Heavy Metal music and culture

In this chapter, I turn to Mina Caputo, the vocalist of the long-running alternative metal band Life of Agony, as a case study to discuss how transgenderness is negotiated in contemporary heavy metal music. Taking my point of departure from queer musicology and transgender studies, I aim to first develop transgender music research as a field that examines music in a transgender-conscious and transgender-empathetic way (Välimäki 2013a, b); second, to contribute to the queering of heavy metal music (Smith 1997; Sarelin 2009; Gregory 2013; Clifford-Napoleone 2015) and, third, to contribute to heavy metal studies with a transgendered perspective.

By practicing reparative reading (Sedgwick 2003), my focus is on how Caputo communicates transgenderness, and gender in general, to a larger audience, and how transgender subjectivity, meanings and pleasure finds its space, even under the pressures, strictures and effects of the heteronormative culture. My research materials are mixed, ranging from audio and audiovisual recordings to ethnographic observation materials and public media texts, including websites and online discussion boards related to Caputo, Life of Agony and heavy metal culture. I am particularly interested in heavy metal culture, where (supposedly) straight and queer scenes intermingle. Because of this overlapping of straight and queer scenes in the same space (Clifford-Napoleone 2015), normative conceptions of gender are effectively undermined.

"The music industry is undergoing extremely rapid structural change not of its own choosing, and record labels will no longer be able to rely on coercive seven-record deals and business methods that have remained unchanged since the 1960s.  This paper provides a case study of the 2000-01 lawsuit by extreme-metal band Metallica against the rogue file-sharing service Napster as a compressed site for analysis in which we can analyse and unpack the music industry’s present predicament, warped logic, and the greed of its various protagonists.  The paper is informed by a Marxist critique of public statements made by members of Metallica during what has come to be referred to as the “Napster incident”.  The band’s departure from its previous existentialist and fraternal worldview in favour of a brutal form of Anglo-American market capitalism is exposed, and we conclude that long-term extreme-metal fans are justified in their vilification of the band.  The band is accountable to the scene and the scene has decided that Metallica has violated normative scene ethics or, in other words, the scene’s internal social contract.  We also conclude that Metallica’s Lars Ulrich’s use of the analogy that a “carpenter should be able to dispose of his table in any way he wishes” is problematic and hides more than it reveals.  Marx used the same carpenter’s table analogy in the first chapter of Volume 1 of his Capital to highlight and expose how the capitalist mode of production presents as a relation between things what is really a social relation between men.  Whilst Marx’s table dances, Ulrich tries valiantly (but fails) to prevent us from seeing that his table is dancing as well.

"

As the song ‘Havfruens Kvad’ by Svartsot (2010) confirms, medieval metal gave a new voice to mermaid mythology. The song has thematically little in common with the fairy tale Den lille havfrue, but does resonate with the Norse mythology about sea goddess Rán, and Ancient Greek stories about the sirens. Their songs are powerfully altered lullabies, which unmistakably include elements of black metal aesthetics and ancient tribalism. By combining aspects of history with mythology and fantasy, the bands create an imagined past upon which they wish to model their ideal future, thus forming ethnic myths, ethnics and nations, mostly online. Within the participatory convergence culture, digital storytelling becomes transmedial.

In the Christian and Victorian traditions, the little mermaid by Andersen
is pacified, she does not pose any danger. But the revived ancient mermaid mythology by Svartsot contains subversive feminist potential. The stories are then transposed into new media, disseminating the artists’ concept of an idealized Viking past, with powerful mermaids. Build on many ancient stories from a variety of traditional sources, within her transmedial narrative, the Danish mermaid became very powerful, through the remediation within the musical genre of medieval metal.

The music industry is undergoing extremely rapid structural change not of its own choosing and record labels will no longer be able to rely on coercive seven-record deals and business methods that have remained unchanged since the 1960s. This paper provides a case study of the 2000-2001 lawsuit by extreme-metal band Metallica against the rogue file-sharing service Napster as a compressed site for analysis in which we can analyse and unpack the music industry's present predicament, warped logic and the greed of its various protagonists. The paper is informed by a Marxist critique of public statements made by members of Metallica during what has come to be referred to as the 'Napster incident'. The band's departure from its previous existentialist and fraternal worldview in favour of a brutal form of Anglo-American market capitalism is exposed and we conclude that long-term extreme-metal fans are justified in their vilification of the band. The band is accountable to the scene and the scene has decided that Metallica has violated normative scene ethics or, in other words, the scene's internal social contract.

