Brian Harris

Brian Harris — American musician — works in the metal circuit of the United States. American metal has a historical peculiarity: it was there that thrash and death metal were born, two of the most influential subgenres, and it is also there that the genre today has the smallest proportional presence in mass culture. The American bands that defined extreme metal in the 1980s and 1990s — Metallica aside — always had a larger audience in Europe than at home. That asymmetry shaped the scene. American metal bands learned early to orient their activity outward: European tours, contracts with German labels, festivals on the continent. For many of them the home market is secondary. The practical effect is that an American musician's career in the genre can unfold almost entirely outside the country, even when the band is based in the United States. It is an inversion of what one would expect from the world's largest music industry.