August 18, 2025 • 35 mins
This week on Whyte Noise: Michael and Ryan dive into their personal histories with music, tracing the evolution of metal and its many subgenres. They share stories of friendships, family influences, and unforgettable concerts while reflecting on the legacies of icons like Ozzy Osbourne and the infamous band Mayhem.
Subscribe and Watch on YouTube
Connect with Us: Michael Judson Berry | Ryan Wilder
Theme: “Happy Dance” by Mr. Smith is licensed under Attribution 4.0 International License. “Running Fanfare” by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under Attribution 3.0 Unported.
Subscribe and Watch on YouTube
Connect with Us: Michael Judson Berry | Ryan Wilder
Theme: “Happy Dance” by Mr. Smith is licensed under Attribution 4.0 International License. “Running Fanfare” by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under Attribution 3.0 Unported.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I listened to Lincoln Park. Am I cooler than I
think I was?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I mean, I've always thought you were very cool.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Michael, Oh my good things.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Michael's like, oh my god, I am in the medal.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Little did I know? I'm so much more hardcore than
I thought. Hello, welcome back, Welcome back. I'm Michelle White
Noise with my dear friend Michelle.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Hello.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hello everybody. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Thank you for joining us so quick. Recap Michelle. I
know because Michelle has been friends with my sister Elson
for a very long time. When you guys used to
live in the same building and your dogs became best friends.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yes, we met through our dogs and they have very
good taste, yes, and.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Brought us all together. And then for years we used
to have dinner once a week and every Tuesday night
and watch Jeopardy and.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Then at well Jeopardy first and then Trash TV afterwards.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
And then Trash TV, and you and Alison took turns
making dinner and would sneak onions into the food and
not tell me.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Oh yeah, that was their idea, though, Oh why.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
I hate onions and sister fashion, you would not notice
them half the time. I didn't notice them to be fair,
and then she'd be like, gotcha, I didn't.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Know if this was the thing. Oh, it was such
a thing. Do you know my biscuits and gravy actually
has onions?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Does it really?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
But why do I fall for everything you say? He
does this to me like almost every episode.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
At some point, Oh, my goodness, you're gonna have You're
gonna give him trust issues? Not healthy.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I was gonna say, if we haven't pulled that off yet,
I might still have I might still be okay for
a while.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I mean, al with the onions. I mean, like this
is gonna like I'm an older sibling, you know, but
like he's a younger sibling, Like he's gonna have trust
issues off.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
The bat, because and yet I still believe everything. She
used to make me eat dirt and told me it
was God's chocolate. She told me if I ran down
the street naked, I'd be able to fly. Did it
did not fly? I need this to say, that was
a real bummer of a day for me, was it?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Though?
Speaker 3 (02:03):
That sounds amazing?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
I mean it was warm. Maybe it ran around naked,
so that I mean, that's not the worst thing. When
you were I think I was like four, but I
was really devastated that I couldn't fly like Mary Poppins
by the time I hit the end of the block.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Pa, Well, I mean, I guess I should be grateful
that my older one is not making my younger one
run naked to the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
So, yeah, your kids, Your kids actually seemed to like
each other.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
They this summer. They did for the most part.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
So that's a little bit about our history. So we
were talking about your.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
History music, How you got into music, Yes, so really Okay,
So how I first got into into music was my
first boyfriend when I was fourteen.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
He was a little bit older and it was the nineties,
so he was listening to Olympiscuit and Olympus Kids first
album was a lot grittier and like harder than their
older their later ones were, And at first I was like,
I don't know, this is a little crazy, But then
after a little bit, I was like, oh no, this
is really good, and like this is gonna be my
(03:02):
thing too, Like this is great. And then my first
concert ever was Lollapalooza. And I don't quit me on
the year, but I think it was nineteen ninety four
and I'm pretty sure that was the year that Tool
was there with Corn and it was an amazing show.
It was, it was amazing and uh and that after
(03:22):
that I was sold. Like, but Lalla Paluza used to
be at Randall's Island. I don't know if it still is,
but the main there were two stages, and the main
stage like it was, it was all outdoors and it
was all dirt. So when the mash pit would start,
like there were just these dirt clouds everywhere. And I
will never forget going home like hours later, exhausted, filthy, good, gross,
(03:43):
you know. But I was fourteen on a care and
blowing my nose and just like black stuff coming out
of my nose all the dust I had inhaled a long.
I was just like, oh, that's probably not good.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Just inhaling dust at Lollapalooza.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah from Marsh yeah Rose, Yeah, But I didn't. But
after that, like you know, I went to a lot
of shows as a kid, and and there are always
rock or metal shows or new metal shows or whatever.
And then my first non metal show was with Allison.
We went to go see Pink together and then a
little while later we saw Lidy Gaga and those things.
(04:18):
They were amazing. But I mean I listened to a
lot of different kinds of music, but that's metal rock
and metal is always my default.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Since that is our topic today, which I don't think
we said so then that congratulations everyone, Now this all
makes sense. The topping happens to be that thing we've
been talking about. It's fascinating. I feel like that was
like one genre that I never really listened to because
I was such a nerd so like same it always
was like I was listening to show tunes and so
(04:44):
compared to like you know, Carol Channing and Sutton Foster,
like metal was so the other end of the spectrum
that it was just like what is this.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
I guess I wouldn't have been allowed to listen to
metal growing up. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean my dad
liked Zeppelin, which was like pre medal.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Like I've told I've talked about this on the podcast before,
and like anything, because my mom was a teacher and
anything that she associated with like not great students were
like things that we were not allowed to do.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
That makes sense, yep, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
It was like not even I was never on my
radar just because I was never i think ever put
in a place to be around it, which is like unfortunate.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, I'm sure my mom didn't love it, but she
was okay with it. And I'm a teacher too, which
is interesting. But so like, I'll let my kids listen
to it and they know. So I've taught them what
the bad words are, so I know which ones not
to repeat. I was like, you can listen to them,
but you can't repeat them. They're like, okay, but they
listened to metal and they'll listen to like some show
(05:49):
tune stuff too, like I forget what Karen's listening to
you right now, but it's totally The show itself is
very can inappropriate, but the sound track is like, oh,
it has been hotel, but the soundtrack is like a
musical basically, and he loves it and Laughlin loves it too,
and I was like, okay, and you know, they can't
watch the show because the show is not for children,
(06:10):
but the music it's fine. So we had we try
to have a good variety, though rock and metal is
mi desaults.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
I had this boss that I used to I was
really close with at work, and you know, the little
the little John song and East Side Boys? Is it
os skeet skeet? Is that actual the name of the song?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
I don't know if that the name of the song, but.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Yes, yeah. So my boss and I were walking around
the office just kind of like generically, like as if
it was some sort of like exclamation, like we'd be like, ah,
skeet skeet, and he'd be like, ah, skeet skeat. And
we'd just be saying this openly in office. And then
finally my good friend Liz grabs me and pulls me
(06:54):
aside and she goes, you know what you're saying, you dumbass, right?
And I was like no. I was like, what does
skeet skeet mean? And she's like, Ryan, it's like skeet
skeet And I was like oh oh. And I go
into my boss's office and I'm like hey, Lou, I
was like, do you know what we're actually saying?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
He's like, no, no, bluse, you guys were accidentally an
HR nightmare.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Yeah, and this is like in my mid twenties. The
duds in like his probably is like late thirties, early
forties at this point, like what idiots.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Look, we don't know you don't know. I mean, I.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Appreciate that you've you've put your sons in a position
to not run around and yell ask skeet everywhere.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yes, I please don't. And there's and there's gonna be
like there's gonna be new things that I don't know.
