Fri, Apr 24, 2015 page11

• Live Wire: Pop goes metal

  • By Joe Henley / Contributing reporter
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  Feb. 1, 1994, the day punk rock officially went pop. Green Day’s third studio album, Dookie, was released and appropriately shot to number two on the Billboard 200 on the way to selling 20 million copies globally. Alternative culture had officially been for sale for some time (the first Hot Topic store opened in 1988). But on this day, we heard punk’s death rattle.

  Punk was no longer an underground phenomenon. No more a place purely for the freaks, the geeks and the weirdos. It was wide open, easily accessible, and sanitized for broad public consumption. Soccer moms started giving their toddlers mohawk haircuts, and somewhere Iggy Pop briefly considered a drug and alcohol relapse to escape the horror of suburbanized pseudo-rebellion.

  May 21, 2002, the day underground metal experienced it’s own Waterloo. The vapid wasteland of glam rock and hair metal aside, metal, much like punk before it, was a place for those who had nowhere else to go. Often, those who were into all things fast, heavy and loud, or even slow, heavy and loud, couldn’t rightly express why they were drawn to it. They just were.

  

  Singer Jesse Leach helped define the modern era of pop metal with his signature scream-and-croon formula just over a decade ago.

  Photo courtesy of Ralph Arvesen

  Then, later that same month, Alive or Just Breathing, the sophomore effort of Massachusetts metalcore pioneers Killswitch Engage, hit the ether. Catchy, easily accessible riffs combined with screamed verse angst mixed with equal doses of saccharine crooned choruses — bordering on the verge of whiny — took extreme music to uncharted territory. Suddenly it wasn’t so scary anymore. It wasn’t just for the oddballs, who for reasons psychological, genetic or otherwise, enjoyed subjecting their eardrums to sounds that, for the majority of the populace, would constitute outright torture.

  A new sub-genre of metal was born, and the great metalcore gold rush was on. Killswitch may have unintentionally saved Roadrunner Records, which had snapped up the band following their debut showing. Once a staple of the underground’s upper echelons, Roadrunner was by the early aughts a flailing, schizophrenic mess looking for something, anything, to give it some sense of identity again. Alive or Just Breathing was exactly what they didn’t know they needed. Roadrunner was revitalized and reinvented as a metal label once more, but as a beast of another kind entirely. A kinder, gentler monster.

  The rest of the labels started to follow suit, snatching up any band with a singer who could bitch his way through a chorus and liken heartbreak to getting shot or stabbed without bursting into hysterics. A year after Killswitch got signed, Metal Blade, the one-time champion of the likes of Slayer, Metallica and Armored Saint, signed California metalcore bible thumpers (though the Jesus rock stylings would later go the wayside) As I Lay Dying. Their fourth record, An Ocean Between Us, went to number one on Billboard’s Top Rock chart in 2007.

  

  Killswitch Engage signaled a new, highly accessible era for metal in 2002 with the release of their second album, Alive or Just Breathing.

  Photo courtesy of Ralph Arvesen

  The formula was officially set. Find a band with a charismatic front man (in Killswitch’s case Jesse Leach, followed by Howard Jones, then a return by the former), preferably easy on the eyes in one way or another. Then get a guitar player who knows his way around a slightly sappy, heart-rending progression or two (enter the eternally goofy oft caped caperer Adam Dutkiewicz). Finally, round up a few faceless fill-ins to complete the lineup. Put out a disc of songs following the scream-croon-scream-croon-solo-scream-croon schematic. No worries if all the songs sound the same, the Hot Topic crowd won’t care so long as there are the obligatory references to general pain, suffering and heartache at the hands of some mythical she-beast. Get a single on hard rock radio and watch metal rise in the hearts and minds of the mainstream.

  And with that, metal had suffered the same sterile fate as punk nearly 10 years prior. Thanks to the industry suits looking to monetize art at every hint of an opportunity, something once dangerous and at times undefinable was turned toothless and easily explained by even the most clueless Top 40 schlock jockey. Sure, there are still plenty of bands out there carrying the torch for the days of old, keeping the death, thrash and black metal of yesteryear alive. But you can never truly go home again. The door that has been opened can never be closed, and can certainly never be forgotten.

  Charles Bukowski once said something to the effect that the moment your parents start enjoying your writing, you know you’re finished. Back in the day, if you brought home Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast, the majority of parents would likely have had a PMRC-induced stroke. And that’s a good thing. We need art to scare us. The kid bringing home a Killswitch record today? His or her mom will probably blast it in the SUV on the way to Bikram Yoga class. The band is talented at what they do, but it just so happens that what they do has taken metal out of the shadows it once happily inhabited into the unwelcome light of a dawn it was never meant to see.

  ■ Killswitch Engage plays Monday at The Wall, B1, 200, Roosevelt Rd, Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路四段200號B1). Advanced tickets are NT$1,800, and tickets at the door are NT$2,500. Doors open at 7pm, and the show starts at 8pm.
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