The relationship of queer culture and heavy metal has long been a strange and often difficult one. The rampant homophobia of the heavy metal scene and the often outright revulsion towards metal by the mainstream GLBT scene makes such an alliance seem desperately unlikely if not outright impossible. Nevertheless, as evidenced by openly gay heavy metal artists like Judas Priest’s Rob Halford and, more recently Gaahl of Gorgoroth, there clearly exists such a creature as GLBT people with a genuine and active passion for heavy metal.

This poses something of a dilemma – what is a queer person to do when none of their friends on the GLBT scene could give a flying fuck that Anaal Nathrakh just released a new album, and their friends on the metal scene use the term “gay” to describe the debacle that was Celtic Frost’s “Cold Lake” and outright despise “fags”?

The phenomenon of the internet proved a saviour in this respect, in allowing like-minded people from around the globe to interact and socialize. The ruins of a number of attempts to form GLBT sites for metal fans abound on the internet, but to our knowledge, the first truly successful attempt was the Queermetal forum run by Wagnerian. Queermetal was the forum where the current admin team first met and ran from November 1, 2005 till about September of 2007 with several hundred members. For reasons still unknown, Queermetal mysteriously vanished. And for a while there was silence.

Vyldr, (then known as Spektre) launched a new forum on December 1, 2007 known as LGBT Metal.

(first logo posted above)

The networks and alliances formed on Queermetal had not died – people who had met there emailed and messaged each other and suddenly the new forum was alive and quickly became a dynamic entity in it’s own right.  Within 2 weeks from launch on the Runboard forums, LGBT Metal was nominated for one of the Top 10 most active board and excellent board layout of the month from the Runboard Administrators.

After a successful run on the board for months, a greater vision was sought and LGBT Metal reincarnated as Infra Iridian on September 1, 2008.  The move allowed us with better programming and let us to broaden our horizons for new hopes for the future.

Still, Infra Iridian continues to grow unto this day.