Death Metal MusicMusic and Culture on the Edge

When I was a teenager, Birmingham Town Hall was the main music venue in a city drowning in car fumes. Modelled on the Temple of Castor and Pollux in Rome, this solid marble edifice stood, like everything else in Brum, marooned on its own traffic island.

Firas glanced at the cover of the Iron Maiden album in his hand and chuckled darkly. This is what life looks like here, he said, holding the CD out to the camera, Death on the Road, dude. The image was typical of the graphical restraint and delicacy we have come to associate with heavy-metal music: an old-fashioned hearse pulled by two red-eyed horses, driven by a gaunt figure of death and ...

Firas glanced at the cover of the Iron Maiden album in his hand and chuckled darkly. This is what life looks like here, he said, holding the CD out to the camera, Death on the Road, dude. The image was typical of the graphical restraint and delicacy we have come to associate with heavy-metal music: an old-fashioned hearse pulled by two red-eyed horses, driven by a gaunt figure of death and ...

It must have seemed like a cool move at the time, with the bonus that it was an easy way to get free publicity.

Metal doesn't rust. In a career that began when The Specials were at No 1 with "Ghost Town", and has rumbled on to keep Glasvegas from the top of this week's album chart with Death Magnetic after just two day's sales, Metallica prove that more than anyone. Radio 1 may play Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" in the daytime, but they cleared five hours of their schedule on Monday night to welcome ...