Showing posts with label Grunge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grunge. Show all posts

Metal Evolution - "Grunge"

Metal Evolution: "Grunge" - Episode 107
Sam Dunn
VH1 Classic


All Access Review:  B+


Seeing it as the province of dumb jocks and sex-crazed hair-band charlatans, one-time Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur steadfastly resists the notion that Grunge, in its original form at least, had much, if anything, in common with heavy metal. Fastbacks bassist/lead vocalist Kim Warnick, while admitting to some nebulous connection between the two genres, insists that Grunge artists never thought of themselves as having a single cloven hoof in the metal world. And when the conversation turns to what musical black arts influenced Soundgarden, Kim Thayil still bristles at the suggestion that he and the rest of the band based their recipe of sonic sludge around equal parts Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. This even though Chris Cornell, bare-chested and sweating machismo from every pore in old live footage, bellows like Robert Plant and Thayil’s own guitar riffs seem stained with the same industrial soot and smoke that smudged those conjured by Tony Iommi at the dawn of Black Sabbath.
The relationship between Metal and Grunge is, indeed, a thorny one, as the amiable and insatiably curious Sam Dunn discovers in the latest installment of his acclaimed “Metal Evolution” series, “Grunge,” which aired on Saturday on VH-1 Classic. At the mere suggestion that they were, in fact, cozy with one another, Grunge’s OGs are likely to squirm in their seats and turn defensive. Then again, in talking to Dunn, Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover of The Melvins freely admit a love of metal, and Tad’s Kurt Danielson owns up to fawning over Iron Maiden and the first Van Halen record, while, at the same time, being blown away by the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks – anything to tweak the parents. As for Mudhoney’s Mark Arm, he’s not at all ashamed to confess to borrowing a few tricks from proto-metal monsters Blue Cheer and Motorhead, as well as Sabbath.
So, what to make of all this falderal? That there happen to be strong opposing opinions as to Grunge’s place in the growth and development of metal is hardly surprising – especially to Dunn. After all, getting everyone involved in the Grunge movement to agree on anything regarding heavy metal and the role it played in its formation is next to impossible. That’s par for the course, though. Grunge was never the most homogenous of genres, even if a lot of acts did share an affinity for angst-fueled emotions.
The great thing about Dunn is he doesn’t set out to prove an already established hypothesis. There is genuine sincerity in this probe, because he himself is not entirely sure that Grunge belongs in heavy metal’s family tree. What emerges from Dunn’s quest is a sense that Grunge artists don’t really see themselves as having much of an impact on metal because they don’t feel a part of that scene. That view isn’t shaped by Dunn through creative editing or his own prejudices; instead, it extends naturally and organically from the extensive interviews he does with journalists, writers, producers, and artists who observed and participated in the early ‘90s explosion that blasted Grunge out of Seattle’s underground and into the public consciousness of a nation.
It’s not just that Dunn is comprehensive in the range of interview subjects he corrals or the issues related to the episode’s topic he attempts to cover. Time being the harsh mistress it is, there’s always something that’s going to be brushed under the rug or left out entirely. For example, in “Thrash,” as a reader so passionately pointed out to me, no mention was made of Overkill or Metal Church, and Hanoi Rocks should have received way more attention for their groundbreaking sound and look in “Glam.” As for “Grunge,” it’s the women who get short shrift. L7, Hole (aside from the Auf der Maur comments) and The Gits – none of them get any play, and that’s a glaring omission. But, remember, Dunn’s aim is not to present a history of Grunge, although he does, in fact, do a fine job of weaving its tale with subtlety as almost a sort of sub-plot. Establishing the “who, what, where, when and how” is not so easy when, first and foremost, there are important questions to be settled.
And there are moments of dazzling insight, including writer Michael Azzerad (“Our Band Could Be Your Life” and “Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana”) citing Black Flag’s 1984 Seattle tour stop in support of the LP My War as a turning point for Grunge, the line of demarcation where local bands weaned on metal found that punk could slow things down, become unremittingly heavy and take on an apocalyptic feel. There’s DJ and journalist Jeff Gilbert and Sub Pop co-owner Jonathan Poneman confirming that Grunge messiah Kurt Cobain did, indeed, incorporate not only the pop sensibilities of The Beatles and the punk nuclear fallout of bands like Flipper into his tortured oeuvre, but also welcomed in the massive riffage and controlled chaos of metal. Or, how about Steve Albini, the famed indie producer who guided Nirvana during the In Utero sessions, proclaiming that while heavy metal was often all about flamboyance and camp, it did breed virtuosos, while Grunge artists practiced a more “functional musicianship.” And at the same time, another of Grunge’s more ubiquitous producers, Jack Endino, provides a lot of the background information about Seattle’s music history – specifically, the energy and spark of rebellion found in the music of garage bands The Sonics and The Wailers – and links it to the wide scope of Grunge’s sonic achievements.
All of this and more is here, and once again, Dunn skillfully meshes the interview footage with rare live and video clips of bands like Tad, Mudhoney, Soundgarden (check the dark, brooding, and heavy performance of “Loud Love”) and Black Flag, among others, while comparing Pearl Jam’s more classic-rock leanings with the rest of the genre’s more punk-ish or metallic progenitors. And with the briefly told story of Alice In Chains, he is able to establish that connection between metal and Grunge, once and for all.
Toward the end of “Grunge,” Dunn tackles a sore subject with Grunge’s main innovators, like Arm, Endino and Osbourne, and that is the rise of “Grunge lite” acts like Creed and Nickelback. Fearlessly, Dunn asks point blank how people like Arm feel about Grunge creating this more “pedestrian,” as Osborne calls it, Grunge monster, and Arm expresses his misgivings, saying that if he had anything to do with it, “Just kill me.” Likewise, the men of Creed try to distance themselves from the real thing, boasting in fact that they are not Grunge at all and that they feel they’ve created something new. It’s a little hard to swallow when the singers of Creed and Days Of The New try so, so hard to sound like Eddie Vedder – doing their “yarling” form of singing, as Endino calls it. It’s an uncomfortably humorous segment, and an issue that needs to be addressed, though the popularity of Nickelback gets perhaps more time than it deserves, even if Alice In Chain’s Jerry Cantrell does give them his stamp of approval. It’s a minor drawback in what is another in-depth and compelling installment of a documentary series that is fast becoming must-see TV for anybody interested in aggressive, rebellious music – as heavy metal is. 
- Peter Lindblad
Metal Evolution - Grunge
View the Full Episode -  Right Here, Right Now



