Heavy metal made for children? Interrogating the adult/child divide in Heavysaurus’s heavy metal humour

Abstract

Heavysaurus (a German act founded in 2017, from a concept that originated in Finland in 2009) is marketed as metal music made for children. As with most children’s media, Heavysaurus’s music utilizes a dual address, entertaining both parents and children, particularly through its comedic value. The following article examines the implications of combining metal aesthetics with children’s media, and the resulting music’s relationship to humour. Although humour in metal music has been brought into connection with the Bakhtinian carnival, this article argues that Heavysaurus’s use of the carnivalesque and other elements of heavy metal humour does not represent a Bakhtinian upheaval of power structures (by challenging dominant constructions of childhood for instance) but instead challenges and makes visible the constructed nature of adulthood itself.