THE HYST LIST // The Top 10 Accidents of Metal

Heavy metal is the law that keeps us united free. Even so, a lot of metal is stage managed to the last detail.

Iron Maiden has its nine-foot tall mummy/zombie Eddie terrorising band and crew among elaborate sets the envy of Broadway. Slipknot are more pyrotechnic acrobats than musicians. If you ever wanted a more obvious example of a gimmick, you need look no further than Cradle of Filth.

Fair enough. Even so, heavy metal began and endured thanks to chance. Whaaaat? Yeah dude, it was all one big accident.

Without the universe smiling on a select few dice rolls, we’d have no metal. The argument in the affirmative:

MORE: Listen to Hard Noise Episode #31 featuring Cradle Of filth.

10. Children of Bodom win Eurovision…er…huh?

Long before Twitter was invented (a year before, which is about 100 in Twitter years) we did all our Euro-trashing via Eurovision.

No man from Finland could be mental

In 2006, Finnish monster pop metallers Lordi took the “coveted prize” and rose to international super-stardom… for about a week. But who lurked behind those monster masks? Journalists salivated at the thought of scooping the big reveal. If you were to ask the Daily Mail, The Sun or Sweden’s Expressen, it was an ancient lineup of fellow Finns Children of Bodom. Yeah, because Alexi Laiho sure looks imposing. Even though it was billed as the shocking truth revealed! It was neither shocking nor true; former Lordi keyboardist Enery filled in for Janne Wirman on their first European tour. Oops. But who is Mr. Lordi? Your guess is as good as mine.

9. Doctor, Doctor, please – the mess Jonas’ voice is in

In 1995, doom metal legends Katatonia’s line-up all but evaporated. Like all good gloomy bands, they broke up. What put the final nail in their coffin (may have been an actual coffin) was vocalist Jonas “Lord Seth” Renkse’s doctor delivering a grave (ugh) prognosis – “You’ll never growl again,” he said, in Swedish, because he’s Swedish.

That’s kind of like telling a porn star his dick’s broken, forever. Thankfully, he could still sing. He just couldn’t growl. This limitation only stirred their creative spirit. They hired none other than Opeth’s Mikael Akerfeldt to lay down his inimitable snarl on breakthrough record Brave Murder Day, which catapulted Katatonia into stardom of a different – and lasting – kind.

8. This Meshuggah are real mensches, oy vey!

Ozzy Osbourne, Reality TV star. Well, weirder things have happened. Tech death nutters Meshuggah would never have in their wildest dreams, in which they’re playing polyrhythms in a time-signature of 22/7 in front of a Dyson sphere or whatever, that Jack Osbourne, Ozzy’s geeky son would prove their greatest champion.

In one episode, Jack aims to piss his next-door neighbours off. His first strike: “Meshuggah. Death metal. From Norway” (although they’re actually from Sweden) was broadcast to millions, propelling these struggling musos into accidental household names. His profound effect on their career saw their popularity surge. Now Sharon, where are Ozzy’s fucking slippers?

7. Soilwork’s Speed Strid’s hockey almost-stardom drives him to Soilwork

Bjorn “Speed” Strid, vocalist of Svensk melodeath titans Soilwork, earned his nickname in the tape trading days, since he loved fast thrash like Carcass and Slayer. But this lust for aggression also found an outlet on the ice hockey rink. Little Bjorn was a rather prodigious ice hockey player, on track to become one of Sweden’s future stars.

Despite rigorous training schedules, he didn’t quite make the Swedish Junior National team. Eventually his disillusion grew with the sport after scrutineers and coaches would “stand around the rink and make notes about [his] playing,” sucking the fun right out of it. Fed up, Strid turned his attention to music, establishing himself as one the most revered and versatile vocalists in Gothenburg-style death metal.

6. When keeping it kvlt and trve goes wrong

Norwegian black metal. Inspired by Satan. Powered by…condoms? Black metal flirted with the mainstream thanks to Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth (I wish I could find that image of Shagrath in his Beemer) but it all came crashing down in 2005.

It was when Gorgoroth, cultish purveyors of “true Norwegian black metal” demanded 50 sheep’s heads, 200 metres of barbed wire and a carpenter to fit it all together. Sounds pretty sinister? It sure was; until you read the entire list. In addition to rotting meat, they politely demanded champagne, strawberries, pink toilet paper (soft) plus “condoms with strawberry flavour” in their grim tour rider. Not to mention their Transilvanian Hunger for a masseuse every three days on the tour to ease the Death Crush of touring. Blaze in the northern sky my ass

5. Judas Priest’s midnight inspiration invokes the wrath of Metal Gods

Judas Priest’s British Steel sessions were going off like Netflix & Chill does using a 56K modem. Frustrated, the boys relocated to Tittenhurst Park, the former home of John Lennon and occupied by Ringo Starr at the time. Bored one night, the hard-up lads from Birmingham decided to take a geeze about Mr. Yellow Submarine’s gaff.

