apocalyptic themes
black
Black Sabbath
Blood Red Skies
Bolt Thrower
british
British Blues Boom
British Heavy Metal
British metal cultural analysis
Category=AVLP
Category=JBCC
cultural critique
death
Death Metal
Deep Purple
Dog Face Boy
Electric Funeral
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
gothic aesthetics
Heavy Metal Scene
Heavy Metal Subcultural
Horror Movie
iron
Iron Maiden
judas
Judas Priest
maidens
masculinity studies
Midas Touch
musicology
Napalm Death
NWOBHM
NWOBHM Band
Peetie Wheatstraw
Post-subcultural Studies
priest
representations
sabbath
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
subcultural
Thin Lizzy
Throbbing Gristle
War Pigs
working class identity
Young Man
Product details
- ISBN 9780754664239
- Weight: 560g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 20 Mar 2009
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Heavy metal has developed from a British fringe genre of rock music in the late 1960s to a global mass market consumer good in the early twenty-first century. Early proponents of the musical style, such as Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Judas Priest, Saxon, Uriah Heep and Iron Maiden, were mostly seeking to reach a young male audience. Songs were often filled with violent, sexist and nationalistic themes but were also speaking to the growing sense of deterioration in social and professional life. At the same time, however, heavy metal was seriously indebted to the legacies of blues and classical music as well as to larger literary and cultural themes. The genre also produced mythological concept albums and rewritings of classical poems. In other words, heavy metal tried from the beginning to locate itself in a liminal space between pedestrian mass culture and a rather elitist adherence to complexity and musical craftsmanship, speaking from a subaltern position against the hegemonic discourse. This collection of essays provides a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary look at British heavy metal from its beginning through The New Wave of British Heavy Metal up to the increasing internationalization and widespread acceptance in the late 1980s. The individual chapter authors approach British heavy metal from a textual perspective, providing critical analyses of the politics and ideology behind the lyrics, images and performances. Rather than focus on individual bands or songs, the essays collected here argue with the larger system of heavy metal music in mind, providing comprehensive analyses that relate directly to the larger context of British life and culture. The wide range of approaches should provide readers from various disciplines with new and original ideas about the study of this phenomenon of popular culture.
Dr Gerd Bayer teaches in the Department of English at the University of Erlangen, Germany
