CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES: THE ROLE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS IN PUNK/METAL CROSSOVER

Tristan Leighton

A Thesis

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

May 2021

Committee:

Jeremy Wallach, Advisor

Esther Clinton

Katherine Meizel

© 2021

Tristan Leighton

All Rights Reserved iii

ABSTRACT

Jeremy Wallach, Advisor

The heavy metal scene has a long history of crossover with punk rock, with many subgenres of heavy metal being influenced by punk. Previous research on punk and metal understood the punk subculture to be strongly tied with the middle class, while the heavy metal subculture was understood to be mostly working class. Over the past twenty years, however, the class demographic of the heavy metal subculture has shifted to be primarily middle class. This thesis is an attempt to understand how heavy metal’s shift in class demographics has influenced crossover between punk rock and heavy metal musics. To understand the relationships between class, punk rock, and heavy metal, this thesis makes use of Steve Waksman’s metal/punk continuum and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of distinction and cultural capital, as well as lyrical analysis and ethnographic research conducted in between July 2019 and February 2020 in the heavy metal scene in the greater Detroit area. In this thesis, I dissect the differences between heavy metal and punk rock. When viewed as Weberian ideal types, I found that, as a genre, heavy metal tends to avoid overt discussions of politics, whereas punk rock openly engages with politics. I argue that the heavy metal subculture has retained a working class habitus, which is seen in metal’s avoidance of overt discussion of politics. This working class habitus in the heavy metal scene is in tension with the middle class habitus of many metalheads. As a result of this, middle class metalheads use various techniques to navigate this tension, including enjoying metal music which more openly discusses politics due to punk rock influences. Finally, I argue that the subgenre of metalcore, a hybrid of hardcore punk and heavy metal, is a product of the middle class fanbase in heavy metal, as it focuses on topics such as sociopolitical troubles and iv mental health. In doing so, metalcore reflects the lived experiences of the middle class metalhead.

v

To my wife, Katie Jacobi.

Your love and support made this possible.

I love you hooman. vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As I write these acknowledgments I am overcome with the volume of people who I have to thank. There are more than I can list, and I tried. I have a list next to me as I write, and I know

I am forgetting people. Regardless, the first person I must thank is my wife Katie Jacobi. She has been by my side throughout the whole adventure that is graduate school. She supported me throughout every late night, every anxiety attack, every time I wanted to quit, and myriad other difficulties. She was also by my side celebrating every minor victory I had, even if I felt it wasn’t worth celebrating. She has been the ultimate cheerleader. I also have to thank her for being ok with moving to Ohio, as she is a Michigan native who moved to enemy territory just so I could go on this adventure.

I have to acknowledge and thank my informants Humbaba, Epirus, Chris, Spike, Dizzy,

Blackbird, Goku, Anthrowych, Raven, and the Engineer. I was unable to use all of your responses in this research, but I owe each of you a debt of gratitude. I learned how to be a better interviewer and researcher from each interview I did, and each interview helped shape the research I did. This thesis would not exist without your generosity.

I am also grateful for the time and expertise my thesis committee has provided me. Dr.

Jeremy Wallach, Dr. Esther Clinton, and Dr. Katherine Meizel. Words also cannot express how thankful I am for the guidance they provided me over the course of writing this thesis. Word also cannot express how grateful I am for their patience, for reading over my very rough drafts, for all the corrections and revisions they provided. The time and effort they have put into helping me with this project has deeply shaped what this project has become, and it has deeply shaped me into a better scholar.

I also wish to thank the Stoddard-O’Neil fund, the Popular Culture Studies Department, vii and the beating heart of the department Beka Patterson. I am grateful for the funding I received from the Stoddard O’Neil fund; without it I would not have had the resources to do this research.

I am also deeply grateful to the whole of the popular culture studies department and all the professors in it. It is good to know there is a quirky department that thinks looking at popular culture is not weird. I am also eternally grateful to Rebekah Patterson. As the graduate secretary for the Popular Culture department, Beka was the first person I dealt with at this school. She was also the facilitator for almost everything I did here, without her help an absent-minded egghead like me would have had no chance at navigating the logistics of graduate school.

I also have to give thanks to my family. My father Dr. Richard Leighton, my mother

Dawn Leighton, and my sister Sara Leighton were indispensable in getting this done as well. Just like my wife, my mother was always willing to talk when I needed to vent, to cry, or just to unwind. Sometimes you just need to call mom. Words cannot express how thankful I am that she is always there. My father was also always there, but he played a different role. Having known me my whole life, having faced many of the same difficulties, and having survived a PhD program, my dad was able to give me the advice I needed to get past a lot of my mental roadblocks and difficulties I had when writing. He always said that he knew I could finish this thesis and was always willing to help me get past my own demons. My sister, Sara, played a very unique role that I am thankful for. She was always willing to celebrate my successes, but what she did for me was something only a sibling can. When I really needed it she could give me the proverbial swift kick in the butt that I needed. I can’t express how lucky I am to have them as a family.

Finally I would like to thank my friends who helped see me through this: Josh Smith, Dee

Elliott, Joe Busch, Peter Burch. Josh’s friendship and the hours he spent with me reading for our viii coursework and group writing our thesis with me have helped me to no end. Dee’s enthusiasm for her thesis topic, the cryptid mothman, served as an inspiration to me at times. Her willingness to speak at length about her topic with unmatched enthusiasm and listen with the same level of enthusiasm as I talked about my thesis inspired me to keep going. I also have to thank Joe Busch for the amount of time he spent just chatting with me at his store, The Stacked Deck. Those conversations were some of the few instances where I was able to turn off my brain and not think about my thesis, giving me the space I needed to return to work refreshed. Finally there is Peter

Burch, my best friend since high school. Peter didn’t help me at all as I wrote this thesis, but without him I would not have been able to write this project. The countless hours of discussions, debates, and arguments we have had over the years helped me develop many of the analytical skills that have used as I wrote this thesis.

I know there are countless others I could thank and acknowledge, as I have been helped by many in the path I took to entering the Popular Culture Studies Department at BGSU, and as I wrote this thesis. Unfortunately to thank everyone would make an acknowledgments section that is longer than this thesis. No matter if you were mentioned here or not, I am eternally indebted to all who have helped me. As I understand it, this is not my thesis, it is our thesis, as I would not have made it as far as I have without all the help I have received along the way.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Defining Punk and Metal ...... 3

Theoretical Background ...... 4

Methodology and Location ...... 6

Ethics Statement...... 7

Chapter Outline ...... 7

CHAPTER I. PUNK, METAL, AND THE WEBERIAN IDEAL TYPE ...... 12

The Weberian Ideal Type ...... 12

Heavy Metal’s Worldview ...... 14

Heavy Metal’s Unity in Disparity ...... 15

Heavy Metal’s “Rejection” of Politics ...... 19

A Unified Philosophy of Punk Rock ...... 25

Conclusion ...... 31

CHAPTER II. CLASS, CULTURAL CAPITAL, PUNK, AND HEAVY METAL ...... 32

Cultural Capital, Subcultural Capital, and Habitus ...... 33

Rock Critics, Punk, Metal, and Cultural Capital ...... 39

Beer, Heavy Metal’s Habitus, and the Working Class ...... 46

Middle Class Metalheads, Metal’s Working-Class Habitus, and Politics ...... 49

Conclusion ...... 54

CHAPTER III. ALLOY GENRES AND THE METAL/PUNK CONTINUUM ...... 55

A Brief History of Metal and Punk Crossover...... 56

Clinton-Wallach Multisubjectivity Hypothesis ...... 61 x

The Alloy Genres and the Metal/Punk Continuum...... 62

Metalcore and the Middle Class ...... 69

Clinton-Wallach Multisubjectivity Hypothesis Revisited ...... 71

Chris, Spike, and Metalcore Lyrics...... 72

Sociopolitical Issues and Metalcore ...... 74

Mental Health and Metalcore...... 76

Conclusion ...... 80

CONCLUSION ...... 81

Chapter Summary ...... 82

Discussion ...... 84

REFERENCES ...... 87 Running Head: CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 11

INTRODUCTION

On August 23rd, 2019 I went to the CD release party for the Detroit-based grindcore band

Shock Narcotic. It was at the Sanctuary, a punk and metal venue in Hamtramck, a suburb of

Detroit. It was, without a doubt, one of the most interesting shows I have been to since I began listening to heavy metal in 2009, because it was the first time I had gone to a show where a grindcore band was headlining. That meant that bands representing genres of music I didn’t listen to, such as punk and hardcore, had a welcome spot on the concert ticket. That was something my decade of metal concerts didn’t fully prepare me for. While most of the night featured bands that played thrash and death metal, genres that I love, the opening band

SkumRotten was a hardcore punk band.

This was one of, at most, a handful of times I saw a hardcore band in concert, and because I was doing fieldwork for this project it was the first time I had closely observed a hardcore band and their audience during a performance. While it was heavy and rhythmic, just like the metal I normally listened to, it was ever so different. The vocalist wasn’t shouting like I was used to, it was rawer, almost like the vocalist was just yelling. The vocalist of SkumRotten also eschewed the normal aesthetic of heavy metal by wearing khaki trousers and a long sleeve black button-down shirt, and he was flailing around on stage in a way that was unlike any metal vocalist I had ever seen. It was good, but I didn’t get it. Thankfully I was in a minority who didn’t get the music, because although it was the opening band the small crowd that had shown up early was loving it. However they were acting differently too. The mosh pit was more energetic and chaotic than I normally saw at metal shows. I knew it was because SkumRotten was a punk band, and I didn’t understand it, but it was fun. CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 12

I start with this anecdote because it was during SkumRotten’s set that I had the thought of including punk rock in this project. At the time I was looking at writing about the differences in the way young metalheads and old metalheads understood the scene. I had conducted a few interviews and been to a few concerts by then, but I had a feeling that it was just not going to work out. I needed to talk to some of the old guard of the metal scene, and I was just not finding them at the concerts I went to. So when I saw this punk band I did not understand it at all, but I found what I was looking for. I had known that punk and metal were related, each having influenced the other for decades, so I decided to look into the role class played in their relationship.

Traditionally, the heavy metal scene is discussed in terms of being a primarily working- class demographic, acting as a space for the expression of rebellious energies of the primarily young, white, male, and blue-collar members of the scene (Berger 1999, Weinstein 2000). At the same time, punk rock has always been a location for a similar expression of rebellious energies from an audience that also consists primarily of young white men, yet in the case of punk, the middle class is the dominant demographic in the US (Rapport, 2020). While these have been the starting block for the two subcultures, sometime in the past two decades there has been a shift in the demographics of the heavy metal scene, with the middle class acting as the core demographic

(Smialek & St-Laurent, 2018).

With the punk and heavy metal scenes occupying a similar class demographic the question arose for me: why are members of the metal scene choosing to join the metal scene as opposed to the punk rock scene? While I did not find an answer to that question, it sent me down the path of investigating crossover genres, those being genres that were born from the merging of punk and metal. I ultimately came to understanding that the crossover genres, namely metalcore, CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 13 exist because of the transition to the middle class. The blending of punk and metal created a genre that embodies the experience of the middle-class metalhead.

Defining Punk and Metal

While many of the terms used in this project will be defined when used, two terms need to be defined at the outset: “punk” and “metal.” While these terms seem to be axiomatic, providing definitions will ensure that there is no confusion regarding these key terms. The choice to use the term metal, as opposed to the more commonly known term heavy metal, is partially personal and partially academic. In my everyday life, I generally use the term “metal” as opposed to “heavy metal.” This is a practice I undoubtedly picked up from the metal scene, which frequently dropped the “heavy” descriptor, with members just calling the music “metal.”

In the academic world, something similar has happened, with the term “metal” being used with greater frequency. It would appear to be a simple aesthetic decision, but the term “heavy metal” is not synonymous with all metal music. Academics have made distinction between the terms heavy metal and extreme metals (Kahn-Harris 2007, Phillipov 2012). The term “extreme metal” is used to refer to a collection of metal genres, including but not limited to death metal, grindcore, and black metal. They are distinguished by the extreme level of transgressive qualities they display, that is, the extent to which they break social rules and expectations. On the other hand, the term “heavy metal” tends to be reserved for the subgenres that “share a clear lineage with the early forms of the music during the late 1960s and early 70s” (Kennedy 2018 P96). In this project, the term “metal” will be used to discuss the totality of both extreme metal and heavy metal, as well as any genres which are considered to be metal even if they do not fall under the labels of “heavy metal” or “extreme metal.” An example of these metal genres that are neither

“heavy metal” or “extreme metal” is folk metal. Folk metal blends the metal music with folk CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 14 music. While some folk metal does blend elements of extreme metal with folk music, it isn’t an inherent part of the folk metal sound.

On the other side of the sonic fence is “punk” and “hardcore.” My history with punk has always been a bit limited. Aside from listening to Green Day and Good Charlotte when I was in middle school, I tended to avoid it, which is likely evident based on the opening anecdote. For most of my life punk was defined as “something I know when I hear it”. Thankfully, the definition for punk used in this project is slightly more rigorous. This thesis follows the British narrative of what punk is. Punk culture has roots in the US and the UK, arising almost simultaneously. However the cultural, social, and economic differences between the US and the

UK shaped the formation of the punk scene in different ways on the two sides of the Atlantic. In the US punk started as a “middle class rebellion against the boredom and the phoniness of suburbia”(Ambrosch, 2015, p.232), whereas in Britain “early punk was mainly a movement of frustrated working-class youths who . . were facing a declining economy and rising unemployment”(2015, p. 232). Even more important to this project, early British punk was more overtly political than its American counterpart. In this project the term “punk” will follow in the

British narrative of what punk is, and it will refer to the collection of bands which either belong to or trace their heritage directly back to the first wave of punk which occurred from 1976-1978, follow the same general sonic and lyrical patterns, and are not also claimed by other musical forms (Laing, 2015).

Theoretical Background

The literature regarding the interplay between punk rock and heavy metal as music genres and scenes is uncharacteristically sparse in comparison to the width and breadth of writing on each individually. Although the interplay and cross-fertilization between the two CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 15 genres have been briefly documented in multiple sources, it is not interrogated at length in these works (Kahn-Harris, 2007; Walser, 199; Weinstein, 2001). This lack of attention to the relationship between the two genres is exemplified by Kahn-Harris when he writes “Indeed, there is an entire genre, metalcore, based on the cross-fertilization between the two scenes.

Despite this, the two scenes remain distinct” (Kahn-Harris, 2007, p. 23).

This dismissal of the depth of the relationship between punk and heavy metal has meant that their full relationship has gone unexplored. Currently, there is only one major work that explores these links, This Ain’t the Summer of Love by Steve Waksman. Rather than see punk and metal as diametrically opposed, Waksman posits that the two genres are situated on a

“metal/punk continuum” with differences that are not “essential characteristics that have defined the two genres, but have arisen through the historical process of contesting the value and definition of rock” (Waksman, 2009, p. 308). Waksman’s work, although useful, is not without its limitations. With his research being archive-based, Waksman has access to only the limited secondary data that exists relating to the relationship between punk and heavy metal. This allowed Waksman to do a good job of exploring the history of rock music from the 1970s through the mid-1990s, yet there is no inclusion of data after 1996. The exclusion of archival data from the past 20 years prevented the exploration of new crossover subgenres such as metalcore and deathcore, which add more credence to the metal punk continuum.

This thesis will also pull from the work of Bourdieu. Specifically, I will be relying upon

Bourdieu’s theories regarding class distinctions and taste. In the introduction to Distinction: A

Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Bourdieu writes, “Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects, classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 16 which their position in the objective classifications is expressed or betrayed” (1984, p. 6). This framework, which ties taste and class together, can be used to explore the ways in which the punk rock and heavy metal scenes have both differentiated and cooperated in both contemporary and historical contexts. Specifically, this framework will allow me to interrogate the degree to which members of the metal scene accept or reject punk rock in a manner which accounts for the working-class ethos of heavy metal, which differed significantly from the punk ethos (Bourdieu,

1984).

Methodology and Location

To provide data for analysis using the aforementioned theorists, I relied upon interviews and field observations, as well as textual analysis of metal and punk songs. As part of my fieldwork, I attended heavy metal concerts in Southeast Michigan, starting in late July 2019 and ending in early February 2020. Although I had a few research dates set for March of 2020, they were unfortunately canceled due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The rationale for selecting southeast Michigan to conduct my fieldwork is that, having been a member of the scene, I have contacts who helped me network within the scene.

While there were many venues in Southeast Michigan that host metal and punk events, I focused my attention on two in particular, The Token Lounge and The Sanctuary. Located in

Hamtramck, a small city surrounded by the city of Detroit, The Sanctuary became the main venue I visited. A relatively young venue, having only opened in 2014, The Sanctuary caters to both the punk and metal scenes, and while the Sanctuary is a young venue, it has become the main hub of the local metal scene in Southeast Michigan (Sanctuary, n.d.). The Token Lounge, on the other hand, has been a concert venue since 1971 and caters to a mix of local and national CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 17 acts, with an emphasis on hard rock and heavy metal, although the acts at the Token Lounge are not exclusively in those genres (The Token Lounge, n.d.).

Ethics statement

As the informants interviewed for this research are all in the Southeast Michigan metal scene, it was important to ensure that they felt free to speak without fear of repercussions. To ensure this, all informants were assigned pseudonyms, and any informant’s potentially identifiable information, such as band names, were changed as well. Additionally, each quoted informant was contacted and given a chance to provide feedback on how their quotes were used.

This was done to ensure that they were properly represented in this work.

Chapter Outline

In the first chapter of this thesis, I seek to establish the differences between metal and punk. As genres and subcultures, punk and metal have a long history of interacting and influencing one another. To account for this, the focus of this chapter will be on punk and metal as idealized genres. While this does make the arguments in the chapter slightly contrived, it allows for the ways in which punk and metal differ to be clearly elucidated. Even more than the sonic differences, the genres and subcultures differed in two key ways: their ideologies and how sociopolitical issues are handled.

