2 Minutes to Metal: February 2014

Its fairly topical at the moment, that the metal community is a bit upset at the treatment it received by this years grammy awards. I don't personally think this is anything new and for years the category has been chopped and changed and felt like its only included at all as the organisers feel they have to.

Firstly a bit of history:

Lets assume for the sake of this argument that Metal was born with Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath in 1970. The first year the genre was recognised by the Grammys was 1989 in the category Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrumental. Before i get in the result of that night its worth considering that is 19 years with out recognition there ignoring the early works of Sabbath, Deep Purple, Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Metallica's early albums, Slayers Reign in Blood, ACDC just to name a few.. you get the idea. So basically the Grammys have been catching up with themselves by acknowledging these legends with awards they deserved for releases they probably haven't deserved them for.

Then the powers that be decided that Hard Rock and Metal were quite different. I personally think it can be quite ambiguous where it stops and where it ends, for example a band like Alter Bridge a case could be argued for there genre to be Rock / Hard Rock / Metal. So the year after the first award there was just the one dedicated category to metal which was Metal Performance and separately Best Hard Rock Performance Now what the hell does that mean? If however unlikely someone from the Grammys reads this can you please have two categories at least for Metal Song and Metal Album (same for Hard Rock). This ran from 1990 to 2011 and was disbanded in favour of the absolute joke category best Rock Performance which is as ambiguous at you want to get, they did soon however realise this error and this year reinstated the Best Metal performance but no Hard Rock category.

As you can see the Grammys obviously employs no one with any love for Rock or Metal. Dance Music gets two categories and then a lot of it gets lumped in with the numerous pop categories. RnB which as far as i can tell these days has less in common with rhythm or blues than metal does has five categories and rap / hip hop has four, country four and jazz five and shockingly Gospel has five. So the point here is there other genres get there dues why doesn't hard rock and metal? I don't buy the fan base argument as Metal is a global genre country is pretty much limited to the American market, and i have never met anyone who is into Gospel for it to warrant five separate awards, this must have something to do with the strong Christian sentiment in the States.

So i think we are up to speed with where Metal has stood at Music's most prestigious awards. It now brings me on to how even when they have tried to recognise the genre they have insulted it.

Back to the first award, its very often stated that the most shocking award ever given at the Grammys was the first in the Metal category. That night the nominees were as follows. Blow Up Your Video - ACDC, Cold Video - Iggy Pop, Nothing's Shocking - Jane's Addiction, Crest of a Knave - Jethro Tull and ...And Justice For All - Metallica. The award went to Jethro Tull who were shocked as they never had considered themselves Hard Rock of Metal. That night Metallica had even performed their song One at the awards and it was widely thought they would pick up they award. Slap in the face number one to Metal.

So you would think that for the next 21 years that the Grammys on keeping the Metal Performance award around would get it kinda right, Not at all, now i must state here this is my opinion so feel free to disagree.

I have always thought when seeing the nominations each year that they very rarely reflected the best the genre had to offer often opting for giving awards based on what i can only assume was historical hindsight. I can only think that because of the ambiguous nature of the word "performance" in the award title this can encompass anything really, this is why i believe there should be two metal categories Best Metal Song and Best Metal Album. I also think there should be certain caveats, no covers the work must be originally written by the artist and that live performances of old songs are a no go as well.

Here are some examples of where i think they got it wrong.

1991 - Metallica win for "Stone Cold Crazy" - No! No! No! this is a cover Grammys!!! The other nominations were:

Anthrax - Persistence of Time
Judas Priest - Pain Killer
Megadeth - Rust in Peace
Suicidal Tendencies - Lights...Camera...Revolution!

At least this year they picked nominees from the correct year as 1990s awards were made up of mainly nominations from 2 years before. But what gets me here is that a cover song beats these four albums now i am sure you can put up arguments for any to win i personally from those nominations would have picked Rust In Peace (Megadeth are one of the most nominated acts to not win an award with 11 nominations no wins!) hindsight is a beautiful thing i know but just to highlight other albums released that year that didn't get a nod, Pantera - Cowboys From Hell, Extreme - Pronograffitti, Testament - Souls Of Black, ACDC Razorsedge (Containing Thunderstuck...Just Saying!) So with all this great music out in 1990 for 1991s awards the best they thought was a cover song! Insulting if you ask me.

I could probably use hindsight and pick the hell out of every year but i'll try to just do a few as its fun!

1992 Metallica wins for Metallica... yea not a hard call really and you can't deny them that one really, weirdly though Hanger 18 by Megadeth was up for an award despite being the album it was on being nominated the year before, i think highlighting the need for two separate awards for Album and Song.

