M. SHADOWS: Everyone thinks I’m the craziest one in the band because my temper has an on/off switch, so when I drink certain alcohols I get out of my mind worse than anyone else on drugs. I’m going around trying to kill everybody or I’m just going nuts. I’ve whipped cards in the faces of casino dealers when I’ve lost, I’ve grabbed knives and tried to stab people and had to be talked down. That’s how I get my bad rep—just from my temper.
THE REV: I’m not a drug addict, but I’m a total sex addict. I’m also probably an alcoholic. I mean, shit, when you’re sitting around the tour bus every night driving to the next town, what the fuck else is there to do but drink and take drugs? But I’m not into ruining my life. I never had to go to the hospital or anything. The closest I got was being on a lot of cocaine and then snorting Oxycontin pills. That was really dumb, and I don’t remember anything after that.
ZACKY VENGEANCE: I once saw Jimmy walking down the street holding his arm up and fucking wheezing. Like, “I gotta put my arm up, it’s hurting my heart. It hurts really bad.” Like the dude’s about to have a heart attack. Then he walked back to the room and I see these lines of coke cut on a mirror that are literally the size of four pencils stuck together. Each line was seriously like a gram and a half. I looked at him and started laughing. I’m all, “That’s enough to last a fucking month.”
THE REV: We have this term cross-eyed drunk for Johnny. He gets so drunk that any other one of us or any normal human being would pass out and get sick. But his body will never make him pass out, so he never has to stop. He’s not conscious at all and he’s doing the most unspeakable things. He’ll be buck naked, puking on himself. He was trying to get drunk enough to do stand-up comedy and improvise. He pukes and we’re like, “You didn’t drink enough.” So he goes, “I know, I know. I can still see.” He downs three more full glasses of tequila and does more stand-up comedy. It’s the most disturbing thing. We filmed it, and watching the video is like watching Faces of Death. There’s one point where he lay down, he got pulled out of his bunk, and it looked like a dead body being dragged across the floor. Then he covered himself in suntan lotion and started trying to tell jokes again.
For Jimmy “the Rev” Sullivan, the good times came to an end on December 28, 2009. Avenged Sevenfold were well into the writing process for their 2010 album, Nightmare, when the drummer died unexpectedly at his home in Huntington Beach, California. Toxicology reports determined that his death was caused by acute polydrug intoxication due to combined effects of the prescription drugs oxycodone, oxymorphone, diazepam/nordiazepam, and alcohol. The coroner’s report also indicated that Sullivan suffered from an enlarged heart, which may have contributed to his premature death.
LARRY JACOBSON (manager): To all of us who loved Jimmy, the only thing relevant about December 28 is that this is the night we lost, too soon, a son, brother, friend, and one of the most talented artists in the world. Every day, his parents and sisters, and his brothers in Avenged Sevenfold smile at the many memories they have of Jimmy, and his fans around the world revel in the musical legacy he left them.
M. SHADOWS: I came home [from playing golf when my wife called me with the news] and there were probably fifty people [there], just crying. [We were] camping at each other’s houses. We’d order in food and sleep and watch videos. We didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything or talk to anybody.
SYNYSTER GATES: A week or two after the Rev passed, some fans gave us this huge book of thousands of stories of the band and [personal] notes and pictures. It was the first therapeutic thing that happened and it was just unreal.
JOHNNY CHRIST: After Jimmy passed, we didn’t think we were going to continue. We couldn’t imagine Avenged Sevenfold without the Rev. But [the fans] sent letters and videos and there was this tremendous outpouring over the Internet, and they asked us if we could continue. After a while we realized that this thing that we created with Jimmy is a little bit bigger than we are at this point.
ZACKY VENGEANCE: Nightmare is the darkest, the coldest, most numb album I’ve ever heard, because we went there during the hardest time, basically with tears in our eyes, and recorded the songs our friend had helped write. Having to listen to the demos he played on, we put up a shield. We turned the rest of the world off, marched in there, and went to work. Looking back, I don’t even know how we did it.
