This article is a few years old now, but I just stumbled across it:

Heavy Metal Headbangers ‘risk injury’

Researchers from the School for Risk and Safety Sciences at the University of New South Wales in Sydney attended several heavy metal concerts to apply biochemical analysis to headbanging techniques.

Their research culminated in the creation of a “theoretical headbanging model” taking into account the bpm (beats per minute) of certian metal songs, and the angle of the head “bang” to predict levels of head and neck injury, similiar to Whiplash.

It seems that if you headbang with an angle of less than 45 degrees, you minimize your risk of injury. Angles of 75 degrees or more are extrememly dangerous to your precious neck.

The article (which is somewhat tongue-in-cheek) recommends wearing a neck brace whilst headbanging, or listening to Celine Dion instead. There’s no hard core shred solo in ‘My Heart Will Go On’ after all.

Reading this article makes me think about headbanging. As a metalhead, headbanging is part of my dancing repatoire – indeed, my ONLY dancing “move”. I can’t waltz, I can’t macarena, I sure as shit can’t skank dance to hip hop. But give me a brutal beat and I can thrash around with the best of ‘em.

I remember my earliest headbanging experiences – thrashing around on my room to Metallica’s ‘Ride the Lightning’ and Iron Maiden’s ‘Seventh Son of a Seventh Son’. When I was fifteen I brought my first metal shirt – the Metallica ‘Metal Up Your Ass’ one – and met another dude wearing an identical shirt – a friend of a friend. We bonded over our love of all things Metallica, and he took me to my first ever live show; a terrible, mediocre christian rock band that played in our local hall.

We didn’t care about the music – we stood up the front and spun our heads around, swung ourselves this way and that, threw goats and every other form of livestock imaginable and screamed at them to play ‘Creeping Death’. Those poor christian boys! They must have thought we were on drugs.

From then on, I was hooked. At every live show, I HAD to be at the front, I HAD to be the tiny girl in there among the men, thrashing and smashing my own circle of death.

When I moved to Auckland from the small town I grew up in, I spent the first couple of years dating a guy from the Christian rock scene. I know, I know, don’t know what I was doing there. When I got out, I went straight down to the metal bar I’d neglected, and found my new home. When I took my now husband to see a local thrash band (before we were even going out) and he slammed his way to the front with me, put his arms around my shoulders and the shoulders of the dude next to him, and beat his head to their epic song, I knew it was meant to be.

As the years moved on, I’ve moved back in the crowd a bit. I tend to nod a lot more, thrash a lot less, but I still give it hell if I feel the band deserves it. The scene has changed a bit – more young boys now, who prefer to beat each other to a pulp than stand around and thrash their heads. Fine, whatever. Move with the times, I guess. Headbanging is still my love, my move, my childhood.

What about you, gentle readers? What does headbanging mean to you?