Heavy Metal Pt I

Summary

Stuff You Should Know: Heavy Metal Pt I Hosted by Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant | Released August 12, 2025

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Introduction to Heavy Metal

In this episode, Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant delve deep into the world of heavy metal, exploring its origins, evolution, and the myriad subgenres that have emerged over the decades. Recognizing the challenge of satisfying a diverse metalhead audience, the hosts set the stage for an engaging discussion, acknowledging that covering such a vast genre without missing key elements is no small feat.

Personal Journeys and Top Metal Bands

The conversation kicks off with the hosts sharing their personal journeys into heavy metal:

• Chuck Bryant reflects on his metal experience from the 1980s, listing his top five metal bands:

  1. Black Sabbath
  2. Ozzy Osbourne
  3. Motley Crue
  4. Ratt
  5. Scorpions

  [03:09] Chuck: "Black Sabbath is number one, Ozzy number two, Motley Crue, then Ratt, and then the Scorpions."

• Josh Clark initially lists bands like Metallica and Poison, later expanding his top five to include Iron Maiden, Gojira, Godflesh, and High on Fire as he delves deeper into the genre.

  [04:09] Josh: "The best hair metal band of all time was Poison. I mean, no questions asked."

  [08:52] Josh: "There's a French metal band called Gojira, and they're very good. They actually played at the Summer Olympic opening ceremonies."

Defining Heavy Metal

The hosts explore the definition of heavy metal, drawing from the Encyclopedia Britannica's description: a genre characterized by intensity, virtuosity, and powerful performances, often featuring distorted electric guitars.

[10:02] Chuck: "Britannica says it's a genre that includes a group of related styles that are intense, virtuostic, and powerful. And includes distorted electric guitar."

They discuss the complexity and fragmentation within the genre, highlighting the numerous subgenres that cater to specific tastes.

[10:25] Josh: "There's subgenres of subgenres, and there's probably subgenres of subgenres of subgenres. Like, that's how niche some of this stuff is."

Black Sabbath's Pivotal Role

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to Black Sabbath's influence on heavy metal:

• Tony Iommi's Tragedy and Adaptation:

  Chuck recounts the tragic incident where Black Sabbath's guitarist Tony Iommi lost fingertips, compelling him to adapt his playing style by loosening his guitar strings. This modification not only accommodated his injury but also inadvertently contributed to the band's signature heavier and grungier sound.

  [23:00] Chuck: "Tony Iommi had to adapt by loosening the strings and switching to lighter strings, which gave Black Sabbath that deep, sludgy grind."

• Impact on the Genre:

  The hosts emphasize how Black Sabbath's debut album and the subsequent "Paranoid" album solidified their status as metal pioneers.

  [19:54] Chuck: "Paranoid is ranked as the number one metal album of all time by Rolling Stone. So there you go."

Iron Maiden’s Enduring Influence

Iron Maiden’s monumental impact on heavy metal is a focal point:

• Band Overview and Mascot:

  The hosts discuss Iron Maiden’s mascot, Eddie, illustrated by Derek Riggs, and how Eddie has become synonymous with the band's identity across all 17 albums.

  [29:50] Chuck: "Their mascot is Eddie. If you've ever seen an Iron Maiden album cover or poster or live video where they have big, giant Eddie walking around, that's their mascot."

• Musical Legacy:

  They highlight Iron Maiden's influence on the "Big Four" of thrash metal—Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax—acknowledging that many thrash bands owe their existence to Iron Maiden's groundwork.

  [28:34] Chuck: "If you ask some of the people who make up the Big Four of thrash bands, Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax, they're basically like, we wouldn't exist if it weren't for Iron Maiden."

• Cultural and Musical Impact:

  Iron Maiden's thematic diversity, from historical events to personal struggles, and their meticulous album art are praised for making heavy metal both accessible and profound.

  [29:21] Chuck: "Their songs are really varied. Like, they cover history a lot. There's a song about World War II pilots called 'Aces High.'"

Evolution and the Rise of Subgenres

The discussion transitions to the fragmentation of heavy metal into various subgenres:

• Death Metal vs. Black Metal:

  Josh differentiates between death metal's guttural growls and black metal's higher-pitched screams, both of which often require listeners to read lyrics to fully grasp the content.

  [58:25] Josh: "Black metal is legit. The kind of satanic metal that the censors of the 1980s and the pastors of the Satanic panic were actually scared of."

• Influential Bands and Controversies:

  The hosts touch upon controversial figures and events within black metal, such as the notorious Mayhem incident involving a suicide and the genre's association with white supremacists.

  [59:58] Chuck: "You can't talk about Mayhem without talking about the worst album cover of all time. 'Dawn of the Black Hearts' is a photograph that was a bootleg album."

Grammys and Metal Recognition

They critique the Grammys' handling of heavy metal, highlighting instances where the awards were out of touch with the genre's evolution, such as Metallica's loss to Jethro Tull.

[52:20] Chuck: "Metallica's 'Injustice for All' very famously lost out to Jethro Tull. They had a comeback album called 'Crest of a Knave,' and everybody immediately was like, Grammys, you're never seen more out of touch with what's going on in the world."

Closing Thoughts

As the episode wraps up, Josh and Chuck reflect on the enduring legacy of heavy metal, acknowledging its resilience and ability to evolve despite challenges from mainstream media and shifting musical landscapes.

[62:30] Chuck: "That's a super sized part one. I think we'll probably have the super sized part two. And there's also going to be a fun little short stuff this week. So I guess we should just call this Metal Week."

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Notable Quotes:

• [02:24] Josh: "Way to use a carrot rather than a stick, Chuck."
• [04:09] Josh: "The best hair metal band of all time was Poison. I mean, no questions asked."
• [19:59] Josh: "Paranoid is ranked as the number one metal album of all time by Rolling Stone."
• [29:50] Chuck: "Their mascot is Eddie."
• [52:20] Chuck: "Metallica's 'Injustice for All' very famously lost out to Jethro Tull."

Conclusion

This comprehensive exploration of heavy metal by Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant offers listeners an insightful journey through the genre's rich history, influential bands, and the complexities that make heavy metal a beloved and enduring form of music. Whether you're a seasoned metalhead or a curious newcomer, this episode provides valuable context and appreciation for the powerful and virtuosic world of heavy metal.

Transcript

[Ebony]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Ice Cube]

Ice Cube's Big Three is the surprise hit of the summer. This Saturday, 4pm Eastern on CBS, with playoff elimination on the line, the most physical, fiercest and competitive basketball in the world. Miami's Michael Beasley and Lance Stevenson must win to make the playoffs, and breakout star Dwight Howard of the LA Riot will battle Gary Payton's Boston squad in a do or die match for both teams. Six teams are allowed for four spots and all must win. There's no crying in the big three, and the no holds barred action starts Saturday at 4pm Eastern, 1pm Pacific. Presented by iHeart.

[Ebony]

Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebony, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm ebony and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network to tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Chuck Bryant]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a.

[Josh Clark]

Production of iHeartRadio, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. It's just the two of us and I think we should greet all the metalheads listening by saying schwing W. You.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ready for this one?