13
NEW AMERICAN GOSPEL: MILLENNIAL METAL, 1992–PRESENT
The nineties and aughts have been a strange time for those who found grunge and alternative rock too lightweight, nu metal too trendy or stereotypically macho, and death metal too brutal. Yet the era yielded some of the most creative and iconoclastic bands formed by artists who wanted to play a combination of sounds they liked and weren’t hearing from existing bands. While Tool, System of a Down, and Mastodon didn’t set out to be rock stars, they each imbued underground sounds with commercial elements that took the mainstream by surprise. Others, such as Lamb of God, Machine Head, Slipknot, and Hatebreed also wrote bracing, original material, yet these bands featured striking and charismatic musicians that couldn’t have stayed out of the headlines if they wanted to, often because their offstage lives were as chaotic as their onstage performances. Then there were rockers like Disturbed and Godsmack, who drew influence from classic metal and wrote heavy, melodic songs that were easily digestible and that turned them into willing celebrities, at least until they craved anonymity and family lives.
MAYNARD JAMES KEENAN (Tool, Puscifer, A Perfect Circle): I moved to LA in December of 1989 and immediately noticed that people playing music clearly were taking cues from A&R guys or marketing people. It seemed all upside-down. They had clever gimmicks, and the music was suffering. I’m kind of an opinionated guy, so I kept expressing myself, and a bunch of people said, “Well, if you think you can do better, you form a band.”
ADAM JONES (Tool): I met Maynard through an old friend he was dating. I was working in Hollywood on special effects for movies, and my hobby was playing guitar. Maynard played me a tape of a joke band that he was in back on the East Coast, and I went, “Maynard, you can sing! You sing good.” I kept bugging him to start a band on the side with me. Danny [Carey] lived downstairs from Maynard, and was playing in Green Jellÿ. He originally didn’t want to play with us. Then we had a practice session and the guy that was supposed to drum for us didn’t show up. Danny felt sorry for us and agreed to play. He said, “Well, I’ll sit in on the sessions, but that’s it.” Afterwards, he went, “Wow, we should jam again.”
DANNY CAREY (Tool): We weren’t trying to be anything. We were just trying to stay open and experiment and find out what our personality was as a band. I was really into prog-rock at that time and Adam was more into rock and roll like Black Sabbath. Maynard was into Joni Mitchell and singer/songwriters. [Bassist] Paul D’Amour was more the grunge guy. We really did just throw everything into the pot and let it develop.
MAYNARD JAMES KEENAN: It wasn’t hard for Tool to get signed. We were four pissed-off, relatively talented musicians, and we got a record deal after about seven shows. Nirvana helped open the door because after they hit, most music guys around town were chasing their tails trying to find the next big thing. Here we come along and we don’t sound like most of the other stuff going on, so for them, they don’t really get it, but they knew that it was different and that Nirvana was selling lots of records, so they knew they had to grab whatever it was, just in case.
ADAM JONES: The most important thing for us at that point was to have creative control. When we got signed [to Zoo Records], we went, “Okay, if we take less money can we have control of the music?” and the label went, “Yeah. No problem.” We said, “If we take even less money can we have final say over the videos?” And so on. So we got artistic control, but there was a lot of banging heads with the record company anyway because they wanted to do things in the traditional way. They’d go, “If you’re not gonna be in your video, we’re not gonna pay for it.” Typical slimy shit. We really wanted to tak
e the importance of who we were and stress what we were doing instead—just the music and the art. We signed a three-album deal and the first thing we wanted to do was an EP. They went, “Yeah, do an EP. That’d be great!” We kind of got burned from it because it wasn’t a full-length so it didn’t count as a record on our contract, which is why they were so agreeable when we suggested it in the first place.
DANNY CAREY: We were broke, and we knew that even if the record company was willing to pay for studio time we were going to have to pay it all back. So we recorded Opiate in four days because we knew if we were there longer it was gonna get expensive. But we also had a live recording and we were happy with the way it sounded. So we thought, “We’ve got all these great live tracks, let’s just mix them and add them to the record.” That’s how “Cold and Ugly” and “Jerk-Off” got on there.
