The following is a very in-depth discussion of my own personal relationship to metal, and contains highly sensitive information. Therefore, it is imperative that the issues discussed here be treated with respect and care. This is all deeply personal to me. Thank you:

Music has been part of my life since as far back as I can remember. It has punctuated moments of ecstasy, triumph, failure, pain, loss, and boredom; a constant soundtrack to my life. Mental illness, in one form or another, has also been part of my life since my earliest memories. What began as a distinct feeling that I somehow did not belong in, or to, this world, permeates my recollections of even early childhood. I was surrounded by people, yet, somehow, alone. Elementary school drudged by, where I slowly learned the sorrows of unrequited romance, the pain of emotional bullying, and also the truth that there was something within me that made it impossible to fit within the social mold presented for me. I was “too sensitive”; my emotions were centered deep within my psyche, and could not be contained, but were ready to burst forth at a moment’s notice to explode outward on those I deemed had wronged me. Suffice it to say I had few close friends, and those I had were quick to remind me of my difference. I’ve received some form of therapy since the age of 5, starting with speech therapy for my stutter (I was told my brain moved too fast for my mouth), and on to occupational therapy and then quickly to psychological counseling, neuropsychological evaluations, and a diagnosis of a learning disability. All this served to reinforce my perception that there was certainly something wrong with me at a fundamental level. I was eight years old when I first began thinking about ending my life, though not actively, it came more in thoughts that kept me awake at night – heart beating out of my chest as I contemplated the possibility of growing older.

The bullying and apartness continued throughout elementary and middle school, but one thing always seemed to make things a bit better, and that was of course listening to music. This was the panacea I had looked for, a soundtrack to drown out the constant droning on and on of my overactive brain. My first recollection of music that really spoke to me was a cassette tape that my parents used to put on in the car on a regular basis. It was a solo tape by George Harrison, the album Cloud Nine, specifically the song “Got My Mind Set On You”. To this day, despite constant rotation in my internal soundtrack, I have no idea what specifically it was about this song that caused it to imprint itself on me so deeply, but perhaps it was a certain emotional weight to it that I perceived, even as a young child. My other first musical love was liturgical music at my synagogue, which had a knack for lifting me to heights of spiritual connection, and upon which I began to rely for a sense of belonging to the world. It was this brew of emotional weight and spiritual connection that would blossom into a reasonable solution to my burgeoning mental health crisis.

I was anxious, depressed, and in deep emotional pain. Some of it was completely internal, while other parts were compounded by the almost constant emotional abuse I was receiving at school. My peers were savage, and becoming increasingly so as puberty took hold in middle school. I was now stopped in the hallways of school and reminded that I had no friends. I was lied to, made to believe that certain people were my friends, but when push came to shove I was left by the wayside. I actually had one “friend” who would ask me to walk a block behind him when we were out together, because he didn’t want to be seen with me. This was not only true of platonic friendships, but also romantic ones. Many times, girls in my school would feign interest in me, until I showed up at an agreed-upon spot for a talk, and would be confronted with what felt like the whole student body. This all had a profound effect on my feelings of worthlessness and pain. It was at this point that I began to turn to drugs and alcohol as a solution to my feelings. This was not new, as I had experimented a bit as a younger child. It was also not an everyday thing, as of yet, but more of an optional escape route during times of extreme stress.

Music, my constant friend, stayed with me through it all. Despite my early inclination toward The Beatles and the pop-punk and Nu-metal permeating the radio airwaves at the time, I was exclusively a fan of three specific bands: Led Zeppelin, The Who, and Pink Floyd. These three bands were my soundtrack to high school. I know this is a metal blog, and many of my metal brothers and sisters got into metal through the Nu-Metal movement during the late nineties and early 2000’s, but I was firmly affixed to the hard-rocking, blues tinged, folk and prog inspired stylings of these bands. Everything I needed was there: emotional weight, musical prowess, an otherworldy, occult feeling, and a confirmation that I was not following musical trends. Another part of this music that appealed to me was the constant reference to Tolkien, and to ancient folklore, these being my other great loves, (along with Star Wars, but that’s for another blog!) To me, Nu-Metal was complete and utter garbage, and, due to living in a time where that was metal, I thought that metal was stupid, dull, uninteresting music, far too uncouth for my burgeoning classic rock snobbery. I became obsessed with Led Zeppelin. During drug-induced psychotic episodes I became Robert Plant. I felt my face changing to take on the the shape of his visage. I felt my voice contorting into a facsimile of his voice.

