Welcome back to Milwaukee Metal Monthly, the column where I’m graciously allotted space to go on at length about outsider music from an insider perspective.
Hey, so remember in the initial installment of MMM where I said, “Maybe I’ll even do an in-depth interview with a single band or artist—closer to a profile-type thing”? Well, I finally got around to making good on that sorta-promise. This month, we only have one interview, and that’s because a whole lot of ground was covered in a 34-minute phone call, and a whole lot of it was interesting and/or quotable. In other words, the half hour flew by, and you’ll see why.
Our interviewee this time around is Hayden Crownover, a full-time guitar teacher at the Brookfield and Waukesha locations of White House of Music, and who’s as much of a metalhead as I am. Naturally, his enthusiasm made him a superb source on the topic of heavy metal. (If you wanna contact Crownover about anything discussed, here’s his Linktree, and here’s his TikTok account. It should be noted that he doesn’t have a preferred method. “I check those [apps] frequently to see who’s messaged me. So, whatever’s clever.”)
To begin, it isn’t an overstatement to say that metal is in Crownover’s D.N.A. “Metal has always excited me,” he says. “Like, the rush you get from listening to it when it all comes together. It’s hard to explain unless you listen to it. The adrenaline rush, the complexity within metal, the compositions, and the fact that there’s so much you can do. Everyone’s doin’ something different. You got everything from thrash metal to symphonic black metal to brutal death metal to power metal—anything you can think of. I always tell my guitar students that one of the things I love about the genre is there’s just so much to it. If you can think of something, there’s probably a band that does that. That’s always been so cool to me.”
Speaking of his students, if there’s one thing that seems to excite Crownover as much as heavy metal, it’s teaching guitar. It becomes clear early on that Crownover, like all great instructors, is patient and affable, and when he discusses teaching and how much he loves it, I can practically hear him smile through the phone.
“I love teaching [beginner] kids, it’s so great,” he beams. “When they finally get a song like ‘Ode To Joy’ or ‘Rockin’ Robin’ or ‘Yankee Doodle,’ when you can tell the kid’s invested in it, and they finally get it, dude, it’s so great. The expression on their face, that sense of accomplishment—like, ‘Oh man, we worked hard at this forever, and now I got it. Now I can play the song.’ There’s something different about that, ya know? It’s so inspiring.”
He’s quick to clarify that he enjoys teaching experienced players, as well. “But of the advanced students I do have, they’re great. I love sitting down and working on more complex stuff. After I’ve been doing ‘Ode To Joy’ all afternoon, it’s nice to be able to sit down and be like, ‘Alright, let’s work on some arpeggios.’”
When I mention that the reason I picked up the guitar back in March 2020 is because of Metallica’s James Hetfield—who Andy O’Connor once called “bar none, metal’s standout rhythm guitarist,” and who’s my pick for the best rhythm player ever—and how excited I was when I first nailed the main riff to their song “Master Of Puppets,” Crownover uses that as a springboard to illustrate part of his methodology.
“I actually use ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ as a great intro into more complex ideas with my students,” he says. “When they transition from beginner stuff like ‘Yankee Doodle’ or ‘Rockin’ Robin,’ they wanna start learning songs with actual techniques. And I think ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ is great because it introduces triplets, eighth notes, palm muting—intermediate stuff that helps them transition into that next step. And it’s a song they know. Most of ’em have heard the song more than once, and so when I show ’em the song—like, how this part is played, or here’s how to do the section with triplets—it helps bridge the gap.”
Crownover’s primary motivation, then, seems to be altruistic in nature, which is to say: simply the joy of teaching. “Honestly, being able to share my knowledge of music with these kids—and adult students, too—inspires me to keep learning and keep practicing guitar,” he says. “I feel like a lotta people kinda get—I dunno if ‘stuck’ is the right word—but they kinda get into a rut. And they don’t really know where to go. I’ve definitely been there, but I think teaching has really helped me get out of those runts because I’m always having to learn something new, or brush up on something that I haven’t utilized in a long while. Like, I’ve got some students who are interested in jazz. I haven’t really touched jazz since college. I’ve been so focused on metal, so now I gotta brush up on some of my jazz knowledge.”
