New Metal

New Metal

JOHN NORUM

Why did this man leave Europe just as the final countdown began?

by Jorgen Holmstedt

When John Norum left the poised-for-stardom band Europe about a year ago, most people thought he was out of his mind (a well-known Swedish magazine named him “Artistic Soul Of The Year”). At the time, the Swedish rock band topped most of the European charts with “The Final Countdown,” Japan was already defeated and the album of the same name had started to move upwards on the American Billboard chart.

No wonder many thought that Europe’s guitarist could have picked a better time to leave the band.

But for John Norum, all these things were without importance. He’s a man who’s always chosen freedom above all. In order to avoid any possible misunderstandings you should know there were basically three reasons the guitarist left Europe, namely:

1) The Music. “Europe isn’t my bag anymore,” John Norum says. “They want to play that wimpy crap with lots of vocals and keyboards. Myself, I’m into more guitar-oriented rock, like Dokken and Scorpions.”

2) The Image. “When I was a member of Europe the girls were screaming just because we were pretty. I was always against the pretty-boy look. I want people to appreciate me for the music I make—not because of how I look.”

3) The Manager. “I have disliked Thomas (Erdtman, Europe’s manager) from the very beginning.”

A common misunderstanding has been that the 23-yearold guitarist left the band because he couldn’t stand all the interviews, photo sessions and TV shows. “I didn’t want to do promotion for a band which I had already left,” Norum states. “I decided to leave Europe in September of 1986. When ‘The Final Countdown’ became a big success in Europe immediately after that, I didn’t want to leave the group in the lurch, so I joined them for a promotion tour of Europe.

“That I refused to do interviews at the end of the promo tour was due to their breaking our agreement. I was promised that I should only have to do three TV shows. Nevertheless, they booked in 15 TV performances!”

For Norum there was no doubt what his next step would be: a solo album. Thomas Witt, an old friend of John’s who has produced three albums for 220 Volt, produced the 14 songs which are currently being recorded for John’s album. “I have co-written 11 of those with the album’s bass player, Marcel Jacob (ex-Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force),” John says.

At the same time, John Norum will be making his record debut as a solo singer.

“I’m going to sing on nine or 10 songs. On the songs where my voice doesn’t fit, I’m going to leave the vocals to Goran Edman (who recently left the Swedish hard rock band Madison).”

Norum played me a tape of three songs that will appear on his album. While you can’t call him a very technical singer, his voice is highly personalized, and he uses it much like Gary Moore-type singers.

Although two of the songs he played—“Someone Else Here” and “Eternal Flame”— are about what you’d expect from John Norum, solo artist (guitar-oriented rock of a somewhat commercial pattern), the third song is somewhat astonishing. “Love Is Meant To Last Forever” is the title of a song which is surprisingly close to the music John played in Europe.

“Many people will probably compare ‘Love Is Meant To Last Forever’ to ‘The Final Countdown,’ ” John logically states. “I only want to say that Marcel Jacob wrote this tune a year-and-a-half before ‘The Final Countdown’ was made. I have always said that if I make a solo album, there’s going to be one hit song included—but only one!”

There’s no doubt that Norum is feeling much better since he left Europe. Gone is the sulky John Norum of yore. “It’s a relief to be your own boss and to release your own albums. The album will be out in the fall on the CBS label,” he says with a smile.

Norum does not have to worry about his income. He has a contract that gives him one Swedish crown (about 17b) per copy of The Final Countdown album, a record which has been bought by four million people. And then there are royalties for the two previous Europe albums, and for all of Europe’s singles...

When I jokingly ask him if he regrets his drastic move from what is today one of the world’s hottest bands, the guitarist only laughs and states: “Never!”

And none have to doubt whether or not John Norum is serious.

TSOL

Out of control or letter-perfect?

by Judy Wieder

After Enigma Records’ incisive success with Poison and Stryper, the music industry is looking to see what these hotshots are going to pull off next. Well, the next daredevil wing dancers on the runway to success are not your average rock hucksters, willing to do everything (including twirling tiki torches) to get your attention. Actually, what you’ve got in TSOL (True Sounds Of Liberty) is your basic hellacious hard rock band. Able to make sounds loud enough to fry your eardrums, TSOL can also zap you with soulful rhythm and blues, acoustic atmospherics and resounding lyrics. All this, and not one technicolor hairdo in sight!

“We do kinda defy musical styles,” bassist Mike Roche understates. ‘‘As far as we’re concerned, we're a rock band.”

Although the four-piece rebel band has put out eight albums and evolved through several personnel changes since their birth in the heart of L.A.’s wacky music scene at the turn of the decade, TSOL’s latest record release, Hit And Run, seems to be just the piece of vinyl everyone wants to drop their needle on.

