Sound of the Beast Read online

  Not fully comprehending the modest size of Zazula’s offer, in April 1983 Metallica drove a small van thirty-five hundred miles cross-country from San Francisco to New York. Unable to afford a hotel, the band of twenty-year-olds on their first trip to the Big Apple slept under U-Haul blankets in the Music Building in Jamaica, Queens. They practiced in a rehearsal space down the hall from Anthrax—a local teenage band in awe of Metallica’s “No Life ‘Til Leather.” Barely old enough to buy cigarettes, the members of Anthrax were graduating from 1970s hard-rock-influenced originals like “Satan’s Wheels” to a faster sound resembling Iron Maiden’s. Dan Lilker played bass in Anthrax and remembers looking after his West Coast comrades. “We would take them down to the market and everything,” he says. “We’d go down to their room and drink some beers. Cliff smoked herb, and I did, like typical bass players. They were kids a long way from home who were real excited about this. They had come over on a wing and a prayer. They were broke. They just trusted Johnny Z to put them in the studio and make sure they ate.”

  In the throes of this adventure, where beer often took the place of food, the last thing Dave Mustaine expected was to be ousted from Metallica for his drinking. Regardless, escalating tension and a drunken run-in with death on the road from California turned his three bandmates against the unruly guitarist. “It was really tough for me, because I didn’t get a warning,” says Mustaine. He came to terms with his anger years later—and then only to a limited degree. “They didn’t say, ‘Dave, you’re drinking too much.’ The truth of the matter is that I imbibed the same amount that they did, but my reaction to alcohol was violent, and it made them happy. I knew I was a real heavy drinker, but I didn’t really realize that my drinking was going to cost me my job.”

  Unlike expelled bassist Ron McGovney (who realized he was fired as the band gradually tossed his shoes and clothes from the van after meeting Cliff Burton), Mustaine’s ejection from Metallica was harsh, abrupt, and by all reports unexpected. “It was really hard for me to listen to their music for the longest time,” says Mustaine. “In retrospect, knowing our plan—which was to rule the world—would I have hesitated if it had been anyone else in the band doing the same thing, to tell them to get the fuck out? No. Would I have given them a warning? I don’t know. I might have.”

  Despite hanging out with Metallica every day, Dan Lilker and Anthrax “couldn’t tell at all” that the change was coming. “[Anthrax guitarist] Scott Ian and I came out of rehearsal,” Lilker says, “and we saw Cliff Burton and James Hetfield in the lobby. They had just come back from a trip to the deli. They said, ‘We threw Dave out this morning.’ Scott went, ‘Bullshit!’ and Cliff looked at him and said, ‘Bullshit, bullshit’—and we all know two negatives equal a positive.”

  Banished from the band he helped build, Dave Mustaine left on a long, lonely Greyhound bus trip from Manhattan’s Port Authority to Los Angeles. The very next night, in flew twenty-year-old Exodus guitarist Kirk Hammett to replace him. Exodus had opened for Metallica previously, but the two San Francisco bands were not yet well-acquainted. Still, Metallica’s road manager pushed Exodus’s demo tape on Metallica, impressing them with Hammett’s flashy, “European” style of playing.

  A Catholic-school boy who switched to public school in junior high, Hammett had a giggly personality and dedication to guitar. Though Cliff Burton dressed the part of a hippie, it was Hammett who actually grew up within the city of San Francisco, and he recalls having his face painted with flowers as a preschooler at a peace-and-love street fair. Says Les Claypool of Primus, who met Hammett in El Sobrante, California, “I was in algebra in ninth grade with Kirk, and Mr. Kelly was our teacher. First of all, he didn’t like Kirk. Every day he’d get on Kirk’s case, because Kirk was just like, ‘Hey, man,’ a Cheech and Chong burnout kinda guy. Mr. Kelly would bend a paper clip into a loop, then stick it in his ear and pull out balls of wax with it. Kirk and I would just sit there and watch.”

  In contrast to the arrogant and outgoing Mustaine, Hammett was a shy thrasher—"this little kid from SF,” according to Dan Lilker. He played his first show with Metallica during the summer of 1983 at the Showplace in Dover, New Jersey, with Anthrax supporting. “Kirk definitely looked nervous,” Lilker recalls. “He was looking at James the whole time, to make sure he was playing everything right—while still doing his headbanging, just with his head turned to one side.”

