Since my last blog post on the “Mexican experience” of writing about metal, quite some time has passed. Also in writing my book about the history of the Styrian heavy metal scene. At the moment, the focus of the writing is on the phase of the 1990s with its pluralisation tendencies and the 2000s with the beginning digitalisation of the scene.
What is formative for this phase and therefore now also characterises the reflection on writing are both continuities and processes of change in the Styrian metalness identity in those years compared to the 1980s as the founding period. The scene consolidated and pluralised in the 1990s, finally becoming digital around 2000.
In writing, this touches on a theoretical core question of metal studies, namely how heavy metal (in Styria) can be theoretically explained. For these decades, the history of the Styrian metal scene is about determining the interplay of law, morality and sound for the construction of the local metalness identity. There is the “pure” historiographical, the “pure” musicological and the “pure” legal view – or the possibility, which seems wiser to me, of thinking all three integrally and together.
It therefore seems most appropriate to me at this stage of writing to see the history of metal in Styria since 1990 as a “hybrid” of musical, moral and legal aspects. All together make up the specific “soundness” of this scene. Metal can therefore perhaps be explained as the “trinity” of law, morality and sound – at least in this specific scene at this specific time.
Over a month ago now, I had the great pleasure of attending the fifth conference of the “International Society for Metal Music Studies” in Mexico City. This central event of Metal Studies usually takes place every two years, but in this case was held this year instead of last year due to the Corona pandemic. In this blogpost, I want to reflect on how this event – possibly – changed my own writing about metal, especially about the history of the Styrian metal scene, which I have been researching intensively for two and a half years now.
The conference in Mexico City, which was attended by about seventy of the leading researchers in Metal Studies, was dedicated to the topic of “Heavy Metal in the Global South: Multiregional Perspectives”. I gave a presentation on my research project on the Styrian metal scene. My central thesis was that the theoretical worlds of “Global South Studies” could potentially help to better explain cultural transfers between metal scenes across the “Iron Curtain” before 1989/90. My talk can be seen online here.
With the temporal distance of about a month that exists today for me to this conference, it becomes more and more clear to me that in a certain sense it has had an influence on my thinking and writing about metal. One could speak of a “Mexican experience” that has had an impact – possibly not only on me – on personal and individual Metal Studies discourse. How can this be and what kind of change is it? What is this “Mexican experience” supposed to be?
Basically, there are two points to be made in the reflection. The first is a sociological one of scholarship, the second a thematic one in the choice of the research object. On the first level of this conference as a collective academic experience of the participating researchers, it is hardly surprising that such a major event has an influence on the personal metal paradigm. At this conference, the latest findings in the field were presented and discussed, renegotiating the way scholarship writes and talks about metal. It is compellingly logical at this level that paradigmatic shifts manifested here individually and collectively.
The second point is then particularly interesting – and I think also particularly transformatively effective. In Mexico City, the “southern” perspective on metal and Metal Studies was in the foreground. For me, as a scholar from the “global north,” the themes and the values and notions of norms that were linked to the study of metal at this event made a crucial thematic aspect much clearer. It is always dangerous to speak of historical tendencies, as they invite stereotyping and essentialization of complex historical processes.
If one nevertheless attempts such a historiographical trend survey, it can be summed up as follows: in the “global north” metal has already become much more commodified, an expression of northern affluence saturation. Here, metal is only “dangerous” or profoundly socially transformative in exceptional cases. In the “south,” on the other hand – and this was the “Mexican experience” that for me still burned itself in much more strongly than before – metal and Metal Studies are still inextricably linked to the struggle for social equality, decolonization, and protest against injustice. Here metal is even more socially transformative.
For my own writing about metal, this Mexican experience is extremely enriching and important. For the remaining stages of my book on the Styrian metal scene since 1980, which I am currently working on, it follows that I should look in particular at those historical times and spaces where metal had a liberalizing and socially transformative effect in this sense. For example, in the confrontation with still existing catholic-conservative traditions in Graz in the early 1980s, when the scene was founded, or in the fight against right-wing extremist and neo-Nazi tendencies in the 1990s. The Mexican experience is a call to write about metal again more strongly also as scientific-cultural empowerment, enlightenment in the most original sense.
In the weeks since my last blog post, the central work in my project on the history of the Styrian metal scene has continued to be writing down the book resulting from the project research. During this period, a first draft of the chapter on the “foundations” of the narrative that will be unfolded in this book has been written down.
These “foundations” concern the theories and methods used to construct the narrative, as well as the type of data from historical sources that were evaluated. Writing on this has been both instructive and challenging. In this blog post, I want to share some reflections on writing about theories and methods in metal studies.
