Black Sabbath vs. Led Zeppelin: Who Needs Football on Thanksgiving When You Have This Matchup?

Every now and then metal dudes and dudettes toss around one of the great, unanswerable questions that has vexed metal scholars for decades.  No, not "Who's gonna go to the store for more beer?" but the question of which band was heavier, Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin. Heavy metal would not exist without Black Sabbath, but Led Zeppelin also had a lot to do with how heavy music took hold in pop culture.  Led Zeppelin was one of the biggest rock bands of all time.  There are but a few bands I can think of that put "big" into perspective like them.  However, the relatively recent acceptance of metal into pop culture has cemented Black Sabbath as one of the most important bands in the evolution of all of rock's sub genres.  Black Sabbath's fans are just as fanatical now as they were forty years ago.  Both bands affected the trajectory of heavy music as much as any other band I can think of, and both had a vibe that freaked the hell out of people who were not fans of their music.  I'm not sure that I can really answer this question in a way that will satisfy everyone, but I can give it a shot.  This is probably a volatile topic for a lot of people, so I'll try to be careful.

Decompositions Studios: My Other Outlet

I started this blog back in August of last year with the loose idea of sharing my ideas about music and the many things I have learned over the years while playing with some of the coolest dudes, and best friends I've known since I was around twenty years old. Confessor and Loincloth have been huge parts of my life, and I could never truly express how grateful I am to have been able to go down the underground highway ( no pervert, that's a different highway ) with all of the guys who have stepped in and out of those bands.  But before I became a drummer I thought I would be some type of visual artist.  I met my oldest friend on the first day of eighth grade, and he really nudged me towards exploring the illustrator side of myself that I had only played around with before meeting him.  Danny Gallant and I were nearly inseparable for several years, and we were partners in crime together.  Because of the joy I got out of spending all night up in my room drawing I applied to a magnet high school here in Raleigh where I met several people who had equally significant impacts on the direction of my life. Phil Swisher helped guide me towards playing an instrument, and Monica and I met on the campus of Enloe High School, becoming the very best of friends, then boyfriend and girlfriend.  Jump ahead several years and months of online stalking, and  I was finally able to coerce her into marrying me.

Haunting Your Own House

In the spirit of Halloween, Monica and I wanted to share some of the fun we have had here at The Shelton household celebrating all things horrifying, morbid and blood soaked.  We whipped together some pretty cool props for a Halloween party a couple of years ago and everyone who showed up had a great time.  We hope that all of you have fun this year, and that you get as creative as you can with your costumes and that you scare the crap out of someone, even if it's yourself!  This is the only time adults get to act like kids and get away with it, so tear it up... or tear it limb from limb.  

Halloween, Heavy Metal and Horror Movies: The Three 'H' Club

Once you get beyond longer hair, lots of black clothes and beer bellies there is one thing that most metallers seem to enjoy universally.  No, not drugs... okay maybe two things.  The one that I'd like to write about tonight is metal's cinematic brother from another mother; the horror movie.  Just in time for Halloween.

Metal and horror have quite a bit in common.  Both try and explore the dark sides of the human experience, and both are quite comfortable using gruesome imagery to shock people into a thumb sucking fetal position.  Sometimes bands or performers will use horror to shock their audience, and it usually works out very well for them.  Before Marilyn Manson we had Alice Cooper and of course, bubble gum music's queens of shock rock, Kiss.  In underground metal, plenty of acts have followed King Diamond's lead and used horror fiction as themes in their music.  Look at how long Gwar has been around.  And well before any of them we had Screamin' Jay Hawkins popping up out of coffins as far back as the late 50's and early 60's. Horror and rock are coconspirators in America's dark counterculture history that have finally become so ingrained in our psyche that we have Ozzy Osbourne selling us cars with "Crazy Train", and in case any of you haven't noticed, zombies have been lumbering into our commercials for the last two or three years.  Horror and metal were meant to be together.

Touching Cloth: A Celebration of Heaviness

There are a lot of things about being in a band that are inspiring. Playing live, and the looks on people's faces who are loving every second of your set provide the kind of inspiration that can make you forget about how mundane your nine to five gig is.  I particularly love the random "God DAMN!" that you sometimes hear a nanosecond before the applause starts at the end of a song when someone has just had their face melted off in a completely unexpected way.  Then there is the inspiration that comes from finally having your crap together enough to make it into a studio, where you actually get to 'hear' your music as an outsider. But the most inspiring thing about playing in a band comes in the practice space.  No, not the hookers and blow.  I have actually never seen either of those rock staples in our practice rooms.  I'm referring to that spontaneous moment when everything clicks and you and the three or four guys you've been playing with for so long hit upon something that reminds you of why you ever wanted to play music in the first place... superbadass riffery!  

Last weekend Loincloth had a marathon practice schedule as we took great advantage of Tannon's visit to Raleigh.  Normally, Loincloth songs are constructed at roughly the same pace tectonic plates push up mountains, which is almost as long as it takes to get a human to pick up the phone and pretend to listen to you when you have a question about your cable bill.  Last Saturday, Tannon and I had one of those moments with a new riff when all we could do was laugh at how heavy it was.  We were able to get the entire rough sketch for a song strung together that night.  With the addition of one tiny note to a riff we already knew, the two of us found ourselves propelled into a world of chunky delight!  Knuckle dragging, plodding heaviness. Loincloth's lone reason for existing.  After hookers and blow, of course.

Confessor Welcomes New Blood

Well, I have had a pretty busy week and I have not had a chance to sit down and write about developments in Confessor's search for a rhythm guitarist until now.  I am happy to report that we have found a guitarist and he has accepted our invitation to join the band!  I know that I speak for all of us in Confessor in welcoming Marcus Williams into one of the world's most hard to describe metal outfits.  There have been a lot of smiles in the practice room over the last three weeks as we watched Marcus blaze through some of our material with almost no time to prepare for tryouts.  We are all very comfortable with how he has interacted with us and how he has absorbed the music, and our slightly skewed perspective on the alchemy that is forging different influences into twisted metal.

Jasmine Update: Two Limps Forward, One Hobble Back

There are a few simple rules in life that everyone needs to keep in mind at all times. One of those rules is to never ask "What else could go wrong?"  Life views that as a challenge, and to inquire of the powers that be what else they might have in store for you is to invite stress.  Stress, heartache and an endless appetite for whatever money you may have set aside for that honeymoon you haven't taken since getting married back in 2006.  Jasmine's road to recovery has been full of turns and close calls.  She seems to be headed towards a more stable and predictable path now, almost ten weeks after I snapped her leg in two ( my boots are fine, by the way ) but for a while there Monica and I were afraid things might not be fine at all.

Breaking your own dog's leg may seem funny on the surface but trust me, unless you're the kind of person who thinks of torturing animals as the "gateway drug" to tapping into your inner serial killer, it ain't all that cool and it costs quite a bit of money.  Jasmine was doing pretty well for about a month after the accident.  The vets where we take all of our little critters ( I even took my pet scorpion, Tyson, to a vet once several years ago! ) know us and our pets by name, and they always ask how they are whenever we have to bring one of them in for a check up.  Jasmine had a pin inserted into her right shoulder that went all the way down to her elbow.  She hobbled around well enough in a way that was cute, kind of funny looking, sad and pitiful all at the same time.  She was doing okay for awhile, but then we noticed that her leg started to really swell up over the course of a couple days, and that was when things became scarier than they were the night I tripped over her.