Thrash Metal Hall of Fame Special Issue

PRESENTS

E XT R E M E LY E XT R E M E

D EC I B E L M AG A Z I N E .C O M

THE

THRASH METAL ALBUMS OF ALL TIME

[starring]

THE

BIG FOUR

+

TESTAMENT PRONG ANACRUSIS

… and the stories behind their greatest records

F E A T U R I N G

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just words from the editor

I first heard thrash through an

elementary school friend named Bernie. We were both in sixth grade. I was a fat loser rocking a Dutch Boy haircut and he was a new kid at our Catholic school who creeped everyone out with his Iron Maiden “Stranger in a Strange Land” back patch.

Obviously, we became fast friends.

Back then, the most extreme records—nay, cassettes—I owned were Metal Health, Stay Hungry and Pyromania. Bernie set out to correct that with one Memorex dBS-90 titled Project: Metal. Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” (which I misspelled as “Master of Pupets” for years), Rigor Mortis’ “Foaming at the Mouth” (fastest song I’d ever heard) and S.O.D.’s “Pussy Whipped” (I had no idea what the song was about, but somehow Bernie did) all assaulted my arena rock ears, and officially put Bernie on the “watch list” for my mom. I didn’t wake up the next day with “Slayer” carved into my arm, but I was well only my extreme metal way—though, still not a fraction as metal as the “Burndog” was.

Complied two years later, a second volume of Project: Metal (II: The Next Generation) featured Exciter, Omen, Sabbat, a collection of doodles and a handwritten disclaimer: “warning: may contain graphic lyrics.” To this day, they’re still the only two cassettes on my CD racks.

Bernie didn’t live long enough to see Decibel. But I’ve thought about him on numerous occasions while assembling this HOF Thrash Special. I’m sure if he got the chance to read it, he’d give me a ton of shit about not sneaking Helloween’s Walls of Jericho album into our Top 50.

This one’s for you, dude.

—albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief

Alex Mulcahy

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

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Anthony Bartkewicz Adrien Begrand J. Bennett Shawn Bosler Liz Brenner Brent Burton Richard Christy John Darnielle Jerry A. Deathburger Chris Dick D.X. Ferris Jeanne Fury Ula Gehret Nick Green Joe Gross Cosmo Lee Frank Lemke Daniel Lukes Shawn Macomber Shane Mehling Kirk Miller Greg Moffitt Andrew Parks Etan Rosenbloom Scott Seward Kevin Sharp Rod Smith Zach Smith Leah Sottile Kevin Stewart-Panko Adem Tepedelen Jeff Treppel Catherine Yates CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

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DECIBEL BACK ISSUES/MERCHANDISE

Decibel’s Thrash Top 50 .................................................... 05 Slayer, Reign in Blood....................................................... 12 Anthrax, Among the Living................................................ 18 Testament, The Legacy ...................................................... 24 Metallica, …And Justice for All ......................................... 32 Megadeth, Rust in Peace ................................................... 40

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Anacrusis, Reason............................................................. 48

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mania behind Yankee Stadium’s ust because we at Decibel didn’t exactly buy in to the have ever really stopped playing, wallet-raping Big Four Nostalgia Fest—none of those bands a year ago—doesn’t mean we and three of them toured the States together as recently as grunge-era swoon up to a still don’t fucking love thrash. From its ’80s heyday through the at its denim seams with innovators shocking new millennium/new wave resurgence, the genre teems

and imitators. The point of this list is identifying and honoring the former, and the only way to do it right is to be painstakingly thorough. It should be no spoiler alert that the Top 10 are all more or less products of the Reagan Years, but we also incorporated overlooked gems (Blind Illusion), one-and-done crossovers (Pantera), Jesus freaks (Believer), adventurous ’90s game-changers (the Haunted, Witchery) and the best of the new jacks (Municipal Waste). Anyway, you know this is all coming down to Slayer and Metallica near the top, but take your time riding the lightning through the remains to see which master reigns. —ANDREW BONAZELLI

50

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM

Doomsday for the Deceiver METAL BLADE (1986)

Mostly known as the original stomping grounds of former Rock Star: Supernova bassist Jason Newsted (who left soon after Doomsday to join some other group), Flotsam and Jetsam were one of the more New Wave of British Heavy Metal-influenced groups. Their thrash wasn’t as brawny as the Bay Area’s take, but the effortless musicianship and sense of fun certainly made up for it. Just, uh, ignore the dopey cover art. —JEFF TREPPEL

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48

FORBIDDEN

WHIPLASH

COMBAT (1990)

ROADRUNNER (1985)

Twisted Into Form

Power and Pain

The San Francisco band emerged in 1990 a more polished outfit than heard on the rampaging Forbidden Evil, and it was a smart move, as Twisted Into Form remains an incredibly hooky thrash album to this day. Guitarists Craig Locicero and Tim Calvert display just as much restraint as they do dexterity, while singer Russ Anderson puts in a vocal performance for the ages, highlighted by the extraordinary title track.

From the fertile NY-NJ-CT thrash/hardcore/crossover scene emerged this Jersey trio.

Power and Pain—Whiplash’s debut—is another unheralded classic from the annals of thrash metal, where the Italian stallions ramped up the ferocity and speed with “Stage Dive,” “Red Bomb” and “Power Thrashing Death,” but managed to temper the chaos with riffing that melded flashy technique and infectious fluidity with classical-inspired leads and a raspy vocal spew.

—ADRIEN BEGRAND

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

D EC I B EL

5

TH RASH HoF

47

TESTAMENT

Formation of Damnation NUCLEAR BLAST (2008)

Nü-metal and pleasant memories of The New Order and Practice What You Preach kept us grading Testament on a curve throughout most of the ’90s. Sure, The Gathering was better than average and only a diehard Trans-Siberian Orchestra fan could grouse over Alex Skolnick’s return, but did anyone honestly expect Testament to unleash anything as vital, scorching, and “Big 4”-shaming as The Formation of Damnation after a nine-year layoff? —SHAWN MACOMBER

46

NUCLEAR ASSAULT Game Over

COMBAT (1986)

Occasionally given short shrift due to their jokey propensity and a lackluster comeback, N.A.’s first three albums are all essential, and their debut is narrowly the best of the lot.

Covering a lot of ground, the band earns respect for mixing up-tempo, politically-charged numbers with bursts of punk intensity (“Hang the Pope,” “My America”) and some nicelydrawn-out instrumental sections (“Brain Death,” “Sin”) that still sound fresh. —ULA GEHRET

45

SADUS

Illusions/Chemical Exposure SELF-RELEASED (1988)

Sadus are criminally slepton. Bassist Steve DiGiorgio’s herculean thunder bass is more widely celebrated on Death’s Human than on any of Sadus’ needle-in-the-red, turbo thrash, but shit, Illusions/Chemical Exposure rips along with such an eye-popping intensity—Darren Travis’ yelp sounds like he’s channeling the very essence of the man on the edge. Metal Church’s John Marshall deserves huge credit for capturing this low-budget/high-definition insanity on tape. Aggressive perfection. —JONATHAN HORSLEY

44

SLAYER

Seasons in the Abyss DEF AMERICAN (1990)

Slayer’s third album with Rick Rubin was also their last truly fantastic one. Where Reign in Blood set the thrash standard and South of Heaven injected venomous nuance, Seasons saw Kerry King and the boys slowing tempos down (occasionally) even further in the process of becoming seriously fucking evil.

The gems here are numerous— “War Ensemble,” the title track, “Skeletons of Society”—but the album’s legacy comes down to Slayer’s most unforgettable moment: “Dead Skin Mask.”

—J. BENNETT

43

INFERNÄL MÄJESTY

None Shall Defy RC/ROADRACER/ ROADRUNNER (1987)

Yes, Toronto’s Infernäl Mäjesty provided another crucial link between thrash and death metal, much like Possessed and Slaughter. However, while None Shall Defy sounded menacing enough, what remains so extraordinary about that 1987 debut is just how varied it is. For an album so often lauded for its brutality, it’s actually a very dynamic, meticulously arranged record, displaying a lot more nuance than many of the band’s peers were capable of.

—ADRIEN BEGRAND

TH RASH HoF

42

41

40

39

WITCHERY

DEATH ANGEL

SEPULTURA

NECROPOLIS (1998)

RESTLESS (1987)

RC/ROADRACER/

DIABOLIC FORCE (1987)

Originally consisting of four former members of Swedish blackthrashers Satanic Slaughter, plus King Diamond bassist Sharlee D’Angelo, Witchery tore the underground a new one with this killer blast of vicious necro-thrash.

Deeply infectious cuts like “The Reaper,” “Awaiting the Exorcist” and a self-titled song—the calling card of any band with aspirations of metal greatness—had fans from Stockholm to Suriname doing “the W.” They’d continue to rule faces with 1999’s mostly-covers Witchburner EP and Dead, Hot & Ready album before falling off.

These Bay Area squirts weren’t even old enough to order a beer when their debut blew the back patches off thrash’s denim vest.

Innovation wasn’t important— Death Angel made an album that was solid from beginning to end, with freaky solos, neck-snapping rhythms, horror-movie squeals and sick drumming (courtesy of a 14-year-old with adult cojones). The Ultra-Violence was substantial enough to make an entire stadium of mullet-heads stain their seats. Even metal has its child stars. —JEANNE FURY

ROADRUNNER (1991)

Eyesore cover notwithstanding, FTT is a purist’s thrash album: vocals that drip acid, sharp and precise riffing, and wellplaced time changes. Add in some truly legendary songs (“Re-Animation,” “The Entity,” “Cyanide” and the epic “Flames of Armageddon,” where Rob Urbinati’s pit-igniting “go!” would beat Tompa to the punch by about eight years) and you have one of—if not the—finest thrash records ever to emerge from the Great White North. —ULA GEHRET

Restless & Dead

—J. BENNETT

The Ultra-Violence

Arise

Spectacularly, two decades of time and dust haven’t obscured Sepultura’s fourth long-player.

Moored by Max Cavalera and Andreas Kisser’s Brazilian bikini-tight riffs, Max’s caustic oracular proclamations, and Igor Cavalera’s heart-stop-worthy drum work, Arise symbolized thrash’s ability to modernize without sacrifices to tempo and aggression. A gateway record— the Roadrunner affiliation helped—if there ever was one, Arise, to this very day, is both a thrash and death metal classic!

—CHRIS DICK

SACRIFICE

Forward to Termination

6

D EC

38

BELIEVER

37

36

VOIVOD

SUICIDAL TENDENCIES

Sanity Obscure

War and Pain

RC/ROADRACER/

METAL BLADE (1984)

ROADRUNNER (1990)

Twenty-seven years ago, Jonquière , Quebec’s resident weirdo quartet was referred to as the “worst band in the world.” That’s a by-product of creating music that forges ahead into the future; the wimps and posers leave the hall, leaving barbs of insecurity in their wake.

War and Pain still crushes with erudite originality and caveman rawness, and the reaction to the songs in their live set today prove Voivod are a smidge better than the worst band ever.

Believer’s sophomore LP disproved two longstanding metal myths: thrash could never be as heavy as death metal, and all Christian metal blows dead dogs for quarters. A technical, progressive, yet mercifully catchy masterpiece, Sanity Obscure remains inexplicably cool despite an anti-drug PSA (“Stop the Madness”) a six-minute opera (“Dies Irae (Day of Wrath)”) and even a semi-ridiculous U2 cover (“Like a Song”). Do you believe in miracles? Neither do I, but this is close enough. —ALBERT MUDRIAN

34

How Will I Laugh Tomorrow When I Can’t Even Smile Today EPIC (1988)

How Will I Laugh Tomorrow marked the debut of Mike Muir’s longtime foil, rhythm guitarist Mike Clark, who gave Suicidal Tendencies a complete thrash baptism. Suicidal were already on a hot streak with Join the Army, but “Surf and Slam” makes up for the lack of skate songs by exploring the link between the Ventures and metal. Oh, and the title track? Some of the most ridiculously catchy gang vocals ever. —NICK GREEN

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

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32

35

DESTRUCTION Infernal Overkill

STEAMHAMMER (1985)

A marked improvement on their 1984 debut EP Sentence of Death, and yet still somewhat eclipsed by 1986’s classic Eternal Devastation, Destruction’s first full-length outing remains something of a dark horse in the band’s discography. Nifty instrumental “Thrash Attack” and album closer “Black Death” aside, all the tracks remain in their set lists to this day and, of course, this one gave us Destruction’s immortal anthem “Bestial Invasion.”

—GREG MOFFITT

31

PRONG

MUNICIPAL WASTE

CARNIVORE

EPIC (1990)

EARACHE (2007)

ROADRUNNER (1987)

STEAMHAMMER (1988)

We know Prong existed before MTV aired the “Beg to Differ” video. For thrashers yearning for a new sonic perspective— Voivod notably excepted—the lead single off Prong’s second album was exactly the right wind in doldrum-ed times. The confluence of Killing Joke, Die Kreuzen and Bad Brains wasn’t evident to most longhairs on Beg to Differ. However, what Prong did with those influences—short, punchy, mid-tempo tunes— resonated hard. Beg to Differ is singularly powerful. —CHRIS DICK

Detractors dismiss the thrash revival as the sonic equivalent of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with beer. Municipal Waste don’t write songs about pizza (though they should), but The Art of Partying is a deft blend of parody, satire and hero worship by one of the scene’s most virtuosic ensembles. No stone is left unturned on this concept album about the world’s most epic bender: It even opens with a song called “Pre-Game.” C’mon, that’s genius. —NICK GREEN

Before Bloody Kisses and Playgirl, Peter Steele roamed the apocalyptic wastelands with this power trio from hell.

Disguised as a goofy, disgusting concept album about postnuclear barbarians, Carnivore actually contains some of the catchiest, most melodic progressive thrash you’ll ever hear, jumping from grinding hardcore to sweet crooning to crawling doom (all in the same song). Underneath, you know, deadpan lyrics about cannibalism and rape—but that’s part of the charm.

While 1985’s “Evil Invaders” was the song that galvanized Canadian headbangers, Violent Restitution from three years later would prove to be Razor’s most consistent album out of all their dizzying 1980s output. Dave Carlo remains one of the most underrated thrash guitarists, his riffs moving with astonishing speed, while Razor never sounded as good as they did with Stace “Sheepdog” McClaren grunting and screaming like no one else ever could.

Beg to Differ

The Art of Partying

Carnivore

—JEFF TREPPEL

D EC I B EL

7

TH RASH HoF

RAZOR

Violent Restitution

—ADRIEN BEGRAND

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ANACRUSIS

29

28

PANTERA

SODOM

Reason

Cowboys From Hell

Agent Orange

METAL BLADE (1990)

ATCO (1990)

STEAMHAMMER (1989)

That there’s a Hall of Fame feature elsewhere in this issue on this St. Louis band’s second full-length should be a pretty good indicator of its status as “fucking ruling.” Anacrusis defied the musical landscape of the late ’80s by daring to combine the Slayer and Metallica parts of their record collections with a burgeoning interest in epic post-punk. Everything except the cover turned out pretty damned good, don’tcha think? —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

One of only two Pantera albums that could rightfully be called thrash (the other being 1988’s poofy-haired Power Metal), the band’s major label debut established Phil Anselmo and co. as heavy metal’s new force to be reckoned with. On Cowboys, the titanium riffage just keeps on coming: “Psycho Holiday,” “Cemetery Gates,” “Primal Concrete Sledge” and the title track are all instantly recognizable classics. Thrash— and heavy metal in general— would never be the same.

Thrash’s tight denim pucker was pillaged by Sodom’s dark ferociousness in the form of Agent Orange—it’s no wonder this German trio’s demonic stylings influenced black metal. Here, the Vietnam War fueled Tom Angelripper’s lyrics, relayed in a beastly rasp over a slash-andburn sonic attack. The album was also big on deviance, with songs about sibling incest, a mom’s twisted desire to bone her daughter’s boyfriend and, uh, the immorality of bullfighting. Mess with this bull, and in the end, you get the horns. —JEANNE FURY

—J. BENNETT

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25

24

South of Heaven DEF JAM (1988)

With the fire ‘n’ brimstone apocalypse of Reign in Blood impossible to repeat, Slayer had the good sense to swallow a heap of downers, put the brakes on and creep everyone the fuck out. There’s no better start to an album than the title track’s haunting melody, and with the speed rationed, there’s all the more time to take in all that horrific shit Tom Araya is yelling about.—JONATHAN HORSLEY

23

EXHORDER

BLIND ILLUSION The Sane Asylum

History of a Time to Come

RC/ROADRACER/ROADRUNNER (1990)

COMBAT (1988)

NOISE (1988)

ISLAND (1987)

It is a goddamn shame Exhorder are probably best known for the patently ridiculous (and surprisingly tenacious) claim that Pantera pilfered their sound.

Slaughter in the Vatican is a superb death-tinged thrash record, complete with intricate, clever riffage, a stellar multidimensional vocalist, and awesomely cartoonish sacrilegious cover artwork. Unnecessary Panteraisms, ironically, dulled The Law (1992) and “Anal Lust” becomes more cringe-worthy each year, but Slaughter remains a legacymaker that deserves a wider audience. —SHAWN MACOMBER

The Sane Asylum is easily one of thrash’s most overlooked masterpieces. Those who would create “best of” lists while sporting the sacred cut-off denim-over-leather often forget this product of four Bay area misfits—including eventual Primus honchos Les Claypool and Larry LaLonde—and the fact that, in songs like “Kamakazi” and “Bloodshower,” this album contains some of the most adventurous and catchiest tunes to ever emerge from the genre’s depth pool.

Arguably both Britain’s greatestever thrash outfit and the missing link between Venom and Cradle of Filth, Sabbat hinged on the sometimes complementary, sometimes volatile relationship between vocalist/lyricist Martin Walkyier and guitarist/riffmeister extraordinaire Andy Sneap.

Marrying thought-provoking themes and endlessly inventive guitar work to a quintessentially English brand of eccentricity, the band’s debut album still sounds utterly unique. —GREG MOFFITT

This is easily the most hotlycontested non-hardcore selection in the Decibel Hall of Fame, but it’s the best of the Belladonnaera albums and really just one cornball (“Indians”) song short of a masterpiece. Scott Ian’s nerdy obsessions with Stephen King novels and Judge Dredd comics (“I Am the Law”) are fully uncorked, and even the more gimmicky stuff exemplifies thrash’s comic and anthemic potential (see: Municipal Waste).

Mublanikufesin, dudes.

Slaughter in the Vatican

SABBAT

27

SLAYER

Among the Living

—NICK GREEN

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

TH RASH HoF

ANTHRAX

8

D EC I B EL

22

21

20

CELTIC FROST To Mega Therion

Under the Influence

EARACHE (1998)

NOISE (1985)

ATLANTIC (1989)

Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying?

In which 3/5 of At the Gates hired a crazy person as their new frontman and set about recreating the music that inspired them in the first place.

Even though later efforts would skew more in a death metal direction, the Haunted’s selftitled debut was thrash, plain and simple—in a way that only Swedish death metal dudes could play it. —JEFF TREPPEL

Hey, it’s Morbid Tales on codeine.

There’s enough proto-black metal, elements of death and doom and all-around gothic fruitiness here that it’s a challenge to justify To Mega Therion’s high ranking on this list. But the purer thrash songs (“Eternal Summer” and “Circle of the Tyrants”) rule the hardest, and Tom G. Warrior applies avant garde touches to dramatic effect on “Necromantical Screams.”

Subsequent Celtic Frost releases begged for this kind of subtlety.

If we’re gonna split (long) hairs, Overkill’s debut Feel the Fire may have an edge in terms of recording quality and songwriting, but Under the Influence is the band at its most raw and zealous. This is where singer Blitz Ellsworth shines brightest as Dirty Jersey’s bastard son of Noddy Holder and Bruce Dickinson. “Hello From the Gutter” became Overkill’s calling card, but the album also boasts fierce cuts like the selfexplanatory “Shred” and “Never Say Never,” putting Fire on the back burner. —JEANNE FURY

Dave Mustaine’s inferiority complex re: His Former Band is astonishing when you consider just how untouchable Megadeth’s classic canon is.

Even making thrash turn disco with the title track, Ellefson’s bass bouncing out that intro was inspired, and tracks such as “Wake Up Dead” and “The Conjuring” elicit a Pavlovian hesher headbanging response every time. Chris Poland’s lead playing was a great foil for Mustaine, who need feel inferior to no one. —JONATHAN HORSLEY

The Haunted

OVERKILL

19

THE HAUNTED

—NICK GREEN

18

TESTAMENT

17

16

MEGADETH CAPITOL (1986)

15

The Legacy

CORONER

No More Color

METALLICA

MEGAFORCE (1987)

NOISE (1989)

MEGAFORCE (1983)

MEGAFORCE (1985)

Talk about hitting the ground running. By 1987, thrash’s template was already firmly set, but although Testament’s debut didn’t exactly stretch the genre’s boundaries, its flawless execution and charisma made it an instant classic. And what a first impression Chuck Billy makes; replacing Exodusbound Steve Souza and handed nine brilliant songs to sing, his persona dominates the record, menacing one minute, accessible the next, lending Testament a dynamic that few thrash bands at the time had. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

Led by the incredible fluidity of guitarist Tommy T. Baron and bassist Ron Royce, No More Color is the ultimate Coroner experience. It perfects the neoclassical vibe they’d been honing since their early days while pointing toward the less frantic, mid-paced, modernized direction they embraced on following album, Mental Vortex. With bristling energy and crystal-clear production, No More Color cleanly stabs Coroner’s sophisticated thrash straight through the brain.

The U.K. dating/music site Tastebuds recently released a poll suggesting Metallica fans were among the likeliest to put out on a first date. Well, if Master of Puppets is the soundtrack to a sophisticate’s three-day Stingesque tantric sex bender, Kill ’Em All is the galloping ode to the first-timer, all uncontrolled passion and messy fury. Herein, Metallica hit the lights and get whiplash groping at a future transcendence only slightly out of reach. —SHAWN MACOMBER

You know how puritans think gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed?

That’s how tightwad music fans in the ’80s felt about mixing hardcore punk and metal. Now, hybrid genres are everywhere, thanks in part to album #53 in Decibel’s Hall of Fame. S.O.D. flaunted frenetic riffs and hardcore barks on politically incorrect ditties like “Fuck the Middle East” and “Kill Yourself,” and went on to sell a million copies worldwide. And metal and hardcore lived happily ever after. —JEANNE FURY

Kill ’Em All

—JEFF WAGNER

D EC I B EL

9

TH RASH HoF

S.O.D.

Speak English or Die

14

CELTIC FROST

13

12

METALLICA

KREATOR

11

MEGADETH

Morbid Tales

…And Justice for All

Pleasure to Kill

NOISE (1985)

ELEKTRA (1988)

NOISE (1986)

CAPITOL (1990)

Hellhammer refined, but no less demented. The beginning of a predetermined conceptual arc, Morbid Tales defined itself with bloated guitar tones and inventive, non-cliché lyrics. Along with prime works by Venom and Bathory, it’s one of the earliest examples of the meeting point between thrash, death and black metal. Despite hints of the more experimental albums to come, Morbid Tales remains as pure and primal as Celtic Frost would ever be. —JEFF WAGNER

For all the complaints about how you can’t hear the bass on Metallica’s final pre-Black Album opus, there are those of us who maintain that Justice is actually the band’s finest hour. The bassless mix proved something else entirely: Despite dearly departed Cliff Burton’s undeniable awesomeness, Metallica didn’t actually need a bass player. On Justice, Hetfield delivered his most vitriolic (and socially astute) lyrics, his most rhythmically punishing guitar work and his most complex songs to date.

Ultimately, the enduring legacy of Pleasure to Kill is an unlikely blueprint for death metal: an onslaught of tremolo-picking and double-kick drums. But in ’86, when everyone else was just speeding up, Kreator established themselves as the kings of Teutonic thrash with a series of marathon-length sprints.

The riff on “Riot of Violence” still sounds newly-minted, and Mille Petrozza’s phrasing (“Unda the guill-UHHHH-tine”) is more quotable than an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

A half-decade after getting booted out of Metallica, Dave Mustaine finally came up with a set of songs smart and mean enough to challenge his archnemeses. All it took was The Punisher and some of the most scorching guitar riffs ever recorded. Rust in Peace told the ’80s to fuck off and welcomed in the ’90s with a cynical snarl—say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss. —JEFF TREPPEL

—J. BENNETT

—NICK GREEN

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9

8

7

EXODUS

DARK ANGEL Darkness Descends

Eternal Nightmare

Hell Awaits

TORRID (1985)

COMBAT (1986)

MECHANIC (1988)

METAL BLADE (1985)

Not to diminish anything that guitarist Gary Holt and co. have done since this blistering debut, but had Exodus not released another record, their place in thrash’s upper echelon would still have been duly cemented.

Ridiculously catchy and powerful riffs are the foundation for every tune, while vocalist Paul Baloff (R.I.P) shrieks and bellows like his nuts are being severely compromised. Kirk Hammett is probably still secretly sad he didn’t play on this classic.

If any thrash metal album in 1986 came even remotely close to matching Reign in Blood for sheer face-melting intensity, it was Dark Angel’s staggering sophomore effort. As its cover depicts, Darkness Descends is hell unleashed on earth—vocals driven by rabid insanity, guitars running on PCP and sheer psychosis, all nailed down by a devastating display from drum demon Gene Hoglan. A truly savage assault on the senses. —GREG MOFFITT

The first wave of thrash metal committed suicide the moment every band began arrogantly boasting about not throwing a thousand parts into songs anymore. They were going to streamline! They were going to groove! They were, in short, going to suck. Eternal Nightmare is the brief of the opposing counsel—an awesome maelstrom of cacophonous riffs so sprawling and unpredictable that its creators felt obligated to hyphenate their own previously non-hyphenated name.

As the precursor to Reign in Blood, this saw Slayer fully transition away from any vestiges of the trad metal influences still evident on Show No Mercy. This is a full-on thrash assault, with Dave Lombardo adding a second kick drum to show everyone just how the fuck it was done. The production is mediocre, but few producers at the time knew how to record music this vicious and fast. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

Bonded by Blood

VIO-LENCE

Rust in Peace

—ADEM TEPEDELEN

—SHAWN MACOMBER

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D EC I B EL

SLAYER

6

VOIVOD

Killing Technology NOISE (1987)

After the off-the-rails horror of Rrröööaaarrr, Voivod did what they do best and evolved several steps forward on album #3. Killing Technology is less a collection of songs and more a futuristic skyline of hulking, monolithic structures. Weird metal in a whirring cosmic vacuum. With guitarist Piggy’s unorthodox chord patterns, cinematic special effects and a rhythm section as inspired by Krautrock, new wave and avantgarde classical composers as Venom’s early primitivism, the material surges forth with a gripping power. It was a sound previously unheard of in metal—thrash or otherwise. An innovative epic of abrasive sci-fi prog-thrash.

5

HOLY TERROR Mind Wars

4

SEPULTURA

Beneath the Remains

UNDER ONE FLAG (1988)

L.A.’s Holy Terror never, ever get mentioned in the same sentence as the Big Four—and that’s if they get mentioned at all. Arguably the most consistently slept-on band in all of thrash, they unleashed two ultra-dynamic, rhythmically complex and vocally bizarre albums before going tits up in ’89 when guitarist Mike Alvord and vocalist Keith Deen opted to stay behind while the other members moved to Seattle to play punk rock. As such, Mind Wars was the band’s last will and testament. Unconventional in the extreme, its monstrous musicality nonetheless proves that Holy Terror deserved to stand among the greats. —J. BENNETT

—JEFF WAGNER

RC/ROADRACER/ ROADRUNNER (1989)

What separates the classic bands from Thrash 2.0? For many, it’s nothing more than the riffs, and Beneath the Remains is the be-all, end-all of guidebooks.

