In a New York Times 2009 interview with Gregory Cowles, author John Wray professes his love for abstract music and its dream-like ability to spawn creative processes. My take is that Wray likes really weird music – nothing more and nothing less. I'm a weirdo for music as well and authored hundreds of heavy metal and hard rock reviews for a decade (MaximumMetal.com). It was of great interest to me to find Wray's 2023 hardcover Gone to the Wolves in an indy book store in Tampa. It is fitting that the book begins and ends on Florida's Gulf Coast, an area about four hours west of my Florida coastline home.Gone to the Wolves begins in 1990. A teenager named Kit arrives in Venice, Florida to live with his grandmother. Kit feels out of place but strikes up a bizarre friendship with a black bisexual teenage boy named Leslie. Kit rescues Leslie from what he believes to be an assault, then later realizes that Leslie was just buying weed from his dealer. Kit and Leslie quickly become friends through music.
If you aren't a heavy metal mophead, the quick basics is that death metal music (cookie monster vocals over heavy distortion) was arguably formed in and around Tampa in the mid 80s. The genre hit corporate radars in 1990 and became a marketable trend. Leslie is up to speed on the early death metal movement and incorporates Kit into the vinyl and tape trading explosion of death metal and thrash. Kit quickly replaces his love for U2 and Huey Lewis with bands like Morbid Angel, Death, and Cannibal Corpse.
Venice doesn't have much to offer so the kids hang out at a place called the Grids, an abandoned section of unfinished housing. It is here that Kit gets to know Kira, a distant teen girl that clearly has a lot of emotional baggage. The three become a tight-knit trio and eventually move to Los Angeles. This is the middle portion of the narrative and features events that you will typically find in any rock documentary ever made – heroin, cocaine, sex, music, the Sunset Strip, and heroin – did I mention heroin?
Kit and Kira become a couple, although its loosey-goosey at best. Leslie falls in love with a guitar player and then becomes hooked on drugs. This portion of the narrative is a rags to more raggedy story of kids coming of age through a baptism of fire. Eventually, Kira's love of extreme metal leads the couple to Europe. It is here that the third act takes place, a narrative in the darkest confines of Norway. Kira is taken by strangers at a metal show and Kit spends a year wondering where she is. Eventually Interpol contacts Kit and things get ominous very quickly.
Again, if you aren't a heavy metal mophead, the quick basics is that black metal music (think Mariah Carey caught in a bear trap over three-chord riffs and blast beats) emerged in the late 1980s and exploded in Scandinavia with a lot of occult mysticism and Viking lifestyles that aggressively rebelled against Christianity. The infamous church burnings began and there were musicians killing themselves and other musicians during this arson phase. Needless to say, Kit and Leslie journey to Norway during the height of this era and begin investigating Kira's disappearance.
It's a cliche, but I will say this book is a love letter to heavy metal. There are enough references to musicians, albums, songs, lyrics, and riff religions to blanket Wacken in a mortuary drape. The central story is a discovery of independence and the development of adulthood. Personality, hormones, identity, and a skewed remembrance are all key factors in the storytelling. There is a purpose to it all and the finale is a very dark place that dips the book into horror's blood red red room.
Gone to the Wolves is a mandatory read if you love heavy metal. Without at least a minimum interest in abstract music, the book may not have as much of an impact. If you are a devil's horn denim and leather wharf rat then this book is all gravy. Highly recommended for headbangers. John Wray, if you ever see this review, I cracked the logos coding and path.
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