Metal Health will Drive you Mad

I was in my Italian grandparent’s old, brown Ford LTD, in the backseat. Even though the Sun was high in the sky and the cloud coverage was minimal, I was still enshrouded in a type of darkness. An overhang jutted out from the funeral parlour over the temporary parking spot. I was tucked into the uncomfortable vinyl crevice, trying to be as insignificant as possible. Sweat ran down my back underneath my jean jacket (unfortunately with no patches… I was too scared to try and ruin the perfect balance of a fading coat). The white collar of my dress shirt underneath poked out to remind me of the formality of the whole affair.

The formality of death.

The formality of seeing a waxy face that apparently was my Nonno’s.

The formality of relatives and relatives of relatives and friends that had become relatives, all unknown to me, all swarming each other, offering platitudes in another language still as stale as the air in that step-right-up-see-the-dead-body showroom.

The informality of women my mother’s age and older throwing themselves at the coffin: Begging him to come back, to not be gone accentuated by spasms of grief and performative cries. A barrier of unbridled emotion surrounding the stage of death. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t feel anything. They were showing off. Reveling in their ability to purge feelings throughout their eyes and mouths and hands. The grasping, the tearing: were they going to pull that body pretending to be my Nonno out of the coffin?

I formally let my mother know I needed to get some air and ended up in the car to grab my jean jacket. My refuge sat heavy in the inside pocket, coiled with the outlet for sweet release. I pulled out the scuffed, grey portable CD player that everyone seemed to have back then. I popped the lid and saw that, yes, it was the soundtrack from Resident Evil: The Film (2002) and my heart started to slow down from its frantic pace.

I didn’t need Manson’s original songs for the OST or the other random nu-metal bands that have long faded into obscurity. I needed that one song! It understood me. I needed it around me! It understood around me!

I selected track 7, Invisible Wounds (The Suture Mix) by Fear Factory and cranked the shit out of the volume.

Dark bodies floating in darkness

That’s what had happened to my Nonno. That’s where he was now.

Dark bodies floating in darkness

That’s where I was. A dark place, floating, a body, bodies cannot convey emotions, even the most intense ones.

Dark bodies floating in darkness! (repeat x5)

Pretty angsty, right?

If you think of teenagers in the 80s and dark, brooding musical genres, you’ll probably think Heavy Metal. And you would be right in my case except for one main difference… I was a teenager in the late 90s and early 00s. My auditory tastes were a bit old school and I definitely didn’t make many friends when rap and pop were the dominating genres. So did I gravitate towards being a loner because of metal or due to metal?

If I look back, I can trace back the shattered lines of my teen years through my musical tastes. The common factor was that it was all metal: whether it be thrash, prog, European speed, classic, or (unfortunately) nu. Surprisingly I couldn’t (and still really can’t) get into the really dark stuff like doom metal or death metal, except when it’s being so wonderfully parodied by Metalocalypse.

With metal, there was rage, drama, darkness, broken hearts, prophetic cataclysms, different views of the afterlife, dealing with self-hatred, and even rock operas with characters and a plot and reincarnation and death and murder and therapy!

However, metal wasn’t my first love in music, and isn’t the only genre I listened to back then. Here are a few choices from my non-metal top hits collection:

Basket Case – Green Day. This is one of my karaoke standards (that and a falsetto version of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive). This is the first song I remember listening to over and over. And even though Nimrod was my first GD album, Dookie is what drew me in. It had that name and that noisy, punk, pasteled album cover. The song contained sex and whore and drugs and these were super fascinating things to a thirteen year-old!

And seriously, do you have the time/to listen to me whine/about nothing and everything/all at once?!

I Want it that Way – Backstreet Boys. The boy band craze in the mid to late 90s was hard for teens like me. If you liked them, be ready to be called names for being too ‘feminine’. My first real girlfriend was into Korn and Limp Bizkit but had a soft spot for the B-Boys. She lived in another city because we met at camp. With her semi-formal coming up, I memorized the lyrics to this song and requested it from the DJ. This gf was like me but more so; antisocial, antiestablishment, misunderstood teen, rough around the edges. Because of this, we danced in a corner away from everyone except her goth friends. They swayed, with morose, to most of the songs. But my girlfriend cried over my gesture. Just as I cried later because of the abuse and suicide threats and ‘play wrestling’, and being more then the one desire but being the one desire that keeps her alive. That song still makes me twinge.

