Heavy Metal Music in Britain (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)

Heavy Metal Music in Britain

Edited by Gerd Bayer

Hea vy Met al Music in Brit

ain

Für Felice who has already started to dance

Heavy Metal Music in Britain

Edited by Gerd Ba yer University of Erlangen, Germany

© Gerd Bayer 2009 A ll rights reserved. N o part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Gerd Bayer has asserted his moral right under the C opyright, D esigns and Patents A ct, 1988, to be identi.ed as the editor of this work. Published by A shgate Publishing L imited A shgate Publishing C ompany Wey C ourt E ast S uite 420 U nion R oad 101 C herry S treet Farnham Burlington, VT 05401-4405 S urrey GU 9 7PT USA E ngland www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Heavy metal music in Britain. – (Ashgate popular and folk music series) 1. Heavy metal (Music) – Great Britain – History and criticism I. Bayer, Gerd 781.6’6’0941 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heavy metal music in Britain / [edited by] Gerd Bayer. p. cm. – (Ashgate popular and folk music series) ISBN 978-0-7546-6423-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Heavy metal (Music)–Great Britain–History and criticism. 2. Heavy metal (Music)– S ocial aspects–Great Britain. I. Bayer, Gerd, 1971– ML 3534.6.G7H43 2009 781.66–dc22 IS BN 978 0 7546 6423 9

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C ontents General Editor’s Preface   Acknowledgements   Contributors   Introduction: D oing C ultural S tudies with E arplugs   Gerd Bayer Part I

1

Metal Commodities

1 T he E mpowering Masculinity of British Heavy Metal   Deena Weinstein 2

vii ix xi

17

Metal Goes ‘Pop’: T he E xplosion of Heavy Metal into the Mainstream   Benjamin Earl

33

3 T he Brutal T ruth: Grindcore as the E xtreme R ealism of Heavy Metal   Liam Dee

53



Part II The Literary and Mythological Heritage 4 D emons, D evils and Witches: T he Occult in Heavy Metal Music   Helen Farley 5 Images of Human-Wrought D espair and D estruction: S ocial C ritique in British A pocalyptic and D ystopian Metal   Laura Wiebe Taylor 6

From A chilles to A lexander: T he C lassical World and the World of Metal   Iain Campbell

7

E lements of the Gothic in Heavy Metal: A Match Made in Hell   Bryan A. Bardine

73

89

111 125

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vi

Part III Heavy Metal Societies 8

The Unmaking of the English Working Class: D eindustrialization, Reification and the Origins of Heavy Metal   R yan M. Moore

143

9 N o C lass? C lass and C lass Politics in British Heavy Metal   Magnus N ilsson

161

10 Rocking the Nation: One Global Audience, One Flag?   Gerd Bayer

181

Index  

195

General E ditor’s Preface T he upheaval that occurred in musicology during the last two decades of the twentieth century has created a new urgency for the study of popular music alongside the development of new critical and theoretical models. A relativistic outlook has replaced the universal perspective of modernism (the international ambitions of the 12-note style); the grand narrative of the evolution and dissolution of tonality has been challenged, and emphasis has shifted to cultural context, reception and subject position. T ogether, these have conspired to eat away at the status of canonical composers and categories of high and low in music. A need has arisen, also, to recognize and address the emergence of crossovers, mixed and new genres, to engage in debates concerning the vexed problem of what constitutes authenticity in music and to offer a critique of musical practice as the product of free, individual expression. Popular musicology is now a vital and exciting area of scholarship, and the Ashgate Popular and Folk Music S eries presents some of the best research in the field. Authors are concerned with locating musical practices, values and meanings in cultural context, and may draw upon methodologies and theories developed in cultural studies, semiotics, poststructuralism, psychology and sociology. T he series focuses on popular musics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is designed to embrace the world’s popular musics from A cid Jazz to Zydeco, whether high tech or low tech, commercial or non-commercial, contemporary or traditional. Derek B. Scott Professor of C ritical Musicology U niversity of L eeds, U K

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Acknowledgements This book would not have been possible without the dedication and generosity of its contributors. T heir enthusiasm for the project has been a great inspiration: my understanding of popular music has been advanced by corresponding with and learning from these colleagues and their diverse fields of expertise. Going back further in time, I have been lucky to learn from the musical talent of a number of friends and fellow musicians: Patrick Göbel, Martin Scherl, Hannes Holzmann, Matthias März, Peter Hoppe, Wolfgang Fulda, Dominik Seyferth, Frank Graffstedt and U li Friedel. Wolfgang Geisler and E rnst S ieber have shown me what it means to take music seriously: all my work has benefited tremendously from their input. Finally, I would like to express my great appreciation for the wonderful support I have received from the series editor Derek Scott as well as from everybody else at Ashgate involved in producing this book, in particular Heidi May, Emily Ruskell and Jonathan Hoare.

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C ontributors Bryan A. Bardine received his PhD from Kent S tate U niversity, USA and is an assistant professor of E nglish at the U niversity of D ayton. He has published on literacy and the teaching of E nglish. Gerd Bayer has returned from teaching in C anada and the USA to the E nglish department at E rlangen U niversity, Germany, where he had earlier completed his PhD . He has written on contemporary British and postcolonial literatures as well as on film, and has edited two other books on popular culture. For ten years, he worked as a guitarist and sound engineer for local, national and international bands. Iain Campbell teaches classics and E nglish at R adley C ollege, U K. He holds BA and MA degrees from C ambridge U niversity. He has published on the impact of the classics on E nglish teaching in the U K. Liam Dee holds a PhD from the D epartment of C ritical and C ultural S tudies at Macquarie U niversity, A ustralia, where he has also taught popular culture. He has published on multiculturalism and globalization. Benjamin Earl teaches on the E nglish and Popular C ulture degree course at the U niversity of Wales Institute, C ardiff, having obtained his PhD from Cardiff University in 2007. He is currently writing his first book, a study of the A rthurian myth in contemporary culture, for Manchester U niversity Press. His principal research interests are tourism, pop music, the nature of authorship, and appropriations of both high and popular culture. Helen Farley is a lecturer in Western esotericism in the S chool of History, Philosophy, R eligion and C lassics at the U niversity of Queensland, A ustralia, where she also obtained her PhD. For ten years she worked as the blues music columnist for the music magazine R ave, where she interviewed many different artists. S he is also the editor of the academic religious studies journal Khthónios. R yan M. Moore holds a PhD from the U niversity of C alifornia, S an D iego, USA , and is currently an assistant professor of sociology at Florida A tlantic U niversity. He has published a number of articles on subcultures and contemporary music styles, including work on punk and metal music.

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Magnus N ilsson took his PhD from Lund University, Sweden, and is an assistant professor of comparative literature at Malmö University. He has published books (including Den moderne Ivar Lo-Johansson, 2003) and articles on European literature. Laura Wiebe Taylor is a PhD student at McMaster U niversity, Ontario, C anada. She has written on radio politics, metal music and science fiction. Deena Weinstein holds a PhD from Purdue U niversity, Indiana, USA , and is professor of sociology at D ePaul U niversity, C hicago. S he is the author of over 80 book chapters and journal articles and has written ten books, including S erious R ock: The Artistic Vision of Modern S ociety in Pink Floyd, R ush and Bruce S pringsteen (New World Perspectives) and Heavy Metal: A Cultural S ociology (rev. ed., Da Capo).

Introduction

D oing C ultural S tudies with E arplugs Gerd Bayer

When confronted with heavy metal music, few people who are not already fans of the genre would think of the potential interest to cultural studies, whose focus on subversive responses to power has long since discovered other art forms. Heavy metal, for the most part, has not received much attention. A nd yet, heavy metal has been one of the great success stories of popular culture, finding fans in the millions across the world who often remain dedicated listeners to their favourite musical style throughout their lives. Born and bred in the United Kingdom by bands like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, heavy metal has also become a hugely successful export item, finding admirers not only on the European continent and in the Western world, but also in distant places like Brazil, home to Sepultura, or Japan. The various chapters in this book, all described briefly at the end of this introduction, set out to contribute to the growing academic discourse about heavy metal. Whereas other popular music genres, such as punk or hip hop, have been the object of much critical writing, heavy metal has not yet been rewarded the attention that its breadth of styles, its musical legacies and its ideological message warrant. In order to give the various chapters more coherency, certain historical and geographical limitations were set at the beginning of this project. T he regional focus is clearly on the British Isles, the birthplace of heavy metal. E ven though the United States soon became a huge market for this music, the developments there started later and moved in different directions from the British tradition. T his is not to say that the arguments presented in this book are not relevant for the US situation: but at times the specifically American realities of production, marketing, politics or even religion may have to be taken into account when arguments presented in this volume are transferred from the U K to the USA . T he developments of such heavy metal subgenres as glam metal or grunge are more specifically American developments that would deserve their own in-depth analysis. The breaking up of heavy metal into numerous special subgroups such as speed metal, gothic, doom or thrash metal already points to another possible area for future research. T he second self-imposed limitation shortens the historical period under consideration in the subsequent chapters. The focus of this book is based on the assumption that with the massive success of heavy metal in the early 1990s, the phenomenon had somehow moved not only into a new phase, but also onto a stage where national borders were increasingly becoming redundant, a move that was further accelerated by the role that MTV – which S imon Frith describes as a ‘gatekeeper’ of popular music (‘Popular Music Industry’ 44) – increasingly played



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in forming and spreading taste cultures amongst listeners of popular music: MTV ’s institution of the all heavy metal Headbangers Ball in 1987 clearly indicates both the popularity of heavy metal at that time and the increasing infiltration of this music genre by the interest of large corporations. Once this global network and other major entertainment corporations had discovered the potential of heavy metal as a commercial commodity (the Grammy award won by Metallica in 1990 probably marking a turning point in this development), heavy metal somehow stopped being a particularly British tradition. Heavy metal has now spawned numerous offspring who, according to Barney Hoskyns, can all look back to Black Sabbath and singer Ozzy Osbourne as having started the phenomenon: the endurance of hard rock, the evolution and mutation of nu metal, the alternative to ‘alternative’ and the codified hipness of Generation Y. And all of it starting with a working-class boy from Birmingham – heavy metal’s sad madman, the godfather of the tattooed tribes. (3)

It is hardly necessary to bemoan this development from a British fringe art form to a global success since it shows that the message of heavy metal speaks to an audience across the world. Just what this message might be, which aspects contribute to it, how they relate to larger social and political developments, and to what their discursive practices might be indebted are some of the questions to which the essays collected here set out to provide answers. Part of the motivation for creating this book was to address two groups of readers, maybe even to bring them closer together: on the one hand, the budding scene of academics working in the area of heavy metal studies and, on the other hand, the wide field of cultural studies adherents who, it is hoped, may find here a new sphere of popular culture to which they can apply their various techniques of critical analysis. Brought into the classroom, the chapters below could be used to introduce a range of cultural theories through a medium that quite a few students might find interesting. If the essays collected here lead to a greater presence of heavy metal in cultural studies, then that would certainly be a welcome result. Heavy Metal Scholarship While the contributors draw from a wide range of theoretical concepts popular among practitioners of cultural studies, they also benefit from the existing research about heavy metal. Scholarly interest in heavy metal dates back to the publication of two books: Deena Weinstein’s Heavy Metal: A Cultural S ociology, first published in 1991 and revised in 2000 as Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture, and  ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� S ee also the bibliography at the end of this introduction, which includes a range of publications not discussed here.

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R obert Walser’s R unning with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (1993). In the disciplinary backgrounds of Weinstein, a sociologist, and Walser, a musicologist, the rich potential of heavy metal for trans-disciplinary analyses already becomes obvious. Weinstein’s groundbreaking sociological monograph brings to the fore both the historical development of this music genre and the social climate in which it not only first developed but also later thrived. Weinstein describes heavy metal as ‘a compound of different elements’ (5) based in social groups and expressed as a genre that derives its unique features from sonic, visual and verbal aspects that combine to create common features (22–35). At the same time, Weinstein points out that heavy metal music, like any serious subcultural phenomenon, resists clear classification and instead is marked by rich heterogeneity. R obert Walser, in R unning with the Devil, devotes individual chapters to the three topics mentioned in his subtitle (power, gender and madness), keeping the musical features of heavy metal at the centre of his analysis. Walser’s musical expertise brings out heavy metal’s relationship to earlier genres, in particular to classical music. For instance, he argues that guitarists like Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore engaged in ‘experimentation with fusion of rock and classical music’ while others were more strongly influenced by blues and rock (65). Voices critical of heavy metal music are not difficult to find. In Hole in O ur S oul (1994), Martha Bayles argues that the genre ‘emerged from the decadent pseudoliterary sensibilities of certain performers’ (246). To blame heavy metal on decadence when the social reality of many of the early practitioners, like Back S abbath, was anything but privileged seems strange: it would have had to be a rare moment of decadence that sprung from the working-class poverty of the English midlands. Ozzy Osbourne, for example, describes his childhood in terms that seem to preclude any risk of decadence (which has of course not prevented him from reaching his present state). Hoskyns writes that Osbourne was ‘the fourth of six children, with three older sisters and two younger brothers. He remembers his toolmaker dad; remembers his mother testing car horns in a factory’ (4). To accuse somebody from such a background of lacking literary sensibilities seems hardly fair. On the contrary, it is rather impressive to learn how many of the early heavy metal bands managed to organize themselves sufficiently to succeed in an environment that they had to create for their music in the first place. That Bayles’s criticism hardly stems from a serious understanding of the musical tradition that lives on in heavy metal, a tradition that R obert Walser so aptly describes in R unning with the Devil, is probably due to the bias against an art form that disagrees with her sensibilities. T he fact that Bayles also sounds sorry that she cannot ‘pin heavy metal on the Germans – or the British, who first bludgeoned the blues’ (247), reveals much about her fear of cultural alienation. Following Weinstein and Walser, more specialized studies of aspects of heavy metal music have concentrated on subgenres or regional scenes. A strong focus on adolescence characterizes Jeffrey Jensen Arnett’s book Metalheads: Heavy Metal Music and Adolescent Alienation (1996), one of a small number of empirical



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studies devoted to heavy metal music (in the USA), based on personal interviews conducted with heavy metal fans. A rnett provides less information about the music, but his book is highly revealing about the fan culture surrounding it. Trying to summarize his findings, Arnett states about his interviewees that he was ‘struck again and again by the depth and pervasiveness of their alienation. Most of them held high hopes for their own lives, but they were deeply cynical about the adult world they were preparing to enter’ (ix). Arnett, who clearly states his dislike of heavy metal music, follows the theme of alienation through various chapters, focusing on manhood rituals, women in heavy metal, family and religion. His study is really ‘a book about adolescence in contemporary America’ (23) and thus – with the exception of his brief history of heavy metal music in chapter three, which also includes comments on musical and lyrical themes – of only limited use to cultural readings of (British) heavy metal. E ven though it describes the heavy metal scene in S candinavia in the 1990s and thus falls outside the geographical frame of British heavy metal, Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind’s Lords of Chaos: The Bloody R ise of the S atanic Metal Underground (1998) offers fascinating insights into a subgenre of heavy metal that has garnered a great amount of criticism, and not, as the two authors show, without a certain justification. The destructive behaviour of a number of musicians, leading to a series of church burnings and murders, as well as the affiliation of some parts of the Scandinavian metal underground with neo-Nazi ideology shows that at least some practitioners of this music take the Satanistic tendencies of black metal very seriously. However, one should not generalize too quickly from the findings of Moynihan and Søderlind. As Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen’s important documentary film Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (2006) shows, much of the shocking behaviour is little more than entertainment. Confronted with the Scandinavian Satanism in Dunn’s film, Alice Cooper, a musician who has attracted a large amount of criticism for his own morbid stage shows, seems amused and alienated by the seriousness with which some musicians transfer a stage posture to reality, turning a music style into a lifestyle. In Metal, R ock, and Jazz (1999), Harris Berger provides an in-depth reading of the musical and social cultures of different music genres in Ohio. Based on extensive interviews, Berger, a musicologist, adds musical analysis to his ethnographic approach. T he various sections on jazz and heavy metal, though based on A merican regional scenes, aim to bring out the ‘meaning of the music for the people who participate in it’ (15). In following this approach, Berger presents a prism of heavy metal existence that connects the musical praxis to a social and political reality, thereby emphasizing the mutual influences between art and reality. In the early twenty-first century, the interest in heavy metal as a topic for academic and also for popular books has further increased. In his comprehensive musicological study R ock: The Primary Text (2001), Allan F. Moore provides an outline of various genres of rock music, including sections on punk and progressive rock. In his discussion of hard rock and heavy metal, which he sees as ‘points on a style continuum’ (148), Moore emphasizes the joint background in blues structures

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and suggests high speed, the traditional instrumentation consisting of guitar, bass and drums, and predictable formal arrangements as characteristic features. Moore argues that ‘heavy metal is perhaps the most formulaic of rock styles (and hence, the rock style that permits the subtlest play of significances)’ (150). Ian Christe has provided the first substantial description of the development of the genre. His book, S ound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal (2003), quickly moves from the British birthplace of heavy metal to the USA and the rest of the world. It does, however, provide detailed background information about the musicians, subgenres and current tendencies within the field. N atalie Purcell’s Death Metal Music (2003), a carefully designed sociological study, questions some of the most blatant clichés directed at death metal audiences. A longside a short history of the genre, comments about censorship, and sections on violence, lyrics and religion, the book offers particularly interesting statistical information, some of which contradicts existing research. In Part IV of her study, Purcell debunks some of the popularly held views about the fans of death metal music. In particular she takes issue with some of the findings of Peter Christenson and D onald R oberts, published as It’s N ot O nly R ock & R oll (1998), who question both the intelligence and racial tolerance of the heavy metal scene, and with Bayles, whose Hole in O ur S ole Purcell accuses of not being based on proper knowledge of the heavy metal scene, criticizing in particular her views on the perceived masculinity of this music genre (102). In It’s not O nly R ock & R oll, C hristenson and R oberts analyse the social behaviour of adolescents in different Anglophone societies, looking at music styles, media consumption, deviant behaviour and other factors. While they emphasize that most of the adolescent listeners of heavy metal ‘are not on drugs, not in jail, not failing in school, not depressed, perhaps not even particularly at odds with their parents (except maybe when it comes to music)’ (109), they do note that the odds of a troubled teenager listening to heavy metal are disproportionately high. Whether their findings, which combine research conducted on highly diverse groups of teenagers in a number of countries, can be applied to understanding British listeners of heavy metal remains somewhat unclear. N evertheless, their comprehensive use of the available sociological research on music behaviour amongst adolescents provides a valuable starting point for much further research in heavy metal studies. Keith Kahn-Harris, in Extreme Metal (2007), advances sociological research on heavy metal substantially by taking seriously the aesthetic complexity of this subgenre of heavy metal and by focusing on the complex infrastructure of the scene’s network of booking, distribution and exchange. His book also stresses the need to study heavy metal music of the 1990s and since then as an increasingly global phenomenon. The majority of books about individual bands is not written from the point of view of academic criticism, so most of them provide at best background information and sound bites from the people involved in the industry; the bibliography below lists a fair number of such publications. However, some books also offer critical insight into the discourse on heavy metal music, such as S usan Fast’s fascinating



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study of L ed Zeppelin, In the Houses of the Holy (2001), or Glenn Pillsbury’s Damage Incorporated: Metallica and the Production of Musical Identity (2006). Chapter Survey Part I deals with heavy metal as an industry driven by concepts indebted to commercial and ideological interests. In C hapter 1, D eena Weinstein explores the meanings that masculinity carries in British heavy metal music in the stage of its crystallization as a genre in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Weinstein goes against the contemporary discourses about pop music ‘masculinity’ and shows how the case of British heavy metal challenges their over-simplified interpretations of that concept. In the wake of feminist theory’s rearticulation of the male–female gender binary, the concept of masculinity has undergone intensive and detailed criticism, with the result that it is no longer credible to regard ‘masculinity’ as a unitary concept with a clear definition. Disagreeing with the frequently heard critical assumption that metal is ‘cock-rock’, Weinstein shows how British heavy metal is not an expression of phallocentric masculinity; rather, masculinity in British heavy metal is an expression of power in a positive sense that does not depend for its meaning on an invidious distinction with a binary opposite. Benjamin E arl, in C hapter 2, presents the relationship between heavy metal and the commercial mainstream as always unstable. He argues that heavy metal music has repeatedly crossed the boundary from the subcultural to the commercial. Earl utilizes Pierre Bourdieu’s theories on cultural fields to show how certain subgenres of metal have sought to define themselves in terms of incorporation into the mainstream but were at the same time redefining the field of heavy metal from within. A lthough heavy metal music in Britain disintegrated into extreme subcultures during the 1980s, some bands at this time found themselves moving towards a commodified form, melodic rock, seeking to appropriate generic conventions from both metal and mainstream pop music to create a hybrid form of ‘popular’ metal. By analysing the trajectory of metal bands like Magnum and Rainbow, Earl shows how the development of the field has impacted on the music texts released and how the textual strategies employed by bands sought to straddle this new-found mainstream position. One of the consequences of the commercialization of heavy metal is that commercial criteria of success became increasingly important. L iam D ee’s chapter focuses on the grindcore subgenre of 1980s British heavy metal. C entred around the independent record label E arache R ecords, grindcore was a concatenation of punk and heavy metal best represented by Napalm Death and its spin-offs, bands like Godflesh and Carcass. These bands were still in the tradition of earlier heavy metal acts like Black Sabbath but they largely eschewed the self-indulgent displays of virtuosity in this tradition in favour of punk minimalism. Following Frankfurt School claims about the field of cultural production, Dee argues that grindcore represented an attempt to take to an

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extreme the aggressive protest of heavy metal against music industry fakery, social conformism and humanist faith in progress. U tilizing Julia Kristeva’s notion of the transgressive abject and T heodor A dorno’s analysis of avant-garde negation, D ee shows that grindcore represented a negative dialectics of ‘extreme realism’. Grindcore took this ‘will-to-authenticity’ beyond the limitations of traditional heavy metal, which had become stuck in a caricature of macho posturing. In response, grindcore re-injected the original critical realist heavy metal impulse with the more rigorous, inclusive and anti-elitist punk philosophy of authenticity. T hough grindcore was still a predominantly white male affair, there was more acceptance of diversity in appearance, not to mention an absence of homophobia and misogyny. T he lyrical concerns of N apalm D eath were based in a progressive left-wing politics that spoke to the immediate causes of social decay in Thatcher’s Britain rather than a displaced evocation of teen-fantasy resistance. T he chapters in Part II address the relationship between heavy metal music in Britain and its literary and mythological pretexts. In C hapter 4, Helen Farley presents a history of the relationship between heavy metal and the occult, following it back to the genre’s evolution from blues music. Heavy metal adopted not only the musical virtuosity of British blues but also maintained the occult themes that had been carried over from A merican blues. T he themes and, hence, the music found a ready market with fans feeling dislocated and dispossessed by the social and political upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. Heavy metal, with its rejection of C hristian norms, expressed the fears and longings of these people. T he N ew Wave of British Heavy Metal in the 1970s continued this development, with the occult themes becoming more culturally specific. In the second part of her chapter, Farley follows the theme of the occult in heavy metal music into more recent subgenres of heavy metal music in Britain. In C hapter 5, L aura Wiebe T aylor provides an analysis of apocalyptic and dystopian narratives from several heavy metal bands, examining the sounds, lyrics and imagery of specific songs and albums to uncover the potential for social critique in a musical style that seems, at surface level, to glorify destruction and despair. Taylor suggests that the dark and disaster-focused science fiction imagery of British metal belongs to a broader British tradition of dystopian writing. E choes of A ldous Huxley’s Brave N ew World (1932), George Orwell’s 1984 (1949), or the early scientific romances of H.G. Wells resonate in metal’s later soundscapes. While a preoccupation with the armies of hell has often cast metal as anti-religious or even S atanic, T aylor demonstrates that this is not always the case. R ather, she shows that works by Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Bolt Thrower and Cathedral reveal a concern for the fate of the planet and the human species in the face of unchecked industrialization, political oppression and high-tech warfare. Placing heavy metal music’s apocalyptic and dystopian narratives in the context of broader traditions in literature, cinema, popular music and heavy metal music, her article demonstrates that beneath metal’s harsh sounds, words and visual displays lies the potential for social consciousness, and for an intelligent critique of human behaviour and contemporary civilization.