“We’ve gone through a long evolution of music styles,” Roche offers, ‘‘and slowly learned how to play. We first got into it because the punk thing kinda cracked the rock scene right open. Before that, in the 70s, everything was Led Zeppelin or Saturday Night Fever. It was all supergroups and you needed hundreds of lessons and the best equipment: young, aggressive rock n’ roll had all but died. Today it’s gotten a lot more competitive again. There are a lot of new groups competing with the superstars and metal has been great in helping our music. We’ve never thought of ourselves as a metal band. We Play a hundred styles of music, and metal is definitely one of the top three. We’re certainly not thrash metal like Megadeth or Metallica—though they’ve really done something wonderful with their music. They've brought in a whole new side to music. Audiences had never heard that kind of thing, and it fits so perfectly.”

Admittedly playing under the influence of AC/DC and Stevie Ray Vaughn, TSOL wants to continue writing all kinds of songs. Blues, rock, whatever.

“A lot of bands are using formulas these days to write, and we don’t ever want to do that,” Mike bemoans. “There’s formula heavy metal out there today and it’s like you can almost buy it in a supermarket!”

To help insure that their own creative writing juices continue to flow freely into their music, TSOL has set up a completely democratic system of songwriting and publishing. Everybody writes and everybody gets a piece of the publishing money.

“Nobody controls this band,” Mike laughs, thinking of how goofy that sounds. “We all vote on everything. You should see us! We’ve actually been onstage and realized that everybody wants to perform a different song—so we stop and vote! It’s funny, but it’s really good. It makes it easy for us to live.”

One thing that isn’t making rock ’n’ roll road life easier to live with is drugs and the threat of deadly sexually transmitted diseases. With an average age of 26, Mike, Ron Emory (lead guitar), Mitch Dean (drums) and Joe Wood (vocals) are suddenly faced with the possibly horrific repercussions of an old rock ’n’ roll traditiondrugs and groupies.

“Well, everybody’s different and you kinda have to draw on your own upbringing,” Mike sighs. “Some people don’t care about it, and it’s like party, party, party. When I was younger I had more of that attitude. But I have to think a little bit more about what I do these days. Everybody should. A lot of people are going down with drugs and we don’t support this, but we can’t tell anyone what to do. As far as major diseases, it's a real shame. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it seems like a lot of people are in a lot of trouble. I don’t really know what to say about it. We're trying to make music on a smaller level, because when you get into that, it really boggles you. I figure if we can just kinda clean up our own backyards, that should help.”

FATES WARNING

A European sound from a progressive New England outfit.

by Andy Patrizio

The innocuous state of Connecticut has what is probably New England’s best-kept secret: Hartford’s Fates Warning. Formed in 1983 by drummer Steve Zimmerman as a threepiece cover band and realizing that covers get you nowhere fast, the band took on vocalist John Arch and guitarist Jim Matheos. Meanwhile, the founding guitarist and bassist were replaced by Vic Arduini and Joe DiBiase, respectively.

After six months of writing and rehearsing their own material, the band cut a four-song demo in 1984. Metal Blade picked up on them almost immediately, releasing their Night On Brocken debut. 1985 saw the band release The Spectre Within to a healthy amount of positive reviews. It was on this album that Fates Warning took on a more conceptualized approach, touching on how fears dominate people’s lives.

One year later and guitarist Vic Arduini departed, to be replaced by 18-year-old Frank Aresti. With their third release, Awaken The Guardian, Fates really went into the fear concept and provided an album that was a rarity among modern metal. It was musical, nonthrash, and featured wellthought-out lyrics.

Being nowhere near thrash, yet not using the Jon Bon Jovi Book of Cliches makes it rather difficult to categorize the band. I asked Matheos where he’d like to be considered in the metal genre.

“I’d rather not be categorized,” he said, “but obviously it’s just easier to grab onto. If we had to have a category I would say it’s progressive metal.” Labels or not, the band has often been accused of plagiarism, with pointed comparisons to Iron Maiden. It’s not without good reason: John Arch’s siren-like vocals are reminiscent of Dickinson, and the overall sound is Maidenish, yet distinctly their own. But some people don’t see that and, to Jim’s chagrin, the accusations continue. “It’s gotten to be a drawback,” he complains. "At first it was a nice compliment, when the first album came out, to be compared to them. Then the comparisons changed from comparisons to them saying we were ripping them off, that we’re just a clone band. So that’s gotten to be a bit annoying.