But I got teaching in middle school, so like I
have to if I hear my.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Students, you're probably pretty up to speed.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
I have to like ask, like the good kids, like
what does that mean? You know? So what the kids
that I know will tell me that or like some
of my other teacher friends, but like the like we'll
be textings the other day like okay, so, so and
so saying this, do we know what it means? It
was like, I don't know what it means? Can you
search it up? It's like, well one of us will
like text our teenage kids like ask someone it means.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
All right, so speak of metal. We each have in
theory prepared some things. Michelle, who would you like to hear?
Go first?
Speaker 2 (08:29):
I guess Ryan can go first.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Okay, yay.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
So this confirms my suspicion that it's in theory that
we prepared things because Michael was way too excited to
as much of time I love.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
When Ryan goes first, Michael will be looking down a
lot because he'll be jotting notes as we go.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
I'm going to be googling everything. Ryan says, all right,
are you ready? Ryan?
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yeah, I hold on one second. I want to find
one before Okay, Yes, now I am, because I was
like I I kind of like how I made my
way into it, but yes, now I'm ready, okay, and
you okay. So, as I obviously exposed, I did not
have a lot of exposure to like metal growing up,
(09:22):
and like I would say, the closest I got to
rocker my like rock genre when I was in like
in middle school and in the high school was the
hardest I got was like Oasis, And I do remember,
like my first real rock concert was seeing Oasis and
it was the last concert that they did in the
United States before they had the really big breakup in
(09:45):
ninety six, and I thought, I recalled that, I thought
they broke up on stage, but actually they didn't. They
broke up post that concert. After that, like the only
thing that I could come up with that like was
the closest thing that I could get to rock or
metal was the Osbourne's which was Ozzy Osbourne and like
his whole you know, the whole reality kind of TV jam.
(10:06):
But what I didn't realize and in terms of doing
my research, is that Sabbath is the origin of metal.
Like there was not metal prior to Sabbath. You had
a lot of like rock bands in the sixties which
were the precursors to metal, So you had Deep Purple
and Zeppelin, but Sabbath was in the seventies kind of
set the kind of darker tones. So like your original
(10:29):
like hard rock was more it was actually more happy,
like it was about like drug trips and cars and
love and whatever else where, like metal was dark and
intended to be dark, but I thought was kind of
interesting and it so you know, you were telling me
like corn and lip and Biscuit, So I have the
whole like how did we get to corn and limp Biscuit?
(10:52):
So what is the because if Sabbath was the beginning,
how did we get to where we are today? And
what were the bands that kind of charted the space?
I thought this was cool. So in the seventies and eighties,
from Sabbath you actually then had you had the trunk,
so it was the same sort of style of music.
You had Judas Priest and Iron Maiden and then even
Ozzie's solo career, and then into into the eighties and
(11:15):
nineties you get trash metal. Oh I'm sorry, thrash metal
not trash. I guess it depends on how you feel
about it. Yeah, the trash metal didn't make it. There
might be some people who feel that way about this,
this branch of the of the metal. But thrash metal
(11:36):
was like Metallica, Slayer and Mega Death. And then you
had glamin Hair, which I feel like a majority of
people know, which is Motley Crue, Poison def Leopard, and
then actually some of the other branches were like Speed
and Power, so I didn't know Helloween or Dragon Force,
and then death metal, which was Morbid Angel, and then
get this one, Cannibal Corpse. Does anyone know Cannibal Do
(11:59):
you know Cannibal Corpse?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
So I know they're not on my playlist, but yes,
I definitely know of them. Are like really the famous bands.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
And then into the nineties and two thousands is where
we get into new metal, and that's where we get
our corns, our limp biscuits, and even Lincoln Park.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
I listened to Lincoln Park. Am I cooler than I
think I was?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
I mean, I've always thought you were very cool. Michael,
Oh my god things.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Michael's like, oh my god, I am in the metal.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Little did I know? I'm so much more hardcore than
I thought.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
I mean, I like Lincoln Park too, but I feel
I feel like that it's because it made Casey Kasem's
Top twenty cat down on Sundays.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Yes, it was much more mainstream.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I was gonna say the other like alt metal, like
you had tool system of down and even deaf Tones,
and then uh, what else do we have? And then
metal core and death core, which I didn't. I did
recognize kill Switch Engage like that band. I did recognize
what are they under metal core? Yeah, they're on metalcore Okay.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
So I feel like there's a lot of other songs.
Some of their songs sound very different from others. So
it's always interesting to me, like how bands get categorized
because they'll have different tracks that sound. Some some bands
have a very distinct sound, like deathtones, like you know
what deathtones before it even like gets a few seconds in.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
As soon as they come on, you're like, oh, yes,
you are.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Like Tools, so as it comes on, like, oh, that's
got to be a Tool song definitely, But like others
bands like kill Switch, there's a lot of difference.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
And they also listened White Chapel and Whitechapel I remember
too as a band, remember that one. I didn't listen.
I didn't listen to them at all. But yeah, that's
kind of like how we got from the origins of
Sabbath to where we are today in terms of like
metal bands. But so I decided to then do and
a little bit of a tribute to Ozzie himself, because
I think most people know he passed away in the
(13:49):
previous couple of weeks. I think, yeah, m hm, And
I loved him, and I love the family from the Osbourne's,
so it was kind of fun to just learn a
bit more about him. He was born in nineteen forty
eight in Birmingham, England. His actual name is John Michael Osbourne,
but Ozzie stuck as a nickname. He was dyslexic, terrible
(14:11):
at academics and bullied and dropped out of school at fifteen,
and then infamously went to jail for stealing things but
got caught because a pair of the gloves that he stole,
he chose to write his name on the inside of them,
so they knew they were the stolen gloves and then
like they're not mine, and then they looked and the
like no, you're poor Ozzy, And then I feel like
(14:37):
I don't feel like I know that metal kind of
got a lot of It's like what it was known
for from the crazy behaviors, right, So it wasn't even
just the lyrics and the sound, it was the behavior
on stage and off stage that kind of you know,
parlayed into phenomenal stories.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Dude, he lived up to the Prince of darkness. Oh yeah,
all the crazy stories.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
So did you know that? So the bat incident is
obviously one of the most infamous ones. And I did
not know this, but apparently he didn't think it was
a bat. He thought it was like a rubber toy.
He thought it was a rubber bat toy, and that's
why he went to go bite the head off of it.
He had no idea.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Can you imagine the surprise?
Speaker 3 (15:20):
And he had to get Raby shots after.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, I would assume.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So, I mean, being azzy, he probably would not have
actually needed the raby shots because he seemed to outlive
anything that went into his body.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
But but what a gnarly surprise, Like, I will say,
going to bite what you think is a rubber bat
and then it's real sounds like a worse surprise than
biting into a castrole and finding out his onions. But
they're very close.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
I love how onions. I love how onions are your bat?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
That's oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Did you know he had another another head biting off incident?
But this one was very purposeful and intentional.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Was it a bird?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah? So he went into yeah, he had doves or
doves and walked into like recording like to get signed,
like meet with recording sects to sign up, you know,
sign with a label or something like that, and he
like apparently pulls out two doves and his hands and
everyone in the room just continued to ignore him. So
(16:19):
he just decided to bite the head off of one
of them, and apparently it freaked out all the execs,
but they signed him.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
But that's very different from accidentally biting off a bat's head.
Like now you know, maybe he was like, well, it
can't taste any worse than the bat, so.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
O now I'm just wondering, like would you let him
dog sit for you?
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Like how small is a dog?
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Actually, he loves he loves dogs. Did you know this?
