Heavy Metal: Controversies and Countercultures

Edited by

Titus Hjelm [+–]

University College London

Titus Hjelm is Lecturer in Finnish Society and Culture at University College London. He is editor of Religion and Social Problems (2011) and Studying Religion and Society (2013). He is also the bass player of the internationally acclaimed metal band Thunderstone.

Keith Kahn-Harris [+–]

Birkbeck College

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Keith Kahn-Harris is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College. He is the author of Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge (Berg, 2006) and writes the blog Metal Jew.

Mark LeVine [+–]

University of California, Irvine

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Mark LeVine is Professor of modern Middle Eastern history, culture and Islamic studies at University of California Irvine and author and editor of several books, including Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam (Random House/Three Rivers Press, 2008 and Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books, 2009).

Heavy metal is now over forty years old and has developed into a diverse and multi-faceted genre. Wherever it is found and however it is played, metal’s fascination with transgression has often meant it has been embroiled in controversy. Controversies surrounding the alleged connection between heavy metal and, variously, sexual promiscuity, occultism and Satanism, subliminal messages, suicide and violence have made heavy metal a target of moral panics over popular culture. Metal has variously embraced, rejected, played with and tried to ignore this controversy and it remains irrevocably marked by its controversial, transgressive tendencies.

This anthology provides a thorough investigation of how and why metal becomes controversial, how metal ‘scenes’ are formed. It examines the relationship between metal and society, including how fans, musicians and the media create the culture of heavy metal.

Series: Studies in Popular Music

Preliminaries

List of Contributors [+–] v – viii

Titus Hjelm FREE

University College London

Heavy metal is now over forty years old and has developed into a diverse and multi-faceted genre. Wherever it is found and however it is played, metal's fascination with transgression has often meant it has been embroiled in controversy. Controversies surrounding the alleged connection between heavy metal and, variously, sexual promiscuity, occultism and Satanism, subliminal messages, suicide and violence have made heavy metal a target of moral panics over popular culture. Metal has variously embraced, rejected, played with and tried to ignore this controversy and it remains irrevocably marked by its controversial, transgressive tendencies. This anthology provides a thorough investigation of how and why metal becomes controversial, how metal 'scenes' are formed. It examines the relationship between metal and society, including how fans, musicians and the media create the culture of heavy metal.

Introduction: Heavy metal as controversy and counterculture [+–] 1 – 16

Titus Hjelm,Keith Kahn-Harris,Mark LeVine FREE

University College London

Birkbeck College

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University of California, Irvine

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Part I: Controversies

Suicide solutions? Or, how the emo class of 2008 were able to contest their media demonization, whereas the headbangers, burnouts or ‘children of ZoSo’ generation were not [+–] 17 – 35

Andy R. Brown £17.50

Bath Spa University

Drawing on historical and contemporary material, this chapter seeks to contrast the ‘suicide epidemic’ reporting that characterized the ‘moral panic’ press and media coverage of the popularity of heavy metal with white, sub- urban lower-class 80s youth in the United States (a group poignantly evoked by Donna Gaines’ (1990) phrase, ‘the children of ZoSo’)1 with a more recent episode, that surrounding the sensationalist press coverage of the ‘emo sub-culture’ in the UK, and its alleged promotion of teen self-harm and suicide, claimed to be found in the lyrics of The Black Parade (2006) album by ‘emo’ band, My Chemical Romance.

‘How you gonna see me now’: Recontextualizing metal artists and moral panics [+–] 36 – 49

Brad Klypchak £17.50

Texas A&M University Commerce

This chapter examines the scope of anomalous recontextualizations by situating the past controversies within the present day and its blend of nostalgic reversioning of past actions. The recontextualizations are also considered in light of contemporary creative works offered by each of the respective artists, thereby adding further signiﬁcations to the reversioning process as a whole.

Triumph of the maggots? Valorization of metal in the rock press [+–] 50 – 65

Hélène Laurin £17.50

University of Montreal

In this chapter, the author discusses the stereotypes that surround heavy metal and answer the following question: Is this perception that metal has been hated and denigrated by the rock press since its inception based in reality?

Dworkin’s nightmare: Porngrind as the sound of feminist fears [+–] 66 – 82

Lee Barron £17.50

Northumbria University

Lee Barron is a senior lecturer in Media and Communication at Northumbria University. His main research and teaching interests are in the areas of cultural theory,
media and popular culture. His writings have appeared in journals such as Fashion Theory, The Journal of Popular Culture and International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music.

This chapter explores the relationship between extreme metal and gender, and speciﬁcally the sexual representation of women in a relatively obscure ‘underground’ metal subgenre that developed in the 1990s—porngrind.

The ‘double controversy’ of Christian metal [+–] 83 – 97

Marcus Moberg £17.50

Turku University

In this chapter, the author aims to highlight the many controversies that started to surround secular metal in the mid 1980s that would come to have a profound and long-lasting effect on the very self-understanding of Christian metal.

Hellfest: The thing that should not be? Local perceptions and Catholic discourses on metal culture in France [+–] 98 – 116

Gérôme Guibert £17.50

University Paris III (La Sorbonne Nouvelle)

In this chapter, the author explains the origins of the Hellfest in France and what is its impact in the French society.

