Obviously a streak of kinetic inspiration energy runs through anyone who feels compelled to pick up a musical instrument and create, but there are the chosen few amongst the masses who go beyond belief with their ability, talent and consistency. In the metal world, there are such geniuses who manage to create musical gold with everything they are involved with.
The typical local metal scene is inherently local, and will commonly have musicians playing in many different bands. However what sets our subjects aside from every other scenester with half baked ambitions is that their touch will almost preternaturally render the final output timeless, classic material.
End of Life Will Never Spell The End For Death - Chuck Schuldiner
The first case in hand is undeniable unless severe synapse impediment is a problem. Chuck Schuldiner, the mastermind behind the band Death met his untimely death through a brain disease in 2001. Fortunately through his lucid vision Death had a long and extremely productive limelight spot.
What makes Schuldiner a metal Midas is not only his ability to put out ten of ten material every time but his ability to push his band forward, to progress but still maintain an unparalleled level of quality. Every Death album exhibits flawless musicianship and songwriting, and over a period of fourteen years demonstrates the prefect career.
Staying with Death, we come to the drummer Gene Hoglan who donned the skins for the Individual Thought Patterns (1993) and Symbolic (1995) albums as well as admirable stints in Testament, Dark Angel, Strapping Young Lad and Old Man’s Child. Those who think this is a case of just getting lucky drumming for awesome band, but his drumming pushes each record forward and gives it something sturdy to launch its attack from.
- Metal Trivia: In the early 1980’s Gene ran in metal circles in LA and met a very young James Hetfield in an incident where Hoglan asked the Metallica mogul about his Iron Maiden t-shirt and was promptly told to “**** off”.
Hevy By Name, Heavy By Nature - Devin Townsend
The mighty and neurotic Devin Townsend has been a force in the metal world since the early nineties and is mainly known for his participation in Strapping Young Lad. SYL have been a dominant creative force for over a decade, reaching extreme metal meets industrial perfection (apart from Fear Factory’s Demanufacture from 1995) with 1997’s City and reiterating their importance with many solid albums including highlight Alien (2005).
Heavy Devy the Canadian eccentricity also spawned and reared the Devin Townsend Band who have released many albums since the Ocean Machine - Biomech (1997) album and aside from some weak points like 2006’s Synchestra each album has delivered progressive metal genius with Townsend’s mark all over.
- Metal Trivia: Devin Townsend embraced his bipolar nature rather than suppressing it with medication to increase his insight for the Strapping Young Lad album Alien (2005).
Still Easily Mistaken For A Hippy - Mikael Åkerfeldt
Another man in the sphere of metal whose dominance is felt across the globe is Mikael Åkerfeldt, frontman of the inexorable Opeth. Mister Åkerfeldt, aside from his unquestionable genius in Opeth has laid his touch upon many side projects and lent his talents to many different outputs.
His vocal roar crowned the first to releases by Bloodbath, a death metal supergroup featuring another midas man, Mr. Dan Swanö (Katatonia, Edge of Sanity). The group made classic Swedish mastery with a nostalgic vibe and heavy as a bus load of fat kids in the form of Resurrection Through Carnage (2003). Even after Peter Tägtren of Hypocrisy joined as throat man, Åkerfeldt came back for a handful of live shows, covered in blood of course.
- Metal Trivia: Mikael Åkerfeldt named his daughter Melinda, after a beautiful song on Opeth’s Still Life (1999) album, ‘Face of Melinda’.
More metallic Midas men will be lime lighted in another article coming soon, and to reiterate the importance of these musicians and their artistic contribution a whole article for each person here could easily have been written.
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