Heavy Metal: a Contrast and Comparison Between Two Historical Bands

Have you ever turned on the radio in your vehicle and heard an out rageous rock song? Yeah that’s right it’s Def. Leppard. They have been tour and doing shows for twenty five plus year and still jamming as we speak. This band has been through just about everything you could think of and surprisingly they are still together after drug over dose, care accident, and divorcees.

Pseudoscience aside, Holst’s The Planets has thrilled audiences around the world for over a century. Mars, Bringer of War’s influence can be witnessed from Hollywood science fiction scores all the way to the birth of heavy metal music. Black Sabbath’s Geezer butler credits Holst’s tri-tone progression as inspiring the main theme from their debut album’s title track, Black Sabbath. This was a sinister sound not originally heard in rock n roll music, beginning the separation of the genre now known as heavy metal from its blues and rock n roll

     A week after Kirk Hammet entered Metallica, they began to record their first album, “Kill ‘Em All”. The album was released in the fall of 1983 on Mega Force Records. At first, people had no idea of how to act when they heard Metallica. To help promote the album, Metallica did relentless touring to show that they knew the real meaning of Rock.

This book brings you on the journey of each member’s journey. Bassist Nikki Sixx lived a life revolving around girls, drugs, alcohol, and rock and roll. With having his mom arrested at age 14 and attempting to stealing his first bass guitar only to realize it was a regular electric guitar Nikki Sixx grew up challenging the laws. Guitarist Mick Mars was into music from a young age where as time progressed he started writing down all his ideas in a notebook such as there band name Mötley Crüe just in a different form. Drummer Tommy Lee grew up a more comforted childhood receiving a snare drum for Christmas buying the rest on his own later. Tommy joined the school drum line where he learned tricks and stuff to do with drumsticks and drums. After skipping school and misbehaving his parents moved and he met Vince at his new school. Vocalist Vince Neil lived the rock star life even in high school where he was a legend and already in a band. Not only does this book take you on a journey of the members but also it takes you on a journey of their struggles. Mötley Crüe struggled to become famous due to the New Wave music, which they later helped kill off at the US Festival. The band struggled even more with getting a record deal then with becoming famous. No record company wanted to sign this band of degenerates who are playing rock and metal music when what was in was New Wave. Mötley Crüe very often struggled with fights and criticism for what they look like and how they sing. Their other major fight that they constantly battled was girls, with abusive girlfriends like Honey and Bullwinkle. The band in there early days usually used women for four purposes Food, Alcohol, Drugs, and

Normally, when you think of Metallica, you think of the heavy metal sound the band is famous for. But, if you think that's the only kind of music the band members, and former band members, enjoy making, you are sorely mistaken.

Heavy metal reared its ugly heard in the latter part of the 1960’s (Hjelm, Kahn-Harrris and LeVine, 2011). Influential

Marilyn Manson, The Beatles, NWA, Garth Brooks, and the king, Elvis, What do all these people have in common? Well, yes, they are all musical groups, but there is something more. Marilyn Manson is a heavy metal group who worships Satan, the Beatles were one of the greatest Rock N’ Roll bands of all time, and NWA was a hard-core rap group from the 80’s. Garth Brooks is a country singer and greatest selling performer of all time, and well, Elvis is the king of Rock N’ Roll. So what do they all have in common? All of these artists have or had songs with indecent or obscene lyrics.

Kurt Cobain. Kurt Cobain was the lead vocalist of the rock band Nirvana. He was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) while he was still young. In the later years of his life, he was diagnosed with a bipolar disorder. He also had depression and died through an overdose of champagne and Rohypnol.

