Primal Fear

Meshuggah

Jorn

Firebrands

Eluveitie

A.O.T.W.

more interviews?

When I started this 'Book Of The Month' thing I didn't think I would ever get a second book I could recommend to you readers in time to continue it. Well, label me naive because here I have a book for the month of March 2004. Anyone who has enough balls to try and do a history of metal gets my immediate respect. Us metalheads love ripping this kind of shit apart for the smallest sliver of incorrect information or missing detail. So for that alone Ian gets my respect. He also gets my respect for making this book way more complete than I ever thought possible. There are more facts in this thing than you can imagine. I started to think I was one of those know it all metalheads that sits in chat rooms and corrects others. Now that I read this book I feel like some mallcore brat in Hot Topics talking about that 'new' discovered band called Black Sabbath. For that I can't find the proper words to make it clear enough that every heavy music fan on the planet should read this thing at least once. If you are a music journalist you should read it a few times. Once to let you know that you don't know it all, and a couple more times to try and retain half of the shit in here.

Now the book is not without it's faults, though. I find some bands getting way more mention than their place in metal history warrants. I see some bands that were part of what got me into metal not even mentioned! Forced Entry was the band that first got me to stage dive as a youngster just old enough to get into the club to see them live. Brad Hull is in the EMP and was even one of the top three guitarists to be flown in to audition for the second guitarist spot when James burned himself. He also was one of the guitarists that turned down the spot in Limp Bizkit. Brad Hull and Forced Entry did not get even one mention in this thing. Cyclone Temple was not mentioned either. Their album "I Hate Therefore I am" was one of the first metal albums I ever bought. Znowwhite (The pre-cursor to Cyclone Temple) had two mentions, but that's like only watching the first minute of a porn movie. You are missing the money shot, damnit! Now you might say that the reason for this was space. There isn't enough room to list every single metal band that ever lived. I understand that, but with Katon and Hirax getting mentioned several times every chapter I think it's more of a lack of balance. Yes, Hirax is a damn good band. Yes, Hirax deserves a spot in metal history. I just don't think they deserve as much space as they got when other bands just as important got nothing. It's all about balance and that is this book's one Achilles heel.

However, with everything else that Ian got in here these few minor missteps are just that...minor! Overall this book is down right amazing. It has the real names of people that you probably didn't even realize used stage names. It has things about the glam bands that you would not even think could be possible. Did you know that Ratt has some true metal street cred? I was shocked too, but you will have to read the book to find out how the hell that happened. Even his best lists are pretty damn on target. This covers the fine line between punk and metal (for those of you that still hold on to the punk vs metal crap). You have some info on everything from the early 'Hard Rock' beginnings to the death-metal, black-metal, mallcore bands of today. This thing is so packed full of charts, facts, figures, secrets, and more that I could write a whole book on this one. I will just leave it with saying that this will be the most important book any metalhead could read. It doesn't matter if you are Nu-school or old school, this book is a must read!

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