One of the most significant ways in which metal and punk differ is in how their worldviews are organized. As a collection of many different subgenres of music, which are sometimes only loosely connected, metal has developed a worldview that can be understood as

“unity in disparity” (Elovaara & Bardine, 2017). The idea of “unity within disparity” can be understood as how, despite the vast differences in sound, the underlying similarities create a way for all these disparate forms to unite under one umbrella, regardless of how wide a difference CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 18 there may be. This contrasts with punk, as although punk does have many subgenres it holds a singular unified philosophy that can be traced throughout all of it. This singular philosophy can be understood as a philosophy which celebrates individualism, seeks to reveal power as an exploitative force, and rejects unchallenged traditions (Kristiansen, Blaney, Chidester, &

Simonds, 2012).

A second significant way in which punk and metal differ is their approach to politics and social issues. Although there is engagement with political and social issues in both, the way they are approached is influenced by the aforementioned worldviews. As befitting the disparate unity seen in heavy metal, metal discusses a plethora of political and social issues in vastly different ways. While the lyrics seen in heavy metal will unpack, critique, and opine on various political and social issues, it is rarely done in a very direct way where the lyricist is openly telling you their thoughts. On the other hand, punk is a more direct music. The lyrics of punk directly opine on political and social issues, with the lyricist directly stating what they think and what they believe needs to be done about whatever political or social issue is focused on.

With punk and metal established as different ideal types, the second chapter of this thesis turns to the topic of cultural capital, punk, and heavy metal. Cultural capital, which will be explained in more detail in chapter two, along with other related concepts, is the set of skills, knowledges, and preferences that are acquired through membership in a particular social class

(Bourdieu, 1984). Cultural capital is related to the larger questions posed in this project about metal and punk because of how knowledge of these two musics are valued.

In their nascent days, punk and heavy metal were both musics of the working class and over time both transitioned to having a primary audience that is solidly middle class. The speed at which this happened was not the same, and for much of its existence, heavy metal was more CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 19 aligned with the working class while punk was more associated with the middle class. The principle reason for this discrepancy is the way music critics reacted to metal and punk. In a nutshell, music critics lauded punk as a rebellious and resistant force which worked against the bourgeoise cultural hegemony (Philipov, 2012). In doing so, they presented the music and ideologies of punk as something to be valued, and as they were in a position to act as ideological gatekeepers, punk was elevated as a result. Metal, on the other hand, was lambasted by the same critics who regarded it as an unintelligent music filled with sound and fury, but little in the form of redeeming features (Rath, 2015).

Because the metal scene retained a heavy working-class demographic, several patterns of behavior developed in the metal scene which could be understood as working-class signifiers.

One of the most prominent I saw in the course of researching this project was the way alcohol was treated in the scene. As I will discuss later, the alcohol of choice at metal concerts is cheap domestic beer such as Budweiser, Bud Light, Coors, and others. Looking at this from an outsider's perspective, this can be understood as a result of metal being a working-class music, and there is some truth to this, as metal did start as a working-class music and these alcoholic drinks are associated with the working class. However, within the metal scene, these same drinks can be understood not as symbols of class but of the scene itself, with one Detroit-based band going as far as to bring a case of beer to hand out to the audience during their set.

As a scene, metal continues to possess many signifiers of the working class which function in a similar way to alcohol, and middle class members of the metal scene have found ways to navigate the tensions that arise between the two. These tensions, which arise in part due to the differences in cultural capital displayed by metal and the middle class, are not navigated in a single universal way by all middle-class metalheads. However, the responses of several CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 20 interlocutors indicate that there is a pattern. Middle-class metal fans tend to favor music that has some political or ideological discourse within their lyrics, as this allows them to engage with the expectations of the metal scene and the middle class simultaneously.

Finally, in the third chapter of this thesis, the discussion shifts towards the musical forms where metal and punk meet, and how that relates to metal’s rising middle class status. While the first chapter, and to a lesser degree the second, looked at punk and metal as two separate and diametrically opposed musics, it is important to understand that in reality metal and punk have influenced each other for as long as they have existed. They exist on what has been called a metal/punk continuum, with the pure and idealized forms of each music existing on either end and a wide spectrum of styles of metal and punk in-between (Waksman, 2009). While many genres of metal and punk straddle the line between punk and metal, one of the clearest examples, and the focus of this chapter, is the genre of metalcore.

A lyrical analysis of contemporary metalcore songs, which differ significantly from the songs labeled as metalcore even 15 years ago, can bring the underlying themes of metalcore to the surface, with a common theme being a solipsistic exploration of mental health issues and other sociopolitical issues (Kennedy, 2018). While explorations of mental health are not exclusive to metalcore, an examination of the way it, along with other sociopolitical issues, are explored in metalcore brings to light how metalcore embodies both the unified philosophy of punk and the worldview of unity in disparity that is embraced by heavy metal.

Ultimately, metalcore’s focus on things such as sociopolitical issues and mental health reflects the fact that it is a product of the middle-class fanbase in heavy metal, which is seen in how it reflects their lived experiences. As interviews with two lyricists in local metalcore bands will elucidate, they write from personal and lived experiences. By writing in a way that is more CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 21 direct than had been previously seen in the lyrics of heavy metal, a legacy of punk’s influence, metalcore can focus on issues such as mental health and sociopolitical troubles. By doing so, metalcore acts as a music that can balance the expectations of the metal scene’s working-class ethos and the expectations of the middle class.

Finally, I need to state my personal stake in this research. I came into heavy metal as a young adult, having taken the plunge headlong into the deep waters of heavy metal in my early

20s. As my interest in the academic study of heavy metal grew, I began reading about it. One element that always struck me was the claims that it was a music of the working class. It was both in line with, and vastly different from, my experience in the metal scene in Michigan. I saw a lot of people who could be understood as working class, but even more were middle-class fans like me. I never understood how that worked, and in a more immediate sense I didn’t know how

I fit in with this scene, as my family was upper middle class. So although this project may not have started with a personal stake beyond its role in my education, over time a greater personal stake arose. As I asked more questions of myself in the research process about the relationships between metal, metalcore, and the middle class, I found I was also asking “what is my relationship with metal as a member of the middle class?” I have been a fan of metal for over a decade, but I had never interrogated the relationship I have with it as a member of the middle class. This project became my attempt to sort out where I belong in the scene. In that regard this was a failed project, as I have not determined what that relationship is, thankfully that was not the main focus. However, I did walk away with a better appreciation of how class has influenced the metal scene, as well as the ways in which punk, a music genre I only recently began listening to , deeply shaped the metal music I have been a fan of for so long.

CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 22

CHAPTER I. PUNK, METAL, AND THE WEBERIAN IDEAL TYPE

This chapter will focus on heavy metal and punk rock as Weberian “ideal type” constructs, which are constructed abstracts formed from a phenomena’s most common elements.

Analyzing metal and punk as ideal types allows for their different fundamental characteristics to be viewed in isolation, and for some of the underlying differences between the genres to be illuminated. As such, this chapter is divided into two sections. The first will focus on heavy metal music as an ideal type. In particular, it will explore the idea that heavy metal as both genre and subculture possesses a unified worldview. This worldview seeks unity within the disparate nature of the metal scene and as such rejects overt politics and ideologies (Elovaara & Bardine,

2017). The second section will be about punk as an ideal type. Although punk is both a genre and a subculture, this section will explore the idea of punk as a unified philosophy rather than a subculture. This philosophy of punk can be understood through punk lyrics exemplifying individuality, the rejection of tradition, and the awareness of power as an exploitative force

(Kristiansen, Blaney, Chidester, & Simonds, 2012).

The Weberian Ideal Type

The Weberian concept of an ideal type will be of particular use in this chapter, as it will allow metal and punk to be viewed and compared as an abstracted form, removing a lot of the subtle nuances that would otherwise plague such a comparison. In his chapter discussing the concept of the ideal type construct as part of the methodology of Max Weber and Alfred Schutz,

George Psathas (2005) defines the ideal type as:

A construct developed by the analyst for particular purposes. It represents a selection of

features or elements considered significant, essential, or exemplary. It is based on or

derived from observations of empirical reality and compared with that reality in its CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 23

formulation, but it does not purport to be a fully accurate and complete depiction of that

reality in all of its features (p. 147).

Ideal types, as defined here, provides several advantages as a tool for analysis, as “they do not attempt to provide an elaborate, complete or detailed description of empirical reality” (p. 149), and they also “provide a means for conceptualization of ‘patterned orientations of meaningful actions’ (Kalberg, 1994)” (p149). In other words, ideal type constructs are useful because they do not attempt to elaborate on the totality of the observable reality of phenomena, yet at the same time they provide a way for us to make sense of patterns of action that we observe. The greatest advantage the ideal type construct brings is that “they allow a focus on individual cases since they need not aim for general laws” (p. 149). The importance of this is, that unlike a law, an ideal type “is not invalidated by a single case” (p. 153).

The advantages that the ideal type provides to analysis makes it a useful tool to apply when comparing heavy metal and punk rock. By looking at these genres as ideal types, we are not required to provide a complete picture of them, nor do we need to formulate an understanding which will hold true for every case. This is helpful, as punk and metal are genres with decades of history, and thus any understanding that would equally apply to everything within these genres would require an understanding so broad as to be meaningless. Instead, the concept of ideal types allows us to focus on individual cases that provide meaningful patterns, in essence finding a larger picture in the small detail. The value of the ideal type also applies to the act of comparison, as the ideal type “systematizes and organizes several features by drawing out or focusing on these and selectively excluding others” (p. 147), and that allows a conceptualization of metal and punk which can elucidate what specifically differentiates the two genres. CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 24

Heavy Metal’s Worldview

Heavy metal, as a musical genre and as a subculture, is not unified by a single clearly articulated worldview, rather it is a disparate canvas of varying forms and ideologies which have formed a loose confederacy of style and sound. This confederacy of sound and style is best understood though the myriad subgenres seen in metal. A subgenre is a subordinate organizational category of genre, being constituted by texts that all share commonalities that go beyond the conventions of the parent genre. An example from heavy metal is progressive metal.

Progressive metal is unequivocally understood to be heavy metal, possessing all the characteristics of heavy metal. But progressive metal is also characterized by the use of complex time signatures, long and complicated compositions, a reliance on technical virtuosity, and the use of complicated and extended instrumental solos. Progressive metal is but one of dozens of examples of subgenre in heavy metal. These subgenres and groups dedicated to the various sounds that are metal vary in significant ways, ranging from the austere fans of anti-Christian black metal, to the quasi-libertarian thrash metal scene, to the gregarious and verbose fans of power metal. Within this disparate mixture of music, several strands hold them together. The first is the transgressive quality of the music (Kahn-Harris, 2007) but, more importantly, there is the larger community that forms around the music. Like the many subgenres of metal, the community formed around it is equally disparate, with different groups leaning towards one subgenre of metal or another. However, this does not fracture the metal scene as a whole, as each group and subgenre of music can and does interact with others. While a fan may be intensely into austere black metal, that does not exclude them from enjoying other metals. My own experience during the first concert I attended as part of this project exemplifies this. The headlining bands were Khemmis and Cloak, both doom metal bands. This was outside my normal bread and butter CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 25 of metal consumption, which was power metal, death metal, and thrash metal. However, I was never excluded by the audience; rather, when I did open conversations with others I was accepted as a member of the larger metal community due to my preexisting knowledge about the genre and scene as a whole. This acceptance due to my knowing the genre is rooted in the shared devotion to a canon of great works in heavy metal. This anecdote should hopefully begin to elucidate the fact that metal is a genre that finds unity within its disparity, and that this is displayed in both the music and the concert itself.

Heavy Metal’s Unity in Disparity

While the previously posited worldview of heavy metal, one in which unity is seen through disparity, has been put forth with heavy metal being seen as an ideal type, there are real- world examples of this worldview in action (Elovaara & Bardine, 2017). Swedish power metal band Sabaton’s song “Metal Crüe,” from their 2006 album Attero Dominatus, was written as a celebration of heavy metal as a musical form. To achieve this, Sabaton’s vocalist and lyricist

Joakim Brodén incorporated the names of 35 heavy metal bands into the lyrics. “Take some venom and accept/ That you won’t see Nazareth/ The rainbow leads you home./ Warrior sent to milky way/ UFO shooting gamma ray/ A riot of destruction/ Watch the rockbitch go down, vixen spread” (italics added to identify band names). This verse, which happens to be the first verse of the song, uses the name of 13 different heavy metal bands, which is only a fraction of the 37 bands mentioned in the song.

The inclusion of 37 different bands in “Metal Crüe” speaks to the larger ideal of unity in disparity. The bands mentioned within the song vary drastically in metal subgenre. Although a plurality of the bands listed, such as Accept and Nazareth, would be considered classic heavy metal, this is in no way the only genre represented. The lyrics mention bands such as In Flames CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 26 and Venom, pioneering bands in melodic death metal and black metal respectively, alongside bands such as Kansas and Rainbow, who represent hard rock. By juxtaposing the bands, Sabaton is creating a situation where each band is viewed on a similarly level playing field regardless of their subgenre, which creates a unified idea of heavy metal which includes all these disparate forms.

The unity in disparity that is demonstrated in the tapestry of genres represented in “Metal

Crüe” is also seen at metal concerts. As a genre, metal is a collection of subgenres and, as such, at any one show it is highly unlikely to see an entire lineup that consists of only a single subgenre. A perfect example of this is the previously mentioned CD release party for Shock

Narcotic. As mentioned, the headliner, Shock Narcotic, is a grindcore band, and the opener,

SkumRotten, is a hardcore punk band. At that show I could see, based on the increasing number of people moshing, that the mixture of genres was not a detriment but a benefit. This mix was embraced to its fullest, with fans hardcore dancing to SkumRotten, a style of moshing where the dancer swings their arms around and kicks wildly, or opening up a circle pit for Shock Narcotic, a form of moshing where a group of moshers run in a circle in the same direction, pushing each other.

While the Shock Narcotic show is a good example of a concert as a location of disparate unity in the metal scene, it is far from the only concert which exemplifies this. One of the first concerts to which I went to do fieldwork for this project was a concert at the Token Lounge in

Westland, Michigan that was headlined by the comedy metal band Psychostick. With

Psychostick working as a comedy musical act, they have the freedom to vary the way they play to create the desired comedic relations through their songs. This freedom would manifest in

Psychostick’s music in the way their setlist included songs that are influenced by myriad CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 27 subgenres of heavy metal. Psychostick’s 2006 song “ABCDeath” leaned into the conventions of death metal, with the band reciting the ABC song as if it were a death metal song. At the Token

Lounge, when Psychostick performed “ABCDeath,” they immediately followed with their song

“Numbers (I can only count to four)”, which is a parody of the nümetal song “Bodies” by

Drowning Pool. These songs contrast with the earlier performance of their song “Because

Boobs,” which follows the conventions of funk metal.

The variety of genres that Psychostick uses in their music was reflected in the lineup for the concert at the Token Lounge. While Psychostick is a comedy metal band, which in many way collapses genre distinction, the opening bands were very much performing within the conventions of their subgenres. The local opener was the band MPD, a hardcore punk band. This was in contrast to the next band on the lineup, The Creeping Chaos, which was very much a classic heavy metal band reminiscent of Accept and Quiet Riot. The final opening act, Kerbera, is a self-described “fresh take on the alternative rock scene with their visually captivating aesthetic, anthemic, pop-punk reminiscent melodies, and crushing post-hardcore undertones”

(Kerbera, n.d.). Each of these bands performed in a different style and with different positions and relationships in the family tree of heavy metal. While this could have meant a rejection of some of the opening bands, as they were not reflective of the sounds used by Psychostick, the disparate nature of these bands was accepted and appreciated by the audience, as everyone I saw at the show seemed happy the whole time. The Creeping Chaos in particular was well received by the audience, as they had a strong stage presence. They also had a man dressed as a mind flayer, a classic monster from Dungeons and Dragons, walking around the stage and in the audience which added to the show. CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 28

The reactions of fans to the disparate sounds heard at both the Shock Narcotic and the

Psychostick concerts indicated that although fans of metal may have a preference towards one section of the metal family tree, there is a willingness to explore the whole of the metal genre and even sounds that are tangential to metal. This follows a similar trend I have seen in responses from interlocutors as well as a sentiment I have witnessed throughout my decade of membership in the metal scene, “If it’s heavy, I usually enjoy it.” Unfortunately, the concept of “heavy” is a nebulous and subjective thing. My informant Spike articulated this subjectivity when asked

“what is heavy?” Spike said:

It is kinda like the word ‘fuck’ in the sense that ‘fuck’ can be a noun, an adjective, an

adverb, it can be used in any part of the sentence . . . it is a very loose term to describe a

huge umbrella of things. . . . for me heavy is anything that is slow, or dark, or ambient.

It’s more of like a feeling, it’s something that makes you make that like, like someone is

cooking up the finest pizza you’re like oh yeah man, that smells great, like that stank

face. You feel the goosebumps from it, whether playing an extremely slow breakdown or

it’s Ghostmane doing some weird hip hop. . . . Some people think 32 second blast beats

are heavy other people think half time china (cymbal) with literally nothing else but a

bass drop before everything comes back in. It is really a fluid term. It is subjective, like a

really good game, it is subjective. What you want to get out of it.

Spike’s definition of heavy being like the word “fuck” fits the myriad understandings of heaviness that I have encountered as a metalhead. One example of these myriad understandings of what heaviness is comes from research conducted by Harris Berger and Cornelia Fales (2005).

Their research was on what sonic element is understood to be “heavy” in heavy metal music.