This article will present the results of a research project that aimed to examine the meanings and mechanisms behind the formation of a metal identity. This report is based on 38 interviews that were conducted at four festivals during the summer of 2014. The article will investigate the ways in which the individual meets the social and the cultural meets the psychological in the context of metal identity forming.

For over 50 years, the abrasive and confrontational genre of heavy metal has persisted as a series of global crises have emerged and deepened. I claim that the culture has a deeply existentialist tendency, which has driven a scathing criticism of postmodernity and its inaction regarding economic, ecological and social crises. The culture offers a solution to these crises by means of re-centring mortality and finitude, contra to hegemonic biases toward unlimited economic growth and ever-extended human life. By reckoning with our own limitations, metal culture advocates a cautious approach and (ironically) more harmonious social and ecological relationships.

Available to watch here: https://youtu.be/lxPUmjP4x5s

Black Sabbath's eponymous debut has been identified as amongst the first heavy metal records, and was certainly the first to introduce much of the dark imagery and lyrical content now synonymous with the genre. Their home town of Aston, Birmingham was often cited by the band members as being seminal for their shift in musical tone from blues to metal, and indeed some works on this topic argue that "heavy metal could only have been born out of the industrial neighbourhoods of Birmingham." However, this study will complicate such assumptions, instead suggesting that a milieu of influences were responsible for this genesis of musical style. The study will diminish the importance of Birmingham and examine the wider-scale effects of British politics, American cultural exports, and world events. This will aim to place Black Sabbath within a transnational context, as opposed to previous studies which have considered the band primarily as a product of their city. The paper will also examine interviews and articles about the band dating back to their inception, which will show that the emphasis on band members discussing the role of Birmingham in their music emerged relatively late into their career, whilst initially the members often discussed their sound as sympathetic with a nationwide sentiment of dissatisfaction.

This paper examines the reception of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring across several media such as performances and recorded editions. Taking influence from both Richard Taruskin and Peter Hill, it demonstrates that by delivering ‘perfect’ renditions, the primal and violent nature of the composition has been neutered and
recording such performances has added to this effect. However, the currents introduced by Stravinsky live on in heavy metal music both in the genre’s use of disorienting and abrasive musical elements, and in its fascination with controversial and fantastical themes.
The study draws particular comparisons with progressive death metal band Meshuggah, whose compositional techniques borrow from ideas laid out in the Rite whilst mirroring and developing its themes and imagery. Their utilisation of polyrhythms and dissonance within note-perfect performances sees the chaos of the Rite displaced into the band’s distorted tone, whilst their lyrics and aesthetic suggest fears of a dystopian future, as opposed to the Rite’s echoes of a brutal and uncivilised past.

Draft paper to be published eventually as Till, Rupert (2012) Metal and the Beast: The adoption of apocalyptic imagery in heavy metal music. In: Anthems of Apocalypse: Popular Music and Apocalyptic Thought. Bible in the Modern World (42). Sheffield Phoenix Press, Sheffield. ISBN 978-1-907534-34-8

Popular music is no stranger to apocalyptic discourse. Whether focusing on biblical or secular apocalypses, musicians often want to tell us things about the end of the world we may not have wanted to know in ways we may not have thought about before. This volume seeks to introduce readers to some of these messengers and their anthems of apocalypse.

Roland Boer’s discussion of Nick Cave indicates that references to the portents and monsters of the apocalypse have been used to refer, not to an age to come, but to the authorities and demons of the present world. Likewise, Kennet Granholm’s chapter on the vegan straight edge band Earth Crisis shows that biblical apocalyptic provides a lens through which to examine environmental politics. This is also true of the work of Rage against the Machine’s Tom Morello, who, as Michael Gilmour discusses, provides a powerful socialist critique of capitalism, American imperialism, new left-activism and identity politics.

Along with these ‘secular’ uses of biblical apocalyptic are, of course, the more conspicuously Christian theological treatments: Mark Sweetnam discusses dispensationalism in Johnny Cash’s music; Marcus Moberg explores eschatological themes in Christian heavy metal; and Steve Knowles looks at the uses of apocalyptic imagery in the music of Extreme. Alongside these are the perennially popular esoteric interpretations of biblical apocalyptic thought. These are explored in Rupert Till’s analysis of heavy metal and Sérgio Fava’s discussion of apocalyptic folk.

