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Glam metal of the 1980s represented a notable development in popular music at this time. A subgenre of 1980s heavy metal, glam metal combined elements of late 1960s and 1970s heavy rock, glam rock and punk rock, enriching both the visual and aural aesthetic diversity of 1980s heavy metal as a result. Moreover, 1980s glam metal bands such as Guns N’ Roses and Poison, Cinderella and Mötley Crüe, Ratt and Warrant, dominated the music video airwaves and sold out venues across the United States. Yet, for all its comparative individuality and widespread popularity, the vast majority of mainstream glam metal bands were marginalised by social action groups mainly, but not exclusively, because of misogynist-type themes that the bands represented in their aesthetics.

During the 1990s, scholars began scrutinising 1980s glam metal’s misogynist aesthetics, for example, Lisa Sloat’s (1998) analysis of glam metal’s sexist and misogynist themed song lyrics concludes that, ‘if exploiting women for sex sells, [glam metal] musicians will [continue] record[ing] songs which do so’ (Sloat, 1998, p. 299). Yet none of these accounts seem to be able to sufficiently unpack the idea that 1980s glam metal’s representation of misogyny was anything other than fundamentally egregious. An alternative reading of the aesthetics shows us how many of the bands creatively appropriated misogyny to idiomatically hallmark metal glam, thus differentiating the style from the broadly homogenous displays of machismo that generally defined the aesthetics of other 1980s heavy metal subgenres. In response then, this chapter should be thought of as a doctrine provactive, intended to elicit a debate about the need to look alternatively at how misogyny is/was used as an artistic aesthetic device, not only in 1980s glam metal, but throughout culture more widely.

During the second decade of the twenty-first century, the phenomenon of ‘kawaii metal’ has garnered significant attention in English-language mainstream press alongside more limited discussion in metal journalism. An ostensible fusion of metal and Japanese aidoru ‘idol’ music, kawaii metal artists frequently juxtapose the traditional aesthetics of kawaii ‘cuteness’ with those of metal, emphasising a combination of influences distinctly Eastern and Western. Prominent among kawaii metal artists, Babymetal have generated substantial press coverage in the Anglophone world. Despite emanating from the Japanese idol industry and singing almost exclusively in Japanese, touring the United States, and Europe (producing live CDs and DVDs recorded in the United States and United Kingdom) have made Babymetal one of the most visible Japanese bands in Anglo-America. This chapter explores Babymetal's fusion of idol and metal by analysing the lyrics for the band's first two albums, Babymetal (2014) and Metal Resistance (2016). Following an introduction to kawaii metal through the lens of Anglo-American press, the author elucidates Babymetal's origins as a sub-unit of the idol group Sakura Gakuin. With this background established, the author investigates the use of wordplay and themes relating to childishness and adolescence in the lyrics on Babymetal's debut album. Examining the lyrics of the band's second album illuminates a more thorough integration of idol and metal tropes, including more English-language lyrics, seemingly designed to align Babymetal with a more global metal audience, managing the interplay of Western and Eastern influences.

Comedy and parody in rock and metal music have been around since the genre's inception. The Italian comedic music genre known as rock demenziale employs the use of nonsense and surrealism which turns conventions upside down. The demenziale has also attracted a slew of bands that employ this humour within the heavy metal genre, most famous of which is the Roman band Nanowar of Steel. With their jabs at Manowar and power metal bands, they place mundane activities and characters into the grandiose medievalist and fantasy worlds commonly used by those bands to the point of absurdity. However, with humour being deeply culture-specific, jokes that draw from a country's pop culture and makes extensive use of puns may be lost to an audience not familiar with that culture. Nanowar of Steel's unique position of having songs written in seven languages, primarily English and Italian, allows us to take a deeper look at how language and humour interfaces with the local and global metal scenes.

The main aim of the chapter is to examine the prevalence of Slavic and, more specifically, Slovenian mythological elements in Slovenian heavy metal music. No such analysis had previously been attempted, so a database had to be established anew. Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives (MA) was chosen as the most comprehensive available source on metal music, supplemented by information gleaned from other sources. All 290 bands listed as Slovenian on MA were inspected for evidence of Slavic and Slovenian mythological content. Each band's name, genre, lyrical themes as listed in their profile, song titles, and lyrics were taken into account. The compiled corpus was then analysed in terms of information availability, prevailing languages used by the bands, and, subsequently, their relation to Slovenian mythological heritage. The search for Slavic and Slovenian mythological content began with keyword-based computer-assisted analysis followed by manual annotation. Elements directly concerning the Slavic mythos, Slovenian legends, and folk tales, were featured in a ‘Slavic content database’, their suitability ascertained through inclusion in prominent publications on the topic, e.g. Mikhailov (2002), Ovsec (1991), and Šmitek (2004, 2006). The acquired results were then divided into seven categories in order of prevalence, namely, deities, mythical creatures, history, nature, literary references, mythical places and phenomena, and idiosyncratic folklore. Our intention was to also present the contents of each category in a short overview aimed at acquainting the reader with individual phenomena, yet only the most prominent two categories could be presented here due to spatial constraints. The remaining categories will be dealt with in more detail in a follow-up paper. The findings featured will also enable the commencement of the second part of the research, a qualitative analysis of the afore-mentioned ‘Slavic content database’.