Week Six: Fragmentation & Intensification of Heavy Metal

There is one particular statement made by Kahn Harris that I would like to address in that I do not agree with his perspective on extreme metal. Kahn Harris states, “More than any other kind of metal, extreme metal is exceptionally diverse. There has been a continual process of musical experimentation that has expanded the possibilities of metal. Extreme metal culture is equally diverse, with musicians and fans located across the world” (p. 6). As shown in the video on Wednesday, the majority of black metal originates from and is produced in Norway, where black metal rules and is one of the largest exports in the country. Being a relatively small, tight knit country, I think it odd that black metal in this sense could be very diverse. While there will always be a desire to deviate from what is already being produced in the scene, there seems to be very little room to differentiate in order to maintain the sound of black metal. As we began discussing in class, there are every so slight differences between death metal and black metal, which, to be honest, sound very similar to me. Therefore, I can’t see how very much differentiation within black metal and the Norwegian scene could be possible. That said, Norway is home of black metal and this form of extreme metal is not found in such concentrations anywhere else in the world. So, while we consume black metal here in the United States, it’s all coming from the same place, the same people, and the same sound ends up being recycled time and time again (just like it does everywhere else).

As Kahn Harris explains the fear of metal in Chapter 2, I think this is one of the most intriguing social factors extreme metal brings to the musical table. “A classic ‘moral panic’ developed around heavy metal, stimulated by powerful political groups that saw it as a dangerous influence on the nation’s youth” (p. 27). Even before it was brought up in a video on Wednesday, as the fear of metal began to surface through the narration, I immediately thought of the Columbine killings and how Marilyn Manson was blamed for the murders that those boys undertook. I remember the media played Manson up to be too influential and discussed how his violent music needed to be censored from young people. The truth of the matter is it worked. Adults were scared into thinking that Manson was more or less subliminal messaging kids into killing people -- my own mom was one of those people. It took years for her to get that connotation out of her head about Manson, whom she now enjoys listening to on occasion. I think the media, and people in general, find scapegoats for tragedies they cannot explain by any other means, and when music, metal in particular, is such a pervasive factor in the lives of (sometimes troubled) young people, it’s the easiest, most misunderstood, medium to blame. Everything about extreme metal artists, such as Manson, produce fear and confusion in the minds of hegemonic society. Does extreme metal address death and violence more overtly than any other genre of music? Of course. But does it directly cause violence in young people? I’m not sure it can cause violence any more than the war and dead bodies portrayed on the news hour after hour, desensitizing America’s youth is.

Week Five: Heavy Metal Aesthetics and Sensibilities

Metal has inherently developed a sense of community between metal-heads and fans of the music to create a culture within the music. As this music began shifting away from the core of metal, towards sub genres of metal, the community began to dissipate, which is something I’ve seen first hand on a smaller scale. Waksman addresses this occurrence by stating, “Indeed, James Hetfield claimed that the band’s preference for fast tempos arose in part from their desire to confront the tastes of local metal audiences around L.A.: “Eventually we started playing everything faster, because...the crowd wasn’t paying any attention to us and that pissed us off. In L.A., people were just there to drink and see who’s there and shit. We decided to try to wake everybody up by playing faster and louder than anybody else” (p. 276). Hetfield’s recollection of this increase in order or the community led to the development of harder, faster, more up-tempo metal that generated a number of sub-genres, such as thrash.

This relates to the sense of order and disorder required for metal to function properly. Metal innately requires a sense of disorder to fuel the chaos, relating to the concept of creation through destruction. This sense of chaos was the core of metal music, and once the community became too ordered and too constructed it began falling apart and pissing the artists off when the audience had no interest in the music itself but rather the community and who was at the show.

On more than one occasion I’ve heard by boyfriend say, “Grunge killed metal in the 80s.” I generally blow it off, but Waksman makes a similar connection between the two generations and the music that represented them. Waksman states, “Moreover, grunge was the one genuinely mass-oriented musical phenomenon, in U.S. popular music at least, predicated on the interplay between heavy metal and punk” (p. 301). In other words, grunge takes aspects of both punk and metal and the ideologies that follow these musical genres and their respective communities and incorporates them into the music of a mass culture that ultimately turns into popular culture, i.e. Nirvana and Kurt Cobain. Grunge inevitably became glorified for its musical contribution, which responded to both punk and metal and the concept of identity for young people.

