Gimmick Metal

Gimmick metal bands are hardly a new thing.  In fact having a ‘gimmick’ is something that has been around in heavy metal pretty much since the start.  People like Alice Cooper have made legendary careers out of a gimmick and there is nothing wrong with that.  One of my favourite gigs of all time was watching Alice Cooper on Halloween. It was the perfect gimmick fitting the perfect occasion.  In recent years this gimmickry seems to have grown however and I am personally getting a bit fed up of it.

I said my piece on Baby Metal in my Sonisphere review and tried to explain, with a bit of over the top swearing thrown in for good measure, just why I detested everything about that band.  Since then I have seen some people I respect state why they like Baby Metal and in all honesty I get where they are coming from.  It’s not for me but it really isn’t the anti-Christ that I maybe made it out to be.  However, it does suggest something in heavy metal that is becoming more and more common.

If you go and flick through Metal Hammer’s Facebook page it seems to be that every week there is someone doing some gimmicky version of a heavy metal song.  Today’s one was Steve ‘N’ Seagulls covering “The Trooper” and in the past we have had the likes of The Lounge Kittens with their take on Limp Bizkit.  It seems that heavy metal is a genre ripe for parody.  A fact I can’t dispute.  There are bands within our own genre who do exactly that.  The success of Steel Panther is staggering and they seem set to take over the world.  While anyone who believes the likes of Alestorm and Turisas are entirely serious needs their head checked.

The problem is these bands are already hard to stomach.  I found pirate metal funny for about one album and then I lost interest.  I spent yesterday listening to Alestorm’s latest album and it was alright, but when you strip away the novelty of the pirate thing it’s a solid 3 out of 5, nothing special.  The same can be said of a lot of these gimmick bands.  Will Baby Metal make a second album?  Will anyone care by the time they do or will we have had enough?  Steel Panther are unique in that they’ve got a gimmick and they are managing to ride it to the top.  The fact that they are brilliant musicians has enabled them to continue to write songs that make people listen.  I would seriously question whether these other bands have that.

The perfect example of all of this is The Darkness, who were basically Steel Panther before Steel Panther existed.  Once upon a time that band could do no wrong, their debut album is still one of the best debut you will ever hear and then it all fizzed out.  Their return made them relevant for all of five minutes before they once again vanished and now I wonder whether the world cares.  Unless bands like Baby Metal and The Lounge Kittens can find a way to make their music last and have people come back for more, I wouldn’t be surprised if the exact same thing happened to them.