I’ve been watching a lot of nature documentaries lately. They’re a good way to unwind before hitting the hay at night; most of them consist of eye-candy footage, and incredibly soothing narration. But occasionally, these documentaries will discuss landscapes that are unquestionably metal.
So what makes a piece of terrain “metal”? The presence of things that frequently appear in metal band imagery helps: snow, mountains, predatory animals, and so on. Harsh climates are good, too; a lot of metal bands focus exclusively on projecting a foreboding atmosphere. Obscurity gets you cred points, of course. And above all, you have to run a pretty good chance of dying if you go there.
Here are my five picks for the most metal places on earth. Why five? That’s how many I managed to write about, before all the exhaustive research tuckered me out. And why these five in particular? Because they were the first ones to spring to mind. Feel free to suggest additions to the list in the comments.
. . .
1. Yellowstone National Park
Yellowstone is not a very metal place in the public consciousness. The visual associations go like this: Old Faithful, colorful hot springs, picturesque bison, waterfalls, and gawping tourists wearing “I am not a bear” shirts.
But come winter time, Yellowstone turns into a black metal theme park. Yellowstone itself is a high plateau surrounded on three sides by mountains. The fourth side opens onto the Snake River Plain, which funnels cool, moist air into Yellowstone’s mountainous cul-de-sac.
The air gets trapped there, freezes, and dumps mind-blowing amounts of snow into the Yellowstone valley — 50 feet per year, as opposed to the 10 feet that surrounding areas receive. Temperatures sink as low as -40° (the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales read the same at that temperature).
The animals that live in Yellowstone, such as the famed bison, are built to withstand the awful winters. But even bison struggle with the extreme conditions; they burn thousands of calories digging for dead grass with all the nutritional value of cardboard. Only the wolves benefit from the weather. They actually get stronger as they feast on their weakened prey.
Yellowstone has a lot of geysers — more than the rest of the world combined. Here’s why: Yellowstone sits on top of an enormous magma chamber that superheats the groundwater there.
The last time this volcano erupted — 640,000 years ago — it blasted hundreds of cubic miles’-worth of molten rock into the atmosphere, buried most of North America in ash, and caused a miniature ice age. It will erupt again, and scientists have no clue when.
Only one band can capture the hilariously metal awfulness that comprises winter in Yellowstone: Immortal.
. . .
Immortal – “Frozen by Icewinds”
. . .
2. The Empty Quarter
Everyone knows that most of the Arabian Peninsula is a desert. But even deserts come in gradations, and the Rub’ al-Khali is a desert among deserts.
The Rub’ al-Khali — the Empty Quarter, in English — occupies the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, covering much of Saudi Arabia and straddling the border with Oman, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates. It is one of the largest deserts in the world, and possibly the sandiest: it contains seven and a half times as much sand per square mile as the Sahara.
This sand piles up in dunes up to 850 feet high, and the wind in the Empty Quarter blows these dunes across the terrain at a rate of several kilometers per year. The terrain is impossibly harsh — it may have swallowed cities in the past — and is getting harsher. Thanks to climate change, even the local Bedouins now have trouble crossing it.
The Empty Quarter seemingly has nothing by which to recommend it; it is, after all, empty. But it’s among the world’s most coveted real estate, thanks to its massive oil reserves. Brutal.
. . .
Nader Sadek – “Petrophilia”
. . .
3. Hydrothermal Vents
The ocean is kind of a creepy place in general. Its deepest points are less accessible than space. When I imagine alien life-forms, they look kind of like deep-sea jellyfish.
The bottom of the ocean, called “the abyssal plane”, which by itself would be a good band name, is dotted with hydrothermal vents. Superheated water from deep within the earth spews out of stone chimneys; scientists call these imposing structures “black smokers”. Since these vents are at the bottom of the ocean, the water around them is already black. The vented water is blacker than black. How much more black could it be? None. None more black.
The mineral-rich water from the black smokers feeds thermophilic bacteria, which in turn sustain entire self-contained ecosystems. These ecosystems are extremely unusual among life on earth in that they don’t need sunlight. The organisms that comprise them are pale, bulbous, unearthly things — longer and older than any human, yeti crabs, monstrous clams, and armored snails.
