Rock Is Dead, But Metal Will Live Forever

Abstract Metal has throughout its history been understood in the context of what Allan F. Moore calls the “hard rock–heavy metal continuum,” an imagined linear spectrum which ranges from mainstream rock to underground metal. This continuum is often imagined to trace out a temporal progression from old to new, with metal evolving away from mainstream rock. This chapter adapts concepts from the performance studies scholar Diana Taylor to show how genre judgments using metal’s rhetoric of oppositional authenticity inhabit a particular position on this continuum and casts anything more mainstream as inauthentic, domesticated, and less heavy. This creates a tradition of progressionist genre distinctions that continue to cite and echo metal’s original departure from the blues. But the universe of styles and subgenres within metal is less one-dimensional than this continuum implies, and the logical conclusion that old bands are no longer heavy is contradicted by fans’ continued enthusiasm for them.