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- Volume 4, Issue 3, 2018
Metal Music Studies - Volume 4, Issue 3, 2018
Volume 4, Issue 3, 2018
- Editorial
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- Section One: Articles
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METALinguistics: Face-threatening taboos, conceptual offensiveness and discursive transgression in extreme metal
Authors: Monika Kirner-Ludwig and Florian WohlfarthIn this article we provide a genre-specific introduction into extreme metal (EM) and its pragmatic potentials. As we are going to argue, these features are all associated with transgression of conventional boundaries and the breach of taboos in terms of sonic, bodily and discursive dimensions. Based on this claim, we will provide relevant insights into taboo theory. We will then propose our methodology of text analysis, aiming to carve out the levels of offensiveness in a representative EM song text, by working at the semantic–pragmatic interface. The selected text will undergo two phases of analysis consisting of three steps each: firstly, we shall include the Middle-Class Politeness Criterion (MCPC) frame, disregarding any non-linguistic contextual factors, which we shall use as a springboard into analysing a text within the EM frame. While MCPC aims at avoiding taboos and dispreferred behaviours, the EM frame ‘lives’ off from transgressing taboos, thus constituting a completely different frame than MCPC.
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Difficulty as heaviness: Links between rhythmic difficulty and perceived heaviness in the music of Meshuggah and The Dillinger Escape Plan
More LessIn this article I examine the nature and meaning of two different types of rhythmic difficulty – extreme metric malleability and non-metricism – in examples taken from the music of Meshuggah and The Dillinger Escape Plan, respectively. While the two bands have different rhythmic styles that create distinct rhythmic difficulties, I claim that in both examples the rhythmic difficulty enhances ‘heaviness’ through various enactments of sonic metaphors for size, weight, density, power, transgression and seriousness, characterizing the creation of rhythmic difficulty as simultaneously a transgressive practice that deforms metal’s technical boundaries and one that fundamentally reaffirms metal’s most central aesthetic.
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Kerrang! magazine and the representation of heavy metal masculinities (1981–95)
By Simon JonesMetal magazines have been shown to play a significant role in communicating and shaping heavy metal culture. And, since the masculinist nature of heavy metal is perhaps its most discussed and agreed upon feature, scholars have argued that heavy metal magazines also reproduce masculine hegemony. Focussing on cover images from Kerrang! magazine, this study utilizes a mixed methods approach to examine how heavy metal masculinities are represented over an extended number of issues (from 1981 to 1995). Utilizing existing scholarship on heavy metal magazines and drawing on celebrity identification theory, I argue that many of the prevailing studies that discuss heavy metal masculinities are essentially flawed in their reliance upon particular traits. Instead I show the ways that media images can come to both reproduce and resist masculine gender norms in the context of heavy metal culture. By considering how representations are formed over an extended period and in relation to particular heavy metal icons, I show that certain arguments and assumptions about masculinity and male privilege in heavy metal culture are oversimplified.
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Guitar profiling technology in metal music production: Public reception, capability, consequences and perspectives
Authors: Jan-Peter Herbst, Christoph Reuter and Isabella Czedik-EysenbergThis empirical study explores the guitar profiling technology and its consequences for metal music production. After briefly introducing this technology, the article investigates its public reception in reviews and online discussion boards to explore the subjective perspectives. A subsequent acoustic experiment tests the capability of the technology. The findings show that many guitar players and producers have been highly sceptical of digital amplification technology because of tonal shortcomings. However, meanwhile many musicians seem convinced of profiling technology due to its good sound quality that has been confirmed by the experiment too. Since for most metal music genres the sound quality of the electric guitar is very important, the creative practices and economic conditions of its production may likely be hugely affected by this technology. The article concludes by discussing the consequences of profiling technology regarding issues such as democratization of production tools, changes in professional services, creative potentials and future applications of the technology that may radically change metal music production.
