On May 2, award-winning author John Wray released what’s being considered his most absorbing and ambitious novel yet, Gone To The Wolves. Within the novel, Wray dives deep into the wild, funhouse world of heavy metal and death cults in the 1980’s and ’90s (around the same time period he discovered music in a passionate, fanatical way).
Through integrating his own experiences growing up in the metal-dominated Buffalo, NY, outsiders’ stories, and his imaginative approach to storytelling, Wray tells a vivid tale of three teenagers growing up together, initially drawn to each other by their shared love for metal of the extreme variety. Through the three characters, the writer highlights the prominent components that set the stage for most die-hard metalheads: Devotion to the music, sense of community, and the importance of tight-knit friendships, which, in a world full of so many “normal” people, they cherish.
Gone To The Wolves lays bare the intensity, tumult, and thrill of friendship in adolescence—a time when music can often feel like life or death. As the novel circulates throughout the population of interested readers and metalheads alike, Wray offered New Noise his top five book recommendations for metalheads to enjoy:
1) Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
In its bleakness, its violence, and its pitch-black austerity, pretty much the entirety of McCarthy’s fifty-year body of work is bound to resonate with metal fans—especially those partial to the more extreme end of the spectrum. But Blood Meridian is his wildest and goriest and most nihilistic book: Hieronymous Bosch’s apocalyptic paintings in fictional form, set against the backdrop of the blood-soaked American West. Read it while listening to (Slayer’s) Seasons In The Abyss.
2) Sound of the Beast by Ian Christe
Ian Christe’s lovingly researched, amazingly knowledgeable survey of literally every corner of the metal universe also happens to be an outrageous, hilarious, and extremely fun ride. I’d never have thought a book (or any other force on earth, for that matter) would actually get me to consider listening to nü metal, let alone ‘rap metal,’ but Christe somehow managed the feat. (I’m still… considering.) A must-read for literally anyone with the slightest interest in the music and the culture. This book educated me.
3) The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Master and Margarita begins with Satan’s arrival in Moscow and ends with a coven of witches flying through the starry sky on nightmares, with a pit stop at Jesus’ crucifixion along the way. What more do you need to know?
4) Cities of the Red Night by William S. Burroughs
It’s not a coincidence that the cover of the first edition Burroughs’ 1981 novel features the same Breughel painting, ‘Triumph of the Dead,’ that has given so many metal album covers and extra touch of Armageddon chic. Its plot is bonkers and indescribable, but here’s what the dust jacket says: “A terrible plague from the ancient Cities of the Red Night, located in what is now the Gobi Desert, has devastated the planet and reduced the population to what it was three hundred years ago. Noah Blake, a young gunsmith on a pirate boat, invents the cartridge gun and the exploding cannonball.” See what I mean? This one’s sure to go over well with psychedelic and stoner-metal devotees.
5) Lords of Chaos by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind
Just as Sound of the Beast was the key to my metal education, Lords of Chaos was absolutely crucial to the creation of my metal novel, Gone to the Wolves. While not necessarily the most elegantly written book you’ll ever come across—it’s basically a 358-page data dump—Moynihan and Søderlind’s labor of love will flood your brain with more information about second-generation black metal—and especially its sad and violent climax—than you ever thought you needed. There’s a sick fascination to this story. It’s like reading I Am Ozzy (which really should be on this list! Best memoir ever!) and Helter Skelter, the book about the Manson family, simultaneously. I also give the authors credit for presenting Varg Vikernes, Øystein Aarseth, and the rest of the Black Circle as exactly what they were—a bunch of dumb kids.
John Wray is the author of six critically acclaimed novels, including Godsend, The Lost Time Accidents, and Lowboy. The recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim grant, and a Cullman Fellowship from the New York Public Library, he was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists in 2007. Order a copy of his newest novel Gone To The Wolves here.
Order a copy of Gone To The Wolves by John Wray here.
Photo courtesy of Julio Arellano
