Stuff You Should Know - Heavy Metal Pt II

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

In part two of Heavy Metal Week Josh and Chuck break down how specialized heavy metal music has become, talk about some of the great album covers, look at how metal hits the brain, and explain the sad death of guitar great Randy Rhoads.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Trust me, new episodes every Wednesday on Exactly Right. and wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too for part two of our episodes on heavy metal, the music. Sorry all you chem majors who showed up with different expectations. Would you like to see the Pope on the end of the rope? Do you think he's a fool? What is that?

That's Sabbath. My brother always laughed at that line. Which song? I think it's on Master of Reality. I don't know the name of the song. I think it said end of the rope, end of a rope, obviously. I'll bet your brother thought that was funny. He did.

Yeah. I think that's the only thing he knows about Black Sabbath, which is hysterical. Some of it is pretty comical, you know? Yeah, I mean, and I guess let's go ahead and kick off part two with talking about Ozzie. uh because this is the section where we're going to talk about some some controversies and Ozzie uh in his day certainly had a few of them uh he was kicked out of Black Sabbath in the late 70s because he partied too hard for Black Sabbath even uh he was replaced by uh the great ronnie James Dio and went on to have a solo career but there are a couple of things that

happened in his life um notably biting the heads off of things that gained him a lot of attention at one CBS sales convention he was supposed to release these live doves and instead he bit the heads off of them and the story's changed a lot over the year so depending on who you're talking to is what version but he bit the head off of one

to shock people in a room and apparently he was being let out bit the head off the other there are also people that said that they were not alive at the time Yeah, that's what I saw. The same thing when he bit the head off of a bat in Des Moines in 1982 on stage when somebody threw a bat on stage, right? Yeah, and somebody tracked down the guy who threw the bat, and he said that bat had been dead for days. Yeah, Mark Neal. And I don't know what is worse.

Biting the head off of a live bat or biting the head off of a bat that's been sitting around dead for a couple of days. I don't know. Flip a coin, buddy. Either way, I've reached a point in my life where I can't even take. talking about like that. Yeah. That's the, like, just don't kill the dog.

That's, that's where I've gotten to in life. No, I'm with you. You know? Yeah, I mean, he snorted live ants beside a swimming pool on tour with Motley crew, and I feel bad for those ants.

Yeah, exactly. What did they do? Like, you know. Nothing. I think Ozzy was a cool dude in a lot of ways, but he was also very hard to get around. And that was one reason why I got kicked out of Black Sabbath. Like some people, like Dave Mustain,

like Ozzie, their bandmates were partying as hard as they were, sometimes harder, but they didn't turn into evil jerks. Yeah. Who would, like, get in your face or try to kill you or, like, try to do something horrible and, like, ruin everybody's time. That's how you would get kicked out of a heavy metal band. By being such a jerk that your bandmates are like,

we can't put up with this anymore, we're going to replace you. Yeah, I think that was definitely the case with Mustaine. I think Ozzy was a little more his reliability became an issue. Oh, is that right? Yeah, I think that was a deal. But we should talk a little bit. I know we covered it in the Satanic Panic episode, but you can't have a metal episode

without talking a little bit about the Parents' Music Resource Center, the PMRC in 1985 led by Tipper Gore, Al Gore's wife. At one point, you know, they were on a mission to clean up music and to at the very least to get ratings on record albums? So at one point, they released their filthy 15 of the Filthiest 15 songs and nine out of the 15 were either metal or hard rock bands. Yeah, I mean, Def Leopard, come on. I mean, they're considered metal,

but I don't know what song that would have even been. No, that's what I'm saying, not whether or not they're metal. Same with ACDC. And Twisted Sister, like, what are these guys singing about that you need to censor? Like, give me a break. Venom and merciful fate, again,

I get why suburban parents were scared of these guys. They were, like, legit, like, let's talk about Satan. and how great he is and how much you suck religious people. So, yeah, so I'm sure, and I'm not saying, like, yeah, they deserve to be censored. I get that one. But Madonna, Prince, Def Leopard, like, it's just, it was, it was, it just goes to show you how preposterous the whole thing was. But a lot of people say it worked. I mean, that's how we ended up with the warning explicit lyrics sticker, which actually helped a lot of hip-hop groups sell more records.

You mean the badge of honor? Exactly. Yeah. Um, but some people say that MTV actually kind of was under pressure to stop showing as much heavy metal and that heavy metal got pushed a little bit out of the mainstream, but instead onto night, like the two-hour version of Headbanger's Ball every week, which is not a lot compared to what it used to be like. I don't know if we said, but Iron Maiden had not one, but two videos played on MTV in the first 24 hours that. that MTV was on the air. And I think they were played more than once. And the first one was sandwiched in between Rod Stewart's sailing

and Ario Speedwagons, keep on loving you. Yeah, I mean, the rotation for MTV was eclectic for sure. And that's kind of what people liked about it for the most part, because it was way more eclectic than FM radio even, because that was generally genred. And they didn't jump around from Madonna to Iron Maiden. on radio. No.

For the most part, I mean, maybe there might be some, like, maybe K Rock was doing something like that, but generally, you had to go to MTV to get metal at all. And then when they sequestered it to Headbanger's Ball, initially, I think it was called the heavy metal mania hosted by D. Snyder, but then it became Headbanger's Ball with, once again, the great Ricky Rockman. Love that guy. At least then, metalheads had a place to go where you could really sink in for a couple of hours, you know?

