With dozens of full-color illustrations! This is a retrospective of musical poetry by heavy metal guitarist and frontman, Matt Pike, which spans twenty years beginning in 1998 with the album Art of Self Defense up to the latest release, the 2019 Grammy-Award winning record, Electric Messiah. Every chapter features brand-new artistic interpretations from the minds and hearts of an incredible cast of illustrators, tattooers, printmakers, and painters Pike has been trusted since the beginning to depict his vision. The cast of artists are Arik Roper, David V. D'Andrea, Santos, Brian Mercer, Skinner, Jondix,Stash, Tim Lehi, Jordan Barlow, and Derrick Snodgrass created brand new, never before seen works specifically inspired by each album, including one large illustration to define the chapter ahead and two additional vignettes that are directly inspired by the songs. Each has their own bold and iconic style that perfectly compliments the breadth of Pike's various works. These prolific artists transport the reader further into a far-away landscape of ominous Lovecraftian entities, shrouded in wondrous and esoteric darkness. Together, they have redefined the way we perceive Underground Doom Metal these past twenty years and it is our honor to showcase them together along with the incredible written word of Pike.

Metal is a form of popular music. Popular music is a form of leisure. In the modern age, popular music has become part of popular culture, a heavily contested collection of practices and industries that construct place, belonging and power. The arrival of Donald Trump in the White House has shown that angry white men still wield huge social and cultural power in this new century. The aim of this monograph is to explore metal music - might be seen as leisure spaces that resist the norms and values of the mainstream; but also how they might also serve to re-affirm and construct those norms and values. In particular, this book is interested in how forms of metal might work to re-imagine masculinity, race, nation and class in an intersectional way through the myth of warrior masculinity and blood and soil. This monograph explores the history of the myths, and the reaction by fans to the music. The focus is extended to bands that use the warrior-nation myth in places and countries beyond the global North, and in ways that challenge or subvert hegemony.

It is common to hear heavy metal music fans and musicians talk about the "metal community". This concept, which is widely used when referencing this musical genre, encompasses multiple complex aspects that are seldom addressed in traditional academic endeavors including shared aesthetics, musical practices, geographies, and narratives. The idea of a "metal community" recognizes that fans and musicians frequently identify as part of a collective group, larger than any particular individual. Still, when examined in detail, the idea raises more questions than answers. What criteria are used to define groups of people as part of the community? How are metal communities formed and maintained through time? How do metal communities interact with local cultures throughout the world? How will metal communities change over the lifespan of their members? Are metal communities even possible in light of the importance placed on individualism in this musical genre? These are just some of the questions that arise when the concept of "community" is used in relation to heavy metal music. And yet in the face of all these complexities, heavy metal fans continue to think of themselves as a unified collective entity. This book addresses this notion of "metal community" via the experiences of authors and fans through theoretical reflections and empirical research. Their contributions focus on how metal communities are conceptualized, created, shaped, maintained, interact with their context, and address internal tensions. The book provides scholars, and other interested in the field of metal music studies, with a state of the art reflection on how metal communities are constituted, while also addressing their limits and future challenges.

(Book). Nirvana is one of the most influential bands in rock history, and even now, nearly 20 years after Kurt Cobain's death, the reverence in which they are held is undiminished. Books have been written about Nirvana before, but they tend to concentrate on the band's superstar period and Kurt Cobain's demise, while skating over the early years. In Entertain Us, Gillian Gaar redresses the balance by examining in forensic detail the band's rise to fame, and their first album, Bleach . Drawing on archive material and interviews with many key people in the story, she traces Nirvana's formation, its early recordings and many personnel changes, and the arrival of Dave Grohl to complete the familiar three-piece line up. By critiquing every song the band recorded in this period, tracing influences and unpicking complex relationships between band members, associates and record labels, Gaar gets to the heart of a compelling story.

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.

Focusing on key elements surrounding a group that stands alongside legends such as Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin, this book reveals the phenomenon that is AC/DC. Covering past and present members, songs, gigs, events, albums, bootlegs, producers, and numerous other subjects, this exhaustive overview spans an extraordinary 35-year musical career--from the very earliest incarnations of the band prior to Bon Scott's arrival, through the era in which he fronted the band and his untimely death, to the wildly successful landmark record "Back in Black," all the way to their 2003 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and beyond. Detailing a group that has sold an estimated 150 million albums worldwide, this is the definitive reference of one of music history's most notable pioneers of hard rock.

