Josh Ricci was 15 when a buddy rushed to his family's New Albany home, excited and eager, just like Vern after hearing about the corpse in the movie “Stand By Me.”

The friend had witnessed a car, presumably stolen, being abandoned in woods near the Ricci home, and the little delinquents decided to loot the thing before the cops showed up.

 The boys were already something of metalheads — surprise! — but in the run-of-the-mill Metallica and Megadeth vein: palm-muted breakdowns and dark music videos, long scraggly hair and denim jackets. And they found nothing of monetary value in that abandoned car — just a bunch of cassette tapes that opened their eyes and changed Ricci's destiny.

“Whoever owned the car was awesome,” Ricci said, telling the story as if he was recounting the first time he got loaded or laid. “They had Slayer, Deicide, Pantera, Cannibal Corpse. Just death metal stuff.”

The boys divvied the 30 tapes among themselves, planting the seed for Ricci's long rock 'n' roll career.

 Ricci, now 29, is a heavy metal drummer, a veteran of fast-paced, eardrum-bursting outfits like Kallus and his current projects, Grave Flower and Antikythera. And it's this type of dedication that keeps Louisville's metal scene thriving, even if these aren't the bands that get much attention outside the confines of Uncle Pleasant's and its ilk.

“Some people grow out of it,” Ricci said, “but we never did.”

 He tells this tale in an old warehouse off Hill Street, which is surrounded by barbed-wire fencing and stacks of industrial drums that mysteriously make clanking sounds, not unlike gunshots. The large halls where a handful of Louisville metal bands practice recall Freddy Krueger's industrial hideout, or, more appropriately, the haunted house where Antikythera singer Chris Miller works during Halloween season.

The Antikythera boys are thoroughly nice guys, like most of the young men and sparse women who make up Louisville's metal scene. Their music, though, is absolute pent-up rage and aggression, a blitzkrieg of loud guitar, fast guitar riffs and Ricci's powerful drums and Miller's roar of indecipherable lyrics, all of which they've measured at 125 decibels ringing through this practice space no larger than a dive barroom.

This is fact: Louisville became something of a music Mecca not long after the city's first punks played simple riffs and occupied the Bardstown Road punk house that was demolished to make way for a Taco Bell.

The list goes from punks (Babylon Dance Band and Squirrel Bait) to math rock bands (Slint and Shipping News); from punk-metal (Kinghorse) to political hardcore (Endpoint); from ethereal indie rock (Elliott) to hip Southern rock (My Morning Jacket). Throw in hip-hop like Static/Major and the Nappy Roots and alt-rockers like Days of the New and Tantric. These are just some of the bands known beyond the city limits.

Through all this, Louisville's metal scene has endured and multiplied, without much notice or help from the city's tastemakers, hipsters and mass media.

It lives mostly in the South End and was born out of the peculiar rage of stifled suburban kids uninterested in high school athletics or thespian societies, kids who want more aggression than punk and less preaching than hardcore. They want loud, fast, fist-pumping, anarchistic aggression, and it's out there to consume: Louisville's metalheads argue, reasonably, that their ranks are the most numerous of any music genre in Louisville, and that Louisville's metal scene rivals those of bigger cities like Indianapolis, Cincinnati and even Chicago.

It's stayed strong even as Louisville's once-dominant political/emotional hardcore scene has dwindled and become moribund — and the bands that call themselves “hardcore” sound more and more like metal bands.

“I don't think it really does get respect” from the rest of Louisville's music scene, said Joey Mertz, the singer for the “blackened metal” band Intent to Kill. “The people out here are doing pretty good stuff, and they deserve credit and respect.”

So where's the love for Louisville's headbangers?

Doing it for themselves

Louisville has a great tradition with heavy music. Squirrel Bait, Kinghorse and Endpoint were as ferocious as any Louisville band that ever plugged in to a Marshall stack, and Slint's inventive heavy-light-heavy-light dynamic would have been impossible without metal. And yet these bands carry a citywide reverence — even within the metal scene — that the long-gone My Own Victim never enjoyed.

Part of it is simple: Metal is abrasive, without the wit of punk or the good-time vibe of a Southern rock band. Women are few at metal shows, so it's not much for dates. It's a scene that's easy to underestimate; about 2,500 people attended a May show featuring Virginia-based Lamb of God, says Terry Harper, the concert's promoter.

But the people who are the gears of Louisville's metal scene are not necessarily looking for adoration from the wider community — that wouldn't be very metal of them, after all. If anything, they want their fellow metalheads to just show up to hear Louisville bands and keep the scene vibrant.

“I'd say we're underappreciated,” said Mike Taylor, who plays guitar for Surviving Thalia. “People here might have a perspective about our metal scene that's based on just one band. It's like anything else, just ignorance.”

Only 24, Harper nudged his way into the promotion business as a teenager, doing menial tasks for Bill Barringer and Billy Hardison's the now-defunct Spotlight Promotions. He started his own promotion company a few years later and now books about 150 shows each year in Louisville, most featuring fierce national acts with names like Pig Vomit, Goatwhore and A Plea For Purging. Business is good. Although the recession led to fewer tickets sold in the latter half of '08, sales have rebounded thus far in 2009.

