Peter Pichler – Stahl

Tag: Metal Music Studies

  • Styria: the local ‘metallic association chain’

    In my last post, I wrote that in our research project on the Styrian metal scene we  now progress from the European macro-level to the Styrian micro-level. Established in the UK in the early 1980s, the European narrative of law in metal culture was our macro-point of reference. During the New Wave of British Heavy Metal this narrative circulated throughout Europe and became a crucial resource for the construction of local scenes – also for the Styrian metal community. Starting from this we can now ask for local patterns. In this post, I attempt giving a first overview of some patterns of the local metal ethos in Styria and Graz.

    History and memory-building projects in the Styrian scene

    In the past weeks, I have been thinking intensely about what these European macro-findings imply for our research on the cultural history of the Styrian metal since the early 1980s. Where exactly should we start? I came to the result that the best point of departure is the local scene’s own view of its history; understood in a quite literal sense of how the scene visually represents itself today in the discourse in 2020.

    This is is so important, because this constructed gaze at the collective scenic self – in its selection of depicted scene members, of materials, of music instruments, of scene sites, etc. – gives us pivotal clues on how to write this history. It tells a lot about the scene’s ethics and its local version of norm-related sonic knowledge.

    Empirically, research on this ‘Styrian metal gaze’ is in a privileged position. Since about fifteen years, the regional heavy metal scene has discussed its own history and collective memory intensely. Apparently, the scene is discussing how this history should be told and/or memorialized.

    In this respect, two projects are to be mentioned. The first ist Rockarchiv Steiemark, a virtual archive of local bands initiated in Graz already in 2007. ((See Rockarchiv Steiermark, https://www.rockarchiv.steiermark.at/?fbclid=IwAR1B_qSmW1AoctisWNGvIGYGEjBQHwwv9VziZu0fEQS7uOMD2PKyqN3YQJ8, accessed 18 July 2020.)) This project is associated with the local urban and Styrian museums. In a professional manner, it provides users with sources on the history of the Styrian rock scene since the 1950s. However, as the title indicates, metal is seen only as a sub-phenomenon of rock history.

    The second project emerged from the metal scene itself. Styrian Metal History is an online project, which has the ambition of telling the history of “35 years of rock & metal made in Styria”. ((Source of the quotation: https://www.facebook.com/pg/mm.andikrammer/about/?ref=page_internal, accessed 17 July 2020.)) The project was initiated by local artist and scene veteran Andreas Krammer. Currently, the database has about 2700 followers and offers more than six thousand scene-related photographs. (( Source of the statistics: https://www.facebook.com/mm.andikrammer/, accessed July 18 2020.)) We have to consider it the most elaborated attempt at collective memory-building in the local scene.

    Specifically this second project with its massive collection of scene photographs is of great empirical value. First, the photographs themselves as sources, then moreover how these sources have been integrated into a mushrooming online history tell a lot about this community. At this point, the main question is no more how many photographs are already collected in this online-memory. Much more, the crucial matter to address is how they photographs were selected, arranged and fashioned into a seemingly holistic narrative.

    The decisions the contributing scene members made on their way to self-narration tell a lot about the community’s identity – about their ethics, their values, their local norm-related sonic knowledge. On the one hand, those decisions pushed certain actors, constellations, materials, technologies, and values into the spotlight. On the other hand, they also pushed aside other groups, actors and competing visions of the scenic collective self. In the following, I give a first discussion of some aspects that caught my attention. I suggest that (preliminarily) we can identify at least four patterns of the representation of the local scene’s ethos. ((Editorial note: the source of all photographs cited here is Styrian Metal History: https://www.facebook.com/mm.andikrammer/, accessed 18 July 2020. Each respective copyright belongs to the copyright holders. Usually, on Styrian Metal History the copyright situation is not mentioned explicitly. If copyright holders or depicted person do not want their images to be cited here, please contact the author via mail, in case you want the picture to be removed from the post.))

    First pattern: Breaking all the rules…and laws as well?

    A first pattern which dominates the representation of the scene is portraying it as a community of cultural ‘rule-breakers’. Be it at concerts or be it for promotional shots for new releases, always the Styrian metalheads decided to strike poses, that transgressed the rules of mainstream culture. Apparently, those were intentional decisions.

