Metallica
| Fandom | |
|---|---|
| Name(s): | Metallica |
| Abbreviation(s): | 'tallica |
| Scope/Focus: | Music |
| Date(s): | 1981- |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Metallica is a heavy metal band from San Francisco, CA, and one of the Big 4 of thrash metal, along with Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax. They grew from a cult band to one of the biggest and most popular bands in the world. Their best-known songs include "Enter Sandman", "One", "Nothing Else Matters", and "Master of Puppets."
Fandom
A longer detailed account of Metallica fandom can be found on Fan History Wiki which is no longer active and is now Fanlore. Metallica on Fan History Wiki through Wayback Machine, Archived version
Fan Club
The Metallica Club, run by the band, is complete with local chapters throughout the U.S., Canada, South America, and Europe.
Fan Community Nicknames
Metallibangers, Metallicats
Intersection With Other Fandoms
On the TV show Supernatural the character of Dean Winchester is a fan of Metallica. As a result the band and their music often play a role in fanfiction. See The Firefly that Loved Metallica.
Metallica made a guest appearance in the TV Show Billions in 2016, where one of the main characters Bobby Axelrod goes to see the band while they are playing a show in Canada and asks Hetfield for some advice, while they are sound checking for the performance.
Fan Art
Fandom Conflicts
The band has a notoriously broken base.
"Metallica is perhaps best known for its somewhat turbulent relationship with its fans. Some of this is the result of their long career and their experimentation with other musical styles. The fan-base tends to divide thusly: "hardcore" metalheads that stay away from anything after Justice, or after Puppets if they're not into prog-metal (Hetfield even mentioned in interviews that the band lost some especially vocal fans after the acoustic guitar intro on "Fade to Black"); fans who got into the band with the Black Album and like their anthemic '90s style better; those who uncritically love everything the band releases; and some who seem to exist solely to antagonize the band and other fans."[1]
Fanfiction
RPF
Metallica slash fiction first appeared in a fanzine called Bambi back in 1996. Since then Metallica slash fiction has been on two public archives that started in the late 90s; Tallific which has a public archive as well as a private one, and Metslash (neither of which is still active today). You can access these older stories through Wayback Machine, some of those stories links still work through the archival website. Some stories which were originally housed on these archives have moved to sites like AO3 and Rockfic. There are still some archives that live on Zetaboards but aren't as well known in the fandom with communities that span from a few hundred to a few thousand.
RPF communities for this band seem to be something that keeps happening over time, there seems to always be a small close-knit group of people who will be writing for this fandom.
Typical Characters
Alphabetically by Last Name
- Cliff Burton (bass, backing vocals 1982-1986)
- Kirk Hammett (lead guitar, backing vocals 1983 - present)
- James Hetfield (lead vocals, rhythm guitar 1981 - present)
- Ron McGovney (bass, backing vocals 1982)
- Dave Mustaine (lead guitar, backing vocals 1982 - 1983)
- Jason Newsted (bass, backing vocals 1986 - 2001)
- Bob Rock (who producer; Metallica (1991), Load/Reload, and St. Anger) Rock also played bass on St. Anger before they hired Trujillo to replace Newsted.
- Robert Trujillo (bass, backing vocals 2003 - present)
- Lars Ulrich (drums 1981 - present)
Pairings
Most fanfiction on AO3 is slash fiction, but with time the fandom has started to incorporate more heterosexual-based stories onto the website. Main ships for the band mostly include James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, being two of the most written about members of the band. Another well-loved one is the pairing of Kirk Hammett/Lars Ulrich, there are many almost canonical photos of Ulrich and Hammett together in the 90s that have sprung a big increase in the shipping of these two together.
It was in the early 2000s after the release of the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster, when Jason Newsted started to be incorporated into more stories not centered around himself and Hetfield having a love/hate relationship with one anotherdespite Newsted leaving the band a few years before the documentary came out.
There was a big increase in the shipping of Hetfield/Ulrich after the release of Death Magnetic.
Fan Works
Examples
Fanart
- Metallica Lions. (Nov 2014) by julis-rocks, featuring the band members as lions from The Lion King
Other Sites
- Metallica.com
- Metallica at Discogs.com
- Metallica tribute bands from around the world at tributecity.com
See also
References
Links & Resources
Primers:
- MARRIED: The James Hetfield/Lars Ulrich Manifesto. by cobrasnaps, Last updated June 1, 2012