Theories and methods
As is customary in scholarly books, my narrative opens with an overview of the state of research as well as the theories and methods incorporated into the presentation. In metal studies, there is (still) no consensus on how to write a history of a scene. There are very different scene, genre, and music concepts, as well as a wide range of methods that researchers can use.
For writers in the field, this is both a curse and a blessing. On the one hand, it allows for innovative and original work. On the other hand, as a writer you are automatically caught between all the theoretical and methodological fronts. Plus, as far as genuinely historiographical work in the field is concerned, there are only a few points of reference.
Relying on the familiar…
Reflecting on the writing phase to date on these theoretical and methodological foundations, two aspects seem crucial to me. First, it seems to have proved successful for me, as far as the selection of theories and methods is concerned, to rely on historiographic approaches that are established and have been successfully applied many times. As specifically historiographical methods, oral history and cultural-historical discourse analysis also proved to be profitable perspectives for researching the Styrian scene since 1980.
…and going new ways
Secondly, however, there was then the necessity – I am dealing with metal, a musical culture – to also include the musical language itself. This meant including in the writing, in addition to theories and methods that were familiar to me, musicological approaches that were new to me. The experienced musicologist Charalampos Efthymiou had undertaken the analyses of relevant pieces of music for my project.
For this stage of writing, it turned out to be fundamental to consciously take a “naive” perspective on the subject again. In particular, the theoretical and methodological approaches, which were unfamiliar to me, brought new and exciting insights. The new ways paid off!
To summarize the writing experiences of the past few weeks on the topics of theories and methods: a balanced mix of conservative-familiar and innovative-bold personal writing paths seems promising to me in metal studies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For my project on the metal scene in Graz and Styria since 1980, I am currently finalizing the framework for the empirical research in 2021. As written in an earlier post, the overall aim is to reconstruct the history of the ‘local metallic association chain’ in Styria.
Most of the second year of the project will be devoted to intense empirical work. The project teams employs three methodical streams – musicological analysis, oral history, and semantic discourse analysis – to grasp the multidimensional phenomenon of the Styrian scene. In the following, I give a rough sketch of what lies ahead for the ‘Norikum’ project in 2021.
Analyzing Styrian metal music…
As already my terminology of metal indicates (I call it ‘sonic knowledge’), I treat music and sound as the ‘heart’ of metal culture. Everything in metal depends from knowing and experiencing the music and its sonic sphere. My project colleague Charalampos Efthymiou now proceeds to analyze the musical production from the local scene. In his analysis, he will focus on the aspect of ‘law’. Together, we already have set up a corpus of relevant songs and albums. About 15 song will be analyzed formally and in the contexts of their albums – to identify ‘law patterns’ in the musical language. ((See D. Elflein, Schwermetallanalysen: Die musikalische Sprache des Heavy Metal, Bielefeld: 2010.))
Analyzing how the scene history is narrated…
Since at least the second half of the 20th century, oral history is one oft he most prominent research methods in contemporary history. ((See L. Abrams, Oral History Theory, London and New York: Routledge: 2010; R. Perks and A. Thomson, The Oral History Reader, Routledge: London and New York, 2000; D. Ritchie, Doing Oral History, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.)) Oral history interviews make open forms of creating the historical source in the dialogue between the interviewee and the researcher. The first must be given the chance to construct his narrative, the latter must nourish this process. I (and another member of the project team) will lead oral history interviews with about twenty interviewees. The sample of interviewees will be constructed to represent the gender and class structure of the local scene as well as include non-scene members with their perspectives on local metal. I already have identified the key interviewees.
Analyzing the local scene discourse…
Though music and sound – sonic knowledge – are at the heart of Styrian metal, its history can only really be understood when interpreting its textual, visual and fashion artefacts – tshirts, album covers, texts, flyers – as integral elements of the scene discourse. Music, sounds, images, texts and fashion make a fabric of meanings that has to be decoded integrally. ((See A.-K. Höpflinger, Religiöse Codes in der Populärkultur. Kleidung der Black Metal-Szene, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2020;also, see A. Frings e.a. (eds.), Vergangenheiten auf der Spur. Indexikalische Semiotik in den historischen Kulturwissenschaften, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2012.))
I am constructing a corpus of about twenty locally worn tshirts, about fifteen to twenty flyers (refering to crucial events in the scene history since 1980) and about twenty album covers (of well-known local metal records) as semiotic sources. A discourse analysis of the semantic relations between visuals, sound, texts and fashion should enable us to reconstruct this scene discourse for the decades since 1980.
What lies ahead in 2021
To sum up, in the ‘Norikum’ project 2021 will be devoted to intense empirical work. Analyzing the local metal music, leading oral history interviews and analyzing the fabric of the local scene culture will provide us with the necessary research data to start writing this history in 2022. Later this year, I will post an research report summarizing the key findings of the first year on the project website.
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 ofLiterature‘. ((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.