[Josh Clark]

Huh? I am. I'm pretty psyched. I'm not going to lie. I haven't been this nervous since maybe we did soccer.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I agree. I mean, we might as well issue the COVID the coa for the entire two parter. We're going to miss a lot. This is about heavy metal and anytime you're doing a big genre like this, it's really hard to satisfy everybody. So we will not name specifically your favorite band most likely.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, yeah, there's a pretty good chance. We are also probably gonna walk by some amazing fact. Yeah, don't call us stupid when you email in to tell us. Just tell us. Be like, guys, get this. Yeah, that's the kind of email we like to get.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's the kind of email that gets read on the air. It's like, hey, I know you can't get to everything, but you missed this kind of really cool thing. Let me tell you about it.

[Josh Clark]

Way to use a carrot rather than a stick, Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

So it is just really intimidating. I agree. Because and I want to chat just at the jump here about our metalness because I am not a metalhead. My metal experience is largely from high school as a Gen xer in the 80s. Hair metal, same Here, buddy. Okay, that's good. So my top five metal bands, and I've gotten since into, like, Black Sabbath and stuff like that a little bit more. But my top five metal bands look like this. And that tells you a lot about what kind of metal fan I am. Sabbath number one, Ozzy number two, Motley Crue, then Rat, and then the Scorpions.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, really? Rat, huh? They were pretty good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Rat's awesome.

[Josh Clark]

The Scorpions were good, too. That whole wind's a change thing, man, that's a stirring song.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's probably my least favorite. But those are the bands that I love I listen on. You know, I got. Sometimes you get a free SiriusXM couple of weeks or whatever.

[Josh Clark]

Lucky.

[Chuck Bryant]

I got very addicted to the Hair Nation channel.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, man. That stuff still plays really well.

[Chuck Bryant]

It does. I love it. And I even like all the kind of corny stuff from then. Like, put on that White lion song and Watch Me Go to Town.

[Josh Clark]

That song. Wait, yeah, I love that song. That is good. Yeah, I know all those songs, too. I would even take a little further and say, I like Daken. Okay, I want to make a joke about liking Winger, but there are some Winger songs that I kind of liked, but, like, Far and Away and I Will Die on this Hill. The best hair metal band of all time was Poison. I mean, no questions asked.

[Chuck Bryant]

Would you say Poison?

[Josh Clark]

Poison.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know what's funny?

[Josh Clark]

You know why?

[Chuck Bryant]

Go ahead.

[Josh Clark]

What?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, you tell me why, and then I'll tell you what's funny.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, fair enough. So the reason why I say Poison is the best hair metal band of all time is because they were highly talented, but they were also totally in on the cheesiness of the whole thing, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

You think?

[Josh Clark]

They did not take themselves too seriously? Okay, you can make an argument that every rose has its thorns. Pretty meant pretty seriously. Yeah, but I mean, like, I want action tonight. Yeah. Nothing but a good time. Like, those dudes were not, like, trying to be serious. There was no shout at the devil or anything like that. They were just partying. They were the perfect hair metal band to me.

[Chuck Bryant]

You can't write a song called Unskinny Bop and claim to be, like, a serious fan.

[Josh Clark]

Right, Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a good point. Like gasoline, you wanna pump me.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. Exactly. Okay, so what was funny was.

[Chuck Bryant]

What was funny is at some point we're gonna talk about how sort of white male most metal is. And Livia, who helped us with this, you know, was able to source some women in metal, including full bands, and she didn't find Vixen. I was like, wait a minute, that was Vixen. And then I typed into Google search female heavy metal or hair metal bands, and it said Vixen and Poison.

[Josh Clark]

That's hilarious. You got that one wrong, AI.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that was pretty funny. What are your top five? Do you have a working top five and not the joke that you sent me via text?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, so mine's actually changed in the last couple days, I have to say.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh.

[Josh Clark]

It used to be time was. And I listened to most of my metal in like, 8th, 9th grade, probably around the same time you did. I was like, metallica just unquestionably is my number one metal band. Oh, okay. I think. And justice for all is maybe the perfect metal album.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I like that early stuff. I liked Ride the Lightning and Master Puppets. The. That was good.

[Josh Clark]

I do, too. But I didn't like those until I was old. Actually, within the last several years, I started listening to those two. I was like, damn, these are really good, too. Yeah, it's just different. It's way less produced. Yeah, it's way more, you know, like, it's just more thrash. Right? Yeah, but so that kind of goes to show you my taste. Like, I like Metallica's their most produced. Good album.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

So that's. That's. They're. They're unquestionably my favorite. Black Sabbath is probably number two or close at their heels. Nipping at their heels is Poison.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

I really like Helmet, which is the alt metal band from the 90s.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I love Helmet.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Helmet was great. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I guess I didn't really think about alt metal, but sure.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, I'm having to include them. That's, I think, kind of a revelation. Like, I'm having to include Altmetal here. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And then I can't maybe. Anthrax would probably be number five. Right. Especially in eighth grade. I loved Anthrax.

[Chuck Bryant]

So not Iron Maiden. That surprises me.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, God, why did I do that? Iron Maiden. I'm sorry, you're right, Chuck. Thank you. I was even going through my Apple Music folder just to look. To refresh myself. I've got like, five Iron Maiden albums in there, too, so I'm not sure how they got left out. Let's say Maiden's number two, then.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, that's great. I have been listening to Iron Maiden lately. You know, I was an MTV kid, so I know that was my big influence. So I know the Iron Maiden songs that had big videos, but I never really dove in and kind of the same with Judas Priest. Even though I have gotten way more into them lately and I think I mentioned I'm going to actually see them later this year. And that was the other thing is I was way more into other music in the 8th and 9th and 10th grade. That's when I was really started listening to NXS and the Smiths and REM and the Cure.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, same.

[Chuck Bryant]

So that was my jam. But like, if you were an MTV kid and a radio kid, like, you kind of listened to all that stuff. But I wasn't the one going to see those, you know, I never saw Ozzy live and stuff like that. Like, those kids in my high school kind of scared me.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, well, they could be kind of scary. I think that's one of the reasons they were into it for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So just to update my list, though, Metallic is still number one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Black Sabbath, or, Sorry, Iron Maiden's still number two. Sabbath is in there somewhere. But there's a couple new bands that I'm like, these guys, Gojira, which is a French. I think they like. They transcend a bunch of different sub genres. So let's just say they're a French metal band and they're very good. They actually played at the Summer Olympic opening ceremonies. Oh, you remember the dudes who were like, thrashing. Yeah. Like, standing on the building. That's Gojira.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

I really like God Flesh. I don't know how I miss them, because I was into industrial in high school too. They're very industrial metal. Yeah, I love them. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And then I'm really now into High on Fire. Have you heard of them?

[Chuck Bryant]

I've heard of them, but I don't know anything about it.

[Josh Clark]

They're amazing. I like everything I've heard of them. And they're playing in Baltimore in mid August. You, me and I are seriously going to go. Maybe I like them that much now. Yeah, you just.

[Chuck Bryant]

You're being coy because you don't want all the High on Fire people to be like, where's Josh?

