I love-hated this book. It felt at times like reading one of those lyrical fan-fictions where you write some story around some lyrics to make them fit. In this specific scenario, the lyrics were pure metal.

The world was a trap and there was no way out.

The plot is split into two: a retired band member goes to re-unite the team when one of their spin-off successful members is touring again. The other side of the plot follows Melanie, a woman working her ass of so that she can attend one of the tour concerts. The two plots converge at the end into a massive firework. The fun part of the book is that UPS people are tasked to kill the band member and anyone she speaks to that might interfer with the dude’s comback tour.

The love story with music

Trust TROGLODYTE. We are all targeted individuals. Black Iron Mountain will try to stop you. But metal never dies. Metal does not retreat. It does not surrender. Metal tells the truth about the world.

I think one of the best parts of the book were the non-sci-fi parts of it. The despair attached with trying to make it into the music scene, the hours spent grinding, the weird fans, the low pay, the feeling when you get a contract which is like selling your soul to the devil.

I loved how Kris, the former band member, spent some time with a decent sounding girl playing guitar on the streets.

The girl sang, Kris played, and they ran through Black Sabbath, Zeppelin, Lead Belly, Phil Ochs, Woody Guthrie, even the Scorpions.
Every song was the same song. These were songs for people who were scared to open their mailboxes, whose phone calls never brought good news. These were songs for people standing at the crossroads waiting for the bus. People who bounced between debt collectors and dollar stores, collection agencies and housing offices, family court and emergency rooms, waiting for a check that never came, waiting for a court date, waiting for a call back, waiting for a break, crushed beneath the wheel.
Kris’s hands could barely keep up with the music, but she rode it forward and it carried her, and all the songs were in the language of the cardboard signs she saw everywhere she went. Please Help. Need Help. Help me. Trying to get home. Lost everything. Signs written in want, need, must, hungry, sick, lonely, scared. Songs for people who couldn’t escape the weight that pressed down on their backs like a mountain, crushed them to the ground, who couldn’t walk because they were too tired, who couldn’t run away because their feet were in chains, who couldn’t think of a solution because they were too hungry to think past their next meal.

And in the end, the final boss fight wasn’t with the devil per se but with the record label who was draining the life out of any artist, banking on their creativity and their spark to make money. They’re the Iron mountain, never budging.

“No.” Rob shook his head, taken aback. “The mountain’s enormous, the sparrow can only carry one pebble at a time, and it has to fly to the ocean, which is hours away. Hundreds of sparrows will die and the mountain never changes. For all intents and purposes, the mountain is eternal. It’s a really depressing story. And that morning, my father asked me: do you want to be the sparrow or the mountain? Do you want to die in a flash, and no one will even notice, or be part of something bigger than yourself that will live forever?”
“I’ll get a million sparrows,” Kris said, but even to her it sounded empty. “We’ll take a million pebbles at a time. Your fucking mountain is toast.”

One life
One bullet
Troglodyte
One life
One bullet
Troglodyte

The tempo built, and it grew in power and intensity until it became primal, a summoning, an exorcism, the words taking on a sound beyond their sound, notes appearing that they didn’t play. It sounded primitive, tribal, and Kris didn’t think about the end approaching, until they were there and she slammed her guitar to a halt.

Awesome man!

Made me think of all the great metal players and for some reasons, of Evanescene, who I grew up listening – a female artist in a male dominated genre, screaming away to a crowd of hungry fans.

Thoroughly recommend the book to any metal music lovers and any chick with a guitar. Never give up!

About the author

Grady Hendrix is a novelist and screenwriter based in New York City. His novels include Horrorstör, named one of the best books of 2014 by National Public Radio, and My Best Friend’s Exorcism, for which the Wall Street Journal dubbed him “a national treasure.” The Bram Stoker Award winning Paperbacks from Hell, a survey of outrageous horror novels of the 1970s and ’80s, was called “pure, demented delight” by the New York Times Book Review. He’s contributed to Playboy, the Village Voice, and Variety.