Mission: metal

Metallica lay down the law; Heavy Metal returns

by Carly Carioli

Mr. Durst, Mr. Ulrich. Mr. Ulrich, Mr. Durst.

A few short months ago the introductions would have been cordial, but for the moment, a meeting of the spokesegos for Limp Bizkit and Metallica would almost certainly lead to fisticuffs, or at least an exchange of subpoenas. And yet there they are, right next to each other on the heavy-metal soundtrack to Mission: Impossible 2 (Hollywood).

Metallica's contribution -- a tune that sounds a bit like Metallica aping Godsmack aping Metallica (Godsmack's skittering tirade, "Going Down," sounds invigorated by comparison) -- bears the possibly prophetic and appropriately postmodern title "I Disappear." When the track began making premature rounds on the on-line MP3 trading community Napster, Metallica decided they'd had enough of Web piracy and filed a lawsuit that was destined to become a major precedent in Internet law. They also hired a private investigator to find all the Napster users who had traded Metallica songs over the Web (possibly a stroke of direct-marketing genius -- that no one thought of it sooner is a measure of the unresourcefulness of the rock-and-roll industry when it comes to new developments on line) and promptly turned their names over to the cops. There are some who believe this course of action will be the end of Metallica. The folks who snatched up 60,000 tickets (at a minimum of $50 a pop) to the band's upcoming Foxboro Stadium concert may have a different opinion.

Limp Bizkit, who extrapolate from the original Mission: Impossible jingle a moody, sinister, and eventually explosive new tune called "Take a Look Around," then threw their stock in with Napster, a decision that may have been slightly influenced by the $2 million they were paid by the as-yet-profit-less (and indeed, income-less) company in exchange for Bizkit's mounting of a free-to-fans Napster-sponsored tour.

Heavy metal is again big business, and there are no bigger players than Metallica, who have a larger stake in album sales than do Limp Bizkit. Where most bands earn a royalty rate of perhaps 10 percent, from which is subtracted the costs of recording and promotion expenses, Metallica sued their label a few years back -- is a litigious pattern developing here? -- and emerged as 50-50 partners with Elektra via a corporation called EM Ventures, by which the parties split their expenses and share equally in the profits. But in their battle against Napster, Metallica may have found a true-life mission impossible: the lawsuit hasn't stopped anyone from trading their songs. I found more than 100 copies of "I Disappear" available, and in fact every song on the soundtrack (including new tunes from Rob Zombie, Tori Amos, Chris Cornell, Buckcherry, and the Foo Fighters) is available at the click of a mouse. It's also worth noting that despite the ready accessibility of the entire soundtrack for free, on line, the traditional CD version of the album still occupies position #6 on the Billboard album chart.

THE SOUNDTRACK to the 1981 R-rated animated sci-fi caper Heavy Metal (based on the comic book of the same name) sums up why "heavy metal" has remained a term you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy (radio prefers "extreme music"). It included cuts by late-period, bad-line-up Black Sabbath, Journey, a severely faded Blue Öyster Cult, and Nazareth. The music, like the movie itself, reflected the most puerile of adolescent male power fantasies -- the kind of sounds and images that in the early '90s, after they had been mostly discredited and abandoned, acquired a nostalgic glow, most notably in the music of White Zombie and the poster art of Frank Kozik, where heavy metal was recognized as great American kitsch.

Now, with the rise of a new generation of metal heroes, adolescent-boy power fantasies are back in vogue, without the aura of nostalgia or the mitigation of irony. The soundtracks to the new straight-to-cable animated sequel Heavy Metal 2000 (Restless) and MTV's party-mix compilation The Return to Rock (Roadrunner) are distinguishable from each other only by the size of the breasts on the women who grace their covers. The ladies are scantily clad and buxom to a degree that would cause lumbar trauma in a world of three dimensions. On Heavy Metal the neo-realist black-haired Amazon holds a sword and is dwarfed by an enormous phallic photon gun; on MTV the black-haired devil girl, drawn by Kozik-school illustrator Coop, holds a guitar between her legs.

The visions of heavy metal within vary slightly. Both albums feature tracks by Coal Chamber, System of a Down, Machine Head, and Full Devil Jacket. Heavy Metal takes a somewhat broader view, with new numbers by Monster Magnet, Queens of the Stone Age, Bauhaus, and MDFMK; MTV, with only three negligible new tracks and two remixes, sticks to new-school draws like Kid Rock, Korn, Kittie, Staind, and P.O.D. What isn't different is the impulse behind these releases: you can safely assume they all did it for the nookie.