Metal on Merseyside: Music Scenes, Community and Locality (Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music)

This is the first book to examine the partially hidden history of metal music scenes within the city of Liverpool and the surrounding region of Merseyside in the North-West of England. It reveals that while Liverpool has historically been portrayed as a certain kind of ‘music city,’ metal has been marginalized within its music heritage narratives. This marginality was not inevitable. The book illustrates how it is not merely the product of historical representation but the result of forces of urban change and regional shifts in the economy of live music. Nor is this marginality inconsequential. Drawing on ethnographic research, Nedim Hassan demonstrates that it has influenced how the region’s metal scenes are perceived and how people feel towards them.

Metal on Merseyside reveals how various people involved with such scenes work within often challenging circumstances to sustain the production of metal music and events. It also reveals the tensions that arise as scenemembers’ desires for an ideal metal community collide with forces of change. Metal on Merseyside is, therefore, a fascinating barometer for the contradictions apparent when people engage in creative labour to produce music that they love.

Nedim Hassan is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Liverpool John Moores University, UK.​