They started with the assumption that over time metal music got heavier, meaning that whatever CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 29 sonic quality is identified as heavy became more pronounced. Berger and Fales found that their initial assumption was correct, heavy metal got heavier over time, and that a sonic quality that was associated with heaviness, the tone of a distorted guitar, became more prominent over time.

The found that the distorted guitar did not just become louder or more distorted, but that the sonic frequency at which distortion was produced changed as well. This change resulted in a sound which metalheads found to be heavier than guitar tones heard in the early days of heavy metal. While Berger and Fales fond that metal became heavier over time, they did not make the claim that fans no longer found the early metal of the 1970s to be heavy. This, as well as Spike’s definition of the word “heavy”, underscores the idea that heavy metal finds unity in its disparity.

What was understood to be heavy in the late 1970s is different than what is heavy today, but they are both still understood as heavy. And the sentiment of enjoying heaviness in music is one of the key elements of the metal scene. Through it, the many sounds of heavy metal are able to create unity through the disparity they display.

Heavy Metal’s “Rejection” of Politics

On the surface, it would appear that in the 50-year history of heavy metal, the genre has avoided engaging with politics and polarizing ideological positions. While this appears to be true on the surface, to quote Kerry King on the nature of metal lyrics, “If you pay attention you get something out of it, and if you don’t care you get something out of it cause it’s great music”

(Chapman, Dunn, & McFayden, 2011). This quote helps elucidate how metal approached politics and polarizing ideologies, they are present in the lyrics but not on the surface. Metal lyrics tend to approach polarizing topics such as politics by clothing them in at least a thin veil of allegory or metaphor, giving listeners the space to come to their own understanding of what the song is about. This approach is important as it helps preserve the unity found in metal’s disparity, and CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 30 both the indirect engagement with politics and metal’s unity in disparity is exemplified in the discussion I had with Humbaba, the guitarist of an internationally recognized Detroit-based metal band Cry of Battle. As Humbaba said in our conversation, his band consists of guys with various thoughts and opinions about politics. One of the main ways that they navigate these differences is to simply not bring politics into their music. This strategy of avoiding politics in their music was not only taken to prevent interpersonal conflicts from arising within the band, but it was a way to ensure that they did not alienate their fans. During our conversation about politics in music, I mentioned that I felt like the lyrics from Humbaba’s band do enter the realm of the political in some ways, with the example of a song where they approach the issue of de- unionization in blue-collar industry. Humbaba agreed, saying that the things that were political were often the influence of their vocalist, who is fairly outspoken about his political beliefs. He also said that, as a band, they still try to not go any further than saying “don’t trust the government,” which Humbaba felt was a sentiment everyone can agree on.

The importance of Humbaba’s band avoiding any polarizing stances in their lyrics was made even more apparent after our interview, when Humbaba showed me the Spotify demographic of who is listening to Cry of Battle’s music. The top country to stream their music was the US, with Canada and Mexico coming in second and third. While I didn’t see the rest of the rankings I did notice that several European countries, primarily the Scandinavian ones, were also represented in their listener's demographics. This drives home their need to not alienate their audience. If Humbaba’s band was to include political messages in their music they would run the risk of alienating fans who did not agree with them, as Cry of Battle’s lyricist’s political views lean conservative at times, which could act to alienate fans who do not share these views. The CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 31 fans of Cry of Battle, who come from many cultures and walks of life, would no longer be able to find unity through the music of Cry of Battle.

Sentiments similar to Humbaba’s were also expressed by James Hetfield, vocalist and guitarist of the legendary metal band Metallica. In an interview Hetfield said in regard to politics

“You’re always going to lose some fans if you say something you believe politically” (Clip ‘Em

All, 2021). Hetfield later also addressed the role of band dynamics in why they avoid politics saying, “I think within the band there are lots of different opinions; we are all pretty opposite, and that is fine. That is probably the main reason we don’t bring up politics is that it doesn’t speak for all of us” (Clip ‘Em All, 2021). These thoughts not only mirror Humbaba’s thoughts on politics in music, but they further elucidate the unity in disparity that is displayed in heavy metal music. Hetfield recognizes the disparate nature of his fanbase, and the differences in beliefs expressed by members of his band. Rather than dividing the fans and the band with political opinions in his music, Hetfield seeks to create unity through the bond that is heavy metal.

When looking at the lyrical content of heavy metal throughout its 50-year history, it becomes apparent that heavy metal as an ideal type eschews the direct discussion of politics and ideological positions. This rejection of overt discussion of politics and ideological positions is built upon the fragmentation of the metal scene in the 1980s and the blue-collar ethos still valorized in the metal scene. When the metal subculture was forming, it was a primarily blue- collar demographic. However, as time progressed and the scene expanded, it underwent further fragmentation, incorporating a larger and more diverse fanbase. This process ensured that the adoption of a single political or ideological stance within the whole metal scene was difficult, as the scene was now an overlapping mesh of audiences and subgenres. Although this fragmentation of subgenres made the adoption of a singular political stance difficult while CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 32 maintaining the integrity of the metal scene, the blue-collar style and sentiments which are valorized in metal did act as a source of political engagement which is expressed through cynical animosity towards politics (Weinstein, 2000). Although metal often avoids overt political gestures, this cynicism and animosity are still expressed in the music through allegorical and veiled means to maintain the unity within the larger and disparate metal scene.

The allegorical discussion of politics in heavy metal can be seen throughout the whole of metal’s history, with examples originating from heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath. “War

Pigs,” the first track on Black Sabbath’s 1970 album Paranoid, exemplifies the political undertones in metal that are obfuscated in the lyrics. Like many other songs by Black Sabbath,

“War Pigs” contains very strong themes regarding Satan and the occult. For most of the song, the lyrics craft a story of army generals who revel in the slaughter their actions bring, alluding to these generals being in some way in league with Satan. In the final verse, the generals are now reaping the harvest of their bloody occupations on the biblical day of judgment as they beg

“mercy for their sins” as an ascendant Satan laughs at the plight of the war pigs.

While most of the song posits little about the politics of war, the first quatrain of the second verse of “War Pigs” sees the lyrics focus not on the occult or bloodthirsty generals, but rather the politicians who start these wars. The lyrics read “Politicians hide themselves away/

They only started the war/ Why should they go out to fight?/ They leave that role to the poor.” At the end of the song, the poor who were sent to fight by the politicians were not mentioned in the day of calling. This omission of the poor, who actually fought the war, creates an implication that although they had literal blood on their hands, their souls were still unsoiled, and they have no reason to beg forgiveness for their sins. This is opposed to the politicians and generals, the war pigs, who sat back and orchestrated the slaughter. CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 33

Throughout the entirety of “War Pigs”, there is never a direct reference to contemporary events. Although the lyrics are fundamentally about the class dichotomy seen in war, this remains shrouded in satanic and occult imagery. This obfuscation was such that the members of

Black Sabbath held different opinions as to what the song was about. Bassist and lyricist Geezer

Butler has said it was “totally against the Vietnam War, about how these rich politicians and rich people start all the wars for their benefit and get all the poor people to die for them” (Popoff,

2006, p.33). This is in contrast to vocalist Ozzy Osbourne’s understanding of the song, which is that it was simply an anti-war song (Clerk, 2002, p.25).

The commentary provided by Black Sabbath has continued in various ways through to the modern metal scene, with examples coming from both the local Southeast Michigan scene as well as from international touring bands. An example from a local band comes from the Detroit based, sci-fi-themed thrash metal band Euphoria Ω and their song “Watchtower.” Like “War

Pigs,” Euphoria Ω’s “Watchtower” does not directly reference events that have happened in our world, rather it crafts a story in which humanity’s moral and ethical failings are center stage. In the case of “Watchtower” the story is one of an alien race that has observed humanity over the millennia and has decided we must be exterminated due to our failings.

In “Watchtower”, the failings which have condemned humanity to extinction are many.

“Corruption, Greed/Monopolizing Machines/ Religious Wars” and the victimization of ourselves with “Two hundred thousand years of oppression/Psychological rape/Dividing of race/ Without remorse,/ the enslavement of their fellow man” are some of the crimes listed. While in “War

Pigs” a finger is pointed at the culpable parties, “Watchtower” takes no such sympathies on the innocent. Rather, the whole of society is condemned for its sins of commission and omission, sentencing not the people but the human condition we have been stuck in. While the ideas that CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 34

Euphoria Ω presents in this song are all critical of society and the human condition, critiquing sinner and saint alike, the directness of the critique is subsumed within the story presented. The use of aliens in the lyrics masks the origins of the ideas in the song, allowing the aliens to act as proxy for the lyricist.

As mentioned earlier, the obfuscation of political ideologies is not limited to contemporary American bands, but also found in international acts, as in the case of “Martyr of the Free Word.” This song, released in 2009 by the Dutch symphonic metal band Epica, is unlike the previous two examples as it does not use a story to obscure a message. Rather in the chorus, the main point of the song is stated. “Those who denounce a way of life/ Will stand alone/ Left to atone their social blunders/ If you gun down the messenger/You guarantee that he will be made/

Into a saint/ A martyr of the free word.” While not overtly political, the chorus contains a message underlying the band's ideology of respect for other beliefs and ideas, along with the warning of what happens when these beliefs are not respected and tolerated.

All three of these examples either put forth some ideology or political critique. Despite this, “War Pigs”, “Watchtower”, and “Martyr of the Free Word” do not put forth an ideology that significantly differs from those held by their primary audience’s, nor do the ideas they put forth have a significant left or right political leaning. The primary audience for “War Pigs” when it was written was the rock listening youths of the day, who were already predisposed to an antiwar leaning and, in the case of American youths, were subject to the effects of the draft due to the

Vietnam War. In the case of Euphoria Ω’s song “Watchtower,” their primary fan base was contemporary metal fans in the Detroit area. When considering the political and economic difficulties that have plagued Detroit over the past 20 years, such as the corrupt administration of

Kwame Kilpatrick (Yaccino, 2013) or the city being the largest US city to declare bankruptcy CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 35

(Davey & Walsh, 2013), the underlying misanthropic sentiment, as well as distrust of power, resonate. Finally, there is Epica’s “Martyr of the Free Word.” With Epica being an internationally recognized band, their primary audience is not based in a single place like

Euphoria’s is, and as such any idea they put into their music will require a more universal appeal to not alienate or separate their fans. With the underlying idea of “Martyr of the Free Word” being one that promotes the idea that differing opinions are to be tolerated, it has the space to resonate with a global audience.

A Unified Philosophy of Punk Rock

In opposition to heavy metal is punk rock, which provides immediacy and direct commentary that is in contrast to the allegorical and often escapist lyrics that exist within the metal scene. Due to this, it would be simple to assume that punk is a musical form and a subculture that acts in a unified way; however, this is not the case. Like most subcultures and musical forms, punk consists of a collection of fans and artists with their ideas and experiences to draw from. While punk may not always be a unified force, but when punk is viewed as a

Weberian ideal type there is an argument for a unifying philosophy of punk.

This unifying philosophy of punk states that at its core all of punk is linked by a philosophy centered on ideas of individuality, oppositions to power as an exploitative force, and a rejection of traditional beliefs (Kristiansen et al., 2012). It is also argued that it is from the underlying philosophy that the music and subculture of punk arose, and not the other way around; that the philosophy is what causes the music to coalesce, and with it the subculture. This is in apparent opposition to the findings of Hebdige (1979), whose study of punk subculture found punk to be a stylistic reaction against the hegemonic norms of postwar Britain. The major difference between the two sets of findings is that Hebdige argues that punk style predates the CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 36 music, whereas Kristiansen et al argue that the punk philosophy is antecedent to all of punk, style and sound included. Unfortunately, by theorizing punk as a reaction to hegemony as Hebdige did, the death of punk then becomes an inevitability, as cultural hegemonic forces often appropriate reactions to hegemony to serve the hegemony. This appropriation can be seen in the fact that, by the early 1980s the haute couture of the Paris catwalk had begun to incorporate elements of punk style into their designs (Lister, 2015). By using Kristiansen et al.’s theoretical framework of punk as philosophy, which sees punk not as a stylistic reaction, but as a philosophy that creates the style and music, it allows the perpetual state of death and decay that people claim punk is in to be avoided and instead a focus can be placed on the recursive nature of lyrical themes that have been seen in punk from its nascent days with the Sex Pistols or the Ramones, up until the present day in the Detroit punk scene.

The recognition of these reoccurring themes in punk is not new, as even the work of

Hebdige (1979) keyed in upon the individualist themes of punk, albeit through the clothing worn rather than the music. More recently, in The Poetry of Punk (2018), the main lyrical themes of punk have been understood to fall into six categories. These six categories are anarchy, anticapitalism/DIY, religion, gender and sexuality, race/ethnicity, and veganism/animal rights.

These themes, which Ambrosch (2018) writes, “are intended to illustrate how the language of politics is reflected in punk’s poetry” (p. 58), illustrate a notion of punk as a bricolage of ideas and a scene that is nearly as disparate as the metal subculture. However, when these themes are viewed through the theoretical framework of punk as philosophy, rather than punk as musical genre or subculture, it becomes apparent that these six themes are outcomes of the underlying philosophy. As such, they can be understood as falling under the three larger elements of the unifying philosophy of punk posited by Kristiansen et al. (2012). CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 37

The first of the three elements of the unified philosophy of punk, individuality, is in many ways the most vital element to punk as a music and a subculture. Without it, none of the rebellious energy and idiosyncratic expressions of self that exemplify punk would exist. Without the discourse of individualism and individual thought, the other elements of punk philosophy could not exist, as it is difficult to oppose power as an exploitative force and reject hereditary belief without first having questioned the naturalized state of the structures that support them. As such it is relatively easy to find themes of individuality within nearly every punk song, although this analysis will focus on Bikini Kill’s (1998) “I Like Fucking” and NOFX’s (1994) “Don’t Call

Me White.”

In each of these songs, individuality underpins the totality of the lyrics, yet individuality is not presented in a unified way. In “I Like Fucking”, individuality takes the form of exercising and reclaiming individual agency. As the title of the song flatly states, it is about how the singer enjoys sex, and with Bikini Kill’s female vocalist, this statement takes on greater significance.

With this declaration, there is a vehement and unmistakable assertion of individual agency regarding the singer’s sexuality. This reclamation of self as sexual agent, which is also a refutation of the oft held idea of woman as merely sexual object, culminates in the final lines of the song “I believe in the radical possibilities of pleasure, babe/ I do. I do. I do.”

In the case of NOFX it is not an assertion of agency based on actions, rather it is an assertion of the individual existing beyond the confines of an ascribed status. In the case of this song, it is the ascription of being white. Throughout the whole song the lyrics rage against the assumptions made of the singer because he was born white, stating that whiteness “Represents everything I hate/ The soap shoved in your mouth to cleanse the mind/ The vast majority of sheep/ A buttoned collar, starched and bleached/ Constricting veins, the blood flow to the brain CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 38 slows.” By positing that whiteness is not a function of his skin, rather a function of personal choices to follow a prescribed middle-class existence, the song reworks the idea of whiteness to one of the individual and that person’s ability to think for themselves and to exercise personal agency. This position culminates in the final lines of the song, where the narrator states “So go ahead and label me/ An asshole cause I can/ Accept responsibility/ For what I've done, but not for who I am.” It is important to note that this argument only functions due to the unmarked nature of whiteness in the US, as any other racial category lacks the privilege of ignoring or denying their race.

The second element of the unified theory of punk is opposition to power as an exploitative force. Regarding the opposition to power as an exploitative force, Kristiansen et al.

(2012) state, “Punk is an oppositional tendency that seeks to unmask the sources of power, hoping to reveal their exploitative nature” (p. 145). This description of punk fits the song

“Bloody Revolutions” to a letter. “Bloody Revolutions,” a song by the anarcho-punk band Crass

(1986), is an anthem that condemns the concept of revolution as a source of individual liberation.

Rather, the band sees revolutionary struggle as a perpetuation of a system of collecting power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.

“Bloody Revolutions”’ first verse acts as an interrogation of the methods used to achieve revolution:

You talk about your revolution, well, that's fine/ But what are you going to be doing

come the time?/ Are you going to be the big man with the tommy-gun?/ Will you talk

of freedom when the blood begins to run?/ Well, freedom has no value if violence is

the price/Don't want your revolution, I want anarchy and peace. CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 39

This verse directly questions the revolutionaries as to their commitment to a revolt if bloodshed is necessary to achieve it. In doing so, Crass also questions the value of the freedom that revolutionaries claim will be an outcome of their actions. The core of this interrogation rests upon the idea that violence is in itself an exercise of power, and that the freedom which is acquired through violent means is not freedom at all. Crass posits instead a desire for “anarchy and peace” which rejects the collected power in a governing body for the diffusion of power to individuals, which prevents the collection of sufficient power to enact systemic exploitations.

Immediately following the first verse is the song's chorus, which expands upon the questioning of revolutionary action and intent by illuminating the truths of governmental power by saying, “You talk of overthrowing power with violence as your tool./ You speak of liberation and when the people rule./ Well ain't it people rule right now, what difference would there be?/

Just another set of bigots with their rifle-sights on me.” The truth that is being revealed by Crass is that although a revolutionary activist may seek to replace an oppressive governmental system with a more liberating form, in both cases there is a small collection of people who wield governmental power in that society. From the perspective of Crass it would seem as if nothing had changed because a government is made up of people who are ungoverned.

The third and final element of Kristiansen et al.’s unified philosophy of punk is a rejection of tradition “as it refuses to blindly accept hereditary beliefs” (Kristiansen et al. p. 145).

As Kristiansen et al. explain, punk does not reject traditions and traditional beliefs out of hand.