    At concerts, headbanging and forming mosh-pits involved breaking usual conventions of dance and non-violent behavior. For promotional pictures, several artists chose to take poses that only worked in their community. Taken in Styria in the 1980s, the following pictures paradigmatically show how this facet of the local metal ethos was set in scene when celebrating metal:

       

    Apparently, the metal scene wanted to be seen as a community of cultural rule-breakers. This pattern is highly relevant for our research. Probably, this aspect of the ethos opened up a cultural sphere, where – as in many other European scenes in 1980s – the above mentioned European narrative of law could be absorbed.

    Second pattern: Encultivated aggression and readiness to act

    A second pattern shines through in these two photographs:

      

    In the first, we see a group of local artists posing with pitchforks in a farming enironment. In the second, we see the band posing with their instruments in a forest beneath trees, on soil covered with fallen leaves. So, the picture was taken in autumn. The interesting point is the attitude set in scene in both pictures; this attitude forms the semantic bridge between them.

    In both renderings of the Styrian metal ethos, the band always carries their ‘weapons’ with them. This intentionally created attitude of permanently being ready to act, combined with metal’s core emotion of aggression, appears throughout the representation of the scene in Krammer’s collection. Readiness to act, if it must be even readiness to act aggressively, seems to make a second pattern. It is a perfect match with the first pattern of rule-breaking.

    Third pattern: Intimitating the enemies of the scene

    Visually and psychologically, a third pattern catches one’s attention. On many of the pictures in Krammer’s database, scene members are viewed by the spectator from the worm eye’s perspective. Rather intimitating, perhaps even threatening, the Styrian metalheads look down on us from above:

         

    This pattern created an image of the local scene, which seems to intimitate the alleged ‘enemies of metal’. It is a fascinating thought that the worm’s eye perspective – with all its associations of hegemony, domination and aggression – became a cultural institution of the local scene. Once more, this has to be seen in reference to the other three patterns and needs more detailled research.

    Fourth pattern: Traditional gender roles and ethics

    Finally, a fourth pattern is the representation of gender roles of men and women in the Styrian scene, most of all in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Like in many other metal scenes, the pictures seem to once more prove metal’s patriarchic structures and conservative gender roles in these decades. Evidently, the pictures show more male than female Styrian metalheads. As a rule, both of them are shown in the traditional roles of men as the ‘guitar heroes’ or ‘authentic fans’, whereas women are shown as ‘femmes fatales’ in revealing clothes. This part of the Styrian ethos seems to be a parallel to other European metal scenes.

           

    Conclusion: A first description of the local ‘metallic association chain’ in the Styrian scene

    Together, these four patterns made the Styrian metal scene appear as a community of (1) rule-breakers, who (2) always were ready to act. (3) In this construction, the Styrian metalheads never were afraid of their ‘enemies’ and seemed to always look down on them from above. (4) That these patterns appear as rather conservative ethics of male dominance also is a facet of the Styrian metal scene.

    This ethos was constructed by the scene members when they decided how they wanted to be seen. This staged ethos created the local ‘metallic association chain’. It created an associative portfolio of attitudes, symbols and values that should appear in one’s mind when thinking of the Styrian metal community. We can start our research by asking for the practical construction of this association chain. Who decided what, where and when in the constitution of this ethos?

  • Wittgenstein, Davidson and Halford: the heuristics of studying norm-related sonic knowledge

    This is the first post, which ‘officially’ discusses my research in the new project ‘Norm-related sonic knowledge in Heavy Metal culture’. We started on 1 February and are currently working on the project website, which will go online in a few days. There, blog posts from the project will be featured in a special section and appear in the newsfeed too.

    In this first post, I want to address a topic which is crucial in our research: the heuristics of what I called ‘norm-related sonic knowledge’. The main question here is how we plan to map this realm of knowledge.  This sphere is constituted by law-related phenomema in metal culture, metal practices, metal music and metal networks. We need a good heuristical strategy to map the field.

    Here, the result of a fruitful conversation I had recently with my colleague Christian Hiebaum (a legal philosopher and legal sociologist at the University of Graz) is key. In our discussion, Christian raised the point that, philosophically and analytically, all the terms involved (e.g. justice, law, legal system, crime, moral, ethics, law-breaking, rule-breaking etc.) form something like a ‘family’ or a ‘Sprachspiel’ of terms.

    Taking up the thoughts of analytical philosophers like Donald Davidson ((See D. Davidson, The Essential Davidson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2006; D. Davidson, Truth, Language, and History: Philosophical Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005; D. Davidson, Truth and Predication. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 2005.)) and Ludwig Wittgenstein ((See C. Bezzel: Wittgenstein zur Einführung. Junius, Hamburg 2000, L. Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen. Frankfurt: WBG, 2001.)), it is quite easy to recognize that all the categories of norm-related sonic knowledge form a ‘pool’ or a ‘family’ of notions and meanings. Heuristically, the crucial point is how the meaning of each individual term is constituted within this family.

