Peter Pichler – Stahl

Tag: Representation

  • “I, the mask”: A concert under the conditions of the ‘Covid19’ pandemic

    Last Saturday, for the first time since March 2020, I attended a metal show at Explosiv youth centre in Graz, Austria. The billing consisted of Alphayn, Groteskh, Heathen Foray and Obscurity. After a concert-less six months, now, slowly, smaller-sized club shows are coming back. The audience has to be smaller than usual and also the fans in the crowd must wear the omnipresent masks. In metal culture, the mask has become a cultural signifier. Many bands offer masks with their logos or album artworks as merchandize. In this shorter blog post, I reflect on two aspects: First, on how these conditions created a very specific and peculiar atmosphere at a metal concert; and second, on how such ‘atmospheric’ aspects can be analyzed in Metal Music Studies.

    I, the mask…

    In everyday culture, the masks haven become day-to-day companions of our lives. Most Austrians wear them, only few refuse to do so. So do most Austrian fellow metalheads agree to wear them, but some are critical about them. On this evening, they had to be worn when entering the concert hall. As written before, the masks – usually in black – have become regular items in metal webshops. Hence, more and more, the masks are part of (commercial) metalness identity-building. At this concert, they were compulsory in the concert hall but in front of the venue and in the bar area people did not have to wear them:

    Concert goers in front of Explosiv youth centre, Graz, 12 September 2020, (c) Peter Pichler.

    In consequence, in front of the venue and in the bar space, things were going usual ways. People were chatting, discussing the perfomances, having drinks or smoking cigarettes. But in the hall, the situation was strangely different from other concerts I had witnessed there before. The audience was about 200 local metalheads, half the size of ‘normal’ shows. So it was less crowded. In the audience space, the masks had to be worn and people were required to keep a safety distance from each other. Both worked quite well. The odd amospheric effect was that the masks – even more than usually – anonymized the fans. They became ‘faceless’. ((For the situation of metal concerts, see D. Weinstein, Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture, Boulder, CO: Da Capo Press, 2000, 199-235.))

    The fans not allowed to show their faces and directly express enthusiasm, excitement or also disapproval towards the bands via facial expressions, there was quite an odd atmosphere in the audience. Heabanging, showing the metal horns and ‘moshing’ happened, but in strangely anonymized and socially distant ways. Not distant because of the new rules, but distant because the actors in the audience were anonymized into ‘facelessness’. The main effect was that, even more than usually, the artists – who did not wear the masks – became the centre of attention, as they were the only ones who could show their faces:

    Performance by Heathen Foray, Explosiv youth centre, Graz, 12 September 2020, (c) Peter Pichler.
    Performance by Heathen Foray, Explosiv youth centre, Graz, 12 September 2020, (c) Peter Pichler.

    Thus, in an atmospheric way, the current ‘Covid19’ conditions changed the ‘mood’ at metal concerts, at least at this specific, contingent concert as an individual event on 12 September 2020. The cultural key signature of this event was that – much more than already before – there was a clearly palpable hierarchical distance between the artists and the audience. The ones were ‘faceless’, anonymous watchers, they others were in the bright light of attention, showing their faces on the stage. How to make sense of this change of atmosphere in scientific ways?

    Atmosphere, mood, stimmung…

    In  2012, the German literary scientist Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht published a book entitled ‘Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung: On a Hidden Potential of Literature‘. ((H.U. Gumbrecht, Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung: On a Hidden Potential of Literature, Stanford; CA: Stanford University Press, 2012.)) The notions in his title – ‘atmosphere’, ‘mood’ and most of all the German-language notion of ‘stimmung‘ (a major concept of 19th century German Romanticism) – catch the main qualities of this concert event. ((For Romanticism, see W. Breckman European Romanticism: A Brief History with Documents, New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007.)) Stimmung describes the affects and emotions that followed from the sensual impressions – watching, listening, smelling, tasting – at this event. The impressions of ‘faceless’ metalheads in the audience, of bands performing without masks in the bright light on the stage, but also of the usual routine in front of the venue, created this evening’s individual stimmung. The main point of this stimmung is that it implied a new atmospheric hierarchy at a concert. We should keep an eye on this because it involves matters of power and representation.

  • 1914, ‘The Blind Leading the Blind’: How to represent history in (extreme) metal?

    Recently, the Ukranian black and doom metal group 1914 issued their new long-player The Blind Leading the Blind. According to Encyclopaedia Metallum, the band was formed in 2014. ((https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/1914/3540396156, accessed 7 December 2018.)) Including the mentioned recent one, the band has released two albums. What makes the group distinct and interesting for a historian, is their concept. Already shown in their band name, the whole of their creative output is only devoted to themes of warfare in the Great War between 1914 and 1918.

    This concept, for a historian working in metal studies, throws up interesting theoretical and methodological questions. First, on the narratological and discursive level, their conceptual scope is immensely focused, even narrow. Only and strictly re-working narratives of the years between 1914 and 1918 forces them to develop a narrative in metal music, in all of its dimensions (visuals, sound, live performances, medial self-representation), which comprehensibly represents WW I trench warfare. Their answer seems to be to attempt creating an ‘authentic’ atmosphere of a trench in their music and concerts:

    The live video seems to underpin my impression. Yet, as always in art, that remains a construction. However, empirically and methodologically, for the case of 1914, it implies that history is represented in a mode of constructed authenticity, with all paradoxes such a concept brings with it. ((H. White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.))

