A few years back I got the itch, as I often do, to start a new podcast. I mostly ignore these itches as scratching just makes it worse, but this time I could not. I began writing and planning a solo show called Reid Messerschmidt Gets Metal. I was going to start it like this:
RMGM INTRO
Hello. I’m Reid Messerschmidt – a 34 year old father and husband. I have a house and many things – four vintage globes, a vinyl collection, and a desk job among them.
I’m a culture snob. An elitist. What’s charmingly known these days as a libtard cuck. A low T Beta, as they say. A snowflake.
I enjoy musical artists like Belle and Sebastian and Jimmy Scott and The Smiths and Edith Piaf and, sometimes – a lot, really – Neil Diamond. I think he’s criminally under rated and I like to talk about that opinion as though it were objective and important. I’ve spent significant time with the Pet Sounds boxed set and I love documentaries, Ingmar Bergman films, calling movies films, feelings, books about feelings, bike rides, progressive (not prog) agendas, and quietness. I don’t love injustice and toxic masculinity. I say things like toxic masculinity.
I’ve been known to sport a cardigan.
As such, I am not a metal guy. I like to think that I know good music when I hear it, regardless of genre, but metal is a blind spot. A big one. And I don’t just mean the music.
Metal is more than a genre, it seems to me. It has a built in culture, and that culture feels impenetrable and scary. I’ve dabbled around its edges, sure. I went through the requisite Metallica phase in Junior High-school. I saw Corrosion of Conformity live once. Also, Korn. I liked the former and not the latter, though, to be honest, I went into the Korn show with a pretty bad attitude.
Let’s see . . .
That Roots album by Sepultura is pretty rad. I predictably kind of like Deafheaven, as they are the metal band that guys like me are supposed to kind of like.
I enjoy what I’ve heard from Hawkwind, but I haven’t gone very deep with them and I’m not sure they’re very metal.
I think occult stuff is fun, but I didn’t care for the Lord of the Rings movies and I’ve never read the books.
I don’t care for dragons.
I’m not particularly angry. Occasionally perturbed? Yes. Often annoyed? Sure. Riddled with angst? Less, in my old age.
And not angry.
To me, at this point, metal represents rage, a spectrum of masculinity that I find completely foreign, and a complete disregard for fashionably good taste that a big part of me admires. It’s a home to a lot of unrepresented folks in the ongoing culture wars, some that I get, many that I don’t.
So I want to get metal. And that’s what this podcast is all about.
Getting metal.
I’ve made a list of every metal band that I can come up with, From Sabbath to Cannibal Corpse to whatever the fuck is going on with metal right now. I honestly don’t know. Based on some cursory internet searches, it looks to consist mostly of skinny guys with neck tattoos and Hot Topic haircuts calling each other fags and arguing about absurdly specific genres designations.
For the most part, I only know the band names. I’ve purposely tried not to really listen to any metal yet or find out too much about any one group.
I’ve chopped that list up and put it in something very metal – a skull to which I’ve applied Norwegian Black Metal makeup – and each week I’ll draw a name out of the skull, deep dive into whatever band comes out, and let you know what I find and what I think.
And guests. There might be some guests and whatever else comes up here.
My goal is not just to understand the music. I want to understand the culture. To understand the anger and the dragons. The term metal is broad to the point of meaninglessness, but under its tent are generations of unsatisfied and angry white folks in all the styles that those people come in. Folks that feel persecuted even if the “mainstream” sees that as a delusion. That’s a very broad demographic in and of itself, but one that a lot of the current issues in the world today seem to emanate from and circle around – and a demographic I feel very apart from but also, sometimes, close to. It’s like a parallel dimension to the one I live in that sometimes intersects with mine, via weird specters and psychic interference.
It’s something of an ignored demographic, and I think maybe its heart lies somewhere in the metal universe.
But maybe I’m wrong. And if all of that seems like a ridiculous stereotype and way off base, I want my misconceptions corrected.
Either way, I intend to approach this without malice and condescension. We’ll see how that goes.
Pushing aside malice and condescension isn’t easy for a snob.
And, you know, I want to hear some great new – new to me, anyway – music with fresh ears.
The whole thing seems like a vast, gnarly landscape, and I’m excited to get lost in it.
