Heavy Metal: The Music And Its Culture, Revised Edition [Paperback]

Deena Weinstein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2000

Few forms of music elicit such strong reactions as does heavy metal. Embraced by millions of fans, it has also attracted a chorus of critics, who have denounced it as a corrupter of youth—even blamed it for tragedies like the murders at Columbine. Deena Weinstein argues that these fears stem from a deep misunderstanding of the energetic, rebellious culture of metal, which she analyzes, explains, and defends. She interprets all aspects of the metal world—the music and its makers, its fans, its dress code, its lyrics—and in the process unravels the myths, misconceptions, and truths about an irreverent subculture that has endured and evolved for twenty years.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This is one of the few books that provides a serious study of this most loud and rebellious form of rock'n'roll. Beginning with pioneers such as Black Sabbath in the early 1970s, Weinstein traces the roots of the music and the bands who played it, from England's hardcore headbangers to their American counterparts plus a lot of the lightweight pretty-boy bands of the 1980s.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"She gives the genre recognition as a serious cultural phenomenon....A user-friendly guide to a not-so-friendly world." -- Voice Literary Supplement

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; Revised edition (April 4, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306809702
• ISBN-13: 978-0306809705
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #193,581 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but Deeply Flawed, November 25, 2007

By 

Planetary Eulogy "Senior Fellow, Hessian Stud... (Asheville, NC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heavy Metal: The Music And Its Culture, Revised Edition (Paperback)

Deena Weinstein's updated edition of her 1991 monograph "Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology" remains, to this day, probably the most widely available academic work on the subject of heavy metal. While it is mostly well-written (a bit heavy on jargon perhaps, but without the suffocating tsunami of subclauses that usually plague academic writing in the social sciences). While it is always gratifying to this Hessian to find an academic work taking metal seriously, this is, unfortunately, a very flawed work.

Like many contemporary academics, Weinstein is overly wedded to social science theories at the expense of a genuine engagement with the subject at hand. As a result, she tends to treat metal - both the music and its culture - as a form of semiotic play, symbolically creating and re-creating a self-referential narrative of 'the Proud Pariah.' Professorial prose, however, is an inadequate patch to cover an ugly truth: Weinstein never really gets beyond the 'rock as rebellion' metanarrative to bring any new insight to bear on the subject of metal. Not surprisingly, she fails to understand metal or its fans at anything beyond the most superficial level, though, occasionally, moments of lucidity creep in, as with Weinstein's recognition of heavy metal's fundamentally neo-Romantic character.

Where this work is strong, however, is in its analysis of the underlying social and political biases that have left metal marginalized, despite its manifest artistic superiority to, well, pretty much anything the contemporary world is producing. In particular, Weinstein has honed in, as few commentators have, on the unreasoned and unreasoning rejection of metal by mainstream rock journalists, and she effectively lays bare the institutional assumptions and prejudices that have crippled the objectivity of the wider music press when faced with outsider forms that do not conform to the expected 60s counterculture norms of social and political discourse.

While this may be of some interest to specialists, it is likely to leave ordinary readers with no better understanding of metal music or culture than they had before picking it up. There have, unfortunately, been no truly excellent academic studies of metal, but if you feel compelled to pick up something on the subject, Natalie Purcell's Death Metal Music: The Passion and Politics of a Subculture is probably a better bet.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Bible of Heavy Metal, October 5, 2000

By 

ChrisV82 (South Jersey, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heavy Metal: The Music And Its Culture, Revised Edition (Paperback)

If you're like me and have spent hours reading "Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology", or if you are at all interested in the Metal community and the roots, styles, and spirit of Heavy Metal, then this book is a must have. This edition is less a revision, and more a republishing of "HM: A Cultural Sociology" with an additional chapter acting as a rather large update on what happened in the decade since "HM: ACS" came out. Dealing with the development, enemies, fans, artists, outlets, community, subgenres, positives and even negatives of Heavy Metal, this should be read by every Metalhead and rock fan. Highly recommended, especially in the cheaper paperback format.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very informative! A must for every metalhead!, October 17, 2004

By 

Z. William Arkosy (California, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Heavy Metal: The Music And Its Culture, Revised Edition (Paperback)

This is by far the most intellectual book ever written on the subject of Heavy Metal! This book goes into great depths regarding the birth of the stlye, both in terms of its musical roots, as well as the image associated with this genre. It has an almost sociological evaluation of the fans of metal and what their lifestyle consists of. This book also enlightens us as to why critics - both from the liberal left as well as the conservative right - detest this style of music. It later goes on into the fragmentation of the genre (regarding the Thrash metal scene and glam rock). There is a final chapter which deals with the genre during and after the nineties, but the vast majority of the book deals with the '70s and '80s. There is a slight (North) American bias, concentrating more on bands that are from English speaking countries (namely the U.S., the U.K. & Canada) but some European bands are also mentioned. It was an enjoyable read and there are many examples illustrated by the author to make the reading less dry. Highly recommended for fans of the genre and for those who are trying to understand the genre.