by Michael McCarthy
collage by Scott Hefflon
In 1995, I put myself in a puddle of debt I still haven’t climbed out of and started a zine called ANT, The Only Cool Magazine That Bites. I was 22 and a big fan of heavy metal. And I was angry that MTV had turned its back on the bands I’d come to love through years of watching them on Dial MTV and Headbanger’s Ball. How dare those corporate fools abandon Warrant and make heroes of Nirvana, I thought. So pissed was I that I had to start my own zine to show Warrant, and the like, my support.
If the metal bands had broken up or otherwise died off, obviously I would not have started a publication devoted to them. However, most were still around, releasing some great albums, and it irritated me that the media was generally ignoring them. I thought I could spread the word through ANT and convince people to give their new albums a chance. Unfortunately, while publishing ANT, I started to realize something: most metal fans are stuck in the ’80s. They’re so fixated on that late ’80s/early ’90s sound that when bands released albums that weren’t quite that, they chastised them more than the mainstream media ever did. In some cases, they were justified. Most of the time, however, they were way off the mark, renouncing great albums because the subject matter wasn’t exclusive to sex and partying. Did some bands try a bit too hard to sound like Nirvana and Pearl Jam? Yeah, sure, just as some tried too hard to sound like Poison and Bon Jovi years earlier. But most made and released some of their best albums to date. Take Def Leppard’s Slang, for example. The lyrics were darker, the sound wasn’t so polished and they’d truly experimented. I was shocked at first, but a dozen listens later, I found myself loving it more than their previous work. A lot of Warrant fans flipped out (in a bad way) over their Ultraphobic disc, which had grunge influences all over it. I still wish certain songs were more polished, but the disc quickly grew on me, and I’ll take it over Cherry Pie any day. Ditto for their arguably more alternative album, Belly to Belly Volume 1. Since that disc also neglected sex-fueled fluff, most fans complained again.
Cut to 1999. A truly sad year for heavy metal. A year that’s made me happy that I’m not publishing ANT anymore. Bands have stopped experimenting, and have made some lousy attempts to please fans who’ve been complaining for the past five years. It’s a smart decision because most of them aren’t likely to gain new fans anytime soon, and if they don’t maintain old fans, they’re fucked. But I can’t call truly disposable releases gems just because the boys have bills to pay. I have bills too, so I feel entitled to complain when I buy a disc that turns out to be shit.
A lot of metal fans think the genre is going to be huge again, mostly because Ratt and Great White were signed to Columbia Records. Well, guess again, folks. They were signed to a new division, dubbed Portrait Records, and those releases have hardly received the push. Have you seen them on MTV? Have you seen full page ads in Rolling Stone and Details? No, no, no. Matter of fact, most publications aren’t even bothering to review the discs. Not that I blame them. I won’t comment about Great White’s disc because I never liked ’em anyway, but the Ratt disc (their second self-titled release) is horrible. It’s as though they tried to please the AOR crowd (as if we’d ever hear Ratt on stations that play Richard Marx) and the old school heavy metal crowd at the same time. The result is a collection of songs that don’t do anything. You don’t want to bang your head, you don’t want to play them for your girlfriend, you just wish they’d done something genuinely inspired.
Def Leppard recently released a new album entitled Euphoria. I knew I was going to be disappointed when I saw the sticker on it, which basically said “after Pyromania and Hysteria comes Euphoria.” While I loved Pyromania and most of Hysteria, Slang had become my favorite, and besides, I’d liked Adrenalize and Retroactive more than Hysteria anyway. What that sticker told me was that the Leps had gone back to the ’80s. Upon first listen, I was more annoyed than I’d initially been with Slang. That a band could do a wonderful, deep, experimental album like Slang and then revert to silly anthems just doesn’t make sense. While some of the songs are damn catchy and a few of them are fairly deep, the sound of the production, the cover, that sticker – it generally rings false. They just tried too hard to recapture their glory days.
The same can be said of the new Dokken disc, Erase the Slate. When they parted ways with George Lynch once again and brought aboard former Winger guitarist Reb Beach, many rejoiced. It was around this time that they started talking trash about their previous album, Shadowlife, and saying the next record would be a return to the classic Dokken sound. Even I was excited, having been pleasantly surprised by Winger’s third disc, Pull, and having enjoyed Dokken’s Dysfunctional disc more than Shadowlife. But then Erase the Slate was released and I was mighty disappointed. They tried too hard to sound like ’80s Dokken and fell flat on their faces. There are a few good tunes, but most are nothing short of disposable.
But at least Dokken, Def Leppard, and Ratt have released albums of new songs. Other bands, like Quiet Riot, Pretty Boy Floyd, and L.A. Guns, are merely re-recording their old tunes, along with a few new tunes (and usually a cover). Some of them are good, because the old tunes rock a little harder and don’t have the excessive guitar solos and backing vocals, but most are merely horrible attempts to milk the fans. But the majority of fans are buying into this and actually love it. In my opinion, the only trend worse is the tribute album thing. Just about every week a new tribute album comes out with a bunch of metal cats covering Alice Cooper, Rod Stewart, Aerosmith, etc. And most of it is shit. Because they’re doing the all-star line up thing, most of the performances are basically phoned in. Someone, usually good ol’ Bob Kulick, will throw down a guitar track, then someone else will record drums, then bass, and finally vocals. Because they’re done this way, they’re pretty bland covers. If they actually sat down and worked on them together, they could make some songs heavier, some faster, some slower, and maybe these tribute discs would be interesting. Even those stuck-in-the-’80s cats seem to be agreeing with me, though for the wrong reason. Most of them are just sour because they don’t like the bands that’re being covered.
I haven’t given up on heavy metal, just on most of my fellow metal fans. Who knows, maybe some of these bands will release their greatest work in the new millennium. I mean, they’ve tried the grunge thing, and they can only rehash their old tunes so many times before even the-stuck-in-the-’80s-fans realize they’re being duped. Perhaps they’ll sit down and write great music now, disregarding everything else. Don’t they owe it to themselves as artists to at least try?