I've loved heavy metal since I was a pubescent nerdling, when Def Leppard and Motley Crue made my little teenybopper heart beat faster. While a lot of metal focuses on parties and pussy, or fantasy/horror themes, there is a small subset that deals with science fiction and techno-alienation. This rarefied category occasionally overlaps with hard prog rock (King Crimson) or industrial (Nine Inch Nails). And, of course, the delightfully cheesy 1981 movie Heavy Metal has a lot of science fiction in it. If you need to rock out this weekend, and I know you will, here are four (and a bit more) kickass metal albums that will help you get your techno-geek on.
Voivod - Nothingface (1989): This smartypants band from Quebec has a whiny, grindy sound that embodies 1980s metal while looking forward to the industrial apocalypse of the twenty-first century. They do all their own trippy album art which perfectly matches their thrashy angst about being nothing but machines inside. Especially excellent are the songs "Into My Hypercube," with its driving minimalist riffs, and "X-ray," which offers a fairly detailed scientific description of how x-rays actually work.
Meshuggah - Destroy Erase Improve (1995): A bunch of seriously fucked-up Swedes, Meshuggah will make your ears bleed and your heart cold. Their music is so technically difficult that the group became straight-edge (on stage) just to get through a set without fumbling on some of those freaky chords. Although Meshuggah continues to make flesh-rippingly great albums today, I love this decade-old one especially for songs like "Future Breed Machine," which moves with ease from drilling your brain with drums to swoopy, complicated guitar solos. "Sublevels" is another fantastic song – the music will make you cry with pain and beauty, and the lyrics plunge you into suicidal mania at the way we've all become automatons in a world of machines.
Black Sabbath - Paranoid (1970): With its rants about the military-industrial complex and agonized comic book geekery, Paranoid rightfully takes its place as the granddaddy of science fiction heavy metal. This was during the wondrous Ozzy era in Sabbath (followed by an equal wondrous era of Ronnie James Dio, in my opinion), when the band was still occasionally inserting inexplicably folky moments into their characteristic heavy sound. The song "Iron Man" is so classic I don't need to describe it to you, but equally great are the kooky "Rat Salad" and screamy "Electric Funeral."
Arch Enemy - Doomsday Machine (2005): Just in case you hadn't already gotten the idea that Sweden is full of musicians who want to drive steel into your skull, this album will convince you. Lead singer Angela Gossow growls at amplitudes that seem superhuman, artfully screaming her way through science fiction death marches like "Enter the Machine" and "Hybrids of Steel." Plus, there's a tip of the hat to high-quality horror in "I Am Legend," named after the literary vampire novel by Richard Matheson.
Honorable mentions:
Goblin Cock - Bagged and Boarded (2005): Alright, so this album isn't science fiction, though the bass player is named King Sith. It's 100% fantasy, with lead singer Lord Phallus stoner-mumbling his way through filk-like tunes "Talking to Chaka" (from Land of the Lost!) and "Kegrah the Dragon Killer." This San Diego, California band also chose to print all the lyrics to its songs in Elvish on the CD insert. Needless to say, I love these guys. As soon as I saw the album at Amoeba Records, with the eponymous Goblin's gigantic cock covered up with a black sticker, I knew it would be one of my favorites forever.
The Mountain Goats are a singer/songwriter band consisting mostly of John Darnielle, who is heavily influenced by metal and has written one of the most beautiful and sad songs about metal geeks ever. It's called "The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton," it appears on their album All Hail West Texas, and it concludes with a rousing chorus of "Hail, Satan!" This is a must-listen for all nerdish metalheads.
Thanks to Chris and Sacha for expanding my metal horizons, and to Liam for opening them.
