A sumptuous, illustrated guide to the symbolism of heavy metal, told through 300 of its greatest album covers Metal music has consistently offered some of the most gnarly artwork to accompany it's equally hardcore music, this book is a celebration of just that! More than any other genre of music, metal is steeped in a rich world of symbolism. From death and the devil to mythology and fantasy, its record covers are awash with iconography that carries a complex deeper meaning. In Codex Metallum, more than 80 of these visual themes are explored and explained, accompanied by 300 of metal's most incredible album covers, including Slipknot, Marilyn Manson, Motoerhead, Black Sabbath, Rammstein and more. With bespoke illustrations from Rammstein collaborators Fortifem, this unique guide decodes the genre's imagery, ranging from serpents and demons to sigils, castles, zombies, dragons and more. Packaged in a stunning leather-effect case with foil finishes, Codex Metallum is a beautiful object in its own right, and essential reading for any metalhead.

The seminal British band Motorhead have been rocking since 1975 and, led by the legendary Lemmy, show no signs of letting up. From early classics "Ace Of Spades," "Overkill" and "No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith" the band have racked up an incredible 25 albums, with 2011's "The World Is Yours" the latest success.
"Overkill" tells the whole story of the ultimate rock 'n' roll trip, through original interviews with those that were there. The book also features an exclusive foreword by rock legend Glenn Hughes (Black Sabbath, Deep Purple).

When Scott McKenzie was a young man, he thought he saw God . . .

The deity was all in black with knee-high silver boots, a patent-leather breastplate, and full face makeup, clutching a beautiful, custom Les Paul guitar. Ace Frehley, lead guitarist for the rock group KISS, wasn't God--but hearing his piercing, shrieking, screaming, outrageous guitar solos was a transcendent spiritual experience for a boy from rural Kentucky, making him feel uplifted, a witness to a higher power.

Two decades later, a grown-up Scott McKenzie vowed to meet Ace Frehley in the flesh--as well as the other gods and demigods who have held divine power over a generation of worshipful metal fans: legendary guitar champions like Glenn Tipton of Judas Priest and Phil Collen of Def Leppard, hallowed names like Steve Vai, Warren DeMartini, and John 5.

Power Chord is a chronicle of Scott McKenzie's epic quest to stand in the presence of metal greatness--to meet his omnipotent guitar gods face-to-face and get them to divulge their otherworldly secret.

Power Metal is Heavy Metal taken to the absolute limit. When the major Metal institutions staked their claim, they engendered a legion of up-and-coming followers, who took the genre in a new, extreme direction. Riffs became labyrinthine, vocals scorched higher altitudes--and they even managed to crank out some more volume. This encyclopedic book documents the Power Metal phenomenon, with exhaustive, unique histories, detailed discographies, and many photos. It covers the British guard such as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest; American metal such as Queensrÿche, Attacker, Jag Panzer, Iced Earth, Liege Lord, and Savatage; European bands such as Helloween, Gamma Ray, Blind Guardian, Running Wild, and Grave Digger; plus Symphonic Metal, Progressive Metal, and more. It also includes a 16-track CD.

Bill S. Preston Esquire and Theodore 'Ted' Logan (Alex Winter & Keanu Reeves) were the stars of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. The hotly anticipated Bill & Ted Face the Music releases August 2020 and stars Winter and Reeves as well as Samara Weaving (Ready or Not), Brigette Lundy-Paine (Atypical), William Sadler, Kid Cudi, Hal Landon Jr., Beck Bennett (Saturday Night Live), Anthony Carrigan (Barry), Amy Stoch, Jayma Mays, Erinn Hayes and more...

With a foreword by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon - the creators of Bill & Ted - this bodacious companion to all three movies features photographs, quotes and interviews: a most excellent publication.

An explosive biography of one of America's most notorious bands - Moetley Crue. Moetley Crue were formed in Los Angeles in 1981, and have since gone on to become one of America's biggest-selling and notorious heavy metal acts, with nine studio albums and over 80 million album sales. Acquiring huge success by the end of the 1980s with their mixture of heavy metal and glam rock, singer Vince Neil's 'glam' look even supposedly inspired the hit Aerosmith song 'Dude (Looks Like A Lady)'. In 1992 Neil left the band to pursue a solo career before returning in 1997. The band went into hiatus in 2000 before reuniting in 2004. In TATTOOS & TEQUILA, Vince Neil chronicles his personal experiences as singer and frontman for Moetley Crue, and his time as a participant on reality shows. Moetley Crue were a band who always lived up to the typical image of the 'rock and roll' lifestyle, and this is captured firsthand by Neil, who writes candidly about the band's struggles with drugs, alcohol and the law. These include incidents such as bass guitarist Nikki Sixx's near fatal heroin overdose in 1987. He also details his marriages to date, as well as movingly writing about the death of his daughter Skylar from cancer in 1995. The result is a compelling look at a band and a man who have seen many highs and lows in their career. A highly-anticipated film following the group's formidable ascent to the top of the '80s rock scene will be released in February 2018.