This is like one of his things. Oh he loves dogs. Yeah,
Like this is like his It's one of his favorite things.
I was gonna say the everything you read that, like,
aside from what was very clearly I think alcohol and
drug fueled behavior, he's apparently like a super softy, very
(16:59):
good and extremely self deprecating and is just well known
for like loving dogs. Although I feel like Sharon. I
have a little bit on Sharon too, because I feel
like Sharon is such an important piece of the story.
She really is kind of what built him into the
legend that he was so like Sabbath was his own thing,
but he didn't stay in Sabbath. He was kicked out
(17:20):
for his drug use. And Sharon was the daughter of
don Ardent, who is the manager of Sabbath, so she
actually stepped in to manage his solar career, solo career,
and she's the one that really rebuilt him. Although you
know from there, I forget when they got married. They
got married in eighty two, but as you'd imagine like
(17:41):
they had a typical kind of like rocker sort of relationship.
Like he strangled her in eighty nine and of alcohol
fueled blackoutrage, didn't remember it. And then I guess the
last last thing I'll share is that in twenty sixteen,
I think the affair was really public where he was
having an affair with his hair dry sir, and she
(18:01):
left him for a bit, but ultimately, you know, I said,
he's the true love of my life. He went and
got I don't know how old he was, nineteen forty
eight minus twenty sixteen. He went to he went for
a sex addiction. He went to therapy for sex addiction
off of twenty sixteen, and I'm like, how old was he?
He was fifty two plus sixteen, so he was almost
(18:24):
seventy years old and still like he was a randy boy.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
There's pills for that, so I don't I mean, it'll
probably work better than the rest of it.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
So wasn't it amazing how you couldn't understand a fucking word
coming out of his mouth, but the moment the man
starts to sing, you were like, it's an angel.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
YEP. I actually went to Osbest a couple of times,
and I remember he was an old man at that
point too, but he had just like home deepot size
like buckets of water and he was like he was
running back over on stage like dumping water on the crafts.
It was so hot, and I was like, how is
are you doing that? You know, like but you know, drugs,
I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
But cocaine's a hell of a drug.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah. And he's like hobbling, you know, because he's like,
you know, he's ancient, you know, he's like hobbled over
and like you know, taking like half step, but he's
doing it. He's like a fucking of water and thirl. People.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Are you ready, Michael? I am.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
I think it's going to be great. Don't you worry, Michelle.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
I'm not letting. But I do know the feeling being
a teacher and I'm like, oh crap, did I plan
out this lesson or not? Like guess my kids doing
it today?
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Okay, yes, tell me when and go. First of all,
real quick side note when you talked about like with
the kids being like, don't repeat these words, but here's
this cool thing. So I do nothing to do with metal,
but it made me think of when I was a kid,
my mom introduced me to the movie Blazing Sound when
I was eight, cre getting I don't know if you
know this movie by mel Brooks, but it's like the
(20:05):
language is like next level. And she was like, this
is a really funny movie. Repeat none of this, but
let me watch it. Every other word she's like, oh,
I forgot about that. Oh forgot about that one.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Oh and that one.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
But she was like, well they already said it. Okay,
back to metal. So I'm so glad that Ryan took
us on a history of metal because I am not
going to. What I ended up on was learning about
this specific band from Norway called Mayhem. Do you know
the Michelle?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
I do not know rings a Bell?
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Did you?
Speaker 2 (20:38):
So?
Speaker 1 (20:38):
I had never heard of them, but I came across
the story and I was like, this feels kind of
wild and appropriate for like how dark things are. It's
just a crazy band in history. So Mayhem was founded
in nineteen eighty four by this guitarists.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
They're black metal.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Black metal? Is that different from death or black metal?
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Actually? Yeah it is. So I didn't bring it up
because you have black metal whatever reason. I skipped her
with black metal, which is Venom, Mayhem and Emperor.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah, so Venom is like what I learned, Venom is
like the cornerstone of these guys. Like they were really
inspired by Venom, which I guess within their subgenre of metal,
Venom was like the band and so they predated them,
so Mayhem. So hopefully this is still applicable for the topic.
I guess. I wasn't sure if there's a diffenstween black
(21:25):
and death metal. So yeah, they were really inspired by
though they say Black Sabbath as well, and Venom and
Motorhead were the bands that they were like most in
love with. So as founded by this guitarist Usteed R.
Sith also known as Uranimous, and we're gonna call him
Uroonymous from here on out because I don't know how
(21:45):
to pronounce anything. I highly doubt I said that name correctly.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I wouldn't know the difference.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Also known as Euonymus. So he founded the band with
a bassist and a vocalist and a drummer. They started Mayhem.
It was based on the song Mayhem and Mercy by Venom.
They in Norway, they sort of started to find their
way in the scene. It took them a few lead
singers before they really found their sound. They finally made
(22:13):
their first album. It did okay, and then they got
rid of that lead singer and replaced the vocalist with
this guy, pal ingin Ulin also known as Dead quote unquote,
and that was his nickname. And then they also replaced
the drummer with a guy whose nickname. His name was
John exel Blomberg, also known as hell Hammer. They all
(22:36):
had really fun, you know nicknames. So he actually Dead
was actually a Swedish singer who had started his own
band they made. They only got as far as making
one demo album. It didn't really go anywhere. He loved
Mayhem and really wanted to sing with them, so he
sent them, as they claim, a box with the demo
(22:57):
from his band, a letter with like this long leg
are about like his dreams and goals for the future
and how he wants to join the band and you
know how he views the future of metal, and then
a decomposing dead rat. They were like, well, the rat
was weird, but the sound was great, I think even
for a metal band at the time. They were like
the rats a bit much, but like whatever, we really
like the way you sing. His sound was amazing and
(23:19):
his sound really helped launch them, but also so did
his like deep depression. He really leaned into the dark
side of metal because it turns out he was like
severely depressed, and he wrote a lot of the lyrics,
and the lyrics felt very like true and genuine, and
they became really popular because he was writing from a
real place of like trying to think process like his pain.
(23:40):
And Uranymous is not a great guy. So Uronymous is
still the head of the band. He's the lead guitar player,
He's running their business side. He got really into Dead's
sort of self hatred, and he would get like egg
him on to like hurt himself on stage. The self
harm thing became like a part of their brand, and
he loved that that was part of their image. And
he really pushed like Dead's depression to try and get
(24:03):
more lyrics out of him. He encouraged behavior like Dead
would sleep with dead birds under his bed so he
could smell death as he slept. Because the band all
lived together. Yeah, he would push this sort of like
insane behavior. And then but they also really didn't like
each other. Was the weird thing is clearly not He
also really disliked him as a person and the band said,
(24:25):
it was actually really difficult because they were constantly fighting.
The energy behind, like off stage was really turbulent. The
more they worked together, they became more successful, but Dead
became more and more depressed. Eventually, in I believe it
was nineteen ninety one, they were living in this like
small house in the woods in Norway. Things got really bad.
(24:48):
The band went out. Dead was left alone and he
shot himself. He left this weird note that just said
excuse the blood, and then this other like they found
written down odd statement. It's like I belong in the
woods and have always done. So no one, no one
will understand the reason for this anyway, to give some
semblance of an explanation.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
I'm not a human.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
This is just a dream, and soon I will awake. Yeah,
he was. He was in a really bad place. This
poor kid who was young, you know, he's in his
twenties and so dead happened to Uranymous happened to be
the one who came home and found him. Unfortunately, Uronymous thrilled.
He called another band member and he was like, wait,
what's the exact quote. It was something like, dude, this
(25:31):
is so cool. He killed himself. Oh, Dad has done
something really cool. He killed himself, and the bandmate was like,
I'm out of here, so dead or uranymous before calling
the authorities. He was so excited that Dead had killed himself.