    Herein, each of the terms – in its individual meaning – depends on the other ones. Let us think of some examples. To be understood and fulfill its function in culture,  the notion ‘law’ relies on its links to related notions like ‘justice’, ‘ruling’, ‘order’ ‘legality’ or ‘law-breaking’. The notion ‘breaking the law’ needs a presupposed and in the metal scene shared understanding of terms like ‘law’, ‘morality’ or ‘crime’.

    If we take Judas Priest’s classic ‘Breaking The Law’ once more as a paradigmatic example, this approach makes us look at the lyrics in a new way:

    There I was completely wasted, out of work and down
    All inside it’s so frustrating as I drift from town to town
    Feel as though nobody cares if I live or die
    So I might as well begin to put some action in my life

    Breaking the law, breaking the law
    Breaking the law, breaking the law
    Breaking the law, breaking the law
    Breaking the law, breaking the law

    So much for the golden future I can’t even start
    I’ve had every promise broken, there’s anger in my heart
    You don’t know what it’s like, you don’t have a clue
    If you did you’d find yourselves doing the same thing too

    Breaking the law, breaking the law
    Breaking the law, breaking the law
    Breaking the law, breaking the law
    Breaking the law, breaking the law… ((Lyrics to Judas Priest, ‘Breaking The Law’, on British Steel, 1980.))

    In red and bold, I marked the notions that are relevant for these heuristics. Analytically and philosophically, it might be very risky, even problematic to integrate not only individual notions (e.g. ‘law’ or ‘anger’) but entire word groups or clauses (e.g. ‘breaking the law’, ‘every promise broken’, ‘out of work’) into such a family of terms. This needs more and accurate thinking.

    Yet what we gain from this is heuristically highly useful. We see very clearly that the categories of norm-related sonic knowledge in the lyrics (e.g. ‘law’, ‘breaking the law’) – in the constitution of their meanings – are closely linked to key aspects of metal culture like anger, frustration, or freedom. And further, these notions are linked to the sounds and music of heavy metal. ((R. Walser, Running with the Devil. Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2014.)) A word cloud would arrange the lyrics in this way:

    In a nutshell, these heuristics should make us able to identify the semantic and analytical links between the different categories of norm-related sonic knowledge. Moreover and equally important, they make visible the linkages to the mental, sonic, visual, and emotional ‘moods’ and dynamics of metal culture.

  • Oral history as a method in research on local metal scenes

    This week, I started working in the research project ‘Norm-Related Sonic Knowledge in Heavy Metal Culture: A Case Study of the Heavy Metal Scene in Graz and Styria‘ at the University of Graz. I have thematized it in a post some months ago. In this project, we want to find out how law-related phenomena (for instance, the topos of ‘Breaking the Law’ as a cultural narrative in metal since the early 1980s; the local scene ethics as ‘scene-laws’; the thematization of law and justice in local metal music; attitudes to law in the scene) affected the distinct cultural history of the local heavy metal scene in Styria, a ‘Bundesland‘ in the Southeast of Austria.

    Asking for the ‘longue durée’ dimension of a scene history

    In our research, oral history is one of the methods, that will be applied in the second, empirical phase of field work in 2021. With scene-members and stakeholders but also with professionals from the legal field (for instance lawyers and other professionals in the judicial system) from outside the scene, we will conduct interviews on their narratives of law (in metal). Already at this early stage, at the point of re-reading the crucial literatures in the field, it is necessary to reflect upon the question how exactly oral history can be applied fruifully in our research. ((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.))

    For us, one of the critical aspects of present scene research is the sometimes rather ahistorical conceptualization of the histories of  local metal communities. From the point of view of trained historians, current scene theories tend to rather oddly isolate scenes from the broader historical flux of culture and their surrounding contexts. ((See. E. Baulch, Making Scenes: Reggae, Punk, and Death Metal in 1990s Bali, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007; A Bennett, and R. A. Peterson (eds.), Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004; K. Kahn-Harris, Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge, New York: Berg, 2007;  J. Wallach and A. Levine,‘“I Want You to Support Local Metal!”: A Theory of Metal Scene Transformation’, in Popular Music History 6, 1/2, 2011, 116-34.)) In a nutshell, metal music studies needs ‘more history’. In this respect, we see our expertise as a chance to better grasp the longue durée dimension characteristic of history.

