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- Volume 6, Issue 2, 2020
Metal Music Studies - Volume 6, Issue 2, 2020
Volume 6, Issue 2, 2020
- Editorial
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- Section One: Articles
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Subject of the drone
By Robin PurvesThe increasingly popular and influential genre known as drone metal is characterized by the interaction of amplified drones with permutational rhythms. Scholarship in the field has, so far, concentrated on distinguishing the work of various drone metal artists through ethnographic analysis of the symbols and social bonds that accumulate around the drone; the ways in which drones are conceptualized have been paid more attention than the function of the drone itself. This article follows the drone form from the inception of Minimalist musical practice in the work of La Monte Young, to contemporary developments in works incorporating the drone by major artists operating in the experimental wings of popular music. To clarify the relationship or non-relation between the drone and musical meaning, three drone-related works by Joan La Barbara, Eleh and Keiji Haino are discussed with respect to their relative proximity to, or distance from, language and/or speech. Although only Haino here could be said to have even a tangential relation to metal, each exemplar extols a primary form that drone metal can be said to elaborate upon: a voice pushed to its limits (La Barbara), amplified sound as a physical force (Eleh), monolithic homogeneity at a crawling pace (Haino). Each piece of music is also considered in terms of the subject who listens, leading to some speculative thoughts on the uses made of the drone, an assessment of its potential to resist appropriation by the culture industry and reasons for the drone’s remarkable persistence and diversity.
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Blackened audiotopia: Privatized listening and urban experience
More LessIn the age of headphone culture, where privatized listening while wandering around the city is the norm, the use of headphones raises questions about the experience of the listener and their perception of their urban environment. Of particular interest is the disjunct relationship between black metal music and urban space. Black metal lyrics often portray images of nature and paganism, a concept completely removed from a modern urban landscape. This article draws from Michael Bull’s work on iPod culture as well as ethnographic research to explore the black metal fan’s experience of private listening in a public cityscape. The main focus of this study is the relationship between the ambiguously intertwined visual urban reality and sonic imaginary. The research suggests that the black metal listener can have one of four experiences of time and space resulting in what is referred to as either a split or a blend of the aural imagined experience and the visual reality of the city.
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‘No satisfaction, no fun, no future’: Futures thinking in black metal
Authors: Jason Wallin and Vivek VenkateshIn this article, we aim to think the burgeoning theoretical orientation known as accelerationism alongside black metal, particularly as black metal harnesses accelerationist strategies of negation and opposition on behalf of surveying a world out-of-step with its ‘normative’ conceptualization. We claim that the relationship of accelerationism and black metal supports a stronger understanding of black metal’s ‘futurist thinking’ in that each cultivates a comportment for saying ‘NO’ to the world ‘as it is’ while advancing futures remote to the current civilizational order and the patterning of social being that such order presumes. It is along such aspects of resistance, we claim, that black metal both disarticulates the present and creates conditions for thinking the future, although one that contravenes the presumption of human supremacy, preservation and mastery. Further, by thinking black metal alongside accelerationism, we might better understand the conceptual and quasi-theoretical force of black metal as an artistic convergence point for apprehending an encroaching world of inhuman transformation and civilizational change.
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The experiences of metal fans with mental and developmental disorders in the metal music community
Authors: Kyle J. Messick, Blanca Aranda and Chris DayA series of interviews were conducted to explore the experience of what it is like to be a member of metal music culture living with mental health conditions and/or developmental disabilities. Ten participants were interviewed, three of which had schizophrenia, four with autism spectrum disorder, two had bipolar affective disorder and one had borderline personality disorder. Thematic analysis was utilized to explore the experiences of people living with various types of mental illness and developmental disabilities in the context of metal, which resulted in the development of three overarching themes. It was found that participants felt that the metal music community was more welcoming to them due to the broad use of lyrics about mental health topics and the prevalence of metal musicians that have mental health concerns. The broad application of mental health topics in metal was seen as having a de-stigmatizing effect towards mental health concerns, but at the cost of accuracy, as topics like schizophrenia are seen as fetishized and inaccurately depicted. Participants reported that the metal community affords its members with mental health conditions and developmental disabilities a number of benefits including a sense of belonging, the facilitation of mood maintenance and the management of lesser symptoms. Symptom management appeared to be mitigated by symptom severity and influenced how participants experienced metal music.
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The characteristics of a Finnish metal fan: Comparative study on music festival attendees
Authors: Maarit Kinnunen, Antti Honkanen and Toni-Matti KarjalainenMetal is exceptionally popular and widely approved at all levels of Finnish society. But what are the Finnish metal fans like? Even though there are studies on how metal fans relate to the metal community and how they construct their identity, studies on metal festival audiences are scarce. Here, Finnish metal festival attendees are studied to find out how they differ from the participants of other popular music festivals in demographics, live music consumption and preferences in festival experiences. This is done using a mixed methods research approach. The most interesting finding concerns sex and self-perceived gender position. So far, female metal fans have been studied qualitatively, demonstrating how they represent and perceive themselves inside the male-dominant metal community. We present a new finding, using quantitative data, where both male and female metal fans consider themselves more masculine than the participants of other festivals. The importance of the community was confirmed. In a metal festival, there is a dual community effect: the festival community forms a temporary, open-minded enclave that is common for all the festivals. In a metal festival, the audience comprises also members of the more permanent metal community. A strong sense of community originates from the shared musical preference, demonstrated by a loyal festival attendance and a common symbol system. From the organizer’s point of view, metal festival fans are a grateful audience since they are loyal and earn more than other festival attendees, being willing to invest time and money for their fandom.
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Nameless, but not blameless: Motherhood in Finnish heavy metal music
More LessThis article argues that, in some specific cases, Finnish heavy metal lyrics are horror texts, and that mothers in Finnish heavy metal lyrics are often relegated to tropes, like being ‘othered’. This shows that motherhood in Finnish heavy metal lyrics, much like motherhood in horror texts, is rarely depicted subversively. This article will address aspects of what makes motherhood horrifying and monstrous in Finnish heavy metal music. Because Pekka Kainulainen, the lyricist for Amorphis (a Finnish heavy metal band), was interviewed specifically for this project, the main example used in this article will be the lyrics of Amorphis. However, several other Finnish metal bands will also be utilized to support this thesis.
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- Section Two: Book Reviews
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Thrash metal, del sonido al contenido: Origen y gestación de una contracultura chilena (‘Thrash metal, from sound to content: Origin and development of a Chilean counterculture’), Maximiliano Sánchez Mondaca (2014)
More LessReview of: Thrash metal, del sonido al contenido: Origen y gestación de una contracultura chilena (‘Thrash metal, from sound to content. Origin and development of a Chilean counterculture’), Maximiliano Sánchez Mondaca (2014)
Santiago: RIL Editores, 170 pp.,
ISBN 978-9-56010-059-7, p/bk, $9.99
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Heavy-y-Metal: A través del cristal. Nuevas perspectivas culturales (‘Heavy-and-Metal: Through the looking glass. New cultural perspectives’), Fernando Galicia Poblet (ed.) (2019)
Authors: Sofía Álvarez and Matías Padin MarchioliReview of: Heavy-y-Metal: A través del cristal. Nuevas perspectivas culturales (‘Heavy-and-Metal: Through the looking glass. New cultural perspectives’), Fernando Galicia Poblet (ed.) (2019)
Madrid: Apache Libros, 284 pp.,
ISBN 978-8-41203-453-0, p/bk, €18.95
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