High school saw my drug and alcohol use blossom into a full-fledged problem. I didn’t go a single day my junior year without using at least one substance. My mental health deteriorated, and I became even more eccentric, making it more difficult to find and keep friends. But that didn’t matter; I had my CDs and my drugs and my room with the lights off. I could escape into a world of my own making, run full-flight away from reality, and I loved it. I was ok being alone, because that meant I could sink further into my fantasy. Songs like “Achilles Last Stand”, “The Battle of Evermore”, “Immigrant Song” and “In The Light”, were perfect soundtracks for my escape. If I wanted to feel something more deeply, I could throw on “Friends”, or “That’s The Way”. The Who’s Quadrophenia album began heavy rotation, with its themes of isolation, alcoholism, and suicide matching much of my high school experience. Even with a girlfriend, (who at this point, looking back, I feel very sorry for) and with a growing group of drug-addled teenage misfits, I prefered to be alone with my drugs and my music. I sank deeper into depression and plummeted toward academic failure. I honestly don’t know how I got into college.

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Music has always been about a search for spiritual and emotional connection to something greater than myself. That’s why liturgical music also crept back into my soundtrack. Now I could play the part of Robert Plant, heroic, standing on stage in front of a packed stadium, or I could be a Chazan, chanting ancient and beautiful hymns before a congregation with mouths agape. And another, softer side of music made an appearance, along with a heavier, more drug-infused style. I began an affair with psychedelic rock, and, simultaneously broadened my horizons to more folk-oriented prog bands, especially Jethro Tull. They were joined by Richie Havens, Janis Joplin, Love, Jimi Hendrix, Fairport Convention, and an even heavier emphasis on Pink Floyd, especially the Animals and The Wall albums. In fact, it was my interest in Jethro Tull that ultimately led to my discovery of metal, but I’ll get to that later. In the meantime, I was happy to get lost in the forest with Songs From The Wood, or to delve into high fantasy with Thick as a Brick. I began to be more obsessed with the darker sides of the types of music I listened to, my fantasies turning morbid as I obsessed over the meaning of A Passion Play, or as I studied the tragedy that was Syd Barret’s life after he left Pink Floyd, becoming well-versed in The Madcap Laughs and Opal. I identified myself with the dead man in A Passion Play. I felt a kinship with the saddened madman Syd Barrett, the lonely mentally ill man with a childlike aura and a simple beauty about his music.

College opened my eyes to even more darkened and sad music for me to obsess over. Blind Melon joined the soundtrack, the perfect accompaniment to my descent into drug-fueled loneliness. In particular, the song “New Life”, which documents Shannon Hoon’s feelings of hope and confusion at the prospect of being a father. He believed that having a child would be the necessary push for him to get sober. The tragedy of his story was that he would die shortly afterward of a drug overdose. I believed this would be my fate at some point, and in some ways welcomed the idea. I remember hearing the song “Change”, and sobbing at the words “When you feel life aint worth livin’/ you got to stand up/ take a look around/look away to the sky!/ And when your deepest thoughts are broken yeah keep on dreamin’ boy/ when you stop dreamin’ it’s time to die”. I felt these lyrics deeply. I would wander my college campus late at night, intoxicated and alone, singing these songs at the top of my lungs. Suffice it to say my difficulty with finding friends was confounded by my eccentricities. I was, yet again, ‘the weird kid’. As I wallowed in the darkened edges of alternative rock music, I was introduced, albeit very late in the game, to Alice In Chains, which, looking back, may have been my introduction to doom metal (I still think Dirt is more of a doom record than a grunge record), though I didn’t know it yet.