[Josh Clark]

That's right. All right, let's get down to business, shall we?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Like I said, Livia helped us out with this. And so she starts off with the definition from the Encyclopedia Britannica, which, you know, is kind of silly, but sometimes we do that because, like, it's kind of hard to define metal as. We'll see. And I have a lot of nitpicks with a lot of these bands that I don't consider metal that are in this material.

[Josh Clark]

But oh, yeah, a lot of them. I mean, there are a few, but a lot we'll see as we go. Okay. All right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe you can just keep a time or a dinger or something.

[Josh Clark]

A clicker.

[Chuck Bryant]

A clicker, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

There you go.

[Chuck Bryant]

But Britannica says it's a genre that includes a group of related styles that are intense, virtuostic, and powerful. And includes distorted electric guitar. The virtuosic really rings to me. Because one thing, there's no metal band that doesn't have a great guitar player. Maybe two, maybe three, you know?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, No, I agree. And are you taking a shot at me with the maybe three part?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, not taking a shot. Like, Iron Maiden has three.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they have three guitarists, man. And you can hear it. Yeah, you can totally tell, like, yeah, Maiden is pretty great. We'll talk a little more about Maiden in depth in a second. Right. But I think you just kind of laid it out there. Like there's. That's as. That's as tight a definition as you can really kind of corral all of metal into. Just because there's so much varied stuff. It's like a really fractured genre of music.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

There's sub genres of subgenres, and there's probably subgenres of subgenres of subgenres. Like, that's how niche some of this stuff is. Like, if the average person came along and listened to, you know, some similar subgenres or closely related subgenres, they would not be able to tell the difference. Some of the subgenres, like, are pretty different, and the average person could tell the difference. But when it gets super niche, you really have to be a fan to be able to be like, oh, no, this is. This is technical thresh. Yeah, Death core, you know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. There is another little bit from the Grammys, because now the Grammys has awards for this kind of thing where they mention dark lyrics that may focus on social issues or fantasy and myth. That's kind of important because I found. When I was nitpicking, and this is just Chuck's dumb opinion, but sometimes the difference was very small as far as, like, you know, all the trappings of metal, but I still don't consider it metal because maybe a very nitpicky reason, but, you know, if you're singing and it's heavy guitar and you're singing about Lord of the Rings, chances are you're heavy metal. Except Led Zeppelin, to me, is not heavy metal. They're hard rock, as far as I'm concerned.

[Josh Clark]

No. And Led Zeppelin has always said like, we're not heavy metal. We never have been. We're like blues rock, hard rock, maybe heavy rock, I don't know. But they've always said we're not heavy metal. Even though, like most metal historians will point to them at least to some degree, as one of the founders or progenitors of heavy metal. For sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And also want to point out the Grammys missed something. They said that when they were focusing on the lyrics, dark lyrics that may focus on social issues or fantasy and myth, they forgot. Or girls. Girls.

[Josh Clark]

Girls, right, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because hair metal, not a lot of social issues, not a lot of fantasy, not a lot of myth. That was a specific period in the 80s where they were mostly singing about girls and sometimes in a very gross way.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, the world's definitely evolved past the hair metal view of the world. Yeah, for sure. Still fun. Poison still just wants nothing but a good time, everybody.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So we did talk about Led Zeppelin. There's actually what's known as the unholy trinity of hard rock. And Led Zeppelin is considered one of them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, agreed.

[Josh Clark]

And yes, no one's going to say like, oh no, no, they're not hard rock. It's just, are they, are they heavy metal or were they just helpful in laying the groundwork for heavy metal? And like you said, one of the things that Led Zeppelin did, they were singing about Lord of the Rings before, you know, before Orlando Bloom was even born.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right, Yeah. I mean, there's a guy that Livia found named Jack Manning of the Metal hall of Fame who said that they have lyrics related to the occult, high fantasy, like Lord of the Rings war, distorted guitar, a loud long haired great lead singer. And again, all those things is. Is fair, are fairly metal, but I just, I don't know, there's something about it. They're just more hard blues rock to me for sure.

[Josh Clark]

And a lot of other groups from the 60s you would kind of lump Led Zeppelin in with because they were all starting to experiment with really distortion heavy guitar. Yeah, but they were blues rock for sure, like Cream, the Yardbirds, which actually like gave birth to Led Zeppelin, it turns out. Yeah, Jimi Hendrix was another one. Yeah, he has a metal tie in though. Lemmy Kilmeister was a roadie for Jimi Hendrix before he went on to found the band Motorhead.

[Chuck Bryant]

I was today years old. Did not know that.

[Josh Clark]

Isn't that a great little fact?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's really great, man.

[Josh Clark]

Can you imagine those two together on acid? Yes, actually I can too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Deep Purple is the second of the unholy trinity of rock. They were formed in 1968, but again, a little more like prog rock to me. I think by their fourth album, which was Deep Purple. En rock is when they replaced their singer with a guy named Ian Gillan and their bassist with a guy named Roger Glover. They got a little heavier then, but they might be classified as a proto metal because of their guitar player, Richie Blackmore, who was a legend. He went on to form the band Rainbow, which was definitely metal.

[Josh Clark]

Is it? I've seen people say, no, it's definitely hard rock. Cause I was like, no, this sounds a lot like metal to me. I like them.

[Chuck Bryant]

I thought Rainbow was metal. But again, these are just our nitpicking definitions.

[Josh Clark]

But that's a good. I mean, that's a good point. That's a good demonstration. Like, you can really get metal fans arguing by just saying confidently, like, no, Rainbow's metal. People will start arguing with you for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And then Sabbath comes along and to me, they're very much sort of the birth of metal. And I think a lot of that has to do. Like, the difference between them, Zeppelin, to me, even though there are a lot of similarities, is Ozzie's voice was just. He had a very sinister kind of creepy sounding voice. And their music just sounded more sinister than Led Zeppelin.

[Josh Clark]

It not just sounded like they were like the stuff they sang about. Yeah, Especially today you're like, yeah, that's metal. But when you look back at what the time they were coming out of, we're talking like the free love hippie 60s. They came right out of that. And so a lot of people point to Black Sabbath not just as, like, the birth of heavy metal, but the end of the 60s. Like the thing that said, like, hey, we're going in a much different direction and it's not nearly as pleasant and colorful as you guys have been taking things.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. Of course, we're talking about the dearly departed, recently departed Ozzy Osbourne.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Rip.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ozzy, rip. Tony Iommi, guitar player. Geezer Butler was a bassist and Bill Ward on drums. And they were originally a blues band called Earth Blues Company. Eventually you become Earth, only Earth. They're from Birmingham, England. As you'll see, that'll be a recurring motif here. And the name Black Sabbath came from the fact that it sounds like Geezer Butler again. Their bass player had sleep paralysis.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it does sound like that, doesn't it?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. What happened?