Rather, punk only accepts traditions or traditional belief if it serves a useful function. This rejection of tradition that Kristiansen discusses coincides with one of the myriad definitions of punk given by Bad Religion vocalist Greg Graffin (2013) in “A Punk Manifesto.” One of

Graffin’s definitions for punk is that “PUNK IS: a belief that this world is what we make of it, CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 40 truth comes from our understanding of the way things are, not from the blind adherence to prescriptions about the way things should be.”

This definition of punk, and a refutation of tradition, can be further seen in Bad

Religion’s 2013 song “Popular Consensus” from the album True North. “Popular Consensus,” which was penned by Graffin, is not a refutation of a single tradition, rather it questions the belief that the popular consensus on a topic always coincides with what is true. This culminates in the chorus of the song, which states “Maybe it's all you need/ To get you through the night/

Maybe you've seen the light/ But you know that popular consensus doesn't make it right.” The

“it” to which Graffin is referring is never truly defined in the song. An example of this is in the first verse, where Graffin writes, “Some people have faith in the craziest things/ They follow outdated conventions that were recorded.” These lines can be read as possibly commenting on religious beliefs; it is left ambiguous so listeners can create their own meanings.

Due to the specific natures of punk and heavy metal, they differ quite significantly. Metal is a marginally contained collective of musical sounds and style, contained by the collective commitment to the idea of heavy metal, creating the idea of unity in disparity. This contrasts with punk, as punk has a unified philosophy which acts as an undercurrent, running through the whole of punk. This philosophy, which celebrates the individual, seeks to expose power as exploitative, and rejects unchallenged traditions, is a direct philosophical tradition. It ensures that punk directly engages with political discourse. Which is in opposition to metal which, when it does engage in political discourse, does so through allegory and veiled metaphor, never in the direct and challenging way that punk engages with political discourse.

CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 41

Conclusion

In this chapter, the focus was to identify how punk and metal differ. While this chapter in no way intends to posit that what was presented here is the only set of differences between punk and metal, analyzing them as idea types demonstrated a core way in which these genres differ..

The ideal type, as envisioned by Max Weber, is an abstracted and constructed idea rather than a perfect representation. This concept was used in this chapter because punk and metal both have long histories, and those histories mean that any attempt to fully encapsulate either of these genres in a single idea would be nearly impossible due to the need to account for every minor deviation from the pattern. By using this approach key underlying themes of metal and punk are revealed, and fundamental differences between the genres. The underlying theme presented in metal is that of unity in disparity. Metal is a very diverse genre, with sonic forms and styles so different as to be almost unrelated, yet the metal scene retains some cohesion. This unity is formed because of this disparity, as fans and musicians in metal ultimately celebrate the whole genre. Whereas the unifying theme in punk is the underlying philosophy of punk. It is argued that this philosophy, which revolves around celebrating the individual and rejecting power, is the animating principle of punk music and punk subculture, rather than the music being the source of the philosophy. Finally, there is a fundamental difference in how punk and metal approach the discussion of politics, which is related to their respective worldview and philosophy. Simply put, while metal does discuss politics it does so in a way that avoids directly mentioning the topic at hand, while punk takes a much less subtle approach, directly stating what is being discussed in a didactic way. Although these differences seem to be benign, they have had a great impact on how metal and punk have been received in society. Punk became a more valuable form of music, while metal was denigrated, which is the focus of the following chapter. CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 42

CHAPTER II. CLASS, CULTURAL CAPITAL, PUNK, AND HEAVY METAL

In the previous chapter, I analyzed the musics of punk rock and heavy metal as ideal types. I looked at them as abstractions, cobbled together from the more common elements of each genre. In reality, punk rock and heavy metal are more complicated and nuanced, especially when looking at their respective fanbases. They do generally follow the pattern of metal fans adhering to a worldview that finds unity in disparity and punk fans subscribing to the politically active punk philosophy, but this has been shifting as the cross-fertilization between the scenes increases. This shift in the apolitical nature of heavy metal has been accompanied by a change in the class demographic of heavy metal. Traditionally in the United States, heavy metal had a primarily working-class fanbase (Kahn-Harris, 2007, pp. 10-11; Weinstein, 2000, p. 113), overlapping slightly with the more middle-class punk scene. This translated into a difference in access to cultural capital for the metal and punk scenes as well as their fans. Being primarily working-class, heavy metal fans had less access to cultural capital than their middle-class punk counterparts. This discrepancy in access to cultural capital is not directly related to the class demographics of the metal or punk subcultures, rather is a result of music critics valorizing punk’s political engagement while they denigrate metal as being mindless noise. While sociological data on the metal scene is limited, there is data that indicates over the past 20-25 years the metal fanbase has transitioned to consist of a more middle-class fanbase, similar to punk (Smialek & St-Laurent, 2018). But the discrepancy in access to cultural capital related to scenic membership has remained and has led to a need for middle-class metalheads to navigate the tensions between the demands of the metal scene and the middle class.

This discrepancy in access to cultural capital and the dynamic required by middle-class members of the metal scene is the focus of this chapter. By focusing on this, I intend to CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 43 demonstrate that the ideas posited in the previous chapter, metal’s worldview of unity in disparity and punk’s political philosophy, are related to the class demographic of each scene. To accomplish this, this chapter will be split into four sections. First will be a discussion of

Bourdieu’s (1984) concept of cultural capital, habitus, field, and the concept of subcultural capital. The second section will be focused on the access punk and metal fans have to cultural capital, and how rock critics influenced this access. The second section will build on the fact that metal has historically had little access to cultural capital and was looked upon as a working-class music. I argue that many of the signifiers that could be read as signifying the working class in the contemporary metal scene are in fact displays of the Bourdieuian concept of habitus in the scene that have little to do with class in their current form. I will be using the alcohol consumed at metal concerts to demonstrate this. Finally, the third section focuses on the middle-class fans of contemporary metal. It will have a particular focus on the tension between membership in a musical scene that has retained strong ties to its working-class background and the larger social requirements of belonging to the middle class.

Cultural Capital, Subcultural Capital, and Habitus

To aid my analysis presented in this chapter, I will be using Bourdieu’s (1984;1990) theories on social stratification and cultural consumption. Bourdieu’s theories assert that there is a link between a person’s socioeconomic status and their preferences for cultural products. This link is not a direct economic link, rather it is mediated through cultural gatekeeping and the process by which children are socialized. Children develop preferences for various products through their family, and these preferences facilitate their adjustments to their class position.

This is related to how value is assigned to cultural products. In a nutshell, those in the upper echelons of society, with access to wealth and power, are in a position to act as cultural CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 44 gatekeepers and are better able to assign worth to various cultural preferences. Through their actions, they allot value to various cultural products, with the products they prefer being valued more highly, and those that deviate are given less and less value. Because of this, preferences for cultural products facilitate someone’s entrance into the class they were effectively born into.

Additionally, as these preferences are, at least in part, learned through familial socialization, they are instilled from youth. Due to this, they are not easily discarded, and throughout the course of one’s life they provide a way of distinguishing those in one economic class from those in another. A second aspect of Bourdieu’s theories is the concept of cultural capital. Cultural capital is, simply put, the knowledge and education a person has which raises their social standing in society. Their knowledges, which are aligned with the preference that facilitates a child adjusting to their class position, are ultimately reflected in the preferences that people have towards various cultural products, such as music (Bourdieu, 1984).

A second important theory that will be used in this chapter is Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. Bourdieu defines habitus as “systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them” (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 53). What this means is habitus is a robust system of actions that we learn socially that allows us to adapt to various situations without having to think about it. Importantly, habitus is also closely related to Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, as it is the embodiment of cultural capital in a physical form. The reason is that, as a system of actions we have learned and use to adapt to various situations, habitus arises from the collection of knowledge and experiences that constitute our cultural capital. As such, when CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 45 we divulge with our habitus we are also demonstrating our cultural capital, which also serves to reproduce not only our habitus but our cultural capital as well.

It is important to understand that the habitus arising from the metal scene is not an embodiment of cultural capital as has been discussed previously, instead it is an embodiment of subcultural capital of heavy metal. Subcultural capital, as posited by Sarah Thornton in her 1995 book Club Cultures, is related to Bourdieu’s cultural capital in that it is the collection of socially acquired knowledges. The difference between the two is the context from which these capitals originate. While the cultural capital posited by Bourdieu is related to the larger hegemonic society and the acquisition of cultural capital begins in childhood as we are socialized, subcultural capital is the insider knowledge about a specific subcultural group and is usually acquired through repeated contact and interaction with a specific subculture. Thornton, whose research into dance clubs was the basis of her conceptualization of subcultural capital, also states that subcultural capital is not tied to economic capital in the same ways cultural capital is

(Thornton, 1995).

The significance of cultural capital, subcultural capital, and habitus to this chapter are in how they are related. The space in which fieldwork for this project was conducted, the heavy metal scene of Southeast Michigan, is its own field. As such it possesses a subcultural logic and ruleset that are unique. Considering that the Southeast Michigan metal scene is its own field, we see in it expressed multiple forms of habitus and subcultural capital. This habitus and subcultural capital, while being expressed in a form that is uniquely from southeast Michigan, also reflect and are influenced by the larger metal subculture’s habitus and subcultural capital. Similarly, the social space that is Southeast Michigan is constituted by many other interrelated fields, which influence the cultural capital and social positions available to those who live in southeast CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 46

Michigan, including the members of the metal community. This in turn influences the habitus which members of the metal scene bring with them when they interact with the metal scene, which possesses a set of rules that does not always mesh with externally originating habitus.

Extending Thornton’s concept of subcultural capital further, Keith Kahn-Harris has identified two main forms of subcultural capital in the extreme metal scene, and by extension the larger metal scene: transgressive subcultural capital and mundane subcultural capital. “Mundane subcultural capital is oriented toward the puissance that is produced as a collective result of the mundane efforts of the totality of the scene members” (Kahn-Harris, 2007, p. 112). In other words, mundane subcultural capital is produced by the competition between scenic members in the mundane aspects of the metal scene and demonstrates the commitment to the collective metal scene. As Kahn-Harris (2007) goes on to explain, it is the form of subcultural capital which is collected “through a sustained investment in self-sacrifice, commitment, and hard work” (p. 122) directed towards the metal scene. This sustained hard work and commitment is often displayed as a deep working knowledge of heavy metal. The display of mundane subcultural capital is most readily seen in how metalheads discuss the nuances of the myriad subgenres of heavy metal, parsing apart where a band might belong in the ever-increasing set of metal subgenres. Another example from Kahn-Harris (2007) of how subcultural capital in the metal scene is acquired and demonstrated is having “a detailed knowledge of the institutions and practices of the scene” (p.

124). The detailed knowledge of institutions and practices of the scene is more difficult to acquire than a detailed knowledge of metal music, as it requires active participation in the scene.

All that is needed to have a detailed knowledge of metal music is time and a decent internet connection. CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 47

In contrast to mundane subcultural capital, which is acquired through a commitment to the scene, “transgressive subcultural capital is claimed through a radical individualism” (Kahn-

Harris, 2011, p. 213). In fact, transgressive subcultural capital is often “claimed through a critique of the scene itself and, by implication, of mundane subcultural capital” (Kahn-Harris,

2007, p.127). Transgressive subcultural capital is rooted in the desire for uniqueness within the scene, and as such, it challenges the norms of the metal scene. The example Kahn-Harris (2007) cites as a clear and intentional accumulation of transgressive subcultural capital is the Norwegian black metal scene of the early 1990s. Citing musicians such as Varg Vikernes and Euronymous as exemplars of the radical individualism which accumulated a great amount of transgressive subcultural capital, it is explained that their sheer commitment to the transgression of scenic norms has allowed them to still be revered and remembered to this day. Kahn-Harris (2007) also explained that those who “are seen as musical innovators within the scene are endowed with transgressive subcultural capital” (p. 128), citing the pioneering black metal bands Venom and

Bathory.

In the metal scene, mundane and transgressive subcultural capitals exist in a state of tension, as they reward opposing actions. A continual source of tension for these forms of subcultural capital is over the subject of change in the metal scene. “Change threatens the mechanisms through which mundane subcultural capital is claimed” (Kahn-Harris, 2011, p.215).

The mechanism threatened by change is the collection of scenic knowledge. As the scene changes the knowledge required to claim mundane subcultural capital changes, which puts those who have accrued a significant amount of mundane subcultural capital at risk of losing some. In contrast to mundane subcultural capital, “transgressive subcultural capital rewards individuality, unpredictability, and innovation” (p. 215). In other words transgressive subcultural capital CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 48 rewards those who bring change, creating the tension between it and mundane subcultural capital.

The tension between transgressive and mundane subcultural capital is not without its merits, as they serve to temper one another. While subcultural capital is more accessible than other forms of capital and cannot be converted into other forms of capital easily, those with greater access to economic and cultural capital can leverage this into greater access to subcultural capital. The bifurcation of subcultural capital in the metal scene into transgressive and mundane provides a solution for this. Although mundane subcultural capital can require levels of knowledge about the scene that excludes those from poorer backgrounds, “transgressive subcultural capital’s rewarding of individuality and idiosyncrasy is also potentially more accessible to those with low amounts of other kinds of capital, since it does not require detailed scenic knowledge” (Kahn-Harris, 2007, p.138) ). Effectively mundane and transgressive subcultural capitals act to level the playing field for members of the metal scene as they attempt to access subcultural capital.

There is also a tension that arises when members of the middle class enter the metal scene, a field that has roots in the working class. As was discussed in chapter one, metal music has a history of avoiding directly approaching any political discourse, and although there is a history of political discourse being in heavy metal, the music tends to approach it in an oblique fashion that doesn’t alienate fans who may not share the sentiment in the music. This avoidance of political engagement extended to the concert environment as well, as throughout my fieldwork

I never heard the fans talking about any political or ideological topic. The one time I heard any of these topics come up was when the band Sekkusu was performing at Shock Narcotic’s CD release party. Sekkusu was the last band to perform before the headliner Shock Narcotic, and CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 49 during their performance, in-between several songs the singer would take a moment to explain what their next song was about. Each time this happened their song was loosely related to a contemporary issue, with two examples being the ongoing corruption in Detroit politics and the wildfires that were raging in the Amazon rainforest in the summer of 2019. When this happened a general hush fell over the crowd that contrasted with the rowdiness of the crowd up until that point, as up until then, when other bands performed the audience had usually cheered or reacted in a positive way when a song was announced. No one at the show discussed this after Sekkusu’s set though, they just went on cavorting and partying until Shock Narcotic came on. In an interview with my informant Spike, the topic of politics and the metal scene came up, and although it was not related to the aforementioned events, it does help explain what happened.

Spike indicated that members of the scene do talk about politics, but it does not usually show up in their lyrics, at least not in the way that is as obvious as Sekkusu was. Spike also indicated that a lot of the discourse about politics does not take place at the concert hall, rather it happens in other locations, with social media being a very fertile space for political discourse in the metal scene. Taking this and applying it to what Sekkusu did, it is apparent that they broke the rules of the metal scene. While it can be assumed many of the metalheads at that show would have been open to talking about these issues, the unwritten rules of the metal scene push these conversations to places other than the concert.

Rock Critics, Punk, Metal, and Cultural Capital

Punk rock and heavy metal have origins in similar places, both having started as music associated with the working class, although punk did enjoy a large minority of fans who were of the middle class (Laing, 2015). Despite their similar beginnings, punk is now in a position where it carries significantly more cultural capital than heavy metal does. This disparity between the CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 50 cultural capital of punk and metal is related to their respective philosophies and worldviews, as discussed in the previous chapter. Specifically, the differences arise between how the philosophy of punk and the worldview of heavy metal were seen by rock critics and academics studying rock music in the late 1970s and 1980s who were in a position to classify punk and metal as musics that have or don’t have value, as well as being in a position to disseminate these understandings to the larger society.

“Music criticism, at the most basic level, is writing about music that takes an interest - whether it be aesthetic, political, social, or historic – in ‘reading’ the music as a revelatory text”

(Powers, 2013, p. 9). With music criticism being defined in such a way, both academic writings on music and laypersons’ critical essays on music are capable of being labeled as musical criticism, which simultaneously dissolved the boundary between a music critic and an academic.

In “An Essay on Criticism,” Frith (2002) acknowledges this lack of boundary, saying “We are well used now to academics who dabble in rock criticism and rock critics who dabble in the academy. There are schools of rock criticism which are clearly ‘academic,’ even if written by journalists with no academic credentials at all, and classes in rock criticism taught by instructors who have never written a critical line in their lives (p. 1).” In following this line of logic, academics of rock music and rock critics can be understood to serve a similar gatekeeping function, being in a position to assign value and detract from various musics in the eye of the public.

Both rock academics and rock critics serve a similar gatekeeping function for much the same reason, their voices were given legitimacy because of the education they had and the publications they wrote for. It is relatively simple to identify how the academics of rock were granted a position in which they could assign value to various musics, they went to universities CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 51 and had advanced degrees in musical scholarship. By the very nature of the advanced degrees they had earned, they were subject matter experts. But some academics of rock music also worked as music critics, with Simon Frith being an example. In addition to his academic writings, Frith also wrote about music for Rolling Stone and the Village Voice, both well- respected periodicals (Frith, n.d.). While most rock critics did not have the same degree of academic training that Frith did, many of them did get college educations at prestigious institutions. Early rock critics Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau, and Ellen Willis all attended prestigious schools. Marcus attended the University of California-Berkeley (Powers, 2010),

Christgau attended Dartmouth College (Cantwell, 2019), and Willis attended Barnard College

(Powers, 2013). In addition to their educational pedigrees, these early rock critics also wrote for respected publications in the music industry. Christgau, the self-appointed Dean of American

Rock Critics, famously worked at the Village Voice as a music critic, a highly respected newspaper, as well as writing for other publications, including Newsday, Rolling Stones, and

Cream (Cantwell, 2019). Marcus and Willis also wrote for respected publications, working for

Rolling Stone and the New Yorker respectively (Cantwell, 2019).

