Sex, Drugs, & Awesome Hair

In 1984, the band started getting opening slots for national metal acts. Their first was at First Avenue, opening for Accept, whose Balls to the Wall record had just exploded. Obsession had a 40-minute set planned—all originals ("We were one of the few bands in town who could actually do that," he says). Arens had never met a national act before. He talked himself down from getting there early. He wanted to project professionalism: not too early, not too late. When he got to the club, he headed straight for the dressing room. He pushed the door open, he says, thinking: "They're talking about the shit that's going through my head every day—guitars and amps and building lights and..."

Inside there was a woman lying on a desk. The band and their road crew were there, and somebody was penetrating her with a beer bottle.

More than two decades later Brynn, now a father of three, clutches his chest as he replays the scene: "My...heart...was...just...broken."

"That was my first real rock 'n' roll dressing room," Arens says. "My first real concert. I literally walked in from nothing...to that. I told it to my psychiatrist."

In 1985, the Minnesota Music Awards created a Heavy Metal category. Its first nominees were Dare Force, Obsession, and Hüsker Dü. MTV was there at the black-tie event at the Carlton Celebrity Room in Bloomington—mostly to capture Prince's predictable sweep for Purple Rain.

Obsession went home as the best metal band. One year later, they would eschew metal altogether, change their name to Funhouse, and eventually cut their hair.

IN 1986 Slave Raider, a new band in town and a frequent warm-up act for Obsession, was nominated in each of the heavy metal categories: Best New Band, Best Original Band, and Best Band. Hüsker Dü was nominated with Soul Asylum for Best Garage Band. Limited Warranty (the Midwest's answer to Duran Duran) and the Jets (a sibling R&B act who enjoyed marginal national success and then fell into bankruptcy) were nominated generously. The event was broadcast live on KTWA, channel 23.

Chainsaw Caine and his posse—the Rock on drums, Leticia Rae on bass, Nikki Wicked and Lance Sabin on guitar—took the nominations as evidence that what they had prophesied with their self-released debut, Take the World by Storm, was manifesting, if only in a small slice of the world called Minnesota.

Chainsaw wore a reflective pirate patch, a top hat, and tails. Rae wore a torn prom dress. Sabin wore a trench coat. Wicked and the Rock wore tattered shirts. The band had splattered its entire wardrobe with acrylic paint. "We were going for a Road Warrior look," Sabin remembers, sitting in the offices of his Institute for Production and Recording with shoulder-length hair and a lavender sports coat, "only colorful."

The band took their seats next to the members of Soul Asylum. Sabin was seated next to Dave Pirner. After tying with Hüsker Dü in the voting for Best Garage Band, Pirner came back to his seat holding the award and itching for a smoke. There was no ashtray. "So he just knocked his award against the floor and broke it in half," Sabin remembers, "and what was left was a perfect ashtray. I shrugged my shoulders and lit up a smoke." The pair shared the tray.

That night Slave Raider won in all three metal categories, cementing Slave Raider as the boss of the local metal scene. "Dare Force was about to break up and Obsession had just peaked," Bart remembers. "And Slave Raider came along and broke all the records."

Most significantly, they broke a losing streak in Twin Cities metal: They won a recording contract. Jive records, a subsidiary of RCA, had no metal bands on its roster when it signed Slave Raider. That roster was packed tight with lucrative fluff: Flock of Seagulls, Billy Ocean, Samantha Fox. An executive with the label, living in London, wanted to start a metal wing of RCA. Slave Raider were to be the trailblazers.

The band was invited on a trip to London to make another record and play a headlining show at the legendary Marquee Club.

Their entrance on the Marquee stage—the chainsaw, the light show, the frenzied crowd—was a triumphant moment. But triumph was not the theme of the visit. The band arrived in London to find that their guy at Jive had quit. The band had no ally left in the company. "Really," Sabin says now, "signing that record contract was the death of the band."