Evil That's Not Evil: A Brief History of Misunderstood Metal

by Andrew Reilly
August 8, 2008 - 8:00am

With the possible exception of hip-hop, no brand of modern music has been subject to more misunderstandings or misconceptions than heavy metal. While often not doing much to deflect its detractors, at least a few incidents in the genre's history have been grossly misinterpreted and led to a flood of misinformation in their wake – sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Here then are a few that have helped metal build its sometimes-laughable, always interesting history of errors.

2002: ANDREW W.K. REVIVES A NON-EXISTENT GENRE
Upon the release of I Get Wet, much of the music press was declaring it would usher in a second wave of so-called "party metal," despite the fact that Wet contained very few elements of metal, and that W.K. would later reiterate in interviews that he hated his music being referred to as such. More importantly, there never actually was such a thing as so-called "party metal." This may have been a nod to some of the beer-and-babes rock from the 1980s, but any true metalhead knows that any famous band of the era whose songs celebrated partying was not actually a metal band, nor did any metal band's songs about partying ever become famous enough to be killed and then revived. This includes Van Halen (glam rock), Def Leppard (arena rock), Motley Crue (also glam rock), and any of the Poison/Warrant school of hair bands. As it were, the closest thing to a true party metal group anyone would remember may have been Guns N' Roses, but this is subject to two flaws in reasoning. For one thing, their metal-ness is debatable considering how much they owed to the blues-based hard rock likes of Aerosmith and Nazareth. For another, their songs dealt more in partying 'til you drop dead from a heroin overdose rather than W.K.'s partying 'til to you merely puke.

THE VERY LATE 1990'S: NU-METAL IS ACTUALLY REALLY OLD METAL
Everything anyone ever needs to know or say about the period of metal between 1997 and 2002 can be summed up with the song "Last Resort" by Papa Roach. The track brought the band into the limelight, but it went barely acknowledged that "Last Resort" was based on a nearly-identical riff from the song "Hallowed Be Thy Name" by Iron Maiden from their seminal 1982 The Number of the Beast album. Papa Roach's Infest album sold 3 million copies, according to the RIAA; Maiden's metal classic sold merely a third of that.

1989: JETHRO TULL DECLARED THE HEAVIEST BAND IN THE LAND
There may be no other band that has as glorious a run of metal albums as Metallica did with 1984's Ride the Lightning, 1986's Master of Puppets, 1988's ...And Justice For All, and 1991's self-titled "black album." In 1989, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences nominated Justice in the Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance alongside AC/DC's Blow Up Your Video, Iggy Pop's Cold Metal, Nothing's Shocking by Jane's Addiction, and Jethro Tull's Crest of a Knave. Tull won, naturally. The award was split into two separate categories the following year. Later pressings of ...And Justice For All bore stickers reading "Grammy Award Losers," and Metallica went on to sell more copies of their next album than Tull's entire catalog combined, and were subsequently Grammy Award Winners themselves with Metallica.

SOMETIME AROUND 1981: DIO THROWS THE HORNS OF LOVE
The invention and propagation of the devil horn salute so common among metalheads is widely attributed to Ronnie James Dio, one-time lead singer of Black Sabbath, Rainbow, and his own hugely successful solo band, Dio. Dio, patrolling the stages before packed houses in the early 1980's, would throw out the now-famous pinky and index finger gesture and the crowd would raise their hands in the same motion. While many people have come to equate this with some kind of satanic salute, the sign actually dates back to an old Italian gesture of love. Dio was telling his audience he loved them. They, in turn, told him to go to hell.

1969: LED ZEPPELIN, II DECLARED FIRST HEAVY METAL BAND, ALBUM
It's a horrible misconception, but one that time and willful ignorance have allowed to endure. Led Zeppelin were a lot of things, but any purist will tell you that Zeppelin were not, in fact, a metal band. Heavy, yes, but metal, no. Their riff-driven songs were based on blues, not rock; their lyrical themes were divided between prog-rock mythologies and sleazy blues retreads; their arrangements were full of energy, but never of fury or anger. The band had numerous elements of metal, and later acts would ape these for all they could, but it stands that the closest Zeppelin ever got to a true metal album was not the blues-folk of II but either the dirges scattered throughout 1975's Physical Graffiti or the sped-up blues epics of 1976's Presence. The classification of II as a metal album in countless well-intentioned but grossly mistaken media outlets hasn't helped matters, either.

In a way, that seems only logical; if metal as a whole can't get a fair shake, why should Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Iron Maiden and Dio, those titans whose only contributions to this music were to almost entirely define its very existence, be any different? What's more, if Iron Maiden can go from early-generation heroes to latter-day revivalists without anyone even knowing it while the band that secretly copped one of their trademark riffs outsells them 3 to 1, is that a greater condemnation of the fans, the bands, or the interchangability and sameness of the music itself? Should anyone really be surprised when people make fun of metalheads anymore?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps confusion is just part of the deal. Perhaps no one will ever know. In the meantime, all a poor metalhead can do is rock on in the name of all that is unholy, lose out to a flute-playing elder statesman, and blast a brand-new, decades-old record at full volume. . . 'til they puke, of course.

- Andrew Reilly

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Illustration thanks to Joseph Devens.