It’s a pretty big plummet, I think, from hippie folksy music and mostly mainstream hard rock to the depths of the metal underground, but every journey starts with a first step; for me, it was the simple suggestion that if I liked Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull’s explorations of ancient folklore and medieval themes, I would probably also enjoy Iron Maiden. While I enjoyed Maiden quite a bit, and they made it into my soundtrack, I don’t think I really got metal until I found myself being dragged along to a metal show by some friends (the few who hadn’t yet tired of my depressing antics). It was a metalcore show, though I had no lexicon for that type of thing. To me, it was just metal, a genre of music that I had always assumed I would hate, due to my only examples being the dregs of the nu-metal movement. The bill was perfectly representative of what one might expect for a small club show in a small town in January 2008. As I Lay Dying, August Burns Red, Evergreen Terrace (they were obviously and decidedly not metal) and Still Remains as an opening act. I was immediately taken aback by the power and intensity of the music live, but if I’m honest, I was scared out of my mind. Big, burly skinhead-looking dudes in black tank tops spin-kicked their way toward me in the pit, as I desperately tried to smoke the blunt that I’d snuck into the show. I left that show relatively unscathed, and with a new respect for this genre with which I previously had no experience. I remember being blown away by the solos, and by the energy in the crowd during the parts which I would come to learn were called ‘breakdowns’. There was a sense of connectedness, also, with which I was familiar, but only in the context of communal prayer. Everyone knew the words, everyone knew the movements, everyone pushed and jumped and the crowd rippled like a roiling sea. Despite not knowing the words, and feeling somewhat out of place in my baggy jeans and dirty Salvador Dali shirt (it was the edgiest article of clothing I owned at the time, and I thought one must wear an edgy t-shirt to a metal show), I was so immersed in the power and the movement of the crowd that I couldn’t but feel a power come over me, travel through me, until I became one with the noise and flow of the crowd.

My journey into the heart of metal didn’t arrive like a bolt in the blue. It was not an overnight change, though I do view this show, in hindsight, as the spark that lit the flame that would burn unquenched in my heart thereafter, a thirst for truth in metal. I was not an overnight metalhead, nor was I particularly well-versed in metal as a genre. I had no idea where to begin; that was part of the allure. Metal was this vast, untapped well of inspiration and I, the curious prospector, would draw up the purest form I could to quench my thirst. This would require lots of research. I was not well acquainted with any fans of metal who were willing to really take me under their wing at the time; I was deeply depressed and mostly alone. During the day, I slept in a dark dorm room with Blind Melon blasting to drown out the hubbub of dorm life. At night, I would dive deep into the abyss of Wikipedia articles about metal music, metal fandom, metal philosophy, satanism, and the various connections between subgenres, bands, fans, fashions, and lifestyles. It was through Wikipedia that I developed a sketchbook knowledge of the ins and outs of the metal scene. I was impressed with what these articles said about metalheads: these were men and women who believed in the importance of individual expression, who held themselves accountable for their actions, and who had found a passionate love for a music which moved them. It seemed the music gave them a sense of power and energy, and a connection to something bigger than themselves. While many people expressed this as satanism, I found others who were Christian, and Jewish, and Muslim, and those whose religion seemed to be the ideology of metal itself.

Despite all this reading, I still wasn’t listening to that much metal. But I had bigger fish to fry than just unearthing a music scene. Managing my mental health problems was fast becoming a full-time job. After a period of relative calm, I began to lose touch with reality. Long story short, a brutal cocktail of alcohol, pain killers, adderral, xanax, psychedellics, cannabis, major depression, lack of sleep, social isolation, and non-engagement in school activities led me to a breaking point. I was actually on academic probation for several months without really knowing it (I think I remember seeing an email about it, but it was filed away with all of the ‘where have you been?’ emails from my professors). I owed the bank a few thousand dollars in overdraft fees, I had burned every bridge with the people around me (my roommate actually moved out of our room because he couldn’t deal with my bullshit), and I was in an almost constant state of drug induced psychosis. I was paranoid. Everyone was thinking and talking about me. In my mind I was cursed to walk the earth a social pariah. I stopped bathing. I stopped talking to people. I built an alternate reality, one where I was doing fine, where all my work was getting done, and if you were to ask me (and my parents did, often), I was able to tell you this unflinchingly; I believed it to be true, though not too far below the surface the truth was staring back at me.

