Peter Pichler – Stahl

Year: 2021

  • “The end complete?”: finishing the empirical phase

    The picture above shows part of the table of contents of the catalogue for the exposition “Palette” by the Austrian artists Helmut and Johanna Kandl. I contributed an article to the catalogue. ((Peter Pichler, Vom Schwermetall als Lautfarbe in der Palette, oder: Wie das Eisenerz vom Erzberg nach Gleisdorf in den Heavy Metal kam, in: Kunsthaus Graz/Landesgalerie Niederösterreich, eds., Helmut und Johanna Kandl: Material + Archive, Wien: Verlag für moderne Kunst,  2021, 114-120.)) The publication of this article and the opening of the exhibition with a section on heavy metal mark in a way the end of the empirical phase in my research project.

    I spent the last year empirically researching the local heavy metal scene in Graz and Styria. Two research methods were the focus: oral history and semiotic discourse analysis. The Covid19 pandemic did not make conducting the research any easier, but I think the “hunt for data” was successful. I have a rich body of oral history data and cultural artifacts from all four decades of the scene’s history. Those artefacts will be analyzed as historical sources. Musicological research from the first year of the project is an important component of the scholarly examination of this scene. A first article about our results can be read online.

    In these weeks of completing the empirical phase, it finally struck me the fundamental extent to which the specific values, individual rules and local music of this scene form one integral cultural fabric. In order to understand this cultural history, it is necessary to analyze it at the intersection of morals, attitudes towards law and the musical language of metal, that is, to explore what I call the local norm-related sonic knowledge. This perspective on the junctures of texts, images, practices and sounds will be the focus of the book I will begin writing in early 2022.

  • “Aren’t you the guy doing this metal studies interview stuff?”: On distance and self-reflection

    In my recent post, I wrote about oral history as a the method of choice to decode the Styrian metal scene’s emerging collective memory. This scene memory depends on the the scene’s shared attitude towards law. Since then, my research has progressed. Another series of interviews was conducted, the discourse analysis has been continued.

    Still, I have the feeling the empirical research is progressing well. The last third of the field research period has begun. In this post, I do not want to go into details about the data collected (this will happen in later posts). Rather, I want to focus on one issue, which – once more – has proven to be crucial: the question of closeness and distance in metal studies.

    Prior to my research, I was a member of this local heavy metal community. I knew scene members and attended concerts. It was – more or less – a silent leisure pleasure. After 21 months of local scene research and consequently many intense contacts with the scene members, I am the ‘metal studies dude’ now. “Aren’t you the guy doing this metal studies interview stuff?”, is a question I am approached with regurlarly at scene events.

    This means that my position in the community seems to have changed. The knowledge about the project circulating, there comes even more support from the scene. I am eternally to the scene members for their neverending patience with my questions. This patience is metal.

    However, with the growing visibility the key issue of the position of the researcher in the community investigated has become vital once more. As now my position has turned from a silent academic watcher to a more visible role, I have to re-reflect upon the question of distance and closeness.

    I would suggest that, in metal studies, each step of data collection in the scene should be reflected upon by the researcher carefully and thoroughly right after having taken the step. Hence, I do not want to be only the guy doing the metal studies interviews stuff but as well the guy thinking about the interview stuff.

  • Still “breaking the law…”: An update

    It’s been quite a while since I posted something on my research project on Styrian metal scene. Since then, the investigations have progressed. I have conducted oral history interviews with about twenty interviewees. There are about twenty-five hours of recorded interview material. The material is continously analyzed. Also, now the half-time in the project is reached. In this short update post, I want to sum up some of my research experiences so far.

    When I started this project back in February of 2021, this was the entry into this field of research. The first year was dedicated to reading through all the existing literatures relevant for this project. Also, this was the year of finalizing the research plan for the second project year. Of course, in several cases the plan had to be adapted….mostly thanks to the Corona pandemic. Now, we are at the half-time. This also is a good point in time to reflect upon my current position in the research field; to reflect upon what it means to research heavy metal in Styria as a historian. This is as much about academia as it is about the local scene.

