Heavy Fundamentalisms

Edited by

Rosemary Hill & Karl Spracklen

Heavy Fundametalisms: Music, Metal and Politics

Critical Issues

Series Editors Dr Robert Fisher Dr Nancy Billias

Advisory Board Dr Alejandro Cervantes-Carson Dr Peter Mario Kreuter Professor Margaret Chatterjee Martin McGoldrick Dr Wayne Cristaudo Revd Stephen Morris Mira Crouch Professor John Parry Dr Phil Fitzsimmons Paul ReynoldsProfessor Asa Kasher Professor Peter Twohig Owen Kelly Professor S Ram Vemuri Revd Dr Kenneth Wilson, O.B.E

A Critical Issues research and publications project. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ The Ethos Hub ‘Heavy Fundametalisms’

Heavy Fundametalisms: Music, Metal and Politics
Edited by

Rosemary Hill and Karl Spracklen

Inter-Disciplinary Press
Oxford, United Kingdom© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2010 http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/

The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary andmultidisciplinary publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Inter-Disciplinary Press. Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland, Oxfordshire. OX29 8HR, United Kingdom. +44 (0)1993 882087

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. Acatalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-84888-017-7 First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2010. First Edition.

Table of Contents
Introduction Rosemary Hill and Karl Spracklen PART I Philosophy and Aesthetics Metal Community and Aesthetics of Identity Igor Gafarov Living for Music, Dying for Life: The SelfDestructive Lifestyle inthe Heavy Metal Culture Daniel Frandsen The Common Vernacular of Power Relations in Heavy Metal and Christian Fundamentalist Performances Christine A. James PART II Nationalities and Warriors Scandinavian Metal Attack: The Power of Northern Europe in Extreme Metal Imke von Helden White Power, Black Metal and Me: Reflections on Composing the Nation Caroline Lucas Machine Guns and Machine Gun Drums:Heavy Metal’s Portrayal of War Samir Puri Part III Fans and Communities ‘Den Mothers’ and ‘Band Whores’: Gender, Sex and Power in the Death Metal Scene Sonia Vasan 3 vii

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‘I’m a Metalhead’: The Representation of Women Letter Writers in Kerrang! Magazine Rosemary Hill Gorgoroth’s Gaahl’s Gay! Power, Gender and the Communicative Discourse of the Black Metal SceneKarl Spracklen Communication Function in the Estonian Metal Subculture Lii Araste Part IV Technologies and Musicologies Louder Than Hell: Power, Volume and the Brain Colin A. McKinnon Dissonance and Dissidents: The Flattened Supertonic Within and Without of Heavy Metal Music Sarha Moore Intelligent Equalisation Principles and Techniques for Minimising Masking when Mixing the Extreme Modern MetalGenre Mark Mynett, Jonathan Wakefield and Rupert Till

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Introduction Rosemary Hill and Karl Spracklen
Heavy metal is a genre of dense sounds and ideologies: as a site for academic discussion it has often been ignored, but recent years have seen increasing curiosity as to what we can understand about metal and what we can learn from metal. The history ofheavy metal music as a popular music genre has been examined in detail by a growing number of researchers such as Weinstein, Walser and Kahn-Harris. Metal can be understood as a selfreferencing community in which action is communicative. Much of the metal scene exists outside of traditional or modern social structures; its meaning and purpose is the subject of discourse and debate. However, in...