MUSIC IN THE BLOOD

David Wood: Founder of Neat Records. " Black Metal is like Black Magic without the chocolate"Vincent Crowley: Vocalist with cult Black Metal band Acheron"Venom, the true gods of Black Metal started this whole thing. So to me, it is a music that you can take to an unholy extreme. Songs about Satanism, The Occult, Myths, Blasphemy, and Hell, takes the listener on a journey to the Dark side. Satan always is the center of attention in Black Metal. And band members always have a dark aesthetic. But the main thing is Black Metal has to be the most demonic music ever!" Malcolm Dome : Rock journalist Black metal is whatever you want it to be...just think of a number, double it and hey, presto, it's black and inventive. That's the beauty of the bestial side. Anything's possible. Everything's probable. Gavin Baddeley [ author of Lucifer Rising] Black Metal is, as these genre labels almost always are, something of a misnomer. Most rockers have always worn b...

Early Days: After being kicked out of Metallica in 1983, guitarist Dave Mustaine started Megadeth. The original lineup included bassist David Ellefson, guitarist Kerry King and drummer Lee Rash. Shortly thereafter Kerry King left for his old band Slayer and was replaced by Chris Poland and Lee Rash was replaced by Gar Samuelson. In 1985 their debut album Killing Is My Business...And Business Is Good was released. Thrash Titans: The success of their debut drew the attention of major labels, and Capitol Records signed Megadeth for their second album, 1986's Peace Sells...But Who's Buying. It was huge successful, and the band was poised to battle Metallica to be the most popular thrash metal band. Problems: Mustaine's behavior was becoming erratic due to drug and alcohol problems. Prior to their third album he fired Poland and Samuelson, who were replaced by guitarist Jeff Young and drummer Chuck Behler. There were several more lineup changes over the years, culminating in the...

Mixing equal parts bone-crushing volume, catatonic tempos, and ominous pronouncements of gloom and doom delivered in Ozzy Osbourne's keening voice, Black Sabbath was the heavy-metal king of the '70s. Despised by rock critics and ignored by radio programmers, the group sold over 8 million albums before Osbourne departed for a solo career in 1979 [see entry]. The band's original lineup reunited for a two-year tour in 1997.The four original members, schoolmates from a working-class district of industrial Birmingham, first joined forces as the Polka Tulk Blues Company, a blues band. They quickly changed their name to Earth, then, in 1969, to Black Sabbath; the name came from the title of a song written by bassist Geezer Butler, a fan of occult novelist Dennis Wheatley. It may also have been an homage to a Boris Karloff film. The quartet’s eponymously titled 1970 debut, recorded in two days, went to #8 in England and #23 in the U.S. A single, “Paranoid,” released in advance of ...

FORMED: 1981, Los Angeles, CA The most consistently innovative metal band of the late 80s and 90s was formed in 1981 in California, USA, by Lars Ulrich (b. 26 December 1963, Copenhagen, Denmark; drums) and James Alan Hetfield (b. 3 August 1963, USA; guitar/vocals) after each separately advertised for fellow musicians in the classified section of American publication The Recycler. They recorded their first demo, No Life Til' Leather, with Lloyd Grand (guitar), who was replaced in January 1982 by David Mustaine (b. 13 September 1961, La Mesa, California, USA), whose relationship with Ulrich and Hetfield proved unsatisfactory. Jef Warner (guitar) and Ron McGovney (bass) each had a brief tenure with the band.At the end of 1982 Clifford Lee Burton (b. 10 February 1962, USA, d. 27 September 1986; bass, ex-Trauma) joined the band, playing his first live performance on 5 March 1983. Mustaine departed to form Megadeth and was replaced by Kirk Hammett (b. 18 November 1962, San Francisco, C...

