THE MANLIEST DECADE IN HISTORY; THE 80's BABY!
Part 2: The Music of the 1980s

You may be saying to yourself “Is Arthur going to talk about Duran Duran and shit like that to illustrate the manliness of the 1980s?” The answer to that is a resounding NO!! What I will talk about is the maturation and mercurial rise of heavy metal in the 1980s. As I have told you, my readers before, heavy metal is the music of true men (Vikings). Heavy metal does not deal with relationships, women, emotions or even mundane day to day life. It is all about manly things such as death, anger, war and treachery. Contrary to what my borderline gay sidekick may say, great heavy metal was conceived and matured in the 1980s. I know, I know, “How about Black Sabbath?” to answer that question, Black Sabbath was much too slow and plodding to be considered real heavy metal. To fully grasp the importance of creation of true metal one must first understand the horrific music of the 1970s. The most popular form of music in the 1970s was disco and while it is much better than what is crammed down our throats on top 40 radio these days, it was still despicable taking most of its cues from the burgeoning gay community. Thankfully, it all started to change in 1980.

In 1980, the great Iron Maiden released Iron Maiden , and by doing so unleashed the manliness of heavy metal to the world. While this album was not as good as its subsequent albums, it gave the public something that was completely new, and more importantly, it kicked some serious disco tail. In 1981, Bruce Dickinson joined Iron Maiden and the most influential metal band in history had taken its final shape. The first release post-Dickinson was the seminal album 1982's Number of the Beast . It featured the classic title track Run to the Hills and the powerful Hallowed Be Thy Name. Iron Maiden was the first true metal band to truly break through in terms of popularity, headlining the Monsters of Rock tour. Its first four albums with Dickinson (Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind, Powerslave and The Seventh Son of a Seventh Son) were top 5 sellers in the UK and three of them made the top 15 in the US at a time when heavy metal was not commercially popular. All of these albums passed the 5 million mark worldwide and were platinum in the United States. Iron Maiden played Rock in Rio in front of 200,000 Brazilian fans and also sold out the Radio City Music Hall for a record five straight nights (only illness stopped the sixth and seventh shows from taking place) Iron Maiden also holds a world record for the loudest live show ever in the Guinness Book of World Records.

"Largest PA system: On Aug 20th 1988 at the Castle Donnington 'Monsters of Rock' Festival a total of 360 Turbosound cabinets offering a potential 523kW of programme power, formed the largest front-of-house PA. The average Sound Pressure Level at the mixing tower was 118dB, peaking at a maximum of 124dB during Iron Maiden's set. It took five days to set up the system."

THAT IS SOME SERIOUS METAL!!!!!

What all of this is demonstrating is that Iron Maiden blazed a trail in the early 1980s for metal acts to follow for the rest of the decade. Sadly, just like the decade itself, Iron Maiden's greatness faded late in the 1980s and in 1990 Iron Maiden released No Prayer for the Dying, sans Adrian Smith, who left the band early in 1990. This album was a departure from the usual greatness of the band. By 1993, Bruce Dickinson left and the band struggled with mediocrity until 1999 when Bruce the Great rejoined and released Brave New World in 2000. While this release was not commercially popular in the US, the album marked the comeback of the real Iron Maiden. I find this to be a circumstance that is not just coincidental. The year 2000 marked the election of W and the beginning of a new manly era in the world. So far there have been many parallels between the 1980s and the 2000s and Iron Maiden blowing the doors off of the music of the time is just one more instance of the rebirth of masculinity. Up The Irons!!

Iron Maiden was not the only great band that rose to prominence in the 1980s and subsequently fell from grace in the early 1990s. Metallica is considered by many (including my co-author Shatner) to be the greatest heavy metal band in history. Metallica was formed in 1981 by the manly James Hetfield and the somewhat bitchy Lars Ulrich. Prior to their first release, Kill Em All in 1983, Dave Mustaine was booted from the band and went on to form Megadeth. (a very underrated metal band that kicked some serious ass in the mid 1980s with Killing is My Business and Business is Good and Peace Sells But Whose Buying?, must haves for any fan of metal). Mustaine was talented, but if you are too much of an alcoholic for an early 80's, Metallica, you know you have problems, and Mustaine has been paying for his mistake ever since. If you want a good laugh, try watching him cry like a bitch in Metallica's documentary “Some Kind of Monster”. Okay… back to fucking Metallica… Kill Em All was a rough, fast and brutal album. The combination of playing speed and musicality was unprecedented and was a precursor for the brilliant recordings of Ride the Lighting in 1984, Master of Puppets in 1986 and …And Justice for All in 1989. Master of Puppets is widely regarded as the greatest metal album in history and for good reason (my bitch Shatner would strongly agree with that judgement). The title track is the greatest song in any genre (in my opinion, which means it is fact) and the rest of the album is breathtaking.

