Raising Hell
Backstage Tales from the Lives of Metal Legends
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- £15.99
Publisher Description
From the author of the celebrated classic Louder Than Hell comes an oral history of the badass Heavy Metal lifestyle—the debauchery, demolition, and headbanging dedication—featuring metalhead musicians from Black Sabbath and Judas Priest to Twisted Sister and Quiet Riot to Disturbed, Megadeth, Throwdown and more.
In his song “You Can’t Kill Rock and Roll” Ozzy Osbourne sings, “Rock and roll is my religion and my law.” This is the mantra of the metal legends who populate Raising Hell—artists from Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Slipknot, Slayer, and Lamb of God to Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot, Disturbed, Megadeth, and many more! It’s also the guiding principle for underground voices like Misery Index, Gorgoroth, Municipal Waste, and Throwdown.
Through the decades, the metal scene has been populated by colorful individuals who have thwarted convention and lived by their own rules. For many, vice has been virtue, and the opportunity to record albums and tour has been an invitation to push boundaries and blow the lid off a Pandora’s box of riotous experiences: thievery, vandalism, hedonism, the occult, stage mishaps, mosh pit atrocities, and general insanity.
To the figures in this book, metal is a means of banding together to stick a big middle finger to a society that had already decided they didn’t belong. Whether they were oddballs who didn’t fit in or angry kids from troubled backgrounds, metal gave them a sense of identity.
Drawing from 150-plus first-hand interviews with vocalists, guitarists, bassists, keyboardists, and drummers, music journalist Jon Wiederhorn offers this collection of wild shenanigans from metal’s heaviest and most iconic acts—the parties, the tours, the mosh pits, the rage, the joy, the sex, the drugs . . . the heavy metal life!
Horns up!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wiederhorn follows up Louder Than Hell with another oral history of heavy metal, this time focusing on "war stories about danger, volatility, and jaw-dropping chaos." The chapters are organized by subjects, including booze and drugs, fighting, groupies (Ministry's Al Jourgensen is one of several musicians who had sex with mothers and their daughters), incidents reminiscent of This Is Spinal Tap (the mockumentary gets an entire chapter), and nausea in all its forms (M torhead's Lemmy Kilmister knows that musicians try to keep up with him when drinking together and says, "That's madness and a lot of them end up getting sick"). The tales exhibit a seemingly bottomless appetite for destruction yet are more fun-seeking than rebellious. The book takes a broad perspective of bands that are not solely metal but are musically extreme comrades in arms, such as Twisted Sister, Judas Priest, Pantera, Warrant, Nine Inch Nails, and Limp Bizkit; Wiederhorn also touches on lesser known bands, including the Sword, Goatwhore, and Kittie (one of the few female groups in this male-dominated gathering). While the book might seem to some like a B-sides anthology, its colorful descriptions of mayhem serve as an astute cultural study.
