Certain places become synonymous with a certain type of music. Detroit is Motown, Nashville is country music, Liverpool is Mersey Beat and Manchester is Madchester.
Here’s a pair that you might not be quite so quick to put together: Birmingham and Black Country, UK is the home of heavy metal. Or at least it is according to a massive season of exhibitions and events that are taking place this summer.
Home of Metal is a celebration of four decades of heavy metal music and culture. It brings together the areas proud but not pretty industrial heritage with the development of the loud and menacing musical genre that spread across the globe.
At this point you are probably imagining Birmingham and the Black Country as a metal moshing middle earth. Where we all walk around in black cloaks, eat bats and make devil horns with our hands. As a proud inhabitant of the Black Country, I can assure you that it is not (always) the case.
An article in the New Statesmen declared: “Heavy Metal was born in the West Midlands”. Yet the people of Birmingham and the Black Country have never been quick to point this out, until now.
Growing up, I was never aware that I lived in the “home of metal”. I knew that Ozzy Osbourne was from Birmingham; Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin bought his sausages from the butchers by my Uncle’s offices. I knew that we had a musical heritage of some sort. I was far more aware of our industrial heritage: the chainmakers strike of 1910, the steel and iron foundries that were in constant decline throughout my childhood and the tales of my ancestor’s lives spent in and amongst the clanking and crashing of grim factory floors.
Home of Metal asserts that it is this history that shaped the music of acts including Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Napalm Death. Rob Halford from Judas Priest said: “There was metal in the air. You literally breathed in metal” when describing his childhood walks home from school.
The season has been curated by Capsule, a Birmingham-based arts and music production organisation. They have drawn together an ambitious and wildly creative programme, spreading across five museums and galleries and culminating in an international academic conference in September.
The flagship exhibition is taking place at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Informed by original band artefacts and archive materials, the show is the first metal exhibition of its kind. It brings together previously unseen fan memorabilia, and places it alongside iconic items such as Black Sabbath’s Mob Rules stage cross and handwritten Napalm Death lyrics. The show will also explore the ingredients that shaped Heavy Metal including the blues-rocks sound, the changing music industry and DIY politics.
Wolverhampton Art Gallery hosts You Should be Living: The Visual Language of Heavy Metal. This show considers the unique aesthetic of the genre, from typography to textiles. Heavy metal quilting and tapestry sits alongside an interactive installation by Damien Deroubaix andNapalm Death founder Nicholas Bullen.
The fashion of heavy metal is showcased at Walsall Leather Museum’s Hell Bent for Leather, where the stage costumes of Judas Priestare on display in their full leather and be-studded glory. Dudley Museum and Art Gallery celebrates the geology and manufacture of metal – from the dawning of the Industrial Revolution to the present day.
Turner Prize nominee, Mark Titchner has created a solo exhibition entitled BE TRUE TO YOUR OWN OBLIVION for New Walsall Art Gallery. The work Be Angry but don’t stop breathing (II) invites visitors to take part in a group primal scream exercise which visualizes the vibrations of sound.
The Home of Metal Conference runs 1-4 September at the Light House Media Centre, Wolverhampton. The event will see experts and academics from across the globe come together to discuss and debate the origins heavy metal within the context of the area’s industy during the late 1960s. The conference has attracted world leaders in the field of Heavy Metal including Professor Deena Weinstein and Professor Scott Wilson.
Home of Metal is running until 25 September 2011. Many of the exhibitions are free of charge and there are numerous smaller events taking place across Birmingham and the Black Country as part of the season.
Visit www.homeofmetal.co.uk for more information.
Images provided by Capsule.