At the time of this writing, the band was preparing new material for their next album, which will be out in January (if it isn’t out by now). The album, titled No Exit, features one of the most ambitious projects a band could undertake: a 22-minute, side-long track ("Ivory Gate Of Dreams”), described by Jim as one of the best things he ever wrote.

The Fates sound is distinctly European, complete with Jim’s unique classical guitar playing. That’s because he screws himself up before writing. “When I write, it’s weird. I try to disorganize my senses and forget everything I’ve learned, because what you learn in America, from when you grow up, is 4/4. And it becomes boring. We like to play in rhythms other than four, like five, seven, 131/2.”

And by playing this way they have a different crowd than Cinderella or Motley Crue. They have, in fact, a desire to be different from the norm of metal bands. "It’s the overall effect of us being a little different. Musically, lyrically, arrangement-wise, everything. I think that’s been our strong point,” says Matheos.

"And also, being a little progressive,” he adds. “There’s a lot of people out there who get sick of listening to music that’s verse-chorus-versechorus-solo-chorus and the lyrics are all about getting laid and getting drunk. I think a lot of people are looking for something else than that, and we try to fill that space for them.”

Think. Bang your head. Fates Warning. Somehow, it all fits.

DICK DESTINY &

THE HIGHWAY KINGS

Metal’s foremost Ph.D. shows his class.

by Chuck Eddy

Gotta admit I haven’t checked the academic transcripts of the ladies in Poison and Cinderella, but I’d bet bucks that Dick Destiny & The Highway Kings are the only Southeastern Pennsylvania true-false-or-otherwise metal band who’ve got a disc jockey with a chemistry Ph.D. (George Smith, a.k.a. Dick Destiny) on axe and throat, a disc jockey who’s working on his chemistry Ph.D. (Byron “the Guz” Goozeman) on other axe, an electrical engineer with “little to say about his good fortune at being selected for Highway Kingship” (Earl “Bud” Hossler) on bass, and a Stryper fan with yellow and black drumsticks but no record player (“Carson” Mills Carson) on cans. But so what? What you wanna know about is what sports they played in high school, right? Well, Dick was a varsity letterman (150-pound weight class) in wrestling, and “everybody else,” Dick explains, “was anti-sports.” Dick denies that his belief that the Dictators’ “Young, Fast And Scientific” is “the best rock song ever recorded,” is due to his inherent conflict-of-interest as a chemistry Ph. D./ex-grappler (the Dies being history's prime exponents of the wrestler-rock genre), but I don’t believe him. “There’s no connection,” he insists.

The Highway Kings put out an album last year called Arrogance (on Destination Records, “home of loud ana ug'y rock ’n’ roll!!” POB 9260, Allentown, PA 18101), and most of it was recorded in Dick’s apartment, using the Tom Scholz-designed Rock Module, which Dick Destiny calls “the ultimate flowering of the Scholz genius as initiated in the Rockman—a rackmounted device that can recreate the whole spectrum of musical sound.” And if those technical considerations aren’t enough for you to rush out and hear the Highway Kings, let me say that they rock lots harder than Cinderella or Poison, with plenty of those kind of raunchy riffs that stick to the heels of your boots and you can’t even scrape ’em off with a hacksaw! Their new LP, Brutality, stirs up even more fungus-soup than its predecessor, and it’s got songs about homy prostitutes and fat sorority girls and big boss-men and ironworkers’ kids, plus a cover of “Ace Of Spades” (Link Wray’s, not Motorhead’s), plus a great one called “Letter To Mr. Ted.”

“Letter To Mr. Ted” steals (riffwise or vocalwise) phrases from Nugent’s “Hey Baby,” “Pony Express,” and “Wango Tango” (and the MC5’s “Ramblin’ Rose,” too), and one verse goes like this: “Hey baby, start some breakin’ neck/Swing that axe, cause an auto wreck/Hey baby, throw your knock-out punch/Right in the labonza, spoil the power lunch/Hey baby, spit on the floor/Chug some Colt, make it more raw/Hey baby, I be givin' good advice/Forget the rest, forget Miami Vice." Dick Destiny rides a Harley and consumes alcoholic beverages (though no one else in the Highway Kings does), and he’s got no patience for wimps like Ted Nugent, the Rock 'n' Roll Herbivore.