Christgau, Willis and Marcus, along with many other early rock critics, had educational pedigrees and were working at publications that allowed their words to carry weight. Rock critics represent the values of upper middle-class and the upper class, and as such act as agents of class distinction. They were listened to by those who read them because the music critic is located in a space between traditional academia and lay personhood. In this space, the music critic can speak with an air of authority while communicating to the larger public. Because of this, the music critic’s words carry significant weight in determining what music has value, and thus what is endowed with greater cultural capital. This process is not a direct process however, as Frith CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 52

(1981) explains, “Music papers, indeed, are more important even for those people who don’t buy them -their readers act as the opinion leaders, the rock interpreters, the ideological gatekeepers.”

(p. 165). While music critics are important, they are not read by the whole of the music-listening public. Rather, those few who do read the work of music critics act as the medium between critics and the larger society.

The relevance of this concerning punk rock is found in the way rock critics recognized and celebrated the ideological nature of punk rock. The philosophy that is found throughout punk rock, was quickly recognized by rock critics. Much of the writing by rock critics who were discussing the first wave of punk rock, happening in the late 1970s, followed the Centre for

Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) subcultural model. This model understood the social sphere not as a place in which benign interactions took place, but as a site of political struggle.

As such, the punk rock scene, and its precursors, were understood to be entangled in a conflict with bourgeois cultural hegemony (Philipov, 2012).

This view of punk as a resistant ideology to cultural hegemony emerged, in part, from the way rock critics and scholars understood punk to be a uniquely working-class subculture and a utopia of egalitarianism. These understandings did not seem to originate from the mouths of the punks themselves, rather it was born out of the semiotic reading of punk, and especially punk style, that was made by critics in the first wave of punk rock. The best-known of these semiotic readings of punk is Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979), which is a book- length semiotic reading of the way punks dressed. Hebdige started his analysis with the idea that

“Each subcultural ‘instance’ represents a ‘solution’ to a specific set of circumstances, to particular problems and contradictions” (p. 81), and that these solutions are semiotically displayed in the way the subculture presented itself. Hebdige found that nearly all of the fashion CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 53 elements of punk style came from everyday life and were used in some way that was contrary to their intended purpose, and by being used in such a way became symbols of rebellion against the hegemonic culture of the time.

Style and fashion were not the only elements of punk that were read in this semiotic fashion. All parts of punk were open to be read in this fashion, and they were often found to be representative of punk as a working-class egalitarian utopia and of punk’s resistance to cultural hegemony. Observing the practice of do-it-yourself (DIY) in punk, scholars understood these practices as another form of resistance against capitalist expectations, and as a way to circumvent the means by which the cultural hegemony maintained the status quo. The DIY mindset found in punk was not only read as working resistance to hegemony by working-class youth, but it was also read as a way that punk made itself more open and accessible to socially marginalized groups, particularly women (Philipov, 2012, pp. 22-23).

Eventually, the CCCS’s subcultural model fell from favor, as it was often the case that as academics sought to identify subcultures that were resistive to cultural hegemony, they often constructed subcultures to appear as resistant. Punk was in no way immune to this; while punk was an ideologically focused music, it is not a homogenous mass of working-class actors as the

CCCS model envisioned it to be. Even in the early days of punk it was observable that a sizeable minority of punk musicians came from middle-class backgrounds (Laing, 2015), and by 1980

Frith was proclaiming the diverse class nature, reversing his previous championing of punk as a working-class bohemia (Laing, 2015, p. 21). Even as the diversity and nuance of punk’s class configuration and the role that played in the politics of punk were being acknowledged, the pattern of rock critics seeing punk as a subculture of resistance remained. This meant that punk CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 54 as a collection of politically minded actors continued to be presented to the public, rather than being viewed in a more nuanced fashion (Philipov 2012).

In contrast to the warm reception punk received, heavy metal was not well received by the larger public for a long time. In its nascent years, early bands were boycotted and, in the case of Black Sabbath, banned from performing (Dunn, 2005). In the 1980s and early 90s heavy metal was blamed for the delinquency of youths, with some high-profile youth suicides being blamed on the deceased teens’ listening to metal, famously the pioneering band Judas Priest was accused of putting subliminal messages into their music telling their fans to commit suicide (Gaines,

1991; Grow, 2015; Walser, 1991). Current-day metal still sometimes receives unjust press coverage whenever it is even remotely related to a negative event. A recent example of this is the coverage of the mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio by Connor Belts. Not only was the fact that he was in a pornogrind band brought up by the media, but Ohio journalist Jim Heath also referred to the fact that Belts was wearing a t-shirt with lyrics from the band The Acacia Strain on it (Heath

2019). Underlying all of this has been the consistently non-existent or negative coverage by music critics, who dismissed metal as not possessing the same unity of ideology as punk

(Phillipov, 2012, p. 54).

When discussing his long-publicized distaste for heavy metal, rock critic Robert

Christgau said he didn’t care for it “Because it's symphonic bombast without the intelligence and complexity, although there's a lot of virtuosity. You know, what can I say — I'm 72 years old.

This is not the time for me to start liking really loud guitar solos. That music is so masculine in a really retrograde way; I don't like that at all. It seems to me to have a very 19th-century notion of power” (Rath, 2015). Significantly, Christgau dismissed metal as an unintelligent music with seemingly no real value. In doing so, Christgau is dismissing the hidden qualities in the lyrics of CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 55 metal, which do carry an underlying worldview, but because bands are trying not to alienate fans they communicate their political stances in less direct ways.

Even in situations when critics penned positive words about metal, there was often an undercurrent of dismissal of the genre. An example of this is from a 1980 Washington Post article titled “Heavy Metal’s Heavier Than Ever.” In this article, author Richard Harrington champions the fact that in 1980 metal music was finding new traction as acts such as the

Scorpions and Def Leppard began to break into the American market. As he does this,

Harrington discusses the mostly male demographic of the metal scene at the time, adding that

“With the exception of Kiss, females generally are not attracted to the numbing sound.” By referring to metal as a “numbing sound” to the general public, the idea of metal as unlistenable and therefore undesirable is maintained.

The importance of how punk and heavy metal have been received by music critics is rooted in how music critics are in a position to evaluate and rank music and musical genres. With the early critics embracing punk as a rebellious music of revolution, they wrote about it in a positive way which was disseminated to the larger public. Even after the rise of post-subcultural readings of punk, readings which recognized the diversity and nuance in the punk scene and music, additionally writings on the political ideology and rebelliousness that were disseminated to the public. What this accomplished was the acquisition of cultural capital for punk. By being written about in a positive light by rock critics, punk became enshrined as something of social and cultural value and knowledge of punk acted as a signifier of social and cultural value as well.

On the other hand, heavy metal music never received the same praise by rock critics and indeed the larger media, having been either ignored or maligned. This ensured that metal would not only be excluded from access to cultural capital, but it was also given the signifier of being a CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 56 problematic music. That ensured that knowledge of metal did nothing to promote the acquisition of cultural capital.

Beer, Heavy Metal’s Habitus, and the Working Class

The traditional understanding of what class demographic forms the heavy metal subculture has been that it is primarily working class, with a bit of middle and lower-middle classes mixed in as well. While the demographic has shifted to primarily a middle-class audience, the metal scene is often read as full of signifiers of the working class. In my fieldwork,

I found that many of the actions and images that could be read as signifiers of metal’s continuing to be working-class are, in fact, the habitus of the metal scene.

A signifier that is easily read as a demonstration of the working-class condition of the heavy metal scene is what alcohol is consumed at shows. By and large, most alcohol I have seen at metal shows has been cheap domestic beer, such as Coors, Natural Light, Hamms, Budweiser,

Bud Light, and my favorite cheap beer, Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR). While cheap beer was the most common alcoholic beverage I saw imbibed, it was not the only one. At the Sanctuary in

Hamtramck, the bar has a surprising range of beer and other drinks, ranging from larger named microbrews such as Sierra Nevada, to hard ciders, to the ragingly popular hard seltzers. Naturally many of the concertgoers had drinks in their hands, and I eventually found that talking about alcohol was a good way to initiate a conversation. Although many of the fans drank cheap beer, they all had their personal preference and that was a great place to start. In one of these conversations I was having with a concertgoer, we were talking about what beer we preferred to drink. While both of us had cheap domestic beer in our hands, I was not, and have never been, shy about my love of highly flavorful micro-brewed beer. It turned out my fellow concertgoer also enjoyed the more expensive beers, although when at a metal concert he tends to not buy the CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 57 more expensive microbrew beer as the beer is not worth the mark-up most concert venues charge. Case in point, at the Sanctuary a 12-ounce bottle of Sierra Nevada pale ale was four dollars, compared to the $2-2.50 range for most cheap domestic beers.

While cheap domestic beer was one of the most popular drink choices, one beverage that

I saw a lot of people talking about and drinking in my fieldwork, the bulk of which took place in the summer of 2019, was White Claw. White Claw, a flavored hard seltzer line that was launched in 2016, was surging in popularity in 2019 (Ad Age Studio 30, 2019). Despite having the price of 4 dollars for a 12 ounce can at the Sanctuary, the same cost as a similar-sized bottle of Sierra Nevada pale ale, it seemed like at least 1 out of every 4 people I saw with drinks had a

White Claw in their hands.

Despite the popularity of drinks like White Claw, the role of cheap domestic beer in the metal scene cannot be overstated. The cheap domestic beer is part of the habitus of the scene.

Sufficiently so that, when I saw the local thrash metal band Manic Outburst at the Sanctuary on

August 16th, 2019, they brought a case of Hamm’s to give out to the audience as they performed.

The audience members in the mosh pit quickly snatched up the beer and proceeded to drink as they moshed, although drink is a generous term for what happened. As the band continued to play, the moshers continued their circle pit, but those with the cans of beer would be almost shaking the beer cans over their heads as they circled, splashing beer all over the floor and several other fans. On a rough estimation, at least a quarter of the beer ended up on the floor of the venue. This was my first time having seen Manic Outburst, and the first time I had seen beer enhanced moshing of this type. I asked a fellow concert goer who was familiar with Manic

Outburst if this was a regular occurrence. I was informed that not only do Manic Outburst bring a case of beer to every show, the crowds seem to always react in the same manner. CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 58

The prevalence of both White Claw and cheap domestic beer can be explained in that both fill a similar beverage role. With the heavy metal scene still being rooted in its working- class roots, the habitus that arises out of the metal scene reflects these roots. Traditionally the alcoholic drink of choice for the working class has been the cheap domestic beer, in part due to its low cost. As such, the drink of choice in the metal scene was cheap domestic beer. Although the demographic of the scene has changed, the drink of choice has not. As I can attest from my personal experience in the metal scene, when I started going to shows I would always order the beer that was closest to what I normally drank. This was usually some aggressively flavored

India Pale Ale. Over time I noticed that almost everyone else was drinking beers like PBR and

Miller, so I began to try these beers instead of my normal drink, and it just felt like it was the right choice. They didn’t feel as heavy in my mouth or stomach, and because they weren’t as intensely flavored I wasn’t taking half the show to drink one beer. It was refreshing to drink.

This allowed me to go into the mosh pit or to have another beer, and in general enjoy the use of both of my hands. This leads to the question, why was White Claw so prevalent as well? White

Claw is even lighter than most domestic beers and, being a seltzer, it is ideally served cold.

These attributes make it as refreshing to drink as beer is in the hot environment of a metal show, especially in the summer.

While the presence of cheap domestic beer in the metal scene can be read as a signifier of the working class, in the metal scene it takes on a different meaning. It is consumed because the habitus of the scene enables this behavior. As is demonstrated by my drinking habits, and the conversation I had with the unnamed fellow concertgoers, cheap domestic beer is drunk as much out of the conventions of the place we are in: we drink cheap beer because that is what everyone else is drinking, and new metalheads drink cheap beer because that is what we are drinking. CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 59

Internally it ceases to be a signifier of class and becomes a signifier of the metal community. It is a signifier that is so powerful that bands will make use of it, with Manic Outburst bringing a case of beer to each show just for the fans.

Middle Class Metalheads, Metal’s Working-Class Habitus, and Politics

In the following analysis I will also be leaning on research on political engagement and class conducted by Daniel Laurison (2016). This work details how political engagement is uneven between the economic classes, with Laurison defining political engagement as “electoral politics, by which I mean activity involved with electing or influencing democratically elected representatives such as legislators, city council members, or presidents” (p. 685). Laurison defines engagement as a collection of behaviors ranging from voting in elections, to political activist work, to simply being aware of and discussing politics. Laurison explains that those in lower economic classes display less political engagement than those in the middle class. In his research he found that “lower-status people are also more likely to believe that they are not legitimate participants in political decision-making, and therefore abstain from voting or other forms of political engagement” (p. 691). Laurison’s research was published months before the

2016 US presidential election, an election with the narrative stating that the winning candidate victory was due to broad support by white working class voters. This narrative seems to run counter to Laurison’s findings on working class voter engagement, however recent research into this election has found that the prevailing narrative about the working is not accurate (Carnes &

Lupu, 2020; Green & McElwee, 2018). While there has been a trend of increasing working class voter turnout, the percentage of working class voters are still less than the percentage of middle class voters who participated in the 2016 election (Morgan & Lee, 2017). Taking these findings on working class voter turnout in the 2016 election and Laurison’s findings on working class CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 60 voter engagement, and viewing them through the lens of Bourdieu’s theory of distinction, it becomes apparent that the lower classes, including the working class, have a habitus that generally dissuades political engagement for myriad reasons. On the other hand, the middle class has a habitus, a framework of behavior, which encourages even surface-level engagement with politics.

As has been discussed, although the metal scene has a habitus associated with it that yields behavior that could be read as working-class, the demographic of the metal scene is predominantly middle class. This is reflected in the fact that the majority of the metalheads interviewed in my ethnographic work were in some form enculturated into middle-class status.

The middle-class metalheads I interviewed all seemed to have similar values and tastes in the expression of ideologies in metal, even though their specific tastes in bands and subgenres didn’t fully overlap. That being said, they didn’t mind the expression of opinions and ideas within music; rather, they welcomed it provided it was civil. This mindset underlies the tensions between the cultural capital and habitus they possess as a result of being part of the middle class and the subcultural capital and habitus they possess as a result of their membership in the metal scene. Although all of the middle-class metalheads I interviewed had to navigate these tensions in one way or another, the two interlocutors who exemplified these tensions are Blackbird and

Dizzy.

The first of these interlocutors, Blackbird, is a 30-year-old male who comes from an upper middle-class background and currently lives in an affluent suburb of Detroit. Blackbird has been a longtime fan of metal and has a long history of participating in the metal scene in

Southeast Michigan, a history which proved useful as he was able to introduce me to other scenic members that may have been otherwise difficult for me to talk to. He also demonstrated an CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 61 encyclopedic knowledge of heavy metal music and its subgenres during our interview and in subsequent conversations. While he has omnivorous tastes in metal, he does prefer to listen to black metal, prog metal, and folk metal. Because of Blackbird’s deep knowledge of metal music and his long history of being in the metal scene, he has accrued a significant amount of mundane subcultural capital.

While Blackbird has acquired a measure of mundane subcultural capital, he has not garnered a similar level of transgressive subcultural capital. In our conversation Blackbird repeatedly referred to the importance of the metal community as we talked, at one point saying that “I never felt a part of that (upper middle-class community). I always felt more at home with lower middle-class communities, which is largely what the metal community I associate with is.”

This acceptance by the community was such that Blackbird, who began listening to metal in his early teens, credits it as “a driving force in my (his) self-actualization and expression.” And that has afforded him “the experience of being able to find myself and how I am to a greater degree than other environments.” This acceptance of the communal aspects of the metal scene facilitated

Blackbird’s acquisition of mundane subcultural capital.

In relating to the presence of overt political and ideological messages in metal, which formed a significant part of the discussion in our interview, Blackbird is “all for the exchange and discussion of ideas.” Blackbird also mentioned that one of his favorite albums is Epica’s

Design Your Universe, singling out the previously discussed song Martyr of the Free Word. He singles out the chorus as being indicative of his position on both politics in music and human discourse in general, stating that “the second people are not open to other opinions you start to have issues.” This opinion extends to Blackbird’s values, which originate from the writings of the occultist Alistair Crowley. Blackbird specifically quoted Crowley's famous dictum “Do what CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 62 thou wilt”(The Book of Law, 2002). Blackbird informed me that this passage can be interpreted in many ways, but he said what “he (Crowley) meant, do what you feel like you are here to do, do what your true will is. As long as it does not infringe on the rights or physical harm on other people or yourself.” These concepts and writings being a core of Blackbird’s worldview and personal values is significant as it not only aligns with the previously discussed worldview of heavy metal, “unity in disparity,” it also allows and celebrates open discourse between those of different ideologies and worldview in a way which has not always been accepted.

Dizzy, the second middle-class informant of note, is a 27-year-old woman who similarly has been into heavy metal for well over a decade. Dizzy is also an omnivorous metalhead, finding quality in most forms of heavy metal, although she does have a fondness for metalcore and nümetal. Similar to Blackbird, she has amassed considerable mundane subcultural capital.

Unlike Blackbird, it does not come from an encyclopedic knowledge of heavy metal, although

Dizzy is quite knowledgeable. Rather it comes from the knowledge of the inner workings of the scene she has acquired. Dizzy’s interaction with the scene goes beyond the normal scope of a fan, as she promotes and organizes local shows as a hobby. Promoting and organizing shows for

Dizzy was a way to stay in the metal scene after the birth of her daughter, roughly a year and a half ago. With promoting being a hobby, Dizzy doesn’t make any money as a concert promoter; however, as she uses these concerts to promote and raise funds for local charities.

