'Transgression and Mundanity: the Global Extreme Metal Music Scene'
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‘TRANSGRESSION AND MUNDANITY: THE GLOBAL EXTREME METAL MUSIC SCENE’ Keith Daniel Harris Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD Goldsmiths College, University of London January 2001 [NB: This is a reconstructed version of the original text from the original chapters, which were not at the time combined into a single document. There may be some minor differences with the formatting of the printed version.] 1 ABSTRACT Extreme Metal musical genres have challenged conventional notions of ‘music’ by developing an impenetrable sound that verges on formless noise. Extreme Metal music is produced, disseminated and consumed by musicians and fans who shun publicity within a set of obscure institutions that ensure the music’s global ‘underground’ circulation. Within the confines of obscurity, musicians and fans explore in a highly ‘transgressive’ manner such themes as death, war and the occult, sometimes flirting with neo-fascist and racist discourses. This thesis develops the concept of ‘scene’ as a method of investigating Extreme Metal music and practice. The concept is theorised through an engagement with a wide variety of literatures, notably subcultural theory, theories of community and critical theories of space. The concept is developed so as to provide an ‘holistic’ method of drawing on a wide variety of incommensurate literatures and conceptual frameworks. Through the concept of scene, this thesis examines how the Extreme Metal scene is ‘experienced’ by its members. Detailed ethnographic, interview and other data are presented from case studies in Israel, Sweden and the United Kingdom. It is argued that scene members explore transgressive experiences that constantly threaten to exceed the confines of the scene. Yet the scene is also a ‘safe’ space, within which members experience the communal pleasures of ‘mundanity’. Members orient their practices so as to experience the pleasures of both transgression and mundanity. They manage the resulting tensions by the practice of ‘reflexive anti-reflexivity’ – the wilful refusal by members to explore the contradictory consequences of their practices. Reflexive anti-reflexivity also ensures that scene members never attend to power relations within the scene, leading to the marginalisation of women and those from certain ethnic backgrounds. The thesis concludes with some reflections about the problematic role of the Extreme Metal and other music scenes in providing means of experiential ‘survival’ within a fraught modernity. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would firstly like to acknowledge the help of the Economic and Social Research Council , whose award (R00429924515) made the completion of this thesis possible. In writing and researching this thesis I have been greatly touched by the support and encouragement I have received from a wide range of people. I would like to thank the many scene members I have met and interviewed in the course of my research. Their willingness to talk and to listen to my sometimes ill-informed theories helped to make the process of research a great pleasure. I would particularly like to thank those who copied tapes for me, sent me CDs and fanzines for free and introduced me to other scene members. Two scene members in particular were immensely influential in steering the course of my research. Nick Terry showed great patience and support at a crucial stage of the research, as I negotiated the process of becoming an informed scene member. Yishai Swaerts gave up his time to ensure that my visit to Israel was a productive and unforgettable experience. The Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths College has been a supportive and intellectually vibrant environment within which to conduct research. I would like to thank in particular my supervisor Professor Chris Jenks for guiding the direction of this thesis with subtlety and good humour. I owe him a great intellectual debt. I also want to thank Professor Jenks’s personal assistant Diana Lockyer for putting up with my anxious telephone calls and e-mails. I would also like to thank those members of the academic ‘scene’ who helped me in developing my ideas and provided me with the stimulation and support that I so desperately needed. The International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) was a welcoming and sustaining community for a new researcher. Motti Regev provided intellectual and financial help during my fieldwork in Israel. Michael Forsman and Ove Sernhede ensured that my fieldwork in Sweden was similarly well supported. I also want to thank those whose helpful suggestions and stimulating conversation sustained me during the long process of completing this thesis, in particular: Les Back, Albert Bell, Andy Bennett, Harris Berger, Alf Bjornberg, Thomas Bossius, Johan Fornäs, Ben Gidley, Paul Gilroy, Phil Hayward, Dave Hesmondhalgh, Paul Hodkinson, Lutgard Mutsaers, Giovanni Porfido, Tim Rapley, Will Straw, Phil Tagg, and all Metal researchers from across the world. Jackie Girling showed