“Heavy Metal
Thunder”
All evidence points towards William S.
Burroughs having coined the term “heavy metal” first in his 1962
novel The Soft Machine in the form of Uranian Willy, the Heavy
Metal Kid and then in his subsequent novel Nova Express where
Burroughs uses the term as “a metaphor for addictive drugs”
"With their diseases and orgasm drugs and their sexless
parasite life forms—Heavy Metal People of Uranus wrapped in cool
blue mist of vaporized bank notes—And The Insect People of Minraud
with metal music" Though Burroughs vaguely gives the term a
musical context, I imagine the radical, purposely incompetent rock
noise such as that produced by NYC avant noise pioneers, The Godz to
be a better match than the riff happy hard rock of the early 1970s.In the hippie and beatnik vernacular of the day, Heavy was synonymous with profound. Metal represented an industrial element. Originally referred to as acid rock, hard rock or downer rock (a term used by Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward to describe their music due to their fans preference for Quaaludes) Heavy Metal as a musical genre developed almost simultaneously in both the U.S. and the U.K. In the U.S.A. The origins of so called heavy metal music could perhaps be traced back to proto punks, The Music Machine, the brainchild of Sean Bonniwell, a heavy metal front man if ever there was one. The band cultivated a dark goth like image characterized by their use of black clothing, black gloves, “heavy” musical arrangements featuring distorted guitar leads and growling vocals.
In the U.K. some consider The Kinks You Really Got Me to be the prototype for the sound that would evolve into heavy metal. Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, The Pretty Things, Deep Purple were just a few of the bands developing what would soon become known as “hard rock” Across the pond, Blue Cheer (Summertime Blues) Vanilla Fudge (with their trademark extended arrangements of hit songs) Iron Butterfly (In-a-gadda-da-vida) Bloodrock (D.O.A.) and Grand Funk Railroad (who defied convention by succeeding without commercial radio play) were early purveyors of the “heavy metal sound” Blue Cheer, named after a strain of LSD made by Owsley Stanley, went against San Francisco's musical conventions to invent a ruckus form of music unlike anything heard before.
The first mention of “Heavy metal”
in song lyrics would be Steppenwolf's Born to be Wild, “I
like smoke and lightning, heavy metal thunder, racing with the wind
and the feeling that I'm under” Kudos to Dennis Edmonton (better
known as Mars Bonfire, an original member of Steppenwolf and author
of Born to be Wild) for coming up with that line, which may well
have been the impetus for labeling the nascent musical genre as
“heavy metal” The phrase also started to creep into the language
of music critics at Rolling Stone most notably Mike Saunders and
Lester Bangs. Saunders famously referred to Humble Pie's first U.S.
album release, Safe as Yesterday Is as “a noisy, unmelodic,
heavy metal laden shit rock band with loud noisy parts.... 27th-rate
heavy metal crap”
“It's your one way ticket to
midnight, call it heavy metal, desperation on a red line, call it
heavy metal noise” New York Times music critic John Rockwell
described "heavy-metal rock" as "brutally aggressive
music played mostly for minds clouded by drugs" and then in a
later review added "a crude exaggeration of rock basics that
appeals to white teenagers" He's describing Grand Funk Railroad
to a tee and stating the obvious.... heavy metal from its very
inception was white noise for white boys. Eventually, the universal
appeal of the music cut through racial and cultural divides, making
it one of the most popular and profitable forms of commercial music
to come down the pike. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that the genre
ruled FM radio through the 1980s and 1990s. Boy Howdy!
“I know that I
could make this world so peaceful and calm,
If I could only get
my hands on a hydrogen bomb”
Ground zero for heavy metal in New Mexico may well be Carlsbad, an intolerant burg nestled on the banks of the Pecos River in southeastern New Mexico. C-bad has sustained a vigorous metal scene for years, producing a number of relatively successful regional bands. With some fluctuation across the “relatively successful” range. Working in a genre that appeals to a limited audience certainly didn't help matters none. Despite oodles of talent and tons of determination, major label stardom eluded these Little Texas sultans of schwing. Footnote: Prom Night Girls, Edgrr, Cidogen, Flood the City, As Idols Fall..... live on only in the minds of hardcore oil patch heshers. Trying to find any mention of them online was an endeavor equivalent to searching for intelligent life at a Trump rally.
If you're talking Carlsbad heavy metal, you have to go back..... way back “The best band that ever came from this area ..Carlsbad,NM. was Banbury Cross..Period..” Perhaps named after an old English nursery rhyme.... “Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, to see a fine lady upon a white horse; rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, and she shall have music wherever she goes” (cock-horse meaning a high spirited horse or a hobby horse ) Banbury Cross, formed in the early 1990s revolving around lead singer Tom Ireland plus guitarists Dion Hood and Martin Burris. Don't confuse this Banbury Cross with the slick alt-rock Seattle band from the same period that featured lead singer Gina Ricci, a Martha Davis sound-a-like and don't confuse that Gina Ricci with the shoe shop in Windermere, UK.