    For this purpose, oral history – a methodological and theoretical discourse developed mostly in English-speaking academia since the 20th century – makes a ‘weapon of choice’. Qualitative interviewing is broadly used in many branches of cultural research nowadays. What we aim at is unwrapping the long-lasting narratives of scene ethics and ‘scene-laws’ in the Styrian metal community, as they seem to have continuties since the early 1980s. Today, they are deeply routed in this community.

    Does metal have a long-lasting history in Styria?

    Thus, the pivotal matter in applying oral history in this case is not only about the selection of interviewees; above all, it matters to develop a set of questions that makes scene-members and stakeholders remember their versions of these narratives since the early 1980s. Summarized in a short formula we have to ask our interviews right at the start: “Does metal have a long-lasting history in Styria?” This is the opening question for our oral history inquiries.

  • ‘Fandom’ and ‘scholarship’: Comparing two cultural-historical institutions

    I ended my last post on the paradox at the heart of metal studies with the suggestion that cultural history, as one individual discipline in the transdisciplinary field of metal studies, could become an exciting enrichment. It gives us the promise of a structurally exploration of the the intertwined histories of fandom, scholarship and ‘fan scholarship’ in the field. In this (admittedly rather short) blog post, I take up this thought and attempt a first comparative analysis of ‘fandom’ and ‘scholarship’ as historically constructed cultural institutions. Once more, I take and stress the point of view of a historian.

    There seems to be a consensus in metal research that the nexus between metal fandom and metal scholarship is a crucial one. In Salzburg, Keith Kahn-Harris and Rosemary Lucy Hill encouraged us to proactively embrace the arising tension between both by self-reflexively asking diffictult questions on racism, sexism, bigotry, misogyny, nazism and other critical phenomena in the scenes. In this, history with its focus on developments over periods of decades (for metal studies this means to study the whole period since the inception of metal culture around 1970) can provide a helpfully orientating narrative. ((Peter Pichler, Metal Music and Sonic Knowledge in Europe: A Cultural History Since 1970, Bingley: Emerald, forthcoming.))

    Seen historically, both fandom and scholarship are not essentialist roles or identities but social formations, that both have long histories. The habitus, rituals and practices of that structure them can be traced back deep in history. If we view them as such complexes of historically constituted roles, the hybrid zone formed by them together in metal studies receives sharper contours. I start with fandom.

    Fandom

    Usually, metalheads are stereotyped as male, long-haired (semi-)adults wearing band t-shirts and battle vests. ((Once more, refer to Weinstein’s classic work: Deena Weinstein, Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture, Boulder, CO: Da Capo Press, 2000; also, see Bettina Roccor, Heavy Metal. Die Bands, die Fans, die Gegner, Munich: Beck: 1998.)) Practices such as the formation of moshpits or showing the ‘metal horns’ at concerts complete the stereotypical imagery. They are expressions of scene members’ feelings of belonging to their communities, performed in public and addressing audiences within the scence as well as outside the scene.

    If we take the point of view of cultural history things appear in another light. Popular culture – and fandom as a crucial functional position of people in it – have a history that in some of its forms can be traced back to early modern periods; at least to the 19th century, when mass media established new forms of public spheres for mass audiences. The masses became literate. ((For introductory texts, see LeRoy Ashby, With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture since 1830, Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2009;  John Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, Harlow: Person, 2009; Kaspar Maase, Populärkulturforschung: Eine Einführung, Bielefeld, 2019.)) Thus, fandom is a cultural construction that, today, takes varying forms in different pop cultures (e.g. literature, music, film, gaming, sports etc.) but all of them stem from one root of comparable processes over decades, sometimes even centuries (as in the case of soccer culture or the passion for classical music).

    Taking this view very much relativizes the allegedly absolute newness of metal fan culture since the 1970s. Yes, the practices installed over almost five decades in the global metal scene produced some innovative patterns; however, only being constructed after 1970, the new rituals, practices and scene rules built there heavily relied on what has been learnt, experienced and practiced in other fan cultures before Black Sabbath took the stage. So, metal fandom is a cultural institution that can best be studied in comparison to other forms of fandom in history. And even more crucial, it has to be compared to other cultural institutions.

