This is a repost from Vue Weekly in Edmonton Alberta, Canada. It is written by a talented Freelancer and music writer, Tom Murray. In this piece, a lot of what goes on in the metal world in general is discussed as well as the struggles of local artists and festivals here in my home city. Hope you enjoy and don't forget to keep those horns held high!
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Peace out, horns up
Metal makes a stand on Folk Fest weekend
Tom Murray / tom@vueweekly.com
SMASH! » Cyn Mecredi of Kriticos lets out some anger / Eden Munro
Folk Fest and Metal Fest on the same weekend? Well, at least they didn't have to worry about booking entanglements.
Which is kind of sad, really, because in the best of worlds you know that you'd want to see Oooze play after Calexico on the mainstage at the Folk Fest, or Vivisect do a workshop with Levon Helm. Oh, what a tormented version of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" we would have heard! Or maybe Levon would lend those ragged, soulful vocals on a cover of Gorgoroth's "Revelation of Doom," with Ricky Skaggs adding tasty mandolin licks.
Alas, it is not to be. Heavy metal may have gained in leaps and bounds in the last few years, but it's still very much a ghettoized form of music in North America, whereas Europe boasts any number of massive outdoor festivals that dwarf our own Folk Fest. Edmonton doesn't lack for bands, or a concentrated scene, but it does lack for interest outside of it. It's a question of respectability, really, and metal only receives that respect when attendance figures and merch sales are high enough to warrant it.
"The thing is, we're sick of the metal community being pushed aside," sighs Art Szabo, metal musician, talent buyer for the Starlite Room, and co-originator of the idea for Metal Fest.
"There's so much talent in this city, but bands rarely get the opportunity to play more than just a few places. We have this incredible cross range of bands at our festival, from black metal to grindcore, classic metal to weird techie stuff to psychedelic. Other scenes, like folk, have had an impact, and it's time we showed Edmonton just how good ours is."
The quality of Edmonton metal isn't in doubt, but Szabo isn't the only veteran to wonder why their scene is marginalized. Is it because the folk music community is tighter, better organized, that they're able to support their own, while the metal scene here can't? Maybe; there's a network for under-the-radar folk musicians, glossy magazines, clubs and non-profit societies that groom talent until they're able to make the leap to the folk-fest circuit. They provide couches or spare rooms, home cooked meals and sometimes even rides to the gig.
Aspiring metal musicians on the road don't get quite the same treatment.
"The promoter might not be taking care of the bands," says singer Cyn Mercredi of Kriticos, one of the local bands on the bill at Metal Fest. "Someone will usually make sure that you get fed and wasted. Most of the time when bands were coming in from out of town I'd open my door so they could chill at my place."
This might be the biggest difference between the two genres; folk fans will buy the albums, diligently attend shows and tell their friends about the music they love, but metal fans go the distance. It's the difference between admiration and zealotry, enjoying music and living out the dreams demanded by music. Both types of fans see themselves as part of an extended community, but the demands of metal are more than just an ordinary fealty; it requires a blood oath that seems irrational to anyone outside of it.
Greil Marcus wrote in his book Invisible Republic about how leftists were responsible for a great deal of the folk resurgence of the '50s, and the genre, as wide and deep as it's become, is still very much steeped in those politics. Heavy metal's resurgence never had a single defining political thrust to it; from Libertarians to Satanists, far right and even racist beliefs to varying shades of the left, metal ideology can't be quite so easily pigeonholed.
"There are a lot of paradoxes in the scene," acknowledges Gabby Riches, founder of Heavy Metal on Campus at the U of A and host of CJSR's long running metal show, Mind Compression.
"You can see many different ideas and political stances, it's not universal or coherent."
Commercial radio keeps to the tried and true formula of Iron Maiden, AC/DC and a few others, but rising bands can't get a break, except on independent stations. CKUA is invaluable to the various clubs and the Folk Fest for helping to promote new talent, but mainstream rock stations are as leery of new metal as they are local anything else. CJSR, however, boasts three metal shows, where new releases by locals Striker, Death Toll Rising, Begrime Exemious and Miskatonic are put into constant rotation.
"CJSR does help," Szabo acknowledges, "and people do listen to those shows, but that's not the point.