Contents
Christopher Partridge, Introduction: Popular Music and Apocalyptic Discourse
1. Roland Boer, Some Routine Atrocity, or, Letting the Curse of God Roar: Nick Cave and Apocalyptic
2. Mark S. Sweetnam, Evangelical Millennialism in the Lyrics of Johnny Cash
3. Kennet Granholm, Metal, the End of the World, and Radical Environmentalism: Ecological Apocalypse in the Lyrics of Earth Crisis
4. Michael J. Gilmour, Raging against the Machine: Tom Morello’s Nightwatchman Persona and the Sound of Apocalypse-Inspired Schadenfreude
5. Marcus Moberg, Portrayals of the End Times, the Apocalypse, and the Last Judgment in Christian Metal Music
6. Sérgio Fava, ‘When Rome Falls, Falls the World’: Current 93 and Apocalyptic Folk
7. Rupert Till, The Number of the Beast: The Adoption of Apocalyptic Imagery in Heavy Metal
8. Steven Knowles, Who Cares? Apocalyptic Thought in Extreme’s III Sides to Every Story

El presente texto presenta los resultados de investigación de Jóvenes Investigadores galardonados por Colciencias y vinculados al Semillero Temático de Investigación en Juventudes. En el texto se abordan temáticas relacionadas a culturas juveniles, participación política y mecanismos de comunicación, entre otras.

For anti-rock activists in the 1980s, lyrical descriptions and visual depictions that glorified and promoted violence, sex, drug and alcohol abuse, Satanism, and related forms of occult activity were symptomatic not only of the declining moral standards of many forms of popular entertainment but also of the overall moral decay of America. At the same time, many of these anti-rock activists argued that a great deal of contemporary music they deemed objectionable was dangerous through its ability to influence and modify the behavior and thoughts of vulnerable children and teenagers. Many of the claims advanced by anti-rock activists were informed by a moral panic that swept across the nation beginning in the 1980s. Paralleling the growing influence of fundamentalist conservatism on American culture and politics during this time, the so-called “Satanic Panic” (or “Satanism Scare”) was fueled by an increasing number of news reports that suggested that an underground network of Satanists were active throughout all parts of American society.

After briefly outlining some of the religious, political, and socio-cultural conditions that helped the anti-rock movement flourish in the 1980s, I will discuss the background and content of one of the earliest reports linking popular music with Satanism: AB3741, a bill proposed before the California legislature in 1982. AB 3741 sought for the inclusion of warning labels on commercial recordings that purportedly contained backward messages that glorified Satanism and the occult. Drawing upon documents and testimony related to AB 3741, I will describe how supporters of the bill exploited contemporary fears regarding Satanism and behavioral modification by characterizing backward (or “backmasked”) messages as a form of subliminal stimulation that had the ability to modify the behavior and beliefs of unsuspecting listeners.

The arguments and claims presented in support of AB 3741 influenced much of the anti-rock discourse that dominated the 1980s, including the campaign for a record labelling system advanced by the Parents’ Music Resource Center (PMRC) as well as civil suits debated in courtrooms across the country as part of multiple wrongful death suits filed against heavy metal acts by parents of teenagers who had committed suicide.

La música de cada época es producto de un proceso de influencias entre músicos y de cambios de técnicas musicales. Además el entorno social geográfico y político determina los sentimientos e ideas que la música de la época va a transmitir. De esta misma manera el Heavy Metal va a tomar su forma a partir de una evolución de técnicas e influencias que serán complementadas por los nuevos sentimientos derivados de la situación vital de la época.
El Heavy Metal así como ningún género de calidad se detiene en un solo punto. Cada grupo aportará nuevo material de análisis. Sin embargo se puede definir un punto clímax en donde hay ciertas características en común que engloba el significado de Heavy Metal.  A continuación se analizará el proceso de construcción del Heavy metal como género. Para ello se explicarán las principales características que identifican el género. Además se mencionan los datos más importantes sobre los diferentes grupos influyentes en la consolidación del género y de los grupos pioneros. A modo de ejemplo se analizarán una pieza de cada grupo mencionado aplicando los conceptos característicos del género y su proceso evolutivo. Eventualmente se mencionará el significado de las letras según su contexto pero este aspecto quedará en segundo plano.
El metal llegó a ser un fenómeno mundial que se introduce en todo tipo de culturas. Incluso en costa rica el metal llegó a ser un movimiento liderado por varios grupos demostrativos y con una infinidad de bandas de Garage que no se dan a conocer por falta de promoción, medios económicos y tecnológicos, pero no por falta de talento. Este trabajo también abarcará una descripción un análisis de los principales grupos de Heavy Metal.