But not too lost, I hope.
My wife probably won’t let me get a neck tattoo.
I wrote something like 7 episodes of that show. Ones for Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Megadeth, Motorhead, and Hanoi Rocks, for some reason. I listened to the ENTIRE catalogue for each of these bands, read books, watched videos and documentaries.
It wasn’t working – I think reading Dave Mustaine’s autobiography and shotgunning his full discography in a single, horrific week broke me – and I realized I needed to come at this from a different angle. I needed a cohost and this thing couldn’t be scripted.
So I looked around me for a metal guru and found one in the unlikeliest of places – my office job. There was this gentleman, Robert Piller, who was muscled, covered in tattoos, had a slicked back undercut and listened, I overheard, to bands called things like Cattle Decapitation. Seemed like a funny guy but a little scary. Perfect.
I only had one question for him:
“How do you feel about Donald Trump?”
“I fucking hate him,” replied Robert.
“Do you want to do a metal podcast with me?”
He said yes.
Each week, Robert would choose a band for me to deep dive into and then we’d talk about it. It lasted about a year, until Robert moved to Minneapolis and my wife and I had another baby.
It was great. I learned a lot. Met a lot of great people. Saw a lot of great shows. Listened to a lot of great music. Listened to a lot of terrible music. Made a great friend. I have many thoughts about metal, and have continued to listen to it.
Today on The Irrationally Exuberant, we’re going to find out what I’ve learned.
Let’s start with a song I wrote about metal. It’s called “__”
God, that was beautiful.
Metal, I have learned, is significantly less boneheaded then I first suspected. Not to say that it’s NOT boneheaded – there are factions that are more boneheaded then you could ever imagine – just that much of it isn’t boneheaded and at all. Much of it is very heady, and much of it is good natured and goofy and wonderful in a way that I never would have suspected.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I portrayed myself as very precious in the opening monologue, and there was a time when that was very true. It probably still is, a little, but being a father and a homeowner in the Upper Midwest will make a man hearty and at least semi-masculine. Maybe that’s not a requirement, but it’s how things have panned out for me.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t still be moved to tears by twee-pop, for Christ sake, and I still very much like antique globes and all the rest of it.
I opened every episode of our show with another example of my preciousness, though this became increasingly difficult as I was spending more of my time – and enjoying it! – with absurdly un-precious bands like Brujeria and Slayer.
But here are some of the examples of show openings and my preciousness.
Welcome to Reid Messerschmidt Gets Metal with Robert Piller, where I, reid messerschmidt.
A man who has twice eaten a whole thing of his wife’s gummy prenatal vitamins.
Gets ebay alerts for vintage cardigans.
Has defended Ariana Grande to his wife.
Will one day, without a doubt, take up bird watching in a big way.
Every year reads Ethan Frome on the day of the first snowfall.
Recently made a Mom Rock 1991-1993 playlist and listens to it constantly.
Is currently reading the Phil Collins Autobiography.
Often wistfully reflects on the time I saw Bjork live.
Just last night had a lovely time at something called the Sweetheart ball.
Doesn’t care for the Eagles but thinks some of Don Henley’s solo work is pretty good.
You get the picture.
But since then I have bought a Cannibal Corpse t-shirt and cut down THREE TREES WITH AN AXE!
Tremble before my testosterone!
Anyway. The music.
The first and most important thing to know about metal is that there are an astounding number of sub and sub sub genres that fall under the broad, meaningless term “metal”. This can be kind of confusing, so what follows is a helpful, though incomplete, guide, and the culmination of what I learned from my time in the metal scene:
Death Metal: Death metal bands can, generally speaking, play their instruments. Their singers sing like Cookie Monster about mutilation, necrophilia, cannibalism, what have you. They wear whatever they happen to be wearing. See Cannibal Corpse for Death Metal’s Platonic ideal.
Black Metal: Black Metal bands don’t give two shits about instruments. They may or may not be able to play them, but they generally want to sound like Dick Dale being shot out of a busted muffler into a giant cheese grater, so it doesn’t matter. Their singers sing like they are being murdered with a dull knife and aren’t taking it with any measure of bravery. They wear black clothes and black and white smeared make-up called Corpse Paint. The second, third, and fourth Darkthrone albums are Black Metal’s Platonic ideal.
