Rating: 
Summary: what band would you rather it focus on?
Review: This book is excellent and is the best book that i have read so far that covers the genre of heavy metal as a whole. Don't believe what the other reviews say about this book and Metallica. Sure, there is more information about Metallica than any other band in this book, but they deserve it. They are the most successful heavy metal band of all time, and any metal book would pay more attention to them than any band. And even though there is a lot of Metallica information, it isn't overkill, it is the required amount of information for such an eccential and important band. Any book will focus on one band more than others, and in metal books those bands will be Black Sabbath (the creators) and of course Metallica (the innovators)
Metallica is so important to heavy metal that their enitre carreer needs to be documented in detail to better understand heavy metal music. There are other great metal bands and some that I do like more than Metallica, but they do deserve the most attention.
Besides that, the book is pretty damn good, chronicling the entire history from Sabbath to Slipnot. Another bad argument about this book is that there is not enough information about the subgenres. Every subgenre that has had any rempote commercial impact is covered. There is plenty of basic information about death metal and black metal to understand the genres and the more influential bands. Maybe not all the bands are mentioned, but the book would never end if it were trying to impress anyone. Those genres arent as popular or important as the other kinds so they dont deserve as much attention anyway. I'm not saying that the bands are bad, but if you're gunna write a book are you going to spend more time researching Deicide or Iron Maiden? Maiden of course, because of their commercial success. If you want more death metal information, read Choosing Death. If you want more black metal information, read Lords of Chaos. But for basic information, read Sound of the Beast.
I have read other metal books and this one is the best. If you think this book is bad, try reading Bang Your Head. That book sucks Metallica's d!ck 10 times more than this one, and as for death, black, NWOBHM, hardcore, nu, or doom metal- forget about it! One third of that book is about Metallica and two thirds Hollywood glam metal. So if you're complaining about this book, it gets a whole lot worse, but this book isnt even bad at all so read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Sucking up to Metallica
Review: This book reads like Hetfield on thorazine: slow, dense, plodding, and not terribly interesting. Don't get me wrong, I love Metallica, but think of the tediousness of the riff in relation to Christe's (what is someone with a name like that doing writing a book on metal anyway? Points for irony anyway) literary drone. Basically, Christe wanted to write a book where he can suck up to Metallica. Rife with inaccuracies (e.g., details of Black Sabbath and Kiss backstories) and smelling of poseur-ness, the book's only redeeming quality is coverage of Black Metal. Deena Weinstein's silly pseudo-social-scientific book makes better reading and has more authenticity. Allow me to summarize: I like Metallica, so does Christe. I didn't write a book about that. (I also didn't get published, so there's that). Maybe I should force Christe to read my unpublished writings. Of course no one forced me to read Christe.
Rating: 
Summary: US history of Metallica only..
Review: This book was very disappointing in trying to portray itself as a "complete history". No such thing can be done of course.If you want to read hundreds of pages about the history of Metallica in the US and bit about how Black Sabbath's popularity rose in the US, this is the book for you. If you wish a wider view of the genre, especially with more focus on the European bands and sub-genres than the passing, almost disrespectful, mentions in this book, you need to keep searching. No mistake, Black Sabbath and Metallica were and are very important influences in this musical genre. This book unfortunately concentrates on them almost to exclusion of all others, including proper mentions of Led Zep and Deep Purple in the early days and the more recent European symphonic bands such Rhapsody and Finland's Nightwish. This book may have come across better as an historical study of several key bands, such as Black Sabbath and Metallica, and their influence on the genre, rather than attempting the impossible task of providing a comprehensive history. I would argue that Iron Maiden had a greater influence than Metallica. Ultimately, that is the problem with the book. If your favourite band isn't listed as the defining band of heavy metal, this book will disappoint.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but...
Review: This is a fun book. I loved reading it. But it is not a complete nor an accurate history of heavy metal. I will just mention one fact: the birth of heavy metal is not Black Sabbath's first album (1970), but Led Zeppelin II, released on October 22, 1969. It is the peculiar accomplishment of recent times to omit this historical fact. It, also, is no doubt not unrelated to the stoner movement of the 90s and the likewise less than rational achievements of the wife of Sabbath's lead singer. As if Iommi has anything even remotely close to the supremacy of Page! Still, this is a very enjoyable and well-written book.
Rating: 
Summary: Thinking Man's Guide to Heavy Metal
Review: This review is of the extended paperback version of Sound of the Beast. I'm a lifelong metal fan, and I still learned a ton with the help of this essential book. If you never stopped to think about everything that's happened with metal in the past 30 years...well, Ian Christe did, and his telling of the story is terrific. Death metal, black metal, and classic Brit metal are completely different universes, but here their interconnections and shared history come clear. Every fan has their biases: I appreciated that Beast includes Holy Terror, Medieval, Darkthrone, Destruction, and Cathedral. Lesser histories would have overlooked them. The shifting sands of metal styles over the years are laid clear with style and insight into the prevailing forces. Which brings me to Metallica: The focus on Metallica was fair and necessary -- when they stunk, he said so, and I appreciate that. I wish he wrote sections about when other bands like Priest started to fail, but you have to choose your battles, and Christe chooses them wisely. It's hard to describe, but when I finished Beast I had a renewed feeling of deep appreciation for the metal subculture. It's so much bigger than most people realize. Very funny, and mandatory reading for anyone slightly into metal or any music of any kind.
