That’s not a malign thing – as he pointed out, punk did much the same in its evolution out of the R&B-based pub rock – but it happened. While researching a book about vintage metal, sociologist Keith Kahn-Harris and I discussed how the codification of metal a decade or so after Sabbath’s first record was in part a process of removing the blues, and thus the black musical origins of the genre, from its sound. The founding fathers of metal in the late 60s and early 70s were still playing music derived from the blues (even Black Sabbath began as a blues rock band, and their drummer, Bill Ward, filled their records with jazz-inspired flourishes). There’s now even a genre identified as “national socialist black metal”.Īnd there’s the fact of how metal came to be. At its most stark, this is evident in the overt racism that has insinuated itself into black metal over the past 30 years, following the example of the openly racist Varg Vikernes of Mayhem and Burzum. T here’s no point denying metal has a more complicated relationship with race than many of its adherents would like to admit, or confront.