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In Chapter 6, Iain Campbell investigates how heavy metal has been influenced by the classical world, primarily through its literature and mythology. A cursory survey of metal band names alone reveals a vast range of classical allusions, from Aeon to Thanatos, via Charon, Elysium and Satyricon. The extent of this influence rivals that of Norse mythology and Tolkien as an apparent source of inspiration. Much of the allusion is to the classical underworld and to ecclesiastical L atin, supporting the macabre religiosity of the black metal subgenre. Campbell also identifies and explains allusions to, and even quotations from, classical authors as diverse as Horace and Boethius. His main focus, however, is on the more widely disseminated (and hence culturally significant) work of major bands such as Iron Maiden. Classical influences in their lyrics range from the stock mythology of the Icarus story (‘Flight of Icarus’) and the Odyssey’s sirens (‘Ghost of the Navigator’), to a more historiographical approach in 1986’s ‘A lexander the Great’. C ampbell questions whether the traditionalism inherent in adopting classical paradigms undermines the ostensibly radical ideology adopted by some bands, or whether for others it simply underlines what is a surprisingly conservative standpoint. Bryan Bardine, in Chapter 7, shows how elements of Gothic fiction have pervaded the lyrics of British heavy metal. Many bands included a variety of Gothic elements in their lyrics, and by doing so not only helped to strengthen their messages, but also, in some respects, revealed the connections between heavy metal music and the works of many authors whose work – at least in part – can be considered Gothic, such as S amuel T aylor C oleridge and E dgar A llan Poe. In his chapter, Bardine first introduces the tradition of Gothic literature and then brings out those particular Gothic elements that have worked their way into heavy metal music, including the supernatural, the occult, insanity, criticism of religion, female powerlessness and settings outside of this world. He presents heavy metal as a textual form in the tradition of R omanticism’s critical dialogue with the E nlightenment. In his conclusion, Bardine speculates about whether heavy metal music indirectly exposes its listeners to Gothic literature, bringing together two art forms that have been shunned by critics since their inceptions. The contributions to Part III deal with the social realm of heavy metal, asking questions about the role that issues such as class and nationality play in the lyrics and performances of heavy metal bands from Britain. In C hapter 8, R yan Moore discusses the music and iconography of heavy metal music in Britain, especially that of Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, in terms of Georg Lukács’s notion of the reification of class consciousness. Reification refers to the process in which the social products of human labour appear to take on a life of their own which is independent of human control and therefore timeless and immutable. Capital and the so-called invisible hand of the market remake the world ‘like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells’, in the words of Marx and E ngels that resemble the lyrics of many heavy metal songs (and echo Goethe’s famous poem). Heavy metal’s reification of power is evident in the way it puts mystical and mythological sources of devastation in the place of human ones. T his suggests that heavy metal was

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never as politically disengaged as most intellectuals and activists have believed. However, it does raise the same problem that the reification of class consciousness posed for Lukács: if capital and social power are represented as unstoppable forces with a life of their own, how is resistance, much less social change, possible? In Chapter 9, Magnus Nilsson analyses Motörhead’s lyrics as an attempt to handle a dominant discourse about the working class within the framework of a ‘heavy metal sub-culture’, and to investigate the political implications of this attempt. Song statements such as ‘We are Motörhead’ can be seen as an attempt to change class value in the public sphere. But, as N ilsson shows, such songs have to be seen as an investment in a capital that, regardless of its value in a larger public sphere, already has a relatively high value in the heavy metal sub-culture where signs connoting working-class identity are used to create a strong sense of collective identity. However, this construction of identity is seldom politicized in Motörhead songs. What is constructed instead is a ‘cultural otherness’ that has almost no links whatsoever to questions concerning oppression, material injustice and so on. E ven in songs that explicitly deal with class issues, the argument is limited to questions of identity. What is at stake is social class, but this is articulated as bearing a mark of cultural distinction. In the concluding chapter, C hapter 10, Gerd Bayer describes how the British tradition of heavy metal music has started to become a global phenomenon, related to the waning global importance of Britain after the end of empire. T his tendency already finds its roots in the early days of heavy metal, with bands at the same time celebrating and criticizing their British heritage and cultural environment. A s a consequence, the relationship of British heavy metal to its national narrative is one of critical intervention, a position that also includes criticism of the notion of nationalism itself. A s the century comes to its close, heavy metal is shown to have become a global phenomenon that, however, remains indebted to its early British roots. Selected Heavy Metal Bibliography A rnett, Jeffrey Jensen. Metalheads: Heavy Metal Music and Adolescent Alienation. Boulder, C O: Westview, 1996. A rnett, Jeffrey. ‘A dolescents and Heavy Metal Music: From the Mouths of Metalheads.’ Youth and S ociety 23.1 (September 1991): 76–98. A rnold, Gina. R oute 666: O n the R oad to N irvana. New York: St. Martin’s, 1993. A zerad, Michael. Come As You Are: The S tory of N irvana. New York: Doubleday, 1993. Ballard, Mary E . and S teve C oates. ‘T he Immediate E ffects of Homicidal, S uicidal, and N onviolent Heavy Metal and R ap S ongs on the Moods of C ollege S tudents.’ Youth and S ociety 27 (December 1995): 148–68. Bashe, Philip. ‘Black Sabbath: Rock’s Dinosaur Dogs Its Detractors.’ Circus (31 March 1981): 29–30.

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Bashe, Philip. ‘Heavy Metal C omes of A ge.’ Circus (31 May 1983): 26. Bashe, Philip. Heavy Metal Thunder: Its Music, Its History, Its Heroes. Garden C ity, NY : D oubleday, 1985. Baumeister, Roy. ‘Acid Rock: A Critical Reappraisal and Psychological C ommentary.’ Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 16.4 (October–December 1984): 339–45. Bayer, Gerd. ‘T he Band J.B.O. and E xploding the S erious S ide of Pop C ulture.’ German Matters in Popular Culture. E d. C hristopher L orey and John L . Plews. S pecial issue Journal of Popular Culture 34.3 (2000): 109–28. Bayles, Martha. Hole in O ur S oul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music. 1994. C hicago, IL : U niversity of C hicago Press, 1996. Bennett, A ndy, ed. R emembering Woodstock. A ldershot: A shgate, 2004. Berelian, E ssi. The R ough Guide to Heavy Metal. L ondon: R ough Guides, 2005. Berger, Harris M. ‘D eath Metal T onality and the A rt of L istening.’ Popular Music 18.2 (1999): 161–79. Berger, Harris M. Metal, R ock, and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience. Hanover, N H: Wesleyan U niversity Press, 1999. Binder, A my. ‘Media D epictions of Harm in Heavy Metal and R ap Music.’ American S ociological R eview 58.6 (1993): 753–67. Blachet, Philippe. Heavy Metal S tory. Paris: C almann-L evy, 1985. Blush, S teven. American Hair Metal. L os A ngeles, CA : Feral House, 2006. Bogue, Ronald. ‘Violence in Three Shades of Metal: Death, Doom and Black.’ Deleuze and Music. E d. Ian Buchanan and Marcel S wiboda. E dinburgh: E dinburgh U niversity Press, 2004. 95–117. Breen, Marcus. ‘A Stairway to Heaven or a Highway to Hell?: Heavy Metal Rock Music in the 1990s.’ Cultural S tudies 5.2 (May 1991): 191–203. Brittan, A rthur. Masculinity and Power. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Bryson, Bethany. ‘ “A nything But Heavy Metal”: S ymbolic E xclusion and Musical Dislikes.’ American S ociological R eview 61 (October 1996): 884–99. C happle, S teve and R eebee Garofalo. R ock ‘n’ R oll Is Here to Pay. C hicago, IL : N elson-Hall, 1977. C hriste, Ian. S ound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. C hristenson, Peter G. and D onald F. R oberts. It’s N ot O nly R ock & R oll: Popular Music in the Lives of Adolescents. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 1998. D avis, S tephen. Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin S aga. New York: Morrow, 1985. D uncan, R obert. The N oise: N otes from a R ock ‘n’ R oll Era. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1984. D unn, S am and S cot McFadyen, dirs. Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. Warner, 2006. Eddy, Chuck. ‘Heavy Metal.’ Rock and Roll Con.dential Report. E d. D ave Marsh. New York: Pantheon, 1985. 183–90.

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Eddy, Chuck. S tairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe. New York: Harmony Books, 1991. Epstein, Jonathon S., David J. Pratto and James K. Skipper Jr. ‘Teenagers, Behavioral Problems, and Preferences for Heavy Metal and R ap Music: A C ase S tudy of a S outhern Middle S chool.’ Deviant Behavior 11 (1990): 381–94. Fast, S usan. In the Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of R ock Music. Oxford: Oxford U niversity Press, 2001. Fischer, Paul D . ‘Worse than the PMRC : T he C ongressional Hearings on Music L yrics and C ommerce.’ Journal of Popular Music S tudies 8 (1996): 43–56. Frick, Ulrich. ‘Rock Music as Commodity.’ Österreichische Zeitschrift für S oziologie 8.4 (1983): 164–73. Frith, S imon. ‘A rt V ersus T echnology: T he S trange C ase of Popular Music.’ Media, Culture, and S ociety 8 (1986): 263–79. Frith, S imon. ‘T he Popular Music Industry.’ The Cambridge Companion to Pop and R ock. E d. S imon Frith, Will S traw and John S treet. C ambridge: C ambridge U niversity Press, 2001. 26–52. Frith, S imon. S ound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of R ock ‘n’ R oll. N ew York: Pantheon, 1981. Frith, S imon. ‘T owards an A esthetic of Popular Music.’ Music and S ociety: The Politics of Composition, Performance, and R eception. E d. R ichard L eppert and S usan McC lary. C ambridge: C ambridge U niversity Press, 1987. 133–49. Frith, S imon and A ndrew Goodwin, eds. O n R ecord: R ock, Pop, and the Written Word. New York: Pantheon, 1990. Frith, Simon and Angela McRobbie. ‘Rock and Sexuality.’ S creen Education 29 (1978): 3–19. Frith, S imon, Will S traw and John S treet, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Pop and R ock. C ambridge: C ambridge U niversity Press, 2001. Garofalo, R eebee. ‘How A utonomous Is R elative: Popular Music, the S ocial Formation and C ultural S truggle.’ Popular Music 6.1 (January 1987): 77–92. Garofalo, R eebee, ed. R ockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements. Boston, MA : S outh E nd Press, 1992. Gore, T ipper. R aising PG Kids in an X-R ated S ociety. N ashville, TN : A bingdon, 1987. Greenberg, Keith E lliot. Heavy Metal. Minneapolis, MN : L erner, 1986. Gross, Michael. ‘Heavy Metal Music: A N ew S ubculture in A merican S ociety.’ Journal of Popular Culture 24.1 (Summer 1990): 119–30. Grossman, L oyd. A S ocial History of R ock Music: From the Greasers to Glitter R ock. New York: David McKay, 1976. Halbersberg, E lianne. Heavy Metal. Cresskill, NJ: Sharon, 1985. Hale, Mark. The Worldwide Megabook of Heavy Metal Bands. A nn A rbor, MI: Popular Culture Ink, 1993. Halfin, Ross and Pete Makowski. Heavy Metal: The Power Age. New York: D elilah, 1982.

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Harrigan, Brian. HM A–Z: The Definitive Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal from AC/DC through Led Zeppelin to ZZ Top. L ondon: Bobcat, 1981. Harrigan, Brian and Malcolm D ome. Encyclopedia Metallica. L ondon: Omnibus, 1986. Harrigan, Brian and Malcolm D ome. Encyclopedia Metallica: The Bible of Heavy Metal. L ondon: Bobcat, 1980. The Heavy Metal Photo Book. L ondon: Omnibus, 1983. Hedges, Dan. ‘Metallica’s Sonic Assault Makes Believers of Ozzy Fans.’ Circus (31 July 1986): 26–8. Hoskyns, Barney, ed. Into the Void: O zzy O sbourne and Black S abbath: A R ock’s Backpages R eader. L ondon: Omnibus, 2004. Ingham, C hris. The Book of Metal: The Most Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Metal Music Ever Created. New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 2002. Irwin, William. Metallica and Philosophy: A Crash Course in Brain S urgery. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. Jasper, Tony and Derek Oliver. The International Encyclopedia of Hard R ock and Heavy Metal. New York: Facts on File, 1983. Kahn-Harris, Keith. Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. Oxford: Berg, 2007. Kelly, S ean K. ‘C ommunities of R esistance: Heavy Metal as a R einvention of S ocial T echnology.’ The R esisting Muse: Popular Music and S ocial Protest. E d. Ian Peddie. A ldershot: A shgate, 2006. 149–62. King, Paul. ‘Heavy Metal Music and D rug A buse in A dolescents.’ Postgraduate Medicine 83.5 (April 1988): 295–304. Konow, D avid. Bang Your Head: The R ise and Fall of Heavy Metal. New York: T hree R ivers Press, 2002. L eggett, C arol. The Heavy Metal Bible. New York: Pinnacle, 1985. Moore, A llan F. R ock: The Primary Text: Developing a Musicology of R ock. 2nd ed. A ldershot: A shgate, 2001. Moynihan, Michael and Didrik Søderlind. Lords of Chaos: The Bloody R ise of the S atanic Metal Underground. V enice, CA : Feral House, 1998. Mudrian, A lbert. Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. L os A ngeles, CA : Feral House, 2004. Obrecht, Jas, ed. Masters of Heavy Metal. New York: Quill, 1984. Peddie, Ian, ed. The R esisting Muse: Popular Music and S ocial Protest. A ldershot: A shgate, 2006. Pillsbury, Glenn T . Damage Incorporated: Metallica and the Production of Musical Identity. New York: Routledge, 2006. Popoff, Martin. Black S abbath: Doom Let Loose – An Illustrated History. T oronto: EC W Press, 2006. Popoff, Martin. The Collector’s Guide to Heavy Metal. T oronto: C ollector’s Guide Press, 1997. Purcell, N atalie J. Death Metal Music: The Passion and Politics of a S ubculture. Jefferson, NC : McFarland, 2003.

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Raschke, Carl A. Painted Black: From Drug Killing to Heavy Metal – The Alarming True S tory of How S atanism Is Terrorizing O ur Communities. N ew York: Harper & Row, 1990. R ichardson, James T ., Joel Best and D avid Bromley, eds. The S atanism S care. Hawthorne, NY : A ldine de Gruyter, 1991. S avage, Jon. England’s Dreaming: S ex Pistols and Punk R ock. L ondon: Faber & Faber, 1991. S imels, S teven. Gender Chameleons: Androgyny in R ock ‘n’ R oll. New York: T imbre, 1985. S inger, S imon I., Murray L evine and S usyan Jou. ‘Heavy Metal Music Preference, D elinquent Friends, S ocial C ontrol, and D elinquency.’ Journal of R esearch in Crime and Delinquency 30.3 (August 1993): 317–29. Straw, Will. ‘Characterizing Rock Music Cultures: The Case of Heavy Metal.’ Canadian University Music R eviews 5 (1984): 104–22. S ugerman, D aniel. Appetite for Destruction: The Days of Guns ‘n’ R oses. N ew York: St. Martin’s, 1991. T horne, S tephen B. and Philip Himelstein. ‘T he R ole of S uggestion in the Perception of Satanic Messages in Rock-and-Roll Recordings.’ Journal of Psychology 116.2 (March 1984): 245–8. V erden, Paul, Kathleen D unleavy and C harles H. Powers. ‘Heavy Metal Mania and A dolescent D elinquency.’ Popular Music and S ociety 13.1 (Spring 1989): 73–82. Walser, R obert. ‘Bon Jovi’s A lloy: D iscursive Fusion in T op 40 Pop Music.’ O neTwoThreeFour 7 (1989): 7–19. Walser, R obert. ‘E ruptions: Heavy Metal A ppropriations of C lassical V irtuosity.’ Popular Music 11.3 (1992): 263–308. Walser, R obert. R unning with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover, N H: Wesleyan U niversity Press, 1993. Wehrli, R eto. Verteufelter Heavy Metal: Forderungen nach Musikzensur zwischen christlichem Fundamentalismus und staatlichem Jugendschutz. Münster: T elos, 2001. Weinstein, D eena. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. 1991. R ev. ed. N ew York: Da Capo, 2000. Weinstein, Deena. ‘Rock Protest Songs: So Many and So Few.’ The R esisting Muse: Popular Music and S ocial Protest. E d. Ian Peddie. A ldershot: A shgate, 2006. 3–16. Welch, C hris. Black S abbath. L ondon: Proteus, 1982.

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C hapter 1

T he E mpowering Masculinity of British Heavy Metal Deena Weinstein

A t its core, British heavy metal is an expression of masculinity. A nd if that judgment was all there was to it, you would have just completed reading a remarkably brief chapter. In fact, this simple assertion conceals several problems. To begin with, there are two major terms that beg definition: what is meant by masculinity, and what is meant by British heavy metal? S econdly, the claim that British heavy metal is an expression of masculinity may be trivial given that rock scholars have long declared that rock itself, of which British heavy metal is a subset, is, in one way or another, masculine. Before describing and interpreting British heavy metal’s sonic, verbal and visual discourse of masculinity, I will address these problems, defining the two key terms, and indicating that British heavy metal’s paradigm of masculinity is different from the masculinity commonly seen in rock itself. ‘Masculinity’ as a signifier has been on the defensive for decades, at least in the West since the 1960s, when popular culture joined social movements aimed at demarginalizing racial, class, age and gender Others. Emerging in this era, rock was born in a compromised position. C ulturally, it stood squarely on the race- and class-marginalized shoulders of rock ‘n’ roll and blues, but it was mostly made by middle-class white males in partnership with companies run by white males. Rock is often seen as masculine since the overwhelming majority of its creators are males. Mary Ann Clawson accounts for the dearth of women in rock bands, particularly instrumentalists, by noting that ‘[t]he band is the elemental unit in rock as an ensemble music. It is the critical institutional locus of learning and initiation; and significantly, the early band is, both socially and culturally, a formation of masculine adolescence’ (103). Ian Chambers provides a similar take, contending that rock emanates from ‘a male camaraderie, formed at school, on the street corner, at art college or in a gang’ (qtd. in Frith and Horne 90). A related tack is taken by those who assert that rock’s central instrument, the electric guitar, is ‘seen as a man’s preserve’ (Strohm 186). For example, André Millard and Rebecca McSwain state: ‘In the world of rock ‘n’ roll the guitar was an inescapable symbol of masculinity, and the dynamics of the performance were filled with sexually significant actions and meanings’ (157). Those styles of rock in which the electric guitar is central have been derisively labelled ‘cock rock’, reducing them to machismo posturing. ‘Rock and roll is a

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celebration of male machismo sexuality’, Michael Brake contends (174). Summing up so many others, Millard and McSwain assert: ‘In several genres of rock, especially heavy metal and hard rock, the way of holding and moving the guitar was closely connected to its phallic symbolism’ (158). It is not merely interpreting the guitar as a phallic symbol (perhaps that is in the eye of the beholder); song lyrics and stage moves also contribute to the effect: Most rock music from the fifties until the end of the sixties shared the misogynist narrative politics of male modernism in its construction of a villainous feminine Other (mass culture/society) against which it rebels. Like modernism, early (and some later) rock provided a male preserve of masculine heroes whose story is the struggle for authenticity against the ever-present danger of selling out to the feminizing horror of pop. (Medovoi 158)

‘As the discourses of art and truth fed into popular music-making, the boundary line between pop and rock became boundaries of gender’, Simon Frith and Howard Horne conclude (93). Other rock scholars concur: ‘In this binary scheme, in which rock was metonymic for authenticity and pop for artifice, authentic rock became masculine and artificial pop became feminine. In the gender hierarchy of rock culture, the masculine represented higher status and values and thus reinforced traditional gender hegemony’ (Mäkelä 100). S imon R eynolds and Joy Press present a critical compendium of what they see as rock’s misogyny, such as ‘the born-to-run impulse (the Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop), the soldier or warrior who takes refuge in the camaraderie of brotherhood-inarms (The Clash, Public Enemy), and self-aggrandising fantasies of man-machine omnipotence (heavy metal, techno) and of kingship (the Doors, Nick Cave, gangsta rap)’ (xiv). Their history begins with ‘American garage punk and British R&B [which] evolved into heavy rock, and then heavy metal. At each stage, the blues form was progressively more bastardised, its machismo exaggerated. T he blues’ cocksure strut turned to phallocratic overkill; Muddy Waters’s “You Need Love” (1963) becomes the “thermonuclear gang rape” of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” (1969)’ (23). A gainst this prevalent critical view I would argue that despite being male-made and guitar-centred, British heavy metal is neither misogynistic nor an expression of machismo; for the most part women are of no concern; there is no binary of male/ female, no invidious elevation of one gender over the other – that is, British heavy metal is not masculinist. (In a similar way British heavy metal is not racist, despite its uniformly white performers, and its lyrics are devoid of racial references.)

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Masculinity The field of men’s studies, modelled after women’s studies, recognizes a variety of masculinities, most of which can be found in the various depictions of rock recounted above. One type, termed essentialist, focuses on the physical features of men. T he preponderant part of the men’s studies literature, as well as the critical descriptions employed by those studying music, are of a second type, social masculinity. S cholars distinguish several forms of social masculinity such as patriarchal, hegemonic and misogynistic (see Connell). A ll of these understandings of masculinity, essentialist or social, have one thing in common – they are all based on an invidious comparison with women. But there is another non-invidious type – cultural masculinity, and it is this type of masculinity that characterizes British heavy metal. C ultural masculinity is somewhat like cultural youth, or youthfulness. As a biological category and social grouping, young people developed their own distinctive values, ideals, sentiments and activities. By the middle of the twentieth century, youth became ‘a distinctive subculture, with symbols, practices, and folkways peculiarly its own; that is, “youth” became a cultural construct as well as a biological and social category’ (Weinstein, ‘Expendable Youth’ 67–8). Youth, now no longer restricted to adolescents, became available to all, as what postmodernists call a ‘floating signifier’, a symbol detached from socially relevant groups. Think of the way in which underclass blacks (a biological and social grouping) became a floating signifier, thanks to rap music and MTV, which was taken up by white suburban youth. Cultural masculinity is constituted from key features of biological and social masculinity, but floats free of originating biological and social groups. It is available to others, as demonstrated by female British heavy metal fans. T hey wore the same denim, leather and band t-shirts (celebrated in a key British heavy metal song, Saxon’s ‘Denim and Leather’) as their male counterparts (Heavy Metal S oundhouse). The all-female British heavy metal band Girlschool also plays, in all ways, with cultural masculinity. (Of course the overwhelmingly male British heavy metal bands and fans played with cultural masculinity too, but because they were also men, their play is not as obvious.) British Heavy Metal British heavy metal is understood here as a genre (or subgenre); that is, as a coherent style of music. T he term is not a mere grouping of music publicly labelled as heavy

  See, for example Berg and Longhurst; Brittan; Connell; Connellan; Farrell; Hoch; Holt and Thompson; Hopkins; Leach; Medovoi; and Messner.

