Tales from the Jugular

Ever Been Scared by a Band?

Were you ever scared by a band and is anybody scary to you now?

We asked a bunch of staffers, metalheads, and musicians and got these responses:


Back in the day Slayer and King Diamond were pretty scary to me. Now, the music has changed so much, I don’t know if anybody scares me. --Dawg, downBleed www.downbleed.com

I was scared to death the first time I got to meet Blackie Lawless of WASP! I was backstage when they opened for KISS (on the Animalize tour I think), and I got to talking with the head roadie. He said after the show he would take me to meet Blackie, and we go back by the dressing rooms and there stands Blackie all decked out in black leather head to toe and mirror sunglasses. I also didn't realize he was 6 foot 6, plus he had 2 or 3 in boots on! It took me about 2 minutes to say anything because he was so intimidating staring down at me, all larger than life with his heavy metal scowl going on, but he turned out to be a very cool guy in the end. Long live Blackie! Now, the only guys that scare me are all those nu-rockers that can't play a frigging solo to save their lives and are trying to inspire kids to be like them. They should have to go through a texas cage match with the guitar god himself, Zakk Wylde! --Jonny Lokke, www.johnnylokke.com

Never really sacred by a band. When I was growing up I was into death,
thrash and black metal so the more evil, the better. The only time I really became scared was in the last few years when I started to hear no-talent crap like The Strokes and The White Stripes get airplay. These musical rejects somehow got record deals- THAT SCARES THE HELL OUT OF ME!! Type O Negative-Peter Steele resembles the essence of a vampire with a voice to go with it. --Gordon Tittsworth, Images of Eden www.imagesofeden.com

Slayer was scary when I first heard of them. I was a good Christian boy so all those satanic lyrics and imagery freaked me out. It's funny how things change. Later on in my senior year of High School I really got into them. I used to blast "Haunting The Chapel" out the windows of my car as I pulled into the church parking lot on Sundays. Those where the days. Megadeth "Go To Hell" also used to scared the crap out of me, especially the video with Dave's face in the water all twisted and deformed and saying all this satanic stuff. Iron Maiden's Eddie scared me. When I was young I used to visit my aunt and uncle allot, and my cousin Gail was a huge Maiden fan. She had all these posters and pictures all over the walls and ceiling of Kiss, Motley Crue, Ozzy and of course Iron Maiden. One poster in particular was a huge door poster of Eddie from "Live After Death" smashing through the door. That poster scared the crap out of me and I was always afraid of going into her room until a few years later when I finally started outgrowing my childhood fears. The Ironic thing is I now own all her Maiden posters. She gave them to me one day after finding out how much of a big Maiden fan I had become. She was a single mother and felt to old for those things, but she held onto them. Giving them to me was kind of her way of passing the torch. It was pretty cool.--Ice Devil

‘Intimidating’ may be a better word for me. Most of the bands from my early days, like AC\DC and Zep, had a hard rock image. Even though it has corny parts, I thought Maiden (Bruce!) in the 'Number of the Beast' video was way on the edge. Then during the thrash years of Metallica and Anthrax, I recalled seeing Slayer posters where the guys looked beyond anything else. Today you have some ugly black and death metal bands, but overall it's more individual people than full bands. --Frank Hill

I was thinking Maiden myself. GWAR - More funny to me than scary...but some may see them as scary. Manson- again, not really scary to me, but more strange. Poison- scared the hell out of me. --XCheck

Alice Cooper never used to instill any loving feelings in me. I think it was mainly the stories and legend that surrounded him, biting chickens heads off ect. --Neekoy

The first band that blew my mind was Kiss in my early years and i thought they were really cool but at the same time kind of scary. Actually it was Gene Simmons that freaked me out the most, not that i was really afraid of him because i thought he was cool with the demon makeup and dragon shoes and axebass, but at the same time i didn´t know what hid behind the mask of this fire-spitting blood-drewling demon. As i grew up and got older i became aware of that there were real people beneath the masks, then the "fear" and "mystique" around the band kind of faded. I still listen to Kiss (the older stuff) but mostly out of a nostalgic point of view with a cold beer in my hand. --John Hermansen, Mother Misery www.mothermisery.com

1st Q: I was at a Deicide show and got hit w/ a piece of bloody meat that was kinda scary/messy/wierd. 2nd Q: Jack Frost is very scary to me. --Wade Black, Leash Law www.leashlaw.com

Can't say I have ever been scared by a band and dont think any particular band is all that scary actually. Some bands try to be scary and some guys are just straight up scary lookin!! --Emo Mowrey, Leash Law www.leashlaw.com

The only time a band ever freaked me out was when I bought Danzig 4. Dig this--the room is dark, lit only by my computer monitor. It's about 2am. I had the disc playing in the background while I wrote, and when the music stopped, I assumed the CD was over. Imagine my surprise when ten minutes later, the hidden track began blasting out of my speakers. I jumped so much that I spilled beer all over the keyboard. --Brian Keene - Author of THE RISING, www.briankeene.com

Sabbath were the scariest until Judas Priest's 'Sad Wings of Destiny' which I had as a new release. That one blew my mind because it was so fast and technical and had all that weird religious imagery. It was timeless and there was no press at all on the band that it seemed like they were aliens dropped in on the metal world. --Martin Popoff - Author/Reviewer, www.martinpopoff.com