These creatures would surely despise the sun.
. . .
Suffocation – “Despise the Sun”
. . .
4. McMurdo Dry Valleys
The McMurdo Dry Valleys are the (un)holy grail of extreme deserts. They occupy a geographically unusual sector of Antarctica. The valleys are protected from glacier flows and precipitation, and thus are one of the very few parts of the continent not covered by ice or snow.
Consequently, the valleys are cold, dead, and almost impossibly dry. Frigid winds whip through them at speeds of up to 200 miles per hour. The terrain is so completely desolate that scientists study it for its similarity to the surface of Mars. No animals live there; any beast that wanders into the valleys ends up as a mummified carcass.
Life exists in this wretched place, but only just. Photosynthetic bacteria must take refuge inside rocks to survive. A glacier near the edge of the McMurdo Valleys bears a nightmarish feature: a five-storey, blood-red waterfall. Blood Falls actually gets its color from iron oxide — rust — that is in turn produced by a community of microbes trapped in a saline lake deep beneath the glacier. But the Australian explorer who discovered it in 1911 probably thought he’d stumbled through a gate to hell.
For me, nothing says “timeless desolation” like Sunn O)))’s Black One. (Especially this Immortal cover.)
. . .
Sunn O)))- “Cursed Realms (Of the Winterdemons)”
. . .
5. Aksai Chin
Aksai Chin is a high, arid expanse that lies north of the Himalayas. It is a stone desert with no human populace to speak of, no natural resources, and no economic significance. Unlike the other entries in this feature, it is neither picturesque nor endowed with interesting geographical features or novel fauna.
But Aksai Chin deserves a mention here for its place in history. It lies along a disputed border between India and China. In 1962, the two countries fought a bloody war over it. China won, and now administers the region, though India still claims it.
Why would these countries go to war over such a useless piece of land? The conflict began when the Chinese built a road through the region, but Aksai Chin has little more strategic value than it does economic worth. The real reasons behind the war are more esoteric: concerns for territorial sovereignty, domestic political pressures, and miscommunication between the leadership of each country. A professor I had in college insisted that this last factor was the most significant.
So thousands died in a war over a barren desert that was arguably fought by accident. It doesn’t get much more metal than that.
. . .
Sepultura – “Territory”
. . .
And the correct answer is:
1. Birmingham, England.
Birthplace of: Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Napalm Death, Godflesh, Diamond Head, Witchfinder General…continue through infinity. Rob Halford said the sound of the plants in his childhood had a direct link to his future career. And Iommi famously lost his finger in one of those plants…
My metric was “most metal in terms of innate harshness and scariness,” rather than “most metal in terms of number of metal bands produced.” If I’d use the latter, this would just be a list of cities that have produced a lot of famous metal bands.
I watched March Of The Penguins with Sunn O))) and Burzum on the background once. It was quite a surreal and heavy experience, most especially since these penguins walk hundreds of miles to give birth, hunt, feed their young, and to die.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CfaK5JNymk&feature=related
?
Sorry sir, but the only “bong” that I know of is the Bong Recreation Area in Wisconsin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bong_State_Recreation_Area
But Yellowstone is beautiful in addition to brutifal, no?
All of these locations do look like the potential site for an Asphyx video shoot.
Yellowstone is indeed beautiful, but I’d still be pretty worried of someone abandoned me there in the dead of winter.
Speaking of death metal videos, have you ever seen the video for God Dethroned’s “Drowning in Mud”? It was so shitty that the band tried to scour it from the internet, but you can still see it here: http://www.rocktube.us/wwzpRtEZGs8/God_Dethroned_Drowning_in_Mud_New_Video_2009_.html
It’s tough to choose a favorite detail, but if pressed, I think I’d go with the guitarist who’s plugged into a bush for half the video.