Mm-hmm. For sure. Same with, remember, 120 minutes for new waivers? Yeah, Matt Finfield. Yeah. You want to see a Bauhaus video? That's where you go. Yeah, for sure.

And if you want to know our metal bona fides, people, we've been in the same room as D. Snyder. He nodded to us once in passing in a hallway. That's right. So, yeah, Headbearinger's Ball also had some tours in North America when it was really big, 87, 89, and 92. So they were like legit. Oh, we got a festival thing? Yeah, pretty much. Oh, cool.

Yeah. And then I think also we should mention, too, that one of the things about metal is that it has been, and I think still remains pretty white working class male for the most part. But it's definitely gotten more diverse than it was in the mid-80s, say. Yeah, I mean, there weren't a lot of bands. I mean, there were bands like Bad Brains that was way more punk but had metal sort of sounds with their guitar. Love Bad Brains. Body count came around. They were, I mean, I think they were for sure kind of speed metal.

Yeah, but with Ice-T rapping. Yeah, I saw them at that Lollapalooza. I'm not going to include Living Color at all, even though he does. Sorry, Livia, you missed the mark there. No, Vernon Reed's guitar playing is metal. I don't know. Listen to the song, Glamour Boys. I mean, come on.

Well, that's kind of hair-metally. Glamour Boys, is it? Hey, hey, speaking of hair metal, I forgot one great hair metal band. Oh, let's hear it. That came out much more recently. Oh, I thought you were going to say Europe. No, Europe's definitely in there with the final countdown. No, the darkness, they're a great hair metal band, even though they're like, I guess tongue and cheek.

I think they know that they're tongue in cheek, but they're really great as far as hair metal music goes. They're talented musicians. Yeah, I think there was a wave around then where people started kind of try to evoke that thing again. and the darkness was in that group. And then Fishbone. That was another all-black band that you could make a case had some definite metal tendencies for sure.

Yeah, not Living Color, definitely Fishbone. I loved Fishbone. Truth in Soul is one of the great albums of all time, and I saw them several times in concert. Okay, and then also Living Color featuring Vernon Reed. And we talked a little bit about women, too, right? We talked about Elisa White Gloze from Arch Enemy.

She's actually the second woman singer, for Arch Enemy, there was a singer named Angela Gossau who was, I think, replaced the original male singer of Arch Enemy, again, a melodic, Swedish death metal band. And then there's another metal queen out there

who at least used to be a stuff you should know listener named Nita Strauss. Yeah, Nita is great. I met her backstage because she was kind enough to invite us to the Motley Crew show where she still plays with the Alice Cooper band.

And I met Nita and she's super awesome and I think she's since gotten married. So congratulations on that. Oh, congrats. Yeah. She's also in Iron Maiden's, the Iron Maiden, all women Iron Maiden cover band. Yeah, for sure. And guess what?

That Judas Pre-show I'm going to, Nita will be there because Alice Cooper is opening up. Awesome, dude. Well, hopefully she hears this. I hope so because we're not in touch or anything. I just remember she was super sweet and was big into science. That's really cool, man.

Kind of a science nerd. Yeah, that's right. And a great guitar player. Mm-hmm, for sure. Speaking of Jewish priest, are you going to dress like a leather daddy to the Judas Priest show? I'm not going to dress like a leather daddy because I don't have those clothes and I wouldn't want to just, what do you call that, appropriate, like a legit style for a demographic. But, yeah, I mean, that's definitely a heavy metal. The leather and studs is a heavy metal trope like no other.

Where did it come from, Chuck? I mean, probably Rob Halford and going to underground gay clubs in London would be my guess. Yes, that's right. All of the black leather metal studded look that permeates heavy metal still in part to this day came from gay BDSM clubs that Rob Halford, as far as I know, the only out LGBTQ metal singer, went to while he was still very much in the closet. Yeah, I think it's great. It's amazing. I can't wait to see. I'll send you videos and stuff. Okay, please do. Yeah, just you, not everybody. Maybe I'll post some on my Instagram account at Chuck the podcaster, so be looking for that this fall.

Okay, fine. So, Chuck, speaking of tropes, like dressing like a leather daddy to be a metal god, there's actually a few others that are, they're not necessarily like, oh, this is a characteristic of metal. They're just things that bands have done and copied each other on over the years that now, people say like this is a characteristic of metal right yeah i mean i have to mention the decorative umlaut uh it's one of the funniest kind of greatest things and one of the biggest except for i think blue oyster cult who i don't consider metal they have the umlaut over the oh and oyster but it became very metal there's no other way to make anything seem metal in writing than to uh there's certain fonts that we'll talk about but if you throw a couple of decorative umelts in there It just looks more metal.

Yeah. I think even Scandinavian bands that have their own thing, which is the forward slash going through the O. Yeah, yeah, that looks pretty metal. I think they actually, in some cases, replace that with an umlaut. That's how metal the umlaut is.