World Revolution - Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger OST). I had to sneak in some video game music in here somewhere as that was a HUGE part of my childhood and teen years (up to now years). Also, what’s more angst-ridden then an epic battle with the second form of a world-destroying parasite that’s been asleep for thousands of years? Chrono Trigger was amazing. The complex tale weaved through different time periods and kingdoms and magical elements. Deep characters and complex motivations showed what video game narrative was capable of. I thought gaming should be connected to everything. My English classes, my drama classes, even music class. I bugged my teacher and conductor of the symphony band to play World Revolution for our next recital. She shook her messy librarian bun hair at me and challenged me to rearrange the piano tab that I had found online for all the instruments in our orchestra. I rolled up my sleeves, got out my notebooks, and almost immediately gave up on that dream. But hey, it did let me hang out with the sexy xylophonist from music class. I’m not sure if the xylophone added to my attraction to her but it definitely didn’t hurt!

But metal; metal is the headlining band, the showstopper, the one true path of rock godliness. My older brother was the one to corrupt my musical sensibilities. He was my half-sibling and had gone to live in another, smaller city right before I became a tween. I had weekends where I would go over to his dad’s place to stay over Friday and Saturday nights. We’d hang out with his friends; White suburban teens with leather jackets, band patches, secret stashes, and rooms adorned with all the sweetest cover art (how can anyone not love the majesty of Painkiller, Powerslave, and Rust in Peace?). I was young and naïve and looked up to my brother which meant I looked up to his friends. They were rocking out in garages and basements, smoking and talking about ‘chicks’ and the most recent concerts they attended. I was in awe.

And it was in one of those subterranean not-yet-a-man caves that I was introduced to Fear of the Dark by Iron Maiden. It seemed an appropriate song considering the light options (low light, UV light, one of those disco ball spiny things that project light) and the location. It was dank, dark, dusty, and awesome! I remember sitting there as my brother, his friends just smoked and chilled, taking in this epic ballad. It’s started with a pulsing yet slow guitar build-up with minimal drums. From there light arpeggios lead into Bruce Dickinson’s lulling but subtly menacing vocals:

When the light begins to change/I sometimes feel a little strange/A little anxious when it’s dark

He then touches upon a fear that so many of us have. He whispers about this phobia of the night, aversion to the shadows. And then, BOOM, suddenly loud, double time, driving repetition of the opening which sails right into that amazing, almost operatic range:

Have you run your fingers down the wall/And have you felt your neck skin crawl/When you're searching for the light?

This was it. This was that something I felt inside That energy and release that I normally couldn’t reach. Emotions that stayed buried to protect others and myself. Not rage but something close. Something akin to passion, letting those feelings come out and not letting anyone take that away from you. It was a shout, a scream, a growl against what I was supposed to be.

I knew at that point. This was me. This was part of my life. The crushing solo with that sustained bend at 4:18. The outro calling back to the slow, lamenting motif of the beginning. That was all mercury icing on the metal cake.

With the spliffs, the blunts, the basements, the metal until 4am, the taboo games like Duke Nukem 3D, I spent a lot of my formative years hanging with my broski and his metalhead friends. Unfortunately, even there I had trouble not feeling like an outsider. When I wanted to be cool like my older sibling, I had this strange desire to be better than him, to make our mother like me more. So I decided the best way was to become a narc: I didn’t smoke or toke or yoke oxen but I did joke a lot. I believe this is where my habit of hanging out at smoker’s pits; I met many friends this way. The metalheads didn’t seem to mind. Maybe they thought I was still holding onto my youthful innocence. Maybe I was. I always was embarrassed with the topic of girls came up. I was hoping metal would corrupt me and make me mature. I probably should’ve known right there and then that it wasn’t the chick magnet that I thought it would be…

I was an outsider who liked metal, was going through those awkward teen ‘changes’, and I had some major body issues. I’ve always been a larger person; my mother use to say I had the shoulders from my Nonna’s side. My gut overshadowed my broad shoulders in my high school years. I felt like I wasn’t even playing in the same league of a lot of my peers, both male and female. Gym class, while not as traumatizing as portrayed on TV, still was not my idea of a ‘fun’ hour. I was embarrassed about my body and my lack of physical skills. Running behind my peers or huffing through a basketball game didn’t do much for my confidence. I dropped the class after the mandatory grade 9 affair.

Even my metal roots betrayed me. My brother’s friends were mostly skinny and moody things. I was the fat one, no matter what city. Even my friends at school felt comfortable enough to constantly torment me. Luckily I cut the worst of them out of my life. However, metal would not just be my betrayer but also my saviour as well.

