‘Metal has always had a sense of family’: inside the world of Heavy Metal Therapy
To mark World Mental Health Day, Polly Allen discusses attending sessions set up by the organisation, who highlight a link between heavy music and improved mental wellbeing
By Polly Allen
In 2024 we’re fortunate that mental health is less of a taboo topic than ever before, but despite an increase in the public conversations, certain subsections of music have long been quietly supporting and inspiring fans going through a tough time.
Aside from blistering riffs and industrial quantities of eyeliner, rock and metal bands deliver incredibly frank lyrics that articulate difficult emotions and make us feel less alone. With fan communities and festival organisers bringing added peer support and representation, and charities recognising the power of teaming up with rock heavyweights, it seems other genres have a lot to learn from the so-called ‘hell-raisers’ looking out for our wellbeing.
Heavy Metal Therapy (HMT) offers peer support, as the name suggests, for heavy metal fans. What began six years ago as an online space to share mental health recovery stories from the metal community turned into something much bigger, first with online resources, and then expanding to host group meetings in six UK locations and online. Plans for further expansion are also in place.
“Part of what we do is promote the use of extreme music as an important coping strategy for many metal fans, and work to counter the narrative that previously suggested that metal music was bad for mental health,” says Dr. Kate Quinn, one of HMT’s founders. “Most of our followers tell us that rather than making them feel more depressed or angry, listening to metal actually can help them to work through or process those emotions, and have a calming effect – some formal research agrees this could be the case.”
I’ve joined HMT Bristol, led by David Savage and Preena Shah. David also runs Black City Records, a metal record shop in the city centre, and is a former youth counsellor. His go-to metal bands for a mental health boost would be Pantera, Machine Head and Terror – “stuff that promotes empowerment” he says.
“Having opened Black City Records and listened to a lot of people’s concerns on a day-to-day basis, I realised that there was a need for a service tailored to Bristol’s alternative community,” says Savage. “Metal has always had a sense of family.”
I’m now three meetings into HMT, and we’ve all quickly settled into the group dynamic. It’s much less formal or prescriptive than NHS group therapy I’ve had in the past, and having a background playlist really helps us ease into conversation (HMT also has some brilliant playlists on its website). What’s shared in the room stays in the room, unless we’re talking about battle jackets – the patch-embellished cut-off denim jackets that are ubiquitous in metal communities – or comparing gig stories.
As Dr. Quinn mentioned earlier, research has found health benefits from listening to metal. Clinical psychologist Dr. Nicole Andreoli went viral last year on TikTok for explaining why listening to metal can calm you down, telling followers that heavy metal has “been found to lessen negative emotions by reducing cortisol levels, which helps to lessen stress”.
A small but promising study published in the Journal of Community Psychology in 2018 followed Australian metal fans aged 18-24, who felt that listening to metal helped them find community, build stronger identities, and cope with being bullied or ostracised.
Over the decades, there are several key bands who have regularly spoken out about mental health issues and woven these darker moods into their lyrics – perhaps the most well-known on the metal scene being Metallica, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath, and the likes of Placebo and Garbage in rock music. All have faced criticism for being so frank. In fact, Judas Priest and Sabbath’s Ozzy Osbourne (during his solo career) both faced lawsuits brought by grieving families who believed this music had led loved ones to suicide. Fortunately, the lawsuits were dismissed. Rob Halford, Judas Priest’s lead singer, has since spoken frankly about depression and addiction.
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With modern hindsight, we know that the stigma around mental health issues – those urges to keep silent, for fear of being judged or poorly treated – can cost lives. These bands weren’t fuelling people’s negative thoughts, just encouraging openness around them, and breaking down barriers. Metallica voiced people at their lowest through songs like ‘Fade to Black’ and the much more recent ‘Screaming Suicide’. When Philosophy Professor William Irwin unpicked the message of ‘Fade to Black’ for his book, The Meaning of Metallica, he praised the “catharsis” and the band’s “fighting spirit”. James Hetfield told Rolling Stone in 1993 that the band had received fan letters saying they had saved lives.
In 2023, Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler published his autobiography, Into the Void: From Birth to Black Sabbath and Beyond, which included details of his self-harm and “bouts of depression” in the 1960s. Though he spoke to his doctor about it, his mental health wasn’t taken seriously. Instead, ‘Writing was my godsend, my treatment, my way of digging myself out of a depressive hole… I’d write lots of poems to expel negative feelings… they became the seeds for the lyrics that would come to define my career.’
“It’s much less formal or prescriptive than NHS group therapy I’ve had in the past, and having a background playlist really helps us ease into conversation.”
Paranoid, in particular, was about depression: “not being able to explain how I was feeling to anybody” and “how people would perceive me as miserable… and tell me to cheer up or snap out of it”. This is all deeply relatable to those of us who have lived with depression. The idea of grim lyrics being cathartic might sound weird to the toxic positivity brigade, but finding someone who’s felt the same emotions as you – whether they’re from a Birmingham metal band or a California rock group – helps you feel seen.
Butler’s bandmate, guitarist Tony Iommi, is also an ambassador for Uprawr Mental Health Foundation, which provides free counselling to young people aged 18-35. Iommi previously spoke about being depressed after a pre-fame welding factory accident that saw him lose several fingertips to an industrial press, and which threatened his music career.
Jack Davis, CEO and Founder of Birmingham-based Uprawr, explains the charity’s approach, and how it began in the wake of Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington’s suicide in 2017: “Uprawr is the alternative community helping the alternative community, which is why we work with counsellors who also have ties to the rock scene. We want people to feel in their comfort zone, and like they’re being supported by like-minded people,” he says. “Alternative music and bands like Linkin Park are not just music, they offer validation and emotional connection.”
