In one sense, then, the birth of heavy metal music is both a product of Great Britain in its industrial pomp

This is completely wrong: in fact, heavy metal is a product of Britain’s *decline* as an industrial power, of the late-60s era when British industry was “the sick man of Europe” and working class midlanders (in particular) were stuck in dead end jobs that were likely to lead to an early death. And it’s hard to see how the view of “industrial pomp” can actually survive reading any interviews with, say, Black Sabbath who were, and are, very clear about just how miserable their lives were in industrial Birmingham.

As for conservatism and patriotism, perhaps listening to “War Pigs” might actually be worth your time? If you can square: “Politicians hide themselves away/They only started the war/Why should they go out to fight?/They leave that role to the poor.” with a view of heavy metal as conservative and celebrating weird views of heroism, I’d love to see it.

To write about British Heavy Metal without even a mention of the Gods of Heavy Metal – Judas Priest and only to mention Iron Maiden in passing is a complete lost exercise IMHO. And Breaking the Law and British Steel (pun intended) are pure working class desperation and revolutionary cries.

You sure it was only 25,000 people? Pretty sure that Guns N’ Roses would have sold out Wembley Stadium’s 80,000+ capacity in 1992.

And Guns N’ Roses were hard rock, not metal, ok?!

Ahem… now that I have got that petty pedantry off my chest…

Another reason why ‘cultural elites’ might distrust metal/hard rock might be based in suspicions that it’s artists (and by extension, it’s fans) are racist, homophobic or mysoginist. In the case. In the case of Guns N’ Roses that was not, I’m afraid, a baseless allegation (see songs like ‘One In A Million’ or ‘Its So Easy’).

It’s notable that cultural gatekeepers are far kinder to the ‘grunge’ artists that usurped Axl & co in the early nineties (at least in criticaf not commercial terms). Kurt Cobain – forever their darling – was vocal in his support for PC causes

Very interesting and entertaining. I never liked the music myself and I have never particularly like Beethoven’s 5th, which is interesting given Mary’s comparison.

The first band I was in floundered because I was already into Joy Division and Einsturzende Neubauten etc and the others all worshipped Deep Purple, ‘Led Zepp’ and Rush. As Mary mentions, Roger Scruton was familiar with the finer points of Metallica and various rappers, which surprised me when I read a couple of his books on music. He certainly knew a lot more about them than I did.

Deep Purple and classical (or western art if you prefer) music: I was once listening to Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending when a friend pointed out that the orchestral arrangement could be Jon Lord on keys and the violin was not far from Richie Blackmore. He has a point. Wider, Colin Seemarks the composer once pointed out in a music class that metal tends to use a lot of majors for dramatic effect and this is the same with metal. This was over 30 years back and he was talking about pre-thrash metal but much of that and the splintered genres of metal since do much the same.