Thrash Metal: Play fast riffs, look like an unhappy biker. Slayer’s Reign In Blood is the go to here.
Glam Metal: Derisively called Hair Metal. Spandex, hair spray, catchy, terrible songs about fucking or being sad about not fucking. Glam Metal was always a joke, but now it is exclusively plaid for irony. It’s not really metal, and I’d recommend you just skip it, but check out Hanoi Rocks, if you must.
Metalcore – I’ve seen two localish metalcore bands live, and both featured a chubby frontman wearing a polo shirt, as though he had just finished a shift at Office Depot, backed by a some dudes with fauxhawks and sparkly patterns stitched on their awful jeans, for what that’s worth, which is to say that metalcore is mostly for aging HotTopic bros and is best avoided. All the bands have names that sound like they should and probably have played on a secondary stage on the Warped Tour. I can’t tell you any good or even representative metalcore bands because Robert wouldn’t let me listen to them and I’ve been too scared to do it myself. I suppose Converge kind of qualifies but they’re pretty great and kind of transcend genre.
Doom Metal – Somehow Doom is an onomatopoeia. That’s just what it sounds like – doom. Shout doom as loud as you can with a second’s pause between each shout, and that’s what doom sounds like, basically. Big, crunchy, sludgy chords played slow and loud. The vocals vary, but ideally someone would be yelling about Dune or some such thing. Black Sabbath’s first album is the go to here.
And since I’m mentioning Black Sabbath, I should not that a band has never been so important to a genre as Black Sabbath is to metal. They invented it in the macro sense, but also invented pretty much every sub-genre, more or less. They are The Beatles of a dark parallel dimension, and they absolutely deserve every accolade they’ve ever received.
Moving on.
Progressive Metal – Do you enjoy Rush, but wish Geddy Lee wasn’t like a nerdier version of the dude that fronts REO Speedwagon? Do you like guitars more than people? Do you have a degree in music theory but also have done a fair amount of coke? Does the word polyrhythm get your motor running? Do you think it’s important that an album have a loose, barely discernible story arc? Then, boy, have I got a genre for you! Probably the Platonic ideal belongs to someone like Queensryche, but I’ve never been in the right mood to listen to Queensrych and hope never to be in that mood, so I’m going to point to either Mastadon’s Leviathan – which is about Moby Dick, sort of – or Tool’s Lataralus, which isn’t REALLY metal, but REALLY only appeals to metal dudes and philosophy majors that have dropped acid too many times.
Technical Death/Black/what have you metal: You can put the word technical in front of any metal genre. These are guys that make Tool look like The Stooges, that is to say, they forgo any fun in favor of alternate tunings and more strings and such. The second you see one of those guitars without a head on the end of the neck, you can bet your bottom dollar that you’ve come face to face with a tech band. This person will probably be listening to free jazz or Frank Zappa and have very straight hair that is far too long. Maybe transition lenses. Cynic is a Tech anomaly as the band is two pretty cool gay guys, but their music is tech all the way, meaning that listening to it makes me feel sleepy.
Power Metal – Inherently dumb things that take themselves very, very seriously can either be the worst or best experience imaginable. Power Metal is one of those things. Any given Iced Earth album is a terrific example of this, regardless of their frontman’s stance on violent insurrection and devotion to terrible presidents. They did a concept record about Spawn, for fuck’s sake, and did it with a straight face.
Gothic Metal – Music for people who like to read Edgar Allen Poe and get choked during sex. Type O Negative’s Bloody Kisses is the Platonic Ideal.
Grindcore – Fast, dirty, unhinged lo-fi. There’s a Napalm Death song called You Suffer that somehow manages to be recognizably Grindcore with a one second track length. Napalm’s first album, Scum, is the Platonic ideal and is inexplicably great. Also, Cattle Decapitation, which is Vegetarian Grindcore and better than it has any right to be.
Industrial Metal: It’s called industrial because it sounds like it was made in a steel factory – not that it was the product of a steel factory, but like it was literally recorded inside of a steel factory, during the work day. It tends to have unpleasant electronic overlays and post-tech-apocolyptic themes and is made by dudes that wear beat up cowboy hats and look like they are probably on a mandatory government list somewhere. I had hoped that seeing Ministry live would turn me on this genre, but I’m sad to report that they come off as what would happen if the darkweb threw up, but boring, somehow. Anyway, they are the torch bearers for industrial.
