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.

In the late 1970s, aggressive, young bands are forming across Britain. Independent labels are springing up to release their music. But this isn't the story of punk. Forget punk. Punk was a flash in the pan compared to this. This is the story of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, a musical movement that changed the world. From this movement - given the unwieldy acronym NWOBHM - sprang streams that would flow through metal's subsequent development. Without NWOBHM there is no thrash metal, no death metal, no black metal. Without the rise of Iron Maiden, NWOBHM's standard bearers, leading the charge to South America and to South Asia, metal's global spread is slower. Without the NWOBHM bands - who included Def Leppard, Motorhead, Judas Priest, Diamond Head and many others - the international uniform of heavy metal - the 'battle jacket' of a denim jacket with sleeves ripped off, and covered with patches (usually sewn on by the wearer's mum), worn over a leather biker jacket - does not exist: 'Denim and leather brought us all together,' as Saxon put it. No book has ever gathered together all the principals of British heavy rock's most fertile period: Jimmy Page, Rick Allen, Michael Schenker, Robert John 'Mutt' Lange, Ritchie Blackmore, Rick Savage, Phil Collen, David Coverdale, Cronos, Biff Byford, Joe Elliott, Rob Halford, Ian Gillan, Phil Mogg, Robert Plant, Tony Wilson, Lars Ulrich, Pete Waterman to name a few. In Denim and Leather, these stars tell their own stories - their brilliant, funny tales of hubris and disaster, of ambition and success - and chart how, over a handful of years from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, a group of unlikely looking blokes from the provinces wearing spandex trousers changed heavy music forever. This is the definitive story about the greatest days of British heavy rock.

In Working Class Heroes, David Simonelli explores the influence of rock and roll on British society in the 1960s and '70s. At a time when social distinctions were becoming harder to measure, rock musicians appeared to embody the mythical qualities of the idealized working class by perpetuating the image of rebellious, irreverent, and authentic musicians.

This book demonstrates the rich and varied ways in which heavy metal music draws on the ancient Greek and Roman world. Contributors examine bands from across the globe, including: Blind Guardian (Germany), Therion (Sweden), Celtic Frost, Eluveitie (Switzerland), Ex Deo (Canada/Italy), Heimdall, Stormlord, Ade (Italy), Kawir (Greece), Theatre of Tragedy (Norway), Iron Maiden, Bal-Sagoth (UK), and Nile (US). These and other bands are shown to draw inspiration from Classical literature and mythology such as the Homeric Hymns, Vergil's Aeneid, and Caesar's Gallic Wars, historical figures from Rome and ancient Egypt, and even pagan and occult aspects of antiquity. These bands' engagements with Classical antiquity also speak to contemporary issues of nationalism, identity, sexuality, gender, and globalization. The contributors show how the genre of heavy metal brings its own perspectives to Classical reception, and demonstrate that this music-often dismissed as lowbrow-engages in sophisticated dialogue with ancient texts, myths, and historical figures. The authors reveal aspects of Classics' continued appeal while also arguing that the engagement with myth and history is a defining characteristic of heavy metal music, especially in countries that were once part of the Roman Empire.

The definition of 'heavy metal' is often a contentious issue and in this lively and accessible text Andrew Cope presents a refreshing re-evaluation of the rules that define heavy metal as a musical genre. Cope begins with an interrogation of why, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Birmingham provided the ideal location for the evolution and early development of heavy metal and hard rock. The author considers how the influence of the London and Liverpool music scenes merged with the unique cultural climate, industry and often desolated sites of post-war Birmingham to contribute significantly to the development of two unique forms of music: heavy metal and hard rock. The author explores these two forms through an extensive examination of key tracks from the first six albums of both Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, in which musical, visual and lyrical aspects of each band are carefully compared and contrasted in order to highlight the distinctive innovations of those early recordings. In conclusion, a number of case studies are presented that illustrate how the unique synthesis of elements established by Black Sabbath have been perpetuated and developed through the work of such bands as Iron Maiden, Metallica, Pantera, Machine Head, Nightwish, Arch Enemy and Cradle of Filth. As a consequence, the importance of heavy metal as a genre of music was firmly established, and its longevity assured.

Presents the history of the musical genre - British heavy metal.

Heavy Metal: The Story in Pictures is a colorful guide to this complex but enormously popular subject, including a look at festivals, fans, and the heavy metal lifestyle. Over 350 photographs feature heavy metal's cutting-edge bands on stage—with some candid behind-the-scenes shots, too. Each chapter starts with a detailed chronological timeline of major events—band formations and fold-ups; seminal album releases; important tours and gigs—followed by a photographic coverage of the decade. Heavy metal developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United Kingdom and the United States. With roots in blues, progressive, and psychedelic rock, heavy metal developed a thick, massive sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, and overall loudness. It did not take long before the first heavy metal bands—the blues-based Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple being the leaders—attracted large audiences and significant album sales. Often critically and publicly reviled—something that is true to this day—few of these hard rock pioneers would continue on into the heavy metal genre. By the mid-1970s, Judas Priest helped spur the genre’s evolution by discarding much of its blues influence. Motörhead introduced a punk-rock sensibility and an increasing emphasis on speed. Bands such as Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, and Saxon followed in a similar vein. Before the end of the 1970s, heavy metal had attracted a huge following of headbanging fans. Behind the music ran a vein of anti-authoritarianism and—more insinuated than real—Satanism and black magic that really got the pundits talking, as did the aggression and violence implied by so many band names and song titles. Heavy Metal: The Story in Pictureslooks carefully at the ancient history—the 1960s through to the start of the 1980s—but the bulk of the book concentrates on the last 30 years that saw the splintering of the genre into a myriad forms: from the great thrash metal bands—Exodus, Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeath, Slayer and then Kreator, Sodom, and Destruction, and Brazil’s Sepultura—to metalcore, that combines various elements of extreme metal and hardcore punk, by way of death metal, black metal, power metal, doom metal, gothic metal, glam metal, alternative metal, nu metal, folk metal, Viking metal, drone metal, sludge metal, extreme metal, and even retro-metal. From Donington to Ozzfest, Hard Rock Hell to Sonisphere, festival-going has become a rite of passage in the metal world. With Heavy Metal: The Story in Pictures, get an up-close look at Hellfest, FortaRock, Zwergenaufstand Open Air, Eisenwahn, Wacken, and Jalometalli and take a stunning visual tour through the evolution of heavy metal.