ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the musical excesses in heavy metal that cause most other people either to laugh or to turn away with disgust are the same ones that the metalheads find so enjoyable. The novelty of the heavy metal sound is also part of the allure for some boys. For adolescent metalheads, however, that threshold is much higher, if not infinite, and heavy metal music fills their sensation-seeking appetites with an abundance of pleasurable sensations. The musical combination of speed, roughness, and volume that is characteristic of the heavy metal sound makes for an orgy of auditory sensation, and the metalheads find it thrilling. There is more to the appeal of heavy metal music than the appreciation of the performers' playing skill, more than the high-sensation pleasure of the music. There is also the ideology of it. Perhaps most of all there is the ideology of it, the ideology of alienation.
