Global Metal Music and Culture This book defines the key ideas, scholarly debates, and research activities that have contributed to the formation of the international and interdisciplinary field of Metal Studies. Drawing on insights from a wide range of disciplines including popular music, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, philos- ophy, and ethics, this volume offers new and innovative research on metal musicology, global/local scenes studies, fandom, gender and metal identity, metal media, and commerce. Offering a wide-ranging focus on bands, scenes, periods, and sounds, contributors explore topics such as the riff-based song writing of classic heavy metal bands and their modern equivalents, and the musical-aesthetics of Grindcore, Doom and Drone metal, Death metal, and Progressive metal. They interrogate production technologies, sound engi- neering, album artwork and band promotion, logos and merchandising, t-shirt and jewelry design, and the social class and cultural identities of the fan communities that define the global metal music economy and subcul- tural scene. The volume explores how the new academic discipline of metal studies was formed, while also looking forward to the future of metal music and its relationship to metal scholarship and fandom. With an international range of contributors, this volume will appeal to scholars of popular music, cultural studies, social psychology and sociology, as well as those interested in metal communities around the world. Andy R. Brown is Senior Lecturer in Media Communications at Bath Spa University, UK. Karl Spracklen is Professor of Leisure Studies at Leeds Metropolitan Uni- versity, UK. Keith Kahn-Harris is honorary research fellow and associate lecturer at Birkbeck College, UK. Niall W.R. Scott is Senior Lecturer in Ethics at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. Routledge Studies in Popular Music 1 Popular Music Fandom 8 Popular Music Industries Identities, Roles and Practices and the State Edited by Mark Duffett Policy Notes Shane Homan, Martin Cloonan, 2 Britishness, Popular Music, and and Jen Cattermole National Identity The Making of Modern Britain 9 Goth Music Irene Morra From Sound to Subculture Isabella van Elferen and Jeffrey 3 Lady Gaga and Popular Music Andrew Weinstock Performing Gender, Fashion, and Culture 10 Queerness in Pop Music Edited by Martin Iddon and Aesthetics, Gender Norms, Melanie L. Marshall and Temporality Stan Hawkins 4 Sites of Popular Music Heritage Memories, Histories, Places 11 Global Glam and Edited by Sara Cohen, Robert Popular Music Knifton, Marion Leonard, and Style and Spectacle from the Les Roberts 1970s to the 2000s Edited by Ian Chapman and 5 Queerness in Heavy Henry Johnson Metal Music Metal Bent 12 Global Metal Music Amber R. Clifford-Napoleone and Culture Current Directions in 6 David Bowie Metal Studies Critical Perspectives Edited by Andy R. Brown, Karl Edited by Eoin Devereux, Aileen Spracklen, Keith Kahn-Harris Dillane, and Martin J. Power and Niall W.R. Scott 7 Globalization and Popular Music in South Korea Sounding Out K-Pop Michael Fuhr Global Metal Music and Culture Current Directions in Metal Studies Edited by Andy R. Brown, Karl Spracklen, Keith Kahn-Harris and Niall W.R. Scott First published 2016 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Brown, Andy R., editor. | Spracklen, Karl, editor. | Scott, Niall W. R., editor. | Kahn-Harris, Keith, 1971– editor. Title: Global metal music and culture: current directions in metal studies / edited by Andy R. Brown, Karl Spracklen, Keith Kahn-Harris and Niall W.R. Scott. Description: New York; London: Routledge, 2016. | Series: Routledge studies in popular music | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015041377 Subjects: LCSH: Heavy metal (Music)—History and criticism. | Music—Social aspects. Classification: LCC ML3534 .G575 2016 | DDC 781.66—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041377 ISBN: 978-1-138-82238-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-74281-6 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra Ronnie James Dio (1942–2010) Jon Lord (1941–2012) Jeff Hanneman (1964–2013) Philphy Animal Taylor (1954–2015) Lemmy Kilmister (1945–2015) This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Figures and Tables xi Acknowledgments xvii 1 Introduction: Global Metal Music and Culture and Metal Studies 1 ANDY R. BROWN, KARL SPRACKLEN, KEITH