ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the New Wave of American Heavy Metal (NWOAHM) period of the early 21st century as a site of complex intersections of genre, heritage and place within metal/hardcore. Combining older influences commonly associated with specific times and places (Great Britain in the early-1980s, Sweden in the mid-1990s), NWOAHM artists created something both ‘new’ and ostensibly linked to North America at the turn of the century. In so doing, the NWOAHM recalibrated specific elements of metal/hardcore past to formulate a novel present, which in turn affected the genre’s future, providing an apposite case study in the significance of heritage within metal/hardcore music culture.