As I'm sure you know, Metallica is still a commercially viable band. I would not dispute that at all but their end did start in 1991 when they released Metallica or the “Black Album”. The production quality was a clear step up from prior releases but some of the raw power and thrashy brilliance of the previous albums was left behind for a more commercial sound. As weak (by comparison) as this album was its subsequent releases were a disgrace to the band when compared to previous material. It was as if the entire band started taking supplemental estrogen and got together and played some pussy ass music and then decided that it was good enough to release. In some ways, the albums of 1990s have tarnished the legacy of this band, a listener cannot help but feel that the power and speed they played with so adeptly in the 1980s was nothing more than mimicking the sound of Motorhead, Iron Maiden and others and when these harder bands were no longer in favor. They changed their sound to keep up with the times. This process of following trends is otherwise known as “selling out” and as much as I love Metallica, I do feel a bit cheated by the band's evolution from a raw, powerful speed metal band to a mere great hard rock band. I do not blame Metallica for this, I blame the decade of the 1990s. It seems as if when Clinton was elected the entire country decided that being strong, virile, and masculine was somehow evil and that being sensitive and introspective was the proper way to act.

But one band never bought into this estrogen based pity party and as a reader of this site you should be familiar with them. That's right folks, the kings of death metal……………….

SLAYER!!!!

You guessed it, another great metal band that was born in the early 1980s. Slayer was formed in 1982 by Tom Araya, Kerry King, Dave Lombardo and Jeff Hanneman and for the most part, this lineup has stayed together with the notable exception of Lombardo who left and rejoined the band on three separate occasions. Slayer released a couple of thrash style albums with little success but eventually ran into Rick Rubin (the famous producer who was the creative force behind the Beastie Boys, Run DMC, The Chili Peppers, System of a Down, and Johnny Cash's American Recordings material) and in 1986 under Rubin's tutelage, Slayer released Reign In Blood the album that Lars Ulrich called the greatest thrash metal album in history. That's right, the guy who recorded Master of Puppets thinks Reign In Blood is better! This album is almost comical in its depiction of death, Satanism, war and torture on top of an incredibly fast wall of sound. Kerrang , a heavy metal magazine, has anointed Reign In Blood the “Heaviest Album in History”. The thing about Slayer that makes them so damn great is that they understand the true calling of men. Men are not about feelings, introspective thoughts, compromise, and compassion. Men are, at their very core, consumed with winning, power, strength, and dominance.

Unlike the previously mentioned bands, Slayer did not go soft in the 1990s. As a matter of fact, they have become more menacing as the years have gone by. God Hates Us All was released on September 11 th , 2001, and without a doubt it is their most offensive and obnoxious album to date. We are still waiting for another release from Slayer, but I would bet any amount of money that it will not be some sort of coming out party for feelings of remorse and repentance. It will kick ass and take names, period! In previous articles, I have been very clear about the greatness of Slayer so I will not go on and on about them in this article (I have done that already in the “Metal is King” article). The reason for this short snippet is to point out the manliness of the 1980s and a discussion about manliness and music of the 1980s would not be complete with mention of the great Slayer.

If only Guns n Roses had been able to use thier original cover for Appetite For Destruction. Robot rapes scenes are the greatest!

I would be remiss if I did not mention Guns n Roses in my discussion of manly music. While I do not feel that Guns and Roses belongs in the same category with Iron Maiden, Metallica and Slayer, they were nonetheless manly as hell. Shatner would be quick to declare that their album Appetite for Destruction is on the short list of greatest albums ever. Personally, I see them as the kings of hair metal, no one did it better. You guys remember these bands; Poison, Warrant, Quiet Riot, Whitesnake, Skid Row, Cinderella, Def Leppard... etc, there were a million of them. You may think that somehow this music was not manly, and when comparing it with Slayer it is not. But when comparing eras, it is important to understand what this music represented at the time. This stuff was the popular “adult contempory” and “teeny music” of the time. In the 1990s, we had knock off punk bands and 30 year olds posing as boys singing nonsensical jingoistic music. Now we have little girls who have had breast implants at age 12 singing about giving blowjobs and little kids from the ghetto running around doing who knows what.

You see, the 1980s was the last time where music was based on talent and skill, not what producer you have. Evidence of this is when 1980s bands go on tour (even bands like Great White and Cinderella) people will go and check it out and remember the good old days where men wore makeup and tights and sang about fucking 17 year olds (Warrant “17”, a classic manly song, ha, ha). To be honest, many of these bands… even some cheesy ones like Def Leppard and Skid Row had some seriously talented musicians and singers. If some techno clowns toured now they would be laughed at (shit, they could not even tour in their heyday of the early 1990s, but that is a different story). My point it that the music of the 1980s, as shallow and callous as it may have been at times, has staying power. Much of the music of the 1990s and 2000s seemed dated three months after its release. The 1980s were the manliest decade in modern history and music was certainly no different.

NEXT: The culture of the 1980's!

-arthur@arthurshall.com