Pod Insights Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin Daron Malakian - ON METAL (Part 1) About this episode Composer, guitarist, vocalist, and record producer Daron Malakian, a founding member of System of a Down, returns to Tetragrammaton to reflect on his lifelong relationship with heavy metal. Using music as a guide to discuss how different styles, sounds, and eras shaped his identity as an artist, he talks through what he listens for in metal, including riffs, mood, aggression, and atmosphere, and how those elements influenced his own songwriting and creative direction.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Rick Rubin? Tetragrammaton.
0:24 Speaker 01 You've got to start with a power chord, right? I don't know who invented the power chord, but you could think of, you know, "You Really Got Me" from The Kinks, which was pretty heavy, I would think, for its time.
0:34 Rick Rubin? In its day, for sure.
0:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, like, just that you could put into a heavy metal song or change the notes a little bit and make it darker and that riff will become pretty fucking heavy. You had The Who that were breaking guitars, blowing stuff onstage, and their sound was massive. I always saw The Who as like a kind of like an example for Led Zeppelin of what a band should... even just the way it was, like a great drummer, virtuoso, amazing bass player, guitar player that wrote the music, produced the records, songwriter. The presence of the vocalists kind of had a similar vibe, too.
1:19 Speaker 01 So, yeah, you know, you had the 60s bands. Dude, even you could say The Beatles in the song called "I Want You", the end of that song, where it gets all doom-y and...
1:32 Rick Rubin? It's like dirge.
1:33 Speaker 01 It's metal. It gives you the feeling of what Black Sabbath gives you without necessarily the same guitar tones or whatever, but the sound, the music, the darkness. So there were things that were happening before Black Sabbath, before Deep Purple, before Led Zeppelin.
1:54 Rick Rubin? Was Guineagata de Vida before?
1:57 Speaker 01 I'm not sure what year that was, but those are all considered psychedelic.
2:02 Rick Rubin? Yeah, but it's heavy.
2:03 Speaker 01 It's heavy, but the heavy stuff came from the psychedelic, like that band High Tide, you know?
2:09 Rick Rubin? The British band.
2:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, that was heavy, but that was before Sabbath. That was during the late 60s psychedelic era. And I think psychedelic music was moving into this direction.
2:23 Rick Rubin? It was certainly one of the flavors, because there was also like a folk flavor. It's like Led Zeppelin has really heavy songs and then they have really folky songs.
2:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:33 Rick Rubin? And it feels like they didn't invent that. That was kind of what was going on.
2:37 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm. Yeah, same with Sabbath. There is Sabbath, I think, took things to a direction that like, sometimes I think even a riff from a band can spark a whole genre. Just that tiny moment.
2:57 Rick Rubin? Do you want to play an example of a riff that inspires people?
3:01 Speaker 01 How about this one from Cream?
3:07 Speaker 01 Pretty dark.
3:29 Speaker 01 It's like heavy metal blues.
4:13 Speaker 01 This could be a Sabbath song for sure.
4:36 Rick Rubin? Of the American bluesmen who created the genre, nothing sounded like that. You know, like it definitely took it to a new extreme.
4:46 Speaker 01 And there was other things going on. Maybe they were inspired by somebody else. I don't know. That I mean, it's always tough to tell, but then you got Sabbath at some point, you know, you got.
4:56 Rick Rubin? You feel like Sabbath is like the real beginning of metal?
5:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, I kind of do. More to me than Led Zeppelin, because Led Zeppelin had moments of heaviness. Their sound was heavy. The energy of harder rock was there. But Sabbath brought the doom.
5:19 Rick Rubin? Also lyrically.
5:19 Speaker 01 The lyrics.
5:20 Rick Rubin? Yeah, Sabbath, the trip was dark.
5:23 Speaker 01 The name of the band.
5:27 Speaker 01 This Black Sabbath, just they brought in a feeling of vibe that to me was the sound of heavy metal. The blues and the jazz was still there, but that came in between the heavy riffs and the riffs with Sabbath weren't like, for example, we mentioned the band High Tide, but probably if you listen to the rest of their songs, that was probably the only song.
5:55 Rick Rubin? That was heavy.
5:56 Speaker 01 That was heavy. Sabbath had the whole album was that vibe. And then the next album was that vibe and the next album. And it just, you know, that vibe continued. It became a character of the sound of Sabbath.
6:10 Rick Rubin? It seems true of heavy metal bands in general. That was the sound of those bands. They may have one ballad.
6:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:18 Rick Rubin? But it was the exception, not the rule. The rule was metal.
6:21 Speaker 01 Yeah. And that's, that's what I mean by like one song or one riff can take a band. And someone who was listening to that would be like, I want to write more songs that are like this.
6:34 Rick Rubin? Yeah. So like the Kinks, Have You Really Got Me? But that's not what all the Kinks songs sound like.
6:39 Speaker 01 No. So it sparked, those are the sparks.
6:43 Rick Rubin? Should we listen to You Really Got Me?
6:44 Speaker 01 Sure.
6:50 Speaker 01 It's heavy as fuck.
6:53 Rick Rubin? And for its time, it was probably shocking.
6:55 Speaker 01 Yeah. And then like to tear the speaker to get the distortion. You know, it's probably one of the first distorted guitar songs.
7:29 Speaker 01 The riff makes you do what heavy metal makes you do, which is like make a fist or like-
7:35 Rick Rubin? Or air guitar.
7:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, just something that makes your face get like, you know?
7:41 Rick Rubin? Yeah, you wanna participate.
7:46 Speaker 01 I think we should play that "High Tide" song.
7:48 Rick Rubin? Let's hear it.
7:59 Speaker 01 Once again, this is before Black Sabbath.
8:04 Speaker 01 Heavy as fuck.
8:05 Rick Rubin? Crazy. Like dirgy sludge.
8:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, but once he starts singing, it gets dark.
8:17 Rick Rubin? Fuck your expectation to the world.
8:24 Speaker 01 That's Doom, for sure. Well, there's a whole genre called Doom metal.
8:29 Rick Rubin? And it sounds like this.
8:30 Speaker 01 And it's like this vibe.
8:43 Speaker 01 Smell of burning flesh, like the lyrics.
8:47 Rick Rubin? Metal.
8:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:28 Speaker 01 But this was considered psychedelic music. There's no name, heavy metal.
9:33 Rick Rubin? No.
9:34 Speaker 01 And the name, heavy metal,
9:38 Speaker 01 came from the Steppenwolf song.
9:41 Rick Rubin? Oh, Heavy Metal Thunder.