As in the conversation with Blackbird, politics and ideologies were a focus for part of the conversation with Dizzy. However, it was Dizzy rather than me who broached the topic of punk’s political ideologies when our conversation turned towards punk rock and the punk subculture. Dizzy, who is a big fan of bands like Minor Threat and Rancid, noted of the punk subculture, “It’s pretty similar, maybe a bit more political than heavy metal sometimes. A lot of CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 63 times punk seems to be very involved in ‘go out and do something,’ you know. Especially when it comes to rising against something.” Although Dizzy doesn’t consider herself a punk, she supports what happens in the punk scene, saying that “it’s a really good way for politics to be represented in culture. It doesn’t always go over well in the mainstream scene; people get really up in arms because there is a lot of division in it.”

As members of the middle class, both Dizzy and Blackbird are in socioeconomic positions where political engagement of some form is part of the social fabric. Following this, their engagement with political and ideological discourses within their hobbies is a social norm for them. The neutrality that this engenders is the nature of the working-class habitus of the metal scene, which seeks to avoid overt political engagements so as to maintain the scene, as was discussed in chapter one. Dizzy and Blackbird navigate the tension between these two sets of expectations in several ways. Both Dizzy and Blackbird are in favor of music that has political and ideological discourse in the lyrics. While this allows for the maintenance of an appropriate social position in the mainstream, it comes into conflict with the underlying working-class ethos that permeates the heavy metal subculture. However, Blackbird and Dizzy navigate the tensions of this expected engagement with the more detached stance of the metal subculture through the obfuscating language of contemporary metal bands. By doing this, they can engage with the metal scene while simultaneously engaging with political ideas in a way that won’t appear as if they are trying too hard to do so. If they were to appear as if they were trying too hard they would quickly squander their subcultural capital as “Nothing depletes capital more than the sight of someone trying too hard” (Thornton, 1995, p. 12). Dizzy’s concert promoting, which she has used to benefit charity, also allows her to accrue mundane subcultural capital and not squander cultural capital at the same time. By booking and promoting shows, Dizzy has accrued a decent CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 64 amount of subcultural capital and continues to acquire more as she books more concerts.

Donating the money raised to charity allows her to avoid a situation where she is seen to be putting her profit over the scene, which could cause her to lose some of the subcultural capital she has. Additionally, by donating these proceeds, Dizzy is able to demonstrate her engagement with social causes, which acts to increase her cultural capital.

Conclusion

This chapter discussed a variety of related topics, all linked by Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural capital and habitus. The intent was to take the ideal type analysis of the first chapter and expand upon it by bringing in the class dynamics of metal and punk through the use of Pierre

Bourdieu’s theory of distinction. The major finding of this chapter is that middle-class fans of metal have found ways to navigate the tensions that have arisen between the habitus of the middle class and the working-class habitus of the metal scene. The main way of navigating these tensions is listening to metal music which does engage with politics in some way. This is important because there are whole subgenres of metal music that merge the political elements of punk with heavy metal, creating music that is uniquely middle-class heavy metal. This merging of genres is the subject of the next and final chapter.

CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 65

CHAPTER III. ALLOY GENRES AND THE METAL/PUNK CONTINUUM

In the first two chapters, my analysis has focused on punk and metal as individual entities which were, for the most part, separate genres. While there is truth to the idea that punk and metal were and continue to be their own musical and subcultural forms, it is not that cut and dry.

Heavy metal and punk have often been understood to be at odds with each other, yet they have just as frequently informed each other’s musical evolution. In the first two chapters of this thesis,

I followed the conceit that they were separate, placing punk and metal in opposition, envisioning them as insoluble as oil and water. This was done to simplify the analysis, as it allowed patterns to be made more apparent. The reality of the situation is metal and punk often overlapped. They overlapped in the places the shows took place, and they overlapped in the record collections of some punks and metalheads. This constant meeting led to contestations and crossovers which birthed new subgenres of punk and metal, subgenres that possess the best of both worlds.

It is my intent in this chapter to take the metal/punk continuum posited by Steve

Waksman (2009) and overlap it with the way class and cultural capital have related to punk and heavy metal. In doing so, the role of musical alloys, like metalcore, can be understood as a space for the expression of middle-class identities in heavy metal as the alloys are placed in between the idealized forms of the working-class metal scene and the middle-class punk scene. To accomplish this, this chapter will be split into three main sections. First will be a discussion of what the metal alloys are, as well as a history of crossover between metal and punk. The second will be an exploration of the alloys, especially metalcore, as a generic crossover point. There will be a specific focus on the way the lyrics possess either the overtly political nature or the immediacy of emotion seen in punk. The final section will demonstrate how metalcore music is linked with the transitions to a primarily middle class demographic in heavy metal as its CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 66 discussions of mental health issues would not have existed without the transitions to a primarily middle class demographic in heavy metal, and metalcore’s discussion of sociopolitical troubles is a way to mediate the tensions between metal’s working-class ethos and middle-class habitus on a large scale.

A Brief History of Metal and Punk Crossover

In the context of this research, the term “alloy” or "alloy genre” refers to any hybrid genre which fuses metal and punk without placing primacy on either. “Alloys” are defined as such because while metal and punk have a history of cross-fertilization which stretches nearly their entire existence, many subgenres of metal such as death metal, black metal, and thrash metal still place primacy on their metal heritage, in effect just welding on bits of punk to their metal core. The alloy genres, such as metalcore, deathcore, grindcore, and crossover thrash are sufficiently mixed that neither their punk nor metal heritage can be ignored.

The cross-fertilization of metal and punk has led to myriad hybridizations of the two genres into new musical forms. The metal scene alone hosts a laundry list of subgenres, with some major subgenres being thrash metal, death metal, metalcore, black metal, power metal, folk metal, and progressive metal. Each of these can be subdivided into further subgenres. Death metal, for example, has spawned blackened death metal, deathcore, melodic death metal, symphonic death metal, and other subgenres. Each of the subgenres listed was born out of some hybridization of and cross-fertilization between genres, be it progressive metal being born out of the fusing of progressive rock and heavy metal, or symphonic death metal being created by taking symphonic and orchestral elements and adding them to death metal. While there have been many outside influences on heavy metal, the most significant has been punk rock. It has been sufficiently significant that, although their relationship is usually ignored, several metal CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 67 scholars have looked at the history of this relationship (Gaines, 1991; Kennedy, 2018; Waksman,

2009).

Waksman's work on the history of metal/punk crossover yielded the conceptualization that metal and punk are not oil and water, but they are located a continuum with metal on one end and punk on the other. Waksman’s historiographic analysis of the relationship between punk and metal elucidated the often acknowledged but rarely discussed history of crossover between the two genres. Waksman’s understanding was that, unlike what was commonly believed, the length of this shared history is nearly as old as punk and metal, with Waksman arguing that genre crossover was happening as early as the 1970s, with the poster child of this proto-crossover being “the British band Motörhead, led by a refugee from the psychedelic era whose given name of Ian Kilmister had been supplanted by the single word moniker Lemmy” (Waksman, 2004, p.1). Motörhead was associated with punk because of the “band’s supposed lack of technical skill” (Waksman, 2004, p.13) and use of stripped-down songs reminiscent of the early days of rock. It is important to note that in the early days of punk, which coincided with the early days of

Motörhead's existence, there was a questioning of the usefulness of virtuosic technique. This technique, which had become a significant part of the rock of the 1960s, was rejected “as young bands asserted their right to play over the valorization of virtuosic technique” (Waksman, 2004, p.13). Similarly, Motorhead’s work gained an association with heavy metal, primarily due to its well-known predilection for playing louder than anything else. The significance of loudness is that it is one of the core features of heavy metal and it “mediates between the power enacted by the music and the listener’s experience of power … the music is felt within as much as without, and the body is seemingly hailed directly” (Walser, 1993, p.45). CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 68

Although the work of Motorhead is associated with both punk and heavy metal, Lemmy and the other members of Mötorhead have consistently refuted their ties with either, with

Lemmy’s constant concert refrain of “We are Motorhead! And we Play Rock and Roll!” summing up what the band was about. Lemmy, who was not ashamed to say that his major musical influences were musicians from the 50s and 60s such as The Beatles, Elvis, and Little

Richard, was playing music that formed the antecedent of heavy metal and punk. Although he was playing this music much faster and louder than his influences, which did endear him to punks and metalheads, it was still just rock and roll (Oliver & Orshoski, 2010).

The next significant event in the history of metal/punk crossover, at least on the metal side, was the advent of thrash metal. Thrash was a subgenre of heavy metal that was birthed in the early 1980s from a fusion of elements of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal

(NWOBHM), punk, and hardcore punk. Unlike the crossover band Motörhead, which was an influence on thrash metal, thrash was never a true crossover as it put primacy on its metal roots, with Kahn-Harris saying of thrash “One of the things that defined thrash metal is a sense of seriousness, a kind of austerity. Influenced by punk, not necessarily always by the music in punk but perhaps by some of the attitude in punk. Punk was born in part of frustration. Punk emerged at a time of great loss of confidence in the west about where the world was going” (Dunn, 2005).

Not long after the eruption of thrash metal, the nascent forms of the alloys began to take shape. In the mid-1980s a wave of hardcore bands “began playing more like intense hardcore that sounded like a stripped-down amateur take on speed metal” (Christie, 2011, p.73), with the term “crossover” being coined to refer to this new sound. While there has been some borrowing between punk and metal, crossover thrash was when the scope of the exchange was so significant that crossover became its own subgenre, with Kennedy saying “rather than hardcore guitarists CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 69 playing metal riffs or metal vocalists singing hardcore lyrics, the notion of crossover as its own entity allowed for a wide variety of interplay between previously defined metal and hardcore concepts” (2018, p.54).

Around the same time crossover thrash was coming into being, a similar crossover was taking place in England in the form of grindcore. The early pioneers of grindcore, including bands such as Napalm Death and Carcass, combined thrash metal, punk, and black metal in such a way that the “stripped down amateur take on speed metal” (Christie, 2011, p. 186), that was found in crossover thrash was compressed. It was compressed to the point that “in grindcore there was almost no song structure – only a blurry sustained outpouring of the ultimate speed and ferocity” (Christie, 2011, p. 186).

Another point of crossover between punk and heavy metal came from the Pacific

Northwest in the late 1980s in the form of grunge. Grunge, a genre of rock music, rejected the excesses of the 1980s metal scene, instead looking toward the heavy metal of the 1970s for inspiration. At the same time, the musical ethos of punk was seen in the stripped-down songs and rhythms seen in grunge. Grunge musician and producer Jack Endino, who has worked with seminal grunge acts including Nirvana, Mudhoney, and Soundgarden explained this merging of punk and metal saying “It seems to me like it was taking up from a place where metal and rock had left off in 1976, and was now sort of going back there and picking up the pieces and throwing some punk rock influence and starting over. This is a continuation of 70s rock with some punk ethos and a healthy respect for noise” (Chapman, Dunn, & McFayden, 2012).

Finally, this brings the story to the genre of metalcore. As an alloyed genre, metalcore fuses punk and metal into a seamless whole. However, the history of metalcore is murky as its definition has changed significantly through the term’s lifetime. Initially, metalcore was a term CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 70 that was used to refer to many bands which blended hardcore and thrash metal, such as

Stormtroopers of Death, Hirax, and the Cro-Mags, all of whom are now understood to be crossover thrash (Christie, 2011). This understanding of metalcore continued into the mid-2000s, with documentarian Sam Dunn listing crossover thrash bands such as Stormtroopers of Death,

Cro-Mags, Corrosion of Conformity, and Suicidal Tendencies as metalcore (Dunn, 2005). At the same time, though there was a change in the waters of heavy metal, the rise of a new wave of

American heavy metal (NWOAHM) was taking place.

While the NWOAHM has been understood as a subgenre in and of itself, it is generally understood as a movement within the American metal scene that took place roughly between

2000 and 2008 (Kennedy, 2018, p.230). This new wave of American heavy metal had myriad bands associated with it which demonstrated a significant range in musical style. Bands such as

Mastodon, which is generally understood to work in the progressive metal genre; Lamb of God, which is generally understood to be working in-between the genres of groove, thrash, and death metal; As I Lay Dying, a contemporary example of metalcore, and the Cro-Mags are all understood to be part of this wave of American heavy metal. While the NWOAHM consisted of a myriad of genres, it is an accurate assertion that the music of the new wave of American heavy metal was a return to an older heavy metal form that brought metal “Back to its core brutality”

(Sharpe-Young, 2005, p. ix).

The New Wave of American Heavy Metal is significant to the story of metal/punk crossover in that it was where metalcore crystalized as a genre. Modern metalcore is a sound which “combined thrash and death metal rhythms, virtuosic guitar leads reminiscent of Iron

Maiden and Judas Priest, and vocals that veered from ferocious hardcore to soaring melodic eighties metal” (Wielderhorn & Turman, 2013, p.557), with major names in the genre being CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 71

Killswitch Engage, As I Lay Dying, and Avenged Sevenfold. The change in what was considered as it crystalized into its current form was sufficiently significant that Erik Smialek conceptualized metalcore to have been formed in 2004, explaining his late start date by saying:

[A]malgamations of metal and punk had been happening for decades—indeed many

histories and taxonomies include bands from the 1980s and ’90s under ‘metalcore’ but it

was not until around 2003 and 2004 when a definable scene that consistently referred to

itself and was referred to by others as ‘metalcore’ succeeded nü metal as the most popular

strain of metal music in North America. (Smialek, 2015, p.79)

By placing the start date in 2004, Smialek links this concept of metalcore with the developments of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal. While not dismissing the antecedent forms of metalcore “[Smialek] implies that metalcore became codified and, in that sense, defined during

NWOAHM in a way that it was not beforehand. In short, NWOAHM changed metalcore”

(Kennedy, 2018, p.228).

Clinton-Wallach Multisubjectivity Hypothesis

In the coming analysis of lyrics from the alloy genres and of interviews conducted with middle-class metalheads in Southeast Michigan, the Clinton-Wallach multisubjectivity hypothesis will be useful in understanding how the music of the alloys makes space for middle- class metalheads in the scene. The Clinton-Wallach multisubjectivity hypothesis starts with the

“conception of the Metal listener as an empowered medial subject aggrieved but not defenseless, neither subaltern victim nor dominating victor, someone attuned to both the horror and allure of power” (Wallach & Clinton, 2017, p.101). Wallach and Clinton argue that heavy metal’s lyrics use a rhetorical practice of invoking both the oppressor and oppressed as part of the way metal depicts power. Citing the lyrics of songs such as Anthrax’s “Who Cares Wins” and Iron CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 72

Maiden’s “Run to the Hills,” Wallach and Clinton argue that in metal lyrics “powerful institutions are personified, and their narrative voices can then be alternated with their victims’ voices” (p.103). Wallach and Clinton argue that multisubjectivity, the placing of multiple subjective voices in a text, is a “noticeable feature of the genre” (p.103) which is seen relatively infrequently in other musical genres. As metal utilizes multisubjectivity more frequently,

Wallach and Clinton contend that it is used in metal to present a nuanced picture of power in action.

The Alloy Genres and the Metal/Punk Continuum

Befitting their position in the middle of the metal/punk continuum, the alloy genres blend the lyrical qualities of their parent genres into a seamless whole. As was discussed in the first chapters, the worldview of metal which seeks unity in disparity, while the philosophy of punk values individuality, the rejection of power as exploitative, and the rejection of traditional beliefs. Both of these trends are present in the alloy genres. Because the alloy genres represent a broad spectrum of sound and style, the themes explored vary from band to band, but there are some thematic patterns. These patterns are an emphasis on the individual, engagement with political and social issues, and the use of poetic language to at least partially obscure the direct topic of the song.

The emphasis on the individual, a key pillar in the philosophy of punk, can be seen within many songs across all the alloy genres. This celebration of the individual is one of the most visible lyrical qualities of metalcore after the NWOAHM codification. As an example of this, in the lyrics of the collected work of three popular metalcore bands, August Burns Red, Killswitch

Engage, and As I lay Dying, nearly all were in the first-person point of view. Of the 87 songs in

Killswitch Engage’s studio albums that had lyrics, and not including bonus tracks or covers, 84 CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 73 of them used pronouns that were in the first person such as I, our, we, us, and me. Similarly, of the 88 songs in August Burns Red’s studio albums that had lyrics, and not including bonus tracks or covers, 82 of them used first-person pronouns. Finally of the 80 songs in As I Lay Dying’s studio albums that had lyrics, and not including bonus tracks or covers, 78 of them used first- person pronouns. Although there are a few songs that did not use first-person pronouns, they still seemed to be written in a first-person perspective, as most were written as if they are monologues being sung directly at someone.

While the vast majority of post-codification metalcore lyrics use a first-person perspective, the way they place focus on the individual differs from the way’s punk does. In the two examples of individuality discussed in chapter one, Bikini Kill’s “I Like Fucking” and

NOFX’s “Don’t Call Me White,” the songs asserted qualities about the individual. In “I Like

Fucking” there was an assertion of agency, namely assertion of a woman's sexual agency and freedom to enjoy coitus. In “Don’t Call Me White” it was an assertion of the individual as existing beyond the confines of an ascribed status. In metalcore, however, the focus is often on personal trials and tribulations. This pattern can be best seen in the songs “Disgust” from My

Own Will, “The Arms of Sorrow” by Killswitch Engage, and “A World Ahead” by The Anchor.

