Lisa Meyer, Capsule, on the Home of Metal from Chris Unitt on Vimeo.

Duncan, Home of Metal from Chris Unitt on Vimeo.

Last Saturday was an overwhelming success with Wolverhampton Art Gallery reporting over 970 people in attendance at our first Home Of Metal open day, we had everyone from small kids, to teenagers right through to the more distinguished older gentlemen. We all had a blast and are incredibly grateful to Kate Williams Pryror and her team at Wolverhampton for all their hard work, Johnny Doom from Kerrang! Radio for hosting the day and his interviews with Jim Simpson and Digby Pearson.

Here are a few photos taken by Naz, from the day to give you a feel for what happened;

Johnny Doom interviewing Jim Simpson

A selection of press clippings and photos on display

Adults and kids making badges & colouring in Black Sabbath picture by Aye Jaye

Godflesh  & Napalm Death related cabinet courtesy of Earache Records – included hand written lyrics, original art work mock ups (old school hand made cut n paste)

Judas Priest & Black Sabbath cabinet of treasures

Led Zeppelin cabinet with rare Russian release of Stairway To Heaven (Courtesy of Lisa Bardsley) and only known official 7″ release of Stairway To Heaven (Courtesy of Nigel Dodds)
Home Of Metal family tree created by Francesca Bunny Williams

Fascinating stuff!

A rare outing for this Robert Plant painting – part of Wolverhamptons permanent collection.

Stuart Williams from Walsall local history archive

Teenage kicks!

Last night we had a little practice run for our open day this Saturday at Wolverhampton Art Gallery – here we all are in our HOME OF METAL T-shirts which were kindly sponsored by Fly53. Aren’t we a happy bunch!!!

Photo by Najma Hussain

So a couple of weeks ago i had the idea of joining the Roadrunner records forum and creating a post for the project.  After 10 days of no joy, i recieved an email from a guy who runs a metal forum. He then went on to inform me that he had already had a post put on his news feed and would be interested if I could keep him updated. its good to see the word is getting spread guys so keep up the good work…we’re getting somehwere!

Anywho here is the link to the news feed. I also recommend you have a mosey round the site itself, which is all about metal an art form in its own right.

Peace

P.s.

For all you Pantera fans

So… How hard can it be to get someone, say a shop or bar, to hang up one of our fine Home Of Metal posters? A little trickier than I thought…. However, the one or two miserable, uninterested faces were way outnumbered by people who expressed genuine interest and enthusiasm for the project. Some of whom even had their own tales to tell, with many a 2 minute visit turning into a half hour conversation. All good stuff – and Spread The Word – I’m sure they will.

A trip last Saturday, once again armed with posters and trusty Blu Tack, took me to a true Aladdins Cave of Rock and Metal: S.T. Records in Dudley. Since opening in 1984, this shop has been a little piece of heaven (or should that be Hell?) for the Rock/Metal devotee. Crammed with goodies from all genres of Rock, I’d forgotten just how cool this tiny establishment was. Memories of my youth came flooding back.. I was rather impressed with small display of various Judas Priest box sets behind the counter. It was at this point that I knew money was going to be changing hands…

As with some other shops on my travels, the owner was only too pleased to stick a poster up, having already read about the project in some local press. There wasn’t any need for a sales pitch, and even though he had no wall space and very little window space, he was determined to get that poster up somewhere! A true Defender Of The Faith if ever there was one!

So, I’d been in to put up poster.. and came out nearly 50 quid lighter! You know the score.. It was just one of those shops..

With the first open day at Wolverhampton Art Gallery fast approaching (SATURDAY 25^th OCTOBER – in case you didn’t know!) we were invited to the hallowed offices of Kerrang! Radio last night to do an interview with the one and only – dare I even say legendary – Johnny Doom.

Myself, Lisa and fellow volunteer Bill took to the microphones and regaled our esteemed host with the aims of the project, an update on where we are with the event and how things are shaping up, coupled with multiple big fat stinking plugs for the upcoming Wolverhampton open day. I spoke briefly about my Napalm Death fandom, whilst Bill did the same for Judas Priest, leaving Lisa free to make sure Johnny got in every possible newsworthy item concerning the event.

