Interview with 666 Days of Metal author Chip McCabe | by Thomas Pizzola
Many people love heavy metal, but not many people are willing to put that love into action and assemble a list of what they consider to be the best 666 albums in the history of the genre. Connecticut-based writer, creator of “The Metal Dad” blog, and former staffer for Relapse Records, Chip McCabe, decided he would be different. He would take his love of metal and compile a list to beat all lists.
So began the original “666 Days of Metal” blog.
“The list started when I was asked to create a ‘100 Greatest Metal Albums’ piece to run on Halloween for the media company I was working for,” McCabe says. “I just couldn’t narrow down the list from the 200-plus albums I initially came up with and still feel great about it. I had a brainstorm of making a list of 666 albums, because that number has just become so ingrained into metal culture. From there, I thought it would be a unique concept to reveal the albums one per day for 666 consecutive days. That’s how the original 666 Days of Metal blog was born. Roughly midway through, I thought it would be a killer idea for a book as well.”
From 2012 to 2014, McCabe posted one entry per day, counting down his list of the most essential albums in metal history. What did those closest to him think of this undertaking? “I think most family and friends thought I was either a little too ambitious or a little too crazed about metal music,” he says. “I’m definitely the latter.”
Unlike authors of other more personal lists, McCabe had very specific criteria for what he deemed an essential metal album. “I was very clear from the start that this was not a ‘best of’ or ‘greatest’ list, because those terms are so subjective, especially when it comes to music,” he says. “I wanted instead to create a list of albums that I thought were essential—essential to the formation of the metal scene as it exists today. So, while things like record sales are taken into account, it’s not the be-all, end-all of what I wanted this list to represent. This project is one man’s interpretation of 666 albums that were crucial to metal’s current development in one way or another.”
This meant excluding huge-selling albums from bands like Metallica and Slipknot. Some people might scoff, but McCabe had very solid reasons for determining what made his list. “I didn’t want to be tied to albums sales alone, so, while there are some obvious multi-million sellers in the book—i.e. the first four Metallica records—I thought it just as important to shine a light on some of those unheralded bands that helped in the formation of so many subgenres and niches in the metal world today,” he explains. “I’d rather focus on acts like the founding fathers of grindcore or the unsung heroes of crossover thrash, for example. To me, at the end of the day, those bands played just as much of a role in where we are today as a fan base and a genre as someone like Slipknot. There are a lot of different types of metal represented in this book: thrash, speed, traditional, proto, power, doom, sludge, grind, death, black, crust, stoner rock, hardcore. You name it, it’s probably in there. To me, that is the true essence of this project, not how many records a band sold.”
Purchase 666 Days Of Metal here.
Though there was no doubt which record would be the number one on the list—spoiler alert: it’s Black Sabbath’s first album—McCabe put a lot of thought into which entries would fill the higher spots. “I hemmed and hawed for quite some time on what albums should be included in the top 10, top 25, top 50, top 100, etc.; it was a long and sometimes painful process,” he says. “As for the number one record? No, there was no doubt in my mind which album deserved that spot, because, to me, it’s the album that almost single-handedly created the metal genre.”
On April 11, “666 Days of Metal” was finally made into a real book. “There were a couple factors that played into it,” McCabe says of his desire to physically publish his blog. “First, I thought the concept itself could play out well in print. The way the book is laid out, the reader can tackle one or multiple albums a day, spending as much time with each as they see fit—not entirely unlike the way a religious person would read their daily devotional. Secondly, and simply put, I’m a fan of books. Writing a blog is great, and you can take liberties you might not in print, but to have your material in a bound edition sitting on a shelf in your home—there’s something to it that’s especially appealing to me.”
After much debate, McCabe decided to go the self-publishing route. “Self-publishing was always a viable option for me, because I’ve met so many people who’ve had varied levels of success with it in different genres, but I did explore the traditional publishing route first,” he says. “I spent quite some time speaking with literary agents and various publishing houses. I had some interest from some publishers, but it seemed to always come down to a couple factors blocking us from working together. There were concerns about the length of the book—it’s a couple pages shy of 700—and I wasn’t willing to compromise my vision for what it should look like. Now that I’ve both self-published and published another book through a traditional publisher, [‘100 Things to Do in Hartford Before You Die,’] I can say that there are merits to both and I’ve enjoyed the process for each.”
Now, to really put the author on the spot: since McCabe is from Connecticut and deals in lists, what would he say are some of the best Connecticut metal albums of the past few years? “That’s a brutally hard question,” he admits. “The Connecticut metal scene is a robust and productive one. Some of my personal favorites, though, have included Sea Of Bones’ The Earth Wants Us Dead, Tomb And Thirst’s Wrath, Bedroom Rehab Corporation’s Fortunate Some, Archaic Decapitator’s Light of a Different Sun, and Curse The Son’s Isolator. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though. There has been so much good metal flowing out of our tiny state these days.”
