Funk metal
Funk metal a subgenre of funk rock and alternative metal that infuses heavy metal music with elements of funk and punk rock. Funk metal was part of the alternative metal movement, and has been described as a "brief but extremely media-hyped stylistic fad".
The funk metal scene formed in California during the mid-1980s with a group of bands who were initially playing a mix of funk, hard rock, hip hop and punk; the genre quickly evolved to include elements of thrash metal.
Characteristics
Funk metal has also been called thrash-funk or punk-funk. It was most prevalent in the American state of California, particularly in Los Angeles and San Francisco. According to AllMusic, funk metal "takes the loud guitars and riffs of heavy metal and melds them to the popping bass lines and syncopated rhythms of funk". They go on to state "funk metal evolved in the mid-'80s when alternative bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fishbone began playing the hybrid with a stronger funk underpinning than metal. The bands that followed relied more on metal than funk, though they retained the wild bass lines." Faith No More, another Californian alternative group who emerged in the mid-1980s, have been described as a funk metal band that also dabbled in rap metal. Rage Against the Machine's mix of funk and metal not only included rap, but also elements of hardcore. AllMusic formerly categorized funk metal as a style of alternative rock, in spite of the genre's name. The website currently categorizes it as a style of heavy metal.Certain bands not from a punk/alternative background, such as glam metal groups Bang Tango and Extreme, have also frequently incorporated funk into their musical style. Bands such as Primus and Mordred emerged from the thrash metal underground.
In his book Know Your Enemy: The Story of Rage Against the Machine, Joel McIver wrote that funk metal is "a slightly clumsy term applied in the late eighties to any rock band whose bass player used a slapping style." He goes on to write "The best known funk-metallers were the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Living Colour. Other funk-metallers ranged from the credible, such as Infectious Grooves, to the relatively obscure, such as the Dan Reed Network."
Roy Shuker described the genre in his 1994 book Understanding Popular Music, writing: "the 'classic' distinction between rock and pop into some difficulties when we consider various forms of 'alternative' music, illustrating the difficulties of forcing genres into too rigid a typology. For example, where would we place the wild musical genre called 'thrash funk', a fusion of 1970s funk, punk rock, rap, California surf, skateboard and hippy cultures, which, according to press reports, swept San Francisco clubs in 1990." Shuker wrote about the genre again in the 2005 edition of his book Popular Music: The Key Concepts, calling it "less structured than earlier forms of metal, with the bass guitar relied on more than the lead."
The genre managed to gain some international popularity through foreign acts such as British groups Atom Seed and Scat Opera, as well as Super Junky Monkey, an all-female funk metal/avant-garde band from Japan. Although never breaking through in the United States, Swedish band Electric Boys attracted recognition throughout Europe, with AllMusic calling them one of the "most celebrated purveyors of the short-lived funk-metal phenomenon."
Funk metal's prevalence in the late 1980s and 1990–91 predated the rise of grunge music in late 1991, which hurt the popularity of more traditional forms of hard rock/metal. In a January 1991 Spin article, Electric Boys singer Conny Bloom claimed funk metal had become a trend since people thought other hard rock of that era was "boring".
