“That whole Christian thing, it’s so wrong. We were never Christian metal”: how doom pioneers Trouble overcame chaos, darkness and misunderstanding to make their 80s masterpiece The Skull

Doom metal band Trouble in the 1980s.

Alongside Pentagram, The Obsessed and St Vitus, Chicago’s Trouble were one of the Big Four of ’70s and ’80s US doom metal. Their first two albums, 1984’s Trouble (aka Psalm 9) and the following year’s The Skull, are held up as a huge inspiration by subsequent generations of doom groups, even if their influence far outweighed their commercial impact. In 2006, longtime Trouble guitarist Rick Wartell spoke to Metal Hammer about the chaos surrounding The Skull’s creation, and its lasting legacy.

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