Metal Reviews

Just wondering if anyone owns or has read any decent Heavy Metal Books?

Currently, I'm reading "Sound Of The Beast - The Complete Headbanging History Of Heavy Metal" by Ian Christie.

Is quite good so far (i'm about 1/3 way through), and going by the reviews of it, it seems as though it is one of the best metal orientated books out there.

If anyone has any recommendations of other heavy metal books, please mention them.

Yeah The Sound of the Beast was good although very Metallica-centric. The Top 500 Heavy Metal Albums of All Time by Martin Poppoff was a fun read too since he polled a bunch of people to make the list, then offers his own opinion on the albums and throws in a bunch of musicians' top 10 lists and goodies like that. I should pick that up again now that I'm more into 80s metal.

The only proper metal book I have on the shelf is Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore.

It's an interesting book- pretty thorough overview that focuses heavily on the British grind scene and Florida DM scene.

Oh yeah, I also have that Popoff top 500 book too. Kinda annoying list though as it's all just the classics... barely an extreme metal album to be seen.

Read about half of Lords of Chaos and switched off when it started going on about Nordic mythology which turned it into a snoozefest. Apparently it's all bullshit, as well, according to Varg, but who really knows or cares.

Yeah I have that too. A couple of others... Lemmy's autobiography, nothing that jumps out to me.

Deena Weinstein's "Heavy Metal" is the text on Metal. It's a sociological analysis of the subculture, although it was written in the 90s, and might not be as relevant today. Otherwise Robert Walser's "Running With The Devil" is a very good book on the musicology of Metal. Keith Kahn Harris has a decent one on Extreme Metal as well.

I have one by him. Kinda boring.

Sound of the Beast is pretty damn good for the most part. The final 3 or 4 chapters are kinda dull.

Lords of Chaos wasn't bad and Sound of the Beast was pretty good for an intro.

Lords of Chaos is a huge pile of bullshit.

I'd just like to say everytime I've considered a book like ny of those mentioned they always take the VH-1 classics approach of memorializing metal, and I think it is total bullshit. I haven't seen the book, but i'm guessing popoff wouldn't consider putting an edguy or bodom album next to a maiden album.

I just find these things so congradualtory to the past and so ignorant of anything since.

and anyone who puts black sabbath's debut in the top 10 ever needs to pull their head out of their ass, just sayin

So what albums would you "congradulate" in your top 10? I don't see why Black Sabbath is so terrible.

70s Sabbath should have about 3 or 4 albums in the top 10.

Black Sabbath
Paranoid
Master of Reality
Volume 4

I'm not complaining about sabbath per se, but that first album is tedious in my opinion. I love NIB (if in it's 6 minute form, which I have it tracked/arranged on my copy) and the wizard too, but the rest of it is not very good. The title track has always been very slow and boring to me. I find the album to be very meandering, on par with Yes' Tales... album.

I agree with putting paranoid on a list, hough I don't find it to be one of my top 100 albums.

I want to see something that doesn't glorify the 70's and 80's as godly and everything else as a cheap clay statue. I personally think the 70's stuff is generally average and the modern stuff is
phenomenal. Obviously I love some older stuff, but some of these writers think the buck stops there and will throw a weak compliment by putting Pantera or something like that at the 85 position to make it clear they intended to include newer stuff.

I hate to speak in such generalities, but this is what I've observed everytime I pick up a book discussing heavy metal.

It's far from complete, I have S-Z and A-C done for the moment, and I have a ton of stuff I've heard half the album thereof, but here's a sample of where I place albums on a list:

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/Adveser/a ... top_albums

70s rock/metal and gernerally average do not belong in the same sentence.

I know it's your opinion, but your opinion fails.

Sorry, I don't subscribe to any such conformity on the matter of what records to listen to. I think a band like Burning Point is a better listen than 70's Sabbath. In what way is that controversial, because it does not fit what the record industry has fashioned into an image to protect the legacy of their recordings? I think a lot of people are just buying the hype or anti-hype

I see you've been listening to some pentagram. I'd stick with that if it were me, it was just so much more believable.

So I like 70s bands because the record company told me so? No. I like Black Sabbath over any new band because that is what I like, not because people tell me it's better. If I listened to what the record companies or mainstream rock/metal radio told me to, then I'd listen to a lot more metalcore and other shitty music like that. But no, I grew up in a family that likes 70s music. It's been a part of me since childhood, at first I didn't like it, but as I matured I found parts of it I enjoy. Sure I'd rather listen to Amon Amarth over Queen, but that's because what I like, not because Amon Amarth gets more airtime than Queen now.

I don't know if I am making sense, but I like what I like because it is I that likes it. I don't like something because it came from before I was born and somebody is telling me to like it, I like it because I enjoy it. Stuff was more original back then. Nowadays most bands are just repeating what bands from the 70s and 80s already did. Plus, Black Sabbath is lot more fun to smoke a joint and chill out to then say your Burning Point.

and what exaclty does that mean?

why is it not ok for people to over hype older bands and say that they are superior to newer bands, but it's ok for you to say the same thing just reversed? How does that work?

You're taking it the wrong way. If Sabbath were not so hyped up, there wouldn't be millions of people claiming they are the best metal band ever. I didn't mean to come across as directing my comments directly at you, that is fact, and your own story is just like mine. I picked up certain bands from my family early on, but because they were heavily promoted major acts. Frankly, Anyone claiming gold and platinum records solely make up the top 20 metal records are going to get shot down by the likes of me because no matter what, I can guarantee anyone that claims that just hasn't heard anything else. If Metallica would have never left Megaforce, they would be a relative obscurity too.

My comment about Pentagram is my own opinion. I think that one record, day of reckoning, i think it was, was far better than any non-Dio Sabbath record and is almost the same kind of thing. I'm making the comment that this record is obscure, but sounds better, IMO, perhaps if only to acknowledge that I do like that kind of thing.

I wouldn't make such a statement about 70's bands, none of them were original either, just no one remembers the 20 bands for every successful one that we never hear about, I mean look at the catalog numbers, there were thousands of records released that no one recalls, but they were out there and everyone benefitted from them. Bands all sounded about the same with a little variation (labels won't have it any other way really) and got their sound from long forgotten bands. Thinks evolve and progress, not show up overnight. Just because we don't remember the Diamond Head's of the 60's doesn't make our hypothetical Metallica any more original. Before tapes bands had to do a 500 copy vinyl release that to this day is likely not remembered, that about those bands? I mean how many of us could claim we've heard the records we have if copying one was impossible today?

Don't take it personally, but the perception of millions, instead of hundreds has really had a dramatic impact than I think people wanna admit.

I don't know man, maybe you are smarter than me, but I think you are looking way too deep into it. You don't like those bands as much as other people do, that's cool. But to not like something because other people do is kind of silly in my opinion. Sure I listened to Sabbath because my dad did, but I still listen to them because I like them. My dad, or anybody else, liking them has nothing to do with me liking them now.

I prefer the 70s/80s stuff, you don't. Whatever, life goes on.

Black Sabbath , regardless of who might have been, are the proverbial brow from which Metal sprung.
We've had this discussion before, and any reputable list of top metal bands will have them listed at the top.

Black Sabbath in their heyday were far from hyped up. They were critically panned on a consistent basis, though they had a small, but very loyal following.
Are there uncovered gems from that era? Sure, but the fact that they are lagely hidden automatically excludes them from any list naming the top 10, 20, 50, or 100. It has NOTHING to do with record sales, it has everything to do with quality and ergo, influence.