Eric reviewed on 4/25/2008

Helpful Score: 1

This book is a good biography of the origins and evolution of heavy metal music. It mostly covers the "classic" bands of the 70's and the NWOBHM in the 80's, along with the major players from early thrash (which this author decided to call "power metal", whether that's a misnomer on his part or if that was the term for it back then, I don't know), death metal, and black metal. The author does a good job of dispelling the "satanic" mythos by exposing certain bands' lyrics as mere shock value and by politicizing the church burnings and other violence associated with the Norwegian black metal scene. My only complaint would be that entire chapters were wasted on the barely-metal (if at all) genres of glam, metalcore and nu-metal, while the European speed/melodic power metal scene hardly got an entire sentence to itself.

Back to all reviews by this member
Back to Book Reviews
Back to Book Details