9:42 Speaker 01 Heavy Metal Thunder. Just kinda like, you know, rock and roll came from like, Rock Around the Clock, and there was a bunch of songs at one point in the late 40s, early 50s, that started using the word "rock", and that became the reason why people called it rock and roll. And I would say even with other genres, as we'll get into as we're going, were kinda named by songs or bands, like death metal, black metal, these kinds of things. So, as things start getting more extreme, you know, Sabbath, the song Black Sabbath,
10:22 Speaker 01 really heavy, slow, doomy, but this song, Symptom of the Universe, to me, was aggressive. Like, you can mosh pit to this song, and there were no mosh pits yet, but this riff
10:43 Speaker 01 is aggressive.
10:51 Speaker 01 Like, you can fucking bang your head to this shit.
12:08 Speaker 02 This takes things to another level of heaviness.
12:51 Speaker 01 Led Zeppelin and all that other stuff, sure it was heavy, but this is heavy metal.
12:56 Rick Rubin? Yeah, this is less bluesy.
13:06 Speaker 01 This song goes into a section that starts getting all jammy and bongos and stuff like that.
13:19 Rick Rubin? More like machine live.
13:20 Speaker 01 Very extreme metal for early 70s.
13:27 Rick Rubin? There's no rock and roll in it.
13:29 Speaker 01 No. Maybe the swing.
13:32 Rick Rubin? Maybe.
13:34 Speaker 01 The backbeat, you know, but.
13:35 Rick Rubin? Maybe.
13:40 Speaker 01 I mean, listen how he's singing.
13:43 Rick Rubin? That's a big part of it. Like Ozzy's voice maybe is the archetype, heavy metal voice.
13:50 Speaker 01 Yeah. The thing is, nobody else sounded like him.
14:00 Speaker 01 It's just the aggression. I think other people came and did aggression in their own style, but I mean, you have to, yeah, of course it has to be.
14:11 Speaker 01 It's a starting point.
14:21 Speaker 01 It gets more.
14:53 Speaker 01 And now here it turns into.
15:11 Speaker 01 I mean, my band does stuff like that.
15:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean.
15:28 Rick Rubin? It's also really experimental. You know, the way the parts go together is not like regular song structure. It's much more free.
15:40 Speaker 01 There was like this jazzy element to some Black Sabbath parts and Bill Ward's drumming.
15:51 Speaker 01 There was a looseness to it at some point. It wasn't just all riffs. There, you'd go into these sections where, like this one, this is not heavy metal. This goes back to the 60s in a way.
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17:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, you had Deep Purple, but you also had other bands like we were talking about, like Budgie. They were doing a heavy sound.
17:57 Rick Rubin? Same time as Black Sabbath?
17:59 Speaker 01 Uh, early 70s. I mean, yeah, you could say. Here's a song that Metallica later covered from them. Metallica actually covered a couple Budgie songs.
18:26 Rick Rubin? Sounds like Metallica.
18:28 Speaker 01 They covered this.
18:30 Rick Rubin? But stylistically, like, the original songs sound like this, too.
18:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:36 Rick Rubin? Especially like early, first album, you know?
18:55 Speaker 01 Aziz vocals. Yeah.
19:29 Speaker 01 So yeah, there was stuff like this.
19:33 Speaker 01 Bands that are kind of like unsung heroes at the time, like, you know, Zeppelin, Sabbath, Deep Purple, they get a lot of the glory and they get a lot of the attention, but there were other bands.
20:00 Speaker 01 So, you know, you had all the early 70s stuff. You know, here's a Deep Purple Fireball.
20:15 Speaker 01 Double bass, which also became something later on in heavy metal.
21:15 Speaker 01 All that.
21:17 Speaker 01 As much as Ozzy was an influence, Ian Gillan. So a lot of people started doing that. Towards the late 70s, early 80s.
21:41 Rick Rubin? Also Ian Gillan in Black Sabbath looked great, too.
21:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, Born Again. Some people don't like that record, but I love it. Yeah, I love that record. And I love Sabbath with Dio as well.
21:52 Rick Rubin? Dio is really different than the others to me. It turns into more like mythical.
21:58 Speaker 01 Well, his lyrics, his vibe. There's another dude that isn't from England that probably should be mentioned or a band. Have you ever heard of Sir Lord Baltimore?
22:11 Rick Rubin? I've heard his name, but I never listened to the music.
22:13 Speaker 01 They kind of get a little credit for being heavy before there was heavy.
22:22 Rick Rubin? It's heavy.
22:25 Speaker 01 From the US, though, from the east coast.
23:31 Rick Rubin? It's groovier than pretty much everything else we listen to.
23:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's, well, they're from the US.
23:37 Speaker 01 You know, there's probably a difference in influences and, you know. You sometimes hear when a band is from a certain place, like you hear the place. You hear that there's a difference in sound.
24:01 Speaker 01 The LA glam sound compared to what the Seattle sound was, like you would hear different genres come out of different parts of the world. And you would hear that part of the world in that genre, you know?
24:19 Rick Rubin? I don't think any of the bands that we've listened to yet, when they formed, formed as heavy metal bands.
24:25 Speaker 01 There was no word.
24:26 Rick Rubin? There was no such thing yet.
24:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, some people call my band nu metal. But I remember when we were doing it, there was no such thing as that. I mean, I don't really consider us nu metal. I think we came out of that genre. I think it was just the time we were around. I think there's things about our music that might be there. But when it's happening, I'm sure the bands in Seattle weren't calling themselves grunge.
24:53 Rick Rubin? No.
24:54 Speaker 01 It's the press.
24:55 Rick Rubin? Happens after, yeah.
24:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, the press starts, has to put a label on it in some way. So when did heavy metal start? I don't know. I wasn't around at this time. We're gonna move into a direction where I was actually alive. I wasn't alive during all this stuff. You gotta mention Kiss. Yeah, rock and roll and I party every day, but the energy, the look, Spikes, Black and Silver, the theatrics. Because theatrics is a part of a lot of metal as well.
25:31 Rick Rubin? What would be a Kiss song that would be representative of their metal side?
25:35 Speaker 01 I always thought Parasite was kinda heavy.
25:39 Rick Rubin? Let's hear that.
25:59 Speaker 02 She'd always be there, trying to climb a hole
26:07 Speaker 02 She thought she knew that, but she didn't know
26:14 Speaker 02 That I was sad and wanted her to go home
26:26 Speaker 02 Parasite lady Parasite eye Parasite lady Don't need to cry
26:49 Speaker 01 It's the image of the demon, the fire breathing, the blood. That was huge to the kids that grew up with that and then started bands. Was huge for me. I mean, I was three years old, three or four years old when I first saw Kiss. It scared the shit out of me.
27:11 Rick Rubin? But you liked it.