The blood falls in the McMurdo Valleys remind me so much of Like An Everflowing Stream. The landscape eerily looks like Dan Seagrave’s paintings.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/612V7ZKMYYL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
Interesting approach to the topic by staying away from industrialized places or one’s with inhabitants. Along those lines I would maybe throw in the Mariana Trench but maybe that is covered by hydrothermal vents. Plus it is so metal that Dethlock recorded there There are some pretty rough jungles too. But from my perspective, “metal places” brings up imagery of war torn cities, heavily industrialized urban areas, or places that are just a rough go. I am thinking Chernobyl in particular. Maybe Baghdad. Obviously the question could be interpreted and approached from different angles, but this was a thoughtful and interesting read. Yellowstone is really pretty, but I can see how Bison are metal in a beardo don’t funk with mr kinda way.
Yes to Mariana Trench!!! So remote only like 4 people have ever been there. I might have added Iceland (blizzards and active volcanoes,whaat?)or maybe Siberia home of Panthera tigris altaica.
..maybe the Nevada Test Site too.
Sorry guys, but the guy who directed the Titanic movie ruined metalness of the Mariana Trench for y’all.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/120325-james-cameron-mariana-trench-challenger-deepest-returns-science-sub/
Chernobyl! Very metal, or at least one band agrees. Here’s a black metal song about Chernobyl, “Reaktor 4″ by Craft.
http://youtu.be/FPQJY8tW7Pw
Burn our earth to waste, scourge.
Monstrous nuclear waste.
Cancerous diseases and nuclear bliss.
Mother Nature’s creatures entwined and sick.
Oh, you darkened waste.
Make our earth unhealthy.
Scourge the soil of God.
Your radiation of immense power.
The wind will pass it.
That’s right. Geology = metal!
Yes! Also, astronomy = metal!
It seems that we are inside some kind of metallic geologic turn (?)
http://bergmetal.blogspot.com
(my post disappeared, so let’s try this again–sorry if it ends up a double-post)
Great article, excellent idea, and well-written.
Clive Barker wrote a very metal story that took place in the Empty Quarter. In the middle of it dwelt Uriel (like the angel), and it was quite the destructive entity as I recall.
I can’t help but think a swamp would have been a good pick for the list. I’m not sure which swamp, but there should be a good one out there.
If you wanted to focus instead on human violence, Juarez is your winner.
Devil Swamp in La. It is the home of Lucifer, a 16-17 foot alligator (perhaps bigger?). That’s the legend. This swamp is so immense that it is probably bigger than Rhode Island. Only attempt to fish this land during the day because if you delve too deep within its rotten heart the bayou moves the dry areas around you and often behind you. People who get lost, usually due to nightfall, never make it out alive. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of unfound human skeletons at the bottom of those black waters.
I think driving through Gary, Indiana at night on the way to Chicago and seeing the fires burn in the industrial skyline is as metal as it gets.
You could literally smell the spirit of Michael Jackson.
Ha! I guess “Beat It” is, uh, kind of metal.
Seriously though, the Gary skyline is the industrial sublime, the visual equivalent of Godflesh’s _Streetcleaner_. I’ve seen it a bunch of times on the way to and from shows, and it always blows my mind. Nature has nothing on the sky lit up by burning chemicals or whatever it is.
Beat It is VERY metal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27trGnc6j0A
I vote for the universe as the most metal place on earth: http://opentheory.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/5c1dedf0c00c09eba150ebcd5845b912.jpeg
I’ll second that.
Tsingy de Bemaraha is completely insane. It’s a monster…I dunno, field or something that is literally nothing but jagged limestone towers. It’s almost inaccessible by humans. You have to see it to believe it.
The East African tectonic rift is as close to hell on earth as you can come. Huge and random fissures open up, spewing superheated poisonous gas, magma flows, etc.
I believe Tsingy de Bemaraha should be reconsidered for the top slot based upon the following excerpt from its wiki entry:
That is awesome!
i vote for centralia, pa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania
Word.
Good call. I was hoping it’d be on the list. I hear Khanate in my head whenever I think of Centralia.
Beaten, dammit.
The Everglades are very metal… as are all those Soviet cities built along the step that had to be abandonned.