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Terms and identities: Forms of music related to national identity practices in blog posts of the Hungarian rock/metal discourse community
By Tamás NagyIn this article, I focus on the specific language of the Hungarian rock/metal discourse community. With Simple Concordance Program I analyse the posts from the two most active Hungarian music themed blogs (Lángoló Gitárok and Rockstation), which were written in April 2016. My functional–cognitive pragmatics and corpus linguistics research focus on the occurrence of the music genre names, ‘metál’, ‘metal’, ‘rock’, ‘punk’, ‘-core’, ‘jazz’ and ‘blues’ and their subgenres (for example, ‘black metál’, ‘death metal’, ‘desert rock’ – ‘sivatagi rock’, ‘deathcore’). This range of naming has been motivated by the categorization and schematization processes of the interlocutors and the conventionality of the discourse community’s terminology. My main questions are as follows: (1) ‘Is there a linguistic difference between the Hungarian and the global rock/metal discourse communities in terms of music genres and subgenres?’ and (2) ‘Are the music-related identity practices similar in these two similar subcorpuses?’
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‘Negeri Seribu Bangsa’: Musical hybridization in contemporary Indonesian death metal
More LessDespite its origins as a hybrid genre, death metal is often subject to discourses of purity, and the inclusion of diverse influences is not always looked upon favourably. Indonesian death metal bands, however, often combine elements of different styles ranging from traditional Indonesian musics to contemporary global popular genres, revealing an incorporative approach typical of modern Indonesian musical practices. This article explores musical hybridization in Indonesian death metal using the band Siksakubur as a case study, examining the ways they negotiate relationships with the overlapping contexts of death metal as a global genre, Indonesian death metal as a localized phenomenon and popular music in postcolonial/post-Soeharto Indonesia. Throughout, I consider the implications of these practices on postcolonial theories of cultural hybridity.
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- Section Two: Short Articles
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Putting the ‘studies’ back into metal music studies
Authors: Heather Savigny and Julian SchaapThe field of metal music studies is in the ascendancy and has established itself as a legitimate domain of enquiry. In this article, we argue that the study of metal has the capacity not only to provide us with rich histories of the subculture and the experiences of fans as academics, but is able to (and should) contribute to wider concerns within society. We aim to answer three key questions that, we argue, underpin and legitimate academic enquiry of metal music: (1) why does the study of metal matter? (the need to ask and answer the ‘so what?’ question); (2) how does metal matter? (the case for methodological rigour) and finally, (3) epistemologically: how can we justify our claims to knowledge? As such, this article is a call to reflect on the wider questions and issues that underpin the study of metal and move the field beyond descriptive representational accounts.
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Metal by numbers: Revisiting the uneven distribution of heavy metal music
More LessConventional wisdom suggests, and scholarship confirms, that the distribution of heavy metal music across the world is uneven. Previous studies show there are more metal bands per capita in Europe and North America than in other regions, but it is not clear what country-level factors explain that distribution. Drawing on data from the Encyclopaedia Metallum, I replicate a 2014 study and find weak support to connect heavy metal and religion, legal history and other social factors. In this article, I present an alternative model to explain the distribution of metal bands and show that wealth and political freedom are highly predictive of metal music, not only across the world, but also within regions.
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Classical idiom and compositional structure in Gorguts’s Pleiades’ Dust
More LessGorguts’s May 2016 EP, Pleiades’ Dust, is a one-movement work reminiscent of the tone/symphonic poem found more often in classical tradition, due to its content and compositional structure. My research explores how the compositional techniques found in the piece, specifically the use of a recurring theme and varied metric structure, reflect the narrative of the House of Wisdom. I believe that these techniques were used intentionally by the band, specifically by main songwriter Luc Lemay. Lemay has said in the past that he often does not use his compositional training when writing for Gorguts, but when writing for Pleiades’ Dust he consciously sought to incorporate classical idiom. This article is adapted from a lecture given on 2 December 2016 at the Extreme Music: Hearing and Nothingness Conference at the University of Southern Denmark – Odense.
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- Book Reviews
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Book Reviews
Authors: Joan Jocson-Singh, Amanda Barnett, Bryan Bardine and Mika ElovaaraMetal Goes Science: The Academic Bibliography of Metal Music, Vasileios Yfantis (2017)
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 105 pp.,
ISBN: 9781974281794, p/bk, $17.00 (US)
No Future: Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture, 1976–1984, Matthew Worley (2017)
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 402 pp.,
ISBN: 9781316625606, p/bk, £17.99
A right to reply
Connecting Metal to Culture: Unity in Disparity, Mika Elovaara and Bryan Bardine (eds) (2017)
Bristol: Intellect Books, 252 pp.,
ISBN: 97817833207008, h/bk, £40
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