In 1995, following several personnel changes and stymied by the usual problems that plague bands, Banbury Cross called it quits.... Sadly, Tom Ireland passed away just two years later. Their languidly paced brand of heavy metal had more in common with the fading “arena rock” style favored by big hair metal bands of the 1980s than the thrash / doom / death metal bands that would follow. For one, the guitars weren't heavily distorted and you could actually understand the lead singer. If you wish to form your own opinion, Banbury Cross still has an active SoundClick page with three tracks available for streaming (Night Shift, Black River, Midnight Run 2) Dion Hood makes mention of a compact disc they recorded at some point. As one chapter of Carlsbad music closed another opened.
N-Cyde (the precursor to Kryoburn) came about from Todd Brashear jamming with Les Huber, which led to Chris Huber joining them (having just acquired his first drum set) They would go on to form the core of Kyroburn, the poster boys for Carlsbad's metal scene. Not sure of the band's full line-up during the early years. (They spent ten years grinding it out before recording their first album) The band has been through several bass guitarists, including Les Huber who takes on the duties when need be. Jared Pace was their bassist at some point, though Derick Richards plays bass on “Enigmatic Existence” Hunter Correll, bass player/vocalist joined after the debut album but left before the release of their second album, he was replaced by keyboardist Kelly Bogues.
It took ten years for Kyroburn to drop their first album “Enigmatic Existence” on the Continental Entertainment label in 2005. Recorded at Krank Studios in El Paso, produced by Eddy Garcia (Pissing Razors, he also produced the 6-track N-Cyde demo for the band. Which included a cover of the Simple Minds, Don't You Forget About Me) “Enigmatic Existence” is triumph of crisp, clean production, strong, muscular instrumental performances, and the barking vocals of Todd Brashear. While the exact parameters of this organically appealing sound have been explored before (Fear Factory, Strapping Young Lad) It doesn't detract from the album's overall appeal. Kryoburn carefully culled their influences from the very best of the alt-metal rockers from that period with highly effective results.
AllMusic's take: “This 2005 release is generally decent, at least if one enjoys a big dose of crushing brutality. Not every artist who comes along is obligated to be groundbreaking or innovative” Kyroburn wasn't having any of that “trendsetter” bullshit and once they dropped the hammer on their audience, it's not likely that anyone had any fucks to give about innovation. It's nothing but a party ya'll. Whatever momentum Kyroburn may have garnered after “Enigmatic Existence” quickly dissipated as the band suffered a number of setbacks including a round of personnel changes which left them pondering their own enigmatic existence. “When artists who wear their influences on their sleeves, function as followers rather than leaders, the question becomes, Are they good followers?”
It took five years for Kryoburn to
regroup. They did so by poaching guitarist Allen Scott and
keyboardist Sam Logan from Blessed Disease, a metal band originally
from Hobbs, N.M. The addition of keyboards added an entirely new
dynamic to their sound, which they displayed on their long awaited
second album “Three Years Eclipsed” Todd Brashear
explained: “It took us awhile to get this done, with all the
changes we've had going on, we had to find our legs again”
Recorded at the band's own studio, KryoLab, “Three Years
Eclipsed” produced by Todd Brashear, really benefits from their
collaboration with Tue Madsden, who mixed and mastered the album at
Antfarm Studio in Aarhus, Denmark. Todd Brashear: “He has done
some amazing albums and we're big fans of his work”
AllMusic wasn't all that impressed:
“Three Years Eclipsed pretty much picks up where their first album
left off, they still operate on the harsher side of alt-metal,
favoring an abrasive, claustrophobic, viciously dense approach”
then as if to deliver the head shot, AllMusic concludes: “Now
for the bad news, Three Years Eclipsed simply isn't very memorable”
they go on to point out that Todd Brashear's “angry barking
vocals” simply ape those of Fear Factory's Burton C. Bell. “One
cannot help but root for Kryoburn and hope that their third album
will be stronger” There would be no third album, in 2011, Allen
Scott (who appears to have become the band's torch carrier) released
a statement announcing that the band had officially called it quits.
Inside Everyone is a Heavy Metal Kid
While researching for this article, I
came across a Topix discussion on Carlsbad local metal bands. It
proved to be more than helpful and highly entertaining. “Kryobum?
hahahaha, Toad and his washed up buddys, hahaha,what a joke. How old
are they? like 40, haha. Kryoburn, that is a good one haha.” Beat me daddy, eight to the bar “Kryoburn have been around since
1995. They broke up because they were tired of going on tour and
coming back broke with no jobs. Everyone's a critic: “Dude
stfu! These bands suck! I have been around and seen the original
local bands and they were good these "bands" f***Ing suck.
They don't play music they make noise and yell at these white kids
from the rich side of town that have it good but want to be cool and
rebel!” One commentator summed it up well “I knew that
this town was not capable of any positive feedback or support for any
local talent” Boy Howdy!
