Full Metal Racket: An introduction to Scottish metal, part one

Published on Tuesday 23 June 2009 15:44

Metal is a much maligned, often ignored genre, with a public image soured by the sweaty whiff of ageing men with long hair and leather jackets.

So to counter this injustice, Under the Radar has recruited metal obsessive Jodi Mullen as our brand new metal columnist/blogger/reporter.

In part one of his introduction today he argues the case for metal in general, before he launches into a comprehensive guide to the best Scottish metal bands in part two.

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Almost since its inception 40 years ago, heavy metal has been considered the ugly red-headed stepchild of the music industry. Often scorned and always misunderstood by the mainstream music press, the genre has largely been left to forge its own path over the last two decades, driven more by musical innovation and an obsessive fanbase than by critical or commercial pressures.

And in the underground, metal has remained one of the most creative and inventive forms of modern music, propelled by cultural and ideological movements over the last twenty five years. Musicians have pushed themselves, their instruments and even conventional definitions of what counts as music in an effort to push back sonic boundaries and explore the furthest depths of extremity. The genre has even expanded to take in influences from classical music, folk and jazz. Under the radar of the mainstream music press, a global metal underground has spawned, reaching from Scandinavia to South America and Tokyo to Tayside.

Few will deny that trying to pin down exactly what metal is and define precise relationships between its countless sub-genres is a difficult task at best and downright impossible at worst. Similarly, it's difficult to speak of a metal scene in Scotland at all without taking into account the almost mind-boggling degree of fragmentation and cross-pollination of sub-genres that makes extreme metal so dynamic and yet so confusing at the same time. Even within individual Scottish cities, the metal community can be split in ways that reflect historic ideological and stylistic differences between sub-genres, with some sub-communities almost totally estranged from others.

Naturally this fragmentation of audiences and performers alike causes headaches for promoters. While some sub-genres may be collectively interpreted as a continuum of extremity - most notably the progression from thrash to death metal to grindcore - and lend themselves to broadly similar audiences, other acts are so isolated from the rest of the scene, both musically and ideologically, that attempting to fit them together on the same bill tends to be a risky and haphazard affair. Though many progressive and post-metal acts can happily slot into a standard rock running order as an exotic curiosity, the sonic and philosophical nihilism of black metal and the full-body assault on the senses that is drone are are so alienated from accepted musical aesthetics as to make them seemingly impossible to fit onto a bill.

Unlike parts of mainland Europe where metal is firmly entrenched in popular culture and is a regular presence both in the charts and on mainstream radio - particularly in Scandinavia, Germany and Greece - the British and Scottish public have long remained uneasy about the genre as a whole, particularly in a live context. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to acceptance is the sheer extremity of the music itself. Even for many of Scotland's most adventurous and enlightened gig-goers, the fact remains that a steady diet of blast beats, guttural howls and downtuned guitars does not a good Friday night make.

Metal also has something of an image problem and though personal experience would suggest that this is, for the most part, an unjustified and puerile stereotype perpetuated by an unsympathetic media, the antiquated notion of grimy bars populated by leather-clad men with a penchant for long hair, beards and casual violence remains. The upshot is that many of Scotland's most popular smaller venues are off limits to all but the most prestigious of unsigned metal acts, making it more difficult for bands to gain exposure and offset the numerous negative connotations the genre has managed to pick up over the years, deservedly or otherwise.

Press coverage of metal tends to be erratic, at best. Mainstream publications occassiaonally adopt poster boys for the inventiveness of genre as a whole, Mastodon (pictured, right), Isis and Sunn O))) being the most recent examples of this particular phenomenon. Much of the rest of the time, however, music journalists prefer to give metal a wide berth, only occasionally descending from their ivory towers to pass judgement on the latest release from Metallica, Iron Maiden, Slayer or some other behemoth of yesteryear and roll out the same tired old cliches about men in their forties trying to recapture teenage glories.

In Scotland, metal coverage in the mainstream media has begun to gradually improve over the last year or so but all too often exciting and innovative bands go uncovered, even when on the verge of reaching critical mass internationally. Perth 'pirate metal' pioneers Alestorm have been a regular fixture in the likes of Terrorizer and Zero Tolerance, Britain's two most respected specialist extreme metal magazines, for well over two years and appeared at some of Europe's most prestigious metal festivals last summer yet only recently received their first feature piece in The List.

Here at Under the Radar, however, we aim to showcase the best of Scotland's underground metal talent over the coming months, taking in everything from black metal to grindcore in our quest to discover why this most-maligned of genres is at the forefront of musical innovation north of the border.

Read the second part of Jodi's report on Thursday...

Under the Radar: showcasing the best new music in Scotland