Eugene Martone, his Fender Telecaster slung around his shoulder, walks tentatively onto the stage. He is here to play for the soul of his friend, bluesman Willie Brown, a harmonica player who in his youth made a deal with the Devil in return for musical virtuosity. To represent his interests, Old Scratch has chosen Jack Butler, the archetypal heavy-metal guitarist: brooding, long-haired with leather pants and a bad attitude. Butler carelessly lugs a heavy-metal axe onto the stage and the contest begins. Initially, it sounds as if Butler has the edge. His screaming, distorted guitar soars and crashes, transcending the blues as his fingers fly supernaturally up and down the fretboard. Strings are bent to breaking in this display of awesome virtuosity. It looks all over for Martone but from somewhere the unsure youth conjures complicated classical riffs and intoxicating rhythms in a dazzling display of speed and musical genius. He snatches Brown’s soul back from Scratch as Butler, unable to match the youngster’s prowess, throws his guitar to the ground and stalks darkly off through the crowd.

Association for Cultural Studies
Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference
14-17th December, 2016

For the first time in its history, Crossroads in Cultural Studies has come to the southern hemisphere. The 11th Association for Cultural Studies “Crossroads in Cultural Studies” conference is being hosted by the University of Sydney and Western Sydney University. Crossroads 2016 will bring scholars together in the beautiful summertime setting of Sydney University to engage with the past, present and future of cultural studies scholarship. The Crossroads conference has played an important role in the creation of a global discussion of Cultural Studies. It has become a major international conference where scholars from all five continents gather regularly to exchange research, views, and insights. Organized by the Association for Cultural Studies (ACS), the Crossroads conference is held every other year in different parts of the world. Previous conferences have taken place in Birmingham (United Kingdom), Urbana-Champaign (USA), Istanbul (Turkey), Kingston (Jamaica), Hong Kong (China), Paris (France), and Tampere (Finland).

Kultura metalowa stanowi w rodzimych badaniach naukowych ciągle jeszcze obszar w niewielkim stopniu rozpoznany. Równocześnie jednak obserwujemy nieustające zainteresowanie redakcji mediów muzycznych oraz samych słuchaczy, fanów muzyki metalowej nowościami wydawniczymi i trasami koncertowymi zespołów wykonujących tak zwaną ciężką muzykę – warto wspomnieć choćby ostatnie, tegoroczne, głośne występy w Polsce takich grup jak Tool, Rammstein czy Metallica. Żywię nadzieję, że niniejszy tom wypełni w pewnym stopniu niszę w rodzimych metal studies, a także iż oferowany numer stanowić będzie dla Czytelnika inspirujący zestaw tekstów na temat współczesnej kultury i sztuki muzycznej, strategii komunikacyjnych w przestrzeni medialnej oraz przede wszystkim wolności artystycznej.
(Ze wstępu)

This Master's dissertation aims to uncover the capacity for political expression within doom metal and willingness to make such expression amongst its proponents, and to identify trends within the genre that support social critique across the political spectrum. The body of the work is comprised of readings of various bands' lyrics, artworks and interviews.
The main focus rests upon the pursuit of individual liberty, comparable to ‘negative’ liberty as described by Berlin in Two Concepts of Liberty, which has featured in doom metal throughout its history and arguably represents a strong tendency toward libertarianism amongst its musicians and fans alike. Critiques of economic and social inequality and exclusion form another theme. A third section focuses on environmental concern, which has manifested in both overt and subtle critiques from doom metal groups, often in utopian terms, contrasted by a nihilistic vision of apocalypse and environmental destruction imagined by some of doom's heaviest and darkest bands. The final section explores the role of women and female empowerment within the genre.
The study then turns to examining the surrounding contexts of doom metal musicians and question the extent to which these contexts have been acknowledged or critiqued by the musicians and their works. After contextualising doom metal and its varied political expressions, the study attempts to find common ideological ground between doom metal artists overall and investigates whether the genre acts as an arena for social comment, or whether the opposite is true; that the escapist aesthetic promulgated within doom metal acts as a safe haven for its listeners, wishing to avoid political discourses in music.