Actually, you’re all wrong. It’s the Guitar Center in Hollywood, just up the street from Musicians’Institute. It’s surrounded by grime, grit, shiftless characters (including people who dress up as Superheroes) and signs at every corner that declare “SELL DRUGS=LOSE YOUR CAR”. It’s also not far from the Whisky, the Rainbow, Hollywood Tower Records (if it still exists) and Lemmy’s fuckin house. Go in there at any time and it’s full of kids playing loud metal thru every conceivable amp, speaker and combination thereof, including bass. Plus, in front of this Guitar Center is all the handprints of Black Sabbath in concrete. And I just remembered: that Taco truck where I once saw Don Fuckin Henley eating is nearby. And where Brad Pitt was “kidnapped” on Jackass. And Grill Em All! Don’t forget GEA. Way more metal than Yellowstone.
That Guitar Center is the bane of my existence. They make a big deal out of the completely unmemorable “Hollywood Rock of Fame” exhibits it also houses, so you get shithead tourists on top of all the would-be shredders. Worst place on earth, if “worst” is an indicator of how much it offends my personal sensibilities.
LOL! Wow, nice. Actually, ALL Guitar Centers are Fiefdoms Of Wank, this one just seemed more so. Thanks for the second op.
The most metal place I’ve ever been was the Masaya volcano in Nicaragua. It’s this huge smoldering crater and when the Christians first came there they thought it was the gates of Hell. Picture here:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-BCcAXOlHUYM/TYjyFfJBtCI/AAAAAAAAAD8/ODiLny3xkdo/Cr%25C3%25A0ter_Santiago_Masaya.JPG
Plus when you’re driving to it you get to drive your wife nuts by singing Sacred Reich to her because it’s on the road to Managua, and if you miss the turn off…
this was a very good read, well written. death valley is pretty metal too, there have been occurences when it was so hot that birds fell dead from the sky. grim.
I’ll second that! Death Valley is a great place.
Dimmu Borgir in Iceland. Just a HUGE lava field that extends for miles. Although it’s been slowly brought back to life by vegetation, it’s still remarkably arid and imposing, and has this sense of age to it.
Rather than “Despise the Sun” you might also have considered this song: http://ecwdoom.bandcamp.com/track/in-the-trench
That’s my friend Henri’s band
Haha, didn’t think I’d see them pop up in an IO comment!
My picks:
1. Chernobyl (kind of has to be, even if I haven’t been there)
2. Mount Mitchell, NC: think of a piece of Norway dropped on top of the Southern Appalachians. That, and the presence of the balsam wooly adelgid has caused many of the trees near the summit to die, creating a landscape of moss-encrusted dead trees. Pretty fuckin metal.
3. Mount Washington, NH: Mount Mitchell’s surly northern brother. Holds record for highest wind speed in North America, as well as some of the lowest temperatures. Not for the faint of heart.
4. Mount St. Helens. PETRIFIED FORESTS. that is all.
5. The Paris Catacombs. Look up pictures on google. King Diamond wishes he had crosses of skulls and bones that big (which are embedded in walls of bone FIVE FEET THICK).
There’s an old rumor (or truth?) about Ulver recording Nattens Madrigal in a forest. I once had a super nerdy conversation about similarly appropriate locations where a black metal band could record, and the Paris Catacombs were #1. Supposedly nobody has fully mapped or explored the place, and it is creepy as hell.
Somebody tell Deathspell Omega to get on that shit now.
Ha ha! I bet that they have their own ossuary at home, just for personal use.
I’ve always found the city of Brasilia equally fascinating and horrifying, might make for a “metal place” in a certain sense. It’s basically the exemplification of a dystopic city; it was constructed to be a “city of the future”, but the city planners didn’t adequately account for the humans who would actually occupy the space. What it became is a city full of sprawling concrete wastelands, a utopia that never was, as shantytowns sprung up on the outskirts to house the poor workers who essentially keep the city running. These same workers die every day attempting to cross the highways on their way to work (there’s no safe way to do so, and going around on foot was never planned for). It’s basically this modernist artifact, an outdated vision of the future forced to exist in a different time altogether. I’m probably romanticizing a bunch of relatively mundane stuff, but there’s this lingering sense of oppression and crushed hope I get from everything I’ve ever read about it.
yeah, that’s a messed up place, Corbusianism was already bankrupt by the time they built that city and yet they built it anyway.
