Media Review: Heavy Metal Music in Britain

Abstract

Bayer, Gerd, ed. Metal Music in Britain. Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series. Farnham, Surrey, U.K.: Ashgate, 2009. xii + 201 pp. General index. Hardcover: ISBN 978-0-7546-6423-9, $99.95/$89.96 from U.S. website. Since its genesis in Great Britain in late 1960s and early 1970s, heavy metal music has proved musically influential, socially controversial, and enduringly popular. musical style and social moorings of heavy metal--forged in extreme musical timbres and mystical, demonic, and apocalyptic lyrics of bands such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Iron Maiden during economic decline of working class--have been delineated and discussed over past twenty years. passage of time, however, combined with interest in heavy metal by scholars beyond of music, continues to yield insights into music, its audience, and its social context. Metal Music in Britain, a collection of essays from scholars working primarily in fields of English literature and sociology, is an important contribution to literature that refines and refocuses previously presented ideas and advances new ones. volume is divided into three major parts: Heavy Metal Commodities, The Literary and Mythological Heritage, and Heavy Metal Societies. In chapter 1, Deena Weinstein, author of Genre of Metal (1991), argues that Metal (BHM) expresses masculinity. Her conclusion rests on an examination of BHM's code--its sound, words, and look. She identifies rapid tempos, extreme volume levels, low-pitched musical material, and heavily distorted guitars as elements of BHM's sonic code that are suffused with signs of masculinity (24). In BHM's verbal elements, Weinstein sees a valorization of masculinity in band names, album and song titles, and song lyrics. She also asserts a visual dimension to BHM's code, pointing to album covers, iconography (including archetypal characterizations such as the warrior, outlaw, and Satan), and dark onstage colors and props (huge drum sets and stacks of Marshall amps). In sum, Weinstein writes, British heavy metal is a cultural construct that gathers its elements from a wide variety of historical sources and puts them together in a heterogeneous configuration that gains its integrity from a master signifier--power (27). Yet, BHM's portrayal of masculine power is uniquely nuanced: The core of BHM's interpretation of 'masculinity' is an affirmation that transcends opposition. power that BHM affirms is, surely, reactive in part--a response against repressive social organization--but it is not resentful; indeed, it is triumphal--the sense that power is good in and for itself (28). In chapter 2, Benjamin Earl examines how movement of BHM bands into mainstream popular culture expanded definition of authenticity. Earl posits that early BHM bands--Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and, in particular, Led Zeppelin--created a generic position for new bands to adopt when trying to enter heavy metal field (37). As other bands evolved their own versions of heavy metal sound, parameters of authenticity expanded, enabling bands such as Bon Jovi, Rainbow, and Def Leopard to achieve commercial success while retaining what Earl terms a consecrated status within heavy metal culture. In chapter 3, Liam Dee examines a stylistic offshoot of BHM. He maintains that the 'extreme realism' of grindcore, born out of same northern England working-class crucible as heavy metal but mixed with more radical experimentalism of anarcho-punk, manifests critical charge of negative dialectics (55). Part 2 of Metal Music in Britain contains in its four essays some of volume's most fascinating insights. first essay, Helen Farley's Demons, Devils and Witches: Occult in Metal Music, investigates association of heavy metal music with Satanism and occult. …