Myth and Magic in Heavy Metal Music

This was a very informative book about heavy metal bands. I used it for an essay on lyrics.

When I first heard about this book, I was really excited, because it's a great topic, but has been under-studied. Such, unfortunately, is still the case.This book is, in a word, terrible. Everything about this book betrays a widespread ignorance and utter lack of diligence. It is galling to think that this person is supposedly a professor of English. I certainly hope he never teaches writing, because it is clear he knows nothing about it.There's little rhyme or reason to anything here, and no sign of any kind of overarching argument. The discussion of the band Anthrax (p. 55f.) is a good example of the book's general problems. For no apparent purpose, the author details some of the band's numerous personnel changes, and talks a little bit about their type of music. But there is nothing about Anthrax and myth or magic until a passing reference almost 100 pages later (and there's no mention of their song "Medusa," which would seem to be an obvious point of detail for a book on myth in metal). Why include a section on Anthrax unless you're actually going to say something about them? There is no clear topic, and no meaningful organization. Freshman comp. papers generally have stronger theses and outlines.There's a whole chapter on Iron Maiden, with a focus on their song "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," based on Coleridge's poem of the same name. Now, this is kind of a weird choice because it's not really myth, but one could make the argument that the poem has mythical aspects—and the author tries to do this. Fair enough.But the chapter is rife with lazy errors. For example, he refers to their 1980 album as "Sanctuary," though that song wasn't even on the first album in the UK (it was on the US version, and only added to the UK version many years later), which was self-titled. But on the very next page he says, "Their first album, 'Iron Maiden' (1978), offers a musical version of Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' (1897)." The title is right this time, but now the year is wrong! (What's more, the song "Transylvania"—to which he's presumably referring—is an instrumental.) In this same chapter, he refers to Maiden's drummer as Nikko (instead of Nicko) and—multiple times—says that the poet on whose work the song is based is Tennyson! And supposedly he's an English professor!I finally stopped reading in the chapter on Norse myth. Within three pages, he refers to the relatively well-known metal scholar Imke von Helden as "van Helden," Valkyries as "Vakyries," the Sybil as "the Sybal," and Völuspá as "Volupsa." He also manages to refer to ragnarok as "magna rok," though one would think that the use of the term in a recently popular movie would make that one hard to mess up.Now, every book—no matter how well edited—is going to have some typos. But these typos reflect an overall ignorance of the ostensible subject matter of the book, and a total lack of care. These errors also betray the flawed concept of the book; this author clearly has nothing coherent to say on the topic. This reads like the kind of first draft that would be written in one go, later to be revised after doing copious amounts of research. But there was clearly no revision or research here.There is no way that this person should have an academic job.

For fans of metal, mythology, esoterica, and more, this book is a must have! McParland's vast knowledge of art, literature, philosophy, and music is apparent in every paragraph. The book reads like an engaging conversation. There are myriad references and connections that will spur readers to explore more deeply the other works, traditions, and historical phenomena that inspired much of our favorite music. This is truly an immense topic, such that many volumes could be filled trying to cover it all. McParland's effort is impressive, taking the reader through a virtual history of the genre, and including important movements such as black metal, which something the uninitiated may not know about. If you're the type of person who likes to talk about metal, mythology, and other wild and crazy stuff like that, you can't go wrong with this book!

It's always interesting reading/hearing different views and getting different perspectives. Also check out Science Fiction in Classic Rock.

McParland uses archetypes well. I have used for a reference for my thesis.