Tesis de licenciatura en Antropología Social.


Algunas de las expresiones religiosas juveniles emergentes de la última década, han sido estudiadas a partir de las instituciones; como estrategias implementadas por estas para atraer y mantener creyentes ante los cambios generacionales, así como aquellas innovaciones que llegan a ser rechazadas y tachadas como prácticas herejes o sectarias por las mismas instituciones.
En esta ocasión, nos ocuparemos de un tercer tipo de agentes de cambio; aquellos que llegan a ser considerados fundadores de una nueva tradición que puede ser aceptada por otro tipo de feligresía, obteniendo así,  un nuevo creer juvenil distinto al creer institucional.
En la presente investigación, se aborda el caso de una expresión cristiana evangélica, desarrollada por y para los escuchas, seguidores y fundadores de un movimiento socialmente asociado con la maldad, lo oscuro, la violencia y el satanismo; la escena metalera o el underground: Alcance Subterráneo. Fundada desde el año 2000 por el pastor Miguel y su esposa Claudia, creada para la escena metalera o el underground, para aquellos que buscan una manera distinta de "creer" muy alejada del "creer" impositivo institucional. Hablamos de un grupo evangélico que porta como estandarte un estilo único dentro del género Metal: el Christian Metal, Unblack Metal, o White Metal de manera musical, escénca, ritual y performativamente.
Algunos seguidores del metal no consideran este reciente subgénero como parte de la escena metalera. A su vez, propios y extraños dentro de ella, incluyendo algunos creyentes cristianos lo han llamado abominable por su relación con la música profana y toda la carga simbólica negativa con la que se ha relacionado a lo largo del tiempo desde sus inicios (e incluso antes). Nuestro primer problema entonces, es resolver cómo ambas partes aparentemente antagónicas logran combinarse en simbiosis armónica para conformarse como género musical y movimiento juvenil y a su vez como iglesia y grupo religioso, es decir, ¿cómo surgió esta forma de creer como una nueva tradición de creyentes evangélicos?

Heavy metal and rap are the two most established popular music genres in the world.  They are also the most studied and debated.  Classified by social psychologists North and Hargreaves as ‘problem music’, heavy metal and rap have, for nearly forty years, been subjected to rigorous research surrounding accusations of causing deviant behaviour in individuals who listen to these types of music.
This dissertation explores these ‘problem music’ genres within three contexts - musicological, subcultural and sociological - in order to ascertain whether there is sufficient evidence that heavy metal and rap cause deviant behaviour.  During this process, it has become clear that correlation is all too often mistaken for cause.  It is proposed that these subcultures do not cause deviance and that any relationship between the two is purely correlative.  By researching the familial, environmental and social backgrounds of ‘problem music’ subcultures, this common denominator emerges.  Forthwith, an unexpected outcome of this study becomes clear, as positive light is shed on heavy metal and hip-hop as beneficial contributors to society.
It is suggested that, as prevalent as they are, heavy metal, initially a youth subculture, and hip-hop, conceived as the subculture of black expression, should be studied in terms of a chronology of society since, respectively, World War II and the Vietnam War.  It is no coincidence that after WWII, teenagers enjoyed freedom of expression for the first time; and that, after the Vietnam War, the black population started moving towards more effective vehicles for their own expression.  As both ‘problem music’ subcultures have evolved demographically over the past forty years, so too have society’s attitudes towards youth and race.  Today, ‘problem music’ subcultures are feared less for their alleged effects on deviant behaviour, as their phenomenal presence within society’s contemporary structure has become clear and their roles as narrators of society have become more apparent in pyschological, educational, cultural, musical and sociological terms.

