Week Four Blog

The reading this week was very interesting because I never really considered that there was any overlay between punk and heavy metal. While I listen to punk music, I never really listened to heavy metal, thus I never really considered any relation between the two. Yet, after this past week’s readings, the two are almost the same, aren’t they? I don’t think that I would agree.

While there remains the obvious similarities between the two: the style of playing loud, rough, and almost crappy sounding, it seems that the topics that each genre speaks to are very different.  Heavy metal stands as something that is strongly masculine and tough in my mind, while this is not necessarily true for punk. It is easier for me to see the femininity of punk rock singers than in metal bands. Also, it seems that both genres are for the rebellion against main stream society, metal seems to be more infatuated with the concept of death and such.

Yet, in the brilliance of Motorhead, we certainly get to see the crossover of the two genres in quite the interesting way. In their own unique way, they called out to both the punks and the metal heads in their style and music. For this very reason, they were one of the greatest bands of the 70’s.