CNN recently referred to Birmingham as ‘the unlikely birthplace of heavy metal’. The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is hosting an exhibition entitled Home of Metal (until 25 September).
All the gnarly-mouthed, guitar-thrashing kings of metal hail from the Black Country: Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Napalm Death. Walsall boy Noddy Holder, lead singer of semi-metal band Slade, thinks it is because, in the Sixties, many Black Country men worked in sheet metal.
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