This document discusses heavy metal music, focusing on its transgressive nature and how it is positioned as more dangerous than similar genres. It explores theories about the role metal plays for audiences and its politics. Several scholars are cited who have studied the metal subculture and found it to be predominantly male, young, white and blue-collar. The document also discusses how metal emphasizes themes of Dionysian excess and chaos through lyrics and musical styles that push boundaries in terms of speed, volume and social norms.

2. PERF2065 MUSIC:
STYLE & GENRE
WEEK SEVEN | METAL
A ONE WAY TICKET TO HELL AND BACK

3. WHAT THIS LECTURE WILL DO:
• Metal as style, social interaction and industry
• Look at theories relating to metal, focusing on
 The role metal plays for its audience
 The politics of metal
 Metal and transgression

4. TO START:
•Metal is positioned as a more ‘dangerous’ music
than genres that share some of its characteristics
(e.g. country)
•Metal is also not taken as seriously as other similar
genres that can be framed as more ‘political’ (e.g.
punk, rap)
•How can we explain this?

5. WHY IS HEAVY METAL SO…
“Although one would be hard pressed to say
that grunge is somehow “better” than
traditional heavy metal artistically or any
other way, the critics generally like it. The
missing piece of this puzzle is the
demographic profile of the audience: middle
class, college-oriented, and otherwise
socially respectable and desirable kids with
whom critics prefer to identify.” - Kotarba

6. BRIEF AND INCOMPLETE HISTORY OF METAL
• First identified as a genre in late 1960s/ early 1970s
with bands like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple
• Slow development through 70s, with bands and
audience denigrated by ‘serious’ rock publications
• By the end of 1980s, the audience is huge and the
music has diversified greatly

13. WEINSTEIN – HEAVY METAL: THE MUSIC
AND ITS CULTURE (1991)
First in-depth sociological study of the metal subculture
finds 4 dominant features
1. Male
2. Young
3. White
4. Blue-collar
People falling outside these categories aren’t excluded, but
need to conform to metal ‘standards’, e.g. of dress.

14. WALSER – RUNNING WITH THE DEVIL:
POWER, GENDER AND MADNESS IN HM
MUSIC (1993)
Takes a musicological approach
• In particular shows close associations between metal and classical
music
• “while it is clear that some heavy metal music does articulate
struggle, madness, violence, and disorientation, metal does
not invent or inject these affective states; instead it mediates
social tensions, working to provide its fans with a sense of
spiritual depth and social integration.” (xvi)

15. “Heavy metal revolves around identification with
power, intensity of experience, freedom and
community. Musically, a dialectic is often set up
between the potentially oppressive power of the bass,
drums and rhythm guitar, and the liberating,
empowering vehicle of the guitar solo or the
resistance of the voice. The feeling of freedom created
by the freedom of motion of the guitar solos and fills
can be at various times supported, defended, or
threatened by the physical power of the bass and the
violence of the drums (…) The solo positions the
listener: he or she can identify with the controlling
power without feeling threatened because the solo
can transcend anything.” (53-54)

18. KEITH KAHN-HARRIS – EXTREME METAL:
MUSIC AND CULTURE ON THE EDGE (2007)
“Within extreme metal, nothing matters as much as music.
No difference, conflict or debate can ever be allowed to
overshadow this. That is not to say that difference cannot be
tolerated and debated within the scene. In fact, in the 1990s,
ethnicity has been an important musical resource in black
metal. Furthermore, racist and fascist discourse may be
vociferously challenged, particularly by those who have a
closer relationship to punk. Yet pursuing such debates
cannot be allowed to happen as an end in itself and no
difference can ever be elevated in importance above the
essential ‘musicality’ of the scene. Non-musical debates raise
the spectre of ‘politics’ and this is seen as absolutely
antithetical to ‘music’.” (Kahn-Harris, 103)

19. THE POLITICS OF METAL
“The members of the metal subculture normally do
not have the sense of themselves as political actors
in the way that the punks did. This is a major reason
why they are not admired by the graduates of the
counterculture who became the dominant popular
music critics. In the metal subculture, blue-collar
style and sentiments are tied to political attitudes,
but these are not progressive in any conventional
sense, basically amounting to a cynical animosity
towards those in positions of governmental
authority.” (Weinstein 115)

20. MAIN THEMES OF METAL
• Dionysian – essentially, sex, drugs and
rock and roll!
• Chaos – death, destruction, the
biological body, the occult, paranoia,
alienation

22. METALLICA - ONE
I can't remember anything
Can't tell if this is true or a dream
Deep down inside I feel to scream
This terrible silence stops in me
Now that the war is through with me I'm
waking up, I cannot see
That there is not much left of me
Nothing is real but pain now
Hold my breath as I wish for death
Oh please God, wake me
Back in the womb it's much too real
In pumps life that I must feel
But can't look forward to reveal
Look to the time when I live
Fed through the tube that sticks in me
Just like a wartime novelty.
Tied to machines that make me be
Cut this life off from me
Hold my breath as I wish for death
Oh please God, wake me
Now the world is gone I'm just one
Oh God, help me hold my breath as I wish for
death
Oh please God, help me
Darkness imprisoning me
All that I see
Absolute horror
I cannot live
I cannot die
Trapped in myself
Body my holding cell
Landmine Has taken my sight
Taken my speech
Taken my hearing Taken my arms Taken my legs
Taken my soul
Left me with life in hell

23. PICASSO – GUERICA (1937)

24. THE POLITICS OF METAL
• So metal contains themes that can be thought of as
conventionally political (anti-government, anti-war,
environmental issues)
• BUT the ‘reflexive anti-reflexivity’ – ‘metal scene
members’ deliberate refusal to interrogate the political
implications of the music they produce and consume’
(Phillipov, 2012, 58) - identified by Kahn-Harris means this
is never explicitly focused on
• (Nor are the more problematic elements in the music!)

25. METAL & TRANSGRESSION
“In broad terms, wherever it is found and
however it is played, metal tends to be
dominated by a distinctive commitment to
‘transgressive’ themes and musicality” (Hjelm
et al, 2013, 4)

26. METAL TRANSGRESSION: MUSICAL
• FASTER! SHORTER!
• Trad metal + hardcore unlocks the sounds Thrash, Speed
& Metal, Black Metal

28. METAL TRANSGRESSION: MUSICAL
• SLOWER!
• Doom and drone metal
• Sunn O))) – Alice

29. METAL TRANSGRESSION: MUSICAL
• LOUDER!
• Manowar hold the world record for the loudest concert –
129 db at a show in 1984

30. METAL TRANSGRESSION: SOCIAL
• More than any other musical genre, metal is where you will
find social norms about what can be said or depicted being
challenged
• References to Satan in early metal
• More recently – everything! (sex, violence, religion, drug
use…and that’s just ‘grindcore’)
• And…

31. METAL ESSENTIALISM
• Metal privileges metal over all
else. People can fly under the
radar by transgressing
everything else except metal!
• Still LOTS of work to do.