[Josh Clark]

He dreamt that there was a dark figure standing at the foot of his bed. And so he wrote a song. They named it. He wrote a song about that and they named it Black Sabbath. And Black Sabbath is taken from a Boris Karloff movie about a talking boat that wins a regatta for a group of orphans. Boris Karloff does the voice of the boat. And they ended up having to change their name because some other band was like, hey, man, we're Earth. And then I'm sure another band was like, no, we're Earth. And then it just kept going on from there. Either way, Sabbath saw the writing on the wall. So they were like, well, our. Our favorite song and the song that everybody likes the most is Black Sabbath. Let's just call ourselves that. So their debut album was Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath, featuring the song Black Sabbath. They were one of those.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And they, you know, I'm gonna sort of pepper in some, you know, Rolling Stone ticket, for what it's worth. But they have a list of their top 100 metal bands and fun fact, either Ozzy or Seb or, I'm sorry, metal albums, either Ozzie or Sabbath have four of the top 15. Not bad.

[Josh Clark]

Not bad at all. No, Ozzy's definitely a metal God, which is interesting because Black Sabbath as a band, just like Led Zeppelin, it said, we're not heavy metal or we weren't heavy metal. It's not what we were. And again, most people are like, you are. Sorry to inform you, you were definitely metal. But apparently Rob Halford, the lead singer, Judas Priest, I guess he was on WTF with Marc Maron at some point and he said, hey, Sabbath has always said, like, we weren't the first metal band. Well, Judas Priest was founded the same year.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So we'll. We'll gladly take that title as the first metal band. And you can make a pretty good case if. If Sabbath says no, give it to Judas Priest.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I don't think I realized they formed at the same time. That's interesting. And I also think Ozzy's post Sabbath career as just Ozzy Osbourne was as metal as metal gets. So there may be a little bit of, like, kind of joining those two things together.

[Josh Clark]

That's possible. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Had he gone like the way of George Benson or Chuck Mangione, people might leave. Oh, yeah, that's right. Wow. They're just popping up all over the place or doing the opposite of that, I guess.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they're pop. They're. Yeah. Laying down.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So most people, though, say they'll give Black Sabbath a pass on their first debut. Their debut album, say like, okay, that was kind of bluesy and it is, but it's still pretty metal Y. But they're like your second album, Paranoid. Sorry, that is definitely Metal War Pigs is about as metal as metal gets still to this day.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean Paranoid is ranked as the number one metal album of all time by Rolling Stone. So there you go.

[Josh Clark]

Well then there's no arguing with that.

[Chuck Bryant]

I agree. And I think we should take a break and maybe come back and talk about a very unfortunate kind of legendary incident that happened to Black Sabbath early in their career. Right after.

[Ebony]

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[Ice Cube]

The reviews and ratings are in and Ice Cube's big three is the surprise hit of the summer. This Saturday, 4pm Eastern on CBS. With playoff elimination on the line, the Stars will be flocking to Los Angeles to witness the most physical, fiercest and competitive basketball in the world. Miami's Michael B's Mosley and Lance Stevenson must win over Houston to make the playoffs, reeling from last week's savage beating at the hands of Chicago's possessed Montrez Harrell. Last time these teams met, Miami beat Houston, but they are a dangerous team having their manhood at stake. Then breakout star Dwight Howard of the LA Riot will battle Gary Payton's Boston squad in a do or die match for both teams. Will LA avenge their previous shocking loss to perennial basketball Boston rivals to survive, six teams are allowed for four spots and all must win. Don't miss the Big Three, the three on three basketball league everyone is talking about. There's no crying in the Big Three and the no hold spot action starts Saturday at 4pm Eastern, 1pm Pacific, followed by two games on Vice starting at 6:30 Eastern. Presented by iHeart.

[Josh Clark]

American History is full of wise people. Walt Whitman said something like, you know, 99.99% of war is diarrhea and 1% is gory.

[Ebony]

Those founding fathers were gossipy AF and.

[Josh Clark]

They love to cut each other down.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History.

[Josh Clark]

Hotline, the show where you send us your questions about American history and I find the answers, including the nuggets of.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wisdom our history has to offer. Hamilton pauses and then he says, the.

[Josh Clark]

Greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar. And Jefferson writes in his diary, this proves that Hamilton is for a dictator based on corruption. My favorite line was what Neil Armstrong said. It would have been harder to fake it than to do it. Listen to American History Hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so we're back with part two of six of the Heavy Metal Duology. And I promised a little bit of talk about a famous incident, a very sad one involving Black Sabbath early in their career. And that is when Tony Iommi, their brilliant left handed guitar player, was a teenager. He worked at a steel mill in Birmingham, England. He was on his last shift. Apparently he was heading out on tour with the band and he came home on a lunch break and almost didn't even go back. And his mom said, get your butt back there, you gotta finish your job, boy. And he went, okay, Mom. And he went back and proceeded to lose the ends of his middle finger and ring finger on his right hand. But remember, he's a left handed guitar player, so if it was the other way around, he could still hold the pick and probably be okay. But this is the hand that is on the neck. So he was missing a large, large portions of his digits that make that pretty vital.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I also read that this was the first time he used a metal press because the guy who normally did it was out. And so they had Tommy, Tony Iommi cover his shift for the first time ever, like last shift ever before he goes out on tour. Like that's just crazy that that happened. But that was actually a gift to metal in a lot of ways because he had to basically adapt. Apparently Django Reinhardt lost like some fingers or a hand or something crazy like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was a fire that basically he only had use of two fingers on his fretting hand.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, well, somebody told that story to Tony Iommi and it inspired him to just get back in there. He made prosthetics himself for his fingers. Apparently they worked. So, so, so instead he had to adapt by. He loosened the strings by down tuning. So everything had a deeper, like, heavier sound to it. The same notes that that standard tuning would produce. It had a deeper sound. He wasn't necessarily doing it for the deeper sound. He was doing it because the looser strings were easy for. Easier for him to bend with what he had left of his fingers. That was a huge development that came out of the loss of those fingertips.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. Also, we switched to lighter strings. He couldn't play as fast. So that's why Black Sabbath has that terrific. Just sort of grungy slog. And it's not like that kind of fast metal. It's because Tony Iommi, you know, he, like you said, he made these things out of wax and leather and if he played fast enough, they would fly off his finger. And so he had to kind of slow it down. And that's why they have that sort of deep, sludgy grind.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. One of the other things I love about Sabbath too, is they, like, their studio albums contain like, mess ups. Like blatant mess ups. Like they'll just like miss the beat on drums or something like that once in a while. And they just kept going and released it on the album. I love that about them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right before we record it, I have the 180 gram versions of their debut, which has the most terrifying album cover of all time to me.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I think so. And Masters of. Or I think Master of Reality. Or is it Masters? I can't remember. And then I ordered. I realized I didn't even have Paranoid, so I ordered that stat.

[Josh Clark]

Nice work, Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's something. We'll talk a little more about album art later. But that's definitely something that's missing in the day and age of like, listening to stuff digitally.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

You don't have that record album to like, look at while you're listening. And that's like part of the experience. Right. But I will say that I noticed recently I was listening to Somewhere in Time, Iron Maiden album. And the album art on my iPhone moves now. So Eddie, like, they. They show him like shooting the guy who's like, just out of frame. You just see his hand.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow.

