Afterword: Being Metal, Being Australian? Reflections and an Afterword

Bring metal is fairly easy to map through empirical case studies of what metalheads claim about their beloved music, and their place in it. There is no doubt that some bands are heavy metal: Iron Maiden are obviously a heavy metal band. They are metal because they use certain guitar tones and playing styles that constitute the noise we all know as the metal riff. They have a rhythm section that plays loud. They have a singer who screeches in one of the styles identifiable with heavy metal. They are also heavy metal because their songs have metal themes: narratives of war and bravery and the fantastical. They are metal because they have fans who say they are heavy metal fans because they are fans of Iron Maiden. Those – all around the world – fans grow their hair long, get tattoos and wear metal clothes: metal t-shirts, black or blue jeans, jackets with back-patches. Iron Maiden are also a metal band because they are marketed and sold as one. They have managers and labels that understand the place of metal in the music industry, and the huge loyalty and conservatism of metal fans. Metal fans still want to buy physical albums and merchandise. Metal fans will still turn out to see the big metal bands touring their country. Being metal brings with it an ideology or perhaps even a moral philosophy of what we might call collective individualism (Weiss, 2003). That is, metal fans come to be metal fans because they are attracted to the idea that metal resists the mainstream and embraces the freedom of the individual. Metal tells figures of authority their norms and values have no place in metal: metal is anti-establishment, anti-social, liminal and marginal.