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| credit: Wayne State University Library |
In 1963, that final year of Americana, curious strains drifted through Europe. The Beatles released their debut album, novelist Pierre Boulle penned the sci-fi satire "Planet of the Apes," and director Mario Bava gave us the horror anthology "Black Sabbath." Bava had better work, but this film secured a distribution deal in England. It found enough of an audience to stick around, slowly winding its grubby little way to the Black Country.
In this setting circa 1969 we find a young Birmingham band named Polka Tulk. They spent their nights rehearsing at a local theater, and noticed the large crowds attracted to horror movies. Bassist Terry "Geezer" Butler was a horror fan, and suggested nicking a film title for a new song based around scary themes.
That song became the band's calling card, and subsequently its new moniker. In a few short months Black Sabbath had two albums in the can, and an image geared to the macabre. The central thesis of metal owes to a colony of factory rats observing that "people will pay money to be scared."
Not that the western world had a lot of money to go around. "Heavy rock" (as it was then known) grew in fits and starts. Sales dropped sharply in the era of Jimmy Carter -though bands continued to pack the concert venues- appearing incongruous with trends at the cinema. The 1970s was a decade where American horror flourished. Movies such as "The Exorcist," "Halloween," "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," and "Alien" gave a vital dimension to the New Hollywood era.
And metal's faithful paid attention. Rob Halford lists those movies among his favorites, and you can spot references to them in the work of Iron Maiden, Slayer, and Possessed. The reams of low budget celluloid and midnight screenings gave us band names such as Witchfinder General, Evil Dead, and White Zombie. Phil Anselmo is such an obsessive horror nut that Pantera lifted an album title from the dialog of "The Exorcist." He now hosts a yearly festival in Texas, dedicated to the intersection of metal bands and horror films.
Which still doesn't answer the central question: "why?" What is the appeal of blasphemous and supernatural themes to working class youths from dying factory towns? My best guess points me towards the declining authority of the church and the state in the first world. They depreciate at an almost one-to-one ratio with the industrial economy. I'm not going to say that correlation is causation, but the effects were similar: an erosion of trust in institutions and established social mores.
Granted, horror narratives range from acute incisions to blunt force trauma. The slasher genre largely eschews the fantastic, and relies instead on earthly antagonists wreaking havoc upon the common people. I think its ascent is best understood in the context of rising crime rates during the post-modern era. While we can point to the origins of slasher pics in "Psycho" and "Peeping Tom," the blood truly gushes with critical mass at the arrival of "Black Christmas" and "Texas Chain Saw Massacre." This style of movie is a largely American phenomenon, and it represents a mostly American crisis. Try to imagine "Maniac" being made in Germany or Sweden. It is not plausible.
But the slasher picture also cuts to the heart of the most nausea-inducing aspect of horror: misogyny. In virtually every instance, the villain is male and the victims are female. The weapon is a phallic blade, and a death sentence is meted out for the crime of sexual independence. This compounds an already prevalent genre trope, and you can see the mentality reflected in any number of metal bands. Sex is understood as a violent act, and the metaphorical affront of la petite mort must be paid for in the most literal way.
And yet, the slasher genre nearly died with the '80s, as did the popularity of nearly all horror movies and metal music. Their 21st century revival has also been synchronous. The two are fueled by similar anxieties and pressures, where a fear of the unknown is a stand-in for the fear of upheaval. We escape from the pressures of daily horror, in so many finished basements, theaters, and concert halls. The lights flicker, and the line between fantasy and reality becomes a matter of interpretation. That curtain may never fall.
