Events Calendar
In This Section
Most Read Stories
Man robbed at Tallmadge Avenue eatery
Another winter punch heading toward Ohio
Four teens restrain man, take items from his Akron home
Complaints against officer keep coming
Police: Ohio girl dies after fall into snow bank
Region makes way for latest batch of snow; cancellations rise
Cuyahoga Falls residents come home to find burning couch on balcony
Blogs:
First Bell - On Education:
No City of Akron basketball tonight
Pets:
Pet telethon re-airs
The Heldenfiles:
Chipmunks "Squeakquel" on DVD/BD March 30
Akron Zips:
Late surge gives Zips ugly road win
Tribe Matters:
Blogmail response on Hafner
Cleveland Browns:
Stallworth's contract terminated
Balanced Ledger:
QB in Browns future: another mock draft
Kent State Sports:
KSU Notes – February 9
Cleveland Cavaliers:
NBA Power Rankings from Around the Internet
Buckeye Blogging:
Buckeyes grab 18 players on signing day
Varsity Letters:
Garfield at Buchtel basketball
All Da King's Men:
Palin At The Tea Party Convention
Blog of Mass Destruction:
Republican Pre-Conditions
Akron Law Café:
Citizens United v. F.E.C. (Part 4): Kennedy's and O'Connor's Basic Approaches to Constitutional Decisionmaking – Top Down and Bottom Up
Car Chase:
Collector Car Hobby Loses One of the Best—Jim Roll
Let's Talk Real Estate:
Decisions Decisions: Credit Cards or Your Mortgage?
Ohio Travels with Betty:
Loucile is looking for a Lake Erie getaway in June for three kids, ages 1, 3, and 5.
Sound Check:
Talk of the Town – Top entertainment picks for the weekend
HRLite House:
OFCCP Report
Akron Gamer:
Makers of 'Castle Crashers' unveil 'BattleBlock Theater'
See Jane Style:
Do IT this week: Layering
Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival to stop at Blossom with a mix of bands and sounds
By Malcolm X Abram
Beacon Journal music writer
Published on Thursday, Jul 30, 2009
Heavy metal: energetic and highly amplified electronic rock music having a hard beat (Merriam-Webster's dictionary, 1973).
That dry, outdated definition (electronic?) of heavy metal was oversimplified in 1973 and in 2009 barely scratches the surface of what most fans simply call ''metal,'' and the numerous subgenres that have sprung up in its 40-plus years of inducing headbanging.
For many nonbelievers, metal is the sound of angry young white boys taking their testosterone-fueled frustrations out on innocent instruments. For others it's ''crazykillyourmamamusic'' where the same AYWBs are screaming about dragons, murder, Armageddon and anything else ''brutal.''
But for many fans, metal is not just their favorite music to listen to, it also speaks to and informs their lives. They are part of a global community of headbangers.
On Friday, the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival will stop at Blossom Music Center, bringing with it a mix of new and old metal bands and a variety of metal subgenres.
Metal has generally been considered masculine and adolescent and for much of its history it has been derided by critics, nonfans and conservative and religious groups for its embracing and, some would say, glorification of the ugly side of human existence. Before the rise of gangsta rap, any conservative group looking for a musical target could easily set its ideological cross hairs on metal.
But, also just like hip-hop, punk and to a lesser extent club/dance music, metal has been subsumed by popular culture.
Bands such as Metallica and Disturbed sell millions of records and sell out arenas.
Birth of metal
The roots of metal were born in the heavy riff-happy blues of the late 1960s and early '70s of bands such as Led Zeppelin and Blue Cheer and the hard rock of Deep Purple.
In 1971, Black Sabbath released Paranoid, which eschewed the blues influence of its debut album with classic tunes including Iron Man and War Pigs that laid the basic metal blueprint — reveling in alternating fast and slow, heavy, distorted chunka-chunka riffs and macabre lyrics.
Other bands of the time such as Judas Priest completely removed the blues element, relying on muted power chords and snakey riffs while also lending metal its basic dark, leathery look to which many bands still adhere.
Later in the '70s, the influential New Wave of British Heavy Metal featuring seminal bands including Venom, Motorhead, (early) Def Leppard, Iron Maiden and Diamond Head became a large influence on bands such as Metallica.
