QUESTION OF THE WEEK: METAL OF METAL
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Ohai there MetalSucks reader! How’s your wang? Keeping it wet ‘n wild? Awesome! So hey remember on Tuesday when MetalSucks Editor-In-Chief Axl Rosenberg bent our boners/boneholes with coverage of a pop-punk band’s wack video called “Headbanger”? Gag barf fffart, right? Well, let’s spit and flush — and freshen our unders — via today’s super-metal MetalSucks Question Of The Week, a weekly survey of our staff on a recent hot-button issue that’s (violently) rocking our metal planet.
Fearless. Controversial. Half-baked. We give it to you straight every Friday afternoon. It’s your one-way ticket to midnight. Here’s this week’s question:
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Inspired by our coverage of a not-so-sharp pop-punk song about being metal, we asked our staff the following question:
WHAT IS THE BEST METAL SONG ABOUT METAL AND/OR METALNESS??
Wat u think? The MS staff’s expert answers after the jump!
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SATAN ROSENBLOOM
This will be a popular answer, but Metallica‘s “Hit the Lights” is one of the greatest reflexive metal songs I can think of. It starts off with the “No life ’til leather” rallying cry and then veers into self-congratulations. Typical teenage narcissism, but Metallica is extra-special arrogant: They imagine each fan being blown away by a song about their greatness! So it’s like a book about the awesomeness of bestselling books becoming a bestselling book.
You know our fans are insane,
We’re gonna blow this place away!
With volume higher than anything today … the only way, yeah!
When we start to rock we never … want to stop again!
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SAMMY O’HAGAR
Pantera’s final album Reinventing the Steel is underwhelming. It displays a band on autopilot and flashes a grim sign of things to come: the tepid bro-metal of Damageplan and the half-decade of apathy that would swallow up Phil Anselmo. But there’s a shining example of Pantera goodness in “Goddamn Electric.“ It’s not a great song, but it has a boozy, knuckleheaded charm via the band’s wobbly Southern riffing and Anselmo’s anthemic bellowing. (“Your trust is in whiskey and weed and Black Sabbath” should be on a banner.) Like all songs about metal, it’s pretty straightforward; but like all good songs about metal, it plays upon the pride you have for the genre. Even with that lousy final album, I still miss ’em.
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LEYLA FORD
3 Inches of Blood’s “Metal Woman.” Haha, just kidding. But seriously: “Metal Is Forever” by Primal Fear.
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SHANBOMB
“Heavy Metal” by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is a quintessential metal song about metal, and it’s easy to see why — look at the title, silly! And the lyrics are very poignant and heavy. When frontman Alec Ounsworth sings…
What happened to our heavy metal?
What happened to our coat of arms?
We find that we’re stuck in the middle
Picking up the pieces of our hearts
…I want to throw on a scarf and trash mad scene kids. It’s remarkable that he sings this in only 2005, as he predicted the Pitchfork posers that would like heavy metal for its irony and retro-coolness; also note the emo-ness in the chorus’ last line that would later surface in Killswitch Engage and Poison The Well. Call this track what it is: an American classic.
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ANSO DF
A lot of songs pledge devotion to metal and urge unity for its adherents, but “Death To All But Metal” by Steel Panther lists enemies of metal by name. That is killer! Sure by the time of the jam’s appearance on 2009’s Feel The Steel, many of its targets were outdated — tho yes, a slag against Papa Roach or Sheryl Crow has no expiration date — but take note, doggie-doo-peddling pussies of tomorrow: U can suck our asses! Burn!
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VINCE NEILSTEIN
Easy! It’s Manowar‘s “Fighting the World.” Pretty much any song by this band qualifies, but these lyrics are unfuckwithable:
Fight, fight, fight
Fighting the world every single day
Fighting the world for the right to play
Heavy metal in my brain
I’m fighting for metal cause it’s here to stay
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GRIM KIM
“Sex, Drinks, and Metal” by Sarcofago.
Really, what more do you need?
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AXL ROSENBERG
I’m sure there’s a less clichéd answer, but a song that both musically and lyrically expresses what metal is all about would have to be Metallica‘s “Battery.“ I wish the answer was something like “Let’s All Blow Axl Rosenberg” by Boobs McGee & The Bikini Model Five or something, but alas, an ’80s song about a club by four hairy dudes will have to do.
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So did we miss any militant metal jamz? Any tales of a tragic/triumphant metal dude on a collision course with destiny? Any how-to guides for metal concert etiquette and party radness? List them below then have an awesome wknd!!
