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Old Man Metal

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It would be difficult to overstate the importance of California recording label Metal Blade Records to the world of heavy metal.

Thrash titans Slayer's first two albums, both of which still have an immeasurable influence on extreme metal today. Metallica's first shot at a recording contract. Debuts from thrash kings Sodom and Voivod. Three of crossover-progenitor DRI's first four albums, including the one that gave crossover the name. All fourteen Cannibal Corpse albums; 27 years of unparalleled brutality. All but one album of GWAR's entire 1990s output. Megalithic death metal albums like Bolt Thrower's Those Once Loyal and Vader's Litany.

All released on Metal Blade.

And these are just a handful of the hundred-and-fifty-odd bands that have released albums under the Metal Blade moniker since its inception in 1982. Most metalheads are familiar with the compilation that started it all: Metal Massacre, which featured tracks from then-unsigned metal bands Steeler, Bitch, Malice, Ratt, Cirith Ungol, Metallica, and a few others.

What a lot of people don't know is that Metal Blade was started by one devoted metalhead in a garage.

Released in August 2017 to great reviews, For The Sake Of Heaviness: The History Of Metal Blade Records tells the story of Metal Blade Records, and of the man that started it, Brian Slagel, both in his own words and those of numerous guest interviewees.

Since its release, For The Sake Of Heaviness has won consistent praise for portraying this consequential part of metal history in a conversational, entertaining, and eminently readable manner.

The print edition has now been supplemented by an audiobook release, narrated by Brian Slagel himself, with the guest segments narrated by Armored Saint vocalist John Bush.

Order here.
 

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