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.

As a twenty-five-year veteran of the Ozzy Osbourne band and Black Label Society, golden god Zakk Wylde has managed to stay alive against all odds. Now Wylde and his brother-in-Metal Eric Hendrikx take you on a Crusade of World Tour Domination, sharing deranged tales of booze-fueled destruction, laying out battle-tested Rules of the Road, and offering exclusive tips on how not to make it in the business. If you aspire to new heights of Metal mayhem, Bringing Metal to the Children will make you laugh, weep, vomit--and maybe even soil yourself.

Metal music has long nurtured an obsession with visions of the Middle Ages, with countless album covers and lyric sheets populated by Vikings, knights, wizards, and castles. Medievalism and Metal Music Studies: Throwing down the Gauntlet addresses this fascination with all things medieval, exploring how metal musicians and fans find inspiration both in authentically medieval materials and neomedievalist depictions of the period in literature, cinema, and other media. Within metal music, the medieval takes on multiple, and even contradictory meanings, becoming at once a cipher of difference and grotesque alterity while simultaneously being imagined as a simpler, more authentic time, as opposed to the complexities and stresses of modernity. In this fashion, the medieval period becomes both a source for artistic creativity and a vector for countercultural social and political critique. The contributors in this book hail from a wide range of fields including medieval history, music performance, musicology, media studies, and literature, and computer linguistics, bringing a variety of critical perspectives to bear on the topic. Engaging in analyses of cover art, liner notes, lyrics, and musical style, the contributors investigate issues of research methodologies, crucial concerns over identity and nationalism, and the recontextualisation of historical materials, all aimed at critically examining how and why medievalism has permeated heavy metal music and culture. Hearken to our tales!

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.

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.

The Godfathers of Nu Metal are set for a triumphant return, with the imminent release of their brand new album.

With over 5 million copies of their last record in circulation, these guys have certainly got a huge fanbase already and interest in Korn is sure to expand with their new release, making them the ultimate superstar heavy-metal icons.

'Kreature Komforts' charts this magnificent journey and details the highs and lows of a band as they develop into world-class entertainers. Ideally suited to the average Korn fans taste and budget, with equal parts intelligent text and full-colour photography throughout, the target market of 13-25-year-olds are certain to approve of the first full-length biography on this exceptional group.

Ronnie James Dio was a heavy metal icon and frontman of three of the best-selling, most influential and famous rock bands in history: Rainbow, Black Sabbath and his own multi-million selling band, Dio. Rainbow in the Dark is a rollercoaster ride through the extraordinary highs and lows of Dio's life, and takes us from his early days as a street gang leader and Doo-wop singer in '60s Vegas through to his breakout success with Rainbow and Black Sabbath in the '70s and the stadiums of US metal in the '80s - ending in Dio's dressing room at Madison Square Garden, in June 1986, at the peak of his worldwide fame with Dio. Tragically Dio passed away from cancer in 2010, but had already begun writing a memoir before his death. Edited by the world-renowned music biographer Mick Wall, with the involvement of Dio's wife of over 35 years and personal manager Wendy Dio, Rainbow in the Dark will honour and feature Dio's never-before-seen original manuscript, while drawing on the extraordinary collection of print and audio interviews with the man himself to produce a vivid, raw and faithful portrait of one of the world's greatest ever rock legends.

In his iconic musical travelogue Heavy Metal Islam, Mark LeVine first brought the views and experiences of a still-young generation to the world. In We'll Play till We Die, he joins with this generation's leading voices to write a definitive history of the era, closing with a cowritten epilogue that explores the meanings and futures of youth music from North Africa to Southeast Asia. We'll Play till We Die dives into the revolutionary music cultures of the Middle East and larger Muslim world before, during, and beyond the waves of resistance that shook the region from Morocco to Pakistan. This sequel to Mark LeVine's celebrated Heavy Metal Islam shows how some of the world's most extreme music not only helped inspire and define region-wide protests, but also exemplifies the beauty and diversity of youth cultures throughout the Muslim world. Two years after Heavy Metal Islam was published in 2008, uprisings and revolutions spread like wildfire. The young people organizing and protesting on the streets-in dozens of cities from Casablanca to Karachi-included the very musicians and fans LeVine spotlighted in that book. We'll Play till We Die revisits the groundbreaking stories he originally explored, sharing what has happened to these musicians, their music, their politics, and their societies since then. The book covers a stunning array of developments, not just in metal and hip hop scenes, but with emo in Baghdad, mahraganat in Egypt, techno in Beirut, and more. LeVine also reveals how artists have used global platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud to achieve unprecedented circulation of their music outside corporate or government control. The first collective ethnography and biography of the post-2010 generation, We'll Play till We Die explains and amplifies the radical possibilities of music as a revolutionary force for change.

