Made of metal: Reviewing the psychology and personality of subgroups of the metal music fandom

What is music fandom? People come together at concerts and online to form a group identity around a musical artist or genre. For Metal music fans these identities can differ greatly between subgenres. While Metal music as a whole often contains themes of death, destruction, and anti-humanism, Power Metal fans might adhere closer to stereotypes of Pop music, while some Black Metal fans might engage in more violent or extremist behaviours. This paper explores existing research on Metal fans and Metal fan culture, theorizes potential correlates with these findings, explores potential directions for future analysis, and conducts a thematic analysis comparing two popular areas of Metal music: Power Metal, and “Trve” Black Metal. The goal of this research is to suggest considerations on the study of fandom subgroups using Metal fandom as a case study, while reviewing the claim that fandom membership can be beneficial to an individual’s well-being. We argue that fandom in different sub-genres is associated with different types of psychodynamics and potential health and wellbeing effects. Black Metal likely lacks the positive well-being effects associated with other subgroups and therefore different sub-genres of (Metal) fandom need to be studied independently.