In a roundabout way, studying music explains Crownover’s music-related endeavor. “My official degree is audio production, and I got it from MATC where I studied,” he says. “I actually studied guitar there originally. And I took all the guitar and theory classes, and being young and dumb I was like, ‘Nah, I don’t need the rest of that. I am just gonna jump right into music production. I’m gonna start a band. I wanna produce my own records. I’m gonna go for it.’ And so I just jumped ship right into audio production, and I kinda fell in love with it, so much so that it was the most studying I’ve ever done in school, outside of my guitar courses.”
He then adds with a chuckle, “That was the hardest-working I’ve ever been in school, and I’m sure my parents would agree with that, seeing my grades growing up.”
Which brings us to why I reached out to Crownover for an interview: he owns and operates Crownover Productions, which specializes in “Mixing and Mastering Services for Metal & Hard Rock.” Unsurprisingly, that description caught my attention because I had to know why an audio engineer would wanna specialize in a niche market.
“I feel like I can just inject a little bit of myself into the music because I love metal music so much,” Crownover says. “I’ve grown up playing it. My entire musical journey has been based off of metal music, so I obviously have a very strong connection to it. I feel like I lend myself best to metal production. Not to say I wouldn’t love to try doing pop or jazz. I love a challenge, and I would absolutely [try them]. But I think from a production standpoint I love the clarity [of metal]. I love clear mixes in metal where you can discern each and every instrument and be able to pick it apart.”
Like pretty much all metal fans who live and breathe the stuff, Crownover’s love of the genre exists in spite of the negative stereotypes—they’re angry, they’re threatening, they’re anti-social, et cetera—that are an unfortunate part of being a card-carrying member.
“I’ve definitely gotten that before,” he confirms. “Even with my teaching, sometimes parents will come up and see me, and I look like this big, scary metal dude. And then their kid comes outta the lesson and they’re just as happy as can be. And it’s like, ‘Well yeah, I’m not a bad person. I just love metal. I love spooky stuff.’”
As such, Crownover is “hopelessly addicted to metal,” so it’s not at all surprising that he’s also the guitarist, producer, and a composer for a local metal band called Illusion Of Fate. Dating back to 2019, the quartet have a handful of releases, the best of which is an excellent 2024 album called Portals To Kur. Their early stuff is more of a straight-up symphonic black metal sound, with Dimmu Borgir being the closest analog, at least partially because IoF’s vocalist King Morbid—fantastic name, BTW—resembles Dimmu’s Shagrath a bit. Since around the time of the 2023 single “Realm Seeker,” though, they’ve added some Finnish flavor, making them closer to the likes of arena-ready melodic death metal bands like Children Of Bodom, Omnium Gatherum, and Amorphis.
Naturally, when I first discovered Illusion Of Fate and gave their single “Spiritual Mutilation” a listen, the first band that came to mind was in fact Children Of Bodom. After I share that with Crownover, he replies with a chuckle, “A man after my own heart.” He then expounds on that. “Yes, Children Of Bodom is a huge influence for me. European metal in general, I can’t get enough of it. More than half the bands I listen to are European metal. That was definitely the vibe I was going for when we were writing [Portals].”
And with that momentum, the band’s already planning on putting out new material this year. “Right now we’re working on an EP, something to tide over folks before we dive head-first into making our next album. But I’m trying to take that same approach, or a very similar approach, that I did with Portals, and just kinda expand on that. Draw a little more inspiration from death metal, and a little bit more shreddy guitar. Trying to just evolve the sound—take what we did with Portals and evolve it from there. I’m very proud of how that turned out.”
We agreed to leave the discussion of Illusion Of Fate there for now, with the intent of having a proper interview with the entire band in the future. And from that last paragraph, it’s clear—probably painfully so, at this point—that metal is Crownover’s essence, or at least a majority of it. Towards the end of our chat, we spoke briefly about the appeal of heavy metal. I mention that, for me, the appeal is escapist, and that it’s also helped me deal with self-esteem issues via exhilaration and pageantry.
“Absolutely,” he agrees. “I’ve dealt with self-esteem issues my whole life, and the one place I consistently feel confident has been with metal music, either playing metal, or writing metal music, or now mixing and mastering metal music. It gives me that sense of purpose and empowerment. It’s who I am. I can’t think of a better way to explain it. As cliché as it may sound, it’s true.”
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