No direction home: ‘The Home of Metal’ and unreconstructed and unaccommodated man

While acknowledging the significant part played by ‘The Home of Metal’ conference, exhibition and archive in the development of Metal Music Studies, this article is intent on interrogating the notion that metal can be so easily accommodated. It argues that at the very heart of metal there is an impetus/attitude/energy that cannot be in this way contained, let alone domesticated. It does so by exploring the identity of a genre conceived in opposition to mainstream musical genres and the aesthetic merits of being ugly as a means of resistance not only to authority in general but also of the aesthetic per se.