Oh, wow. Okay. And apparently a rock critic named Richard Metzler claims that he was the one who told Blue Oyster Cult to use that, to use an umlau. Unnecessarily. People say that Blue Oyster Colt

was the one who did that, like you said. And Richard Meltzer or Metzler also claims to be the one who suggests that they use more cowbell in their music. Oh, man, I didn't see that coming somehow. Yeah. Oh, that makes me very happy. Very nice. Classical music as an inspiration is definitely, I don't even call it a trope, it's just a thing in metal.

The theatricality, the virtuosity and that technical ability, you know, you'll find that. Many heavy metal lead guitarists were schooled in classical, not the least of which is the great Randy Rhodes, who we'll talk about later. And Eddie Van Halen, you know, took classical piano lessons and stuff like that when he was a kid. Metal god. Yeah.

Not a metal god, but, yeah, so classical for sure. Yeah, the thing is, one thing to understand about metal across the board in any genre or subgenre is there are very few bands where you, that make music where you can suck. You essentially have to be an expert, extremely talented musician to play metal. Even the stuff that you're like, what is this?

If you actually stopped and listened to the layers, the composition, the time signatures, like this is really complex, complicated music in every single subgenre. So like metal as a whole, as a group, metal musicians tend to be about as talented as you'll find in any rock outfit, by far. Yeah, 100%.

They all have chops. That was another thing that got me a little bit into metal was I started playing guitar when I was 13 and immediately subscribed to a guitar player magazine. Oh, yeah. Which was, I mean, that's how I knew about all those guitar players. Emily always makes fun of me when she's like, Judas Priest and I'll go, Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing,

and I can name all these guitar players. Nice. It's from pouring over that magazine. Like, I wouldn't even that into Judas Priest, but I knew these guys from these articles. Yeah, yeah. I still, to this day, lament that I had a terrible teacher for electric guitar on my salmon-colored. I don't even remember what kind of guitar it was.

But I remember I complained about him before, and someone who had that same teacher rode in and was like, I know exactly what you're talking about. That guy sucked. Oh, man. Who knows what could have happened? They even told me the band. I can't remember what the band was. I wouldn't name check him anyway because I don't want to shame the guy, but he was a terrible guitar team. And I was really into it at the time.

Well, I got a B.C. rich, Candy Apple Red B.C. rich guitar because of that early sort of hard rock influence. Because it's kind of a corny guitar now. Did not get a warlock for people who know B.C. rich guitars. That's one of the most metal-looking guitars ever. Oh, is it like the triangle? The flying triangle? No, no, no. That's the flying V. Oh, okay. They know called it the flying triangle? It can, the flying B can definitely be metal, but it, it, is.

It also has been used in a lot of classic rock. Well, what's the one you're talking about? I'll send you a picture of it. You'd know it as soon as you saw it. Okay. You probably don't have your phone, though, right? Oh, there it is. I'll send it to you and you'll text me after.

What else? Chuck, anything else? Well, I mean, you've got to mention Lord of the Rings because we kind of joked about it, but Lord of the Rings has been in a lot of metal songs, like figuratively, like thematically and literally. Yes. So, yeah, there's like Led Zeppelin songs. about the darkest steps of mortar and all sorts of other stuff too and throughout like their whole catalog um i think who who else was well known for that i think megadeth had a song that was based on

aragon's speech and in the return of the king um like it's a really recurring it is it's a trope there's no other way to put it it's been in um heavy metal from the outset still through today people are referencing it in some ways in some cases like Like, there's a group called Burzum. It was a solo project by Varg Vicaranese. He was imprisoned for murdering former bandmate Euronymous from Mayhem. Oh, okay. And then he was also charged with burning down churches in the...

He's from the black metal scene. Anyway, Burzum does not talk about Lord of the Rings stuff at all. And yet, it's still from Lord of the Rings, Burzum is. But this, I think, kind of gets across how black metal the Burzum project was. Burzum in Lord of the Rings means darkness in the black speech that's spoken in Mordor. So it's dark in the darkest place

and it means darkness in that dark place language. That's how dark that black metal was. And their album cover is Vanta Black. That's right. No light can escape from it. We should also mention, we'll take your break here in a sec, but we should also mention the Gothic font.

I mentioned fonts. You've got to have the right font on your metal album. album. Sabbath definitely was kind of one of the first, I think. Their album Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath, used the old English black letter typeface. And there's nothing spookier looking than black letter, you know? No, for sure. But what's hilarious is it's just evolved and evolved and evolved to where very frequently you'll run across a metal album cover and you'll be like, what, what is the band's name? I can't, I can't decipher this at all. Can't even read it. It's just so

tangled. Like, I can't tell what it says. Sometimes when you find out the band's name, you'll be like, oh, okay, I see it now. But other times you're like, I still don't see it. It's pretty funny. It's like, that's very spinal tap. Yeah, yes, it is. Yeah, and they definitely should at least get name checked in this episode, right? Yeah, absolutely.

In fact, just today, at their new trailer for the Spinal Tap sequel dropped. Oh, really? Yeah, it doesn't look that great, but I don't know. I'm going to definitely see it. I'm withholding judgment. It just, it doesn't look very good. No, I think it was just, I don't know. I mean, it's a good enough concept, like get the old band back together for one more show.

So it's not like the idea isn't solid. Like, that's a very, like, realistic thing for an old metal band. I just, I don't know. We'll see. All right. So enough of fonts. Let's take a break. And we'll talk about some brain stuff and album covers and social views and all that fun stuff right after this.