The genre is not one of fanciful frets and meandering melodies; its main traits are loudness and speed. If my favourite songs mirrored the power inside of me, then couldn’t they be used to bring it out of me? The gym was out. I didn’t like working out around others because of the above self-consciousness. I had tried a few times to get into running with my father and my stepmother (both marathon runners) but the experiences left me out of breath, stiff, sweaty, and sore for a number of days after. I had weights which I used occasionally, but I need something with momentum, that would let my energy flow through me.

Metallica was and still is my favourite band (even through some missteps and awful albums). I came into them in the late 90s; the somewhat still maligned Hetfield voice change; if you like anything past …And Justice for All, you aren’t a true fan. My favourite song came from one of the earlier albums, Master of Puppets with the eponymous track. However, my preferred CD was S&M, a live one. The letters stand for ‘Symphony’ and ‘Metallica’ and the two-disc bonanza featured a lot of old staples, some newer songs, and two new tracks. Number 3 from disc 1 was Master of Puppets; the best song with the best Hetfield vocals.

It begins with a bang as the previous song, The Call of Ktulu, comes to a close. It’s a race from even before the start and those famous guitar chords fill the entire theatre. The symphony’s string and brass sections add amazing flourishes with violins soaring over the chunky riffs and the trombones sneakily laying the foundation underneath specific sections. James adds his rock inflections, with an ‘Ooh yeah’, ‘Baby’, and adding in a ‘fucking’ to keep things lively. The audience chants of ‘Master, master’ just add to the grandiosity of the track. The symphony ushers in one of the best solos in all of metal with violins, a lonely French horn, and what sounds like some timpani. A xylophone follows the high-registered arpeggiated start with the two sounds creating a perfect harmony. The horns push forward the body of the solo and continue to fly over the electric distortion, creating a regal throne for the Hetfield led marvel. Everything builds to a slow and ominous chorus. With an echoing reprieve from the other bandmates, they chug steadily to the second solo. All the while the string section is keeping a consistent slide up and down the higher register, something that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror movie. James says something incomprehensible before the fingers of fire start. The rest of the song harmonizes between the classy additions from the symphony and the chopping chord strumming.

At this point, I am sweaty. I have matched the intensity of the song. I have, in my own bizarre way, been working out. The weight walk (which I’m just dubbing it now) was a process where I would aggressively stomp back and forth in my room, door closed, while pumping iron to Master of Puppets. This (probably dangerous) exercise routine evolved with heavier weights and more songs from S&M. My Mother and Stepfather grew more annoyed as the regiment got longer, faster, and louder. I literally had to do it barefoot or I would slide around from all the sweat coating the ground.

I grew skinnier. I gained muscles. I started to feel more confident. But I was a son of metal. I did not show these ‘guns’ off. However, this whole experience underscored the awesome power and unseen failings of metal, at least to me. The working out, the rocking, out the air guitar, it was all for me. A way for my internal self to be able to express the extremities of emotions that were unacceptable to let to the surface. The solipsism of this metal mantra was a lonely one. I shared these traits with my brother and his friends but their subgenre tastes were usually different than mine. I only saw my sibling maybe once a month. At school, at home, metal was me but only to me. I often hid my taste in music (other than my outfits that usually consisted of the Canadian tuxedo with black tee), and would drift off into my own little world when peers would bring up the hip new music.

I tried to incorporate it into my studies; one assignment in Grade 10 History was to take a song and research and talk about the historical themes and truths found in the lyrics. Alexander the Great by Iron Maiden is basically one big autobiography of the titular conqueror, in lyric form. The assignment also meant we had to play the song for the class:

Then Egypt fell/To the Macedon King as well/And he founded the city called Alexandria

I could see my peers’ eyes either glaze over or stare in disbelief at the sounds they were forced to endure. I expected this kind of reaction but it was still hurtful to live it out.

After class, one of the girls came up and said, “Who would listen to that crap?”

I still got a fucking A+ on that assignment.

That was almost the extent of my mixing of metal and education.

It’s no surprise that as wannabe loner I was drawn to drama class. The high tragedy (The Unforgiven I and II by Metallica) and comedy (Rise and Fall by Helloween) of my musical leanings were a perfect catalyst for the stage. I found another outlet for the turbulence within and I started flexing my acting ability, my playwriting ability, and my ability to lug heavy, black, nondescript cubes around. I did exceptionally well in those classes, and stuck with it even though the teacher was a vindictive hippie that thought they were a gift to the thea-tar!

Metal spilled out three times in my four years of drama class. In the basement of my school, with the bend by the janitor’s station, we entered the long room. The back door was often used when you were running late. I definitely used that entrance a number of times.

It seems fitting that a song off of a rock opera/concept album would find its way into a group presentation project. Our theme was ‘dreams’ and I knew the perfect song to go with that.