    Scholarship

    Let us come to scholarship. At first glance, scholarship seems to be something completely different. Scholars usually are seen as rational, well-educated and distinguished personalities. Once more, the stereotype is a male one. Scholars wear glasses, speak of almost non-understandable things and live in the ivory towers of their universities. Yet, also scholarship – and the modern intellectual as a role in it – are historically constructed phenomena. The role of both cannot be separated from the history of the university in Europe and the world since the Middle Ages. ((For introductory texts, see Hilde de Ridder-Symoens et al., eds., A History of the University in Europe, 3 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992-2004; Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, New York, NY: Basic Books, 2010; Dietz Bering, Die Epoche der Intellektuellen 1898–2001. Geburt – Begriff – Grabmal, Berlin: Berlin University Press.)) Since the Middle Ages, philosophers, scientists, theologians and intellectuals – scholars in a most broad sense – tell us how to make sense of the world.

    As said before, this role appears to be very different from fandom. Nonetheless its realities work – basically and structurally – in ways comparable to any other spheres of community-building. Academia knows rituals, do’s and dont’s, forms of identity-building and othering. ((See Anthony Becher and Paul R. Trowler, Academic Tribes and Territories, 2nd edn., Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001.)) The essential question here is what sets this cultural institution, grown out of the tree of a history of almost thousand years, apart from other cultural institutions such as fandom.

    Seen from this angle, what separates them and what makes them comparable at once belongs to the same sphere: their historical backgrounds. How, on the one hand, scholars use the centuries-old narratives of scientific wisdom in their lives and how, on the other hand, metal fans use their  decades-old narratives of metalness can be compared, but only historically so. Both have come together in the history of the field of metal studies.

    Metal studies as a transgressive laboratory of cultural institutions

    What can we learn from this? If we take the point of view of history, metal music studies is they structural point where both histories come together. Seen this way, metal studies is nothing else than a cultural discourse, in which the insitutions of metal fandom and scholarship – with all their heritage – build a ‘match’. Thus, we should see the field as a transgressive laboratory, in which we work on these cultural institutions in the long term and, arguably, shape the new ‘sub-institution’ of the ‘metal scholar’. It is not about playing off one against each other but much more about thinking this new institution in visionary yet critical ways.

  • The paradox at the heart of metal studies

    Over the last two days, I had the wonderful opportunity of taking part in the inspiring Hardwired VII conference at the University of Salzburg. Already the seventh conference in this series, it was an event of intense discussions on topics of transdisciplinarity and transgression in metal studies. As such a stimulating event, it was an oportunity of further developing the scientific community in the field.

    In this post, I want to reflect upon what – probably – can be called the ‘heart of metal studies’. Intentionally, I use this notion of the ‘heart’, because as a metaphor it evokes associations of vitality, life, energy and of the identity of the metal studies community. Worth remembering, German metal veterans Accept released a classic album called Metal Heart in 1985. ((Accept, Metal Heart, Portrait Records, 1985.))

    Now what is at the heart of our field? From my point of view, taken together the two keynote lectures of the conference, by Rosemary Lucy Hill and Keith Kahn-Harris, summed up the crucial challenges scholars have to master in the coming years. Of course, I cannot deliver a full solution to the central problems of metal research in this blog post. From the perspective of a cultural historian, I want to comment upon the paradox at the heart of metal research.

    In her lecture ‘”You’re asking the Wrong Question!” Methodology, Standpoint and Fandon in Metal Research’, Hill delivered an excellent analysis of the main problem of the field in its ‘teenage years’. Metal research is dominantly conducted by scholars, who also take part in the culture as metalheads. With this comes an obvious, structural conflict between the obligation of the scholars in us to keep a distant and critical view on metal and the metal fans in us, who love the music. Hill encouraged scholars to keep asking hard questions on the difficult aspects of metal, e.g. sexual violence, fascim, racism and misogyny.

    In his keynote ‘Too much Transgression – Metal in an Age of Explicit Knowledge’, Kahn-Harris took up his work on metal culture and the concept of ‘reflexive anti-reflexivety’. For Kahn-Harris, today’s metal culture is to be seen as a culture in an age of abundant knowledge. Transgression takes new forms. He called these forms ‘transgressive literalism’, ‘transgressive unintellegibility’ and ‘transgressive inversion’. Also in his view, conflicts between stances to problematic aspects of metal have to be reconsidered.

    For a cultural historian, both lectures thematize a paradox, which seems to form something like the heart, perhaps the dark heart of the field. This heart pumps into the field (and its community) its vitality and is its key problem at the same time. The core issue  seems to be to develop theories, strategies and a communal habitus or ‘thought style’, which enable us of coping with the tensions between our identities as scholars and identites as fans in a productive way.