KAHN-HARRIS AND NIALL W.R. SCOTT 2 Reflections on Metal Studies 22 DEENA WEINSTEIN PART I Metal Musicology 3 Iron and Steel: Forging Heavy Metal’s Song Structures or the Impact of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest on Metal’s Musical Language 35 DIETMAR ELFLEIN 4 ‘It’s Like a Mach Piece, Really’: Critiquing the Neo-Classical Aesthetic of ’80s heavy Metal Music 50 GARETH HERITAGE 5 The Distortion Paradox: Analyzing Contemporary Metal Production 68 MARK MYNETT PART II Metal Music Scenes 6 Voracious Souls: Race and Place in the Formation of the San Francisco Bay Area Thrash Scene 89 KEVIN FELLEZS viii Contents 7 The Unforgiven: A Reception Study of Metallica Fans and ‘Sell-out’ Accusations 106 ERIC SMIALEK 8 Use Your Mind?: Embodiments of Protest, Transgression, and Grotesque Realism in British Grindcore 125 GABBY RICHES PART III Metal Demographics and Identity 9 The Numbers of the Beast: Surveying Iron Maiden’s Global Tribe 145 JEAN-PHILIPPE URY-PETESCH 10 The Social Characteristics of the Contemporary Metalhead: The Hellfest Survey 167 CHRISTOPHE GUIBERT AND GÉRÔME GUIBERT 11 Un(su)Stained Class? Figuring out the Identity Politics of Heavy Metal’s Class Demographics 190 ANDY R. BROWN PART IV Metal Markets and Commerce 12 Tunes from the Land of the Thousand Lakes: Early Years of Internationalization in Finnish Heavy Metal 209 TONI-MATTI KARJALAINEN AND EERO SIPILÄ 13 Death Symbolism in Metal Jewelry: Circuits of Consumption from Subculture to the High Street 227 CLAIRE BARRATT PART V Metal and Gender Politics 14 ‘Getting My Soul Back’: Empowerment Narratives and Identities among Women in Extreme Metal in North Carolina 245 JAMIE E. PATTERSON 15 Gender and Power in the Death Metal Scene: A Social Exchange Perspective 261 SONIA VASAN Contents ix 16 Masculine Pleasure? Women’s Encounters with Hard Rock and Metal Music 277 ROSEMARY LUCY HILL PART VI Metal and Cultural Studies 17 Retro Rock and Heavy History 297 SIMON POOLE 18 Transforming Detail into Myth: Indescribable Experience and Mystical Discourse in Drone Metal 311 OWEN COGGINS PART VII Metal Futures 19 The Future of Metal Is Bright and Hell Bent for Genre Destruction: A Response to Keith Kahn-Harris 333 ToM o’BoYLE AND NIALL W.R. SCOTT 20 A Reply to Niall W.R. Scott and Tom o’Boyle 343 KEITH KAHN-HARRIS Notes on the Editors and Contributors 351 Index 359 This page intentionally left blank List of Figures and Tables Figures 3.1 The Hard Rock–Metal Continuum. 35 4.1 A Chart Showing the Harmony Used in the Chorus to ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’. The group of four chords indicated with ‘*’ are successively repeated. The jazzy harmony, unusual in early-1970s heavy metal, is apparent because of the inclusion of 7th and 9th chords. 52 4.2 An Excerpt Showing a Portion of the Bridge’s Guitar Riff from Black Sabbath’s Song ‘Iron Man’ (1970). Introduced by two power chords, the riff enters on a B power chord using the B blues scale with an added chromatic passing note of A# in bars 3 and 4. The function of the A# is to raise the seventh degree of the scale, thereby creating a major tonality that contrasts the blues feel of the riff. 53 4.3 and 4.4 Two Transcriptions of the Two Organ Rises from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565. 4.3 is from bar 2, and 4.4 is from bar 10. 54 4.5 A Transcription of the Organ Rise from Manowar’s ‘The Crown and the Ring’. The organ rise is essentially an E minor spread chord ranging five octaves. The affect of the E minor chord played over this range elicits a feeling of awe not unlike the feeling evoked by Bach’s ‘Toccata’. 54 4.6 The First Motivic Development in Canon in D. Played on Violin I, the motif is later distributed to the 2nd and 3rd violins in canon. In this example, violin II is playing the original descending stepwise melody. 55 4.7 The Intro Guitar Riff to ‘Goodbye to Romance’. Similar in melodic contour, Pachelbel’s influence can be seen in the stepwise melodic contour and accompanying bass countermelody. Notice the pitches in the descending bass line are the same as those played by Violin II in bar 1 (4.6). 56 4.8 A Table Showing the Harmony for Canon in D. 57 xii List of Figures and Tables 4.9 A Table Showing the Harmony Used during the Verse of ‘Goodbye to Romance’. Although there are differences to the harmonic structure of Canon in D (4.8) there are many similarities, such as the use of the Bm9, F#m7, and G6.