Does Metal Have Soul?
How mashup artists reveal the genre's latent musical DNA
This week ~*My Girlfriend*~ and I took a trip to visit New York City as part of a week long vacation for her birthday. We had a great time, though I can’t say I’ve missed New York all that much. My life in Chicago has hardly been less eventful, and as much as I love my former roommates they can’t compete with living with ~*My Girlfriend*~ and her dog. One thing I’ve learned from living with ~*My Girlfriend*~ is that the two of us have very different habits on the internet. She plays word games and shares results with international group chats on social media. I hang out on Discord and talk about heavy metal and NBA basketball. She looks up Severance fan theories on Reddit. I, uh, watch a lot of YouTube. It’s easy to adopt a kind of cultural myopia on the web and assume that the stuff you’re engaging with is popping up on everyone else’s radar. Talking about the internet with ~*My Girlfriend*~ reminds me that the stuff that I take for granted might be fresh to someone else. So, continuing this year’s loose theme of writing about YouTube videos (which I promise I’m doing for a very specific reason which will be revealed eventually!) I’d like to talk to you about some mashups.
The two channels Bill McClintok and Wax Audio have, for over a decade now, carved out a niche of mashups that combine old school heavy metal with soul, funk, and R&B vocals. Metallica and Stevie Wonder, James Brown and Rage Against The Machine, Marvin Gaye and Slayer, and so on. Sometimes they flip the formula in the opposite direction by replacing Donna Summers with Danzig or layering Pantera’s Phil Anselmo over Bill Withers instrumentals. These tracks illicit a twofold reaction. First “no way is this going to work”, second “wait it actually kind of does??”. That first incredulous reaction relies on two types of ignorance in order to set up the punchline of the second pleasantly surprised reaction. To be shocked that The Temptations can comfortably fit over Black Sabbath riffs the listener must be equally ignorant of the skills & technology available to mash-up artists and the musical DNA shared by both sides of the equation.
Non-musicians broadly underestimate the power of modern recording technology. Armed with a professional grade digital audio workstation it doesn’t take much to massage one song into the shape of another. Vocals and be pitched up and down, tempos of backing tracks shifted faster or slower, and everything from entire sections to individual notes can be cut and/or pasted into whatever order you need. With enough time you can make just about any two songs fit together. Making that fit sound “natural” on the other hand takes time and effort as well as an ear for the pre-existing overlaps. This is to say that in order to make a mash-up work you have to identify the secret sympathies between two songs, in the form of similar rhythms, shared keys, or parallels in form. It stands to reason that songs born out of related traditions would be especially sympathetic.
What these “Soul Metal” mash ups reveal, at least to me, is that the true difference between heavy metal and extreme metal is their relationship to rhythm & blues. Though extreme metal would certainly not exist without the long legacy of soul and rock, the genre treats itself as a radical break from the conventions and manners of popular music. Sure you could say that James Brown’s high pitched howls carry on in the screeches of black metal singers, but that might be giving the corpse painted a little too much credit. Heavy metal singing on the other hand is so close soul singing, as reliant on the pentatonic scale and bending notes blue, that from a large enough distance they might as well be the same genre.
If I have any reservation about the popularity of these mash ups and my own fascination with them, it’s that serve a similar purpose as white metalheads watching reaction videos from people of color looking to have their tastes validated. I think metal fans are subsconsciously desperate for approval from genres they view as more legitimate than them. It’s why you see so many allusions to classical music, from Vivaldi to Wagner to Penderecki, in metal culture. By the same token I think metal fans perceive soul as more authentic and “real” than the music they like, and that these mash ups confer that authenticity onto metal. Might be a stretch, but I don’t know!
