Heavy Metal Music and the Communal Experience adds to the growing number of excellent metal scholarship being produced each year. The editors have included chapters which examine the various roles community plays in Metal music and culture—though they are the first ones to put so much together in one place. I plan on using this book in my course on Metal Culture and History!

Bryan A. Bardine, University of Dayton, University of Dayton

Heavy Metal Music and the Communal Experience is a brilliant collection of essays by luminaries in the field of metal music studies. The collection is both interdisciplinary and global in subject, and provides a primer on the important topic of community formation in metal scenes. It will become a classic text in the discipline.

Amber Clifford, University of Central Missouri

This volume is proof, if proof was needed, that Metal Studies is now a thriving, diverse, and intellectually engaging area of global academic inquiry. Drawing on a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to the conceptualization and investigation of metal as community – from the ideal to the mythical, 'glocal' scene studies, age and identity, and culture and politics – this collection not only demonstrates the passion and commitment of metal scholars to produce work adequate to the growing complexity of its subject of inquiry but also that metal scholars themselves are a community that is growing in confidence and expertise.

Andy R. Brown, Bath Spa University, Co-editor of Global Metal Music and Culture: Current Direction in Metal Studies