30 heavy metal songs to listen to before the planet explodes, part 1
Except for a brief period of time in the mid-80s which was, let’s be honest, horrifically embarrassing anyway, heavy metal is by definition a cult genre. The vast majority of bands write a very specific kind of music for a specific group of scruffs, and the adoration of the masses is pretty far from their minds (except, again, during the Embarrassment Era, when pop metal was a big thing and many hours spent primping in front of the mirror — dark days).
So, in that way people have of always obsessing over organizing anything and everything into lists — top ten favorite 70s movies, top twenty favorite episodes of ST:TNG, top eleven and a half favorite spaces at Trader Joe’s — I’ve been thinking lately of a kind of thirty essential list of heavy metal songs that anyone really ought to hear before the world shatters into a trillion pieces and all life on the planet is thrown into the void to suffocate and die.
I should warn you all that it is probably the single most subjective list you could ever hope to see, because it simply has no criterion at all upon which it’s based. It’s just my mind pondering thirty songs from the genre that, gee, it would be a good idea to listen to before armageddon. It does not represent thirty of the most popular metal songs, or the most famous, or the most highly-regarded, or the most lucrative, or even thirty of the most obscure songs (though many are indeed pretty obscure to casual fans), or thirty from a particular era, or style, or … well you get the picture, which is that there is no picture. Casual listing of the undisciplined mind.
And each post I will choose one of these thirty Songs to Hear Before The Planet Explodes and talk about it, and why it rocks out with its cock out, and why its particular fiddly guitar solo is better than other fiddly guitar solos, and why the screaming and raving of the singer is better than the screaming and raving of another singer, etc etc etc.
Oh, and one more thing — there’s no order here. It doesn’t start with the least most important Song to Listen To Before The Planet Explodes, and end with the most important Song to Listen To Before The Planet Explodes, or anything like that. Favoritism wounds tender feelings, so if any song makes it in to the List of Heavy Metal Song To Listen To Before The Planet Explodes, it’s just as important as all the other 29 songs To Listen To Before The Planet Explodes. For all metal that is true and not poseur metal (”True Metal forever! All poseurs must die! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” … erm, ahem) is our children and we cherish each and every one.
Right, then, with that thoroughly unprofessional rambling preamble out of the way, on to number 30 (or number 1, depending on your point of view):
Cutty Sark “Heroes”
(from the 1985 album of the same name)
Cutty Sark (”we’re named after the boat, dude, not the whisky!”) made kind of a strong splash in their home country between their first four-song EP in 1983, and their second and final album in 1985, although I rather think they were virtually unknown beyond their borders at the time, and never broke into the North American market. The story stereotypically ended with a nasty spat with their record label, and then no record deal at all when the only offers came with the usual demands of primping, prancing, and popping up their image. Rather than go glam, they went bust, and that was that. The cool thing is that they were friends at the time, and I believe remain in touch to this day, so at least it’s not a situation of big egos blowing a band apart.
But they did leave two albums and an EP behind, which to the adventurously curious turn out to be this wonderful mixture of great uniqueness and instantly recognizable familiarity all at the same time — and, remarkably, actually in print from German reissue label High Vaultage, albeit not in the most ready supply. You could say that their music typifies a high-quality example of true classic early 1980s heavy metal, but with enough individuality and deft manipulation of the genre’s staples to really set them apart from the crowd.
“Heroes”, eponymous track of their second and final album, ideally represents everything that was strong about the band, which aside from the usual requisites (strong songwriting, tight drumming…) was the unique vocals of Conny Schmitt, and the blazing guitar firepower of Uwe Cossmann.
Any attempt to describe Conny’s singing style is only going to make him sound bizarre, so suffice to say that after perhaps an initial breaking-in period the listener starts to get quite comfortable with his sound, and then to realize that his expressiveness is an integral part of what drives these songs beyond mere copycat conformity.
Uwe, conversely, is easy as pie to describe. You know how Viv Campbell is a huge part of why those first couple of DIO albums rock out so hard? It’s the same kind of situation here — Uwe is just all over this song, which starts with a really a swaggering guitar intro before leading into the vocals, proceeds to shatter hyperactivity records with a hugely enthusiastic and grinding main solo, and then … well, then just refuses to stop, as Conny comes back in for the final couple of verses, and Uwe just keeps plugging away in the background, keeping things intensifying at a steady rate until they literally snap at the end. If you’re a big fan of flashy guitar (especially which puts the quality and variety of sound above pure fiddly neoclassical technicality) then you are immediately trawling ebay for a copy of this, because you know that any band that writes songs in this style is going to have guitar heroics all over it. But it’s not just heroics, because Uwe isn’t playing just so you have to listen to him twiddle — the lead guitar is an essential and almost nucleic part of the song structures on Heroes (and indeed on all their songs), an organic kind of lead guitar which doesn’t sit quietly in the background strumming its chords until its 30 seconds of swaggering allow it stand up and massage its ego, but rather a guitar whose purpose is there to tell the story of the song just as integrally as Conny’s vocals are.
And the story, for the geek inclined, is a really cool one. What I can make out of it is that “Heroes” tells of a man who tries to become a hero and make a positive change in the world around him, and through his own inadequacy and even blind arrogance becomes a failure overcome by the world’s ills. The listener is cast as a spectator, watching this would-be hero amaze everyone with his fearlessness and his selfessness, then watching him defeated and finally broken when he finds his will unable to endure a world that refuses to be healed.
Actually, the lyrics are fairly abstract — this is my own interpretation of what amounts to something very subjective.
The hero in the song is referred to as “a Batman”, but whether or not the song is literally about Batman or if the name is simply a kind of euphemism for all would-be superheroes who try to fix society’s ills remains unclear.
Say, I just thought of something as I was writing this. You know what this song kind of reminds me of? Watchmen. It has that same sense of tragedy that comes from witnessing people who decide naively to confront evil, only to be consumed by it.
“Heroes” is pretty damned near a perfect classic heavy metal song, both exuberant and optimistic and turgid and cynical. Have a listen before the planet explodes. And just try to get through it without throwing a little air guitar. I dare you.
Technorati tags: Cutty Sark, heavy metal