Major Labels and Extreme Metal
- Story by J. Bennett
From Metallica to Carcass to Lamb of God, Decibel examines major labels' flirtations with extreme metal and the genre's (potential) future
The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where pimps and thieves run free and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side. —Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
There are a lot of different versions of this story, varying in hue from rose-tinted nostalgia to semi-brown cautionary tales—and really, you’ve heard most of them before—but the conventional wisdom goes like this: Since time immemorial, corporate mega-labels have been there to sign the shit out of any given band—regardless of what said band actually sounds like (which, let’s face it, is often a secondary or tertiary consideration at best)—if they feel like there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. As such, the majors’ historical relationship with underground metal bands of the non-Sunset Strip variety has ranged from, well… rose-tinted nostalgia (Metallica, Slayer) to semi-brown cautionary tales (Earache Records’ deal with Columbia in the early ’90s) and everything in between (Sepultura, Morbid Angel, Satyricon). As these things often do, this process is currently repeating itself with the major label signings of Lamb of God (to Epic), Mastodon (to Warner Brothers), and Shadows Fall (to Atlantic). The difference is that these days, the majors’ once-dominating sales figures are in such drastic decline that they have few dependable reference points, and even once-reliable platinum pop acts and seven-figure rock chumps aren’t putting up the kind of Christmas-bonus-boosting numbers that the suits were once accustomed to. But is history doomed to repeat itself? Will Lamb of God, Mastodon, and Shadows Fall get dropped like the filthy, noisy habits that were Sepultura, Entombed, and Carcass—thrust back to the warm bosom of the indie motherland after having been hastily finger-banged by a handful of rich, smooth-talking hustlers who happened to see a number they liked on a Xeroxed shipping invoice addressed to some “no-name” label from… where was that label from again? Anyway, it’s not important. The main thing is that, shit, man, these dudes sold 100,000 records on that fucking label, which means all the heavy lifting is taken care of. All we gotta do is wave some cash under the band’s collective nose, sic our lawyers on the label, and let the marketing machine work its magic. All in a day’s work or whatever, right? Right:
“Major labels watch indie labels closely to see what’s rising to the top,” says Roadrunner Records Senior VP of A&R Monte Conner. “The reason they do this is because I don’t think the majors have the know-how, or even the desire, to sign underground bands and develop them up to the 100,000 [records sold] range. So they wait for independents to do that, and they move in for the kill, many times mistakenly believing they can take these bands to the next level.” Conner should know: After Roadrunner released Sepultura’s Arise to great acclaim and unprecedented charting on the Billboard 200, Epic Records swooped in to distribute the Brazilian deathmongers and release 1993’s Chaos A.D. before dropping them after what the label perceived as lackluster sales.
Even folks at the major labels admit that this business model—“using the indie label as a farm team,” as Conner describes it—is an incredibly viable one. “Century Media has done an amazing job with Shadows Fall,” enthuses Anthony Delia, the band’s A&R representative and product manager at Atlantic. “They’ve basically doubled the band’s sales on each record. That becomes increasingly challenging to do, so the fact that they’ve done that throughout the band’s career is awesome. And we’re setting out to do what’s already been done and then spread it out a bit more. But it’s challenging. Nothing’s easy right now.”
“I don’t think major labels truly understand this music and what its limitations are,” Conner offers. “These bands aren’t gonna write radio singles—and that’s how major labels break bands. They don’t know how to keep a metal band on the road for three or four years straight, and work it in that grassroots, underground way while still meeting their sales expectations. If a band like Mastodon were to sell 250,000 copies on Roadrunner, they’d be hailed as heroes. Sell that much on a major label and it’s considered a failure.”
Just to put this in perspective, Mastodon’s major label debut, Blood Mountain, was released on September 12 of last year, and—according to their manager, Nick John—has sold 75,000 copies in the US since its release. And yet both John and Craig Aaronson, who signed Mastodon to Warner Brothers (he also signed My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, and Avenged Sevenfold; back in the day, he signed At the Drive-In to Grand Royal) say that number is in line with the label’s expectations. “It’s only been out for three months, and [Mastodon’s previous album, released on Relapse] Leviathan just cracked 100,000 after two years,” John explains. “So for them to get to 75% of that in three months is good—especially for a band like Mastodon, a band that’s not all over the radio or MTV. Because of all the hard work and touring they did prior to this record—and all the touring they’re doing now—they should be able to surpass Leviathan. And, if anything, that’s the expectation, realistically.”