Predecessor Schizophrenia was an excellent record with a feeble sound, and so Scott Burns stepped in to give the band’s peaking talent the production it deserved. The result is nine songs of pure riff-o-rama, often tossing aside an amazing hook after 30 seconds that Exodus would ride out for another nine minutes. If they had been able to maintain this level, it would now be known as the Big Five, and they’d be Brazillionaires.

—ULA GEHRET

3

2

METALLICA

SLAYER

1

METALLICA

Master of Puppets

Reign in Blood

ELEKTRA (1986)

DEF JAM (1986)

ELEKTRA (1984)

While the debate about thrash’s best album will never be settled, you can guarantee Metallica’s third album will always be in the mix. Master of Puppets is a rollercoaster of styles, textures and emotions, ranging from the era’s most high-velocity thrash and epic workouts to doom-tinged, crushing and pensive ballads (we don’t need to list off song titles!). Despite the band’s questionable aging, Master remains unfuckwithable excellence from top-to-bottom. Every song is pristine, Kirk Hammett’s solos are songs within songs, every beat played by the much-maligned Mr. Ulrich is where it’s supposed to be, Hetfield’s rhythm chug is unmatched, and every time we hear Cliff Burton’s rapid-fire trills and screaming wah-wah pedal, we shed tears of fucking steel. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

From its release to near-blind accolades on blogs today, Reign in Blood is superlative insofar as it’s never been replicated. Not even by Slayer! That it sits in a Metalli-wich on this list is debatable, but musically, Slayer—with the help of producer Rick Rubin—took thrash to its highest high with headbangers like “Angel of Death,” “Jesus Saves,” “Postmortem” and “Raining Blood.”

The album’s (black) magic, however, resides in its less recognized pieces. “Necrophobic,” “Altar of Sacrifice” and “Reborn” are absolutely frightening displays of focused aggression. Coupled with Araya’s dictionary of death and Larry Carroll’s harrowing cover art, Reign in Blood is (and will forever be) #1!

Even if it’s #2 here. —CHRIS DICK

Though Master of Puppets has bogarted most of the backslaps for its greatness, it was only riffing on the sense of grandeur already perfected on the death-obsessed Ride the Lightning. Kill ’Em All sounded a warning that Metallica may just have the musicality to articulate their aggression and sustain this over the course of a six- to eight-minute song, and Ride delivered in full. Hetfield’s turbine-throat and merciless rhythm chug, Cliff Burton’s bass lending an incomparable depth to huge, ambitious jams that were almost classical in their scope—this was Metallica declaring the full, breathtaking extent of their powers.

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Ride the Lightning

—JONATHAN HORSLEY

story by j. bennett

Who'll Stop The Reign? the making of Slayers’ Reign in Blood

I

n the early ’80s, four L.A. boys in huge spiked wristbands and football greasepaint terrorized the rouged-up glam queens trolling the Sunset Strip for fake tits and lucrative recording contracts.

Having already unleashed two merciless lo-fi shredding clinics via Show No Mercy and Hell Awaits, Slayer’s urban-Satanist lyrics and ultra-violent guitar acrobatics were far too inaccessible for West Hollywood’s coke-metal scene and way too sketchy for the Bay Area’s newly viable thrash contingency.

But by 1985, the makeup was long gone, and Slayer entered the studio with Def Jam Svengali Rick Rubin (at the time best known for producing the Beastie Boys and LL Cool J) to record their third album, Reign in Blood.

Now widely regarded as thrash DBTHRASHHOF metal’s definitive 28 minutes, it is as relentless today as when it scared the shit out of everybody Reign in Blood back in ’86. Nearly two decades DEF AMERICAN, 1986 later, hesher classics like “Angel Rick Rubin finally of Death” and “Raining Blood” does something good still make other metal bands sound like frail pussies. With original drummer Dave Lombardo back at the pulpit and a 2004 DVD (Reign in Blood Live: Still Reigning) documenting the band’s inclusion of the entire album in their live set, Decibel hunted down all four members of Slayer for a romantic stroll down memory lane. [4]

Slayer,

T H R A S H 13 H o F

SLAYER REIGN IN BLOOD Impale Rider Kerry King looked pretty cool without the goatee, huh?

to see the show. He was a fan of the band, and he said he wanted to sign us. We told him to call Brian, because Brian was our manager at the time. [Rubin] seemed like an interesting person; a genuinely nice person. He had a big old grin on his face—he usually does—but the only thing I knew about him was that he was with Def Jam, you know? In the process of working with him on that record, and then South of Heaven and Seasons in the Abyss, we heard some of the other things he was working on, which was very impressive stuff.

DAVE LOMBARDO: Then [Rubin] came over to my parents’ house. It was good to have somebody interested who knew what they were doing. I remember Glen E. Friedman—the photographer for Thrasher—came over, too. He was the local punk scene photographer at the time.

Were you aware of Rubin before he came knocking?

KING: Not at all. I think Hanneman might’ve been into some of the rap stuff, but I wasn’t.

It must’ve been a big difference, productionwise, going from Slagel to Rubin.

Oh, yeah. Rubin is a real producer.

[Laughs] He knows how to get the sound he wants.

Slagel was a kid like us—he was going through the motions, trying to figure out how to do it.

LOMBARDO: Absolutely. It sounded really good.

Plus, we had Andy Wallace engineering the sessions, and he captured the best of us at that point.

KING: It was a different mentality. Right away, the first thing you notice is that there’s no reverb on it. That allows it to be way more threatening—it hits you in the forehead. Rubin really cleaned up our sound on that record, which drastically changed what we sounded like and how people perceived us. It was like, “Wow—you can hear everything, and those guys aren’t just playing fast; those notes are on time.” It was what we needed to be. Before that, we were happy to sound like Venom or Mercyful Fate. We played in Reverb Land, for lack of a better term. And the reverb was the first thing Rubin took out. When we heard the mix we were like, “Why didn’t we think of that before?”

HANNEMAN:

What was the general feeling just before you went into the studio to record Reign in Blood?

I remember coming back from the tour we had done in Europe and really working on the new material. Jeff and Kerry had written a lot of it on their own. They rehearsed it and taught it to Dave—they did it pretty quickly, if I remember correctly. We recorded the songs ourselves, which we always did, and took the tape to Brian [Slagel, Metal Blade Records CEO and early Slayer producer/manager]. He got all excited when he heard the demos—and at that point, there weren’t even any vocals on it. And then he didn’t hear it again until Rubin put it out.

[Laughs] That’s my fondest memory about that.

JEFF HANNEMAN: Basically, we were all pretty pumped because it was right after we had met Rick Rubin, who wanted to sign us to his label.

TOM ARAYA:

The overall feeling was just that we were excited because we spent all those years on a shitty label… what was it, Metal Blade? [Laughs] We didn’t have a bus or a tour manager. It was fun, but after we hooked up with Rubin we had a manager and a real record label, so we were just excited as hell.

KERRY KING: To us, it was just the best 10 songs we had at that point. It wasn’t like we sat there going, “We’re gonna change shit with this record.” We had a new producer; we were excited about being on a new label, but other than that, it was business as usual.

What was your first meeting with Rubin like?

The first time we met him, we were out touring on Hell Awaits. We were playing at L’Amour in New York City, and Rubin came out

ARAYA:

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Was the idea just to be the fastest, most evil band in the world?

That was about it. [Laughs] That’s what we planned to do. I remember when Brian first heard us and asked us to put a song together for one of those Metal Massacre compilations. So we went and bought the Metal Massacre he had out at the time. We listened to it and were like, “We can write something heavier and faster than this.” So we wrote “Aggressive Perfector,” and just continued from there.

ARAYA:

Aggressive Perfection Lombardo sticks it to Jesus KING: In the beginning, it was definitely about being the heaviest and the fastest because, well, you gotta be something.

But by [Reign in Blood], I think we were just honing what we do, just looking through that window of what Slayer’s gonna be forever.

LOMBARDO: That’s the nature of the business. One record is declared the ultimate record. But then again, I hear people say that Reign in Blood, South of Heaven and Seasons in the Abyss are the classics. It’s just that one had an impact because it was the first one—the masterpiece. Nobody had done anything like it at the time.

Did you think of yourselves as being in competition with Metallica?

When it came out, Reign in Blood was largely ignored by the mainstream media.

In my eyes, there was no competition—Slayer was an entity unto itself, a band with its own style and its own name. Whatever anybody else did was their business, and whatever success they had was strictly up to them. I just minded my own business and played the best I could possibly play.

KING: Well, that was around [Master of] Puppets, and we always knew they’d be more popular than us because they sang about accessible stuff and we sang about stuff that nobody wanted to talk about.

We knew that from day one, and I’m still happy with that today.

LOMBARDO:

Master of Puppets is almost twice as long as Reign in Blood.

At that time, we always listened to Metallica and Megadeth to see what they were doing, but one thing about me and Kerry is we get bored of riffs really quick. We can’t drag the same thing over and over or do the same verses six times in a song. If we do a verse two or three times, we’re already bored with it. So we weren’t trying to make the songs shorter—that’s just what we were into. When we finished Reign in Blood, we had this meeting with Rubin, and he was like, “Do you realize how short this is?” And we’re going, “Oh, fuck…” And then we all collectively looked at each other and said, “So what?”

KING: I thought it was kinda neat that you had the whole record on one side of a cassette.

[Laughs] You could listen to it, flip it over, and play it again. We’d never been about putting songs and music on our records that doesn’t need to be there. Hour-long records seem to be the trend these days, but you know, you listen and it’s like, “You could lose this part; you could cut this song completely—and make a much more intense record,” which is what we’re all about.

HANNEMAN:

The first time you heard the album played back, were you like, “Holy shit, we’re the best!”?

LOMBARDO: [Laughs] No way. We put it out, and eventually it got the recognition that it did, but we were in no way acting like that. That might sound like other bands I probably know—when they put out a record, they think they’re the greatest. Little do they know, they gotta live up to the expectation.

KING: Yeah, we’re full of ourselves to an extent, but not blindly full of ourselves.

At the time the album was recorded, there weren’t many bands doing what you were doing.

The first records from the original death metal and grindcore bands had yet to be released.

Oh, yeah. I think we went fast to be intense. It’s been misconstrued along the way, and bands are fast just to be fast. A lot of the blast beat bands—you know, three straight minutes of blast beats in a song? It takes the intensity out of it. I know a lot of people are into it, but it doesn’t work for me.

KING:

How soon after Reign in Blood came out did you realize the impact it had?

KING: Probably not for a long time. I mean, we just kept on going—we put out South of Heaven, we put out Seasons. So maybe around Divine Intervention is when we’d get the interviewers asking us, “How does it feel to keep trying to outdo Reign in Blood? How does it feel to have made the best thrash metal album of all time?”

But you know, we didn’t really think about it.

And we certainly don’t try to outdo it.

Some say you’ll never top Reign in Blood.

Does that bother you?

KING: Not really—because in a lot of people’s minds, we won’t. I think [2001’s] God Hates Us All is a better record than Reign in Blood—not because it’s the last one, but because it’s more mature. Not to take anything away from Reign in Blood—it’s a great record.

HANNEMAN: No matter what we do in the future, it’s gonna be the album. That’s why we did South of Heaven right after that. We knew we couldn’t top that record, so we slowed down and changed our style just a tad.

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LOMBARDO: Yeah, we were ignored by everybody except the underground magazines, but that was normal. Look at the music that was on MTV at the time— Flock of Seagulls, Duran Duran—and here come these punks from L.A. with long hair and kind of a demonic outlook.

They didn’t want to acknowledge our presence—they’d never heard music being played that way. I think what really opened their eyes was that a wellknown producer like Rick Rubin gave it the time. So the recognition we got was, in part, because of Rubin’s interest in us. By taking on the project, he was showing that there was something there.

The first word uttered on the album is “Auschwitz.” Did you think that you would attract controversy because of that at the time?

Oh, yeah—but I didn’t give shit. We had just gotten off tour for the last record, and since we didn’t have a tour bus, there was no music to listen to, no TV to watch—we were just sitting in Tom’s Camaro driving all over the place.

So I was buying books to read, and I remember stopping some place where I bought two books on [Nazi “surgeon” Josef] Mengele. I thought, “This has gotta be some sick shit.” So when it came time to do the record, that stuff was still in my head— that’s where those lyrics came from.

LOMBARDO: We got dropped by Columbia because of that. I mean, “Auschwitz—the meaning of pain!” Any sympathizers with the Holocaust aren’t gonna have any part of it. But they didn’t see the deep meaning of it—it’s just documented musical awareness. It’s not necessarily for it— it’s just something that Jeff discovered and wrote a song about.

HANNEMAN:

So that must’ve been how all the “Jeff Hanneman is a Nazi” rumors started.

Yeah, probably that, and I collect medals and other Nazi stuff that my dad got me started on because he gave me all this shit he got off of dead Nazis. Next thing I know, we’re neoNazis. It was like, “Oh yeah—we’re racists. We’ve got a Cuban and a Chilean in the band. Get real.”

KING: Slayer are “Nazis,” “fascists,” “communists”—all that fun shit. And of course we got the most flack for it in Germany. I was [4] HANNEMAN:

SLAYER REIGN IN BLOOD

Tom, how many takes did you need to nail the scream at the beginning of “Angel of Death”?

[Laughs] It took two takes.

On the first one, they were telling me what they wanted to hear, and I just let it rip. After I did the initial scream, I told them to rewind the tape. They looked at me, and I just said, “I’ve got a better one.”

ARAYA:

always like, “Read the lyrics and tell me what’s offensive about it. Can you see it as a documentary, or do you think Slayer’s preaching fucking World War II?” People get this thought in their heads—especially in Europe—and you’ll never talk them out of it. They try to talk you into what they’re thinking. When they ask you a question and you give them an answer they don’t want, they’ll be like, “Well, don’t you mean…” And I’m like, “No, dude, I don’t mean that.” It’s just like, wake up.

LOMBARDO: Jeff’s best friend is black, so I don’t think that was a good way to portray him—although it was kinda funny. It’s fine, though—it gives people something to talk about. It’s better that they talk about something than not talk about it at all.

Almost 20 years later, which song holds up best for you?

Probably “Raining Blood.” I still love playing that song live. You’d think we’d be tired of it—I mean, I’d love to know how many times we’ve played it live. That would be really interesting.

KING: Yeah. The intro is big with the two-guitar harmony part, and than that first beat that Dave does, that double-kick thing, and it’s like this backwards gallop that gets the crowd going regardless of where you are. I mean, we could be playing in front of Alanis Morissette, and the crowd loves that part.

HANNEMAN:

The most widely available version of Reign in Blood has “Aggressive Perfector” and the remix of “Criminally Insane” tacked on the end—which I always thought was weird, because the original album closes perfectly, with the rain sound effects at the end of “Raining Blood.”

Yeah, it is weird, but that’s the record company’s way of sweetening the deal—because it’s got two tracks you really can’t get anywhere unless you’ve got that rare single that was released in Europe. It’s like them saying, “Here’s two cookies. You’re gonna have to buy the milk with the money you’re saving.”

KING: Our history of changing distributors— which certainly isn’t our fault—means whoever gets the catalogue puts out a new one. Although, I know people who’ve bought Reign in Blood twice because they wore out their first CD. [Laughs] That’s the way it should be.

HANNEMAN: I think it was Rubin’s idea [to do the “Criminally Insane” remix]. We were getting ready to leave for a European tour, and Rubin wanted to fuck with it. It was just me and Dave hanging around, and Rubin wanted to slow it down just to fuck with people, I guess. I’m pretty sure Dave did the slow parts on a drum machine.

I think I did a new solo at the beginning, too. We took out some of the lyrics and put a solo over the first verse.

ARAYA:

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Whose idea was it to use that Larry Carroll illustration on the cover?

KING: That’s the artist, right? [Laughs] I’m guessing Rick Rubin, because we certainly wouldn’t have known about him. We’ve actually been kicking around the idea of having that guy do the next album, since the original lineup is back together.

LARRY CARROLL: I met Rick Rubin in a coffee shop in New York—it must’ve been 1986. He looked pretty much the same as he does now, with the big beard and everything. I had heard Slayer, because I’m from California, but I’d never seen them. At that time, I was doing a lot of political illustrations for The Progressive, the Village Voice, the New York Times op-ed page, stuff like that. If I remember correctly, the band didn’t like the cover I did for Reign in Blood at first. Someone didn’t, anyway—I don’t remember if it was actually someone in the band or their management.

But then someone in the band showed it to their mother, and their mother thought it was disgusting, so they knew they were onto something.

HANNEMAN: Rubin knew the guy and was like, “This is sick. This should work for us.” We ended up using him for three albums.

ARAYA: I thought it was amazing. I liked it immediately. I liked them all, actually—there were three variations, and they incorporated all three into the cover. They did the same thing with South of Heaven and Seasons.

In hindsight, is there anything you’d change about Reign in Blood?

LOMBARDO: Absolutely not. What it was is what made it a classic, so you’d never change it.

ARAYA: Someone asked me that same question the other day, but just in terms of Slayer in general—what I’d do differently—and I just told him I’d bring a video camera. [Laughs] People would not believe the shit we’ve gone through. A

story by j. bennett

Nice Nikcuf Album 1987

the making of Anthrax’s Among the Living was a big year for cokemetal and bad hair: Def Leppard’s Hysteria, Mötley Crüe’s Girls, Girls, Girls, Whitesnake’s Whitesnake, and Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction were all bum-rushing the charts like a pack of wild junkies tearing through Steven Tyler’s medicine cabinet at 4AM—which most of them were, anyway.

DBTHRASHHOF Anthrax’s third album, Among the Living, on the other hand, was all about speed (the tempo), Indians, and Stephen King. (Okay, so maybe Anthrax had Among the Living shitty hair, too, but most of it’s gone now.) The second ISLAND, 1987 of four Anthrax full-lengths to feature the lineup of Definitive collection of Scott Ian (guitar), Charlie Benante (drums), Frank thrash metal “jams” Bello (bass), Dan Spitz (guitar), and Joey Belladonna (vocals), Among the Living secured Anthrax’s immortal standing amongst the “Four Horsemen of the Thrash Apocalypse” with Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer. But while the other three bands were scowling and writing about death, destruction, and Satan (although the latter was mostly Slayer’s bag), Anthrax were recording songs about Judge Dredd (“I Am The Law”), John Belushi (“Efilnikufesin [N.F.L.]”) and “bumicide” (“Skeletons in the Closet”) under the (ultimately) unwelcome guidance of Zeppelin/Hendrix producer Eddie Kramer in glossy locales like Miami and Nassau. With the Among the Living lineup freshly reunited, Decibel made some Hall of Fame phone calls. [4]

Anthrax,

T H R A S H 19 H o F

ANTHRAX AMONG THE LIVING John Bush and Joey Belladonna in the studio Let's try that again, but with more Waaaaaaa!

PART I:

THE KRAMER FACTOR

------------------------------What’s the first thing that pops into your head when you think of the Among the Living sessions?

SCOTT IAN: Wow… a lotta things—Florida, Eddie Kramer, the Bahamas. It was quite an experience. We went from making our first two records in Ithaca, New York, with Carl Canedy as our producer to all of a sudden being in Miami in a big fat studio and having Eddie Kramer produce our record.

CHARLIE BENANTE: Ithaca was very cold, and there wasn’t a lot of atmosphere up there. We just wanted a complete change, so we went to Miami, and then we went to mix it at Compass Point in the Bahamas. It’s funny, because it’s probably one of the heaviest records at the time, and where it was made was such a nice location.

JOEY BELLADONNA: Eddie Kramer…I always think of him doing our album as a really cool thing because he’s done so many great records. Going down to Florida was neat, too—I was glad to be taking in the sun. It was just a nice atmosphere, a nice place to stay down there. And then of course, for me, doing a second record after all that time was very exciting, too—just to get it under my belt.

DAN SPITZ: Eddie Kramer. [Laughs] I’m kind of

a gearhead—I’m the guy who knows what’s inside the piece of equipment that Eddie Kramer brought from Jimi Hendrix’s studio that Jimi Hendrix and him tweaked together. So I had a lot of fun times talking with Eddie in the studio after everybody else left. He’d pull out all this weird stuff that he used with Jimmy Page and stuff like that. I mean, I had a poster of Jimmy Page on my wall when I was kid starting to play guitar. Eddie’s never-ending Hendrix stories made for a wonderful time in my life.

Were there any actual pieces of gear used on Among the Living that were used on a Hendrix or a Zeppelin session?

DAN: Absolutely—some of the equalizers we used were actually Page’s stuff. I remember we were all in the van down in Florida—Anthrax and Eddie Kramer—delirious from recording all day.

We’re heading back to the hotel, and Eddie is half asleep all the way in the back, where you’d usually stick your luggage. Charlie had been playing all day, and the drum sound just wasn’t good enough, even though we had millions of mics everywhere. All of a sudden that Zeppelin song “The Ocean” comes on, and all we hear is Eddie say, “three mics,” and then he goes back to sleep. Turns out he only used three mics to record the drums on that entire album. I learned a lot from that dude. Of course, the other side of

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D EC I B EL

Eddie Kramer was the fights and stuff we had. I remember there were a lot of conflicts when we were mixing in the Bahamas. Eddie Kramer’s not a mixer, you know—he’s known for engineering.

You tell him what you want and it’s on tape.

You didn’t get along with him, then?

FRANK BELLO: Well, with every record and every producer, you’re gonna have one or two guys in the band who are gonna have issues. It’s just comes down to different personalities clashing.

If you have a vision, and the producer has a different vision, and usually there’s some kind of compromise. That said, Eddie had several thoughts, and we had other thoughts. [Laughs] We won most of it. It was mostly about sounds, cutting down verses and stuff like that—you know, touching the music. And that’s one thing we never let happen. It’s gotta come from us— we’re the ones who are gonna be touring on it for two years. The producer just goes onto their next record—we gotta play these songs for the rest of our lives.

SCOTT: You know, we got along great with Eddie until the mixing stage of the record. That’s when things started to fall apart a bit. We hired Eddie Kramer because we loved all the work he did in the ‘70s, and we wanted something really inyour-face dry, not overproduced. I mean, at that time, Def Leppard was the biggest thing in the

little bar we hung out at. I remember going for a drink with some journalists from Kerrang!, and Bono was at the bar, but we didn’t hang out or anything.

CHARLIE: I think it was called the Sugar Shack— and the one night I didn’t go, U2 were in there having drinks. I was like, “Motherfucker!” because I was a huge U2 fan back then.

PART II:

THE HORROR OF IT ALL

------------------------------“Skeletons in the Closet” is based on Stephen King’s “Apt Pupil,” about a teenager who kills the local winos. You actually use the word “bumicide” as a lyric.

[Laughs] Yeah, whatever that means. I just started writing lyrics and that was the shape they took. I’ll hear something in the music that kinda speaks to me, and I’ll just start coming up with words where I have no idea what I’m even going for. It still works that way sometimes, but other times, I’ll have a specific idea about what I want to write about. So “Among the Living” ended up being about Randall Flagg [from Stephen King’s The Stand] and then, for “Skeletons,” I think we already had the song title, so it made me think of that story.

CHARLIE: The old man on the album cover is based on that actor [Julian Beck] who played the old guy in Poltergeist [II]. His image just haunted me. So Scott incorporated it into the Randall Flagg thing.

SCOTT:

Rare Among the Living vinyl bonanza Chances are, you were a virgin when/if you bought these

world, and you know what Pyromania sounds like.

We pretty much wanted the opposite of that. We wanted something completely under-produced, raw, live in the studio, ‘70s-sounding record.

And Eddie was of the mindset that he wanted to make Pyromania. So it became this daily battle when we were mixing the record—us walking in and hearing a snare drum that sounded like it was played in some giant cave. Everything just had tons of reverb and tons of effects, and we were like, “Pull that effect, pull this, pull that,” until basically everything was bone-dry and we loved the way it sounded. And he hated it—it wasn’t what he wanted to do. It got pretty shitty sometimes—he and I would be yelling at each other to the point where I was like, “This isn’t your fucking record—it’s an Anthrax album.”

Everybody was in on it, but I was the mouthpiece. I was the one who was doing most of the yelling. It was frustrating, because we love Eddie Kramer, and we’re huge fans of his, but maybe he wasn’t the right choice. And we love the finished product—it was just getting there, mixing at Compass Point in the Bahamas, it was just pretty much constant battles.

Did you choose Compass Point because Maiden did bass and drum tracks for Somewhere in Time there?

Yeah, and also we were on Island Records at the time, and [Island founder] Chris Blackwell owns that studio, so we got a really good deal to go there.

DAN: I think it was Blackwell’s idea. Of course, whenever Joey and I hear anything about being in the sun, we’re like, “Let’s go!” For me, it was SCOTT:

great, but I’m sure other people in the band would tell you that they hated being on an island after a while. And that it was hot outside. But Joey and I wanted to stay a couple extra weeks at the end.

JOEY: I’d never been there before, so flying in was really exciting. It was my first time being somewhere that had a satellite dish with all the TV channels. Of course, I didn’t watch much of it, because we were so busy. We did some really cool photos down there, too—on the beach and stuff. Robert Palmer’s place was right across the street, and we swam in the pool there. I remember cooking Eddie Kramer some linguini and clam sauce while we were at the studio. He was all excited that I was cooking some dinner for him.

DAN: There were all these townhouses across the street from the studio—we were staying in one, and I think the whole second row was Robert Palmer’s. He was just chillin’ and taking his tax credits all the way to the bank. He’s no dummy, man.

FRANK: We’d go out for margaritas and shit, go back to the studio and Eddie Kramer would be mixing a song, and tell us to go back out for a while. We’d go right back to the beach. I can’t tell you how easy it was. That was absolutely the best time, because all we did was get drunk and hang out. We weren’t big drinkers back then, but we’ll put it away. [Laughs] Scott and I will, anyway.

SCOTT: I don’t remember what record they were doing, but U2 were staying right down the road at Chris Blackwell’s plantation or something.

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What was the inspiration for “Efilnikufesin (N.F.L.)”?

John Belushi. It was about wasting your life and dying. I’m not sure why we said it backwards… I mean, we said “Nice fuckin’ life” in the song.

SCOTT:

What does the “A.D.I.” in “A.D.I./ Horror of It All” stand for?

FRANK: Oh, man, I remember it was something like “Arabian something Intro.” It sounded like an Arabian scale—but I forget what the “D” stood for. But let me just say that this band is the biggest bunch of ballbusters you’ll ever meet in your life. If you get us in a studio for a long period of time, a lot of ugly, fun stuff is gonna come out. I mean, “N.F.L.—Nice Fuckin’ Life”— shit like that. Whatever it was, I’m sure it was appropriately named.

SCOTT: It stands for Arabian Douche Intro, because Danny was so into all these Arabian sounding scales that he was playing at that time.

I think Frankie coined that phrase, actually, like, “Enough with these Arabian douche scales that you’re playing.” [Laughs] That’s where that came from. [4]

ANTHRAX AMONG THE LIVING “I Am the Law” is about Judge Dredd?