The definitive oral history of heavy metal, Louder Than Hell by renowned music journalists Jon Wiederhorn and Katherine Turman includes hundreds of interviews with the giants of the movement, conducted over the past 25 years. Unlike many forms of popular music, metalheads tend to embrace their favorite bands and follow them over decades. Metal is not only a pastime for the true aficionados; it's a lifestyle and obsession that permeates every aspect of their being. Louder Than Hell is an examination of that cultural phenomenon and the much-maligned genre of music that has stood the test of time. Louder than Hell features more than 250 interviews with some of the biggest bands in metal, including Black Sabbath, Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Spinal Tap, Pantera, White Zombie, Slipknot, and Twisted Sister; insights from industry insiders, family members, friends, scenesters, groupies, and journalists; and 48 pages of full-color photographs.

'Absolutely hilarious' - Neil Gaiman 'One of the funniest musical commentators that you will ever read . . . loud and thoroughly engrossing' - Alan Moore 'A man on a righteous mission to persuade people to "lay down your souls to the gods rock and roll".' - The Sunday Times 'As funny and preposterous as this mighty music deserve' - John Higgs The history of heavy metal brings brings us extraordinary stories of larger-than-life characters living to excess, from the household names of Ozzy Osbourne, Lemmy, Bruce Dickinson and Metallica (SIT DOWN, LARS!), to the brutal notoriety of the underground Norwegian black metal scene and the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. It is the story of a worldwide network of rabid fans escaping everyday mundanity through music, of cut-throat corporate arseholes ripping off those fans and the bands they worship to line their pockets. The expansive pantheon of heavy metal musicians includes junkies, Satanists and murderers, born-again Christians and teetotallers, stadium-touring billionaires and toilet-circuit journeymen. Award-winning comedian and life-long heavy metal obsessive Andrew O'Neill has performed his History of Heavy Metal comedy show to a huge range of audiences, from the teenage metalheads of Download festival to the broadsheet-reading theatre-goers of the Edinburgh Fringe. Now, in his first book, he takes us on his own very personal and hilarious journey through the history of the music, the subculture, and the characters who shaped this most misunderstood genre of music.

While the growing field of scholarship on heavy metal music and its subcultures has produced excellent work on the sounds, scenes and histories of heavy metal around the world, few works have included a study of gender and sexuality. This cutting-edge volume focuses on queer fans, performers, and spaces within the heavy metal sphere, and demonstrates the importance, pervasiveness, and subcultural significance of queerness to the heavy metal ethos.

Heavy metal scholarship has until recently focused almost solely on the roles of heterosexual hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity in fans and performers. The dependence on that narrow dichotomy has limited heavy metal scholarship, resulting in poorly critiqued discussions of gender and sexuality that serve only to underpin the popular imagining of heavy metal as violent, homophobic and inherently masculine. This book queers heavy metal studies, bringing discussions of gender and sexuality in heavy metal out of that poorly theorized dichotomy.

In this interdisciplinary work, the author connects new and existing scholarship with a strong ethnographic study of heavy metal s self-identified queer performers and fans in their own words, thus giving them a voice and offering an original and ground-breaking addition to scholarship on popular music, rock, and queer studies."

Heavy Metal, Gender and Sexuality brings together a collection of original, interdisciplinary, critical essays exploring the negotiated place of gender and sexuality in heavy metal music and its culture. Scholars debate the current state of play concerning masculinities, femininities, queerness, identity aesthetics and monstrosities in an area of music that is sometimes mistakenly treated as exclusively sustaining a masculinist hegemony. The book combines a broad variety of perspectives on the main topic, regarding gender in connection to: the history of the genre; the range of metal subgenres; heavy metal's multidimensional scope (music, lyrics, performance, style, illustrations); men and women; sexualities and various local and global perspectives. Heavy Metal, Gender and Sexuality is a text that opens up the world of heavy metal to reveal that it is a very diverse and ground-breaking stage where gender play is at the centre of its theatricality and sustains its mass appeal.

Based on ethnographic research within the extreme metal community, Unger offers a thought-provoking look at how symbols of authenticity and defilement fashion social experience in surprising ways. Exploring the many themes and ciphers that comprise this musical community, this book interprets aesthetic resonances as a way to understand contemporary identity, politics, and social relations. In the end, this book develops a unique argument: the internal composition of the community's music and sound moulds symbols that shape, reflect, and constrain social patterns of identity, difference, and transgression. This book contributes to the sociology of sound and music, the study of religion in popular culture, and the role of aesthetics in everyday life. It will be of interest to upper level students, post-graduate students and scholars of religion, popular culture, and philosophy.

