Presenting a sociological study of perceptions on women in the subculture of heavy metal music on the basis of interviews with self-identified fans of the genre, this study is aimed at accurately and usefully describing and portraying what members of the metal community themselves think and feel in their own terms. Rather than examining the (objective) structures of the dynamics and stratification of gender in the heavy metal culture, we develop an interpretive model of various aspects of (subjective) identity of self and (intersubjective) understanding of others in the heavy metal community, with a special focus on questions of gender. Such a perspective oriented at hermeneutic understanding, laying bare subjective meaning, can count on a long and proud tradition in the social sciences, stretching back to the very foundations of the discipline, most notably the work of Max Weber (1949), and enjoying continued popularity and recognition until today. Critically, we will also show that such interpretive work can only be sociologically relevant if it is contextualized within an appropriate theoretical framework (Habermas 1970). As this study will reveal, this methodology sets a sociological investigation often apart from other work that is not disciplinarily guided.

It will be more than useful to bring out, from the start, what this book can and cannot do. This work is not conceived of, nor meant to be, a study in the relatively young field that is nowadays referred to as “metal music studies,” “metal scholarship,” and “heavy metal studies” (Brown 2011; Gardenour Walter et al. 2016; Spracklen et al. 2011). Of course, we do hope our work can offer relevant insights and would not wish to deny that this variably labeled area of study does not also contain sociological and otherwise disciplinary work, or that it would not have produced interesting studies. In fact, as we will show throughout this book, we have learned much from the relevant literature on heavy metal to situate our own investigations (Chapter 3) and with which we will also engage in terms of the implications for the study of central questions of gender, feminism, and popular culture (Chapter 8).