CHARLIE: Yep. We were on the Spreading the Disease tour, and I had these riffs, and we would always jam on them at soundcheck. So “I Am the Law” was one of the first things written for that record. The Judge Dredd tie-in came because we were just reading the comic like crazy.

Dan Lilker has co-writing credits on “I Am the Law” and “Imitation of Life,” even though he left the band two albums prior to Among the Living.

Some of those riffs go back to when Danny was still in the band. They just didn’t get used up until that point, but they fit into those songs, and they were riffs that he had come up with.

CHARLIE: Danny’s riff is the first riff on “Imitation of Life”—it was originally gonna be an S.O.D. song, but Scott wanted to use it for the Anthrax song.

DAN LILKER: I remember shaking my head and laughing a little, thinking “Jeez, they’re still using my riffs?” After all, that was like three years after my departure… actually, I was SCOTT:

Anthrax circa 1986 Remember the Soldiers of Metal bootleg?

thrown out. Apparently the first singer, Neil Turbin, didn’t like me—something to do with the fact that I was taller than him and refused to just stand in the back like the bassist of Judas Priest.

It was a bit of a surprise, considering I’d wrote a good 75 percent of the music on Fistful [of Metal, Anthrax’s first album], but I just shrugged, called John Connelly, and formed Nuclear Assault.

What was Joey’s involvement in the songwriting?

JOEY: Scott wrote almost all the lyrics. I basically got handed the list of things we were gonna do, and I had to turn the songs into something that would really be happening. That was enough for me—I didn’t want to disrupt the system that they had going. When the songs are finished like that, they usually have them nailed down pretty good, so you can’t really change too much.

I walked into Spreading the Disease like that—they just need a vocalist—the music was already down.

FRANK: We worked hard on the lyrics and melodies and stuff. Joey put his touch on it, and that was good enough for the songs, and that’s how it worked. That’s why the songs had the impact they did. We didn’t just hand him the lyrics—he put his own taste on it. Scott would write the lyrics, I would write a lot of the melodies, and then we’d go to Joey.

JOEY: I barely got time to rehearse with them

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at all—not anything extensive, anyway. But I work pretty quick, and I try to make the best of it. I mean, even with Persistence [of Time] I at least went into rehearsal to go through the songs like the band would. I didn’t get to do a whole lot of that stuff with the early records at all. It could’ve been a lot more efficient—in terms of taking a few ideas further, extending a few things, cutting others back. In the studio, they were looking over every move, every vocal, every take, pretty tightly. So it wasn’t as loose it could have been. I remember on “Indians,” when I wanted to do that harmony that I thought sounded cool, it was like, “Oh, better check with Scott.” And he’d be on the other side of the glass shaking his head, going, “I dunno—could be gay.” But to me, it fit the song, and it worked out well.

It’s definitely one of the songs people know best…

JOEY: Yeah, it’s catchy. I like hooks, you know?

I’m always trying to do stuff like that. When I sing, I don’t just throw something up there—I try to put it in a good context so that it has a little bit of velocity to it. I don’t wanna just shit all over it. Sometimes it’d just be one little part that would really make a song like “Indians” come to life. I remember Eddie Kramer would sit at the piano and we’d work on the verses. When you’re changing keys all

the time, it’s hard to lock in and sing over stuff that’s moving so fast. You gotta stay in tune, or it’s a mess. I don’t think certain people have the goods to do stuff like that—they can’t keep up with it. What they’re doing now, it’s even more open for vocals. I mean, big time.

It wasn’t like that when I was in the band—it was all so fast.

PART III:

LIVING TRIBUTE

------------------------------At the end of the album’s thank-you list, it says fans can write in to be included on the next list. That seems like a massive pain in the tits.

DAN: Well, you know, we broke a lot of molds, and I’m sure everyone knows by now that Anthrax has a sense of humor, and we obviously show it onstage as well. That’s what differentiated us from regular metal guys who thought you weren’t allowed to smile. I think it made our fans feel like they know us as friends. We ended up with so many friends we ran out of room.

CHARLIE: People sent in their names, too. It was fucking ridiculous.

Which song holds up the best for you today?

I’d have to say “Caught in a Mosh”—it has all the elements of all types of metal in it. It has an AC/DC boogie type of riff, a total thrash beat, and the chorus kind of opens up in a very heavy metal type of vibe.

JOEY: Well, I can only go by when I play live these days, from a crowd standpoint. I mean, “Caught in a Mosh” and “N.F.L.” are just, you know—bang—an anthem-type thing. And “Indians” is a good mosh tune.

DAN: My favorite song is “Among,” but one of my favorite riffs we ever wrote is from “Skeletons.”

It’s one of our most underrated songs, and it’s really hard to play.

SCOTT: A number of them. We play five of them regularly—”Caught in a Mosh,” “Indians,” “N.F.L.,” “I Am the Law,” and “Among the Living.” I think they all hold up pretty well.

CHARLIE:

In these Hall of Fame interviews, we usually ask the band members if they’d change anything about the album in question, but you guys sort of already answered that one by re-recording those five songs with John Bush on vocals. How would you compare the two versions?

Well, they’re basically the same songs with him singing it—it’s not like we really changed anything. We did The Greater of Two Evils because we were trying to come up with ideas to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the band. The other one was a box set, but we knew

SCOTT:

What do you remember about the band photo on the back cover?

CHARLIE: In the New York train station? I remember we weren’t allowed to shoot down there. We needed a permit, so we pretty much snuck around and did it really quick. I remember I was wearing a Day of the Dead shirt. When the album came out, Cliff Burton saw it and said, “Dude—I have the same fuckin’ shirt!”

The album is dedicated to Cliff.

DAN: Yeah. It was on an Anthrax/Metallica tour in Europe that Cliff passed away when the accident happened. We were there, you know?

I know how it happened, how the bunks were changed around on the bus they got that night.

We left an hour earlier than them, and I remember as we were walking out, we stopped by the soundboard because Cliff was in the middle of a bass solo. We all did. I remember those mountain roads and the snow and sleet and arriving in Denmark while everything was going into the shitter. I mean, Metallica and us have known each other since we were kids.

FRANK: It was just a really hard time. Not only was Cliff one of my favorite bass players, he was a really good friend. The one memory that stands out in my mind is that we were touring together and we used to have this thing every night when we were leaving for the tour buses where I’d say, “Hey, Cliff—maybe I’ll see you tomorrow,” and he’d say, “Yeah, Frank—maybe you will.” That was the last thing we ever said to each other. To this day, I’ll never forget that, God rest his soul.

In my eyes, Cliff will always be a legend.

Plus, a lot of the songs would change slightly over the years when we played them live, so you gotta go with it.

JOEY: I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was just, “Hey, why not?” But I don’t know if they were trying to prove anything like, “Oh, these are really the way they should have been.” I don’t know if anybody thought they should have been different in the first place, so I don’t what their reasons were. I mean, I’m happy to hear someone else doing it, because it’s just cool to hear somebody doing something of mine as opposed to me doing someone else’s. On the other hand, I know that, more than likely, if I wasn’t ever around—if John had been in the band at that time—those songs probably would have been totally different vocally. I’m not sure he would’ve taken some of the turns that I took. But I hate to have to compare them—there isn’t that much new to them, I think. I don’t think there was anything really wrong with them in the first place, but they have all the right to do it. And as much as they might have wanted to push all the old stuff aside, I don’t think they really could.

Many folks would consider Among the Living the definitive Anthrax album—would you agree?

Of that period, sure. From Fistful of Metal to Persistence of Time, that’s the one, for sure. We knew we had some good songs, but we didn’t really feel any different about it than we did on Spreading the Disease or Fistful of Metal. We had no

SCOTT:

The tour started off with us headlining small clubs, but by the end of ‘87, six or seven months after that record came out, we started to play arenas in some places. From May or June to December of that year, everything just blew up exponentially. It was insane.

SCOT T IA N we weren’t gonna get the box set together last year. We knew we’d be able to pull off something where we had the fans vote for the songs that they wanted us to re-do. We put no thought into that record whatsoever, literally. We played it live in the studio, and that was it.

CHARLIE: We straightened the songs out a bit, I think. I mean, Among the Living has been out there for a while, so that’s how people know those songs, but I just wanted to make things a little more groove-oriented. Especially on “Indians,” I wanted to make sure I was capturing the groove of the song and not just speeding ahead of it. And of course, after years of playing the songs, you’re going to get better at them.

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idea things were gonna go the way they did. The tour started off with us headlining small clubs, but by the end of ‘87, six or seven months after that record came out, we started to play arenas in some places. From May or June to December of that year, everything just blew up exponentially.

It was insane.

FRANK: No. [Laughs] I understand that, but being in the band and writing in the band, it’s just what got us noticed. It established us. I mean, I think the last record we did with John Bush was the most well-written album we’ve done so far.

I think you just grow up and get older and you learn how to write songs. But Among the Living is where it all began—that’s where it broke. A

story by kevin stewart-panko

Legacy of Kings the making of Testament’s The Legacy

N

ews flash: Thrash metal didn’t begin or end with the release of Testament’s The Legacy, but just because the band’s 1987 debut didn’t defiantly construct genre bookends, doesn’t mean it isn’t still very much worthy of entry into Decibel’s hallowed hall. The nine-song behemoth hit the metal world with the impact of a close-range thunderclap upon its release, causing those outside of San Francisco’s Bay Area to further believe that if there wasn’t something in the water, then a coterie of thrash metal lovin’ mad scientists was likely performing successful genetic experiments in a secret bunker underneath the University of California-Berkeley.

But chances are the album’s initial impression as a Hall of Fame contender is clouded by the fact that The Legacy was another in a long line of absolute gems that found their genesis in the ’80s Bay Area scene. The story surrounding the creation of what is arguably Testament’s best top-to-bottom recording isn’t awash in band drama, tragic circumstance, abject poverty or hardship of any description—although they did return to California after recording at Pyramid Sound Studios in Ithaca, NY during one of the worst winters of the decade with a different moniker—as it’s simply the tale of a bunch of goofy, metal-obsessed kids from the suburbs of San Francisco and Oakland coming of age and dodging alcoholism while sculpting their Priest, Maiden, Mercyful Fate and local thrash influences into the music they wanted to hear and play, creating a killer album in the process. The Legacy is not only significant because it’s a storming combination of brash and class, combining polished and refined traditional metal with the raw, pimply-faced energy of the then-new-school sounds of thrash in an album that quickly found the band nipping at the heels of the so-called “Big Four” (Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth), but it also opened DBTHRASHHOF the door to a 21-year, nine-album—give or take a live collection, rerecording or unsanctioned “best-of” collection—career. Now that Testament have reunited with the lineup of rhythm guitarist Eric The Legacy MEGAFORCE, JUNE 1987 Peterson, bassist Greg Christian, vocalist Chuck Billy, lead guitarist Alex Skolnick and drummer Paul Bostaph (who played with the Big Five give Big Four a run for their money band live during the mid ’90s as one of the many replacements for Louie Clemente, their original skin-slapper who performed on The Legacy and the three albums that followed) and have returned to classic form with the recently-released The Formation of Damnation, we gathered the boys for a look back at their landmark debut. [4]

Testament,

T H R A S H 25 H o F

TESTAMENT THE LEGACY California, here we come Clockwise from top left: Chuck Billy, Greg Christian, Alex Skolnick, Louie Clemente, Eric Peterson

PART I:

THE FORMATION OF ASSOCIATION ------------------------------It’s common knowledge that Testament used to be called Legacy and that former Exodus vocalist Steve “Zetro” Sousa was an early member.

However, much of the band’s history is a bit of a mystery to those outside the Bay Area. Can you tell us a bit about the early days?

I actually started the band with Eric and his cousin Derrick [Ramirez]. We started the band out in Alameda, just outside Oakland.

For the longest time, it was the three of us just jamming in my bedroom during the day until we got enough money to get a studio in Oakland.

Then, we got the Souza brothers, John and Steve; John played bass and [after] he left and we got Greg. I was the original drummer, but left the band for a while after my daughter was born and I came back before we did the record.

ERIC PETERSON: Basically, what happened was LOUIE CLEMENTE:

that Louie had this real crazy girlfriend who was a control freak. Sometimes she’d be at our practices, but if she wasn’t and we ran late, she’d show up, she’d come in, make a big scene and pull him out by his hair. It just got old after a while. We’d have photo shoots or whatever and he wouldn’t show up. We’d go over to his girlfriend’s house and they’d be there all smiling.

Finally, he just disappeared and we ended up getting Mike Ronchette on drums and he did our demo. From there, we went from being a local band playing [legendary metal-friendly venue] Ruthie’s Inn to getting a little bit of international recognition and some record company interest, but we missed Louie a lot. He was like our Ringo Starr; he wasn’t the best drummer, but there was something about him. He has a great personality and there were a lot of little things about him that added up to this real big monster.

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we all jammed together and it just felt natural.

It was kind of sad because there was nothing bad about Mike, but like I said, Lou was like our Ringo.

GREG CHRISTIAN: It was Derrick, Eric, Louie and Zetro when I joined. Zetro met a friend of mine at a house party when they were looking for a bass player, so he gave him my phone number. I was 17, a senior in high school, a Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden fan and was just starting to get turned on to thrash. I got home from school one day and this guy calls: [in excited, surferdude voice] “Hey, man! You don’t know me, but my name is Zetro, dude! We got this band goin’ on…” [Laughs] I had nothing to lose and from the first two notes of the practice tape I heard, I wanted to play with these guys. I’d never heard local kids just a year or two older than myself playing anything that sounded anything like that before. I was blown away.

ALEX SKOLNICK: I had a buddy in high school, Alexis Olson. We were underage and we used to get into metal shows by carrying amps and pretending we were roadies. We carried amps for Exodus, Lääz Rockit and so on. One of the shows I didn’t go to, Legacy was opening for Exodus or Slayer and my friend came back and wouldn’t stop talking about them. Within a few weeks, he ended up managing them and around the same time Eric’s cousin left the band. S0o, my friend said I should try out. I was studying with [Joe] Satriani at the time and I asked him about it and he was [like], “Absolutely! If anything, just the experience of auditioning will be good for you.”

I went to their rehearsal space and played a few licks. They said they had a few gigs coming up and within a couple months I was in the band.

What’s the story behind Zetro being replaced by Chuck?

After we put the demo out, we started getting record company interest. I was ready to sign to anybody. I was like, “Wow, I get to put a record out!” because all I knew was Ruthie’s Inn and the Stone. After Lou came back, we started getting a lot more shows and even headlining here and there. At the time, Exodus was having trouble with [Paul] Baloff and Legacy was drawing as many people as Exodus. They recognized that and saw that Zetro was a good frontman. I mean, they were still doing well, but the drugs were probably taking their toll or whatever and they basically stole Zet from us.

They told Zet they were going to be on Capitol Records and have all this and that and be huge.

I think Zet just saw stars and dollar signs. We were in the middle of writing “The Haunting” and we kept on him about lyrics, saying, “Dude,

PETERSON:

the song’s almost finished, you gotta get some lyrics together.” I ended up finishing up that one and we were working on “Apocalyptic City” and he didn’t have lyrics, so we ended up playing a show and doing it as an instrumental. After that night, we had a meeting and he was all like, “I didn’t want it to happen this way, but I’m joining Exodus.” He started yelling about how, “I can’t wait around anymore” and how, “My time is now and it’s my destiny to be a rock star” and all this. We’re just looking at him, thinking, “What?” Things were going good; in two years we went from opening to headlining and record contract offers. But the good thing he did was that he turned us on to Chuck. We used to go to a lot of parties in the Bay Area and I knew him as the big guy from all the keggers. He was known for kicking ass. We went to go see Chuck’s band and they were kind of poser-ish. We were like, “This guy does not fit in with all these guys flipping their hair and trying to look cute.” Chuck’s up there calling the crowd a bunch of pussies and telling them to get their asses up front.

We thought he was cool and his high screams reminded me of Halford.

CLEMENTE: Chuck came under recommendation from Steve because they were from the same area, out in Dublin, in the valley of the Bay Area.

CHUCK BILLY: Steve was one of my younger brother’s best friends. My brother and I had a band and Steve would always come down, hang out and roadie. One day he told us about this band he joined; they were playing a show and told us to come check it out. They were Legacy at the time, we went and saw them for the first time in Alameda and they all had on priest col-

lars and scary-looking make-up. [Laughs] When I saw them, I was like, “Wow, these guys are pretty good” and I was kind of blown away. I got their demo and the demo had some good songs and was really different from what I was doing. I was going to school, taking singing and guitar classes and I was from a more melodic background with singers that sang a little more.

Their demo was really something new to me and a different style of vocal. When Zet quit, he gave me Alex Skolnick’s number and told me I should call them up and audition. I studied the demo, learned the songs and went out to Oakland and their tiny little rehearsal room. I had all kinds of PA with me; I had so much PA it was too much for the room and I had to sing in the hallway for my audition. I kind of brought my sense of melody to this straight-ahead kind of singing and they were like, “This kind of works; it’s more melodic and kinda different.” A week later, they decided I was going to be the singer.

For me the early Legacy stuff was transitional and a whole new era of learning different vocal patterns and timings. It’s funny—when I did my first demo for my first band, we were in the studio next to Exodus when they were recording Bonded by Blood and all I could hear was this guy screaming and I was thinking, “What the hell is going on in there?” It’s kind of funny that I fell into Legacy and the whole thrash thing.

Skolnick was 16 when he joined the band. Was his age ever a factor or sticking point in terms of your ability to do shows or play in clubs?

When he joined the band, I went over to his house with our manager at the time, and his parents were like, “Well, he can join the band, but he can’t play shows on weekdays.” And I remember him kind of whining, “But mom, there’s a big show coming up!” I remember going to his house the night of that show and telling his parents that we were just going to go up to his room to jam and us sneaking out his window to go play the show.

CLEMENTE: His age wasn’t really a problem, but from the minute we heard him play, he had something special about him. From day one we saw it and we were willing to do anything to get him in the band. He was really into it at the time, but he was going to school and I think his parents wanted him to really

PETERSON:

School’s out forever Striking poses in Oakland, circa ‘87

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focus on school. I don’t really think they wanted him to be in a band.

SKOLNICK: Like I said, I was in high school and my parents were concerned about me doing my homework and actually finishing high school. I had to introduce them to the band and, yeah, there were a couple nights I snuck out to make rehearsal or a show.

CHRISTIAN: I think he did some really impressive work for being that young and it became more like this thing I could tell people about. I’d play people the demo tape and be all like, “Yo, check it out! You hear the guy shredding on these arpeggios? He’s only 16!”

PART II:

STEPPING OVER THE WALL ------------------------------What do you remember about writing and rehearsing the material that eventually appeared on The Legacy?

The first record has the really old stuff that Louie and I wrote with my cousin before anyone else was in the band. We had “C.O.T.L.O.D.” and “Raging Waters,” which were more, I wouldn’t say death metal… maybe more black metal-ish? We actually started off like a black metal band; all our early photos had us in corpsepaint and bullet belts and all the pictures were in graveyards. We looked like Celtic Frost or something and Zet was always like, “I’m not wearing that shit!” When Alex got into the band, we got more melodic and became more speed/thrash metal. Alex and I totally got into Mercyful Fate and everything after that had to have cool guitar parts in the songs. “Burnt Offerings” was the first song we wrote together and it starts off with the clean guitars in the intro and it gets heavy like an Iron Maiden, epic thing, then it gets into the thrash and the Fate harmonies. We always called it our “Satan’s Fall.” The next song we wrote with Skolnick was “Alone in the Dark.” Most of the rest of it was already written; Chuck wrote one song with us, “Do or Die.” CHRISTIAN: What do I remember? Well, a lot of alcohol went down—a lot of alcohol. [Laughs] And a lot of repetition and getting it tight, as odd as those two things may seem to go together.

We took it on like a full-time job. We played most of those songs in clubs for two years as Legacy before putting out the record.

SKOLNICK: I think about half the record was done when I joined. Around the time I joined, I had been trying to get a high school band together but I couldn’t find players good enough. So, I had these ideas lying around and the first thing I did was present these ideas to Testament. One of those ideas turned into “Burnt Offerings,” another turned into “Alone in the Dark” and one of them became the solo section for “First Strike Is Deadly.” These were things I had lying [4] PETERSON:

TESTAMENT THE LEGACY around and we just combined them with stuff Eric had. Zetro wrote his lyrics and in a very short time, we had more songs and every couple months, we we’d have a new song.

I think it happened very naturally because we weren’t writing for an album because we didn’t have a record deal yet. We just needed more songs because we didn’t want to keep playing the same stuff.

BILLY: For me, it was great because this was still new and fresh for me. Once I had about six to eight months of rehearsals before we did the record, I felt I really had it down. Everything else was pretty much written when I joined and “Do or Die” was the only song I really contributed writing on. They pretty much had a record ready to go, but didn’t get the chance to do it because Steve quit.

There were some pretty unique and tragic circumstances surrounding your finally signing with Megaforce, correct?

BILLY: There was a deal already on the table when Zet was in the band, so we contacted Megaforce after I joined and asked, “Do we still have a deal?” They said, “Send us the new singer’s demo.” I went in and did a three-song demo, sent it and [Megaforce president] Johnny [Zazula] was like, “Yeah, the deal’s still on.” They wanted to come out and see us rehearse live and that was a really awkward experience. It was around noon when we scheduled the “audition.”

We got to the studio and Johnny and Marsha Zazula came in and were really tired, worn out and looked really saddened. We were like, “What’s going on?” and they told us they had all been up all night because Cliff Burton was killed the night before. We were like, “Holy shit!” because Cliff was like our Bay Area hero. So, that was a really odd day because here we are, we’re auditioning for a label and we found out Cliff just died. It was one of the most solemn auditions ever. Normally, you’d be happy and fired up, but no one was speaking; we just played our songs, they were like, “OK, we have a deal” and then they were gone.

How did you end up coming to record The Legacy at Pyramid Sound with producer Alex Perialas?

Did you feel intimidated or nervous recording with a “name guy” like him?

That was all hooked up through Megaforce. They were all like a family out there.

Alex Perialas did the previous two Anthrax records and they were trying to get us on with their whole team. Two of our favorite records were the S.O.D. record [Speak English or Die] and Spreading the Disease, so we were like, “OK, that sounds cool!”

CLEMENTE: I think it took us a little while to PETERSON:

warm up to recording at Alex’s place. We were all pretty nervous because we were young at the time and we’d never even been on the road at that point and we had Alex working with us who had just finished [working with] S.O.D. and Anthrax and his assistant was the drummer from Raven, Rob “Wacko” Hunter, and we were big Raven fans. It was a little bit scary at first and kind of intimidating, but it was a pretty good time because we fell into our roles, did our recording work during the day and just partied at night. There were a lot of drunken times; there was a bar up the street—I can’t remember the name of it, but I think S.O.D. mention it in one of their songs. We spent a lot of time there.

CHRISTIAN: It was and it wasn’t [intimidating] because we had our thing and we were solid together. We’d been playing those songs in clubs for a couple years and we had become like the

We were just a bunch of California boys who showed up in the cold and snow of Ithaca in our colorful surfer shorts and it was probably one of the worst winters Ithaca had ever seen at the time.

LO UIE CLE ME NT E kings of the local unsigned bands. We almost maybe went into it with kind of an attitude, but we absolutely would listen to everything Alex had to say. We were out there for about six weeks and I did all my tracks in a day. I played along with Clemente when he was tracking and had to go back and punch in and fix a few things here and there. I was done a few hours after he finished drums. I spent a lot of the rest of the time drinking a lot. I was 20 years old and not even legally allowed to be in a bar, but I was in this place up the street a lot.

BILLY: Back in those days, we didn’t really know what the recording process was like; we did our demo at some guy’s house! The clock was ticking as soon as we got there and we had six weeks to get it all done and nerves played a big factor, especially when I’d have a day when my voice TH RASH HoF

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wasn’t feeling totally right. Being in Ithaca really got us focused on getting what needed to get done. I think if we were at home and our friends were hanging around the studio, we never would have got it done the way we did.

We were excited! We’d wake up, go straight to the studio and couldn’t wait to see everybody do their parts. It was also such a cool town and there was a lot of stuff to do. It was a college town with girls running around, college kids everywhere and lots of bars. It was like we were in college, but we were doing a record. We were kind of off the hook at night, but during the day we got the job done.

SKOLNICK: I was absolutely terrified. I was worried about playing my solos and had I had a choice, I would have warmed up for a year.

[Laughs] But with what little time there was, I tried to make it work. A really tough part about it—and this is more about the recording technology back then—was recording scratch tracks because the basic tracks sounded terrible.

You used to have to play with these terrible sounding tracks and imagine what it was going to sound like later. That was one of the biggest challenges—just remaining inspired about the music while going through this process where it just sounded terrible. I have to give Alex a lot of credit because it was absolutely difficult trying to balance a bunch of guys away from home for the first time and trying to get any work done.

Part of Alex’s role was to keep us in line; we were a little crazy. I think a lot of males in their late teens or early 20s go through that experience, whether it’s the army, a fraternity or a rock band. Going away with no chaperones, no parental figures… it’s like a reality show.

What were your thoughts when you started hearing the album coming together?

CHRISTIAN: I was blown away. Everything was new and fresh and I was amazed every time I heard it. It’s like, “Wow, this is a record, but it’s a record I’m playing on.” I hate to say it, but it’s almost like I was a star-struck kid and back in that day and age; to actually have something that sounded that clean and clear as that did was nowhere near as easy as it is nowadays with computers and digital. That was a big, big deal, to see the two-inch tape rolling and hear the playback.

BILLY: I was definitely surprised at how it was turning out and how huge it was sounding because all we had was the demo and that sounded tiny! This was before Pro Tools and you had to hit it and make sure your timing and everything was spot-on. That’s where Alex came in and did his job and made sure we fell into line. I remember we had ordered a bunch of new equipment to record with and when we showed up to Ithaca it was like Christmas because all these Marshall and Ampeg stacks and heads showed up and we wanted to fire it up, plug in and jam right away. Having brand new equip-

PHOTO BY BART KAMP

Legacy artists Billy and Skolnick, sweating bulletbelts on stage

ment meant we sounded great and we couldn’t wait to get those Marshall tones down on tape.

That was the first time that each guy had the opportunity to play through two stacks and two heads and it was so huge! Everything just got better and better once we started.

SKOLNICK: Once we got to the point where we were able to mic the guitars properly—and layering—things started to come around. We had never heard of layering guitars before and that was one of the first things Alex taught us: You just don’t play the riff, you actually play the riff again. I remember thinking, “Are you kidding? Is that right?” Once Eric and I started layering the guitars, it started to sound cool and made sense. It was like, “Ohhh! This is what it’s supposed to sound like!”

getting everyone back and forth and every night coming back we’d pull into the parking lot doing about 30 mph and lock up the emergency brake and spin donuts.

It was wild because none of us had ever driven on snow before. The whole thing was firsttime experiences: being away from home and families, driving on the snow, living in the cold, recording a record.

CLEMENTE: We were just a bunch of California boys who showed up in the cold and snow of Ithaca in our colorful surfer shorts and it was probably one of the worst winters Ithaca had ever seen at the time.

SKOLNICK: Well, I used to go on ski trips, so I had experienced snow. But that time of year in upstate New York… that was just a different level of cold.

PART III:

APOCALYPTIC CITY ------------------------------How did a bunch of guys who had never been outside of California and had never really seen snow before react to an upstate New York winter?

