Of Metallian Towers And The Knights

Metallian is a site dedicated to the promotion of all sub-genres of heavy metal. It is designed to act as a metal resource and an address geared towards the fan. Metallian intends to feature leading reviews and interviews free from the conventional industry patronage and commercial pursuits of other outlets. The site’s main server is located at Metallian Towers.
The goal of The Metal Encyclopedia is to offer a comprehensive database of all signed metal bands. This is a work in progress.
Please report any omissions; however, note that weak and impure bands should look in the mirror and have themselves to blame if they are excluded.
All entries in this heavy metal encyclopedia are in strict alphabetical format. Capitalized denotes current and lower case former band members. Names in brackets are civil names for artists’ aliases. Members who did not appear on albums are omitted, as are EPs, singles and compilations due to redundancy.
Metallian welcomes all metal music and news submissions. We also need your opinions and suggestions.

Metallian is the collaborative effort of:

-Ali “The Metallian” (metallian AT hotmail DOT com)

-Anna Tergel
-Reza G.
-Sheila Wes Det
-Andreas Herzog

All letters and packages are forwarded by royal couriers to Metallian Towers regularly, but please be patient. Packages marked “heavy metal is better than music” receive preferential treatment.

Metallian Disclaimer

Metallian provides all contained information only for entertainment purposes. We make no guarantees regarding the information provided. Furthermore we are neither affiliated nor in contact with the featured artists. We do not store or offer lyrics, tabs, digital music formats or other artist-related work.
The original copyright of all images, titles and names are owned by their respective copyright holders and are reflected here only for entertainment and informational purposes.
© 2002 – 2024, metallian.com, All Rights reserved. Limitation of use: excerpts may be used only if source is noted.

Account Of The Metallian

Ali “The Metallian” was only 14 years old when he heard his first metal album, AC/DC’s masterpiece Back in Black. Such classic heavy metal bands as Judas Priest, Samson, Trapeze, and Iron Maiden were quick to follow. Those bands were the only music he was listening to for a long time and he listened to them a lot. From the very beginning Ali “The Metallian’s” commitment to heavy metal in all forms was just a bit more intense than most people would think normal, and this has not changed since.

If anything, Ali “The Metallian’s” commitment to metal has gotten more intense at the same time the music he listened to got more intense as well. Heavier bands like Metallica and Venom were added to his list. His first concert experience ever was during Judas Priest’s 1984 Defenders of the Faith tour with Ted Nugent opening.

University life in Montreal offered Ali “The Metallian” opportunities to participate in his favourite -his only- music beyond merely listening to it. Of course he seized them. Curiously he never played in a band but he knew how to write, and learning how to be a radio DJ is not hard. At Concordia University, CRSG’s Friday afternoon metal and grindcore slugfest “Sonic Disaster with Ali the Metallian” was notorious (one student union presidency candidate promised to “get rid of that awful music in the halls” while campaigning, and lost). In addition, he and Yves Campion were co-editing Metallian. The man gladly contributed to others all the while including Japan’s EAT Magazine, the U.S. Chord Magazine, The Sepulchral Voice, and Hardware. He did this while maintaining a full course schedule at school which included summer courses, and being a member of the radio station’s executive.

When I met Ali “The Metallian” in June of 1991 he had already been well-established at Concordia. My earliest impressions of him were of a guy with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of metal and a burning intensity for all things in life (and as we all know, metal is life, right?). Indeed, he has been compiling his very own encyclopedia of metal since 1984, starting it long before he or anybody else had heard of the internet. It started out as a single notebook with “Ali’s Metal Data” written on the cover but then he ran out of space and had to use a ledger; today, it takes up two huge ledgers filled with names of bands, album titles, line-ups, and flow-charts of where various band members went.

I saw Ali “The Metallian’s” metal encyclopedia when I interviewed him in his apartment one Saturday winter night in 1992. His recycling box was filled with LPs (still his format of choice). The television had the hockey game on but the sound was off. I remember Massacra’s “Enjoy the Violence” pounding at full blast on the stereo. Like I said, this guy is intense!

Ali “The Metallian” could only get more intense still. He became a member of the Concordia Student Union executive, “Sonic Disaster” moved to McGill University’s CKUT which meant FM radio and a much wider audience (he was filling the large shoes left empty by “Uncle” Normand de Bellefeuille), and by now well-known magazines like Toronto’s M.E.A.T. and Pit were actually seeking him out to write for them. The word was out, get this guy on your masthead at all costs!