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Let's talk legacy, tech, and generational wealth. I don't think any person of any gender, race, ethnicity should alter who they are, especially on an intellectual level or a talent level, to make someone else feel comfortable just because they are the majority in this situation and they need employment. So for me, I'm always going to be honest in saying that we, need to be unapologetically ourselves. If that makes me a vocal CEO and people consider that

rocking the boat, so be it. To hear this and more on the power of black innovation and ownership, listen to Black Tech Green Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Chuck. So if you are not a metal listener, but you're aware of heavy metal just in general, you're probably associated with satanic stuff. And again, in some cases, you're absolutely right. And not like Satanic in the Satanic temple or Satanism. Like Satan, the folkloric mythological evil one, like some bands are super, super into that, right? But there's also a lot of other stuff. Remember we talked about Iron Maiden having all these different themes to their song.

One of the things that metal is not necessarily known for, but it's a big part of it, they have like pretty strong social views. And if you really kind of drill down into them, it's essentially super populist, anti-establishment, anti-fascism, anti-authoritarian messages, frequently anti-aggression, too, especially on the government's behalf, the government being aggressive. You can find that throughout the entire metal community. And I think a lot of people kind of overlook it. Yeah. I mean, cast aside the black metal scene, which can, like you mentioned in, I guess it was part one, where there's a lot of white supremacist threads and things like that and far right ideology. If you, if you cast that aside, cast aside 80s hair metal, which just sang about chicks,

one might make the argument that heavy metal is a very sort of low-key, leftist, musical genre. Yeah. Like, okay, so take Metallica, for example, starting with Ride the Lightning, the title songs back from 1984. It's basically about like how the, it questions the government's state monopoly on violence, right? Like, yeah, with their moral right to execute anybody. That's pretty anti-authoritarian. It's also pretty libertarian throughout. So if the lyrics aren't left-leaning in general, they also tend to be libertarian, too. And their whole album, and Justice for All, song after song after song, has a huge, robust political message to it, basically across the entire album. Yeah, for sure. The song One is an anti-war song, and Justice for All is about the corruption of the justice system.

I, the beholder. That's about the repression of freedom of speech and expression. What else? The shortest straw is about fascism, witch hunt writing. through. Blacken is a straight up overt environmentalist song. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they literally talk about like poisoning mother nature. Yeah. And you find this like, it's not just Metallica. You find this throughout the metal community. Like even if it's not like clear immediately, if you actually stop and listen to the subtext of what the song is saying, it's usually about the powerful and the elite being served at the expense of the masses, the populist.

masses. That is essentially what you can boil almost every song, again, saving black metal and death metal, too, down into. Like, that's the message of just about every, um, every metal song at its heart. At least one song on the album is going to be like that. Yeah. Even old Dave Mustane with Megadeth, uh, I mean, peace sells, but who's buying? Yeah. He's, he's singing about peace, just like the hippies in the 60s might have been just through a very different, you know, sort of genre. Yeah, and some people actually credit him for promoting metal music to have messages. He was taking a shot clearly at hair bands, too, at the same time. But there was an interview with him in the LA Times in 1986 where he said, a band should be aware of what's going on instead

of being so wrapped up in themselves, Cece DeVille. That's a fairly ironic. Yeah, that's pretty his name. Yeah, for sure. And then, you know, you have cases where, like, Pantera's former frontman, Phil and Selmo was caught on video shouting white power on stage and giving a Nazi salute and like the metal community was outraged like people came out, you know, speaking out against them,

not the least of which was Scott Ian of Anthrax saying like, you know, that's a vile thing to do and they were, you know, it was heartening to see that kind of thing, you know? Yeah, for sure. I mean, it was about as close to being canceled as you can get in the metal community, which isn't really a canceled culture, you know?

Is that not a thing? No. And then it actually goes all the way to the far left, and this is much less typical, but you have like grindcore bands like Napalm death that came out of the hardcore punk tradition of being very socially left, even into like the anarchist territory, essentially. But for the most part, it's probably center left, maybe libertarian, is the bulk of the messages that you'll find in metal music. Can we talk about how your brain does on heavy metal?

Because they've actually done some studies that have found. And of course, you know, we should say there's, there are people that struggle with mental health where music and certainly metal has had some negative impacts. Yeah. And there are examples of that. But, you know, aside from that, it seems like metal actually like kind of tests and taxes your brain in a good way. Maybe taxes isn't in the right word challenges your brain in a good way. Yes. Because it immediately starts firing to start making sense of this sort of musical puzzle on all these complex.