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metal (and that term alone has various and conflicting understandings) and made by British artists (all or some Brits in the band). Such a category would have little coherence and would include a 40 year span of widely diverse music. One needs to specify what is meant by British heavy metal; otherwise, one could, by judicious cherry-picking of songs or artists, say that the category covers almost anything. British heavy metal is close to but not fully co-terminus with what has been called the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM). That term was initially popularized by journalist Geoff Barton who states: ‘… in truth the N WOBHM was a catchall title for a melting pot of bands with an immense variety of musical styles. … T he only thing a lot of N WOBHM groups had in common was that they came to prominence at about the same time. … there was a genuine resurgence of youthful British rock at the end of the 1970s/beginning of the 1980s’ (qtd. in Ward). I mean something far more specific than Barton does. What I am calling British heavy metal has both a code and a particular history, as all genres do. Genres are not merely any products made by musical creators; they are the resultant of creators in interaction with each other, appreciators (fans) and mediators (such as venue owners who book these artists and record labels that help record and distribute their music) (see Chapter 1 in Weinstein, Heavy Metal). The code (set of rules) governs a genre’s sonic, visual and verbal dimensions, and allows one to recognize and create something that belongs to that genre. A mong the rules governing sound are the constraints on the type of instruments (for example, electric guitars played through particular effects) and vocalization techniques; verbal rules include those for naming bands and for lyrical themes; and visual conventions include colour schemes, facial expression and hair styles. In the next section those dimensions will be shown to be coded as masculine for British heavy metal, but first we need to specify the genre itself, which can be understood as a type of what Michel Foucault calls a discourse. Genre histories tend to follow a similar form, as R onald Byrnside notes. T hey represent a break – a ‘rupture’ in Foucault’s terms (17) – at a particular sociohistorical moment and, in their preliminary phase, one or more artists detach themselves from predecessors and create something distinctive. Genres begin before they are named. When several artists working in a new style find a common audience and mediators (such as the rock press, record companies and concert   Definitions of heavy metal vary by era, national origin and type of publication, and writer idiosyncrasy.   Writers in the mass media, ideologues, and to a lesser degree academicians, have used this highly dubious sampling method.   Genres are the temporary and contested results of complexes of discourses among creators (musicians), mediators (especially marketers) and appreciators (fans). Genres are comprised of sets of codes governing sound, lyrics and visual style. N ot written in stone and lacking definitional enforcement, genres vary over time and place. There are many works that contribute to an understanding of genre; see, for example, Jameson; Neale; Rodman; C hapter 2 in Weinstein, Heavy Metal; Chapter 4 in Toynbee; and Frith.

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promoters) recognize the genre, it is in its period of crystallization. How long that phase lasts and what succeeds it vary. It may merely disappear from the scene, fragment into several other styles, or become so mannered as to be a parody of its once-vital self. British heavy metal’s era of crystallization lasted about three years, from 1979 to 1982. Genres emerge not merely as the result of the transaction among artists, mediators and fans; that transaction is located in a specific socio-cultural time. As George L ipsitz writes: ‘Popular music is nothing if not dialogic, the product of an ongoing historical conversation’ (99). British heavy metal emerges with the rise to power of Britain’s ‘Iron L ady’, Prime Minister Margaret T hatcher. T he country was mired in recession, a come-down from its 1960s high of the ‘swinging L ondon’ centre of the popular cultural universe. It was the end of a decade that saw the rise of the working class as the ‘cool’ replacement for the ‘prestige from below’ American blues artists in the 1960s. Musically, British heavy metal came into existence as several well-developed genres were ending their own periods of crystallization – British punk, progressive rock and psychedelia – and it incorporates influences from each of them. The influence of punk’s DIY (do-it-yourself) ethos manifested itself in some of the early British heavy metal bands, which booked their own tours and put out their own recordings. For example, in 1980, D iamond Head issued their 7" single debut ‘Shoot Out the Lights’ (‘Helpless’ was the B-side) on their own label, Happy Face. T hey sold it by mail through ads in S ounds (see Sharpe-Young). E vidence of the crucial role played by the mediators in establishing the genre is provided by a quote from Iron Maiden’s founder, bassist and songwriter S teve Harris: ‘A ll over Britain there were bands in the same position as us, and none of us knew that we all were doing the same thing – until it started getting in the press’ (qtd. in Considine). Harris was referring especially to the rock magazine S ounds. It was in that publication that the term N ew Wave of British Heavy Metal was coined. Although Geoff Barton was the first journalist to use the term in print, and is credited by others as its name-giver (cf. Christe 33), it was not his   What is included here is very partial; one could add the impact of the women’s movement and the demise of the British E mpire, among other socio-cultural changes.  N WOBHM was not used strictly to refer to a genre by S ounds; the term also identified a broader category of British hard rock and metal bands gaining popularity at the time.   Most genre names are provided by a mediator. T here has been much confusion about who was responsible for coining ‘heavy metal’. For decades, authors in books and magazines claimed that the (dis)honor belonged to Lester Bangs. My extensive research to find the first time the term was used in print revealed that Bangs had no claim to that distinction. When I finally tracked down the writer who first used ‘heavy metal’ to describe a style of music (Mike Saunders, in his 1971 review of Sir Lord Baltimore’s debut) and asked him who originated the term, he too said, at first, that it was Bangs. When I informed him of my research, he reconsidered, did extensive research among his own files, and owned up to the ‘first’ title, but with an asterisk. Bangs was his editor and they were in constant communication. A ccording to his recollection, written to me via email in 2006,

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creation. ‘I’d like to take credit for inventing the term “NWOBHM,”’ he said, but accorded the title to his editor at S ounds: ‘it was a “Big A l” L ewis brainstorm’ (qtd. in Ward). But it was Barton who initiated the writing style that became associated with British heavy metal. He said he wanted to write like Marvel Comic’s Stan Lee ‘would have done if he’d been a rock journalist’ (qtd. in Ward). S ounds covered the emerging British heavy metal bands, initially with a pullout section. In June 1981, it launched Kerrang!, the key magazine of the genre (and of related styles), as a monthly. The cover of that first issue included the following, all arguably British heavy metal, artists: D iamond Head, V enom, R aven, Jaguar, L emmy, Girlschool and S axon. Other mediators were initially more significant to the crystallization of British heavy metal. L ondon’s Heavy Metal S oundhouse (lending its name to Iron Maiden’s first EP, released in 1979) was the genre’s major venue, emerging as the alternative to punk and new wave venues. Neal Kay was in charge of booking the bands; he helped compile and wrote the liner notes for the first major British heavy metal record compilation, Metal for Muthas. Other compilations were made including Heavy Metal Heroes and Metal Explosion. T ours were put together ‘covering the length and breadth of the country’, such as the Heavy Metal C rusade, which brought bands such as Iron Maiden and S axon to fans (Heavy Metal S oundhouse). In 1980, Monsters of Rock, the first annual D onington festival, featured a variety of major and minor metal and hard rock bands. Even radio and television helped. For example, BBC Radio One’s ‘Friday Rock Show’ session aired bands including Diamond Head. The influential television show Top of the Pops, in February 1980, aired Iron Maiden performing ‘R unning Free’ live. A s crucial to initiating the genre as the musicians and mediators were the fans. Britain has a good track record for music-based subcultures. One reason is, as Michael Brake maintains, that ‘[w]here there is a vigorous street culture in a workingclass district, the commercial aspects of youth culture have little influence’ (66). A s a result of their novelty, new genres are generally non-commercial. T he fanbase of British heavy metal was non-passive, ‘lean forward’, as is the case for all subcultures. In contrast to the ‘lean back’ audiences for mass-media delivered styles, subcultural audiences actively seek out and help create discourses. T he demise of British heavy metal, starting in 1983, was due to a variety of causes. T o a large extent decline can be attributed to the success of the genre, a goose that laid the golden egg – widely broadened its audience – allowing for larger venues, long and generally lucrative US and E uropean tours. T he advent of MTV Bangs probably used it in conversation and S aunders put it into print at least a year before Bangs did.  S ee a picture of the cover in C hriste, 38.   The term ‘lean forward’ has been used widely in the literature on videogamers; see, for example, N ewman.

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and the opportunities to sign with major labels seeking to attract MTV’s audience sealed the fate of British heavy metal. T he success of British heavy metal also spawned its successors, especially the A merican thrash pioneered on the E ast coast by A nthrax and Brutal T ruth, and on the West coast by Metallica, S layer and Megadeth, among a host of others. T hese initiators had been fans of British heavy metal and had also responded to punk and to its successor, hardcore. British heavy metal, like all genres, tends to have more or less porous boundaries and includes artists and specific songs that clearly adhere to its full code, while others do so partly. T hat is, a genre tends to have a centre and a periphery, what H.L.A. Hart calls ‘core and penumbra’ (593). Paradigmatic examples of the core of British heavy metal during its crystallized era are the recordings released between 1979 through 1982 of Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Diamond Head, Motörhead, S axon and V enom, although not every cut. S ome of these bands, such as Judas Priest, had been around before the genre began and had changed their style; others, such as D iamond Head, were youngsters who started playing British heavy metal from the start. To check my judgment and to avoid indulging in cherry-picking specific artists and songs, I asked a panel of ten metal experts to help. They came from a wide variety of metal careers, including performer, writer, band manager and documentary filmmaker. All had been fans of metal before entering those careers and despite their long-gone youth, all still are fans. E ach was emailed a request for help: ‘list the names of 4–6 bands that are core exemplars of British Heavy Metal. A nd for each band, give the names of 1–3 of their songs that are their “best loved” by their fans.’10 Each expert’s list included Judas Priest and Iron Maiden; all but one included Motörhead. Because I did not specify any time frame, all also included Black S abbath, focusing mainly on songs from the 1970 album, Paranoid, including the title track, ‘Iron Man’ and ‘War Pigs’. Sabbath’s music, particularly because of its slower tempo, does not fit the British heavy metal paradigm fully, but it shares much of its code. Of interest is the fact that the album did not sell especially well when first released, but, when it was reissued in June 1980, it charted at #54 in the U K. Only two other bands, listed by one person, C arcass and N apalm D eath, were not prominent during the 1979–82 era. T he majority of the bands listed, especially those named by most of the respondents, have had particularly long careers, and are still active. Y et at their contemporary concerts, they are still playing set lists

10 S ent S eptember 2006: ‘I need your help. Y our help as an expert in things metal, specifically British Heavy Metal. Could you please list the names of 4–6 bands that are core exemplars of British Heavy Metal? A nd for each band, give the names of 1–3 of their songs that are their “best loved” by their fans.’ (One could also generate a list of songs by seeing which ones the bands included in their live sets or that receive the most vigorous crowd reaction, the ones frequently played on subcultural radio shows or covered in tribute albums to these bands.)

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that rely heavily on the songs released between 1979 and 1982. A nd it is those songs which predominate on each of the lists. Masculinity in British Heavy Metal All of the dimensions of British heavy metal’s code – its sound, words and look – are suffused with signs of masculinity. In D orothy S mith’s words, British heavy metal expresses an ‘ideological representation of maleness’ (160). Like so much in modern culture, British heavy metal is a ‘textually mediated discourse’ (Smith 160). (British heavy metal also has a significant, mostly interpersonal albeit media informed, discourse amongst its subcultural fans, which for limitations of space is not considered here.) In examining that textually mediated discourse it is not clear which of the three dimensions is most significant,11 so the order of their analysis here is arbitrary. But since it is a genre of music, I will begin with the significant features of the sonic code. A lthough increased speed differentiates British heavy metal’s sound from earlier metal, the masculinity of its sound, its volume (‘loudestness’ is R obert D uncan’s word for what he judged to be metal’s defining feature [39]), low-pitch, and the centrality of the heavily-distorted guitar, is shared with its forebears. T hese are not merely symbols of power but are power itself. Each of them requires amplifiers, developed in the 1960s by Marshall and others (see Maloof). Motörhead’s 1979 album title track ‘Overkill’ is a paean to loud: ‘On your feet you feel the beat, it goes straight to your spine / Shake your head you must be dead if it don’t make you fly.’ T he electric guitar is understood as masculine not because of that ‘phallic symbol’ shibboleth (Millard and McSwain 158), but because it is seen as a machine. Berit Brandth and Marit Haugen, not at all focusing on music, succinctly state: ‘Machines are a part of the picture men show of themselves, and the machines tell us that the persons are in possession of qualities required of a “real man.” Being capable operators of the machines establishes men’s connection to other men’ (151). John Strohm addresses the issue head on: ‘The amplified electric guitar was perceived as an instrument of great power, and this was the main reason that its playing in public was restricted to males. E lectric guitars were seen as a man’s preserve’ (186). N on-mechanized human strength, which is associated with masculinity, is heard in the pounding of the large drum kits and seen in the drummer’s heavily muscled arms.12 Vocals too are powerful, not fey, soft or pretty. T he sonic dimension of British heavy metal – the dynamic synthesizing, highly amplified 11  Splitting the code into these three dimensions makes it difficult to analyse elements that are situated in more than one of them. For example, the central instrument, the guitar, has sonic and visual significance. 12 In their study of S candinavian forestry magazines Brandth and Haugen conclude: ‘T he main tools mediating masculinity in the 1970s are the power saw and the axe. T he toilers are pictured working with these tools. Traditionally, such tools have been seen as

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electric guitar and bass, booming drums and assertive vocalization – conveys a sense of overmastering power and uncompromising vitality in which the listener shares an untamed yet not undisciplined masculinity. T he valorization of masculinity is also found throughout British heavy metal’s verbal elements, including the names of bands,13 album and song titles, song lyrics and the comments made by musicians in interviews. If one were to summarize this dimension, the term chaos would be appropriate. Women, with several exceptions, such as the Biblical Eve, are perceived as the keepers and transmitters of order, subservient to the powers that be. In contrast, the forces of chaos that challenge the order of everyday life are associated with males. T hemes of chaos are represented in various images such as rebellion, injustice, mayhem and death – and British heavy metal is rife with this imagery.14 Many of the songs (several also serve as album titles) mentioned by the panel of experts exemplify chaos: Judas Priest’s ‘Living After Midnight’ (1980), ‘Breaking the Law’ (1980) and ‘Screaming for Vengeance’ (1982); Iron Maiden’s ‘Killers’ (1981), ‘The Number of the Beast’ (1982) and ‘Run to the Hills’ (1982); Motörhead’s ‘Overkill’ (1979) and ‘Ace of Spades’ (1980); and Venom’s ‘Welcome to Hell’ (1981).15 E ach of those bands’ names are also precise symbolic of chaos. A s interesting as what characterizes British heavy metal’s lyrics is what is absent from them. Unlike so much of rock music, especially hard rock, glam rock and their offspring – 1980s hair metal – British heavy metal songs are not about lust or romance. N one of the songs named by the expert panel is about love (although some of the bands do have a few songs that approach that topic). Iron Maiden’s main lyricist, Steve Harris, was asked if any of his songs could be considered ‘romantic’. He replied: ‘No, I wouldn’t say that; not really. I don’t think we’ve ever written anything that is romantic. I mean, frankly, it’s a bit sort of … wimpy, I think. That’s not to say I don’t sort of have any romance in me at all. It’s not that. But I just don’t think something like that is what I particularly want to write about.’ He adds, ‘everyone writes about … all this macho screwin’ of women, which I think is quite laughable, really’ (qtd. in Gueniviere). He maintains that the very few exceptions, like in the Iron Maiden song ‘Charlotte the Harlot’, are meant to be ironic digs at the mainstream theme.

men’s tools, demanding physical strength (axe) and technical skills (power saw)’ (155). T his is homologous to the drums and guitar in metal, respectively. 13  Band names are brand names and as a consequence adhere to the tenets of brand naming, including richness in positive associations and memorability; see A ndroutsopoulos. 14  Some of its imagery is taken from the apocalyptic section of the Christian N ew Testament (the Book of Revelation) and Gothic and fantasy literature. 15  Venom’s subsequent work elevated the theme of chaos to pure art. Their 1984 release, At War with S atan, is a concept album based on Milton’s Paradise Lost, but in Venom’s version Satan is triumphant; see Barron.

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Magazine interviews during British heavy metal’s period of crystallization did not dwell on the groupie scene (although it did exist). It is revealing to compare those interviews with the interviews of the hair metal musicians, which consisted of little else. Eileen Luhr writes of the ticklish situation faced by Christian hard rock and hair metal bands. She implies that the sex talk of their secular counterparts was a way to offset their less than masculine hair styles and makeup. ‘In a sense, Christian bands (who could not speak about, or did not indulge) were vulnerable to questions about [their] masculinity in ways that their secular counterparts were not: after all, Mötley Crüe and W.A.S.P. sang about their (hetero)sexual conquests, gave interviews in which they discussed their sexual exploits, and made videos that featured scantily clad women’ (123). T he visual dimension of British heavy metal’s code is found on album covers and in magazines, on stage and in band merchandize such as t-shirts (and secondarily, on fans’ tattoos and jacket patches). The verbal focus on chaos is reflected in British heavy metal’s iconography, initially appearing on album covers and then borrowed for stage backdrops, props, t-shirts and so on. The primary images are all male, but more significantly, all are representations of masculinity. One is the warrior (see the one on S axon’s 1979 debut with his sword drawn and holding his shield). Another key symbol is the outlaw (see the leather-clad bad hombres of Motörhead gracing their 1980 Ace of S pades cover, the menacing hands with leather-studded wrist-bands clenched in a fist bashing someone’s head on Fist’s 1982 release Back with a Vengeance, or the razor blade on Judas Priest’s 1980 British S teel). The warrior is one of the ‘dominant images of Western masculine culture’ (Hopkins 44). Another icon is that notorious symbol of rebellion, S atan, generally represented in British heavy metal as a horned goat (see various Venom covers like their 1981 Welcome to Hell or Witchfynde’s 1980 Give ‘Em Hell). Finally there is the monster (best known is the ghoulish Eddie, a staple of Iron Maiden’s album covers from their first eponymous release in 1980). British heavy metal’s colours also reflect the masculine, eschewing soft, pastel hues. ‘The dominant color is black, used especially as the background for the other artwork. Red is the second most important color. The color scheme is not gentle, relaxing, or merely neutral. R ather, it is intense, exciting, or ominous’ (Weinstein, Heavy Metal 29). To the iconographic backdrops and unsubtle lighting (and for Maiden, Eddie) on stage are added those masculine sonic devices that serve as key props – the electric guitars, huge drum kit and especially the stacks of black (usually Marshall) amps and speaker cabinets. But the dominant cultural representation of masculinity is the appearance of the musicians themselves. Whether they are seen on stage, pictured in magazines or album covers, or on television, they are walking advertisements for British heavy metal’s fundamental meaning. Of course they are men, but to understand how that is not the cultural key, one only has to compare British heavy metal musicians to those playing hair metal in the mid-to-late 1980s. Both were occupied with masculinity, but were obviously playing different games.

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Hair is a good place to start the comparison. Both styles demand very long hair, an anomaly for men in the twentieth century that was passed down from the late1960s counterculture. One analyst of hair length wrote in 1969 that ‘cutting the hair = social control; long hair = being outside society’ (Hallpike, qtd. in Synnott 382). A nother, L eerom Medovoi, states: ‘L ong hair on white men … could be an expression of liberated Samsonian masculinity’ (175). But the style differences between British heavy metal and hair metal are telling. S teven Blush’s photo-heavy book American Hair Metal starts with a picture of a can of hair spray. T he dozens of musicians pictured sport highly-coifed, curled and teased hair. It is obviously dyed, with the front man usually in some lighter shade of blonde. ‘Blonde, perhaps, is seen as an essentially female colour, like pink; with dark hair as primarily a male colour’, writes John Molloy (qtd. in Synnott 388). The straight, unstyled hair of British heavy metal musicians was mainly dark. Unlike hair metal musicians, they wore no lipstick or thick eyeliner. British heavy metal’s body types, enhanced by weight-lifting and the cuts of their clothing (and perhaps by self-selection), appear quite muscular. Hair metal bodies are more sinuous, more appropriate for their dancing (and prancing) stage moves. On stage, British heavy metal musicians did not dance but might strut, stand or run – muscular moves. T he clothing of British heavy metal musicians was straight out of male working-class biker fashion, the denim and leather celebrated in Saxon’s song. It was a look made famous and writ outlaw by Marlon Brando in the 1953 movie The Wild O ne. But Judas Priest’s elaboration of that look was imported from S&M regalia.16 Motörhead’s fashion inspiration was the Hell’s Angels. Conclusion ‘Masculinity’ in British heavy metal is embedded within a cultural form that is specifically determined in space and time, and is an expression of a particular social group responding to its historical circumstances – British working-class male youth in the era of Margaret T hatcher. T hat British heavy metal went global after it crystallized and attracted audiences far beyond its original core constituency only testifies to the freedom – in a postmodern period – of cultural forms to transcend their spatio-temporal-social origins and combine with other forms. British heavy metal itself has a decidedly postmodern character. Its paradigm of masculinity is not based on any essentialist ideology, nor does it replicate the categories of any single extant social ideology. R ather, British heavy metal is a cultural construct that gathers its elements from a wide variety of historical sources and puts them together in a heterogeneous configuration that gains its integrity from a master signifier – power. 16  Of the two extreme gay styles, the stereotype pouf femme and rough macho looks, British heavy metal via Judas Priest front man R ob Halford (who publicly stated that he was gay decades later) took the stereotypical masculine look.

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British heavy metal plays with power in a mood and mode of exaltation. Heroic warrior, bold outlaw, devil and monster are all figures of power who surge up against the limits of everyday order through their personal qualities and break on through to the other side. For sociology of art, British heavy metal is a sublimation of marginalized British male working-class youth in the Thatcher era, who created a subculture organized around an affirmative imaginary. British heavy metal is unselfconsciously masculine – its devotees do not exult in their maleness either for itself or in an invidious comparison with women or gays; they affirm an imaginary of power that valorizes various characteristics that they take for granted are male. Their problem is constraining order, wherever it appears – and that might include conventional domesticity – and their response is an affirmation of forceful individuality and chaos that they rarely act out in their lives outside the play-forms of the subculture. Beyond good and evil, British heavy metal values heroism and destruction by turns, and will celebrate the forces of the machine, heaven and hell, and nature to make its Dionysian point of breaking barriers and prevailing through strength. T he core of British heavy metal’s interpretation of ‘masculinity’ is an affirmation that transcends opposition. The power that British heavy metal affirms is, surely, reactive in part – a response against repressive social organization – but it is not resentful; indeed, it is triumphal – the sense of power is good in and for itself. It is British heavy metal’s affirmative core that insures that its interpretation of ‘masculinity’ is free standing and not anchored in invidious comparisons based on gender and sexual orientation. More than any other philosopher or theorist in the Western canon, British heavy metal resonates with Friedrich N ietzsche, who celebrated forms of life that were active rather than reactive. For N ietzsche, self-overcoming meant ridding oneself of responses to the world that are rooted in defensiveness and resentment against victimization, and substituting for them the positive assertion of life untainted by a sense of injury. In contrast, S igmund Freud, and the tradition that follows and revises him, finds in life an unremitting reaction in which assertion translates to aggression, ‘defence mechanisms’ are ubiquitous, and – in Freud’s later work – T hanatos comes to surround E ros. N ietzsche, not Freud or his feminist revisionists, is the presiding genius of British heavy metal. References A ndroutsopoulos, Jannis K. ‘What N ames R eveal about the Music S tyle: A S tudy Of N aming Patterns in Popular Music.’ Paper presented to the 7th International Pragmatics C onference, Budapest, July 2000. 4 A pril 2008 http://bandnames. archetype.de/bandnames.PD F.

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S ynnott, A nthony. ‘S hame and Glory: A S ociology of Hair.’ The British Journal of S ociology 38.3 (1987): 381–413. T oynbee, Jason. Making Popular Music: Musicians, Creativity and Institutions. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. U lrich, L ars and Malcolm D ome. ‘E ncyclopedia Metallica.’ R AW 3 (1988): 27–34. Ward, S teven. ‘Geoff Barton, Behind the Wheel: Former Kerrang! E ditor Discovers a Different Kind of Speed.’ 4 April 2008 http://rockcriticsarchives. com/interviews/geoffbarton/geoffbarton.html. Weinstein, D eena. ‘E xpendable Y outh: T he R ise and Fall of Y outh C ulture.’ Adolescents and Their Music: If It’s Too Loud, You’re Too O ld. E d. Jonathon E pstein. Hamden, CT : Garland, 1994. 67–85. Weinstein, D eena. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. 2nd ed. New York: D a C apo, 2000. The Wild O ne. Dir. László Benedek. Stanley Kramer, 1953. Discography Black Sabbath. Paranoid. V ertigo, 1970. D iamond Head. S hoot O ut the Lights. Happy Face, 1980. Fist. Back with a Vengeance. N eat, 1982. Heavy Metal Heroes. Heavy Metal R ecords, 1981. Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden. E MI, 1980. Iron Maiden. Killers. C apitol, 1981. Iron Maiden. The N umber of the Beast. E MI, 1982. Judas Priest. British S teel. E pic, 1980. Judas Priest. S creaming for Vengeance. C olumbia, 1982. Metal Explosion. BBC R ecords, 1980. Metal for Muthas. S anctuary, 1980. Motörhead. Ace of S pades. Bronze, 1980. Motörhead. O verkill. Bronze, 1979. V enom. At War with S atan. N eat, 1984. V enom. Welcome to Hell. N eat, 1981. Witchfynde. Give ‘Em Hell. R ondolet, 1980.

