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As I sit and write this, the first few lines of this site, VH1's Heavy: The Story of Metal
is playing on my TV. I've been watching this program with a mixture of nostalgic euphoria and anger. Nostalgic euphoria because
I grew up with it. I was 10 years old when AC/DC and Kiss formed. The first album I ever bought was Kiss's Love Gun. I hadn't
heard a single note from this LP, but the cover art had me the instant I saw it. I took it home, put it on the cheap little
record player my mom bought for me and my sister and was instantly transformed into a different creature. If anyone had asked
me back then just what it was about those songs that grabbed my soul by the throat and breathed new life into it, I really
couldn't say. I know now that it was two things. Ace Frehley's Shock Me and Gene Simmon's Almost Human.
They were different. They weren't the saccarine, empty hack pop crap being played on the radio. There was a wicked vitality
to it that blew away everything I had heard up to that point. I wanted more. If this was out there, what else was there? The
beast was awakened and it wanted blood. What followed was a lifelong love affair with Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Twisted
Sister, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, The Scorpions and Alice Cooper. In the late 70's through the 80's metal exploded, raged, and partied
hard. Suddenly a new breed of metal band took it all to another level- bands like Metallica, Overkill, Anthrax, Death Angel,
Grim Reaper, Slayer, Megadeth, Biohazard and Pantera. Metal was at last truly heavy. Then it was over. MTV began it's decline
into a festering stinkhole of banality and garbage-laden brain-dead programming by abruptly cancelling Headbanger's Ball with
no notice and dismissing Rikki Rachtman for voicing his opinion about MTV's suckyness. Wherupon MTV began pandering to the
teenybopper pop wusses, started kissing the unwashed heiny of the Grunge fad and then becoming a whore to hip-hop all the
while phasing out music altogether. Somewhere in all this disco reared it's ugly, sissy head for awhile (and thankfully died
as quickly). These were dark days for metalheads like me who grew up in such a vital, influential period of rock history.
This is the part I'm angry about. This decline of metal I mostly blame the short attention span of our pop culture. The general
music-loving population is a notoriously fickle tool to marketing and as such eagerly embrace trends instead of substance.
I also place blame on bands themselves. There was a lot of disgustingly crappy junk out there being passed off as metal. Glam
bands, hair bands, preening and skipping hacks pandering to shrieking teenage girls instead of making good music. To the casual
observer, it looked like the complete end of metal. But we, the real children of the beast, knew better.
Metal never even came close to dying. It evolved, branched into sub-categories, and thrived underground where
it began. Today legends of metal are reuniting and playing sold-out venues. Ozzy has reinvigorated the metal genre with Ozzfest.
VH1, formerly the old-folk's alternative to MTV, is now in the middle of it's Metal Month. This already is too cool. But something
else is happening. The beast is not only alive and well, but it's crouching for another go at the throat of pop culture sensibilities.
This is evident not only in the attention it's getting on TV and in the concert arenas, but in unlikely places all over the
USA. On May 20th of this year Anniston Alabama was home it's first ever Death Metal Festival. The event was coordinated by
Jon K. of Angel Heart Tattoos. It featured Jon's own band, Divine Blacken Path as well as hard hitters such as Apolocolyptic
Visions, Grotestuary, Parabellum, Anos Mia, Wicked Descendants, and Sciatica. I was unable to attend this monumental event
but I'm sure it was a smashing success because my inside source at the Anniston Police Department informed me that the PD
recieved many calls about the noise as well as complaints about atrocities such as bible-burning. This hellacious event drove
home the fact that there is a thriving metal community not only in the southeast, but right here in stone-age Calhoun County.
Now the question resurfaces decades later. If these guys are out there, what else is out there? And are we on the verge of
another cultural takeover? After pondering this for just a moment, I realized that I just don't care. I don't want this angry,
sublime, bloodthirsty beast we call metal to again become commercial fodder. I want it to remain the raw, overpowering kick
in the face that it's supposed to be. I want the bands I admire to have the support of real fans because they are good and
relevant, not because they produced a slick video for TV. I want more shows like Jon's event at the fairgrounds. But most
of all, as Dee Snider says, I WANNA ROCK.
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