    Oral history as a tool to discover the memory of the Styrian metal community

    As mentioned above, oral history as an established historical method is crucial in this current phase. I conduct interviews with scene members representing all periods of the Styrian metal history since 1980. Also, the memories of people outside the scene and metal detesters are important to record and analyze. On balance, it has become clear that currently, after four decades of scene history, this local metal community is about to create its own collective memory. The scene members share the need to construct a scene-wide circulating narrative of this history. Oral history seems to be a very apt tool to record and analyse this memory formation process. This happens in the context of the digitalization of the scene. In the coming research, this needs to be investigated up to a point where the formation process of the memory is clearly describable.

    Law in the Styrian metal scene: The intersections with scene ethics and metalness identity

    In this project, research on the role of law and law-related phenomena in metal is a central focus. It is one of my key interests to reconstruct how the attitude to law developed in this metal scene since 1980. So far, it has become clear that law has always been present in the scene. It has been present as a practical reality of scene-life (e.g. copyright laws; law of associations; laws considering alcohol consumption, etc.) and also as a field of social imagination. The Styrian metal scene used the law, which often was presented as an oppressive set of rules in a conservative society, as the phenomenological “other”. In contrast to a supposedly conservative law, the own scene ethics and local metal identity of freedom could be constructed.  I want to fully find out how this happened in the next monts.

  • Heavy Metal historicism? Some reflections on history, primary sources, and methodology

    Ten days ago, I gave an online lecture on history’s disciplinary position in the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary field of Metal Music Studies. ((For a first monograph on this from a European perspective, see P. Pichler, Metal music, sonic knowledge, and the cultural ear in Europe since 1970: A historiographic exploration, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2020.)) You can read the German title of this lecture in the featured image above this post. My aim was to show to history students at the University of Salzburg how history with its distinct methodologies can be a useful disciplinary lens for metal research.

    In the online discussion after my presentation, the main issue was the question how the traditional methods of history (i.e. working with historical sources, traditionally mainly texts) can be exploited in researching metal. For two reasons, I have been thinking quite a lot about this question since this discussion.

    The first reason is that the traditional method of history (what is called ‘the historical method’ since the 19th century, when scholars like Leopold von Ranke or Johann Gustav Droysen ‘invented’ the method of ‘Quellenkritik‘) ((See M.C. Howell/W. Prevenier, From reliable sources: An introduction to historical methods, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001; also, see J. Rüsen, Historik: Theorie der Geschichtswissenschaft, Vienna: Böhlau, 2013.)) is crucial to history’s disciplinary identity. It seems, without the methodological toolkit of ‘Quellenkritik‘ there would be no academic history at all – at least, history would be a very different discipline.

    The second reason is that if one accepts the heavy traditional burden that comes with this historicist identity claim, then one has to ask whether this traditional toolbox is suited to write a history of metal. Basically, classical historicist source critique focuses on texts. But in metal we have music records, lyrics, clothes, practices, cover images, and several other types of source materials. The cultural fabric of metal is multilayered. Hence, we cannot make sense of metal without intepreting it in integral ways, taking into account all these varying modes of sense-making it has to offer.

    In my lecture, I suggested to use an eclectic approach to metal history. In my current research project on the history of my local metal scene in Graz and Styria, it has proven fruitful to combine three methodological streams: (1) oral history, (2) semiotic discourse analysis, and (3) musicological research. This comes close to what Florian Heesch said about the use of ‘scavenger methodology’ in an inspring recent podcast.

    However, suggesting an eclectic approach does not really answer the question whether the traditional methods of history can be used in metal research; or whether the toolbox has to be expanded. Essentially, this leads to the question how historians (and metal scholars in general) define the primary sources of metal history. Thus, history has to develop a ‘metal Quellenkritik‘, which really would have to take into account the specifities of all these types of sources characteristic of metal history.