[Josh Clark]

His eyes light up like, it's really cool. Worth downloading the album just to see that alone, let alone for the music. So I'm glad that that developed, but it's still not quite the same as holding, like A record album, like, cover and looking at it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. The 70s also included, of course, Judas Priest. As you mentioned, Iron maiden started in 1975 with a different lead singer. That's if you're not super into Iron Maiden and you just kind of remember the 80s music videos with the. The great Bruce Dickinson up front. Their first two records, Killers and just. I think it was self titled. Right.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Iron Maiden and then Killers. And they were both. It was. Paul Dano was their first lead singer.

[Chuck Bryant]

I like those records.

[Josh Clark]

Let's talk a little bit about Maiden right now. You want to.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You want to get into it?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because it's really pretty much impossible to overstate the influence that Iron Maiden had on you. Metal, you know. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I agree.

[Josh Clark]

Like, if you. If you ask some of the people who make up the big four of thrash bands, Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax, they're basically like, we wouldn't. We wouldn't exist if it weren't for Iron Maiden. Like, we loved Maiden so much, we decided to form our own band. We were inspired to form our own band. And it just keeps going down the line. Band after band after band. Started out loving Iron Maiden. It's such a great entree into heavy metal music because it's so listenable.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Totally melodic. The lyrics are really interesting. Like, the themes of the songs are really varied. And I was evidence of this. The poster art alone can get you into Iron Maiden. Like, I had my room covered in Iron Maiden posters before I listened to them at all.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, we should talk about that for a second then. Their mascot is Eddie. If you've ever seen an Iron Maiden album cover or poster or live video where they have big, giant Eddie walking around and stuff, like a puppet, I guess he's their mascot. And he was drawn by a guy named Derek Riggs. And originally he was called Eddie the Head, and then just the Head, but in their British accent. The Ed. They, like, dropped their H's.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, is that right?

[Chuck Bryant]

It just became Ed. Then Eddie is how they eventually wound up with Eddie.

[Josh Clark]

Very nice. And he's been on every single of the 17 albums that they've released. Most of the singles, apparently, not all. I don't know why, but he's usually kind of like altered to represent whatever that particular album is about, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. Like, he was a inmate in a mental institution for peace of mind. I do love the COVID of Powerslave when he's a pharaoh in the desert. Pretty cool.

[Josh Clark]

Apparently when they toured that album they had, like a 30 foot, like, actual build of that as the backdrop for their stage show.

[Chuck Bryant]

Of course they did. Why would you?

[Josh Clark]

Not exactly, you know. But, yeah, Eddie was boss. Just Eddie alone. And he's a good example of why the loss of, like, an album cover is really, like, a big deal. Because, man, it doesn't get any better than Iron Maiden album covers.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, agreed. They came out in 1975, and believe it or not, Def Leppard was also debuting along with Motorhead. And they were grouped together as what's called the new wave of British heavy metal. And that was sort of happening concurrently with the punk scene, which is interesting because punk and metal to me are very different. But there are some sort of tendrils that work through both of those kinds of music.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And that's where those first two albums definitely, they were definitely influenced. Paul Diano's definitely influenced by punk. So it was a lot more. It was a lot closer to hardcore than the albums that Bruce Dickinson helmed, starting with their third album, Number of the Beast, which is when the band just broke through and became metal gods. That was back in 1982.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Dickinson brought that sort of operatic flourish, the theatrical, like some of his. I was listening Today. And sometimes he literally goes like, frum and that kind of thing, which is like, you gotta love it. He really leaned into it for sure.

[Josh Clark]

And, like, I don't know how. I. Like, I'm not such a fan that I know who actually writes the songs. I've always presumed Bruce Dickinson did, but usually it turns out to be like, the, the guitarist or something like that. But their songs are really, really interesting and they're really varied. Like, they cover history a lot. Like, there's a song about World War II pilots called ACEs High. Yeah. Song about Alexander the Great, about white Europeans and Americans overrunning Native Americans in North America. Run to the Hills. That's on Number of the Beasts, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Great song.

[Josh Clark]

They have some really, like, uplifting, encouraging messages in their songs, like Can I Play with Madness? And Wasted Years. They even have a song about the loneliness of a long distance runner. And that's what it's about.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And it's really. It's a great song. Like, it, they, they, they, they follow the pace and, like, the slowdown and then the speed up again once he gets a second wind. Like, it's a really well done song, but it's about a long distance runner running a marathon by himself.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. One of the things I haven't gotten around to yet in my recent documentary, Binge is, I know there's a really good Iron Maiden documentary that came out, I think last year or semi recently. And I haven't checked that out yet, but that's on the list, like even higher now.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. And if you're like, well, okay, how big is Iron Maiden? We've got a few stats for you. One, Chuck, back in 2012, the Queen's 60 year Jubilee, the UK held some polls to say, like to figure out what the best of the best was of the last 60 years. The best British record album of the last 60 years voted by citizens of the UK was number of the beast, Iron Maiden. So just best record, the best record. The Beatles were from Britain. Don't forget, all of those guys who are the progenitors of heavy metal were from Britain. Iron Maiden's number of the Beast was voted the number one record in the last 60 years in great Britain.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, here's my statement on that.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't doubt you. I just want to know a little bit more about the robustness of this poll. And like, it's shocking to me that that would be number one over like the Stones or the Beatles or Led Zeppelin or just bands that were just way, way, way more popular.

[Josh Clark]

I totally get you. And I triple checked that to make sure that that was not just like some misinformed fan.

[Chuck Bryant]

I just want to see the. I want to see where they took this poll, like how it was done. That's what I want to know.

[Josh Clark]

But they got almost 10% of the vote, so it's pretty good.

[Chuck Bryant]

You're like, it was in the parking lot of an Iron Maiden show.

[Josh Clark]

So they've also sold 130 million copies of their 17 albums. Not bad. Even Lady Gaga is a fan, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, I think she was knocked out by their fandom or standom because she was like, what I see in an Iron Maidens fan base is what I want for myself. Like, they are so wholly dedicated. And that's something. I think that's true for a lot of metal bands. But they seem to be even more so than a lot of metal bands.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I mean like worldwide. If you go to South America, they can fill a stadium every night for a month. Like people around the world love Iron Maiden. I just think it's great because they're a great band. There's not a bunch of controversy. Controversy. They're not like preoccupied with like bringing the full, the full power of Satan to bear on his non believers, like.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

They're just actually a lot of their Stuff is pretty encouraging. At the very least, super interesting. So they're. They, like. They're just a good band to be beloved worldwide, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Totally agree. I still think I'm Judas Priestmore. I was listening to British steel today, and they're both great. They're kind of side by side for me, actually.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. I have to, like, add to my original top five, maybe even current top five. I really like Motorhead a lot. Yeah, I don't own a Motorhead T shirt. I really haven't heard much beyond their Ace of Spades album, but I love what I hear of Motorhead. I like their whole jam. They're another band that said, like, we're not heavy metal.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's true. But they were kind of the progenitors of speed metal, I think, in a lot of ways. The Scorpions came out in 65 in Hanover. I know. I've recommended the sales of Sharon as a very amazing YouTube thing to go watch. If you want to see some pre-80s Scorpions.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Def Leppard came out in 77. See, this is where Livia has a couple listed, like Van Halen and Blue Oyster Cult and Aerosmith and acdc. That. I don't think any of those bands are metal.

