On the corner of Moreland and Euclid Avenues in the heart of Little Five Points, where The Corner Tavern lived for nearly 20 years, one of the former establishment’s longtime bartenders and kitchen managers Mikey Braswell has taken the helm of a new metal bar called Halford’s. Named after the English, leather-and-stud-clad lead vocalist of Judas Priest, Rob Halford, the bar is an alter to the metal gods.
There’s the central mural, painted on a large wall across from the bar by Atlanta Renegade tattoo artist Mike Dietz, inspired by Judas Priest’s “Painkiller” album cover. The bathroom walls are plastered in “Heavy Metal” comic book covers, concert posters and pictures of Ozzy Osbourne, lit in sultry hues of red and blue. The menu pays tribute to metal bands, like the Slay Slay burger after Slayer, the Type-O dog, after doom metal band Type O Negative and the Lemmy steak, after the lead singer of Motörhead. A carnival claw machine will soon be installed as a nod to the lead singer of one of Braswell’s favorite death metal bands, Cannibal Corpse, who, though tough in appearance with a meaty neck and the nickname “Corpsegrinder,” is also known for winning teddy bears from claw machines to donate to kids. It’s the type of bar that if you know, you know.
“I just kind of made it look like my teenage bedroom essentially,” joked Braswell.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Braswell too carries that metal edge. On his right arm, he has tattoos of Viking symbology, on his left, a series of skulls in the styles of Star Wars, Terminator and Día de Muertos.
Braswell grew up listening to metal in Bogotá, Colombia. When he was about 10-years-old, he was introduced to Pantera and Brazilian heavy metal band Sepultura by his teenage sister. The angsty sound and politically-charged lyrics hooked him from the very start.
“Something about it just clicked in my head,” Braswell said. “I was like, ‘I like this energy.’ … I grew up in a country of war. I remember dealing with guerrilla groups going into different cities of the country. So, seeing a band being against that ...was something I immediately could relate to.”
As a teen and young adult, Braswell traveled to the U.S. where he had a chance to go to Oz Fest and other metal festivals .
“Then when I moved here [to Atlanta], the big venue I would always go to was the Masquerade,” he remembered.
Braswell started working for The Corner Tavern in 2008. The bar’s owner, Mike Rabb, is a fellow metalhead who has been into metal music since the 80s — the days of Black Sabbath and Metallica. When Rabb decided he was ready to move on from the Tavern to other things, he passed the torch to Braswell to build the bar of his metal dreams.
“We came together to make this little dream happen,” said Braswell. “The bar that it was before already kind of had the metal vibe, but not fully. There’s been a lot of different bars and restaurants around the city that have always been kind of like a metal bar, but never fully. … Atlanta needs a metal bar. And in this neighborhood, Little Five Points, it’s the perfect place to have a metal bar. There’s a lot of history of metal in this neighborhood.”
Atlanta’s metal history
The history of metal in Atlanta is the subject matter of an album released just a few months ago, Sept. 6, 2024, by local Atlanta underground label Boris Records. “Surrender to Death: A History of the Atlanta Metal Underground 1982-1999″ is a double vinyl compilation that offers a look at the Atlanta metal scene’s history and variety.
“Although Atlanta is scarcely talked about in the annals of metal (compared to L.A., New York, San Francisco etc.) you’ll get a glimpse of the Atlanta scene’s depth and its awesome and sometimes truly bizarre takes on the genre and subgenres,” reads the album’s Bandcamp profile.
In the ‘90s and beyond, Atlanta and Georgia birthed more metal legends. Sevendust formed in Atlanta in 1994. By mid-1999, the band’s debut album had gone gold. The internationally known metal band Mastodon formed in Atlanta in 2000. In their early days, Mastodon played at Atlanta’s alternative venues including The Masquerade, Star Bar, The Drunken Unicorn and Smith’s Olde Bar. Mastodon has since sold more than 2 million albums and had three albums hit RIAA Gold certifications, each selling more than 500,000 copies. Baroness, a band formed in 2003 with Savannah roots, largely got their start playing Atlanta venues.
“Around 2009 or 2010, we really started to have a more burgeoning scene here in Atlanta with old school death metal and thrash metal,” said Rafay Nabeel, now the bassist for Atlanta-based metal band Withered, who was deep in Atlanta’s metal scene in the 20-teens.
Nabeel played for multiple metal bands signed with Boris Records, rehearsed at a storied underground space in the Old Fourth Ward called the Thunderbox and played at a legendary DIY space at 55 Krog Street called the PS Warehouse.
“It’s a pretty legendary spot for some of the shenanigans that went down. But also some of the underground acts that actually came through and performed there,” Nabeel said about PS Warehouse. “Some of us kind of cut our teeth there and have a lot of good memories from that spot.”
Both the PS Warehouse and Thunderbox Rehearsal space closed; PS in 2003, the Thunderbox in 2015. With each closure, metalheads lost a point of connection.
“Thunderbox was more than a music incubator; it was a community,” wrote Chad Radford in a 2015 article in Creative Loafing about the closure.
The Highlander, a metal and punk dive bar in Midtown Promenade that was a staple for metalheads to gather for 30 years, closed more recently, in June 2022, citing on Instagram “unforeseen circumstances and hardships.”
A meeting place for metalheads
Braswell’s goal in creating Halford’s was to create a new meeting point for metalheads.
