19 Facts About NWOBHM

NWOBHM began as an underground phenomenon growing in parallel to punk and largely ignored by the media.

The NWOBHM was heavily criticised for the excessive hype generated by local media in favour of mostly talentless musicians.

Many bands from the NWOBHM reunited in the 2000s and remained active through live performances and new studio albums.

Motorhead's musical style became very popular during the NWOBHM, making them a fundamental reference for the nascent movement and for musicians of various metal subgenres in the following decades.

NWOBHM involved both musicians and fans who were largely young, male and white and shared class origin, ethic and aesthetic values.

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British writer John Tucker writes that NWOBHM bands were in general fuelled by their first experiences with adult life and "their lyrics rolled everything into one big youthful fantasy".

NWOBHM was a fiction, really, an invention of Geoff Barton and Sounds.

NWOBHM transformed his nights at The Bandwagon into The Heavy Metal Soundhouse, a spot specialising in hard rock and heavy metal music and a place to listen to albums of established acts and to demos of new bands, which circulated among fans through cassette trading.

NWOBHM International Heroes' lead singer and songwriter, Sean T Wright, was a renowned cassette trader at the time.

Momentum behind the NWOBHM benefited already established bands, which reclaimed the spotlight with new and acclaimed releases.

Groups arising from the NWOBHM were no longer precluded from world tours and were often chosen as opening acts for major bands in arenas and stadiums.

NWOBHM bands were already present on the roster of the famous Reading Festival in 1980, and were quickly promoted to headliners for the 1981 and 1982 events.

NWOBHM eventually found space in newspapers and music magazines other than Sounds, as journalists caught up with the "next big thing" happening in the UK.

NWOBHM felt disappointed by the low quality of the new bands and frustrated by the ease with which record labels exploited enthusiasm for heavy metal.

NWOBHM bands had been touring steadily in the United States, but had not yet received enough FM radio airplay there to make a significant impression on American charts.

Power metal and thrash metal, both stemming from the NWOBHM and maintaining much of its ethos, were gaining critical acclaim and commercial success in the second half of the 1980s with their even faster and heavier sound.

The NWOBHM experienced a minor underground revival, highlighted by the good sales of old vinyl and collectibles and by the demand for new performances.

The collision of styles that characterised the NWOBHM is seen as key to the diversification of heavy metal in the second half of the 1980s into various subgenres that came to the fore in the 1990s.

The sound of the NWOBHM even "cross-pollinated" a subgenre of punk, as UK 82 street punk bands like Discharge blended punk music with elements of metal.