[Josh Clark]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You don't think Van Halen is metal?

[Chuck Bryant]

Not at all.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I disagree with you.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I think they're not metal at all.

[Josh Clark]

All right. I'm gonna say that I think that they qualify as metal.

[Chuck Bryant]

Interesting. Have you ever heard David Lee Roth?

[Josh Clark]

I have. I have.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm Ice Cream Man.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. I know that they have other stuff, but I'm saying, like, I think they're, like, the stuff that sounds like metal is metal.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't think it sounds like metal at all. I just think they're a rock band.

[Josh Clark]

Have you heard Panama?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That didn't sound metal to me at all.

[Josh Clark]

I know. I'm just kidding.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

I can't think of a single metal song of theirs. I think it's mostly just Eddie Van Halen's playing that. I'm like, that's metal, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, see, not to me. That's just virtuosic rock guitar lead to me. I mean. And also just, you know, they didn't sing about those things. There was no darkness. There was no, you know, the way they dress. Like, Eddie Van Halen wore overalls on stage.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, Randy Rhodes wore a polka dot, like, Chippendales vest.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

So let's not get into that.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right? So anyway, just my opinion.

[Josh Clark]

I knew this is mine, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

But let's talk about just the. I mean, I guess this is a nice segue into the words heavy metal, because, like I said, people can nitpick this stuff to death. What heavy rock was or when it transitioned into metal. There's a sociologist named Dina Weinstein that Livia found that tried to kind of root out the origins of the literal phrase heavy metal. It was in Born to Be Wild by Steppenwolf, you know, heavy Metal Thunder. But that wasn't talking about music. That was talking about cars and stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Right. I don't know. It could have influenced it to some degree or whatever, but it doesn't seem like the direction. Answer.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

If you ask me, William S. Burroughs apparently puts up a pretty good argument for the guy who coined heavy metal, or at least put it out there, and that it was adopted to eventually describe that genre of music. It's not at all what he was doing. He had a character from his Nova trilogy called Uranium Willy, the Heavy metal kid. Okay. I don't know enough about William S. Burroughs writing to know if, like, Uranium Willy was like metal in, like, the metal sense. Yeah, but he also had a drug called heavy metal that appeared in some of his other works. Not Naked Lunch, but in other works. That, to me, makes a. That you could make a pretty good argument that I would buy that that ultimately maybe led to the use of heavy metal to describe heavy metal.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I think both of those things had put it out into this public consciousness as two words that can be said together. But for my. You gotta go with Lester Bangs. This was in 1970, and I think he was writing for Rolling Stone at the time. But the legendary rock critic and writer, in one of his reviews in 1970, said he was complaining it was a negative thing. He said all the heavy metal robots of years past, of the year past. When he was talking about the albums of 1970, he was talking about 1969. And he proceeded by a few months, a guy named Mike Saunders, eventually known as Metal Mike, who described Humble Pie as a noisy, unmelodic, heavy metal laden poop rock band.

[Josh Clark]

Thank you for changing S to poop.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But preserve the moral purity of our podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

They both used the words heavy metal to describe music, I think for the first time in 1970.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But they were negative reviews. That's possible. I think Dina Weinstein says that's a real possibility for. But she put something out that I thought was pretty interesting, too. She pointed out that a lot of these bands came from Birmingham, England, and Detroit, Michigan. Which apparently were very similar at the time. They're very polluted, dirty industrial working class cities. And that the fans of heavy metal also hailed from those areas too, or areas like them and that. That they would be familiar with like the feel of heavy metal. Like the. Not the feel. What's the word I'm looking for?

[Chuck Bryant]

The sensibility?

[Josh Clark]

No, more like the. Just the. Like what the term can kind of bring to mind, you know what I'm saying? And associating that with music like somebody from, you know, super nice town usa, whose experience with metal is the nails holding their white picket fence together. They might not be able to be like, yeah, heavy metal really describes this music, but the kids in Detroit and Birmingham probably could. And I thought that was an interesting point.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Oh geez, look at where we are. Why don't we take another break, okay. And we'll come back and talk about how the genre started to grow and sort of split into subgenres right after this.

[Josh Clark]

This is going to be. Go outside.

[Chuck Bryant]

No.

[Ebony]

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[Ice Cube]

The reviews and ratings are in and Ice Cube's big three is the surprise hit of the summer. This Saturday, 4pm Eastern on CBS. With playoff elimination on on the line, the stars will be flocking to Los Angeles to witness the most physical, fiercest and competitive basketball in the world. Miami's Michael Beasley and Lance Stevenson must win over Houston to make the playoffs. Reeling from last week's savage beating at the hands of Chicago's possessed Montrez Harrell. Last time these teams met, Miami beat Houston, but they are a dangerous team having their manhood at stake. Then breakout star Dwight Howard of the LA Riot will battle Gary Payton's Boston squad in a do or die match for both teams. Will LA avenge their previous shocking loss to perennial basketball Boston rivals? To survive, six teams are allowed for four spots and all must win. Don't miss the Big three, the three on three basketball league everyone is talking about. There's no crying in the big three. And the no hold spot action starts Saturday at 4:00pm Eastern, 1:00pm Pacific, followed by two games on Vice starting at 6:30 Eastern. Presented by iheartrade. Hello, I'm John Lithgow.

[Chuck Bryant]

We choose to go to the moon. I want to tell you about my new fiction podcast.

[Josh Clark]

It's One Small step for Man.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's about Buzz Aldrin, one of the true pioneers of space. You're a great pilot, Buzz. As far as I'm concerned, the best I've seen.

[Josh Clark]

That's the story you think you know.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is the story you don't predisposition.

[Ebony]

To depression, alcohol abuse and suicide.

[Chuck Bryant]

We'll see Buzz try to overcome demons. What do you say, Buzz?

[Josh Clark]

Another beer. And triumph over addiction. Here's to you, Buzz Aldrin.

[Chuck Bryant]

Good luck to you and become a true hero. Buzz and I will proceed into the.

[Josh Clark]

Lunar module not because he conquers space, but because he conquers himself. Buzz, we intercepted a Soviet radio transmission.

[Chuck Bryant]

Starring me, John Lithgow.

[Josh Clark]

Can you put it through?

[Chuck Bryant]

Can you Translate on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts?

