"...The true entomologist's pleasure is much simpler, more direct: that of discovering a new type..." writes Kobe Abe as he begins to sketch out the moods and motivations of the main character in the early pages of his novel, The Woman in the Dunes.

I know that feeling, I know it very well; the near glee of finding something that has lain forgotten, or ignored, or just invisible, the almost proprietorial sense of joy "I discovered it first, ergo it's mine..."

Of course, I've never discovered anything completely new; whatever I have, has really been known about, just not to me or to many others. Putting it plainly: someone else got there first.

However, that was then, this is now, because I have. I've snuffled something out that I reckon is fresh, novel, and still has the earth clinging to it's perky roots.

I've uncovered a hitherto unknown movie sub-genre: the redemptive heavy metal film, where a struggling, washed up band, like Anvil, or a deeply addled, conflict stricken, riven apart band like Metallica, are at the crossroads, go through the wringer, get mashed, squashed, and nearly flattened, but it all comes good at the end.

Like a good taxonomist, I've then been able to pick out sub-sets hanging off my sub-genre: there's the absolute feelgood metal movie - Anvil; the metal band consumed by dark forces, in meltodwn, and in creative despair movie - Metallica.

You thought I was n't going to include the mother of all metal movies, the Ur film, the film without which there'd be no sub-genre...? The Casablanca of Spandex...the Citizen Kane of scissor kicks...the Gone with the Wind of Amps pushed to 11. Heading up my sub-genre is Spinal Tap.

That's where it all started, the source. No Tap = no sub-genre, and me without a discovery, even this trivial, to my name.