I awoke one evening, deciding I needed help. Going to the school counseling center, I was met with an offer for help, if only I would turn in a drug test to show where I was at in terms of my use. I tried to play it off like I wasn’t using drugs, but the counselor said to me “you literally have weed residue on your fingers right now, like, I’m not an idiot”. This was not the first time I’d sought help from the counseling center at school, though the first time ended with me running out of the office after I “accidentally” checked off the “recent suicidal ideation” box in the intake assessment. But this time I knew I really needed the help. I went back to my room to roll a joint, figuring I had popped positive anyway, so there was no use trying not to get high that night. As I sat there rolling, my dorm room a graveyard of old bottles and take-out containers, an archeological dig site with layers of old clothing and schoolwork piled in stratified layers denoting the month when I had tossed it aside, my phone rang. It was my parents. They asked me what I was up to. I responded “just doing my homework”. They replied “Ok, great, so open the door”. I was caught. It was over. There was no hiding my decompensation. There was no time to hide my drugs, or my paraphernalia.

My school had ‘asked me to take a medical leave of absence’, which is private school talk for ‘get help and get out’. So I got out. And I got help.

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Moving back in with my parents was interesting, to say the least. My parents, to their credit, really tried to understand where I was coming from; how things got this bad. They would sit with me some nights, asking me about my feelings, my thoughts, my plans for the future. This was an interesting part of my healing process, and one that I don’t often think about. It was also a time when I began to try to give them an insight into my feelings through music. I would sit them down and show them songs I’d been listening to in order to express what I was feeling at the time. Their reaction to some of the sad-boy music I’d been listening to (I had a brief flirtation with what in hindsight I would say is shitty emo music) was the expected tears and questions about suicidal ideation. Their reaction to the metal I’d been listening to was… different. They were none too pleased with the video for ‘Homicidal Retribution’ by Dying Fetus, for example. But I was finding more and more that I needed this kind of music more than I needed the sad melodrama of the emo scene (I mean no disrespect here, there are a lot of emo bands I still love, but the shit I had been listening to was really awful; that’s a story for another time). I needed music that made me feel powerful and took me away from my negative self-talk. I needed an escape.

I needed to find a way to heal, and at that point, healing meant a massive change in thought and in action. My mind and body felt broken, there was a gaping maw in my heart that needed filling, and the drugs and alcohol didn’t do the trick anymore (which was incredibly frustrating). I was attending an outpatient rehab weekly, but it wasn’t particularly helpful, and I couldn’t stop using for even a whole day. This portion of the story is fairly boring looking back on it; about a month of doing the same thing over and over trying to get different results and failing, knowing that the result would be the same anyway. It was groundhog day every day, and can be summed up by saying that I learned I couldn’t change my whole way of being without some kind of help. I count my first day of being a true metalhead as the first day I made it without drinking alcohol or using drugs, my first day sober, May 12th of 2008. I actually fell asleep that night listening to a band I’d just found out about, called Hammerfall, and one song stood out ‘Remember Yesterday’. Now I’m not trying to say that metal got me sober. It did make me feel connected to something more powerful and grander than I am, or than my problems are. I did actually reach out for help from some like-minded people who had gotten help for their substance use problems, and who helped me through their experiences to feel like I wasn’t alone anymore. But now here I was, not drinking, not using drugs, not working, single, out of school, with a lot of time on my hands.

I dove back into researching metal; there was something to this music that made me feel confident, powerful, and connected to something greater. I had been encouraged by my new sober friends to connect to something greater, and while my search was ultimately for God, as I now try to understand God, my first clear path to connection after years of separation was, as in the beginning, through music. It is ironic that this music, synonymous as it is with anti-religious hatred and satanism, would lead me to an understanding of God, but sometimes things work out in ways we can’t understand.

