Two albums, both from the Bay Area, both released in 1988, both by bands whose members had been in the audience four years earlier, and both considerably better than the reputations they ended up with.
Forbidden Evil and Eternal Nightmare are the second wave on record, and between them they answer the question of what happened to the East Bay after the founders left for major labels.
What the second wave was
By 1986 the bands who had built the scene had either signed to majors, moved away or come apart. Metallica were in Copenhagen. Exodus had lost their singer. Possessed were effectively finished.
What replaced them was a generation who had grown up watching those bands from the front row at Ruthie's Inn, and who therefore started from a considerably higher technical baseline. The first wave had to invent the vocabulary; the second wave learned it as teenagers and then went looking for what to do with it.
Vio-lence, Eternal Nightmare
The angrier of the two, and the one that sounds most like the East Bay clubs. Sean Killian's vocal is a strangled, high, permanently furious thing that divides listeners on first contact, and Phil Demmel and Robb Flynn's guitars are locked into each other in a way that only comes from a band who rehearse relentlessly.
What makes it work is momentum. There is very little light and shade; the record simply goes, for forty minutes, and the effect is cumulative. Robb Flynn later formed Machine Head, which is the reason most people under forty have heard of the band at all.
Forbidden, Forbidden Evil
The more accomplished of the two, and technically the best record the second rank produced. Craig Locicero and Glen Alvelais are a genuine two guitar partnership rather than one player doubled, Russ Anderson can actually sing as well as shout, and the songwriting has proper structure rather than momentum alone.
It also has the misfortune of being a very good record released a year after the field had filled up. In 1986 it would have been an event; in 1988 it was one strong album among two dozen.
| Eternal Nightmare | Forbidden Evil | |
|---|---|---|
| Band | Vio-lence | Forbidden |
| Year | 1988 | 1988 |
| Label | Mechanic | Combat |
| Strength | Momentum and fury | Technique and structure |
| Weakness | Very little dynamic range | Arrived into a crowded field |
| Who came out of it | Robb Flynn to Machine Head | Alvelais to Testament, briefly |
What happened to both bands
The same thing, on the same schedule, and it had nothing to do with the records.
Each made one more album that was competent and less exciting. Each was then hit by the collapse of 1991 and 1992, when the labels dropped everybody below the top tier and the club circuit stopped booking these bills. Vio-lence split in 1993. Forbidden lasted until 1997 and then stopped.
Both have reformed. Forbidden came back in 2007 and made a genuinely strong album in 2010. Vio-lence returned in 2019, made an EP, and are touring to audiences considerably larger than they had in 1989.
Why these two rather than the others
Because between them they cover the two things the second wave could do that the first wave could not.
Vio-lence are the sound of a band who learned this music as children and can therefore play it faster and tighter than the people who invented it. Forbidden are the sound of a band who learned it as children and then asked what else it could be made to do.
Everything the Bay Area produced after 1987 sits somewhere between those two positions, and a listener who has heard both of these records has a considerably better picture of the scene than one who has only heard the famous names.
The other bands from the same rank, and what stopped each of them, are in the second tier piece, and the full account of the period is in The Golden Years.
The venue that made both bands
Ruthie's Inn in Berkeley is the room that connects everything in this article, and it is worth describing because scenes are made in buildings rather than in abstractions.
It was small, it was on San Pablo Avenue, and it would put on a bill of unsigned bands on a weeknight. Both of these groups played there repeatedly before either had a record, in front of an audience that included the members of every other band in the East Bay, which is the condition that produces a scene rather than a set of unconnected groups.
It also produced the standard. Playing to a room that contains Gary Holt, Kirk Hammett and the members of Testament is a considerably harder audience than a record review, and both of these albums are audibly the work of bands who had been tested that way for years.
What to listen for
On Eternal Nightmare, the interlock. Demmel and Flynn are playing parts that fit together rather than doubling each other, and at that tempo the precision is the point. Follow one guitar for a whole song and then the other.
On Forbidden Evil, the arrangement. Notice how often a section arrives that has not been prepared, and how the band gets out of it. That is a level of structural writing the first wave mostly did not attempt, and it is the clearest evidence that the second wave were doing something rather than repeating something.
Where they sit now
Both records have been reissued, both bands are active, and both are cited routinely by musicians who were not born when they came out. That is a considerably better outcome than either could have expected in 1994.
What has changed is access rather than opinion. These albums were always this good; they were simply hard to hear, distributed by labels with no reach, and buried under the founders' reputations. A generation that can hear anything instantly has judged them on the recordings, which is all either band ever needed.
Sources and notes
Years and labels refer to original pressings. Line up details refer to the periods of the albums named.