This updated reissue of Mark LeVine's acclaimed, revolutionary book on sub- and countercultural music in the Middle East brings this groundbreaking portrait of the region's youth cultures to a new generation. Featuring a new preface by the author in conversation with the band The Kominas about the problematic connections between extreme music and Islam. An eighteen-year-old Moroccan who loves Black Sabbath. A twenty-two-year-old rapper from the Gaza Strip. A young Lebanese singer who quotes Bob Marley's "Redemption Song." Heavy metal, punk, hip-hop, and reggae are each the music of protest, and are considered immoral by many in the Muslim world. As the young people and subcultures featured in Mark LeVine's Heavy Metal Islam so presciently predicted, this music turned out to be the soundtrack of countercultures, uprisings, and even revolutions from Morocco to Pakistan. In Heavy Metal Islam, originally published in 2008, Mark LeVine explores the influence of Western music on the Middle East and North Africa through interviews with musicians and fans, introducing us to young people struggling to reconcile their religion with a passion for music and a thirst for change. The result is a revealing tour de force of contemporary cultures across the Muslim majority world through the region's evolving music scenes that only a musician, scholar, and activist with LeVine's unique breadth of experience could narrate. A New York Times Editor's Pick when it was first published, Heavy Metal Islam is a surprising, wildly entertaining foray into a historically authoritarian region where music reveals itself to be a true democratizing force-and a groundbreaking work of scholarship that pioneered new forms of research in the region.

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.

For over four decades, scholars have been investigating male dominance - both symbolically and numerically -within popular music. The heavier genres of popular music, metal music in particular, have been male dominated spaces, which are difficult to navigate for women participating as fans, musicians, or both. Studies on gender inequality in metal music have convincingly demonstrated how gender dynamics shape the reception of metal music and metal scenes all over the globe. Yet, they shed relatively little light on the extent of and reasons for metal music's male domination from a production perspective. This book fills this gap, offering is a systematic and large-scale overview of gender inequality in metal music production. In other words: how many women - compared to men - are participating in metal bands and what are the causes for the differences in participation?

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.

Born into poverty--the entire family slept in a single room--Ozzy Osbourne endured a challenging childhood. It was a struggle from which he sought shelter in music, and his time as a member of Black Sabbath revolutionized heavy metal and catapulted him to worldwide fame. With the acclaim, however, came the excesses and heartbreaks; and in this engaging and revealing autobiography, Osbourne writes as candidly about his struggles with addictive substances and the loss of close friends as he does about his legendary stage performances and tours, and also discusses his more recent reinvention as a reality TV star. This is the definitive insider's account of the heavy metal scene from the 1970s through the 1990s and a more general cultural history of that same period. Heavy metal, rock and roll, and pop culture fans alike will find this essential reading. "Nacido en la pobreza--su familia entera dormia en una sola habitacion--Ozzy Osbourne tuvo una ninez dificil. Fue una lucha de la cual consiguio un refugio en la musica, y su tiempo como un miembro de Black Sabbath sirvio tanto para revolucionar al heavy metal como para catapultarlo a la fama. Con la aclamacion, sin embargo, vinieron tambien los excesos y desenganos; y en esta autobiografia simpatica y reveladora, Osbourne escribe tan francamente sobre su lucha con las substancias adictivas y la perdida de amigos cercanos asi como sobre sus interpretaciones y giras legendarias, y discute tambien su reinvencion reciente como una estrella de la telerrealidad. Este es el relato definitivo del mundo del heavy metal desde los 70 hasta los 90 y una historia cultural general del mismo periodo. Los fanaticos del heavy metal, el rock y la cultura popular consideraran esto lectura imprescindible."