    Logically, this is a classic paradox. The point here is, cultural-historical experience teaches us that usually paradoxes cannot be solved. ((For instance, for the paradoxical structure of the identity of the European Union between nation-state and ‘super-state’, see Peter Pichler, ‘European Union cultural history: introducing the theory of ‘paradoxical coherence’ to start mapping a field of research’, Journal of European Integration 1 (2018), pp. 1-16.)) In the long term, the identitary tensions that arise from such conflicts are solved only contigently by creating new spaces of knowledge, in that scholarship goes as far as possible in both directions: in the direction of critique and the direction of keeping a positive attitude to the culture. In a perfect metal studies world, which never will become reality, this could look a bit like this figure:

    Thus, metal studies should not aim at defining a methodology or theory of metal that resolves the paradox. It should aim at constituting a new sphere of knowledge, in that we can go as far as possible into both directions. What Kahn-Harris called ‘engaged scholarship’ comes pretty close to this. With Hill, we should keep asking difficult questions. In this, history with its focus on longue durée developments over decades since 1970 could become an exciting enrichment. ((Peter Pichler, Metal Music and Sonic Knowledge in Europe: A Cultural History Since 1970, Bingley: Emerald, forthcoming.))

     

  • On the history of the ‘metal ear’ and methodological ‘distant listening’

    Currently, I am in a phase of revising some older texts on metal cultural history. During these revisions I realized that over the last five years since I started this blog, my approach to heavy metal records, as sonic sources of history, has changed quite a bit. In 2014, when I set out to write first pieces on albums like Behemoth’s The Satanist or Temple of Oblivion’s Traum und Trauma, I listened to those records like I did in the 20 years before – as a metalhead who happens to also be a historian.

    When reading an older piece on Panopticon’s Revisions of the Past, I acknowledged that my identity as a metal listener developed into a new direction. There are times when I listen to Panopticon (or Behemoth or Temple of Oblivion) as a metalhead but there are also times when I listen to them intentionally as a metal scholar. Over the past few years, I developed a second, more ‘methodical’ mode of listening to records, as sonic historical sources. Herein, I do receive the music as ‘data’ and ‘process’ it in my texts.

    I do not mention this career of my personal ‘metal ear’ ((I would like to thank all the participants at the ‘History’ panel at the ISMMS conference in Nantes on 19th June 2019 for sharing their thoughts on this matter.)) in order to celebrate it. I do so because, arguably, there is a significant methodological aspect hidden within such kind of self-reflection. Sound history, as a recent discourse of the new cultural history ((Burke, P. (2004). What is cultural history? Cambridge: Polity Press; Langenbruch, A. (2018). Klang als Geschichtsmedium. Perspektiven für eine auditive Geschichtsschreibung. Bielefeld: Transcript; Schrage, D. (2011). Erleben, Verstehen, Vergleichen. Eine soziologische Perspektive auf die auditive Wahrnehmung im 20. Jahrhundert. Studies in Contemporary History 8(2), 269-276.)) showed instructively that our ways of listening have changed significantly over the course of history. For instance, the sound of the motorization of modern cities in the early 20th century with car engines and car traffic changed how the inhabitants of the cities experienced urban worlds.

    Analogically, in metal sound history, the structural situation of the metal ear in 2019 is very different from that of the early 1970s, i.e. when metal was ‘invented’. In 1970, fans listened to Black Sabbath’s debut on vinyl albums, at live concerts or on the radio. Today, we can listen to the debut and to their last LP 13 (and all of other recordings in their back catalogue) on one of the digital, globally available music platforms that are available via our smartphones. If we grow tired of Sabbath, it takes just a moment to jump to Rihanna, to Miley Cyrus or even to spoken content like comedy or audiobooks. Thus, our medial and structural situation of listening to metal and hearing metal today involves overwhelmingly more cross-genre and cross-media jumps, and hence there is also much more fluidness and transgression. Arguably, this affects the cultural metal ear.

    On balance, this leads me to suggest to not only think of historical agents as ‘learning listeners’ or ‘conditioned listeners’ but also of ourselves as researchers in metal studies as potentially self-reflexive listeners. On myself, I can observe a kind of ‘distant listening’ when intentionally listening to metal records as a scholar. Having a certain potential of methodological meta-reflexivitiy, this kind of ‘distant listening’ could become an aspect of historical theorizing in metal. Strategically treating metal records as sonic historical sources, one could think of a sort of ‘training program’, in which this kind of listening would be consciously nurtured. This also implicates to claim a deeper interdisciplinary exchange between cultural and musicological research in metal studies.

