Metal on Merseyside - The Book

 

Metal on Merseyside: Music Scenes, Community and Locality. The first major output from the project, Metal on Merseyside: Music Scenes, Community and Locality was written by Nedim Hassan and published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2021. It is part of their ongoing book series, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music. 

 

Metal on Merseyside is the first book to examine the partially hidden history of metal music scenes within the city of Liverpool and the surrounding region of Merseyside in the North-West of England.

  

From rock venues like the Liverpool boxing stadium and the Royal Court, to pubs like the Moonstone and Wilsons, to clubs like Krazyhouse and Planet X, hard rock and metal music scenes have endured in the area since the late 1960s. Such scenes have also witnessed the emergence of internationally successful and critically acclaimed metal acts such as Carcass, Conan, and Anathema, as well as up-and-coming bands such as Loathe and Video Nasties.

  

Yet, while Liverpool has historically been portrayed as a ‘music city’, these metal acts and scenes have been curiously marginalized within its music heritage narratives. The book reveals that such marginality was not inevitable. Rather, it illustrates how metal’s marginal status is not merely the product of historical representation but the result of forces of urban change and regional shifts in the economy of live music. 

 

In the face of such changes, Metal on Merseyside reveals how various people involved with hard rock and metal scenes over the last couple of decades have worked within often challenging circumstances to sustain the production of music and events. It also reveals the tensions that arise as scene members’ desires for an ideal metal community collide with forces of change.

 

Featuring exclusive interviews with metal artists from bands such as Carcass, Conan, Video Nasties, Exhumation and Neuroma, as well as with numerous other scene members, Metal on Merseyside will appeal to readers interested in Liverpool’s music history and heritage. It will also appeal to students, researchers and a wider readership interested in popular music cultures, place, live music industries, and creative labour. 

 

Metal on Merseyside is out now in both hardcover and e-book forms. It can be purchased from the Springer Nature website and from all good booksellers.