Having finally completed reading the aptly named "Heavy Metal Master Class" - which if you don't know is the latest book by the best selling author Emile Alquier in collaboration with Antoine Grand, someone who needs no introduction - I decided it would be fair to do a review.
How I ended up with a copy of this book (you can find it here) is another story altogether. It's no secret that I have deep and unending disdain for heavy metal "authors", aka people with no connection to the metal scene, who copy paste Wikipedia or other sources to make a hastily put together "book" that they then parade around for clout... come to think of it, it's pretty much the same formula for most modern metal: style over substance.
Keep in mind: I am far from alone in my contempt for what passes for heavy metal scholars. It is a field with 0 rigour, 0 quality control and almost 0 accountability... anyone can just make up fantasy stories about artists they never met, have them published, and it magically becomes the "official version". Both Fenriz of Darkthrone and Varg Vikernes of Burzum have long tried to explain this fact to their audiences, where some no-name authors or journalists just make up claims about Norwegian black metal bands being "satanic" and performing "human sacrifices" and other nonsense.
Luckily, Emile Alquier is a serious author (one of the few). Antoine Grand... well, he is a mixed bag. To cover all the controversies surrounding this person would take an entire post, so maybe in the future.
What about the "Heavy Metal Master Class"? Is it any good? Would I recommend it? These are difficult questions to answer.
As far as exhaustive resources go, when it comes to heavy metal, I tend to prefer quality over quantity - which is partly why I despise the "profilic-but-idiotic" Pitchfork authors who publish one new article every day, with 0 factual information. The Heavy Metal Master Class has, by chance, both quality and quantity in abundance.
It is a heavy book. Literally. It has something like 30 parts, breaking down the history of heavy metal from the early 70s to today. It covers everything from Motörhead and Black Sabbath all the way down to modern day black metal and death metal.
Most of the information, you will already know (somewhat) if you are a heavy metal aficionado, but there are many jewels hidden within the book that only an insider would know (interviews published in obscure Norwegian magazines and never translated to English, etc). Emile Alquier is no joke when it comes to metal knowledge. He can put any encyclopedia to rest easily.
The authors, in the foreword, provocatively claim that after finishing the "Master Class" (no easy task, btw), you will "know more than 99% of experts in the field". While this is obviously meant as hyperbole, there is (more than) a grain of truth in that statement... most "scholars" can only dream of knowing as much as what Emile Alquier and co deliver with this opus. The "Heavy Metal Master Class" is indeed a masterclass in the study of extreme metal music, clearly the best book written on the genre.
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