Metal Music Scene Research Articles

Negotiating Blackness, and Culture in Brazilian Metal Scene

This paper aims at discussing the presence of black individuals in the Brazilian metal music scene. To do so, we move away from a homogenizing and historically constructed cultural position that privileges certain forms of art in the building of black subjects’ authenticity to the detriment of others. We seek to highlight how racial representation works as a form of oppression. We ask: What are the ways and means that black people, as musicians and audiences, can find to re-inscribe themselves in the midst of an environment still predominantly occupied by whiteness in metal and, consequently, how can we locate those interstices to re-emerge and re-exist?

‘This gave me a Mastodong’: A decolonial analysis of the Black twerking dancers in Mastodon The Motherload music video

The article presents a decolonial and intersectional approach to production and reception of The Motherload music video (2014) in the context of heavy metal culture and how female Black bodies are displayed in media culture. We discuss the feminist dichotomic approach on the objectification of female bodies and the defence of Black female empowerment in the performances recorded. Our debate focuses on racial and sexual hierarchies in the metal music scene and in The Motherload music video, using the female Black body as a means of gaining visibility and adherence to this scene where women are often sexually objectified in its social dynamics.

Masculinidades y feminidades en la música metal

En el artículo se desarrolla parte de los resultados de investigación acerca de la escena bonaerense de la música metal entre los años 2013 y 2017. El eje está puesto en la perspectiva de género y en las sexualidades. La escena construye una identidad social predominante a través del paradigma de la autenticidad metálica, que se caracteriza por evaluar la veracidad de les músiques, les aficionades y sus prácticas por medio de parámetros patriarcales. De este modo, les agentes construyen identidades masculinas y femeninas alternativas que dialogan y tensionan con la heteronormatividad.

The New Metal Men: Exploring Model of Flexible Masculinity in the Bandung Metal Scene

The global metal scene has long provided narratives and methods for solving issues of masculinities since in their particular environment in the music industry, and they are generally considered masculine. This article explores the stereotypical construction of masculinities in the Bandung metal music scene. This analysis based on in-depth interviews with Bandung professional metal male musicians who are aged 39-44 years old and are married. This investigation examines how these metal musicians negotiate alternative masculinities in various contexts, taking into account the predominantly Muslim culture in Indonesia. Using an ethnographic approach and borrowing from Millett's concepts of temperament, role, and status, this paper argues that metal music, which is generally considered hypermasculine, does not display the same construction in their performing their functions in the family. Through their roles as breadwinner, musicians maintain normative Indonesian masculinity, as well as fulfilling their responsibility to their family. However, they negotiate equity in the private space, which regards household labor division, childcare, and sharing of income. This paper argues that to some extent, musicians in the metal music scene in Bandung provide a role model of masculinity that is more gender-sensitive and egalitarian.

2018. gada latviešu metālmūzikas albumi

The aim of the study is to describe metal music albums of the year 2018 from the genre, textual and artistic aspects, looking for the common and diverse in the Latvian metal music world. It is recognised that there is still no unified collection of Latvian rock and metal music resources, and that makes the researcher’s work more interesting. Even though only ten metal albums came out in 2018, their metal styles are quite wide-ranging from symphonic metal and through thrash, groove, industrial metal to classic heavy metal, which is also played in an acoustic format. Album designs, in the author’s opinion, are classic but qualitative and do not damage the first impression, especially designs of those albums that were released on physical media. Because physical media is becoming an exclusive case, the trend continues to sell albums only in digital format (at least at first); this has been done by the bands “Revelation Attic”, “Yomi”, “Seira”, “NUVO”. Perhaps knowing that Latvia is too small to live on music only, as well as wishing to expand their audience and be noticed abroad, the 5 of the albums in question are recorded in English. The debuts of several newly formed bands (“Seira”, “Revelation Attic”, “Māra”) confirm the unlost interest in metal music and also show the attempts of these groups to build their way to Latvian and the world metal music scene, which manifests in their search for a strange sound (“NUVO”) or a strong female vocal use (“Oceanpath”, “Seira”, “Māra”). In general, Latvian metal music representatives continue the world’s metal music traditions, where it is extremely difficult to surprise because the number of existing bands is so large that it is almost impossible to be original, while the population of the planet is so big that many bands can access the listener so that each band also searches for its audience, both online and in concerts.

Vigilante feminism as a form of musical protest in extreme metal music

Drawing on my 2016 ethnographic research on women in New York’s extreme metal music scene, this short article discusses the emerging concept of vigilante feminism; a term first coined by American Studies professor Laura D’Amore in her 2017 study, Vigilante Feminism: Revising Trauma, Abduction, and Assault in American Fairy Tale Revisions. Through interviews with the death metal band Castrator, the role of the female musician and fan in the extreme metal music (EMM) scene is explored. Using the lens of vigilante feminism as a form of musical protest, I analyse lyrical content, performativity and the ways in which female musicians navigate the traditionally masculine-coded subculture. I argue that for some female death metal musicians, vigilante feminism acts as a form of empowerment which enables them to coexist in a liminal space so often dominated by their male counterparts.

