![]() ![]() This, of course, showed the world that a directional shift of some sort was on the horizon with Helloween. Kai formed Gamma Ray, who debuted in 1990 with a better version of the thrashy power-metal Helloween had moved into with their most recent work. After inching up to mega-stardom behind MTV’s heavy rotation of the video for their golden bubblegum-thrash masterpiece, “I Want Out” (one of the hands-down greatest metal songs of all time) the band lost its secret weapon, the guitarist and vocalist Kai Hansen. Helloween were the most successful band on Noise Records (Germany’s Metal Blade, if you will) and the latter of the three aforementioned albums sold over a million copies worldwide. These albums showcase the band’s perfection of a particularly precise, catchy, and unbelievably European (if not absurdly German) form of speed metal, one which they accurately have a proprietary stake in. Helloween peaked almost immediately with their first three albums, 1985’s Walls of Jericho and both of the Keeper of the Seven Keys albums ('87 and '88, respectively). The numerous discography detours profiled in this column are products of creative restlessness, panic, environmental necessity, and other more humanistic motives, and while I will write some “critical” content in regards to the albums in question, each and every band covered squared up with, then updated, their original respective strengths, and have chartered a dignifying third act over the last ten or 15 years. As such, their creative pants-pooping was an anomalous and unnecessary choice that deserves the resounding negativity it attracted. Still, every other band on the planet would have self-terminated in the same situation, and Metallica navigated not only that major misstep, but the seven or eight that followed it to present day. It was more akin to a soft drink behemoth using contracted image consultants to introduce a new “Scented Candle Feces Flavor!” campaign. Their drastic, from-the-floor-up change was not a survivalist move by any means. Metallica could have made five more identical albums over the next ten years and been just fine. And it’s not a straight-up piece of shit, either. There was no note.Lest any readers take the presumptuous route with the opinion that I’m just going on about a bunch of lesser-known examples of Metallica’s notorious transformation between the release of the Black Album and the Load/ReLoad debacle, I will briefly explain the soon-to-be obvious difference-aside from Nirvana’s Nevermind, no album of the early-90s can match the combined sales and musical impact of Metallica’s Black Album. Inside was a check from Paul Ehrlich for $576.07. And he found a small envelope from California. In October 1990, the economist Julian Simon was going through the mail at his house. And he wonders if the bet actually poisoned the waters, helping to set the stage for a world where environmental debates are framed by the extremes - one side warning of certain catastrophe, and the other saying everything is going to be great. People invented substitutes, like companies switching from aluminum to plastic for packaging.īut Paul Sabin at Yale says, personally, he worries a lot about the environment. The catastrophe Ehrlich was predicting just did not happen. One of the reasons the prices dropped was just what Simon said. Prices for the five metals went down by an average of 50 percent. The world population grew by 800 million people. Those next 10 years, from 1980 to 1990, crept by. He asked people to drive more slowly to conserve fuel. ![]() President Richard Nixon went on television. And here at home in 1974, there were long lines at gas stations because of conflict in the Middle East. So, if Ehrlich was right, more people on the planet would mean we would start running out of stuff, and the price of these things should go up.īut, if Simon was right, the markets and human ingenuity would sort things out, and the prices would stay the same or even go down.Īnd before we get to how the bet turned out, it's worth remembering the context for all this. Simon proposed that they bet on what would happen to the price of five metals - copper, chromium, nickel, tin and tungsten - over a decade.Īnd the logic was that these metals were essential for all kinds of stuff - electronics, cars, buildings. And Sabin says Simon's side never really got as much notice as Ehrlich's - and that, it seems, is why he proposed the bet. Paul Sabin, a historian at Yale, told the story of this famous bet in his new book The Bet. Simon took to wearing devil horns on his head when giving talks. And he proposed a tax on diapers to keep population in check. Ehrlich started a movement called "Zero Population Growth." He got a vasectomy to set an example. Both Ehrlich and Simon enjoyed being provocative.
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