Dissidents

How does one make a political metal mix for someone who already has "War Pigs," "Peace Sells," "Cult of Personality" and "Bring the Noise?"



Dissidents

1. Metallica, "Blackened"
2. System of a Down, "B.Y.O.B."
3. Faith No More, "We Care a Lot"
4. Living Colour, "Pride"
5. Guns N' Roses, "Civil War"
6. Suicidal Tendencies, "Send Me Your Money"
7. Marilyn Manson, "The Love Song"
8. Saul Williams, "List of Demands (Reparations)"
9. Lamb of God, "As the Palaces Burn"
10. Revocation, "Pestilence Reigns"
11. Megadeth, "Symphony of Destruction"
12. Ministry, "Thieves"
13. Gojira, "Vacuity"
14. Motörhead, "God Save the Queen"
15. Sepultura, "Kaiowas"
16. Rage Against the Machine, "Wake Up"
17. Body Count, "Cop Killer"
18. Misery Index, "Traitors"

Answer: It's hard, but not for lack of songs. How to pick just one selection from Rage Against the Machine or System of a Down? Is Tool's "Ænima" political enough? Is Saul Williams' "List of Demands (Reparations)" metal enough? There are already enough political metal mixes, with names like Psalm 69 and As the Palaces Burn. How can anything compete with those?

I ended up pulling up a little from everything. This is for someone who probably agrees with Cattle Decapitation philosophically if not melodically, so I'm throwing down the biggest metal trump cards. I picked "Blackened" over the other ...And Justice for All contenders by virtue of the fact that it rocks the hardest, and "Symphony of Destruction" for not having a verse about the Punisher, plus being still sadly relevant in an era of Morsis and Putins. Sepultura's "Kaiowas" landed here for proving that a metal band didn't need amps, or even lyrics, to send a message about forced evictions of natives in Brazil. I also dug up "We Care a Lot" from Faith No More's pre-Mike Patton days, a gleefully incisive takedown of the Live Aid and "We Are the World" celebrities which I'd still pit against anything Bono and Bob Geldof are doing today. I'll add that "We Care a Lot" predated The Book of Mormon ("I am Africa") and Get Him to the Greek ("African Child (Trapped in Me)") by at least 20 years.

More recently, the Political Metal flag has been raised by French progressive environmetalists (sic) Gojira and relentlessly confrontational deathgrinders Misery Index, the latter of whom earn the Thomas Paine and John Brown references on "Traitors" by being one of the only metal bands to put as much care into their lyrics as their music. But my favorite is Revocation, whom match their politically-charged lyrics (they recently debuted a song called "Fracked") with the most sophisticated metal that these ears have found over the past few years. "Pestilence Reigns," a chilling depiction of air raids, solves all of my problems with neo-thrash and technical death metal, giving the former a death metal makeover and the later a sense of songwriting direction.

Finally, I couldn't put together a political metal mix without including the most controversial metal single of all time. If you haven't heard it, that's because it's been banned from CD release since 1992.

Marilyn Manson, "The Beautiful People"

Like David Bowie and Madonna, Kanye West is a brilliant consumer and interpreter of pop and underground music.  From alt-rap to synthpop, West has earned his stardom in part by re-imagining cutting edge music as something that frat boys and sorority girls could get down to. The industrial-tinged scream-rap on Yeezus has called attention to iconoclastic artists like Death Grips and Saul Williams, both of whom have self-released their music without record labels and rarely get much respect from anyone who has never written for a music blog. Hopefully that will change with the acceptance of Yeezus.

However, one Yeezus influence that people apparently aren't listening to is Marilyn Manson. Last week, a widely-shared mixtape entitled Yeezus: The Samples became internet famous for compiling all of Yeezus' samples, Manson's "The Beautiful People" included, in one stream. The problem being, that had anyone who actually listened to Marilyn Manson had anything to do with Yeezus: The Samples, they could tell that there are no Manson samples anywhere on Yeezus.



Yet it's easy to forgive listeners for assuming that "Black Skinhead" samples Marilyn Manson, who still holds the high standard for the kind of industrial pop that West is dabbling in. Nine Inch Nails is rightfully credited for bringing industrial music to the mainstream, but what Manson did in his prime was both poppier and more metallic. The guitars and choruses are simple, loud and catchy, unable to be disguised by any amount of artsy production and music videos.

Before I had ever heard a note of Manson's music, I was familiar with him through a few interviews and the cover of Smells Like Children. I had never seen a creepier rock star, an image that was enhanced by his deadpan interview delivery--he didn't seem like he was trying to shock people at all. The first song of his that I heard was "The Beautiful People," on a DC-area rock station. Even though I'd missed the DJ's intro, I could tell who the artist was within seconds. The attitude was all there.

Like Kanye, Manson was terrific at adapting underground music for mainstream listeners. Hints of Ministry, Killing Joke and Bauhaus are all in "The Beautiful People", simplified and produced with Interscope Records and MTV in mind. Antichrist Superstar was purposefully written to make Marilyn Manson an iconic outsider, the most controversial rock star on the planet, and somehow it worked. To this day, it sounds audacious--will anything this Satanic ever play the MTV VMAs ever again?



That audacity wouldn't last. Cynics will say that all shock rockers have short shelf lives, but comparing "The Beautiful People" to Manson's subsequent, less popular albums, it sounds like he lost interest in the mainstream long before the mainstream lost interest in him. If his songs were still this infectious, he'd still be selling out arenas. But Manson doesn't need to build on his legacy anymore. Kanye's got that covered.