Killswitch Engage’s song “The Arms of Sorrow,” from their 2006 album As Daylight

Dies, is a song that focuses on some unnamed personal struggle. Being sung from a first-person perspective, it is not a narrative but rather something more like a snapshot of mental illness. The song’s vocals almost entirely eschew the harsh or growled vocal seen in metalcore, rather relying on the bittersweet legato tones of Howard Jones’ cleanly sung high baritone to carry the emotion of the song. The song opens with the lines “Imprisoned inside this mind/ Hiding behind the empty smiles/ So simple (the anguish)/ As it mocks me/ Crawling back into the dark/ Running, CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 74 always running, into the distance/ Stop me before I bleed, again/ The echoes of my voice/ Follow me down/ The shadows I cast/ Follow me down.” The song continues in this pattern as it reaches the chorus, saying, “Deeper I’m Falling/ Into the arms of sorrow/ Quickly Descending/ Into the

Arms of Sorrow.”

Unlike “The Arms of Sorrow,” the song “Disgust” from My Own Will’s 2019 EP

Disgust, focuses on a declaration of strength and resilience in the face of an oppressor rather than the internal melancholy and struggle of mental illness. The song uses a vocal tone that is a mix of shouting and growling throughout much of the song, only occasionally dropping into a deeper groan reminiscent of death metal. The song’s lyrics open with a harsh scream, saying “3, 2, 1, get the fuck up/ I won't be a victim/ I won't fall to a broken system/ You can't control me,” quickly asserting the individual's resistance against whomever or whatever has previously compromised their agency. The first verse of the song continues in this vein of resistance, but it vehemently rejects the oppressing party, saying, “Get fucked: you are a waste of life/ I'm tired of you crawling in my fucking mind/ I tried to protect your feelings/ But you gave my hatred a whole new meaning.” The assertion of individual agency and refutation of an oppressing person or group culminates in the song's breakdown, when the vocalist screams “This hatred in my chest,/

Makes me feel lower than the rest./I'm no one's second best, /And now I'll leave you in the past...fuck!” In the bone-crunchingly heavy breakdown, the vocalist acknowledges the anger that was held inside and had been controlling him, only to triumphantly cast it aside.

Lastly there is the song “A World Ahead,” from the 2016 album of the same name by

Colorado-based metalcore band The Anchor. The vocals in this song oscillate in delivery between a deep growl and clean singing which is slightly reminiscent of vocals in pop music. Of the three examples, this song is the one that celebrates the individual in the most obvious way, as CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 75 the song is a celebration of the importance of prioritizing the care of one’s self. The song opens with the growled lines “Confined with no space to speak/ Build up the skin to hide what composes me/ I see the path but my soles are worn and filled with mud.” This sets the singer in a position that seems to be controlled and worn down by some unmentioned force. When the song reached the chorus the vocals switch from growls to clean singing, with the vocalist clearly and triumphantly proclaiming “I am the tiger/ A gem among the world of stone/ I won’t be mastered by what holds me down.” In this moment, the switches from a person who is worn down by the world to a celebration of an individual who is asserting themselves and their personal values in a powerful way.

These songs, “A World Ahead,” “Disgust,” and “The Arms of Sorrow,” make use of the punk discourse of individuality. Rather than celebrating “the biological and cognitive idiosyncrasies that make us all individuals” (Kristiansen, Blaney, Chidester, & Simonds, 2012) and rejecting conformity, metalcore focuses on the individual as an emotional being. Due to the focus on the individual self as an emotional creature, metalcore is able to play with power along the same lines as stated in the Clinton-Wallach Multisubjectivity Hypothesis. However, metalcore does this differently; rather than using multisubjectivity to represent mediality, these songs place the I of the song in a position that is medially powerful. Each song acknowledges in some way the self’s lack of total power in a situation. In the case of “The Arms of Sorrow” there is an acknowledgment of a lack of power over one’s mind and emotions, as seen in the previously mentioned first verse “Imprisoned inside this mind/ Hiding behind the empty smiles/

So simple (the anguish)/ As it mocks me.” In “Disgust” there was an acknowledgment of power that someone or something held over the self, as indicated in the lyrics “I'm tired of you crawling in my fucking mind./ I tried to protect your feelings,/ But you gave my hatred a whole new CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 76 meaning.” Finally, in “A World Ahead,” there is an acknowledgment of the oppressive nature of living for someone else. This is heard when the singer growls “My hands pushed under the weight of/ my mistakes and doubts./ Dreams and hopes pushed aside./ I can’t live a life for someone else.” While this acceptance of a less than powerful position happens in each song, at some point each song reframes the way power is positioned, by either reclaiming it, reasserting it, or understanding that it is still within your grasp. This can be seen in “The Arms of Sorrow” when the singer declares “There must be serenity/There must be deliverance”, in doing so the I in the song recognizes at least for a moment that there is some power over one’s own mind that is still within grasp. In “Disgust” the singer is reclaiming power, which is very clear in the breakdown when the vocalist screams “I'm no one's second best,/And now I'll leave you in the past … fuck!” Finally, in “A World Apart” the I of the song reclaims power and control over her own life, declaring, “I can create the life I underestimated for so long/ For me to write the lines. I now see the world that lies ahead./ The world that lies ahead for me/ I am the gem. I am the tiger.

I am the courage/ My life comes first.” Through the course of the song, the lyrics shift to proclamations of the singer’s importance, proudly declaring, “My life comes first.”

The influence of punk philosophy on metalcore is not limited to a discourse of individualism. While it is less readily visible, the lyrics in metalcore do embrace other elements of punk philosophy, like the rejection of traditional belief, and the refutation of power as an exploitative force. While doing this, the lyrics in metalcore still follow the precedent generally seen in metal lyrics of not directly naming the issue being discussed. This can be exemplified in the song “Destination Insanity” by Art of the Fallen.

“Destination Insanity,” from the 2019 album History Repeats by the Detroit band Art of the Fallen, is a song that illustrates the presence of punk’s philosophical trend of refuting power CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 77 as an exploitative force. The refutation of power as exploitative is seen in the chorus of the song and the second verse. The chorus states, “We march with Honor and peace/ But we’re met with force and violence/ We try to Carry on as one/ But we know that it can never be done.” This chorus leads into the second verse, saying “We must learn from mistakes of the past/To make humanity Last/ When we look back and we see/ What happens ruling with tyranny/ Haven’t we learned the lesson/ of running with power and obsession.” In the chorus, the subject of the song is established, and like most metalcore it is seen in the first person. Unlike many of the previously examined songs, “Destination: Insanity” uses the first-person plural, but the focus is still firmly on the individual.

Within each of these songs the individual in the song recognizes that they are in-between a position of power and powerlessness, be it the power of one’s mind, others, the world, or political power. In a very punk fashion, they celebrate the individual’s ability to triumph over the exploitative nature of power. However, these songs also do this in a way that is very much in line with the style of heavy metal. As was discussed in chapter one, while heavy metal does approach and discuss political topics, it does so in ways that do not directly state the political issue being discussed, nor does it directly state the band's opinions on the issue. Similarly, while some of these lyrics didn’t broach political topics, the same technique was used. While none of these songs were blunt in how they approached their topics, none ever specifically stated what they were singing about. In doing so they left the interpretation of the songs to the listener who can insert their personal understandings into the song as they wish. By doing this, the lyrics of metalcore merge and benefit from generic conventions of both its parent genres.

This use of genre conventions of both punk and metal may also explain why these songs do not utilize multisubjectivity in their lyrics as Wallach and Clinton claim is commonplace in CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 78 the metal corpus. Clinton and Wallach state that although multisubjectivity is common in metal, it “is far less common in other music genres, which tend to keep a single perspective in a song or only shift perspective once between the verse and chorus” (2017, p.103). Considering that metalcore is a genre born of punk and metal, and is located in the center of the metal/punk continuum, it does not hold to the conventions of either entirely. Metalcore emphasizes the individualist trend found in punk by frequently using a first-person perspective in its lyrics. In doing so, metalcore lyrics are effectively barred from using multisubjectivity. However, through the same first-person perspective metalcore lyrics are able to place the subject of the song, and subsequently the listener, in a position of medial power and in doing so ensuring the appeal of metalcore to the middle-class metalheads.

While much of the time spent discussing music in this thesis has been dedicated to the discussion of lyrics, it is important to note that punk and metal differ in their musical qualities.

Metalcore alloys sonic qualities of punk and metal to create it’s unique sound. As was commented on by Wiederhorn and Turner(2013), contemporary metalcore didn’t just merge punk rock and heavy metal wholesale, instead it combined specific elements from various subgenres in each.

The guitar work in modern metalcore reveals its mixed parentage in that it combines rhythms form thrash and death metal, melodies and guitar leads reminiscent of the New Wave of

British Heavy Metal, and breakdowns seen in modern hardcore punk. What this means is the rhythm guitar plays riffs, that is musical phrases which are repeated and form the basis of the sound during the verses and chorus, which are heavily influenced by thrash metal and death metal. Thrash and death metal riffs are usually very fast and complex phrases, which require significant technical skill and manual dexterity to play. The guitar leads, those being melodies CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 79 and solos played by the guitar, take sonic influence form bands like Judas Priest and Iron

Maiden. That means these leads tend to be very melodic and relatively simple, simple enough that they can be sung by fans at a concert, even if the fans were drunk. Finally there are breakdowns, which originated in the hardcore punk scene in New York City. Breakdowns are rhythmic sections of music which often fills the role of a bridge in the song’s structure. It utilizes heavily syncopated rhythmic playing by the guitars, bass, and drums that breaks with the current melodic and rhythmic pattern to create a very aggressive sound that has been described within the metal scene as “bone-crunching.”

The vocals in metalcore are also indicative of its parentage, as metalcore vocals mix the screamed vocals found in hardcore punk and clean vocals seen in metal from the 1980s.

Hardcore punk made use of harsh vocals, much like death metal does, using specific vocal techniques to safely create an atonal and distorted sound. Death metal growls tend to be low, having a tonal quality that can only be described as “cookie monster when he sings”. On the other hand the vocals in hardcore punk, and by extension metalcore’s harsh vocals, are generally higher in pitch than death metal growls, sounding like the vocalist is screaming his lyrics towards the audience.

Metalcore and the Middle Class

We have established what the alloy genres are and that the crossover status in Metalcore is displayed through lyrics which exemplify the merging of punk philosophy and metal’s worldview, but the story of metalcore is more complicated than that. Although it is clear that the music of metalcore is a merging of punk and metal into a new alloy of music, the subgenre of metalcore is more than just a midway point in the metal/punk continuum. Metalcore is an alloy of metal and punk with a specific blend of lyrical foci and idiosyncrasies that are a product of the CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 80 rise of the middle-class demographic in heavy metal, reflecting the culture of middle-class metal fans and musicians.

Social conditions, such as class, have the ability to influence how some musical forms are allowed to exist without the breaking the rules of their genre (Brown, 2018). Metalcore’s reflection of the middle-class metalhead is an example of this, and it is directly related to several things. The first is quite simply the fact that the middle class is now a dominant demographic in the heavy metal scene. Couple this with the fact that many metalcore lyricists write about personal experiences, a fact which will be elucidated by several key informants and will be expanded later. Writing from personal experience is not unique to metalcore, nor it is exclusive to punk. Even in metal lyrics, which tend to write in metaphor and allegory, personal experience is a common inspiration. This was famously demonstrated by Dee Snider of Twisted Sister when he was summoned to appear before the Parents Music Resource Center in Washington DC to testify about musical censorship. His song “Under the Blade,” from the 1982 album of the same name, which some had understood to be about sadomasochism and bondage, was written in response to the throat surgery of the guitarist in Twisted Sister (Dunn, 2005). What truly sets metalcore apart from the rest of the corpus of heavy metal, at least in terms of how it reflects the middle-class fans, is the influence of punk on the lyrics. Metal has a history of writing lyrics which do not directly state the lyricist's intended meaning, while punk has always been much more transparent. Befitting its alloyed status, metalcore is somewhere in-between, where the intended meaning of the song is usually fairly easy to discern, but still leaving some room for interpretation.

As has been mentioned, metalcore lyrics have a special interest in mental health and sociopolitical issues. The common element of each of these interests is power, as has been CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 81 discussed previously. The fact that power and the structures of power continually reappear in the lyrics of metalcore is the true reflection of the middle class seen in metalcore, as the middle class is betwixt and between power and powerlessness, which returns this conversation to the Clinton-

Wallach multisubjectivity hypothesis.

Clinton-Wallach Multisubjectivity Hypothesis Revisited

In the same article where Wallach and Clinton posit their hypothesis of multisubjectiviy they also use the idea of medial power to explain heavy metal’s appeal to the middle class.

Wallach and Clinton start with their initial conception of the metal listener as an empowered subject in a medial position of power and then use the multisubjectivity presentation of power in metal lyrics to attempt to explain the shift in demographic in the metal scene with regards to

“socio-economic class, gender, and geographic position” (108). They argue that the new audiences all are in some form of medial position and that better allows for an appreciation of metal’s discourse of power. In the context of this research, the medial position to be discussed is socioeconomic class. Wallach and Clinton argue that the rise of the middle-class metal demographic in the United States is a consequence of industrial outsourcing. This outsourcing led to the children of blue-collar workers being de-proletarianized and “confined to low-wage service-sector jobs or long term unemployment”(2017, p.109). With this transition, it becomes the middle class who are the mediating strata of workers and thus explaining to a degree the rise in middle-class metal fans.

The significance of this in the current discussion on metalcore is that, as has been previously discussed, metalcore lyrics very frequently place the listener in a medial position. It is this medial position in metalcore lyrics that goes a long way in explaining the presence of the middle class in metalcore’s fanbase. As Wallach and Clinton (2017) briefly explained, the CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 82 middle class is now the medial strata of workers, a consequence of a decades-long process of neoliberal reforms in the economy which outsource the industrial labor that once formed the backbone of the working class in the US.

Chris, Spike, and Metalcore Lyrics

To aid in demonstrating how the metalcore reflects the experiences of the middle-class metal fan, I will be relying on the responses by two of my key informants in metal bands in the

Southeast Michigan scene, Chris and Spike. Chris and Spike are both vocalists in metalcore bands, and as such they were able to provide great insight into the themes and motifs that were found in metalcore in addition to the process they used in crafting their lyrics. Additionally, both

Chris and Spike hailed from the middle class so their answers, while not directly related to questions of class and metalcore, were able to elucidate the relationship between the two.

Spike, a 30-year-old male from the suburbs north of Detroit, is a member of a metalcore band which has had enough success to be able to launch the occasional national tour, although their larger touring focus is in the Midwest and the regions of the country adjacent to it. The lyrics that Spike writes tend to lean more toward the allegorical, so any intended meaning he may place in the lyrics is open to interpretation. Spike was also under no illusion that although there is an artistic quality to writing metal music, at the end of the day music is a business and there are ways of making a song that will be well received by listeners. One of those techniques

Spike mentioned was the use of empathy, saying,

You’re always trying to bridge that gap between the artist and the listener, by using first-

person pronouns it gives the listener the ability to kind of put themselves in the in the

person’s shoes so to speak, the metaphorical person whether it is the author of the song or

the fictional person the song is coming from. Empathy is a strong tool and I think that is CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 83

why first-person pronouns are so often used, that ability to put yourself in shoes of the

person delivering the message in the song is a very huge part in conveying that message.

Getting that point across, getting the listener to come back to it.

Spike later elaborated that when he said empathy, he was using that word because it “is just a much more fine-tuned way to describe a connection; you are trying to bridge a gap between listener and artist.”

The other key informant, Chris, a 29-year-old male who is also from a suburb of Detroit, is similarly in a metalcore band that has had some success and has established itself in the

Southeast Michigan metal scene. Unfortunately, unlike Spike, Chris’s band has not had the opportunity to play many shows beyond the local scene. While Spike often referred to the idea of empathy in lyrics, Chris places an emphasis on relatability in the lyrics he wrote, as he tries to write about whatever he felt is relatable to the listener and that he finds personal inspiration from. Discussing relatability, Chris used the 2020 presidential election as an example, saying,

“like politics is big right now. I’m not gonna write the grass is green, the sky is blue” as there were more directly relatable events he could write about. Although Chris writes using personal experience as inspiration, he did mention how he was tied to the instrumentation, saying the theme of each song, “Depends on the guys who are writing the music and what the instrumentation makes me feel. If the song is fast and pissed off I will follow that, if it is slower and more reflective I will write in that vein.”

Chris and Spike are not alone in writing lyrics using a reflexive process. In metalcore, it is a fairly common practice, as Chris elaborated on, “I would say probably about 90% of metalcore lyrics are either personal experiences, viewpoints, or those two of someone that they’re close to.” With that being the case, each lyricist writes music that is reflective of their CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 84 habitus and cultural capital, and on a larger scale that translates to the habitus and experiences of the middle class being reflected in the music of metalcore.

Sociopolitical Issues and Metalcore

The discussion of sociopolitical issues in metalcore, and the metalcore scene, makes sense when class and habitus are taken into consideration. Harkening back to the end of chapter two there was a discussion of how the working-class habitus of the metal scene and the habitus of the middle class are at odds with each other. There was also a discussion on how middle-class metal fans navigate these tensions. The basic idea was they found ways of engaging with habitus simultaneously, as Dizzy and Blackbird both enjoyed metal music that had some form of ideological message in it. Metalcore follows that same trend writ large, as the genre provides a platform for the relatively open discussion of the sociopolitical while still following the expectations of the larger metal scene.

The contradictory nature of the open yet veiled approach to discussing the sociopolitical in metalcore is truly reflected in what Chris and Spike said to me. Spike had said, regarding the rejection of former president Donald Trump in the local metalcore scene, “I would say yeah, I mean not necessarily through music, just in the way especially like I said, I am very open on social media about my opinions, but I heavily dislike that man. A lot of my peers feel the same way,” indicating that politics is discussed in the scene. Politics is not talked about at concerts or directly in the music, but members of the metal scene do talk about politics and they discuss it with each other in locations not associated with the metal scene. Chris, on the other hand, mentioned in our interview how he does write about these topics, and politics is something he deals with in his music as it is relevant to our lives. Spike and Chris provided two contradictory statements which happen to complement each other, revealing a larger story. The metalcore CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 85 scene is filled with members of the middle class, people who were raised with an idea that these issues are important and need to be followed and discussed. Yet, the discussion in the lyrics is never so direct as to be like the vocalist saying on stage, “yes this next song is about the illegal slaughter of the long-finned pilot whale,” as the metal scene would reject that level of directness.

