My good friend and colleague Scott Tarulli and I have been discussing our shared interests and backgrounds in classic heavy metal, which go back to our teenage years in the early 1980s, for a number of years.

In 2020 we decided to start something new. We kicked around the idea of a podcast or a show focused on heavy metal, but then decided upon something that would capitalize on our work as educators: a Classic Heavy Metal Class. Given our time-commitments, we thought we could commit to meeting up once a month to offer a researched, competent, and engaging discussion to interested learners and participants bearing on some issue, era, problem, or topic connected to heavy metal.

So we started it up, fittingly enough, with a session on the very origins of Heavy Metal as a musical movement and genre in the early 1970s. Over the next few years, we tackled a number of topics including the developments of metal scenes in various eras and locations, ethical issues raised by what bands do, metaphysical issues having to do with identity, mimesis and parody, reviews of recent albums by classic metal bands, and some of the key themes involved in metal music.

We meet in Zoom sessions, where (unless we are interviewing a guest) Scott and I are the only people on camera and miked up. We record these Zoom sessions, and I upload them into my main YouTube channel. There are quite a few regular attendees who come to these sessions, and we get some interesting one-off drop-ins as well.

We're going to keep this monthly class going, since there are many more cool topics for us to explore, research, and discuss. We hope that you can come along with us on at least part of the journey!