  Adapting to the circumstances, Hammett gelled quickly with Metallica, picking up many of Mustaine’s guitar solos and adding a few of his own. After only four weeks of practice, the new lineup hiked north in May 1983 to the secluded metal stronghold of Rochester, New York, to record its debut album at the now-defunct Music America studios. Manowar’s Joey DeMaio lived in the area and recommended the space for its upstairs ballroom, a suitably dramatic location for Lars Ulrich to record his drums. The material Metallica put to tape was essentially identical to “No Life ‘Til Leather"—but what a difference a year made in the performance.

  Released in July 1983, Metallica’s Kill Em All was undeniable— steeped deeply in the fresh traditions of metal, it determinedly improved and expanded the field. The lyrics showed a band obsessed with the metal universe. The opening song, “Hit the Lights,” piled on guitar solos, drum fills, and excitement in a wild exhortation to the live-concert experience. Then came the drug-riffing frenzy of “Motor-breath,” the hot fervor of “Jump in the Fire,” the emotional overdrive of “No Remorse,” all barreling toward the helmeted legions of “Metal Militia.” In the compulsive ode to headbanging, “Whiplash,” the band boasted—or prophesied—"Hotel rooms and motorways, life out here is raw / But we will never stop, we will never quit, cause we are Metallica.”

  Metallica’s first official photo

  (Megaforce Records)

  The glories of metal were praised on nearly every song. With songwriter Dave Mustaine gone, the sexual double entendre of “Mechanix” from the demo tape was rewritten to create “Four Horsemen,” a forceful doomsday scenario played out against the relentless unison riffing of Hetfield and Hammett. The lyrics were cribbed from the biblical book of Revelation, and harked back to the cataclysms of early Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. Even so, there was little doubt that the four horsemen in question were in fact Metallica, sweeping the land clean of anything but the heaviest, most powerful metal.

  Making his recording debut with Metallica, Cliff Burton pulled the hyperactive band back down to earth with his bass playing, applying torque with his emphasis on moody counterpoint. Burton’s emotional soliloquy, “Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)” was Kill ‘Em All’s wild card, capturing the controlled flailing of an uninhibited madman, a cool statement in a universe overpopulated by wanky Van Halen-inspired guitar solos. For three and a half minutes Burton the contrarian emphasized not so much the bass notes themselves as the long, ragged, wa-wa-pedal-inflected spaces between them.

  Employing gruff vocals, prominent bass lines, and unwavering rhythm guitar, Kill ‘Em All replaced the high, whiny notes of early-1980s metal with dense, brooding tones that carried the massive and unstoppable load of Black Sabbath minus the melancholia. The chugging thunk of Hetfield and Hammett’s twin Gibson Flying V guitars was hypnotic and explosive, with frequent tempo changes fused together by Hammett’s finger-racing guitar flash. Soon much imitated were the trademark muted guitar riffs, a startling rhythmic element at the forefront of Metallica’s sound, generated by holding the meat of the picking hand over the base of the strings, producing a compressed mechanical chunking sound instead of a ringing cry.

  What’s more, Kill ‘Em All blazed faster than anyone short of Motörhead, whose influence was felt in the galloping rhythms and thunderous drums. Kill ‘Em All might have been the first record fast enough that when fans played it to the point of skipping, a full chorus could be captured in a single revolution of the vinyl. Observes Katon DePena, whose band Hirax was one of the quickest of the 1980s, “It’s cool to play fast, but you’ve got to be able to write
a riff, and that’s what made Metallica incredible.”

  Skirting the speed frontier, Metallica was almost forced to speed up to find a niche. Due to the long-term relationships between heavy metal bands and their fans, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden were only growing more popular with age—not disappearing into obscurity like so many out-of-work one-hit radio wonders. The only choice for new metal bands was to expand on the furious firmament. Says metal visionary Tom Warrior of hearing Metallica in his native Switzerland, “I couldn’t believe when the British metal wave triggered the American metal wave, how the American bands blew everything away. They had a much more clinical approach to heaviness. Whereas the British bands had this publike aura around them, the Americans just sounded like heavy machines.”

