Thursday, March 16, 2006

Book Review: Bang your Head - The Rise and Fall of Heavy Metal



Yet another review for ya. This one was pretty good. This once actually touched base on several heavy influencing bands since the late 60's (such as Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper,Zeppelin, Aerosmith, etc) all the way to the 'fall' of the '80's metal' band era.

This story is pretty interesting because it touches base on the bands I grew up with and their influences. This book touches base on some of the previous books I've reviewed such as Kiss and Motley Crue but it also gives the reader a sense of what was happening with the music scene in general. I like near the end of the book when the scene takes a turn into the Seattle grunge era. Many people believe that the grunge music killed the 80's metal bands. In this book, there are many quotes stating that grunge was once piece of why that music genre disappeared for awhile. Equally important was the record companies financials and the bands mentality of 'living it up' as well as most of the bands themselves were self destructing amongst themselves.

One slight grudge: The book is kind of misleading and implies that all the bands mentioned in the book are 'metal'. Aside from a few bands, such as Metallica, Exodus, Flotsam and Jetsam, most of these bands would be considered 'rock' in my book. Also, the last chapter/section ending rather quickly.

Overall, I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone interested in 'rock' music.

1 comment:

  1. Many of these 'rock' bands were called and considered heavy metal at the time, save Kiss. Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Rainbow and Thin Lizzy were all listed in the book as protometal bands showing the step leading to the age of thrash,speed,glam, doom and folk metal.

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