He went to a local store bought a camera and
this is like mid eighties, but got like a disposable camera,
(25:53):
came back and took pictures of Dead's body and like
posed him, kept them and he wanted to use them
as publicity stunt. Of course, so of course he they
replaced him with another singer. He took Dad's death and
used it as a giant publicity move and made the
band more popular than ever. Even though he would knock commercialism,
(26:14):
like he was like, no, this should stay a subgenre,
like this should be niche and he felt it was
like really elite. He was like, only a twenty or
thirty people deserve to hear our albums. Everyone else are idiots.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
How are you gonna make any money?
Speaker 1 (26:27):
But also but also like to make money, so he's
just like a really shitty dude. So poor Dead's Dead
Mayhem is now bigger than ever. Uronymous goes on to
open a record shop and then also that's also where
he based the label out of he's producing records, he's
doing pretty well, so he brings in a new lead singer.
This guy, Varg virkanis also known as Count Grishnach and
(26:51):
he is also a little crazy and unfortunately too. Uronymous
at this point had sort of established himself as like
the leader of like the black and death metal scene
in Norway, and he had this sort of like cult status,
is like the father of this, and he would set
this like insane rules and he was hardcore into Satanism
and like his thing was like you had to be
(27:12):
like into Satanism. He had all these really set rules.
But the problem is the bigger he got, the more
it was like some people saw him as like a
cult leader and some people just sawhims like an egomaniac.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
It sounds like a cult leader, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Yeah, And unfortunately for him, Varg was one of the
ones who like at first was like totally on board
and would go do crazy things like burn down churches.
He like took the movement to the streets, which I
guess Uroonymous was like going too far, going too far,
and that's when Varg was like, then you don't really
believe in your message because you're preaching all this stuff
and now I'm going out and actually doing it, and
(27:46):
now you're telling me it's too much. And then Varg
started to get out paranoid and was like, oh, you're
going to try and kill me because you glorify death
so much, and now you don't like me thinking And
again I think there were a lot of drugs involved.
And I don't know how far in my ten minutes.
Supposed to kind of make a long story short, a
Varg decided to get like one step ahead of Uernonymous
(28:07):
and he drives one day he was somewhere else, so
he said it was a five hundred kilometer drive to
go to uronymus house to confront him. And then he
felt like Euronymous was threatening him and said that he
had the gun that dead shot himself within the house
and like not to mess with him. They get in
this big fight and he ends up stabbing him. I
want to say, Varg ends up stabbing Uronymous. I believe
(28:31):
it was twenty six times. Oh my god, it insane,
like stabs the absolute quite literally the absolute hell out
of him. He stepped in twenty three stab wounds two
to the head, five to the neck, and sixteen to
the back.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
I assume he didn't live.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
He did not live, and that's how the story ends.
Oh yeah, it's crazy like Varg. Yeah, Varg ended up
getting sentenced to twenty one years in prison. He had
no remorse because he was like, he was a coward.
He did he tried to run away, which was a
coward's move, which just proved to me that he doesn't
believe in the movement. He didn't die like a hero
(29:10):
the way like somebody of his status should have. Like
I watched an interview with Varg where he's very just
sort of like, yeah he did, like he's weirdly fine
with what he did. Wow, And he's like, well, he
was going to kill me first, and if I didn't
kill him, eventually he was going to kill me. I
guess he had threatened to torture him, kill him and like
videotape the whole thing for the sake of the movement.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
I got the if you want to hear it, I
got what the difference between death and black metal is.
Ooh yeah, actually it was. I'm just going to give
you the full rundown on each. So death metal its
birthplace was in the mid eighties, in Florida, which I
go figure from Florida. But the sound is growled, guttural.
It says, think cookie monster, low heavy guitar tone, lots
(29:52):
of downtuning, complex rifts, blast beat, drumming, technical, technical, brutality.
Themes are gore, violence, horror, think like Grade B movie spatter,
and the vibe is like brutal physical meant to overwhelm
you with sheer heaviness. Black Metal Birthplaces in Norway nineties.
In the Norway, the sound is high pitched, shreeked vocals,
(30:16):
less groul, more banshee, thin, tremolo, picked guitars, lo fi,
raw production on purpose. The themes are Satanism, anti Christianity,
anti Christianity, paganism, nature, mysticism, more about atmosphere and philosophy
than gore, and the vibe is more like cold, haunting, atmospheric,
(30:39):
almost ritualistic. So like death metal is rip your face off,
black metal is summer and winter demons.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
I mean this sounds very Norwegian versus American, Like I
still feel like this fits with a Norwegian vibe. And
I did read that like Mayhem, one of their first albums.
I want to say it was whatever one like blew
up first, and it makes sense. It was really poorly produced,
and then that ended up being the sound. People thought
they did it on purpose, and it turns out they
(31:06):
just weren't very good. But that became like because it
was so raw is how it was described, Like they
loved how sort of raw it was, and so they
kept it with them. But yeah, I was just like,
this is this is wild? So Michelle, yes, now now
you get to pick which one of us who the winner?
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Winner?
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Who's the winner?
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Okay? So this was very entertaining for me, and I
loved like hearing the history and like the story with
Mayhem is like that's crazy. But I'm going to go
with Michael only because I feel like I'm torn between
whether I want that to be like a documentary and
Mayhem or not, because holy crap, I would definitely watch that,
(31:48):
but I feel like they would give Meta like a
really bad name that passed the whole, like Marilyn Manson's
Ruining Children thing, you know, yeah, but that was a
really stor I had no idea, So for that reason,
I will vote Ryan. You were very close. Second place
was was Marilyn Manson Metal No, he's like glam metal, rock, whatever.
(32:13):
I don't know, like the categories to me like blur
because like it's music. I don't know how it's supposed
to be creative, so to me, like by default it's
not supposed to have to fit in a box. But
you know, but he's definitely like the more the glam industrial.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Like lamb rock.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah yeah, but like not as industrials like Nine Inch Nails.
But in his earlier work was much much grittier than
his older than his newer stuff as well, because you know,
just evolve.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
You know, I was gonna tell you, by the way,
because you went to Ozzi Fest. Ozzi Fest was a
pretty important piece of actually fostering all of these branches
and introducing so it played a pretty key role through
the nineties and the two thousands of actually continuing to
foster the genre as well as bring new talent to
(33:00):
the table and make people aware and continue to create
these kind of branches.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
It's kind of there was always a side stage too,
where like there would be smaller bands that we get
out there with Ozzy, you know and yeah yeah, which is.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Really cool, like Ozzy. Like again, Ozzy had a heavy
hand and kind of carrying it forward which is kind
of cool.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, yeah, all there is wine.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
All right, So what what is our topic for next week?
Speaker 2 (33:21):
My favorite topic that I gave to my students that
they love the most too to research and that you know,
you can go deep into this or not is are
we living in the simulation? And I had them and
they want they were like yeah, so they someone some
kids thick it one way and like went to like
different movies that like talked about like whether we're in
(33:43):
a simulation like the Matrix, you know, like I was
thinking about the Matrix when I came up with the
question for them, which also had a great soundtrack, but
I uh, and some kids like they talked about like
like the Spider Man, like Spider Verse. I don't know
the new one. I haven't watched it. My kids watched it.
I don't watch it. Multiverse that's all about different types
of Yeah, And so they took it in different direction,
(34:03):
and I read there's all really cool books about it,
like how would we know for living in the simulation?
