Customer Reviews

Metal: The Definitive Guide

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book does an excellent job of including biographies and listed discographies of many representative bands in metal separated by categories such as style of music (like Power Metal), geography (like South American Metal), combinations of these (like UK Trash) and a few others (like 70s Metal and Innovative Bands). So you will see a collection of bands from Black Sabbath to Lordi, from Metallica to Cirith Ungol, from Japanese Ezo to Italian Rhapsody (of Fire), from legends to obscure road warriors.

What you won't be seeing, though, are some controversial genres. I'm talking about Hair Metal, Grunge, Nu Metal and bands that the author perhaps thought were split between Hard Rock and Metal (the aforementioned 70s Metal category is rather short, but the bands there are very crucial to Metal's history). So there is no Motley Crue, no Nirvana, no Korn and no Deep Purple, for example. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since a book focusing in band biographies could be three times the size of this one and still leave out interesting bands. So, all the bands in this book are inarguably metal and reading this book can get you to know what kind of bands are (or were) out there.

However, the thing I expected a little more from this book was a general focus on the music itself, not only the story of the band. Yes, you will know what kind of sound is the trademark of every band (usually at the beginning of the entry) and if a band changed the face of metal in big or subtle ways that comes across in the text as well. But the entries can't have the same length (bands like Infernal Majesty never had the long career of Black Sabbath) and often I want to read more about which albums by Trouble are the classics, not what happened to them between albums or which bands they toured with.

Bottom line, this book is a great read (some cool photos as well) but if you want to expand your knowledge of the bands AND their music, pair this book with the ones by Martin Popoff's, most of which have excellent reviews of whole discographies, and even of individual songs.

This book is basically a big thick encyclopedia of different metal bands. The author did a really good job of writing about bands that are purely metal, as opposed to other metal books that just get all ridiculous and have entries on Pearl Jam and Insane Clown Posse, but leave out a lot of important bands. Pretty much every band that should be in here is in here. The only band that I was really surprised was missing was Melvins (it was also kind of surprising that the Japanese band Boris wasn't in here either). Anyway, the focus on metal means that many hard rock bands that are either considered to be metal or proto-metal are not in here. So that means no Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, Deep Purple, or AC/DC. There's also no hair metal and no nu-metal.

The book is broken up into sections for different genres/categories of metal. Because there are so many genres of metal and so many different metal bands, this sounds like a bad idea, but the categories are split up pretty well. Every band entry is pretty informative and includes a discography. Most entries for bands span multiple pages. Entries for more popular bands like Black Sabbath, Metallica, and Anthrax span several pages and had all kinds of information I had never read before. So while reading this I've never really gotten the feeling that I'm just reading a bunch of stuff that I've read before, which is a huge plus with this kind of book. Also, the band entries are often accompanied by a band photo, which is nice.

Anyway, I guess I would sum up my thoughts on this book as thus: If there were a college course on heavy metal, this would probably be the textbook you'd have to buy.

I recently bought this book back in August and am stillreading it, its thatgood. First of all, this book only deals with "True Metal" bands only. There are no NuMetal, Grunge, hair,etc.What you get is different genres of Metal. American Thrash, British Thrash, Death, Black, Doom/Gothic, Power, American Heavy Metal, Swedish Heavy Metal, Japanese Metal, NWOBHM, NWOAHM, Brazilian Metal, etc. Band histories and discography are very well done. No longer will you have to buy individual Metal books. Its allhere. In fact, flipping through theAmerican Thrash section, I discovered several Canadian Thrash bands that totally shred. Ended up buying several of their cd's. Garry Sharpe Young has put together the best book on Metal out there for the True Metal fan. If you're a Metal Maniac, buy this now, trust me.

My favorite still is the Encyclopedia of Metal as a generic guide, but when I saw this one come out this year, I picked up a copy, and it was well worth it. Not only is it also a complete guide, it divides the bands into Genres of metal, that way you can pick up the book, look at the contents and get organized alphabetical answers in each Genre. And all the big bands are included. Again, a great book to have for the Metal head. Check this one out.

