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SNOWY SHAW - The Book of Heavy Metal - 8.1/108.1/10
Summary
Steel Cartel
Release date: July 25, 2020
User Review
( votes)Read all about it!
After more than 30 years of touring the world, Snowy Shaw has written a book about his life, making music and a whole lot more. Known for his work in King Diamond, Sabaton, Mercyful Fate, Therion, Dream Evil, Dimmu Borgir, Notre Dame, Memento Mori, Denner/Shermann etc. and his solo act, Snowy Shaw has a lot of stories to tell us. What we get in The Book of Heavy Metal is Snowy taking us behind the scenes of a life of a metal maniac and what the life of touring, recording and living as a working musician is like.
Autobiography of a Metal Head
Snowy has given us his life story/autobiography named after his most popular anthem to date written for his former band Dream Evil. From the camps of the aforementioned bands, he is the first to spill the beans. Snowy tells it all as his version of the truth in an extremely openhearted and revealing story of all the ups and downs of a crazy rock n’ roller coaster life at ‘Tivoli Shaw’. In the Foreword by his longtime friend, youth idol and mentor Mikkey Dee (Motörhead, King Diamond, Scorpions) tells us “this is not the typical romanticized Cinderella story, this is the real deal.” I for one have to agree.
In the Book of Heavy Metal
The book takes us through his life in small stories and jumps around in the timeline of his life like watching Pulp Fiction where we get the whole story, but not sequentially. From the first pages on it’s loaded with great pictures, and the layout looks great. The editing could have been a little better as far as grammar goes, but overall it doesn’t detract from the reading experience enough to slow you down. Musicians will relate to his stories and will enjoy reading about what it means to be in bands that have success as well as bands that maybe don’t. What we get is the hard truth about the music business and what that all looks like from an insider’s point of view in the world of Heavy Metal.
What all you get
The book is a limited deluxe edition hardback of 464 pages, beautifully designed and decorated with loads of memorabilia and tons of never before seen pictures from Snowy’s private collection. Each copy is autographed, numbered and comes with a personal dedication to the lucky fans that order one. Overall, it’s one hell of a bargain and something that should be in your metal collection.
I love the stories. He has truly led a rock ‘n’ roll life. Some of it hits close to home as well, especially when he talks about struggling to get bands out of the rehearsal space and onto the stage, or the endless search for a vocalist. I can relate.
I agree with the reviewer that the book could have been edited better. There’s a good portion of Swenglish and grammar mistakes here, and the jumping back and forth is done seemingly without a red thread, other than wanting to break it up a bit. I think if Snowy had used an external editor instead of doing the job himself this book might have scored close to 10/10 for me.
He’s a good storyteller though, and the book is very entertaining. I think the only thing I missed was how he landed the gig with Therion. Recommended read!