Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal Music

William Phillips And Brian Cogan

The Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal Music was a daunting but enjoyable endeavor for a multitude of reasons. First of all it must be stated at the outset that within the heavy metal community there is a constant debate about the parameters of metal and what consists of true and false metal. There are not only controversies about what bands are metal, but what makes a band metal and what makes a band not metal. The intersection between the terms hard rock and heavy metal, for example, is problematic at best, and the purpose of the authors was not to be the sole arbiters of taste, but to be as broadly inclusive as possible. We did not set ourselves up in some metal Valhalla, drinking mead and making dark sacrifices to the metal gods to decide. Instead, we carefully analyzed the difficulty inherent in setting categories in terms of music, especially one with as vibrant and active an audience as is the metal audience.