I picked up the Dream Theater album up from the paltry metal section in the upper floor of that HMV. The words ‘Theater’ and ‘Scenes’ drew me in. Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory was my first introduction into the layered and often pretentions world of prog rock/metal. The album contained 2 acts, a handful of characters, and 12 songs. I often would escape into my mind seeing myself casting and producing and directing this musical masterpiece and leaving my classmates no choice but to stand in awe of my brilliance and finally accept the face-melting gods of metal.

And as a side-note, Dream Theater is one of the only groups that I can say that I got my brother into, unlike the dozen or so metal bands he indoctrinated me into.

The song we used for our dream presentation was the first track, Scene One: Regression. Fittingly, it was used for the beginning of our skit. And, my guess was that my group partners accepted the song as it was not your typical metal ditty.

It starts with a monologue by the therapist character, putting the main character, Nicholas, into a dream-like state. They lyrics lull you with:

Safe in the light that surrounds me/Free of the fear and the pain/My subconscious mind/Starts spinning through time/To rejoin the past once again

The song is probably the furthest thing from a metal ballad as you can get. The constant clicks of a metronome set the relaxing mood over the monologue. Slow, melodical chords sweep you into the calming voice of James LaBrie, as he sets the ‘stage’ for the upcoming songs/scenes. Track 1 flows into 2, Scene Two: I. Overture 1928 with a droning keyboard chord and a familiar song section from the Metropolis, Pt. 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper, an accompanying track to the concept album from Images and Words, which released 7 years earlier. Then a driving progression fades in that holds small rests that and tension to the tune. However, I digress. That is a song for another day.

The second time I tried to introduce metal into my high school drama career was more interesting. I was to direct a scene from a play from one of my favourite playwrights at the time, George F. Walker. The scene from Suburban Motel involved a couple coming into a motel room, making out for a bit, and then the female lead forcing the male lead to have a conversation about their disastrous life. The play involved elements of murder, arson, shitty lawyers, shitty people, burials, sex work, and cleaning toilets. I needed something to start the scene with.

I was randomly watching MuchMusic (Canadian MTV, and this was something I rarely did) and this amazing video came on. It was loud and fast and angry, with an amazing hook, and had these small fusions of turntable scratching and rap. The lead singer, screaming in a sewer (and even on the ceiling at one point), had short, spiked, platinum blonde hair. I don’t know if it was the Matrix influence or something else, but I was obsessed with that colour and cut when I was teen. Then there were monks in red robes doing karate and using unique weapons like a pair of kama (the Japansploitation explains why I loved this video so much). The energy of this new kind of metal made me just totally get into the Nu kind of Metal.

Linkin Park were just gaining recognition and becoming a big deal when I came across the video for One Step Closer. I immediately went out and bought Hybrid Theory (at the same, downtown HMV) and ate up that album over and over. When I read through my scene and the rest of the plays in Suburban Motel, I felt the grittiness of this song.

I probably just played the first 20-30 seconds, to establish the scene. The opening chords followed by a miniscule rest and then a slide was enough to push the Nu agenda of angst, rage, loneliness, and blaming everyone else for your problems. I looked back and saw a bunch of people getting into it.

The scene went better than expected: I’m glad my lead woman spoke up and expressed being uncomfortable with the kiss that opened up the scene. Over the clothes, minimal groping worked much better. And it was the first in many lessons about boundaries, respecting all people’s autonomy, and knowing that sexism makes speaking up that much more difficult.

After the argument and the cliff-hanger of an ending, there was a Q&A section for the actors and the director (me). The resident ‘smooth stoner’ who slouched so deep in the shitty plastic chair, like he sinking in the most chill way possible, moved his arm from dangling from the back of the chair to up in the air. He held it up like he didn’t care if he was called upon or not. I never really talked with him, he was in a higher social standing than myself, the one truly chill student that everyone liked. I was confused what he would have to ask, especially since he was so ‘removed’ from these classes.

Our pretend-hippie teacher called upon him. I waited with anticipation.

He asked about the song that I used at the beginning of the scene. What was it? What band was that?

I told him about Linkin Park and their latest album and the cool visuals from the music video.

Many people looked back at him. He was processing this information. They were waiting to see if he would bestow a chilled thumbs up to a song that LEIF used?!

“Dope,” he said.

Times like that were rare. I wasn’t a leader or popular or a rebel or anything that would get me attention (other than being in the school plays, which, let’s be honest, didn’t really elevate you with the right people). I was often awkward, struggled to express myself with words, especially with classmates that I saw as cooler. I did the usual loner thing and hated them from a distance, bitter about what I perceived to be perfect lives without any struggles. Cultivating the perfect image was a much more in person thing in those days. No Instagram, just the yearbook and the hallways.

