Session 4A: Extreme Metal in Distorted Utopias

Session 4A: Extreme Metal in Distorted Utopias
Chair: Marcus Moberg

Extreme Music for Extreme People(!?!) Black and Death Metal put to Test in a Comparative Empirical Study
Sarah Chaker
Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Germany

Although there are bands like the Norwegian black metal band Dimmu Borgir or the British black metal band Cradle of Filth, which have been commercially very successful during the last years even out of the black metal scene by softening sound and image, most black and death metal musicians still aim for the goal to create maximum ‘extreme’ metal music. Because they usually do not accept musical compromises, their music is often not what you would call a best-seller but is only attractive for the scene-members themselves. This attitude guarantees the maintenance of black and death metal as two ‘underground’-styles of music. This status is concurrently the pride and joy of the scence-members because it enables them to distance theirselves from each kind of (pop-) mainstream music.
For most people out of the scences black and death metal music ist just loud, sounds agressively and destructively – almost indistinguishable from noise. They can not comprehend the huge attraction black and death metal music has for the fans.
In my opinion, the great appeal of black and death metal for the scene-members can not only be explained by the specific musical structure but by the special sound. Moreover, for many fans black and death metal is much more than just music: A specific lifestyle, a community of like-minded people, a special living environment. Consequently, my doctoral thesis “Black and death metal. The sound. The market. The Scence.” I am working on since 2006 suggests to regard black and death metal as two particular kinds of cultural practice, where the sound-phenomena are intimately connected with the scenes and economic contexts. This realisation requires a multi-disciplinary research strategy including a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. Because the subject black and death metal is still a dead space in scientific research, my studies are based on qualitative field research, completed by paper-and-pencil-interviews given to 550 fans at two German black and death metal festivals during summer 2007. I would be very glad to present you some of the results at the first global heavy metal conference in November. Of course results will be open for discussion.

Distortion-drenched Utopias: Metal and Modernity in Southeast Asia
Jeremy Wallach
Department of Popular Culture, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, USA

Dedicated fans of heavy metal—especially “extreme metal”—music can now be found in every corner of the industrialized world.  This fandom, rarely mentioned in most studies of  “cultural globalization,” is usually associated with the existence of local “scenes” – semiautonomous social networks supporting the production, dissemination, and consumption of recordings, fanzines, and other artifacts that operate to some extent outside the global/national mainstream commercial music industry. This paper investigates the remarkable development of indigenous metal music scenes in three adjoining Southeast Asian nations—Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore—over the last fifteen years.  While hard data on this phenomenon are still limited, the little that exist raise tantalizing questions about the relationship between these music-based subcultures and consumer capitalism, constructions of masculinity, pre-existing sources of social difference, and patterns of global dissemination of cultural forms.
This paper will discuss the available research on the topic with particular focus on the author’s own ethnographic research in the region. Specifically, it aims to move beyond general descriptive accounts and develop three overlapping arguments: First, extreme metal music has thrived in the region due to the establishment of scenic infrastructures anchored in pre-existing cultural patterns of male sociality. Second, while metal in Malaysia and Singapore is commonly associated with working-class Malay ethnonationalism, in Indonesia the national metal movement forges ties across boundaries of religion, ethnicity and class. Third, in the symbolic and material exchanges that characterize relations between the underground metal movements in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, Indonesia provides “cultural” resources in the form of its traditional and popular musics as well as a less-regulated performance environment, while scenes in Malaysia and Singapore provide Indonesians with sources of economic capital and social prestige important for building scenic infrastructures.