About the Book
During the past three decades, heavy metal music has gone global, becoming a potent source of meaning and identity for fans around the world. In Metal Rules the Globe, ethnographers and some of the foremost authorities in the burgeoning field of metal studies analyze this dramatic expansion of heavy metal music and culture. They take readers inside metal scenes in Brazil, Canada, China, Easter Island, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Malta, Nepal, Norway, Singapore, Slovenia, and the United States, describing how the sounds of heavy metal and the meanings that metalheads attribute to them vary across cultures. The contributors explore the dynamics of masculinity, class, race, and ethnicity in metal scenes; the place of metal in the music industry; and the ways that disenfranchised youth use metal to negotiate modernity and social change. They reveal heavy metal fans as just as likely to criticize the consumerism, class divisiveness, and uneven development of globalization as they are to reject traditional cultural norms. Crucially, they never lose sight of the sense of community and sonic pleasure to be experienced in the distorted, pounding sounds of local metal scenes.Contributors. Idelber Avelar, Albert Bell, Dan Bendrups, Harris M. Berger, Paul D. Greene, Ross Hagen, Sharon Hochhauser, Shuhei Hosokawa, Keith Kahn-Harris, Kei Kawano, Rajko MurŠič,Steve Waksman, Jeremy Wallach, Robert Walser, Deena Weinstein, Cynthia P. Wong
Table of Contents:
Part 1. Introduction: The Global Conquest of an Outcast Genre
Affective Overdrive, Scene Dynamics, and Identity in the Global Metal Scene / Jeremy Wallach, Harris M. Berger, and Paul D. Greene 3
The Globalization of Metal / Deena Weinstein 34
Part 2. Metal, Gender, Modernity
"A Dream Return to Tang Dynasty": Masculinity, Male Camaraderie, and Chinese Heavy Metal in the 1990s / Cynthia P. Wong 63
Unleashed in the East: Metal Music, Masculinity, and "Malayness" in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore / Jeremy Wallach 86
Part 3. Metal and the Nation
Electronic and Affective Overdrive: Tropes of Transgression in Nepal's Heavy Metal Scene / Paul D. Greene 109
Otherwise National: Locality and Power in the Art of Sepultura / Idelber Avelar 135
Part 4. Metal and Extremist Ideologies
The Marketing of Anglo-Identity in the North American Hatecore Metal Industry / Sharon Hochhauser 161
Musical Style, Ideology, and Mythology in Norwegian Black Metal / Ross Hagen 180
"You Are from Israel and That is Enough to Hate You Forever": Racism, Globalization, and Play within the Global Extreme Metal Scene / Keith Kahn-Harris 200
Part 5. Metal and the Music Industry
Arenas of the Imagination: Global Tours and the Heavy Metal Concert in the 1970s / Steve Waksman 227
Thunder in the Far East: The Heavy Metal Industry in 1990s Japan / Kei Kawano and Shuhei Hosokawa 247
Part 6. Small Nation/Small Scene Case Studies
Metal in a Micro Island State: An Insider's Perspective / Albert Bell 271
Noisy Crossroads: Metal Scenes in Slovenia / Rajko MurŠic 294
Nako: The Metal in the Marrow of Easter Island Music / Dan Bendrups 313
Afterword / Robert Walser 333
Acknowledgments 337
Works Cited 339
Contributors 367
Index 371
About the Author :
Jeremy Wallach is Associate Professor in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He is the author of Modern Noise, Fluid Genres: Popular Music in Indonesia, 1997–2001.
Harris M. Berger is Professor of Music at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Stance: Ideas about Emotion, Style, and Meaning for the Study of Expressive Culture and Metal, Rock, and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience.
Paul D. Greene is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology and Integrative Arts at Pennsylvania State University, Brandywine. He is a co-editor of Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologies in Sonic Cultures.
Review :
"Metal Rules the Globe is a collection of 14 essays that look into various aspects of the global metal scene, with a keen eye set on the genre's cultural specificities... There's a wealth of fascinating information to discover throughout Metal Rules the Globe, particularly that related to local scenes and the sub-cultural appropriation of metal... If you're a fan of musicology, sociology, anthropology or ethnographic discourse, then Metal Rules the Globe is well worth exploring. It underscores just why metal is such a crucial medium of support and nourishment for millions of fans. It's a fascinating insight into how metal constructs different notions of identity around the world, yet reinforces those all-important commonalities we share as fans." Craig Hayes, PopMatters.com, August 9th 2012 "This is a timely collection, as recent books and films about punk and metal in the Middle East and South Asia shed light on a worldwide audience. Ethnomusicology collections and students of popular culture take note." Ed Graves, Library Journal "The authors stoke the flames of heavy metal high and wide as the united forces of fans, bands, and mediators mount local-to-global resistance against the contradictory claims on identity, economy, history, and society. Valiant against anomie, disempowerment, and meaninglessness, we see an Alloy International Army standing proud and strong. A treasure chest of brutal truth for scholars, planners, metal maniacs, and globalization geeks from sea to toxic sea." Donna Gaines, author of Teenage Wasteland and A Misfit's Manifesto "Metal Rules the Globe will surely join the ranks of Robert Walser's Running with the Devil and Deena Weinstein's Heavy Metal as one of the classics of heavy metal scholarship. A fascinating and valuable read!" Sam Dunn, co-director of Metal: A Headbanger's Journey and Global Metal