Ask author before citation.  (c) Pippa Lang 2015

Black Metal is an underground musical genre, descended from Heavy Metal and born in the late 80s in Scandinavia. In this dissertation, we are aiming to reconstruct its genesis before showing how it builds its aesthetics alongside the concepts of transgression and transcendence. Taking a fundamentally multidisciplinary perspective, we aim to maximise the genre’s characteristic parameters by addressing a large number of bands, mostly from Europe. The analysis addresses both the lyrics and the accompanying music, including the harmonic, melodic and rhythmical elements of the speech and the various instrumental techniques. Black Metal’s stage attitudes and iconography are also important contributions to the overall modes of expression. They have all been analysed in the context of the musicians’ personal ideologies, ethics, and beliefs, including their literary, philosophical and spiritual aspects, to provide a holistic understanding of this thirty-year-old genre.

Né à la fin des années 1980 en Scandinavie, le Black Metal est un genre musical underground, descendant du Heavy Metal. Nous avons tenté, dans cette thèse, de reconstituer tout d’abord sa genèse, avant de montrer comment il a construit son esthétique, au travers des concepts de la transgression et de la transcendance. Grâce à une analyse fondamentalement pluridisciplinaire, nous avons observé un grand nombre de paramètres caractéristiques du genre en convoquant un panel conséquent de groupes, majoritairement européens. Il est ici question des aspects musicaux, détaillés grâce à des analyses du langage harmonique, mélodique et rythmique, ainsi que des techniques de jeux instrumentales. Une place importante est aussi accordée à l’observation minutieuse des textes. Les attitudes scéniques et l’iconographie du Black Metal sont aussi des facettes auxquelles nous avons consacré de nombreux paragraphes au sein de cette recherche doctorale. Emaillées des références littéraires, philosophiques et spirituelles des musiciens, l’éthique, les idéologies, les croyances représentent également d’incontournables clefs de lecture en vue de la compréhension de ce genre déjà trentenaire et encore insuffisamment traité au niveau universitaire en France.

The aim of my MA thesis is to analize the relationship between Medieval Germanic texts and the modern German heavy metal scene.
Three texts have been chosen: the "Hildebrandslied" (Old High German), Walther von der Vogelweide's "Palästinalied" (Middle High German) and the "Hávamál", second poem of the Old Norse Poetic Edda.
I decided to focus on the German metal scene since it is one of the most active and productive in the entire world and every year many German bands release new albums concerning Medieval texts.

The aim of this article is to pay special attention to the character whose stage and artistic activities seem significant for the constitution of metal culture, the essence of the work being the countercultural characteristics of the artist, exhibitionist, desecrator, performer, American singer of the Plasmatics Wendy O. Williams. Genres aspects, selected lyrics and issues concerning the singer’s suicide were discussed.

This is the typo-version of the submitted version of a guest section by Amanda DiGioia in Jasmine H. Shadrack's 'Black Metal, Trauma, Subjectivity and Sound: Screaming the Abyss'.

Women, heavy metal music, and trauma are intimately linked. In metal music, women and their anguish, agony, and torment often amount to little more than lyrical objects, filleted (be it physically or emotionally) for the audience’s pleasure: an audience that is often perceived to be (though may not be in actuality) comprised of men. An example of this, which will be expanded upon throughout the chapter, is the overwhelming success and acceptance of multiple bands who hypothetically (via their lyrics) or literally (via fists, weapons, or sexual assault) abuse women. In order to experience trauma (physical or psychological), an individual must first experience either something distressing and/or violent. Men face different challenges within intimate partner violence, such as not reporting partner abuse because they convince themselves the incident was insignificant, or because they fear being taken seriously due to constructs of masculinity under patriarchy. Any gender can be an abuser, and any gender can be abused. Though these statements regarding other genders are valid, further examination is beyond the scope of this chapter, which focuses specifically on women, their trauma, and how these two linked ideas are dealt with in heavy metal music.

Murihiku/Southland, Aotearoa/New Zealand(NZ), is the western and southern
most region of the country. Southland has a short but colourful history of
whalers, sealers, bootleggers and gold miners from Northern Europe mixing
with the local population. A landscape known for the epic scenery of Fiordland
and Queenstown Lakes, heavy industrial-scale agriculture, powerful hydroelectric
dams, the Tiwai metal smelter, and country music’s Gold Guitars,
Murihiku is also home to a culturally significant level of heavy metal musical
groups. This paper reports on the cultural, external contributors and a musicological
framing of this genre within the local independent music scene. Murihiku
(Southland) metal is approached as a ‘glocalised’ study, centred on Invercargill
one of the world’s most isolated cities, which to date has not been rigorously
investigated. This paper represents the beginning investigation of the
metal music scene from the city of Invercargill in Southland, New Zealand. It
is part of a larger project for a thesis on metal music and production as part of
a Doctorate of Musical Arts through Griffith University.