Lamb of God’s Sacrament, their second full-length release on Epic, has sold just under 200,000 copies since its release on August 22nd, and Epic’s VP of Marketing, Scott Greer, doesn’t seem disappointed in the least. In fact, he’s bragging about it. “Lamb of God was the best-selling first-week metal record of 2006,” he says. “It did more than Killswitch [Engage], more than Slayer, more than Mastodon in the first week. We did nearly 65,000 in that first week, which is nearly double what we did on the previous record—and keep in mind, we’re in a declining market.
“The whole market has contracted,” Greer continues, “But if this record does what I’m hoping it does, I’d love to have a fuckin’ gold record. And I think we could do another half-million overseas. Those are huge numbers, but who knows when you have the template drawn by bands like Slayer, Pantera, and Metallica? And that’s what I tell these guys.”
Shadows Fall’s major label debut has yet to be released, but Delia says that the band’s last proper full-length on Century Media, The War Within, has sold 260,000 copies as of press time. Although he (wisely) won’t quote any specific sales figure the label might have in mind for the band’s next full-length, Delia says the previous number is a completely acceptable one were the band to duplicate it for Atlantic. “My initial set of goals is to present a record to their fanbase that they’ll be very excited about and do whatever we need to do to sustain and build upon that base,” he offers. “It’s all about strengthening what’s been built. Once that’s been accomplished, it’s about stretching it even further without compromising what’s been built already. That can be tricky, because a lot of different opportunities will come in and if someone doesn’t understand the vision of the band well enough, they’ll say, ‘We can put you in a commercial for X project and they’ll give you this much money to use your song.’ And you’ll think, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of money, and it’s great exposure for the song, but we can’t possibly put these guys in that position.’ Everything that they’ve worked for can be erased by something like that.”
The situation, then, is this: Lamb of God could potentially release a third major label record without cracking the 300,000 sales mark, traditionally a pittance by major label standards. Mastodon’s sales are “kind of underwhelming” even to Greer (who, admittedly, works at a competing label, but whose point is nonetheless salient, given our topic), and yet neither the band’s manager nor A&R rep seem the least bit uneasy. Then there’s the fact that a band like the Mars Volta, who aren’t really a metal band, per se, but have inexplicably put out three records on Universal—one of which, Frances the Mute, is a five-song, 77-minute space-jazz freakout in which half the lyrics aren’t even in English—is still on a major. Surely that says something about major label viability, or at least perceived viability, in marketing and A&R terms, of music that isn’t the easiest to digest by commercial standards. Have you listened to Blood Mountain lately, by the way? Yeah, “Colony of Birchmen” is totally catchy, but the rest of it doesn’t exactly scream TRL. So what gives?
As Decibel’s close personal friend Bobby Zimmerman likes to say, “The times, they are a changin’.”
CHOOSING DEATH
In the early ’90s, Jim Welch was running Earache Records’ US office out of his kitchen in New York City. With a roster that included Carcass, Entombed, Napalm Death, Godflesh, and Fudge Tunnel, the label was pumping out one Hall of Fame-worthy slab after the next. “We were selling 600,000 records a year, just in America, independently—and probably a similar number overseas,” Welch says. “That got on people’s radar, and the labels started calling.”
Earache eventually inked the infamous deal that saw Entombed’s Wolverine Blues, Carcass’ Heartwork, Fudge Tunnel’s Creep Diets, Godflesh’s Selfless, and Napalm Death’s Fear Emptiness Despair released through Columbia Records alongside Cathedral’s The Ethereal Mirror. According to Welch, who eventually went on to work in the A&R departments at Columbia, Atlantic, and Arista (he currently runs a management, publishing, and licensing firm called 2012), Columbia were just chasing the numbers. “They didn’t know what they were dealing with,” he says. “They were thinking if they had the label deal, they might break an artist and then end up with some sort of market share of a ‘scene.’”