According to guitarist K.K. Downing, they were testing how various objects sounded in an attempt to make the record more “metal.” Luckily Ringo had lots of “paraphernalia” lying around, ripe for use in weird and wonderful ways. You can hear his pool cues being thwacked about for one. The most notable bit of kit was his cutlery. If you hear the metal hordes bearing down upon thee among Metal Gods, it’s actually just Ringo Starr’s knives and forks rattling up and down in a drawer. Who knew Ringo could prove useful for something, after all?

4. Dave Mustaine sleeps in and begins the feud

On the 9th of April, 1983 Metallica slayed the L’Amour in Brooklyn, New York. Lead guitarist/ginger Dave Mustaine celebrated in a hail of booze, sex, and debauchery; as he did every night whether they played or not. He did something so heinous beyond his best recollection that his Metallica bandmates had enough. But they didn’t fire him on the 10th; they nervously waited until he slept in on the 11th instead. Mustaine remembers that the rest of the band all crowded above him as his eyes creaked open that fateful Monday. They packed his bags for him, he had a bus ticket good for one trip direct to Los Angeles and he was out.

So through songs, through documentaries, through countless interviews and of course that whiny confrontation in that movie, we’ve never heard the end of it. But the fallout did spawn Megadeth, a slew of stellar thrash records and some truly epic Megadeth-led tours such as the Clash of the Titans and Gigantour.

3. Lemmy gets busted, gets fired, forms Motörhead instead

Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister is God. Duh. Prior to his apotheosis, Lemmy was a begrudging product of the flower generation. He shared a flat with the Jimi Hendrix Experience (minus Hendrix) and served as their roadie before joining progressive rock band Hawkwind in 1971. By 1975, Hawkwind were touring North America. Left behind while en route to Detroit, Lemmy finagled some speed and stuck them “down his trousers” figuring they were “only” going over some remote bridge when in reality they took the underground route through Canada instead. Lemmy, passed out in the back of the tour bus was oblivious to his impending predicament was searched, nicked and jailed for possession.

Five days later he was released due to a technicality (the cops said he had cocaine…it was speed, man!), he played one more gig because his replacement “couldn’t get there in time.” So he “buggered off” and formed Motörhead instead. Lesson to metalheads: never pass out on tour. Or rather, do pass out and form a band that kicks as much arse as Motörhead (you won’t, so don’t bother.)

2. A hotel fire inspires one of the greatest heavy metal songs of all time

If you’ve ever even had your ears pointed in the general direction of an electric guitar you’ve heard this riff.

It’s the first god damn sequence of notes any guitar teacher sets as homework. It’s the first song you play on fucking Guitar Hero. It’s Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple. Once upon a time…well, bugger it, it’s in the song:

We all came out to Montreux,
On the Lake Geneva shoreline.
To make records with a mobile,
We didn’t have much time.
But Frank Zappa and the Mothers,
Were at the best place around,
But some stupid with a flare gun,
Burned the place to the ground.

And ahh…yeah. That’s pretty much it. (And you were singing along in your head, admit it.) In December 1971 Deep Purple furnished themselves inside Montreux Casino, sat on the shores of Lake Geneva. They booked rooms to cut the soon-to-be proto-metal classic Machine Head amid the celebrated Montreux Jazz Festival. One ill-fated evening, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention were rocking the basement until a fan fired a flare gun up toward a highly flammable ceiling made of rattan, promptly gutting the entire complex. A few days later, guitarist Roger Glover dreamt of “Smoke on the water of Lake Geneva.” Relaying this dream to Gillan, Blackmore and co., the band cut the track in the Rolling Stones’ Mobile Studio. I mean, they had nothing better to do, their hotel just burned down.

1. Bad workplace safety invents heavy metal

Heavy metal was created thanks to an on the job accident. I’m not even joking. Tony Iommi was a talented guitarist. He almost gave it up at the rage-pulsing age of seventeen. On his very last day of work in a local Birmingham sheet metal factory, he sliced the tips of his middle and ring finger clean off. Distraught, he endeavoured to play left-handed before a brainwave saw him craft specialised thimbles to fit over his phantom tips, allowing more fret-range. In 1969 Iommi along with bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward responded to an ad in the local music papers that read “Ozzy Zigg requires gig” put in by a daft git by the name of John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne – and thus this dark beast known as Earth, later Black Sabbath, had coalesced to finally claw its way up from hell.

This newborn band rehearsed in a Birmingham community centre across the road from a movie theatre. Tony or Geezer said one morning (this story relies on Ozzy’s memory, so yanno) that people will pay to see scary films, so why not create scary music? Their dark, brooding sound was partially driven by Iommi down tuning his guitar from E to D#. Slack strings means less pressure on his fingers, which means lower, more eeeeevil tones. Despite critics hating it at first (Lester Bangs thought it was shit, but he’s dead and we’re not so WHO’S LAUGHING?) it survived the 70s, boomed in the 80s, and bubbled along ever since. Thanks, shitty health and safety laws!

This article first appeared at TheVine, now Punkee. Reposted with kind permission.