27:12 Speaker 01 But it just, I was just obsessed with it. I couldn't stop looking at it. Never heard a song yet, even at that point, do I just had?
27:21 Rick Rubin? Just the image.
27:21 Speaker 01 Just the image, just seeing them. Maybe Kiss's music wasn't as heavy as what Black Sabbath was doing, but Black Sabbath didn't look like Kiss.
27:33 Rick Rubin? Kiss's image with Black Sabbath's music together.
27:36 Speaker 01 Matched.
27:37 Rick Rubin? Yeah.
27:38 Speaker 01 Matched.
27:38 Rick Rubin? And that's what brought forth the next wave of heavy metal.
27:42 Speaker 01 Which people call the new wave of British heavy metal, which started happening mid to late 70s into the 80s.
27:53 Rick Rubin? What bands would those be, do you know?
27:56 Speaker 01 Well, you know, you could start with bands like UFO, but they were still kind of in the mid 70s, you could say. Then Judas Priest.
28:09 Rick Rubin? Did Judas Priest start in the 70s? I think so.
28:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, Judas Priest was pretty early on, but then there changes happened through their sound in the early days. It started becoming the blues and the jazzy elements that the earlier bands had. These bands kind of didn't have that. A band like UFO had a great guitar player. They kind of, the early couple of records were kind of more psychedelic, but then you get into, say, a song like this one.
29:11 Speaker 01 You hear that gallopy kind of thing? There's a little Led Zeppelin in that.
29:32 Speaker 01 That gallopy thing became a very Iron Maiden thing.
30:00 Speaker 01 So bands like this, and I'm gonna give the Scorpions some love.
30:19 Speaker 01 A heavy metal kind of wave, a song like "The Sails of Charon."
30:31 Speaker 01 So those are all English bands we were talking about, but these guys came from Germany.
30:39 Rick Rubin? Scorpions had really metal album covers.
30:46 Rick Rubin? Yeah, if you would play this, I wouldn't be surprised.
30:54 Rick Rubin? Wow.
30:55 Speaker 01 I love the Scorpions.
30:56 Rick Rubin? I can see.
30:58 Speaker 01 Oh, you hear it in my ear?
30:59 Rick Rubin? Yeah, but I never heard them before. It's very interesting.
31:13 Speaker 01 Uli Rock, amazing guitar player.
31:19 Rick Rubin? I didn't know it was this original.
32:42 Rick Rubin? Also has like an operatic vibe vocally.
32:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, and kinda Arabic kinda guitar lines and stuff.
32:51 Speaker 01 So, their sound kinda changed as it went on into the 80s. It became a little bit more poppy. They're known for like their rock ballads, which I love rock ballads. And Scorpions did some of the best rock ballads. You know, bands like Thin Lizzy.
33:17 Speaker 01 Heavy as hell.
33:38 Speaker 01 This dual guitar thing they did.
33:41 Rick Rubin? The harmonies.
33:42 Speaker 01 Very influential with bands to come like Judas Priest, uh, Iron Maiden. They did these dual guitar solos. Thin Lizzy, I think, was one of the first.
34:24 Rick Rubin? Still not metal. None of these bands, I don't think we would have called metal yet.
34:27 Speaker 01 I don't think they would have called themselves metal.
34:29 Rick Rubin? Exactly.
34:30 Speaker 01 But the kids that were listening to them, or the teenagers that were listening to them that were about to be 18, 19, 20 years old and start bands themselves.
34:39 Rick Rubin? The next set of bands.
34:39 Speaker 01 Yeah. Going into the late 70s, new wave of British heavy metal bands like Judas Priest, you would say, were starting to take the blues out. And then the imagery as well. Judas Priest also, I think, had a lot to do with the look of metal with the spikes and the stuff which-
35:02 Rick Rubin? Kiss did it first, but they kind of made it their trip and they weren't wearing makeup. They weren't playing monsters. They were playing themselves.
35:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:09 Rick Rubin? But they dressed like that.
35:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, and um, a lot of that spike and stuff came out of the BDSM kind of imagery and that, that's kind of where that came from. So Kiss and Judas Priest, I would say, had a lot to do with that heavy metal, spikes, black leather towards the late 70s, early 80s. And here's a-
35:37 Speaker 01 Judas Priest song called "Hellbent for Levin."
35:57 Speaker 01 Stranglehold again.
36:00 Speaker 01 Hey Ted Nugent had probably something to do with this to me.
36:14 Speaker 01 Double kick.
36:31 Speaker 01 There's an emotion that heavy metal gives you, which is that fist in the air. Makes your face change into mean grim face. It does to me at least. I can't help myself sometimes.
37:31 Speaker 04 Yeah.
37:50 Rick Rubin? Are they the first band that we've listened to that had two guitar players?
37:55 Speaker 01 Ben & Lizzy did.
37:58 Rick Rubin? That's definitely a difference.
38:00 Speaker 01 Yeah. Dual guitar playing, dual solos.
38:03 Rick Rubin? Yeah, trading off solos.
38:04 Speaker 01 Trading off. Became a thing.
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39:52 Speaker 01 So we're at the new wave of British heavy metal, late 70s, early 80s. I start remembering at this time of my life, remembering the older kids at my school when I was at elementary school, the shirts they used to wear. It was just all like, wow, to me, man.
40:13 Rick Rubin? Like black t-shirts with bands on them?
40:15 Speaker 01 Band shirts at the time, Judas Priest.
40:18 Rick Rubin? Yeah.
40:18 Speaker 01 Iron Maiden, Ozzy, you know, Ozzy had separated from Black Sabbath at that point. I mean, early Ozzy solo stuff, you can't deny. Randy Rhoads guitar playing. I remember going to the record store with my mom and seeing the album cover for Speak of the Devil, which is a live album. But it's Ozzy and he has his mouth open. He has this shit in his fucking mouth. I don't know. It's like jelly or something, but at the time it was like, oh, Ozzy used to bite heads off bats and all that stuff. So you would think, oh, is that the head of the bat? In my head as a kid, and I don't know, man, as a kid, I was really young, man. I was like five years old, but I was like really into this shit.
41:03 Speaker 01 Like to the point where my mom should have maybe been concerned, you know? But, but I was just really, really into this shit. And so we're also getting to the point where people are starting to accuse these bands of being devil worshippers.
41:17 Rick Rubin? Oh, yeah.
41:17 Speaker 01 Which was also something that was appealing to me as a five year old. But I'm sure as like kids that were 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, whatever, I'm sure that was also something that was dangerous.
41:33 Rick Rubin? But do you think it was about the danger of it? It wasn't about actually worshiping the devil. It was more like it was this scary thing.
41:41 Speaker 01 Taboo.
