I apologize for not getting this posted earlier. The problem with this type of research is that I keep getting distracted by listening to various bands.  Previous posts in this series: I, II, III, IV.  Note that some links below may Not be Safe For Work...

So what about the metal music?  It's incredibly stylistically diverse.  Since I don't typically listen to metal music, I don't know what makes a "good" metal band.  I know what I like and don't like, but I'm totally unqualified to assess the quality of a representative of this genre.  Here are some interview questions about the music itself. 

Member of the Metal Tribe: 

(I thought the show was effing awe.some. I'll elaborate in a future post.)

Killyosaur suggests reading this source to get an overview of the sub-genere "black metal."

Oh wow.  That's a loaded question.  I'm not going to touch that one very much since everyone has their own idea.  I like swagger!  If a band (live) is doing what they do and they obviously like it and own it then it's great.  However for every good band out there, there are at least 15 bad ones.  They are usually easy to spot.  Pot leaf/camo/Pantera worship (I refuse to get into this whole Pantera/Dimebag issue) is kind of what I use as my bad band bellweathers.  Real technical guitar players that couldn't actually play anything worthwhile?  I'm a pretty crappy guitar player but I have enough sense to understand that fretboard wizardry a good song does not make... but when well done can be great.  I'm so used to being able to sniff out bad ones (and look for some extra z's in the name!) that sometimes I forget the good ones.  It's like anything else; can you tell the band is with it and about what they do; or are they just a bunch of kids/manchildren with guitars making scatological music or singing about dead babies/serial killers/vampires/whateverthehellisthecoolviolent thing right now. There was also a crappy emo music boom there for a while, but that seems to have died out.  Emo(not real emo, the stuff that came up later that called itself emo) was a bit shameless with how much they stole from hair metal.

I will now give you an example of a great band or two that you could definitely consider metal, if only in the retro/throwback sense:

The Sword.
also:  Priestess

Now:  For technical guitar wizardry and that real traditional sense of shredding and METAL and dungeons & dragons and all that ridiculous crap here's a good AND a bad:

Good:  Coheed & Cambria
Bad:  Dragonforce [agreed...these guys remind me of simpering effing Rush]

and no, I'm not going to show my work.  People might disagree, but that's how I'm calling it.  If you haven't already - the penultimate metal band of the modern era (like... say post-grunge, part of the whole metal/rock revival) would be:

Mastodon.  They are the best.

Like I said earlier, this is such a bizarre subject, it's all visceral.  I think when you really boil it down it's sort of an evolution thing.  The bands I cared about growing up, and that my peers listened to growing up, have affected what we play today.  So the genre grows.  The internet made a lot of strange bedfellows.  Like you can tell that I grew up near Detroit.  There is a certain sound (MC5, The Stooges) from the 60's and 70's that came out of the midwest.  I also listened to a lot of Motown growing up in riding in the car; so I really don't like to be without a rock solid beat.  I also was in my prime music phase when grunge and college rock were the hallmarks of cool and I latched onto that (but got bored with the moping).

The last show I went to that included a subset of metal fans was in El Paso, Texas headlining the Melvins (who I adore;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvins). It was in a smoke-free venue and the crowd was quite mellow even though the music was not.

Unfortunately, although there is diversity among fans as well as stylistic diversity among bands, there appears to be very little diversity among band members.  They tend to be white d00ds. 

AU: Where are the metal girls? Why aren't there more girl-fronted or all-girl metal bands?

I can't figure out the lack of female bands..I'm clueless on that one.

Killyosaur: (Killyosaur mentioned the lack of African-American band members, something that--I'm chagrined--wasn't even on my radar.)

 

As to the lack of women fronted bands, I'm not absolutely certain. I think some of the possible answers in your post seemed plausible, that it is the nature of the music, and possibly the culture. There are, as far as I know, virtually no black metal bands that are all women, or fronted by women, it is possible that metal has a stigma for being a men only music genre, I don't really know. [...]

Definitely a lack of african american, but also note that there is a style of metal known as "Black" Metal as in the color not the race, which is distinctly devoid of Female fronted, or all women bands. These bands tend to heavily lean on Satanism as a religion and being, to a certain extent, pro-evil. They largely started in Norway.

 

The true metal heads think that these bands are inherently weak.  I enjoy the variety girl-fronted bands offer.  Something different to listen to.  Some of those gals can achieve vocal effects that rival even the most serious screams from their male counterparts.  I’d love to see more female involvement.  The other aspect you should take into consideration is the marketing aspect.  How many attractive women can let loose the cookie monster?  How many attractive women want to even try?  I believe that there are quite a few that meet these requirements, they just don’t want to pursue that career path.  They’ve been brought up to pursue other paths.

 

One final source, my Awesome Girlfriend, has a hypothesis about the lack of diversity among metal band members.  She believes that girls and various ethnic minorities already have great music of their own that is superior to metal, so they have no incentive to explore the metal genre. 

 

Next up: the concert review, In which I summarize my ethnographic fieldwork.