After groups paved the way for heavy metal, one band can be the representative of the heavy metal style in the 1980’s. Metallica was formed on October 15, 1981 by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. Lars played the drums while James was on vocals and guitar. Kirk Hammett joined the band in 1982 and became the band’s lead guitarist. Metallica’s bass player was Jason Newsted, after their first bassist, Cliff Murton, was killed in a bus crash. It was on March fourteenth that Metallica played their first gig at radio city Anaheim in California. On June fourteenth the Metal Massacre LP was released and it was Metallica's first appearance on an official record. The first release of the LP contained a few mistakes including band’s name being miss spelt Mettallica and Lloyd grants name being misspelled as Loydd Grant.

“Another popular grunge band from the 90’s, Soundgarden, is infamous for their album, “Supermassive Black Hole”, which included the hit “Black Hole Sun”. This band included members singer Chris Cornell, drummer Matt Cameron (before going to Pearl Jam), lead guitarist Kim Thayil, and bassist Hiro Yamamoto.”

Meanwhile, in Copenhagen, Denmark, Led Zeppelin Performed on their 1971 European Tour. The band was not politically inclined; however, they were, and are, very influential in music. Along with Black Sabbath, they are often cited as the Godfathers of Heavy Metal. Obviously extremely popular in the 1970s, they are best known for their influences in heavy metal despite having a diverse musical style (Fast, 2016).

After these incidents of suicides, “people were forced to now take a look at the family life instead of the actual music” (Osbourne). Ozzy had to go to court because of tragedies to explain the lyrical content of the song. He was not charged in any of the cases. It would have been ridiculous if he had been charged. It is not his fault for people to misinterpret the meaning of his songs. Some people do not listen to the lyrics closely. Some just listen to the music and do not follow along with the lyrics.

In 1973, Al Atkins and Chris Campbell left the band because they weren’t happy with the band’s lack of money. Sue Halford mentioned her brother, Rob Halford, as an exchange for Al, welcoming him into the band soon after (Bowe 33). This seemed to turn things around for Judas Priest. In 1978, the band began to change up their look. Instead of satin bloused, bell-bottoms, and wide-brimmed hats, they wore black leather and metal studs (Bowe 40). After the release of “Hell Bent for Leather” in 1979, they brought in handcuffs and whips, completing their look. After this, many heavy metal bands had began to take on the look as well (Bowe 42). CREEM magazine decided to put Judas Priest on the cover in August 1981 (Bowe 47). Judas Priest’s only concert appearance was a huge charity concert in Philadelphia and London in 1985 to help people in Africa that were starving, and the name of this organization was Live Aid. In that same year, many heavy metal artists got criticized for their lyrics (Bowe 53). From all the stress of the Reno trial and constant touring and recording, Rob Halford wanted a break from the band, officially leaving in 1992. This caused a long, messy fight between him and the other band members (Bowe 63). Then in 1994, Glenn Tipton started his own career (Bowe 64). In 1997, Halford was replaced by Tim “Ripper” Owens, the nickname given to him by the band (Billik). In 1998, Rob Halford was ready to tell people something about

With a great deal of different genres of music available for listening to, each genre must effect, shape, and allow for the expression of personality to be contrasting with each of the different genres of music that are available to us. In a recent study executed by Yair Neuman, Leonid Perlovsky, Yochai Cohen and Danny Livshits, from the Department of Education & Homeland Security Institute, based their experiment on “a very specific research question: Do personality types differ in terms of their essays’ similarity to the lyrics of various music genres?” (4). They set up their experiment to solely test whether a person’s personality can be directly affected by certain types of music. Their experiment concluded “…all results were statistically

The first hard rock and heavy metal music was produced by the rock group called Blue Cheer somewhere around 1967. Their music was angry and had a noticeably heavy beat.. At this time, the music of the Rolling Stones, too, became harder and angry, with a negative accent. Many other groups sprang up during this period. In truth, hard drugs, mixed with psychedelics were having an effect. The world was witnessing a new phenomenon: musical groups of young men - opening doors to the psychic world through the use of drugs - were using electrified instruments to bring in a new music that was harmful to the human psyche, destructive, and angry (2).