41:42 Rick Rubin? Yeah. And it embraced the dark side that everybody has some aspect of in them. It wasn't hiding it away. It was celebrating the dark side.
41:51 Speaker 01 And you were like, are they, were they? There's something like kind of, you know how wrestling has kayfabe? It's, there's something kind of. K-Fabe.
42:05 Rick Rubin? Heavy metal and pro wrestling kind of work in the same way where there's, there's definitely a theatrical element to heavy metal.
42:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, like, you know, the kiss, the demon, what is, is this guy really, he lives like this? Is this really his life? Does he walk around the street like this, you know? We didn't have the internet back then. We didn't have social media where everybody sees the person's life and what they are offstage. And, you know, in my head, Ozzy was like this, wow, dude, this guy was like not even from this planet.
42:34 Rick Rubin? The fantasy aspect of it appealed to you. It's almost like they're cartoon characters.
42:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, like I imagined what they were like, like this person is really like this all the time, you know? Or is this, I never even thought about like, oh, they're not like this. It was, I was very young, so in my head, they were fucking cartoon. I was still watching cartoons at this time in my life. You know, I would take my mom to the record store and the band started playing into the satanic thing. And, um, Iron Maiden had Eddie, you know, the, the mascot. It was always like these evil album covers.
43:11 Rick Rubin? It was like a horror movie. Eddie would be like a horror movie character.
43:16 Speaker 01 Kind of, yeah, but I always wanted to get those albums, but I knew if I took those albums to my mom, she wouldn't buy them for me. So I would like try to go to this safer, like, you know, Def Leppard, Pyromania. I didn't have that on there, it had a building burning. But I had my way of getting those albums to me through like an older cousin or whatever. They would record them on a cassette that didn't have the album cover. So I'd still get to listen to like Dio, Holy Diver, because the, the album cover for that is like, the devil has this priest in the chains and, you know? So there's, you know, there's two singers in Iron Maiden, Paul Diano and Bruce Dickinson.
43:57 Rick Rubin? How low was Paul Diano?
43:58 Speaker 01 Just two albums.
43:59 Rick Rubin? First two albums?
44:00 Speaker 01 First two albums. And I was gonna play a song from those records because. If we're talking about the evolution and the new wave of British metal,
44:10 Rick Rubin? Yeah.
44:11 Speaker 01 this was the beginning of it. Yeah, Judas Priest, but early Iron Maiden, I would consider, and later Iron Maiden, but it wasn't the new wave after that. This, this was kind of the new wave coming.
44:25 Rick Rubin? So the first singer is more like in line with the Judas Priest era of new metal?
44:31 Speaker 01 Not necessarily, but I'll, I'll let you hear it.
44:34 Rick Rubin? Play it.
44:34 Speaker 01 I'll play Killers, which is the title track off their second album.
45:48 Speaker 01 That gallop is signature to Iron Maiden's sound.
45:54 Speaker 01 Dum-pur-dum-pur-dum-pur-dum-pur-dum.
46:23 Rick Rubin? Two guitar players as well?
46:24 Speaker 01 Yes. Back then, now they have three.
46:58 Speaker 01 Dual guitar playing.
47:04 Speaker 01 And then the bass playing is very specific to Iron Maiden as well. I mean, Steve Harris is pretty much like the main writer in the band.
47:14 Rick Rubin? The bass player?
47:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
47:21 Speaker 01 What are you not hearing, though?
47:25 Rick Rubin? Blues. No blues. No blues, no rock.
47:28 Speaker 01 Nope.
47:30 Rick Rubin? It feels almost more a little related to like classical music.
47:33 Speaker 01 Yes, it starts going more into that.
47:35 Rick Rubin? The drama of like Wagner, you know?
47:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
47:45 Rick Rubin? Solo's a little bluesy.
47:48 Rick Rubin? But that's what guitar players did it at that time.
47:56 Rick Rubin? But the riffs are not bluesy at all. And there's nothing about the groove that's bluesy. It's very, uh, Germanic.
48:04 Speaker 01 Germanic?
48:05 Rick Rubin? Yeah.
48:09 Speaker 01 I'm playing this era of Iron Maiden because this was very raw.
48:15 Speaker 01 This was their beginning.
48:21 Speaker 01 Just a dirtier version of Iron Maiden.
48:23 Rick Rubin? Still late 70s?
48:24 Speaker 01 Uh, this starts getting into the early 80s.
48:31 Speaker 01 Here's another song from Iron Maiden called Phantom of the Opera.
48:42 Speaker 01 This is the album before Killers. This is the first Iron Maiden record. Self-titled.
49:00 Speaker 01 It's amazing.
49:03 Speaker 01 Undeniable.
49:07 Speaker 01 So influential.
49:14 Speaker 01 Nobody was really doing this. This was as heavy, I think, as it got at this point of metal in the 80s.
49:23 Rick Rubin? And very straight.
49:29 Rick Rubin? It's not psychedelic.
49:30 Speaker 01 No, there is none of that. There's no blues.
49:33 Rick Rubin? No.
49:33 Speaker 01 No psychedelic.
49:39 Speaker 01 It's aggressive, but very musical.
50:17 Speaker 01 I learned how to play my guitar playing these songs. In my room, just trying to learn them.
50:25 Rick Rubin? And would you play along?
50:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
50:46 Speaker 01 Another thing about Iron Maiden. Different parts, long songs. This one is...
50:54 Speaker 01 It's like a seven-minute song. And it goes from parts over and it keeps you interested.
51:12 Speaker 01 It's music that should be sat down and listened to.
51:18 Rick Rubin? It's not a pop song. You don't dance to it.
51:21 Speaker 01 Well...
51:21 Rick Rubin? You could, but it's not...
51:22 Speaker 01 You know, heavy metal has its dances too, man. Mosh pit, head banging.
51:29 Speaker 01 That's the heavy metal dance. Probably head banging before the... Because I think the mosh pit came from hardcore and punk.
51:38 Speaker 01 But just banging your head is the feeling you get when you're feeling this heavy emotion. It feels right.
51:54 Speaker 01 A lot of things are happening all at the same time that are making things what they are a year later, two years later. While all this is happening with the new wave of British heavy metal bands, you have...
52:12 Rick Rubin? Punk rock.
52:13 Speaker 01 Punk rock. And I think it's somewhat meshing together somewhere in the late 70s.
52:19 Rick Rubin? Yeah, because the kids probably listen to both of those. I know I did. I listened to punk rock and heavy metal at the same time. And then, when you started hearing, like, probably Metallica was one of the first, where it felt like this was different than what came before it.
52:35 Speaker 01 I mean, you would, Motorhead.