“I’m really stoked about what Mikey’s doing. Since the Highlander’s gone, now we have a place to go congregate … And in Little Five, that’s like the epicenter of weird, right? That’s right where we belong,” said Cody Martin, a metalhead who, alongside another big name in the scene, Amos Rifkin of A. Rippin’ Production, started one of Atlanta’s largest annual metal festivals, Mass Destruction Metal Fest. Martin had a similar goal as Braswell: to unite metalheads who he said tend to be “scattered.”
“That’s how I always envisioned Mass Destruction,” Martin said. “I had envisioned it just being an anchor ... Now that Halford’s is open, there’s a destination to come year-round … I just think it’s really neat that there’s these pillars and places.”
Mass Destruction had its seventh annual festival Nov. 1-3 at Boggs Social & Supply on the west side. The fest draws roughly 500 to 600 metalheads from around the globe for a weekend of metal. This year, the festival flew in Birdflesh, a grindcore band from Sweden, plus 19 other bands from across the U.S. Three Atlanta-based bands played, including Tómarúm, Malformity and Withered.
“We typically import bands from all over the world. We’ve had bands from Japan, Peru, Norway, Sweden, the UK, and then all over the United States,” said Martin.
While the global subculture spreads far and wide, if you ask a local metalhead, the Atlanta scene has a closer knit. There seems to be five degrees of separation or less in Atlanta metal — an interconnected web of passionate musicians, producers, concert promoters, album distributors, underground magazine publishers, a metal radio segment (WREKage at Georgia Tech) and slew of fans.
“It’s a very tight group ... it’s bigger than it actually seems,” said Braswell. “I feel like with Atlanta, it’s a good surprise once you find it and realize ‘Oh, OK, everyone here knows each other.’”
Nabeel agreed.
“For people who like metal music, they recognize that in other metalheads. The identity, the look, the obsession … there’s definitely a sense of camaraderie, a sense of family, between metalheads.”
Credit: Return to the Pit
Credit: Return to the Pit
… “It’s not a phase of life,” said Rabb. “It’s something that carries on with you. You just kind of feel it in your blood and soul. I mean, I’ve never heard a person say, ‘Hey, I’m into Slayer one summer and then they’re not ever again.’”
So what is it about metal music that produces such diehards?
Most metalheads interviewed said variations of the same: the music makes them feel better.
“A lot of people hear metal as being very angry, and yeah, it’s aggressive ... but most metalheads don’t listen to metal and get mad. They feel better,” said Rabb.
“I can go to the metal show and I can hear somebody screaming their head off and it’s a hundred decibels and a bunch of distortion and bass drums, and it’ll do wonders for my mental health,” said Nabeel.
There is a concept in Jungian psychology called the “shadow self,” which is the theme of Withered’s album “Dualitas.” The concept is that all individuals have a darker side that needs to be channeled in some way for a human to stay well. Metal seems to be a place for the shadow to express.
“The bulk of us [metalheads] are sweethearts.” said Martin. “It may look scary, it may sound scary. There may be a lot of denim and leather and patches and beer flying … but we’re just big old teddy bears. That’s the least metal thing to say, but I guarantee everyone you talk to besides the true misanthropes are going to say the same damn thing.”
Other good signs for Atlanta’s metal scene
Four months before Halford’s opened, in June, a new metal music series launched. The Little Five Summer Concert Series was cocreated by Terminus Hate City, an independent Atlanta metal record label run by musician Jay Crash, and Syd Howell, a veteran of the scene, talent buyer for the Masquerade and founder of Slaughter-Que, another long-running Atlanta metal festival. Together, Crash and Howell started the free series to bring metal to the masses. The three-month series brought more than 40 bands, 10,000 people and 150 vendors to Euclid Avenue.
“It was pretty awesome,” Crash said. “We had a really successful turnout that I think, honestly, preemptively paved a pretty awesome path for Halford’s ... it was really inspiring to see that.”
Kip Thomas, the publisher of Record Plug Magazine, said there’s another good indicator of metal’s health. His underground zine, printed on recycled paper and distributed to shops across the city, hasn’t run out of bands to cover in four years.
We’ve probably covered a couple hundred bands and I feel like we were just getting started,” Thomas said. “I am continuously surprised at how large the scene is. … The metal scene seems to be the strongest of all the live performance scenes in Atlanta.”
In spite of these positive notes, Rifkin, who books roughly 300 bands a year for Boggs Social & Supply and has seen rises and dips for decades, has a more sobering point of view. “2024 was one of the hardest years we’ve ever had. Anyone who says its thriving is wrong. It can be a struggle,” he said. “But, you can’t kill metal. Metal will never die.”
GO: Mosh for Tots charity metal festival
On Dec. 14, Tim Jones, Terminus Hate City, Syd Howell Presents and Dark Sails Entertainment will host the Mosh for Tots charity metal festival benefiting The Casa Program. The festival will take place at Atlanta Utility Works (2903 RN Martin St. East Point, GA 30344). Doors open at noon. The event will gather toys, canned goods and coats for children in need. Twelve metal bands will perform, including Sustenance, DayGlo Mourning, Truth to Power, Starved of Light, God Tongue, Slugcrust, Subdivisions, Celestial Death, Actus Reus, Apostle, Violence System and Enox. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased on freshtix.com.
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