Alternative Metal: Every shitty, bland, aggressive bro band you hear on “Hard Rock” radio is Alternative Metal and they are uniformly terrible and people that like it are largely responsible for the state of the world today. The platonic ideal doesn’t exist – it’s all terrible – but I’ll just say that I can’t recommend not listening to Five Finger Death Punch strongly enough.
Folk Metal – I had a strong reaction to Folk Metal, as I’m sure many do. I’m not opposed to the IDEA of it, but the bands that I heard were . . . not to my liking. Eluviete is the first Folk Metal band I was introduced to and, to my ear, sounded like a grizzly bear let loose at a Renaissance Faire. I think that’s a fairly accurate description.
Djent – I don’t know. I guess djent is supposed to represent the sound the guitars make. Meshuggah is the embodiment of Djent and they were the first metal band I heard that I just couldn’t stomach. It’s very loud while also being very dull, unless you’re really into watching a drummer’s foot work.
Symphonic Metal – Very dramatic, even operatic, with strings. Quality varies wildly, in my limited experience. Fleshgod Apocalypse is pretty good, but I don’t know enough to tell you the definitive band.
Speed Metal – This one borders on meaningless. It’s supposed to be, I guess, a band that plays really fast, but most of them do. Or maybe it’s just the kind of drugs they take. The Internet tells me that Motorhead is Speed Metal, but I don’t think Motorhead would agree.
New Wave of British Heavy Metal – NWOBHM, they call it. A very weird term, and more relating to a time period and location than an actual sound, though the sound of NWOBHM has become recognizable. If you get into this particular genre, you’re going to have to pledge your allegiance to one of two bands: Judas Priest or Iron Maiden. I’m a Priest man myself, but I’ve come around on Maiden.
There are many, many more genre’s, but those are the ones I have some direct contact with.
It seems overwhelming, but it’s not. Just listen to whatever suits you – don’t worry about genre, unless you insist on being a snooty scene guy, which probably has its merits.
I’m not sure what you’d call a band like YOB, for instance, but they are wonderful. I defy you not to like “Beauty In Fallen Leaves”.
So, what did I take from my time with metal?
I learned that personal taste is much more elastic than I’d suspected. The first notes I heard from the first band Robert assigned me – Behemoth – were rough. I thought I’d made a huge mistake. I told Robert it felt like having a grown man scream at you about his feelings.
But by the end of the week, I’d come around. I’d started to get my metal ears, noticed some of the subtle touches, some good, some less so. I started to be able to pick out lyrics, themes, styles.
Listening to Behemoth now, it seems like – I don’t want to say Lite Metal, but not nearly as heavy as I prefer.
By week three it had really clicked. I was on a plane, sitting next to an old woman, listening to Cannibal Corpse, and thinking, “I don’t know why, but this is working for me.” And then the old woman gave me the side eye, glanced down at my phone, saw the cover of Tomb of the Mutilated, gasped, and looked straight ahead for the rest of the flight. And then I thought, “I kind of like that reaction.” And for the rest of the weekend, I listened to Cannibal Corpse non-stop. By the end of the week I was looking into buying their music on vinyl.
I’ve never been much concerned with genre – good music is good music – but adding metal to my life really expanded that. Even the stuff I think I don’t like has something to tell me.
I also learned that Metal concerts are more fun than the sad indie guy shows I’ve mostly gone to. Not to disparage sad indie guy shows, I’ve had some wonderful, emo times at those things.
I I managed to see a lot of great bands in one year:
Cannibal Corpse
Morbid Angel
Slayer
Ministry
Ghost
Thrallfrost
Demifiend
Egypt
Phil Anselmo
and a dozen other bands whose names I can’t remember.
Some truly great shows.
And even if you don’t like the band you’re seeing, standing just outside of the reach of a massive circle of people beating the holy shit out of each other is very entertaining.
Finally, I learned . . . maybe the most important thing of all. Something that has changed me forever, and the thought I’ll leave you with:
King Diamond is the greatest. THE GREATEST. EVER.
The end