Part II: Countercultures

‘I want you to support local metal’: A theory of metal scene formation [+–] 117 – 135

Jeremy Wallach,Mark LeVine £17.50

Bowling Green State University

University of California, Irvine

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The following chapter aims to articulate an explicit theory that can be applied to metal scenes across the planet. Such a theory must go beyond synchronic conceptions and instead account for the emergence, devel- opment, and continually ﬂuctuating fortunes of local heavy metal scenes, including considerations such as generational succession, relations with neigh- bouring scenes, and the role of musical amateurism

Voice of our blood National Socialist discourses in black metal [+–] 136 – 151

Benjamin Hedge Olson £17.50

University of Hawaii at Manoa

In this chapter, the author describes the ways that National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) utilizes discourses concerning race, nation and culture, as well as the ways that those discourses are contested by non-racist black met- alers. Racism and neo-Nazism force black metalers to confront the ambigu- ity of hatred and deﬁne the limits of transgression in a globalized black metal scene.

Extreme music for extreme people? Norwegian black metal and transcendent violence [+–] 152 – 165

Michelle Phillipov £17.50

University of Tasmania

This chapter focuses on the events of the Norwegian black metal scene in the early 1990s, a period in which violent aesthetics in metal music became explicitly and deliberately articulated to real acts of violence. Concentrating on the musical and criminal activities of the band Emperor, the author suggests that the group’s success was, at least in part, the result of members’ simultaneous promotion and disavowal of their involvement in violent crime.

The extreme metal ‘connoisseur’ [+–] 166 – 181

Nicola Allett £17.50

Loughborough University

This chapter draws on the author’s research with extreme metal fans to consider the construction of the extreme metal community in the UK, in the light of controversies and set against a wider culture that is increasingly celebrating the extreme. The author considers a discursive strategy by fans to deﬁne extreme metal against a mainstream and legitimate their taste by adopting a system of values and distinctions that position themselves as ‘connoisseurs’.

Black metal soul music: Stone Vengeance and the aesthetics of race in heavy metal [+–] 182 – 200

Kevin Fellezs £17.50

Columbia University

This chapter focuses on exploring the theme of Black Metal Soul Music, specifically considering the band Stone Vengeance.

‘[I] hate girls and emo[tion]s’: Negotiating masculinity in grindcore music [+–] 201 – 227

Rosemary Overell £17.50

University of Melbourne

In this chapter, the author uses feeling brutal as an entry point for a discussion on how affect relates to, and troubles, metal masculinity. There is a recurrent assumption in metal studies that Western metal is sexist, masculinist, and even misogynist (Arnett 1996; Kahn-Harris 2007; Walser 1993; Weinstein 2000). The author questions whether grindcore participants really do, following a song title from band Blood Duster, ‘Hate Girls and Emotions’. Overell concurs that metal imagery, particularly in death metal and gore-grindcore, regularly represents women as sexualized objects at best and objects for rape, torture and murder at worst. Metal signiﬁers, often literally, scream masculinity

Heavy metal and the deafening threat of the apolitical [+–] 228 – 243

Niall Scott £17.50

University of Central Lancashire

This chapter focuses on discussing the claim that heavy metal is an apolitical movement is an interesting one and we will investigate what it could mean for metal to be apolitical, whether this is a sustainable position to hold, and what alternatives might be available.

Index

Index [+–] 244 – 250

Titus Hjelm FREE

University College London

Reviews

Offers rigorous explorations of heavy metal subcultures from leading scholars in the field. This insightful book is a superior source of in-depth research on black metal, in particular, and mainstream media and community responses to it. Also strongly represented are cross-cultural approaches to heavy metal culture, which broach difficult and relevant issues such as religious intolerance and racism in metal. Recommended.
Choice, December 2013

A powerful addition to the metal studies literature, this book is overflowing with insights into the cultural politics of heavy metal music. With lively writing, interdisciplinary approaches, and a global perspective, these chapters offer ideas that have broad implications for the study of popular music scenes and their dynamics, media scandals, the relationship between music and affect, and the role of culture in social life.
Professor Harris M. Berger, Texas A & M University

From Christian metal to African American metal artists to the pleasures of feeling 'brutal,' Heavy Metal: Controversies and Countercultures explores a wide array of topics too often neglected in the critical study of the genre. The book is global in both the range of contributors and of its subject matter, and so joins the recent Metal Rules the Globe as proof that the field of global metal studies is in full bloom.
Steve Waksman, author of This Ain't the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk

For long-time (or fresh-faced) metal fans, there’s a lot of insightful analysis to enjoy here.
Pop Matters.com

The essays...are surprisingly sophisticated conceptually and theoretically, and they demonstrate what can be accomplished by turning high-culture terms and methods on a supposedly low-culture form like heavy metal. Anthropologists have profitably studied other popular culture/music practices, like the 'rave' phenomenon or psytrance events (see for example Graham St. John's Global Tribe: Technology, Spirituality, and Psytrance, reviewed elsewhere in ARD), and I look forward to reading ethnographic studies of heavy metal concerts, performers, and scenes.
Anthropology Review Database, 2103

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Books and Journals in Humanities, Social Science and Performing Arts

Heavy Metal

Controversies and Countercultures

Titus Hjelm [+–]

University College London

Keith Kahn-Harris [+–]

Birkbeck College

View Website

Mark LeVine [+–]

University of California, Irvine

View Website

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