I was off school for at least a few weeks after my Nonno died. I wasn’t that close with him but that introduction into open casket funerals, and Italian style grieving, and the sick practice of stuffing bodies into the walls of a mausoleum haunted me. I became more withdrawn and ‘dark’ like the bodies in the Fear Factory song.

I was feeling a lot of turmoil those days without a healthy outlet. I thought maybe theatre is where I should express it. I set up a coffee house that I would emcee in our basement dwelling for actors. The usual theatre nerds came out along with some of the cooler kids that had friends performing. I don’t even remember any of the other acts. I just remember my dramatic, incredibly awkward and misguided opening. I did a spoken word version of Dark Bodies (Suture Mix) with all the lights off as I lay centre stage on two of the infamous black cubes. Beyond the obvious overdramatic nature of this indulgent opening, there was a problem with the lyrics. Not that they were explicit or too violent. Nope, rhyming with lyrics can be much different than rhyming with poetry.

Dark bodies floating in darkness/No sign of lighSt ever given/Imprisoned in a world without a memory/Unconscious, or am I conscious?/Cut from the heart I am part of/Sometimes I feel as though I'm frozen in…

The last word is ‘heaven’ but it comes out rhyming with ‘frozen’. So a more accurate spelling (not that English is good with this kind of thing) would be ‘Heaven’.

Metal took me to fictional, glorified hell many times. Perhaps pronouncing the opposite place so poorly was another reason to go back down into the pit.

My teenage years were difficult, especially the early ones. In my last two years, I started to do more writing, less arranging (and emceeing) of coffee houses, and made new friends with similar interests. However, even to this day, there’s been an individualized aspect with my relationship with metal. I don’t really share it with many people. My partner is definitely not a metal person so I often wear headphones.

I understood myself better through extreme lyrics:

Darkness imprisoning me/All that I see, absolute horror/I cannot live, I cannot die/Trapped in myself, body my holding cell/Landmine has taken my sight/Taken my speech, taken my hearing/Taken my arms, taken my legs/Taken my soul, left me with life in Hell!

I understood better the darker side of grief, loneliness, withdrawal, and avoidance. Songs like Metallica’s One resonated with my inner loner. It was the only way I gave myself permission to feel those intense emotions and try to do something with them. Yelling them out through lyrics about death and destruction. Dispelling them from my body with angry headbanging sessions (yes, I hurt my neck at times) or frantic air guitar solos (yes, I hurt my random parts at times).

I was alone but I was comfortable there. Metal helped with that. It wasn’t until university that those places would get names like ‘depression’ and ‘anxiety’. In high school, mental health wasn’t a thing you thought about. You just played your music, rocked on, and tried to get through another day.

Helpless hysteria/A false sense of urgency/Trapped in my phobia/Possessed by anxiety/Run, try to hide/Overwhelmed by this complex delirium

Panic Attack by Dream Theater

Afterword

I felt like ending this essay/musical journey through my teenager years here. All doom and gloom. Start with my Nonno’s death and build up to the reflections in metal which would become warning signs for my eventual mental decline.

However, nothing is ever totally dark or totally light. I have good memories of those times. I wasn’t alone like I thought; my brother was my Broski of Metal. He was someone I looked up to and made fun of and enjoyed being around. The same is true today, even if we are still in our own cities.

Music brought us together and at the most unexpected times, brought family together in unexpected ways. As I mentioned, the Italian side of my family is LARGE. There’s a lot of people, even within the immediate uncles, aunts, and cousins. Family functions were usually a chaotic affair at my Nonno and Nonna’s house, with it’s shrink wrapped furniture, black and white TV, and cantina. Due to my established brooding ways, the concept of ‘familia’ was a hard one for me to grasp.

It was rare that my Italian grandparents would come to our house but it happened. There was one time in particular I remember fondly, as does my brother. We had this small and dinky CD player on the dining room table. Nonno was sitting in one of mom’s vinyl and horrendously patterned chairs. A song was coming out of the speakers. My grandfather was bouncing up and down with the music, clapping, obviously enjoying himself. His English could be limited and it made it hard for me to get to really know him.

It was through the music of my favourite performer that my brother, Nonno, and I shared that moment, language barrier and all.

Some-a nice minestrone, ‘ats good for you/Have-a some marinara/Have-a some marinara, I know-a you like/I know-a you like, I know-a you like

La-lasagna

La-lasagna

La-lasagna

Thank you Weird Al, for your decades of amazing parodies and riotous original songs, and for

giving us a small slice of connection with a small slice of Lasagna.