McClintok & Wax Audio aren’t necessarily making a new argument here, the line from the blues to rock and roll to heavy metal is as straight as Rob Halford isn’t, but what they suggest is an alternate history where more was made of that connection. What if Metallica had a horn section on The Black Album? What if singing falsetto over Slayer riffs was more commonplace? Alternatively, what if more soul groups seized the potential of down-tuned guitar and double bass? Those are fascinating questions to me, ones that open all sorts of roads toward new sounds and new songs.
# # # # # The Promo Zone # # # # #
🦈🦈🦈: Earlier this month Lamniformes Cuneiform hit a new milestone. This newsletter now has over 300 subscribers. That blows my mind. I’m deeply appreciate to not only all of you for giving this newsletter a shot, but also to all of the other blogs (Wolf’s Week, This Side of Japan, and To The Teeth in particular) that have pointed you in my direction. It’s an honor to share rad tunes with you. Each time this newsletter crosses a threshold into a new big integer I only get more motivated to put more time and effort back into it. Lately I’ve been expanding my calendar of exclusives for paying subscribers adding a monthly Demo Download alongside the Playlist Postscript series. There is more coming. You support my work and gain access to these exclusives by subscribing for $5 a month or the low price of $40 a year (that’s a third of the year for free!).
ICYMI: I wrote about the state of modern progressive metal through the lens of the latest albums by Blood Incantation, Dream Theater, Opeth, and Bedsore for Invisible Oranges.
⚛️🪞⚛️: Next week’s newsletter will celebrate the one year anniversary of my album The Lonely Atom. I’m going to listen to the album for the first time in a year and reflect (🪞) on my feelings about the songs, the process of making and releasing the record and what I’ve learned in the year since. If you haven’t listened to The Lonely Atom before or want to refresh your memory ahead of next week’s letter you can listen to the album on Bandcamp, Ampwall, and Apple Music. The Lonely Atom is also available on cassette through Furious Hooves and People | Places for American and Canadian shipping respectively. Wow, that American vs Canadian division sure seems on the nose now! I’ll get into that and more next week.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Listening Diary ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Listen to this year’s running diary on Apple Music.
“Sometimes” by Bilal (1st Born Second, 2001)
Bilal’s a really interesting figure, probably best known for not being D’Angelo and his brief cameos on the records of other more successful artists (Kendrick Lamar, for example). Still, the guy has a devoted audience and an impressive back catalog worthy of respect and consideration. Since I’m eventually going to learn one of his tunes for Drumming Upstream (🥁) I’ve gradually been working my way through Bilal’s records and got gobsmacked by this tune. I got so swept up by the bass and drums on this track that I couldn’t even object to the turn to vocal jazz in the final stretch. Beautiful stuff.
“Agora Ou Nunca Mais” by Ana Mazzotti (Ninguem Vai Me Segurar, 1974)
Ryan from Ferrn played this at one of our first practices when we bonded over a shared interest in jazz fusion and Brazilian pop. Not too often that you hear a samba in 7! This tune stays slick even when it shifts into even meters. Great drumming, catchy melody, killer keyboard solo, and then it’s gone as quickly as it came.
“TV Crimes” by Black Sabbath (Dehumanizer, 1992)
My Sabbath sojourn continues with the brief return of Ronnie James Dio and an easy highlight from the band’s mostly mediocre late period. A rare example of lucid, non-fantastical lyrics from Dio here, instead tackling the very late 80s/early 90s target of televangalism. Speaking of the early 90s, get a load of this music video! The sleeveless flannel+shorts+long hair under a backwards hat look burned bright and faded fast. Dio really brought something special out of Iommi and Butler.
“Anti-Pope” by The Damned (Machine Gun Etiquette, 1979)
Shouts out to Ben of Trauma Angel for encouraging me to check out this record. My awareness of The Damned doesn’t extend far beyond their debut record, so I was pretty surprised by the sonic range on this album. Had this been on Damned Damned Damned I could see it cutting off after a minute or so, but instead they push past the song’s off ramp into something else entirely, layering on the percussion and turning it into a real party.