Not everybody was necessarily clueless, though. “Before we did the deal with Columbia, one of the earlier companies that was interested was this label called Medicine which went through Warner Brothers and was run by this guy Kevin Patrick,” Welch explains. “He really wanted to sign Fudge Tunnel, and I actually think he did understand what that band was about, and that they were kind of like the next step heavier after the grunge thing. They weren’t as heavy as the Melvins, maybe, but they probably had catchier songs.”
“I think everybody would’ve liked to think that Godflesh could’ve followed in the footsteps of Ministry,” he adds. “And I don’t necessarily think that was unrealistic—they were certainly capable of it—they just chose not to. But was it unrealistic to think that Napalm Death was gonna have a gold record? Yeah, but I don’t think anyone ever thought that. Did we think Carcass or Entombed could’ve sold more records? Sure, maybe if the timing was a little bit different. If Wolverine Blues came out two years later, when the first Korn record came out, yeah, maybe it could’ve been that big. And Carcass, you know, after Heartwork, I don’t think their songwriting was what it could’ve been. But I don’t think it was unrealistic to think that they could’ve sold records like Megadeth. When you think about the whole continuum—Korn, Limp Bizkit, System of a Down, Slipknot—I think Carcass and Entombed were definitely as commercial as some of those bands, if not more so. But they were ahead of their time, and that happens a lot in music. The people breaking the ground aren’t necessarily the ones that sell the most records. But maybe Slipknot or System of a Down would disagree.”
Later in his career—shortly before leaving the company—Welch picked up Cradle of Filth’s Damnation and a Day for domestic release on Sony in 2003. “They were signed by the president of Epic UK, and he basically called me and said, ‘Look, I don’t really understand this music, but these guys are fucking huge and I totally understand why everyone thinks they’re huge—because they take everything to as much of an extreme as possible. I’ll go ahead and sign them if you can help get it into America and help guide it, because I can’t really sit in a meeting and explain what it is—I can just explain my passion for it and the fact that extreme totally works.’ So he was totally honest about it, which was cool. But did Sony make money off of Cradle of Filth? I don’t really know.”
According to Monte Conner, who released Cradle of Filth’s first post-major label album, Nymphetamine, through Roadrunner in 2004, the band’s short-lived relationship with Sony was considerably less than satisfactory for all parties concerned. “Cradle of Filth figured out that a major label was not their dream, so we put out the Nymphetamine record, and it’s their highest-selling record to date in the US—it’s sold just under 150,000,” he offers. “The record prior to that, Damnation and a Day, on Sony, has sold just under 100,000. So, without commenting on the quality of each record, you can see the difference right there. And 150,000 makes them heroes here. At a major, they’d most likely get dropped.”
Welch seems to agree with Conner’s assessment: “I don’t think major labels are signing artists to sell a small number of records,” he says, “Especially in this day and age. But I don’t think that the industry is so hurt right now by people just not buying records across the board, regardless of the type of music, that they sit there and go, ‘Hey, we’ll be happy with 100,000.’ That just doesn’t happen. They wanna have gold records, platinum records—that’s the deal.” Which isn’t to say that a lot hasn’t happened since Welch’s days in the Earache kitchen: “It’s a different time, and much more extreme music gets on mainstream mediums than it used to—and the Internet provides a whole different way to market that we didn’t have. I mean, could you imagine if we had the Internet when Earache was blowing up? Forget about it—it would’ve been crazy. But I barely had a fax machine.”
RIDE THE LIGHTNING
Everybody at Elektra freaked out. Nobody had seen anything that young and powerful and different before. —Michael Alago, on signing Metallica to Elektra in 1984
Before Lamb of God, Mastodon, Shadows Fall, and Earache, there was (obviously) Metallica. “When I did A&R, it really was a different time,” says Michael Alago, who in the ’80s and ’90s was an A&R scout for both Elektra and Geffen. “I bought a copy of Kill ’Em All, which was on Megaforce, at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Flea Market in New Jersey, and it really was unlike anything I’d ever heard. At the time, anyone who listened to metal was listening to stuff like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, and Ozzy—all the old, good shit. So at the time, I think it was a daring move for me to sign them, because it wasn’t old school metal anymore. In the early ’80s, major labels hadn’t started signing the onslaught of metal bands until after I started signing metal bands—and that started in the summer of ’84, when I signed Metallica.”
