![]() Kip, Leslie and Kira know how to survive a backwater. Metal is not a cult or an ideological system but a scene, and a scene is always a cultural backwater of the mainstream. ![]() Kip’s takedowns of the pay-to-play fame seekers who cavort about the Whisky a Go Go’s stage on weekday nights to half-empty rooms with glitter cannons and paisley scarves, are scabrous enough to give the likes of Lester Bangs and Kickboy Face pause. “He couldn’t shake the feeling,” Wray writes, “that all it would take to bring the whole scene crashing down would be for someone, just one random person, to look around and start laughing.” (Though the band isn’t named, that’s the effect Nirvana had when it broke out in 1991 and sent hair metal back to the underground.) Kip’s musical taste is defined by what he doesn’t like, and as he reinvents himself as a reviewer for a zine called Hair of the Serpent, he discovers plenty to dislike in the druggy lore of the Sunset Strip. Leslie’s motives are carnal, but Kira’s are harder for Kip to decipher. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and Kira is reputedly related to Grady Stiles, who performed under the name Lobster Boy and left behind a legacy of violence that Wray weaves into “Gone to the Wolves.”Īfter surviving high school, the trio moves to Hollywood, where Leslie and Kira fixate on a terrible glam metal band that keeps changing its name. Venice was also the winter headquarters of the Ringling Bros. Because Chuck’s mom goes to church in Venice, these misfits claim him as their own. Wray’s story begins in 1987 with the emergence of a band called Death, whose record “ Scream Bloody Gore” many consider to be the birth of death metal, a faster and more ferocious style stripped of ornament and played at punishing volumes.ĭeath was the brainchild of Chuck Schuldiner, who played all the instruments on the record save drums. Naturally, Kip falls head over heels in love with her. The group is rounded out by Kira Carson, who is drawn to the most intense music she can find in a desperate search for truth: “Kira was the genuine article, a metal mujahid, a wild-eyed true believer, and the scorn she felt for music - for anything, really - that was soft or safe or tentative was too ferocious to resist.” It’s a complete shadow culture, with its own laws, its own myths, its own scripture.” Leslie Z, “who had three strikes against him already: he was Black, he was bi, and he liked Hanoi Rocks.” Leslie is the scene’s savant and proselytizer. Kip is indoctrinated into heavy metal by Leslie Aaron Vogler, a.k.a. These rumors are bolstered by Kip’s proclivity for slipping into a violent fugue-like state he calls the White Room whenever he’s threatened or stressed. His arrival is attended by a raft of rumors about his incarcerated father and drug-addicted mother, as well as his own involuntary stay in a mental health facility. In his latest outing, he has nailed his milieu.Ĭhristopher “Kip” Norvald is the proverbial new kid in town, who moves to Venice, Fla., to live with his grandmother and finish high school. Wray is the acclaimed author of five previous novels, ranging from the voice-driven (“Lowboy”) to the historical (“The Right Hand of Sleep”) and the experimental (“The Lost Time Accidents”). This is certainly the case for the three main characters in “ Gone to the Wolves,” an outstanding new novel by John Wray set in the world of ’80s heavy metal. Enduring everything from insults to parking lot beat-downs, devotees of extreme music earn their fandom. This is why headbangers and punks are the most loyal fans on the planet. ![]() There is a direct relationship between the amount of crap you take for the music you love and the depth of your devotion to it.
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