On the surface, Australian metal music can be read—quite fairly—as a white, working-class, hypermasculine phenomenon. With further excavation, however, the way metal music materializes in local Australian scenes around the country in various ways reveals its power in negotiating complex structures of identity and belonging. Australian metal music is paradoxical and complex, and fans ‘use’ metal in a variety of political ways. Quite specific to Australian metal music, too, are the ways in which it has long been constructed as a frontier space—a space sitting ‘on the edge’ both geographically and politically, wherein metal’s tendency for extremes—its celebration of brutality, and its perpetuation of hegemonic white masculinity—is only matched by its potential for counter-hegemonic politics, radical change, and boundary-pushing. The Australian frontier functions symbolically in our reading, both as a space dominated by the centralizing figure of the colonial white man, but also as a precarious space in which women’s resilience and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s agency in pushing back against colonial normativity rise to destabilize the accepted narratives of invasion politics.

Metalcore is a slippery concept. A relatively new genre category, dating from the early 2000s, it provokes wide disagreement about what counts as metalcore and arguments within metal scenes about its legitimacy. This chapter provides an overview of metalcore as an ‘abject genre’, a useful shorthand term for nu metal, screamo, and a variety of core subgenres that have been widely criticised by metal fans. Beginning with commonalities that metalcore shares with other abject genres – some mass popularity, stylistic alterations of traditional metal traits that detractors view as simplified dilutions, quotidian rather than supernatural lyrics, and associations with marginalized categories of identity – I then outline diverse historical accounts by other authors to argue for a more complex view of chronological and conceptual boundaries than an individual narrative might allow. Finally, an analysis of Currents’ ‘Silence’ (2017) provides an example of metalcore as an amalgamation of stylistic qualities from multiple sources. I conclude with thoughts on the utility of abject genres as a concept for reception histories and the potential for metalcore’s complexity as a genre to teach broad lessons about genre in popular music.

What is the relationship between metal and the wider leisure, tourism and entertainment industries? How can metal be a place for countercultural resistance while being a part of the modern leisure industry? In this chapter, metal as a space for leisure and tourism is explored. It first discusses how metal is leisure, for musicians and for fans, by exploring the meaning and purpose of leisure and leisure’s relation to modern society. It looks at how metal is a part of the wider entertainment industry, and how that industry is best defined as commodified popular culture. Finally, the chapter discusses three specific forms of tourism and leisure industries that align with metal: tours, festivals and the recent growth of metal holiday cruises.

The gender of metal and the relationships between the music, misogyny and women have long raised eyebrows amongst popular commentators and scholars. Yet many metal fans claim that the genre is at heart an inclusive, even equal one, ready to welcome all fans regardless of gender, race and sexuality. This chapter gives an overview of thinking about the gendered meanings of metal, its origins in the music of Black blues women, the constraints on women’s music-making, the 1980s moral panic around metal and sexual violence, the gendering and queering of genre, women’s empowerment in metal and metal as a vehicle for feminist fury. I argue that placing women’s metal stories at the centre of our focus reveals different aspects of metal and its culture, and opportunities for understanding metal’s relationship with gender. Claims to inclusivity are exaggerated because metal exists in a sexist world and is not immune to societal discourses. The myth of equality is problematic because it impedes progression towards better inclusion. And yet metal provides opportunities for joy, power and for challenging misogyny for women, opportunities which are beginning to be grasped.

This chapter explores the direct experiences of renowned record producers, working with metal music, to construct an in-depth understanding of the genesis, and development, of recorded metal music. Technological democracy has changed the experience of making metal records, affording creative flexibility and control that would historically have been out of reach, technologically and financially. Multitrack technologies and fragmented production processes are also examined. Framed by the experiences of producers that have shaped the recording careers of artists such as Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, this chapter links the direct experiences of record-making to musical, sociocultural and technological development.

Australian metal music is notably diverse. Although the country’s metal output is proportionate to its population size, many trend-challenging and genre-defining bands have emerged from this community. These bands – indeed all Australian metal bands – have forged their careers in constant negotiation with their distance from international scenic hubs and from one another. This negotiation, in its varied forms, has imprinted on the musical and paramusical texts of many Australian metal artists, many of whom have responded with defiant and convention-challenging practice. This chapter, within a cursory overview of Australian metal music history, explores the work of three such bands: Buffalo, a proto-heavy metal band from the late 1960s; Sadistik Exekution, a death metal band formed in the mid−1980s; and Ne Obliviscaris, a progressive extreme metal band that has been mainstay of Australian metal since the early 2000s. These three bands are demonstrative of the variability and inventiveness of Australian metal. They also exemplify the way answers to these common distance-related pressures, negotiated through obstinate artistic vision and culturally shaped ideals, can result in inimitable music and art.

Contrary to decades of speculation about the poor mental health of heavy metal fans, newer research (and research conducted with heavy metal fans) has begun to reveal some of the more positive and nuanced outcomes of heavy metal music and culture for well-being (for examples see Dingle and Sharman 2015; Rowe and Guerin 2018). Moving beyond a focus on the music itself, this chapter builds on notions of metal as a protective factor for mental health by exploring three domains of psychosocial well-being through a lens of heavy metal identity formations. Those being stress and coping, belonging and purpose, and certainty of self in an unpredictable world. Concluding comments propose that the internal identity dialogue of metal fans and its interplay with the embodiment of metal identities have significant value for steeling oneself against some of the most pervasive social and emotional threats of modern life.

Viking metal is one of the few varieties of metal music defined by the songs’ contents and visual elements rather than its sonic aspects. While a band’s music can be affiliated with folk metal, death metal or black metal, the lyrics and visual elements are clearly centred around the Viking Age, Old Norse mythology and the portrayal of Nordic nature. Time is an important feature in Viking metal lyrics and imagery and appears in the shape of a ‘past’ that can be identified as the Viking Age or as a past that lacks a time stamp. Often without a specific description of the underlying idea, the past is frequently attributed with wisdom and continuity. It appears in song lyrics and is depicted in various scenes from a seeming past or with direct reference to the Viking Age in the cover artwork of Viking metal bands. Why is the past such an important feature of Viking metal? What other aspects are deemed important? What ideological aspects do the references to the past entail? To answer these questions, I will identify defining features of Viking metal to then analyse the connotations of ‘the past’ in Viking metal.