Of Graves and Gods, hailing from Oil Center, N.M. was successful enough to release an album “Slit Throat Andromeda” on Candelight USA records (same label that released Kryoburn's second album) and embark on a 2006 tour of the U.S. (which included a pair of shows in 'Burque) The album garnered some less than enthusiastic reviews: “Of Gods And Graves occupies the harder end of the metalcore spectrum. The band’s sound is belligerent and brutal” observed Anna Turgel at Metallian Towers “Then again, the lack of originality, the spoken vocal segments and the non-descript drumming take back most of the aforementioned gains” Dismissively, Ms. Turgel then ponders the tenuous connection between the band's name and C.W. Ceram's history of archaeology “Gods, Graves and Scholars”
All Music's reviewer sorta liked it: “When a band like the New Mexico-based Of Graves and Gods has a recipe that is about 90 percent metalcore and ten percent death metal, brutality is bound to result -- and this is definitely a brutal, harsh, vicious sledgehammer of a CD. Of Graves and Gods' jagged material isn't remarkable or terribly memorable -- other bands have done a better job with this type of approach -- but Slit Throat Andromeda is a generally decent listen if one is in the mood for pure, raw, head-kicking exhilaration” To sum it up, it's a dose of European metalcore for American metal heads who prefer metalcore played by Americans. “Slit Throat Andromeda” is available on Amazon for $1 U.S. plus shipping. Keep the change you filthy animal.
Of Gods and Graves consisted of lead
singer Lance Staggs, lead guitarist Dustin Mellenbruch, drummer Jake
Rogers, guitarist Shawn Norris and bass guitarist Dustin Norris. The
Norris brothers were also members of Lest My Heart Dies, a highly
talented Carlsbad metal band that we'll get into next. “Slit
Throat Andromeda” was produced by Eddy Garcia whom I mentioned
previously as having produced Kryoburn's first album and the N-Cyde
demo tracks. Eddy is the drummer for Pissing Razors, a metal band
originally from El Paso, since relocated to New York City......New
York City? get a rope. Highly influential on the Transpecos metal scene, Pissing
Razors have recorded seven albums for a number of labels including
Noise Records.
For those of you interested in exploring Kirs Kerby's musical roots. Kris, Shawn Norris, Dustin Norris (who handled vocal duties) along with Dustin Morril, CJ Burton and Bronson Roybal were also involved in Death For the Well Dressed, a metal group that followed Lest My Heart Dies. Both groups released albums, albeit short ones. Lest My Heart Dies' album clocks in at a furious 18:10 and Death For the Well Dressed at 25:51. Both are available on YouTube. My New Mexico music source of choice. As you would expect, both groups have a similar sound, though for being teenagers their musical chops were well developed. To me this says a lot about Carlsbad Public Schools excellent music programs. Marching bands being the main source of rock musicians in the U.S.
Ibleedblood included Thomas Williams
(Through Gore Comes Glory) and Wesley Whitaker (pretty sure he's
related to Dillon Whitaker of Through Gore Comes Glory) They're best
remembered for having won a battle of the bands that led to them
opening for Veil of Maya, After the Burial and Within the Ruins
during the Lubbock, Tx. Warped Tour stop in 2011. Ibleedblood were
heavy as fuck, splendid in all their gut grinding, throat mangling
glory. There's still a SoundClick page for the band with six tracks
queued up for streaming... do it, do it now! All the Carlsbad bands
I've mentioned suffered from “failure to launch” to one degree or
another. None more so than Through Gore Comes Glory (Dillon Whitaker,
James Dingler, Thomas Williams and Dustin Morrill)
Primed to become the next Kryoburn,
Through Gore Comes Glory ran out of steam before reaching their full
potential. A long awaited album never surfaced and their presence
online seems to consist of a few live concert videos on YouTube that
are rendered almost unlistenable by poor audio.
The one thing that jumps out at ya' about Through Gore Comes Glory
are Dillon Whitaker's vocals... they can best be described as the
sound a bobcat-that-got-caught-in-a-tractor's nuts would make... just
before it died a slow and horrible death. All of which led one
Facebook commentator to say: “That singer is fucking nasty”
Through Gore Comes Glory, like almost every band I've mentioned is in
a holding pattern. As are we all, waiting for the next big thang to
come outta C-bad.
Dirt City Chronicles podcast episode 46
Retribution Shot- Space
Truckers
Unkept- The Ground Beneath
Ramble Song- The Dirty Clydes
Court of Kings- Five Hundred
Gateway- Winterlock
Soul Crusher- Catfish Hunter
The Agent- Sincerely
Unkept- The Ground Beneath
Ramble Song- The Dirty Clydes
Court of Kings- Five Hundred
Gateway- Winterlock
Soul Crusher- Catfish Hunter
The Agent- Sincerely
Night Shift ~ Banbury Cross
Transience ~ Kryoburn
Curbstomp vs. Face ~ Through Gore Comes
Glory
Above All ~ Immortal Prophecy
Taking Advantage ~ Arcadian
Alice ~ Cordova
Beneath Desire ~ Kryoburn