It wasn't until the '80s that metal went mainstream when ''hair-metal'' bands such as Motley Crue, Twisted Sister, Ratt and Poison mixed metal riffs with glam rock images, sending many disgusted metal heads to the many underground scenes popping up in places such as the Bay Area. There, young musicians influenced by punk and hardcore started bands such as Metallica and Death Angel.
Further south in Florida, where much of the American extreme metal scene was born, were bands such as Obituary and Morbid Angel.
During the hair metal years, real metal also broke through with bands such as Anthrax, Slayer and Megadeth, which played packed arenas and coliseums despite virtually no commercial airplay.
Now, the term ''metal'' encompasses a gaggle of subgenres and sub-subgenres including death, metalcore, black, symphonic, Viking, Celtic, doom, avant, power and other adjectives, that pretty much all end with metal.
While grunge (also influenced by punk and metal) essentially killed the hair metal in the early '90s, recently there has been what is dubbed the New Wave of American Heavy Metal featuring bands such as Lamb of God, Cleveland's own Chimaira and several Mayhem Fest bands including Killswitch Engage and God Forbid that have found dedicated audiences and even some radio airplay.
Here are short bios of the Mayhem Festival headliners and their relative regions they occupy on the vast metal landscape.
Marilyn Manson
Manson is the least musically metal of all the main stage acts as his music incorporates hard rock, industrial and electronic elements.
The former Canton resident is more widely known by the seemingly limiting label ''shock rocker.'' For Manson, who is also a painter, the visual aspect of his art is as important as the music and he has spent much of his career periodically reinventing his look to coincide with his latest musical offering.
Controversy has long been Manson's raison d'etre, starting in 1989 when the band was billed as Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids and each member had a stage name combining a female sex symbol and a serial killer (i.e. Madonna Wayne Gacy, Twiggy Ramirez).
Manson has sold a ton of records and been at the center of a ton of controversies including the band's breakthrough album Antichrist Superstar featuring the single The Beautiful People. Other hits include The Dope Show from the Bowie-inspired glam-rock flavored concept album Mechanical Animals, which was boycotted by Wal-Mart for it's ''obscene'' cover art.
Christian groups have long held Manson in their cross hairs but he gained a whole new level of infamy after the 1999 school shootings at Columbine when he was held up as the scapegoat for the evil influence of evil music on impressionable minds despite neither of the shooters identifying themselves as Manson fans.
In recent years, Manson's profile hasn't been as high musically (though his marriage and divorce from model/dancer Dita Von Teese got plenty of headlines). He still maintains a highly dedicated fan base and still sells millions of records.
His latest, The High End of Low released in May, marked his sixth top 10-charting album, debuting at No. 4. The album finds the now-divorced Manson applying his signature croak to songs such as the throbbing new wave-ish We're From America.With lines such as ''I want to be a martyr don't want to be a victim, be a killer with a gun so they call me a hero,'' it will not be added to any Independence Day celebrations.
Slayer
Its members are the graybeard godfathers of thrash and it arguably is the sole band that is likely to be in the music collections of every other band on the tour.
Spawned in Huntington Park, Calif., in 1981, its members were raised on hard rock, punk and hardcore and filtered all of those sounds into their own black bouillabaisse, taking metal's affinity for macabre subjects and the dark side of existence to extremes in their cover art and the music.
Drummer Dave Lombardo is one of the forefathers of the now obligatory over-the-top, double kick-drum style prevalent in much of metal and guitarists Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King have unleashed some of the ugliest guitar solos this side of Lou Reed.
Along with Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax were among the genre's first stars in the late 1980s. Slayer rose to infamy with its third album, 1986's Reign in Blood, a bona fide 29-minute genre-defining classic with pleasant tunes such as Angel of Death, a song about Josef Mengele that got the band charged as Nazi sympathizers for its lack of overt condemnation of the WWII war criminal. Guitarist/songwriter Jeff Hanneman later said he didn't think it was necessary to tell listeners that Mengele was a bad guy.
Nevertheless, Slayer has proved to be one of the most popular and longstanding metal bands with four gold-selling albums and two Grammys.
Most recently, the band released Christ Illusion, its ninth album of new material in 28 years of headbanging. Surprisingly, the album was a strong return to form after the frenzied God Hates Us All managed to draw some controversy for the song Jihad, which was written from the point of view of a suicide bomber.
