Episode 49 – Black Label Society’s Lord Humungus: A Bone-Crushing Breakdown

This week on Mandatory Music, Mike and Sebastian dive into the sheer heaviness of Black Label Society’s thunderous track Lord Humungus. From Zakk Wylde’s signature blistering riffs to the song’s relentless groove, they break down what makes this track a headbanger’s dream. They also discuss its Mad Max-inspired themes, crushing guitar tones, and how it fits into BLS’s catalog. Grab a drink, crank up the volume, and join the conversation!

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Transcript

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(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Good evening, and welcome back to another titillating episode of Mandatory Music. Yes. Yes. I am, I am Mike, one of your hosts, and I'm here as always with my, with the bestie man himself, Seb, who actually went to a concert last night. That I did, yes! What did you, what did you go and see last night? So we saw Apocalyptica, because they were here in Vancouver, and for those that don't know, Apocalyptica is a band that comprises of three cellists and a drummer, and they released an album in the summer called, Apocalyptica Plays Metallica Volume 2, because it's the second one they've done, and they were here at the Queenie, which is a theatre in Vancouver BC, and it was pretty frickin' rad. That's awesome. Not gonna lie. Yeah. Before we get too far, how did you, like, do you, are you the kind of guy that cruises like Ticketmaster and like, okay, what, is there shows coming in the next few months that I wanna go look at? Not at all. Not at all. I just rely on you mostly. And honestly, I don't even look anymore, because it's, like, all the big bands we like are old. Old. Old. And not touring anymore. And I had no idea Apocalyptica was coming, but I believe your girlfriend put you onto it? Is that, she found that out for you, or did you find out? No, I was scrolling Facebook, actually, when I was at her place, and I noticed it on Facebook in, like, December. I'm like, oh, man. And then I just said, do you wanna go? And she's Finnish as well, and she's known about Apocalyptica before I even knew about them. Nice. So, yeah. That's awesome. So it was a good, it was a good time. And obviously she enjoyed the show as well. Yes. Is Deb into that kind of music? Oh, yeah. Like, sort of same as you? Like, same idea? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's amazing. She likes metal, but, I mean, she likes a lot of different music as well. Sure. Well, so do you, right? Yeah. We can't really be pigeonholed into just one genre, right? We both have, like, a classical music base as well. Like, we both grew up learning how to play classical music, so. What instrument did she play? Flute. Sweet. That's cool. Oh, nice. So she humbles me in the piano work, for sure. Oh, absolutely. That's okay. I don't consider myself a pianist anyways. I just know how to dabble, and I know the notes and stuff. Well, you know notes and chords, and then that's good enough, right? Yeah. You two should make music together. That's the plan. Good. We have stuff to do. Good. In that regard, but, yeah. It was interesting, like, when we went to the merch table, Nita Strauss was opening for Apocalyptica, and she had more merch than Apocalyptica did. No way. Yeah. Really? So it was kind of fascinating, but nobody was buying her merch. Everyone was waiting for the Apocalyptic. Well, there's a few people that were, right? That's too bad. Okay, correct me if I'm wrong, I think I remember, she's Alice Cooper's guitar player, right? Correct, yeah. And she also toured with Demi Lovato as well as her main guitarist. Yeah, Nita's an amazing guitar player. Yeah, so she's released her second album now, and I guess she's on tour for it. Nice. But yeah, she is. So we were talking about this yesterday, and it's a very interesting space for her to take because she's a solo guitarist that doesn't do, she doesn't sing. So she had, I cannot remember her name, Kasey, somebody who came in to sing a bunch of her songs, but for the first half of her set, it was just solo work, right? Oh, interesting. And so coming in to take that space of like a Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, she's very good. Like, there's a reason Alice Cooper chose her to be the lead guitarist for the last however many years, right? It's been a long, it's been quite a while now. Yeah, she's 38. She's been doing it for like 20 years, basically. So, but yeah, so she got her start with Alice Cooper, and then she's got two albums of her own that are out, which are very good. She did a song, so she closed the show with the new song that she has that she did with Alyssa. Oh, from R. Tenemy, right? Yeah, it's called Something of the Wolf. I can't remember. Yeah, that song's cool. Yeah, so that's the one she closed with. Wolf something. The Wolf You Feed. That's the name. Yeah, super cool concert. It was very nice to see a concert in a venue that only has under 3,000 people, because you're all so intimate and close. You know, the last few concerts that we have gone to, or I've gone to, have been in 70,000 seat stadiums. Stadiums or big arenas when you saw Tool, Iron Maiden, whatever, but yeah, it's those kinds of venues are, man, I miss going to shows in smaller venues. Yeah, like