Alago went on to sign Metal Church, Flotsam & Jetsam (he eventually helped Jason Newsted get the Metallica audition), Johnny Rotten’s post-Pistols band Public Image Ltd., and White Zombie. “It was so crazy when I saw Metallica for the first time. It was at the Stone in San Francisco—I gave Lars my card and I kinda left it that. They were doing something so brand new that I didn’t know what to tell the people at Elektra.” In the meantime, Alago was working on demos with semi-grizzled NWOBHM vets Raven, but the next time he saw Metallica—at Roseland in New York City with Raven and Anthrax—he made his move. “I invited our chairman, Bob Krasnow, and our head of promotion, Rick Bone, and a bunch of people from Elektra. I thought Metallica would be so big that they had to be on a major label. I told John Zazula from Megaforce, and he freaked out on me, like, ‘These are my babies—these are my guys!’ Finally, I had him meet with Krasnow and myself and we talked about how big Metallica could be on a major, and we worked out a deal where Megaforce would get points in perpetuity for the next two or three records, their logo would be on the next two or three records, and it eventually all worked out.”
No shit it did. But, like Alago says, those were different times. “This was at a time period when labels were still into artist development,” he explains. “When I signed Metal Church and we sold 100,000 of The Dark, we wondered if it was because of specialty metal radio, or touring, or what. Where did we sell those records? That’s what was important to us. Elektra was a major, but it was a boutique label. We were really selective about what we signed, and we never played follow the leader. Everything we ever had—going back to the ’60s when Jac Holzman and Danny Fields signed the MC5 and the Stooges, to when I started our Metal Department—was very unique and original. These days, major labels aren’t really signing metal bands like they used to. You’ve gotta leave that to people that know what they’re doing, like Roadrunner. New artists don’t have a chance on a major if you don’t sell half a million records. The labels are going down the tubes, as we all know, and they still follow old formats of marketing and promotion, even though it doesn’t work anymore.”
Which was basically 100% true when Alago quit the business in 2003, before Lamb of God, Mastodon, or Shadows Fall would ever put out a record on a major label. Since then—in part because the majors are so deep in the shitter that they’re being forced to adjust their expectations, but also because the indie labels from which these bands came (and the bands themselves) did most of the grunt work in terms of marketing, promotion, and nonstop touring—the folks at the majors seem to be changing the way they do business. “60,000 is the new 100,000,” says E.J. Johantgen, founder of Prosthetic Records, the label that released Lamb of God’s early albums. Unfortunately, the rest of Decibel’s lengthy and informative interview with Johantgen has been lost to posterity, but his major label counterparts seem to agree with his assessment.
“The whole market has contracted,” says Greer, Epic’s VP of Marketing. “There are always expectations, but every year that goes by, it’s harder to sell records. Ultimately, if you’re marketing a band and not just trying to sell records, the record sales will come as you market the band. I don’t think of myself as a guy selling records—I’m marketing artists. I worked with Radiohead back in the day, and they were initially thought of as a one-hit wonder. Everyone said if they didn’t have a song that was better than ‘Creep,’ they’d be done. And then they came out with The Bends and everyone was like, ‘Well, there was no “Creep” on that record—they’re done.’ But they toured and toured and didn’t give a fuck if they were playing with Alanis Morissette or Spacehog. And then they stole their fans.”
“I think you have to have more realistic expectations when it comes to creating budgets around projects like this,” Atlantic’s Delia says of metal at majors. “Especially now, with the way records are selling, there are definitely more realistic expectations. Obviously, your goals change as you achieve them. I think a gold record would be amazing, but it’s hard to define things by numbers right now because we’re seeing record sales fall off so much. That’s why it’s more about sustaining what’s been built and making it stronger.”
