Get ready to learn about your new favorite band, deepen your understanding of the music you love, and think critically about the dominant culture around you. Native artists have been central to hard, heavy music: surf rock, hard rock, heavy funk, straight edge, thrash, rap metal, grunge, grind core, and especially black metal. Natives have made their own uniquely indigenous hard music forms, pre-Hispanic metal in Latin America, Navajo rez metal, and experimental ambient metal in the far north. Beginning with Link Wray's trailblazing guitar sound that gave birth to punk and metal as we know them today and culminating in contemporary acts like all-female doom metal and punk Maori band Death And Hatred to Mankind, this eye-opening, encyclopedic history of Native bands and musicians spans the last 60 years. Historian and professor Al Carroll teaches us to listen critically to spot imposters and bigotry, while celebrating the explosion of Indigenous bands during the rise of thrash and later nu-metal, how Native artists in the so-called U.S. gained popularity and radio play overseas while their releases were censored in the States, and the 'harder than you' grit of bands originating on Pacific islands. There's something in this book for every hard music fan and anyone looking for a new way to see the music and culture around them, or inspiration to create something of meaning to their own community and roots.