52:37 Rick Rubin? Oh, Motorhead's in a class by themselves.
52:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
52:40 Rick Rubin? I love Motorhead.
52:41 Speaker 01 So.
52:42 Rick Rubin? I never thought of them as a descendant of punk rock, though. The punks loved Motorhead.
52:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
52:48 Rick Rubin? But it felt like they were Motorhead in spite of what anyone else was doing.
52:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was really aggressive rock and roll, in a way.
52:58 Rick Rubin? Yeah, like, like hard biker rock.
53:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, and let's be loud, and let's be fast. Here's another band that Metallica covered, called Diamond Head. You know, Metallica's a very influential band, obviously, but these are bands that influenced Metallica. Just like we're talking about bands that might have influenced Black Sabbath. These are bands that probably influenced Metallica and Slayer, you know, all the early thrash stuff, but there was no thrash yet.
53:39 Speaker 01 So this is "Am I Evil", Metallica made famous. A lot of people didn't even know that it was a cover until, you know, they, like, this is the band called Diamond Head.
53:53 Rick Rubin? And this rhythm goes back to Jeff Beck.
53:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
55:19 Speaker 02 My mother was a witch. She was spent alive. Blackless little bitch. For the tears I cried. Take her down now. Don't wanna see her face.
55:38 Speaker 02 Mister Amber. Can't hide my mistress. Twenty-seven, if you want us nice. Gotta see them make them pay the price. She's everybody's out on the ice. Take my time.
55:57 Speaker 02 Am I evil? Yes, I am.
56:03 Speaker 02 Am I evil? I am bad. Yes, I am.
56:11 Rick Rubin? In the break between the two heavy parts of the song, there's a tapping guitar part.
56:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
56:17 Rick Rubin? Did Eddie Van Halen invent that, or were other people already doing it?
56:21 Speaker 01 Other people did it before Eddie Van Halen, but Eddie Van Halen made his thing.
56:28 Rick Rubin? No one had done it like he had done it.
56:29 Speaker 01 Nobody had done it like he had done it. You know, and once again, guitar players, Randy Rhoads, Eddie Van Halen, Ingvain Momstein. These guys all shaped how heavy metal guitar players. You know, before there was Jimmy Page, and there was all those dudes from, you know.
56:48 Rick Rubin? More rooted in the blues, really.
56:50 Speaker 01 These guys were more rooted in like neoclassical. That kind of also pushed the blues a little bit out of the guitar soloing. Cause we just heard the early Iron Maiden stuff. But as you go into deeper Iron Maiden, you'll hear less of that bluesy stuff. And it gets to be a little bit more minors and
57:15 Rick Rubin? Neo classical.
57:16 Speaker 01 Neo classical types of vibes. So singers influential, guitar players that were influential, drummers who played more aggressively as time went on. Double kick started coming into the situation more. I'd say faster double kick started probably coming into the situation in the early to mid eighties with Slayer, you know?
57:43 Rick Rubin? But that was really different than what like John Bonham or Keith Moon were doing, who were incredible at what they did.
57:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:51 Rick Rubin? But this was a different kind of great new drumming.
57:54 Speaker 01 Those dudes were still, you could hear the jazz, you could hear, which later on will come back in metal in some ways, jazz fusion drumming. But in the early eighties, I would say it was just this stiff kind of heavy beat, solid, keep things solid.
58:15 Rick Rubin? And the eighties was also when drum machines were getting popular.
58:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
58:18 Rick Rubin? Also when disco was kind of in the air. So like the idea of the heavy, straight beat was kind of everywhere from drum machines and from disco.
58:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
58:27 Rick Rubin? Metal doesn't sound like disco, but it is as hypnotic, straight.
58:34 Speaker 01 It's not loose.
58:35 Rick Rubin? Yeah, it's not like improvisational.
58:39 Speaker 01 Yeah. Here's another band I really like this, I like this song. It's a band called Holocaust. The song's called Death or Glory. I just feel like
58:47 Rick Rubin? From around when?
58:48 Speaker 01 Same early eighties kind of time. You could say influenced heavier bands to come, but wasn't necessarily that just yet.
59:20 Speaker 01 Fucking heavy.
1:00:51 Speaker 01 For the early 80s.
1:01:02 Speaker 01 It's made you bang your head.
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1:02:46 Rick Rubin? When you were a kid, did the other kids in your school all listen to heavy metal or was it unusual music?
1:02:53 Speaker 01 Some older kids I would see that weren't my friends, I would just see that they were, they wore these shirts and stuff like that. My surrounding people, like my cousins, that were like older cousins of mine, they hated heavy metal. I didn't really have anybody that was, I don't know what it is about this music that was just, I was just drawn to it. What sparked it was just, I walked into a distant older, cause people that aren't really like that closely related to me, went to their house and they were teenagers. I was three or four years old, opened the door and I saw Kiss all over their walls. As I got older, it was just something, you know, my mom would go to the grocery store and I would
1:03:37 Speaker 01 be at the magazine stand and I would be looking at all the heavy metal magazines and not really reading them, just looking at the pictures, you know? The funny thing is she'd always say, as long as it doesn't influence you too much.
1:03:53 Rick Rubin? It seems like it influenced you just right.
1:03:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:03:56 Rick Rubin? Worked out.
1:03:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, she's happy now. But, look, I'm into a lot of different kinds of music. You know that. You and I always exchange, you know, send each other stuff. It's usually psychedelic music or world music, or I mean, it's all over the board. Just like you, I have like a pretty broad taste, but heavy metal was my first spark, my first love, my first thing that put me in my direction, you could say my roots.
1:04:24 Rick Rubin? And you'd play along with those records to get started.
1:04:27 Speaker 01 Growing up, yeah, even though there was, I could say I love disco at the same time that I love this stuff too. Obviously, if you listen to my band, you hear more than heavy metal.
1:04:38 Rick Rubin? For sure.
1:04:38 Speaker 01 And that's why some people will be like, well, why is Darren talking about like extreme metal? Because he's not in an extreme metal band, but I grew up with this kind of music. I grew up with extreme metal. By the time I formed my own band, I wanted to do something original. I don't want to copy the bands that, you know, came before, but I was very influenced by.
1:04:57 Rick Rubin? Yeah, can't help but be.
1:04:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, everything that we're playing and stuff we haven't played yet are all things that someone as a fan of heavy metal, we're talking about like the evolution of heavy metal, but was also my evolution with heavy metal at the time that it was happening.
1:05:16 Rick Rubin? Yeah, you grew up with this music.
1:05:19 Speaker 01 So get to some of the stuff that starts getting a little bit heavier in the early eighties, which is merciful fate.
