HEAVY CLASSICAL METAL
Were Beethoven and Mozart the world’s first rock stars? There’s a case to be made that they were predecessors of the likes of Metallica and Slayer, given their lifestyle and their music — which is essentially about the histrionic release of energy.
Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart the world’s first rock star?
Cam Pipes thinks so, but not because the famed classical composer made it rich as a musician. Quite the opposite, actually.
“Even in his heyday, when he was being commissioned to write pieces, Mozart was a starving artist,” the vocalist for Vancouver epic metal band 3 Inches of Blood says. “He partied, he blew his money, he drank it away. I’m sure it parallels a lot of bands and musicians. He lived it up and didn’t set anything aside and he died poor. That’s rock ’ n’ roll.”
Pipes argues Mozart’s lifestyle ( and that of many composers) was closer to his peers’ working in heavy metal today.
In fact, a strong case could be made that heavy metal and classical music have more in common than people would normally think.
One is associated with leather, tattoos, distortion and fantastic tales of horror and fantasy; the other bow ties, formality and pomp.
Yet at their core, they share certain similarities. Both musical genres are characterized by visceral outbursts of virtuosity and histrionic emotion.
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra composerin- residence Edward Top agrees that classical and metal are essentially about “releasing energy.”
It may surprise many to learn that Top is not just a skilled classical music maker but also an avowed heavy metal fan with a soft spot for thrash metal bands like Slayer and Anthrax.
“A few years ago in London I saw Napalm Death live,” Top says, “and the energy was unbelievable.”
Napalm Death is a band that pioneered the “grindcore” genre, taking the punkinfluenced speed of thrash metal ( whose most popular offspring is Metallica) and coupling it with the pummeling viciousness of hardcore bands like Black Flag.
Now 41, Top remembers proudly wearing a leather jacket with the lyrics to the Napalm Death song Life? printed on its back when he was 16.
“It was the energy in a small space and the sheer volume — you could never do that with an orchestra in a large hall.”
One of Top’s most recent pieces, Totem, draws inspiration from tribal rhythms and Napalm Death’s blast- beat drumming.
Totem is one of many pieces in Top’s catalogue infused with his heavy metal indoctrination, which began in the ’ 70s with bands like Queen and Van Halen and later went on to include the likes of Iron Maiden, German band Accept, and Canadian technical metal trailblazers Voivod ( another band that was represented in patch form on his leather jacket).
If you ask Top, the best heavy metal album ever recorded is Slayer’s 1986 opus Reign In Blood, which he finds as exciting and musically inventive as any classical music piece.
Classical shredding
“For me personally, the divider between different musical styles such as classical violin concertos and thrash metal has never existed in the experience of listening,” Top says.
Classical music has been an important cornerstone in the evolution of heavy metal, from British legends Black Sabbath borrowing the tritone ( ie. “the devil’s note”) in their monumentally creepy selftitled song, to Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore borrowing from medieval music, and guitar gods Eddie Van Halen and Yngwie Malmsteen transposing complex classical violin solos into their six-string work.
Listening to 3 Inches of Blood’s catalogue, including its latest opus Long Live Heavy Metal, you can hear some of the classical undertones in the band’s music: Squealing, rapid- fire guitar solos, Pipes’ operatic singing style, and tales of sword and sorcery are at the core of the Vancouver metal favourites’ work.
“Paganini was a shredder,” Pipes says of the celebrated Italian violinist.
Certainly the most “metal” violinist, Paganini was rumoured to be in league with the devil, and the church denied his body a Catholic burial.
“Some of his stuff is all over the place. It’s easy to see where guys like Malmsteen get their crazy fretwork. He’s all about ‘ more is more’ — it’s over the top.”
Pipes admits classical music has always been a part of his life, and his first encounters were connected with his parents constantly listening to CBC radio at home when he was a kid.
“One of my earliest fascinations with classical music was the William Tell Overture, which to me was The Lone Ranger theme song,” Pipes says, explaining the piece’s charging finale could easily be transposed as a heavy metal guitar riff.
“We had a record with the William Tell Overture on it and I used to listen to it over and over. I lived in Calgary and we went to the Stampede every year and I had a Lone Ranger costume. So that’s where it started.”
Though he was never classically trained, Pipes continued to listen to classical music through university and later on in life, with his favourite composers remaining Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Wagner.
Wagner is often considered a heavy metal composer for the sheer epicness of his work.
The monstrous Ride of the Valkyries is but one example, and his Ring Cycle has a Norse mythology resonance that makes it a prized series for metal bands with more “Viking tendencies” such as 3 Inches of Blood.
“I didn’t really put two and two together until later,” Pipes says, “until I really got into rock music that was around before I was born.
Recently, more heavy metal bands have emerged showing an overt classical influenced style, especially in Europe.
Symphonic power- metal bands such as Finland’s Nightwish and Sonata Arctica have taken a synth- based approach to string arrangements, progressive metal acts like Sweden’s Opeth have fused death metal with neo- classical leanings, and British extreme metal icons Cradle of Filth have made their music stand out with a theatrical flair equal parts Italian opera and Alice Cooper shock- rock.
On the other side of the spectrum, incorporating metal into classical has been more difficult.
“I’ve been careful in using metal in classical music because these two things kinda don’t match,” Top says.
While Top is slowly attempting to break down barriers, the classical world certainly doesn’t revel in the same level of visual stimuli as heavy metal does, which ultimately may be the main divide between the two styles.
Metalheads are often more than happy to talk about the genius of Paganini and Wagner, yet classical fans ( who tend to be older) mostly find heavy metal a little too extreme.
“But quite a bit of composers and performers of classical music enjoy metal,” Top admits.
Ironically, classical and metal are both “outsider” genres in the great battle against mainstream pop, and both camps are made of people too smart or too nerdy for their own good. If they started digging, they might just realize how similar their roots are.
“We’re mostly influenced by other heavy metal bands, and by association we’re influenced by what they were influenced by,” Pipes says of his work with 3 Inches of Blood.
“If some 13- year- old kid wants to start a band and he likes to listen to a lot of Deep Purple, whether he realizes or not, he’s being influenced by the classical stuff Ritchie Blackmore loved.”