Some Heads are Gonna Roll to the Market

Published October 9th, 2024 at 4:12 pm, Last Updated October 9th, 2024 at 4:30 pm

Albuquerque has long had a community of fans of music with dark subject matter. Heavy metal, goth and punk have been an essential part of the Duke City’s rich music scene for years and although many death metal devotees embrace the genre’s negative reputation, some members of the subculture are hoping to change perceptions about what it means to be a headbanger. Brenda Enriquez-Lopez is coordinator, art curator and founder of ABQ Headbangers Market and her husband Michael Lopez is the director of operations. 

“I feel like in the past decade, people have had the wrong idea about metalheads, about headbangers,” Enriquez-Lopez says. “The type of artwork that we support has been demonized or has been judged or criticized, and I feel like that has discouraged many talented artists or people that gave up in their career because they were trying to adjust to society’s norms.”

The ABQ Headbangers Market and FUSION Theater on Oct. 12 will host an event filled with “darker-themed” art and music that Enriquez-Lopez says mainstream audiences may find unusual or scary.

“We bring together a community of artists, musicians, vendors and crafters — and they all specialize and focus on the heavy metal, punk rock, goth, horror and alternative types of art,” she says. “These are artists that are extremely talented, but they’ve always felt like they do not fit in, or they do not belong in traditional pop-up markets.”

The event features live music from some of New Mexico bands that represent metal’s essential subgenres. 

“We have Rapid Fire which is gonna be doing Judas Priest and [Ronnie James] Dio covers and Archiactra which is more like melodic death metal,” Lopez says. “We’re also having a special guest named Sage Bond and she performs acoustic metal.”

Andres Diaz, a member of the organizing committee, says that the Headbangers Market wants to give up-and-coming bands the opportunity to make a major entrance to the Albuquerque metal scene. Fittingly, Lectricide — a Metallica cover band whose members are 15-year-olds from Valencia High School — will be opening the show.

“One of the things we also wanna do is open it to the community and let people know that we are giving a platform to those who are also starting out,” Diaz says. “They’re very young, this is their first gig and the fact that they like Metallica and the old school stuff is really, really cool.”

The Headbangers market was careful not to forget the veterans of the New Mexico scene and have some local favorites performing some nasty, earsplitting, old-school tunes. 

“We’re really excited this year as well because of our closing band —Savage Wizdom from Santa Fe — and the main singer from Savage Wisdom has been part of the New Mexico metal scene for like 40 years,” Enriquez-Lopez says. “He was originally the singer of a band named Prowler who were well known in the New Mexico metal scene back in the eighties. They moved to Los Angeles to try and make it big, spent 10 years over there and they did well, but they came back to New Mexico.” 

Enriquez-Lopez says that the Headbangers Market rose from the ashes of Albuquerque’s dormant music, entertainment and art scenes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In 2021 we were starving for live music. We were craving concerts and socializing with our friends. So I want to think that the Headbangers Market was that nice refreshing event that happened when it was much needed by the community,” she says.

You can check out the full list of bands, profiles of featured artists, vendors, ticket giveaways and more on the ABQ Headbangers Market Facebook page.