Heavy Metal Music

Four naked men and women covered in cows' blood hang suspended from crosses while a rock band plays, bathed in red light. At the edge of the stage is a phalanx of sheep heads, impaled on stakes and frozen in death grins. The slate-colored eyes of the singer, Gaahl, peering through dark, tangled tresses, are upon us -- his corpse paint dried to the consistency of cracked concrete, mascara-black smudges over cadaver white.

THE most famous riff in rock is the 3 1/2 -chord skull buster that stalks Deep Purple's 1972 "Smoke on the Water" -- a branding moment in the infancy of heavy metal. And as Deep Purple's set at last year's Montreux Jazz Festival (recently documented on DVD) climbed to its climax, the customers stood waiting for that coup de grace. Then it came. Sort of. Goateed Don Airey tinkled a sprightly mutation of the "Smoke" melody on piano.

There aren't too many mean-looking things in Cupertino, Calif., this sleepy Silicon Valley haunt of Apple Inc. employees and overachieving middle schoolers. But there's something gruesome growing in one corner of town: Halo Custom Guitars Inc. Fueled by a resurgence in heavy-metal music and its numerous sub-genres, Halo makes and sells evil-looking instruments with bodies carved to resemble rotting flesh, distended eyeballs and bone.

Metal detectors may soon be irrelevant at House of Blues clubs, at least any sitting on property owned by the Walt Disney Co. Five heavy-metal concerts scheduled on Disney property in Anaheim and Orlando have been hastily shifted to other venues or canceled recently, according to House of Blues website calendars. A Sept.

Heavy metal singer Chris Barnes didn't know what people would think of the antiwar song "Amerika the Brutal" he wrote after his cousin deployed to Iraq in 2003. He heard a number of complaints -- but also received supportive e-mails from American troops in the war zone. "It kind of sent a shiver up my spine because those are the guys I didn't want to offend by sounding antiwar," said Barnes, vocalist for the death metal band Six Feet Under. Other metal bands are finding similar inspiration.

The idea of a heavy-metal awards show, with paparazzi flashbulbs and celebrity wranglers, seems odd. Metal is outsiders' music, forged in dank garages by fans for whom Motorhead's Lemmy Kilmister is a sex object. But it's also competitive. The comparative merits of Coldplay versus Alison Krauss and Robert Plant are opaque; questions of which drummers can play 16th kick notes at 180 bpm are debates with answers.

The bullying seemed inescapable. Iain Steele's family and friends say it followed him from junior high to high school -- from hallways, where one tormentor shoved him into lockers, to cyberspace, where another posted a video on Facebook making fun of his taste for heavy metal music. "At one point, [a bully] had told [Iain] he wished he would kill himself," said Matt Sikora, Iain's close friend. Iain's parents know their son had other problems, but they think the harassment contributed to a deepening depression that hospitalized the 15-year-old twice this year.

Could the critical rock 'n' roll question at concerts soon shift from "How ya doin' (insert city name here)?" to "Can you hear me now?" Don't laugh. In the ongoing search for ways to leave rock musicians and concert-going fans with happy memories instead of permanent hearing loss, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland last week held an experimental "quiet concert" with, of all acts, the Eagles of Death Metal, the side project of Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme.

For 10 years, Ozzfest was every mega-decibel addict's one-stop shop for heavy metal music during the summer, a chance to experience the requisite banging of heads and the brandishing of devil's horns to the quarry-mining accompaniment of a handful of hard rock bands in a festival setting.