1:05:29 Speaker 01 I realize that King Diamond is not for everybody. Because there are even metalheads, they're like, "I don't know, I can't get into it, I can't get into The Voice," whatever. I love King Diamond. I love Merciful Fate.
1:05:42 Rick Rubin? Yes.
1:05:46 Speaker 01 Black funeral.
1:07:00 Speaker 01 Heavy as shit for that time.
1:07:09 Speaker 01 I love this right now.
1:07:12 Speaker 01 I'm playing King Diamond on TetraGRAM.
1:07:38 Speaker 02 ...
1:07:55 Rick Rubin? Tell me the story of Merciful Fate. What do you know about him?
1:07:59 Speaker 01 They're from Denmark, I think. I don't know much about the history, about like why he started singing like that. I think Ian Gillan was kind of an influence on him, but he just like did Ian Gillan the whole time.
1:08:12 Rick Rubin? Maybe DO2 a little bit.
1:08:14 Speaker 01 Maybe. They were around in the late 70s, but kind of this album, and they have a few albums, but like the two classic ones are the first two.
1:08:23 Rick Rubin? And then King Diamond went solo.
1:08:24 Speaker 01 King Diamond went solo. Merciful Fate has more of like a raw sound. It's kind of like if you compare early Iron Maiden to later Iron Maiden, it became a little bit more polished. Merciful Fate has a little bit more of that raw late 70s, early 80s production sound, the riffs. King Diamond's stuff became, I'd say you could say even more theatrical. The whole album had a theme, like them was, the whole album was like a story. But his style, and I get it, some people don't get it, but it's signature though. He goes from high to
1:09:09 Speaker 01 and it's just kind of like, how do you, what made him like, I don't know, how did he come up with singing like this? It's very unique. There is nobody before him or after him. It's just him that does this with the different voices and the different harmonies and the over the top high pitch thing. And then the makeup, like in Merciful Fate, there was like five dudes, the rest of them just looked like regular heavy metal dudes. And then there was him with the makeup. And going back to Satanic kayfabe.
1:09:47 Speaker 01 The other people, you were kinda like, eh, maybe, maybe not. But this guy kinda convinced you that he was. And the way he talked and the way he explained it and these interviews and stuff like that, made you think, oh, this, this guy's really a devil worshiper. This guy's really satanic, which gave him this extra street cred, kinda credibility that made it convincing. And I, and I think he has those beliefs to some.
1:10:14 Rick Rubin? Have no idea.
1:10:15 Speaker 01 Degree.
1:10:15 Rick Rubin? It always sounded to me like a theater kid doing heavy metal, like as an act. That's what sort of turned me off about it was it was theatrical to the point of parody.
1:10:31 Speaker 01 If I remember correctly, I probably didn't like it the first time I heard it, which was not Merciful Fate for me. It was King Diamond solo. But then I didn't like Slayer the first time I heard it.
1:10:43 Rick Rubin? Wow.
1:10:44 Speaker 01 Because remember, I'm growing up with this kind of vocal.
1:10:48 Rick Rubin? Yes.
1:10:49 Speaker 01 Iron Maiden, Dio, Ozzy Osbourne kind of vocal. When I first heard the vocals in Slayer, it was something that was brand new to me. But then I gave it another shot and it became like my favorite band.
1:11:01 Rick Rubin? When it's so different, the first reaction is it's not for me. Most of all, my favorite music, I didn't like when I first heard it. It's too much.
1:11:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:11:09 Rick Rubin? But then when you realize, I remember laughing at the Ramones when I heard it. It was ridiculous. Why would anybody play that?
1:11:14 Speaker 01 It's like tasting a food for the first time.
1:11:16 Rick Rubin? Might not have any point of reference.
1:11:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, you don't have any reference and it's kind of like, you don't recognize it. But then you try it again and it's like for that next month, you're eating that food and you know, it becomes your favorite food.
1:11:30 Rick Rubin? Yeah. Okay, what would be a good example of King Diamond as a solo artist?
1:11:37 Speaker 01 For me, it was, I love the album Them.
1:11:41 Rick Rubin? How old were you, you think, when it came out?
1:11:43 Speaker 01 Them, 1988, I was 13 years old.
1:12:00 Speaker 01 Song's called Welcome Home.
1:12:51 Speaker 01 Man, listen to how many voices he does.
1:13:17 Speaker 01 This was kind of a big song. He used to come on Headbanger's Ball and stuff. Really? Yeah, yeah. This was, I'd say, the breakthrough song for his solo career. There was an album before this, or two, solo. So, you know, there's bands around this time, remember a band called Metal Church? People that were metalheads at that time were into Metal Church. Metal Church fucking was relevant.
1:13:51 Speaker 01 It's a band that's not talked about as much now, but at the time, we would look forward to the new Metal Church album, you know, as young metalheads.
1:14:19 Speaker 01 This song's called Metal Church, self-titled, off the first album.
1:14:34 Rick Rubin? Can you hear the Black Sabbath influence?
1:14:37 Speaker 01 You hear the Black Sabbath, but you don't hear no blues, you don't hear no jazz.
1:15:24 Speaker 01 Like up until this, Judas Priest, Maiden, all that stuff was the heavy stuff. Now we're getting into the mid-eighties. And this was happening around the same time as Slayer and Metallica.
1:15:41 Rick Rubin? Was there a name for this genre?
1:15:46 Speaker 01 Some people would like, would call it power metal.
1:15:49 Rick Rubin? Power metal. It definitely sounds like an escalation on what came before it.
1:15:55 Speaker 01 Yes, and it is.
1:15:57 Rick Rubin? You can hear it.
1:16:28 Speaker 01 Fucking mean riff.
1:16:29 Rick Rubin? Yeah, it's almost like thrash, the riff, but not the beat.
1:16:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:16:36 Rick Rubin? And not the vocals.
1:16:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:16:38 Rick Rubin? Vocals are more like traditional metal.
1:16:40 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:16:43 Speaker 01 So during this mid 80s time, the metal was getting kind of more aggressive. Because while we're listening to this, Metallica is putting out, you know, Kill them all, and Master of Puppets, and Slayer's putting out Show No Mercy, and Hello 8, and Rain and Blood, and all that stuff. Things were kind of getting more aggressive and faster. But then there was a, there was bands that were kind of taking it back to the Black Sabbath thing and doing like a more doom metal thing, like a band like Candleman's, and this song called Demon's Gate.
1:17:27 Speaker 01 An ancient path is surrounded by hatred.
1:17:33 Speaker 01 Dare I walk between the hands of my gods? Theatrics. I went into the demon's gate.
1:17:53 Speaker 01 These guys kind of slowed it down while everyone else was going faster.
1:18:05 Speaker 01 I believe they're from Sweden.
