While dashing wildly toward unknown destinations, heavy metal earned its scars. Metallers in America often found themselves in skirmishes that erupted into destructive dramas -- producing more heavy metal martyrs than metal terrorists. As the mystically powerful music and its myriad offshoots forced their way to the front of cultural change, they often crossed swords with factions of society that were dragging their feet, trying to reverse history and deny rather than embrace the new realities of the modern world.

In the simple terms of rhetorical shorthand, heavy metal remained the devilıs music -- a convenient and reliable scapegoat for social and spiritual ills. "It's so easy for Middle America to look to people who are slightly different and ostracize them," says Bruce Sinofsky, director of the film Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. "Then, when a crime takes place that canıt be solved because thereıs no evidence, they can say itıs an occult-related crime, and somehow itıs traced to the heavy metal music scene. The logic is pretzel logic. You can never figure out where it came from until you actually live in that environment. Itıs scary."

By its nature heavy metal had always threatened the status quo, offering an escape from the strip malls and fast food of Middle America. Since Black Sabbath, heavy metal lyrics investigated the corners of the subconscious, and bands from Judas Priest to Metallica took their gloom and doom straight from the pages of heretical writers like Goethe and Nietzsche. Naturally young people examining the big questions of God and the devil took to heavy metal‹these were the only adults who respected their curiosity. "I always consider my audience to be a lot brighter than most people think," says Ronnie James Dio. "I gave them songs that I thought had a lot more fiber than most songs theyıd heard, and I think they were smart enough to realize that."...