Delia recognizes the so-called Long Tail effect—selling less of more as the future of successful business, as embodied by Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson’s book of the same name—but he doesn’t necessarily think Atlantic is subscribing to it. “When I saw the emo thing start coming up, there were bands being touted as the Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains of that genre, and then they didn’t become that—but it seemed like there were more bands that were able to sell 100,000 records, sell a ton of merch, do some kick-ass touring and live really cool lives as career musicians without becoming superstars. I’m not sure how that’s affected our signings, though, because I think we’re probably signing less bands these days. We’re working with more independent labels, but I think we’re signing [fewer] bands to Atlantic so we can focus more on the bands that we are signing.”
“We didn’t have any expectations that Mastodon was going to be a radio-driven artist,” says Aaronson, Senior VP of A&R at Warner Brothers. “So you gotta think left of center, like the band is. You gotta bring the center to the left by bringing the audience to them. And you’ve gotta do it in more non-traditional, creative ways. I do believe that between touring, the Internet, and the street you can build enough of a buzz. I really do think that if there’s enough of an underground cult following, you can ignite excitement from radio. Instead of the band bending to what radio needs, radio bends to what the band is.”
Greer echoes Aaronson’s make-them-come-to-you attitude when it comes to Lamb of God. “It’s important to understand an audience, but it’s also important to understand your artist and where you can go with them,” he says. “If you’re working with Lamb of God and think they’re gonna write a massive hit, you’re sorely mistaken. That’s not what they do—but that’s also part of their appeal. Lamb of God is successful because the audience comes to them.”
But is there a ceiling for this type of music on major labels? With no radio hits in sight, it seems like there should be. “Yeah, there’s a ceiling for everything,” Greer admits, “but in Lamb of God’s case I don’t know what it is. I’ll say this, though: We’ve vastly exceeded the ceiling that people thought existed when we signed the band.”
Aaronson, on the other hand, says what every metal band wants to hear: “The sky’s the limit,” he insists. “With heavy music, I don’t think it’s a prerequisite at all to have radio singles. It’s a bonus. I don’t know the numbers, but didn’t Metallica sell hundreds of thousands of records without radio support? With heavier music, the fans want to be part of the whole world—they wanna buy the record, the merchandise, the tickets to the show—and they find out about it on their own, either through word-of-mouth or touring. They don’t need a radio station to do that.”
“I think the idea of signing bands based on having a radio song—it’s funny, because I wanna say those days are numbered, but every year there’s a Hinder record that says, ‘Hey, you can sell two million records off one or two songs’ and kind of feeds that mentality—but there are people at radio stations and labels who see it differently,” Delia says. “They wanna see bands that put out consistent records and push the envelope of what they do without compromising their creative vision.”
But even Delia admits there are folks at Atlantic who’d like to see Shadows Fall pump out a hit single. “You mean, like, write a Nickelback song?” he laughs. “Yeah, if it resulted in selling millions of records, I’m sure there are people who would love that. But I think there’s more of a consistent mentality here about the development. I think people here know the danger of what a song like that could be. It could explode and sell a lot of records, but it could also erase a lot of what’s been built and you might be back to square zero because the loyal fanbase doesn’t have respect for the band they way they once did. But if commercial radio starts to take chances on your style of music and you’re in the right place at the right time with the right song, you never know what could happen.”
“There’s always a pressure for sales,” Greer admits. “I mean, we’re not giving records away for free. But we try to focus that pressure on expanding the audience without compromising the band. I mean, I’m not gonna set Lamb of God up for a Coke ad—not that Coke would ever wanna take the meeting.”
Even Conner musters some respect for Epic’s handling of Lamb of God thus far, though he wonders if the good times brought on by this uncharacteristic mini-renaissance at the majors will last. “Out of any push I’ve ever seen on a major label for an underground band, I really do think Epic are stepping it up for Lamb of God,” he says. “The band is visible, and the support seems to be there—which is why I think it’s one of the biggest underground success stories. That said, are the sales gonna be enough to make the major label bean counters happy? We’ll see.”