As I mentioned earlier, my path to metal begins with my interest in Jethro Tull, as well as the more epic songs from Led Zeppelin. In albums like Songs from the Wood and Thick As A Brick, I reconnected with my childhood love of medieval history and fantasy. But where Songs from the Wood placed me firmly beside a medieval campfire, with a bard singing softly and connecting me to the forest, those first metal albums I bought felt like I was riding a horse into battle, a knight fighting for justice and the goodness of humanity, slaying dragons as I ride. I had found an extension of a sound that I already loved, through bands such as Iron Maiden, Hammerfall, Blind Guardian, Manowar, and Falconer. I had found Power Metal! This style was perfect for me. It was close enough to the more mainstream music that I was used to that I could understand the where it was coming from, it had soaring and powerful vocals that were reminiscent of Robert Plant and Freddie Mercury, but with a type of riffing that I’d not heard since the first time I heard ‘Immigrant Song’ or ‘Achilles Last Stand’. Listening to albums like Hammerfall’s Legacy of Kings and Manowar’s The Triumph of Steel made me feel like I was part of this great legacy of powerful heroes in a constant battle against all things dishonorable. It made me feel connected to a vast history and a tribe of people who shared a worldview with which I connected. Most importantly, listening to these bands allowed me to forget my real life struggles, helping me to disappear into a fantasy world of demons and wizards, warriors and outlaws.

From here, I delved deeper and deeper into the fertile but often nebulous foundations of metal. I unearthed other subgenres, each with its own distinct sound and aesthetic, its own feel. They were all bound together with the spirit of freedom and power, which had been the catalyst for my exploration. There seemed to be a style for every mood, for every weather pattern, for every activity. I think this process would be familiar to any burgeoning metalhead; first I found thrash, then death metal, then black metal, and then all of the various combinations thereof. I will never forget the first time I heard Master of Puppets, the opening acoustic guitar of ‘Battery’ transitioning into that first thrash riff I’d ever heard–that was power. From there it was Slayer Reign in Blood, I was beginning to develop a taste for speed. I wanted it faster, harder, more powerful. Next came Cannibal Corpse Tomb of the Mutilated, and Morbid Angel Altars of Madness. I found out about Pantera by searching ‘Power Metal’ on iTunes and coming up with their album of that name, but it was their album Cowboys From Hell that caught my eye. I had no idea how to categorize that one, but I knew I liked it. It felt like there was so much to learn and so much to discover when it came to metal. The different styles, the cover art, the lyrics, interviews with band members, it felt like the world was my oyster.

I put my research hat back on and began the process of peeling back the layers of history and change to discover the roots of each subgenre of metal. I wanted to find the purest, most distilled form of each. I vigorously traced the lines back to their roots, and found so many more bands. Death, Possessed, Deicide, Obituary, Autopsy; I could hear the different pieces of death metal coming together through the seminal records from these bands. And I found the same for black metal, discovering Venom, Bathory, Mayhem, Darkthrone, Behemoth and Emperor. Thrash was great, too, and I fell in love with Overkill, Metal Church, Testament, Anthrax, Slayer, Metallica, and Sodom. I even found grindcore, with Napalm Death and Terrorizer making an appearance in my rapidly expanding iTunes musical catalogue. When I wasn’t at work, in therapy, or meeting with my newfound sober friends, I was listening to and reading about metal. I had found a new obsession, and it provided me with a “new level of confidence and power”. I often find myself wishing I could go back to the first time I heard some of these records, to hear these sounds with fresh ears and to not be able to predict each movement of the music, each surprise that awaited around the corner. I’ll never forget the first time I heard a black metal record all the way through; it was Behemoth Sventevith (Storming Near The Baltic), and I had no idea what to expect. It sounded to me like medieval european folk music being played in an ancient mystical land. I had never heard a record with production like this, sounding like the whole thing was ‘Hidden in a Fog’, so to speak. I was enamoured with the way I needed to almost lean forward into the music to understand what was happening, and the sense that even after repeated listens, there were mysteries for which I still had far to seek. I had the same type of experience with each new extreme metal record I heard, requiring multiple listens to unlock its secrets, adding to the sense of excitement with each new record I found.

