Do You Remember Heavy Metal Home Videos?

Back in my greebo metal days, if you wanted to see video footage of your favourite long-hairs in action then there were only a handful of convoluted, analogue-only options. You either set the video recorder to tape Noisy Mothers and Raw Power off of ITV at 3 a.m. (which meant having to program the goddamn thing in the first place, a process on a par with teaching a chimpanzee how to fly a space shuttle), borrowing VHS cassettes of Headbangers Ball off of your Satellite TV-empowered mates or heading down to Our Price and forking out for the sturdiest but most expensive option: the Heavy Metal Home Video.

Heavy Metal Home Videos (or HMHVs for short) were long-form promotional VHS tapes that were all the rage in the 80’s and 90’s; featuring a bunch of heshers engaged in some sort of audio-visual tomfoolery. Almost all of them included music videos for whatever songs corresponded with the band’s most recently-released album but what made them must-haves was the stuff that you couldn’t get anywhere else: home video footage shot by the band featuring members (and, usually, their roadies) being complete twats. Kinda like Jackass only with reasonably skilled musicians instead of skateboarding jocks.

Unlike the modern age, in which fresh content must be released every nanosecond lest the Internet implode, a band would release HMHVs infrequently. Usually every two or three years if you were lucky. This meant that said video would easily be watched hundreds of times. So much so that the viewer could memorise each and every line of dialogue, not unlike learning the lyrics to all the songs on the hand’s album.

Many was the time that my hard-rocking associates and I would sit indoors, chugging tins of Stella while watching our then-idols being idiot man-children. Later on we’d recite our favourite parts on the bus or in some greebo bar in the West End in between concerted attempts at failing to pull.

For reasons I struggle to understand, VHS video tapes have made some sort of comeback and, along with casettes, have suddenly become the hipster media format du jour. You can boost your beardy, tight-trousered, craft beer cred by hunting them down off of ebay… but it’s much easier to just fire up YouTube. And on that note…

 

Top 5 Heavy Metal Home Videos

Metallica – A Year And A Half In The Life of Metallica, Parts 1 & 2

Back in the early 90s, ‘Tallica was an unwieldy, over-indulgent beast that played concerts in excess of three hours and didn’t bother with a support band. In keeping with this spirit, they put out a two-video set (released separately so as to make Lars Ulrich even more money) chronicling the making of The Black Album and the mammoth world tour that followed.

Part 2 is the more entertaining, as alpha male James Hetfield (then in his Functioning Alcoholic phase) is reliably horrible to everyone around him, including an amusing interlude where he is happy to have himself filmed while mercilessly taking the chronic piss out of Axl Rose, despite being on tour with Guns n’ Roses at the time. YEAH-HEH.

 

Pantera – Vulgar Video

The Citizen Kane of HMHVs, Vulgar Video is a Homeric odyssey of depravity, filth and severe gurning. Harking back to an earlier, simpler (though not necessarily better) time, watch with bemusement as Dimebag, Rex, Phil and Vinnie proceed to drink, smoke and swear their way across the globe, fitting in naked women and puerile behaviour along the way.

Also features a home-made commercial for Death Cigarettes and roadies being made to touch faeces in their sleep. Back in the day we all watched this one more than Star Wars.

 

Korn – Who Then Now

Nowadays everyone listens to their token hardcore and doom bands and pretends they were never into Korn, but you can take my word for it that in 1996, EVERYONE (including myself) was rinsing that first album and wearing preposterously baggy trousers with wallet chains.

Those XL vibes are in abundance on this video, in which Bakersfield’s finest spit beer on each other, do funny dances and get all weepy after singer Jonathan Davies vents his daddy issues in the studio. Favourite line: “Put tags on my bag, bitch!”

 

Skid Row – Oh Say Can You Scream

New Jersey pretty boys Skid Row were the missing link between cock rock and “proper” metal and were on the brink of superstardom in the mid-1990’s before a catastrophic falling-out with Cindy Crawford lookalike and lead vocalist Sebastian Bach scuppered their chances.

Regardless, their home video is pretty good fun. Noteable highlights include Rachel Bolan’s DIY arthouse mini-films and footage of Pantera’s Phil Anselmo tripping over a lot. Good times!

 

Metallica – 2 Of One

It’s cheating a bit to include two videos by the same band but this tape holds special significance for me as it’s only about 15 minutes long and in 1993 I paid £20 for the bastard thing at Tower Records in Piccadilly (RIP), which is about £40 in today’s money. It had two versions of the epic video for ‘One’ on it, plus Lars Ulrich’s spectacular 90’s mullet.

I stand by my purchase. Also, we didn’t have MTV and I was desperate.