Metal Mike Saunders

Who is Metal Mike Saunders?

Mike Saunders, better known as "Metal Mike" Saunders, is a rock critic and the singer of the Californian punk band Angry Samoans. He is credited with coining the music genre label "heavy metal" in a record review for Humble Pie's As Safe As Yesterday Is in the November 12, 1970 issue of Rolling Stone.. Six months later in 1971, he used the phrase again while reviewing Sir Lord Baltimore's first album, Kingdom Come, in the pages of Creem magazine.

Saunders was born and grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas. Up to the age of five, he lived across the alley from The Insect Trust clarinetist and rock/blues critic Robert Palmer. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1973 with a degree in statistics; eventually he received another bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Saunders kept his day job as an accountant throughout his years as lead singer and guitarist for the Angry Samoans.

Saunders' political incorrectness and personal attacks in his lyrics earned him significant notoriety in the early 1980s, especially due to their song "Get Off the Air", an ad hominem attack upon well-known KROQ-FM DJ Rodney Bingenheimer.