The biggest boon to my developing love of metal was my discovery of the strength of the community surrounding it. I found this community through online reviews, through metal magazines like Terrorizer and Metal Hammer, and through Banger Films. The documentary Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey connected all the dots for me. This was a film about the true power of metal to bring people together. There is a great moment in that film where Chuck Klosterman is being interviewed and he talks about how metal tells people who might feel ‘different’ that they’re really not; that instead they are actually part of this worldwide community of people with shared values, that they are not alone. This is the crux of it for me; metal helped me feel like I wasn’t alone anymore. Just as I had felt alone in my alcoholism and drug addiction, and had found a community of people who had the same issues who could help me solve my problem, I’d also found a different community of people who were all being ‘different’, together. Headbanger’s Journey also includes many interviews with metal fans who explain what metal means to them; it means a sense of belonging but also a sense of individual identity and confidence. Courage and persistence were themes throughout subgenres. All I knew was that when I heard the sound of metal music, it stirred something in my soul, and made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. It made me feel a power flowing through me that I didn’t know could exist in me, and I wanted more.

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I recognize that this is getting a bit long in the tooth, but I feel it would behove me to wrap up by explaining briefly how I got from a beginner metal-head to the die-hard I currently am. The long and the short of it is; I didn’t do it alone, but my metal journey wasn’t entirely typical. I didn’t have an older family member who could guide me through the mysts, nor did I have friends who cared to take the journey with me, at least in the beginning. I did eventually meet people along the way, some of whom I have stuck with, at least to some degree. My friend Will ran a college radio show at Princeton, and I had the pleasure of being a guest DJ there (albeit only once, due to my own anxieties I guess), and an old friend from middle school named Alex, who, it turned out, was a phenomenal metal drummer, originally playing for a technical death metal band called Pyrrhon. He has gone on to play live with Malignancy, and to record lots of awesome albums (including the most recent Pyrexia record, which is awesome). Try as they might, though, these two brothers in metal could not get me to come to shows. This has been my major difficulty in terms of really feeling like a part of the scene. My sometimes crippling anxiety makes going to shows really uncomfortable. Also, as somebody who no longer drinks alcohol or uses drugs, it can be frustrating having people spill beer all over me in the pit. I’m not one of those ‘straight edge’ types who will get angry at other people having a good time, but I know what I can handle and what I can’t, and somehow being covered in alcohol makes me a bit anxious. Because of this, I’ve mainly seen shows when there are bands playing who I have a special emotional connection to. I sought ways to engage in the metal community without having to put myself in a position to have anxiety attacks, while still feeling like a part of the community at large. Metal review sites like Encyclopedia Metallum allowed me the opportunity to feel connected while remaining safe. Despite this, I continued to feel that I was not contributing to the scene at all.

Purchasing records and band merch, reviewing some records on Metallum, subscribing to metal youtubers; these are some of the ways I tried to contribute. I even recording some of my own music, which I stand behind as really interesting black metal with Jewish mythological themes as well as personal reflections, but I don’t think I’ll ever release any of it, if I’m honest. I’m not a particularly talented writer, at least not talented enough to write for a major magazine or internet publication, and even after over 10 years of listening to and loving metal, I sometimes feel like an imposter or a poseur. That being said, after years of experiencing the power, beauty, and healing energy of metal, I’ve been exposed to many people, fans as well as band members and others, who have become more and more open about struggles with mental illness, substance use, and other challenging life situations. Whether it’s Randy Blythe’s openness about his struggles with alcoholism, Devin Townsend’s experience with bipolar disorder, or Nergal’s fight against leukemia, all these and many more are representative of the power of this community and this music to heal. Their openness about struggle, growth, and redemption, along with my own experience both as a person with mental health problems and substance use issues and as somebody now working in the mental health field has inspired me to put together this blog. In many ways, metal inspired me to pursue my dream of becoming a social worker, as metal encouraged me to stand up for my beliefs, to care for my fellow travellers, and to never give up, even when things seemed darkest. I think I have finally found my contribution to the scene; a metal blog dedicated to openness about mental health and substance use struggles, as well as other struggles that can be difficult to talk about. I hope to create a safe enough space for people to have their voices heard, and to create an open dialogue in an effort to enrich the scene. This very long-winded introduction will be followed by discussions of records that have been important in my growth. I hope to eventually do interviews, and to have other writers add to this open dialogue about the healing power of metal.

In the words of HammerFall’s ‘Stronger Than All’, “This magic of metal unites us / is making us strong!”

In Metal,

Spencer