Men who try to look like metal band stars

For Southcott and her friend Paige Bennett, a 20-year-old receptionist, it boils down to realness: 'The lyrics, riffs and performances are overall much more meaningful and emotional than your generic chart crap,' says Bennett, whose favourites include Brighton metalcore act Architects, described by Metal Hammer magazine as 'pumped with controlled rage and unhindered heart' (translation: bring earplugs). While it's true that Sykes isn't ugly вЂ“ see the Yahoo Answers page devoted to the question 'Why is Oli Sykes so hot?' вЂ“ rock's appeal to young women is more complex than that. With a band like Bring Me the Horizon, they're making incredible music, but you've also got the fact that Oli is a good-looking chap, his head is screwed on and he has his own clothing company. 'There's kind of almost a pop mentality, in the sense that fans use them in the same way they would if they were into One Direction. He compares the response to the hysteria provoked by boybands. They were really vocal вЂ“ you could barely hear the PA because of people singing every song in a high-pitched register.' 'Of Mice & Men played Koko and it was 60/40 girls to guys. At gigs, he's noticed the ratio of girls to boys rising вЂ“ from spotting 'maybe two girls at a hardcore show' when he was a teenager, he now finds himself at gigs where women outnumber men. 'It shows good faith at Radio 1 that this is a thing and not just about guys in denim jackets,' says Rock Show presenter Daniel P Carter, whose current playlist includes Slipknot's Pulse of the Maggots and Cro-Mags' thrashy World Peace. And, most tellingly of all, from 7 September the Radio 1 Rock Show вЂ“ currently languishing in the Monday midnight to 2am slot вЂ“ is being expanded to three hours and migrating to the prime 7pm Sunday slot immediately following the showpiece chart rundown. Radio 1, meanwhile, has slipped punk-metallers Of Mice & Men and hardcore stars Lower Than Atlantis in to the daytime playlist. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images Girls headbanging at Rock in Rio music festival, 2012. Despite being ignored by mainstream media, California metalcore act Avenged Sevenfold and Surrey hard rockers You Me at Six play sold-out arena tours, while this year's biggest boyband, 5 Seconds of Summer, are guitar-playing skatepunks. Metallica's appearance at Glastonbury вЂ“ the first time a metal act headlined the festival вЂ“ excited much comment, but the smaller shifts in the landscape are just as significant. But another rock push is gathering steam, and has the makings of something that could reclaim some of the territory the genre has lost to pop since the mid-noughties, when an Arctic Monkeys-led guitar comeback fizzled out almost as soon as it began. Radio 1 does, in fact, play metal in the daytime, but the playlist is weighted in favour of pop and dance tracks. 'I don't see why they shouldn't play it in the daytime.' Accordingly, an untapped audience of young female metal fans will be of great interest: 'I would listen to Radio 1 regularly if it played metal more,' says Southcott. Though reaching young people (who'd rather make their own playlists than listen to the radio) is not just Radio 1's problem вЂ“ broadcaster Eddie Mair recently wrote about his shock at meeting a class of sixth formers and finding that none of them ever listened to any radio вЂ“ it's a particular imperative for the station that used to dub itself 'the nation's favourite'. These female fans could also be key to Radio 1's quest to attract younger listeners, a priority for the station since a 2012 report from the BBC Trust stated that its median listener age of 30 was too old. For Southcott, and thousands like her, rock is more welcoming, and if its latest resurgence turns out to be more than a blip, it will be because girls are flocking to it. The 22-year-old shop worker from Hastings is part of a tide of young women who feel marginalised by the presumption that they listen to nothing but dance, pop and R&B вЂ“ the trinity that fills most of the airtime on mainstream radio.

If the music industry has its wits about it, it will take note. I shouldn't have to like pop just because I'm a girl.' 'People think rock is more for the boys, and that girls should be into pop and dance, but my generation shouldn't be pigeonholed. People expect me to be into Justin Bieber and One Direction and, when I say I go to metal gigs, they think I'm strange,' says Kirstie Southcott, with exaggerated, can-you-believe-the-idiocy patience. 'I f you're a girl and you like metal, it's frowned upon.

Men who try to look like metal band stars