“EVERYTHING LOUDER THAN EVERYTHING ELSE”

Abstract

Within contemporary metal culture the apparently ludicrous request “can we have everything louder than everything else?” has come to acquire something of touchstone status in epitomising the desire to find a way of increasing the volume of individual elements within the limitations of overall volume excess. Metal music culture, both in the past and in its current variants, has always prided itself on being the loudest and most intense-sounding of all genres. This paper maps contemporary metal magazine culture in the United Kingdom. It does so against current contradictory critical and academic debates about music culture and magazine culture, involving the apparent decline of “critical rock journalism” and the rise of consumer-oriented lifestyle magazines. Drawing on recent debates about the “circuit of magazine culture” (Jackson et al., 2001, p. 19) and a return to a closer examination of the content and features of the “magazine” itself (as well as the “interpretative repertoires” of readers), I report on my current research into this neglected area of current youth consumption.