Slayer is debuting a new song, Psychopathy Red, on the tour as a preview of its upcoming album World Painted Blood.
Killswitch Engage
A mosh-ready band of relative youngbloods, Killswitch is one of the most popular bands on the tour.
The Massachusetts quintet, whose lead singer Howard Jones grew up in Columbus, plays a melodic brand of the current crossover style metalcore — a mix of hardcore and thrash/speed metal that usually includes some slower passages, dramatic breakdowns and shout/screamed verses and relatively catchy choruses.
Bands such as Killswitch and Bullet for My Valentine (replaced at the Blossom tour stop with local favorites Mushroomhead) get some radio play on adventurous ''active rock'' stations.
Killswitch has had two of its five-album catalog reach gold status.
The band's brand new album, Killswitch Engage (its second self-titled album) peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard charts and the band's intense tour schedule and guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz's sometimes silly onstage antics have made them favorites in Europe and other international metal bastions.
Mushroomhead
If you're a Northeast Ohio metal head you surely know this band and are likely indifferent to the band's theatrical mix of metal, industrial and alt-rock or are among the throngs of enthralled headbanging fans.
Mushroomhead is a classic case of DIY as it has built up a worldwide following with little help from major labels, radio or video outlets and has created its own iconic logos and images that you can find on seemingly endless variations of merchandise and etched on the the bodies of dedicated fans.
The band's last album was 2006's Savior Sorrow. Mushroomhead has had a longstanding fan-fueled beef with Slipknot over that band's similar use of macabre masks and theatricality in its shows, which Mushroomhead fans claim was stolen by Slipknot.
Reportedly, Mushroomhead will release a new album some time this year tentatively titled The Slaughterhouse Is Back In Business.
On the side
The two side stages sponsored by Jagermeister and ''hip'' clothing and knick-knack chain Hot Topic are filed with metallic subgenres.
The Hot Topic stage will cater to lovers of extreme and death metal led by another band of influential 20-plus-year metal veterans Cannibal Corpse. Also on the stage will be Polish blackened death metal (that's really, really scary occult-themed death metal) purveyors Behemoth, as well as Job for a Cowboy, Black Dahlia Murder and Whitechapel — all of whom share a love of growling vocals, start-stop tempos and violent blast beats.
The Jagermeister stage will feature less extreme but still headbanging bands including Florida-based Trivium, whose latest album The Crusade with its old-school thrash riffs and gruff but melodic vocals often sounds like an homage to Metallica's Master of Puppets.
Also on the Jagermeister stage will be All That Remains, which also traverses the melodic end of metalcore with big, punchy arena metal choruses that can be heard on its latest album, Overcome. Also on the stage will be God Forbid, a band that often mixes hardcore elements into its music, but sticks mostly to contemporary metal sound melding clean and growled vocals and old-school metal style guitar harmonies on its latest album, Earthsblood.
Malcolm X Abram can be reached at mabram@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3758.
Details
- What: The Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival
- When: 2:15 p.m. Friday
- Where: Blossom Music Center, 1145 W. Steels Corners Road, Cuyahoga Falls
- Tickets: $25-$49.50
- Information: http://www.ticketmaster.com, 330-945-9400
Heavy metal: energetic and highly amplified electronic rock music having a hard beat (Merriam-Webster's dictionary, 1973).
Get the full article here.
Comments
Click here to post your comments
Canton, OH
Posted 11:56 AM, 07/29/2009
Stay away from Blossom Friday. . That will be one crazy, nutso crowd of young white males high on testosterone ( among other things ). . .
Boston Hts, Oh
Posted 12:50 PM, 07/29/2009
Ummm, Im a old white female ...and Ive had my tickets since they went on sale!
ohhh, but I am taking my 17 year "young white male"...lol
wadsworth, oh
Posted 01:03 PM, 07/29/2009
im excited for this show! got tickets when they first went on sale!!
Hudson, OH
Posted 03:34 PM, 07/29/2009
I like Ben Fold's take on the "angry white boy" music in his song "Rockin the Suburbs."
These metal bands today are just terrible.
Akron, OH
Posted 08:28 AM, 07/30/2009
MUSHROOMHEAD!! Wish I was going to the show... just not financially feasible right now...