History
Origins (early–mid 1980s)
The roots of funk metal can be traced back to the Atlanta band Mother's Finest. In the late 1970s, the band already trying to make the leap from the classic funk rock of their Epic Records label to a more powerful sound. This can be heard in the song "Hard Rock Lover", which features a heavier rhythm section made up of bassist Jerry "Wizzard" Seay and drummer "B.B. Queen" Borden. It would be in 1981 when they could finally make the complete transition in their album Iron Age, an authentic mixture of heavy rock and funk that establishes the elements of origin for funk metal. The decision to take that direction towards heavy metal had some consequences, such as the departure of keyboardist Michael Keck, who could not find a place in that new sound. The album was produced by Jeff Glixman, who also worked with bands like Black Sabbath, Saxon, Magnum or Kansas. According to Alex Henderson of AllMusic, "with the right promotion, Iron Age could have made MF a big hit with the Quiet Riot/Judas Priest/Scorpions crowd, but the album was a commercial flop instead of the big commercial breakthrough that it should have been".The self-titled 1984 debut album from Los Angeles band Red Hot Chili Peppers has been cited by some as the first truly funk metal or punk-funk release. Unlike with earlier funk rock albums from the 1970s and the early 1980s, it included elements of both punk and hip hop. At that point, the band were already signed to the major label Capitol Records. Faith No More released their independent debut We Care a Lot the following year. Like with the Red Hot Chili Peppers' debut, it also mixed funk, hip hop and punk music. While Faith No More originated from San Francisco's punk scene of the early 1980s, their guitarist Jim Martin was connected to the city's thrash metal scene, adding heavier influences to the band's sound. According to Louder Sound, Faith No More, Fishbone and Red Hot Chili Peppers "pre-dated the funk metal gold rush" of the very late 1980s and early 1990s, when major labels began signing bands associated with the sound. In 1988, Neil Perry of Sounds Magazine referred to Faith No More's 1987 major label debut Introduce Yourself as "a breathtaking harmonisation of molten metal guitar, deadly dance rhythms and poignant, pointed lyrics". On the Red Hot Chili Peppers' album The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, released the same year, guitarist Hillel Slovak started to experiment with sounds other than punk rock/hard rock, including thrash metal. During late 1987, Faith No More and the Red Hot Chili Peppers toured together in support of these two albums. Martin recalled: "We were travelling in a box van with no windows. We drove all the way to the east coast for the first show. Flea asked me if we liked to smoke weed. I said: ‘Yes’ and he said: ‘We're going to get along just fine’. We did something like 52 dates in 56 days." Faith No More subsequently went on a solo tour of the United Kingdom in 1988. Following this tour, their singer Chuck Mosley was fired due to his increasingly erratic behavior.
New York band Living Colour, who entered the mainstream during the late 1980s, were named by Rolling Stone as "black funk metal pioneers." Ska-influenced Los Angeles band Fishbone are also noted for being an all-black group. They had ties with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and have been labelled as early leaders of the funk metal/punk-funk movement. The band got signed to the major label Columbia Records in 1983, releasing several albums through them, but never had a significant hit song. Entertainment Weekly noted in a May 1991 article that "despite the rise of black rockers like Living Colour, the American funk-metal scene is predominantly white." Many reviewers often cited Living Colour as having been a band that were directly inspired by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The vocalist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Anthony Kiedis, played down similarities between the two bands. He stated at the time, "Living Colour to me sounds nothing like Red Hot Chili Peppers. But I have to deal with on a daily basis: 'Wow, Living Colour's really biting your style. Y'ever see the guy on stage? He moves just like you.'" The A.V. Club later wrote in 2013 that, "Living Colour was boundary-breaking—and yet the group was given more boundaries right out of the gate. As funk-metal like that of Faith No More solidified into a subgenre with set rules and sounds, the last thing Living Colour wanted was to be called funk-metal."
Primus, a band with thrash metal origins formed in the mid-1980s, has been widely described as funk metal, though they have also crossed many other genres and bandleader/bassist Les Claypool dislikes the categorization. After getting signed to Interscope Records, Claypool remarked in 1991, "We've been lumped in with the funk metal thing just about everywhere. I guess people just have to categorise you". Claypool has mentioned being inspired by The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, comparing it to Led Zeppelin.
