Co-edited with Andy R. Brown, Karl Spracklen and Niall Scott

Global Metal Music and Culture: Current Directions in Metal Studies

This book defines the key ideas, scholarly debates, and research activities that have contributed to the formation of the international and interdisciplinary field of Metal Studies. Drawing on insights from a wide range of disciplines including popular music, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and ethics, this volume offers new and innovative research on metal musicology, global/local scenes studies, fandom, gender and metal identity, metal media, and commerce. Offering a wide-ranging focus on bands, scenes, periods, and sounds, contributors explore topics such as the riff-based song writing of classic heavy metal bands and their modern equivalents, and the musical-aesthetics of Grindcore, Doom metal, Death metal, and Progressive metal. They interrogate production technologies, sound engineering, album artwork and band promotion, logos and merchandising, t-shirt and jewellery design, and fan communities that define the global metal music economy and subcultural scene. The volume explores how the new academic discipline of metal studies was formed, also looking forward to the future of metal music and its relationship to metal scholarship and fandom. With an international range of contributors, this volume will appeal to scholars of popular music, cultural studies, and sociology, as well as those interested in metal communities around the world.

Contents:

1. Introduction: Global Metal Music and Culture and Metal Studies Andy R. Brown, Karl Spracklen, Keith Kahn-Harris, and Niall W.R. Scott 2. Reflections on Metal Studies Deena Weinstein Part 1: Metal Musicology 3. Iron and Steel: Forging Heavy Metal’s Song Structures or the Impact of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest on Metal’s Musical Language Dietmar Elflein 4.‘It’s like a Mach piece, really’: Critiquing the Neo-classical Aesthetic of 80s Heavy Metal Music Gareth Heritage 5. The Distortion Paradox: Analysing Contemporary Metal Production Mark Mynett Part 2: Metal Music Scenes 6. Voracious Souls: Race and Place in the Formation of the San Francisco Bay Area Thrash Scene Kevin Fellezs 7. The Unforgiven: A Reception Study of Metallica Fans and ‘Sell-Out’ Accusations Eric Smialek 8. Use Your Mind?: Embodiments of Protest, Transgression, and Grotesque Realism in British Grindcore Gabby Riches Part 3: Metal Demographics and Identity 9. The Numbers of the Beast: Surveying Iron Maiden’s Global Tribe Jean-Philippe Ury-Petesch 10. The Social Characteristics of the Contemporary Metalhead: The Hellfest Survey Christophe Guibert and Gérôme Guibert 11.Un(su)Stained Class? Figuring Out the Identity-Politics of Heavy Metal’s Class Demographics Andy R. Brown Part 4: Metal Markets and Commerce 12. Tunes from the Land of the Thousand Lakes: Early Years of Internationalization in Finnish Heavy Metal Toni-Matti Karjalainen and Eero Sipilä 13. Death Symbolism in Metal Jewellery: Circuits of Consumption from Subculture to the High Street Claire Barratt Part 5: Metal and Gender Politics 14. ‘Getting My Soul Back’: Empowerment Narratives and Identities among Women in Extreme Metal in North Carolina Jamie E. Patterson 15. Gender and Power in the Death Metal Scene: A Social Exchange Perspective Sonia Vasan 16. Masculine Pleasure? Women’s Encounters with Hard Rock and Metal Music Rosemary Lucy Hill Part 6: Metal and Cultural Studies 17. Retro Rock and Heavy History Simon Poole 18. Transforming Detail into Myth: Indescribable Experience and Mystical Discourse in Drone Metal Owen Coggins Part 7: Metal Futures 19. The Future of Metal is Bright and Hell Bent for Genre Destruction: A Response to Keith Kahn-Harris Tom O’Boyle and Niall Scott 20. A Reply to Scott and O’Boyle Keith Kahn-Harris

Book cover of Global Metal Music and Culture: Current Directions in Metal Studies

Formats available: Hardback, Paperback, E-Book

First Published: April 8, 2016

Publisher: Routledge

Themes: Metal Music and Culture

Related articles and media

A Reply to Niall W.R. Scott and Tom O’Boyle

In: Global Metal Music and Culture: Current Directions in Metal Studies, edited by Andy R. Brown, et al London: Routledge

I am grateful to Niall W.R. Scott and Tom O’Boyle for taking my ideas seriously and engaging with their implications. As they recognize, my keynote at the 2013 conference, together with the selection of essays that followed it (Kahn-Harris, 2013; 2014), was intended to be a provocation and a stimulus to debate. While Niall and Tom take issue with some of my arguments, their piece is very much in the spirit of what I was aiming for. In some ways, Niall, Tom, and I are very much on the same page. In the final part of my series of essays, I suggest the concept of ‘Metal beyond Metal’ (Kahn-Harris, 2013g). This refers to taking metalness beyond the confines of what we currently understand as metal. Metalness here connotes the following:

It refers to something that is hard, intractable and resilient. It refers to something that is defiant, inexhaustible and unashamed. To be metal is to be unafraid to explore darkness and transgression, but to do it in such a way that one retains one’s sense of selfhood. To be metal is to possess a certain ebullient wit and playfulness that those outside metal often mistake for crassness. To be metal is to value fellowship, to commit to supporting and celebrating the bonds between like-minded people. (2013g)

I don’t know if Niall and Tom would necessarily sign up to this particular articulation of metalness, but I think we are reaching for the same thing: a future in which metal reaches out simultaneously in myriad different ( Deleuzian) directions at once. I found myself both excited and moved by the passionate way in which they uphold the possibilities of a transgressive and radical metal future. Yet, although I am struck by the similarities between our respective projects, I think there are significant and revealing differences in our relationship to metal today. Niall and Tom point out that my works to which they are responding are ‘not filled with empirical data to support his claims’ but I want to argue that, in fact, my piece is more grounded in an analysis of contemporary metal culture than may at first be apparent.

Publication Date: April 8, 2016

Theme: Metal Music and Culture

Category: Book chapters

Metal Studies? Cultural Research in the Heavy Metal Scene

Journal for Cultural Research 15(3)

Special issue co-edited with Karl Spracklen and Andy R. Brown. Includes jointly authored introduction.

Publication Date: August 30, 2011

Theme: Metal Music and Culture

Category: Edited issues and publications