All Known Metal Bands
By (Author) Dan Nelson
McSweeney's Publishing
McSweeney's Publishing
28th May 2008
Main
United States
General
Non Fiction
782.421660922
Hardback
300
This volume contains the names of over 50,000 metal bands. Presuming that each of these bands had an average of four members, and multipling that by the number of bands, one might figure that at least a quarter of a million humans have pledged allegiance to one of them at some point is his or her lifetime. Never has a genre of music relegated to the underground of a civilization had so many devotees; no radio needs to transmit the power of this music, for it is sought out fiercely and freely by the doomed and the dispossessed, whose ears are never soiled by songs of love and weakness.
These names are invisible tokens to be spoken aloud, each representing a human quest for superhuman spectacle: shaking floorboards and quivering walls, split ears leaking blood, with faces painted and ornaments pointy, voices uttering eternal truths shunned by woman and man alike.
Dan Nelson was born in Massachusetts in 1972. In his early years, he worked primarily with unpainted wooden blocks, moving on at age five to photography. After a teenage period of reading Jean Cocteau, dyeing his hair, taking more photographs, and drumming in the basement, he attended Saint John's College. He then became a sailor, visiting several countries on various continents whose shores are lapped by several oceans. He returned to the U.S. to become a photojournalist in 1999, and again donned the mantle of artist after a ten-year hiatus. In 2002 he moved to California in a sedan, pausing in Indiana to pick up a drum set. His current art projects include illustrations for a Schubert song cycle and "140 Ways to Make a Cassette Unlistenable".