The always-outspoken hard rock vocalist Corey Taylor begins America 51 with a reflection on what his itinerant youth and frequent worldwide travels with his multiplatinum bands Slipknot and Stone Sour have taught him about what it means to be an American in an increasingly unstable world. He examines the way America sees itself, specifically with regard to the propaganda surrounding America's origins (like a heavy-metal Howard Zinn), while also celebrating the quirks and behavior that make a true-blue American. Taylor likewise takes a look at how the world views us, and his findings should come as a surprise to no one. But behind Taylor's ranting and raving is a thoughtful and intelligent consideration, and even a sadness, of what America is compared to what it could and should be. Expertly balancing humor, outrage, and disbelief, Taylor examines the rotting core of America, evaluating everything from politics and race relations to modern family dynamics, millennials, and "man buns." No element of what constitutes America is safe from his adept and scathing eye. Continuing the wave of moral outrage begun in You're Making Me Hate You, Taylor flawlessly skewers contemporary America in his own signature style.

At last...The first comprehensive, English-language guide to the revered New Wave of Heavy Metal phenomenon, revealing the true extent and significance of a musical force which shook a small nation two decades ago, paving the way for a global heavy metal revolution in later years. Discover how, where, and why it all started, and why so few of those aspiring hopefuls became household names while countless small-town wannabes simply disappeared into oblivion. Marvel at over 500 eventful stories which unfold in lurid detail. The individual entries range from the genre-busting successes (Iron Maiden and Def Leppard) to such esoteric acts as Stormqueen and Masterstroke. In each case, informative discographies provide an invaluable, easy-to-use guide for collectors. Fully illustrated throughout, with unpublished photographs, sleeve reproductions and concert material of the period, and featuring contributions from many of the key musician themselves. This is a fascinating and absorbing read for enlightened aficionados and curious newcomers alike.

D.X. Ferris explores the creation of the most universally respected metal album.Slayer's controversial "Reign in Blood" remains the gold standard for extreme heavy metal: a seamless procession of ten blindingly fast songs in just twenty-eight minutes, delivered in furious bursts of instrumental precision, with lyrics so striking that Tori Amos was moved to record a cover. Reign in Blood saw the emerging underground standouts from Huntington Beach team with Rick Rubin - 2007's Grammy-Award winner for producer of the year, then known strictly for creating hip-hop albums with groups such as Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys - to permanently fuse classic rock's technical proficiency, hardcore punk's speed and metal's brute power. Working in a much-maligned genre, guitarists Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King emerged as the Lennon and McCartney of speed metal, penning a collection of apocalyptic scenes comparable to the dark work of novelists like Cormac McCarthy and Herman Melville.The album came together though the efforts of a team that would go on to be some of the biggest names in the current music business. Issued on America's premier rap label at the pinnacle of the thrash movement, Reign in Blood sparked a new genre called death metal and continues to serve as a touchstone for metal musicians. The disc marked Slayer's coronation as the kings of thrash and their ongoing twenty-five year streak of vitality places them in the small fraternity of rock's greatest groups. Through interviews with the entire band, Rubin, engineer Andy Wallace, and a who's who of headbangers from three decades, D.X. Ferris explores the creation of the most universally respected metal album."33 1/3" is a series of short books about a wide variety of albums, by artists ranging from James Brown to the Beastie Boys. Launched in September 2003, the series now contains over 50 titles and is acclaimed and loved by fans, musicians and scholars alike.

One wouldn't usually turn to a veteran of Guns N' Roses for advice on how to live, but Duff McKagan is not a typical rock musician. He got sober at thirty, went back to school, got smart about money, fell in love, became a father, and got his life back on track. Through trial and considerable error, Duff learned to strike the balance between family and work, travel and contentment, financial aptitude and sacrifice.In How to Be a Man , Duff takes the reader into the life of an international rock musician and shares, with disarming candour and humour, the solid life lessons he's learned along the way to success and fulfillment in both his family life and career. From hard-won advice on basics like starting with a strong base and staying humble to techniques on staving depression and transforming darker impulses into something productive, How to Be a Man is the ultimate guide to rocking life- not as a dissolute train-wreck "rock star" but as a man bound for success and longevity.

A pioneering "horror-punk" band, the Misfits are legends in their own time. This discography tells the story of the band in all of its incarnations through all of their recorded output-both official and unauthorized releases. Discographies are provided for both present and former members' solo projects and bands, along with a wealth of rare record sleeves, photos and vintage posters documenting the evolution of the band and the brand.

