| Acknowledgments | |
| Introduction | |
| 1 | Metallurgies: Genre, History, and the Construction of Heavy Metal | 1 |
| Genre and Commercial Mediation | 3 |
| Casting Heavy Metal | 7 |
| Heavy Metal in the 1980s | 11 |
| Headbangers | 16 |
| Nasty, Brutish, and Short"? Rock Critics and Academics Evaluate Metal | 20 |
| 2 | Beyond the Vocals: Toward the Analysis of Popular Musical Discourses | 26 |
| Genre and Discourse | 27 |
| Musicological Anaalysis | 34 |
| Writing about Music | 39 |
| Metal as Discourse | 41 |
| "Runnin' with the Devil" | 51 |
| Negotiation and Pleasure | 55 |
| 3 | Eruptions: Heavy Metal Appropiations of Classical Virtuosity | 57 |
| Classical Prestige and Popular Meanings | 58 |
| Ritchie Blackmore and the Classical Roots of Metal | 63 |
| Edward Van Halen and the New Virtuosity | 67 |
| Randy Rhoads: Metal Gets Serious | 78 |
| Yngwie Malmsteen: Metal Augmented and Diminished | 93 |
| Popular Music as Cultural Dialogue | 102 |
| 4 | Forging Masculinity: Heavy Metal Sounds and Images of Gender | 108 |
| Behind the Screen: Listening to Gender | 112 |
| No Girls Allowed: Exscription in Heavy Metal | 114 |
| The Kiss of Death: Misogyny and the Male Victim | 117 |
| Living on a Prayer: Romance | 120 |
| Nothing but a Good Time? Androgyny as a Political Party | 124 |
| "Real Men Don't Wear Makeup" | 128 |
| 5 | Can I Play with Madness? Mysticism, Horror, and Postmodern Politics | 137 |
| Professing Censorship: The PMRC and Its Academic Allies Attack | 137 |
| Suicide Solutions | 145 |
| Mysticism and Postmodernism in Heavy Metal | 151 |
| Horror and History | 160 |
| Guns N' Roses N' Marx N' Engels | 165 |
| Appendix 1: Heavy Metal Canons | 173 |
| Appendix 2: Heavy Metal Questionnaire | 175 |
| Notes | 179 |
| Select Discography | 205 |
| Select Bibliography | 209 |
| Index | 215 |
Format: Paperback, 242 pages
