The Anti-reflexive Reflexivity of Metal

Every hardcore metal head knows who their favorite bands are and what kind of metal music they personally listen to.  In fact, I have been in countless arguments simply over the legitimacy or authenticity of certain metal bands.  I was a fan of progressive metal after I went through my intense Metallica and thrash metal phase.  I like bands like Dream Theatre, Planet X, Liquid Tension Experiment and others that fall into this interesting sub-genre.  When I would bring this up to Deathmetal or Metalcore fans, they would scold me and tell me “That’s not F*&%ing metal!  Bunch of Opera singers and Berklee grads get together and play stupid concept albums, get out of here.”  But for me, the music was so complex, so unique that I could not get enough of it.  I did not care what these other metal heads said due to what Kahn-Harris describes as “knowing better but deciding not to know.”  In the modern Western world, children are taught from a young age that everyone has a right to their own opinion.  In the metal community, where individuality is king, this has spawned deeply opinionated views about almost every aspect of the scene.  At a young age, I started to realize there are metal heads who have their own opinion and nothing is going to change it.  After years of arguing over the best guitarist or genre, I stopped fighting the losing battle and began not caring what other people thought, only what I like and wanted to listen to.  I would value the opinions of my closest friends, but the average death metaller did not have much input on metal music that I hadn’t already heard.  So I stopped caring about analyzing the musical subgenres and rating bands, and started caring about just the music that resonated with me.  That music happened to be progressive metal with epic stories, high operatic vocals, and complex instrumental sections dispaying incredible virtuosity.  I was infatuated with trying to play the guitar parts and solos of John Petrucci, lead guitarist of Dream Theater and still my personal guitar hero.  But just because I started to ignore the reflexivity in the metal scene does not mean I am not aware.  I still heard of new and upcoming bands and judged them and their impact on the scene by myself.  The only difference was I did not run around yelling and screaming that my band is better than that new band and their garbage polluting the scene.  So much new music has exploding onto the metal scene, it is hard to even keep up.  But I think that my views are more grounded in my love for the music than in the importance to the scene, especially as I have drifted further and further away from the metal music scene.      

Metal as a Global Force

            As I watched the documentary about metal around the world, I started to realize metal is a powerful liberating tool.  It invades the conscious of those who listen to it, especially if they are oppressed or alienated in their society.  Whether it be a Muslim, atheist, or even Christian, metal has found its way into almost every corner of the world.  It gets to the core of something deep within humans, something primal.  Music is the perfect medium to reach these primal instincts in modern society because the violence, aggression, and anger is all expressed through sound instead of actual violence which is not allowed.  Metal heads express their anger at a concert with other like-minded individuals, and even though on the surface a pit might seem like the most brutal street fight around, there are rules in the pit which advocate helping others when they fall down and other precautions to prevent serious injury.  I was interested in the Indonesian metal scene, especially because they were under a dictatorship when the first major metal bands such as Metallica had concerts there.  The Metallica show ended in mayhem as the military arrived and thousands of ticket holders were denied entry to the venue.  Soon, a riot ensued as the local Jakarta residents displayed their intense passion for freedom of speech and demonstrations like metal shows.  Metal music can be adapted to any culture, as Sam Dunn points out through the distinct Balinese metal that incorporates traditional gods from their culture instead of using the same symbols from metal in America or Europe.  It is an incredibly pervasive and adaptable style of music, more than most.  I am very interested to see the metal scenes emerge out of countries that had recent revolutions such as Egypt and many other North African and Middle Eastern countries.  In fact, the domain Egyptmetal.net has already been bought and is under construction now.  Hopefully, these countries will enjoy free expression for many years to come, and along with it heavy metal music.  Here is a video I found online showing off some Pakistani metal bands, thought it was pretty interesting plus they include links to learn more about the Pakistani metal scene.  Although this is the opinion of one member of the scene who uploaded a video to youtube, it is an inside look at a developing metal scene in a unique place.  My 10 favorite Pakistani Metal bands   

Female Metal Fans

Metal has never been conducive to female audiences, continually degraded and exerting their ‘power’ over women by using them as tools.  They are often depicted as slaves, bound by chain or rope.  A vast majority of the famous metal bands are all male, so what attracts females to the scene?  Keith Kahn Harris describes many different reasons that metal fans begin listening to metal, but many of them are males.  I believe females start listening to metal for much of the same reasons, they feel alienated in society and want to escape their reality and enter the scene.  They find comfort in expressing their individuality, and they seek power that they feel society and the metal scene believe they are not as powerful as men.  From what I have observed in female metal fans is a desire to overcome and disprove the men of the metal scenes assumptions that women are weaker, in music and in real life.  A metal chick is the kind of girl who wouldn’t think twice about pouring a drink on you at a bar for saying something insulting or idiotic.  Girls that play in metal bands want to show the boys how it’s done.  They want to prove they are just as talented and can rock just as hard.  I went to metal show in Portland, Oregon when I was younger and one of the opening bands had a female lead guitarist.  At first, my friends and I looked at each other, laughed and scoffed that there is no way that girl is going to shred the lead solos.  And in fact, she shredded harder than any member of the headlining act.  I think the satisfaction of knowing that every guy in the room will have the exact same initial assumption about her playing skills gives her even more motivation to showcase her talent.  That is the mentality of a female metal fan.  They want to be just as metal as the guys, and often times they are.  

