An Introduction and User's Guide

I've decided to start this blog because of Seb Hunter's book Hell Bent For Leather. I bigged it up on my other blog a few weeks ago and decided to re-read it. While reading it again after a gap of a few years I decided that Hunter was taking the piss out of heavy metal, a genre of music I have, and, to a certain extent, still do, love. I know it's very easy to mock the music, the bands, the clothes etc. but it provided me with some of the most enjoyable years of my life. I hope to bring the some of the that back to life with this blog. It won't all be positive (believe me, I hate just as many metal bands as I like) but I hope to do the music more justice than Mr Hunter who has written his book with a kind of knowing wink directed at non-metalers and the sneering, chattering classes.

For starters, just look at that picture; it's the very essence of heavy metal. It's James Hetfield of Metallica, quite probably the coolest man on the planet (even though he looks as though he's just set light to a fart). It tells you everything you need to know without hearing any of the music.

To kick things off, here's my favourite metalist metal track like ever, dude: Metallica's Battery. Enjoy.