He was also sought out by Montreal grindcore band Kataklysm. They knew he was a fan, and they knew his connections in the metal side of the music business and the metal media were considerable. It was after about a year of being pursued by them that Ali “The Metallian” finally agreed to be their manager. Indeed, he had been offered management positions by many bands such as Summertime Daisies, Blood Of Christ, Amniorrhexis, Vital Remains, and Immolation (the latter for Canada only) but the only band Ali “The Metallian” was interested in managing was Kataklysm. He pulled all stops to open doors for these guys until he left in 1995. Kataklysm were signed to Nuclear Blast, got a good budget to record their first album at one of the best studios in the country, and they played shows supporting internationally reknown bands as their tours came to Montreal. They toured Europe. I’ll make no bones about it, only Ali “The Metallian” could have done this for Kataklysm.

Now in Toronto, Ali “The Metallian” keeps himself busy. He was the exclusive “unsigned” writer for Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles, reviewing demos of unsigned bands for that magazine’s early issues. This was an idea Ali “The Metallian” proposed to BW&BK editor “Hard Music” Tim Henderson after the latter asked him for a unique idea to contribute to the magazine.

Someone as independently-minded as Ali “The Metallian” could not for very long write for others however. Ever the gentleman, he left every magazine he ever wrote for voluntarily and on good terms. Then Ali “The Metallian” started his own bi-monthly newsletter The Underground Review in 1996 with musician Ed Balog (of Slaughter/Strappado, and Inner Thought fame, Balog has since amicably left TUR for other pursuits). The word was out: if anything, and I mean anything is happening in the world of metal, you’ll read about it in The Underground Review first! The album reviews in there were classic Metallian prose: literate, uncompromising, heavy-handed, opinionated, Canadian, and yes, intense. I was uniquely privileged to copy-edit The Underground Review every two months and nobody can make me laugh so hard with a simple one-sentence album review! Moreover, I don’t trust anyone else’s reviews when I’m itching to buy something heavy.

So there you have it. The Underground Review is now followed online by www.metallian.com which includes the now digitized Metal Encyclopedia, 18 years in the making! I’ve known this guy for more than ten years and I’ve never met anyone more intense about metal than Ali “The Metallian.” He lives a full life and does nothing because he has to do it, only because he wants to do it. That, and the intensity, are the spirit of metal manifest.

Andrew Bernstein
Montreal, Canada
March 2002

Metallian Unveiling

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
March 15, 2002 metallian.com: launches on the Ides of March!

Toronto – metallian.com the most comprehensive metal news, review, interviews and information resource is launched. The web site will become the premiere metal resource on the web catering to metal fans worldwide.

With the launch of metallian.com, fans, musicians, editors, researchers, collectors, publicists and labels have a site where it all comes together. You will be able to read the latest metal news, reviews and interviews. You will find more content here than ever before. At metallian.com you have found a one-stop metal resource that promises to act as the central station for millions of metal fans worldwide.

The Metal Encyclopedia – constantly updated – is the all-inclusive metal resource for the fans to browse, read and research. Writers can find all the information they need, and more, at metallian.com. Labels, managers and musicians will find their band and music represented with detailed biography, discography, line-ups, photos and more.

The Metal Encyclopedia is the first time every band, album, member and bio information has come together and been placed at the disposal of the reader/viewer.

The reviews and interviews will attach journalistic integrity and quality to a wide array of metal bands and albums. “At www.metallian.com we will celebrate the metal style from the fans’ perspective,” says editor/founder Ali “The Metallian”. “This is not a corporate-backed effort. Even if we intend to offer more here than any other effort.”

The site will work on promoting and introducing heavy metal music to new and uninitiated markets in addition to becoming a hub for the music on the World Wide Web.

Launched by Ali “The Metallian” on March 15, 2002, metallian.com will feature a heavy metal encyclopedia in the making since 1983. The site will also bring together the results of over 10 years of writing reviews, conducting interviews and will consistently add a plethora of content.

Ali “The Metallian” has been a metal fanatic since 1982/83 and has over ten years experience at metal radio, management, promotion, etc. He has written for a diverse list of magazines and has written for and edited his own metal-only newsletter The Underground review since 1996.

Metallian is now on-line and available for your perusal. Visit www.metallian.com for all your heavy metal needs.

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