Rating: 
Summary: From Playboy Magazine
Review: "It became acceptable to mock heavy metal with Beavis and Butt-head and Wayne's World. After that, hardly a devil-horn salute or head-bang existed without an inherent sense f ridicule, sending Skid Row and similar bands to the land of Behind the Music. Given some distance from the genre's demise, it's refreshing to read Bang Your Head: The Rise and Fall of Heavy Metal, David Konow's unsarcastic history of heavy metal. Konow tackles the acceptable (Metallica, Guns n' Roses, Slayer) and the absurd (Ratt, Twisted Sister, Cinderella) with the same enthusiasm. Surrounded by hairspray, spandex and a stilleto-clad Tawny Kitaen, Konow delivers an insightful and straightforward retrospective of metal- makeup and all."Jason Buhrmester
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read For Metal Fans!
Review: A must read for metal fans! A very funny and knowledgeable book about the most famous bands of metal and heavy metal itself. It features bands such as Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, KISS, Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Metallica, Dokken, Ratt, Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, Exodus, Skid Row, Warrant, Winger and More! As well it talks about Knac, MTV, the NWOBHM and the beginning of heavy metal and fall during the Grunge era.
Rating: 
Summary: Dull at its best. Boring at its worst.
Review: After reading Sound of the Beast, I was not at all impressed with this book.
First of all, it was written in that typical American style, by which I mean it was overly simple. The author tried to be deep at times but just wound up making himself sound bad by using big words in the wrong places (my personal favorite: "Penultimate" when referring to the last night of the Guns 'n' Roses tour - although everyone knows penultimate means "next to last" not "last"). And then there are the typical grammatical errors and spelling mistakes one comes to expect from American authors. Who ever told these people they could write anyway???
Other than that, I was very disappointed in the way the entire book comes off as a compilation of tales from the gossip rags - nothing really new or interesting, just the same Circus magazine gossip tales rehashed. Meanwhile, the flow of the book is iffy at best. Way too much jumping around for me - but it goes with the rest of the style I suppose. But the worst thing about this book is that the author seems to think heavy metal begins and ends with the L.A. scene from the '80's - there is no mention of black metal, death metal, etc. In fact, he only mentions nu-metal on the very last page of the book and even then it's like "oh, by the way, here's a new scene. go find out about it on your own." He even disregards the fact that half of the bands he writes about are reformed now! It's all "was" and "were" - even though these bands are still active. Absolute atrocity.
Anyone who has followed metal over the past two decades probably already knows more than what this book has to offer.
Rating:
Summary: Finally, A Decent Metal Book
Review: All the other metal books I have read do not give any attention to the hair metal scene, which was one of my favorite metal scenes. Also, this is the first one I have read which mentions KNAC, a has-been heavy metal radio station in Long Beach, California. KNAC was a major part of 80's metal, and I don't think it is very nice to ignore it. And also, finally an author who agrees with me 100%: Metal died when the grunge bands came out. Many people call the garbage nu metal actual metal, but it is not. This is finally one who ignores the black and death metal scenes, which are the two most horrible types of music in the world and an embarrasment to metal. There are two minor flaws. The author does not mention Iron Maiden in the entire book, I believe, and he does give aknoweledgement to Bon Jovi, which is not a metal band whatsoever. But I feel this book is superior to Sound Of The Beast, or The Book Of Metal, because it gives quite a bit of information about the rise and fall of KNAC, and does not aknoweledge nu metal, death metal, or black metal, none of which are true metal.
Rating:
Summary: From Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 2002
Review: Appealing history of the genre that offended critics, moved millions of units, and thrilled adolescents of all ages. Konow's debut follows a straightforward thesis: heavy metal maintained enormous and under-acknowledged worldwide popularity from the 1970s through approximately 1992, when many factors, particularly the Seattle "alternative" explosion, consigned most bands to the cut-out bin. He identifies metal's crucial elements-multi-guitar power chords, energized vocals, rebellious occult trappings, elaborate stage productions-and traces their almost accidental coalescence during the '70's as pioneers like Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, KISS, and Queen toured constantly. By the decade's end, economic malaise compelled a young generation to hurry into bands, resulting in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal: Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, and Judas Priest. In turn, these groups inspired an explosion in American "underground metal," most prominently Metallica, while pop-metal acts like Bon Jovi and the infinitely sleazier (hence authentic-seeming) Guns N' Roses dominated record sales in the late '80s. A fan first and critic second, Konow discusses the laughable (W.A.S.P., Motley Crue, Poison) and the venerable (Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Slayer, AC/DC) with the same lucid enthusiasm. He attributes metal's commercial dominance to grassroots fan loyalty, MTV's marketing savvy, and major labels' deep pockets, which enabled the profligate "hair bands" to consume huge sums while recording and touring. The ludicrous side of metal, immortalized in the seminal "mockumentary" This Is Spinal Tap, emerges in numerous hilarious anecdotes concerning the awesome egotism of figures like Axl Rose or David Lee Roth and the myopia of bands like Dokken or Quiet Riot, which expected to remain popular forever. Konow's discussion of metal's commercial decline offers shrewd analysis of cultural shifts: MTV and major labels happily dropped the metal bands once profitablility waned, while embittered musicians blamed fair-weather fans and alternative rock "nerds" rather than examining their own sordid histories (herein documented) of misogyny, thuggishness, substance abuse, and uninspired recordings. Even non-headbangers may enjoy this engaging account of an improbable musical watershed.