  Lacking a strong lead vocalist, Metallica emphasized its groove, a basic shift in the way heavy music was organized. In the world of flamboyant singers, Hetfield’s gruff, laid-back chanting obscured stealthy melodic hooks behind killer guitars and cagey drumming. Vocals were no longer leading the way, a distinction that eventually became a point of departure for Metallica from other heavy metal acts at that time. “I really have a lot of respect for James,” says Katon W. DePena. “With ‘No Life ‘Til Leather’ I remember thinking that if James would just sing like James, instead of trying to sound like Vince Neil, then it would be good. When Kill ‘Em All came out, that’s exactly what he did.”

  Yet even after the release of their debut, Metallica remained unsure of Hetfield as a singer. Though growing more comfortable with the role, he was singing only because no one else wanted the job. The band still considered enlisting a conventional lead vocalist and front man, confining Hetfield to rhythm guitar. “Shit like that affects your performance when you have to change a song arrangement around in the middle of it all,” Lars Ulrich told Kick Ass Monthly, “especially when you don’t have a front man who, during technical problems, could just stand and rap with the crowd for five minutes. That’s one of the reasons we are looking for a front man that we’re probably never gonna find, because there’s nobody crazy enough to fit in with what we’re doing.”

  As late as 1984 there was still one likely candidate. “There’s only been one guy—it’s not really a secret anymore,” said Ulrich in Kick Ass, “—that we have really been keen on getting for the band, and that’s the front man for Armored Saint, John Bush. They’re like kids that have grown up together, and I think he’d be very insecure about leaving the situation he’s in. He’s got the fuckin’ best voice. No matter what band he’s in—in like five years, he’s only nineteen now, he is gonna be one of the biggest singers and front men. He’s gonna be up there with Dio.”

  John Bush recalls being courted by Metallica, a process that included frequent pressure from both Ulrich and Johnny Z. “When they were still contemplating the singer thing, Armored Saint had just started,” Bush says. “We were cool, and I guess they thought I was hip, and they kept bugging me to join the band. I just didn’t know them. I was like, ‘Who’s this band?’ All the guys in Armored Saint and I had grown up together, so I wasn’t going to quit my buddies’ band. I never regret it—it would have changed everything. I was not meant to be in Metallica. That’s just the way it is.”

  To differentiate their approach, young bands like Metallica began to call their music “power metal.” There was not a tremendous stylistic difference between established acts like Dio and up-and-comers like Armored Saint and Manowar, but these power metal acts buttressed every aspect of their operations to double the impact of the riffs and the imagery. It might have been taken for granted that those thorny exteriors would soften with increased commercial success. In 1983, however, Metallica revealed new codes and tricks that streamlined and oversaturated the sound, creating magnetic metal-hearted music that was less subject to commercial change.

  Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All sold a surprising 17,000 copies within two weeks of its release, mostly through the distribution networks that serviced mom-and-pop record stores. Many headbangers had been clearing room in their record collections for something more intense than Iron Maiden. As Exciter’s Dan Beehler told Canadian television, “The kids in Europe today have had their fill of Priest and Sabbath, and they seem to be going towards the Venom, and picking up on Exciter, Metallica, and Anvil—the younger metal. They seem to be really getting into metal at wicked speeds, as heavy as possible.”

  The NWOBHM revelations of 1980 had become articles of faith to young fans, and times were ripe for progress. Following the success of Kill ‘Em All, Megaforce cultivated a powerhouse roster that showcased this new kind of metal not oriented toward radio or MTV. As if on a mission, the label scooped up Manowar, Exciter, Anthrax, and Raven. Each released one breakthrough album after another. There was nothing homogeneous to the sound, yet the warrior anthems of Manowar and the accelerated scramble of Raven shared an attention-grabbing desire for something new.

  Still woefully inexperienced, yet developing quickly, Anthrax on Fistful of Metal sped up in direct response to Metallica, relying more heavily on rhythm guitar and a double-bass drum set. After they began playing power metal, the intricate British-style song craft had to be matched by thunderous speed, which became possible with the addition of Charlie Benante, an aggressively fast drummer. “He definitely pushed us to take songs like ‘Panic,’ which were good molten metal songs,” says bassist Dan Lilker, “and speed them up enough so they had a desperate, panicky edge to them.” These were children of the 1970s—Anthrax recorded the Alice Cooper song “I’m 18” for Fistful of Metal one day after its youngest member had turned nineteen.

