Fear, Emptiness, Decibel: The Hall of Fames Goes Bang
Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…
Okay, so, I obviously don’t know shit, but occasionally Albert forwards me the Hall of Fame text for the month and I’m like, “Uh, who the hell is that?” You know, like that time when we inducted Morbid Angel’s Altars of Madness! Anyway, many of you—despite posting with frequency on a site called MetalSucks—will very likely see the words “Bang, Bang” in the April Decibel and think this instead of the actual band/album we’re honoring. But Philadelphia trio Bang is actually a lot like Jessie, Ariana and Nicki! The former is a criminally unheralded proto-doom outfit that influenced countless successors, whereas the latter are a criminally Auto-Tuned pop outfit that influenced countless junior high boners.
HOF scribe Nick Green points out that 1971 was a banner year for the building blocks of heavy metal: countless seminal tours and albums from the likes of Zeppelin, Sabbath, Deep Purple and Sir Lord Baltimore. Bang capped it all off with their self-titled debut in December, the culmination of a wild journey that began when the cocky young upstarts drove to Orlando and demanded to play before a Rod Stewart/Deep Purple gig. That chutzpah helped them earn their way onto Capitol Records, and the ensuing self-titled album was a cleverly arranged riff fest that none other than Rise Above head honcho Lee Dorrian would go on to call “a poppier version of Sabbath, but still as heavy and raw as hell, placing Bang as one of the greatest heavy/hard rock bands to have emerged from the States in their day.” Fast-forward to the present and Bang are preparing to open a forthcoming Pentagram tour. Safe to say they’re legit, no? Get your obscure on and check out the Bang HOF in the dB Tour issue.
The April 2015 issue of Decibel also features At the Gates, Enslaved, and Behemoth , and can be purchased here. But anyone who doesn’t just get a full subscription may be condemned to a lifetime of nothing but Jessie, Ariana and Nicki.
