(TheBRHM.com) Let’s go back a few years to the summer of 2006. I was 21 and had a little familiarity with heavy metal through my dad listening to hard rock and some metal. He’s more of an Elton John, Frank Zappa, AC/DC, and Blondie guy—a lot of stuff that you’d hear on your local classic rock or hard rock station. It would also be a lot of the same stuff that appeared during VH1’s “Metal Month”.
Remember VH1 Metal Month?
For OG headbangers and metal enthusiasts, Metal Month is every month but VH1’s presentation had to be like attending Metal 101 for a whole month. I was really into the Fuse channel at the time since it seemed more like old school MTV and their Uranium show featured some modern-day metal acts. Again, I was familiar with metal music but had warmed up more to 2000s punk and hard rock acts like Avenged Sevenfold, AFI, and Damone.
So, the idea of Metal Month was very interesting to me and I dove into it. Needless to say, it was the best month of television I ever invested in. It gave me a blueprint for exploring older bands and finding communities to discuss music with and learn from older or more experience metalheads.
It served as a crash course in the genre for me and featured some documentaries that explained quite a bit about some of the established acts. The centerpiece of the month was the docuseries Heavy: The Story of Metal. As far as metal documentaries go, it’s alright. I felt Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey was a better documentary, much more entertaining, and somewhat more informative.
A real treasure in Metal is the Metal family tree—which could stand to be touched up or corrected a bit as far as where some bands belonged in the genres but genre’s always a discussion among fans. I thought the family tree was very useful regardless as it led me to Encyclopedia Metallum during my dives and research into different bands.
Often when something like this comes along there is a precursor. There was something that made VH1 think “There’s money here, there’s ratings here.” Stick around TheBRHM for when we get into Supergroup and the band Damnocracy.
A Second Run at Metal Month
After the first one, I’m not sure if VH1 hosted another Metal Month. I had gotten so wrapped up in my metal research that I was only focused on metal and wrestling that year and following few. I’d say it wasn’t necessary since VH1 Classic was regularly featuring old episodes of Headbanger’s Ball, airings of old music videos, and the program That Metal Show.
The genre had a presence on the network when it didn’t on MTV or VH1. Of course, VH1 Classic is a specialty channel and you have to either request it or hope it’s in your provider package, but heavy metal was being aired on a network that had dipped on the genre—and later on music—decades earlier.
In some sense, this was just a part of that mid-late 2000s of metal in the mainstream what with a game like Brutal Legend being released and the move towards sharing tour footage and interviews on YouTube. Metal had always had a place online but with the late 2000s-early 2010s came a chance to discover global scenes, easier access to distros, merch being available in more sizes—changes, folks.
Metal Month was just an accessible introduction to a world and fandom that always existed. If you were around or dropped in on VH1’s Metal Month, what did you think? Did you enjoy it or did you expect more? Maybe you saw it for what it was—a mainstream presentation of metal music—do you feel VH1 did a good job in showcasing the genre or do you believe it possibly harmed it or showed it unfavorably? Finally: do you believe Fuse could’ve done a better job given their Warped Tour coverage?
Tons of questions but as always, let us know in the comments!
Staff Writer; M. Swift
This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.