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C hapter 2

Metal Goes ‘Pop’: T he E xplosion of Heavy Metal into the Mainstream Benjamin Earl

With the increasing standing of cultural studies departments within the academy there has been a welcome growth in the number of studies of popular musical forms such as heavy metal. However, these have tended to focus on the subcultural underpinnings of the genre, and have tended to ignore more commercially oriented bands such as D ef L eppard or R ainbow. Harris M. Berger displays vividly how such commercial forms of metal are often dismissed and, indeed, set apart from the metal genre as a whole, as he contends that ‘whereas metal bands want to overturn society, a commercial rock band merely wants to pull a little harmless mischief’ (51). In her essay ‘Rock Critics Need Bad Music’ Deena Weinstein persuasively discusses why critics might avoid analysing commercial rock music and instead focus on bands that are more explicitly subcultural in their nature: Rock critics must overcome the judgement that they are engaged in a trivial pursuit and they do so by differentiating good from bad music, defining their superior taste by contrast to the forms that they brand debased. S ince many critics have been schooled in high culture, they are particularly sensitive to charges that they are simply hyping commercial dross. If they defended all kinds of rock music, they would not have any prospects for gaining credibility in the general culture. (306)

It is clear that this can be extended to rock criticism within the academy. Bands such as Def Leppard find themselves stuck between traditional aesthetic value judgements and the problem that they have been positioned as being too commercial, with their ideologies naturalized too deeply for their music to be of any political worth for academics to analyse. However, by creating this artificial distinction between metal and pop, academics such as Berger do not take into account the fact that, over the period of its existence, the relationship between heavy metal and the mainstream has never been stable. Indeed, this musical form finds itself constantly crossing back and forth from the subcultural to the commercial. In this respect, it initially appears that heavy metal follows Dick Hebdige’s description of subcultures. However, while I aim to look at how, within heavy metal, ‘the cycle leading from opposition to defusion, from resistance to incorporation [that] encloses each successive subculture’ operates (Hebdige 100), it is not the case that heavy metal’s creative

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energy is exhausted once it reaches a mainstream position. Indeed, whilst Hebdige argues that new subcultures are created once existing subcultures move into the mainstream, this is not the case with heavy metal, which sees a circular process of mainstreaming and fragmentation within the field itself. Consequently, this chapter will discuss how the definition of authenticity within certain sections of the metal field shifted, meaning the symbolic capital available to metal bands changed accordingly. Pierre Bourdieu, on whom I shall draw throughout this chapter, discusses in The Field of Cultural Production how ‘the structure of the field … is nothing other than the structure of the distribution of the capital of specific properties which governs success in the field and the winning of the external or symbolic profits … which are at stake in the field’ (30). For certain subgenres of heavy metal in the 1980s these symbolic profits shifted away from a more subcultural position that had traditionally focused on discourses surrounding metal’s virtuosity and rebellion against the establishment, to a situation where elements of mainstream pop took precedence. Using Bourdieu allows me to demonstrate how certain subgenres of metal have sought to define themselves in terms of their recognition by and incorporation into the mainstream in the 1980s. Unlike Hebdige’s analysis, this mainstreaming does not result in the exhaustion of a subculture but rather shows how bands adopt position-taking strategies in an effort to win recognition, and these strategies can be both commercial and/or artistic, depending on the dispositions of the bands involved. Indeed, to understand better how the fields of restricted and large-scale production interrelate, it is necessary to refine the notion of the mainstream. A lthough initially appearing to be a stable entity, in reality the mainstream is constantly shifting. Jason T oynbee explains how the mainstream depends ‘on the importation of musical authenticity’ (‘Mainstreaming’ 154). This introduction of different styles results in the mainstream seeing a steady flow of different musical genres pass through it at different cultural moments. In this respect, Hebdige argues in relation to punk that ‘as the music and the various subcultures it supports or reproduces assume rigid and identifiable patterns, so new subcultures are created which demand or produce corresponding mutations in musical form’ (69). However, although he is correct in stating that new subcultures reconfigure the markers of cultural value, Hebdige does not take into account the fact that these ‘rigid and identifiable patterns’ of the newly mainstreamed music offer a ‘means of hearing through difference’ (Toynbee, ‘Mainstreaming’ 160) for the newly formed subculture. A s S ean A lbiez elegantly describes in his discussion of the relationship between progressive rock and punk, subcultures define their own authenticity by positioning against those cultures perceived to be ‘inauthentic’ (see also Thornton 101), and thus make the mainstream out to be more ‘fixed’ than it is in actuality. C onsequently, as heavy metal’s musical voice gained strength owing to its increasing popularity, it found itself both shifting towards the mainstream, whilst the mainstream also found its position changing as a consequence (cf. Toynbee, ‘Mainstreaming’ 153).

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It is clear that relations between heavy metal and the mainstream are never ‘stable, but [are] under constant negotiation and reformation’ (Karja 17). David Rowe argues that such movements within rock fields are not unusual, and that ‘rock [has been] alternatively positioned as dominated by consumer capitalism or as subversive of capitalism’ (50). After subtly defining the mainstream, it is surprising to hear Toynbee claim that ‘by the 1980s the rock community had already begun to break up’ (‘Mainstreaming’ 159). However, in reality it appears that a more accurate reflection of the 1980s saw certain bands within the heavy metal subcultural field adopting a new position-taking strategy, which also impacted on their textual emphasis. Through such a diachronic analysis of the heavy metal field this essay critiques how certain elements within the metal field saw their relationship to the mainstream change during the period of the 1970s and 1980s. T his focus on the development of the field’s trajectory from its inception through to its commercial peak in the late 1980s makes visible an ever-increasing commercial popularity for certain bands of the genre and raises the question as to whether this popularity affected the dispositions of the bands involved. T herefore, it is necessary to question whether ‘the general popularity of originally subversive bands … [as] indicated by their presence in sales charts … simultaneously subverts those bands’ subcultural status’ (Bayer 111). By looking at the relations between certain subgenres of heavy metal and the fields of restricted and large-scale production, this chapter examines how the development of the heavy metal field of production has impacted on the music texts released. In so doing, I shall discuss how the textual strategies employed by bands sought to deal with this new-found mainstream position. T o indicate this phenomenon, the focus will be on three bands in particular: R ainbow, D ef Leppard and Magnum. The next section, though, will chart the heavy metal field’s trajectory from its inception until the period of its mainstreaming in the 1980s, in order to gain an understanding into how the belief in the value of metal texts was initially constructed (cf. Bourdieu, Cultural Production 37). This will explain why later bands found themselves adopting a position-taking strategy in opposition to the original consecrated bands, in an attempt to win recognition for themselves. British Heavy Metal in the 1970s: A Subcultural Style According to Robert Walser, ‘a relatively small but fiercely loyal subculture formed around [heavy metal] during the 1970s’ (3). Generally acknowledged to be the consecrated acts in the field, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and in particular Led Zeppelin were the bands who went furthest in defining metal’s subcultural style (see Weinstein, Heavy Metal 14–15). Although Walser correctly argues that it is impossible to homogenize the metal genre, and that a polyphony of styles coexists within metal (3–4), it is clear that these acts went some way to developing certain core values that new entrants to the field needed to follow if they wished to attain a consecrated position (cf. Bourdieu, Cultural Production 50–51).

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It is wise to remember in this instance Bourdieu’s claim in The Field in Cultural Production that ‘charismatic legitimation … is given to only a few individuals, sometimes only one per generation’ (51). Not every metal band would automatically rise to a status within the field where their style would be mimicked. Bands such as Colosseum, for example, with their jazz-rock fusion, would remain very much on the periphery of the metal field. Despite the undoubted success and influence of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, it was Led Zeppelin who came to be most associated with the perception of a heavy metal aesthetic in mainstream consciousness, owing to their massive profile and success. Moreover, within the restricted heavy metal field, Led Zeppelin achieved the highest status of legitimation, above and beyond even Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. Although S usan Fast states that ‘there has always existed a gap between the millions of fans who are devoted to Led Zeppelin’s music and the rock establishment’ (3), she acknowledges that critical coverage in the UK was predominantly positive (72) and the rock critics’ role of ‘privileged interpreter’ (Bourdieu, Cultural Production 135) remained intact, so giving them the ability to bestow consecrated status on the band. Indeed, Fast’s attempt to set up a division between the taste-formers in the musical press and L ed Zeppelin’s fans reveals more about her own cultural positioning and prejudice with regards to heavy metal, than it suggests any real separation. T his becomes clear as she discusses how L ed Zeppelin have been ‘relegated to the category of heavy metal’ (3, emphasis added). Although Fast argues that ‘given the diversity of the band’s output, they might easily be differently categorized, but this rarely occurs’ (3), she does not take into account how, although there may indeed be many ways to read the L ed Zeppelin text, this polyphony of meaning is not activated by every consumer of the text. In fact, Fast’s analysis does not consider how fans’ prior cultural competencies have an effect on the space of cultural positions open to them, and thus their possible ways of reading the text, where ‘texts are productive of meaning only within particular and determinate reading formations’ (Bennett and Woollacott 262). Bennett and Woollacott’s Reading Formation theory looks at ‘the formal mechanisms by which a text produces a position or positions for reading, organising its own consumption in the implied, model or preferred reader’ (60). In L ed Zeppelin’s case, this means that ‘the meaning of the text will be constructed differently according to the discourses, knowledge, prejudices [and] resistances brought to bear on the text by the reader’ (Morley 87). In the case of metal fans, owing to their disposition towards a metal aesthetic, they are more likely to activate readings of L ed Zeppelin that focus on their use of guitars, riffs, R obert Plant’s somewhat pinched singing style and John Bonham’s heavy, rhythmic drumming, all archetypes of heavy metal. T hat both the fans and the band rejected the heavy metal tag was probably due to the fact that ‘many artists bridle at genre categories because they see them as restrictive stereotypes, implying formulaic composition’ (Walser 7). This does not mean that Led Zeppelin’s œuvre cannot take its place in the metal canon, but rather shows a position-taking strategy that attempts to show

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L ed Zeppelin as more creative, more imaginative and more distinctive than the average metal band. Indeed, Led Zeppelin’s combination of blues, folk ‘and Tolkeinian references to Mordor and Gollum’ (Drummond 36, see also Fast 51–5) became a legitimate generic position for new bands to adopt when trying to enter the heavy metal field. Early albums by the likes of Uriah Heep, Rainbow and Magnum saw these bands adopt this position-taking strategy. Album titles such as Demons and Wizards (1972) and Kingdom of Madness (1978) gave an indication as to the style of music on offer, and song titles such as Rainbow’s ‘Man on the Silver Mountain’ (1975) reinforced the fact that the lyrical content of the songs included subculturally valued ethereal, otherworldly subject matter. Meanwhile, Magnum went even further stylistically: their first two albums saw keyboard player Richard Bailey double up on the flute, bringing a Jethro Tull-esque folk influence to their music. This had the happy effect of positioning the band as following the L ed Zeppelin metal template even further; it also enhanced Magnum’s own claims to musical authenticity as the use of different timbres as well as acoustic and electric parts within the songs was ‘a signifier to fans of the band members’ complex and multi-faceted identities’ (Fast 80). Although Borthwick and Moy argue that ‘metal’s “rebellion” … is … typically manifested through escapism and fantasy rather than an engagement with the political realities of social circumstances’ (139), they do not explain how such an approach was used as a marker of distinction to position the metal field against that of commodified pop music. Although fantasy can be described as a ‘commercialized and popularized’ form (Possamai 59), in the case of heavy metal the importation of fantasy themes was seen as a marker of authenticity. In a genre with a polyphony of styles, some bands decided to take a fantasybased position to demonstrate they had recognized ‘the specific stakes of the field of production’ (Bourdieu, Cultural Production 100). That a fantasy-based approach enabled these bands to incorporate many of metal’s core systems of belief (cf. Bourdieu, Cultural Production 35–6) becomes apparent on analysis of both the albums themselves and the inter-textual materials surrounding them. R oger D ean, artist for virtually all of Y es’s album covers over the years, and also responsible for the artwork on Uriah Heep’s Demons and Wizards, is clear in how important he considers the artwork and imagery in evoking a response: ‘songs can tell a story, music can create moods or atmospheres and obviously emotional responses; it can also enhance and be enhanced by images’ (qtd. in Macan 63). Dean’s work for Uriah Heep furthermore allowed for an association with the art music of progressive rock. Progressive rock has been described as ‘a style of self-consciously complex rock often associated with prominent keyboards, complex metric shifts, fantastic (often mythological) lyrics, and an emphasis on flashy virtuosity’ (Holm-Hudson 2). It obtains its authenticity not, as for much of metal, from pop-cultural folk influences, but especially from classical music, enabling it to gain a devolved authenticity from the high cultural form (see also Mazullo 149 and Covach 4). Ken Hensley’s role as main songwriter for the band further enabled the link to be pursued, owing to his liking for keyboard timbres,

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which provided a more orchestral sound than found with bands restricted to the basic metal instruments of guitar, bass and drums. Clearly, the link to high cultural classical sources was not exclusive to progressive rock. Jon Lord had, for years, appropriated classical influences for Deep Purple, most notably by scoring the Concerto for Group and O rchestra (1969). However, the use of Dean’s artwork also gave an indication to the heavy metal subcultural style that saw widespread use of fantasy covers (cf. Borthwick and Moy 151). Demons and Wizards is a typical D ean otherworldly landscape with unusual shapes, and the ethereal moonlight poking through the wizened tree adds to the whimsical atmosphere. Moreover, unlike his covers for Yes, Demons and Wizards is explicitly placed as pure fantasy by the presence of the eponymous wizard himself on the front sleeve. With little subtlety, U riah Heep had guaranteed that any potential listeners would be in no doubt as to the content of the album. Following a similar strategy, Magnum came to be associated with the artist R odney Matthews, who supplied album covers for Chase the Dragon (1982), Eleventh Hour (1983), O n a S toryteller’s N ight (1985) and the re-releases of Kingdom of Madness (1989, 1978) and Magnum II (1989, 1979), in addition to illustrating novels by acclaimed science fiction writer Michael Moorcock. These paintings saw an accumulation of fantastical creatures, combined with explosions into the mythical landscape of futuristic science fiction aircraft and machines. That this was a mark of distinction not only between metal and the mainstream but within heavy metal itself becomes clear through the contrast between this more subtle style of cover and that favoured by bands like Saxon or Judas Priest, where biker logos and hard, metallic styles of artwork were used to convey the power and energy of the music. Whereas the likes of British S teel (1980) saw a dominant image of a razor blade used to signify the harsh, metallic, jagged style of Judas Priest’s music, Magnum’s covers showed a broad panoramic landscape. T he use of shading and complex detail paralleled that of the music inside, with its neoprogressive changes of rhythm and key. As the children pictured on The Eleventh Hour cover were drawn by Matthews to show distinct characters and nationalities, thus preventing the figures from descending into a homogenous mass, so the huge number of keyboard and string instruments (ranging from the latest Moog synthesizer to a harpsichord) used by Mark Stanway to create the required sounds showed how there was a homology between cover and music, contrasting the band explicitly to the more simplistic style employed by S axon and Judas Priest. This brief sketch of how the heavy metal field developed in the 1970s allows for an analysis of how certain bands’ struggle for consecration impacted on their strategies taken to receive recognition. The subsequent section will therefore show how the space of possible positions open to them shifted (see Bourdieu, Cultural Production 183–4) and how the shift of the field to a more commodified position impacted on the metal texts released during this period.

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British Heavy Metal in the 1980s: Fragmentation and Mainstreaming As detailed above, the heavy metal field’s initial bid for authenticity sees the metal aesthetic positioned in opposition to that of mainstream pop (cf. Whiteley, ‘Progressive Rock’ 236). However, ‘since its beginnings, metal has slowly moved away from its blues and psychedelic roots to engage with other styles’ (Borthwick and Moy 139; see also Kahn-Harris 135). Although this shift in the heavy metal style saw extreme versions of the genre such as death metal spring up, more commercial forms of metal also developed. One of these was melodic rock. This subgenre sought to appropriate generic conventions from both metal and mainstream pop music to create a hybrid form of popular metal that was seen as a commodified form of the more authentic rock forms dominant in the previous decade (see Walser 13–14). As certain metal bands tried to attain a consecrated status in the field, these acts made a conscious effort to assert their difference and distinction to those more established groups, in an attempt to make space for themselves within the metal field. As David Hesmondhalgh points out, ‘fields are, to a large extent, … constituted precisely by struggles over these positions, which often take the form of a battle between established producers, institutions and styles, and heretical newcomers … [where] these position-takings by newcomers restructure and recreate the relevant sub-field and field’ (215–16, emphasis in original). As metal bands sought to increase their commercial potential, so the heaviness and rhythmic nature of heavy metal was merged with stylistic devices ‘associated with “catchiness” and marketability’ (Traut 57) such as hooks and choruses akin to mainstream pop. The desired effect of this change in the metal field was to increase certain bands’ fanbase beyond the hardcore of a rock subculture. Robert Walser has shown that Bon Jovi ‘fused the intensity and heaviness of metal with the romantic sincerity of pop and the “authenticity” of rock, helping to create a huge new gender-balanced audience for heavy metal’ (13), and a similar formula was also used by certain British bands. Holly Kruse argues that some acts can occupy spaces in both the fields of largescale and restricted production. In contrast to Bourdieu, who presents these as distinct fields, Kruse suggests that acts in the restricted field have ‘never been fully autonomous from the economic field’ (153). Indeed, Led Zeppelin demonstrated this phenomenon, winning both commercial and critical success. C onsequently, certain metal bands show how it is possible to think in terms other than constructing a binary opposition between mainstream commercial and subcultural art music, as elements of the restricted heavy metal field found themselves in tension with the field of large-scale production. In order for this to work, elements of heavy metal that were previously foregrounded for authentication yet were no longer viable in the new mainstream climate were now pushed to the background. It was necessary for melodic rock ‘to emphasise certain “root” elements [of the genre] at the expense of others’ (Karja 12).

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A lthough Walser claims that the process of mainstreaming began in the 1980s, specifically 1983–84 (12), in Britain the process had started earlier. With Led Zeppelin in decline, and disbanding in 1980, Rainbow were one of the first bands to attempt to move the position of the heavy metal field. The process had begun in 1979 when, in a dramatic step, guitarist and band leader Ritchie Blackmore sacked vocalist Ronnie James Dio and replaced him with Graham Bonnett. The consequence of this was a departure from epic, flashy, neo-mythological songs such as ‘Gates of Babylon’ (1978) to the more chart-friendly fare of ‘Since You Been Gone’ (1979). Indeed, the title of the album from which ‘Since You Been Gone’ was taken, Down To Earth, made explicit the fact that R ainbow would be taking a more understated approach than previously, and catering for a more popular audience. T his new-found commercial disposition of the band ‘clash[ed] with the prevailing norms of production and the expectations of the field’ (Bourdieu, Cultural Production 57). However, this disposition perversely allowed Rainbow to win recognition within the heavy metal field, as their difference to more avowedly anti-commercial acts allowed their style to appear as unique and distinctive compared to the by now generic approach of the established acts. T hese bands were not able to appear as distinctive, as they merely followed the approach of the consecrated acts, and sought recognition by virtue of their own homage to the established acts (see Bourdieu, Cultural Production 57). At this stage of the development of the heavy metal field, to be commercial was to show difference, and the position of the field began to shift so as to make authenticity the domain of the commercial. As Bourdieu argues about fields of production as a whole, ‘in a universe in which to exist is to differ … they [agents within the field] must assert their difference, get it known and recognized, get themselves known and recognized …, by endeavouring to impose new modes of thought and expression, out of key with the prevailing modes of thought’ (Cultural Production 58). In this case, this new ‘mode of expression’ involved imposing the concept of mainstream metal as authentic metal. A uthenticity ‘is an effect not just of the music itself but also of prior musical and extra-musical knowledge and beliefs; that what counts as authentic varies among musical genres and subcultures’ (Auslander 66). In the melodic rock field, authenticity and commercialism were not necessarily mutually exclusive, as the shifting of the field showed a desire for mainstream acceptance by Rainbow (cf. Walser 45). ‘S ince Y ou Been Gone’ was a typical love song, and the lyrical content saw R ainbow explicitly positioning themselves against a heavy metal aesthetic, where references to ‘the romantic love so dear to pop music’ are conventionally ‘absent’ (Weinstein, Heavy Metal 35). The song also saw Rainbow placing a ‘greater emphasis on simplicity and repetition’ (Warner 66) than in previous works, with a catchy, sing-a-long chorus that contrasted sharply with earlier lyrical fare such as ‘S targazer’. In the latter song, the narrative is far more structured, and lyricist R onnie James D io constructs a morality tale that focuses on the danger of man’s over-ambition. The pseudo-mythological story tells a tale of slaves forced to work for one man’s vanity, a man who thought he was a god but was proved to be

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human. His tragic, inevitable, humiliating failure is spelled out at the end, as the wizard climbs the tower his acolytes have built him, in an effort to fly: the song tells how he ‘falls instead’ and that, at the end, there is ‘blood on the sand’. ‘Since You Been Gone’ signified a mainstreaming of metal not only in terms of the lyrical content and stylistic approach: it also showed a change from the heavy metal tradition that saw band members writing and performing their own work. In this instance Blackmore chose a song by Russ Ballard, thereby reducing the role of his band to that of hired musicians, akin to a pop sensibility. James Isaac E lliot sees the career of a professional songwriter in commercial, rather than creative terms (179), while Andrew Blake argues that bands who wrote their own music were able to ‘move away from dependency on managers, agents and record companies’ (92). By using a hired songwriter, Blackmore moved Rainbow away from an authentic metal position and towards a status of commercial dependence that saw success measured not by artistic creativity but the volume of sales (cf. Headlam 321 and Weinstein, Heavy Metal 62). In this respect, Blackmore was successful, with ‘Since You Been Gone’ reaching #6 in the British charts in August 1979. In contrast, reviews saw R ainbow as betraying the authenticity of metal. S ounds magazine considered Rainbow’s new approach to be akin to ‘lightweight American Top 40 material’ (Barton 38). Not only was the Rainbow approach influential on other bands, who chose to mimic their style (Warner 37), but Ballard found himself in demand from other metal bands keen to gain commercial success and ‘enter the cycle of simple reproduction’ (Bourdieu, Cultural Production 57). Before long, Uriah Heep and Magnum, longstanding bands who had not attained the status of consecrated artists, used Ballard compositions ‘On the Rebound’ and ‘Rockin’ Chair’ respectively. This was in contrast to their earlier position-taking strategy and this consequently saw a dilution in the traditional heavy metal aesthetic, where ‘its heroes emerg[ed] … through pain, debauchery and excessive behaviour to produce great art’ (Blake 126). This approach shifted the field away from a traditional authentic position that saw music’s ‘tendency to emphasize and put high value on the authorship of performers’ (Regev 254). Instead, Ballard’s commercial, rather than creative track record was of significance in appropriation of his songs to confer authenticity on the bands. That critical acclaim was no longer as important within the field was shown when R ainbow repeated the formula on their follow-up album Difficult to Cure, with the Ballard-penned ‘I Surrender’ reaching #3 in the singles charts in January 1981. In contrast to the condemnation of the band by S ounds (a magazine with strong links to the metal subculture), its rival Melody Maker, although occupying a similar subcultural space to S ounds at this time, had traditionally ‘served a broad readership’ (Toynbee, ‘Policing Bohemia’ 289). This partially accounted for why the latter magazine took a different view to Rainbow’s new approach, musing that ‘after their chart success in the past 18 months, the move toward commercialism is valid’ (Gett 15, emphasis added). Moreover, yet another change in the line-up saw vocalist Joe L ynn T urner join the band and accelerate ‘the move towards romantic narratives and less exaggerated vocal styles’ (Borthwick and Moy 150).