Dick and the Guz provide color commentary for the most important and, indeed, the best radio program in the United States, from 6 to 9 p.m. every Thursday night on Lehigh University’s WLVR 91.3 FM, the station at which Dick’s chemistry Ph.D. wife Carol is music director. A poster distributed to all the Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch neighborhoods in the area reads as follows: "When Dick 'The Professor’ Destiny takes you back to the early ’70s when loud guitars were king and words like intelligence, good taste and restraint didn’t exist...back to the birthplace of heavy metal with timeless acts like Uriah Heep, Black Sabbath and Mountain .. . What more could you ask for?!?! (We!l, maybe a bag of fried pork rinds and some Boones Farm).” The deejays spin Rose Tattoo, Budgie, Three-Man Army, Sir Lord Baltimore and other pre-C.D.era faves, too, and they constantly thump and refer to Terry Jasper and Derek Oliver’s International Encyclopedia Of Hard Rock And Heavy Metal, what Dick calls “the essential Bible” of something or other. If you’re ever passing through or around Allentown (where, Dick would like to inform Billy Joel, there is no steel mill—just the corporate HQ’s of Mack Trucks and Black & Decker), you should tune in.

The Highway Kings are motorcycle-rockers squarely in the tradition of the Boyz, Godz, and Cigaretz, but they didn’t end their name with a "z,” Dick says, because “it never occured to me.” Dick’s favorite heavy metal albums are the MC5's Kick Out The Jams, Blue Oyster Cult’s Tyranny And Mutation, ZZ Top’s Tres Hombres, the Dictator’s Go Girl Crazy and Bloodbrothers (“GGC for attitude and stupidity, Blood for riffing”), Sabbath's Paranoid and Vol. 4, Uriah Heep’s Very ’Eavy, Very 'Umble (“my copy had muddy sound which only heightened the effect”), and (“just for sport”) the first Point Blank LP. The stupidest things anybody ever said to him at gigs were when one guy told him to “play more Edgar Winter stuff,” and when, “after a smokin’ rendition of ‘Ramblin’ Rose,’ ” a guy instructed him, “you shouldn’t try to sing Beatles songs.” Dick did chemistryPh.D.-type beaker-type research work for three years after school, but now he just lives off his wife and his royalties. The research was performed in Hershey, where he says you really can smell chocolate in the air, “but after a while it makes you sick.”

FATE

Out of the ashes of Mercyful Fate comes a more commercial offering.

by Sydelle Schofield

“I think we developed into a great unity,” guitarist Hank Sherman proudly announces through the telephone cables from Copenhagen, Denmark. He is referring to his one-yearold band, Fate, an offspring of Mercyful Fate. A Matter Of Attitude is their premier LP, and it showcases an unexpected style from a guy who used to burn the frets for a black metal band. But that’s where this story all began.

“I started with King Diamond in 1980 when I met him in a Copenhagen bar,” Hank remembers of that fateful day. “We had mutual interests. We both wanted to start a band, so we sat down and talked about it. We then got the other guys, and in three weeks, we officially became Mercyful Fate.”

Two of their three albums, Don't Break The Oath and

Melissa, both broke through on American charts and gained the band a certain notoriety, due to the lead vocalist’s assumed penchant for Satanism.

“This thing that King Diamond is a satanist is just an image. He’s just as normal as any other human being,” defends Hank. “I think King is into it as a hobby. It’s interesting, some of those things behind black magic. When many people hear the word ‘satanist,’ they go crazy. I prefer to call it ‘black magic.’ It's just the unexplainable.”

There are those who are still in the dark regarding the unexplained breakup of Mercyful Fate in 1985.

“I think there are two reasons for that. One reason is that our company, Roadrunner Records, didn’t support us at all. In 1981, when we did our American tour, they didn’t support us with any money. We

had to withdraw from our personal bank accounts.

“The second reason was that I became bored with that type of complicated hard rock style. I wanted to play more commercial stuff.”

It only took a determined Hank Sherman 48 hours to begin a new band project. He contacted a trio of local musicians jamming together in a band called Maxim. “Two days after the split of Mercyful Fate, I found this guy named Jeff Limbo who I’ve known for about five years. He was always a fantastic singer. Jeff was jamming with a drummer named Bob Lance and a bassist named Pete Steiner. Two days later, Bob and Peter were with us and Fate became a reality.”

Just two months after the members met, they secured a record deal from EMI in Denmark and released a self-titled LP. However, they didn’t have a chance to create new music. They just rehashed some of Hank’s old Mercyful Fate tunes and slabbed them quickly down onto vinyl. This time around, though, they did things quite differently. They got to know each other, first of all. Secondly, they wrote nine pop rock songs tinged with a hard edge.

But what gives Fate that added attraction is the spice of Jeff Limbo’s witty and humorous lyrics. He takes full credit for “Do It,” the last song on the album, and a number reminiscent of America’s Tin Pan Alley era.

It just goes to show you never know what Fate has in store for you.