You ended up having to change your name to Testament while you were in Ithaca. How did you feel about leaving home as Legacy and coming home with a new name and having to reintroduce yourselves to the world?

CHRISTIAN: That was the first time I had ever experienced that kind of cold in my life and I think it was the same for all of us. That first breath of air when I stepped out of the Syracuse airport hit the inside of my lungs and I just started coughing. I dropped my bass and suitcase on the sidewalk—I didn’t give a fuck at all—and turned around and went back inside the building coughing and choking all wide-eyed, going, “It’s c-c-c-cold out there!” Of course, a week later, we’re all drunk and wearing shorts and kicking snow around.

BILLY: We’d never experienced snow growing up unless you went to Lake Tahoe or something.

The best thing was that we had a rent-a-car that we would drive to the studio and back and I was always the driver. I was the one responsible for

CHRISTIAN: Johnny Z went out and did the copyright searches and came back to us and said, “Hey, you guys have to change your name.”

CLEMENTE: Yeah, we were in the studio when we found out there was another band and people were telling us we didn’t want to have problems in the future and that it was best to just change the name. Billy Milano was actually the one who came up with the name Testament.

SKOLNICK: We were kind of tripping. Our attorney looked into it and I don’t think that the other band still existed, but they still had the rights to the name. At that point we couldn’t think of a name. Billy thought of the name and we liked the similar meanings.

PETERSON: We were at a barbeque at Billy’s house and it was like a scene out of Animal House. We

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were sitting around eating chicken and trying to come up with all these names and him and Metal Maria [Ferrero, Testament’s presentday manager] are arguing back and forth and he just goes, “What about Testament?” and belches. It was just like Belushi in Animal House where they’re trying to think of a nickname for that one guy and he goes, “What about Flounder?”

“Why?” “Why not?”

How did the album’s artwork tie in the new band name with using your old band name as the title?

The record was originally going to be called First Strike Is Deadly, but that didn’t sound right. We decided to call it The Legacy, which made a lot of sense to us because we were closing a chapter and going into a new chapter with Testament. The cover was meant to show the old and the new. The skull was sort of like an old mascot skull we used to use and the Testament part was represented with the book and the window of the church-type building. In the book itself, we printed the lyrics to the song “The Legacy,” which was an early song that actually didn’t appear until Souls of Black. That was the first song we ever wrote and basically we printed the lyrics to that song in the book, but they were written in Elvish. But it didn’t come out totally and it wasn’t captured the way we wanted, so that you could really read it. I think the lighting got fucked up. I have photographs of it where you can see it clearly and the background looks way better.

SKOLNICK: We had someone that our record label knew and I remember he took all the photos; he made the little model of the skull and put it all together. Funny story: I think that guy had been in Bon Jovi at one point. I remember hearing a story about this guy and about how he was in a band with Jon Bon Jovi and Jon wanted to call the band Bon Jovi, but this guy wasn’t having any of that ego-trip shit and he just started doing his own thing. [4]v PETERSON:

PHOTO BY JENNY RAISLER

TESTAMENT THE LEGACY What possessed you guys to go out and get matching tattoos of The Legacy skull character?

PETERSON: Basically, we were hanging out and rehearsing one night and Chuck was like, “Hey man, I have $200, let’s go get tattooed.” It was a Friday night and we were drinking at a bar by our studio and we were like, “Alright!” We hopped into his 1957 Cadillac and went to Ricky’s, the worst tattoo place ever in the worst part of town. All the tattoos they did were stuff like tigers, dragons and sailor girls. There was nothing cool at—or about—this place. But we all got them and it was a good story for a long time. It was something that people took pictures of, which was kind of embarrassing because the tattoos sucked; they were like these stick figure skulls. [Laughs] CHRISTIAN: There was a real all for one, one for all mentality going on. We came back from New York, got drunk, fired our manager and went to a tattoo parlor. Of course, by the time we finished getting our tattoos, we were sober again. I remember being the first one in the chair.

SKOLNICK: We came back from doing the record.

It’s kind of funny now—and I don’t want to make light of it because I know it was very traumatic for my friend at the time—but we were making this transition from local band to professional touring act very fast and it was not without casualties. We realized that it wasn’t working out with Alexis. We were at the point we needed someone who could talk to the record label, talk to the attorney at the record label and all these different people, and he had never functioned at that level. Unfortunately, we had to let him go. We’ve patched things up since, but we had a big dispute that led to his dismissal.

Basically, to make a long story short, we fired our manager and we went and got tattoos and it was a major bonding experience.

PART IV:

THE LEGACY OF THE LEGACY ------------------------------Once the album was released how did you feel about it and the public’s reaction to it?

Well, in the back of my mind, since I was a kid, I always knew that this was what I was going to do. I wasn’t really surprised; I was more excited. I was told all my life that I would never make it in a band. I wasn’t a sixfoot strapping lad with long blonde hair; I’m 5’8” half-Mexican, half-Swedish and didn’t fit in with the Mexicans or the white guys. I always knew we were going to do something and it was then I knew it was something special, especially when we got Alex and Chuck, because when we all got in a room together it was like magic.

CLEMENTE: It was special to us and we were really PETERSON:

proud of it. Back then, albums were still being made and I remember getting copies of the artwork and showing it to all our friends and family. The Bay Area scene and sound was what was popular back then, so I don’t think we were surprised it sold; we knew we were doing something a little bit different, but I don’t think we knew it was going catch on to where it has held [up] over all these years and people still like those songs. We’re all still really good friends and I go see Testament every time they come to New York, and we did the 2005 reunion together and kids were singing along to those old songs off The Legacy. It’s amazing. It’s also kind of moving and emotional.

BILLY: The reaction to its release was pretty quick because, at that time, our demo was one of the biggest selling demos in Europe before we even did the album. I think a lot of the Europeans wanted more than a three-song demo and I think the album delivered. Next thing you know, the first time we go to Europe, we’re playing the Dynamo club and festival. That was the first time we’d even ever left the country.

SKOLNICK: I wasn’t happy, actually. I thought it deserved better recognition than it got. At the time, it just seemed like thrash was considered this sort of musical ghetto, with the exception of Metallica and Megadeth, and I didn’t agree.

I wanted to be compared to everything else out there, the same way Metallica was. I remember seeing a magazine where all the albums reviewed received about a paragraph each and they had a section called “The Thrash Bin,” which of course sounds like “the trash bin,” and it had one sentence for all of these albums, including The Legacy. Obviously, since then it’s caught on and got the recognition it deserved, but it took a long time. But the fans who liked it flipped out over it and that was very gratifying.

Knowing what you know now, would you go back and change anything?

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Sweats of black Guess who Louie Clemente’s favorite band is

Knowing what I know now? Well, if I knew what I knew now, I’d be a millionaire [laughs], but overall, I’m pretty happy with how things went. I’m really happy about where we are now and we wouldn’t be where we are now if it weren’t for where we were.

BILLY: We didn’t know enough about the recording techniques and the mic choices for recording guitars and drums. Knowing what we know now, we probably would have used different mic techniques or different microphones. I listen to the record and it sounds smaller and thinner than what you can do today with production. I always wanted to go back and remix those tracks, but Atlantic Records would never let us, which is why we did First Strike Is Still Deadly re-recordings. But ultimately, I don’t think I would have changed anything about what we did at the time. When Alex rejoined with us, he wanted to play the songs he wrote with us and a lot of them were The Legacy songs. And once he came back after 15 years and we played them, we realized that a lot of these songs really have stood the test of time.

CHRISTIAN: As far as the record goes, not really.

Maybe we could have had a little bit more forethought into the cover because I think it could have looked a lot more powerful, especially given the skull. The first pictures we saw of that skull on a black background looked amazing. Then, they were just blurred, thrown over the book and the arch with the candle. It took away some of the power of the object itself because the actual sculpture piece that was made was really badass. But I feel honored that you’d want to put this in the Hall of Fame.

We were five kids who just went into the studio.

Sure, we had our sound, but I don’t think any of us thought it would go as far as it did. I’m really blown away and feel really blessed. A PETERSON:

Revised and Expanded Edition! 100 New Pages of Interviews and Photos!

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story by j. bennett (with additional reporting by David Fricke)

photo by ross halfin

Now the World Is Gone M the making of Metallica’s …And Justice For All

any will cry sacrilege, but we’re Metallica essentially proved that they didn’t actugonna say it anyway: …And Justice for ally need a bass player.

All is Metallica’s finest hour. Before the Whatever the case, Justice remains Metallica’s bitching and moaning begins, here’s a most complex and progressive album to date, a quick look at Justice by the numbers: monolithic mid-range juggernaut that produced nine songs, 65 ½ minutes, a bazillion parts per song the band’s first single (“One”) and, arguably, their and No Fucking Bass. Released on August 25, 1988 (a fastest song, like, ever (“Dyers Eve”). Lyrically, date immortalized in song by the Dillinger Escape Hetfield was on top of his game, writing viciously Plan’s “8.25.88”), …And Justice for All was Metallica’s efficient and prescient lyrics about the failings of DBTHRASHHOF first full-length with bassist Jason Newsted, who the legal system (the title track), the loss of freehad stepped in for the dearly departed Cliff Burton dom and civil liberties (“Eye of the Beholder”) and in 1986. All kinds of people will make all kinds the House Committee on Un-American Activities …And Justice of arguments for 1983’s Kill ’Em All, 1984’s Ride the (“The Shortest Straw”). Combined with the For All Lightning and 1986’s Master of Puppets—especially album’s savagely precise riffery and bottomless ELEKTRA, AUGUST 25, 1988 Master of Puppets—but many of those arguments power grooves, the overall effect is like a battery The last masterpiece are based upon the faulty assumptions that Justice of machine guns spitting serrated razor blades a) would have had audible bass lines if Burton had through the listener’s face. Metallica began the played them, and b) could have somehow been a better album if he Justice sessions at One on One studios in Los Angeles with Mike were alive. But the fact is that Burton couldn’t have played on … Clink, who was enjoying nascent superstardom as the producer of And Justice for All no matter how much anyone—including Metallica Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction. After recording a pair of covers vocalist/rhythm guitarist James Hetfield, drummer Lars Ulrich and with Clink, the band ended up calling in Flemming Rasmussen, the lead guitarist Kirk Hammett—may have wanted him to. In a way, Danish producer who had worked on Ride the Lightning and Master Burton’s absence confirms Justice’s supremacy in Metallica’s canon: of Puppets. What happened immediately before, during and after Because Newsted’s tracks were all but nonexistent on the album, is henceforth committed to Decibel’s Hall of Fame.

Metallica,

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the writing process for … And Justice for All? LARS ULRICH: We’d just come off the Puppets tour in Europe in the spring of ’87, so we get back to the Bay Area and everyone’s pretty fired up. Jason’s got a lot of spunk and is ready to rock. We were over at this new, neutral, kinda bland rehearsal joint with a bunch of other bands. We were just throwing some ideas around, like the “Blackened” riff. We were literally a couple of days into writing when we had this Saturday Night Live appearance scheduled. While we were rehearsing for the show, Hetfield is over at some skate park in Berkeley or some shit and fuckin’ breaks his arm.

So we had to cancel Saturday Night Live and then go on hiatus for a couple of months, pulling our plonkers and waiting for James to heal.

Meanwhile, we decided that the rehearsal joint was a little fancy and didn’t really have a vibe. I was renting a house in El Cerrito on the same street as the Metalli-pad where we wrote Lightning and Puppets—it was literally 200 yards down the street. So we checked in with the landlord lady and she said it was cool if we converted the garage into a little jam space. So me and Jason and a couple of others converted the garage while Hetfield was recovering. Then Donington ’87 came up, with Anthrax and Bon Jovi and all that, and we decided to do the first Garage Days EP. If you look at the back of that EP, there’s a bunch of pictures of us rehearsing, and those are inside the studio at that house. And all the pictures of us laying in the gutter were taken right outside my house, literally 10 feet from the garage. So we did the Garage Days EP, we did Donington and then

a couple of shows in Germany with Deep Purple.

Then we went straight back home and started writing in that garage.

JAMES HETFIELD: We were going to do the EP earlier on, but we had to blow it off because I broke my arm. Then we were building the garage. I remember trying to saw things with one arm and help build the thing—we were building the soundproof garage while my arm was healing.

And it got better, so we started jamming on those tunes. We did the EP thing, then we started working on the album. Maybe two months writing. It came together fairly quick. We had a lot of material, compared to Master where we didn’t have a whole lot. This time we had two years of shit just on tape. Lots of song titles.

KIRK HAMMETT: I remember sitting in that garage as the songs were being written and [4]

T H R A S H 33 H o F

METALLICA …AND JUSTICE FOR ALL Blackened power (l-r) Hammett, Hetfield, Ulrich, Newsted, before they were sandmen

having to write them all out on a piece of paper because they were so fucking complicated and progressive. They weren’t your standard sort of Metallica arrangement, which was verse A, verse B, chorus and then an instrumental section. We were beginning to break out of that arrangement style with Master of Puppets, but we totally flew off the handle with it for …And Justice for All. ULRICH: Part of what we were trying to do earlier at the old rehearsal space, which we’ve attempted to do so many times, was the famous, you know, “Let’s get everybody together and try to work on stuff.” So all four of us were there and we were working on that “Blackened” thing, but it just never really went anywhere. Over the course of Metallica’s career, whenever we get too many people to be part of the writing thing, it always ends up not so good. So when we came back after those shows in Germany, we thought maybe James and I should just run with it. So we sat down with our usual riff tapes and spent the fall of ’87 holed up out at my rental house on Carlson Boulevard in El Cerrito. I think “Blackened” came early; “Harvester [of Sorrow]” came early; “One” came early. I think “[The Shortest] Straw” and “Dyers Eve” came later. It’s a little bit of a blur there. We were just doing demos on the old Fostex. I remember when Kirk got married—I think it was in November or December of ’87—we made some demos because our A&R guy Mike Alago came out for the wedding. I remember I played him some of the songs, and right away he was like, “Whoa—this is like some next-level shit.” But the writing was pretty much me and James in the sweaty, stinky garage there on Carlson Boulevard.

JASON NEWSTED: I guess my best memory, when I break open those vaults, is James and I sitting in the bedroom of my one-bedroom apartment in San Pablo, CA, with my four-track machine—

the one I still do my stuff on—in front of us.

There’s a “Damage Inc.” poster on the wall. They had just put out that little Marshall mini-amp thing, the one that looks like a half-stack, but it’s tiny. We were playing through those, and I had the riff to “Blackened.” I showed James the fingering for it, and we just started working on the song. We both still had long hair, thought the same way and listened to the same music.

When I went away, he’d baby-sit my cats; when he went away, I’d baby-sit his cats. We both had one-bedroom apartments, and they were both equidistant on either side from Lars’ garage, where we made Garage Days. We were all living in the El Cerrito area, and we had a very gangoriented, Ramones-oriented thing happening.

We had that mentality very intact. Everybody was pretty much a straight-ahead metalhead. We were very determined to be that American band that brought this kind of music to people.

Were the songs intentionally written to be that complex, or did they just sort of end up that way?

A little bit of both, I’d say. In the late ’80s, everybody was really focused on their instruments. Shred guitar was really big. Guitar albums were really big, and the emphasis was on good chops. Not just guitar, but on all instruments. I remember Lars was taking some drum lessons, and he was really focused on playing well. We all were. I was listening to a lot of different guitar players—guys like [Joe] Satriani and [Steve] Vai were at their peak, and I think that had on a big influence on us wanting to play in a virtuosic kind of way. It was just the thinking at the time.

And because we were into playing well, the music came out at a more virtuosic level.

ULRICH: It’s always been an “ending up that way” kind of thing. There’s never been that much of a purposeful, it’s-gotta-be-this-one-way kind of HAMMETT:

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thing. Back then, we just tried to cram as much shit into the songs as possible, but it wasn’t like we felt like we had to keep cramming until they were nine minutes long. It was more like, “Wow—this is pretty cool.” We had the idea that there were slots on the record, and rather than each song being its own thing, it was designed to fit into the whole. It was instinctive. When you’re 24 years old, you don’t think that much; you just react. It’s your gut, and you just kind of roll with it. The beauty of growing older is that you have so much more on your horizon, but that’s also the cross you have to bear. I mean, we just spent the last two years trying to figure out how the fuck we did it back then. [Laughs] It’s not so easy.

HETFIELD: We could have gone on writing forever.

There were so many possibilities. We recorded [demos] all these different ways, but we’d always go back to the first one. But you feel like you haven’t really tried unless you’ve tried every possibility. It’s a good feeling at the end to say you’ve tried every possibility, but this one is the best—to have real confidence in it. When we were writing this album, we were just together with it. We didn’t have any outside opinions except for management, who’d be saying like, “Hey, you gotta write some shorter songs.” Then they finally heard it a few times and agreed it was pretty fucking out there, and dug it. It is pretty weird to be sitting in there by yourself, working on it, wondering, “Is it good? I like it, but is anybody else going to get into it?” I mean, we were writing for ourselves.

Were you nervous about trying to take on these massively complicated songs with a new guy in the band?

No, because Jason had been in the band for a little bit. We were waiting for him to write some big, epic stuff, but it never really came. It was kind of weird. It was a nonstarter, in retrospect. It was great that he was there and was enthusiastic about it, but he didn’t make any huge contributions. The only thing he really came up with was the riff in “Blackened,” and in retrospect, that was pretty much the biggest contribution he ever made to the band. I don’t know why that is, but it’s just kind of how the chips fell.

HAMMETT:

Was any of the Justice material around when Cliff was still alive?

ULRICH: That’s a good question. I don’t think so.

As legend has it, the only thing that was left over

from the old days was this thing called “The Hills Ran Red.” It was something that me and [Dave] Mustaine were kind of kicking around, but it never ended up on an album. At that time, we only wrote what would end up on the record. It’s not like nowadays, where we write 25 songs and whittle it down to 10. We kept it to the bare minimum.

HAMMETT: Well, on “To Live Is to Die,” one of the riffs in that song was his. And I can remember jamming to the riff from “Dyers Eve” on the Master of Puppets tour with him, because I had the main riff at that point. I remember playing it for him in a hotel room on that tour. But that was pretty much the only thing.

HETFIELD: The main riff [on “To Live Is to Die”] is Cliff’s riff. That was when we were writing Master of Puppets—that was one of his extra riffs we didn’t have room for. So we used it [on Justice]. It’s heavy as fuck, man. Then the buildup, that’s his, too. There’s one riff in there, too, that’s [from] way before Kill ’Em All. What do you remember about the recording sessions themselves?

ULRICH: It was ’87, so Guns N’ Roses were like the hottest thing around, so we were like, “OK, we wanna work with Mike Clink.” We started in January of ’88 in L.A., and, well, I’ll give you a quick story here. When we were recording Master of Puppets in the summer of ’85, we decided to record with Flemming Rasmussen, and he came out to L.A. and spent a week with me and Hetfield checking out all the studios we were most vibing on. We found a studio called One on One, and that was the number one choice to record Puppets, but we decided to go back to Denmark to record at Flemming’s studio because of the currency— we’d get way more bang for the buck. But we always knew that we wanted to make a record at One on One. So in January of ’88, we went down there with Mike Clink, and just like we did with Puppets, we started with a couple of cover songs.

We recorded [Budgie’s] “Breadfan” and [Diamond Head’s] “The Prince” to get the sounds and get warmed up. During the recording of those tracks, we realized that working with Clink wasn’t working out, and that we probably had to call up Fleming again. Clink was a super-nice guy, but the vibe just wasn’t happening. So Clink started the process and then Flemming took control of the recording session.

HAMMETT: I remember “Dyers Eve” was pretty difficult to get down, just because of the beats per minute. We were in the studio with Flemming Rasmussen, who we had recorded Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets with. So he was used to pushing us in a certain way, saying stuff, like, “Yeah— that’s metal!” But our chops were up—we were very capable at that point. And there wasn’t as much lag time between albums as maybe there is now.

ULRICH: We were at One on One for probably three or four months, mostly just me and James, and then Jason and Kirk would come in for their

parts. The Justice album was probably the epitome of the Lars and James Show, in terms of the writing, the recording, the mixing, the whole thing.

That was James and Lars just running the whole thing. Kirk came in to play his solos, and Jason came into play his bass for maybe a week or two, but the rest of it was me and James running everything with an iron fist.

NEWSTED: For Justice, my situation was very… awkward. I had nothing to do with any of the other guys in the band when they recorded their parts and they had nothing to do with me on the actual day—notice I said “day,” singular—that I went into the studio to record my bass parts.

I had recorded the Flotsam [and Jetsam] album [Doomsday for the Deceiver] maybe five months before I was onstage with Metallica. And then we went and recorded the Garage Days thing, where were all standing in the room together, just like we did with Flotsam, when we’d have our shit down to the point where you could play each song upside-down and backwards. So that was my mentality. When I went into record the bass for Justice, there was no decision on the producer

Listen, every solo Kirk Hammett has ever played has gotten my dick hard.

LA RS ULRICH yet—there was talk about Mike Clink, there was talk about Flemming, there was talk about somebody else who may have been interviewed or not.

So I was put in the room with Toby Wright, who at the time was second or third engineer at One on One. He was more like the guy who got coffee, the guy we’d burn doobs with and stuff. He went on to record Alice in Chains [along with Slayer, Korn and In Flames] and really made something of himself. But you have to go back in time and think about Toby’s stage of development and awareness and capabilities and prowess in the beginning of 1988.

I mean, I rolled my own SVT cabinet out of my truck that I drove down from San Francisco to L.A., unloaded my own gear in through the back, set it up in the studio and put the mic in front of the cabinet. Toby and I figured out a [direct-input] box… I didn’t even know about putting my amp head in the control room with me at that time. I just set up my amp, dialed it up like I wanted it and rocked it. When Toby told me I could sit in the control room with him so we could listen back as I was doing it, I was like, “Wow—that’s bitchin’.” I mean, that’s the level of naiveté that existed at that time. I just knew about performance and being ready and having D EC I B EL

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the chops down. I didn’t know about punch-ins or take two, take three, that kind of shit. I mean, I walked in, Toby rolled the tape and I played the songs. We started with “Blackened” because that’s the one I knew the best. The rest of the songs were like a double-black diamond level of difficulty in terms of technical demands. I wasn’t used to having 14 or 18 parts in a song, but I was ready for it. I can’t remember exactly how much we’d played the songs together before I went in there—I just remember learning the songs myself off the tapes that I had of the drums and the guitars. So I played the tape, recorded my parts, loaded up my shit and that was it.

Were you surprised that they weren’t there when you recorded your parts?

NEWSTED: I don’t know. I guess. It was such unknown territory to me. I was very much the new guy and I was hired partly because of my independent nature. But I really became very honed at that point by necessity. I really had to stand strong on my own two feet to prove a lot to a lot of people. The Garage Days EP was one thing—we were playing for fun, and you could hear the bass loud as shit. But with Justice, you can see the situation: There’s no producer, and the bass player is sent in with nobody there to say one thing or another about, “Maybe on that bit, we should back off,” or “Maybe we should try a harmony part here.” You know, just things you discuss as a band as you’re recording the basic parts of your orchestra. When it starts coming to the fancy stuff—the shakers and all that—whatever. But when you’re doing the bass and the drums, there should be somebody there saying, “That tone is good” or “That tone isn’t gonna work there”—any kind of explanation of how certain frequencies will work within the recording process. So that’s where it all started. And you know that whoever you let mix the record is who you’re gonna hear on the record. It’s always, “More me, more me” no matter who’s in charge.

It’s better to have a producer making a mix away from the band, someone who has no personal ties to anyone in the band.

You also have to keep in mind that we were continuously inebriated from ’87 through ’89. It was mostly drinking—I know that Kirk and Lars got into some powders and stuff like that, and I used to smoke some herb back then, but mostly I just drank. And that was part of the deal—we were pretty wasted, and those guys were trying to burn the candle at both ends, mixing the records and doing the shows at the same time.

Over time, I learned about frequencies and how they work in a band, where the guitar player’s frequency covers all the same frequencies as the bass guitar except for the fifth string. I started playing five-string bass in 1986—that’s a long time ago. I got the prototype five-string from ESP before anyone was even making them. You’ve only seen those become popular in the last [4]

METALLICA …AND JUSTICE FOR ALL few years, but I’ve been playing them for over 20—and there’s a reason for it. I had to find a way to get under the guitars. So over time, we figured it out and made it sound like a band, like something powerful. But early on, those were experimental years.

people who were hired to mix the record. Look at the credits—those were people who mixed radio songs. Those weren’t the guys who mixed Sepultura records. So all those factors must play a part in what we hear with our ears now. But it’d be cool as fuck for somebody else to go back and remix it, because I think it could be really fun to have a whole new album. Because that’s what it would be.

Kirk’s solos on Justice still stand out as some of the best of his career. What do you attribute that to?

Some fans are under the impression that the bass was intentionally turned down in the mix as part of the infamous hazing process Newsted was subjected to when he joined Metallica. Is that the case?

ULRICH: No, it wasn’t intentional. Like I was saying earlier, Justice was the James and Lars Show from beginning to end, but it wasn’t, “Fuck this guy—let’s turn his bass down.” It was more like, “We’re mixing, so let’s pat ourselves on the back and turn the rhythms and the drums up.”

But we basically kept turning everything else up until the bass disappeared. [Laughs] HAMMETT: The reason you can’t hear the bass so well is because the bass frequencies in Jason’s tone kinda interfered with the tone that James was trying to shoot for with his rhythm guitar sound, and every time the two blended together, it just wasn’t happening. So the only thing left to do was turn the bass down in the mix. It was unfortunate, but for some reason or another, that album is known for the low-end being there without the bass being very high up in the mix. It was an experiment, too—we were totally going for a dry in-your-face sound, and some people really like that sound. A lot of the newer-generation bands, especially, think that album sounds great. But at the end of the day, it was an experiment. I’m not really sure it was 100 percent successful, but it is a unique sound that that album has.

NEWSTED: Metallica has always recorded in a very different manner than any type of popular rock or country music, where the drums and the bass are recorded first and you put the melodies and the guitars and all that stuff on afterwards.

For the entire existence of Metallica—and the only band Lars has ever been in is Metallica—he has had only the rhythm guitar and the vocal coming out of his monitor at 130 decibels behind his head. There’s no bass in his monitor at all, so it’s not a situation where the drummer and the bass player go together on groove, like in any band I’ve ever listened to. So that was real different for me to get used to and for any bass player to deal with. And Robert [Trujillo] probably has to deal with it to this day. There’s just no bass coming out of the drummer’s monitor. So you have to think of that as part of the equation.

But to answer your question about the intentional thing? Maybe they were still exorcising that thing that they were still trying to deal with and obviously didn’t deal with until like 2002 or something, when they finally came to grips

I had nothing to do with any of the other guys in the band when they recorded their parts and they had nothing to do with me on the actual day–notice I said “day,” singular–that I went into the studio to record my bass parts.

JAS O N N EWST E D with what had been taken from them. That was still present, absolutely. They didn’t know how to channel those feelings and emotions at that time. It wasn’t something they had the capacity for. When you get young guys together and they all become millionaires by age 25, you miss a few developmental stages that everyone else—people who live a less-accelerated lifestyle—go through.