ABSTRACT
This paper explores the role of Musicking in the Metal community in Guadalajara, México. I examine the construction of a Metal identity that bonds people from its origins in England in the 1960s to its present day status in Latin America. The case studies in Guadalajara along with the participants portray three moments of Metal represented by three main bands. The position of Metal throughout the years constructs an important element for characters to form relationships that go beyond meeting in concerts or playing music. Metal in México encounters a special idiosyncrasy when it comes to the relation of themes, behaviour in concerts like in the “dances” in Mosh pits this makes embodiment and experience of the body central to Metal as a cultural phenomenon. The specific case of banning mass events in México gave Metal localities more force where they united and thus, set the mood for a Metal community to form. In Mexican Metal culture all of the agents perform alongside each other and the bands in unison enabled by Musicking.

Keywords: Metal music, Musicking, community, embodiment, body, experience, kinship, friendship, bonding, Metalhead, Metal localities, performance

This article argues that, in some specific cases, Finnish heavy metal lyrics are horror texts, and that mothers in Finnish heavy metal lyrics are often relegated to tropes, like being ‘othered’. This shows that motherhood in Finnish heavy metal lyrics, much like motherhood in horror texts, is rarely depicted subversively. This article will address aspects of what makes motherhood horrifying and monstrous in Finnish heavy metal music. Because Pekka Kainulainen, the lyricist for Amorphis (a Finnish heavy metal band), was interviewed specifically for this project, the main example used in this article will be the lyrics of Amorphis. However, several other Finnish metal bands will also be utilized to support this thesis.

This is the submitted version of this article (complete with typos). The citation for the published version of this article is available in the header of this document.

Using Freud and Lacan, this article proposes a psychoanalytic approach to the thrash metal band Slayer. It particularly focuses on the band's engagement with violence and perversion. The article starts by analysing Slayer in Freudian terms, as a symptom of the discontent existing in western civilization and it advances further to using Lacan, taking into account concepts like expression, conceptu-alization, repression and signifying chains, among others, in order to reach the conclusion that Slayer's revolt against present-day society is not so much a revolt as an unconscious expression of its symbolic order.

"Se nos ve de negro vestidos. Siete enfoques sobre el heavy metal argentino" es un libro del Grupo Interdisciplinario sobre el Heavy Metal Argentino (GIIHMA). A partir de los ensayos aquí publicados, buscamos una aproximación al heavy metal argentino a partir de múltiples perspectivas que abarcan las letras, la filosofía, el mercado cultural y las ciencias políticas. Al mismo tiempo, valorizamos esa producción musical hasta el día de hoy dejada de lado en los ámbitos académicos argentinos.

“Extreme” or “heavy” music genres such as those found in hardcore, death metal, and black metal (as well as alternative and progressive rock) reportedly hold a positive correlation between violence and aggression in youths (Binder, 1993; Litman & Farberow, 1994, Richardson & Scott, 2002). However, some data exists which not only challenge this notion, but point to the reverse: Previous studies associate listening to extreme music with reduced suicide risk, especially among teenage girls when utilized for vicarious release (La- course, Claes, & Villeneuve, 2001). In these cases, extreme music may be used to channel negative valence and arousal. This paper argues that extreme music offers a self-regulation strategy to reduce destructive and autodestructive behavior; a strategy already intuitively used by many youths. Moreover, this research presents an investigation into the spectrum of affect correlated with specific genres and musical traits. We define heavy music to include capacious, distorted riffs, loud pervasive percussion with varying tempos, and an overall feeling of ‘raw power’ and emotion stemming from the instrumental or vocal parts. Finally, by adopting the Foucauldian conviction that subjectivity is not simply imposed externally, but freely occupied internally, this research will examine how we may utilize extreme music therapeutically to bring meaning, positive affect, and resilience into the lives of youths.

A través del método etnohistórico y algunos abordajes teóricos interdisciplinarios, se plantea a la perspectiva emic en la que está inmersa el testimonio del autor como herramienta aprovechable junto a los otros testimonios recopilados en un esfuerzo de analizar los procesos históricos que competen al movimiento musical del Metal en su ciudad, Mérida, cuáles han sido sus orígenes e influencias, su desarrollo histórico y su realidad en el presente.