Like that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Honestly, my first thought was I can't wait to hear
what Ryan says, Like, Michelle, you just set Ryan up
for a really, really cool, cool episode. I almost wanted
to be a solo Ted talk and I will just
sit and listen and just also a word you well, you.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Could like give him a couple of exta minutes if
you want to, you feel like generous, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Yeah, that ends up happening anyway.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
So in case you didn't notice, we're super strict.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
On this show.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
I know the rules are so so important.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Well, this is great, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
And I want to hear how the next one goes,
so I would have to beginning it
I listened to Lincoln Park. Am I cooler than I
think I was?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I mean, I've always thought you were very cool.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Michael, Oh my good things.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Michael's like, oh my god, I am in the medal.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Little did I know? I'm so much more hardcore than
I thought. Hello, welcome back, Welcome back. I'm Michelle White
Noise with my dear friend Michelle.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Hello.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hello everybody. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Thank you for joining us so quick. Recap Michelle. I
know because Michelle has been friends with my sister Elson
for a very long time. When you guys used to
live in the same building and your dogs became best friends.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yes, we met through our dogs and they have very
good taste, yes, and.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Brought us all together. And then for years we used
to have dinner once a week and every Tuesday night
and watch Jeopardy and.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Then at well Jeopardy first and then Trash TV afterwards.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
And then Trash TV, and you and Alison took turns
making dinner and would sneak onions into the food and
not tell me.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Oh yeah, that was their idea, though, Oh why.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
I hate onions and sister fashion, you would not notice
them half the time. I didn't notice them to be fair,
and then she'd be like, gotcha, I didn't.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Know if this was the thing. Oh, it was such
a thing. Do you know my biscuits and gravy actually
has onions?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Does it really?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
But why do I fall for everything you say? He
does this to me like almost every episode.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
At some point, Oh, my goodness, you're gonna have You're
gonna give him trust issues? Not healthy.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I was gonna say, if we haven't pulled that off yet,
I might still have I might still be okay for
a while.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I mean, al with the onions. I mean, like this
is gonna like I'm an older sibling, you know, but
like he's a younger sibling, Like he's gonna have trust
issues off.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
The bat, because and yet I still believe everything. She
used to make me eat dirt and told me it
was God's chocolate. She told me if I ran down
the street naked, I'd be able to fly. Did it
did not fly? I need this to say, that was
a real bummer of a day for me, was it?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Though?
Speaker 3 (02:03):
That sounds amazing?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
I mean it was warm. Maybe it ran around naked,
so that I mean, that's not the worst thing. When
you were I think I was like four, but I
was really devastated that I couldn't fly like Mary Poppins
by the time I hit the end of the block.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Pa, Well, I mean, I guess I should be grateful
that my older one is not making my younger one
run naked to the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
So, yeah, your kids, Your kids actually seemed to like
each other.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
They this summer. They did for the most part.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
So that's a little bit about our history. So we
were talking about your.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
History music, How you got into music, Yes, so really Okay,
So how I first got into into music was my
first boyfriend when I was fourteen.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
He was a little bit older and it was the nineties,
so he was listening to Olympiscuit and Olympus Kids first
album was a lot grittier and like harder than their
older their later ones were, And at first I was like,
I don't know, this is a little crazy, But then
after a little bit, I was like, oh no, this
is really good, and like this is gonna be my
(03:02):
thing too, Like this is great. And then my first
concert ever was Lollapalooza. And I don't quit me on
the year, but I think it was nineteen ninety four
and I'm pretty sure that was the year that Tool
was there with Corn and it was an amazing show.
It was, it was amazing and uh and that after
(03:22):
that I was sold. Like, but Lalla Paluza used to
be at Randall's Island. I don't know if it still is,
but the main there were two stages, and the main
stage like it was, it was all outdoors and it
was all dirt. So when the mash pit would start,
like there were just these dirt clouds everywhere. And I
will never forget going home like hours later, exhausted, filthy, good, gross,
(03:43):
you know. But I was fourteen on a care and
blowing my nose and just like black stuff coming out
of my nose all the dust I had inhaled a long.
I was just like, oh, that's probably not good.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Just inhaling dust at Lollapalooza.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah from Marsh yeah Rose, Yeah, But I didn't. But
after that, like you know, I went to a lot
of shows as a kid, and and there are always
rock or metal shows or new metal shows or whatever.
And then my first non metal show was with Allison.
We went to go see Pink together and then a
little while later we saw Lidy Gaga and those things.
(04:18):
They were amazing. But I mean I listened to a
lot of different kinds of music, but that's metal rock
and metal is always my default.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Since that is our topic today, which I don't think
we said so then that congratulations everyone, Now this all
makes sense. The topping happens to be that thing we've
been talking about. It's fascinating. I feel like that was
like one genre that I never really listened to because
I was such a nerd so like same it always
was like I was listening to show tunes and so
(04:44):
compared to like you know, Carol Channing and Sutton Foster,
like metal was so the other end of the spectrum
that it was just like what is this.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
I guess I wouldn't have been allowed to listen to
metal growing up. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean my dad
liked Zeppelin, which was like pre medal.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Like I've told I've talked about this on the podcast before,
and like anything, because my mom was a teacher and
anything that she associated with like not great students were
like things that we were not allowed to do.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
That makes sense, yep, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
It was like not even I was never on my
radar just because I was never i think ever put
in a place to be around it, which is like unfortunate.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, I'm sure my mom didn't love it, but she
was okay with it. And I'm a teacher too, which
is interesting. But so like, I'll let my kids listen
to it and they know. So I've taught them what
the bad words are, so I know which ones not
to repeat. I was like, you can listen to them,
but you can't repeat them. They're like, okay, but they
listened to metal and they'll listen to like some show
(05:49):
tune stuff too, like I forget what Karen's listening to
you right now, but it's totally The show itself is
very can inappropriate, but the sound track is like, oh,
it has been hotel, but the soundtrack is like a
musical basically, and he loves it and Laughlin loves it too,
and I was like, okay, and you know, they can't
watch the show because the show is not for children,
(06:10):
but the music it's fine. So we had we try
to have a good variety, though rock and metal is
mi desaults.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
I had this boss that I used to I was
really close with at work, and you know, the little
the little John song and East Side Boys? Is it
os skeet skeet? Is that actual the name of the song?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
I don't know if that the name of the song, but.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Yes, yeah. So my boss and I were walking around
the office just kind of like generically, like as if
it was some sort of like exclamation, like we'd be like, ah,
skeet skeet, and he'd be like, ah, skeet skeat. And
we'd just be saying this openly in office. And then
finally my good friend Liz grabs me and pulls me
(06:54):
aside and she goes, you know what you're saying, you dumbass, right?
And I was like no. I was like, what does
skeet skeet mean? And she's like, Ryan, it's like skeet
skeet And I was like oh oh. And I go
into my boss's office and I'm like hey, Lou, I
was like, do you know what we're actually saying?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
He's like, no, no, bluse, you guys were accidentally an
HR nightmare.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Yeah, and this is like in my mid twenties. The
duds in like his probably is like late thirties, early
forties at this point, like what idiots.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Look, we don't know you don't know. I mean, I.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Appreciate that you've you've put your sons in a position
to not run around and yell ask skeet everywhere.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yes, I please don't. And there's and there's gonna be
like there's gonna be new things that I don't know.
But I got teaching in middle school, so like I
have to if I hear my.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Students, you're probably pretty up to speed.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
I have to like ask, like the good kids, like
what does that mean? You know? So what the kids
that I know will tell me that or like some
of my other teacher friends, but like the like we'll
be textings the other day like okay, so, so and
so saying this, do we know what it means? It
was like, I don't know what it means? Can you
search it up? It's like, well one of us will
like text our teenage kids like ask someone it means.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
All right, so speak of metal. We each have in
theory prepared some things. Michelle, who would you like to hear?