great attention to detail in transcribing many of my interviews. James Merino helped me tremendously in meticulously reading through the final draft of the thesis. Of course, all mistakes (grammatical and intellectual) remain my own. 3 I want to express my love and appreciation to my partner, Deborah who has shown great fortitude in coping with me during the frequently stressful process of completing this PhD and has provided an excellent ‘sounding board’ for my emerging ideas. Finally, I want to thank my parents, whose unfailing love and support – emotional, intellectual and financial – has made this PhD possible. The thesis is dedicated to them. 4 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCING THE SCENE Introduction Heavy Metal is one of the most controversial musical cultures ever to have existed. Its notoriety has ensured that even those who have heard very little Heavy Metal music may well have an opinion on it. In the 1980s Heavy Metal was one of the most popular musics in the world, attracted condemnation from right and left and was the subject of media- and state-sponsored ‘moral panics’ (Miller 1988; Richardson 1991). The two principal academic studies of Heavy Metal, by Robert Walser (1993) and Deena Weinstein (2000), show the way in which Heavy Metal in the 1980s provided a counter- hegemonic challenge to dominant culture through playing with some of the most highly charged themes available in Western culture, including the occult, sexual excess and substance abuse. Yet, even at the height of its popularity in the 1980s, Heavy Metal had begun to fragment to form a musical culture that went much further in its musical and lyrical challenge to the ‘acceptable’ norm – Extreme Metal. Extreme Metal1 encompasses a set of closely related musical genres and attendant practices that have challenged the orthodoxies of Heavy Metal. In contrast to Heavy Metal’s notoriety, Extreme Metal is remarkably obscure – so obscure that most people will never hear of it. This is somewhat surprising, given that Extreme Metal is, in every respect, more radical and challenging than Heavy Metal. In the early 1980s ‘Thrash Metal’ bands such as Venom applied the speed and simplicity of Punk to Metal. Thrash engendered a variety of ever more radical Extreme Metal genres. Bands such as Death and Possessed created ‘Death Metal’ out of Thrash Metal. Vocals became less and less intelligible, songwriting became more complex and musical ‘riffs’ (chord sequences) sounded increasingly austere and ‘dark’. By 1986–87 Death Metal as we know it today had emerged as a distinct style. Death Metal, played by bands such as Cannibal Corpse and Morbid Angel, features growled vocals and fast, complicated guitar work with few solos. Death Metal lyrics (decipherable only with the aid of a lyric sheet) deal with themes such as violence, war and the occult. ‘Doom Metal’ also emerged in the 1980s, with bands such as St Vitus and The Obsessed playing extremely slow forms of Metal, often based on long songs with highly repetitive guitar riffs. Doom Metal was refined further in the 1990s, as bands such as My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost employed exaggeratedly ‘depressed’ vocals and tortuous song structures. In the 1980s the term ‘Black Metal’ had begun to be used to refer to overtly Satanic bands and in the early 1990s Norwegian bands such as Emperor developed it as a distinct form of 1 Some examples of Extreme Metal (including all of the songs for which lyrics are quoted in this thesis) are presented on the attached tape, the track-listing to which is presented in appendix four. 5 Extreme Metal. Initially, Black Metal was characterised by extremely rapid playing and an unusually trebly guitar sound, often using very simple riffs, song structures and forms of production. Black Metal has embraced Satanism wholeheartedly and is sometimes (but not always) played by people with quasi- fascistic views. Another Extreme Metal genre of note is ‘Grindcore’. Grindcore was developed in the late 1980s by bands such as Napalm Death through a Punk-influenced radicalisation of Death Metal that utilises extreme speed. Songs are often extremely short – Grindcore albums may contain 40 to 50 songs. The above-mentioned genres are frequently referred to collectively as ‘Extreme Metal’. All share a radicalism and a marked difference from the commercially popular Heavy Metal of the 1980s. All forms of Extreme Metal share fans, musicians and institutions. The difference between Extreme Metal and most other forms of popular music is so pronounced that those who are not its aficionados may not see its considerable internal differences. Whereas Heavy Metal was at least intelligible to its detractors as ‘music’ (albeit of a degraded kind), Extreme Metal may not appear to be music at all and its attendant practices may appear terrifying and bizarre. Extreme Metal has also developed its own institutions and methods of distribution. In contrast to Heavy Metal’s mainstream commercial reach, Extreme Metal came to be disseminated through small-scale ‘underground’ institutions, ‘fanzines’ and the trading of recordings by bands and fans.