In Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music, Robert Walser, assistant professor of music at Dartmouth College, wrote that "[h]eavy metal is, inevitably, a discourse shaped by patriarchy. Circulating in the contexts of Western capitalist and patriarchal societies, for much of its history metal has been appreciated and supported primarily by a teenage male audience... lacking in social, physical and economic power but besieged by cultural messages promoting such forms of power... as the vital attributes of an obligatory masculinity." But according to Walser, even heavy metal has a softer side. "If in some ways heavy metal replicates the ruthless individualism and violence that capitalism and government policy have naturalized, it also creates communal attachments, enacts collective empowerment, and works to assuage entirely reasonable anxieties."

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