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Turner’s style played a key role in the band’s shift to an explicitly mainstream position. S imon Frith argues: It is through the singing voice that people are most able to make a connection through their records, to feel that performances are theirs in certain ways. It is through the voice that star personalities are constructed …. T he tone of voice is more important in this context than the actual articulation of particular lyrics. (145)

Joe L ynn T urner’s tone was soft and warm compared to the style of R onnie James D io, whose approach focused on power and emphasized the vocal dexterity and effort required to reach the high notes (cf. Shepherd 166). Dio’s style saw the singer associated with the creative role of virtuoso, and his departure saw that role in the band fall to Blackmore, and Blackmore alone. Sending a clear signal that musical virtuosity was not the most important prerequisite for the new, commercialized Rainbow, Roger Glover, the bass player Blackmore had sacked from Purple for musical reasons, had joined the band by this stage. For Blackmore to backtrack on his previous decision shows how his position-taking strategy had changed over time. Meanwhile it became clear that D io’s style was more suited to a subcultural metal style when he resurfaced in Black Sabbath, where he continued to write songs along fantasy themes, showing that Dio was not likely to move to a more mainstream position any time soon. In contrast to D io, T urner’s voice was more suited to FM radio, with S ounds referring to ‘T urner’s homogenised A OR vocals’ (Barton 38), and his looks saw him become something of a pin-up. It was not T urner’s vocal ability which was of primary importance (although this of course still mattered) but rather his image. A Leppard Changes Its Spots: Def Leppard and Commercial Authenticity Rainbow’s position-taking strategy was hardly extreme when compared to that of later bands. What R ainbow had achieved was a shift in heavy metal which made a commercial strategy more viable by virtue of its attempt to change the hierarchy of positions available in the field, and thus served in moving the position of the field itself (cf. Bourdieu, Cultural Production 58). Blackmore’s past as founder of Deep Purple meant that regardless of the actual musical content, readings of R ainbow would always tend to see them as a metal band. However, this new subgenre of metal allowed for commercial elements in the music alongside Blackmore’s trademark guitar riffs and solos that went some way to signalling the band’s continuing metal presence. C onsequently, as others moved to contest positions in the metal field, their bid for consecration saw them adapt a position-taking strategy   The difficulty that Blackmore has had in gaining critical acceptance in some quarters for his folk music project with his partner Candice Night shows how, to some, he will forever be positioned as a metal guitarist.

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similar to R ainbow. D ef L eppard found themselves attaining a consecrated position in the genre by adopting a commercial position-taking strategy, and thus influenced a further ‘change in the space of possibles’ within the field (Bourdieu, Cultural Production 32), moving the melodic rock field further towards the field of large-scale production. Part of this re-positioning saw D ef L eppard further distilling the creative process by becoming greatly involved with the producer R obert John ‘Mutt’ L ange, who Randall Abrahams claims ‘crafted the sound’ of the band (6). With emphasis on an outside party as creative force, this changed the musical direction of the group, a move later repeated by Metallica’s much-criticized hiring of Bob Rock. C o-writing most of D ef L eppard’s songs, L ange’s compositional involvement drew the band closer to ‘the notion of the popular [mainstream] music art work as the product of a team rather than an individual’ (Warner 67). Moreover, ‘the centricity of the recording studio in the whole compositional process … blurs the distinction between artist and producer’ (Whiteley et al. 16), and this proved to be especially so in an age where ‘producers … enjoy[ed] unprecedented visibility’ (Zak 180) and were seen not as separate to the creative process, but as ‘the musicians’ artistic collaborators’ (Zak 17). Indeed, A ndrew Goodwin argues that art/pop distinctions are made within the heavy metal genre between the likes of Metallica and Def Leppard (179), and it is true that the commercial success of D ef L eppard, who were once considered to be frontrunners of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal alongside acts like Iron Maiden and S axon, was regarded by some as suspect. Paul Friedlander claims that the production of the band showed how they ‘paid close attention to studio details and used keyboards and sound effects to move closer to the musical mainstream and increased commercial success’ (272). Although bands such as Def Leppard have been ‘judged to lack authenticity’ (Weinstein, Heavy Metal 46), the case of the band shows that response to a text does not merely differ between different taste-cultures, but can even differ within a particular subculture. T he following section of this chapter will demonstrate how this struggle for position in the melodic rock field relies on ‘classificatory schemes, which exist and signify only in their mutual relations, and serve as landmarks or beacons’ (Bourdieu, Cultural Production 95). However, although anathema to certain heavy metal fans, D ef L eppard’s successful moving of the melodic rock field resulted in the amount of records sold (cf. Bourdieu, Cultural Production 38) becoming an important criterion of perceived success (see, for example, Wright 370). It is important to discuss ‘not how true a piece of music is to something else, but how it sets up the idea of “truth” in the first place – successful pop music is music which defines its own aesthetic standard’ (Frith 137). Although Borthwick and Moy claim that ‘metal was an album form rather than one built on singles or tracks’ (146), for bands such as D ef L eppard, the 1980s saw a period of incredible commercial success. A lthough referring to country music and pop, A llan Moore’s analysis applies equally well to melodic rock in that:

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Heavy M etal Mus ic in Br itain Whereas in the late 1960s, authenticity was the preserve of a politicised, selfless counterculture, in the late 1980s there was no such counter-culture, and thus ‘authenticity’ became allied to … an unreserved embrace of the ‘pop’ to which it was so antithetical twenty years earlier. (213–14)

It was now the case that a position-taking strategy allowed for chart single success to be culturally valued within the field, as opposed to the more familiar subcultural approach that viewed ‘a three-minute single … as superficial’ (Fast 77). As such, top 40 success now signalled a melodic rock text as authentic. Def Leppard’s success is a key example of how melodic rock shifted to a more commodified populist form than the subcultural spaces previously open to rock bands. Whilst the likes of Led Zeppelin refused to issue singles so their artistic integrity was not compromised (cf. Fast 72), and ‘the group’s commitment to musical truth informed an “anti-commercialism” which turned out to have a remarkable selling power’ (Frith and Horne 90), Def Leppard showed a readiness to grab any opportunity for a top 40 hit, targeting the lucrative US market and managing five top twenty singles in the U K off the Hysteria (1987) album alone, with the title track also reaching number 26, all between July 1987 and January 1989 (Roberts 148). Gone were the pseudo-mythological songs as favoured by L ed Zeppelin and U riah Heep, and in their place were romantic pop ballads such as ‘Hysteria’ and ‘L ove Bites’. Instead of relying on the powerchords of their earlier albums such as O n Through the N ight (1980) and High and Dry (1981), Def Leppard employed production techniques such as the multi-tracking of their vocals, a method that tended to signify a record as a pop record, owing to the inability to reproduce the sound live (cf. Warner 45). Magnum Opus: The Acceptance of Commercial Strategies in the Metal Field A lthough for many subcultures ‘movement away from the subculture towards the mainstream is perceived as … a betrayal of “roots” ’ (Bannister 81), Def Leppard’s shift of the field meant this was not necessarily the case for melodic rock groups. Instead, many other bands found it in their interest to build on the new rules of the game in operation (see Bourdieu, Cultural Production 183). A closer analysis of Magnum, who had previously competed for space in the field by serving up   Zuberi remarks how ‘[t]he Smiths were … considered more authentic because they could “cut it live,” touring extensively and using “real” instruments’ (30); see also, among others, Bannister 83; Thornton 26; and Toynbee, ‘Mainstreaming’ 158. This is not to say, however, that D ef L eppard were not considered a live band of some repute, but the production techniques employed on Hysteria, along with the band’s enforced lay-off after Rick Allen’s car accident, shifted the emphasis of their musical ‘authenticity’ from stage to studio. Even when the band took their first tentative steps back on the road, with Allen playing a modified drum kit, Jeff Rich of Status Quo was hired as insurance.

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neo-mythological fare and album-based releases, shows them following D ef L eppard in releasing commercial singles. T he result of this saw them receiving exposure on chart programmes such as Top of the Pops, the epitome of a pop aesthetic (Warner 13), and signals clearly how ‘the signs of rock authenticity … change over time’ (Auslander 71). Magnum demonstrated clearly how, as Bourdieu explains in The Field of Cultural Production, a band’s struggle for recognition depended on ‘the state of the legitimate problematic, that is, the space of possibilities inherited from previous struggles, which tends to define the space of possible position-takings and thus orient the search for solutions and, as a result, the evolution of production’ (183–4). This approach was exemplified by their album Wings of Heaven (1988). Much as D ef L eppard’s Hysteria featured album-oriented tracks such as ‘Gods of War’, so Magnum’s Wings of Heaven managed to straddle the fine line between ensuring there was sufficient commercial authenticity by way of concise, three minute love songs to satisfy the band’s new-found fans, while still displaying the subcultural values that had seen the band build up a loyal core fanbase. In this respect, Magnum followed a similar process to that discussed by Akitsugu Kawamoto with regards to Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP). Kawamoto notes that as ELP found commercial success, so ‘it was necessary that the countercultural ideology formerly represented as “insult” to the establishment be “misread”; i.e. it would still be referred to but at the same time revised to some extent’ (233). The dark brooding menace of Magnum’s ‘Don’t Wake the Lion’ echoed earlier tracks such as ‘Soldier of the Line’ (1982), and continued songwriter Tony Clarkin’s liking for anti-war lyrics. Meanwhile the neo-progressive key changes in ‘Wild Swan’ showcased Clarkin’s songwriting prowess and the band’s musicianship. D espite the band’s new-found mainstream position, it was important for the band to cater for its traditional subcultural audience also. ‘Don’t Wake the L ion’ displayed Magnum’s lineage, and showed they had not departed entirely from metal’s subcultural heritage (cf. Walser 13). Despite the success of the band’s swing towards a mainstream position, their music was still required to be ‘perceived as having some quality of the underground ideology’ (Kawamoto 233) in order for Magnum to straddle both the restricted and the large-scale fields of production. Wings of Heaven offered the promise of ‘the apartness of genuine aesthetic expression, but at the same time … [a promise] to deliver that experience to a mass audience’ (Collins 24). Depending on the reading formation activated, Magnum could now be appropriated by both metal and pop fans. However, the three hit singles allowed Magnum a platform to demonstrate their feel for the game and exhibit the commercial authenticity of the album. Although featuring a typically dark Tony Clarkin lyric, ‘Days of No Trust’ saw an up-tempo number, with lighter harmony guitars dominant in the mix, rather than powerchords. It was the other two singles that moved Magnum more explicitly into a mainstream position, drawing on generic popular song lyrics in a similar fashion to R ainbow.

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T he new lyrical approach – visible in the variations on the cliché-ridden song line ‘I’m never gonna give you up’ – clearly positioned ‘Start Talking Love’ as more a pop than a rock song. It followed the pattern described by Warner, namely that ‘the lyrics for pop music display a fondness for simplicity with limited vocabulary, short sentences, much use of cliché and straightforward narrative themes’ (9). Indeed, the generic nature of the lyrics is shown by their similarity to the chorus of Rick Astley’s (Stock, Aitken and Waterman penned) #1 hit from the same period, ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ (1987). These popular values of simplicity appealed to a commercial field more disposed toward works ‘devoid of artistic ambition or pretension’ (Bourdieu, Distinction 16). Love songs such as ‘Start Talking Love’ and ‘It Must Have Been Love’ saw Clarkin’s lyrical content move away from a subcultural position where the words could only be comprehended by those ‘possessing the disposition and the aesthetic competence which are tacitly required’ to understand the heavy metal subculture (Bourdieu, Cultural Production 257). Magnum’s new-found commercial position also saw them breaking their link with artist R odney Matthews from Vigilante (1986) onwards. Instead of a fantasy landscape, the album cover for Wings of Heaven featured a band photograph. This immediately signified a mainstream product, as ‘the code for pop … albums mandates photographs of the faces of the performers’ (Weinstein, Heavy Metal 29); it further showcased a movement away from the heavy metal subcultural style and progression away from escapist fantasy (cf. Warner 64–5). In addition to the artwork, Magnum had a new logo. As Weinstein points out in Heavy Metal, logos ‘provide fast identification and … convey a significant image’ (27), and Magnum’s original logo explicitly linked the band with a sword and sorcery image, as the edges of the lettering doubled as sharp blades. With this original logo it was possible to say that Magnum quite literally needed sword and sorcery to make their meaning. T he new logo was a far more simple affair, as the band’s name changed from a gothic to a neutral type face (the same approach that R ainbow had taken earlier). This meant the band’s logo showed a ‘neutrality, efficiency, and order … antithetical to heavy metal’ (Weinstein, Heavy Metal 28). With this, the band’s cultural makeover was complete. Music, artwork and band image had combined in a total package that made the statement that here was a metal band gone pop. Conclusion: The Ever Shifting Boundaries of Value In this chapter, I have shown how ‘[t]here is a specific economy of the … [heavy metal] field, based on a particular form of belief’ (Bourdieu, Cultural Production 35). In the 1980s, this ‘form of belief’ saw the need for certain metal musicians to borrow successfully from the popular cultural mainstream in order to attain a consecrated position in the field. Although authenticity is often gained, as in the case of progressive rock, from ‘the inclusion of musical styles from other than a

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rock format’ (Holm-Hudson 2), the 1980s saw certain metal bands not borrowing from high culture, or authentic folk musical forms, but instead deriving much of their authenticity from pop. These new positions opened up in the melodic rock field allowed for bands to follow a trajectory where chart success and commercialization were legitimated as a position-taking strategy (cf. Weinstein, ‘All Singers Are Dicks’ 328). As metal bands’ commercial standing was ‘a matter of position and trajectory within the field, so that … [they vary] from one agent and one moment to another’ (Bourdieu, Cultural Production 72), I have shown how bands occupying a certain position in the metal field as a whole were now required to adopt alternative position-taking strategies to appeal to consumers outside the heavy metal subculture. A lthough to some, ‘rock is supposed to be a rebellious music, a music that shocks the “establishment” and challenges its conventions’ (Sheinbaum 21), this is not the only position-taking strategy open to metal bands. Some choose to go pop, and this does not affect their chances of attaining consecrated status. In this respect, this period of metal is certainly not unique in how its subculture developed. T hrash bands such as Metallica and T estament followed a similar path in their career, moving from a hardcore subcultural position to a point where they occupied a more mainstream area of metal. C oming to similar conclusions, A lbiez argues that post-punk ‘[John] Lydon and PiL pursued a distinctly progressive path in an attempt to bury punk’ (360). By accepting that, to some taste-cultures, a mainstream positioning can be seen as an authentic strategy, analysis of metal can move beyond looking at the more obvious cult texts to see how even seemingly bland, middle-of-the-road music still constructs its own ideologies and makes meaning in a particular way. T hat this music’s status has been naturalized in such a manner does not mean it lacks textual interest and significance. By locating the techniques used to construct identity and difference, the possibility is open to analyse many more rock bands that have so far been ignored. References A brahams, R andall. ‘S pinning A round: T he S outh A frican Music Industry in T ransition.’ Human S ciences R esearch Council. C ape T own 2003. 14 A ugust 2007 http://www.hsrcpress.ac.za. Albiez, Sean. ‘Know History!: John Lydon, Cultural Capital and the Prog/Punk D ialectic.’ Popular Music 22/23 (2003): 357–74. A uslander, Philip. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatised Culture. L ondon: R outledge, 1999. Bannister, Matthew. ‘“Loaded”: Indie Guitar Rock, Canonism, White Masculinities.’ Popular Music 25.1 (2006): 77–95. Barton, Geoff. ‘R ainbow: C lapped Out!’ S ounds 14 February 1981: 38. Bayer, Gerd. ‘T he Band J.B.O. and E xploding the S erious S ide of Pop C ulture.’ Journal of Popular Culture 34.3 (2000): 109–28.

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Bennett, T ony and Janet Woollacott. Bond and Beyond. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987. Berger, Harris M. Metal, R ock, and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience. Hanover, N H: Wesleyan U niversity Press, 1999. Blake, Andrew. The Land without Music: Music, Culture and S ociety in TwentiethCentury Britain. Manchester: Manchester U niversity Press, 1997. Borthwick, Stuart and Ron Moy. Popular Music Genres: An Introduction. E dinburgh: E dinburgh U niversity Press, 2004. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A S ocial Critique of the Judgement of Taste. L ondon: R outledge and Kegan Paul, 1984. Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. C ambridge: Polity, 1993. C ollins, Jim. ‘Introduction.’High-Pop: Making Culture into Popular Entertainment. Ed. Jim Collins. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002. 1–32. Covach, John. ‘Progressive Rock, “Close to the Edge,” and the Boundaries of S tyle.’ Understanding R ock: Essays in Musical Analysis. E d. John C ovach and Graeme M Boone. Oxford: Oxford U niversity Press, 1997. 3–31. D rummond, Kent. ‘C limbing a S tairway to Heaven: L ed Zeppelin’s C eltic E mbrace.’ Journal of S trategic Marketing 14.1 (2006): 35–43. Elliot, James Isaac. ‘From Partnership to Profits: The Role of Cowriting with R ecording A rtists as a S trategic Plan for C opyright E xploitation.’ Popular Music and S ociety 26.2 (2003): 169–81. Fast, S usan. In the Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of R ock Music. Oxford: Oxford U niversity Press, 2001. Friedlander, Paul. R ock and R oll: A S ocial History. Boulder, C O: Westview Press, 1996. Frith, S imon. ‘T owards an A esthetic of Popular Music.’ Music and S ociety: The Politics of Composition, Performance, and R eception. E d. R ichard L eppert and S usan McC lary. C ambridge: C ambridge U niversity Press, 1987. 133–51. Frith, S imon and Howard Horne. Art Into Pop. L ondon: Methuen, 1987. Gett, S teve. ‘Good Heavy Pop.’ Melody Maker 7 February 1981: 15. Goodwin, A ndrew. ‘Popular Music and Postmodern T heory.’ Cultural S tudies 5.2 (1991): 174–90. Headlam, D ave. ‘D oes the S ong R emain the S ame? Questions of A uthorship and Identification in the Music of Led Zeppelin.’ Concert Music, R ock, and Jazz since 1945: Essays and Analytical S tudies. E d. Betsy Marvin and R ichard Hermann. R ochester, NY : U niversity of R ochester Press, 1996. 313–63. Hebdige, Dick. S ubculture: The Meaning of S tyle. L ondon: R outledge, 1988. Hesmondhalgh, D avid. ‘Bourdieu, the Media and C ultural Production.’ Media, Culture & S ociety 28.2 (2006): 211–31. Holm-Hudson, Kevin, ed. Progressive R ock R econsidered. New York: Routledge, 2002.

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Toynbee, Jason. ‘Mainstreaming: From Hegemonic Centre to Global Networks.’ Popular Music S tudies. E d. D avid Hesmondhalgh and Keith N egus. L ondon: A rnold, 2002. 149–64. T oynbee, Jason. ‘Policing Bohemia, Pinning up Grunge: T he Music Press and Generic C hange in British Pop and R ock.’ Popular Music 12.3 (1993): 289–301. Traut, Don. ‘“Simply Irresistible”: Recurring Accent Patterns as Hooks in Mainstream 1980s Music.’ Popular Music 24.1 (2005): 57–77. Walser, R obert. R unning with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover, N H: Wesleyan U niversity Press, 1993. Warner, T imothy. Pop Music – Technology and Creativity: Trevor Horn and the Digital R evolution. A ldershot: A shgate, 2003. Weinstein, Deena. ‘All Singers Are Dicks.’ Popular Music and S ociety 27.3 (2004): 323–34. Weinstein, D eena. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. 2nd ed. New York: D a C apo, 2000. Weinstein, Deena. ‘Rock Critics Need Bad Music.’ Bad Music: The Music We Love to Hate. Ed. Chris Washburne and Maiken Derno. New York: Routledge, 2004. 294–311. Whiteley, Sheila. ‘Progressive Rock and Psychedelic Coding in the Work of Jimi Hendrix.’ R eading Pop: Approaches to Textual Analysis in Popular Music. E d. R ichard Middleton. Oxford: Oxford U niversity Press, 2000. 235–62. Whiteley, S heila, et al. ‘Introduction.’ Music, S pace and Place: Popular Music and Cultural Identity. E d. S heila Whiteley et al. A ldershot: A shgate, 2004. 1–2. Wright, R obert. ‘“I’d S ell Y ou S uicide”: Pop Music and Moral Panic in the A ge of Marilyn Manson.’ Popular Music 19.3 (2000): 365–85. Zak, Albin. The Poetics of R ock: Cutting Tracks, Making R ecords. Berkeley, CA: U niversity of C alifornia Press, 2001. Zuberi, N abeel. S ounds English: Transnational Popular Music. U rbana, IL : U niversity of Illinois Press, 2001. Discography Astley, Rick. Whenever You N eed S omebody. RCA , 1988. Black Sabbath. Master of R eality. V ertigo, 1971. Black Sabbath. Paranoid. V ertigo, 1970. C olosseum. Those Who Are about to Die S alute You. Fontana, 1969. D eep Purple. Concerto for Group and O rchestra. Harvest, 1969. D ef L eppard. High ‘n’ Dry. V ertigo, 1981. D ef L eppard. Hysteria. Phonogram, 1987. D ef L eppard. O n Through the N ight. V ertigo, 1980. D ef L eppard. Pyromania. V ertigo, 1983.

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Iron Maiden. The N umber of the Beast. E MI, 1982. Judas Priest. British S teel. C BS , 1980. L ed Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin II. A tlantic, 1969. L ed Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin IV . A tlantic, 1971. Magnum. Chase the Dragon. Jet, 1982. Magnum. The Eleventh Hour. Jet, 1983. Magnum. Goodnight LA. Polydor, 1990. Magnum. Kingdom of Madness. Jet, 1978. Magnum. Magnum II. Jet, 1979. Magnum. O n a S toryteller’s N ight. FM, 1985. Magnum. Vigilante. Polydor, 1986. Magnum. Wings of Heaven. Polydor, 1988. R ainbow. Bent O ut of S hape. Polydor, 1983. R ainbow. Difficult to Cure. Polydor, 1981. R ainbow. Down to Earth. Polydor, 1979. R ainbow. Long Live R ock ‘n’ R oll. Polydor, 1978. R ainbow. R ising. Polydor, 1976. R ainbow. R itchie Blackmore’s R ainbow. Oyster/Polydor, 1975. R ainbow. S traight between the Eyes. Polydor, 1982. S axon. Wheels of S teel. C arrere, 1980. U riah Heep. Abominog. Bronze, 1982. U riah Heep. Demons and Wizards. Bronze, 1972. U riah Heep. Equator. Portrait, 1985. U riah Heep. The Magician’s Birthday. Bronze, 1972.

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C hapter 3

T he Brutal T ruth: Grindcore as the E xtreme R ealism of Heavy Metal Liam Dee

Introduction: Negative Dialectics and Oppositional Popular Culture Those who analyse popular culture as an oppositional force would rarely seek succour from the notoriously snobbish cultural critique of T heodor A dorno, yet A dorno’s concept of negative dialectics provides a valuable means to locate resistant strains in popular culture. S tarting, in N egative Dialectics, with what he saw as Hegel’s ‘unsuccessful attempt to use philosophical concepts for coping with all that is heterogeneous to those concepts’ (4), Adorno sought a dialectical method that was more capable of undermining the constricting uniformity of ‘identity thinking’. His negative dialectics was thus constructed as a dynamic negation rather than a dialectical synthesis; a continual, restless effort to expose the tension between a concept and its substantive content and thus open the possibility for the oppressed heterogeneity of the world to be freed from dominating abstraction. T he cultural corollary of this was the inherent tension in art between conceptual attributes like objective form and quantifiable artistic skill and the ‘aconceptuality’ of subjective content and emotional response (A dorno, Aesthetic Theory 1–3). Yet for A dorno mass culture reduced this tension through formulaic products leavened with a semblance of novelty and spontaneity that simultaneously veiled rigid

  A version of this paper was delivered as a talk at the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota on 2 April 2007. My thanks go to both Susannah L. Smith and John Mowitt who facilitated this presentation and provided me with invaluable resources. My thanks also to Gerd Bayer for his sterling editorial support and to both Ruth Barraclough and my daughter U na for their love and bemused tolerance of my passion for grindcore.   For a recent and typical example of populist anti-A dornianism see Pérez, especially pages 79–80.   Where our abstract conception of the world is ‘identified’ or equated with immanent reality (A dorno, N egative Dialectics 4–5); in capitalist society this is predominantly manifest in the reduction of a particular, qualitative use value to an abstract, quantitative exchange value: one standard of value to rule them all! Or, as Nick Smith argues: ‘From within the profit-driven perspectives of capitalism … all things are squeezed into financial concepts and therefore look like exchangeable commodities’ (45).

