Arts & Entertainment
 

Grohl twists metal to his own creation

by Bridget Brown
The Daily Cougar

Listen to the Foo Fighters. It's an overall happy project. One part pop, one part punk, a little grungy, but not enough to be depressing. It's hard to imagine that the Foo's leader Dave Grohl's smiling, goofy persona has a dark side, or that he's spent the last three years working on a project with metalheads that have names like Tom G. Warrior, Wino and Snake.

If you're not a metal connoisseur, these names may have never surfaced from the dark 1980s metal underground onto your turntable. But, the artist's bands -- Place of Skulls, Celtic Frost and Voivod, respectively -- inspired Grohl as a teen, and once he gained enough recognition on his own he decided to reintroduce the world to his favorite metal militia.

This is how Probot was born. Grohl created 12 songs, which he performed and wrote almost entirely, and later decided to add a rotating cast of his childhood heroes. Each track features a different artist lending their vocals to a song that leans specifically towards the band's style. There's thrash-metal, black metal, death metal, speed metal, metal-hardcore and a whole bunch of old-school wailers and low-end grunters. The variety works because the album plays like an introductory course in metal music and its history. 

The godfather of speed and thrash metal, Motorhead's Lemmy, rasps his way through whisky-fueled "Shake Your Blood," and C.O.C.'s Mike Dean powers the punk-infused "Access Babylon."

The bass and drum sections in "Silent Spring" keep the pace through multiple style changes as Kurt Brecht of D.R.I. sings, "They damned up the rivers/ And paved all the shores/ Built parking lots/ And discount stores/ Then they started to die/ But not fast enough/ So, they shot at each other/ With bullets and stuff." 

Snake of Voivod's guitar-heavy piece "Dictatorsaurus" is the most melodic track on the album and is most likely the song to have set up the format for nu-metal.

"Sweet Dreams," sung by icon King Diamond of Mercyful Fate, has guitar solos that couldn't be touched by the same wannabes. 

Selpultura's Max Cavalera put Brazilian metal on the map, and his vocals along with Grohl's natural power behind the drum kit makes "Red War" a song not suited for the weak of heart.

Actually, the whole album sounds best played at high volumes, and that's the only way to give credit to these somewhat overlooked performers.

Grohl's vision may have started as a way to collaborate with his heroes, but the result could help to bring real metal back into rotation, and it's about damn time.

Probot

Probot

Southern Lord Records

The verdict: Turn it up and let it rip.
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