Las escenas de la música metal: discusión teórica a partir del caso de la provincia de Buenos Aires

El objetivo de este artículo es reflexionar acerca de la teoría de la formación de la escena de la música metal propuesta por Jeremy Wallach y Alexandra Levine a partir del trabajo empírico realizado en la escena de la provincia de Buenos Aires entre 2011 y 2017, constituido por la observación participante en recitales, ferias y tours de viaje a conciertos, entrevistas etnográficas y etnografía virtual. El propósito es evaluar dicha teoría a partir de características tales como el contacto entre lo global y lo local, la circulación y el carácter transcultural de la música metal.

‘The rage of the Northmen’: Extreme metal and North-motivated violence

AbstractThe Vikings have for generations yielded significant output in different cultural venues. Also the music scene has utilised perceptions of the North and the Northmen to generate a stereotypical image of medieval Scandinavian society. Extreme metal, most notably black and Viking metal, have applied narratives pertaining to the Viking Age for its own purposes. This paper examines one particular aspect of the black and Viking metal music scene: violence. It examines how the North and its inhabitants are utilised to justify violent behaviour. Drawing from pinpointed examples of extreme metal, this paper shows that stereotypical assumptions of violent Viking expansion as well as fear of subjugation motivate the ‘rage of the Northmen.’

Second wave true Norwegian black metal: an ideologically evil music scene?

PurposeThe second wave (true Norwegian) black metal music scene has garnered attention for its ostensible negative impact upon contemporary consumption. Producers and consumers of the scene, as potential heretics, have been associated with acts of church burning, Satanism, murder, and violence. Such actions have circulated under the signifier of evil, and have been associated with anti-Christian semiotics and pagan practices. Contemporary media has positioned such acts of evil beyond rational comprehension via the deployment of a rhetoric of evil. This enframement has evaded the psychoanalytic question of evil and the significant role of negative ethics in theorizing the allure and potential impact of black metal music. The purpose of this paper is to examine the evil in the music scene, its relation to ID evil, and its consumption and production practices.Design/methodology/approachDrawing upon Zizek’s (2006) development of evil through Lacan’s three registers, this paper examines evil production and consumption through a detailed analysis of true Norwegian black metal. The authors rehabilitate the complex corridors of evil against its conceptual collapse as merely the ontological absence of good. Via Zizek, the authors offer a reconsideration of the anti-establishment violent activities enacted by some proponents of black metal ideology. Herein, the authors deploy a reading of ideological evil in order to interrogate the role of enjoyment and desire at work in the black metal scene.FindingsAfter extensive immersion in the true Norwegian black metal scene, the authors elucidate on the key issues surrounding good, evil and Satanism, and their relationships to production and consumption. What many might term as “evil” is far more complex than what appears on the surface-level aesthetics.Originality/valueWhile there have been examinations of the black metal scene, there has been scant literature that delves deep into the symbolism of the Satanic and the evil beyond the surface. This paper sheds light on the value of exploring evil in a scene as something that is much more than the mere absence of what is considered good.

‘To Holmgard … and Beyond’: Folk metal fantasies and hegemonic white masculinities

On first inspection, the metal music sub-genre of folk metal might be arguably residual white, masculine spaces. The sub-genres are not fashionable within the metal music scene. Folk metal bands are ridiculed by fans of black metal for being too mainstream and crowd-pleasing, constructing fantasies of drinking and fighting that have no authentic connection to Vikings, Saxons or other (supposed) nationalist patriarchs. But folk metal bands are not part of the mainstream of modern heavy metal, judged by sales of records and numbers of fans on social media. This paper draws on new research on folk metal and its reputation within heavy metal, using a range of internet sources and semiotic analysis of folk metal bands’ songs and images. The bands at the focus of the case study research are bands that have been deliberately selected because they are well-established in the industry, and generally known to fans of heavy metal: Turisas (Finland), Týr (Faroe Islands), Eluveitie (Switzerland), In Extremo (Germany) and Cruachan (Ireland). In this paper, I argue that folk metal is not easily dismissed as a fantasy space for young, white European men left behind by postmodernity, post-colonialism and a rearrangement of the gender order. Rather, folk metal remains central to the on-going construction of heavy metal as a form of commodified leisure that makes the power of Western, instrumental whiteness and hegemonic masculinity invisible, while ironically being in plain sight.