  New York thrashers Anthrax in 1983 with tall singer Neil Turbin

  In contrast to the charming yet untested Anthrax, the well-seasoned Danish band Mercyful Fate played elaborately agile compositions that even outclassed the scrubby banging of Metallica. Unfortunately, they were stranded in Denmark, far from a metal hotbed. Things changed after Dutch entrepreneur Cees Wessels’s Roadrunner Records began licensing American products by Metal Blade, Megaforce, and others for sale in Europe. Earlier, anyone seeking to capitalize on Europe’s fanatical love of metal had to pack a suitcase and travel to each country seeking a sales outlet. As Roadrunner became a central licensing point for the Continent, Wessel and his affiliated labels from across the Atlantic thrived. Music for Nations soon began doing similar deals in England.

  While importing Metallica records to Europe, Roadrunner signed and then licensed Mercyful Fate’s Melissa to Megaforce. Melissa arrived at a truly magical moment—the juncture of classic heavy metal, power metal, and the furtive black metal movement—yet resisted falling wholly into any of those styles. Led by the versatile and often bewildering vocals of King Diamond, the Danish quintet used archaic guitar scales and catchy, galloping rhythm riffs to summon a dark suite of smoky songs about the supernatural. Each track on Melissa—including “Evil,” “Curse of the Pharaohs,” and “Satan’s Fall"—beckoned listeners to otherworldly destinations via black horse-drawn carriage, casting an unrivaled mystical emotional spell.

  The unusual singer King Diamond topped Mercyful Fate’s sound with a style that rose and fell from echoing falsetto to anguished growl. “It seemed like it was songs recorded today that could have been written a long time ago,” says Diamond of Melissa. “It had a lot to do with the sound, of course, but always having that unique songwriting. I haven’t heard another band sounding like that. Even the simplest passages were written from the heart, and people can tell Mercyful Fate from a few notes.” As the singer commented in a 1983 interview, “I want people to go home thinking, ‘Well, I saw it and I heard it, but I don’t know how they did it.’”

  Melissa remained a cult favorite, equally esteemed by early thrashers Dave Mustaine and Dan Lilker, the members of Norwegian black metal band Emperor, and platinum-selling hitmakers Slipknot. “Melissa was really incredible,” recalls a captivated Trey Azagthoth of Morbid Angel. “It’s quite special. The way the songs were structured was unor
thodox. They had guitar parts that were so weird. It wasn’t just a band playing—they were like musicians for a ceremony, and the singer was like a high priest narrating the story. I picked up on it the same way Black Sabbath was very ceremonial.”

  With such artistic successes Megaforce also had its share of errors. Confident that the Seattle group Metal Church would sign to his unstoppable label, Johnny Z prematurely printed an advertisement promoting them along with Metallica and Mercyful Fate. “No offense to Johnny Z,” says Metal Church vocalist David Wayne, “but our attorney said that contract was full of mud, and we sent it back. Johnny called our lawyer some names, and we ended up producing the album ourselves.” Undeterred, Johnny Z sought to bridge an era by signing Blue Cheer, the legendary late-1960s sludge power trio whose cover of “Summertime Blues” was allegedly promotion for a brand of LSD. Their roots metal return, The Beast Is Back, took a short trip to nowhere. Power metalheads were firmly oriented toward the future.

  POWER METAL

  When young bands started doubling the already brain-bending attributes of heavy metal, adding steroid tonnage to the most explosive moments, they created power metal. The term was used broadly to describe everything from the wall of sound of Exciter to the doomy black cries of Mercyful Fate, ultimately defining a sound with twice the crunch of classic heavy metal. Two times the speed, two times the spikes—power metal had double everything. Accept, Jag Panzer, and Warlock took dual-guitar leads, histrionic vocals, and pounding drums to a powerful place—without radically rearranging the rules of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. Likewise they pushed heavy metal’s image: Metallica wore black spandex and bullet belts, Anthrax dressed in matching animal prints, Manowar donned real fur outfits, and King Diamond of Mercyful Fate put on ghostly face paint. Their music protected the inner core of metal from MTV video compromise and paved the way for thrash metal soon afterward.