Go first?
Speaker 2 (08:29):
I guess Ryan can go first.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Okay, yay.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
So this confirms my suspicion that it's in theory that
we prepared things because Michael was way too excited to
as much of time I love.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
When Ryan goes first, Michael will be looking down a
lot because he'll be jotting notes as we go.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
I'm going to be googling everything. Ryan says, all right,
are you ready? Ryan?
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yeah, I hold on one second. I want to find
one before Okay, Yes, now I am, because I was
like I I kind of like how I made my
way into it, but yes, now I'm ready, okay, and
you okay. So, as I obviously exposed, I did not
have a lot of exposure to like metal growing up,
(09:22):
and like I would say, the closest I got to
rocker my like rock genre when I was in like
in middle school and in the high school was the
hardest I got was like Oasis, And I do remember,
like my first real rock concert was seeing Oasis and
it was the last concert that they did in the
United States before they had the really big breakup in
(09:45):
ninety six, and I thought, I recalled that, I thought
they broke up on stage, but actually they didn't. They
broke up post that concert. After that, like the only
thing that I could come up with that like was
the closest thing that I could get to rock or
metal was the Osbourne's which was Ozzy Osbourne and like
his whole you know, the whole reality kind of TV jam.
(10:06):
But what I didn't realize and in terms of doing
my research, is that Sabbath is the origin of metal.
Like there was not metal prior to Sabbath. You had
a lot of like rock bands in the sixties which
were the precursors to metal, So you had Deep Purple
and Zeppelin, but Sabbath was in the seventies kind of
set the kind of darker tones. So like your original
(10:29):
like hard rock was more it was actually more happy,
like it was about like drug trips and cars and
love and whatever else where, like metal was dark and
intended to be dark, but I thought was kind of
interesting and it so you know, you were telling me
like corn and lip and Biscuit, So I have the
whole like how did we get to corn and limp Biscuit?
(10:52):
So what is the because if Sabbath was the beginning,
how did we get to where we are today? And
what were the bands that kind of charted the space?
I thought this was cool. So in the seventies and eighties,
from Sabbath you actually then had you had the trunk,
so it was the same sort of style of music.
You had Judas Priest and Iron Maiden and then even
Ozzie's solo career, and then into into the eighties and
(11:15):
nineties you get trash metal. Oh I'm sorry, thrash metal
not trash. I guess it depends on how you feel
about it. Yeah, the trash metal didn't make it. There
might be some people who feel that way about this,
this branch of the of the metal. But thrash metal
(11:36):
was like Metallica, Slayer and Mega Death. And then you
had glamin Hair, which I feel like a majority of
people know, which is Motley Crue, Poison def Leopard, and
then actually some of the other branches were like Speed
and Power, so I didn't know Helloween or Dragon Force,
and then death metal, which was Morbid Angel, and then
get this one, Cannibal Corpse. Does anyone know Cannibal Do
(11:59):
you know Cannibal Corpse?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
So I know they're not on my playlist, but yes,
I definitely know of them. Are like really the famous bands.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
And then into the nineties and two thousands is where
we get into new metal, and that's where we get
our corns, our limp biscuits, and even Lincoln Park.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
I listened to Lincoln Park. Am I cooler than I
think I was?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
I mean, I've always thought you were very cool. Michael,
Oh my god things.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Michael's like, oh my god, I am in the metal.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Little did I know? I'm so much more hardcore than
I thought.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
I mean, I like Lincoln Park too, but I feel
I feel like that it's because it made Casey Kasem's
Top twenty cat down on Sundays.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Yes, it was much more mainstream.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I was gonna say the other like alt metal, like
you had tool system of down and even deaf Tones,
and then uh, what else do we have? And then
metal core and death core, which I didn't. I did
recognize kill Switch Engage like that band. I did recognize
what are they under metal core? Yeah, they're on metalcore Okay.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
So I feel like there's a lot of other songs.
Some of their songs sound very different from others. So
it's always interesting to me, like how bands get categorized
because they'll have different tracks that sound. Some some bands
have a very distinct sound, like deathtones, like you know
what deathtones before it even like gets a few seconds in.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
As soon as they come on, you're like, oh, yes,
you are.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Like Tools, so as it comes on, like, oh, that's
got to be a Tool song definitely, But like others
bands like kill Switch, there's a lot of difference.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
And they also listened White Chapel and Whitechapel I remember
too as a band, remember that one. I didn't listen.
I didn't listen to them at all. But yeah, that's
kind of like how we got from the origins of
Sabbath to where we are today in terms of like
metal bands. But so I decided to then do and
a little bit of a tribute to Ozzie himself, because
I think most people know he passed away in the
(13:49):
previous couple of weeks. I think, yeah, m hm, And
I loved him, and I love the family from the Osbourne's,
so it was kind of fun to just learn a
bit more about him. He was born in nineteen forty
eight in Birmingham, England. His actual name is John Michael Osbourne,
but Ozzie stuck as a nickname. He was dyslexic, terrible
(14:11):
at academics and bullied and dropped out of school at fifteen,
and then infamously went to jail for stealing things but
got caught because a pair of the gloves that he stole,
he chose to write his name on the inside of them,
so they knew they were the stolen gloves and then
like they're not mine, and then they looked and the
like no, you're poor Ozzy, And then I feel like
(14:37):
I don't feel like I know that metal kind of
got a lot of It's like what it was known
for from the crazy behaviors, right, So it wasn't even
just the lyrics and the sound, it was the behavior
on stage and off stage that kind of you know,
parlayed into phenomenal stories.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Dude, he lived up to the Prince of darkness. Oh yeah,
all the crazy stories.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
So did you know that? So the bat incident is
obviously one of the most infamous ones. And I did
not know this, but apparently he didn't think it was
a bat. He thought it was like a rubber toy.
He thought it was a rubber bat toy, and that's
why he went to go bite the head off of it.
He had no idea.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Can you imagine the surprise?
Speaker 3 (15:20):
And he had to get Raby shots after.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, I would assume.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So, I mean, being azzy, he probably would not have
actually needed the raby shots because he seemed to outlive
anything that went into his body.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
But but what a gnarly surprise, Like, I will say,
going to bite what you think is a rubber bat
and then it's real sounds like a worse surprise than
biting into a castrole and finding out his onions. But
they're very close.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
I love how onions. I love how onions are your bat?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
That's oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Did you know he had another another head biting off incident?
But this one was very purposeful and intentional.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Was it a bird?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah? So he went into yeah, he had doves or
doves and walked into like recording like to get signed,
like meet with recording sects to sign up, you know,
sign with a label or something like that, and he
like apparently pulls out two doves and his hands and
everyone in the room just continued to ignore him. So
(16:19):
he just decided to bite the head off of one
of them, and apparently it freaked out all the execs,
but they signed him.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
But that's very different from accidentally biting off a bat's head.
Like now you know, maybe he was like, well, it
can't taste any worse than the bat, so.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
O now I'm just wondering, like would you let him
dog sit for you?
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Like how small is a dog?
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Actually, he loves he loves dogs. Did you know this?
This is like one of his things. Oh he loves dogs. Yeah,
Like this is like his It's one of his favorite things.
I was gonna say the everything you read that, like,
aside from what was very clearly I think alcohol and
drug fueled behavior, he's apparently like a super softy, very
(16:59):
good and extremely self deprecating and is just well known
for like loving dogs. Although I feel like Sharon. I
have a little bit on Sharon too, because I feel
like Sharon is such an important piece of the story.
