Jon Wiederhorn

I was born in 1986. When I was a child, I didn’t really listen to music all that much. I remember listening to the Radio sometimes, but mostly I would play video games. Milwaukee, WI is terrible when it comes to Radio. Most of the stations are generic and boring or outright copies of other stations. I really didn’t get into Metal Music until I was in college. Even then I mainly listened to a lot of streaming services which helped me to expand into other fields of music. I guess I was lucky that the internet exists. Thanks to that, my tastes are eclectic; I can listen to almost anything you put on.

Reading Louder Than Hell was an interesting experience because of that. It tears away the veneer inherent in how people act on stage and reveals a number of events that shaped the genre. From the years of Proto-Metal with Led Zeppelin and Cream to the modern times of 2013, this book is extremely thorough. It talks about practically everything. Drug escapades, sexual encounters, overdoses, it’s all in there. The book is fascinating in that sense and really enjoyable.

The book does have to backtrack sometimes since it goes chronologically, but that is no big deal. It starts out with Black Sabbath and other bands that started out around that time. It mentioned pay-to-play venues which seemed a bit backwards to me. It was sort of like my quest to get credit. You can’t get credit without credit, turning it into some kind of Catch-22 situation. Some of the people did it for the music, but mostly it was to get laid. Money was a nice thing to have when you were living off of packaged Ramen Noodles and Bean Burritos.

Each person is introduced at the first point of their appearance in the book. While I say that, all the authors do is mention the band that they are from. It doesn’t say what part they play except in context, but that is fine. For instance, it mentions Tony Iommi as a guitarist for Black Sabbath. The book will put that in the top of his text, and after that you pretty much have to remember what band he is from. It isn’t hard when there are only a few bands doing metal music, but eventually it gets to be where you need a list for yourself. Most of the famous people I remember well enough. Take Ozzy Osbourne for example. It talks about his whole battle with substance abuse and how it split Black Sabbath apart and then Ronnie James Dio comes in and he’s fantastic and was such a sweet guy.

Eventually it gets to the splits. Not the splits of bands, since that happened all the time, but the genre splits. Hair Metal was big for a while, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal was discussed. It goes really deep into a lot of different stuff. Like remember the Parent Media Resource Group? I don’t, but their influence is still felt with the warning labels that existed on CDs. Tipper Gore or whatever her name was wanted to limit people’s first amendment rights because the music made her and a bunch of other old ladies uncomfortable. I never even heard of it, so that was interesting. I mean, I am somewhat familiar with the Electronic Software Ratings Board and how that was formed, but I was never that into modern music until recently.

All in all, this book was excellent. I had high hopes for this one, and my expectations were certainly met. 5/5… (mere)

I love good oral history books and this is overall a good one. There are a lots of good stories, some entertaining, some sad. The thing that got me bored at times is that the stories are mostly about sex/groupies and drugs and weird stories that happen in the context of both. That's fine as we are talking about Rock Music but where is the music in the book? Also not much you learn about fans or fan culture and metal. So entertaining, but maybe not the last word on the history of metal as a music genre.… (mere)