rhythms and time signatures that kind of go hand in hand. Right. Yeah. So your brain basically is being worked out. Like it's not just just sitting there like being vibed at. Like it's working trying to decode all this stuff. And yet, paradoxically, for a lot of people, they report that it actually helps improve their focus. I think people with ADHD and people on the autism spectrum tend to report that heavy metal actually helps them focus. better, which is pretty interesting because if your brain's decoding that, you would think that it would be focused on that, but it's not. It's doing, it can do that separately, apparently. And then also emotionally, it seems to have positive effects, too. Yeah, for sure. I mean,

there are so many, you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of heavy metal fans that maybe desponded or angry or frustrated or sad or something. And this music provides a real outlet you know, whether they're just in their room on their headphones or they're driving around in their car through their, you know, weird suburbia that they don't relate to or where they're going to a concert, and it provides a real legitimate release for that stuff. Yeah, and that's not just like anecdotal. There have actually been studies that have been published in peer-reviewed journals that show that there are positive emotional effects that are experienced by metalheads from listening to metal music. There's one from 2013 that studied 414 British metalheads. And they found a mixed bag, right? They found that they had a higher openness to experience, which is one of the big five personality traits,

generally considered positive. They have more negative attitudes toward authority. Can't really disagree with that if you are questioning the authority of a corrupt government, right? Yeah, for sure. Lower self-esteem. Didn't quite understand that. That might just be that metal music attracts people. people with lower self-esteem. I don't think it gives people lower self-esteem.

Yeah, I think that's the case. Greater need for uniqueness. Love it. And then lower religiosity. That's not very surprising either. You know, I was like, are they playing them? Like, are they confused? And they think Van Halen's metal and that's what they're playing, like the 1984 album. But it turns out, like, they're playing like legit metal stuff. Like, um, they played as I lay dying, cradle of faith, overkill. Like, actual metal and they were still getting these results, which I found heartening. Yeah, for sure. There was another study I thought was pretty interesting from 2019. It was 32 fans of metal, 44 non-fans of metal. And they found, and this one's important because I think, especially in the 80s with the

PMRC, there was a lot of just gabbity going around that like, it's going to make your child something. It's going to make them into this. It's going to make them violent. And in that study in 2019, they found that metalheads have the same negative bias toward seeing violent imagery that people who don't listen to metal have, even if they're listening to metal that has violent lyrics and themes, it doesn't then transfer. If they see an image of violence, they're still like, oh, I don't want to see that. Right, exactly. I don't actually want to do that. Right. I just want to, yeah, exactly. It's just rocks. Yeah, exactly. It just keeps going on and on. And I think the point of these studies, especially if you compile them together like we did, is that there's just such a dumb misunderstanding or wrong interpretation of what metal is and what it does.

Again, accepting black metal. They're definitely the outliers here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So we've talked a little bit about genres and subgenres, but we'll dig in a little more here because it gets really confusing. And I don't know many of these bands at all, but I feel like we should just mention a few of these subgenres, right? Do you want to? You want to go through this kind of anatomy of just a single subgenre?

I mean, I feel like, I mean, were all those under MathCore? Yes, this is where MathCore came from. Oh, yeah, sure. Okay. So MathCore is a type of metal music, very, very, very niche subgenre. And it's so niche that the bands of this. subgenre have names like the Tony Danza tap dance experience or the Dillinger escape plan.

Okay, super niche. And MathCore is a combination of metalcore and math rock. And I know you know what Math Rock is, right? Yeah, I used to listen to a little bit of that in college. That is rock music that's very complex musically, a lot of weird time signatures, a lot of starts and stops. If you've heard Math Rock and you may have heard it, and not known it was Math Rock, but you just thought, like, what an interesting odd band.

So you've got Math Rock. Math Rock, you said with as interesting, like time signatures and very technical playing, that evolved from Prague Rock, like Rush, Genesis, King, Crimson, yes, from the 70s, right? Yeah. And then Math Rock was also influenced by jazz. That's just Math Rock. That's one part that MathCore is made up of. On the other side, you've got Metal Core, the other half of MathCore.

It's a combination of hardcore and extreme metal. You might say, oh, okay, hardcore punk. No, wrong. Hardcore is different if you're a purist from hardcore punk. Hardcore is like bands like coat orange, vein. Hardcore punk is minor threat, black flag. They're very closely really. They sound similar, but they're different subgenres.

So metalcore is hardcore and extreme metal, which is a big umbrella term for a bunch of other types of metal. too. Okay. And extreme metal is also under Mathcore? Yes. So extreme metal is one of the basis, or is the basis of metal core. And there's different types of subgenres in extreme metal. You've got death metal, black metal, progressive metal, kind of like prog rock, but metal, doom metal, stoner metal. These are all varieties of extreme metal. And so all of those can have their own core, right? Their own version of metal core. And so probably, progressive

extreme metal with hardcore that version of metal core probably eventually led to metal core this is how divided and cut up

the genre of heavy metal is that's how niche it's gotten into and again some people will come along and be like this sounds

just like progressive metal to me like no it's math core get it right you know that's

that's essentially like I just find it fascinating that people have gotten that into the weeds. And I've seen in a couple of places, probably on Reddit or something, where people are like, this is ridiculous. Let's just take a big step back and get out of this mindset because it's getting kind of weird. Yeah, I mean, there are definitely some genres that have subgenres, but I don't think there's anything that approaches metal.

Even like, I don't know, even hip hop has a lot of subgenres, but I don't think it comes close to metal even. No. No, I don't think anything does. I mean, you can basically take anything and give it several subgenre title, suffixes or prefixes, and you probably have an actual, like, metal subgenre. Yeah, agreed. I just found that interesting. I appreciate you taking that little diversion with me. I love it. All right, we'll take another break here and come back and finish up the part two of the two-part duology. And we're going to talk about album covers and the death of Randy Rhodes. right after this. When I became a journalist, I was the first Latina in the newsrooms where I worked. I'm Maria Inogosa.