Episode Summary - Sam explores grunge, a.k.a. the Seattle Sound, from a decidedly fresher approach, inspiring two fundamental questions: "Why did grunge polarize the Metal community?" and "What are the true roots of grunge?" While grunge was enjoying its meteoric rise, replacing the MTV face of Metal that was glam with its own brand of telegenic, easy to digest "rebellion," diehards within the Metal community struggled to adjust. We'll explore how fans and musicians felt a profound sense of disillusionment with the ascent of grunge, alienated by its lyrical obsession with depression and endless self-examination, and suspicious of the flannel-wearing façade that was deemed antithetical to the ethos of Metal. At the same time, there were other metallers who felt a connection with grunge-legends like Geddy Lee and Sabbath's Bill Ward discuss their admiration for the Seattle Sound, and how they incorporated elements of grunge into their own music and in doing so, shed light on a profound irony that was at play. We'll also reveal why the leaders of grunge were publicly shunning their Metal roots, preferring to advance the dubious notion that their music was an offspring of the American punk movement. But, through plain-spoken dialogue with Sam Dunn, surviving purveyors of grunge like Kim Thayil, Jerry Cantrell and Thurston Moore, will, for the first time ever, "come out of the closet," and own up to the enormous debt-technically, viscerally and aesthetically-they owe to Metal giants like Led Zeppelin, Blue Öyster Cult and Black Sabbath. In Episode 6, the history of grunge will be rewritten.

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Collectible Posters: 

Grunge Posters
Metal Posters



Metal Evolution - "Thrash"