1:18:50 Speaker 01 So this is considered doom metal.
1:18:56 Rick Rubin? Feels related to prog rock, but much darker.
1:18:59 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:19:24 Speaker 01 The truth is, you hear more Ian Gillan in vocals as time goes on than you do Ozzy in some ways. Those high pitch Ian Gillan things kinda stuck around with a lot of bands through the years. And they built on it, or just became like, "The head of town!" that kind of thing.
1:20:03 Speaker 01 So another band you could say that was doing this at this time, when other bands were doing other things, was a band that I think you worked with called Trouble.
1:20:13 Speaker 01 Early Trouble had doom elements. And more bands came and started, a subgenre started through this. Stoner metal, some people like to call it.
1:20:27 Rick Rubin? Also, more of these bands, the splintering after the Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, it started getting more independent. Like, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest were on major labels.
1:20:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:20:39 Rick Rubin? You saw them at an arena when they came to play. These other bands were more like-
1:20:44 Speaker 01 Roadrunner, Metal Blade.
1:20:46 Rick Rubin? Like, independent labels. And it was almost more of a punk rock aesthetic, even though it was metal.
1:20:53 Speaker 01 It was underground.
1:20:53 Rick Rubin? It was underground music.
1:20:55 Speaker 01 Still underground. A lot of these bands- I would either find because I liked the album cover, or the guy at the record store knew what I liked and he would be like, "Check this out." It wasn't from mass marketing or-
1:21:11 Rick Rubin? Or MTV or anything like-
1:21:13 Speaker 01 Oh, Headbanger's Ball. At that time, you would find some bands that-
1:21:17 Rick Rubin? Cool stuff.
1:21:18 Speaker 01 Would play on Headbanger's Ball that would only be played like after midnight on Headbanger's Ball, though it wasn't in the regular rotation of MTV. At that time, the regular rotation of MTV was like the glam bands and the-
1:21:33 Rick Rubin? Bloods and Roses.
1:21:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, the hair bands, Motley Crue. Look, man, early Motley Crue is, you could say, very influential too and- Or like Shout at the Devil era Motley Crue. There was some heaviness to that. It wasn't all bubble gum. It wasn't, you know, there was- The riffs were heavy, the imagery was satanic and kinda dark. I remember when I was a kid, I had the Motley Crue cassette and in the back of the cassette, it had written, "If you play this record backwards, it plays Satan-" I don't know, it plays backward messenger. It's, they purposely wrote that because they wanted, you know, once again, satanic kayfabe.
1:22:13 Speaker 01 You know, as a seven, eight-year-old kid, I was like, "Oh, wow, this is something that, you know, I gotta hide from, from my mom. I don't want her to read that," you know? At this same time, though, you had more aggressive stuff that was a precursor to thrash.
1:22:37 Rick Rubin? What would be an example of that?
1:22:39 Speaker 01 I wouldn't consider Discharge a heavy metal band, but Discharge definitely played-
1:22:45 Rick Rubin? Influenced.
1:22:46 Speaker 01 Influenced thrash music. So, a song like this came out in the early eighties.
1:22:57 Speaker 01 Discharge, Drunk with Power.
1:24:14 Speaker 01 It's really, really heavy for that time, man.
1:24:23 Speaker 01 Like, he would sit there and think, "How are they doing this while all these other bands are doing that?" It's less music, it's more assault. It's a repetitive riff, it's mesmerizing in some ways.
1:24:41 Speaker 01 It just, it stays the same. Every song has the same vocal approach, it's the same, it's a lot of the same vibe.
1:24:52 Speaker 01 This takes, like, the Ramones and all the, but like, takes it to this other place.
1:25:02 Speaker 01 Such an original band.
1:25:05 Speaker 01 It baffles me on like, "How are they doing this at this time?" They formed in the late 70s. And this was probably early 80s.
1:25:22 Speaker 01 If you, like, heard this at that time, you would be like, "What is this?" Yeah, still now it sounds, you say. Yeah, it's aggressive.
1:25:34 Rick Rubin? Bands like The Bad Brains and Discharge definitely took it to a whole new level.
1:25:38 Speaker 01 Of intensity.
1:25:39 Rick Rubin? Yes.
1:25:40 Speaker 01 That is still feels intense now. You know, you had these bands coming out in the early eighties that were not necessarily metal.
1:25:49 Rick Rubin? But the same metal kids might hear those and it might be one of the influences. For sure on Slayer.
1:25:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:25:57 Rick Rubin? There was the influence of, in addition to Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. Clearly, the extreme punk rock was part of the.
1:26:06 Speaker 01 Well, that's, they were fusing this with Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Merciful Fate. And they were fusing the music and the riffs of that, but the intensity of this. But for me, you know, in punk rock, you have MC5 and the Stooges, right?
1:26:26 Rick Rubin? Yep.
1:26:27 Speaker 01 You could say are like the.
1:26:29 Rick Rubin? Precursors.
1:26:30 Speaker 01 Precursors to the Ramones and all that stuff. In extreme metal world, for me, sure, Discharge was a player in that, but you can't deny Motorhead.
1:26:57 Speaker 01 Heavy as fuck, man.
1:27:00 Speaker 01 Speed, because he was on speed, so.
1:27:25 Speaker 01 You can put discharge in this.
1:27:31 Speaker 01 You would like bill them on the same gig and it would make sense. The intensity of it was there, even though they probably wouldn't consider themselves in the same genre or whatever, but it's the vocals.
1:27:48 Speaker 01 He's not singing, he's got this, same like the discharge guy.
1:28:33 Speaker 01 I think at the time, metal and punk people, like the metal kids didn't really listen to punk and the punk kids didn't really listen to metal, but there was some bands that they could agree on and Motorhead was one of them.
1:28:46 Rick Rubin? Everyone liked Motorhead.
1:28:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:28:48 Rick Rubin? Most people in metal, if they knew about them, loved them, but they were a little more underground than the above-ground metal stuff.
1:28:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, like we said, MC5 and the Stooges, Motorhead and Venom. Venom is a big deal.
1:29:05 Rick Rubin? Okay.
1:29:05 Speaker 01 In extreme music, influential on thrash, influential on black metal. They named black metal, the album was called Black Metal.
1:29:17 Rick Rubin? Really?
1:29:18 Speaker 01 And the vocals of Venom, I remember Tom's brother, John, was my guitar tech for a long time and he would tell me that when Slayer started, they wanted to hear Tom sing more like Venom.
1:29:35 Rick Rubin? Wow.
1:29:35 Speaker 01 And you hear it in early Slayer, Show No Mercy era, really, you hear a lot of that Venom in Slayer. But this is a song called "Black Metal" by Venom.
