Karen Yossman

Death metal

Why do authoritarian regimes fear metalheads? Karen Yossman goes on tour with Iron Maiden on their first visit to China to find out

With its loud guitar riffs and even louder fashion, heavy metal has always been ripe for ridicule. In its mid-1980s heyday, it was epitomised by the fictional rock group Spinal Tap prancing on stage next to an 18-inch polystyrene model of Stonehenge while clad in ball-crushingly tight trousers and floor-length capes.

In some parts of the world, however, metal is no laughing matter. In the Middle East, for instance, the potential punishment for wearing all black while wielding an electric guitar is death. These days, against a backdrop of authoritarian suppression in countries such as Iran and China, heavy metal’s trademark theatrics and widdly guitar solos have become less an opportunity for gentle mockery than a rallying cry for artistic freedom.

If all this sounds about as bombastic as the lyrics to Manowar’s ‘Die for Metal’ (chorus: ‘They can’t stop us, let ’em try, for heavy metal we will die!’), it is worth noting that historians now credit rock’n’roll as being instrumental — pun intended — in bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union. Not only did bands such as the Beatles counter communist propaganda by humanising the West; for many Soviet teenagers (including my Lithuanian-born father), buying illicit, black-market ‘bone records’ — bootlegs printed on discarded X-rays — gave them their first taste of rebellion and set many on a path to dissidence.

So it’s no surprise that, while some in the West might consider it a bit of a joke, today’s authoritarian regimes are downright fearful of metal, a darker and more aggressive subgenre of rock that first emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although the origins of the term ‘heavy metal’ are murky, its initial usage, according to American sociologist Deena Weinstein, was almost certainly pejorative.

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