Heavy Metal, Gender and Sexuality brings together a collection of original, interdisciplinary, critical essays exploring the negotiated place of gender and sexuality in heavy metal music and its culture. Scholars debate the current state of play concerning masculinities, femininities, queerness, identity aesthetics and monstrosities in an area of music that is sometimes mistakenly treated as exclusively sustaining a masculinist hegemony. The book combines a broad variety of perspectives on the main topic, regarding gender in connection to: the history of the genre; the range of metal subgenres; heavy metal's multidimensional scope (music, lyrics, performance, style, illustrations); men and women; sexualities and various local and global perspectives. Heavy Metal, Gender and Sexuality is a text that opens up the world of heavy metal to reveal that it is a very diverse and ground-breaking stage where gender play is at the centre of its theatricality and sustains its mass appeal.

Many bands may lay claim to inventing or popularising the term `heavy metal', but few would deny that Black Sabbath have defined the genre in the minds of many, and have come to embody its popular image. From the `classic' first decade with singer Ozzy Osbourne, through the Ronnie James Dio period and the oft-overlooked later albums, the Sabbath name has always been a trademark of quality, despite some less celebrated, though often fascinating, periods. To commemorate the final retirement of the band, lifelong devotee Steve Pilkington takes the reader through every song on every one of the band's studio albums, taking in the highs and occasional lows, as well as looking at the cover artwork and stories behind the albums. He also discusses live recordings and DVD releases. The result will surely be regarded as the most exhaustive guide to the band's music yet produced, as critical opinion rubs shoulders with facts, trivia and anecdotes to provide the ultimate guide to this legendary band. Whether you are a hard core fan, or simply want a guide to what lies beyond `Paranoid', this book is for you.

After a career that has spanned three decades and included 100 million albums sold worldwide, nine Grammy Awards, and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Metallica has firmly established itself as one of the preeminent musical acts of all time, embodying as no other band has a passion for the sound and frenzy of heavy metal. This account takes a chronological look at the band's long history, delving into the band members' personal lives and the band's records and videos, and provides a wealth of anecdotes and trivia. The authors, both music specialists, also dissect lead songwriter James Hetfield's lyrics and offer an appendix with unrivaled information on the instruments, effects, and amps used by the bands during each period and on each record.

The lead guitarist of Grammy Award-winning mega-band KoRn tells the incredible story of his life after leaving the hardcore music scene and of God leading him back to the band-now in paperback. He left KoRn to help himself. He went back to help others. And along the way, he nearly lost everything. A life-changing spiritual awakening freed Brian "Head" Welch from a stranglehold of drugs and alcohol and prompted him to leave the highly successful nu-metal band KoRn in 2005. What followed was a decade-long trial by fire, from the perils of fathering a teen lost in depression and self-mutilation to the harsh realities of playing solo and surviving the shattering betrayal of a trusted friend. In this intensely inspiring redemption saga, perhaps most inspiring is Brian's radical decision to rejoin KoRn and reconcile with the tribe of people he once considered family in the metal music scene. Brian returned to his musical roots with a clear head and a devoted heart. Though his story is wild, hilarious, and deeply poignant, the message is simple: God will love you into the freedom of being yourself, as long as you keep the relationship going and never, ever quit.

ESinister UrgeE is the first in-depth career-spanning biography of heavy-metal musician and filmmaker Rob Zombie. Born Robert Cummings in 1965 Zombie is now as well known for his movies as he is for his music which he has released and performed both as a solo artist and as part of his early band White Zombie. In both fields he imbues his art with the vivid sense of macabre theater that has thrilled his millions of disciples since he and his band first emerged with ESoul-CrusherE in 1987.THAlthough he has sold millions of albums and generated many more millions of dollars at the box office Zombie has never taken the easy option or the predictable route. Indeed while the music industry a and many of his peers a have fallen to their knees in the last decade or so Zombie has found a new edge his work undiluted by success or middle age.THDrawing on original research and new interviews with bandmates and associates ESinister UrgeE takes a detailed look at Zombie's challenging oeuvre offering close analysis of his albums and films alongside tales of his life and work on and offstage.

In 1991, Metallica released their fifth studio album that would become known and beloved around the world as "The Black Album." Since its release, it has sold 30 million copies, and become a towering monument in the pantheon of rock's greatest records. Readers will get unprecedented insight into the story behind an iconic album from one of the world's most iconic bands through interviews with James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, Jason Newsted, and "Black Album" producer Bob Rock. Masciotra takes readers into the recording studio, giving them Metallica's account of how their most successful and famous record was born and learned to walk into every radio station and stadium stage around the world. Masciotra not only talks to the band about the making of the album, but also the stories that inspired the songs. Readers will not only learn about "The Black Album," but they will also gain greater knowledge and familiarity with the men who created it. With direct access to the band, Masciotra offers a fascinating and inspiring account of the creation of one of music's best and best-selling albums.