Metal in the Mainstream (Part 2 of 6)
Plugged In Online's in-depth series on heavy metal music examines its history, subgenres, performers, fans, messages and influence on us all.
One of the most enduring themes in rock 'n' roll is the plight of the loner. From the genre's earliest days, musicians have strummed odes to struggling, misunderstood characters. Chuck Berry's guitar-hero protagonist, Johnny B. Goode, hailed from out in the sticks: "Deep down Louisiana close to New Orleans/Way back up in the woods among the evergreens." In 1973, Bob Seger's gravelly voice evoked lonesome images of life on the road. His song "Turn the Page" begins with rock's version of the "dark and stormy night": "On a long and lonesome highway/East of Omaha." Countless musicians have immortalized the motif of the drifter making his way down the dusty road of life. This antihero is unpredictable, dangerous and—alone.
Over time, the cliché evolved from the loner to the outlaw. When glam metal reached its apex in the '80s, the genre was practically synonymous with rebellion and dissolution. Bands such as Mötley Crüe and Bon Jovi commandeered biker and cowboy imagery, spinning tales of modern-day desperadoes. "I'm a cowboy," Jon Bon Jovi crooned, "on a steel horse I ride/I'm wanted dead or alive." It was practically an advertisement for the Marlboro Man.
If glam romanticized the ideal of the defiant loner, thrash and metalcore take that idea a big—and darker—step further, from outlaw to outcast. In the last several weeks, I've listened to more than a dozen albums from prominent and diverse metal artists such as Metallica, Tool, Slayer, Godsmack, Rob Zombie, Korn, System of a Down, Stone Sour, Avenged Sevenfold, Trivium, Slipknot, Killswitch Engage, Underoath, As I Lay Dying, Still Remains and Disturbed. These bands represent a cross-section of metal's subgenres, from thrash to industrial, alternative to hardcore. Yet if there's a single thematic thread connecting almost all of them, it's alienation. Nothing ties these bands together more than the collective notion that they are deeply alone.
"Nothing Left For Me"
Metal artists universally articulate a common rallying cry: No one understands me, no one gets my pain. As a result, it's me against the world, and I'll either struggle on alone ... or kill myself. It doesn't take much investigative work to locate metal lyrics long on desperation and isolation.
Metallica's last album, 2003's St. Anger, offers a telling example of exactly this kind of alienation. "Invisible Kid" describes someone (a teenager, perhaps) who buries his pain and who seems cut off from significant relationships. "Invisible kid," snarls James Hetfield, "locked away in his brain/From the shame and the pain." The song also says he's "got a place of his own/Where he'll never be known." Switching to the first person, the invisible kid tells us, "I hurt inside, I hide inside."
The pain of alienation is definitely evident on Slayer's latest, this year's Christ Illusion, as well. "You never dealt with such rejection," Tom Araya screams, "Licking your wounds that won't f---ing heal" ("Catalyst"). And in Trivium's song "Departure," the band sings hauntingly, "I reach out for your hand to find there's nothing left for me." Godsmack frontman Sully Erna confesses, "Way, way down inside, there's a hollow soul/An emptiness shadows tomorrow" ("Bleeding Me"). Singer Matt Heafy of Trivium simply boils it down to the f-word on "Departure": "F--- the people, f--- the world, f--- it all."
No!
It's not just in their music that many of these musicians talk about a sense of isolation. In an interview exploring the lasting appeal of such despairing music, industrial rocker Rob Zombie says, "It's outsider music and it's outsider subjects. ... Metal is like all the weird kids in one place." Guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave adds, "[Metal] is a negation of the world as it's handed to you. It just says, 'You know what, this daily existence of this boring-a-- high school or this Dairy Queen job—just, no. This is something that's mine. That I own. And f--- you, I won't do what you tell me.'"
One of the godfathers of the scene, Ronnie James Dio, describes metal fans as a clan of people whose love for the music is the only thing that overcomes their aloofness. "It becomes a great big family of people who all share one thing, and that's metal. ... And it really is them against the world. It really is. And I think that's its importance. And that's why it lasts so long." The heavy metal family Dio identifies, then, might best be described as a tribe that's somehow alone together.
Whether members of these bands feel they've been cut off by society or they have chosen self-imposed exile themselves, it's clear that they define themselves as permanent outsiders. As a result, hope, wholeness and relational connection are almost always absent from their music.
In Part 3 we look at how metallers encourage their fans to process the loneliness and pain that pours out of them.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