Popularity (late 1980s–early 1990s)
The success of Faith No More's 1989 song "Epic" helped heighten interest in the genre. Funk metal band Living Colour also achieved mainstream success with their song "Cult of Personality", which was a very popular hit and frequently played on MTV, helping the band's album Vivid go double-platinum. In the wake of Living Colour's success, another all-black funk metal band from New York called 24-7 Spyz gained popularity. Anthony Kiedis later claimed Faith No More's new singer, Mike Patton, had stolen his style, specifically in "Epic" and its popular music video. He said "I watched 'Epic' video, and I see him jumping up and down, rapping, and it looked like I was looking in a mirror." Since the Red Hot Chili Peppers had not yet broken outside of America, he believed European audiences would view him as being an imitator of Patton. The LA Weekly state: "Faith No More, then led by vocalist Chuck Mosley, before Patton joined the band, used to open for the similarly progressive Peppers just as the funk-metal scene was gaining momentum. By 1989, as both bands were getting exceedingly popular, they both landed European tours, with Faith No More’s scheduled to begin a few months before RHCP's. This wasn’t an issue, until Kiedis saw the video for FNM’s 'Epic'". In an interview with Kerrang! Kiedis further said, "what a drag if people get the idea that I’m actually ripping him off. Especially in the UK where FNM is much better known than us. In America, it’s a different story, people are aware of the profound influence we had on them." He also threatened to "kidnap , shave his hair off and cut off one of his feet just so he'll be forced to find a style of his own."Faith No More's keyboardist Roddy Bottum responded to Kiedis by saying in an interview, "to me, our band sounds nothing like Red Hot Chili Peppers. If you're talking about long hair, rapping with his shirt off, then yeah, I can see similarities I haven't talked to them since this whole thing started." Patton addressed Kiedis' allegations in 1990 by saying to Faces Magazine that, "it just kind of came out of the blue. It doesn't bother me a bit. I got a real big kick out of it to tell you the truth. I mean, if he's gonna talk about me in interviews, that's fine - it's free press! Either he's feeling inadequate or old or I don't know, but I have no reason to talk shit about him." Kiedis and Patton were thought to have gotten on good terms with each other after face to face encounters in the 1990s, although the feud would eventually continue into the late 1990s and early 2000s with Patton's other funk metal band, Mr. Bungle, who were heavily inspired by the Red Hot Chili Peppers in their early days.
The movement had reached a critical and commercial peak in 1991, with albums such as Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Sailing the Seas of Cheese and Mr. Bungle's self-titled debut attaining acclaim from the music press. Blood Sugar Sex Magik eventually went 7× platinum in the United States. Mark Jenkins of The Washington Post claimed in a 1991 article that "much of it sounds like art rock". Mr. Bungle initially began as a death metal band in Eureka, California with their 1986 demo The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny. On their subsequent 1980s demos Bowel of Chiley, Goddamnit I Love America! and OU818 they shifted to a ska-influenced funk metal sound. They signed to Warner Bros. Records in 1990 on the back of singer Mike Patton's success with Faith No More, and by then had started mixing their ska/funk metal style with avant-garde sounds. Their 1991 debut on Warner Bros. has been labelled as "funk metal madness" and "an irresistibly vulgar fusion of jazz, funk, metal, and a great wealth of other things." Regarding Mr. Bungle's evolution during the 1980s and early 1990s, guitarist Trey Spruance said, " Slayer and Mercyful Fate. Later it was The Specials and Fishbone. Then we moved to San Francisco and got all sophisticated. Now we are improv snobs who rule the avant-garde universe by night, and poor, fucked-up hipsters by day." Spruance has mentioned the first two Red Hot Chili Peppers albums as an influence, with Mr. Bungle even covering their song "Baby Appeal" at a high school talent show. However, bassist Trevor Dunn has since claimed that he wasn't as big a fan of them as other members in the band were, saying "I was way more into Fishbone and Bad Manners back in the day."
In January 1991, Spin observed that major labels were seeking out bands with a "thrash-funk" or "funk metal" sound, and commented, "all of a sudden there's a virtual army of funk-metal bands, primarily centered in the San Francisco Bay Area. They range from thrashers, who lend an occasional funk edge to some of their material to straight-out funkers to those who defy categorization." Spin considered Limbomaniacs to be the most "rap-oriented" of the bands in the Bay Area scene. Trey Spruance notes that when living in San Francisco, Mr. Bungle played at "officially funk-metal functions" such as the Funk Fest, but he claims there wasn't as coherent a scene in the city as was being reported in the media. According to him, Mr. Bungle generally kept their separate ways from Faith No More, despite sharing the same singer, and neither Faith No More nor Mr. Bungle were particularly close with Primus.
