Amoeba Music

Metal Edge Magazine

Story & Photos by Bryan Reesman While most still think of the city as the Petri dish for '80s hair metal, Los Angeles has also produced a plethora of real metal over the years, including the heavyweights like Armored Saint, Slayer, Megadeth, and Metallica (before they migrated to the Bay Area). Given that rich heritage, it's only natural that the City of Angels would offer a devilishly fine metal emporium like Amoeba Music. According to them, it's the largest independent music store in the world, stocking a jaw-dropping variety of music, movies, and related merch. You can get lost in there for hours, searching for horror movies, goth albums, rock toys, and metal music. As Amoeba's metal buyer and one of its head used CD buyers, Jason Moore - also frontman for a classic rock band Jason Moore & The High Society - has passionately promoted metal since helping launch the cmopany's Sunset Boulevard stronghold five and a half years ago. Amoeba Music originally burst forth from the Bay Area, with stores in Berkeley and San Francisco. Moore joined their ranks eight years ago, making a pilgrimage down to LA two years later to assist in Amoeba's conquest of Hollywood. While the San Fran stores have metal sections, the one in LA is called Black Metal; it's really a catchall for extreme metal, but Moore's not fond of that term. He reports taht metal sells incredibly well in LA, and he moves 500 to 700 discs per week from his two-row section. He buys an average of 200 used discs every week that, once freed into the bins, are quickly devoured by steadfast supporters. When he originally opened the section, Moore stocked genres like goth metal and "stuff that rode a fine line," he says. "I started taking bands out and brought over a lot more of the speed, thrash, and death metal stuff. All those bands were getting lost in the rock section." Larger metal names like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Motorhead can still be found in the regular rock section, but the more underground stuff is collected under the Black Metal sign. Whether you're jonesing for classic catalog titles from Celtic Frost, Death, and Mayhem, newer releases from Nachtmystium, Pig Destroyer, and Dimmu Borgir, or power metal titles from Rhapsody, DragonForce, and Iron Savior, you'll find it. There are also plent of limited edition items from the likes of Obituary, Ayreon, and Manowar. "I'm a big fan of the classics," reveals Moore. "I always make sure I'm stocked on all the classic death metal records and the early black metal records, first and second wave. As silly as it sounds, there's so much new stuff these days that I get dictated by cover art a lot of times. If I know it's a dude in corpse paint, and I see forests, that one will sell even if I don't know what it is. [If I] look at a grind record and see disgusting sex acts, that will probably do alright. Certain computer graphics that don't look so hot, they never do that well. I order some of that stuff, and it always sits here." Moore proclaims himself to be a "vinyl guy," and stocks as many LPs and picture discs as he can, including releases from Bathory, Carpathian Forest, and Cannibal Corpse, though he admits vinyl sales are disappointing. Something he can be more pleased about - being an old school headbanger weaned on Slayer, Metallica, Carcass, and Morbid Angel - is the classic thrash revival he is witnessing. "There's a big resurgence of that these days, the first black metal wave or old thrash," enthuses Moore. "Thrash is huge right now. You see sixteen year-old kids coming here with denim jackets, their sleeves cut off, with the patches and the bullet belts. They buy all the classic thrash records, and then there are all these new bands like Toxic Holocaust and Municapal Waste." Well-known rockers have been spotten shopping in Amoeba's ultra-heavy Black Metal section, including Amen frontman Casey Chaos, System Of A Down drummer Darol Malakian, the boys from Behemoth, and frontman Satyr from Satyricon. With prices below list, at $14 to $16 - "we have a modest markup and try to cut people a break" - plus a soild used selection, legions of headbangers are being lured into the store. And that bodes well for its future. As Moore notes: "The good thing about the fact that metal is popular again is that I get to stock more stuff."