So the developmental things could’ve played a part in them just keeping the bass down rather than going through and listening to what was played good and what wasn’t played good. Being drunk at three o’clock in the afternoon, going into some studio in upstate New York with a couple of cats who are getting paid real good and could really give a shit about being there or not at sometimes… you know what I mean? Guys who were assigned to make a certain product sound a certain way. This was a chance for Metallica to get on the radio, so they’re mixing with that kind of thing in mind—those were the kind of TH RASH HoF

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ULRICH: Listen, every solo Kirk Hammett has ever played has gotten my dick hard. Basically, since Kill ’Em All, I’ve been the one who sits there with Kirk going, “That works,” or “Maybe that doesn’t work so well.” There was always this odd kind of thing with James where he wouldn’t be part of that because, well, I guess it was just a guitar thing. So it was bestowed upon me—and happily so—I’ve pretty much sat there with Kirk for every guitar solo he’s ever played in the studio. Me and him have always had a vibe, and we’ve always been inspired by Ritchie Blackmore and a big dose of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and a little Jimmy Page thrown in for good measure. It’s been the one thing that was just kind of me and him that Hetfield was never involved in. I think the solo on “To Live Is to Die” is among the best he’s ever played. I think some of the stuff on “The Shortest Straw” is incredible. Some of the stuff in “Blackened” is pretty psycho sideways, kinda nutty. And obviously the stuff on “One” is great.

But my favorite is probably the solo on “Live/Die.” HAMMETT: I can remember not having enough time to play the guitar solos because we overextended ourselves and committed to doing the Monsters of Rock tour, so we had to finish the recording by a certain date to go on tour with Van Halen, Scorpions, Dokken and Kingdom Come. I had a week, maybe a week and a half to do all the solos.

The first week or so moved at a great pace, but then things started to slow down and it became crunch time. I remember having to stay up all night playing solos and getting to the point where I was so fatigued that it was becoming difficult for me to bend notes. So, emotionally, it got pretty raw at the end because I was so tired and pissed off. I wanted to be able to play a certain way, and I had to practically wrench it out of myself. And I think that has a lot to do with the way the solos actually sound.

Did the album title come from the Al Pacino movie of the same name? Obviously, the theme of the title track is similar to the theme of the film.

ULRICH: Yeah, it did, but it was an afterthought.

We’d come up with the titles and the ideas for the songs and then we’d reference other material. So it wasn’t like we’d watched …And Justice for All and went, “That’s a great thing to write a song about.” It was more like we thought …And Justice for All was a great title and a great subject, went looking for inspiration afterwards, and then checked out the movie. The same thing happened

Singles going shreddy Assloads of Justiceera rarities, of varying quality

Your lyrics—especially on Justice—really served to distinguish Metallica from other metal bands at that time. What got you into writing about mental and social ills, the failings of the legal system, censorship, and the like?

Drinking.

[Laughs [Laughs] Really—drinking and thinking, seeing what’s going on around me. [At] some of the early gigs, I’d get real mad [because] not only weren’t these people into it, but they didn’t want to give a shit. They didn’t acknowledge we were even there. They were too busy posing. That made me real mad, like, “Hey, fuck—we’re here!” It’s not me sitting and reading the paper, going, “Oh, I have to write about terrorists; it’s a good subject, real popular now.”

HETFIELD:

with “One.” That was a title we had, and we had the idea of writing a song about a guy with no arms and no legs. Like, what’s it like to be in that vegetable kind of state? You’re just a living, breathing mind. We mentioned the idea to our manager, Cliff Burnstein, and he said, “You should really check out Johnny Got His Gun. It’s about what you’re saying.” When I told him about our idea for “The Shortest Straw,” about blacklisting and being ostracized and the whole thing that went on in the ’50s, he told us to check out a book called Naming Names [by Victor Navasky]. So they were always afterthoughts—the source material was secondary to the original ideas.

HETFIELD: The song “One,” I remember my brother telling me this thing a long, long time ago about the guy [in the song], a veteran. And we were sitting around with Cliff, he was asking us if we had any ideas for songs. And I mentioned, “There’s this weird one about a guy who has no arms and no legs.” And he said, “Oh, that’s that book, Johnny Got His Gun.” [I was like], “What, oh yeah? I’ve got to read that thing.” Then I got really into the author [Dalton Trumbo], who was blacklisted. And Cliff named a few other books, the Naming Names thing [and] the huge Commie scare that went with it.

What was the lyric-writing process like?

At that point, [Hetfield’s] lyrics were starting to get very autobiographical—moreso than the first three albums. I’ve been saying this a lot lately, because I truly feel this, but it’s hard for me to comment on James’ lyrics because he and he alone knows what they represent.

HETFIELD: I don’t sit down and write poetry. The songs start out with a riff. And then there’s a title. The title is basically the start. The title we come up with is the result of something we’re feeling, or something we’re interested in. It might be a few phrases here and there, and I’ll make that the strong point of the song, the first line or the chorus. And I build on from that. On Justice, I was a little slow coming with lyrics. But once I started, it just started to roll.

HAMMETT:

“Dyers Eve” is addressed to your parents, who were Christian Scientists.

They’d sit around and tell stories about someone who got healed without medicine. I remember this one little girl, she broke her arm, and they were saying, “She didn’t need a cast, she didn’t need anything.” And if you looked at her arm, it was all fucked up—she couldn’t use it properly. I couldn’t believe it. If you’re going to believe in God, don’t you realize God gave you the brains to be able to fix something like that right? I could not get into that at all, and I think that messed me up early on.*

HETFIELD:

Was “Eye of the Beholder” written about what was going on with the PMRC—music censorship, warning stickers on albums—at the time?

“Eye of the Beholder”... is... look, they all tie [together] in some way. With the [previous] albums, there is always something there that ties them together. And then people say, “Oh, you gonna write another concept album?” It ain’t no concept album. I sit down and write and things just tie together somehow. Like the freedom thing on this record. “Eye” was not directly written about the PMRC, but overall, how your freedom gets screwed with without you knowing about it.

HETFIELD:

Whose idea was it to do the Wizard of Oz chant at the beginning of “Frayed Ends of Sanity”?

ULRICH: That was James. It was just one of those things, you know? “Oh-wee-Oh,” like angry fucks marching in your head. But that was all James. I wasn’t particularly well-versed in The Wizard of Oz at that point. [Laughs] HAMMETT: It just sounded heavy. And the riff

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after that, James told me he got from watching a marching band during a football game. Isn’t that the craziest thing?

Before “One,” it seemed like Metallica were adamantly against making videos. How did that change?

Well, we never said we wouldn’t do one. That’s often misperceived. Our attitude was that videos sucked and we weren’t gonna make some fuckin’ thing with a bunch of chicks dancing around and us driving Ferraris down Sunset Strip. There was a lot of that at that time. But it came to the point where we could either make a video that wasn’t that, or we could not make one at all. So we ended up making a video that was just so much not that.

NEWSTED: I remember when we were trying to figure out whether [making a video] was the right thing to do. The managers were saying it was the time to strike, and I have to admit I was intrigued by the process. At that point, we’d seen [Iron Maiden’s] “The Number of the Beast” and a couple of other cool videos from our heroes, you know? We thought, “We can do something like this.” I still think the “One” video is timeless, man. I think it was a good decision to spend the money to get the rights for the film [Johnny Got His Gun] and all that stuff. There are some moments, even though they weren’t hugely innovative, there are still moments that set standards. Like the shot with the full freakin’ head shaven and the bang coming on the downbeat? I mean, c’mon man!

Fuckin’ eternal. Nobody had seen that kind of shit on television. People were going, “Just imagine what that dude’s neck is gonna feel like when he’s 45.”

HAMMETT: I remember watching the video for the first time and thinking, “Wow—this is like nothing else that’s on MTV right now. I can’t believe they’re actually playing it.” That was mindblowing to me. I remember sitting there one night, watching MTV and all this crap they were playing, and then our video came on. When it was over, the VJ came on and said, “Wow, that’s depressing. On a happier note, here’s Huey Lewis and the News!”

HAMMETT:

The album went to number six on the Billboard chart and was nominated for a Grammy.

How did that change things for the band?

Some friends of mine called me up and went, “Hey man—I hear you went platinum.

Just quit and come home, give up and start a new thing. The new thing is to quit.” Can you imagine [the headline]? “Metallica Goes Platinum and Quits.” Then the next day’s paper: “Metallica Fans All Quit Their Jobs, Sit at Home, Drink Beer, Watch TV.” Yeah, “the new thing.”* HAMMETT: I can remember being pretty shocked when I was talking to a record company person after the record was finished, right before HETFIELD:

METALLICA …AND JUSTICE FOR ALL it was actually released. He was like, “Yeah, man—it’s probably gonna sell a million albums in the first couple of weeks.” And I was like, “No way.” And he was like, “Yes way.” I thought it was too heavy and too progressive and there was no way it would sell that much. But you know what? It sold more in those first two weeks than he even talked about. We were in Europe when it was released, and it charted really high—the highest we’d ever charted in the States. It was insane. We just couldn’t believe it. But I think it had a lot to do with the fact that we toured a lot behind Master of Puppets, we were on the Ozzy tour and, you know, I think Cliff Burton’s passing kind of put the spotlight on the band in a very unfortunate sort of way. So the name was out there, we had a new album and we had this video. And it all just came together. All the right things happened at the right time. It was just our time, I guess.

NEWSTED: That was the beginning of the household name thing. And now, 20 years later, you see some kid with a Metallica shirt in every third movie that comes out. It’s really something how it’s permeated the world culture. At the time, it was very much a feeling of waiting for someone to wake me up and go, “Ha ha!

Gotcha!” But it all went on, and it had to do with preparedness and the fact that none of us wanted to be the weak link. It was beyond all for one and one for all. My being the new guy was multiplied on them because they had to set the example while staying a step ahead of me. And I was all about first one in, last one out. It worked perfectly—they had to have someone who was that dedicated. There was no two ways about it. There were only three other people up for the gig, and if either one of them had got it, it just would not have been the same thing. I know those people, and it’s not a dis to them—it’s just facts. I mean, I knew all those Metallica songs before anything ever happened, before any of that horrific shit came about. I knew them through and through, so it was meant to be. I was already the biggest fan.

I was the guy who was supposed to get it.

for cover songs now—they got a Grammy for “Whiskey in the Jar.” “Stone Cold Crazy” got a Grammy, too. [Laughs] At that time, there were probably about 500 albums being released every week, with eight to 10 songs on each, and they’re giving out Grammys for cover songs? Whoa.

For years, you never played some of the songs on Justice live. In fact, you still haven’t played “Frayed Ends” or “To Live Is to Die” in their entirety. Why is that?

ULRICH: Halfway through the Justice tour, we came offstage one night—we’d just played “Blackened,” “One,” “Eye of the Beholder,” “...And Justice for All” and “Harvester”—and we were like, “This shit is fucked up to play.”

It was really difficult. Every night became an exercise in not fucking up—our whole purpose was to not fuck up. We just decided that it was stupid. It was our first go-round in the arenas, and we were playing with our minds, not our bodies or our guts. It wasn’t physical; it was mental. I remember Bob Rock called it “math metal.” So we were like, “Enough of this.”

We’d taken that side of Metallica to the end— there was no place else to go with it. In May of 1990, when me and James started writing for The Black Album, we listened to the Misfits, the Rolling Stones, AC/DC—all these bands that wrote three-minute songs.

HAMMETT: One of the reasons is that we just haven’t gotten around to it. We’re actually thinking about playing “Frayed Ends” on this tour coming up. But it really is just because we haven’t gotten around to it.

ULRICH: When we were on tour for The Black Album, we did the famous “Justice Medley,” where we did some of “Frayed Ends.” And on The Black Album tour in Europe, we did a medley of “[The Call of ] Ktulu” “To Live Is to Die” and “Orion” or something. I think we broke out “Shortest Straw” for the first time on the Guns N’ Roses tour in ’92. And we didn’t break out “Dyers Eve” until the St. Anger tour in ’04. That was just a matter of demand, really. People were saying, “These fucking pussies can’t play that shit anymore.”

Do you have a favorite song on the album?

“Blackened,” of course. That’s my song.

I really love “The Shortest Straw” and “Dyers Eve.” Of course, I could go on and say that I really like “One” and “Blackened” as well. [Laughs] ULRICH: I don’t know if I have a favorite— they’re all cool in their own way. But I think “The Shortest Straw” is one of the most underrated. I think that song is great. I love playing it. It’s spunky and fucked up and it’s got a lot of attitude. I wish we’d play it more, but for some reason, James doesn’t like to sing it. And what am I gonna do, sing it myself?

NEWSTED:

When [“One”] was over, the VJ came on and said, “Wow, that’s depressing.

On a happier note, here’s Huey Lewis and the News!”

KIRK HA MMET T

The fact that Justice was nominated for the Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Grammy in 1989, but lost to Jethro Tull’s Crest of a Knave remains one of the most outrageous fuck-ups in Grammy history, considering that the Tull album was neither metal nor hard rock and was released in 1987. Looking back, do you still find it shocking?

NEWSTED: Yeah, awesome, right? How perfect was that? I mean, we’re still talking about it 20 fuckin’ years later, that’s how shocking it was. C’mon! It was absolutely nonsensical. And Metallica spent the next nine years digging themselves out the hole. They get Grammys

HAMMETT:

In retrospect, is there anything you’d change about that record?

ULRICH: I’m not a great believer in that. At one point, somebody said, “Should we remix it with bass?” That’s the kind of thing you entertain for maybe nine seconds, but it shouldn’t happen.

It’s always about trying to be as in the moment as possible. And then you have to let go of it. You have to disown it.

HAMMETT: You know, I think what it stands for is what it was supposed to stand for. What it represents is what it was supposed to represent.

Maybe I’d turn the bass up. [Laughs] There was this one guy who actually added bass to it. He gave me a copy of it maybe 10 or 12 years ago, and I just thought it was the most hilarious thing. He took it upon himself to add bass.

NEWSTED: Yeah—that we stood in the room together and played it. If we’d done that, we wouldn’t have to worry about any of the other extenuating circumstances. A

*From “Heavy Metal Justice” by David Fricke From Rolling Stone, January 12, 1989. © Rolling Stone LLC 1989. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by Permission.

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Corrode to the Top the making of Megadeth’s Rust in Peace

R

ust in Peace, as you will learn, wasn’t written in a day. It wasn’t even written in the studio— well, Dave Ellefson’s “Dawn Patrol” was birthed there—over many months, like so many records of the day were. Rust in Peace was crafted over time in dank, sometimes strange places, its riffs, rhythms, lyrics and clever nuances honed to perfection by two different Megadeth lineups. The sheer amount of blood, sweat and tears—as well as cocaine, heroin and other illicit substances—that went into making Megadeth’s fourth fulllength is unprecedented. In fact, it probably shouldn’t have been. After very dark days—failed mega-tours, a revolving cast of drummers and guitarists, and several mortgages worth of blow—following Rust in Peace predecessor So Far, So Good... So What!, it’s a major miracle that Megadeth managed to even function, let alone rehearse, write DBTHRASHHOF and record what is arguably one of the best thrash metal records of all time. Yes, for Dave Mustaine, Ellefson and new drummer Rust in Peace CAPI TOL RE CORDS, 1990 Nick Menza, the phoenix had risen from the ashes at the most opportune moment.

Nuclear o.g. thrash assault Partly out of determination, partly from a fathomless well of inspiration, and partly out of dumb luck after Mustaine acquiesced and listened to—at his then-manager’s suggestion— Dragon’s Kiss, the solo record by six-string wonderkid Marty Friedman. With Friedman in the lineup, the new, nearly sober Megadeth weren’t just another iteration of Mustaine’s now-infamous machine. They were unstoppable!

There is no hyperbole to Megadeth 1990. They were, to use an appropriate metaphor, nuclear. The quartet [4]

Megadeth,

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MEGADETH RUST IN PEACE

was an inseparable unit, militarized to shock and awe. “Holy Wars... The Punishment Due,” “Five Magics,” “Hangar 18,” “Take No Prisoners,” “Tornado of Souls” (co-penned with Ellefson) and pièce de résistance “Rust in Peace... Polaris” weren’t just good songs.

They were great songs. Genre-defining works of complex and thrilling origin. It took us two years to chisel and position the Hall’s fourth pillar—Slayer, Anthrax and Metallica having been wheel-and-pullied upright years ago by venerable word architect J. Bennett—but now that Megadeth and Rust in Peace are in their rightful place, the Hall and its hallowed membership can finally withstand any attack. Take no prisoners! Take no shit!

What do you think Megadeth had to prove on Rust in Peace?

We had a lot to prove. A lot of people were talking shit about us. The drug problems we had. That we couldn’t back it up.

We played, though. Even if we were high, we played. No matter how bad of shape we were in, we played. It wasn’t until things got really bad that we started canceling stuff. Fortunately, the Rust in Peace era was great. Around Rust in Peace, there were a lot of bands vying for our position.

They knew we were one of the best. I mean, who

DAVE MUSTAINE:

else was there? When Marty [Friedman] came into the band, I was ready to say, “We’re back with a vengeance!” I knew the record was going to be revered. And here’s why: All anyone thinks about is the studio process. They don’t know about the months and months I spent writing the record.

I mean, we were struggling, though. Junior [a.k.a. Dave Ellefson] probably had the worst [drug] problem out of all of us. Nobody knew about it. Everybody knew about me. We had to cancel the Monsters of Rock festivals because of TH RASH HoF

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Ellefson. He was a junkie. Junior, our manager and the agent came up with this cockamamie bullshit story that he had slipped in the tub and sprained his wrist. So, we went home. We missed seven soccer stadiums with Iron Maiden.

So, going back into the studio with these guys?

I wasn’t looking forward to it. But we were still jamming. We ended up making a change—going with Nick [Menza] and later Marty—and while we made the change with Nick, we couldn’t find a guitar player. We were a three-piece. We would go to this rehearsal place every night. We’d go there and work. And work. Inside my guitar case, where the picks go, I had a mirror, cocaine and heroin. Same with Junior’s. Nick smoked pot like it was going out of style and loved to drink Heineken. All we would do there is get wasted and play the songs over and over.

DAVE ELLEFSON: Some of it [Rust in Peace] was written with me, Dave and former drummer Chuck Behler. We were writing and rehearsing songs over by Dodger Stadium at a hellhole of a rehearsal space called Hully Gully. I think the Red Hot Chili Peppers were also rehearsing there. We were just baby bands on EMI/Capitol at the time. We were coming off the So Far, So Good...

So What! thing. The whole band had ground to a halt. Dave and I got new management, got cleaned up, and during that process Chuck was let go and Nick had come into the group. Nick was a fireball. A powerhouse, hungry for it all.

He was born and bred in the Valley in L.A., so he had a total Valley dude attitude. He definitely had something to prove. He wanted to come in, kick ass and rip faces off. It was good for us, because that mindset helped us through our own life transition of getting things—I mean, us and the band—back on track again. We spent the summer and fall of ’89 with Nick Menza in a rehearsal studio in North Hollywood writing the rest of the record. At that point, because we were coming off of the stuff we were coming off of, we were pissed off, snotty, mad, like frickin’ hornets in a hornet’s nest. All of a sudden, the tempos got fast and the music got ferocious.

NICK MENZA: I worked for the band for almost two years as a tech for Chuck [Behler]. Before that, a guy named Neal Schafer, who was the soundman for Megadeth on Peace Sells…, had called me and said, “Hey, do you want to go play drums with this band Megadeth? They’re going to do a drum change. Maybe you should come down and see them at Santa Monica Civic.” I went down with another friend of mine. I met Dave and Dave Ellefson, under the pretenses that I’d come in playing drums. Next thing you know, I’m driving the equipment truck up to Tacoma, Washington. I was like, “Wait a minute! How did I end up driving the truck?” [Laughs] So, I teched

LORRAINE WEBB

Downstroke Patrol Mustaine selects the nuclear option in London, circa ‘91

for two years until I couldn’t take it anymore. I was like, “Forget this! I’m not going to do this!” I just couldn’t take it anymore. I ended up quitting right before they went to Japan on So Far, So Good... So What! When they came back from that, I got a call from Dave and he said, “Hey man. Are you ready?” I said, “Ready for what?” I started rehearsing right after that. ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy’ was the very first thing I did in the studio.

We rehearsed for a couple of years after that.”

MARTY FRIEDMAN: I don’t think any of us had to prove anything. We just did what we did naturally. I knew right off the bat that the chemistry was going to be at the very least interesting, and most likely explosive.

Were you ever concerned how the follow-up to So Far, So Good... So What! would sound?

I didn’t think like that. I had heard about Thriller selling tens of millions of copies and then when Michael Jackson followed up with Bad, it had only sold 8 million copies. I was thinking, “Oh, poor baby.” Only 8 million? Fuck!

MENZA: It had to be better. I knew it was going to be better. Just because of the lineup change.

Marty and myself are more players than the other two guys before us. I don’t look at music.

I listen to it. There’s a whole image thing that goes with it. I was always more concerned with playing my instrument and just being the best I could be. A lot of times, the guys would say, “Dude, relax. You’re way too amped up on this stuff. Slow down and think on what you’re doing.” [Laughs] There was a lot of competition at the time with bands that were out there: Anthrax, Slayer, and all these bands putting out slamming albums. Rust in Peace definitely has the hunger on it. It’s progressive, it’s rocking. You can listen to the whole album from beginning to end. It’s pretty slamming.

FRIEDMAN: No, as a matter of fact I thought that [So Far, So Good... So What!] was not nearly as good as Peace Sells…, sonically or musically.

MUSTAINE:

What do you remember about Nick’s audition?

Nick came into the band on a recommendation by Neal Schafer. Neal was more famous for his sexual escapades than his sound mixing, but I digress. He came up to me and said, “Hey, man. I know this guy who’d be perfect for your band.” He knew we were having problems with Chuck. He said, “Yeah, and he plays guitar and sings, too.” I finally said to him, “Really? Well, I don’t need a fucking guitar player, genius.” So, Nick Menza shows up. He’s got these glasses. They look like Ernie’s glasses from My Three Sons. I was a little off-put because of his glasses. They were like Coke bottles. I said to him, “Dude, you’re about as goofy-looking as Buddy Holly. You can’t be in Megadeth.” He took his glasses off and he looked great. Handsome guy. He had great physique. He’d go out there in his bike shorts and girls would check him

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out because after he was done playing he’d be almost erect. Girls would go nuts. He went from an uninspiring guy to this electric personality. I knew he was the right guy.

But how’d he get the audition? We needed a drum tech. He was hired as a drum tech and worked for a long time. Every day, he’d say to me, “Dave, when are you going to get that fat pig off the drum set?” I was like, “Oh boy! Don’t say that. If Chuck ever hears you calling him a fat pig, he’s going to lose it.” I didn’t want Chuck quitting on me, even though I knew his days were numbered. Finally, we had the last straw with Chuck. We were in Nottingham, England.

We were about to do our soundcheck and Chuck was gone. He had found the bikers at the club and they had crystal meth and coke. So, he was gone. We couldn’t find him anywhere. So, I said, “OK, Nick. You’re up!” At Rock City in Nottingham is where Nick had his audition.

MENZA: The first time I jammed with Dave was in Europe at a Hammersmith Odeon at a soundcheck because Chuck didn’t show up. He was late or something happened. I don’t remember exactly what it was. We played “Holy Wars…”

Inside my guitar case, where the picks go, I had a mirror, cocaine and heroin.

DAVE MUSTA INE Dave just had the riff, so we started jamming to that. I remember Dave said, “What songs do you know?” I said, “I know all the songs.” He wasn’t sure if I was telling the truth or not, but I did know all the songs, pretty much. I was a fan of the band before I joined. I remember I got off the drum kit and Dave shook my hand. I said, “What?” He said, “You know what!” That was the start of it. That’s what planted the seed in Dave’s mind. I guess he thought, “Nick’s actually a good drummer.” [Laughs] That was around ’88, I think. I remember my dad was in Europe at the time doing some jazz stuff. So, I told him to come down to the show.

That I was with a band called Megadeth. He came out there and saw me pushing road cases across the floor. He’s like, “What the hell are you doing?!” I neglected to tell him I was just the drum tech. I told my dad, “Dad, relax. Things are going to work out.”

ELLEFSON: I remember we were doing a warmup show for So Far, So Good... So What! This was mid-’87, I think. Somewhere down in southern California. Dave wasn’t able to make the soundcheck. It was me, Chuck and Jeff [Young] runD EC I B EL

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ning through some tunes. Nick jumped up and started singing. I was like, “This guy’s got some fucking balls, man. Jumping up and singing right now. He’s the fucking drum tech!” I knew he was a great player. A seasoned drummer. But that was my first experience with Nick. I was a little put off. Assuming he could walk up to Dave’s mic. Nick was very cocky. He [was] always [like], “Fuck that! I can play better than that!”

But he was cool. He wasn’t mean-spirited. He just had a very high self-assessment. [Laughs] When we were making the change, I checked out Nick. He was playing everything really fast. I was like, “Geez, dude. You’re playing these songs too fast. You gotta slow down.” He definitely had something to prove. He had been in bands out in the Valley and in North Hollywood. He was like a young stallion. He just wanted to get out in the yard and run. Very much unbridled. Being under Dave’s direction was good for him. It gave Nick structure. At the same time, Nick’s attitude and ferociousness—being dangerous and out on the edge—was exactly what the band needed.

I think that’s exactly why people like the Rust in Peace lineup: Dave and I had an established a relationship. I was the rooted, solid guy. Dave was who he was. Marty was this beautiful guitar player. Nick was the thrash metal version of Tommy Lee. Of course, they like the music, but it’s something deeper. It’s personalities on the record. We were explosive, unpredictable and always on the rails.

Lee Altus and Eric Meyer auditioned for the empty guitar player spot. What did Friedman have that Altus and Meyer didn’t?

Who? Lee from Heathen? Who the fuck is Eric Meyer? I don’t even know who those people are. I would’ve remembered them. Let’s put it this way, in all seriousness: If these guys auditioned for Megadeth and if they were good enough, they would’ve been in the band. No one came to us that we didn’t send packing. So, if some motherfucker says they auditioned for us and that they were too good to be in Megadeth to stay in their piss-ant bands, then so be it. All I know is we had a bunch of people who come down to audition and Marty got the gig. End of story.

ELLEFSON: Oh, man. There were a lot of auditions.

One guy I remember was from Jag Panzer, which is funny ’cause Chris Broderick is now in Megadeth, but he came in with white pants. Nice guy, decent guitar player, wrong band! Another guy came up from San Diego. He was all cocky. Steve Cox was his name. He’d whip his cord against the fingerboard like Ritchie Blackmore. Me and Dave had our wireless packs on. If one of us turned around and turned off our wireless pack, it was hidden code for “Audition’s over!” Dave would turn his off and we [referring to himself and Nick] would have to be the diplomats to get the guy out of the room.

Like, “Yeah, Dave’s done with you, we’re done [4] MUSTAINE:

MEGADETH RUST IN PEACE with you, so thanks for coming by!” I was the Ambassador of Diplomatic Relations.

[Laughs] MENZA: Uh, I only remember some of the auditions. We auditioned this guy Steve Cox, who came in and started playing one of Dave’s solos. Dave looks at him and said, “Whoa! Stop. Stop. What are you doing?!”

The guy said, “I’m playing the solo.” Dave said, “No. That’s my solo.” He was a good player, but was totally overzealous. I could tell he just wanted to play. Dave wasn’t having any of it. I think he irritated Dave. We had so many guys.

A lot of guys were really nervous. It was brutal.

There’s some video footage of some of the guys floating around. Marty was clearly the most prepared playing-wise of all the guys who auditions.

Do you remember saying, “[Marty Friedman] looked like a poser to me, because his hair was two different colors”?

Yeah, I said that. I remember he came into the audition. He was wearing vile shoes.

The knees were ripped out of his pants, and he was with this guy Tony DeLeonardo, who ended up being my guitar tech. He comes in with this Carvin guitar and this amateurish stack. So, I told Tony, “Listen, go over there, put him [Marty] into there, patch him into this A/B box, and when it’s time for the solo, step on the box, the other amplifier will click on and we’ll hear if he can play the solo right.” He did the solo and it was right. It wasn’t perfect, but it was right. We did another song, and it was right. We knew we’d be OK with this kid.

I remember talking to my manager, saying, “This is the guy. But his name’s Friedman. That ain’t very metal. Can we get him to change his last name? A stage name?” My manager said, “Well, he’s already an established guitar player.”

Well, I went back in the room and told him he got the gig, but he had to get his hair fixed and get some new clothes so he didn’t look like a bum. We also got him a car, which, of course, he immediately crashed it into every fucking parking pillar underneath the apartment we rented for him. Before that, he was living in a real shithole. I went to his apartment. There was a mass of dirty laundry, but piles of candy. Why buy new clothes when you can eat candy? [Laughs] The whole experience with Marty was really enjoyable. It really ended ugly, but the Rust in Peace thing was great. We were untouchable.

MUSTAINE:

What do you remember about Marty’s auditions for Megadeth?

He was an incredible musician. Very willing to do what it took. I remember when he came into the studio—I had been sober—I felt I had lost grasp of my trade. I was far behind where I should be. I should be as good as Marty

MUSTAINE:

Friedman was. I wasn’t. So, I went and I got loaded. I fell off the wagon. I looked at him and said to myself, “Oh my god! This guy’s so good.

That’s it for me.” That was right in the middle of when we were in the studio recording. I went off on a bender. I couldn’t believe he was that good. I was like, “Shit, if he can do it, I can.” But I wasn’t as good as I could’ve been. I was really pissed. I didn’t want to become a junkie again, but it was frustrating to see someone that good.

He was a motivator.

ELLEFSON: I remember sitting down and listening to his solo in “Tornado of Souls.” I was in the B room at Rumbo Recorders. It was like, “Holy shit! That is absolutely amazing!” That whole solo was a song within a song. A composition within the composition. I turned around to look at him, and said, “Oh my god! That was frickin’ amazing!”

Nick’s attitude and ferociousness was exactly what the band needed.

I think that’s exactly why people like the Rust in Peace lineup: Dave and I had an established a relationship. Marty was this beautiful guitar player. Nick was the thrash metal version of Tommy Lee.

DAVE E LLE FSO N Even though I was broke and borderline homeless, I was smart to hire a good guitar tech, as just coming in and playing looks a hell of a lot better than standing around tuning your guitar, hauling your amp in there, and then fussing with knobs and stuff. I think they liked the fact that I didn’t guitar-wank all over the songs like the other guys who auditioned probably did.

No dive-bombs, no overplaying or showing off, I just played ’em with common sense. Far from perfectly, I’m sure, but I would guess more realistically than other guys. Also, and importantly, right off the bat it wasn’t awkward just hanging with the guys at all. It kinda felt like my high school band.

MENZA: Marty’s a guitar wizard. A real technician.

FRIEDMAN:

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Once Dave showed him what to play, he’d be like, “Yeah, yeah, I got it.” He just nails stuff. We did a lot of down-picking stuff as [opposed] to butterflypicking. Marty would try the butterfly-picking and Dave would say, “Dude, no. You got to downpick it all.” Marty would say, “Christ! It’s killing my arm!” “Tornado of Souls” is all down-picking.

There’s no butterfly-picking in that song. Dave’s notorious for down-picking. You get more pressure applied to the song. It’s more exciting energy-wise when you down-pick it.

Also, Marty, you were a seasoned musician by the time you joined Megadeth. What was it like playing with Megadeth at the time?

I already had my own thing going on musically, but I still learned a lot! At the beginning, adapting to Dave’s unique rhythm playing was a big hurdle, but worth the effort. Also I was used to playing six-minute guitar solos and quadruple-tracked harmonies in my previous bands, so I had to make the 45-second solos within the Megadeth songs really count. When it came to playing live, we tore it up every single night. I loved touring with the band right from the start.

FRIEDMAN:

Was the chemistry as good underneath as it was on the surface?

I think the chemistry was really good for a lot of reasons. But as success started to sink in and Marty started to become a super guitar hero—he was great before, but he was only popular with the Mike Varney-type guys—I guess the chemistry started to change. Marty went from this little GIT guy to a world-class player in Megadeth.

MENZA: I had just come from playing with Slayer for a month before I got into Megadeth, so I was on 10. Playing with Slayer is like this: Everything you know about drumming, forget it! That was a total workout for me. Everything I did after that was easy. That drumming was just insane.

I was having trouble holding the spit in my mouth. Rabid-dog-playing-drums kind of thing.

I wanted incorporate as much of that as I could into Megadeth.

FRIEDMAN: I thought it was great between us, and I loved the clean “guy next door who happens to play intense thrash metal” image we had. I was proud to be in the band.

MUSTAINE:

Megadeth’s drug affiliations were public. How much of a factor did drugs play by the time the Rust in Peace album cycle started?

I thought everything was just fine and normal. Of course, I was very blind to whatever drug problems were going on. Because of his “band leader” reputation that I had heard about, it was a bit curious to me that Dave was almost never around while I was recording guitars on Rust in Peace. A few times he showed up to the studio and rather than ask about how the tracking was going or whatever, he would just

FRIEDMAN:

Nuke does a body good Vic lords over vintage Rust tee

breeze in and ask me to borrow $100. I thought it was kind of odd for a guy who pulls up in a Benz to ask a guy he barely knows—and who, three months prior, was homeless—for $100. But even then I didn’t suspect anything until much later when I put two and two together. The way I saw it, I was in an amazing studio with Mike Clink—one of the best producers ever, and I was just happy to be there rocking.

I knew zero about the drug world, and I was very naïve about it at the time anyway because I couldn’t have cared less about it. I was just really into the recording itself, and making sure my major label debut was something I could be satisfied with. Even though my 10 years with Megadeth were fantastic, the whole drug, AA, addiction thing was a constant pain in the ass.

At the time I used to always think, “Why do we waste all this valuable time with drug bullshit?

We should be working on new music instead.”

We all know drugs suck. But it’s not as simple as that for people with addictions. So, I really have to give both Daves tons of credit for all of the extremely hard work they did and probably still do keep the band together. Every single thing takes twice the effort you would expect. Lesser guys would have never been able to achieve what these guys have given the same obstacles.

What was it like creating, collaborating and working on the Megadeth vision sober?

ELLEFSON: Well, initially, it just hurt. My whole body hurt. Just touching the metal on my bass hurt. It was literally painful. Then, to be playing fast, furious and ferocious music like we were back in those days aggravated my raw nerves even more. We certainly played better. My mind was in the moment. I remember working with

Mike Clink on the bass parts. I was finally in tune with what I wanted to get out of Megadeth at the time. Nick was new and, being able to oversee the drum and bass recording, I finally lived up to my name Junior. I was next in line, so to speak. When Dave wasn’t there, I was the next guy in charge. During the bass and drum recording, I wore the hat, which was cool. Being clearheaded, I was able to show up and take charge.

What do you remember about the writing sessions?

Well, most of it was just Dave, Nick and I. We went over the music. Over and over it.

I remember there was a funny incident when we were at a studio called Hully Gully. Ellefson and I had been living in Silver Lake, at the time. When we went to rehearsal, there was a guy named Johnny. The dude had smoked crack. He was in the studio. He’d go from one end of the room to the other punching holes in the walls with a hammer. He kept flicking the power off. We were like, “Dude, what’s your problem?!” We were in a soundproof room and when the lights go out, it’s black. Pretty fucked up. That’s how we ended up at Rumbo, which is the studio owned by Captain & Tennille.

ELLEFSON: It was me, Dave and Chuck initially writing the tunes. And those tunes were “Holy Wars…,” “Tornado of Souls” and “Polaris.”

Maybe the beginnings of the other ones. They were really assembled with the three of us in the room. Sure, exit Chuck Behler, enter Nick Menza, but it was the three of us putting those songs together. On that record, Dave would walk in with a riff and that was the beginning of a song. We’d spend several hours with it, Dave would rework the riff, so we were basically onMUSTAINE:

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call to help put it together. His rhythm section of sorts. Through that process we all contributed.

It’s interesting—some of Nick’s greatest writing contributions were mistakes he made. We’d be going through a part and Dave would say, “Stop!

What was that?!” Nick would say, “I don’t know!

I made a mistake. I blew it!” Dave would go, “No, man! Go back! That was awesome!” Dave was always trying to get Nick to replay a mistake.

Nick’s genius came out when he wasn’t really thinking about it, and I think Dave had a great way of spotting it. [Laughs] Dave’s way of writing is if you’re willing to work with him, or rather like him, then chances are you’ll contribute. My writing stepped up on So Far, So Good... So What!

Both lyrics and music. Like the beginning of “Lucretia”—the rhythmic piece—is my contribution, I contributed to lyrics on “Tornado of Souls” and, of course, the music of “Dawn Patrol,” which wasn’t like Dave at all. Go figure! [Laughs] FRIEDMAN: If I’m not mistaken—and I may well be—all but “Hangar 18” was written in some form or another before I joined the band. Right after I joined the band, Dave asked me to come to Nick’s house, where he was staying, to talk to me about “Hangar 18.” I thought he was out of his mind, rambling on about aliens and government conspiracies. But he was so funny and clever that I took a liking to him right away. We rehearsed the album for a few weeks at the Power Plant in L.A. before recording, and that’s where I did all of my own preparations for the album. There was a three- or four-song demo for Rust in Peace floating around before I joined the band, but I pretty much ignored it, as I wanted to start from scratch when it came to coming up with my own parts. On Rust in Peace, I was encouraged to just do my own thing when it came to all my solos and fills, all the “Marty-sounding stuff.” On rhythm, though, Dave was quite particular about me playing the rhythms exactly the same way that he did. Usually in bands when two guitarists play rhythm, the goal is to play in different positions and different chord shapes, but it was just the opposite in Megadeth. I thought it was odd, and a waste of time at first, but when we did it live, I saw the light on that topic, as it just sounds massive when both guys are playing the exact same thing.

MENZA: I tried to do as much as I could writingwise. Dave was obviously the main guy. I was just playing drums. I didn’t really start writing music until Countdown [to Extinction]. But I did have some conceptual ideas about the cover for Rust in Peace. Actually, I had conceptual ideas for songs, too. I remember Dave would also have ideas for drum parts. He’s sit down on the drum kit and say, “Hey, check this out!” He’d play the “Five Magics” riff. He’d play it really slow and say, “OK, can you play this?” I’d be like, “Yeah, sure.” Then, he’d say, “Now, play it really fast!”

They had demos of Chuck doing some of the songs from Rust in Peace. I was like, “You know [4]

MEGADETH RUST IN PEACE what? I don’t want to listen to this stuff! It’s going to inhibit how I think I should be playing these songs.” I’d rather just rehearse the songs with the guys and come up with drum ideas that way. So, the beginning of Rust in Peace didn’t have that drum fill. The end of “Polaris” has got some weird beats in it. Little time change going on. Dave actually sang that part to me.

“Hangar 18” was my idea. The alien concept. So, we’d collaborate on a lot of material.

Do you remember why you sequenced the album the way you did?

ELLEFSON: It was a collective decision between Dave, our manager Ron [Laffitte] and the mixer.

The mixer and/or producer make the ultimate decision. I don’t recall if Mike Clink had a decision. A mix can make a recording come to life or fall flat. Mastering can make a mix sound dazzling or tame it to the point where it’s lackluster. Sequencing is like rearranging the page numbers of a story. Pages 1-50, you have a comprehensive story. Once you start moving pages around, by the time you get to the end you’re like, “Huh, what was that all about?” An album is like looking at a family photo album.

It should tell a story. Here we are at the beach.

Here we are at the fair. Here we are at the wedding. A chronological story. If the songs are put in the right order, you get to know the artist. An album isn’t a collection of songs. It’s a body of work, and Rust in Peace really encompassed late ’88 through early ’90. It covers a 20-month period of our lives.

How did Mike Clink become involved in Megadeth? Was it because he produced UFO’s Strangers in the Night?

He had done Michael Schenker. When we got into the studio and started talking about Michael, I got to hear a bunch of stories. That was really cool for me, but he said something that really put the kibosh on the whole project.

He said, “Well, I gotta tell you, if Axl [Rose] calls, I have to leave.” I was like, “What?!” He was doing two projects at once. I said to the guys in the band, “If he leaves, he’s fired!” And he left. We finished it with Micajah Ryan. Micajah was really good. It didn’t work out quite like we planned or hoped, but I think Rust in Peace turned out just fine.

FRIEDMAN: To be honest, I wished he was involved more. He was awesome to work with, and when he was there he came up with some real gems. I thought Appetite for Destruction was the best rock album out there in a long time. I was stoked to work with him.

MUSTAINE:

How musically demanding was Rust in Peace?

MUSTAINE:

Ah, “Five Magics” is hard to play. It’s

a little tough. The articulation of the picking at the end of it. There’s some really fast picking.

It’s like jump pedaling and string pull-offs at the same time, which sounds more complex than it really is. It sounds incredible, though. Powerful sounds. I’m talking about the beginning of “Five Magics.” The hardest thing to do really was to determine who does what solo. I’m still like that, especially if it’s a difficult rhythm that I need a better soloist to go over the top of it. I’ve always backed myself with a great partner. I can play really good solos over easy rhythms, and I can play really great rhythms under somebody else’s solos. That’s how we’ve tried to mete out all the information. It was hard on Rust in Peace to give the solos to Marty. Prior to that, I had done all the solos. Well, I guess we had Chris Poland do some solos on the demos, but I wasn’t prepared to let go with Marty. Like, “That’s my solo!” But really there was nothing better than having Marty Friedman come into the band. We went from being one of the best to the best metal band in Los Angeles.

ELLEFSON: It’s interesting. Both Peace Sells… and Rust in Peace were done old-school. We took up to a year writing the songs in a rehearsal room.

Getting together several nights a week, learning the notes, memorizing the parts, standing there in the room together. Woodshedding it. We were young thrash metal musicians. Let’s show everyone how good we can play. We pushed the envelope. And that was a big thing for us. That was us hanging our nuts from the mantelpiece for the world to see. [Laughs] By the time we got to the studio, all the grunt work was done. The songs laid themselves down as compositions pretty smoothly. But Rust in Peace was excruciatingly difficult. We enjoyed that.

MENZA: Not so much. We didn’t really have any mental blocks or physical shit. Like, coming out and playing “Holy Wars…” was hard. ’Cause it was the first song. Other times, we’d have it as the last song. People would say, “What’s the easiest Megadeth song to play?” I’d say, “The last one, ’cause I knew I was done after that.”

[Laughs] There really is no easy Megadeth song. I mean, every song is a drum solo. That’s why I’m “Lead Drums” on Rust in Peace. I was playing the shit out of everything. It was a joke, really.

FRIEDMAN: The challenging thing about Rust in Peace was exactly the same for me as all the albums I’ve done before and after it, which is just to do something better, deeper and more interesting than I did on the album before. To do something no one has heard me do before.

How did Rust in Peace end up as the album title?

There was a bumper sticker on a car.

I was so amped after my first skydiving jump.

Such a rush. I was flying down the freeway from Riverside back up to Los Angeles, and there was a car in front of me that said, “May all your nuclear weapons rust in peace.” Amen to that,

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I remember. I woke up the next morning after having an incredible dream about these kids on the beach painting graffiti on beached mines. I thought, “That’s it!” That’s when I took the idea to [Ed] Repka.

Did you float the Rust in Peace cover idea to Ed Repka or did he present it to you?

Whenever we would talk about ideas, it was usually quick over-the-phone. Ed was a college student and he lived with his mom. I think he was helping her out. When we would talk, it would be, “OK, here’s the idea. Blah, blah, blah.

Alright, see you later.”

ELLEFSON: Dave came up with the title, so he had the cover. He put it over to Ed Repka. He did the Peace Sells… cover, which we had great success with. We weren’t as happy with the So Far, So Good... So What! cover. That was done in-house at Capitol. We wanted to get back to what we liked as fans. Killer artwork that was thought-provoking and tied into the lyrics. The cover art should lead you into the experience of the record. It’s a package. It was awesome, though. Peace Sells… was red. Rust in Peace was blue. Primary colors.

Easy! [Laughs] MENZA: Well, Dave had the cover concept of all the heads of state sitting around. He had a Polaris missile on the cover. I said, “Wouldn’t it be cool to put an alien on the cover?” Dave wasn’t pro-alien concept. I was the one who pushed Hangar 18, Area 51, aliens and all that stuff. I was fully into that stuff. Ed Repka, the artist, said, “Wouldn’t be cool if the alien had some kind of cryogenic thing and he’s holding a crystal?”

MUSTAINE:

Would you change anything?

You know, I don’t know. We had a leftover song called “My Creation.” Something Nick had. We had some lyrics leftover about Frankenstein, ’cause those guys were into monsters and crap.

ELLEFSON: I don’t think so. Really, that record is the perfect storm. Looking back on it, the drummer change, the lifestyle change, recording the record when we knew the songs were done, Mike Clink being the perfect producer, Marty Friedman landing in our lap all happened at the right time.

FRIEDMAN: Nothing musical. Don’t hate me, as I know I have had my share of rubbish album covers, but honestly I think the cover is lame compared to how cool the album itself is.

MENZA: To this day, it stands the test of time.

It’s one of my favorite records by far. If I was stranded on an island somewhere, I’d have this record. Not because I played on it, but it’s a fun album to listen to. We definitely set the standard for all of metal. We pumped it up a couple of notches. There’s nothing really I’d change. I wished there would’ve been a couple more songs on it. [Laughs] A MUSTAINE:

*Get your music from a record store.

Find them at www.mymetalclub.com

story by kevin stewart-panko

A Loco Motive T the making of Anacrusis’ Reason

hose of you old enough to rewind your minds back to 1989-’90 without images of Texas Instruments Speak & Spells or the inside of your mother’s cold, gray womb dominating your mind’s eye will recall the beginning of thrash metal’s “dying days.” Like the action movie bad guy being dangled over a cliff by the protagonist until he reveals what he knows, thrash metal was hanging on for dear life with killer albums from the likes of Sepultura, Vio-lence, Forbidden and Blind Illusion. But craptacular offerings from the likes of Destruction and Nuclear Assault signaled a downward turn in terms of quality, excitement and—let’s face it—thrash-ness. Hell, even two of the Big Four were dancing on landmines by then. Bands were looking to do something different. The trouble was, far too many didn’t have it in ’em to make transformative additions and have them not suck. Exhibit A-through-Z: thrash-funk.

Formed out of the ashes of vocalist/guitarist Kenn Nardi’s previous band, Heaven’s Flame, St. Louis’ Anacrusis scored some quick notoriety overseas for their Annihilation Complete demo and debut album, Suffering Hour. A rickety confluence of Slayer-ish thrash, proto-doom and classic heavy metal, Suffering Hour generated healthy amounts of exclusive attention from ’80s Euro-thrashers. With their second album, Reason, the quartet—rounded out by guitarist Kevin Heidbreder, bassist John Emery and drummer Mike Owen—took deliberate steps to move beyond thrash’s boundaries by adding massive hooks, obscenely dynamic vocals, melodies inspired by dark rock and post-punk, and Emery’s bass often driving sonic themes. The result was an album that broke ground by pushing thrash into new territories while including some of the finest, most infectious songs the genre DBTHRASHHOF has ever produced. While future albums Manic Impressions and Screams and Whispers are more familiar to metal’s everyman— mainly because that was when Metal Blade started pushing Reason the band—Reason is where the evolution began.

METAL BLADE, FEBRUARY 16, 1990 Last year, the band took the increasingly common step of Judge not by re-recording Reason and Suffering Hour, as both a celebration of its cover their roots and to do them like they “should’ve been done.”

Both albums were packaged together in a gorgeous doublegatefold digipak with a porterhouse-thick booklet of photos, liner notes, recollections and new artwork as Hindsight: Suffering Hour and Reason Revisited, released by Divebomb/Tribunal Records. We caught up with Anacrusis’ still active—and pleased—members to discuss Reason’s past and present for our latest induction. [4]

Anacrusis,

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ANACRUSIS REASON Arch-Progressives The men of Reason consider their masterpiece

of 36 MTV channels to see a Slayer video. Going into the studio, we always tried to be prepared and have the material ready in finished demo form so that we had a map to go by. We were always really good about that sort of thing, which is good especially when you’re on a budget. Going back, I wished we could’ve had an unlimited budget, gone in with things halfway cooked, and been able to play and put things together in the studio.

JOHN EMERY: We called Reason our soul-searching record. It was the record where we had all these influences, and me being five years older than those guys, I was throwing in all this weird progressive art-rock stuff, so I definitely take credit for some of that. But the mastermind behind the whole idea of where our sound came from and what we were trying to accomplish was Nardi.

As far as lyrics go, I would write finished stuff and Kenn would have to painstakingly put it to music. With Reason, there was a lot more collaboration as far as arranging the songs, augmenting little things in each riff and working on the flow.

MIKE OWEN: We were definitely trying to be a little more diverse. We all have a lot of different influences and we didn’t want to get the “sounds just like this” reaction that we got with Suffering Hour and people saying we sounded like Slayer.

We were trying to be diverse, but it came naturally. All the different influences kind of made it happen that way.

What do you remember about writing the songs for Reason?

Reason was more of a group effort because we all had material coming in. I’ve never considered myself a “songwriter.” I’ve always been more of a riff guy. So, a lot of stuff for me would start when I’d get to practice and Mike or somebody would show up early and I’d just start throwing riffs around and see what we would get. For me, it was more of an exploratory thing. Kenn is way more thought-out and songwriting is more of a private thing for him.

He’d get an idea in his head and sit down with a drum machine and hammer it out in that fashion. For me, it’s put me in a room with some musicians, crank it up and see what the fuck we come up with. We really concentrated on rehearsing and writing. A lot of bands in St. Louis would exhaust themselves trying to play live all the time. We shied away from that; we played in town maybe once or twice a year, but we still rehearsed four or five nights a week.

We used that time to hone material and write material. So, at practice there was always a lot of writing and developing and forming ideas and executing those ideas. After Suffering Hour was released, there was a lot of time just spent with the intention of writing a record.

OWEN: It was a fun and enjoyable process because most of the material was brand new. It was more Anacrusis than us just reworking old songs.

HEIDBREDER:

After the all quick attention given Suffering Hour, where were you at going into Reason?

KENN NARDI: Suffering Hour was a sort of a compilation. I think a third of the songs were already written before I got with those guys, a third Kevin [Heidbreder] had already written and a third was stuff we wrote together. Suffering Hour didn’t have us thinking about who we wanted to be or our identity. It was more like, “Hey, we did a record and we’re signed. This is totally cool!”

By the time we got to Reason, there was a lot more thought about establishing our own sound and identity. So, there was a pretty major leap as far the writing and stuff. At that point, even though I guess I was the chief songwriter, we were still very much jamming together and coming up with riffs that I would take off with and arrange into songs. There was still a lot of writing together on that album. We were actually pretty shocked we got to do an album. We didn’t do any touring at all for Suffering Hour and we were signed to a U.K. label, so there was almost noth-

ing said about us in the States at the time. All of the attention we got was through tape-trading and European magazines. Going to record Reason, we had been approached by Metal Blade, who signed a distribution deal to release Suffering Hour and Reason in the states. So, at least we knew we were going into the second album with distribution over here. We were excited [about] it being a “proper” album.

KEVIN HEIDBREDER: Suffering Hour and Reason are personal favorites of mine because there was a rawness to those records, maybe even an innocence that got a little bit lost later on.

Our earlier influences shined through on those albums—Slayer, Metallica and even the Pink Floyd kind of thing. So, there were still the left-field elements, but also the thrash; the stuff that people today take for granted because it’s so readily available. In 1986 or whatever, it wasn’t. You had to put it on your turntable or tune into a college radio station if you wanted to hear it; you certainly couldn’t turn on one TH RASH HoF

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What lessons did you learn from Suffering Hour that you were trying to incorporate— or avoid—on Reason?

You’ve never been shy about expressing how much the Cure influenced Anacrusis. In what way and how did that happen?

Like a lot of bands, when you first start out, you just want to emulate your heroes and whatnot. When we recorded the first album, we were basically just out of high school— some of us were still in high school—and no one was thinking of being the next Metallica or whoever; we were just trying to be as cool as Metallica or Slayer. We were much more focused on trying to see ourselves as an actual band, not just a local band or a bunch of kids who ate Metallica riffs.

EMERY: Suffering Hour was like a commando recording. We had five days in Kansas City, and it was basically tracked live and stuff was punched in and fixed up later. When we did Reason, it was awesome because the studio was only like 20 minutes from home or work. We really wanted to be able to take our time. With the songs, we were trying to bring more melody into the music without sacrificing any brutality. Reason also opened the door for me as a lyricist who wrote about what I knew: myself.

Instead of reaching out and grabbing for ideas, I was reaching inside and spilled all that crap onto paper.

OWEN: The main thing was to not do it like we did Suffering Hour. [Laughs] We were 18-year-old kids with no money and no clue trying to fly through and record that thing as quickly as possible. We knew we wanted to take our time, more time. We wanted it to sound better, but I think we tried to do too much with it and it came out muddy. It definitely didn’t turn out the way we intended it to.

HEIDBREDER: Primarily, we had a bit more studio time. When we recorded Suffering Hour, we didn’t have any label commitments at that point. We elected to self-finance and put out a record on our own. We had a deal with Active Records, who released Suffering Hour after it was recorded. [Metal Forces editor] Bernard Doe offered us a slot on a Metal Forces compilation called Scream Your Brains Out, but that was basically a couple of demo tracks. Bernard knew somebody at a label called Axis, which became Active, and they licensed the album to Metal Blade for U.S. release, and that’s how that all came about. So, we actually went into the studio with a little bit of money to record with.

Certainly not a staggering amount—basically a few thousand dollars, which was enough to buy a couple weeks of studio time as opposed to a long weekend. Process-wise, it was something we still had to think out as best as we could, about what order to record the instruments, the mixing and put some rough formula together that we thought would work. It was as frustrating as anything else. We came from doing basement demos to going into a top-notch local studio, and it was a bit intimidating.

NARDI:

NARDI:

I discovered the Disintegration album through Mike, who thought I’d like it because I’d always been really into melodic and dark stuff. As much as I’m into metal, I was always into bands like New Model Army and stuff. That album definitely very, very heavily influenced me, and I love it to this day. It had this big, murky, muddy production that I kinda didn’t like about the album at first, but somehow I subconsciously copied that and ended up with the same result in a metal version on Reason.

Also, I think one of the biggest changes between the first and second albums, which we can’t make light of, is that we were really into a lot

I think the press was generally either ambivalent or pretty good. The thing about Anacrusis is that I don’t think we ever had a lot of fans, but the people who got what we were doing really got into it.