the venues we have here, they're beyond small, like they're actually real small, but something like 3,000, 2,500 people is like the perfect amount of people. And I think in my old age, I get peopled out pretty easily now. Yeah, there's no bad seat there, right? No. It's all, no matter where you sit, whether you're on the floor, the mezzanine, the balcony, up top, everything looks straight right at them, right? So it's not like when we went to Metallica where half the time we spent watching the screen, because you can't see anything. It was too far away. But what can you do? Well, right, what can you do? Obviously, we didn't want to stand on the floor for five hours. I probably would have died. That wouldn't have. Those days are over, Mike, I'm telling you. Dude, those days are long gone. I'm not standing, I'm not being crowded in with people. And I know you're the same way. And even my kid, he has no interest in getting into the pit and being rowdy with other people. I think that would probably, he'd probably blow a gasket if he was in there. But tonight, we'll segue into what we're talking about. The metal master, the madman, well, yes, he is a madman. The madman himself, Zach Wilde, and his band, Black Label Society, put out a single, I'm assuming, which is off of an upcoming record. I don't know what the album is called. Lord Humongous. I really hope it is, because the reference to Mad Max is so amazing. It's right there. So people out there, Mad Max 2, The Road Warrior, there was the bad guy, the main bad guy, his name was Lord Humongous. And the cover of the single is literally the dude from Mad Max with the Jason Hockey mask and the leather. And he is, why he was called Lord Humongous, I don't know, because the dude wasn't that big. I'm just assuming. Well, he's taller than everybody else. He was. He was a big man, but he wasn't like, what's his name off of Game of Thrones? The Mountain. No. That's a big dude. I just, I don't know. I just found, I just noticed this the other day, the video cracked me up because Zach Wild's humor is second to none. He doesn't take himself too seriously. He is a serious musician, but he does have the sense of humor. He's done a bunch of videos now which are kind of almost lighthearted or humor. What was the one where they were wearing suits or something like that? I can't remember. Wasn't that off the last record? Set Me Free or something? Set Me Free or Set You Free. Yeah. And then like body parts starting flying off of people and people turn into like these flesh eating zombies, but they're all in suits and dressed up. So why don't you describe the video for people? Okay. If you remember. I do. And I'm going to put it on again because I'll watch it. I'll describe it a little bit, but it's basically the four band members, they are wearing like, well, of course they're all wearing the mask, the humongous mask. Which is basically like a Jason hockey mask. It's like an old school hockey goalie mask basically. That's exactly what it is. And they're wearing kind of like those sumo suits you can wear. Yeah. Those inflatable sumo suits. Yeah. And even the drummer has got the inflatable sumo suit on and it's just, and they're riding tricycles. And like, it's just like, it's the road wear, but it's just funny and done in a Zach Wild kind of way. The funny thing is that like he's singing, but you can't see him singing because the mask is covering his entire face. Right. So he's just kind of like playing the guitar and whatnot. And maybe I was just making a joke about how you said earlier it was a one ref song, which it kind of is, but yeah, it's just a play on the road warrior. It looks like a sort of trippy 60s psychedelic video too with, you know, lots of color, the screen kind of distorts in all different directions. It's like film lo-fi. It's, that's fun. It's just, it's exactly what you would think if you heard the song, the video kind of, it's like, I wouldn't say you can compare it to Winona's Big Brown Beaver with you think of the video and you can't disassociate the two, but this just, it's just typical black label. And it's just, the video is just awesome. Yeah. So Zach Wild has a certain tone. When you hear his guitar work or you hear his music, there's a certain style. He does a lot of drop sound, like drop guitar. We've talked about this before, but normally you tune your, your sixth string on the guitar is tuned to E to, to do a drop tuning, you tune that down a whole step. So it will be D. So you get a lot of open notes that you can play like the 003, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 6. Absolutely. This is like, I don't know if you were to, this is like classic Zach Wild riff. Like, and I have to imagine that he was just screwing around and he's like, Hey, I really like this riff because it's literally this riff for the entire song. More or less. Except for the bridge, there's like different parts. And then the chorus is just holding power chords. But like, you know, we talk about having complexity in music and journeys, but sometimes you just have this riff that speaks for itself. And you're just like, let's just, you just gotta go on blow the shit, the shit out. Yeah. You can say, you can say shit. It's okay. But it's in a drop B. Is it really B? I thought it might have been just been D flat, but that's now that I