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Beginning with 1978’s Killing Machine (released as Hell Bent for Leather in the United States in ‘79) the band shortened their songs to a more commercially acceptable length in an effort to get air time on the radio. The Netherlands legalized same-sex marriage in 2001 and over 30 countries have followed suit.

But those attitudes haven’t gone extinct exactly, either. Metal will never die because metal is always changing.

And that includes getting queerer.

The Origin Story

Metal really began with Black Sabbath’s titular debut, decried at the time by lauded American critic Lester Bangs as “like Cream but worse.” Judas Priest were already a band by the release of that record, but they struggled to reach any semblance of commercial success until the early ’80s, when they released their masterpiece British Steel.

That album, one of the most important of the genre’s first decade, took the formula that Black Sabbath had already established — fast, heavy blues guitar; abrasive lyricism; sung-screamed lyrics — and doubled-down on the camp in a way that Sabbath had not.

Despite the band that they would eventually become, in those early days, Ozzy Osbourne and his mates styled themselves after gnostic groups like Hawkwind.

Ironically, The Wild One was also the original inspiration for the gay leather subculture, so Judas Priest was emulating leather daddies even if that wasn’t their intention. And how you got it."

-The Metal God

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Rob Halford, Judas Priest

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Contact Chad Fogelberg to get information on resources related to metal music and The LGBT community.

Key to that project was Helot Revolt, a hair metal avant-garde group led by the openly gay Jack Dubowsky. “Church burnings are, of course, a thing that I support one hundred percent,” he said in a recent interview.

He’s also gay. Throughout everything — from his shame-ridden teenage years to Judas Priest’s period of early discovery; through unheralded obscurity and monumental success; from the crushing lows of addiction and loss to self-acceptance and Metal Godhood — music was the common thread that wove through Rob Halford’s remarkable life and (ongoing) career.

This shift launched the band to the peak of their career with the release of British Steel (1980). Since then, my fellow admins and I have helped many people feel comfortable with their sexuality within a hyper masculine genre. But amongst those wilder soundbites, Bottum dispersed emotional home truths.

Hopefully, you find these sites useful. He also stated that homophobia was still unfortunately common in the music industry. The band that most aggressively expanded the remit of pop-metal at the time, they dragged the tropes of the genre through ten miles of glitter-covered barbed wire, adding in the baroque flair of Queen and the avant-garde noise of John Zorn.

There is perhaps no single individual who personifies the genre more than Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford. After his remarks aired, Halford was bombarded with letters of support from LGBT people who wrote that his decision to come out inspired them to grow more comfortable in their own skin.

Rob Halford rejoined Judas Priest in 2003, this time fronting the band as a proud, openly gay man.

My sexual preference was for men, sure, but I was and still am pretty vanilla.”

Halford explained that the band was seeking to emulate the attire Marlon Brando’s character wore in The Wild One(1953), the first film to depict outlaw biker culture. They have been together for over 25 years.

LGBT METALHEADS ONLINE COMMUNITY

Underground, But Out and Proud

At LGBT Metalheads, we recognize a future where both metal music and LGBT rights are more accepted. It was a sign of the way the scene was already changing, and had been throughout the ’80s and the hair metal revival.

Hair Metal And Nu-Metal

Throughout the ’80s, the genre’s theatrics were slowly brought front and centre, and the Grand Guignol theatre of the ’70s was traded for tall hairstyles and tight pants.