Palabras clave: Rock, Metal, Etnohistoria, Imaginarios.

Rebellion in the haunt. The cultural legacy of the musical movement of metal in Mérida: An ethnohistorical contribution.

Abstract Through the ethnohistorical method and some interdisciplinary theoretical approaches, it is posed to the emic perspective in which the authors testimony is immersed like a useful tool together with the other testimonies collected in an effort to analyze the historical processes that correspond to the musical movement of Metal in his city, Mérida, what his origins and influences have been, his historical development and his reality in the present.

The lyrics of the American metal band Hatebreed seem to be preoccupied with a certain notion of the moment. In this paper it will be shown how this notion can be seen from a philosophical perspective, namely that of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. The lyrics seem to establish dismantling and buildings of Kierkegaardian stages, divided by moments manifested in both lyrics and music.

Z recenzji prof. dra hab. Wojciecha Józefa Burszty:
"Autor dokonuje dość skondensowanego [...] przeglądu pola badań nad rockiem i metalem w humanistyce krajowej i międzynarodowej, wskazując na pola dotąd - zwłaszcza w kraju - słabo lub w ogóle nierozpoznane [...]. Praca opowiada o dość szczególnym momencie w historii kultury rockowej, kiedy pokolenie jej twórców zbliża się lub przekroczyło siedemdziesiąty rok życia i zaczyna podsumowywać kilkadziesiąt lat kariery i życia osobistego, także na tle wszystkich zmian, jakie dokonały się w powojennej kulturze europejskiej. Narracje autobiograficzne twórców omawianych w dysertacji to także opowieści o szeroko rozumianej kontrkulturze i kontestacji, walce o autonomię, dojrzewaniu, wzlotach i upadkach, ułożone zawsze w pewien, rozpoznany przez autora, wzór narracyjny. Autor od samego początku konsekwentnie prowadzi swój wywód, umiejętnie łączy decyzje teoretyczno-metodologiczne z interpretowanym materiałem, dba o szczegół i wiarygodność faktograficzną [...]. Można wręcz powiedzieć, że opracowanie przeciera nowy szlak w refleksji nad muzyką rockową jako sferą pamięci komunikatywnej i kulturowym aglomeracie symboliczno-znaczeniowym. Rozważania dowodnie pokazują, że kultura rocka to struktura długiego trwania, na równi intencjonalna i stanowiąca element metakultury symultaniczności, w jakiej wszyscy jesteśmy w jakiś sposób zatopieni w XXI wieku".

En este trabajo exploraré la construcción de identidades y estereotipos sobre la escena metalera desde la pantalla chica. El cine, así como los programas televisivos, han jugado un papel fundamental en la reproducción del “canon” metalero.  Destacan series animadas como Beavis and Butt-Head, transmitidas por la Music Television (MTV) en los años noventa del siglo XX, la cual dio paso a series posmodernas como Metalocalypse, en donde se privilegia la vida de los músicos y no tanto la de los fans.
Si los productos fílmicos, audiovisuales y televisivos pueden verse como documentos etnográficos que evidencian un contexto cultural, independientemente de la intencionalidad del autor, entonces las imágenes televisivas asociadas con la escena metalera serán filtradas y re-significadas por cada sujeto y colectividad. Estos imaginarios ficcionales, que pueden o no corresponder con la realidad, generan estigmas, identidades, tabúes, temores y, paradójicamente, la reproducción de la escena metalera mundial a través de diversos consumos culturales. Se analizará la imagen global del Heavy Metal en las narrativas de Metalocalypse y cómo éstas evidencian la estructuralidad metalera, ello a partir de un ejercicio etnográfico entre los participantes de esta comunidad de sentido en la Ciudad de México. Los testimonios etnográficos fueron seleccionados aleatoriamente para apuntalar mis interpretaciones.

Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wysrU0h9-OQ -------- Playlist for the paper: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5rfwKnFjtpSWoOJZINwXSg -------- Paper for Conference "Heavy Metal & Global Premodernity", Brandeis University, 24-26 February 2022, organised by Jeremy Swist and Charlotte Nayor Davis --------- www.brandeis.edu/classics/heavy-metal-and-global-premodernity/index.html -------- Playlist for the conference: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0173xFeABCpQvcGmurKFu6