K E NN NA RD I of hardcore and crossover stuff. I’d always been into punk stuff like Minor Threat and Black Flag, but we were really getting into stuff like the Crumbsuckers, Cro-Mags, Agnostic Front and C.O.C. Not everybody in the band, mind you, as our tastes were pretty eclectic, but Mike and I were really into a lot of hardcore stuff, and I think that shined through in something like “Child Inside.”

“Stop Me” and “Afraid to Feel” are two of the album’s standout songs, but weren’t they written just before you went into the studio?

We knew we were definitely carving out a little bit of our own niche as far as creating an original sound, in metal terms anyway.

Those were songs we kind of pulled together towards the end, and I think they really shined through. Usually, the first track you write for an album ends up being the strongest material— even for us on Screams and Whispers with “Sound the Alarm”—and you build around that. With Reason, it was more us looking at what we had

NARDI:

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and saying, “What’s really missing here from what we want to present?” That’s what led us to those last couple of songs being written.

Was there any trepidation about starting the album with “Stop Me”?

That was kind of a last-minute Kenn idea. We were going to open the album with “Terrified,” but Kenn always loved to taunt people in a weird sort of way by doing something crazy, weird and quirky like that. “Terrified” seemed like the perfect fit for an opener, but it suited him to throw a curveball and watch the reaction, good or bad. It was definitely done intentionally.

NARDI: I remember having a conversation with Kevin about how “Terrified” would be the obvious choice to kick off the album because it’s balls-out, in-your-face and really raw, heavy and fast. At the time, we had just come up with “Stop Me.” We had the riffs and were practicing it a little bit. I put some vocals on it at home, and when I played it for the guys, even we were like, “Wow, this is really different!” So, I remember talking to Kevin about opening the album with it just because it’s not what anyone would expect. It starts with the heavy riffs, but then drops out into that really clean, mellow verse, and I think that was one of the best decisions we ever made because it stands out from the pack. Love it or hate it, when you put it on, it’s definitely different and didn’t sound like any metal album at the time.

EMERY: That was a song everybody was really excited about. It just kind of showed everything that we were as players and gave us a direction as far as individuality and what we were writing about: ourselves, our lives and what we saw. I remember Kenn telling me, “You’re playing the melody here and we’re doing the rhythm part while I sing.” And I was like, “What?!” But once I got the groove, it was like, “This is cool! People are going to be able to hear me!”

OWEN: We knew the song was different, but we were confident, mostly because we enjoyed it, so it didn’t really matter. It was like, “Here’s something new and this is what we are.” We weren’t too afraid of doing that, and we liked the fact that it sounded different from Testament, Forbidden and all those bands we loved. We just liked being our own selves.

HEIDBREDER:

What are your recollections about your time in the studio?

We had a lot of problems with drums and triggers not triggering correctly, and all kinds of crazy stuff like Mike having to sit there and play snare hits off a drum pad after the fact. I myself didn’t have a lot of downtime because I was so busy overseeing everything. At that time, most bands were two guitars, bass and drums, with guitar tones for rhythms and solos and that’s it.

We were doing all this clean stuff and we used low B tuning, which is basically a seven-[4]

NARDI:

ANACRUSIS REASON string guitar without seven strings, and we were playing through old shitty gear. We weren’t really partying kind of guys; there wasn’t a whole lot of chicks and booze. We were just boring guys playing music and trying to get this stuff recorded, but there’s one funny story involving Mike and a plate glass window…

HEIDBREDER: We recorded at Smith Lee Studio in a neighborhood called Maplewood, which was a really neat, happening part of town. We shopped around a little bit to find something cool; a place to get the job done as efficiently as we could with the money we had. It was a nice studio. There was a dining room/meeting room/lunch room there that had this huge plate glass window that looked out onto this scenic street with a lot of cross traffic. It was a neat place to people-watch.

Everybody would always kind of gather there, and we always kept crazy hours in the studio.

We were taking a break and Mike went to grab something to eat. He came back and stood outside the studio, looking through this plate glass window at us. We’re all sitting there, so he puts his face up to the plate glass window, puts his lips on the window and blows outward to make his cheeks and face puff out, and it was really fucking funny to watch. Well, he did it and the entire plate glass window just shattered. And it wasn’t a tiny window either. All the glass shattering and crumbling kind of happened in slow motion. Mike could have been seriously hurt, but he didn’t even get cut. He was just standing there in the same spot and position in complete shock. Then, we had to grab the engineer, who was still in the studio, to tell him. He just came in, looked at everything, shook his head and said, “I can’t deal with this right now.” He had to call the owner of the studio and explain why his huge glass window had been broken.

OWEN: They told you that one?! What they didn’t tell you was why I put my face up against the glass. It was in the Maplewood part of town and every day all these really odd people would walk by, who we called “Mapletoids.” They were the freakiest bunch of people. We even had a buddy come down to take pictures, it was that crazy! We finally found out there was a mental hospital up the street, and that’s where they were going and coming from. There was a guy named Roy who walked by every day, and he moved and walked like a robot. That’s how I ended up shattering the window—because I was goofing around and imitating Roy the Robot, and I decided to put my mouth up against the glass.

Well, if they all told you that, then I’m going to tell you one about John that I remember. We were outside taking a break, sitting on the back of John’s car and it was right next door to the drive-thru of a Hardee’s or White Castle or whatever. This girl was working the drive-thru and

Yawns and whispers Biding time in the studio, circa 1989

John was there with his finger up his nose digging away, not realizing this girl is looking right at him. We’d go in there everyday to get something to eat, so the next day we go over there, the girl sees him and she turns to everybody she’s working with and says, “Hey everybody, it’s Booger the Kid!” and John was just mortified.

EMERY: I remember the setting at Smith Lee being very conservative, and us four kids going in there with our thrash metal and clashing with the stiff and stuffy atmosphere of a “real studio.” The one we did Suffering Hour in was like a box or little trailer. It was a 16-track analog studio and one of the channels wasn’t working, so it was actually a 15-track studio [laughs] and we had to have a friend/ roadie sit there and keep the tape from running up on the tape machine’s pinions. Smith Lee was a completely different thing; it was professional with a wooden room, an isolation booth and all this stuff. I remember me and the guitar players having a competition to see who could finish first with the least number of mistakes or takes or whatever. I remember putting blinders on—a hat and headphones and staring at the wall while those other guys were jumping around like monkeys trying to distract me. And I’m like, “We’re paying for this time, man!” Still, I remember being done my parts really quickly. I know that the bass sounds really fat and full and on top in the mix. I think in doing so, some of the other instruments suffer because of that.

We were in there for days, and people started to not be objective anymore because ears started to get fried. It would be like, “Oh, my god, I’ve listened to this part for a thousand minutes,” and you want to do anything but listen to it again. It’s hard to describe the feeling of not wanting to hear your own music anymore.

[Laughs] What I also remember was that we were in the studio, just about to do the mix, and it was TH RASH HoF

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August 30 of 1989, and I remember that because it was the date of my first year of sobriety and everyone decided they were going to get me a cake to celebrate. I remember feeling pretty awesome about myself and not having had a drink for a year.

What were your thoughts when you started hearing everything coming together?

One of the moments in the studio where I found myself really satisfied was late one night we were listening back to “Afraid to Feel.” We just had the console lights on, and it was almost like the room was candlelit. I was sitting in the studio chair with headphones on in “to hell with the rest of the world” mode and it was a really neat moment because that track is very spatial with a lot of atmosphere, but at the same time there’s a very thumpy groove throughout the whole song.

NARDI: The guy who was engineering it was kind of throwing the mix together as we went along, and he ended up kind of mixing the thing at the end, and we were really, really unhappy with the way it turned out. So, we scrambled up some money—I think Kevin borrowed a few hundred more bucks from a family member— and we bought another one or two days and went in and remixed the whole album in one night. Believe it or not, it actually does sound better than the first version. That’s not saying much. [Laughs] HEIDBREDER:

For a Reasonable price…

The Euro LP, long box and assorted Anacrusis swag will not be yours

What’s the story behind the album’s two different covers?

The U.S. cover for Reason is just the four of us just sitting there looking almost like a hardcore band, and I think that might have confused a lot of people. The original was marooncolored with the triangular pieces flying out, which was something we tried to recreate on Manic Impressions. For some reason, Metal Blade didn’t want to use that cover, which I can maybe see why, but not after what they came up with.

We kind of tossed around ideas with Metal Blade, talking about how we both wanted to do something different. None of us actually saw the Reason cover until it was released. We had no idea what they were doing. They said they were going to take a picture and kind of stretch it and do this and that. And we were like, “OK, as long as it’s something kind of interesting or different.” Then I literally walked into a record store, picked it up and it really looked like a low-budget hardcore album, because a couple of us had short hair and a lot of people didn’t know what to make of it. We learned that it was very difficult to live in a place like St. Louis and have communication with a label, whether it’s in Europe or California. It may as well have been China, because if you’re not able to hang in the office, bug ’em, bother ’em and look over their shoulders, you end up doing everything by telephone and, as this was 20 years ago, you waited and hoped.

HEIDBREDER: I did the original layout for Reason, with the broken shards of glass. That was what we came up with, submitted to Active Records, and they approved it. The problem with the situNARDI:

ation, or at least what we were told, was that we did the layout for vinyl album size. The artwork was forwarded to Metal Blade for the U.S. release, and when it was reduced to CD size, they didn’t like it. They said it didn’t translate well to CD size and had about 800 other excuses. I remember this being a very big time of drama for us, and we ended up with that piece of shit cover that they gave us. It was like, “What the fuck is this? Who would buy this?

And why?” You have to remember that this was back when people would look at an album cover and decide if it looked cool enough to buy. Who’d buy a picture of the four of us? When we actually got the CD version of the European pressing, it looked fucking fantastic, with the exception of the CD itself, which, for some reason, was pink.

OWEN: I didn’t even see it until I went into a store, and I think pretty much all of us said the same thing: “What the hell is this piece of shit?”

It’s like, oh great, we’re sitting on a log and the picture is stretched out. Wow. Cool. [Laughs] What do you remember about reactions to Reason when it was released?

Fan-wise, I think the reactions were very good. The production had been cleaned up a bit from Suffering Hour, which to me was a good thing, but I think some people were looking for more of that doomy, gloomy kind of sound of the first record. Critically, people really liked it. There were a few things on there that were a bit different and less metal. There was always the side of the fence that thought a song like “Stop Me” was fantastic and there was always the other group of kids who were like, “What the fuck is this doing on a thrash record?”

NARDI: I think the press was generally either ambivalent or pretty good. The thing about Anacrusis is that I don’t think we ever had a lot of fans, but the people who got what we were doing really got into it. Even the people who didn’t get into it always seemed to appreciate that we were genuine and that there was something different about what we were doing. There wasn’t much negative reaction, but I don’t think HEIDBREDER:

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it was as strong an album as Manic Impressions was in terms of hooking people in for the first time.

1990 was a really strange time, and it seemed like the age of real straight-ahead thrash was coming to an end and getting stale. People were starting to look for a little bit more melody and songoriented stuff, and I think in a lot of ways it was different, inventive and original, but I don’t know if it was the best first thing for people to hear by us.

EMERY: I remember being really happy that there was a CD and record out there of my band at Streetside Records in St. Louis. I worked up the road, so on my way home from work I stopped in because everyone had called me and told me it was out. That was a cool feeling. When we went on the road and didn’t see it in very many other stores, that was not a cool feeling. [Laughs] OWEN: For the most part, I remember good reactions. There were always the die-hard thrashers who didn’t like the melody and the fact that it wasn’t just like Suffering Hour. We were all pretty excited about it and pretty proud, even if it didn’t turn out exactly the way we wanted. The album has a lot of my favorite songs on it.

Reason was also the point in Anacrusis’ history where you did your first spell of touring.

We went on tour with D.R.I., which was absolutely fantastic and very interesting.

D.R.I. was doing the whole crossover thing, so metal kids were just discovering them, and a lot of the punk kids actually really dug what we were doing, which was unexpected. Before that, we did a string of dates that Metal Blade wanted us to do out on our own, which was quite an eye-opener. We drove from St. Louis to Rochester, NY for the first show of 10 or 12 dates, and we were opening for Overkill for a one-off show. So, we get up to this club and it’s a fantastic place; I think it was called Backstreets.

It was like a giant garage attached to the side of this bar. There were like 1,000 kids jammed into this room. We got out there and we played a 40-45 minute set and just kicked everybody’s ass. Literally, there were kids boosting other kids 14-15 feet into the air to grab the rafters above, they’d hang there, then drop back down. It was absolutely insane.

The next night, we played in Syracuse and we were the headliners. It looked like it was going to be a good gig; there was some totally different type of band playing, and the dance floor was full of these ’80s type girls. They stayed on the dance floor until we started the first song. Then, the whole place cleared out, and that’s what it was like for the rest of the tour. [Laughs] The one exception was the last night. The last gig was going be at L’amour in New York, and we were going to be opening for the Cro-Mags, Biohazard and Warzone! We were fucking terrified! We were calling the label every day from the road begging them to get us off the bill because [4]

HEIDBREDER:

ANACRUSIS REASON we were scared to death. And every gig on the way, there were always three or four people who’d be like, “Oh, my god! You’re going to get killed!” This whole thing got built up around the show, but it ended up being the best show on the whole fucking tour. It was fucking incredible!

NARDI: Any band will tell you that no matter how many times you play at the local clubs and bars, until you get on the road for a while, you really don’t know what it’s like, as it really kind of hardens you and polishes your skills. Reason was our first exposure to the road. It was only a few weeks, but still, you learn a lot travelling around in a rusted Dodge Caravan with a U-Haul trailer, playing for basically what were punk rock crowds. As well, you never know how much you dislike each other until you go on tour together.

We were kind of like kids right out of high school. John was a bit older, and we brought a friend as a roadie and another friend sort of like a roadie/moral support guy. There were six guys crammed in there, and I think we had $5 for a per diem, and even in 1990 that was McDonald’s once and hopefully the club would feed you. We weren’t crashing on people’s floors. We had the old AAA book, and we’d try and call ahead and find a room for $30. It was rough; you’re living two inches from each other, getting sick because you’re not eating or sleeping right and all you’re doing is smoking cigarettes. In hindsight, it was cool and exciting, but it was pretty rough and what led to Mike quitting.

EMERY: I remember it being totally amazing. We were a little apprehensive because it was D.R.I. and we thought there would be more hardcore fans at the shows, but everyone embraced us.

Those guys were amazing. We learned a lot from them, and they would make fun of us because we would play the gig, get in the van, drive to a hotel and read. [Laughs] OWEN: We were playing the 9:30 Club in DC, and that was our last show of the tour. D.R.I. kept threatening that they were going to get us with shaving cream, throw shit at us and fuck with us the whole show. We’re on stage and they’re all right up at the front of the stage, so I was paranoid the whole time. They ended up doing absolutely nothing, so that pissed me off even more. So, when they were playing, I got right up front and I was trying to pants John [Menor], D.R.I.’s bassist. He’s fumbling and making all kinds of mistakes, and I climb up on the PA to keep at him. Then, their bass tech dropped my shorts to my ankles right in front of the whole crowd. That kind of backfired. [Laughs] Their drum tech was this guy named Levi who was an insane character and has since passed away. He would get completely naked at the drop of a hat.

One night I brought some beers up and we were

watching from behind Tim Millare [ex-Overkill], who was playing drums for D.R.I. at the time.

Levi just dumps a beer down my shorts. So, I dump one down his. So, he just took all of his clothes off and he’s standing right by Tim swinging his junk around his face and stuff. Everyone could see what he was doing, and he couldn’t care less. That’s the kind of guy he was.

And you quit after the D.R.I. tour?

I actually told them I was quitting in the middle of that tour. John and Kevin got in a fistfight. It was god knows what time in the morning outside of a hotel, I was getting tired of the arguing and I had a smoking hot girlfriend that I wanted to get married to for whatever stupidass reason, being young and dumb, I guess. So, I told them, “When we get back, I’m done with this crap.”

OWEN:

What’s unique about Reason as a Hall of Fame album is that, opposed to albums that get remastered or remixed, you recently went back and entirely re-recorded it and Suffering Hour for the Hindsight release. What did you want to address with the re-recording?

Everything, basically! When people look at Anacrusis’ four albums, they draw a line between the first two and the last two. It’s almost like we were a different band because the production and atmosphere changed a lot. We always thought there were gems on those albums that production hindered, and even prevented people from giving them a chance. I think Reason is really difficult to listen to, production-wise.

We were thrilled to be able to do it, to go back and record all that stuff how we wanted it to turn out originally. I also think it’s much, much better.

HEIDBREDER: Everybody wanted to have those albums sound the way they “should have” sounded. Did we achieve that? I don’t know. It was a fun experiment. It wasn’t an attempt to light the world on fire. I think we could have made it more current, but the initial goal was to recreate what we had done and make it sonically better. We were always proud of the stuff we did, individually and personally, so we hoped it would translate into what we knew it could.

EMERY: There was a concerted, conscious effort NARDI:

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to create a cohesive piece of music, but as far as I’m concerned, Reason was the album we were least happy with how it came out. And that’s why Hindsight was such a huge amazing golden opportunity, with recording technology and our maturity as musicians and people, for us to get in a room and say to one another, “This was fucked up. Let’s fix this.” The songs just came across a lot better, and it’s a better representation of how that album was supposed to be. We didn’t want to change the arrangements or anything, though some of the solos are different, but I don’t know if that’s for better or for worse. The guitar tones are better, the bass guitar isn’t so “rumbly” and “woofy.” I don’t hear any of that. I listen to Hindsight in my car and just go, “Oh my God!” OWEN: Some things change with different musicianship. Like, I’m a trillion times better drummer than I was back then. Kenn’s also a really good engineer and producer, so we were able to take our time and do it right. Back then, if what we did on Hindsight what we had, we all would have been blown away.

What did you think when you were told Decibel was doing Reason for our Hall of Fame?

EMERY: My first reaction was, “Why not Manic Impressions?” But then I thought about what came first and how it was relevant. Like I said at the beginning, it was our soul-searching record; we were defining our path for how we wanted our band to be. And here we are.

OWEN: Manic and Screams are actually more accessible to people, but I was actually really happy when I heard it was Reason because there are some really good songs on there—some of our favorites.

It’s just that the sound on the original wasn’t exactly what we wanted.

NARDI: My first thought was, “Why that album?” I was kind of surprised, and it’s a pretty big honor, especially when I see what other albums are on there. The four albums, to me, are all really different from each other, and which one I prefer kind of depends on my mood. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite of our albums, but I always had a soft spot for it because I loved the songs even though I knew deep down that I didn’t think they sounded how they were supposed to sound. But when I talk to older fans, people feel really close to Reason. So, that’s all good. A

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Find them at www.mymetalclub.com

story by chris dick

Prime Cuts the making of Prong’s Beg to Differ

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o say prong were unique would be an understatement. We’re not talking about kitchen percussion and a catgut string quartet, but by the time Prong unfurled Beg to Differ onto a music-centric world still reeling from Aqua Net shotgun blasts in the form of MTV darlings “Love in an Elevator,” “Forever” and “Way Cool Jr.”—as well as thrash metal reaching its creative apex—Prong’s simplified rhythm ‘n’ dissonance-heavy thrust was positively rare air. Of course, Prong—a power trio comprised of guitarist/vocalist Tommy Victor, bassist Mike Kirkland and drummer Ted Parsons—had existed prior to Beg to Differ. The group’s debut EP Primitive Origins and follow-up LP Force Fed crisscrossed punk (Damage), post-punk (Killing Joke), hardcore (Bad Brains, Discharge) and thrash metal (Slayer, Destruction), re-forging them into something unheard of both in the States and, to a greater extent, in England.

Picked up by Sony after big-fishing it in small indie label ponds, Prong would craft a masterpiece of modern metal before there even was such a term. MTV—very much caught in the midst of, to quote Parsons, “boot and hair metal”—was the platform by which Beg to Differ would be broadcast to the masses. Initially, the album’s lead single, the title track, was in light rotation on Headbangers Ball, MTV’s flagship heavy music program. Filmed in the bowels of New York City, “Beg to Differ” captured an industrial vibe—Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM—without the Orwellian overtones. The song’s urban grit felt here and now rather than distant and future. “Beg to Differ,” with its surgical chops and atmospheric jangle, was instantly relatable. Unlike Voivod and Wargasm, there was no “adjustment period” to Prong.

Not long after the “Beg to Differ” video dropped jaws and MTV folded part of “Lost and Found” into the Headbangers DBTHRASHHOF Ball theme did the rest of Prong’s second album start to impress. With a powerful yet clean production courtesy of Mark Dodson (Anthrax, Suicidal Tendencies), leadoff track Beg to Differ EPIC, MARCH 12, 1990 “For Dear Life,” “Steady Decline,” “Lost and Found,” “Prime Cut,” ”Take It in Hand” and the inimitable “Your Fear” were Ball-crashing groove-thrash thrash metal from a non-thrash metal perspective. No doubt about it. Prong didn’t bash brains and divebomb solo ’cause that’s what everyone else was doing. That is to say, Victor, Kirkland and Parsons weren’t path-bound by the Big Four. They had their own set—individually and collectively—of mostly non-metal influences.

And it showed.

There remain many thrash metal albums to enter the Hall of Fame, but it’s time to honor Beg to Differ for breaking sacred ground and directing where heavy music would inevitably head for the rest of the ’90s. [4]

Prong,

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PRONG BEG TO DIFFER Ringing True Dodson (middle, seated) leads Prong to the moment of proof

Prong were unlike any band around at the time.

What do you attribute that to?

It was our influences. Mike and I were really into groups like Die Kreuzen, Killing Joke and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry. The typical metalhead, at that time, maybe crossed over into hardcore. They’d listen to D.R.I. or something.

Of course, Metallica had interest in the Misfits, who we were into. They were also into Sisters of Mercy, who were a far-reaching band for the average metalhead. We just had a lot of different influences. I wasn’t really playing metal. I was writing hard music. I mean, Ted was in Swans, who we loved, too. Mike brought it into the hardcore realm with him playing with Damage, so we took the foundation of Damage and added stuff on top of it. Like the noise element, dissonance. Stuff we were into. Also, being from the Lower East Side of Manhattan was different, too. It’s not like the band formed in the suburbs of the Bay Area. We were in the city. We were downtown, living with rats, garbage and junkies.

It was desolate, man. Dangerous, too. Working on the Bowery. This is stuff we were exposed to.

Also, stuff we read had a lot to do with it.

MIKE KIRKLAND: Ted, Tommy and I had similar influences, but on the other hand we didn’t.

Being in New York at the time, the kind of music we were listening to, etc. Time and place has a lot to do with it. Tommy and I keyed into the same influences, like early Gang of Four, Die Kreuzen and certainly Discharge, at least for me. I would say Discharge was the biggest influTOMMY VICTOR:

ence on me as far as writing for Prong. Well, Discharge and Killing Joke. Put them together and you have early to mid-period Prong.

TED PARSONS: I think it was our taste in music.

Tommy, Mike and myself liked all kinds of music. We all had the same musical tastes and we fused it all together. Film, art and culture included. I wasn’t into heavy metal so much. At least the old monsters. But when Venom, Slayer and Destruction came along, we were digging it. It had the energy of hardcore without all the boot and hair shit. I fell in love with all the punk, post-punk, reggae and dub that were coming from bands in the late ’70s/early ’80s.

English bands mostly. Tommy and Mike both worked at CBGB’s, so I would go to drink beer and hang out. Watching all the music that came in and out of that place [gave us a] lesson of do’s and don’ts. The ’80s was a very exciting time to be in NYC for sure.

To me, Beg to Differ was a more focused record than Force Fed. Do you feel the same way?

Yeah, we knew what we had to do to stand alone. We knew we couldn’t compete with the local thrash metal bands. We were a trio, and had to build things around that. We stumbled into the right way of doing things.

Unfortunately, we got distracted from that later on. But it was a good method, at the time. Mike and I were working together at CBGB’s [hereafter CB’s], and we’d really talk a lot. We’d go see shows together. There was a unity involved

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for a brief period of time.

I think it’s important for any successful endeavor to have a little unity going on. We were seeing a lot of bands at CB’s, and I was noticing what a lot of bands were doing that I didn’t like. What was useless. So, we went the other way.

We were definitely stylized. When we went into rehearsal, we knew what kind of riffs had to be done.

There weren’t a billion riffs to go through. The “Beg to Differ” riff, for example.

It’s like, “Yeah, that’s cool, man. That’s it!”

KIRKLAND: It’s hard to qualify. The first two records were recorded on shoestring budgets in someone’s closet almost. Recorded in a matter of days. When it came to Beg to Differ, we had been together longer and we were given three weeks to record. We thought that was amazing. Like, “Wow! That’s a lot of time!” You know, with a co-producer. Ted, Tommy and I were kind of changing. I am partial to the first two records, but that’s just me. We did have an idea, a sound in mind that we were going after. I hadn’t listened to the record in ages. I went and listened to it. There are some things obviously I’d change now. Back then, I thought, “Hey, this is pretty good.” I wasn’t crazy about the gates on the drums. It was a little too tight. The whole record overall. Maybe too polished. We never played it that way, but since we had the three weeks, we were able to clarify a few things.

Tommy and Ted were really into the nitty-gritty on that record.

PARSONS: Yes, most definitely. I still love the rawness of Force Fed, but the playing got better as we went along, and we knew what we wanted to do for Beg to Differ. Overall, better songwriting and a producer who would take our music and make us sound clear and clean. Mark Dodson put a heavy gate on my snare, which I didn’t really like at first, but it ended up creating a cool drum vibe.

Power trios were a rare breed of band. Do you recall why you didn’t expand the lineup?

There were so few people around that had similar influences or likes, especially in the hardcore and metal realms. We tried a couple of singers out, but it was a disaster. They just didn’t

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work. We couldn’t even think of a single person who could come out and fill in on second guitar, at that point. Unthinkable, really. We felt we could hold out as a trio, even though I was pretty inexperienced as a guitar player. [It was a ] learning by doing kind of thing. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Especially as far as gear goes. The amp I used on the record was stolen. It was a 100-watt Marshall. A guy came in off the street in the Bowery. I was in CB’s. He sold it to me for $50. It was probably stolen from one of the bands that had just played there. Out of a van or something. [Laughs] There was no name on it.

That’s the way things were back then.

KIRKLAND: With power trios, no one gets lost in the shuffle. We were very democratic about what we did. We wrote separately and brought the songs in. Then, some parts would change or [we’d] add something to them. We thought about adding a singer, ’cause we always felt the vocals were hard to do. It was difficult for Tommy. We tried a singer or two. After doing that, we felt we liked it was better the way it was.

PARSONS: We all liked being a trio and it made things simple. Plus, we tried a couple people later and we couldn’t find the right player. I thought Tommy did a great job on his own. He’s a very unique guitar player. Some of my favorite bands are trios. The guitar holds the melody, and the drums and bass hold the rhythm. What else do you really need?

Do you recall the writing sessions? Were they collaborative or individualistic?

Everything, at that point, was worked on individually. I was working on the riffs mostly. I think we may’ve gone over to Mike’s apartment for like a half hour to show him what’s going on. Mike had most of the sections to “Steady Decline,” for example. Then, I’d come in and another riff to it. A lot of the time, songs really were missing a part. We had the stuff in our heads. We had to be prepared when we went down to Westbeth [an artists’ community in Manhattan] in order to work. We knew we had two hours, three times a week. We had to get in and get out of there. Actually, thinking back on it, we never had any demos. We didn’t have a vehicle to record any demos. This is before Pro Tools or Mboxes. We didn’t even have a boom box. We just rehearsed it, jammed it out by memory.