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podcast network on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts all right uh promise talk of album covers i want to give a big big shout out to a guy named blake massey who wrote a really great article on the metal pit dot org and also shout out sherry thomas from the aquarium uh because blake wrote a really really great piece on heavy metal album art and you know basically kind of pointing out and making the case that that's where it all starts is like being in the record store seeing this imagery uh black sabbath kind of starting it all with um Just dark imagery, very provocative stuff. A lot of times, you know, like sometimes they would hire out just a company, but I feel like especially with metal, many times the band is very closely involved in the vision for the album cover because, I mean, album covers are always important, but it feels like metal, they're even more important.

Yeah, it's just part of the experience, you know? Yeah. Like you buy the poster even, if you're like me and you're into Iron Maiden's poster art, not really their music yet. Yeah, because it's legit, amazing art. I mentioned in part one, I think, about the Black Sabbath self-title debut album in 1970. One of the most terrifying album covers I've ever seen. It's just a, it's a photograph. It's got this cloaked figure.

It looks like a woman standing in front of this old, like, you know, torn down, or not torn down, but just sort of dilapidated building. And this was in 1970 when, like, psychedelia and colorful album art was a thing. and it was just very, very creepy looking. Yeah, but it also said, hey, everybody, like, we're going in a different direction here. Check this out. Like, I can't imagine what that landed like.

It must have just looked so different. Like, think about Led Zeppelin's album covers. The grimmest one they had was the Hindenberg explosion in black and white. Yeah. You know, like, that was as grim as their album covers got. Like, this is spooky. Like, it's definitely different. I just think that's really cool.

like to think back of just how how some people must have seen this and been like, I'm reborn. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, you know, there's a range like everything. You can look at something like the cover of Number of the Beast. We already talked about the great Derek Riggs and Eddie, their mascot. But if you look at their album covers, Iron Maidens especially, they're just, they're so intricate. And there's so much to see when you sit down on your floor with your headphones on as a teenager.

Yeah. But they can also be a little more simplistic. Like, if you look at the great cover for Metallica's Master of Puppets from 1986, you know, a little can say a lot. It's just there, first of all, you've got to have a great logo. And Metallica's logo is always great. It is. As is Iron Maiden's Judas Priest has always had a great logo.

But it's that Metallica logo and then that cemetery with those crosses connected to the puppet strings. It's just, like, kind of chilling to see. So shout out to Metallica and Peter Minch, who designed that one. And we talked about, while I talked about, rain and blood earlier. And its album cover is actually, it's art. Like, it's very clearly like a painting. I can't remember who did it.

I'm not, I'm not actually sure. Oh, Larry Carroll. And it's basically hell. It's just a landscape of hell. There's off to the foreground in the left, there's some heads floating in a lake of blood. There's a goat on a throne presiding over this horrible place. The Pope is wandering around, wondering what the hell's going on.

But it has its own style, even. It's not like, like, if you look at, Holy Diver, the Dio album cover. It's almost like, it's cartoon realism, almost. This is art. It's like a style of a painter that the Rain and Blood cover is, which makes it even more unsettling, I think. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, that Holy Diver cover is great. You know, Dio has an amazing logo, and they also have a mascot named Murray. Did you know that? I didn't. I guess now that I think about some... d artwork i realized that i've seen that masked person i did not know that his name was murray i didn't either he reminds me of the black spy from spy versus spy he's just not wearing the hat yeah yeah

that's i never really thought about that i didn't either until i saw him yeah just go check out the the holy diver cover it's great because murray is uh kind of standing up you know behind a mountain uh whipping a chain that's wrapped around a uh priest who's in the ocean with the waves lapping and he's you know clearly struggling to stay alive. And Dio, by the way, he took over after Ozzy left Black Sabbath. He, I think it was him immediately after Ozzy, right? Yeah, it was. But he was also in another band with an album cover that we talked about before, Rainbow,

their album cover for Rising is one of my favorite, not even just metal album covers, just album cover in general. It's got a very pretty rainbow on it. It is very pretty. Guns and Roses, we should talk about, I mean, so I don't really throw them in in the metal crowd, but I think maybe early on they might have been thrown in that group of hair metal. But, you know, very famously, their original appetite for destruction artwork was very controversial

for obvious reasons, you know, trigger warning here because it's drawn, you know, like a cartoon, but it depicts a sexual assault that's happened from a robot. And people were like, we can't put this on our shelves. Record stores were saying that. So Geffen Records was like, yeah, maybe we are going a little too far. They put that on the inside cover sleeve, and then ended up with an iconic cover as a result that, again, it's drawn like an animated sort of drawing, but it's that Celtic cross with each band member's head at various points on the cross. And, again, another great logo. It is. It turned out pretty good.

I heard Gaffin's first idea was to put a nice price sticker over the offensive painting. Is that a joke? It is. Okay. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me. Remember those stickers? The Nice Price. That's right. I do want to mention the one more, though, before we get to Randy Rhodes' Quiet Riot because they were the very first metal band to hit number one on the charts. With which one, Metal Health or Come On Feel the Noise or both? Well, Metal Health, that was the album. Come on Feel the Noise was on that album.

