California has been a wildly varied hotbed of musical creativity longer than any of us have been alive. Just think of the myriad Golden State music scenes that have made an indelible impact over the past several generations: the flower-powered Haight-Ashbury sounds of Sixties-era San Francisco, Compton-bred G-funk, Southern California surf-rock, and so much more.
It goes without saying that California musicians have also put an enormous bootprint on the world of heavy music. Whether fueling a revolution in the underground or going mainstream-seismic, they’ve given us everything from Bay Area thrash and nu-metal to Sunset Strip glam, SoCal skate-punk, West Coast powerviolence, Gilman Street punk and more.
But who is the ultimate Californian heavy act? A group of NorCal headbangers? A sinfully speedy SoCal institution? Something in the great many miles between? We asked the fans this very question, and they ranked their Golden State greats thusly.
Korn
Depending on who you talk to, the “Bakersfield Sound” is either the honky-tonkin’ kind of West Coast country music established back in the Fifties by genre icons like Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, or the 7-string destruction conjured by Korn at the turn of the Nineties. When it came to this poll, it’s obvious that Revolver readers felt Jonathan Davis and Co. are the peachier option.
Though perhaps no one was quite ready for the game-changing nu-revolution arguably instigated by the first notes of “Blind,” music fans have been hooked on the freaky feelings Korn songs have given us for more than 30 years. They remain their hometown’s most famous heavy band.
Metallica
They call it Bay Area thrash for a reason, you know?
Sure, Metallica technically got their first licks in together in L.A., after a teenage Lars Ulrich posted a musicians wanted listing in his local alt-weekly. But the band migrated to San Franciso just a year into their existence, before shocking the world with 1983’s Kill ‘Em All, and they’ve called Northern California home ever since.
‘Tallica took the lead in the Eighties as the band to watch in the Bay Area, and indeed continue to rep their local scene while conquering arenas as the still-reigning biggest metal band in the world. And yet, when it comes to Cali-specific faves for our readership, there’s at least a few bands that can top even the mighty Metallica.
Deftones
Since getting their start in California’s capital city of Sacramento in the late Eighties, Deftones have become not only one of the Golden State’s most beloved heavy-music forces, but the gold standard for shoegaze-glistening, conscious-expanding alt-metal the world over.
Truly, Deftones have adrenalized many fans through a consistently air-pushing approach reflecting Stephen Carpenter’s gorgeous guitar work, Abe Cunningham’s heady and hypnotic backbeat and the iconically breathy coo of frontman Chino Moreno.
With the band having just announced their upcoming private music album, there’s apparently plenty of new, Cali-grown tunage for fans to swoon over this summer.
TOOL
On the one hand, TOOL’s shadowy, progressively third-eye-tunneling music sounds completely out of this world — or at least millions of miles away from the sun-smooched sands of any Southern California beach.
That said, the alt-metal foursome got their start — as they put it quite elegantly in “Ænima” — “in this hopeless fucking hole we call L.A.” While members have drifted away from the Coast (vocalist Maynard James Keenan is currently kicking it in arid Arizona), they built their legend in California.
Slayer
That Slayer would be voted the most beloved Cali metal band of all time — per our readers — should be no surprise for a multitude of reasons. The most obvious? Well… it’s fucking Slayer! On another level, it’s also fair to say the evilest faction of the Big 4 have coursed a ton of Cali vibes into their aesthetic.
Through the undisputed attitude of late guitarist and songwriter Jeff Hanneman, Slayer’s extremist development of early thrash was in many ways an extension of the California punk and hardcore bands he loved, like Dead Kennedys, T.S.O.L. and eventual Bay Area residents D.R.I. And don’t forget that both Hanneman and Kerry King used to rock Raiders football jerseys onstage (through the L.A. and Oakland eras). You could also point to the fact that their Southern California homebase is indeed “south of heaven.”
While seemingly bred deep in the bowels of hell, Slayer remain the cream of the crop of what California heavy music has to offer.