1:29:50 Speaker 01 And also the production, the speed.
1:30:41 Speaker 01 This and a couple other bands were considered the first wave of black metal. Because black metal has another act coming in the early 90s. Which is my favorite part of our story ever.
1:30:58 Speaker 01 I love black metal music.
1:31:04 Speaker 01 You could say black metal music got its name from that song. But if you want to hear how its influence on Slayer...
1:31:17 Speaker 01 It's gonna very well been a Venom song.
1:31:30 Speaker 01 Same kind of beat, right? Black metal. Drap beat.
1:32:09 Speaker 01 You can hear how this came from Venom.
1:32:14 Rick Rubin? The thing that this has that Venom doesn't is Dave Lombardo. The thing about Dave Lombardo is no matter how fast it gets, it's always groovy. It never sounds like
1:32:28 Rick Rubin? It's always swinging.
1:32:30 Speaker 01 I got a chance to once jam with Dave.
1:32:33 Rick Rubin? And could you feel it?
1:32:35 Speaker 01 Dave is a different kind of drummer, man.
1:32:39 Rick Rubin? Totally different.
1:32:40 Speaker 01 You can play one riff and Dave will change what he's playing and he will change your riff. The story with that is, uh, we were playing the whiskey once. Dave was in our mosh pit.
1:32:55 Rick Rubin? So cool.
1:32:56 Speaker 01 And we had never met him before. And, uh, we were just playing and I kind of was like, dude, that's Dave Lombardo in the fucking mosh pit. And I was like, oh, we have to meet him. We met him afterwards and my first thing was like, dude, you gotta come to our It's like, I gotta play with Dave Lombardo.
1:33:12 Rick Rubin? Yeah.
1:33:13 Speaker 01 And he came. He came to our studio like a week later or something like that. I don't know if he remembers this, but I do. It was great.
1:33:20 Rick Rubin? I'm sure he does.
1:33:20 Speaker 01 And we, we didn't, it wasn't even like at first we were playing songs or I was just like riffing, just jamming, just free jamming, which a lot of metal guys can't do, you know? And he would just free jam and it was just like going from one thing to another. But one thing I noticed was like, I could just sit there and play a riff and this guy was changing the things he was playing. And I didn't have to change anything, but he was just changing the vibe of the riff.
1:33:47 Rick Rubin? Yeah. It made like the riff into three parts without changing.
1:33:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, without doing anything. So the hype on Dave is definitely well deserved.
1:33:55 Rick Rubin? For me, it's like that feel of it's groovy. And most drummers, the faster you get, the less groovy it gets. It gets more stiff, more straight. But Dave's always swinging.
1:34:08 Speaker 01 No, he's special. He's a special drummer.
1:34:12 Rick Rubin? I always felt like that's what separated Slayer from all the other speed metal bands was just the way Dave played. I love, obviously, the songwriting in Slayer regardless, but the feel of it was always what drew me energetically to Slayer, the groove.
1:34:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, his fills, the fills that he would play on later albums, like that was kind of very straightforward, raw Slayer.
1:34:35 Rick Rubin? Yeah.
1:34:36 Speaker 01 I'm kind of playing these albums from these bands that some of these bands changed along the way. But I'm playing their early versions of this band. Like, I just played that song from Slayer because I wanted to I wanted to set that song up with the Venom.
1:34:54 Rick Rubin? Yeah, see the connection.
1:34:55 Speaker 01 So you can, yeah, so you can see the connection of how Venom inspired that.
1:35:00 Rick Rubin? Yes.
1:35:01 Speaker 01 So I see Venom being an influence on Slayer when I hear that sound, but then I hear Motorhead being a key influence for Metallica and making that Motorhead drive with more of the metal kind of riffs and early Metallica, well, Motor Breath.
1:35:36 Speaker 01 You can't fuck with early Metallica. I mean, it is what it is.
1:35:49 Speaker 01 Motorhead drive, you know?
1:36:29 Speaker 02 Don't stop for nothing, full speed or nothing. I'm taking down whatever's in my way. Getting your pizza, shooting the line. Sending the shibboleths up and down my spine.
1:36:43 Speaker 02 Move your breath, sour in my life. I can't take it any other way. Move your breath, sour, I'm getting it fast. This is going to take your breath away.
1:37:22 Speaker 01 I mean, what is this, 82, 83?
1:37:28 Speaker 01 Heavy as clock.
1:37:31 Speaker 01 Anyone who heard this for the first time at that time was blown away. Or it was too heavy for them. Like, some people wouldn't get it because it's too fast, too crazy.
1:37:50 Rick Rubin? What I hear different about that than Motorhead, let's say, is there's a technical proficiency.
1:37:56 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:37:56 Rick Rubin? With Motorhead, it's superpower slur.
1:38:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, distorted bass.
1:38:02 Rick Rubin? Yeah, but James's
1:38:04 Speaker 01 Riffing.
1:38:05 Rick Rubin? Strumming, really.
1:38:06 Speaker 01 Tight.
1:38:07 Rick Rubin? It's so tight, and that's very different than whatever punk rock roots they might have.
1:38:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:38:14 Rick Rubin? Punk rock rarely sounds technically tight. It's just a different thing.
1:38:18 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm, yeah.
1:38:19 Rick Rubin? And the skipping also, it's like, it's not just straight, fast, it's...
1:38:24 Speaker 01 It's not open chords either, it's muted guitars. People call the genre junt, which I don't really like that.
1:38:30 Rick Rubin? Junt?
1:38:31 Speaker 01 Junt, because it's a guitar goes junt. It's like a whole thing. That's after my time, to be honest, like, it's a
1:38:38 Rick Rubin? Junt metal?
1:38:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, younger, younger metalheads have, like, you know, bands they call junt. But it's got the junt, but... You also have to think of the guitar tone was more of a compressed kind of guitar tone. It wasn't your regular.
1:38:54 Rick Rubin? It's more percussive, really.
1:38:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. It's not that rock tone anymore. That starts becoming the heavy metal tone. So when you mute your guitars, there's just like bass behind it. There's this tightness behind it. You start seeing that at this time.
1:39:13 Rick Rubin? Do you remember when you first heard Metallica?
1:39:14 Speaker 01 I remember exactly where I was, but I didn't know that it was Metallica. Some kids in a parking lot when we were take, when we were on a trip to Lake Arrowhead. And I heard Faster Faster in my head out of their car coming up. And I was like into metal, but I was like, what is this song Faster Faster? I didn't know they were saying Master, Master. And then it wasn't until I ran into the cassette and accidentally played the song. And I was like, oh my God, it's that Faster Faster, but they're saying Master, Master.
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