It was tough to let some of the albums go, in particular a copy of Mayhem’s Mediolanum Capta Est I bought in Rome. But the reality is that a significant portion of my metal collection now exists as digital files on a hard drive.
What is missing, however, is one of the most important parts of the albums: the cover art, the inside artwork and the liner notes. As I selected CDs for sale, I was struck by how much effort went into even the smallest underground releases. Sure, it’s nice to have the music where it’s easily accessible, but it seems like part of my collection is gone.
The ongoing transition from CDs to an entirely digital format raises larger questions about what the move to digital means for metal – a genre inextricably linked to images and artwork. What will the digital age mean for the aesthetics of heavy metal?
Imagine the first Black Sabbath album without the billfold foldout featuring the upside-down cross and creepy poem that opens: “Still falls the rain, the veils of darkness shroud the blackened trees…” Could Napalm Death’s Scum artwork – an image of starving people surrounded by craven businessmen and corporate logos - ever look the same as a small digital file? Could any of these albums pack the same visceral punch in this new format?
King Diamond thinks something could be permanently lost with the transition to digital. Diamond set the standard for metal concept albums during the past two decades: Abigail told the story of a couple that inherited an 18th century home with dark secrets. In all of Diamond’s albums, the liner notes and artwork are an integral part of the story. When I first purchased Diamond’s music I was drawn to the image of demon pointing from behind a wall of flames on Mercyful Fate’s Don’t Break the Oath.
“If I got a new album, especially in the old days, I would study that thing before I even put it on,” Diamond says. “It just created the atmosphere of the music to come. You could get into a certain mood before the album. It was created with the lyrics and the artwork. That’s still what we’re trying to do with CDs.”
But the move to digital is inevitable and bands will need to learn to work with the new format much like they did when vinyl was replaced by compact disc. A recent Forrester Research report concludes that half of the music sold in the country in 2011 will be digital. Despite the growth, the report says the record industry will continue to lose money.
Metal Blade Records president and founder Brian Slagel – who helped launch Slayer and Metallica’s careers - says that digital music accounts for less than 10 percent of label sales. But that number is quickly growing. In 2007, digital music sales outpaced album sales during the traditionally slow winter holiday months. “In a few years it might get kind of interesting…we just need to see where everything shakes out,” Slagel says.
Old School vs. Digital
Metalheads in the 1980s were defined by their vinyl collections. My friend Eric had what appeared to be one of the largest collections in Washington D.C., including WASP’s Animal-F*** Like A Beast and Piledriver’s Metal Inquisition. Eric ran a brisk business copying albums to cassette tape and selling them to other kids at our junior high. I remember sitting in his upstairs room absorbing the cover of Black Sabbath’s Live Evil, reasoning that my parents would never let me purchase the album or shirt.Vital Remains guitarist Tony Lazaro had similar experiences as a young metalhead and is an unabashed old-schooler. He’s convinced that metal fans should have an actual album in their hands, not just information stored in a hard drive. Lazaro will still go right home after buying a CD to rip the plastic off the case and look at the booklet.
Lazaro says the ability to quickly pay for and download music allows breaking bands to get their music to the public. “But I still like vinyl and that’s why we still make it for our records,” Lazaro says.
Lazaro is a fan of the old vinyl paintings from 1980s metal albums – think Celtic Frost’s Emperor’s Return or Sodom’s In The Sign Of Evil. He designed the cover of Icons of Evil as a nod to the past. The artwork, perhaps the most incendiary metal cover of 2007, shows Christ’s hands being nailed to the cross by a demonic aggressor.
“The image just stuck with you. It was so extreme and so killer,” Lazaro says. “I showed Glen (Benton -Deicide vocalist and bassist) and he started doing that devilish laugh and he was like ‘I love it.’ So we said we have to go with it.”
“The full package is everything,” Lazaro says. “It’s getting the artwork, the booklet, the lyrics, the photos. It’s the whole experience. When a fan of underground music goes to the store and picks it up the excitement is high. You want to get in your car or get home and rip the package open and throw it in your stereo and just crank it and look at it.”
“Nothing’s changed for me,” Lazaro says. “I still want to come home, give it a good four or five listens and read the lyrics. It’s really important to have that initial shock value… you do lose that with something like iTunes where it’s just the music and nothing else.”