"Bands really have to start helping each other out, bottom line. This is something that needs to happen—we can sometimes get them shows, and CJSR can play their records, but the bands themselves really need to communicate with each other and help each other out. What we need is for the community of musicians to band together."
"It's generally supportive," adds Mercedi, "but some people only go to their friend's shows, and that's not really cool; they should be supporting everyone."
Oddly enough, Tom Russell, a respected and critically acclaimed Texas based songwriter who claims much more than just the folk world for influences, is somewhat leery of the notion of community.
"To have a community is a good thing, and Canada definitely has a great folk one that's a legacy from the European tradition, much better than the States. However, it's not always something that's healthy for a songwriter or band. The New York scene of the '60s was tight knit, but it was brutal and competitive; I mean, whatever happened to Fred Neil and Phil Ochs? Ochs committed suicide, Neil just faded away. It was the competition, and especially the presence of Dylan, who wiped everyone out with his apocalyptic songs. That's something you never read about.
"There are two sides to it, really. Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary) made a good case for community nurturing songwriters, but I disagree. In the end I had to move away to El Paso, because I didn't want the pressure of people telling me how to write songs. I wanted to do them the way that I wanted. It's like Van Gogh standing outside the artist's community in order to come up with what he did. In the end you have to go back to the community to play your music, but until then it's best to stand alone."
Russell's songs have been covered extensively in the folk and country world, but he's as much an outsider to the mainstream as Obituary and Meshuggah, and he frankly has no problem with that. What he's arguing is that the community makes claims on a particular scene, consciously or subconsciously finding a particular sound that musicians are pushed to adopt. While much of the city itself is oblivious to it, Edmonton has a range of bands happily finding their own sound, even if they're relatively unheard.
"Metal lineups are always the same," says Mercredi. "They always try and put together bands that have a similar sound. That's great, I mean, I love metal more than anything, but it would be nice to see some variety. We just played a gig like that, where it was all mixed up, and we had a lot of fun—we need more like that."
The blame shouldn't necessarily rest with just metal promoters; after all, your average hip-hop, folk or jazz promoter isn't going to think of Kriticos for their next gig. It does point to something, though; metal fans and musicians do take pride in their exclusion from the rest of the music world. It's a double-edged sword; as Russell says, exclusion allows an artist to follow their muse to places where commercial considerations won't allow, but it also closes doors.
"If (veteran local band) Dead Jesus had to worry about being commercial, you wouldn't see them using animal products from a slaughterhouse as part of their act, or the lead singer self mutilating himself," laughs Riches, who is currently working on a paper about mosh pits for her degree in Recreation, Sport and Tourism. "It's still a very underground music, and that's part of the appeal; it hasn't been co-opted."
It's also been much maligned; attempts to set up an outdoor festival called Harvesting Hell last year turned into a major headache for promoters, as they were turned down by worried county officials, who denied them both Red Deer's Benalto Fair Grounds and Parkland County's Bent River Ranch. In the end, laying tarps in front of a stage is a fairly sedate activity, but moshing is an alarming one to an outsider.
In an interview done before Ronnie James Dio and Black Sabbath brought their Heaven and Hell tour to Edmonton a few years back, the late Dio mused on the difference between metal fans and musicians from the classic bands they listen to. Many younger metal fans are committed to the form itself, while Dio and his various band mates in Sabbath, Dio and Rainbow grew up on classic rock 'n' roll—Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, doo wop and rhythm & blues.
"We got a good grounding in so many other forms of music growing up, because there was no metal then," he noted. "One thing about many metal bands and fans is that many just listen to metal; I don't say that to disparage them, it's just a fact. The biggest problem with that is how it closes you off from the rest of the music world."
Dio hastened to add that he was touched by how steadfast his fans have been to him, but it points to how far the music has travelled since he had a hand in codifying many of its rituals. Szabo is also cognizant of the fact that metal bands can't just exist in a vacuum; for him, the future lies in allying with other local music scenes. In the meantime, he'll be focused on drawing attention to the community he's long been a part of.
"We're telling these bands that we're watching out for them, and that we care." V
Fri, Aug 6 (7 pm) & Sat, Aug 7 (6 pm)
Metal Fest
With Weapon, Divinity, This is War, Kriticos and more
Starlite Room, $12 – $20
Tickets available at Blackbyrd Myoozik and Starlite Room