[Josh Clark]

Columbia. Okay, Chuck, So the early 70s or the mid-70s to early 80s gave us the British wave, the new British wave of heavy metal, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Laid the foundation. You would call most of that just heavy metal. Like, it's just so classic. They don't even fit into sub genres. They just gave the world heavy metal. From that point, it just started to split. And one of the ways that it started to split was by spreading. And it didn't spread through radio. Radio was afraid of heavy metal almost from the outset. So bands were forced to basically say, let's just get out on the road. Let's go to our fans, rather than relying on other people to help boost our popularity. And so touring and massive tours became just a part of being a heavy metal band, especially in the early 80s, throughout the 80s. And they would make stage shows that people would talk about for years afterwards. Like we talked about the Iron Maiden, 1983 Power Slave or 84 or 5 Powerslave Tour, and what their stage show Looked like. Like that's the kind of stuff they were doing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. The 80s. Of course, that's when hair metal comes onto the scene. And that's when I. And mtv, that's when I started getting into it a little bit, despite my, you know, early alternative music leanings. And also loving, like, Billy Joel at the time and stuff like that.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I was all over the place. But, you know, Rat comes along, Motley Crue comes along. Your band, Poison, Cinderella, another band that I love. I mean, we could go through them. Louisiana Guns, Whitesnake, Hanoi Rocks, Slaughter, Skid Row, Daken, Wasp, Warrant, Warrant, Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister. And we have to mention this band because it was kind of the beginnings of some really dark metal. And that is a band called Merciful Fate from lead singer King diamond, who would later. After Merciful Fate, I think merciful fate was 1980-84. And then after that, King diamond, which is obviously a stage name, went on to form the band King Diamond. And they were very dark, sort of darker metal and used what's known as corpse paint. Like the black and white makeup paint on a space.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

And very influential early, I guess, dark metal.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. The other band that typically gets pointed to is the basis of death or of death metal in particular, is Possessed. They're from San Francisco.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

They released an album called Seven Churches in 1985. That was another one that I was like, where. Where was I? What was I doing? Yeah, this is right in my wheelhouse. Like, how did I not hear Possessed? How did I not hear of Venom? Like, I did not. This stuff did not cross my path. And this. It's like actual legit death metal. But it's from 1985. Death Metal wouldn't really start to take off until the later 80s, early 90s.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And we should just say death metal is like that. Like, you know, the growling, like, lyrics that you just can't understand. You have to read the lyrics while you're listening. That is death metal. That's like the key characteristic of death metal that anybody could come along and be like, oh, that's different than the other stuff I'm listening to because of this.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. And, you know, the. Why you didn't know about it is because you had to know the person who knew about it because it wasn't on the radio. Stuff like that wasn't even on mtv. I mean, maybe you might see something like that as a deep cut on Headbanger's Ball later on, hosted by the great Ricky Rockman. But otherwise you just had to know the dude who was like, hey, man, have you heard this?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And so they gave birth to Morbid Angel Autopsy. Cannibal Corpse is a very, very famous death metal band from the late 80s, and it just keeps going on and on and on. Our longtime listener, I think she still listens. I haven't talked to her in a while. Elisa White Gloves from the band Archenemy, she listens, or she used to. But Arch Enemy is a melodic Swedish death metal band. Yeah, it's just a bunch of sub genres put into one. But if you listen to Elisa Singh, she's doing that death metal, like guttural singing. Yeah, it's just part of death metal, no matter what that genre is carved into.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. Not fully my thing. I was into a little bit of industrial metal that came around in the mid-80s. Ministry, of course, is the band that comes to mind from Chicago, who were a little more of a synth pop. They were not what they became for sure early on, but they kind of led the way for the industrial music scene in the mid-80s when their 86 album Twitch came out.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, and that's, that's. I went in that direction toward industrial in addition to new wave stuff. Like, I really like Nitzer Eb and Meat Beat Manifesto Skinny Puppy. None of those would qualify as metal, but I guess Ministry kind of bridged that. Or was the bridge between metal and just straight up industrial. God Flesh, they were another one that was, no question, industrial metal. And again, Go listen to God Flesh's, I guess, first album. I can't remember what it's called, but it's like a black background with a white minimalist kind of face all up in your face. You'll be like, wait, this is metal. And if you listen to it, you'll say, yes, this is metal. They use a drum machine and you're like, okay, well, that seems like cheating. No, they use a drum machine because no human being could play drums at this slow a pace and not like fall asleep or die from boredom. Right. So they have a really slow tempo, but with traditional, like, distortion and guitars and singing that you would associate with metal. And you put it all together and it is really good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I saw a cool interview with the great Mike Patton of Faith no more and Mr. Bungle, one of the greatest singers ever in any genre. And he was singing the praises of God Flesh and I went and listened to a little bit of it and I was like, man, this is like very, very heavy stuff.

[Josh Clark]

It is, it is oh, it's super, super dark. But they were from Birmingham, too. So this is like. So Birmingham is to metal what Manchester was to Britpop. Yeah, yeah. Like, it just was this center. And what's crazy is it was a center for a really long time. I think there's still bands coming out of Birmingham that are noteworthy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah. The Grammys got on board in 1989 and all the wrong ways. They introduced the best hard rock slash metal performance. And Metallica's Injustice for all very famously lost out to Jethro Tull. They had a comeback album called Crest of a Knave, and everybody immediately was like, grammys. You've never seen more out of touch with what's going on in the world. And so pretty quickly they were like, oh, maybe we'll split the categories. And the next year it was hard rock. A hard rock award and a medal award. But they even messed that up. Like, you know, bands like Soundgarden1 the metal category and stuff like that. And, like, they're not metal either.

[Josh Clark]

Well, the Grammys aren't really known for being super in touch with underground stuff. And it's interesting because the reason why groups like Soundgarden won the metal Grammy at the time is because grunge just took over, and it actually pushed metal right out of the limelight, the earth. Like, basically starting January 1, 1990, grunge just took over, and it stayed that way for years. And the metal started to kind of come back in a way. Nu metal came along in the mid to late 90s. So, like, you had Slipknot and corn. Lincoln Park, I guess, qualifies. I'm not either, but I know a lot of people are like. A lot of people got back into metal thanks to these guys. They basically, they're like, hey, you like. You like grunge, you like alternative? We're going to help transition you back to metal. And then there was something called the new wave of American heavy metal starting in the early 2000s that took back over from nu metal and brought it back to, like, legit, serious metal. Like As I Lay Dying, Lamb of God, and of course, High on Fire, and a bunch of other bands that are still coming out in America and around the world. So metal came back. Whether you like nu metal or not. You can thank them for bringing metal back from obscurity in the late 90s, early 2000s.

[Chuck Bryant]

Thank you, Korn.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, thanks a lot, Korn.

[Chuck Bryant]

Alt metal was a thing, too, in the late 90s and kind of early 2000s. I think people consider tool kind of an alt metal band. A band called System of a Down. I listened to some tool, but they're another band that I know that has a very, very, very hardcore loyal following.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then progressive metal that had kind of been around in the 80s. Like a band like Queens Reich, who I never really liked that much, could probably be considered prog metal. As well as a band called Dream Theater, who are also very popular and have fans that are like, super loyal.

[Josh Clark]

I remember listening to Queens Reich Operation Mind Crime as like a 12 year old and being like, I don't get it. Yeah, this is. Where's the crime? Way too grown up for me. Right, Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know, you know, what the crime is. These lyrics.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Pantera was another one that actually kept metal alive during the grunge years. They. I did not know this. Pantera started out, the Cowboys From Hell. Started out as a glam rock band. Spandex, big hair and everything. And eventually they shifted into more of a metal sound. And they were one of the pioneers of what's called groove metal, which is essentially what it sounds like. It's catchier metal. I think there's more refrains to it. And I'm just speaking musically. It's not. It's. It has nothing to do with like jam bands or anything like that. It's just as far as metal goes, it's probably the grooviest version of metal you could. You could do.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate.

