Why I Love Heavy Metal (or, "Turn Off That Damn Racket, Josh")

There's always one guy in every band who listens to all sorts of heavy metal. In this band, it's me (mostly). Dan is also into the metal (but not always), and Nick seems to listen to anything. The only person I have to appease is James. Due to being raised on The Beatles and other lyric-and-melody-based pop/rock, he doesn't have the patience for it. He'll put up with my noise, but only to a certain point. Consequently, we've reached an agreement wherein I am allowed to listen to metal in the car only AFTER shows. Since I'm almost always the one driving back home at 2 AM, I need something to keep me awake, and that something is loud and terrifying.

I enjoy listening to music that would render most men blind and impotent. For some reason, I gravitated towards this particular style in my teens. My mom didn't really listen to music when I was a kid, so I had to figure things out for myself. The turning point for me was hearing Disturbed on the radio when I was about 14. It was just so heavy (at the time) that I immediately went and bought the record. I also discovered through my online friends (back when instant messaging was used for meeting new people, and not getting sodomized by middle-aged men) the magic of Metallica. I think it's a bit strange that I went for this music, as I don't recall being an angry teenager, although I did sport dreadlocks and an eyebrow ring in high school.

The National Guitar Workshop (at which I taught for 4 years) was a big influence as well. I attended as a student for 2 years before getting a job there, and I spent most of my time hanging out with the metal kids. They introduced me to Dream Theater and Rage Against The Machine (okay, not really metal, but still awesome), and gave me my first taste of death metal. At the time, I really couldn't handle it. The guttural vocals prevalent in the style put me off. It wasn't until very recently that I was able to stomach it. It's not about the lyrics, since you can't understand half of them anyway. It's about the energy, the power, the sheer brutality of the music. To me, this is the point of all metal. It makes you want to bang your head, jump around, wear tight leather pants, and occasionally sacrifice children and farm animals to your chosen pagan god.

Even though I'm not in a band that plays this kind of music, I still listen to it constantly. I'm listening to Shadows Fall as I write this. And I'm sure it creeps into the bass lines I write for our songs. It's certainly the reason that I have two distortion pedals in my arsenal.

In closing, here are 18 metal bands you should listen to (it started at 5, but I couldn't stop), and an album from each to get you started. Rock on.

1. Mastodon, Crack The Skye (a current favorite of myself and Dan)
2. In Flames, Reroute To Remain (the album that brought me to melodic death metal)
3. Slayer, Reign In Blood
4. Children of Bodom, Hate Crew Deathroll
5. The Devin Townsend Band, Accelerated Evolution
6. Fear Factory, Demanufacture
7. Tool, AEnima
8. Lamb Of God, As The Palaces Burn
9. Meshuggah, Chaosphere
10. Rammstein, Mutter (German dance-metal)
11. Pantera, Vulgar Display Of Power
12. Nevermore, Dead Heart, In A Dead World
13. Skindred, Roots Rock Riot (Welsh reggae-metal)
14. Necrophagist, Epitaph (the best band you will ever hear)
15. Spiral Architect, A Sceptic's Universe (this will mess you up)
    
16. Testament, First Strike Still Deadly
17. Living Colour, Vivid (the only all-black metal band I know of)
18. 3 Inches Of Blood, Advance And Vanquish