Power and Status in the Black Metal Community

As heavy metal transgressed towards extreme metal, the struggle for power among some black metal bands in the 1990’s took on a whole new form of insanity.  Suicides, murders, and church burnings were commonplace in Scandinavia during the rise of second wave black metal in the late 80’s and early 90’s.  Were these actions true attacks on Christianity or merely an attempt to solidify their scene as the most ‘metal’ and gain a reputation worldwide.  Although metal has been accused of influencing murder, suicide, and rape for quite some time, these crimes were directly perpetrated and boasted about by the leaders of the bands at the forefront of the scene.  Bands like Mayhem created Norway’s largest cultural export through fear and destruction.  I believe in the beginning of the black metal scene in Norway the actions were genuine and not meant to gain any commercial success.  These people truly wanted to attack the Christian faith.  A majority of these bands did not perform live, and musicians such as Gorgoroth’s lead singer Gaahl have stated it was not meant for an audience other then themselves.  Now, bands continue to infuse satanic and anti-Christian messages into their lyrics and symbolism, but their actions are much less radical then the founders of the scene.  The experience of black metal is one that promotes the hedonistic individualism, complete indulgence.  Fans of black metal are more likely to gain the attention of an average person walking down the street.  The outfit includes combat boots, almost exclusively black clothing, and the adornment of chains and spikes in a warrior like display of power.  At concerts, the live spectacle includes staged crucifixions, many anti-Christian symbols such as the inverted cross and pentagrams, and fake and sometimes even real animal blood.  All of these factors create a sense of enchantment, a total departure from the regulations of modern society and a return to a more barbaric, medieval existence.  The bands use these symbols to exert power over the weak, and only the strong will be able to listen to black metal due to its intensely graphic and perverse imagery and lyrics.  Black metal is still not as popular as heavy metal, but it has thousands of followers around the world.  These fans experience the scene and indulge in all of their pleasures, without fear of the rules of society.  They display their allegiance to the scene by joining the black metal scene’s crusade against the oppressive Christian religion and show no mercy or restraint towards authority.  Black metal fans are a unique breed, and it is one of the most extreme forms of metal due to its violent past and rhetoric.      

Guitar Center Syndrome

Waksman referenced Buzz Osborne’s interview with Guitar Player magazine from 1996 in which he claims guitar players have fallen victim to “Guitar Center Syndrome in in which guitarists felt compelled to display the fastest, flashiest, and most flamboyant aspects of their technique for the sake of other guitarists to prove their capabilities.”  As a guitar player myself, I can actually imagine the scene he is describing, because not only have I witnessed it, I too have experience the Guitar Center Syndrome. 

Guitar Center is a large chain of music distribution outlets throughout the country.  They specialize in Guitars, but have a wide variety of musical equipment available.  They have to allow the customers to play a guitar or test out an amp before they make a purchase, and of course hundreds of customers a day come to plug in and jam out right there in the store.  Now, when a guitar player plugs into an amp in front of people, it might as well be considered an audience.  All guitar players want to sound good, and look good when playing the guitar.  So what’s the first thing they play?  Stairway to heaven, as famously mocked in Wayne’s World, possibly.  Most likely they will start shredding the guitar and doing their best Eddie Van Halen impersonation trying to impress the other 50 guitarists within the vicinity.  Guitar Center even acknowledges that a lot of talented guitars do come into their shop to test out the best gear, and they hold a yearly regional competition to for guitarists to settle the score and decide who is the most metal guitarist.  Soon, everyone was a guitarist trying to become the next big thing discovered at the Guitar Center.  Then, a unique sound started to get some attention out of the Pacific Northwest.  Grunge bands started getting record deals and soon the Seattle sound would spread.

