The Underground

Chapter four of Waksman's book deals with metal, punk, and the crossover between the two. One band in particular, Motörhead, blends these two styles and creates their own genre. Their sound is unique in that it uses very fast blues riffs. You can definitely hear the heavy blues influence in their music. It was said in the documentary watched in class that all lead singer Lemmy wanted to create was a British version of MC5. Their sound is very similar, but they put their own twist to it. Lemmy's raspy voice sounds like he has been smoking cigarettes since birth, and that helps give them their own sound. Where Motörhead crosses over with punk is their song lengths and sped-up riffs. But I think that they are extremely different. They are different in that Motörhead is heavier, has more musical structure, and has shredding guitar solos. I think that they do have some similarities but I think after Motörhead is where the line between punk and metal is drawn.

Motörhead is just one of the bands from the new wave of British heavy metal. Some of the other bands that came out of this new phase were Iron Maiden and Def Leopard. Some of the other bands around at the time were lumped into this category even though their music was not metal at all. I thought it was so interesting that there was a metal disco in England where metal heads could gather and headband to new cutting edge music. The Kingsbury Bandwagon debuted all of the new music and was a key part in popularity of british new wave heavy metal. It was so interesting that the staff of the Kingsbury would put together a chart of the top demo tapes.

I can't even imagine listening to a new Iron Maiden demo tape. It must have been so raw and like nothing else at the time. It is so crazy to think about how different music is today. Back then if you got a demo tape, you had something special. It was a listening experience, where you would get together with your friends and listen to the whole demo in it's entirety. Now most people download singles from iTunes and only listen to one sone and because of that the idea of an album has died. It is sad to think about that, and it makes me with that I were alive when music was different.