[Josh Clark]

A couple other things. Chuck, did we talk about the Big Four?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we talked a bit about the Big Four earlier of thrash bands, which is, of course Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer.

[Josh Clark]

Were you into Slayer or Megadeth or Metallica or Anthrax?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I got into Metallica at one point when I lived in New Jersey. Cause a friend of mine listened to them. And so I listened to Master of Puppets and Ride the Lightning and Injustice for All. Like, those are great records. A little bit of Anthrax here and there, but those generally weren't my thing. Definitely never really listened to Megadeth. I know Dave Mustaine has a reputation in the industry. He was let go of from Metallica.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And hasn't stopped complaining about it for 43 years.

[Josh Clark]

I saw an interview with him that he. Where he said, like, I own that. Like, I was like, I had to quit drinking because I was so aggro and violent whenever I did. But yeah, he was not happy about it. But metal fans are happy because he went on to found Megadeth basically to spite Metallica. And they became huge in their own right. But I was never into them. I really want to be into Slayer. Like, I have Rain and Blood on my phone, which is not a super metal thing to say, but it's the truth. And I just, like, I can listen to it, but I'm not like, damn, this is good. Like, I just can't get into Slayer and I've never really been in Megadeth, despite trying to.

[Chuck Bryant]

When he left, he said, I'll show you guys. I'll go on to found a band that will never be as good or as popular as you will be.

[Josh Clark]

I know it's got. Seriously, I hope it doesn't stick in his crawl, because that is. That would be hard to get over.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think he's kind of well known in the industry. There's a couple of metal people that a lot of metal people don't like. Dave Mustaine is one, and then Lars Ulrich, the drummer from Metallica is another. Even Metallica fans, there's a lot of them that are like, oh, God, Lars, just shut up.

[Josh Clark]

It's interesting. What do you think about. Yeah, he does. Yeah. Because some of them are so, like, vocal about their opinions and how awesome they are and how terrible other bands are.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, sure.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I'm sure. How about this? Let's say we wrap it up talking a little bit about black metal and then we'll move on to part two. What do you think?

[Chuck Bryant]

That sounds good.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so we can't wrap before we talk about black metal, which was something that also emerged out of thrash or actually I think it emerged out of death metal, to tell you the truth. But where death metal is like guttural, black metal is screaming. Essentially. It's just a higher pitched of not understandable lyrics. You have to read the lyrics along with it. But it is so death metal is like gory and like, just go look at Cannibal corpses Butchered at Birth album cover and you'll get an idea of what death metal is about. Yeah, black metal is legit. The kind of satanic metal that the. The censors of the 1980s and the pastors of the Satanic panic were actually scared of. That didn't exist yet. Black metal is that so does like.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is merciful Fate and King diamond do they. Are they thrown into that group?

[Josh Clark]

I think the progenitors of black metal were Venom all the way back in 1981. They were actually part of the new wave of British heavy metal. They like. They had a picture of Baphomet in an upside down star on the COVID Right. So I could see suburban parents being actually scared of Venom. Bathory from Sweden, they were another one from 1984. And the mayhem is the one that like, took black metal into, like, the actual, like, this is kind of scary realm. And because they actually did stuff in real life that involved like death and suicide and murder and church arson and stuff like that, it was like the Norwegian black metal in particular, they're seen at least it was kind of dangerous. It's really just. You can't say that that's not true.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah, like you said, there was a literal murder in the van Mayhem. And I will issue a huge trigger warning and encourage you not to go look this up. But you can't talk about Mayhem without talking about the worst album cover of all time. Dawn of the Black Hearts is a photograph that was a bootleg album, but became very famous because it showed a photograph that the band took of an image of their lead singer right after he had died by suicide by shotgun. And it's awful.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

No other way to describe it, but just horrific.

[Josh Clark]

It's essentially a close up and it's exactly what you would think it looked like. But, like, that was their album cover. Bootleg album, like you said. True. But the picture was taken by one of Mayhem's band members, Euronymous, who apparently arranged the scene to make it a better looking photo and hadn't even contacted the cops yet to say, like, hey, my friend killed himself. He was taking pictures of it instead. So, like, this is, like, this was. This is black metal there. It's also rife with white supremacists. And I'm not. So I. I don't. I'm sure, positive that there are black metal bands out there that are not down with all of that, but are still really good. But I would guess that they're not the majority. And I don't mean to put down the whole thing and sound like a pearl clutching, like parent, because I'm not. I'm just trying to get across, like, how, like, what these guys are saying is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And like, if you read the lyrics, they're like, wow, this is really nuts, man. It's cool. And I don't actually know where these guys fall, like, if they're white supremacists or anything, but I know that they are exemplary of Norwegian or Scandinavian black metal called Emperor. And they have a song called the Loss and the Curse of Grace, I think. Okay, it's got a great video. Like, it's It's a really cool song. Read the lyrics along with the song.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

And you'll be like, okay, I understand black metal. That's a great entree to it, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, I'll do it.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. But I don't. I'm not really into the sound because I've read that it's deliberately meant to be noisy and put off people like me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Squares.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, let's just say it. Yes. Squares who aren't into black metal. Poison Scandinavia. Yeah. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. That's a super sized part one. I think we'll probably have the super sized part two. And there's also going to be a fun little short stuff this week. So I guess we should just call this Metal Week. And we don't do listener mails at the end of a part one, right?

[Josh Clark]

No. No, we don't.

[Chuck Bryant]

So take us home, baby.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, you ready?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

We are gonna stop. We are gonna stop. We are gonna, we are gonna, we are gonna stop. Stop, stop, stop. We are gonna stop here.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit.

[Josh Clark]

The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

[Ebony]

You listen to your favorite favorite shows.

[Ice Cube]

Ice Cube's Big Three is the surprise hit of the summer. This Saturday, 4pm Eastern on CBS, with playoff elimination on the line. The most physical, fiercest and competitive basketball in the world. Miami's Michael Beasley and Lance Stevenson must win to make the playoffs. And breakout star Dwight Howard of the LA Riot will battle Gary Payton's Boston squad in a do or die match for both teams. Six teams are allowed for four spots and all must win. There's no crying in the big three, and the no holds barred action starts Saturday at 4pm Eastern, 1pm Pacific. Presented by iHeart.

[Ebony]

Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebony, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebony, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions of and give you new insight on the people around you. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Josh Clark]

I'm Dr. Joy Hardin Bradford, host of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. I know how overwhelming it can feel if flying makes you anxious. In session 418 of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, Dr. Angela Neal Barnett.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I discuss flight anxiety.

[Ebony]

What is not normal is to allow.

[Josh Clark]

It to prevent you from doing the things that you want to do the things that you were meant to do.

[Ebony]

Listen to therapy for black Girls on.

[Chuck Bryant]

The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Ebony]

This is an I heart podcast.