She really is kind of what built him into the
legend that he was so like Sabbath was his own thing,
but he didn't stay in Sabbath. He was kicked out
(17:20):
for his drug use. And Sharon was the daughter of
don Ardent, who is the manager of Sabbath, so she
actually stepped in to manage his solar career, solo career,
and she's the one that really rebuilt him. Although you
know from there, I forget when they got married. They
got married in eighty two, but as you'd imagine like
(17:41):
they had a typical kind of like rocker sort of relationship.
Like he strangled her in eighty nine and of alcohol
fueled blackoutrage, didn't remember it. And then I guess the
last last thing I'll share is that in twenty sixteen,
I think the affair was really public where he was
having an affair with his hair dry sir, and she
(18:01):
left him for a bit, but ultimately, you know, I said,
he's the true love of my life. He went and
got I don't know how old he was, nineteen forty
eight minus twenty sixteen. He went to he went for
a sex addiction. He went to therapy for sex addiction
off of twenty sixteen, and I'm like, how old was he?
He was fifty two plus sixteen, so he was almost
(18:24):
seventy years old and still like he was a randy boy.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
There's pills for that, so I don't I mean, it'll
probably work better than the rest of it.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
So wasn't it amazing how you couldn't understand a fucking word
coming out of his mouth, but the moment the man
starts to sing, you were like, it's an angel.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
YEP. I actually went to Osbest a couple of times,
and I remember he was an old man at that
point too, but he had just like home deepot size
like buckets of water and he was like he was
running back over on stage like dumping water on the crafts.
It was so hot, and I was like, how is
are you doing that? You know, like but you know, drugs,
I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
But cocaine's a hell of a drug.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah. And he's like hobbling, you know, because he's like,
you know, he's ancient, you know, he's like hobbled over
and like you know, taking like half step, but he's
doing it. He's like a fucking of water and thirl. People.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Are you ready, Michael? I am.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
I think it's going to be great. Don't you worry, Michelle.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
I'm not letting. But I do know the feeling being
a teacher and I'm like, oh crap, did I plan
out this lesson or not? Like guess my kids doing
it today?
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Okay, yes, tell me when and go. First of all,
real quick side note when you talked about like with
the kids being like, don't repeat these words, but here's
this cool thing. So I do nothing to do with metal,
but it made me think of when I was a kid,
my mom introduced me to the movie Blazing Sound when
I was eight, cre getting I don't know if you
know this movie by mel Brooks, but it's like the
(20:05):
language is like next level. And she was like, this
is a really funny movie. Repeat none of this, but
let me watch it. Every other word she's like, oh,
I forgot about that. Oh forgot about that one.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Oh and that one.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
But she was like, well they already said it. Okay,
back to metal. So I'm so glad that Ryan took
us on a history of metal because I am not
going to. What I ended up on was learning about
this specific band from Norway called Mayhem. Do you know
the Michelle?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
I do not know rings a Bell?
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Did you?
Speaker 2 (20:38):
So?
Speaker 1 (20:38):
I had never heard of them, but I came across
the story and I was like, this feels kind of
wild and appropriate for like how dark things are. It's
just a crazy band in history. So Mayhem was founded
in nineteen eighty four by this guitarists.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
They're black metal.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Black metal? Is that different from death or black metal?
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Actually? Yeah it is. So I didn't bring it up
because you have black metal whatever reason. I skipped her
with black metal, which is Venom, Mayhem and Emperor.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah, so Venom is like what I learned, Venom is
like the cornerstone of these guys. Like they were really
inspired by Venom, which I guess within their subgenre of metal,
Venom was like the band and so they predated them,
so Mayhem. So hopefully this is still applicable for the topic.
I guess. I wasn't sure if there's a diffenstween black
(21:25):
and death metal. So yeah, they were really inspired by
though they say Black Sabbath as well, and Venom and
Motorhead were the bands that they were like most in
love with. So as founded by this guitarist Usteed R.
Sith also known as Uranimous, and we're gonna call him
Uroonymous from here on out because I don't know how
(21:45):
to pronounce anything. I highly doubt I said that name correctly.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I wouldn't know the difference.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Also known as Euonymus. So he founded the band with
a bassist and a vocalist and a drummer. They started Mayhem.
It was based on the song Mayhem and Mercy by Venom.
They in Norway, they sort of started to find their
way in the scene. It took them a few lead
singers before they really found their sound. They finally made
(22:13):
their first album. It did okay, and then they got
rid of that lead singer and replaced the vocalist with
this guy, pal ingin Ulin also known as Dead quote unquote,
and that was his nickname. And then they also replaced
the drummer with a guy whose nickname. His name was
John exel Blomberg, also known as hell Hammer. They all
(22:36):
had really fun, you know nicknames. So he actually Dead
was actually a Swedish singer who had started his own
band they made. They only got as far as making
one demo album. It didn't really go anywhere. He loved
Mayhem and really wanted to sing with them, so he
sent them, as they claim, a box with the demo
(22:57):
from his band, a letter with like this long leg
are about like his dreams and goals for the future
and how he wants to join the band and you
know how he views the future of metal, and then
a decomposing dead rat. They were like, well, the rat
was weird, but the sound was great, I think even
for a metal band at the time. They were like
the rats a bit much, but like whatever, we really
like the way you sing. His sound was amazing and
(23:19):
his sound really helped launch them, but also so did
his like deep depression. He really leaned into the dark
side of metal because it turns out he was like
severely depressed, and he wrote a lot of the lyrics,
and the lyrics felt very like true and genuine, and
they became really popular because he was writing from a
real place of like trying to think process like his pain.
(23:40):
And Uranymous is not a great guy. So Uronymous is
still the head of the band. He's the lead guitar player,
He's running their business side. He got really into Dead's
sort of self hatred, and he would get like egg
him on to like hurt himself on stage. The self
harm thing became like a part of their brand, and
he loved that that was part of their image. And
he really pushed like Dead's depression to try and get
(24:03):
more lyrics out of him. He encouraged behavior like Dead
would sleep with dead birds under his bed so he
could smell death as he slept. Because the band all
lived together. Yeah, he would push this sort of like
insane behavior. And then but they also really didn't like
each other. Was the weird thing is clearly not He
also really disliked him as a person and the band said,
(24:25):
it was actually really difficult because they were constantly fighting.
The energy behind, like off stage was really turbulent. The
more they worked together, they became more successful, but Dead
became more and more depressed. Eventually, in I believe it
was nineteen ninety one, they were living in this like
small house in the woods in Norway. Things got really bad.
(24:48):
The band went out. Dead was left alone and he
shot himself. He left this weird note that just said
excuse the blood, and then this other like they found
written down odd statement. It's like I belong in the
woods and have always done. So no one, no one
will understand the reason for this anyway, to give some
semblance of an explanation.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
I'm not a human.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
This is just a dream, and soon I will awake. Yeah,
he was. He was in a really bad place. This
poor kid who was young, you know, he's in his
twenties and so dead happened to Uranymous happened to be
the one who came home and found him. Unfortunately, Uronymous thrilled.
He called another band member and he was like, wait,
what's the exact quote. It was something like, dude, this
(25:31):
is so cool. He killed himself. Oh, Dad has done
something really cool. He killed himself, and the bandmate was like,
I'm out of here, so dead or uranymous before calling
the authorities. He was so excited that Dead had killed himself.
He went to a local store bought a camera and
this is like mid eighties, but got like a disposable camera,
(25:53):
came back and took pictures of Dead's body and like
posed him, kept them and he wanted to use them
as publicity stunt. Of course, so of course he they
replaced him with another singer. He took Dad's death and
used it as a giant publicity move and made the
band more popular than ever. Even though he would knock commercialism,
(26:14):
like he was like, no, this should stay a subgenre,
like this should be niche and he felt it was
like really elite. He was like, only a twenty or
thirty people deserve to hear our albums. Everyone else are idiots.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
How are you gonna make any money?