The Definitive Guide - I agree absolutely!!! Useful and practical book - over 400 pages and about 300 bands covered. The essential bands are there due to their talent and influence, and not sales. There are definitions and introductions of genres and sub-genres (from HMR and NWOBHM to goth, power, doom etc) discographies, geography - from UK and Finland to Central America. This book is an honest, knowledgeable and decent job of true professional and real connoisseur. Not only I finally found what I've been looking for (and couldn't find in "Great Metal Discography" - avoid it), I used it as a guide to buy many decent albums, and to read "Nuclear Blast". Few suggestions only - to find some place in the next edition for "Grand Funk", "Blue Cheer" and "Iron Butterfly". As for doom - honestly, "Swans" and - especially - "Laibach" should be there. And a real must is "Mezarkabul" ("Pentagram") from Turkey. But just buy this book, it's a give away price.

This is the best metal book ever assembled. This and the "Encyclopedia Of Heavy Metal" are the greatest metal books. nuff said everything that is metal is this book!

Fans of heavy metal who enjoy reading and learning about the genre will find appealing METAL: THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE. It blends biography, history, critical analysis and a fine reference section to profile all the major heavy metal artists along with related niche acts around the world, and includes a interviews with many major heavy metal musicians, discographies, and more. It's packed into a survey which also features the sub-genres of heavy metal - goth, black, etc. - in an A-Z of key artists. Any lending collection strong in general-interest, contemporary music must have this.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

All he cares about is the boring minutiae! A typical band entry discusses every single person who's ever been in the band, every other band they played with before or after (including every release each of their other bands released), every tour the band went on, every band they ever toured with, etc (essentially a bunch of boring detail that nobody but a trivia obsessive could possibly care about) yet hardly *EVER* mentions what the band actually SOUNDS LIKE! It's absolutely infuriating to read 19 different paragraphs about a band you've never heard of, only to come away wondering, "So... what do they sound like!?" Half the time, it seems as if the author hasn't even heard the band he's discussing; he's just listing every single detail he can find on them, no matter how uninteresting.

On the plus side, I was introduced to a lot of heavy metal bands with whom I was previously unfamiliar. On the minus side, it's up to ME to find out what they sound like!

Within my small but perfectly formed music library, I have `The International Encyclopedia Of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal' which came out in 1983 (with Mick Box on the cover) and Vol 3 of the same which was released in 1991 (with Axl), both written by Tony Jasper and Derek Oliver. Since those rather naïve times, metal has expanded to become a many headed monster where even the subgenres have subgenres (Melodic Death Metal for example). The result is a musical scene where although there are some great magazines (sadly none of which are published here in NZ and cost a fortune on import), but it can still be quite hard to uncover all of the great music that is out there. My advice to anyone trying to find out what to listen to then this is a great starting point for anyone. We have nearly 500 large format pages with bands history and discography laid bare for all to see. To start with I picked some bands I know well and went through the information provided extremely closely. It was great to see that not only could I not find any mistakes, I was actually finding out new information on bands that I thought I knew in detail.

From there it is just one short step to starting at page 1 and trting to read it all the way through. I say trying as there is just so much detail! It is very well written but halfway through the section on American Thrash Metal I realised that I could be reading this for many weeks to come! Instead I have been using it as a reference guide for new (to me) bands and finding it invaluable. Yes, I culd argue that there are some bands missing that should be in there, and some included that shouldn't be, but that is down to personal taste.

Yet again here is a Jawbone release that is absolutely essential for any fan of the genre.

I loved the attention to detail involved in this book. All the nitty gritty details about all of the metal bands in a variety of genres. This is a great book for anyone interested in getting a comprehensive guide to many of the founding fathers of various metal styles. After reading through some of the different sections I was inspired to explore some different styles of metal that I had not been too interested in before reading the book. I would highly recommend this book to any metalhead or person interested in knowing more about heavy metal and its different styles.