ADAM JONES: We felt like no one would take us seriously unless we pushed the more heavy metal ideas, and that explains Opiate. We got typecast as a metal band right off the bat. It’s kind of funny because the least aggressive song, “Opiate,” was the most popular one.
MAYNARD JAMES KEENAN: After Opiate came out, we found ourselves in some place like Akron, Ohio, playing some club that looks like it holds five hundred people, but there are only five people there and those are the guys that are playing after us. But it didn’t matter because we were still getting to know each other. Being on a stage like that, hearing what things sound like in different venues, getting used to traveling—I think that was a very important step in our growth.
DANNY CAREY: We got thrown into the whole grunge thing, which was weird. Everyone was into that stuff so heavily, so just because we had sort of a heavy sound and we didn’t look like a spandex-wearing hair band, they instantly assumed we were one of those Seattle-type bands.
Tool delivered their music with artistic flair and drama that equaled their aggression. Other bands, however, focused more intently on sheer rage born of challenging upbringings, chemical imbalances, or just plain contempt for society and/or themselves. Robb Flynn, the force behind Machine Head, had an abusive childhood, but he was able to turn his negativity and depression into inflammatory songs rooted in thrash and incorporating aspects of nu metal. Flynn actually cut his teeth in the Bay Area’s late thrash band Vio-Lence (as did current Machine Head lead guitarist Phil Demmel). At the time, Flynn and bassist Adam Duce were young, hostile, and trying to survive in an industry that had grown antagonistic toward thrash.
ROBB FLYNN (ex–Vio-Lence, Machine Head): Vio-Lence was a second-wave Bay Area thrash band that I was with [from 1986 to 1992], and it was reaching its end. The shows were down to about a hundred people. I told them I’d stay, but I wanted to start another band called Machine Head. The end of my time with the band came a year before they broke up. We went to a Deftones show and left roaring drunk with a crazy friend who loved to fight. The three of us would drink a fifth of vodka and then either get laid or fight somebody for no particular reason. This night we were getting gas and beer at the AM/PM, and this big white dude walks up and starts shit with my friend. We’re watching them fight, then these two black girls from the neighborhood walk up to see what’s going on. Seeing two white guys fight was pretty entertaining to them. All of a sudden, three carloads of black dudes roll up and they’re like, “What are you doing fucking with our black girls?” They were fucked up and wanted to start shit. They surrounded us, the girls scatter. The dude who’s fighting our friend bails. I could see there was no talking. I had a handful of these gnarly rings and I swung and felt this guy’s nose break under my fist and he dropped. It was on. We’re fighting five dudes. They’re kicking and beating on me, and in the end, three of these guys got stabbed [by my crazy friend] and we bailed.
ADAM DUCE (Machine Head): I came out of the mini-mart with a six-pack and I see Robb and the other guy we were hanging with squaring off with six guys. I put my beer down on the curb and I thought, “Oh, fuck. We are about to die,” ’cause there’s about fourteen of them. They kicked Robb to the ground and surrounded him. I came over and I’m swinging on whoever, not looking. I’m hitting people in the ear as hard as I can from behind. Next thing I know, I’m picking myself up off the ground ’cause I got knocked out. I wake up and start hitting people again ’cause they didn’t surround me. And I got knocked out again. I wake up and look up, and these [black dudes] are screaming and running. I was like, “What the fuck happened and now how do we get out of here?”
ROBB FLYNN: We had a show coming up and I started getting death threats at the club. People were calling in and saying, “We’re gonna throw grenades onstage.” This was the real deal, so I told the band, “This is too fucked-up. I’m not gonna play the show.” They took that to mean I was quitting. For the next month, Adam and I lived every second terrified. These gang guys had gotten our number and were calling and threatening our lives. Eventually it all passed over because they ended up finding somebody else to fight. Over the next six months almost every single person in that gang was killed through their own internal shit.
ADAM DUCE: Me and [ex–Machine Head guitarist] Logan [Mader] used to score weed and hang out with [Vio-Lence guitarist] Phil [Demmel] all the time. Then in 1990 we all moved into the same apartment building. We’d sit around playing acoustic guitars and get wasted. So when Robb approached us to say, “Hey, I want to do this other thing,” we had already started doing something.