The interview is to be played tonight – 21^st October – on Johnny Dooms show, The Late License.at 1am, so tune into 105.2FM to catch it live ; alternatively you can listen to the show on the website during the subsequent week which is located here.

Would also just like to say thanks to Johnny and Kerrang Radio for the opportunity to discuss Home Of Metal on their show – most appreciated!!!

L-R : Johnny Dooms plastic bag(!!!!), Johnny Doom, Bill and myself.

Rain. An ominous church bell. More rain. Then suddenly, a monolithic, dirge-like guitar riff cracks through the atmospherics and heavy metal is born.

It was literally as easy as that. The song in question, is ‘Black Sabbath’, by Black Sabbath, from their first album, ‘Black Sabbath’. Heavy Metal Year Zero in other words.

Sure, Led Zeppelin had been around for a few years prior, but they didn’t make the same kind of immediate impact and tread the new ground that the Sabs did from the get go. Steppenwolf may have first quoted the phrase ‘Heavy Metal’ in their breakthrough single Born To Be Wild back in 1968, and Blue Cheer may have popularised the fuzzed-out, down-tuned blues riffs around the same time, but Sabbath were the first, and arguably the most skilful at amalgamating  these – at the time, seemingly disparate – threads which over the years have coalesced into the beast that now is simply known as heavy metal.

The funereal speeds, the tortured vocals, the powerful drums and the down-tuned guitars may sound like a description of any one of a number of contemporary stoner or doom bands, but this was the first track from a bands first album, way back in 1970, which is testament to the enduring power of this group, in that even to this day, bands are taking what they created, and treating it as the gospel as to how heavy music should be played.

Simply put, without Sabbath, the musical landscape would have taken on a significantly different guise in their absence. Who is to know what our beloved heavy metal would sound like nowadays without the initial impact of Sabbath? Perhaps it’s best not to think about it, and instead celebrate what they have given us. As Scott Ian, guitarist in legendary thrashers Anthrax put it,

“To create something from nothing is impossible. So what Black Sabbath did was magic. These four wizards from Birmingham created a genre of music that didn’t exist before Tony Iommi put tipless fingers to fretboard and changed the world. It’s as if the notes were just floating around in the ether waiting to be heard until Tony, with the power of his hands, plucked them from limbo to share their doom-onic song with all of us. Sabbath channeled those notes into five perfect albums of pure heavy metal. It’s theirs. They own it. Everyone else that followed — Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer, Pantera (all great bands in their own right) — are just leasing.”

And Ian’s sentiments are reciprocated by essentially a whos who of the heavy metal world, noone who has led their life listening to or playing metal can play down the importance of Black Sabbath – indeed, even a cursory viewing of the excellent ‘Metal – A Headbangers Journey’ documentary can see a multitude of established acts – both contemporary and classic – extol the virtues of Black Sabbath, especially their first five albums – Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master Of Reality, Vol 4 and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, all of which, are to a certain extent, flawless examples of their craft.

(Personally, I’d also add their sixth – Sabotage – to that list as I feel that it stands up to any of the first five although a couple of fillers are present, and Hole In The Sky and Symptom Of The Universe are regarded as quintessential Sabs tracks. The artwork is fantastic given that Bill Wards undercrackers are visible on the rear cover, as his red tights just aren’t quite as opaque as he’d have probably liked.)

And whether intended or not, it is well-documented that the soundscapes created on their first albums owe a great debt to Birmingham and the Black Country. In the same way that noone would take the Beach Boys seriously if they hailed from Dudley and unleashed ‘Surfing USA’, Black Sabbath are undoubtedly a product of their environment. The correlation between the heavy industry of the area in the late 60s and the heaviest of heavy metal cannot be dismissed. The sound as oppressive and claustrophobic as the factories and mines that littered the West Midlands, and as Charles Dickens described the area in The Old Curiosity Shop, “[the factories chimneys] Poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air” which could easily be re-evaluated as a music review describing Sabbaths debut onto an unsuspecting nation. And let us not forget that J.R.R Tolkien himself based the region of Mordor upon the Black Country, even referring to it in places within the novel as, well,  ‘the black country’.