  • On interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary cooperations in metal music studies

    Currently, I am putting final touches on the manuscript of my book on European metal cultural history. ((P. Pichler, Metal Music and Sonic Knowledge in Europe: A Cultural History, Bingley: Emerald, Forthcoming.)) In this stage of revision, I have been thinking a lot about the forms interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary cooperations take in metal studies. In the following, I elaborate upon my view of these in our field crucial processes and invite my peers to discussion.

    In each of the currently existing introductory books to our field (and also in more specialized studies), the character of metal research is described as interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary. It is a discourse, in that since its inception around 1990 scholars from musicology, sociology, philosophy, linguistics, the study of religion etc. cooperate and discuss a shared subject: metal.

    However, often we approach the shared subject from very different angles and speak different disciplinary languages. For each of us, the epistemic and theoretical vocabularies we use are informed by our various disciplinary trainings. In my case, I live in the world of an Austrian historian, educated in this small country in central Europe. Thus metal studies, beneath the surface, is not only an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary enterprise but also an ‘inter-identitary’ and ‘trans-identitary’ one, transgressing the boundaries between our sociological, musicological, historiographical, philosophical etc. identities.

    This has serious consequences. In metal studies, at conferences, in book projects, in collaborations and cooperations, we regularly face situations of conflict, of nonunderstanding and of misunderstanding caused by our various disciplinary traditions. From my point of view, there can be only one solution to this crucial issue: more theoretical self-reflection and and a clearly and explicitly defined theoretical language.

    In the sense of Savigny and Schaap’s recent essay on ‘putting the studies back into metal music studies’, ((H. Savigny and J. Schaap, ‘Putting the ‘studies’ back into metal music studies’, Metal Music Studies 4, 3 pp. 549-557)) we should lead an open discussion on key terms like ‘metal’ itself, but also on ‘scene’, ‘time’, ‘space’, ‘sound,’ ‘history’, ‘identity’, ‘culture’…obviously, the list ist opend-ended. The point here is to put more emphasis on explicit work on terminologies – in order to perhaps give birth to an independent language of metal studies.

  • Breaking the law!? A research agenda for a gap in scholarschip

    A gap in research

    In 1980, Judas Priest released their classic heavy metal anthem ‘Breaking the Law’ on the British Steel album. In the song’s lyrics, the protagonist thematizes law-breaking as his way of empowerment. This topos of ‘breaking the law’ is relevant in metal until present days. It is connected to metal’s idea of ‘metalness’ and scene-internal norms. Metalheads all around the world know the lyrics, at least the chorus.

    In a video clip of a live performance of the song, Rob Halford introduces the classic by saying that it would have become ‘synonymous’ to his band and metal at large:


    A second well-known example is Metallica’s album …And Justice for All (1988). Its cover and title-track work with narratives and semiotics of the allegedly corrupted laws of the American legal system. Here, law is represented as a field of oppressive norms.

    The cover takes up the ancient imagination of the Roman goddess of Justitia and reworks it in a metalness version. It was ‘translated’ to the semiotic aesthetics of 1980s thrash metal:

    Even more telling, since decades, metal’s scene language knows idioms like ‘heavy metal rules’ or even ‘Heavy Metal (is the Law)’, which is a song title by early Helloween. Here, literally metal-as-law is synonymous to scene-internal norms and rules. Metal makes the law. Despite this evident empirical relevance of law-related phenomena in metal, there currently is practically no research on this.

    Addressing the gap: a research agenda

    Addressing this substantial gap in scholarship, the author has applied for funds from the Austrian Science Funds (FWF) for a three-years research project. It is planned to research the role of law-related phenomena in the scene-building process in Graz and Styria since the 1980s.

    The proposal is affiliated with the Institute of the Foundations of Law at the University Graz. The project team consists of the author as a cultural historian, of a musicologist, and a of board of legal scholars. Also scholars from other disciplines are involved.

    In the project, which centres empirically on Styria, Graz and Austria, we want to answer three questions, that also have relevance when addressing the gap on a fuller scale:

    1.  How did ‘law’ function cultural-historically as a category in sense-making processes?
    2. Did that (those) mode(s) of sense-making change over the period from the early 1970s to the present?
    3. What role did ‘law’ play in the construction of a scene community in the long run?

    On balance, we hope this could be a fruitful addition to metal music studies.

  • Interdisciplinarity, crossover, black metal theory: a single cultural history

    Next week will see the 2019 edition of the black metal theory symposium in Ljubljana on 18 and 19 April. As I will not be able to make it there (but you should go there! 😉 ), though I want to take the event as my occasion for a short blog post on interidsciplinarity and metal culture.