Seattle has a rich musical history, producing many great musicians including Jimi Hendrix, a guitarist know for his unique use of the guitar and recording techniques that were revolutionary.  Soon bands like Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana would follow that tradition and use strange tunings, new tones, and defiance against the musical norms around them to craft a musical movement.  Technical musical prowess was not important to these bands, because the music was more personal and creative.  It didn’t follow the same pentatonic progression.  It was wild and unpredictable, often using dissonance to create tension.  The shredders had contributed to the very disenchantment of music that heavy metal intended to combat, and people were vocally upset about it.  The Guitar Center Syndrome is an insult intended to illuminate this problem within the musical spheres that existed after the mainstream success of heavy metal musicians such as Van Halen, Metallica, and shredders like Yngwie Malmsteen.  I personally loved to play the guitar as fast as I could because I thought it was the most challenging.  However, after a while it is not fun at all to play the same patterns over and over again, and the music sounds the same after a while.  Grunge music gave a soulful, blues inspired aspect of bringing back the true importance of music and making it individual.  Being from Portland, a lot of these Seattle bands were intensely popular when I was growing up, and I was not only a fan of Metallica but also Nirvana, an interesting contrast as they were almost directly at odds musically.      

NWOBHM

New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM)

Neal Kay created a scene at the Soundhouse, giving metal heads in the UK a mecca where the heavy metal product of the crossover scene of heavy metal and punk music in England during ’77-79 would give rise to the new wave of British heavy metal.  Bands like Iron Maiden worked their way from garages to arenas by taking a lesson from the growing influence of Punk music.  They scrapped together as much money as they could for studio time and started recorded exclusive productions (EP’s).  These rough but raw sounding EP’s would go on to define the NWOBHM sound.

            Iron Maiden’s legendary Soundhouse Tapes referenced Neal Kay’s importance in shaping the scene around the music.  With a venue to showcase their unreleased, raw talent, bands like Iron Maiden, Praying Mantis, Saxon, and Def Leppard gathered momentum and buzz throughout the streets of London and across the Uk.  The Metal for Muthas compilation started to feature these bands and help distribute the sound.  This coupled with the Sounds weekly publication of Neal Kay’s collection of the top requested tunes at the Soundhouse gave metal fans around the nation a reference on what was hot in the scene.  Soon, the new wave was ready for its invasion of America, but their success across the pond was viewed with varying levels of betrayal from their loyal fans and critics back home. 

            These crude forms of distribution were channels to reach the larger record deals, which in turn lead to the lucrative American market.  The issue of “selling out” has always been in heavy metal, and independent success is viewed as a true sign of success.  Def Leppard is often questioned as catering to the American audience and sacrificing some of their original sound in order to sell more records.  Also, the departure of original vocalist Paul Di’Anno in favor of former Saxon signer Bruce Dickenson ended the discussion if Iron Maiden was a crossover punk/HM band, and they made it clear that the working class was not where they wanted to stay.  By the release of Def Leppard’s album Pyromania, both bands enjoyed international success and fame, while most of the NWONHM had lost that momentum created by the Soundhouse.  But now, Def Leppard faced charges of not being genuine came from their critics.  Lead signer Joe Elliot even wore a Union Jack shirt on stage to show his loyalty to England.  However, this didn’t satisfy the critics.  Waksman makes a good point that although the true spirit that encompassed the NWOBHM didn’t survive the commercial boom of the ‘80s, it was directly responsible for it.  The atmosphere at the time created a sound and attitude that propelled these bands to giant arenas around the world for decades, and these phenomenons can't survive because they are a result of a multitude of factors at a specific time and place in history.

Youth and Metal

Youth and Metal

The Dictators and the Runaways represented the youthfulness of rock’n’roll.  They talked about things that teenagers or young people can relate too, like being late to class and midnight joy rides.  The themes of their music appealed to teenage angst.  The feeling young people have when they are growing up, they don’t quite feel like they fit in, but when they listen to this style of music they can forget it all and become a part of something.  They walk a fine line between individuality, being different than the “status quo,” being a part of the “teenagers in hate” that Waksman describes, and giving up the “status quo” to be a part of this rebellious style of music, heavy metal.  These bands add another level of re-enchantment to the equation.  Alice Cooper brought the theatrical element, now there is the element of no-holds-barred teenage rebellion, a powerful concept throughout history.  Kids during this period had heavy metal to hold onto, something that their parents couldn’t rip from their grasp even if they tried.  Something fierce, unpredictable, uncontrollable.  Heavy metal was not about being a virtuoso.  It was the kind of music that was forged in the garage.  It was about being low-tech but in an “in your face” kind of way, unlike the remnants of rock from the ‘60’s.  I feel this is at the core of rock music.  Young people always feel alienated in some way or another while growing up, but music is such a visceral form of communication.  It has such a powerful physical component, being at the concert hearing the booming bass wave over your body.  It is an all-encompassing experience that takes the teenage angst and channels it into raw, distorted guitars.  The Runaways also added that extra appeal of sex, theme that runs throughout music and especially heavy metal.  As seen here, they advertised that they were rebellious through sex.  This also relates to teenage angst.  They looked and acted like teenage runaways, and this made their music real.  It made kids believe in them, and want to be a part of this movement of heavy metal.