This led Uprawr to put together a huge event that raised £100,000 for mental health support in Bennington’s memory: “Chester’s last show with Linkin Park was in Birmingham at the Utilita Arena, so we put together an event there called 1000 Lights, with a thousand musicians, including members from bands like Bullet for My Valentine, Creeper, and Mallory Knox, to perform Linkin Park songs as one. So many people identified with Chester’s lyrics, which often dealt with themes of pain and mental health struggles, and it brought a shared sense of belonging and identity through the music.”
The mental health charity CALM has also worked closely with a range of rock ambassadors and supporters over the years, such as Frank Turner, New Order, IDLES and Placebo. Recently, Papa Roach selected CALM as a beneficiary for its global campaign, ‘Leave a Light On (Talk Away the Dark)’, based around their powerful anti-suicide song. A donation from ticket sales for their upcoming UK shows at Wembley and Nottingham will go to the charity.
Elizabeth Charlesworth, Head of PR and Communications at CALM, explains why music is such an important way of reaching people. “Listening to a song that you enjoy can actually trigger the release of hormones to pick you up when you’re feeling flat,” she says. “It’s powerful and personal. Music creates a sense of meaning in our lives, when we’re struggling or when we lose someone, and helps us find our place in the world.”
Charlesworth adds: “Our new film for World Mental Health Day features New Order’s track, ‘Your Silent Face’, which the band kindly donated. The film lets people know that we all need to play our part in suicide prevention – it’s a message that resonated with the band.”
In 2017, Placebo raised £27,500 for CALM by auctioning off band equipment and memorabilia. Band members Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal have both reflected on their own mental health struggles over the years, and returned to the topic in their new documentary, This Search for Meaning.
Emanuela Panattoni is one of the team behind Placebo Anyway, a Placebo fan account and blog with over 41,000 followers across Facebook and Instagram, which often discusses the emotional impact of the band’s lyrics.
“Placebo’s attention to mental health has always remained so powerful since their early years in the 1990s – they were true pioneers back in the day,” says Emanuela. “Everyone finds something about themselves in Brian’s lyrics, about their inner struggles, about what in everyday life they’re often required to repress and hide.”
Her colleague, Olga Burlaka, can relate: “The song that literally kept me sane at the most mentally difficult time of my life was ‘Surrounded By Spies’, especially the lyric, “This search for meaning is killing me”. I knew I wasn’t alone, desperately searching for meaning. Despite the overall disturbing vibe of the song, some of these lyrics resonated with me in the most positive way possible.”
In a similar vein to Placebo Anyway, the AF Gang is a private Facebook group run by IDLES fans that has also become a support network, with some 35,000 fans of the band able to share problems and be open about their mental health. The band is thrilled that the AF Gang has come from the fandom to bring people together online, and even saved some people’s lives.
The rock and metal festival circuit has also put mental health on the agenda. In the UK, we saw Takedown Festival give backstage mental health support to crew, staff and bands through the Tonic Rider programme from charity Tonic Music, which offers therapy, workshops and training courses.
“The ripple effect of the Tonic Rider programme gives people essential mental health skills to support themselves, their colleagues and the wider rock and metal industry,” says Jeordie Shenton, Programmes Lead at Tonic Music.
Whilst there’s an ever-changing list of bands whose lyrics open up conversations about mental health, Jeordie notes: “We see a lot of people resonating with Sleep Token in our community, in terms of the lyrics and compositions. Others are Enter Shikari, Wolf Alice, Frank Turner, Lambrini Girls, Bob Vylan… the list is endless.”
Meanwhile the Cardiff-based non-profit Heads Above the Waves (HATW), which raises awareness of depression and self-harm in young people, has run stalls at festivals like ArcTanGent and 2000 Trees (look out for their slogan tshirt that says ‘self-love is punk rock’). Si Martin, Co-Founder of HATW, sees music as a positive coping mechanism:
“Music can help us communicate and connect – we’ve had people create Spotify playlists of songs that help them say how they’re feeling when they don’t know how to say it. One song that spurred me on is ‘Local Man Ruins Everything’ by The Wonder Years. The line, “It’s not about forcing happiness / It’s about not letting sadness win” sums up the whole mental health journey for me.”
ArcTanGent, Glastonbury, Bloodstock and Download are just some of the festivals to have a Samaritans welfare tent available throughout their events. Whilst festivals and gigs are often seen as breaks from real life or even holidays, we know that negative thoughts don’t take time off or care who’s on the line-up.
Over in the USA, the annual Metal Health for Mental Health Festival has been running for five years as a partnership between Minnesota-based Lupulin Brewing and The Scars Foundation, a charity founded by Sully Erna of the band Godsmack, having lost friends and musician peers to suicide.
Meanwhile in Brooklyn, but also streamed around the world (with 80m streaming impressions), the Sound Mind Festival brings together an eclectic mix of music genres and speakers to promote good mental health. Line-ups have included All Time Low and Cold War Kids, as well as singer and guitarist Julien Baker, who has spoken about living with addiction, depression and OCD.
Rock and metal may not be available on prescription, but the music community is working hard to support fans, crew and band members who see these genres as therapeutic, and find like-minded people in the mosh pit or on stage. Perhaps Brian Molko of Placebo put it best when he said, “we’re all essentially made out of the same emotional stuff”.
For mental health support, you can contact CALM, Samaritans or Mind. In an emergency, please call 999.