The funk metal bands formed in the San Francisco Bay Area were influenced by the earlier, punk-oriented Los Angeles bands such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fishbone, and there would be interaction between bands from both cities. Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith recalled in 2014 that, "the Red Hot Chili Peppers used to play with Primus. I remember when we would come up to the Bay Area—especially in the late 80s, they were a really popular band up there. People would say 'Oh, Primus is like the Bay Area Chili Peppers. You've got to hear them!'". Smith added that, "obviously, they were doing their own thing was quirky and people just loved them. You could tell they had a real loyal rabid fanbase—real fans that really dug what they were into." According to Steev Esquivel of the band Skinlab, the prevalence of funk metal around this time hurt the popularity of thrash metal music in the San Francisco Bay Area. He said Primus and Faith No More "came in and shut down the metal scene single handedly", and that bands such as these attracted a large female demographic that had previously followed thrash metal. John Joseph, who left crossover thrash band Cro-Mags to form funk metal band Both Worlds, told Spin in 1991 that, "funk is fun music to play, and it's good to see girls having a good time up front, not just dudes with spikes on their arms."
The New Jersey band Mind Funk signed to Epic Records in 1990 shortly after forming, with Spin describing their sound as mixing "metal's wall-of-sound guitar firepower and funk rhymes." At first, they were widely associated with the movement as a result of their name, although they have also since come to be associated with the grunge and stoner rock genres. Vocalist Pat Dubar distanced Mind Funk from the more funk-oriented bands in the movement, saying in 1991 that, "everyone's jumping on that bandwagon. We may have funky parts in our songs, but as far as playing straight funk, forget it. We couldn't do it as well as the guys who originated it. We take a lot of different elements from rap to the Doors and jazz and mix them together."
Los Angeles band Rage Against the Machine signed to Epic Records in 1991, the year that they formed, and achieved mainstream fame in the 1990s with their albums going multi-platinum. Infectious Grooves, another Los Angeles band, also signed to Epic Records at the beginning of the 1990s. Infectious Grooves included vocalist Mike Muir and bassist Robert Trujillo, both of Suicidal Tendencies, a hardcore/crossover thrash band. Suicidal Tendencies themselves had signed to Epic in the late 1980s and already begun adding funk metal elements to their music on 1990's Lights...Camera...Revolution!. The drummer for Infectious Grooves was Stephen Perkins of Jane's Addiction, a band from the same scene as the Red Hot Chili Peppers who occasionally delved into funk metal. Muir gave Infectious Grooves equal status as Suicidal Tendencies, and the two bands often toured together, necessitating an exhausting two sets per night for Muir and Trujillo. They released three albums through Epic in the 1990s, The Plague That Makes Your Booty Move... It's the Infectious Grooves, Sarsippius' Ark and Groove Family Cyco. Groove Family Cyco included a diss track towards Rage Against the Machine called "Do What I Tell Ya!". The feud with Rage Against the Machine originated after their guitarist Tom Morello began speaking negatively about Suicidal Tendencies in public, leading Muir to point out the irony of Morello's band preaching anti-corporate values in their lyrics while being signed to Epic Records.
Neg Raggett of AllMusic claims that by 1992 "oodles of funk-metal acts were following in Faith No More and the Red Hot Chili Peppers' footsteps." In an interview from around this time, Flea spoke negatively about derivative acts that were inspired by Faith No More and Red Hot Chili Peppers. After a writer compared Red Hot Chili Peppers to the new funk metal band Ugly Kid Joe, he said "I just know where their music is coming from – copping us, copping Faith No More, copping Pop-Rock Band No. 17B. We're coming from listening to Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Defunkt, Funkadelic, the Meters, James Brown – the real shit. And it's coming from jamming and playing billions of hours of shit that no one will hear."
Guitar virtuoso Buckethead began releasing albums through avant-garde labels in the early 1990s, and many of them have been associated with funk metal. Additionally, Buckethead was in the experimental band Praxis with veteran funk musician Bootsy Collins and former Limbomaniacs drummer Brain. Their music has also been associated with funk metal, particularly their 1992 debut Transmutation .