MÖSH YOUR ENTHUSIASM (9)
By:
January 29, 2024
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of metal records from the Eighties (1984–1993, in our periodization schema). Series edited by Heather Quinlan. Also check out our MÖSH YOUR ENTHUSIASM playlist at Spotify.
ST. VITUS | “BORN TOO LATE” | 1986
We have barely slipped our toes into the opening sludge on St. Vitus’s 1986 album Born Too Late, and singer Robert Scott Weinrich, formerly of The Obsessed and also known as Wino, is already bummed out. “Every time I’m on the street / People laugh and point at me / They talk about my length of hair / And the out of date clothes I wear.” Rock has always mined authenticity from alienation, but this is not a rebel yell — it’s a sullen retro grumble. Whatever long hair might once have signified for young male rockers, David Crosby’s freak flag had gotten pretty faded by 1986. Trimmed, buzz-cut, dyed, and teased by post-punk and New Wave, male hair in those years stayed long and unadorned (if sometimes feathered) only among the stoner hordes of hard rock, clad in their moldering denim, leather vests, and other out of date gear that Wino can dig.
The one major modification to this subcultural coiffure was offered by aptly named “hair metal” glam bands like Twisted Sister and Mötley Crüe, whose immense do’s were smothered with so much product they looked like cotton candy, lending their bearers all the feral threat of a Muppet. Their silly and inconsequential music also ruled Sunset Strip, in St. Vitus’ hometown of Los Angeles, which is another reason the band felt kicked to the curb. Their raw molasses riffs, their dirt-bag air of acidhead refusal, were ignored by the local metal scene. Which is why St. Vitus bonded with the Long Beach band Black Flag, playing tons of hardcore shows and recording for the label SST, whose post-punk overlord Greg Ginn had a genius ear for para-metal sounds. But despite their punk snarl, St. Vitus were culturally, even mythically metal — a metal whose time and sound (and hairstyles) were seemingly out of joint.
As you might imagine from a band named St. Vitus, “Born to Late” makes its debt to Black Sabbath as clear as a wizard crystal. After a chaotic opening filigree, the band unlocks a crude Paranoid-era crypt riff whose lack of development over the song’s seven minutes speaks to the implacable limitations of fate — or maybe some old Quaaludes lying around. Drummer Armando Acosta sounds like he can barely be bothered to play; elsewhere on the album Wino channels the spirit of clinical depression itself. But there are seeds hidden in the bummer sludge. “They say our songs are much too slow,” sings Wino. “But they don’t know the things I know.” I don’t know what Wino knows, but he might have received the revelation that his band’s glacial riff minimalism, rooted in an anachronistic refusal to quit the grotto of early Sabbath, would alchemically transform over time into that most mighty and cosmic of heavy music subgenres: doom metal. “Born to Late,” then, is less retro than it is untimely: a prophecy disguised as grumpy nostalgia, and a living glimpse of doom metal’s abiding theme: the temporal rift, or riff, of eternal return.
MÖSH YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Heather Quinlan | Crockett Doob on Metallica’s ENTER SANDMAN | Dean Haspiel on Mötley Crüe’s HOME SWEET HOME | Jack Silbert on Poison’s TALK DIRTY TO ME | Adam McGovern on Dio’s INVISIBLE | Mariane Cara on Faith No More’s EPIC | Heather Quinlan on Blue Öyster Cult’s SHOOTING SHARK | Steve Schneider on UFO’s DIESEL IN THE DUST | Carlo Rotella on Primus’ JERRY WAS A RACE CAR DRIVER | Erik Davis on St. Vitus’ BORN TOO LATE | Greg Rowland on Motörhead’s ACE OF SPADES (remix) | Kathy Biehl on Twisted Sister’s WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT | Nikhil Singh on G.I.S.M.’s GAS BURNER PANIC | Erin M. Routson on Metallica’s ESCAPE | Holly Interlandi on Helmet’s MILQUETOAST | Marc Weidenbaum on Celtic Frost’s I WON’T DANCE (THE ELDERS’ ORIENT) | Amy Keyishian on Living Colour’s CULT OF PERSONALITY | Josh Glenn on Scorpions’ STILL LOVING YOU | Alycia Chillemi on Danzig’s SOUL ON FIRE | James Parker on Godflesh’s CHRISTBAIT RISING | Miranda Mellis on The Afflicted’s HERE COME THE COPS | Rene Rosa on Type O Negative’s BLACK NO. 1 | Tony Leone on Slayer’s SOUTH OF HEAVEN | Christopher Cannon on Neurosis’s LOST | Brian Berger on Black Sabbath’s HEADLESS CROSS | MÖSH CONTEST-WINNING ENTRY: Tony Pacitti on Metallica’s THE CALL OF KTULU. PLUS: CONTEST RUNNER-UP: James Scott Maloy on Accept’s MIDNIGHT MOVER.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!