think about it. According to Songster and according to the YouTube video I sent you. So I said, Mike, a YouTube video with Tab. Yeah. If you go down a bit, the guy, guy's like, what's the tuning on this? And he goes drop B. So it's B, F sharp, B, E, G sharp and C sharp. So it's low. So it's basically the black Sabbath tuning tuned dropped because the Sabbath tuning isn't far off from all the other ones. Usually I think they just go C sharp or no. Yes. Whatever. They go see. And then now he dropped it to be good. God, that's low. It's low. You need some thick strings to make that chunky sound. Yeah. This is going to be one of those songs where he gets a different guitar and plays it for one song live and then, you know, throws his guitar to the guitar tech because I can't imagine they have a lot of songs in drop B. But it's low. It's low sounding. It is. And like you said, the solo or not the solo, the chorus is holding the chords basically of what the song of what the riff was. And it's just our chords in there. Yeah. It is simple. And and even the solos. They're not like they're like they're fast. Yeah. I'm wrong. Like speed scares me. And that's why I've never asked why I won't probably want to attempt them. But you should give it a go. Mike. I probably should. But. The solo is actually. Because sometimes that solos are a tad on the. Wanky side, you know what I mean? Look what I mean. Like he's just like, oh, not trying to disparage his solo playing, but sometimes it's too much. And sometimes you just have to maybe bring it back to planet earth. And because we all know Zach can play fast. But, yeah, because I prefer out of the two out of the because Zach and Dario are trading solos. Yes. And I've and Dario Lorena is an absolutely he's a killer guitar player. He's a beast of a guitarist. He is a beast of a guitar player and his tone. We'll get back to Zach's tone for a second. So Zach's tone can be a little muddy. Yeah. And dirty. Like, it's hard to explain, but it's he's got so much distortion. The distortions distorted that if that makes sense. If you play James's tone for Metallica and then playing Zach's tone for Black Label, it's very different. There's he incorporates a lot more fuzz and muddiness in his distortion sound, whereas James and Kirk want more of a crisp distorted sound like they're both distortion. But there's, you know, his is harder to differentiate. You nailed it on the head. It's totally the fuzz. Yeah. And it's fine. But that's always been Black Label's style, though. Like, he's always had that tone. Yeah. Because back in the day when he did Pride and Glory, I don't think there was any fuzz. I think it was just guitar, wah pedal, and then straight out of these gigantic Marshall stacks that probably made the room shake. And it's the classic Les Paul sound. So now he doesn't play Les Pauls anymore. He's got his own brand of guitar. So now it's the Zach Wilde sound, and it's good. And that was one thing about when we saw Pantera, because Zach is playing guitar in Pantera. Not that we could hear the guitar anyway. It really didn't matter. Yeah. That was a piss off, man. It was. The whole time we were there at Pantera, I'm like, can you turn Zach up? Because I can barely hear him. And then when he did his solos, I'm like, I can't hear them. Yeah. Couldn't hear nothing, which was a real shame. But I always sort of was like, Zach would be the perfect guy to sit in for Mr. Daryl. I agree. But the guitar tone is, between the two of them, so different. But it's equally as good, if not better. Probably more classically trained. Do you think, okay, let me ask you this. Do you think because it's so low on the register, if it's in drop D, that affects a lot of the crispness of the sound? I think so. And you pair that in with his natural style of wanting to have this fuzziness? Yeah. So kind of like the riff is very, I mean, I like the riff. It's great. But it's kind of, you kind of lose it a little bit in the muddiness. You do. In the murkiness of the sound pool, so to speak. Yeah. Especially when you've got two guitars doing that and the bass is emulating it, and so everything's already so low. And probably in a club setting, the drums will be just hitting you right in the face. So yeah, I think a lot got lost in that, in the tuning. The tuning's too low. Like, if you're going to play that low, maybe dial the fuzz back and go for that sort of. Yeah, I have that. That is a question for you. Why bother having two guitarists when they're playing exactly the same thing through the entire song, except for the end of the solo. Except for the solos and the harmonies, which we'll get to the harmonies because they're cool. I really think that this song was written one day. Oh, probably. It was probably written. I think he just had the riff, and he was like, let's just fucking write a song. Or excuse my language. Let's just write a song with this riff, and you know. Well, it's similar to that Set Me Free song, where Set Me Free is literally almost the same thing. It's basically one super heavy riff, and then they kind of just build around it a bit. And the song's three and a half minutes, and it's done. Yeah, it's classic Zach singing, too. Sure. Because he's got that Aussie growl going on, and he just. Wow. Wow. He's not Australian, but that's fine. Well, not Australian, but like