Sounds like you’ve visited? I’ve always wanted to visit it, just because it sounds like such a bizarre place, but people I know who have visited said that it is a simply miserable city. So I guess we could say black metal? Maybe Woe?
I’d add that the general layout of the center of Brasilia resembles a bow and arrow, quite on purpose, of course:
http://www.justmaps.org/maps/la/brazil/brasilia.asp
Also metal, although a sword would have been much better. But I guess we can find some Amon Amarth in Brasilia too.
The death zone on Everest is fairly metal:
http://bergmetal.blogspot.com/2012/03/bergmetal-lost-album.html
This is great; every time I go somewhere I kind of assess the place’s metalness, so I totally appreciate this connection between metal and geography that goes far beyond just saying that Bergen is a really metal city. I spent a time living on the Altiplano in Bolivia, a high (12,000+ feet), wind-swept, arid plain, surrounded by mountain peaks, and with very, very, very low population density in places. I would huddle in my adobe house when it was far below freezing outside, and close to freezing inside (no heat), and listen to Immortal, Xasthur, and Weakling — definitely the most grim and frostbitten place I’ve come to know really well.
For those interested, you can find plenty of “inspiration” here…
http://www.amazon.com/Bob-Berman%60s-Weirdest-Objects-Cosmos/dp/B006O0HEOK
Check out the link below is in Spanish, but see the photos.
Is a Russian Ghost city, was made to mine coal and is 90 miles from the nearest town. When the mines ceased production, the government simply turn off the switch, no water, no light and the 12,000 people who lived there were forced to relocate.
Result: A ghost town
when I first saw I could not stop thinking about metal do not know why
http://tejiendoelmundo.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/pueblos-fantasma-kadyckchan-espejo-del-declive-de-la-antigua-union-sovietica/
The blog has some wonderful photos:
ghost towns, abandoned parks, abandoned hospitals, all dark, all gloomy
http://tejiendoelmundo.wordpress.com/abandonos/
The Kowloon Walled City. The place looks pretty much exactly how the band sounds.
http://coilhouse.net/2008/08/kowloon-walled-city-the-modern-pirate-utopia/
You picked Yellowstone for an Immortal song as opposed to somewhere in Norway?
That would be too obvious! And to the best of my knowledge, there’s nowhere in Norway that’s likely to explode and destroy human civilization anytime soon.
I actually included Jotunheimen in an earlier draft of this piece, but ended up eliminating it. Names don’t get much more metal, but I found that there wasn’t as much to say about it as a grim and frightening locale.
Still a well-crafted editorial and a great idea nonetheless. Good job, Doug.
Thanks!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapledurham_Watermill
Dude, Iceland… it has caves called Dimmuborgir… I mean… doesn’t that just kind of end it? Volcanos, Vikings, Ice, and Dimmuborgir caves…
It perhaps can’t compete with the Marianas Trench or saharan deserts, but I would give Salton Sea in Southern California trumps Yellowstone…a manmade lake accidentally made from runoff, built up to be a beach resort town until the mummified husks of fish killed by the toxins in the water started regularly washing up on the shores, which are not made of sand but instead of dead barnacles, tiny bones, and various debris? Abandoned and rusted cars, homes, remnants of broken lives all around with nothing but open desert freeway for miles? And the chilling reminder that all of this is the result of man’s carelessness?
Effing metal.
Gary, Indiana or Detroit. A city left to rust and die, and a city that’s halfway there, with no police after 4pm. Nothing left and no law. Metal as Fvck.
The “Gate of Hell” (it’s in the name), Darvaz, Uzbekistan. It’s a massive crater of burning natural gas that has been continuously burning for nearly 35 years.
Oregon / Seatle imo. Mountains, forests, fog, and rain.