Metal Blade founder talks about running record label

Vegas Voices is a weekly series highlighting notable Las Vegans.

Before Slayer reigned in blood, Metallica reigned in album sales and Cannibal Corpse reigned in parental advisory stickers, there was Brian Slagel in his mom’s garage.

There, 35 years ago in Woodland Hills, California, Slagel launched Metal Blade Records.

In the decades since, it’s become the most influential label of its kind, as synonymous with heavy metal as denim, leather and a profound aversion to barbershops.

Beginning with 1982’s compilation release “Metal Massacre,” where Metallica made its recorded debut and Ratt first started making a name for itself, Metal Blade has been at the center of the worldwide metal scene.

The label released the first two Slayer full-lengths, discovered the biggest death metal band of all time, Cannibal Corpse, and is home to a bevy of heavy hitters, such as Amon Amarth, Beneath the Buried and Me, and The Black Dahlia Murder.

Metal Blade put out Gwar, Voivod, Trouble, Sacred Reich and, uh, the Goo Goo Dolls.

And it all started with Slagel, who founded one of metal’s first fanzines, The New Heavy Metal Revue, before launching Metal Blade, which he ran on his own for the first three years.

The 56-year-old chronicles it all in a recently released book, “For the Sake of Heaviness: The History of Metal Blade Records.”

We talked to Slagel, a newly converted Southern Nevadan, about the state of the metal industry then and now.

Review-Journal: What brought you to Vegas?

Slagel: I bought a house out here as an investment about a year and a half ago. Just as a hobby, I buy and sell real estate. I did a bunch of stuff in Arizona for a while. I thought the market out here was pretty cool, and I like the desert. I just started spending a lot time out here, realizing it’s pretty awesome. I’ve met a bunch of friends. There’s no traffic. Everybody’s really nice. Now I’m pretty much spending the majority of my time here.

We’ve seen some industry folks relocate to Vegas in recent years. Producers Kevin and Kane Churko. Five Finger Death Punch. (Former head of Century Media Records) Marco Barbieri moved back here. Could you see Vegas becoming a bit more of a hub for the industry?

It’s certainly very possible. … I think the upside is pretty big. A lot of people like myself are leaving California because of the traffic, the prices and all that sort of stuff, and this is certainly a great option. I’m one of the Chamber of Commerce people now, like, ‘Come on out. Let’s go.’ And people are starting to come out.

How has the day-to-day functioning of the label evolved in the streaming and digital music era? How does that affect the way you run things?

It’s interesting, because all of this stuff, for the most part, is having a really positive effect on everything. I’ve been really pleasantly surprised by how well streaming has done. Honestly, all of us metal labels — and independents in general — were a bit late to the streaming thing, because we felt that we wanted to get paid the same as the major labels, and originally that wasn’t the offer. So we all kind of waited. Now that we’re in it a little bit, surprisingly enough, we’re having one of the best years we’ve had in a long time, because streaming has more than made up for anything we’ve lost on the physical front, and it continues to grow every day.

You started in the fanzine and metal-writing realm. Before the label took off, did you think of being a journalist?

Honestly, that’s what I thought I was going to do. I did the fanzine, and even before that, I wrote a couple articles for Sounds, which was a big U.K. magazine. I ended up working for Kerrang. I thought I was going to be a journalist. And then the whole scene in L.A. was happening with Motley Crue and Ratt and all these bands and nobody knew who they were. When I got the idea to put the compilation album out, that kind of steered me in a whole other direction.

Do you remember the moment when you realized, ‘Hey, this is more than a hobby, I can actually make a living doing this.’

Very vividly. When I was growing up — single mom, we didn’t have a lot of money, yada, yada — my mom bribed me with a stereo for getting straight A’s in school. It was really tough, because being a music fan, you always sort of wanted that sort of thing. I remember the first time I ever walked into whatever store it was that sold stereos in L.A. in the ’80s and going, ‘I can now afford to buy any stereo I want.’ That was when it hit, ‘Wow, I think this is a real thing now. This is happening. I like it.’

When you sit down and reflect on the past as you had to do for your book, how does it affect your perspective on what you’ve achieved, what Metal Blade represents?

You don’t think about any of that stuff day to day. You don’t think about the past or the success you’ve had. You’re moving forward, looking at what’s ahead. So putting together a book was really interesting. The way we wrote it, in chronological order, telling the story from beginning to end, about the middle point of it, I’m like, ‘Wow, we did a lot of stuff back then,’ working with Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, being involved in marketing stuff with Faith No More and Guns N’ Roses and seeing how huge they’ve become. It kind of surprised even me at the end of the day: ‘I kind of forgot, we did a lot of stuff over all these years.’

Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter.