Forging Masculinity: Heavy Metal Sounds and Images of Gender, by Robert Walser

Walser explains heavy metal as a staging of the male fantasy of masculine virtuosity and control. The music stylings are wild but controlled, explosively powerful and impressive. The male voice or presence is powerful, asserting itself over the female, distinguishing himself from femininity.

Metal musicians have “male swagger”, hyper masculine or androgynous, they are a spectacle of deviance. This style of dress and attitude is a response to anxieties of masculinity. Heavy metal is epic, dramatic, and is shaped by patriarchy and power play. Heavy metal draws themes from mythology, violence, hatred against women, teenage angst, and later on romance.

Because heavy metal is mainly supported by white teenage boys, a community generally disempowered by the father figure, but at the same time bombarded by society to take hold of social, physical, and economic power—outlining these attributes as vital to masculinity.

Heavy metal offers a solution to the anxiety males experience from the ‘crisis’ of masculinity; the texts and sounds and images and motifs found in heavy metal confirms masculinity and offers a space to adapt or revise gender identities through interaction with it. Metal offers freedom from reality in it's epic narratives, and dominance over women; female characters are seen as mysterious and dangerous with the potential to break the bonds between men.

Historically metal songs deal with issues that men face, but more recently, with the addition of female performers and the theme of romance, more females are engaging with the heavy metal music genre. 

The following article from The Telegraph outlines the research being done on intelligent teenagers who listen to heavy metal music to cope with the pressure's of being talented. 

Article Heavy Metal 'a comfort for the bright child'

Queries:

1. Implications of having heavy metal associated with the neo-Nazism movement? {the desire for power is obvious} but what about the discourse of gender and sexuality? 

2. A lot of people see heavy metal as the advocacy for misogyny and the occult; aside from a form of escapism, are there any redeeming qualities to metal? 

3. Why are there so many metal bands coming out of Europe? What differs in society there that it is such a popular music form?