Yeah, but they also released the song Metal Health as a single, right? That was also on that album. Right. So which one reached number one first? Or do you mean their whole album? I got it finally. You can stop screaming at your speakers. Yeah, they're the first metal band to have a number one record. Metal Health came out and kind of changed the game. And it featured the Man in the Iron Mask very famously. It's a pretty cool album cover and that guy was in the videos as well. I've always wanted to play that album during seating for one of our shows. But those two songs are really the only good ones on there. The rest are just slimy. Yeah, so I've always skipped it. But yeah, Metal Health, that is a great song, which is ironic. It's a bang your head, Metal Health Ledraged You Mad. I think he says it just like that.

It's funny, it's a very slow song. So, I mean, you can bang your head to it, but you do it very slowly. That's right. So, Chuck, you had said you specifically wanted to end this on a huge downer. And I think you've really knocked it out of the park with your choice to talk about Randy Rhodes and his untimely death at age of 25. Yeah, I mean, I think we both had our kind of big things we wanted in here. Yours was Iron Maiden and mine was the death of Randy Rhodes because it was one of the saddest things that happened to music. Big shout out to Rex Thompson. He wrote a great piece on it for live for live for live music.com. But Randy Rhodes was a great kid. He was very soft spoken guy, a virtuoso from the jump as a teenager. And so much so that when apparently when he was a kid practicing so. much his mom like called a doctor when it's like can this hurt my son's thingies like could this cause permanent damage to his little fingies i read also that she was a piano player so she must

have been he must have really been playing yeah so um he formed quiet riot i had no idea about this my only understanding of quiet riot was from metal health onward well all right let's just be honest it was mental health that's it um right so he formed quiet riot back in nine 1973, I had no idea that Randy Rhodes was in Quiet Riot or that Quiet Riot had been around 10 full years before mental health came out. He was a child, basically. And same, you know, Kevin Dubrow was a singer and everything. But they signed to CBS Records. The band was kind of taking a different direction than he thought like I'm better than what we're doing. And he was right. And he left the band. It was pretty frustrated. And he got a call that Ozzie. Ozzy Osbourne had left Sabbath and was forming a new band. And as the story goes, he auditioned for a very hungover Ozzy Osbourne and was warming up with

some scales. And Ozzy was like, you got the job. Pretty great. Yeah. And that was it. So he became, I mean, just an absolute legend thanks to his stint with Ozzy. Right. Was Ozzy band just Ozzy Osbourne?

Yeah. It wasn't like Ozzy Osbourne and the dewops or the Five Dines or something like that. No, it was just him. And, you know, the saddest part about all this is that he was, he really awoke something in Ozzie and became very, very good friends with he and his wife. I guess they weren't even married at the time, but his eventual wife, Sharon, who I saw at a restaurant in L.A. last year, by the way. But he lived with them when he was in England and was part of the family, basically,

a very playful, spirited, really nice kid and just absolute. just slayer on the guitar until a very, very sad day in 1982. Yeah, it is terribly sad. It was so unnecessary, Randy Rose's death. And again, like, this guy's finally starting to hit the stride that he has known he could get to his whole life. He was crazy train. You know, everyone's heard crazy train. That's Randy Rose.

Yeah. So, and he was also, like you said, he was a good guy. Like, people just loved him, right? So he was 25 of the time. It was the day after a show in Knoxville, Tennessee, the tour bus had made it out of Tennessee through Georgia, safely into Florida. And they stopped in a town called Leesburg, Florida, to repair their bus, which makes sense because Leesburg, Florida is well known as the bus repair capital of Florida. And so they decided to take the whole day off, the day they were going to spend the night in Leesburg. So they were just messing around that day.

And again, they had to show the night before. And everybody was either hungover or still messed up from the night before. Apparently, Randy Rhodes and Ozzy, it had an argument backstage at the Knoxville show because Randy Rhodes was concerned about Ozzie's behaviors, drinking. He was like, you're going to die young. You're going to kill yourself if you keep this up. Ozzy didn't like that, so he stormed off. And they hadn't made up yet because Ozzy was still sleeping.

And Randy was now awake and people were messing around in Leesburg. Yeah, he was sleeping on the bus. So the bus driver, he was a former commercial pilot. His name was Andrew Aycock. And there was a beachcraft bonanza propeller plane, a 1957 beachcraft on the property. And he was like, hey, I can fly that thing. Let's take it first spin. The plane was unguarded.

And so he and initially keyboardist Don Airy and tour manager Jake Duncan got on board, flew around a little bit and landed safely. And then after that, he was like, hey, anyone else want to take a ride? young, spirited, awesome, Randy Rhodes. It's like, yeah, man, I'll go up there. That looks like a blast. And then the seamstress for the band, Rachel Youngblood also boarded the plane. And while they're up there,

Randy Rhodes is like, hey, Ozzy's, you know, sleeping off another hangover. Let's, like, buzz the bus and see if we can wake him up. So they did, right? They did four times. And each time, Acock, Andrew Acock, was like, I can get closer. We can do it faster.

