By Chris Nixon
July 10, 2008
Listen up America: Your youth is talking to you. From the rolling cornfields of our rural small towns to the hard concrete streets of our cities, kids are sick of the pervading complacency, and that's reflected in the pop culture barometer known as music.
Bubbling underneath the thin veneer of Midwestern family values (Iowa), urban elitism (Chicago), quiet retirement communities (Tampa) and the racially divided South (Atlanta) are metal kids from all walks of life feeling pinned down by adults.
That's not a new story. But add in the lingering economic divide in the U.S., the war in Iraq, a lagging economy and the laundry list of social ills facing the nation, and there you have it: the perfect recipe for youthful rebellion through metal.
In its first year, the Mayhem Fest gives credence to the growing popularity of metal bands. Case in point: More than 8 million people logged onto AOL to check out the new masks Slipknot is donning these days.
Kevin Lyman, the longtime architect of the Vans Warped Tour, is putting on the Mayhem Fest, and he expects it to be an annual touring festival. From locales all over the metal map, both musically and physically, the festival sports 14 bands on three stages.
Iowa's Slipknot, Chicago's Disturbed, Tampa's Underoath and Atlanta's Mastodon anchor the first-ever festival, which lands at the Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre in Chula Vista Wednesday.
Here's a look at the primary bands causing Mayhem:
Under the mask: Slipknot
Full of farmland and desolate plains, Iowa was the unlikely breeding ground for one of modern music's most fierce combos. From its hometown of Des Moines, Slipknot rose in 1996 like a nine-man revolution against insular God-fearing, family friendly life.
DETAILS
Mayhem Fest
with Mastodon, Disturbed and Slipknot
When: 2 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre, 2050 Entertainment Circle, Chula Vista
Tickets: $10.53-$49.75
Phone: (858) 450-6510
Online: mayhemfest.com, ticketmaster.com
Like a Halloween party gone awry, this collective dons menacing masks and matching jumpsuits. The band members – using monikers numbered from zero to eight – burst out of the late 1990s' rap-metal explosion.
Rougher than Limp Bizkit and more musically deft than Korn, Slipknot rose above the metal glut with haunting turntable samples, dense percussion, brash guitar licks and lead singer Corey Taylor's angst-ridden lyrics. The band's music struck a chord with America's disaffected youth.
Slipknot recently donned new masks, adding buzz to the band's upcoming release, “All Hope Is Gone.” Due out Aug. 26 via Roadrunner Records, Slipknot's latest was recorded with producer Dave Fortman (Evanescence, Mudvayne) at a studio near the band's hometown.
Said Taylor in a recent release: “Every album we have made is a statement about that space in time. I think this era is the most mature, most beautiful and the most powerful. We have made an album that will show the road behind, the road ahead, and where we are as men. I think it's the best thing I've ever made.”
Prehistoric monster: Mastodon
Gut-splitting. Severe. Massive. Fearsome. All these adjectives describe Mastodon's huge metal riffs and the harder edge of the Atlanta quartet's musical spectrum. But the band's ability to slide in and out of odd signatures and the soaring melodic flights set Mastodon apart from the metal herd and the remainder of the Mayhem lineup.
Twisty, intricate compositions sprawl all over Mastodon's instant classic disc, 2006's “Blood Mountain.” Think a new millennium version of Iron Maiden meets Metallica with a twist of prog-rock pioneers like King Crimson, Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Or think Tool on steroids and buckets of caffeine.
Any way you slice it, these guys rips on their instruments. Drummer Brann Dailor ranks with Tool's Danny Carey as two of the best drummers in rock these days.
Matt Bayles (Pearl Jam, Brad, Minus the Bear) produced all three of Mastodon's epic full-length discs: 2002's “Remission,” 2004's “Leviathan” and “Blood Mountain.” Mastodon went with producer Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Stone Temple Pilots, Bruce Springsteen) on the upcoming release, which the band is currently finishing up.
Throwback hard rock: Disturbed
This Chicago-based quartet channels old school metal, circa late '80s and early '90s: the pre-growl pre-turntable pre-crunching guitar riff stuff. Everyone from the old guy in the Iron Maiden shirt to rocker chicks can dig on Disturbed's brand of accessible metal.
Disturbed's first couple of albums, particularly 2000's “The Sickness,” sported a tougher, edgier metal sound, but the band's music has shifted more to mainstream in recent discs. Its latest record, 2008's “Indestructible,” is packed with pop hooks wrapped in infectious guitar riffage and lead singer David Draiman's percussive vocal style.
Draiman told UltimateGuitar.com in 2006: “We probably have too much melody going on or we're not quite as turbulent or caustic (to be considered heavy metal). While I really love that type of music, it's not what we try to do. If we have to place things in context, we're more hard rock than heavy metal these days.”
Clean and screamed: Underoath
If Disturbed lives near the mainstream end of the metal spectrum, the music of Tampa's Underoath is slightly more hardcore. Like a lot of screamo metalcore bands, Underoath uses two vocalists: Spencer Chamberlain for the screamed vocals-growls and drummer Aaron Gillespie for the clean vocals (adding harmony and choruses). Formed in 1998, the band is openly Christian, but not in a real preachy way.
Chamberlain told Europunk.net that Christianity is “backbone of our lives, especially in the way that we handle certain things, but it's not so much the backbone of our lyrics. It's not like every song is a lesson from the Bible or something. It's just normal life struggles.”
