After the apocalypse: Identity and legitimacy in the postdigital heavy metal subculture

Using the metaphor of apocalypse, this piece considers what is lost in the digital age. The power of major labels has certainly been diminished, access to global distribution has been widened exponentially and the tangible products produced by artists have been replaced by digital information. The changes are immeasurable, but many people still dedicate time to finding new music. What overwhelmingly defines their choice though is still the music they grew up with, from before the apocalypse. Major festivals rely perpetually on the before for their legitimacy. In the last decade for instance, there has not been a year in which either Metallica or Iron Maiden has not headlined a major UK festival. Needing to look backwards for meaning, as James Berger suggests, is to look before nothingness; this is the apocalypse that music is faced with. Where heavy metal as a genre attracts specific scrutiny is due to a number of factors, including a propensity to embrace nostalgia as a component of counterculture, an allure towards grandeur, and also sporadic mainstream success. The apocalypse narrative in itself represents a beginning and an end, highlighting the paradoxical questions of identity and legitimacy faced by heavy metal. Metal and its followers are neither mainstream nor subversive, both looking backwards in order to survive and ultimately enforcing its unsustainability as a result.