All Known Metal Bands

40 years ago there was only one metal band in the world and that would be Black Sabbath. Forward to the present there are now over 50,000 metal bands in the world. Dan Nelson’s little black book of silver font listing, All Known Metal Bands collected since 2007 grows each year. Heavy Metal has a very big following throughout the globe with many type of genres branched from the source. Between Cream, Iron Butterfly, and Black Sabbath there is debate to who really popularized metal. Black Sabbath encompasses every cliche about the break-off music bastard child of the blues. Ask any of the youth today about Cream and Iron Butterfly and you will get a blank look. Black Sabbath still reigns over the metal landscape in all music created in the past 40 years. Black Sabbath was just the blues cranked at the most possible wattage allowed at the time. That is why there is such a love fest of sorts for the exploits of Ozzy and his clan, he has fostered in a span of 40 years over millions of fans to the flocking of the power chords of a bell ringing in the background as the beating of the rain rang something ominous was dawning after Woodstock in 1969.

This volume contains the names of over 50,000 metal bands. Presuming that each of these bands had an average of four members, and multipling that by the number of bands, one might figure that at least a quarter of a million humans have pledged allegiance to one of them at some point is his or her lifetime. Never has a genre of music relegated to the underground of a civilization had so many devotees; no radio needs to transmit the power of this music, for it is sought out fiercely and freely by the doomed and the dispossessed, whose ears are never soiled by songs of love and weakness.

These names are invisible tokens to be spoken aloud, each representing a human quest for superhuman spectacle: shaking floorboards and quivering walls, split ears leaking blood, with faces painted and ornaments pointy, voices uttering eternal truths shunned by woman and man alike.