Tapes, Transgression and Mundanity: the participatory engenderment of death metal and grindcore Steven Jones Pro gradu thesis University of Turku School of History, Culture and Arts Studies Master's Degree Pathway in Popular Culture Studies (Musicology) May 2016 The originality of this thesis has been checked in accordance with the University of Turku quality assurance system using the Turnitin OriginalityCheck service. THE UNIVERSITY OF TURKU School of History, Culture and Arts Studies JONES, STEVEN: Tapes, Transgression and Mundanity: the participatory engenderment of death metal and grindcore Master's thesis, 110 p., 6 appendix pages. Master's Degree Pathway in Popular Culture Studies (Musicology) May 2016 ABSTRACT Since its origins in the early 1980s, the popular rise of extreme metal throughout the globe has been phenomenal. The emergence of extreme metal's most sonically transgressive subgenres of death metal and grindcore between the mid 1980s and the early 1990s, however, was not an easy one. Indeed, during this period, the only way for globally dispersed extreme metal fans and unsigned extreme metal bands to stay musically connected was via the underground practice of tape-trading. The aim of this study is to illuminate the impact of tape-trading upon the global spread of extreme metal. The study will situate the historical context of extreme metal tape- trading by exploring how it emerged, and why it was necessary in the first place. Utilising the concept of 'extreme metal scene', the study will focus on the central scenic discourse of transgression and explore how this was negotiated into the mundane scenic practice of tape-trading. In relation to this, and utilising the concept of participatory culture, the study will further explore how the music arose and spread throughout the globe via the socially networked practice of both musician and non-musician tape- traders in relation to the tape cassette technology itself. Ethnographic interviews were undertaken with both types of traders in order to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon in question. The research concludes that the tape-traders were able to challenge the status quo of record company gatekeepers, by facilitating the engenderment and global distribution (including the later commercial distribution) of death metal and grindcore. Such powerfully affective music via its continual global spread, offers as it did for the original tape-traders, a pleasurable and empowering communal/personal space for disempowered people throughout the globe. Further research into extreme metal tape- trading would require deeper exploration into other extreme metal subgenres, especially black metal, tape-traders situated outside of North America and Europe, women tape- traders as well as exploration of the phenomenon after the early 1990s. Keywords: Tape-trading, death metal, grindcore, extreme metal scene, transgression, mundanity, subcultural capital, participatory culture, textual poaching, thrash, underground punk, lite/glam metal, musicians, fans, record companies, distribution networks, collecting, technology. Acknowledgements I wish to express my gratitude to following people who helped me in this academic endeavour. This project would not have been possible without their full support. I would like to thank my supervisors Professor John Richardson and Dr Juha Torvinen for their academic guidance, extremely valuable advice, encouragement and enthusiasm towards my study. I would also like to extend the same gratitude to my earlier supervisors Dr Susanna Välimäki and Dr Yrjö Heinonen for their valuable support and advice during the initial stages of my research. I would especially like thank all the tape-traders/musicians who were kind enough to provide me with their time and knowledge. This thesis would be very different without your much valued input and the world would also be a very different place without the music that you created/helped spread throughout the globe. In addition to this I would like to express my gratitude to Jussi Helenius, Atte Häkkinen, Luxi Lahtinen, Jani Muurinen, Kimi Kärki for helping me to get in touch with tape-traders/musicians in the first place. I would also like to thank Dr Katariina Kyrölä, Dr Mari Pajala and all my fellow students from the Popular Culture Master's thesis seminar (2014-2016) for their feedback on various chapter drafts for this thesis. Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank my wife Marjaana and my son Oscar for their love, support and patience during the whole period of my thesis and my Master's degree studies. I could not have done any of this without you both. i Table of Contents 1. Introduction 1 1.1 Topic background 1 1.2 Purpose and relevance of this study 2 1.3 Review of the previous study on the topic 4 1.4 Theoretical framework, methodology and chapter outline 12 2. Tape trading in the context of the "extreme metal scene" 15 2.1 The "extreme metal scene" 15 2.2 Transgression 25 2.3 Tape trading as the negotiation of transgression into mundane subcultural capital 38 3. Going deeper underground and further "South of Heaven'" 42 3.1 The origins of tape trading, sonic transgression, death metal and grindcore 42 3.2 Motivations - sonic transgression verses the new gatekeepers 52 3.3 The "politics" of the extreme metal tape-trading underground 61 4. The "participatory culture" of tape-trading 70 4.1 Participatory culture within the global extreme metal tape- trading network 70 4.2 The "commercial" rise of death metal and grindcore and the decline of tape-trading 89 4.3 Problems and positive potentials 98 5. Conclusion 102 Appendix 106 Bibliography 112 ii 1. Introduction 1.1 Topic background Since its origins in the early 1980s, the popular rise of extreme metal throughout the globe has been a phenomenal one; especially as this particular subgenre of heavy metal has consistently produced some of the most aggressive sounds known within wider contemporary popular culture via its extremely fast distorted guitars, thudding bass, aggressive drum rhythms and often screamed or guttural vocals. Indeed, whilst many people outside of the extreme metal scene consider its music as noise (and some state censors, religious leaders and conservative politicians regard its lyrical themes of death, destruction and Satanism as negative/harmful), extreme metal fans/musicians however have always remained very emotionally attached and fanatically dedicated towards the music and its associated scene (Kahn-Harris 2007; Wallach, Berger and Greene 2011). This fanaticism was exemplified throughout extreme metal scene's embryonic years during the 1980s, when it remained very marginal and underground due to the wider heavy metal scene's domination by two of its more commercial pop orientated subgenres, namely lite metal and glam metal (Weinstein 2000). Indeed, during this period, especially from the mid 1980s, the only way for globally dispersed extreme metal fans and unsigned extreme metal bands to stay musically connected to each other was via the underground practice of tape-trading. This practice consisted of these globally networked extreme metal musicians/fans trading mainly band demos, rehearsal or live cassette tapes with each other (containing the most extreme underground metal music available) via the global postal network (Christie 2003; Kahn-Harris 2007). However, when undertaking preliminary research into the phenomenon of tape-trading within the extreme metal scene as a possible thesis topic in the autumn of 2014, it came to my attention that whilst most historical/academic texts addressing extreme metal mentioned tape-trading/acknowledged its importance towards the initial global spread of extreme metal, they did so briefly without any further analysis of the phenomenon (Weinstein 2000; Christie 2003; Purcell 2003; Mudrian 2004; Kahn-Harris 2007). The premise for the following study therefore reflects my intention to address what I then believed to be a grossly underexplored phenomenon within Metal music scholarship, especially considering that these aforementioned musicians/fans via their 1 underground global extreme metal tape-trading network were fundamental towards changing the sonic and (global) scenic landscape of metal that exists today. 1.2 Purpose and relevance of this study As I have addressed above the main objective of my thesis is to critically explore and illuminate the impact of tape-trading upon the global spread of extreme metal. Although firstly, because extreme metal contains within itself a grouping of extreme musical subgenres (namely thrash, death metal, grindcore, black metal and doom metal) my main focus will be on death metal and grindcore. These two subgenres are not only the most sonically similar, but also represent the most sonically extreme, in other words the most "sonically transgressive" of all the extreme metal subgenres (Kahn-Harris 2007; Reyes 2013). However, to contextualise the temporality of the extreme metal scene, the earlier subgenre of thrash from which death metal (and with the help of underground punk) grindcore both emerged will also be explored due to its sonic/discursive influence, as well as underground punk due to its sonic, but more importantly, its DIY (do-it-yourself) influence upon thrash, especially the underground practice of tape- trading. However, whilst I shall explore the origins of tape-trading in relation to its emergence within an underground metal scene by the early 1980s, my primary focus upon tape- trading will be between the mid-1980s and early 1990s, which coincides with the global emergence of death metal and grindcore via tape-trading, or more specifically, when these subgenres were intrinsically linked to underground global networked practice and the cassette technology itself. Issues of capital inequality regarding record companies controlling access to the main modes of musical production and distribution will also be addressed in terms of record companies acting as barriers to globally dispersed extreme metal musicians and fans who wanted to push their own music's boundaries in terms of its sonic extremity and global space.