“I'm a metal guy at heart — that's the music I love,” he said. “That's all I listen to.”

And Harper's shows draw big crowds without much advertising or support from the local media. There are few bloggers dedicated to the metal scene, few stories in newspapers and magazines (including Velocity, admittedly) and little support from local radio.

 Harper owes his success to dedicated fans, who take it upon themselves to seek out shows.

And the genre's popularity is exhibited by the vast venues that frequently feature metal shows. Headliners is Harper's pick for big shows, although he's starting to book the InnPlace Hotel and Conference Center near Jeffersontown for prominent touring bands like Killswitch Engage and Cannibal Corpse. He frequently books bands at Uncle Pleasant's and Bulldog Café in Fairdale. Phoenix Hill Tavern has metal bands occasionally. And Expo Five, St. Andrew's Pub, Shooters — all near Dixie Highway — frequently host metal shows.

“It's just aggression, man”

Harper, himself a heavy metal drummer at times, said the only problem with Louisville's plethora of grinding bands is a lack of diversity — bands all use the same Cookie Monster vocals, the double-kick drums and the manic changes. He wishes Louisville's metal bands sought some new influences.

“That's the only thing about the metal scene that's kind of weak around here,” he said.

No one seems to be rushing to take up Harper's challenge, but then again, heavy metal has not been a genre known for relentless self-reflection.

When discussing their favorite music, metal fans and metal musicians reliably note the amount of skill necessary to properly operate double-kick drums or deliver speedy guitar licks — and, truly, these aren't easy styles to execute.

And it takes a certain type of soul to appreciate growling vocals, crunching guitars and a complete disdain for melody. (“If it's got singing, it's not metal,” Ricci says. “Except for Judas Priest.”) Yes, Antikythera's Chris Miller is a smart guy whose songs thoughtfully cover topics like human emotions and social issues, but who can understand them without a lyric sheet?

For metal fans, melody, soulfulness and thoughtfulness matter nil. It's all about force — sweaty, violent force. Intent to Kill shows can get rough — fights break out occasionally, something Intent to Kill (ironically) doesn't condone, Mertz noted.

But it's not surprising, because metal's underlying purpose to be a release of pent-up rage for both musician and fan.

“For me, it's just an outlet for aggression,” said Antikythera's Chris Miller, who by day is a member of the Geek Squad at Best Buy.

Intent to Kill's Joey Mertz agreed.

“It's just aggression, man,” Mertz said. “In normal life, I'm not that aggressive. I'm just a normal person who likes to go to work, hang out and raise my daughter. Another thing I like about it is you can basically say whatever you want. You can tell the audience how you feel, and they can take it or leave it.”

For Intent to Kill, the message is the age-old metal anti-religion meme with an intellectual, agnostic twist.

“The idea is to say that religious oppression happens,” Mertz said. “We're not here to tell you what to believe, we're just trying to say you have options. You don't have to believe what your parents tell you. I mean, we don't know what's out there. But just because you don't believe in God doesn't make you a Satanist.”

Surviving Thalia guitarist Mike Taylor said metal bands are unafraid to state opinions, to piss off naysayers and to foster rough-and-tumble mosh pits — again, it's a release.

Blue-collar mentality

Harper's plea for more metal diversity has merit, but it also depends on the definition of “metal.”

Consider Intheclear, which wavers from heavy alt-rock into pure metal in its songs, a result, said guitarist Clay Cook, of the band's wide-ranging musical tastes, which veer from Coldplay to Metallica.

Or consider The Revenants, a decade-old horror punk outfit of The Misfits variety that has progressed deep into black metal territory. (The Revenants also include one of Louisville's few women metal players, bassist Gabrielle Kays.)

Then there is Dead Child. In 2008, Dave Pajo, the guitarist in Slint and thus one of the godfathers indie rock, formed his take on a metal band, which was promptly dismissed as “not metal” on the metal-oriented 502 Scene message board, mostly because singer Dominic Cipolla's Ozzy-influenced vocals weren't quite like the grunty stylings favored by contemporary metal bands.

But to non-metalheads, these could all pass for metal bands, suggesting that the scene doesn't lack diversity so much as that it tends to reject anyone who colors outside the lines.

Here's the key to the metal machine: Metal bands all the way back to Black Sabbath thrived on being excluded. They weren't as handsome or as popular as the pop singers. Like the biker gangs with which they shared a certain aesthetic, metalheads turned rejection into a point of pride.

Heavy metal is not for everyone — it is certainly an acquired taste, even its more competent practioners agree — and this, more than anything, is why Louisville's metal scene gets so little love outside its own ranks. If it were meant for everyone, if the music didn't irritate most people, it wouldn't be metal.

“We just embrace a blue-collar mentality that resonates through the city,” Taylor said. “We look authority in the face and wave our middle fingers.”