Speaker 1 (26:27):
But also but also like to make money, so he's
just like a really shitty dude. So poor Dead's Dead
Mayhem is now bigger than ever. Uronymous goes on to
open a record shop and then also that's also where
he based the label out of he's producing records, he's
doing pretty well, so he brings in a new lead singer.
This guy, Varg virkanis also known as Count Grishnach and
(26:51):
he is also a little crazy and unfortunately too. Uronymous
at this point had sort of established himself as like
the leader of like the black and death metal scene
in Norway, and he had this sort of like cult status,
is like the father of this, and he would set
this like insane rules and he was hardcore into Satanism
and like his thing was like you had to be
(27:12):
like into Satanism. He had all these really set rules.
But the problem is the bigger he got, the more
it was like some people saw him as like a
cult leader and some people just sawhims like an egomaniac.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
It sounds like a cult leader, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Yeah, And unfortunately for him, Varg was one of the
ones who like at first was like totally on board
and would go do crazy things like burn down churches.
He like took the movement to the streets, which I
guess Uroonymous was like going too far, going too far,
and that's when Varg was like, then you don't really
believe in your message because you're preaching all this stuff
and now I'm going out and actually doing it, and
(27:46):
now you're telling me it's too much. And then Varg
started to get out paranoid and was like, oh, you're
going to try and kill me because you glorify death
so much, and now you don't like me thinking And
again I think there were a lot of drugs involved.
And I don't know how far in my ten minutes.
Supposed to kind of make a long story short, a
Varg decided to get like one step ahead of Uernonymous
(28:07):
and he drives one day he was somewhere else, so
he said it was a five hundred kilometer drive to
go to uronymus house to confront him. And then he
felt like Euronymous was threatening him and said that he
had the gun that dead shot himself within the house
and like not to mess with him. They get in
this big fight and he ends up stabbing him. I
want to say, Varg ends up stabbing Uronymous. I believe
(28:31):
it was twenty six times. Oh my god, it insane,
like stabs the absolute quite literally the absolute hell out
of him. He stepped in twenty three stab wounds two
to the head, five to the neck, and sixteen to
the back.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
I assume he didn't live.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
He did not live, and that's how the story ends.
Oh yeah, it's crazy like Varg. Yeah, Varg ended up
getting sentenced to twenty one years in prison. He had
no remorse because he was like, he was a coward.
He did he tried to run away, which was a
coward's move, which just proved to me that he doesn't
believe in the movement. He didn't die like a hero
(29:10):
the way like somebody of his status should have. Like
I watched an interview with Varg where he's very just
sort of like, yeah he did, like he's weirdly fine
with what he did. Wow, And he's like, well, he
was going to kill me first, and if I didn't
kill him, eventually he was going to kill me. I
guess he had threatened to torture him, kill him and like
videotape the whole thing for the sake of the movement.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
I got the if you want to hear it, I
got what the difference between death and black metal is.
Ooh yeah, actually it was. I'm just going to give
you the full rundown on each. So death metal its
birthplace was in the mid eighties, in Florida, which I
go figure from Florida. But the sound is growled, guttural.
It says, think cookie monster, low heavy guitar tone, lots
(29:52):
of downtuning, complex rifts, blast beat, drumming, technical, technical, brutality.
Themes are gore, violence, horror, think like Grade B movie spatter,
and the vibe is like brutal physical meant to overwhelm
you with sheer heaviness. Black Metal Birthplaces in Norway nineties.
In the Norway, the sound is high pitched, shreeked vocals,
(30:16):
less groul, more banshee, thin, tremolo, picked guitars, lo fi,
raw production on purpose. The themes are Satanism, anti Christianity,
anti Christianity, paganism, nature, mysticism, more about atmosphere and philosophy
than gore, and the vibe is more like cold, haunting, atmospheric,
(30:39):
almost ritualistic. So like death metal is rip your face off,
black metal is summer and winter demons.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
I mean this sounds very Norwegian versus American, Like I
still feel like this fits with a Norwegian vibe. And
I did read that like Mayhem, one of their first albums.
I want to say it was whatever one like blew
up first, and it makes sense. It was really poorly produced,
and then that ended up being the sound. People thought
they did it on purpose, and it turns out they
(31:06):
just weren't very good. But that became like because it
was so raw is how it was described, Like they
loved how sort of raw it was, and so they
kept it with them. But yeah, I was just like,
this is this is wild? So Michelle, yes, now now
you get to pick which one of us who the winner?
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Winner?
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Who's the winner?
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Okay? So this was very entertaining for me, and I
loved like hearing the history and like the story with
Mayhem is like that's crazy. But I'm going to go
with Michael only because I feel like I'm torn between
whether I want that to be like a documentary and
Mayhem or not, because holy crap, I would definitely watch that,
(31:48):
but I feel like they would give Meta like a
really bad name that passed the whole, like Marilyn Manson's
Ruining Children thing, you know, yeah, but that was a
really stor I had no idea, So for that reason,
I will vote Ryan. You were very close. Second place
was was Marilyn Manson Metal No, he's like glam metal, rock, whatever.
(32:13):
I don't know, like the categories to me like blur
because like it's music. I don't know how it's supposed
to be creative, so to me, like by default it's
not supposed to have to fit in a box. But
you know, but he's definitely like the more the glam industrial.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Like lamb rock.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah yeah, but like not as industrials like Nine Inch Nails.
But in his earlier work was much much grittier than
his older than his newer stuff as well, because you know,
just evolve.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
You know, I was gonna tell you, by the way,
because you went to Ozzi Fest. Ozzi Fest was a
pretty important piece of actually fostering all of these branches
and introducing so it played a pretty key role through
the nineties and the two thousands of actually continuing to
foster the genre as well as bring new talent to
(33:00):
the table and make people aware and continue to create
these kind of branches.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
It's kind of there was always a side stage too,
where like there would be smaller bands that we get
out there with Ozzy, you know and yeah yeah, which is.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Really cool, like Ozzy. Like again, Ozzy had a heavy
hand and kind of carrying it forward which is kind
of cool.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, yeah, all there is wine.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
All right, So what what is our topic for next week?
Speaker 2 (33:21):
My favorite topic that I gave to my students that
they love the most too to research and that you know,
you can go deep into this or not is are
we living in the simulation? And I had them and
they want they were like yeah, so they someone some
kids thick it one way and like went to like
different movies that like talked about like whether we're in
(33:43):
a simulation like the Matrix, you know, like I was
thinking about the Matrix when I came up with the
question for them, which also had a great soundtrack, but
I uh, and some kids like they talked about like
like the Spider Man, like Spider Verse. I don't know
the new one. I haven't watched it. My kids watched it.
I don't watch it. Multiverse that's all about different types
of Yeah, And so they took it in different direction,
(34:03):
and I read there's all really cool books about it,
like how would we know for living in the simulation?
Like that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Honestly, my first thought was I can't wait to hear
what Ryan says, Like, Michelle, you just set Ryan up
for a really, really cool, cool episode. I almost wanted
to be a solo Ted talk and I will just
sit and listen and just also a word you well, you.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Could like give him a couple of exta minutes if
you want to, you feel like generous, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Yeah, that ends up happening anyway.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
So in case you didn't notice, we're super strict.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
On this show.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
I know the rules are so so important.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Well, this is great, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
And I want to hear how the next one goes,
so I would have to beginning it
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!