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conformity and resonated with the need for high turnover in commodity exchange; this critique is most apparent in A dorno’s analysis of jazz (Prisms 119–32). However, though sympathetic to A dorno’s critique of the facile escapism and general uniformity of entertainment commodities, many critics have found forces of ‘non-identity’ from within popular culture akin to the critical ideals of negative dialectics (see Watson; Gourgouris; and Schoolman). Y et such analyses do a disservice to the potential of negative dialectical appraisals of popular culture, not in their distance from A dorno’s own aesthetics, but rather in the blind spots they share with him. In condemning the commodified sameness of mass culture A dorno believed that only an exclusive section of high modernism – most prominently the works of Schönberg, Kafka and Beckett – possessed the requisite non-identical dissonance to oppose the ‘harmony’ of commodified uniformity (Aesthetic Theory 4–6). In so doing Adorno downplayed the threat of artworld abstraction to the non-identical qualities of avant-garde modernism; the acceptance and legitimation of experimental art in the rarefied isolation of galleries and academic journals. Though the work of Frank Zappa, S un R a and T odd Haynes (the ‘artists’ that Watson, Gourgouris and S choolman respectively deign as exemplars of pop culture Adornianism) are not at the rarefied heights of Schönberg, Kafka or Beckett, they are all art-house/avant-pop forms separated from the mass entertainment market to be consumed as prestige cultural commodities; and they all suffer from a suffocating institutional identity akin to high modernism. T he negative dialectical energy of Zappa’s ribald ‘sexual materialism’ (Watson 155) atrophies in the same way the ‘terror’ of Schönberg’s atonality (A dorno, Culture Industry 60) has in the acceptance and explicability of avant-pop eccentricity within bourgeois avant-garde art: exclusivity based on the talent of the artist and cultural capital of consumers, often in conjunction

  ‘N ot only are the hit songs, stars, and soap operas cyclically recurrent and rigidly invariable types, but the specific content of the entertainment itself is derived from them and only appears to change … As soon as the film begins, it is quite clear how it will end’ (Horkheimer and Adorno 125).   Susan Buck-Morss does note a gradual reduction in Adorno’s faith in the critical capacity of art (186) which led him to doubt whether ‘non-ideological’ art was feasible (A dorno, Aesthetic Theory 336) and to make scathing critiques against the idealist cult of genius (A dorno, Aesthetic Theory 244). Yet this was not tied to the particularities of artworld administration and nor did A dorno ever fully renounce his estimation of the ‘true art’ of Schönberg et al. as fundamentally anti-bourgeois. For more on this see Dee, ‘Creative A ccountancy’.  T his cultural capital, though not reducible to economic capital, has a tendency to overlap with a reasonable amount of wealth. T hus an expensive ‘progressive’, ‘nonmainstream’ music journal like The Wire, which features as much on Zappa and S un R a as it does on the ‘high’ avant-garde of Schönberg and Cage, is made more or less exclusively middle class by both the barriers of taste and affordability.

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with restricted avant-garde festivals; contemplative consumption through talks and performances in rarefied venues like upscale galleries and university halls; and niche marketing to discerning consumers in the form of specialist arms of the culture industry. C ontrary to A dorno and many of his followers whatever amenability popular culture has to negative dialectical analysis really comes from its distance from, not similarity to, the avant-garde artworld. T his is not simply to side with populist antiA dornianism, as negative dialectics has immense value to radical cultural analysis and most so-called popular culture is indeed a standardized, escapist product of A dorno’s dreaded ‘culture industry’. However, popular culture undoubtedly includes vulgar, carnivalesque aspects closely akin to the ‘non-identifiable’ materialism of negative dialectics, refusing to ‘identify’ with the idealized vision of harmonious social relations and creative individualism. Of these it is British heavy metal that is particularly open to negative dialectical appraisal given its original ostracism from both the refined world of ‘serious culture’ and the mainstream culture industry. T hough this abrasive vulgarity, which immersed British heavy metal in the everyday life of industrial capitalism without harmonizing with it, was neutralized by rock music standardization, the vulgar excesses of early British heavy metal have continued in the genre of grindcore. T his chapter examines how the ‘extreme realism’ of grindcore, born out of the same northern England working-class crucible as British heavy metal but mixed with the more radical experimentalism of anarcho-punk, manifests the critical charge of negative dialectics. This will be evoked not only through Adorno’s stress on the dialectical tension between the will-to-brute-realism and dissociative experimentalism, but also through Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection, which is used to contrast the cartoonish horror of death metal ‘extremism’ with the more disturbingly raw and unstable grindcore depictions of corporeal brutality. Grindcore and the Genre Boundaries of Heavy Metal and Punk The mercurial qualities of grindcore start at the level of definition, with many choosing to subsume grindcore under other extreme heavy metal genres like death metal (Pozo), or else under punk rock, as Angela Rodel does by making ‘grind(core)’ a sub-category of ‘extreme hardcore’ (237 and 242). Yet the validity  S uch as the A rs E lectronica A wards, which gives recognition and prize money for new media including popular electronic music like techno, noise, glitch, ambient and microsound (AEC, ‘Digital Musics’) and is sponsored by Austrian state cultural institutions and multinationals like Sony (AEC, ‘Sponsoring and Support’).   For example the Fox Searchlight branch of Fox Studios for ‘independent films’ and N onesuch R ecords, the ‘independent, new music’ subsidiary of T ime Warner A OL which features high avant-garde acts like Kronos Quartet and Steve Reich and prestige rock/pop acts like Wilco and k.d. Lang.

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of the term grindcore is worth pursuing not only for its distinctive qualities, but because it marks the unstable interstices between heavy metal and punk. Indeed few bands could be said to have been definitively grindcore throughout their existence, with many either moving back to the more clear-cut rock grounds of heavy metal or hardcore punk (or at least having to declare their allegiances one way or the other), or else moving towards a more avant-noise sound (see for example the ambient minimalism of Final, O ne [1994], and L ull, Continue [1996], by former Napalm Death members), or even oscillating between all these forms. Y et ‘grindcore’ denotes important unifying qualities, however transitory, such as the heavy metal emphasis on the powerchord (Walser 2) and the lower tuning of guitars to evoke the dark aural ‘grind’ that heavy metal founders Black Sabbath achieved with an emphasis on minor keys. At the same time the grind that former Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris was thinking of when he coined the term grindcore was actually the murky, wall-of-sound of the post-punk band Swans (Mudrian 35). It was through post-punk genres like hardcore that grindcore would find not only the influence for its characteristic speed, achieved by the rapid 64th notes played on the snare drum (Mudrian 35), but also the desire to push the bounds of the rock music form, whether through extreme velocity, discordances, arrhythmic changes of tempo or even unusually slow beats, like those of the Swans-like band Godflesh. In all cases the aim was to strip away the melodic humanism and theatrical virtuosity of rock to an unstable core of minimal chord progressions, attenuated or non-existent guitar solos, near-unintelligible vocals and socio-political abjection: an aesthetic born out of punk and metal realism. Bullshit Detector: The ‘Inauthentic’ Realism of Grindcore The Precursory Minimalism of Punk and Metal D espite considerable enmity between the two musical styles in the 1970s (see Berger 57), both punk and heavy metal were linked by an aesthetic of minimalism born of both underprivileged circumstance and active rejection of the value system that determined privilege. While the iconic S ex Pistols album title N ever Mind the Bollocks reflected the way punk more clearly articulated minimalism as an ethos, Black Sabbath had already birthed heavy metal in the late 1960s in part   While Godflesh founder Justin Broadrick did not like the restrictive nature of the term ‘grindcore’ he did acknowledge an affinity with the grindcore aesthetic (cf. Blush 35–6). Even the most hyper-paced grindcore bands mixed in the kind of painfully slow passages that were at the heart of Godflesh, to add alienation and despair to their palette of discomfort. Though Ian Christe, amongst others, defines grindcore primarily in terms of speed, he notes that on their second album grindcore-founders Napalm Death ‘shook expectations by introducing into grindcore the ultraheavy influence of the New York art band the Swans’ (Christe 187).

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as a reaction against the overly elaborate ‘progressive rock’ manifestation of the psychedelic blues revival of the period (Popoff 4). Part of the sludgy sound of Sabbath came from the cheap recording situation that their working-class poverty necessitated, but it was also an aesthetic choice to get away from ‘clean’ rock and back to ‘dirty’ blues roots (Popoff 4–5). Black Sabbath’s origins in the West Midlands city of Birmingham are not coincidental to the beginning of heavy metal. T he class-based restriction of cultural resources was not just a barrier to be overcome but a demarcation to be celebrated in the gritty minimalism of timbre over pretentious melodic excess. They thus applied a crucial marker of distinction: ‘Of all musical parameters, timbre is least often analyzed, but its significance can hardly be overstated. … Before any lyrics can be comprehended, before harmonic or rhythmic patterns are established, timbre instantly signals genre and affect’ (Walser 41). On the other hand punk was born of a much more self-conscious effort to eliminate the abstractions of the music industry by explicitly linking an egalitarian music style to an anti-commercial culture of production and participation.10 T his promotion of immediacy between people was also a promotion of immediacy between people and their social conditions. Much of the despair and suffering manifest in British heavy metal and punk of the 1970s embodied the workingclass experience of the grim, violent reality of the conditions of production, often quite intimately: Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi suffered a hand injury as a sheet metal worker, which he had to compensate for in his playing (Popoff 3). Dark, discordant music reflected the reality of working-class exploitation and a welfare system coming apart at the seams in a way that chirpy pop tunes obviously could not (Hay 232 and Savage xiv). Yet the darkness of metal had a tendency to be displaced on to the fantastic realms of Satanic occult and horror films, and the abstractions of rock commodification often remained, particularly in the exclusive virtuosic ethos of heavy metal guitar solos and elaborate stage shows. T his was especially the case with the more commercially successful second wave of heavy metal in the 1980s (Walser 12). A s a reaction many in the heavy metal community sought to reassert and even go beyond the raw, underground aesthetic of heavy metal by crossing genre boundaries and adopting the stripped-back speed of hardcore punk, creating both thrash and death metal in the USA (Walser 14). But even this was still very much a continuation of previous heavy metal virtuosity and display (Walser 14 and 157). In E ngland, however, the aggressive extremity of grindcore developed from punk rather than being simply added-on to existing heavy metal. A s C arcass vocalist Jeff Walker notes: ‘People presume that just because we’ve got long hair we’re into 10  Though too much is often made of the association between punk anticommercialism and the explicit S ituationist critique of capitalist alienation, there is no doubt that there existed a shared desire directly to counter the systemic artifice of corporate media and show-business through self-production and humorous exposé (see S avage 28–36 and Nehring 2).

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Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. … That really isn’t the influence at all. [Grindcore] is the result of growing up in a time when bands like that were pop music, and we went for things that were more underground and obscure’ (qtd. in Christe 186). Grindcore Immanence The stripping back of the humanist certitude of jobs-for-life and welfare support in the Thatcherite Britain of the 1980s was reflected in the nihilism and ‘aesthetic negation’ of a new wave of British hardcore punk, including the anarcho-punk band Crass, whose name evoked blunt realism and who sought to flatten musical structure as well as group hierarchies (Thompson 308). More than any other punk band C rass developed their antagonism to the expropriated excess of capitalism in the Crass Collective, an organization dedicated to do-it-yourself (DIY) participation, independent production and anarchist activism (Thompson 311). S uch a radical politics of immanence inspired many other bands, including Napalm Death, a Birmingham-based punk band who formed in 1982 and released their earliest recordings on the 1984 C rass R ecords compilation Bullshit Detector #3 (Mudrian 27–8). As they developed their own sound Napalm Death took the rudimentary rock structures of Crass and married them to the more aggressive hardcore of bands like Discharge. The emerging grindcore sound pared song structures down to the most basic chord progressions, often degenerating into quick blasts of guitar riffs and drum beats, the most minimal being a two-second track called ‘You Suffer’ on their first album, S cum (1987). Despite the heavy metal riffs adopted by N apalm D eath and other grindcore bands there were no lead guitarists to play intricate solos and, in the case of the band Godflesh, which was formed by former Napalm Death guitarist Justin Broadrick, there was no drummer either, with beats supplied by a drum machine. As a product of the anarcho-punk environment grindcore was set against the rock-star detachment that even early heavy metal was prone to evince. Though E arache R ecords, which became the house record label for grindcore, was not founded on the same anarchist principles as C rass R ecords, it was still an independent label dedicated to supporting raw underground music (Mudrian 121–2). Inspired also by the DIY ethos of punk Napalm Death members were largely self-taught musicians, often picking up new members from an audience similarly unconstrained by the mediation of music teachers and correct technique (Mudrian 27–31 and 117–19). Tape-trading networks that formed cross-pollinating communities of underground metal and punk fans exchanging primitively recorded tapes of unsigned bands further encouraged the erosion of the barriers between performers, fans and production (Mudrian 28 and 59–60). While such communities included people who would never meet face-to-face it was a much more intimate form of communication than that mediated by multinational record companies, as it was an exchange based on the particularity of the individuals involved rather than the abstraction of massproduced products.

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In keeping with this larger philosophy of realist immanence, the covers of N apalm D eath’s early albums were rude, jarring montages of political brutality, becoming a template for subsequent grindcore acts like Terrorizer and Brutal T ruth. Popular visuals included multinational logos over images of Holocaust victims or skulls piled up from those killed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, as found on the N apalm D eath albums S cum (1987) and From Enslavement to O bliteration (1988). Even grindcore bands like Carcass, seemingly engaged in the same horror-film fantasia as death metal, distinguished themselves by their desire for realism. Quoting C arcass guitarist Bill S teer: When we started the band in early ’87 … there were a lot of bands with so-called gore lyrics, but they were just writing about horror films and stuff like that. To us, that was ineffective, it didn’t have any impact on the listener. We wanted to introduce something that was a little more realistic … and that’s why we use medical terminology. (Qtd. in Blush 36)

T his is not to say that medical terminology is some fundamental proof of realism, merely that it represents the desire to present a materialist negation to the fantastical escapism of horror-film hyperbole. Critical R ealism against Fetishized Authenticity Y et it is at this point that A dorno’s critique of social realism becomes pertinent. The belief that art could break through the veil of stylized abstraction via a straightforward ‘documenting’ of reality was a delusion that also had the reactionary effect of fetishizing a non-mediated reality.11 In The Jargon of Authenticity A dorno made clear that the desire for ‘authenticity’ was prone to mystify the ‘reality’ of dog-eat-dog individualism as a timeless, if unpleasant, truth rather than as an imposed, historical, changeable perspective (38). Though the florid, macabre excesses of genres like thrash, death and black metal seem a deliberate attempt at fantastical escapism they are usually framed by their purveyors as non-judgemental depictions of the macabre nature of the world that exists in contradistinction to what they see as the ‘preachiness’ of hardcore punk (Berger 61 and 269). Yet even hardcore often carried the ‘apolitical’ libertarianism of many first-wave punk bands like The Sex Pistols, and this is especially true for the US hardcore that influenced thrash and death metal. Early 1980s American hardcore bands like Black Flag, Die Kreuzen and Misfits largely limited themselves to ‘intensely personal anthems about schoolyard betrayal, mental confusion, and [unfocused] antigovernment rebellion’ (Christe 173). Even where a strong left-wing politics did exist in US hardcore it was rarely adopted by 11  ‘Whenever art tries to copy social reality it is all the more certain to become an asif. Brecht’s C hina in the Good Woman of S etzuan is no less stylized than S chiller’s Messina in the Bride of Messina’ (A dorno, Aesthetic Theory 321).

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hardcore-influenced metal bands. In the UK, the desire to remove the artifice of social morals through nihilist individualism inevitably led to a reactionary politics of authenticity, whether explicitly embraced or otherwise: ‘Punk’s libertarian politics had been deliberately vague, and its anarchist flourishes were all too easily being co-opted into a different kind of individualism’ (Savage 481). Though the cynical sneers against welfare-state paternalism resonated with the selfish individualism of T hatcherite neo-liberalism, the more disturbing development was the way the amorphous nature of punk aggression and nihilism began to attract violent neo-Nazis. This began to be reflected in neo-Nazi hardcore, the most infamous example being the band Skrewdriver (Nehring 8). Such associations were taken to new extremes in black metal, where a desire to push Satanic nihilism to the extreme often led to a neo-N azi politics of white, heterosexual authenticity (Moynihan and Søderlind 303–32 and 106–12). This reactionary ‘bio-politics’ of race and sexuality is underpinned by a larger bio-politics of gender essentialism and authenticity in metal.12 Though not usually taken to the black metal extreme the tradition of heavy metal has been one of tough, masculine, heterosexual authenticity against the feminized fake glamour of pop (Savage xiv). S haring the male domination of participants with death metal, grindcore always risks falling into such masculinist tropes, yet it is also imbued with the political values of punk: ‘Punk did not reproduce dominant lad modes: heretical sex and gender politics were key to its original impact’ (Savage xiv). Not only was this promoted in grindcore through less macho imagery, leading to a more gender-balanced audience (see Broadrick in Bains), but it was often actively asserted in the music, such as the explicit anti-machismo of songs like ‘It’s a M.A.N.S World’, ‘Cock-Rock Alienation’ and ‘Musclehead’ from the Napalm D eath album From Enslavement to O bliteration (1988) and the Brutal Truth song ‘A nti-Homophobe’ from Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme R esponses (1992). This attitude is consonant with the anarcho-punk roots of grindcore, where the reality of patriarchal capitalism is something to be vehemently critiqued rather than apolitically ‘exposed’ and thus tacitly legitimated. E ven C arcass, whose gory subject matter seemed to be about mere apolitical shock, based their work on a vegan critique of the anthropocentric hypocrisy of the meat industry (Cloonan 354). T his style of vegetarian critique has been even more stridently adopted by the A merican grindcore band C attle D ecapitation, who leave little doubt about their position with such songs as ‘V eal and the C ult of T orture’ from the album Human Jerky (1999). T he critical nature of grindcore is usually considered too didactic and obvious, lacking the subtle niceties expected of either avant-garde experiments or even social realist engagement. T he incontinence of this critical passion is best represented in the growls and shrieks that make up the predominant form of grindcore vocals. S uch a style marginalizes grindcore as it both distorts the lyrical content and 12 In line with Michel Foucault’s understanding of ‘bio-power’, by which he means the social control of corporeal matters like race, sex, gender, eugenics and so on (140).

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exhibits naïve emotional expression; passionate rage is all well and good, but it must be restrained to the pace of rational legibility or ironic distance to be classed as either political or art. Y et the ‘noise’ of grindcore does not exist in a vacuum of emotional atavism; it is tied to other elements like album art, song titles, lyric sheets and band interviews to form an aesthetic that is critically grounded yet often exceeds the limits of discursive restraint. Extreme Noise Terror? The ‘Noiseless’ Extremism of Grindcore The Dialectic between Experimentalism-as-Critique and R ealism-as-Critique T he excessive nature of the grindcore critique was born out of an antagonism that had existed within punk from the beginning. On the one hand the more artconceptual punks, like the band Throbbing Gristle, sought a disengagement from the entire mundane world and an attack at the level of musical and psychological conventions; on the other hand social realists like The Clash sought a more ‘practical’ agit-prop political engagement (Savage 421–2). While this did lead to a form of punk sectarianism, there were bands that sought to combine both elements, acknowledging that punk negation needed both. A good example was C rass, who, despite their initial social-realist philosophy and even explicit claim that politics was primary over music (Wells 37), later combined this realism with the use of performance-art stunts and an experimental approach to live shows and music structure (Thompson 314–18 and Wells 37). Grindcore Experimentalism T his openness to new forms and dissociative techniques carried into grindcore, as the founder of Napalm Death, Nik Bullen, made clear: ‘Between 1978 and 1984 there were six years of other music: industrial, electronic, reggae, psychedelic, and anything we came across. That was our second wind to go back to something like Napalm Death’ (Christe 187). The anarchic energy and fluidity of Napalm Death led avant-garde instrumentalist John Zorn to compare grindcore to the free-jazz aesthetic and he helped to contribute to this through his own band Painkiller, a grindcore-jazz act featuring Zorn on saxophone and former N apalm D eath member Mick Harris on drums (Hopkins 38). Many other grindcore bands, including the American bands The Locust (Mudrian 265) and 7,000 Dying Rats, have made use of electronic and brass instruments to transgress boundaries that death metal flirtations with keyboards or classical instruments do not.13 Grindcore has even been involved in the kind of performance-art stunts that both Crass and Throbbing Gristle engaged 13  Death metal bands like Nocturnus and Morbid Angel used keyboards sparingly to augment traditional metal structures, while the occasional use of classical instruments was a claim for virtuosic recognition (Mudrian 83 and Pozo).

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in, with the E nglish grindcore act E xtreme N oise T error collaborating with the band KL F to sabotage the 1992 BRIT awards by unexpectedly playing the KL F pop hit ‘3 A .M. E ternal’ in grindcore style while KL F sprayed the audience with machine guns preloaded with blanks (Christe 187). Abject Extremes For the extreme wing of punk merely using unexpected musical material was not enough to shock and ‘deprogramme’ alienated people. In association with their dissociative formal arrangements Throbbing Gristle’s work was based around an obsession with the abject realm of death and defilement (Reynolds 130). The aim here was not cheap shock value, but the kind of psychic disturbance described in Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection. For Kristeva, the abject represents the primal chaos of the ‘semiotic’. It is material which cannot be repressed into the subconscious and which consequently disturbs the borders of the ‘symbolic’ (3–4), where our rigid, unified sense of self is forged. The examples Kristeva uses to demonstrate this include faeces and vomit, but more abject than these is the human corpse: ‘If dung signifies the other side of the border, the place where I am not and which permits me to be, the corpse, the most sickening of wastes, is a border that has encroached upon everything. It is no longer I who expel, “I” is expelled’ (4). In the face of the inert semiotic meat of the corpse the symbolic bromides of death as a spiritual journey, a continuation of the ‘I’ in the soul, are difficult to maintain. In this realm it is death metal that would seem to be the most abject as it was named for its subject matter, yet grindcore pushes abjection further than the most extreme death metal, as can be seen in the following comparison between the album covers of C arcass’s R eek of Putrefaction14 and the death metal band C annibal C orpse’s Butchered at Birth: E ven today, 18 years after its release, R eek of Putrefaction is still one of the most disturbing album covers in existence. The shock value of all future album covers pales in comparison. Take Cannibal Corpse’s Butchered at Birth from 1991. In the foreground, two zombies rip an unborn foetus from its mother’s body, whilst in the background numerous other foetuses hang from meat hooks. This album cover is as offensive as they come – few have been more offensive since – but next to R eek, it can be seen for what it really is, a simple painting of a violent, fantastical scene that could as easily be at home in any of the horror movies that so heavily influenced Cannibal Corpse. (Sherry and Aldis 130)

In other words these stylized horror-movie tropes of death metal safely displace, rather than overtly confront, the shock of death, whereas Carcass genuinely raise 14 T he cover is a photographic montage of human corpses and body parts in various states of decay and violent rupture. The images are morgue documentations taken from medical textbooks.