ROBB FLYNN: Before Machine Head, I was doing a lot of drugs and I sold speed at shows. Slayer shows were always the big score ’cause I could send my trolls off and make $700 in one night. I used to do a lot of speed, but after I left Vio-Lence, I completely stopped. I just wanted to sell drugs to make money because I needed to live. I was basically just drinking at that point.
ADAM DUCE: I was at rock bottom. I’d panhandle $20 so I could buy a $20 bag of speed and cut it in half and sell both of them for $40. I’d do it again and again. To live in the Bay Area was a real struggle. I did it for several years, and then I rented a warehouse to grow weed, and that was a huge job.
ROBB FLYNN: The first Machine Head record, Burn My Eyes, was fueled mostly by alcohol, rage, and hunger.
ADAM DUCE: I was a pissed-off nineteen-year-old kid starving to death, deciding whether I should go down to the store and buy a sandwich or buy a pack of cigarettes, and choosing the cigarettes because cigarettes are going to last all day and I won’t be hungry. There wasn’t a chance in hell the four guys that did Burn My Eyes could burn that hot for that long.
ROBB FLYNN: At first, no one liked us. One reviewer wrote, “Burn My Eyes: pretty good if you’ve never heard Prong.” I was like, “Dude, fuck you!” We opened for Napalm Death and Obituary and at 85 percent of those dates the crowds hated us so much dudes were trying to fight us onstage. They were shouting, “Go back to Oakland, pussies” and spitting on us. At the end of the Denver show we had to take cymbal stands off the drum riser and use them like shields to defend ourselves. I thought Chicago was gonna be sick because Vio-Lence did pretty well there. We played there, and when we stopped “Davidian” there were just two people sarcastically clapping. I said, “You suck, fuck you Chicago.”
While alternative and grunge incapacitated thrash and nu metal, it didn’t have the same effect on hardcore, largely because many of the popular bands of the day—Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine—all claimed to be rooted more in punk than metal. Ironically, one of the most popular hardcore bands, Hatebreed, was influenced as much by Slayer as Minor Threat. The front man for the band, Jamey Jasta, started in the music industry in Connecticut in his early teens, playing in the well-respected band Jasta 14 and booking local hardcore and metal shows. Like Flynn, Jasta came from a dysfunctional family and sought music as an escape.
JAMEY JASTA: I was thirteen when I was in my first band, Dreadnaught. We had to change the name when I was fourteen because there were other Dreadnaughts, so we went with Jasta 14 and started to play out and do trade shows. I loved every part
of it, whether it was handing out flyers a week before the shows or making the demos and photocopying at the Food Bag down the road from my house, cutting them with scissors or buying the tapes for demos at the dollar store. We could draw two or three hundred kids in some places, and we sold a lot of demos. We were kind of like a mix between mosh metal and bands like Burn or Quicksand. The other guys were older than me, but I grabbed the mic because I was determined to be the singer. I don’t think they necessarily wanted me to do the vocals, but I didn’t know how to play an instrument so they went with it. We practiced in the middle of the night in a band room in downtown New Haven above an old woman’s clothing store. It was not what a normal fourteen-year-old should have been doing. I missed a lot of school to play shows out of state, and I made it to the end of the ninth grade before I dropped out. I lived at home on and off and I lived with the drummer of High on Fire, Des [Kensel]. My crackhead Uncle Paulie, God rest his soul, used to take us to gigs. He didn’t have car insurance, but he had a license, so he convinced Ryder to rent us a truck. One tour, it was us and Dive in the back of a Ryder truck, which you’re not supposed to have people in the back of. We’re drinking Mad Dog, we’re smoking weed. Matt [Kelly] from Dive, who is now the drummer of Dropkick Murphys, was in the back with us, and we were telling stories about the hookers that my uncle used to fuck—that he’d bring to my house. Talk about debauchery. We didn’t believe in karma. Shoplifting was the norm, being a scumbag, being an asshole. Eventually it caught up with me.
Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal Page 61