Known for such powerful hits as "Two Minutes to Midnight" and "The Trooper," Iron Maiden was and is one of the most influential bands of the heavy metal genre. The often-imitated band existed for over 20 years, pumping out wild rock similar to Judas Priest. Iron Maiden has always been an underground attraction; although failing to ever obtain any real media attention in the U.S. (critics claimed them to be Satanists due to their dark musical themes and their use of grim mascot "Eddie"), they still became well known throughout the world and have remained consistently popular throughout their career. Iron Maiden was one of the first groups to be classified as "British metal," and, along with Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and a host of other bands, set the rock scene for the '80s. Iron Maiden was first formed in 1976 by bassist Steve Harris, who would soon join up with rhythm guitarist Tony Parsons, drummer Doug Sampson, and vocalist Paul Di'...

The cradle is rocking, the dead are rising, the seas will boil and the skies will fall. As the world stands poised on the edge of mass destruction, the freaks, fools and monsters who rule us are about to be taught a real lesson in the use of power, for Cradle of Filth have created the greatest album of their career to date. 'Damnation and a Day', has been carved out of the darkness that is about to engulf what we know as civilisation.The recordings, spawned from the loins of five of the most controversial Lords of darkness ever to walk the earth grew to their full strength at Parkgate, a studio set in the blood-soaked town of Battle, set in darkest Hastings. Inspired by their surroundings, the five Horsemen of the Apocalypse fed on the blood of Doug Cook who was unwittingly drafted in to co-produce and engineer the album. Little did he know that he was merely a victim. Cradle sucked the knowledge out of their hapless victim and used his withered shell of a body to help direc...

The Suicidal Note of Kurt Donald Cobain, 1967-1994 To Boddah Speaking from the tongue of an experienced simpleton who obviously would rather be an emasculated, infantile complain-ee. This note should be pretty easy to understand. All the warnings from the punk rock 101 courses over the years, since my first introduction to the, shall we say, ethics involved with independence and the embracement of your community has proven to be very true. I haven't felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music along with reading and writing for too many years now. I feel guity beyond words about these things. For example when we're back stage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins., it doesn't affect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury, who seemed to love, relish in the the love and adoration from the crowd which is something I totally admire and envy. The fact is, I can't fool you, any one of you. It simply isn't fair to you...

Quotes "I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown, which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments." "I think the highest and lowest points are the important ones. Anything else is just... in between. I want the freedom to try everything." "I think I was just fed up with the image that had been created around me, which I sometimes consciously, most of the time unconsciously cooperated with. It just got too much for me to really stomach and so I put an end to it one glorious evening." "The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first."

Jim Morrison (December 8, 1943 - July 3, 1971) was a singer, songwriter and poet. Born James Douglas Morrison in Melbourne, Florida, he was the lead singer and lyricist of the popular American rock band The Doors. He was also an author of several poetry books. James Douglas Morrison was the son of George Stephen Morrison and his wife Clara Clark Morrison, both employed by the United States Navy. His father was a strict military officer, who served as an admiral. Jim was raised by his conservative parents but would grow to express drastically different views than those taught to him. According to Jim Morrison the most important event of his life came in 1947 during a family trip in New Mexico. He described the event as follows: "The first time I discovered death... me and my mother and father, and my grandmother and grandfather, were driving through the desert at dawn. A truckload of Indians had either hit another car or something- there were Indians scattered all over the highwa...

Kurt Donald Cobain was the leader of Nirvana, the multi-platinum grunge band that redefined the sound of the nineties. Cobain was born on the 20th of February 1967 in Hoquaim, a small town 140 kilometres south-west of Seattle. His mother was a cocktail waitress and his father was an auto mechanic. Cobain soon moved to nearby Aberdeen, a depressed and dying logging town. Cobain was for most his childhood a sickly bronchitic child. Matters were made worse when Cobain's parent's divorced when he was seven and by his own account Cobain said he never felt loved or secure again. He became increasingly difficult, anti-social and withdrawn after his parent's divorce. Cobain also said that his parent's traumatic split fueled a lot of the anguish in Nirvana's music. After his parent's divorce Cobain found himself shuttled back and forth between various relatives and at one stage homeless living under a bridge.  When Cobain was eleven he heard and was captivated by the B...