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the threat of semiotic abjection through their shockingly raw depiction of human death, for which their albums were seized by British police as obscene material in 1991 (Cloonan 353). Cannibal Corpse vocalist George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher explicitly admits that his band does not set out to critique reality: We sing about stuff that – basically, all our songs are short stories that, if anyone would so choose, they could convert it into a horror movie. R eally. T hat’s all it is. We love horror movies. We like gruesome scary movies, and we want the lyrics to be like that. Yeah, it’s about killing people, but it’s not promoting it at all. Basically these are fictional stories and that’s it. (Qtd. in Prindle)

But that is not it! T o try to offend people with misogynist, violent imagery and then claim it is ‘just fiction’ is to both glorify and repress the sources of such violence. On the other hand the photo-realist morgue montages of C arcass force a confrontation with the consequences of extreme violence, without the psychological safety valve of ‘just-fiction’ to allow our selves to seek safety in subconscious denial. For Carcass this was not abject disturbance for the sake of it, but the means to shake us out of the complacent human arrogance that denies our messy mortality and privileges our ‘non-meat’ bodies over those of animals. Grindcore Musical Extremism Y et to concentrate solely on the thematic content of grindcore is itself to ‘symbolize’ the visceral excess of the music. More than any other popular music genre the significance of heavy metal lies in aural excess: ‘The most important aural sign of heavy metal is the sound of an extremely distorted electric guitar. … T his electronic distortion results when components are overdriven – required to amplify or reproduce a signal beyond their capacity to do so “cleanly”’ (Walser 41–2). Yet this has not stopped extreme metal genres like thrash, or even death metal, from being successfully integrated into mainstream rock commodification (see Walser 14 and Mudrian 184–5). It is interesting to note that while Walser celebrates the ‘overdriven’ instability of heavy metal (33–4), he prosecutes a restrictive norm, what he calls the ‘heavy metal dialectic’, which dictates virtuosic guitar solos and singing to be performed against the ‘controlling power’ of the pounding rhythm, thus providing a liberating vision of spontaneous, transcendent freedom (54 and 108). Such a dialectic has not only become stylized and predictable; it also lacks the tension of negative dialectics, providing delusional relief from the reality of homogenizing rationality in the humanist ideology of transcendent genius overcoming rigid control. While Walser condemns the need for metal to seek ‘classical prestige’, he still sees the technical prowess of classical music as the fundamental basis of innovation in heavy metal, ignoring the experimentalism of punk (58 and 62–3). While C rass provided aforementioned examples of musical avant-gardism, it was actually the post-punk of Throbbing Gristle that influenced the experimental

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spirit of grindcore: ‘“When we were young and looking for music,” says Bullen [of N apalm D eath], “Joy D ivision, Birthday Party, and T hrobbing Gristle were the bands that were around for people like us”’ (Christe 333). The Throbbing Gristle use of sound-as-physical-assault, beyond the relief of melody or groove (Reynolds 124–9), inspired grindcore bands to push beyond the ordered harmony of rock music. Primarily this was achieved through the increase of timbral intensity, with guitars tuned lower than the conventional E , sometimes as low as C or B (C hriste 186 and Berger 306n1); drums enhanced by double-bass pedals (Rodel 242); and vocals where the timbral qualities were pushed beyond linguistic or harmonic identity.15 Harris Berger calls this the ‘vocal analog of distorted guitar timbres’ (58), and it is the distortion of the guitar amplification that is predominant as it creates the substantial noise component to the timbre (Walser 123–4). For most death metal bands this noise is prevented from blurring the sound through an emphasis on the boosted upper and lower frequencies while recording (Berger 58). On the other side the ‘muddy’ production of early grindcore albums like R eek of Putrefaction merged the sounds of instruments into a sludgy swirl that matched the front cover visuals of viscous organs and fluids overflowing body boundaries; closer to the origins of the word ‘noise’ as ‘nausea’ (Smith 43). T o induce actual nausea through noise was the aim of T hrobbing Gristle, an aural attack on the capacity of the body to ‘contain itself’ mirrored in the excessive volume of Godflesh concerts causing anxiety and pain in the audience and in the slam-dancing and moshing that audiences engage in to experience the speed and aggression of hardcore/death metal shows (Christe 182 and Pettigrew). However, the seething mosh pit can often be a reinforcement of the self, rather than an abject threat, through the violent assertion of the selfhood of the strongest and most obnoxious. While death metal bands explicitly structure their songs to cater to the expectations of the mosh pit (Berger 64), grindcore bands often try to deny the cathartic release of moshing through either the slow pace of bands like Godflesh or else through a frantic speed and mix of tempi that is too fast and confusing for a stable mosh rhythm to be sustained. Indeed grindcore pushes rock music to the very brink of noise and it is not surprising that it has been an influence on Japanese noise music acts like Masonna and Merzbow (Smith 44 and Martin 161). N ot N oisy Enough Y et it is easy to get carried away by the hyperbole surrounding a genre that includes a band named E xtreme N oise T error. T hough it tears at the edge of the symbolic order of rock, grindcore does not attain the entropic velocity of avantnoise and is generally conflated with the rest of heavy metal and treated with scorn by noise aficionados: ‘Unlike the temperament of most machismo metal where 15  ‘Heavy vocal timbres are produced when the vocal folds are left partially open and air rushing through the glottal space produced a noisy, nonharmonic component in the sound wave’ (Berger 58).

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one confirms one’s ego against the world by “raging against the machine,” noise only compounds uncertainty’ (Smith 50). Yet Smith himself strives to maintain the borders of noise, attacking metal bands as those who merely ‘flirt’ with noise, and admonishing noise music when it descends to the ‘adrenaline-rush’ level of heavy metal (53 and 55). C ertainly advocates of avant-noise are aware that the gravity of cultureindustry recuperation is a constant, if not inescapable, threat, but like Adorno and his avant-pop followers the issue of sanctified abstraction in the avant-garde artworld is downplayed or ignored outright. E ven S mith, who is attentive to the mystifying hyperbole of critical-art discourse,16 cannot help but follow A dorno down the rabbit hole of art fetishism: in order for music to be dissonant with contemporary consumer culture, it must risk its very identity as music. Noise makes this sacrifice in order to be heard as art rather than mere cultural commodity. N oise appears to critique the prevailing cognitive and social habits of modernity – what T.W. Adorno named identity thinking – by providing concrete and particular art objects that demand attention and jar us from one-dimensional life. (44)

This distinction between wild art and tame ‘cultural commodities’ works only in the formalist dream-world of ‘raw sound’, an inherently ‘content-less’ particularity, or else in the essentialism of art as that which exists prior to the art-world abstractions of galleries, state-sponsored performance spaces and prestigious awards for ‘radical innovation’ à la the A rs E lectronica A wards. In truth what constitutes ‘noise’ is always changing and the avant-garde art-world bureaucracy uses both subversive chic and a distinction from vulgarly hedonistic pop culture to sustain its inert elitism. The R idiculous S ublime of Grindcore With neither the sacralizing legitimacy of the avant-garde authenticity nor the hedonic utility of the mainstream culture industry, grindcore is left in the wasteland of the ridiculous. A s its extremism is not legitimated by avant-garde discourse it becomes a mere joke, the tension relieved by positing it as disposably comic. Unlike the legitimate ‘absurdism’ of Beckett or even the more populist dark humour of Zappa, the absurdity of grindcore is reduced to a novelty or immature prank best ignored.17 Many grindcore bands facilitate such an attitude themselves through 16  To the point of noting the complicity of academic theorizing like his, or indeed mine: ‘A s we decipher, classify, and explain noise, we render it sensible and meaningful. T he brute materiality of the thing can then be integrated into the prevailing conceptual and economic system’ (Smith 51). 17  See, for example, Lynskey’s condescendingly sarcastic Guardian article on the extreme brevity of N apalm D eath’s ‘Y ou S uffer’.

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clumsy parody performances that fail to maintain the precarious tension between extreme absurdism and realist critique. One-joke bands like Lawnmower Deth reinforce what should be a self-evident point, namely that not all bands who fall under the rubric of grindcore are able or even interested in pushing the grindcore aesthetic to negative dialectical extremes. Most of these bands eventually end up in the safety of routine thrash/hardcore identity, as L awnmower D eth did. On the other hand many refuse to allow the relief of uncomplicated ridiculousness to be attributed to grindcore; both the renowned BBC DJ John Peel and eclectic music experimentalist Kevin Martin have reflected on how they experienced grindcore as simultaneously thrilling, dangerous and hilarious, without the latter cancelling out the former (Mudrian 124 and Eden).18 E ven the apparently ludicrous grindcore band The Locust, who perform songs titled ‘The Half-Eaten Sausage Would Like to See You in His Office’ in lurid green tight suits and mesh masks, reject the notion of just being a joke band, upholding the serious politics in their lyrics and performing with serious intensity (Mudrian 265). There is more than a passing similarity here with the D ada/S urrealist attempt to bind passionate absurdism to revolutionary critique without compromising the non-identical nature of the former to political ‘pragmatism’ (Vaneigem 18–19; see also Bürger). Ultimately, however confrontational or confusing, grindcore is about a jouissance of fun. A sense always remains of visceral extremism that might indeed be ridiculous, but which would rather risk being so than falling into the staid artworld or the equally boring pseudo-spontaneity of mainstream pop music. Conclusion Of course to pretend that grindcore remains immune, or was even radically external to, the culture industry would be just as naïve as any hagiography to the radical critique of avant-pop. In the more conventional sense in which commodification is understood as a ‘sell-out’, grindcore has certainly suffered from the homogenizing demands of corporate and technical standardization. Many original grindcore bands, like Carcass and Napalm Death, invariably drifted towards more conventional death metal structures – coincidentally at a time when their label, E arache R ecords, was conducting licensing and distribution deals with major American companies (Mudrian 185–94). At the same time, the demands of a more ‘professional’, ‘mature’ approach lead them to clean up their previously muddy sound and adopt the more serious virtuosity of death metal. E ven bands that have stayed true to grindcore forms have often succumbed to the contradictions between 18  This is evocative of a point John Limon makes about the tension inherent in absurd humour: ‘a joke involves tension and release … [b]ut a joke is more than tension and release: when people tell us jokes, our mystification lasts beyond the punch line. We feel sublime helplessness not merely for the duration of the joke’s suspense, but also before a timeless power’ (53).

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extremism and minimalism. Rodel notes that while technical skill in guitar playing is largely rejected in grindcore, the frantic pace of blast-beat rhythms has led to an emphasis on drumming virtuosity (239). More overt state censorship has also been successful in taming grindcore excess; though the obscenity case against Carcass was eventually aborted, it had the desired effect of making the band more cautious about future album visuals (Cloonan 354). Yet an analysis of grindcore negation remains pertinent, not simply in celebrating aesthetic transgressions but in taking advantage of the gaps the ridiculous immanence of grindcore opens up for a sustained non-commodified experience beyond the dominating identity of avant-pop and the mainstream culture industry. References A dorno, T heodor W. Aesthetic Theory. T rans. C . L enhardt. L ondon: R outledge and Kegan Paul, 1984. A dorno, T heodor W. The Culture Industry: S elected Essays on Mass Culture. E d. Jay Bernstein. L ondon: R outledge, 2001. A dorno, T heodor W. The Jargon of Authenticity. Trans. K. Tarnowski and F. Will. L ondon: R outledge, 1973. A dorno, T heodor W. N egative Dialectics. Trans. E.B. Ashton. New York: C ontinuum, 1990. A dorno, T heodor W. Prisms. T rans. S amuel and S hierry Weber. C ambridge, MA : MIT Press, 1981. AEC Ars Electronica Center Linz Museumsgesellschaft mbH: ‘Digital Musics.’ 2007. A rs E lectronica L inz mbH. 8 A pril 2008 http://www.aec.at/en/prix/cat_ digital_musics.asp. AEC Ars Electronica Center Linz Museumsgesellschaft mbH: ‘S ponsoring and S upport’. 2007. A rs E lectronica L inz mbH. 8 A pril 2008 http://www.aec.at/en/ prix/index.asp. Bains, Jon. Godflesh. 1992. C onvulsion Online. 8 A pril 2008 http://www.obsolete. com/convulsion/interviews/convulse/godflesh.html. Berger, Harris M. Metal, R ock, and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience. Hanover, N H: Wesleyan U niversity Press, 1999. Blush, S teven. ‘Grindcore.’ S pin 7.3 (1991): 35–6. Brutal T ruth. ‘A nti-Homophobe.’ Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme R esponses. 1992. Music and lyrics by Brutal T ruth. E arache S ongs. Buck-Morss, Susan. The O rigin of N egative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute. New York: Free Press, 1977. Bürger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-Garde. T rans. Michael S haw. Minneapolis, MN : U niversity of Minnesota Press, 1984. C attle D ecapitation. ‘V eal and the C ult of T orture.’ Human Jerky. 1999. Music and lyrics by D avid A stor, Gabe S erbian and T ravis R yan. T hree One G Publishing.

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C hriste, Ian. S ound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. C loonan, Martin. ‘“I Fought the L aw”: Popular Music and British Obscenity L aw.’ Popular Music 14.3 (1995): 349–63. D ee, L iam. ‘C reative A ccountancy: T he S upposed C ontradiction between A rt and Commodification.’ Entertext 5.1 (2005). 8 April 2008 http://arts.brunel.ac.uk/ gate/entertext/5_1/ET 51D eeE d.doc. D ee, L iam. ‘General A naesthesia: A esthetics, A rt, and C ommodity D esign.’ D iss. Macquarie U niversity, 2006. E den, John. The Bug: The Psychopathology of Kevin Martin. n.d. U ncarved.org. 8 A pril 2008 http://www.uncarved.org/dub/bug/bug.html. Foucault, Michel. The History of S exuality Volume O ne: An Introduction. L ondon: Penguin, 1981. Gourgouris, S tathis. ‘A dorno after S un R a.’ S trategies 6 (1991): 198–216. Hay, C olin. ‘Labor History S ymposium: U nderstanding R egime C hange in British Industrial R elations.’ Labor History 47.2 (2006): 227–35. Hopkins, Simon. ‘John Zorn Primer.’ The Wire 156 (1997): 38. Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: C ontinuum, 1972. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. T rans. L eon S . R oudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. L imon, John. S tand-up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America. D urham, NC : Duke University Press, 2000. The Locust. ‘The Half-Eaten Sausage Would Like to See You in His Office.’ Plague S oundscapes. 2003. Music and lyrics by T he L ocust. S elf published. Lynskey, Dorian. ‘Readers Recommend: Short Songs.’ The Guardian 18 August 2006. 8 April 2008 http://music.guardian.co.uk/readersrecommend/ story/0,1929597,00.html. Martin, Bill. Avant R ock: Experimental Music from the Beatles to Björk. C hicago, IL : Open C ourt, 2002. Moynihan, Michael and Didrik Søderlind. Lords of Chaos: The Bloody R ise of the S atanic Metal Underground. V enice, CA : Feral House, 1998. Mudrian, A lbert. Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. L os A ngeles, CA : Feral House, 2004. Napalm Death. ‘Cock-Rock Alienation.’ From Enslavement to O bliteration. 1988. Music and lyrics by Napalm Death. Earache Songs (UK). N apalm D eath. ‘It’s a M.A .N .S World.’ From Enslavement to O bliteration. 1988. Music and lyrics by Napalm Death. Earache Songs (UK). N apalm D eath. ‘Musclehead.’ From Enslavement to O bliteration. 1988. Music and lyrics by Napalm Death. Earache Songs (UK). N apalm D eath. ‘Y ou S uffer.’ S cum. 1987. Music and lyrics by Michael John Harris. Earache Songs (UK).

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N ehring, N eil. ‘“E veryone’s Given U p and Just Wants to Go D ancing”: From Punk to Rave in the Thatcher Era.’ Popular Music and S ociety 30.1 (2007): 1–18. Pérez, Jorge. ‘T he S oundscapes of R esistance: N otes on the Postmodern C ondition of S panish Pop Music.’ Journal of S panish Cultural S tudies 7.1 (2006): 75–91. Pettigrew, Jason. Godflesh: Louder Than Life. June 1992. A lternative Press. 8 April 2008 http://www.godflesh.com/articles/article2.html. Popoff, Martin. Black S abbath: Doom Let Loose. T oronto: EC W, 2006. Pozo, C arlos M. Earache R ecords: A Grindcore Post-Mortem. February 1998. Perfect S ound Forever. 8 A pril 2008 http://www.furious.com/Perfect/grindcore. html. Prindle, Mark. George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher – 2004. 2004. Markprindle.com. 8 April 2008 http://www.markprindle.com/fisher-i.htm. R eynolds, S imon. R ip It Up and S tart Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. L ondon: Penguin, 2005. Rodel, Angela. ‘Extreme Noise Terror: Punk Rock and the Aesthetics of Badness.’ Bad Music: The Music We Love to Hate. E d. C hristopher Washburne and Maiken Derno. New York: Routledge, 2004. 235–56. S avage, Jon. England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, S ex Pistols, Punk R ock, and Beyond. New York: St Martin’s Press, 2001. S choolman, Morton. ‘T he N ext E nlightenment: A esthetic R eason in Modern A rt and Mass C ulture.’ Journal for Cultural R esearch 9.1 (2005): 43–67. S herry, James and N eil A ldis. Heavy Metal Thunder: Kick-Ass Cover Art from Kick-Ass Albums. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2006. Smith, Nick. ‘The Splinter in Your Ear: Noise as the Semblance of Critique.’ Culture, Theory & Critique 46.1 (2005): 43–59. T hompson, S tacy. ‘C rass C ommodities.’ Popular Music and S ociety 27.3 (2004): 307–22. Vaneigem, Raoul (as Jules-François Dupuis). A Cavalier History of S urrealism. T rans. D onald N icholson-S mith. E dinburgh: A .K., 1999. Walser, R obert. R unning with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover, N H: Wesleyan U niversity Press, 1993. Watson, Ben. Art, Class and Cleavage: Quantulumcunque Concerning Materialist Esthetix. London: Quartet Books, 1998. Wells, S teven. The S tories Behind the S ongs: Punk, Young, Loud and S notty. N ew York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2004. Discography 7,000 D ying R ats. Fanning the Flames of Fire. Invisible, 1998. Brutal T ruth. Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme R esponses. E arache R ecords, 1992.

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Bullshit Detector #3. C rass R ecords, 1984. C annibal C orpse. Butchered at Birth. Metal Blade, 1991. C arcass. R eek of Putrefaction. E arache R ecords, 1988. C attle D ecapitation. Human Jerky. T hree One G, 1999. Final. O ne. S ubharmonic, 1994. Godflesh. Godflesh. 1988. E arache R ecords, 1992. T he L ocust. Plague S oundscapes. A nti, 2003. L ull. Continue. R elapse, 1996. N apalm D eath. From Enslavement to O bliteration. E arache R ecords, 1988. N apalm D eath. S cum. E arache R ecords, 1987. T errorizer. World Downfall. E arache R ecords, 1989.

Par t II T he L iterary and Mythological Heritage

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C hapter 4

D emons, D evils and Witches: T he Occult in Heavy Metal Music Helen Farley

Eugene Martone, his Fender Telecaster slung around his shoulder, walks tentatively onto the stage. He is here to play for the soul of his friend, bluesman Willie Brown, a harmonica player who in his youth made a deal with the D evil in return for musical virtuosity. T o represent his interests, Old S cratch has chosen Jack Butler, the archetypal heavy metal guitarist: brooding, long-haired with leather pants and a bad attitude. Butler carelessly lugs a heavy metal axe onto the stage and the contest begins. Initially, it sounds as if Butler has the edge. His screaming, distorted guitar soars and crashes, transcending the blues as his fingers fly supernaturally up and down the fretboard. Strings are bent to breaking in this display of awesome virtuosity. It looks all over for Martone but from somewhere the unsure youth conjures complicated classical riffs and intoxicating rhythms in a dazzling display of speed and musical genius. He snatches Brown’s soul back from S cratch as Butler, unable to match the youngster’s prowess, throws his guitar to the ground and stalks darkly off through the crowd. This scene, featuring the climactic guitar duel, is taken from Crossroads, an otherwise ordinary movie from 1986, but what this nine-minute scene succinctly summarizes is the close musical and thematic relationship between heavy metal music and the blues. S atanism has long been associated with heavy metal. C oncert goers display the ‘devil horns’ hand gesture legendarily popularized by Black Sabbath vocalist Ronnie James Dio. Lyrics often have Satanic or dark supernatural themes. A lbum covers are resplendent with demons or depict medieval encounters with mythical or magical figures. The names of heavy metal bands often incorporate Christian and Jewish religious and occult terms; examples include Exodus, Testament, Cathedral, Armored Saint, Morbid Angel, Black Sabbath, Demon and Possessed. T his chapter will investigate the association of heavy metal music with S atanism and the occult, tracing its lineage from A merican blues to the British Blues Boom of the 1960s to the beginnings of heavy metal in the late 1960s to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) that emerged in the late 1970s. R arely have lyrics come under such close scrutiny as they have with heavy metal. T he supernatural themes elaborated within the genre have attracted considerable media attention with several court cases proceeding against record companies and   Eugene was played by Ralph Macchio and Jack Butler by guitarist Steve Vai.

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bands whose music allegedly caused young people to commit suicide in response to the dark lyrical messages. Further, youth rebellion, graveyard desecration, animal sacrifice and other antisocial and offensive behaviours have been linked to heavy metal by sensationalist media, conservative politicians and parent groups often with little or no supporting evidence. With the themes of heavy metal attracting such close analysis, it becomes useful to determine the ultimate sources of the lyrical content. T he lineage of heavy metal has been well established. T he genre originated with Birmingham band Black Sabbath, who emerged towards the end of the British Blues Boom that spawned other influential bands including Cream and Led Zeppelin. T hese bands in turn drew their influences from the pre- and post-war American blues, maintaining not only a structural and melodic connection but also a thematic one (see Walser, R unning with the Devil 8–9 and Wright 370). The Blues T he blues evolved from the impassioned music of a people violently abducted from their homes in S enegal, the Guinea coast, the N iger delta and the C ongo in West Africa to an unknown territory inexplicably hostile (Stearns 17). As a musical form, the blues was fully formed by the end of the nineteenth century (Ferris, ‘Blue Roots’ 123), having evolved from the field hollers that eased the burden of picking cotton. Slaves sang to ease the erosion of their dignity and their abuse at the hands of their white oppressors (see Springer). Along with the blues evolved a lyrical vocabulary that ambiguously concealed criticisms of their abuse at the hands of plantation owners, providing a passive defiance and veiling unsuitable topics such as lurid sexuality or the expression of A frican spiritual beliefs. T hough these songs were heard by the white folk, they remained unaware of the actual content of the lyrics.

  Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest successfully defended court cases brought by parents of teenagers who committed suicide allegedly incited by their music. C alifornia teenager John McC ollom committed suicide while listening to the Ozzy Osbourne song ‘S uicide S olution’ (from the album Blizzard of O zz, 1980). McCollom’s parents sued Osbourne’s record company, CBS (McCollom v. CBS Inc. 1988). Another youth committed suicide to the same song. Again, the law suit was unsuccessful (Waller v. CBS Inc. 1991). The parents of a Nevada teenage boy sued CBS after he killed himself after listening to the Judas Priest album S tained Class (Vance v. CBS Inc. 1985); see Stack, Gundlach and R eeves.  C f. Breen. T he exception to this would be the association of ‘E soterrorism’ with black metal bands in Norway; see also Arnett, Metalheads 122–9.  T he British Blues Boom occurred from about 1962 until 1970. It coincided with an interest in the ‘race records’ of A merican blues artists and was fuelled by their E uropean tours; see also How Britain Got the Blues by R oberta Freund S chwartz.