    Arguably, the only viable way to solve this tricky methodological puzzle is to re-discuss, rethink, and then expand our concept of historical sources. Since the ‘Cultural Turn’, there has been a broad academic discourse on sources in history as a discipline; however, currently there is no specific discussion on metal. ((See D. Bachmann-Medick, Cultural turns: New orientations in the study of culture, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016.; Pichler, Exploration.)) In Metal Music Studies, we lack a convincing semiotic definition of primary sources to tackle this problem. ((See A. Frings/A. Linsenmann/S. Weber, eds., Vergangenheiten auf der Spur:Indexikalische Semiotik in den historischen Kulturwissenschaften, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2013.)) In the coming months, I hope to find time to write a journal article on this topic.

  • The Styrian metal scene in 2021: ‘Pandemism’ and localism

    Copyright of the elements of the title image: cover artwork ‘Thrashing Death Squad’ EP © MDD/Black Sunset Records 2021; branding artwork ‘Metal on the Hill 2021’ © Napalm Records 2020.

    In my project on the Styrian metal scene since 1980, I am currently conducting oral history interviews in this local metal community. I have already talked with several stakeholders, musicians, studio owners, record producers, and other community members. I am very grateful to them for beeing so cooperative and open during the interview sessions. While some of my initial assumptions about the scene have proven to be right, others have been corrected or modified. Steadily, the evaluation of the interview recordings opens up new insights. This phase of research will last about a year until early 2022.

    Of course, the Covid19 pandemic has been one of the crucial topics in most of these interviews. Scene members experience the pandemic in different ways, depending on many individual and social factors. However, some shared patterns of experiencing the pandemic seem to be recognizable. Most of the local metalheads share a very understandable frustration about the lack of concerts and scene events. Also, most of them feel an uncertainty or are worrying about the scene community’s future.

    On balance, the pandemic crisis seems to catalyze the trend of digitalization that was already transforming the scene before 2020. Digital concert streams and many other forms of digital scene life are gaining momentum. Because of the present lack of opportunities to play gigs, the scene moreover witnesses a productivity boost. Bands focus on studio recordings – as far as this is possible under the current conditions.

    Fascinatingly, in this phase of a new productitivity in the Styrian metal scene, a new localism is gaining momentum. A number of new Styrian records  – for example, the new split EP by Darkfall and Mortal Strike shown in the title image – thematize local semiotics. They rework cultural themes from Styria and Graz – for instance, the traditional Styrian blazon. Another example is the branding of the ‘Metal on the Hill’ festival scheduled for August 2021, also shown in the title image.

    Intriguingly, the new productivity in the scene promotes feelings of local Styrian beloging, identity, and history. The new music is more ‘Styrian’ than ever before. This recent phenomenon, which I am tempted to call the scene’s ‘pandemism’ (in a sense of trying to culturally cope with the pandemic crisis in form of musical self-empowerment), is crystalizing currently. Hence, from 2021 onwards, the ‘glocal’ character of the scene seems to be even more important than before. We should keep an eye on both the ‘pandemism’ and the localism.

  • Metal scenes: Multi-role agents and scene ethics

    In the last few days, I had quite some intense exchanges with crucial agents in the Styrian metal scene, which I am researching in my project. When reflecting upon how these members of the local scene have constructed their community over now more than fourty years, I realized how diverse their multiple scene roles have been throughout their scene biographies. Many of them have acted as ‘multi-role agents’ in the scene.

    In a single person, they have combined and integrated meaningfully their scene roles as – for instance – musicians, journalists, fans, concert organizers, peers, and so on; usually various scene identites in a single person. Looking at the already dense discourse on scene research, most of all on the early periods and founding scenarios of scene, this finding comes as no suprise. ((Just to mention a few important titles, see the case studies in: Jeremy Wallach e.a. (eds.): Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music arount the World, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011; Anna-Katharina Höpflinger/Florian Heesch (eds.), Methoden der Heavy Metal-Forschung: Interdisziplinäre Zugänge, Münster and New York, Waxmann: 2014; Andy R, Brown e.a. (eds.), Gobal Metal Music and Culture: Current Directions in Metal Studies, London e.a.: Routledge, 2016.)) From this research we know very well that metal scenes usually grow out of a DIY ethos but strive intensively for professionalization (whatever it might mean to be a professional metalhead).

