rhapsode

by Sha Frasier.the Continuing Education Project.New York.

Source

Christe — Sound of the Beast

Cited in 4 notes
Dawes — What Are You Doing Here?, Metal, Walser — Running with the Devil, Weinstein — Heavy Metal

Find it in a library:WorldCat·Open Library

Author: Ian Christe
Title: Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal
Year: 2003
Type: Book (HarperEntertainment)

Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal is a book by the music journalist Ian Christe, published by HarperEntertainment in 2003. It dates heavy metal from the release of Black Sabbath’s first album in 1970 and tells the genre’s history from then to 2003, drawing on more than a hundred original interviews with musicians. PopMatters reviewed it favorably, LA Weekly listed it among the best books of 2003, it has been translated into eleven languages and taught in university courses, and in 2025 Brian Kirkmeyer, in the journal Metal Music Studies, credited it with launching a metal media company, further histories of the genre and a college course. Brent Burton, in the Washington City Paper, found its prose clumsy and its treatment of race in metal poorly supported, and PopMatters found its coverage overwhelming at times.

Christe, a music journalist whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone and Spin, published the book with HarperEntertainment in 2003.1 He dates heavy metal from the release of Black Sabbath’s first album in 1970, and writes that, as Black Sabbath defined it, heavy metal was “a complex maelstrom of neurosis and desire formed into an unbending force of deceptive simplicity.”2 In his account the genre arrived while rock and roll was in “horrific disintegration.”3 The book draws on more than a hundred original interviews, with members of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Metallica and many other bands, and it includes a graphic timeline of metal’s eras from 1970 to 2003.4

PopMatters, reviewing it in May 2003, called it “a meticulous book as dense and pummeling as the music it chronicles,” and Greg Burk of LA Weekly listed it among the best books of 2003.5 The book has been translated into eleven languages, its publisher reports more than 150,000 copies in print, and courses at Miami University of Ohio, the University of Rochester and West Texas A&M University have taught it.6 In 2025 Brian Kirkmeyer’s retrospective in the tenth-anniversary issue of Metal Music Studies credited the book with launching a metal media company, a series of historical books and a college course that serves several hundred students a year.7 Christe founded the metal book publisher Bazillion Points.8

Burton’s review in the Washington City Paper, published in June 2003, praised the book’s close view of a music most people regard as one-dimensional. Burton found the prose often clumsy and wrote that Christe’s answer to the charge that metal is white music was poorly supported, since it named only a few musicians, among them Phil Lynott and Slash.9 PopMatters wrote that Christe “can become overwhelming in his insistence of covering everything.”5

Key contributions

  • A single-volume history of heavy metal from 1970 to 2003.
  • A founding date for the genre: heavy metal dated from Black Sabbath’s first album, released in 1970.
  • A body of more than a hundred interviews with metal musicians.

See also

Footnotes

  1. Ian Christe, Wikipedia and Sound of the Beast, Wikipedia (both accessed October 21, 2026). ↩

  2. From the book’s opening pages, carried in the WorldCat publisher excerpt for the first edition (ISBN 006052362X; the excerpt service blocks direct linking); the founding date per Sound of the Beast, Wikipedia (accessed October 21, 2026), which states that the book “argues that heavy metal began with Black Sabbath in 1970.” ↩

  3. The WorldCat excerpt, as at note 2. ↩

  4. The interviews per Sound of the Beast, Wikipedia and Bazillion Points’ page for the book (both accessed October 21, 2026), which also lists the 1970–2003 timeline. ↩

  5. PopMatters’ review, May 14, 2003 (accessed October 21, 2026); Burk’s review as quoted, with the LA Weekly “Best of 2003” listing, on Bazillion Points’ page (accessed October 21, 2026). ↩ ↩2

  6. Bazillion Points’ page (accessed October 21, 2026); the eleven translations per Sound of the Beast, Wikipedia (accessed October 21, 2026). ↩

  7. Brian Kirkmeyer, “A retrospective of Ian Christe’s Sound of the Beast,” Metal Music Studies 11, no. 1 (March 2025): 131–34 (accessed October 21, 2026), from its abstract. ↩

  8. Bazillion Points and the publisher’s author biography (accessed July 14, 2026). ↩

  9. Brent Burton, “South of Heaven,” Washington City Paper, June 27 – July 3, 2003, as summarized on Sound of the Beast, Wikipedia (accessed October 21, 2026). ↩

Published July 14, 2026