At a time in human civilisation when a grumpy cat can become richer than Kim Kardashian, you might think that planet earth has reached cat saturation (caturation?) and that releasing another book featuring cats would be like throwing a whisker into a sea of Whiskas. Well, you’d be wrong.

This book is just slightly different enough to make it through. Part-time photographer Alexandra Crockett has released a book called Metal Cats that presents a side to metallers that many people might be surprised to see. Crockett traveled the length and breadth of the US of A to snap heayy metal cat owners with their pets.

I’m not particularly surprised by this lighter side of metallers myself, they’re humans too you know. If anything metal heads are nicer than “normal” folks because they get their rage out in a concise and regular manner rather than bottling it up and listening to smooth and/or difficult jazz.

Crockett notes that the subjects of her photo project often got their cats from rescue centres rather than buying them from dealers; could it be that these gold-hearted cat lovers are more caring than most cat purchasers? No, I think it’s more likely to be the high price of cat breeders combined with the more amusing personalities of cats from rescue homes.

Whatever your take on cat owners and/or metal heads, you can’t help but be enchanted by the following images. Sorry, there are no weird-ass green cats or cats with two faces in this collection though.

(Use your arrow keys to navigate through the gallery.)