    From this finding follow crucial conceptual and emprical implications for the oral history research I am doing on the history of the Styrian metal scene since 1980 (most of all I deal with matters of the scene’s ethics, its values and scene laws, and then how these norm-related aspects depend on global metal’s attitude to law). If  one assumes that the crucial agents of the scene – for example in the founding period in the 1980s – have been such ‘multi-role agents’ then they also must have been equally multifaceted in respect of developing their scene community ethics. The values they attached to their ermerging community were the values of musicians, fans, organizes, entrepreneurs – in many cases all in a single actor. This is key to keep in mind when leading oral history interviews.

  • Covid19, metal studies, and oral history research: A methodological rant

    In my last blog post, I attempted to describe the thoroughly digitalized research environment I discovered in our project on the history of the Styrian metal scene. Our research is progressing very well. My colleague Charris Efthimiou already provided no less less than thirteen very detailled analyses of law-themed metal songs and albums. Besides the crucial referential frame of globally famous classics (such as Judas Priest’s ‘Breaking the Law’) Charris focused on Styrian music. Hence, we now have a good data set on the musical production in the Styrian scene.

    As  the project leader, I spent the last few weeks gathering data on the cultural production in the scene since the early 1980s. I am constructing a permanently growing corpus of cultural artefacts from the scene. I am collecting T-shirts (as crucial pieces of clothing), album covers (as pictorial historical sources that ‘cover’ the music on records), concert flyers, posters, and other forms of sources. This body of sources currently comprises dozens of artefacts, images, and texts. It will grow steadily. Still, I am very thankful to receive information on further source materials.

    Thus, at this point, the project team is in midst of the process of researching our empirical data. Thanks to Charris’ brilliant work the musicological stream is advancing very well. The same holds true for the semiotic discourse analysis of the scene. Most texts and images, in many cases also of T-shirts, are available from the web. As well, many pieces of clothes can be ordererd to really hold them in hands. In this respect, digitalization makes things possible that would not have been possible five or ten years ago.

    Yet, I do face a highly ambivalent situation in respect of the oral history stream of my project. For almost a year now, face-to-face interviews have been difficult, often even impossible to conduct. Currently, we are experiencing (again) a quite strict form of a ‘lockdown’ here in Austria – with an open ending point. Of course, in many other places around the globe the situation is the same or – sadly – even worse. Of course, this is frustrating. Yet, I also think this is a very good occasion to globally rethink using oral history methodologies in metal studies. From my point of view, two aspects are crucial to reflect upon.

    First, there already is a rather dense discourse on experiences and practical information on how to conduct interviews online. For instance, the British Oral History Society gives good advice on this. Also, metal studies scholars have started to discuss this problem in their field. Hence, perhaps relieving the frustration a bit, no oral history researcher is alone with this problem! Nonetheless, we need a broader discussion on this issue in metal studies!

    Second, as a historian it is fascinating to think of the fact that, now in 2020/21, digitalization as the crucial historical ‘mega trend’ of the last two decades has not only transformed the scene I am researching but also the ways I am researching it. Doubtless, both aspects depend on each other. Yet, in the pandemic period, digitalization is more relevant than ever before. Metal studies is almost fully digital – at least for the moment.

    Hence, we should not only see this as a frustrating attack on our used ways of research. Much more it is the historically logical catalysis of a development which already was transforming metal studies before the pandemic. The pandemic did not start the process, it only catalysed it. Hence, for my project, I try to see it as a valuable opportunity to experiment with new forms of conducting interviews remotely. I would expect that after the pandemic we will have gained a big deal of important experiences in this changed world of research.