GREG PRATO - Survival Of The Fittest - Heavy Metal In The 1990's

September 2, 2015, 8 years ago

(Independent)

Greg Pratt

Rating: 9.0

review heavy metal greg prato

GREG PRATO - Survival Of The Fittest - Heavy Metal In The 1990's

It's almost a challenging proposition, reading a book about mainstream metal's lean years, especially if it's going to be a bunch of bitter hair rockers complaining that grunge pushed them out of the spotlight. But, man, did I ever get sucked into what Greg Prato (no relation) has put together here, the fairly large book being an oral history told from the perspective of those who lived it, mainly hair rock heroes, but with the occasional grunge or death metal guy in there. And while I find myself yearning for an actual written book as opposed to the oral history format, this does offer up a very candid look at these characters. 

I mean, you just cringe every time Joe Elliot says something after a while, don't you? (I thought it was tough being a Slayer or Megadeth fan; I had no idea.) Some of the guys come across surprisingly lucid and smart, though, dudes like Cinderella's Tom Keifer and Tesla's Frank Hannon maybe being a bit more human than we gave them credit for after all. The book walks us through the '90s, after hair metal killed itself out and Metallica did their '90s thing and the only metal the mainstream saw was Pantera, a bit of Sepultura, and that junk that no metalheads that I know liked that always ends up in the conversation anyway (Marilyn Manson, looking at you). 

This is really a great read, as it turns hilarious, revealing, and more than a little tragic: Gilby Clarke's story about Slash being sad because people were actually pointing at him on the sidewalk and laughing is enough to make any metalhead feel for the guy. The book largely focuses on more mainstream metal sounds (ie, there's no chapter devoted to Assück, who made metal so world-shatteringly good in the '90s I can still barely comprehend it) so it's offering up only a portion of what was happening in metal in the '90s, but what a great read about, really, a fascinating time for our genre, even if it was a tough time for a lot of longhairs, especially those who were on top of the world just a few years before the decade in question began.



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