Granted, the relatively frequent reformations of the classic line-up over the past decade or so may have lessened their impact, especially given that the best years of Ozzy’s voice are now well behind him – and the less said about the transformation of his family to bona fide worldwide celebrity the better – but noone can deny the timelessness of their original works, and as Rob Halford himself was quoted as saying,

“you can put on the first Black Sabbath album and it still sounds as fresh today as it did 30-odd years ago. And that’s because great music has a timeless ability: To me, Sabbath are in the same league as the Beatles or Mozart. They’re on the leading edge of something extraordinary.”

So in closing, I’d agree with everyone who claims that Sabbath invented this heavy metal lark. Of course, this is my personal opinion, and if debate is to rage, then feel free to comment as appropriate below, but I’d put money on the fact that they did, and I’m comfortable in knowing that I have a veritable army of fans, artists and bands who will back me up.

Thanks to the guys at Total Rock Radio, the rock and metal internet radio station, for putting a small article about the project up on their website. All help is greatly appreciated! Here’s the page

Will

By now I’m sure you’ll all have heard at the very least some rumblings about this HOME OF METAL project that the good ladies at Capsule have kicked into action over the past few weeks and months. For this – my first attempt at a blog on this site – I’ve tried to get across the reasons that I joined the team, and why I felt compelled to volunteer. I’d also like to explain what the bands that Home Of Metal are concentrating on mean to me.

For those who don’t know me, probably numbering millions, I’m Duncan (also known as Drunk for reasons I cannot understand…). I used to play in Mistress and deadsunrising amongst others, so by default I have connections within the Birmingham metal scene and have done for a long time. I also had a spell as a freelance writer for Terrorizer for approximately 12 months, during which I managed to realise one of my dreams and interviewed Napalm Death upon the release of their latest album at the time. With this background, I hope to be able to create a number of different blogs to be posted throughout the project, and I initially aim to write a few pieces on each of the bands we are concentrating on.

Before I joined Mistress, and whilst DSR were still in a very young and embryonic stage I used to produce a fanzine called Blindspot which tried to concentrate upon the local bands around Brum, coupled with reviews, interviews of whomever I dug at the time. Given that this was around 1997, I’m quite ashamed to admit that this included quite a lot of nu-metal type stuff, although by the second issue I had started to develop my own tastes, and this included an almost puritanical obsession to really try and shout the praises of the British acts around at the time, for example Earthtone 9, Stampin Ground and Iron Monkey to name but a few.

This led to a realisation that Birmingham not only had a load of great contemporary bands, but had a rich history, including the likes of Napalm Death who I always had held in high regard (more of this later!) through to Black Sabbath, whose albums I had inherited by a metal-loving father of one of my mates, and then Led Zeppelin and Judas Priest, whom my mother used to enjoy reminiscing about watching those bands in her youth.

Once I had joined Mistress, it was obvious that at the time we held a debt to Sabbath with our de-tuned riffs and lumbering speeds, although not that pronounced, was always just there. Before I joined, the first Mistress demo contained a song called Black Sabbath. And by the time we had released our first couple of albums and were doing the associated interviews to promote them, one of the most consistent questions – especially from the European magazines – was, “What is it like to be a band from Birmingham : the home of Black Sabbath and Napalm Death? ”.

To the outsiders, Birmingham was a mythical city, located somewhere between Middle Earth and Valhalla, where metal was law, and Ozzy ruled as mayor-stroke-deity. Once, a stoner rock band from Sweden arrived to play a show at the now-demolished and much-missed venue The Foundry, and immediately asked Dirty from Mistress (who was supporting them in his prior band Sally) where to find where Ozzy was born. He was swiftly advised that he’d be more likely to be stabbed or offered glue to sniff than find any plaque proudly proclaiming that ‘The Prince of Darkness was born here’.

And that story really encapsulates (no pun intended) one of the main aims of this project, to be able to create a lasting testament to those bands who raised the profile of the city on a global level, who not only were fucking great bands, but actually created a whole new style of music. Given the traditionally self-deprecating sense of humour that the English, and by default that the brummies possess, we have never really embraced this fact, and certainly, if Memphis can proclaim proudly to the world that they are the home of Country music, then Birmingham has every right to scream from the rooftops – preferably in a Rob Halford wail – that Birmingham IS heavy metal.

To follow : my musings on Black Sabbath, their impact, and Bill Wards pants.