“Damaged Soul” by Black Sabbath (13, 2013)
And so the Black Sabbath discography comes to a close. I’ve got a number of complaints about this reunion record with Ozzy. First, the title has zero sauce. Regardless of the quality of their contents Sabbath records always have great titles. Second, Brad Wilk is a great drummer but he’s very much the Tony Martin of Sabbath drummers. I don’t feel like he brings enough of his own personality to the tunes. Instead he’s caught halfway between the heavy handed hard rock style of Appice & Powell and the jazz-influenced wildness of Bill Ward that this consciously nostalgic material begs demands. That all said, this track gets the closest to reviving the old Sabbath magic. The harmonica counts for a lot, as does the old school 12/8 blues groove they lay down.
\ \ \ \ \ Micro Reviews / / / / /
Here are five micro reviews of albums from my vast Rate Your Music catalog. Long time Lamniformes Instagram followers will recognize these from my stories, however they’ve been re-edited and spruced up with links so that you can actually hear the music instead of just taking my word for it.
Defenders of the Faith by Judas Priest (1984) - Heavy Metal
Priest at the peak of their stadium status, and in my view the strongest Priest album top to bottom. It is good because it is cheesy, not despite being cheesy. This album wants you to have fun and it works overtime to make it happen. The hooks are simple because they’re so good that they can be simple. Some of Halford’s best subversive lyrics delivered with pure charisma on every line. If your Halloween playlist doesn’t have “Love Bites” on it, don’t invite me to your party. Rock hard, ride free.
Songs for the Deaf by Queens of the Stone Age (2002) - Hard Rock
I borrowed this from a friend in 8th grade knowing nothing but that Dave Grohl played drums on it. The CD was so badly scratched that I never knew how long it’d be until the skips made it unplayable. There was a real sense of adventure any time I’d make it to the second half. Hey, every 13 year old needs a saga. What’s the saga? An hour straight of great rock and roll performed by a rotating cast of singers and punctuated by fake radio stingers. One of the best paced records of the CD era. Feeling kind of overlong and exhausting is crucial to the road trip vibe. And good god does Grohl rip his kit to shreds.
Horses in the Sky by Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band (2005) - Post-Rock
Compared to earlier Silver Mount Zion albums, this album sounds less like a studio experiment and more like a band playing in a room. Without sacrificing any of their compositional depth or rich textures, this change also highlights the human feeling at the heart of “Horses in the Sky”. These songs cannot be sung alone. The web of rounds, harmonies, and calls & responses require a small village to perform correctly. This is the point. The album walks its lefty collectivist talk by the very nature of how the music is played. This is also where Efrim’s lyrical voice sharpened, translating all of GYBE’s resilient hope and bitter anger into tangible form. “God Bless Our Dead Marines” (🥁) is an all timer. Great record.
A Love Supreme by John Coltrane (1965) - Spiritual Jazz
The only album a drum teacher ever assigned to me as listening homework. Though certainly worth a listen on its own merits, I can see why he’d have singled out this jazz record as an entry way for an aspiring hard hitting rock drummer. Elvin Jones is the molten core of this record, constantly churning but solid enough to serve as the center of gravity for the rest of the band. The music moves from chaos to serenity and back, avoiding the standard issue “head-solos-head” structure of most jazz for something more intuitive and linear. Packs a lot into 32 minutes. If you like hard drums and heady tunes, you owe it to yourself to listen to this.
Too Dark Park by Skinny Puppy (1990) - Industrial
Though much of their discography doesn’t do it for me anymore, this audio nightmare from 1990 still hits the spot. Skinny Puppy have never been great songwriters and Orge is as allergic to hooks as ever, but the sound design here is so good that it doesn’t matter. Ear candy with razor blades inside. Gorgeous old school synths. Layers of sampled dialogue and clattering percussion. It would be an absolute headache if it weren’t so much fun. The final stretch of tracks are particularly great. Lose your mind, feel it going, and enjoy yourself.