KIRKLAND: With Beg to Differ, we wrote separately.

They were collectively arranged. Maybe add a part or two to make them collective songs. You’re trying to get songs out as quickly as possible.

You’re playing shows, you’re listening to music, and you want your music to be as good as what you’re listening to. You’re rehearsing a lot. It just kind of gelled. It didn’t seem to be a lot of work. Once the songs were presented, it was like, “This needs this and that needs that.” Then, the song’s done and we moved on. I have to say, on VICTOR:

Beg to Differ we did spend more time refining the riffs. I’m sure Tommy spent more time. We kind of slowed things down a little bit. There was a groove element that was added to the tunes.

PARSONS: I think Mike and Tommy were great at making riffs and deciding what was acceptable and what to trash for the Prong sound. Then we would jam in the rehearsal space together, and I would put up a beat and we would go from there.

We didn’t have a lot of time in the studio. Those were the days [when] you had a couple hours to play, then the next five bands would follow.

No computer programs [were] used back then.

Just old-school hashing it out until it felt right.

We had an understanding what this album was going to be, but not necessarily what it would be sonically.

It was a serious time for us. What was once fun became tense.

We were competing with Pearl Jam, Rage Against [the Machine], Korn and bands who were selling a million copies. I don’t think Sony had a clue what we were about.

T E D PA RSO NS I think Prong’s rhythmic sense was unparalleled for the time. What do you attribute that to?

I’d say it was the combination of Killing Joke and the Bad Brains. I Against I is one of my favorite records. I was really into that. Killing Joke’s What’s THIS For...! was probably played a million times. They had these jagged percussive stabs with dissonant guitars. Vocally, Jaz Coleman was somebody Mike and I tried to emulate a little bit. If you take “Change,” off the first Killing Joke record, that aesthetic was definitely in Prong. It comes out much later in Prong—on the Cleansing record—but I remember the Mudd Club was always playing that song. I also have to say “Follow the Leaders.” The first time I saw Killing Joke was at the Underground right on the north side of Union Square. It’s a cliché, but they changed my life. When I saw them, I was like, “Oh, my god! This is it! Everybody else

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sucks!” I was so into it. Joy Division was also a big favorite. I remember playing Killing Joke for kids who were into Suicidal [Tendencies]. They didn’t really get Killing Joke. A lot of people didn’t. The darkness, the simplicity, the apocalyptic vibe. I wanted to do that, too. They were just cool. I wanted to be cool, too. To simplify it all, it’s a combination of those two bands. We were heavily into those records.

KIRKLAND: Metal back then… We’re talking 1985, ’86, ’87, ’88—metal’s changed so much since then. My influences were punk. Like the Stooges.

They’re my all-time favorite band. Metal didn’t play a part in what I listened to. I liked early Black Sabbath. Ted was a huge Zeppelin fan.

Godflesh was an influence. When that came out, it was like, “Oh, these guys are doing something with a metal-ish kind of sound.” That’s the thing about Prong. We wanted to be different.

New bands always want to do that anyway. They don’t want to rehash the past too much. Doing straight-up hard rock or metal wasn’t interesting to me at all. Once we got into the metal framework is when I lost interest, in a way. The audience wants certain things, and they only respond to certain things. It’s like they only want to eat bologna and mustard sandwiches every day.

PARSONS: It was our influences we took from music. Beats from Big Paul of Killing Joke, Joy Division, the Stranglers. This was all the music that had big grooves and beats. I was really into funk and soul drumming as well. The groove of [John] Bonham. This, combined with a metal/ hardcore sound we were listening to, helped create “groove metal,” if you will. I think maybe this [contributed] to the rhythm of the band.

What is NY noise, and how did it impact Prong’s sound going into Beg to Differ?

Stuff like Sonic Youth was innovative.

Experimenting with different tunings, atonality in the guitar parts. There was a pop element to it in terms of having a song to present. That was one thing we had to have, too: songs. Prong didn’t have long jams going on. Solos always were at a minimum. We definitely had rules, almost punk-like aesthetics to what we were doing. But we were so exposed to it all the time. I was working 60-70 hours, mixing six bands a night at CB’s, including the hardcore matinees. That was a great thing for the band—also, my musical career— was to be in that situation. There were countless Live Skull shows, Blind Idiot God, countless other bands that’d come in on audition night that were into that sound. Barkmarket were around at that time. I remember the famous thing with Dodson—he was a straight-ahead rock guy and he sort of got talked into doing Prong—is that he’d always say, “Obnoxious chords!” He hated the dissonant chord thing with Prong. He’d say, “That’s fucking horrible.” I’d say, “Well, that’s the way it is, man.” There was a longstanding joke with [4]

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PRONG BEG TO DIFFER him about “obnoxious chords.” [Laughs] But I have to give credit to Von Lmo. Von Lmo, if you see it now it’s almost like a joke, but back in the day it was threatening. Nobody but Von Lmo was making completely obnoxious noise on guitar for 20 minutes. Von Lmo was an originator. We were stuck in the middle of that.

So much of this stuff was there. We ended up picking little pieces and throwing those things into what we were doing. I think it was more prevalent on Force Fed. There’s Swans, Live Skull, there was a band called Rat at Rat R. Matter of fact, the singer Victor [Poison-Tete] of Rat at Rat R was thinking of singing for Prong at one time.

I think it was Mike’s idea. It never really happened.

KIRKLAND: I don’t think it did at all. New York noise was a thing that happened in the late ’70s.

I think the remnants of it morphed into the Swans, which Ted was a huge part of. Other than the fact that Ted was pounding the drums for that band, I think he may’ve taken something from that. For myself, New York noise didn’t really play a part in Beg to Differ’s sound.

PARSONS: New York noise was more experimental. The Contortions, Sonic Youth, Swans, Glenn Branca, Missing Foundation—the list goes on. It was all over the place in NYC at the time. I think we just absorbed a little of it into our feel. More of the feel than the actual sound. But I don’t think we had a lot of affiliation with it. Prong was linked more with the metal/hardcore and punk scenes. Von Lmo was our fave!

I think a lot of people think signing a major label deal is like a deal with the devil. Did the label influence you in any way?

I hate to use the term “underground,” but the scene was kind of strong. You had bands like the Cro-Mags selling out the Ritz. Sonic Youth? Forget about it. You couldn’t even get in to see Sonic Youth. Inevitably, when the major labels moved in, they sort of ruined the “underground” scene. We had something going, but thinking back on it, we didn’t get a lot of offers from the indies. I mean, the question was: Should we take 25-30 grand from Epic to do a record, or should we let [Homestead Records’] Gerard Cosloy do the record for two grand? We did our time with independent labels.

Roadrunner was around, but they were more like a major.

But we got hammered in Europe for being on a major. The negativity for being on a major label—regardless of how good Beg to Differ was— was intense. I remember Mick [Harris] from Napalm Death came up to me and said, “Fucking sellout!” People were really pissed off at us. We did this Rock Hard fest over there, and everybody was on these cool little labels. Here we are

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on Epic—or Sony—and we’re getting bumped into in hallways. People gave us major attitude.

Later on, it wasn’t a big deal. In a lot of ways, Prong got lucky. In a lot of ways, we had bad timing. There were a lot of unfortunate events.

Stuff we couldn’t foresee. When we signed the record deal—it was a Friday. Friday the 13th of October. I’m pretty sure of that—our lawyer, Elliot Groffman said, “OK, you think this is great and all, but now comes the hard stuff. Here comes the nightmare.” We had just signed a record deal and we were thinking, “What’s this motherfucker talking about?!” He was so right.

Everything became more of a nightmare compared to when we were having fun and were a local band. Everything we did was fucking dissected. The criticisms were hard on me, for sure.

KIRKLAND: I never heard it. We talked a lot to people we were working with, like Bob Feinangle and couple of other people who were there. They never asked for anything. I think they thought we’d be one of the bands they’d throw at the wall to see if we’d make it. They didn’t spend a lot of money to get us. That was before they’d sign anything and give them a bunch of money. I think they figured we knew what we were doing. The only input they had was choosing the producer.

It’s something Bob Feinangle pushed for. We listened to the stuff he did and said, “Yeah, fine.

Why not? We’ll co-produce with him. Just put us in the studio and we’ll make a record.” When we said we wanted Pushead to do the cover, they said, “Yeah, fine. Great! We’ll write him a check.”

PARSONS: They had a lot to say about videos, art, etc. We didn’t necessarily agree all the time.

Getting signed meant we could tour and promote our music. People think, “Wow, you guys hit the big leagues!” It’s not what it’s cracked up to be, let me tell ya. Big labels are just banks giving out funds that are recoupable. Major labels now are not giving money at all to bands unless you’re a hitmaker. I think Steve Albini summed it up well with his article on the music business. Some people thought we sold out, but who cares, really, at the end of the day? You’re always going to have old fans saying you sold out and get some new ones that just discovered you.

Epic found you opening for the Cro-Mags, correct?

Yeah, it was Prong, Destruction—one of our favorite bands—and the Cro-Mags. We had fought for a long time to be on a rock show. We had never got the big show, really. We were playing at CB’s. We had played some pizzerias out in Jersey. Weird shit. [Laughs] Once we got the Cro-Mags show, things changed. All of a sudden people were like, “Holy shit! Who’s Prong?!” Kids from the suburbs finally heard us at a big show in the city. People from Brooklyn were hearing us. Actually, we did get some exposure before the Cro-Mags show. Mike Parente from L’amour put us on a show with Overkill. That went over

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really well.

I don’t remember that at all. We may’ve opened for the Cro-Mags. I mean, Tommy and I worked at CB’s. We saw so many bands.

We’d be there all the time. It gets kind of blurry.

Did we play? Or were we just working that night?

PARSONS: I can’t remember. I do remember that Vernon Reid from Living Colour loved Prong and told his A&R people to sign us to Epic/Sony. He was a great help, no doubt.

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What was the atmosphere in the band like after you signed the Epic deal?

Well, as usual, the money we got went to Ted’s shit. [Laughs] He’d be like, “I need a new drum kit.” So, he ate into the budget. I was able to buy a couple of new guitars, which actually got stolen out of his car on 48th Street.

Ridiculous. People won’t believe me, but throughout our career, we never had any dough.

We had the start-up money, but we didn’t have tour support. We had to sign a merch deal and pay for that ourselves. [Epic] didn’t really start sinking money into Prong until the Prove You Wrong remixes. I think they thought they were where we were going musically.

KIRKLAND: I think the atmosphere in the band changed. Basically, you do it for fun. You also do it because maybe you like writing songs, listening to music and playing with people in other bands. It was like, “I’m going to get up tomorrow morning and go to work. I’m going to make so much money in this band. I’m going to be in this band for however long.” I never thought of it that way. I’m not sure those guys did either.

Maybe they did. I kind of doubt it, to be honest.

When we got signed, I was like, “We can make money doing this other than just scraping by?”

So, it changes the way you think.

PARSONS: It was a serious time for us. What was once fun became tense. We were competing with Pearl Jam, Rage Against [the Machine], Korn and bands who were selling a million copies. I don’t think Sony had a clue what we were about.

They just saw everyone else was signing new “underground music,” so why not take a chance on Prong? Suddenly, Tommy was all concerned about our look and what image we would send out, as well as the label. Mike and I could care less. We were a T-shirt and jeans band. We didn’t give a fuck about fashion.

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How important was CBGB’s to Prong at the time of and after the release of Beg to Differ?

Priceless. Being exposed to all the bands that were coming out at the time was a blessing.

You couldn’t get that kind of exposure back then.

Imagine all the bands running through that club. That was our Internet. The Internet wasn’t even a concept at that point. The only communication we had with the outside world was through fanzines. There was a fanzine shop on

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Taking it in hand Victor (l) and Kirkland get into the groove

“Dark bollocks,” he would say. It was a pleasure to work with him. It was a drinking fest at that session. The coolest thing was meeting Danny Miller [Rolling Stones producer] at that little recording studio in Rhode Island. We were thinking, what the hell are you doing here?

The negativity for being on a major label– regardless of how good Beg to Differ was–was intense. I remember Mick [Harris] from Napalm Death came up to me and said, “Fucking sellout!”

TO M M Y V ICTOR St. Mark’s [Place]. That’s all they sold was fanzines. That’s how we got our demo out there initially. That’s how Pushead [Brian Schroeder] had heard about us. We got our coverage in fanzines throughout the country. Locally, we had bands like Green River coming through. I remember they went on at 12:30 on a Tuesday night. No one was there. Christian Death also came through.

Youth of Today were huge at the time. Had I not worked there I wouldn’t have wanted to hang out with all these little bald kids with cut-off chinos. That wasn’t my scene. But we became friends. Anyway, that’s the kind of stuff I’d see all the time at CB’s.

KIRKLAND: CB’s was important in the way we met. It was the breeding ground for what we were doing in New York. It was important that we were working for Hayley [Williams]. Hayley was a great guy. Rest in peace. You didn’t go to CB’s to start a metal band. The mid-’80s at CB’s was a strange time. Obviously, the heyday of 1977 was long gone. But it was still very cool. I met a lot of great people there. It was important personally, but for us as a band not too much.

PARSONS: Well, CBGB’s was where we all originally met. I hung out there so much I used to call it “the office.” We saw a lot of bands there and took from the good stuff and discarded the bad

stuff. And believe me, there was a lot of bad.

What were the studio sessions with Mark Dodson like?

He was so great on that record. He was a friend and a vocal coach for me. He wasn’t a kiss-ass. He was hard. We worked hard. All day long. We drank a lot, too. I remember the actual master of the song “Intermenstrual, D.S.B.” got wiped by his assistant, a guy he called Lamie Jamie. He was very cool about it. He could’ve killed the guy. He could get ferociously angry, but at the same time he was a good sport about some things. He was great, though. He asked me what I wanted to do with the record. He wasn’t too familiar with our sound, and I had been working as an engineer at CB’s—a joke of a sound thing, really—so I kind of knew how effects worked. The whole gated snare sound is a trick I used at CB’s. I mean, had I not worked at CB’s, the whole hardcore sound and mosh parts wouldn’t have been part of Prong.

PARSONS: Mark Dodson was the first real music producer that we worked with. Sony recommended him because he had worked with the likes of Anthrax, Judas Priest and Suicidal Tendencies. Although he didn’t really understand all the alternative music we were into.

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How would you describe the sound on Beg to Differ? Punchy yet dissonant, I guess I’d call it.

Well, I remember we recorded the record and, from my recollection, we didn’t even go to the mastering. We went out of that session and were on a plane to Europe for a tour. I don’t remember ever going to a mastering session for that record. It was sent off to Greg Calbi and that was it. We had to wait until it came out. We didn’t know what the hell was going to happen.

So, it’s hard for me to remember what I thought of the sound after it was all done.

KIRKLAND: It was new to the audience. The stuff we were listening to had those elements. They weren’t mainstream. With Prong coming in, having something on television like Headbangers Ball, it was different. If Die Kreuzen had been signed to a major label and something off October File had made it to MTV, it would’ve been like Prong, to be honest.

PARSONS: Yeah, you’re probably right. I would agree with that. I wanted the drums to be stripped down. No fills unless it was necessary.

Surgical and precise. I’ve always played for the music. Tommy and Mike as well. Looking at your music under a microscope tends to do this.

VICTOR:

Lyrically, Prong read anti-establishment. That you and those who connected to you were underlings in the greater scheme of things.

“Prime Cut” has that line “gristle’s good enough.”

We were living on the Lower East Side. It was punk rock. I got out of school early and moved down there. I lived like a mole for a few years. We were part of the environment. It’s not suburban music. Our music isn’t of that mentality. We were cut off a lot back then. We didn’t have a lot of exposure to the outside world. I was thinking [4]

VICTOR:

PRONG BEG TO DIFFER of it recently—apart from the Mets winning the World Series in ’86, I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t have a TV for a long time.

My roommate at the time had a black and white TV with a hanger sticking out of it in his room. I was out of touch and in my own world. It was the music and the band. That was it. We didn’t have a lot of distractions.

KIRKLAND: I guess you could say that. We looked at issues with the media. Obviously, we weren’t a mainstream act. Obviously, we weren’t proud of Reagan at the time. What America was turning into. I don’t think we ever wanted to be overtly political or anti-establishment in our lyrics. I can’t speak for Tommy too much. For myself, the lyrics I wrote were in between stream of consciousness and then trying to nail down what I was thinking about. I didn’t have an agenda to espouse. Some of the better songs I wrote weren’t on Beg to Differ. You’d have to go back to Force Fed. Like “Bought and Sold.” Or “Look Up at the Sun,” which is my favorite tune. I always had the approach that if you wanted to read into something I wrote, go ahead. I don’t really care. To be overtly anti-establishment? No. Never.

Up on the crossover Various early ’90s gristle, good enough

Pushead’s work is always recognizable. How did he end up as the artist of choice for Beg to Differ? It was very different for a metal record.

That was all Pus. He completely did that himself. His concept. He was the man. We paid him. We trusted him. That’s pretty much it.

KIRKLAND: I don’t think any of us in the band thought of us as a metal band. Maybe the people that signed us thought we had a metal thing going. To be honest, any of the clichés of metal were overtly avoided. We were making an interesting, hard record that was kind of new. It was based on our influences like Discharge, Die Kreuzen, Killing Joke and the Swans. I mean, we shared Ted with the Swans for the first two records. He was touring with that band. It was very hard music. Brutal and primal sound. I don’t think we ever really thought to ourselves, “Hey, let’s go make a metal record!”

VICTOR:

Did you have a set idea for the three of you to appear on the cover?

KIRKLAND: Pushead had gotten in touch with us prior to the record. I think he had listened to Force Fed, if I recall. He knew somebody I knew who owned a record store in Salt Lake City. A guy named Brad Collins. I think that’s how he got in touch with us. He had done the C.O.C. [Corrosion of Conformity] cover.

How important was Headbangers Ball to Prong?

I distinctly remember seeing the “Beg to Differ” video in rotation. Always a highlight amongst the Warrant and Tesla videos.

I don’t know. Apart from the sticker on the CD, I don’t think anybody knew who we were. Or cared. There’s the section from “Lost and Found” in the intro, but I’m not sure if people put those things together. It took Riki Rachtman mentioning it, I think. I don’t think it helped that much. If anything, we may’ve fallen into the major label stigma. Like the punk rock and metalheads felt, “Give me a break!” Today, kids don’t come from the street. The more commercialized it is, the better it is. They’ve been conditioned to think that way. Years ago, people

VICTOR:

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were distrustful of MTV. The only way to make a difference back in those days was to be on the radio. And we didn’t hit radio until [1994’s] “Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck.” That was the only instance of it, really.

KIRKLAND: Well, business-wise it was superimportant. It was great we got on there. When you’re in the band, anyone who gets to hear what you’re doing, see what you’re doing or like what you’re doing, it’s good. Had I wished it would’ve been on another program? No. In England, obviously, it was different. We had independent videos over there. Our records were on Southern. If you read the stuff that came out in the major music press, they viewed us differently from the Americans.

PARSONS: It was important for us to get more exposure, and Headbangers Ball contributed to that and to get us out to a larger audience. They used the “Lost and Found” song as the theme tune for a few years. Headbangers Ball, at the time, was about boot and hair metal, so we were the new breed of crossover music at the time.

What do you remember about the filming of the “Beg to Differ” video? Where was it filmed?

It was filmed under Central Park. I guess there’s a waterworks down there. The Central Park reservoir. I’m sure it was costly to get the permit. We were very happy with it. I thought it was pretty cool.

VICTOR:

KIRKLAND: Some kind of cavern under Central Park. I don’t know what it’s for or why it exists.

It’s very interesting-looking. I forget his name [Kevin Kerslake], the guy who made the video.

He went on to make a few Nirvana videos. A great guy. I remember being in a room watching the video. There were a couple of elements I thought were goofy. There was a monkey in there at one point. Typical things you’d expect for an industry that makes money off music. Obviously, you’re a little naïve as to what’s going to happen.

On another hand, your bandmates are telling you it’s great and other people are telling you it’s great. Well, it could’ve been worse.

PARSONS: It was filmed in Central Park underground at the main waterworks for NYC. It was interesting because most of our videos were made by friends and film students. To be honest, I like the videos we did back in the day. Less polished and more raw, like the music.

How did Mike end up leaving Prong?

It was a really bad thing. I don’t know what the hell happened. We weren’t getting along too great on the first tour. The misery factor increased a lot when we turned into a professional band. It was a nightmare. We didn’t know what to expect. We were kings of the CB’s scene. When we were a national band, and we had to act like that, we weren’t prepared for it.

We had to have the best gear, which we didn’t.

Mike was an older guy, an art rocker. He’s very intelligent. People started to criticize the vocals he was doing, his bass playing, and it looked like we weren’t progressing at a fast enough level. We had to start competing with national-level bands.

We were no longer a Lower East Side hardcore/ noise phenomenon. It all went to our heads. Mike was sort of scapegoat for the misery factor.

VICTOR:

We had a co-headline tour with Pantera. Now, this was a band that had been playing together since they were babies. They had a truckload of gear, techs, lighting. They had to have been touring for like 15 years in Texas. I’ll tell you, they wrecked us! They completely destroyed our confidence and it ended up being a disappointing tour. I had a mix-match guitar rig and a couple of broken-down guitars. Our tech didn’t know what the hell he was doing. Pantera were a machine. And that machine destroyed Prong, man. Mike’s confidence was affected. It was a bad time after that. We did a Flotsam & Jetsam tour after that. It was so grueling. Looking back on it, it was a dumb move. We should’ve done more records together. Though getting [Paul] Raven in Prong gave us new life later on. You know, I’ll tell you this: I was stupid. I wanted longevity in the music business. I certainly got it. It’s not what it’s cracked up to be.

KIRKLAND: Ted and Tommy had a different vision for the band than I did. We made Beg to Differ, and things were pretty cool. The first tour we went on was Soundgarden. Pretty sure. It was pretty successful. It was in Europe. We also did America with them and Voivod, which was cool, too. The push for the metal thing was getting stronger and stronger. We got thrown out on the road with a couple of bands. Pantera was one of them.

A great live band, if you like that sort of thing.

And Flotsam & Jetsam. I was pretty burned out at the time. Being on metal tours was like, ugh.

It was never the kind of thing I wanted to do in the first place. I had been going along with the idea. We were a different band. We really didn’t fit in anywhere. The metal influence was getting stronger and stronger. I guess they could feel I wasn’t into it. Leaving Prong was a breath of fresh air. Obviously, they weren’t happy with D EC I B EL

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me, at the time. I wasn’t happy with them, I suppose.

Although I still consider Ted a pretty good friend. Once I was out of that scene and that world, I was a lot happier. I didn’t realize how much of a box I was in at that point.

It was like being a frog in a pool of lukewarm water that was slowly getting hotter and hotter. By the time I got out, it was like, “Man, that was kind of a fucked-up place to be.” [Laughs] PARSONS: Tommy and I thought Mike was less interested in Prong at the time and dragging us down. It was a really tough thing for me to tell Mike this at a meeting in a bar. Tommy was mute at that meeting, which I thought was a bit cowardly. Mike was a great guy, and I felt guilty that we let him go.

Tommy and I were so blinded by success and getting ahead that we lost a great bass player and good friend. The music business can be cruel and corrupt if you’re not careful. A lot of things changed when we made that choice.

Good and bad.

Looking back, what do you make of Beg to Differ being an influential record?

In order for it to take on that integrity, it takes guys like you to bring it to that level.

We’ve been on tour with newer metal acts, and they have no idea who we are. Very rarely do we get kudos from anybody. It’s deserved. It’s true.

I could [have] more braggadocio about it, ’cause I know a lot of people stole ideas from us, but it’s an honor and fantastic that it gets some note now.

KIRKLAND: I don’t know. It is kind of influential. I hope it’s influential in the same way the records that we were listening to were to us.

I don’t know to what degree it is successful. I mean, I remember a band called Helmet showed up on our heels pretty quickly. They were in the crowd when we were playing. They showed up with a sound that kind of reminded me of Prong, in a way. Tool as well. I remember hearing Tool in the mid-’90s. A friend of mine played it for me. I was like, “What the fuck?! This sounds like some of the stuff we were doing.” I don’t think that in a bad way. I kind of liked it. Tool sounds kind of cool.

PARSONS: I think the Beg to Differ album was an innovation for a new breed of crossover bands. It still sounds fresh to me. I get people to this day saying Beg to Differ was a big influence and inspiration for them. It’s nice to be recognized. A VICTOR:

JHANENEFMFAN

SOLUOM ALB

MONDAY

11:30: Mr. Hanneman reported to studio complaining of early call time. Mr. Rubin’s personal chef served him a macrobiotic lunch of toasted grains over greens in a light vinaigrette, which Mr. Hanneman called “gay.” Mild argument over karmic repercussions of calling Pizza Hut ended with Mr. Rubin ordering the Meat Lover’s for Mr. Hanneman “just this once.”

12:30: assistants set mics up, selected prewar Martin for Mr. Hanneman to play. Mr. Hanneman examined his guitar and appeared for a moment to be looking for hidden cameras: “This is a joke, right?”

1:15: after spirited discussion, Mr. Hanneman accepted an offer of $250 cash to “at least try” singing and playing Depeche Mode’s “Get the Balance Right.”

1:30: “Get the Balance Right” aborted. Principals agreed to take rest of afternoon off, “maybe see if tomorrow hasn’t got a better vibe.”

TUESDAY

11:30: Mr. Hanneman reported to the studio complaining of hippie music over in-house PA. Mr. Rubin’s personal chef served Mr. Hanneman a macrobiotic lunch consisting of roasted new potatoes in light miso gravy and a side of bulgur, which Mr. Hanneman called “pussy.” Spirited argument ensued over whether having cold cuts in studio fridge is technically a breach of dharma.

12:30: assistants set up mics and selected 1960 Gibson Jumbo for Mr. Hanneman to play. Mr. Hanneman examined his guitar and appeared to smell something funny or unpleasant.

1:15: after rancorous disagreement, Mr. Hanneman accepted an offer of $500 cash and a personal apology from Mr. Rubin “for being gay” in exchange for “one honest attempt” at playing and singing “I Think We’re Alone Now.” 1:45: “I Think We’re Alone Now” basic track completed, to surprise and delight of all present.

2:00: arrival of goat cheese and candied walnut snack plate “completely harshes any mellow we had going.” Mr. Hanneman exited building, said that engineers should “call [me] when they have their shit together.”

WEDNESDAY

12:30: Mr. Hanneman arrived late to studio, bringing several burritos and a 3 lb. bag of Lay’s KC Masterpiece BBQ chips with him. Sat on chair in vocal booth eating silently for 20 minutes, twirled finger in accepted “roll tape” gesture, said “let’s fucking do this” into mic, and proceeded over the next hour to play first-take keepers of “You Got Another Thing Comin’,” “Snowblind,” “Rainbow in the Dark,” “Slow Ride” and Dokken’s “Jaded Heart.” Last number resulted in fistfight between Mr. Hanneman and second engineer, who was overheard on talkback saying that he “wasn’t paid enough to put up with this shit.” Mr. Hanneman left studio amid many obscene gestures. WD-40 applied judiciously to stuck talkback mic; project shelved.

A

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