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
