The Tournament of Metal

Calico, my rock band, has decided to host The Tournament of Metal, and we decided to host it here (mainly because setting up these polls on Facebook proved too difficult), on my blog, because I'm the drummer, and I rock. The bands in the tournament do, too. Or they did.

The Tournament of Metal consists of over 350 songs released between and among 1980* and 1992** by heavy metal, hair/glam/pop metal, speed metal, power metal, thrash metal, and hard rock bands (or bands who were marketed as such) . All you have to do is look over at the sidebar on the right and vote on as many different song choices as you desire. Vote early, and vote often.
This first round, we whittle down the list to what's essential in each band's oeuvre. Next round, we'll pit band against band, like against like, hair metal against hair metal, speed metal against speed metal, etc....In the third round, we'll stage dive, throwing one type of metal song into the pit with another, and we'll continue that way until it's all over.

When is that? Oh, I'm no mathmatician,*** but the end will arrive sometime near the end of June.

Why so long? With over 350 songs in the tournament, it's not feasible to list over 175 battles at one time; therefore, we've quartered the list, and the first round should finish in four weeks, with the second round finishing in two weeks, and each subsequent round should take a week each, and with eight rounds, that puts around the last week of June when the champion song is crowned.

Why is my band, Calico, sponsoring this tournament? Three-fifths of our members are heavy metal fans and have been since youth,**** and we just wanted to throw our Dio demon horns in the air as a salute to those who rocked, if only for a brief bit.

Once again, vote! This week's list o' metal songs (from bands falling alphabetically A through D) will only last...uh...a week. Next week, another eighty/one-hundred songs will be pitted against one another, so vote now, and don't miss your chance, 'cause if--say--the Bulletboys' lame cover of the O'Jays' "For the Love of Money" tops the B'boys deliciously-raunchy hit "Smooth Up in Ya," then don't come crying to me.

We'd like to give one last ROCK! before we leave, and that's to Shane Woodard Hardy, for without him, this list might never have seen the light of the computer screen.

So get your one way ticket to midnight, people. Call it heavy metal.

NOTES

*Yeah, I know, heavy metal didn't start in 1980; however, 1980 was when heavy metal finally made a huge sales dent in the American market with the debut and incredible success of AC/DC's Back in Black album, making it much safer for metalheads from Philadelphia, Mississippi to Fargo, North Dakota to come out of the closet with their heads banging.

**Yeah, I know, heavy metal didn't officially end in 1992, but that was it's last gasp, and grunge officially dethroned metal, as marked by Nirvana's seminal album Nevermind reaching #1 on the Billboard album charts.

***Why do English teachers teach English? 'Cause they can't do math.

****Yeah, I know, three-fifths of a band does not unanimity make, but it does make majority, and since the other two of our five either play triangle or play stool, then we three kings of metal rule the rock shed.