Comedic horror writer Grady Hendrix, author of Horrorstor, wrote a novel about heavy metal band Durt Wurk that never made it big because the lead singer, Terry, went solo and became a big success. This book is told through the eyes of Kris, the female lead guitarist and author of the missing album "Troglodyte", who is about to become homeless, is fed up with her job at Best Western, and is a shadow of the tough girl she used to be. When Terry brings his band, Koffin, back from retirement for a few big shows, Kris wants to go there and confront him, but first she goes to rhythm guitarist Scottie for backup, and he shocks her by living in a locked basement and spouting out nonsense about how Black Iron Mountain, a place from the album "Troglodyte", is where evil lives and forces want to take over the world. Scottie just got out of rehab and seems to be schizophrenic now, but her opinion changes when Scottie takes a phone call that has a Koffin song playing. Now he tells her he has to kill either her or the UPS men who are coming. Scottie refuses to kill anyone but himself, which he does with a gun to the head. When Kris gets out of the basement, she finds his wife dead on the kitchen floor, and she hears shots coming from other places in the house, killing his children. Kris hides and sees the UPS men with guns.
She escapes and goes to see Tuck, the bass player, in Allentown. Tuck is living the perfect suburban life and doesn't believe Kris. He agrees to take her to see Bill, the drummer, who lives in the old band house in Kentucky. Bill is in a wheelchair from the night of the contract signing when a drunken Kris insists that someone is after them and they need to leave. Everyone but Kris signed the contract, which became null and void when Kris flipped the van in the forest. Memories of that night are missing for the band members. Kris is nervous about seeing Bill for the first time since the accident, but Bill has forgiven her and opened a chain of rehab centers, the first at the old band house. Soon, Kris is involuntarily committed and uses the Troglodyte album songs to get free. Meanwhile, Terry has told the media that she is coming to kill him and that if his fans see her, they must stop her and call the police.
Kris gets help from some of the most unlikely sources as she travels to the concert outside of Las Vegas. Up until the halfway point of this book, you're not sure what the heck is going on and what to believe is reality. After that, it makes more sense, and there is a lot of gooey gore. This book is a heavy metal song about fighting the powers that be and surviving the Black Iron Mountain. "We Sold Our Souls" is an Odessian journey "into the heart of a conspiracy-crazed, pill-popping, paranoid country that seems to have lost its very soul." Hendrix paints the music world as an evil entity that some will sell their souls for the fame and money, while others want to keep the music alive and well by using it to overcome the diversities in their lives.
Quotes
She played the chord again. It was the only bright thing in the dingy basement with its 40-watt bulb and dirty windows. If Kris could play enough of these, in the right order, without stopping, she could block out everthing: the dirty snow that never melted, closets full of secondhand clothes, overheated classrooms at Independance High, mind-mumbing lecture about the Continental Congress, and ladylike behavior and the dangers of running with the wrong crowd and what X equals and how to find for Y and what the thlird person plural for cantor is and what Holden Caufield's baseball glove symbolizes and what the whale symbloizes and what the green light symbolizes and what everything in the world symbolizes, because nothing is as it seems, and everything is a trick.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.8)
-The only one left is Tony Iommi.
-But if he says it's Sabbath, it's still Sabbath.
-He can say whatever he wants, but if a band has four people in it, and three leave, it's not the same band.
-It is if the person who
stayed behind is Tony Iommi. Same as if it were Ozzy.
-What if it's Geezer?
-Bass players don't count.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.32)
They filled up their time between childhood and old age trying to be as unremarkable as possible.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.42)
Kris has been around long enought to know it was dangerous when men accused you of being better than them.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.124)
Relax any metal song enough, and you went right back to the blues. Led Zeppelin covered Memphis Minnie's "When the Levee Breaks". Black Sabbath blew a harp on their first album. Hell, the first band Ozzy and Tony Iommi were in together was called the Polka Tulk Blues Band. Hard rock, heavy metal, stoner rock, doom metal--it all dragged itself up out of the swamp called the blues.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.182)
Every song was the same song. These were songs for people who were scared to open their mailboxes, whose phone calls never brought good news. These were songs for people standing at the crossroads waiting for the bus. People who bounced between debt collectors and dollar stores, collection agencies and housing offices, family court and emergency rooms, waiting for a check that never came, waiting for a court date, waiting for a call back, waiting for a break, crushed beneath the wheel.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.183)
The blues were about the pain and struggle of living inside Black Iron Mountain. Metal showed you a door.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.186)
"Kris", he said, "it is possible to be crazy and paranoid and totally insane and still be right. Maybe the problem with everyone is that the world has become so insane they're not out of their minds enough to comprehend it."
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.193)
It's like the song. You know, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia? I can't believe that after a lifetime of playing metal, it turns out the world is a shitty country song.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.194)
Kris had always thought of Las Vegas as a whore's corpse, covered in glitter and left in the desert to rot, but even that didn't do justice to the Strip. Frat boys carrying plastic yard-long margaritas got in a fist fight with a guy dressed as Batman in an intersection. Drunk parents pushed sleeping kids in strollers across the street, screaming at each other about money, while half-naked women wearing police caps and fishnet stockings posed next to puffy-faced fathers with their hats on backwards.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p. 243)
A song isn't a commercial for an album. It isn't a tool to build name awareness or reinforce your brand. A song is a bullet that can shatter your chains.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.302)
A girl with a guitar never has to apologize for anything.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.303)
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