Waksman goes onto say, “Both metal and punk emerged in the early 1970s as ideas, if not genres, out of the perception that rock was in danger of losing the capacity to represent its core teenage audience. The idea that rock’s core audience was, or should be, teenagers was itself an ideological construction designed to promote the notion that rock should be visceral rather than reflective, Dionysian rather than Apollonian” (p. 301). This certainly relates to my article through the importance of youth in the metal scene, but also relates to the larger picture of heavy metal in that the Dionysian model relates directly to metal and the chaos that comes along with it that can ultimately only come out of the presence of young people and the need for rebellion. Unlike Apollonian music, such as progressive rock, the reflection and intellectuality isn’t key to the development or listening of the music. The behavior and ideologies are vital to the function of metal and when those behaviors and ideologies sway away from rebellion, naivety, individuality, and disorder, metal has historically created a new shock value and a new way to keep the attention of listeners. In some of those instances, such as grunge, the music has gained the attention of popular culture, at least temporarily.

Week Four: Forging the Heavy Metal Sound & Style

The new wave of British heavy metal brought a whole new realm of music that inevitably invaded the United States. Where the music came from and the culture that surrounded it is particularly interesting to me, however. The film we watched in class discussed the community of the British heavy metal was very small, connected an intimate in the sense that bands would pool together enough money to create an EP and press a small number of albums to be handed out, making their music personal and required to be shared in order for more people to hear them outside of live shows. This is really interesting to me because it’s very different from how music, and even metal, today has developed. Today albums are mass produced and can be bought nearly anywhere. During the new wave of British metal, these albums were part of the community of young people who shared the EPs, within the pubs and the larger community of fans that followed these groups.

Waksman states, “Live music, or alternatively, the gathering of fans to listen to a genre-specific records as occurred at Neal Kay’s soundhouse, was crucial to the growing momentum of heavy metal” (p. 179). I believe the physical space for metal fans to come together was crucial to the movement and progression of metal due to the fact that metal developed into a community of people who cam together to escape their mundane lives, thus coming back to the concept of re-enchantment. Therefore, this tight-knit community, sharing of exclusively released albums, and physical spaces for the metal community served as the stepping stones to the greater re-enchantment of metal on a large scale as we later see Iron Maiden becoming popular in the United States and greater Britain.

Waksman goes on to explain that, “In what was becoming a pattern, the band drew considerable attention on the basis of a self-released cassette of demo recordings that circulated under the name “Soundhouse Tapes,” in tribute to Neal Kay’s role in popularizing the group by playing their unreleased songs at the Bandwagon” (p. 180), which I touched on earlier. This sense of DIY mentality in the metal scene is also something we see as a cross-over from punk. I found it really interesting in the video how Kay had such an influential role in the metal community, particularly through his construction of the top metal hits lists. As the DJ, Kay had a unique perspective on the metal scene, allowing him to see both the bands and their construction of music and the changes throughout the music, as well as the responses of the audience to various changes. Within the community, Kay became somewhat of a role model as well as an opinion leader through his list constructions.

Week Three: Embryonic Heavy Metal

Since the focus of this week reading surrounded the presence of youth in the metal movement through artists such as The Runaways and The Dictators, I found one quote interesting in Waksman’s argument regarding the presence of youth in the music industry. “It is the moment, in others works, when commerce triumphs over creativity, as the record industry figured out how to appropriate the youthful appeal of the music while excluding those elements that made it a threat to the social order” (p. 111).

First, this argument is intriguing to me in that Waksman states there is no creativity present in the youthful production of metal and punk, which is staunchly incorrect in my opinion due to the fact that The Runaways, for instance, were a group of young girls who all played their instruments and wrote their own lyrics. I believe Waksman himself acknowledges that the lyricist of The Runaways was just 13-years-old when they wrote their first hit song. It’s also a contradicting statement in that both of these artists are seen are trend-setters and revolutionary for the time period. While the producer of The Runaways was searching for an all-female rock group to be overly sexualized, I think it says something about the culture within which these girls lived due to the fact that these girls previously had interests in being rockstars and playing instruments before being introduced to The Runaways and the commercial music industry.