Aussie Osbournes. Like Aussie. Oh, yes. I don't know why I just went to Australian all of a sudden, but yeah. What a shrimp on the bobby. Nice. Yeah, you like that? Austria. Lovely answer. It's funny, like when you look at the lyrics for this, there's nothing there. It's so simple. It's about a crazy apocalyptic man. Yeah, but even the lyrical content, it's like, I don't think you can get. Well, I mean, you can always get shorter, but it's very short. Yeah. You know, so I actually believe that he had this riff, and he was just like, oh, let's just do something with this because we're bored or whatever. And he just, they just like fast track the song and put it out. Right? Because there's no rhyme or reason for him to put out a song. Like they're allegedly in the works of a new album, maybe. But you haven't heard anything. I think it's done. I think the new album's done. They probably did it. Do you think so? Oh, yeah. Maybe. You know, but you're right. The lyrics, but they're amazing. They fit the simplicity of. Well, the concept, yes. Yes. What? Yes. But, you know, wheels are rolling. Thunder destruction fills the air within the horror of the wasteland where they walk without fear. And that's the verse. That's the verse. That's it. That's all you get. And it's awesome. Like if you haven't seen Mad Max 2 or The Road Warrior or Mad Max 2, The Road Warrior, you really have to. It doesn't honestly like that. OK, so when I was a kid, I watched The Road Warrior all the time, which explains a lot of how of what things I like to watch, listen, read, consume. It's all post-apocalyptic. That's like that's that's my genre of everything. So. Seeing Mr. Humongous on anyways, but I watched the Road Warrior and it was like a month ago, me and the wife were watching it. Oh, nice. It was a triple. It was a triple threat of Mad Max, Road Warrior and Thunderdome. And so the first one of all of them, the first one holds up. I know I'm getting off topic here, but the first one holds up really well. The first one's really good. It's gritty. It's good. The second one's ridiculous. Like the one that I've seen 58000 times as a child. It's just it's just off the wall. Kind of the one where everyone's wearing hockey pads. Yes. Yeah, they have all the people dressed in white are wearing like. Yeah, they all have like, yeah, basically lacrosse, probably baseball pads, whatever they are. Yeah. Football pads. Some guys got big shoulder pads on. I swear to God, the Legion of Doom from wrestling is in that movie. Probably actually. Right. And it's especially when when because my favorite part of the whole of the first two movies is the car. Top of the car. Love the car. And yeah, that's why that's why Furio is so good. Right. It's all about the vehicle. And, and, you know, and then when the car gets spoiler alert, gets sacrificed. I think the statute of limitations. My God, why did you? 40 whatever years ago. I was going to go watch it tonight. And then we watched and then we watched Thunderdome and we didn't even, we couldn't finish it. It was so bad. It's just, it's, it's ridiculous. It's not ideal. It is. It's the worst one out of all of five of them. Yeah. Honestly. Oh yeah. Furiosa is 10. Well, actually, well, I like Furiosa. I really enjoyed Furiosa. It's no Fury Road, but I. No, but it was a COVID movie. What do you expect? Like, what do you do? It is what it's been anyways. So we're getting back to the Lord Humongous himself. The Lord Humongous. Which even the, the name of the song, it fits the riff too. It's like the, the riff is humongous. Yeah. Like it's humongous, chunky, big riff that for three and a half minutes, it's just, he's chasing you with that mask and all the crazies are behind him. But after the solos, they trade off, like, I don't know. I don't know what key the harmonies are in, but there's this really cool segue into the final chorus of these sweet guitar harmonies for like 20 seconds. And it's like, oh yeah, that's why there's two guitar players. We'll land the plane with the two guitar players. That's why there's two guitar players just for the harmonies. Yeah. Right. This has to be a super fun riff to play, man. Oh yeah. Because it's the only reason why they just play the riff from beginning to end. Like, yeah, there's breaks in it too. Right. But it's, it's, it's a lot of fun to play. You can get it set up, get the pose, get, get down, like get the, get the crouch going and just get that guitar up and just start just. Well, okay. Let's talk about that for a second. I think Zach Wilde has one of the best power poses in all of metal. His guitar stance when he's playing is just so freaking cool. And sometimes he'll, yeah, sometimes he holds his guitar almost vertical. Like it's like straight up. I'm like, I can't imagine how he plays that on his like hip like that. And sort of how good on your, what your, even your fretting shoulder, that's gotta be, that's hard to hold that up. But Zach kind of is the humongous because he is kind of, he's a large, he's got humongous arms and big, you know, he's big. I don't want to say he's large, like size-wise, but he is a big guy. Like he works out a lot and whatnot, but he has a large personality too. Oh, absolutely. So. Maybe this is some sort of like, uh, sort of, uh, try what the words I'm thinking for like a, uh, self bio, biography of himself. He