The music Chris writes and his opinions surrounding that music exemplifies the pattern of metalcore lyrics acting as a mediator between the tensions of the middle class and the metal scene as he will write on sociopolitical issues. Although he writes about these issues he is very aware of how he presents them, commenting on his preference to leave things vague, saying,

When I write, I want the listener to take what they take out of the song, I don’t want it

to be this I am telling you straight up this this this and this you know. There are a couple

songs that I have written that were like that, one of the songs you can tell was about

losing somebody, but I left it open enough to wonder, is it death, it is a relationship did

they just walk away from, you know, things like that. I like it to be up to interpretation

because for me, getting me into music it was those types of lyrics that really hooked me.

It wasn’t a black and white this is how I feel, a specific message.

This attempt to leave the song open to interpretation is just as present when Chris writes about mental health issues, which he openly acknowledged that he had dealt with since his teens. Aside from writing about the experience of dealing with mental health issues, he also links mental health to the larger social context. “So I am right now in the process of writing for a new album, one of the songs I’m working on is about the taboo of mental health, and our group of people in the alternative scene it is not taboo, it is normal to reach out. I am trying to bridge the gap between what some don’t, and some do.” Chris’s attempt to write about the taboos on mental health is a form of engagement with the sociopolitical, as many of these taboos do end up CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 86 informing public policy towards mental health. But it is also a way of engaging with the other topic that reflects the way the middle class is represented in metalcore.

Mental Health and Metalcore

The outward discussion of mental health in metalcore lyrics is a direct representation of the middle class’s presence in heavy metal. As with the discussion of socioeconomic troubles in metalcore, the discussion of mental illness is a product of the middle-class habitus informing metalcore lyrics and the metalcore scene. Unlike the discussion of sociopolitical troubles, however, this is as much a story of metal’s working-class past as it is of the middle-class present.

In metal’s past there was frequent discussion of mental illness and psychiatric maladies. These discussions date back to the nascent days of heavy metal, as even the progenitor of heavy metal,

Black Sabbath, tackled this topic in the classic song “Paranoid.” However, the relationship between mental health and the working-class members of the metal scene was particularly strained in the 1980s, as Donna Gaines illuminated.

In the late 1980s, sociologist Donna Gaines went to Bergenfeld New Jersey to do ethnographic research on the teen “burnouts” of that town. What precipitated this research was a nationally covered quadruple suicide in Bergenfield that occurred on March 11, 1987. The four teens who ended their lives were labeled “troubled youths,” a term which has several unfortunate slang terms which include the term “burnout.” Burnouts, who were “often the kids near the bottom – academically, educationally, or socially” (Gaines, 1990, p.9) were those alienated, disaffected, and disgruntled youth who just didn’t fit in with the desired social order of high school. They were the exact group of people that were drawn to heavy metal.

While Gaines’ work looked at many aspects of the lives of burnouts, her chapter discussed reform school and the way in which schooling and psychiatric institutions were used in CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 87 an attempt to either fix the burnouts or at least shove them off to the side where they would be out of sight and thus out of mind. Some of these troubled youths were sent off to reform schools, such as “The Rock” which one of Gaines’ informants had been sent to. The Rock, as it turns out, was effectively a special education school for New Jersey, a location where youths with the need for some form of non-normative education were sent. The problem is how children with these needs were classified. Usually, as Gaines points out, those in special education were diagnosed as emotionally disturbed (ED), and become “a subject of bureaucratic domination at its most sophisticated. And despite the legislation stating that the child’s evaluation shall not be tainted by cultural or racial biases, special education is often about the containment of minority and working-class male children” (1990, p.132). The reason why these biases were so omnipresent in the labeling of an ED youth was that the label ED was defined with sufficient ambiguity as to allow variance. With criteria “the magic trick occurs in the words ‘satisfactory’ and

‘inappropriate’ The first is arbitrary, biases in favor of the person making the judgment. The latter is ironic. ‘Inappropriate’ behavior that is not considered suitable for the situation – a pervasive mood or depression, physical symptoms, irrational fears” (Gaines 1990 p.133). In other words, the exact behavior of a dispossessed, alienated, and outcast young white male who is angry at the world, the behavior of the burnouts.

Gaines was also keen to point out that “everybody I know in special education who has been diagnosed as ‘ED’ got that label from fighting,” (1990 p.135), and that fighting is more in line with the other classification used by the state of New Jersey at the time for troubled youth, which was socially maladjusted. Socially Maladjusted is a label that means that the youth is antiauthoritarian to the point of legal trouble, but that label didn’t come with additional federal funding for special education. “So where possible kids will be labeled ‘ED’ by altruistic school CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 88 personnel because that way more program options will be available for that kid”( 1990, p.135).

So the troubled youth, the burnout, is institutionalized for a vaguely presented mental illness.

Which in turn breeds distrust and a wariness to discuss mental health in any substantial way.

That distrust and wariness seeped into, and informs, the larger habitus of the primarily working- class habitus of the metal scene of the 1980s.

While the working-class ethos and habitus of the metal scene that formed in the 80s certainly restricted the open and frank discussion of mental health, it was not stifled forever. By the mid-90s nümetal opened the floodgates for mental health, with many bands exuberantly wearing their pain for all to see. While many nümetal bands wore their pain on their sleeves, few did it as viscerally as nümetal pioneers Korn did, with their vocalist Jonathan Davis allowing himself to be filmed as he broke down in tears as he recorded vocals for Korn’s self-titled debut album. These tears were because he writes from personal experience and often writes lyrics that draw upon difficulties he has faced in the past, a fact which he and his bandmates have been very open with (kornchannel, 2019). This openness was not lost on the listeners of nümetal, as my informant Chris attested to when he discussed the legendary nümetal band Linkin Park and the song “Numb” from their 2003 album Meteora, saying, “Take Linkin Park for example, one of the most successful alternative bands of all time, and the lyrical content they were writing was all about mental health. But they did it in a way that was marketable to everybody and you could take your own message out of what they are writing regardless of what the lyricist was theming it off of.” The role of nümetal in shaping what metalcore became should not be ignored, as well over half of those I interviewed for this project stated that their introduction to heavy metal was though nümetal, as it was the radio-friendly metal of their teenage years. CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 89

While nümetal opened the doors for a deeper exploration of mental illness in metal music, it differs significantly from metalcore in the way mental illness is explored. While nümetal’s depiction of mental illness was often very raw, with the lyricists expressing their own pain in emotionally vivid terms, metalcore takes on a more varied approach towards mental health. While there are songs that seek to explore the experience of mental illness from a personal perspective, such as Killswitch Engage’s “Arms of Sorrow,” others approach it differently, as Chris helped make clear in our discussion of mental health in metalcore. Aside from the aforementioned desire to write songs that help to break the taboo on discussing mental health, he also referenced the song “Youngblood” by Wagewar, on their 2015 album Blueprints.

“Youngblood,” according to Chris, is a song that was written in response to the suicide of a friend of Wagewar and is focused lyrically on aftereffects of suicide and the grief of those who were left behind.

Ultimately metalcore is a form of heavy metal, which is, to quote Deena Weinstein in her interview for Metal: A Headbangers Journey (2005), “A music of the strong.” It is listened to as a way of evoking a feeling of strength, not weakness. But the way those feelings are evoked through lyrics is culturally and socially constructed, what evoked strength for metalheads in the

1980s is not what works in the 2000s and today. In the 80s the cultural landscape and ways in which mental health care was weaponized as a way to control the working class youths who comprised the metal scene ensured that they did not openly discuss mental health, nor did they discuss mental illness in any significant way. Because discussion of mental health was directly linked to an oppressive experience, it could not signify the strength that is part of the fabric of heavy metal. Fast-forwarding to the 00s and 10s, and both the larger cultural discussion and the subcultural understanding in the heavy metal scene regarding mental health had changed. Mental CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 90 health services are now advertising their services on national TV, with celebrities openly admitting that they have needed counseling to deal with issues they have faced. An open discussion of mental health is slowly becoming normalized. Although the discussion is becoming normalized, access is still limited. Even among the middle class, the cost of accessing mental health services is prohibitive. These are then reflected in metalcore’s discussions of mental health, as admitting mental illness is no longer something that signifies a lack of strength in the metal scene. And because the access to the care needed to treat these issues is so limited, at times discussing mental health in metalcore lyrics can provide the strength to persevere through the difficulties that mental illness can bring.

Conclusion

This chapter was focused on the place where punk and metal meet along the metal/punk continuum. While there are many genres of punk and metal that are located on the continuum somewhere between the idealized concepts of heavy metal and punk rock, one of the clearest examples of this hybridization is metalcore. As an alloy of metal and punk, metalcore makes use of many of the elements of punk and metal, creating a gestalt with its own emergent properties.

The creation of this gestalt is a product of the unique history of metalcore and how the changes in metal at the turn of the 21st century reshaped what the scene was. Ultimately this merging of punk and metal into the beast we call metalcore allowed metalcore to reflect the middle-class demographic that comprises the core of the metal audience.

CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 91

CONCLUSION

On September 19th 2019, when I was conducting interviews for this research, I interviewed a local musician, Epirus. Going into this interview I was still trying to figure out the specific topic of this thesis, and even the question I was going to try to answer. I had ideas, but nothing had come together yet. In our discussion I asked questions about the Shock Narcotic show. Specifically, I was asking about the events surrounding the anecdote with which I started this paper. I was describing the way the crowd was acting, and Epirus was asking questions like

“Were they skanking? Were they just moshing?” I, unfortunately, didn’t have the knowledge of punk, or the nomenclature, to really describe what was happening. But from this, we talked more about hardcore dancing at metal shows. I was fervently against hardcore dancing, but Epirus said something which explained hardcore dancing to me. He said that they were just trying to express what the music made them feel, explaining it as a form of individual expression. This was news to me.

I open with this anecdote because it explains my relative lack of knowledge regarding punk rock. In many ways, it was this lack of knowledge that fueled the choice of topic for this thesis, as well as the question I wanted to answer. That question was “why are members of the metal scene choosing to join the metal scene as opposed to the punk rock scene?” The root of this question was my understanding that the punk and the metal scenes were both primarily middle-class demographics, and, as they were both aggressive rebellious musics, what differentiated them? While I didn’t fully answer that question, as my research took a left turn somewhere, I did find that the two genres had influenced each other many times, and that some genres that were born through this crossover were reflections of the middle-class metalhead due to their use of genre conventions from both punk and metal. CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 92

Chapter Summary

The chapters of this thesis were organized in such a way as to start in the first chapter with the idea of heavy metal and punk as separate entities, and by the time the third chapter was over, leave with the understanding that not only do punk and metal interact, but their interactions have spawned unique genres which are related to the class of the fans of these genres. To do this, each chapter looked at different aspects of the relationship between metal and punk. In the first chapter, metal and punk were viewed as ideal types, an abstraction that can reveal how the two genres are different, rather than looking at them in all the complexity that they possess. The second chapter discarded looking at punk and metal as ideal types, and instead looked at how they were understood by people outside of the punk and metal community, with an emphasis placed on class, particularly on middle-class metal fans. Finally, in the third chapter, the conceit that punk and metal were separate was discarded. The analysis was centered on punk and metal’s meeting point of metalcore, and how that relates to middle-class metalheads.

In the first chapter, because metal and punk were viewed as ideal types, two patterns were revealed. The first was that metal and punk have significantly differing ideologies. Punk roots itself in a philosophy that celebrates individuals, attempts to speak truth to power, and rejects unchallenged tradition. Metal, on the other hand, is not bound up by a single philosophy, but rather is a diverse group of subgenres that find unity through their disparity, celebrating the diversity of sound and style seen in the genre and coming together because of it. Because of these divergent ideologies, metal and punk also approach politics in different ways. Punk, in line with its philosophy, takes a direct approach. Punk is politically didactic; it has something to say and is not afraid to say it. Metal on the other hand is not political, at least not directly like punk CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 93 is. Metal shrouds its political commentary in allegory and metaphor, which also serves to preserve the unity found in metal’s disparate forms.

The second chapter turns its attention to class, punk, and metal. It describes how their aforementioned ideologies influenced how they were received, and in the case of metal, how this ideology creates tension for its middle-class fans. The early rock critics celebrated punk while they castigated heavy metal. As these early critics were writing in prestigious publications and had elite educational pedigrees, their value judgments of punk and metal influenced how the larger public understood the genres. Punk was good because it engaged with politics, metal was bad because it didn’t, and these value judgments influenced how knowledge of these genres was perceived as well. Metal, however, continues to be a working-class scene. Even though it had more of a middle-class audience, the decades of it being working class have stuck, the working- class ethos and habitus are still part of the scene. This, unfortunately, causes tension between the middle-class fans of metal, who are expected to engage with things like politics, and the working-class habitus of the metal scene which shuns such engagement. Fortunately, middle- class fans have found ways of navigating this tension. By preferring metal music that still engages with politics in some way, however slight, they can walk a line between these two habitus.

Finally, in the third chapter, the focus switches to where metal and punk meet. Using

Steve Waksman’s metal/punk continuum as a starting point, the chapter discusses the subgenre of metalcore. Metalcore holds a unique place on Waksman’s continuum as it exists in a space between punk and metal, as such it also combines elements of the two genres. Due to this, metalcore retains the detached stances seen in heavy metal, but it is not as aloof, taking punk’s more direct lyrical style. In doing so metalcore is able to act as a mediator between the tensions CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 94 of the working-class habitus of the metal scene and the habitus of middle-class metalheads, only this is on a larger scale than was illustrated in chapter two. By placing the focus on things like sociopolitical issues and mental illness, metalcore can directly address the issues facing the middle-class, while still adhering to metal’s detached stance.

Discussion

This project sought to take Waksman’s (2009) metal/punk continuum and apply it to the ethnographic research of the metal scene. The intent was to use it as a tool to understand and explain previously underexplored facets of the contemporary metal scene, namely the alloy genres like metalcore. This is important because both metalcore, and the relationship between punk and metal, have received relatively little academic attention. This is especially obvious in comparison to the volume of work done on more spectacular genres of metal, like black metal.

This project also sought to fill another important gap in the literature, one on the rise of the middle class in heavy metal. Again, there is relatively little writing on the subject. Some authors have attempted to provide an answer as to why the middle class is now the primary class demographic in metal, although none have done so through ethnographic methodology (Smialek

2018; Wallach & Clinton, 2017).

In the process of conducting this research, I found that metalcore was reflective of the middle-class metalhead, but on the path to that conclusion I spent many hours thinking over this topic. One result of these countless hours was that at least a dozen new questions and areas of research came to me. While most are only tangentially related to this research, there are two which are particularly relevant. The first is, “Why is mental health such a common theme in metalcore music and how does this relate to the middle class?” and the second is, “What is the relationship between nü-metal, metalcore, and the middle class?” CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 95

The first area for further research, the question of mental health, was addressed in chapter three of this work. However, due to many factors I was not able to give it the full treatment that it deserves. When conducting my interviews the subject of mental health did come up from time to time, but because the intended focus of these interviews was more on thoughts, opinions, and experiences with heavy metal and punk rock I was neither prepared nor equipped to ask any in- depth questions about my respondent's experiences with mental health. Considering that there has been some contemporary research on mental health outcomes and heavy metal, finding that for metal fans the music aids in resolving emotional problems and maintaining mental health, there is clearly more research that can be done in the area of heavy metal, mental health, genre, and class (Baker & Brown, 2014; Sharman & Dingle, 2015).

The second area for further research is the nagging questions involving nümetal. Aside from the link between nümetal and mental health, I can’t ignore that most of my respondents indicated that they came to the metal scene through nümetal. I had heard nümetal openly discussed several times during my fieldwork, and it wasn’t in a denigrating way either. Similarly, many of my informants, especially those in the metalcore scene, indicated that they came to metal through nümetal. Coupling that with metal news websites providing positive coverage of nümetal’s resurgence (Nguyen 2020; Westbrook 2020), it is clear that nümetal is no longer the abject genre that Smialek (2015) understood it to be. This begs the question, what is the relationship between the middle-class fans of metal and nümetal, and what is the relationship between nümetal and metalcore? Given the way nümetal approached the subject of mental health and the fact that it was influential for the middle-class fans of metal, there is most likely a relationship, and the depth of that relationship needs further exploration. CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 96

Finally, I would like to bring this thesis full circle, ending where I began at the Shock

Narcotic show. That show in many ways exemplifies what this research was trying to reveal. It was a meeting place for punk and metal, where fans of both were able to enjoy the music. The people who were enjoying the hardcore punk of SkumRotten, later were enjoying the metal played by subsequent bands. That concert speaks to the long history of crossover between the two genres, as no band there could claim that their music was completely devoid of influence from either punk or metal. More importantly, in this mix of bands representing punk and metal, people were enjoying themselves. This might actually answer the question I had that night, why do middle-class metalheads choose metal over punk. It was a question wrongly asked, as it was mutually exclusive. Sure, metalheads may prefer metal and punks will prefer punk, but that does not mean they only have to enjoy the one. The two genres have been and will continue to be enjoyed by fans on both sides of the metal/punk continuum. As long as concerts like the Shock

Narcotic concert continue to happen, punk and metal will continue to be enjoyed by fans of the other genre. They will continue to merge and create new genres, like metalcore, genres that are influenced by, and reflect, the lives of the new fans who listen to them.

CONTRASTING SOUNDS AND OVERLAPPING SCENES 97

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