Eschewing Community: Black Metal

ABSTRACTThere is a great deal of literature that examines community orientations, in particular consumption‐based subcultures rooted in the appreciation of music scenes such as heavy metal and its subgenres. Much of this literature focuses on aspects of community maintenance, reaffirmation of shared identities and building of social bonds. In the present article, we report a study in which consumption of, and fandom in a specific scene in extreme metal, namely black metal, may lead to very unique consumer cultural orientations. Our analyses reveal that black metal fans' identities reside in a realm outside of a desired collective identification and tightly knit community, but rather one that uses signification, or representational means to convey meaning and belonging, as a way to signal repugnance with society and a reverence of individuality. The study engages a mixed qualitative approach utilizing interviews, observational research and content analysis to demonstrate how self‐identity related to the black metal music scene can thrive through an ideological and semiotic rejection of traditional community orientations seen in the majority of other extreme metal music scenes. This paper challenges traditional conceptualizations of group identity in music scenes by closely examining aspects of signification and fandom in black metal that represent a unique system of shared identities devoid of community building. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Kami semua headbangers: Heavy metal as multiethnic community builder in Penang Island, Malaysia

Abstract This article investigates how heavy metal music promotes the development of multiethnic community interactions by focusing on Penang Island, Malaysia as a case study, where individuals of different ethnic backgrounds have intermingled in the heavy metal music scene as a consequence of the dearth of spaces dedicated to the practice and performance of such music. Through the use of ethnographic participant observation over the course of two years (2011–2013), I demonstrate how the heavy metal music scene in early 2010s Penang had outgrown the country’s ethnic structure in which heavy metal music was used to build a community where musicians of different ethnic backgrounds interact in settings where ethnicity is of reduced salience. Fostered by the forced cohabitation of the scarce spaces dedicated to extreme music practices in the country, I argue that the case of Penang’s heavy metal music scene outlines how the localization of imported forms of western popular music in a fast developing South East Asian society have challenged and reconfigured ethnic boundaries that are frequently reified in and through public and political discourses.

Female, Mosher, Transgressor: A 'Moshography' of Transgressive Practices within the Leeds Extreme Metal Scene

This paper examines and reconceptualises transgression in the Leeds extreme metal music subculture through theories of performance, embodiment and spectacle. The spectacle, for Debord (1967), is a social relation that is alienating and mediated by images and technology. At a live extreme metal concert fans subvert social norms, challenge gendered expectations, and disregard hegemonic norms of etiquette and decency. Moshing is the most visible and sensuous example of transgression within the extreme metal scene. It is an aggressive, physically demanding performance which embodies resistance to the impersonal and disillusioning world of the spectacle (Halnon 2004). The pit is a transgressive space that is itself transgressed by women who participate in this masculine, chaotic space, disrupting the homosocial bonds of male solidarity (Gruzelier 2007). This paper offers an ethnographic account of a female metal fan participating in the transgressive practice of moshing within the Leeds metal music scene---a moshography.

Female, Mosher, Transgressor: A 'Moshography' of Transgressive Practices within the Leeds Extreme Metal Scene

This paper examines and reconceptualises transgression in the Leeds extreme metal music subculture through theories of performance, embodiment and spectacle. The spectacle, for Debord (1967), is a social relation that is alienating and mediated by images, visuals, and technology. At a live extreme metal concert fans subvert social norms, challenge gendered expectations, and disregard norms of etiquette and decency. Moshing is the most visible and sensuous example of transgression within the extreme metal scene. It is an aggressive, physically demanding performance which embodies resistance to the impersonal and disillusioning world of the spectacle (Halnon, 2004). The pit is a transgressive space that is itself transgressed by women who participate in this masculine, chaotic space, disrupting the homosocial bonds of male solidarity (Gruzelier, 2007). This paper offers an ethnographic account of a female metal fan participating in the transgressive practice of moshing within the Leeds metal music scene – a moshography.

The internet and the construction of a transnational Christian metal music scene

Christian metal music emerged in the late 1970s as a means of evangelism among secular metal music fans. In recent years it has grown significantly and developed into a transnational Christian music-based youth culture. In addition to the music, Christian metal has adopted the metal style, rhetoric and attitude. At the same time, Christian metal is as much about religion as it is about music or style. This paper examines some of the most important ways in which Christian metal artists and fans in a number of countries all over the world have come together with the formation of a largely Internet-based transnational Christian metal music scene. Particular focus is put on the ways in which this Internet-based transnational scene supports the spreading of central discourses about the function and meaning of Christian metal as an alternative form of religious expression and Christian identity.

The ‘Failure’ of Youth Culture

This article examines an enduring question raised by subcultural studies: how youth culture can be challenging and transgressive, yet ‘fail’ to produce wider social change. This question is addressed through a case study of the black metal music scene. The black metal scene flirts with violent racism, yet has resisted embracing outright fascism. The article argues that this is due to the way in which music is ‘reflexively antireflexively’ constructed as a depoliticizing category. It is argued that an investigation of such forms of reflexivity might explain the enduring ‘failure’ of youth cultures to change more than their immediate surroundings.

"Black Metal is for white people"

"Black Metal is for white people"