by Flack » Tue Sep 03, 2019 8:58 am
I was at a club show in the fall/winter of '91, a couple of months after Nirvana's Nevermind was released. I don't remember who was playing that night, but here's what I do remember. Between bands, the house sound guy started playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and everybody in the club stopped talking and just stood around, listening to the music. When that song ended, "Come As You Are" began, and the same thing happened. Everyone in the club just stood still, looking like zombies. My most vivid memory of that night was that when it was time for the second band to go on, people screamed at the sound guy not to turn the album off. The concert got hijacked and went from being a club show to being a Nirvana listening party. This was before "Smells like Teen Spirit" was in heavy rotation on radio or MTV. I'm pretty sure every kid leaving the show that night went and bought that Nirvana album the next day. I know I did.
Prior to the release of Nevermind, metal bands were trying to be more extreme, not less. Megadeth's Rust in Peace, released in 1990, had tracks like Hangar 18 and Holy Wars, songs that got play on Headbanger's Ball but no radio stations (at least not around here). Same goes for Metallica's ...And Justice for All, with the almost ten-minute long title track and almost every song being more than six minutes in length. I've never heard a Slayer song on the radio around here (they didn't get played before 10pm on MTV). Our local rock station was not playing a lot of Pantera. Bands were getting heavier, not softer. I bought Sepultura's Chaos AD because I read about them in a magazine, not because I heard them on the radio.
Of course the seed to everything was planted with "One," the first Metallica song that the band shot a video for. It got played on Headbanger's Ball, caught some traction, and worked its way into regular rotation. Sales skyrocketed. It outsold every other previous Metallica album. It went platinum in two months. A five-minute radio-friendly version of "One" was released. Metallica was forced to make a choice -- did they want to keep releasing epic-length songs for the metal community, or did they want to make some compromises and live in mansions?
Spoiler: the average song length on Master of Puppets is 6:51. Average song length on And Justice for All is 7:17. The average song length on the band's Black album is 5:13. And how did that work out for them? According to Wikipedia:
"By September 2018, the album spent 500 weeks on the Billboard album chart, making it one of the four longest-running albums of all time. [The Black Album] is one of the best-selling albums worldwide, and also one of the best-selling albums in the United States since Nielsen SoundScan tracking began. The album was certified 16× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2012, and has sold over sixteen million copies in the United States, being the first album in the SoundScan era to do so."
Many other bands followed the trend. On Megadeth's Countdown to Extinction (1992), only two of the album's 11 tracks are longer than 5 minutes (one is 5:03). Result? Countdown to Extinction debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, went triple platinum, and (again, Wikipedia) "became their most commercially successful album."
For what it's worth, and this is just my opinion, I believe White Zombie's "Thunderkiss '65" had a big impact on metal at that same time. It's a metal song -- they're a metal band -- but the song structure is very pop oriented. It's very verse-chorus-verse with a simple riff, and so evey with a heavy guitar sound and Rob Zombie's nonsensical lyrics, it was all over the radio. And so for a couple of years, it seemed like every metal band was trying to copy Metallica or White Zombie's format to get on the radio, or Nirvana's blueprint.
This is all a very borind and long-winded way of explaining what happened to (US) metal between 1991 and 1994. TL;DR, big bands found financial success by changing their song structures to a more radio-friendly format, and it paid off. Many other bands followed suit.
This brings us full circle to 1994 and the release of Korn's debut album.
I was at a club show in the fall/winter of '91, a couple of months after Nirvana's Nevermind was released. I don't remember who was playing that night, but here's what I do remember. Between bands, the house sound guy started playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and everybody in the club stopped talking and just stood around, listening to the music. When that song ended, "Come As You Are" began, and the same thing happened. Everyone in the club just stood still, looking like zombies. My most vivid memory of that night was that when it was time for the second band to go on, people screamed at the sound guy not to turn the album off. The concert got hijacked and went from being a club show to being a Nirvana listening party. This was before "Smells like Teen Spirit" was in heavy rotation on radio or MTV. I'm pretty sure every kid leaving the show that night went and bought that Nirvana album the next day. I know I did.
Prior to the release of Nevermind, metal bands were trying to be more extreme, not less. Megadeth's Rust in Peace, released in 1990, had tracks like Hangar 18 and Holy Wars, songs that got play on Headbanger's Ball but no radio stations (at least not around here). Same goes for Metallica's ...And Justice for All, with the almost ten-minute long title track and almost every song being more than six minutes in length. I've never heard a Slayer song on the radio around here (they didn't get played before 10pm on MTV). Our local rock station was not playing a lot of Pantera. Bands were getting heavier, not softer. I bought Sepultura's Chaos AD because I read about them in a magazine, not because I heard them on the radio.
Of course the seed to everything was planted with "One," the first Metallica song that the band shot a video for. It got played on Headbanger's Ball, caught some traction, and worked its way into regular rotation. Sales skyrocketed. It outsold every other previous Metallica album. It went platinum in two months. A five-minute radio-friendly version of "One" was released. Metallica was forced to make a choice -- did they want to keep releasing epic-length songs for the metal community, or did they want to make some compromises and live in mansions?
Spoiler: the average song length on Master of Puppets is 6:51. Average song length on And Justice for All is 7:17. The average song length on the band's Black album is 5:13. And how did that work out for them? According to Wikipedia:
[i]"By September 2018, the album spent 500 weeks on the Billboard album chart, making it one of the four longest-running albums of all time. [The Black Album] is one of the best-selling albums worldwide, and also one of the best-selling albums in the United States since Nielsen SoundScan tracking began. The album was certified 16× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2012, and has sold over sixteen million copies in the United States, being the first album in the SoundScan era to do so."[/i]
Many other bands followed the trend. On Megadeth's Countdown to Extinction (1992), only two of the album's 11 tracks are longer than 5 minutes (one is 5:03). Result? Countdown to Extinction debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, went triple platinum, and (again, Wikipedia) "became their most commercially successful album."
For what it's worth, and this is just my opinion, I believe White Zombie's "Thunderkiss '65" had a big impact on metal at that same time. It's a metal song -- they're a metal band -- but the song structure is very pop oriented. It's very verse-chorus-verse with a simple riff, and so evey with a heavy guitar sound and Rob Zombie's nonsensical lyrics, it was all over the radio. And so for a couple of years, it seemed like every metal band was trying to copy Metallica or White Zombie's format to get on the radio, or Nirvana's blueprint.
This is all a very borind and long-winded way of explaining what happened to (US) metal between 1991 and 1994. TL;DR, big bands found financial success by changing their song structures to a more radio-friendly format, and it paid off. Many other bands followed suit.
This brings us full circle to 1994 and the release of Korn's debut album.