The answer would have to be that I never found any band scaring me. I draw energy from them. Is anybody scary now? --generally speaking Vader still remains a scary fuck!! Especially on 'The Empire Strikes Back' "Lord Vader! The fleet has moved out of light-speed, and we're preparing to...ARGGH!" (Admiral Ozzel) --Jon K., Biomechanical www.biomechanical.co.uk

Morbid Angel really spooked me back when I first heard them about three years ago. But I suppose that was all part of the effect that made me so fascinated. Another thing that I remember is being creeped out by my sister's "Rust in Peace" shirt at around the age of 5 or 6.--Shrapnel

I like to Be in Scary situations/places like Graveyards, supposedly haunted houses,the occasional Black Mass. Stuff like that, but I have never seen anything Scary!! As far as bands go I wish that there was a band that could scare me. Some ghostly, band from the nether world. That would be killer. I have seen some damm scary Talent though,i.e. Nick Barker, Mike Manginni, Virgil Donati. Those guys are MONSTERS!!!!! --Jake Circle of Nero

Well, in 1985 I saw Exciter, Mercyful Fate and Motorhead at The Beacon
Theatre in NYC...Both Exciter and Fate put on good shows but when Motorhead came on I was standing on top of my 5th row center seat (awesome)and at the opening note of Ace of Spades it was so loud that Lemmy's bass intro hit me right in the chest and I fell back off my seat and was scared shitless! --Louie Gasparro, Supervillain

Scared of: When I first heard Celtic Frost as a kid, it scared the hell out of me. The first song that I ever heard by them was "Into Crypt Of Rays". The whole intro thing followed by my first dose of (80's) Extreme Metal made my skin crawl. However, I was instantly hooked and have been a fan of extreme metal for over 20 years now. Scary now: Nothing scary to me now, but there are a plethora of bands that have a real grim, evil aura about them. Some of those bands are: Clandestine Blaze, Black Dawn, Hate, Sin Origin, Forgotten Tomb and Graveland. --David Loveless

Bret Michaels has totally given me a fright. I love Poison beyond words, think they are a great 80's band, and deserve more respect than they are given, but Bret himself, has scared me. He did okay with his solo album,"songs about life" so he thought he could do one better by creating an album of country songs. --Psycho Sarah

I was scared of Pantera's Great Southern Treadkill album when i was younger so i sold it to my friend. That album is so dark and depressing and the booklet pictures were very eerie. I also remember being about 9 or 10 and waking up at about 2am at my grandparent's house and seeing Marilyn Manson's video for Sweet Dreams on the televison. That was the first time I had seen or heard of Marilyn Manson. That video was truly frightning to watch. --Jake

The only one I can really think of that spooked me when I first heard them is Meshuggah, but that's kinda the reason why I was drawn to them. I heard them on Ozzfest back in 2000 and I thought were one of most unique and talented extreme metal bands I had ever heard. --HeadbangerDude

Back in 1994-1995, I was quite scared when older guys in my school service bus showed me their Slayer and Sepultura tapes...Chaos A.D cover and Reign In Blood cover had frightened me very much, I remember. --Zero Tolerence

WASP: First time I saw them play ever was at L'Amour's when they played with Metallica (had to be mid 80's). I had the flu and was drugged out beyond belief but would not miss the show due to this illness. Anyway, I struggled through WASP's set, and the crazy light's and smoke coming from the onstage skulls and stuff were making me feel uncomfortable (strong medicine does that to you). Then when Blackie did the blood from the skull it was so evil looking and the image did not leave me for weeks. Like I said, the flu medication added to the creepiness factor. Never felt that way again at a WASP show and they are one of my faves ever since. --Ken Pierce

From the time I was little I was exposed to the extreme Non-denominational Christian faith and at a young age had a bad conscious that I was a bad person. I thought Hell was knocking on my door every time I teased my sister or swore. So when I got ahold of Bryan Adams - Reckless album and there was two full-on Metal songs on that album, I was scarred. In the daytime I would relish myself with those songs and loved them, but at night I would not listen to them because I was scarred they were evil in a way that I could not find.

Def Leppard scarred me a bit with the intro to "Rock of ages" and the lyrical content I thought was about burning in Hell. I figured, thanks to super-religious adults, that every Metal or Rock band was Satanic and that they all tried to hide it. Kiss scarred me, I remember visibly shaking when my cousin was playing the album "Love gun" in his basement. On the cover Gene is making the "Devil solute" with his hand and I though "Wow, he is actually referencing his legion to Satan". "Animalized" also scarred me because I had seen a religious show which said that Kiss stood for "Knights in Satan's Service" and that Satan helped them write their music in the studio (keep in mind all of this was while I was 5-10 or so). I remember borrowing Animalized from a friend because I thought that "I've had enough of the cold, into the fire" was the greatest song ever written...of course I thought it was about having enough of life and wanting to walk into Hell. So anyway, I borrowed the tape and had to hide it so my Mom would never see it, I pulled it out later at night when they were in bed and then could not play it because I was scarred.

As you can see, the Religious World around me at the early ages created a warped perception of music for me. Regardless of my feelings at the time about Metal being all evil, I still enveloped myself with every bit of it that I could. I struggled internally with it until about the age of 12 when I decided that I was not an evil person and that two meanings can be drawn from anything including Music. I listened with a clear conscious from then on. --BattleAngel




[Other Maximum Metal Columns]

<< back >>