“The devil makes sense to them”: The band Dave Grohl said was straight from hell
Dave Grohl learned the first rule of being a good musician long ago: never be a snob. Although many artists like to draw lines in the sand in terms of musicians that they wouldn’t be caught dead collaborating with, Grohl knew that it was far more interesting to make music with whoever struck his fancy, whether that was jamming with Guns N’ Roses or working his magic in Nine Inch Nails. And for someone born and bred in the punk tradition, many people can benefit from learning a thing or two from how Grohl operates.
After all, the original punks were trying to stomp out any other genre in their way, and the entire idea of selling out started to become more and more of an issue as the years went on. Even when Nirvana changed the landscape of music overnight, no one would accept them as a punk band strictly because of how catchy some of their songs were, no matter how many times Kurt Cobain screamed at them.
And while Grohl doesn’t even pretend to abide by those same dated punk credentials today, that doesn’t mean he can’t still enjoy a lot of the heavy stuff he loved back in the day. He may have first fallen in love with drumming by playing along to Rush and Beatles records in his bedroom, but once he found out that playing as fast as he could was a lot more fun, it didn’t take him long to embrace the sounds of bands like Fugazi.
Then again, metal has always been punk rock’s older brother in many ways. The biggest names in punk rock when Grohl was growing up like Henry Rollins also worshipped at the alter of Black Sabbath, and since both genres were about being an antithesis to the mainstream and toying with what was acceptable, it’s not like there wasn’t at least a little bit of overlap between their fans.
And while no self-respecting punk fan would have wanted anything to do with a band like Poison or Winger in the 1980s, thrash metal was much easier to grasp. This was metal with the same kind of ferocious energy as Ramones and The Damned, but the minute Grohl heard what Slayer could do, he knew that there was something truly demented going on whenever they plugged in.
It might have annoyed many upset mothers to no end, but when picking out tracks to listen to, Grohl said there was no better way to get the blood pumping than Slayer, saying, “We have a boombox in the dressing room before we go on with, like 15 CDs in, but it’s all fucking death metal, so it’s hard to think of what would work. How about Slayer’s ‘Raining Blood’ off Reign In Blood? Slayer’s straight from hell, and anything the devil says makes sense to them!”
There’s probably not going to be some kind of black magic to learn from studying their records, but ‘Raining Blood’ remains the closest any thrash metal band has come to depicting hell. The riff itself is already a bit monstrous, but the minute Jeff Hannemann and Kerry King kick up the BPM almost faster than mortal ears can hear, their guitars practically sound like they’re being tortured as they’re being pulled down to the underworld.
Even though bands like Venom and King Diamond played up their occultist tendencies for the press, Slayer might be the better soundtrack for what happens when moving into the afterlife. They may have been unlistenable to some people back in the day, but for any modern metalhead, any Tom Araya scream is usually the sign for everyone to start headbanging and beating the shit out of each other in the pit.
