ABSTRACT
Heavy metal is a progressive genre, with a long, tangential and complex development. The ‘evolution’ of heavy metal, notable by the growth, fracture and splintering over time into myriad subgenres—the multiplicity of successive and concurrent ‘metals’—masks retro-progressive engagements with heavy metal histories, with retrospective fan and musician practices, with its relationships with past classics and canons, failures and fads. Palimpsests are both actual and figurative texts. In using the palimpsest as a metaphor for heavy metal’s genealogy, a number of ways of thinking about the genre can be explored. Fans of these multiple heavy metals, collectively articulate some of Nietzsche’s ideas about historiography, about history as they relate to the Platonic modalities of history.