I also believe this was one of the remarkable turns of the music industry from the creative, “for the music” lifestyles, as Waksman explains, to the commercial, all-for profit, less talented rock, pop and rap industry that we see today. This strategy and method have crossed over genres from rock and have reached pop and rap artists whose main role is to entertain audiences and make money. Instead of creating intellectual, thoughtful pieces of work, music is about merchandising, ticket/record sales and who can be the biggest star. I’m not saying that sexualizing young girls and creating a platform for the commercialization of youth through metal was the only turning point in the music industry, however. Clearly arena rock and theatricality play a huge role, as well as the emergence of a focus on recording rather than performances (i.e. The Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers) and the sexualization of young girls to draw in audiences who might not otherwise be interested in a bunch of teenage girls singing about the melodramas.

Week Two: Mourning the 60s and Reviving the Corpses of Rock

The rock n’ roll of the 1960s veered away from the capitalist approach to society, where musicians were playing music to play and to share that experience with their audience. Rather than sticking with straight mainstream society, musicians in the 60s wanted to go back to nature and away from the industrial and capitalist frameworks that had ben constructed in society. However, this ideology shifted back when arena rock came along. I noticed this primarily in the following excerpt (Waksman, p. 31):

‘Rock and roll had started in the clubs and the streets and the parks. Then it became a game of supple and demand. As the market price went up, the negotiations got heavier. It wasn’t just who had the better amps or piano or stage crew. it got to the point where bands were earning money beyond their wildest dreams. Musicians realized, “God, I have a second car. I can have a home in the country. I can have a sailboat. I can have everything I want.” What else did they need? The time to enjoy all these things. Because the road was always the same, the conclusion they reached was, “I want to make more money in less time.” Result? Stadiums.’

This merely capitalist approach to the musical career shifted the role and status of musicians drastically between the 60s and 70s, ultimately changing their ideology and creating what may be argued as the “inauthentic” rockstar. Other bands, such as Grand Funk Railroad, however, maintained their authentic nature, which has ultimately led them to being less well known than bands such as Led Zeppelin. “Rock festivals rather than clubs or ballrooms were Grand Funk’s proving ground, affording them access to crowds of thousands without having the bear the burden of headliner status” (p. 33).

Along with this shift of bigger and better rock shows came theatricality through artists such as Iggy Pop and Alice Cooper, which I find most interesting. By not only wearing makeup and costumes during his performance, Alice Cooper conducted a mini rock theatre performance during every show, thus tinkering with this sense of authenticity. Cooper “oscillated between entrapment and freedom, self-immolation and empowerment” which “formed the crux of Alice Copper’s persona and proved a significant mechanism through which the singer sought to produce a specific series o effects and experiences for his audience” (p. 79). Cooper took all authenticity and stood it on its head, creating an experiences not only through his music but through his appearances and actions unlike any other artist of the time had done. As we know metal has played with the concepts of death, here I believe Cooper was playing with the concept of watching a person die and that being an experience that many people don’t have nor want to have necessarily. This theatrical manner of showing the audience this (apparently) realistic guillotine scene of his death takes singing and thinking about death to a whole ‘nother level for the audience.

Beyond the concepts and appearances of death, Cooper meddled with sexual concepts, drawing in necrophilia in Love It to Death and songs such as “I’m Eighteen,” which Waksman examines in depth. “He was not corrupting young minds so much as he was expressing the fundamental sensibilities of young Americans” (p. 84). Waksmans’ take on this is particularly interesting since he goes on to say that Cooper acknowledged that sex was still a mystery for many young adults and for that reason he wanted to essentially scare them and tease out their longings for such desires. I’m sure at the time critics of the past generations fully believed Cooper was corrupting young people through his theatrical performances of death and his lyricism of necrophilia, as well as through his ability to shift back and forth, the previously mentioned oscillation, between concepts, making him hard to follow, but none the less an unmistakable act.

Iggy Pop on the other hand represented the dominancy and masculinity of rock music during this time through his performances. Often removing his shirt while wearing tight pants, intentionally harming himself with glass and commanding the attention of the audience, Pop symbolized the ideal masculine rockstar of the 70s.