• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• I. Metallurgies: Genre, history, and the Construction of Heavy Metal
• Genre and Commercial Meditation
• Casting Heavy Metal
• Heavy Metal in the 80’s
• Headbangers
• “Nasty, Brutish, and Short?” Rock Critics and Academics Evaluate Metal
• II. Beyond the Vocals: Toward the Analysis of Popular Musical Discourses
• Genre and Discourse
• Musicological Analysis
• Writing about Music
• Metal as Discourse
• “Runnin’ with the Devil”
• Negotiation and Pleasure
• III. Eruptions: Heavy Metal Appropriations of Classical Virtuosity
• Classical Prestiger and Popular Meanings
• Ritchie Blackmore and the Classical Roots of Metal
• Edward Van Halen and the New Virtuosity
• Randy Rhoads: Metal Gets Serious
• Yngwie Malmsteen: Metal Augmented and Diminished
• Popular Music as Cultural Dialogue
• IV. Forging Masculinity: Heavy Metal Sounds and Images of Gender
• Behind the Screen: Listening to Gender
• No Girls Allowed Exscription in Heavy Metal
• The Kiss of Death: Misogyny and the Male Victim
• Living on a Prayer: Romance
• Nothing but a Good Time? Androgyny as a Political Party, “Real Men Don’t Wear Makeup”
• V. Heavy Metal and Postmodern Politics
• Professing Censorship: The PMRC and It’s Academic Allies Attack
• Suicide Solutions
• Mysticism and Postmodernism in Heavy Metal
• Horror and History
• Guns N’ Roses N’ Marx N’ Engles