    Cultural-historically, black metal theory, both its journal and its symposia, is an immensely exciting phenomenon. The discourse attempts to bring together the robust spirit of black metal and metal studies. Hence, if taking its own credo seriously, it has to stay permanently pulsating, oscillating and on the move. In this way, it is hybrid. Historically, this discourse can be interpreted as a process of knowledge production, an attempt at creating knowledge practices in such a hybrid way.

    Metal studies’ own credo stresses interdisciplinarity. It does not want to be an independent discipline, despite the fact that many of its current academic procedures, processes and gate-keeping rules tend to aim at a direction of canonization and discipline-building. As well, this is a process of knowledge history that influences significantly how metal will be researched in the next few years.

    The fascinating historical fact is that we can bind back those processes of researching metal to metal history itself. ‘Invented’ and established above all in the UK in the 1970, then being diversified into mushrooming sub-genres and globalized in the 1980s, currently metal culture adapts itself to a new era of digitalization – with all its advantages and flaws of digital connectedness. Historian Wolfgang Schmale’s theory of a cultural ‘hypertext’ of history seems to be illumating when researching this history in a view of long durée. ((W. Schmale, Gender and Eurocentrism: A Conceptual Approach to European History, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2016.))

    Fascinatingly, all those 50 years of metal history permanently have consisted of processes, in that the knowledge forms and practices of metal culture relied on hybridity processes. Black Sabbath used established patterns, thrash and speed metal cultures combined eclectic elements into a new genre, so did death and black metal – always, newness started from established concepts and genres of doing and knowing rock culture. Genres are results of hybridization processes, so is metal itself.

    The essential consequence, which arises from this, is quite a simple thought. Black metal theory tries to know metal culture using a hybrid paradigm. Metal heads and metal musicians know their music and culture in eclectically hybrid ways (despite all claims of ‘authenticity’ and ‘trueness’). This situation given, canonization, disciplinary narrowness and gate-keeping structues are metal music studies’ worst enemies. The academic field itself reflects the hybridity of the culture studied and will only work fruitfully if it will be capable of keeping its positive coherence of heterogenous approaches.

  • Metal (music) studies: What’s in a name?

    The field we are working in is commonly referred to as metal studies or metal music studies. I prefer the second because it makes clear it is research on a music culture, and in this way avoids already possible questions on the subject of research. Recently, Heather Savigny and Julian Schaap reminded us of  ‘putting the “studies” back into metal music studies’. ((See H. Savigny and J. Schaap (2018), ‘Putting the  “studies” back into metal music studies’, Metal Music Studies, 4:3, pp. 549–557, doi: 10.1386/mms.4.3.549_1.)) In their critique, they demand more methodological rigour and more reflexivety in questions of epistemology. In this short post, I want to take up this point and throw in some questions from the point of view of a trained cultural historian.

    My preferred name of our discourse is metal music studies. It contains three words. ‘Metal’, which is rather obvious (not mentioning the broad debates on the definition of metal) and names the subject of research. ‘Music’, the second element, is significant due to the fact that it tells non-insiders that we examine a popular music culture, i.e. heavy metal music. ‘Studies’, the third and the one which Savigny and Schaap problematized rightly, is the crucial one. It points out that this is an independent academic field.

    From the point of view of a trained historian, the current state of the art is still characterized by a lack of historical awareness and of historic depth. There are books and conferences, which have the word ‘history’ in their titles. ((See, L. Meller (2018), Iron Maiden: A journey through history, Curitiba: Appris; also, see the call for paper for the conference ‘Somewhere in Time: A Conference on Metal and History’, Victoria, BC, 23 to 25 August 2019, at: https://www.facebook.com/download/1138331633226652/Somewhere%20in%20Time%20CFP%20.pdf?hash=AcpU2f1kwval0Th3. Accessed 8 March 2019.)) However, so far the history and cultural history of metal have been written by scholars ouside history as a discipline. On the one hand, this is good think because it sets history on the agenda of our discourse.

    On the other hand, however, ‘putting the “studies” back into metal music studies’ consequently would also mean to take much more seriously the expertise of trained historians. Their expertise and knowledge of reading and examining sources, of historiography as a form narratology, and finally their knowledege of the broad contexts of the global history of the second half of the 20th century is key to writing a history of metal with more rigour. My upcoming book will not fix this issue but I address these questions. ((P. Pichler (2019), Metal music and sonic knowledge in Europe: A cultural history, Bingley: Emerald Publishers, forthcoming.))