MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

The mostly white and male demographic of heavy metal fans and performers that pervaded the music industry and video channels of the 1980s hardly seems like the best place to interrogate and analyze American race relations. A cursory retrospective of the scene might only seem to consist of hairspray party boys on one end, or neo-Nazi hate mongers on the other. But, as heavy metal music continued to expand throughout the decade, past Quiet Riot through Skid Row and into mainstream popular culture, some of the bands of the more peripheral “thrash” scene did utilize the trope of race in their music. Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills” and Anthrax’s “Indians” are two examples of bands engaging with social and racial issues and attempting to infuse their lyrical content with a social consciousness; however, while not explicitly bigoted, traces of racist post-colonial attitudes remain a part of these songs. Slayer’s “Angel of Death,” on the other hand, embraces no progressive social consciousness and instead raises particular debates about racially insensitive lyrical content in popular music. At the beginning of the 90s, the collaborative song, “Bring the Noise,” by Anthrax with rap group Public Enemy provides us with a perspective to review the problematic contours of 80s metal bands’ treatment of social and racial issues.