Rating: 
Summary: Should have been titled
Review: Though metal has needed an updated comprehensive history for about the past ten years that would show, among other things, the demise of L.A. glam-this book unfortunately isn't it.
Quite simply, after an amazingly erudite first four chapters that makes all the connections between Sabbath and the NWOBHM movement, the book becomes the story of Metallica's rise, with entire chapters dedicated to them with the occasional nod to "supporting" acts Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer et al. Basically, anyone not familiar with the metal scene would believe that two of metal's founding bands-Judas Priest and especially-Iron Maiden, fell of the face of the earth after 1985. (Despite the fact that Maiden's Donnington appearance in '88 set the attendance record for that festival).
Further, though I consider them to be one of the most over-rated acts of all time, Guns 'n Roses is not given proper credit for their influence on a slew of late 80's bands and their double album-"Use Your Illusion"-a tremendous seller and for many during 1991-(excluding myself )a must-have nearly or as-important as Metallica's "Black Album," is inexplicably ignored.
However, I did like Christe's treatment of the sub-genres of metal-especially his exploration of death,doom and Scandinavian black metal-which a lot of people, especially in the U.S., while being "metalheads," traditionally have not been very familiar with.
In short; a competent work, but far too focused in its "Metallica Saved the World and Changed Music Forever" theme that too many inexperienced metal fans born since about 1980 have come to believe.
Rating:
Summary: Good, Coulda Been Great
Review: When I bought this book I was hoping for another book like 'Bang your Head', or 'The Encyclopedia Of Heavy metal'. Instead, this is a pretty boring book that has it's moments, but otherwise is quite badly done. First of all, the section on the 1970's is only like 20 pages long, he does only one short chapter on hair metal, which isn't my favorite, but helped put metal in the mainstream in the '80's. There is just way too much on Metallica, a very overrated band. And also, the author includes death, black, and nu metal, none of which are real music. Good parts are the NWOBHM segment, and the American Wasteland parts.
Rating:
Summary: By no means a "complete history."
Review: While certain elements of the book are extremely well-researched and the work is generally well-written, this is by no means a thorough history of heavy metal. Where Christe grants an odd amount of space to unimportant metal offshoots like the metal/techno/dance hybrid, he completely ignores others that indeed shaped heavy metal as we know it today, such as the industrial movement. Moreover, and as others mentioned, he's not afraid to let the fact he's a fan affect the entire book; this is acceptable in some areas but completely unacceptable in others. It's readily apparent which bands he truly likes and which he doesn't by the simple inclusion or exclusion of said bands. For example, how can you claim a "complete history," yet completely ignore Tool, save for a two-word mention in a list of "nu-metal" recordings? Or countless words devoted to Manowar, but none to Alice in Chains? Christe is obviously a huge fan of '80s-era metal and apparently hoped metal would always stay that way. It's too bad the book didn't flow with the times, because metal has evolved in spectacular fashion. With any luck we'll see a book in the near future that can adequately handle the task.
Rating:
Summary: Metal from the perspective of a US-centric Mettalica fan
Review: While this book is well written and relatively intelligent it has several major flaws:
1) The seventies are 'covered' within the first forty pages, which means that the precursors of heavy metal from the sixties, the classic bands who inspired the HM formula and many of the definitive 70s HM bands are hardly covered at all. This is due to the fact that HM didn't really take off in a major way until the 80s in America, despite the success of Zeppelin, Sabbath etc. For readers who know their rock history and those from the UK, the defining era of the genre is therefore largely ignored and the many interesting theories abounding regarding the origins and defintions of HM are missing. However, the author does correctly identify Judas priest as the definitie original HM band (good man !)
2) Once Metallica appear on the scene, virtually every event in the history of metal onwards is examined from within the context that metallica are the definitive and greatest metal band. As good and as important as they are, this is meant to be a history of HEAVY METAL, not Metallica.
3) Some poor research and overly US oriented misunderstanding of genres like Punk Rock and New Wave perpetuate myths about these other areas of rock that do not stand up to close scrutiny - no musical genre is as simple as these alternatives to metal are represented here. There are also factual gaffes, for example the notion that Budgie were English, when they are of course Welsh. Such a subtle cultural point might seem insignificant, but I'm sure if the author had labelled a Swedish band Norwegian, there'd be hell to pay....
Despite these points, the book is a good fun read, but what is really needed is a work of similar scope that spends more time on the seventies in metal, otherwsie younger listeners might go away with preconceptions about old school stuff.
Ultimately, the fact remains that in a form of music as intrinsically modern as rock, the pioneers remain the most important artists and they are simply not represented enough here. I'll stick with Deena Weinsteen's 'Heavy metal: A Cultural Sociology' until a more balanced history of the most resilient of rock forms comes along.
See you all on the Priest tour later this year !!!
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