    Second, on a more global level, a historian has to ask how ‘accurate’ and ‘reliable’, in a scientific sense, ((M.C. Howell, M. C. and W. Prevenier, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001.)) the representation of history can be or become in metal music. As examined in my upcoming book, ((P. Pichler, Metal Music and Sonic Knowledge in Europe: A Cultural History, Bingley: Emerald, 2019, forthcoming.)) even extreme metal, in an age where we do have the scientific discourse of metal studies and closer links between metal culture and the mainstream, is forced to modify its modes of the representation of history. They have changed towards more rational and ‘scientifically’ operating modes of telling history.

    Also in the case of 1914, this seems to be true. Their approach requires a methodology of representing history that is very clear, focused, delineated from other narratives, and thus rational. The only and strictly work on four years of twentieth century history. They ask how it was to live everyday life in trench warfare in those years, attempt to exploit all resources of extreme metal’s discourse in telling that history. In a nutshell, their approach works like the one of historical anthropologists in scientific history whose gaze at history is as clear, focused and microscopical. ((G. Dressel, Historische Anthropologie: eine Einführung, Frankfurt am Main e.a: De Gruyter, 1996.))

    On balance, we can conclude that things keep beeing exciting in metal studies, in terms of asking for history in metal. The culture of metal moves towards more ‘scientified’ histories of history. As a history of metal by trained historians still remains a desideratum, I want to work on such topics.

  • “Why does that guy research heavy metal?” – A short note on metal studies’ acceptance and self-representation within academic discourse

    I just returned from an intriguing conference on Mediterranean Europe(s): Images and Ideas of Europe from the Mediterranean Shores in Naples, Italy. There, I gave a talk on how European Union historiography could look in times of existential crisis. Before my talk, I was introduced and my chair also mentioned my upcoming book on a cultural history of metal in Europe. ((Peter Pichler, Metal Music and Sonic Knowledge in Europe: a Cultural History. Forthcoming: Emerald Publishers, early 2019.)) In fact, in the exact moment when my chair mentioned this book, I did not look at the audience; but the mentioning of a  “cultural history of metal in Europe” caused some laughter, however, most of all it caused interest and paying attention to my speech.

    This is a situation, almost in a paradigmatic way, which I experience at practically every conference, lecture, course or other academic event outside of metal studies itself when my research on metal is mentioned. It causes a mixture of laughter, ignorance, however, predominantly it is a trigger of immediate attention. Here, the label “metal studies” becomes a signifier of novelty, interdisciplinarity but also of all stereotypes of metal culture. Hence, the question is how – strategically and proactively – metal studies should present itself to other academic discourses.

    My “answer” also takes up an individual experience I had at the Naples conference. After the keynote on the event’s first day, I had an informal chat with the keynote speaker; she gave a really convincing lecture on theoretical issues of Mediterranean history, showing how personal stories and scientific historiography interact in historians’ individual careers and lives. After I gave her a short feedback, she told me that after hearing that I work in metal studies she had been asking herself: “Why does that guy research heavy metal?”

    Again, here metal studies triggered immediate attention. However, this shows a fundamental lack of knowledge. I answered in a twofold way. First, I replied that most of all since about ten years metal studies has become a serious emerging field of research. So, I tried to give basic information. Second, I felt it was even more important to give a sense of how a European cultural history of metal is connected to the discourse discussed in Naples. In this respect, I anwered that – basically – a European cultural history of metal is part of a broad cultural history of Europe since the 1970s, of Europeanization, globalization and regional integration in the EU.

    I mentioned two examples how metal history could give new insights: I told her that metal history in the 1980s was a cultural phenomenon in Europe, which crossed the Iron Curtain before 1989 – Iron Maiden toured Poland as early as 1984. I compared this phenomenon to other forms of culture such as cross-bloc-contacts in literature, academia or music. Like this, I tried to show how metal history was a form of subcultural European integration even before 1989.

    Then, I told her about the development of extreme metal as a whole spectrum of subgenres since the 1980s. I mentioned that for a historian it is rather evident that extreme metal emerged in a decade which was the fin-de-siècle of an epoch which Eric Hobsbawm called the “Age of Extremes“. ((Erich Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991, London: Michael Joseph, 1994.)) For me, there is a rather obvious, already linguistic connection between the emergence of extreme metal and the Age of Extremes. The latter is the context of the birth of new musical subgenres.

    After this informal talk, the keynote speaker told me that this sounds highly interesting and she will look out for my book. One can intepret this as collegial practice of informal etiquette; yet this anecdote proves that metal studies causes interest. My idea is that to further nurture our field we ought to meet this interest strategically, proactively and respectfully. This means to provide basic knowledge about our field. Then, explaining the field’s aims and ambitions by describing cross-linkages to other discourses and giving empirical examples appears to be helpful.