thinks he is the humongous. Maybe. Could be. Anyways. Um, the song is short, it's three and a half minutes. We've kind of like, there's nothing it's straight up. It's straight up hard rock. It's it's done. The only way is Nyquil can do it, which is driving straight ahead at 95 miles an hour. Yeah. I mean, the rumors are that there's a new, um, saw new, the album, the album will be released at the end of this year. So that would make sense. Cause Pantera is touring through the summer. So I think once, I think once maybe the Pantera cycle is done, I think at the end of the summer or whenever they're done, I think Pantera might go away. Cause I know down is in the studio, which is Phil and Pepper from. Well, Pantera is doing a concert with Arch, Arch and me, I think. Oh really? Yeah. Cause I know they're going to, they're going to tour with them on a Marth. Oh that's sorry. Yeah. I'm on a Marth. I'm sorry. Too many bands. Yeah. That's all good. And that's correct. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know when that tour ends, but I'm assuming once tour ends, I think Pantera, like Charlie's going to go back to Anthrax cause they have a new album coming. Yeah. So Zach will go back to Black Label and then Phil will go to back to down and down will put out their new record, which. Looks like they're touring till September 13th. Well, there you go. Yeah. So I'd be willing to better on Halloween. We'll get the Black Label album. That'd be my guess. Yeah. And the dates are pretty consistent. It's like three. Yeah. It's, it's pretty full. So they go on tour April 19th. Oh, that's the Metallica tour they're still on. And then, oh wow. And then they go July 15th is when they start with them on a Marath. I'm on a Marth. Yes. I can never say that name properly. Yeah. Cause July 5th is the Birmingham show, which is, you know, this is that it's the Ozzy Osbourne show basically the last one. I mean, I think one thing before we go, uh, we talked about Dario Lorena being a kickass guitar player. He's got another band. They are called Dark Chapel and that's they're awesome. The album comes out February 28th. So this week, this Friday, it comes out. There's a couple, there's two songs out now. Dark Chapel. It's what you think it is. It's it's metal. I'm not, I'm not sure who's singing. I don't know if it's Dario. I think it might be actually. Yeah, it is. Is it? Okay. Dark Chapel fronted by guitar singer Dario Lorena. There you go. Um, he's like, he's just the epitome of hard rock. He's got the hair. He's got, he's got the poses. He's got the chops. He's Dario's awesome. He's yeah. So yeah, so Dark Chapel is cool. So check out Dark Chapel. Put that on my list. Put it on your list. Yep. Friday, we'll get the whole record. So I'm assuming he'll be touring them until Black Label is ready to get back on the road and do their deal. So I would assume so. Yeah. Right. I would, these guys got to keep busy. So, um, that's our quick sort of review of, yeah, it's a quick one today. There's the Lord Humongous because there really isn't a lot to the song. There is one riff. One riff that's bone crushing. It's a really good riff. Oh my God. It's. Do you think you wanted more in the song though? No. No. Just, it's just Zach Wilde punching the face. Here we go. Yes. Yeah. You know, it's like you said, they wrote, they probably wrote this in a day, an hour or like he was probably warming up and then it was just like all of a sudden, whoa, okay. And then hit the record button and then, okay, well, well we already got, okay, we got three minutes to the song. Now we need solos, harmonies and a chorus. And that's it. Let's just throw it together. It's like a paranoid situation there from like Zach. I'd be willing to bet this song took more than an hour. I agree with you a hundred percent. Yeah. Just like, he just had this riff and they're like, let's just fricking do it. Do it. It's recorded. And it's not like they don't know like where to go in a chorus. Okay. Well the thing's in B, so where are we going to go for the chorus? We'll just do boom, boom, boom, done. And then. Yeah. It's a very simple song. Yeah. You whip together a couple of solos and Bob's your uncle. Yep. So catch us next week when we do the most complicated song on the planet. We're going to do something by, oh, there's a new song off the new dream theater album. It's like 20 something minutes. And we're not doing that. No, we're not. We're not doing that. No, it's I, I would never do a dream theater song that's too complicated and I'll sound like an idiot. So. But yeah, for anyone that likes metal or is interested in just listen to the song, crank it up, watch the video if you want, or just do it on Spotify and just put some headphones on. Yeah. Just crank it up and just enjoy the riff because it's so good. The riff. And that's what it's there for. So yeah. So Lord Humongous Black Label Society just released on Friday of last week. So it's fresh, it's new, it's fun. And yeah, check it out. So that's it. We're enjoying it. Yeah, exactly. And we will be, we'll be back next week with something Lord Humongous part two, the second coming. We'll do the, I don't know what the second coming of the Humongous will be, but yeah, do a tiny things or something. So there you go. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. We'll see you next week.