Metal Evolution: "Thrash" - Episode 106 
Sam Dunn
VH1 Classic

All Access Review:  A-
Squaring off against everything that ‘80s glam metal represented, the soldiers of thrash – glam’s uglier, angrier cousin – wanted to eradicate every trace of makeup, lipstick and hairspray from heavy metal’s dark underworld. Or, as Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine puts it in the “Thrash” installment of Sam Dunn’s “Metal Evolution” documentary series, the androgynous purveyors of glam metal, many of whom looked almost as pretty as the girls they were bedding, were “fleas on the balls of a camel” and thrash “was a flea bomb.”
The strongest of pesticides, thrash almost killed glam metal dead. Grunge would finish the job in the ‘90s. Obviously a fan of one of metal’s most extreme sub-genres, Dunn, author of the acclaimed “Metal A Headbanger’s Journey” documentary, explores the fiery origins and virus-like developments of thrash metal in the latest chapter of “Metal Evolution,” which appeared over New Year’s Eve weekend on VH-1 Classic. Up to this point, Dunn has done a fine job detailing with great care the genealogy of heavy metal. Every piece is rife with riveting interview material, classic live footage and historical fact. With the exuberant enthusiasm of a fan and the intellectual curiosity of an anthropologist, which is what he is, Dunn has dissected the body of and probed into every nook and cranny of that most reviled of all musical forms.
So far, “Metal Evolution” has taken viewers on a loud, crazed journey through all the mayhem and madness metal has produced over the years. Yes, it’s a history lesson, but the scope of Dunn’s work is wide-ranging, studying the influence of classical and jazz on metal, while also investigating the connection between the gritty, early ‘70s Detroit proto-punk sound of The Stooges and the MC5 and confronting the strained relations between English punk and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. And that’s just a small sampling of Dunn’s exhaustive, but never tedious, testimony.
“Thrash” is another winner. Starting off at its birthplace, Soundwave Studios in California’s Bay Area, where Testament is running through a fiery rehearsal, Dunn, through content-rich talks with Mustaine, Slayer’s Dave Lombardo, Testament’s Alex Skolnick and Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, finds the merging streams of hardcore punk and NWOBHM flowing electricity into thrash’s roiling sea. Taking the energy and spirit of punk and the melodic aggression of bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, thrash’s innovators, like Slayer and Exodus, upped the ante.
As Skolnick relates in “Thrash,” musicians like him loved punk’s songs and its undeniable vitality; however, what was missing was musicianship, and they wanted desperately to create something that would challenge their chops. Thrash was it. Heavy and punishing, the riffs raged, flying at unheard-of speeds. And the guttural vocals screamed and growled, spitting out graphically violent lyrical imagery that occasionally touched on war and social issues but more often told stories of serial killers and gruesome deaths. Using this symbiotic relationship as a jumping-off point, Dunn segues into how thundering, high-velocity double-kick drums became the driving force behind Trash. Ulrich and Testament’s Paul Bostaph give all the credit to Motorhead’s Phil Taylor for bringing the double-kick drums into fashion, and Thrash’s young vanguard of drummers took Taylor’s style and gave it a shot of adrenaline. Taylor is one of the surprising stars of Dunn’s “Thrash,” a metal veteran telling his war stories and explaining his absolutely vital contribution to metal, with Dunn hanging on every word.
When the conversation turns to Metallica, Jon Zazula, founder of Megaforce Records, and his wife reveal how their mom-and-pop metal label served as the launching pad for the band that would become Thrash’s version of The Beatles. Metallica’s tale serves as the lynchpin for “Thrash,” as Dunn follows the band from its lowly beginnings on through the explosion of San Francisco’s underground metal scene and into the controversial, MTV-courting “Black” album, which some in the Thrash community saw a betrayal of its values. Dunn and Lombardo make no bones about how they felt. It was treason, but to Dunn’s credit, he shares his feelings with Ulrich, who offers Metallica’s side of things. Ulrich feels that “betrayal” is such an ugly word and that if Metallica had done a rehashing of … And Justice for All, that would have been Metallica selling out. They needed to do the “Black” album to expand their horizons and grow artistically, as Ulrich explains. His reasoning makes perfect sense.
So does Nunn’s storytelling. In less capable hands, “Thrash” could have been a jumbled mess, but he sticks to the philosophy of “Metal Evolution,” and that is to follow each stage of metal’s growth and development to the wherever the story leads. Slayer’s Reign in Blood is treated with awe and respect, and the story behind landmark show at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City that led to major-label deals for Raven, Metallica and, eventually, Anthrax is told with an insider’s perspective.  By the end of “Thrash,” Nunn has traversed Sweden to investigate Thrash’s unlikely revival in the land of ice, snow and Lutherans – the Gothenburg sound, which, after Thrash’s mid-‘90s swoon, which married melody and harmonies with blinding speed and crushing heaviness in bands like In Flames – and Richmond, Va.’s burgeoning scene, which roared to life because of Lamb of God. Though previous segments of “Metal Evolution” – including a surprisingly sincere look at “Glam,” strategically shown the week before “Thrash,” the juxtaposition probably being no accident – were strong statements of purpose, “Thrash” is the best of the lot. Next week, it’s “Grunge,” as Dunn goes to Seattle to take on the movement that many say destroyed the careers of bands like Warrant and Ratt, among others. Let’s hope Dunn treats the subject matter with just as much care as he does with Thrash.
- Peter Lindblad
Metal Evolution Thrash
View the Full Episode - Right Here, Right Now!




Episode Summary - Arguably metal's most popular and passionate genre, Sam journeys to Northern California to trace the roots of Thrash by interviewing the architects of this hugely popular genre. Sam interviews Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer, Testament, Exodus, and many more Thrash Metal legends.
Click here for more information on VH1's Metal Evolution

Collectible Heavy Metal Posters:
  
Anthrax
Megadeth
Metallica
Slayer