And they managed to do it three different times. On the fourth time, their luck ran out, and I guess his wing clipped the bus, and it doesn't take much pressure to send a plane going 150 miles an hour careening, spinning out of control, and that's exactly what happened. The plane struck the ground and hid a tree, and Randy Rhodes and Rachel Youngblood were ejected probably dead immediately from the plane. I believe Andrew Aycock was left in the plane. It exploded into flames, but not before it had gone. cruised into and taken a stop in some poor Shmo's garage. Yeah. Ozzy slept through the plane hitting the bus that he was on somehow. That explosion woke him up.

And apparently emergency services weren't quick to get there, but it's pretty clear that everyone died immediately. The autopsy showed that ACOC had still had cocaine in the system. And Ozzy was like, yeah, he testified that he was using coke, like, well into the night. He was the bus driver. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well into the night, this was the next morning.

And his pilot's license had expired a long time ago. And, you know, that was it. We don't have any, like, black box recording or anything. It was just a huge loss to the music world and a huge, huge loss to the Osborne family who loved him so much. And Ozzy was already in bad shape. And this was the beginning of a very, very bad, dark time for him. Yeah, he said since that Randy Rhodes' down. sent him spiraling down that path that Randy Rhodes had argued with him about getting off of in the first place.

Because like you said, they formed some sort of bond that just didn't last very long and just broke Ozzie's heart, I guess. Yeah, super, super sad. It is sad. And I've been thinking, okay, how can we end this on a slightly higher note? And I've got it, Chuck. Kawai Medal. Do you know what Kauai means in Japanese? No.

Cute. Right? So cute. Kauai'i metal means cute metal. It's Japanese metal. It combines J-pop, right, with metal, and it actually kind of works. So if you're curious about J-Pop metal or Kauai-Metal, look up the band's baby metal and ladybaby. And that'll be a pretty good start down your journey into the J-Pop metal realm. All right.

And I want to quickly, I know I promised in part one, the Rolling Stone top top. 10 metal albums of all time. So I don't want to leave that off. And I'll just quickly go through from 10 to 1. We've got Pantera with vulgar display of power. Ozzy's Blizzard of Oz at 9. Megadeth, peace cells, but who's buying it? 8.

Motorheads, no remorse at 7. Slayers rain in blood at 6. Sabbath, self-titled Black Sabbath at number 5. Number of the beasts from Iron Maiden at number 4. Judas Priest, British Steel. Great record at number 3. Master of Puppets at number 2 from Matt And number one with a bullet, paranoid from Black Sabbath.

And I know what you're thinking. Where else is Iron Maiden? They were also at 13 besides number four with their debut record. Okay. I dispute a lot of that, but let's just not get into it. It's a Rolling Stone list. You know how those go. They really, I think they're just trolls, essentially.

Yeah, probably. Well, I think that's it, everybody. That's everything we have to say about heavy metal right now. And again, sorry we did not. name check your favorite band. If you want to tell us to get into something, email us. We love that kind of thing. We hope you enjoyed this. We did the best we could. Thanks again to Olivia for taking this journey with us. And since I said that, of course, it's time for listener mail. You know what? I'm going to call an audible here, not going to do a listener

mail. Instead, I want to shout out, a book writer. I've been meaning to do this for a while, And it kind of fits because I know that the author, Keith Rossin, is into some heavy music. I don't know if it's metal or what. I just know he's into some pretty hardcore music. I took a flyer on a book with a cool cover a long time ago, finally took it on vacation. It's a duology called Feverhouse. And the second book is called The Devil by Name. Great, great horror books.

I've never read horror in my life. there's a thread of humanity and the characters and the heart of his stories are incredible and then you've also got good horror stuff so recommend Feverhouse and the devil by name from Keith and then his upcoming book I had shouted him out on Instagram

he got in touch and so we're kind of Instagram messaging now and his book publisher sent me a galley of his new book out this fall it's called Coffin Moon this one's about vampire and it is great. And so sign up for the pre-sale. It's just, I can't wait to read what he does next,

and Keith is like a super cool guy. So, Fever House, the Devil My Name, and the upcoming coffin moon, which that one's about vampires, like I said, it's fixed. Like Keith. Keith Rosson, R-O-S-O-N. Okay, since you said that, I've been trying to figure out

how to shout out two horror movies that I've seen recently that are like, oh, great. These are the best I've seen in a really long time. One's Japanese, it's got subtitles, It's called Best Wishes. Ringu? No.

That's a good one, though. This is called Best Wishes to All. It's a hundred times more off the chain than Ringu. It's not as scary as the Grudge or the Japanese version of the Grudge. It's just nuts. It's really good, though. Another one is one of the darkest horror movies I've ever seen. It centers on snuff films.

It's called Red Rooms. They do such a good job that they don't even actually show any of the videos in question. question, and it's more about this woman's descent into madness, you know, being into this kind of stuff. It's just an amazing, amazing movie. It's not for everybody, but if it is for you, you will love this movie. And I think if you can just get past the weirdness and enjoy it, I think just about anybody could enjoy Best Wishes to All.

I love it. I enjoy when we throw out these recommendations. That's great. Okay, Chuck. That was great. That was a great end to the metal episode. too, I think. Good job. Yeah, those were fun. I feel like we could have done a part three, four, five, six, two, to be honest.

Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us about heavy metal or anything, you can send it via email. Send it off to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hello, I'm John Lithgow. We choose to go to the moon. I want to tell you about my new fiction podcast. That's one small step for man.

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