Rating: 
Summary: Not great, not bad
Review: BANG YOUR HEAD tries to tell us about the delcine of Heavy Metal music in the 80's. While I found the book to be and easy ready, some of the information that is in the book is not all that new. Alot of the information you could have got from watching a Behind The Music marathon on VH1. I still found some of the stories interesting and kept my attention throughout the book. The author tended to jump around with his stories, maybe that is because his is a magazine writer and his book did have a magazine feel to it. I am not trying to put him down, the book does do its job, it informs the reader. While he does cover some actual heavy metal bands such as Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, some of the other bands such as Poison, Warrent, Motley Crue, are bands that I would have never catorgorized as metal. I guess that is one fault that I found with the author, but that just boils down to a difference in opinion. I did enjoy the book, I guess I was just hoping for more.
Rating: 
Summary: STRESS RELATED!!
Review: Ever since his fanzine days Konow has been an insider to heavy metal. He has the gift of schmoozing with these guys! But do we really need another retrospective of 80's hair metal? It seems every couple of years we have to endure the same story (Bret Michael's arriving in LA from Mechanicsburg, PA through Smells Like Teen Spirit). I hated 80's metal then, and I still hate it. It deserved to die. Now, let's hope David can write a great history of death/black metal from the early 90's, whose story has yet to be told. Troll through the past issues of Stress Related (RIP) and reprint those cool interviews with Carcass, Grishnackh, etc. That book would get five stars!
Rating: 
Summary: lukewarm
Review: First of all, the rise and fall of heavy metal is not only a huge subject, but is an incorrect premise. Has heavy metal fallen? Let's see, Tool, Mastodon, Morbid Angel, Metallica, Korn, Slipknot....need I say more? OK,then, God Forbid, Cannibal Corpse, Lamb of God, Sepultura....now do I need to say more? Didn't think so. So, heavy metal hasn't fallen, but it did rise and this author has written a book that purports to chart that ascension. Doesn't really work. The book seems to jump around, lobs a bunch of rumors and anecdotes without a coherent thread or narrative. And I'm not sure a lot of these bands are really metal at all. I never thought of bands like Ratt and Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister and Vixen as anything other than prefabricated, corporate pop marketed as "dangerous" so teen boys would buy it. I mean, Ratt is just as pop as the backstreet boys or n'sync. Next time you hear some of this type of twaddle, listen carefully and you'll see what I mean. But anyhow, the book is OK, but sort of disjointed, nothing new here.
Rating:
Summary: Bang Your Head
Review: Good overview of the metal scene. Konow pretty much covers the most important metal bands of the last century (Black Sabbath, Metallica, Motley Crue, Led Zepplin, etc.) -- their rise, bloated excess and fall. He also gives small coverage to some lesser-known bands such as Armored Saint and Exodus, though not enough for my tastes. The problem with this book, as some of the other reviewers have stated, is that this does read more like a bunch of magazine articles strung together. Also, because there are so many bands covered here, as well as many different styles (hair metal, speed metal, classic metal, etc.) there are bands you may not care about or some that you just don't like at all. There were some bands in here that I could care less about, and that made for tedious reading. However, that's the nature of a book like this. Konow tries to cover as much ground as he can without the book growing to encyclopedic proportions. For the most part, Konow succeeds in what he was trying to do, but only on a superficial level.
Rating:
Summary: This book was awesome! (Actually 4.5 stars)
Review: I had a great time reading this book! Not only does it deal with the Hollywood hair metal scene, it writes about a lot of various bands from other cities and styles that were as big as Bon Jovi & Metallica, and some of them less popular, like Armored Saint. It starts off with the early bands, like Sabbath, Led Zep, Kiss and Alice Cooper and ends with the Grunge movement - it even goes beyond and touches on slightly more contemporary bands. The book is full of very entertaining and shocking stories! It takes a look at how some of these bands formed, went on to success and (in some cases) were destroyed by inner-conflicts. Besides band members they got interviews from producers, promoters, club owners, managers, industry people, etc. So if you are a fan of bands like Twisted Sister, Ratt, Ozzy, Dokken, Guns N' Roses, Malmsteen, Warrant, Megadeth, Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, Exodus, Van Halen, Poison, etc. then this will be a great read for you! The only problem I had with this book is that it barely mentions any European bands from the '80s (like Helloween, Iron Maiden, Accept or Running Wild) or does so in passing. This is like reading a history book on North American Metal! Good stuff!
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