1997 - Rage Against The Machine win for the song Tire Me. Not the most memorable Rage song but i can only assume this was given for criminally never nominating the self titled album or any song off it. The same year Rage had a nomination for Bulls On Parade in the Hard Rock category, this is just getting annoying now, a much more memorable song but over looked for that award, so wait a minute in 1997 you couldn't work out what was hard rock and what was metal, I'm actually getting confused writing this now. Ok so remember 1997 awards award 1996s body of work pretty much, heres what missed out on nominations, by the power of hindsight give me sight beyond sight! ( i do realise looking back its easy to say what was wrong but i think these mistakes are still being made) so back to point... Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Superstar, Cannibal Corpse - Vile, Korn - Life is Peachy (a song was nominated to be fair) Metallica - Load, In Flames- The Jester Race, Nevermore - The Politics Of Extascy, Sepultura - Roots, Type O Negative - October Rust, Tool - Anemia (nominated a year later??? Better late than never i guess)

A couple of quick ones

2000 Metallica win for Better Than You, immmm ok... and in 2001 Black Sabbath win for Iron Man(live) 21 years late, again better late than never?

Then we get a couple of years where they appear to kinda know whats going on, Deftones for Elite in 2002 and Tool for Schism in 2003 not going to argue with them both in hindsight were very strong even though some of the other nominations were stupid a decent out come.

2004 the judges must have been snare deaf as Metallica won for St Anger! The other nominations weren't great, missing out on a very relevant Dance of Death album from Iron Maiden a couple of very strong songs on there and Dream Theatre - Train of Thought, Hatebreed - Rise of Brutality - Dimmu Borgir - Death Cult Armageddon (an awards with five gospel awards is never going to like this) Children of Bodom - Hate Crew Deathroll and more.

Again in 2009 Metallica winning for My Apocalypse which is not only off a very average album it wasn't even the best song on it. Missing from the nominations were albums such as ACDC - Black Ice (I'm not the biggest ACDC fan but Rock N Roll Train was a great song and showed they were still doing what they did unlike Metallica who seem spent and confused these days) I wouldn't have argued with Slipknot winning for something off All Hope Is Gone. No Opeth - Watershed, Meshuggah - Obzen, Gojira - Way Of The Flesh, Enslaved - Vertebrae.

Ok if you are still reading you are probably fed up of this so lets get to the present day. As metallers we are a mellow bunch, so long as who we love turn up to shows release albums we are happy until that is this year and the Grammys pulled the unlit mate insults on some of our greats...

Firstly not awarding Sabbath there award in the proper fashion, a lot of people think they deserved that award for releasing a relevant album that stood up in the modern scene, i wouldn't argue with that at all. These guys are legends they pretty much created the genre and there influence is huge! I have seen them a couple of times and they are still brilliant (why couldn't they perform?) The one category we now have is not deemed important enough to present properly and was given to the band was they walked in yet we had to watch Daft Punk collect all of theirs and they don't even talk! Huge disrespect to a legendary band who when time looks back on in history are as big as you get.

The nominations weren't bad i am not entirely convinced they were the best the genre had to offer, i really wish they would consult a body of people in the know about such things rather than seemingly pick usual suspects who have done something or people that they might have heard of. The metal genre seems to get more diverse and stronger and stronger every year, i would have liked to see maybe something like Gojiras effort acknowledged with at least a nomination its new fresh and absolutely killer. If we are picking the most outstanding efforts from the entire genre i reckon we could put up some really impressive nominees.

During the Annual In Memorandum Video they snubbed Jeff Hanneman the Slayer guitarist and man who wrote Grammy Award Winning Songs. They actually gave him awards and forgot to acknowledge his sad and untimely passing with a brief picture! Also Iron Maiden founding drummer Clive Burr.

Metallica's performance really did sum them up to me that night, i wasn't sure why they were there and they were trying to pedal the same old stuff in a difference package, I've given it a couple of listen and its a messy performance quite hard to listen to. Why they were there was confusing they haven't released anything they weren't up for an award so why not get Sabbath to give a master class.

Then to top it off i was quite looking forward to the group jam at the end which has Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) Queens of the Stone Age, Dave Grohl on drums and Lindsey Buckingham from Fleetwood Mac, now this sounds pretty cool, but nope they cut it off as they ran over time, they were something like 15 minutes over time so a few more minutes wouldn't have hurt! Trent Reznor rightfully told the organisers what he felt in a well aimed tweet.

This isn't Reznor's first time when it comes to lashing out at the Grammys. In a 2011 cover story for the Hollywood Reporter, he said he displayed his Oscar and Golden Globe prominently in his home, but had not kept track of where he had stored his Grammy awards for best metal performance in 1993 and 1996: "Why don't the Grammys matter? Because its feel rigged and cheap - like a popularity contest that the insiders club has decided."

I don't think i sum this up any better so i will leave it there, thank you for reading \m/

Music's biggest night... to be disrespected.  A heartfelt FUCK YOU guys.

5:30 AM - 27 Jan 2014

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