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.

'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.

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.

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.

From the world's most controversial rock star comes his shocking, confessional and revealing life story. In The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, Marilyn Manson candidly and vividly recounts his metamorphosis from a frightened Christian schoolboy into the most feared and revered celebrity in America.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Metallica have sold in excess of 100 million albums and won seven Grammys. Their journey from scuzzy Los Angeles garages to the stages of the world's biggest stadia has been an epic and often traumatic one, and one of the few truly great rock 'n' roll sagas. No music writers have been afforded greater access to Metallica over the years than Paul Brannigan and Ian Winwood, two former editors of Kerrang. Having conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with the band, they have between them gained an unparalleled knowledge of the group's history and an insiders' view of how their story has developed: they have ridden in the band's limos, flown on their private jet, joined them in the studio, been invited to the quartet's 'HQ' outside San Francisco and shared beers and stories with them in venues across the globe. There are countless memorable stories about the band never before seen in print, tales of bed-hopping and drug-taking and car-crashes and fist-fights and back-stabbing that occur when you mix testosterone and adrenaline, alcohol and egomania, talent and raw ambition. Perceptive, emotionally attached, and intellectually rigorous, Birth, School, Metallica, Death will be the essential and definitive story of this extraordinary band. Volume I takes us from the band's inception through to the recording and eve of release of their seminal, self-titled, 1991 album.

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.

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.

Ministry: The Lost Gospels is both ugly and captivating, revealing a character who has lived a hard life his way, without compromise. Jourgensen, one of the most innovative and prolific artists ever to pick up a guitar, mandolin, harmonica, or banjo, wanted to be a musician, yet became a rock star. And fame and fortune almost killed him. An IV drug abuser from the age of fifteen, Jourgensen delved deeper into heroin, cocaine, methadone, and alcohol for twenty-two years before cleaning up, straightening out, and finding new reasons to live. Filled with humour, heart, decadence, and tragedy, Ministry depicts the epic life of a renegade iconoclast.

#1 German bestseller I have no idea how late it actually is. We flew off somewhere this morning, and my cell phone automatically turns off the clock if we're getting close to a new time zone by plane. Mile by mile, the bus pushes through the inner city. Budapest seems to be quite big. We are in the middle of rush hour traffic. As it is Friday, everyone wants to get out of the city very quickly. But nothing works quickly here at all. Flake, the legendary keyboardist for the German band Rammstein, takes readers on a journey of what it is to be a touring musician. The excitement, the boredom, the moments that will be remembered and those that are forgotten. It's The World's Birthday Today is a strange and moody book about life on the road.

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.

John Darnielle describes Master of Reality through a fictional character, a fifteen-year-old boy being held in an adolescent psychiatric centre in southern California in 1985.John Darnielle describes "Master of Reality" in the voice of a fifteen-year-old boy being held in an adolescent psychiatric centre in southern California in 1985. Adolescents in treatment are often required to keep a journal, and they write letters by the dozens: to their parents, to their friends on the outside, to the nurses who confiscate their belongings, to the teachers back at school who've offered them an outlet for their creativity. Our narrator has arrived in treatment with a Walkman and some tapes that are precious to him, only to have them taken away on the ground that their content is part of his greater problem.His various writings, aimed mainly at getting his tapes and Walkman back, will explain how Black Sabbath differs from their Satan-worshipping popular image, and how Master of Reality is an overtly Christian album, which it is. Our narrator will try to explain Black Sabbath like an emissary from an alien race describing his culture to his captors: passionately, patiently, and lovingly. This album has a genuinely remarkable historical status: as a touchstone for the directionless, and as a common coin for young men and women who felt shut out of the broader cultural economy.It'd be hard to overstate Ozzy Osbourne's totemic status among adolescents in the early eighties. His public image, cobbled together by his audience from occasional mainstream press mentions and niche magazine coverage, made him a nearly perfect sponge for the aggressive feelings of frustrated young men around the world. To this audience, who continue to occupy a an enormous if ghostly position on the margins, the early Black Sabbath albums were accepted classics in a genre whose lack of real status only served to indicate its true value.This, for me, is one of the places where the music does its most interesting work: when it becomes a tool in the hands of its listeners, and when the process of explaining it becomes part of its essence. This was never truer than in the mainstream metal subcultures of the eighties, where album titles served as passwords to a more accepting world. "Master of Reality", from its Christian heart right down to its ultimately incomprehensible title, is the perfect candidate for illuminating these undersung passageways."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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

18 And Life on Skid Row tells the story of a boy who spent his childhood moving from Freeport, Bahamas to California and finally to Canada and who at the age of eight discovered the gift that would change his life. Throughout his career, Sebastian Bach has sold over twenty million records both as the lead singer of Skid Row and as a solo artist. He is particularly known for the hit singles I Remember You, Youth Gone Wild, & 18 & Life, and the albums Skid Row and Slave To The Grind, which became the first ever hard rock album to debut at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 and landed him on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. Bach then went on to become the first rock star to grace the Broadway stage, with starring roles in Jekyll & Hyde, Jesus Christ Superstar and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He also appeared for seven seasons on the hit television show The Gilmore Girls. In his memoir, Bach recounts lurid tales of excess and debauchery as he toured the world with Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Motley Crue, Soundgarden, Pantera, Nine Inch Nails and Guns N' Roses. Filled with backstage photos from his own personal collection, 18 And Life on Skid Row is the story of hitting it big at a young age, and of a band that broke up in its prime. It is the story of a man who achieved his wildest dreams, only to lose his family, and then his home. It is a story of perseverance, of wine, women and song and a man who has made his life on the road and always will. 18 And Life On Skid Row is not your ordinary rock memoir, because Sebastian Bach is not your ordinary rock star.