In the late 70’s, a curious paperback book was published, filled with wackily twisted facts about famous people and unusual historical sidebars of eyebrow raising information. It caught people off-guard but the lure to peep into it’s catacombs of information was strangely alluring. It was titillating and a bit scandalous for the times, and led to a few more volumes in the early 80’s. Other similar books would pop up through the years but they were only imposters to the original.
In 2013, two music biz inhabitants sat down and snookered out facts and figures from a brand of music that usually doesn’t cause giggly reactions amongst it’s devoted legion. People take their Metallica, Iron Maiden and Slayer very seriously. But we’re all curious creatures by nature and we tend to like creating lists, thereby making The Merciless Book Of Metal Lists by Howie Abrams and Sacha Jenkins a scrumptious piece of candy for the happily tattooed.
It will only take an hour, if that long, to read this, but upon finishing, pass it to a friend and then have fun arguing over whether Black Sabbath’s debut album is really THE best metal album EVER. Or if Tommy Iommi deserves the #1 spot over Randy Rhoads as the greatest metal guitarist. Or if Metallica’s “The Call Of Ktulu” is the best metal instrumental. Throw a party, play the music and enjoy lashing out with each other the pros and cons of Sabbath vs Metallica vs Exodus.
It’s not all my-band-is-better-than-your-band debates. There is some funny trivia thrown around, as well as some just plain “What?” moments: 10 Observations From Lemmy’s Warts, 5 Things I Learned By Opening Slayer’s Fan Mail Back In The Day, Top 11 Things People Say To Start A Conversation With Me by Anthrax’s Scott Ian (#11 – “Can I touch your beard?”)
There are fun facts about Megaforce Records, a list of album covers featuring goats, metal songs about, well, metal, 35 non-metal artists that metalheads love, birth names of some of your favorite heavy rockers, and some good-natured (?) ribbing at Dave Mustaine. There’s even a crossword puzzle at the end, right before Phil Anselmo gives his “Merciless Afterword.”
If you love metal, this is a short & sweet version for shits and giggles. For the more in-depth stuff, you will certainly need to go for the behemoth 700 page volume known as Louder Than Hell, which also came out this year.
“Heavy metal was never officially born. It came together in bits and pieces between the mid-sixties and early seventies, and stemmed from a desire to rebel, shock, and create a level of intensity that did not then exist in pop music.” And so it begins. Authors Jon Wiederhorn and Katherine Turman have excavated deep into the darkest bat-infested caves for interviews long forgotten or which had never seen the light of day, and scrapbooked them together to form a compelling history of the music we love LOUD.
Voices past and present speak tales of sex, drugs, rock & roll, debauched lifestyles, ruined careers, stupid decisions, too many parties, exciting concerts, thrilling creativity and music, music, music. From beginning to end, every band you have ever heard release a wolf howl to some screaming guitar lick has a story to share, starting with Anthrax’s Scott Ian in the Forward admitting to buying his first Iron Maiden album because “Eddie looked so fucking cool” on the album cover.
Touching on each genre along the metal yellow brick road, Louder Than Hell attempts to pinpoint the conception of the music that has at times been worshiped and vilified. Ozzy Osbourne mentions the Kinks: “I got that tickling up my back” when he heard “You Really Got Me.” Ritchie Blackmore liked Jimi Hendrix’s “snarling guitar.” And Blue Cheer’s Dickie Peterson gives his band a legitimate stake with, “In 1968, we played with Iggy & The Stooges and the MC5 at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom and I honestly think to this day it was really the first metal show ever.”
Sufficient time is spent delving into the cores of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Metallica and KISS. Drugs are talked about as if ambrosia of the gods (Trent Reznor: “I think the right drugs used with the right amount of intelligence can be a very important tool in self-awareness.”) and elixirs of death (Phil Anselmo: “I felt like heroin couldn’t kill me, man; there was no way heroin was stronger than me. Come to find it could kill me and did.”) Groupies are lusted after then quickly discarded (Stephen Pearcy: “I had to have three different women a day. It was like an addiction.”). And dabbling in mysticism is almost a rite of passage. With over 700 pages of musicians talking, there’s bound to be some revelations that shock you, disgust you, sadden you and inspire you.
But it is the music that continues to seduce them, day after day, year after year. For those of us who couldn’t play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” if our life depended on it, Louder Than Hell feeds us everything we need to know about the slings and arrows of heavy metal music. You just have to open the book and start reading: “I was eight years old, sitting in my uncle’s bedroom at my grandparents’ house, going through his vinyl. I pulled out the first Black Sabbath record.”