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From the beginning, blues was known as the ‘Devil’s music’. It readily moved from the fields to the juke joints and house parties, an after-hours release from the day’s drudgery, becoming prevalent in the 1930s. T his burgeoning popularity saw blues become serious competition for the gospel music of the church (Ferris, Blues from the Delta 83). A half-remembered African belief named the guitar, as Alan Lomax argues (360), as the ride of the Devil and preachers exploited this link in order to boost church attendance at the expense of that for blues. Further, both blues musicians and preachers were viewed in the black community as ‘men of words’ or ‘good talkers’, and as such they competed for the same audience (Szwed 115). T hough blues songs and spirituals shared certain structural similarities, they differed in lyrical content: blues spoke to the mundane anxieties of individuals; the spirituals addressed the sacred concerns of the larger community. T he only hope for an improved situation lay in admission to heaven after death and anything jeopardizing this ultimate reward was shunned. In addition to singing, dancing was considered a valid way to express religious fervour in the black churches of the South, even though the dances were often lascivious. D ancing was considered proper as long as the legs were not crossed as they were in European-style dancing with a partner (see Puckett 60 and Jones 43). To dance in such a manner was to embrace Satan; and those musicians providing the musical backdrop could expect a similar fate. To exacerbate matters, preachers would sermonize about abstinence from sin and the evils of blues, frequently while running juke joints in their homes. Blues artists railed against this hypocrisy and blues became the voice of rejection of so-called respectable, but ultimately phoney, church-going society. Blues musicians often sang about vodou, a spiritual and magical system derived from Y oruba traditions. T o a race of people obsessed with being ‘white’ and rejecting their black skin – a topic discussed at length in Frantz Fanon’s Black S kin, White Masks – this remembrance of A frican religion was devilish. White masters and missionaries had little tolerance for these folk beliefs and indeed the C hristian missionaries associated the D evil with the Y oruba god Èsù or the Haitian vodou loa Papa Legba (Davis 105–6), long associated with the crossroads and the intermediary between humans and gods. T his association is also exploited in the movie Crossroads, where the devil goes by the name of ‘L egba’. Because of this diabolical association, many blues musicians considered themselves to be in league with S atan. Peetie Wheatstraw (real name William Bunch) marketed himself as the ‘Devil’s Son-in-Law’ or the ‘High Sheriff from Hell’, as R obert Palmer states in Deep Blues (127). Many other blues artists felt that if they were going to be labelled as cohorts of the D evil then they should play that role (Oliver 255), preferring honest performance to the hypocrisy of the preachers. These shadowy associations formed the backdrop to the blues of America’s S outh. A s time passed, intriguing legends arose: most are familiar with the story of

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R obert Johnson, whose tale was captivating enough to inspire the feature movie Crossroads. Just an average guitarist, Johnson sat in with Johnny S hines, Willie Brown, S on House and C harlie Patton. He disappeared from the scene for a year, only to reappear a consummate musician (Murray 109–10). Not only was Johnson morally suspect as a guitarist, he was rumoured to have entered into a formal arrangement with the D evil. A ccording to legend, Johnson had gone down to the crossroads, just as Dr Faustus did in that famous legend (Puhvel 169), and signed a pact with the D evil, delivering his soul in return for musical virtuosity, fame and all its trappings. T his was to be R obert Johnson’s escape from the extreme poverty into which he was born (Patterson 3). His song ‘Crossroad Blues’ reportedly portrays the scene of a man ‘standin’ at the crossroads’ and ‘sinkin’ down’ but receiving the ‘crossroad blues’. Certainly he lived as if he had a hellhound on his tail; soon becoming famous with an adoring woman in every town. In 1936, and again in 1937, he recorded 29 songs (six of which made explicit reference to Satan), providing him with more money than he had ever seen in his short life. Unfortunately, Johnson fulfilled his part of the bargain sooner than anticipated. A jealous husband poisoned him with strychnine after a performance in 1938. He took several days to die and renounced the D evil on his deathbed, at the last appealing to God to save his soul. It is difficult to say just when this legend first gained currency. Some claim S on House told the story to thrill E uropean audiences during the 1960s blues revival, actually relating the story of T ommy Johnson. A decade earlier, T ommy had likewise sold his soul to the Devil in the form of Legba in return for prowess. It was said that he went to the crossroads and a big black man strode up and tuned his guitar at the stroke of midnight (Murray 111). In fact, the open tunings used extensively in blues were generally associated with the D evil, and R obert Johnson’s use of them was seen as further evidence of collusion. Johnson’s style has influenced generations of guitar players who in turn forged impressive careers of their own, including Muddy Waters, E lmore James, E ric C lapton, Peter Green and Jimmy Page, who in turn inspired Brian Robertson (Thin Lizzy, Motörhead), Phil Campbell (Motörhead) and Steve Clark (Def Leppard) among others. The British Blues Boom In the United States, blues was presented on ‘race records’ for a black audience. Though Elvis Presley drew much of his influence from the genre, white listeners were shocked by the raw emotions and blatant sexuality conveyed by the music. By the mid-1960s, however, blues had become enormously popular with British  R obert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi in 1911, dying in 1938. He was the illegitimate son of Julia Dodds and farm worker Noah Johnson.  In the movie Crossroads, Willie Brown is depicted as a harmonica player though he was a guitar player; see Fusco, Crossroads.

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folk and pop artists, many of whom had begun their careers in blues outfits. Pink Floyd took their name from two obscure blues singers from rural South Carolina: Pink Anderson and Floyd Council (Boyd 43). Other bands following this route included the R olling S tones, the Y ardbirds, T he A nimals and Jethro T ull. From the early 1950s, black blues artists began to tour Europe to wide critical acclaim and this was to be the first significant white audience that blues garnered. Big Bill Broonzy toured in 1951 with his twelve-string guitar. Muddy Waters first toured Britain in 1958 and initially received a hostile reception because he played electric guitar rather than a ‘traditional’ acoustic one (Palmer, R ock & R oll 115). Big Bill Broonzy, S onny Boy Williamson, V ictoria S pivey, Otis R ush and John Lee Hooker also became popular as a result of these early visits (Clayson 44). Blues records were difficult to buy but nevertheless it was through this medium that the English musicians dug beyond the works of the touring artists, to an earlier generation of A merican blues players that included R obert Johnson. T he albums had to be ordered in from the United States and a few stores stocked them in London (Clayson 50). Some musicians, in particular Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, learnt all they could about the music and the people that originated the form (Coleman 38), evolving into blues virtuosos at a time when guitarists were traditionally subservient to the vocalist. They were the first guitar heroes, combining the rock ‘n’ roll of Chuck Berry with the deep blues of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf (Walser, R unning with the Devil 9). Clapton, then with the super-group Cream, worshipped at the altar of R obert Johnson, performing several blues covers including Johnson’s ‘C rossroad Blues’, which became simply ‘C rossroads’ (Coleman 38). Clapton fully immersed himself in the lore surrounding this legendary performer, intrigued by Johnson’s diabolical connections. T he result became evident in an interview he gave in July 1974, included in Palmer’s Deep Blues, following a concert with his post-Cream band, Derek and the Dominos: Once with the D ominos, we dropped some acid in S an Francisco and apart from the fact that the guitar was made of rubber, every bad lick I had, every naughty lick, blues lick … whatever you want to call it, turned the audience into all these devils in sort of red coats and things. A nd then I’d play a sweet one, and they all turned into angels. I prefer playing to angels personally. (128–9)

Because of this hallucinogenic vision, C lapton steered clear of the blues for some years. Jimi Hendrix, brought to E ngland by T he A nimals’ C has C handler, was instrumental in bringing musical virtuosity to British rock music. His pioneering guitar techniques and brash reinterpretation of the blues standards of his childhood fuelled the British Blues Boom. Hendrix had experienced the blues firsthand, cutting his chops with the likes of Little Richard, B.B. King, Sam Cooke and Solomon Burke. His music also replicated the themes of the blues, particularly the association with all that is devilish and dark. With ‘Voodoo Child (Slight Return)’

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Hendrix made a statement about his identity, just as Peetie Wheatstraw and R obert Johnson did some 40 years before: ‘Lord knows I’m a voodoo chile.’ T he British Blues Boom coincided with a burgeoning interest in the occult. In the 1950s Gerald Gardner ‘exposed’ traditional witchcraft and A lex S anders professed to be a hereditary witch, initiated by his grandmother. T he use of psychedelic drugs and cannabis was becoming widespread by those seeking a shortcut to spiritual experience. In the US , A nton L aV ey’s C hurch of S atan was founded, part of a wider movement against the establishment. Films such as R osemary’s Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973) proved popular, reflecting a desperate need to fill the void left by the declining authority of traditional religion (Russell 253). Also popular were the works of Aleister Crowley, a self-styled magician who promoted debauchery and excess as a valid path to enlightenment. C rowley attained an almost cult-like status among musicians including Jimmy Page and T he Beatles, who included his image on the cover of their S gt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. R hythm and blues musician Graham Bond believed he was the illegitimate son of C rowley and recorded albums of rituals with his band, Holy Magick, before falling under a train when he was 36 (Larkin 45). T he R olling S tones also embraced a S atanic image. T hey released ‘S ympathy for the D evil’ (Beggars Banquet, 1968) and were said to be intrigued by Robert Johnson’s devilish pact. Significantly, this posturing was more a rebellion against polite society than a reflection of Satanic belief. T owards the end of the 1960s, L ed Zeppelin, whose music is credited as the forerunner to heavy metal, arose from the ashes of an earlier R &B band, the Yardbirds. Led Zeppelin’s Birmingham-born singer, Robert Plant, undertook a pilgrimage to Clarksdale, Mississippi knocking at doors almost at random in an attempt to trace a surviving acquaintance of R obert Johnson. L ater he was to report: ‘I’ve never been so ridiculous in my life!’ (Clayson 104–5). There were also rumours that Plant possessed a glass jar containing soil from the crossroads where R obert Johnson legendarily made his pact with the D evil. But it is guitarist Jimmy Page who is best known for his occult dabblings, as well as his passion for the blues. Page was an avid collector of blues records, scanning the mailing lists of US independent labels like Excello, Aladdin, Atlantic and Imperial, and those British labels that began issuing R&B singles (Clayson 50). He was also a serious collector of A leister C rowley artefacts and cultivated a deep appreciation for the practice of magic. With his astrologer, he once owned an occult bookstore in Kensington, T he E quinox, which dealt in C rowley memorabilia. It was also rumoured that Page financed the reprinting of Crowley’s works (Moynihan and Søderlind 3). Page was so intrigued by the infamous magus that he bought Boleskine, C rowley’s estate, in 1970. It included a single-story mansion on the shores of Loch Ness that Crowley had acquired in 1900 specifically to perform a ritual requiring water, mountains and a building facing a certain direction. When Page took it over, he commissioned Satanist Charles Pace to decorate it with murals that would restore it to its ‘original condition’ (Konow 21). Page’s fascination with

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C rowley was further evidenced by his insistence that ‘D O WHAT T HOU WILT ’, C rowley’s famous maxim, be etched into the playout grooves of US pressings of Led Zeppelin III. Page was famously linked to another Crowley enthusiast, filmmaker Kenneth Anger. He was commissioned to write the soundtrack for A nger’s movie Lucifer R ising, but only managed to write a half hour’s worth of music before being dropped from the project (Clayson 225–6). Intriguingly, it was widely rumoured that L ed Zeppelin had entered into a Faustian pact with the D evil just as R obert Johnson had done. T his contract was allegedly drawn up in 1968. T hree members readily signed but bassist John Paul Jones refused (Patterson 106–7). The rumour came about because the band, in order to garner some publicity, had staged a record launch as a Black Mass, in the underground caves which originally housed the rites of S ir Francis D ashwood’s Hell-Fire C lub in the eighteenth century. R umours of a diabolical involvement proved persistent. When drummer John Bonham died in 1980, having asphyxiated on his own vomit after an alcoholic binge, it was said that he died as the result of one of Page’s experiments in black magic. Certainly, the lyrics of Led Zeppelin reflected Page and Plant’s interest in mysticism and the occult; populated by references to A leister C rowley’s T helemic religion, themes drawn from A ngloSaxon and Norse folklore, and the literary mythology of J.R.R. Tolkien’s works (Moynihan and Søderlind 4). E ngland’s power blues gave rise to what became heavy metal music. A long with Jimi Hendrix, these bands with their slower, more ominous tempos, thick bass and guitar unison riffs, musical virtuosity, distorted guitar and a powerful vocal style littered with screams and growls, provided the musical vocabulary for the emerging genre (Welch 18 and 25). Blues soon became a cliché, and heavy metal mutated from the remnants late in the 1960s, growing and evolving into a totally different genre (Brown 445); a reaction against the hippie ethos of sunshine and light. The Birth of Heavy Metal Many consider Black Sabbath to be the first heavy metal band (Konow 7), coming together in 1968, just as the time of blues in E ngland was drawing to a close. Blues rock bands were prominent as psychedelia was winding down (Hoskyns, ‘Prologue’ 5), but it was Black Sabbath who gave blues the impetus to morph to heavy metal. The band, however, were unaware of their significance, seeing themselves as nothing more than a really heavy 12-bar blues band (Clerk 13). T he four original members – John ‘Ozzy’ Osbourne, T ony Iommi, T erry ‘Geezer’ Butler and Bill Ward – grew up in working-class families close to each other in the town of Aston on the outskirts of the industrial city of Birmingham. T he area had been bombed heavily during the S econd World War and was still in the process of rebuilding. Iommi and Ward cut their teeth playing guitar and drums in a straight blues band originally called The Rest (and subsequently Mythology),

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before joining forces with Osbourne and Butler to become the Polka Tulk Blues Band, later Earth. They were influenced by the music of the British Blues Boom including that of Hendrix, C ream and T en Y ears A fter. However, another band on the scene went by the name E arth, causing considerable confusion and the search was on for a new name (Turner, ‘Black Sabbath’ 27). Osbourne tells the story of walking past a cinema, across the road from where they rehearsed; Italian director Mario Bava’s Black S abbath was playing. Iommi said: ‘Isn’t it strange that people pay money to see scary films? Perhaps we should start writing scary music’ (qtd. in Walsh 147). Subsequently, Butler wrote a song with the same title and the band adopted the name. With their music and performances, they attempted to recreate the same sort of feelings generated by horror movies (Turner, ‘Sympathy for the Ozzy’ 96). Butler wrote many of the lyrics for the band and was heavily influenced by the occult novels of Dennis Wheatley, also drawing on a superficial understanding of the occult elements in blues lore. Within a short time, Black Sabbath secured a residency at Hamburg’s StarClub, playing a bleak though ‘progressive’ blues style with startling intensity. Their sound was morbid, achieved by tuning their guitars as much as three semitones lower, which gave their riffs more depth and texture and could make a single chord sound huge and oppressive (Konow 7). The band adopted the infernal imagery that went with their name; wearing Satanic adornments and performing original pieces that incorporated occult and devilish themes. T heir self-titled debut sported an inverted cross on the inside front cover, the design originating with the record company rather than with the band (Turner, ‘Sympathy for the Ozzy’ 96). Robert Johnson may have sung about the Devil but Black Sabbath made the diabolical relationship visually explicit as well. From early in S abbath’s success, the band would receive many phone calls from Satanists, asking them to play at their Black Masses. Alex Sanders, ‘King of the Witches’, approached them to perform at a ‘N ight of S atan’ at S tonehenge. T he band declined and S anders put a hex on every member. When the band toured the US they received death threats, the police were reluctant to let them perform and shows were cancelled due to the dark imagery of their lyrics. In Los Angeles, they were cheered by members of C harles Manson’s family and in S an Francisco, Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, held a parade in their honour. Black Sabbath had never even heard of him (Clerk 32–3). In response Butler said: T he whole S atanism thing was a big surprise for us when we came to A merica. T he people in England, they don’t care about that sort of stuff; it is hard to shock people in that regard in E ngland. Of course, if we’d been putting cats and dogs down, then we would have shocked some English people, but with Satan, you just get laughed at. (Qtd. in Clerk 33)

Osbourne likens the members of Black Sabbath to actors. No one really believes that what they do on screen actually reflects their beliefs. When bands use occult

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themes in their music, he believes, they are doing it only for commercial success (in Turner, ‘Sympathy for the Ozzy’ 95–6). Just a couple of years later, another band emerged that would even more enthusiastically embrace occult imagery. Known originally as Pesky Gee!, Black Widow formed in 1970 in Leicester. Their first album, Sacrifice, contained mystical and demonic lyrics set to a contemporary heavy rock backdrop. They received advice from A lex S anders on the art of magic and their stage show provocatively featured a ritual that climaxed with the mock sacrifice of a naked female. Two band members – Jim Gannon and Jess ‘Zoot’ T aylor – went on to write a heavy metal musical with occult themes. With rival bands Black Sabbath and Black Widow, S atanic imagery became irrevocably associated with heavy metal music. Both exploited the shock value to augment their audiences without an underlying belief in the ideologies described in their lyrics. T eenage rebellion became as easy as buying a Black Sabbath record. With the addition of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore to the line-up of Deep Purple in 1969, all of the ingredients that would characterize heavy metal were in place. Blackmore added classical melodies into the blues rock mix, overdriving the whole lot with the distortion and volume of hard rock. Blackmore’s incorporation of classical melodies brought a new level of virtuosity to the music, enhancing the harmonic and melodic vocabulary of the genre. T his approach would be fully realized in what would become known as neo-classical metal, a genre exemplified by complex musical structures with musicians exhibiting a high level of musical virtuosity as exemplified by Yngwie Malmsteem, King Diamond and S teve V ai. Musical virtuosity became as much a part of heavy metal as occult themes and S atanism, and implicit in the combination was the idea of R obert Johnson’s Faustian pact. Musical virtuosity was bought for the price of a soul. Heavy metal was as much, if not more, the D evil’s music, as the blues had been half a century earlier. New Wave of British Heavy Metal E ngland, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, spawned a wave of new heavy metal bands, partly as a reaction to the demise of the original metal bands such as Black Sabbath but also as a reaction against punk music. Known as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM), the music tended to be crude, poorly produced   A more contemporary example of a band that uses Satanic and otherwise dark imagery purely as a marketing tool is the Finnish heavy metal band Lordi, winners of the 2006 E urovision S ong C ontest.   Deep Purple keyboardist, Jon Lord, was also classically trained though he favoured a fusion of classical music with rock but performed for classical audiences. His Concerto for Group and O rchestra was performed at the R oyal A lbert Hall in 1969 and more recently in 1999; see Walser, ‘Eruptions’ 266.

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and played by musicians with undeveloped talents. Prominent bands included V enom, A ngel Witch, T ygers of Pan T ang, A nvil and S axon, though they were hardly acknowledged for their virtuosity or the clarity of their sound. The bands attracted large followings in the USA though they rarely toured there, predominantly because they were signed to small, independent labels such as N eat that could not afford to finance tours to far-flung territories. Only the more popular bands such as Judas Priest and Motörhead managed to penetrate the US touring market. In the aftermath of the NWOBHM, many metal subgenres sprang into existence; some characterized by their lyrics depicting occultism or S atanism. Prominent among these were thrash, black metal and death metal. Thrash T hrash metal is characterized by music that is harder, faster and angrier. It emerged in C alifornia between 1981 and 1983, fusing elements of the N WOBHM from bands such as Iron Maiden with 1970s and 1980s punk rock (Brown 445). British band V enom’s 1981 release Welcome to Hell was a forerunner of early thrash metal. V enom, along with many of the bands that emerged into this burgeoning genre, embraced accelerated tempos, employing a characteristic snare drum pattern with rapidly picked single-string riffs or two-string powerchords. They frequently used a tritone interval called Diabolus in Musica (Devil in Music) which was banned from church music in the Middle A ges due to its apparent association with the Devil (see Walser in Dunn). In this context, such a diabolical association was encouraged and made overt by the pervasive use of S atanic symbolism. Metallica, with Master of Puppets (1986), were innovators of the genre, paving the way for significant subsequent developments. While in Europe, Onslaught, V enom, D anish band Mercyful Fate and the S wedish band Bathory perpetuated thrash metal. Their albums were dark and aggressive and made ample use of diabolical imagery. In addition to S atanic symbols, thrash metal frequently utilized imagery associated with other spiritual entities such as ghosts, angels, demons and witches (Brown 449). The song ‘The Haunting’, which appeared on the Testament album The Legacy in 1987, refers to ‘Headless ghosts’ and ‘S hadow plays’ and ends with everybody ‘slain’. The imagery was intended to shock and disgust the mainstream; many found it genuinely disturbing. Deena Weinstein argues that it was an attempt to reclaim metal for youth, particularly males, by making the music revolting to an authoritarian culture (48). Further, it was music of alienation which attracted those elements of society without the power to conventionally rebel against authority figures such as parents, teachers or bosses. The music provided a release for pent-up emotions, enabling fans to transcend their frustrations and aggravations (Brown 446).

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Black Metal When thrash met the Gothic subculture, black metal, with its exaggerated emphasis on Satanic and pagan symbols, came into being (Purcell 40; see also Introvigne). A gain, V enom is the band cited as spawning the genre, forming in 1979 from the ashes of several bands in northwest England. Consisting of Cronos (Conrad Lant), Mantas (Jeffrey Dunn) and Abaddon (Anthony Bray), the band emerged amidst the N WOBHM. With their 1982 album Black Metal, with a devilish face on its cover, the genre was established along with its moniker and Satanism became its defining theme (Sharpe-Young 414). The title song on Venom’s album Black Metal mentions key words like ‘black’, ‘Satan’, ‘chaos’ and ‘maniacs’. Following the chorus, which repeats the song title, listeners are invited to give up their ‘souls to the gods of rock ‘n’ roll’. Just as Robert Johnson and Jimi Hendrix believed they were of infernal stock, so did V enom proclaim their spiritual inheritance in the song ‘S ons of S atan’, written by C onrad L ant for the album Welcome to Hell (1981). The ‘blood, lust, hatred and scorn’ evoked lead to the expression that ‘Satan’s child’ is both ‘a believer’ and ‘going wild’. Onslaught were another British band that fully embraced the infernal image of black metal. Their second album, The Force (1986), which featured an inverted pentagram on its slick cover, presented provocatively named songs including ‘L et T here Be D eath’, ‘Flame of the A ntichrist’ and ‘Fight with the Beast’, written by Nige Rockett. For the purposes of considering these black metal bands, a distinction has been made between ‘moderate’ S atanism and fascist S atanism. T he former category accommodates organizations such as A nton L aV ey’s C hurch of S atan and the Temple of Set; whereas the latter category houses more extreme groups. Fascist S atanism is also opposed to capitalism, liberalism and democracy. T he antiS emitic undercurrents are a more recent addition to the genre. Organizations that fall into this category are typically small and include the Black Order, the Order of the N ine A ngles, the Ordo S inistra V ivendi and the Order of the Jarls of Balder. These organizations belong to a network called The Infernal Alliance (Introvigne). Satanists for their part view most black metal music as little more than adolescent angst; the anger and aggression giving a one-sided view of Satan, lacking the subtlety and seduction of their beliefs. Though there is a genuinely Satanic element in black metal, particularly in Northern Europe (cf. Moynihan and Søderlind), most bands and their fans are neither S atanist nor neo-fascist. T he symbolism, extreme lyrics and diabolical imagery are intended to shock and as such are a protest against the pervasiveness of societal norms. Death Metal T he death metal subgenre evolved from thrash metal in the early 1980s in the wake of the NWOBHM and is characterized by a high degree of dynamic intensity

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and high-speed percussion. T here is a lyrical preoccupation with drugs and sex but also with S atanism, anti-C hristianity and the occult. A s with other subgenres of metal, death metal is a form of rebellion and S atanism is no more than an unimaginative rebellion against C hristianity. It attempts to integrate that which is ‘primitive’ or ‘animalistic’ into the lifestyles of fans and acts as a safe outlet for those repressed feelings of frustration, anger and aggression. T his form of S atanism is viewed as being cartoonish and ridiculous by genuine S atanists. Most fans are not knowledgeable about Satanism and do not really know how to recognize it, says Akercocke’s David Gray (qtd. in Mudrian 254). Though death metal fans wear S atanist, pagan and occult symbols in the form of jewellery or patches, they are worn as a signature of identification with heavy metal, not as a religious or philosophical statement (Gross 125). One of the appeals of this music is that it is inaccessible to adult society. Rock ‘n’ roll was viewed in a similar way when it first emerged (Trzcinski 15). Satanic references within the lyrics only signify a form of subversion. E nglish bands that represent the genre include N apalm D eath (who also founded the grindcore genre), Nailed, Hecate Enthroned and Akercocke. Conclusion The lineage of heavy metal can be readily traced back through the early heavy metal bands of the industrial Midlands of England in the late 1960s, back through the blues rock of the British Blues Boom, and ultimately to the pre- and post-war blues of the southern U nited S tates. N ot only did blues lend its musical and lyrical vocabulary to heavy metal music, but also its supernatural and diabolical themes and associations. Just as blues provided a disempowered and disenfranchised people with a voice of rebellion and protest against the status quo, so does heavy metal music. Karen Halnon describes heavy metal as ‘carnival’ (34), raising the transgression ante to the extreme and challenging social rules concerning taste, authority, morality and propriety, the sacred and even civility itself. Blues was known as the ‘Devil’s music’ and became irrevocably intertwined with the legend of R obert Johnson’s Faustian pact where he traded his soul in exchange for musical virtuosity. A s much as the musicians of the British Blues Boom were intrigued by the culture and musicality of the blues, they were intrigued by the genre’s diabolical associations. T he interest in blues music and associated themes coincided with an occult revival which saw historical figures such as Aleister Crowley gain prominence. With the first heavy metal bands such as Black Sabbath and Black Widow, these themes were exaggerated in order to increase the popularity of the music. Once this diabolical association became established, heavy metal music was to embrace the S atanic and occult imagery wholeheartedly, for the most part not as an expression of religious or philosophical views but as a form of rebellion and protest against societal norms. T he idea of the Faustian pact remains ever present in the background. Much of heavy metal relies on a high

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degree of musical virtuosity; the implication being that it is derived from Satanic or other non-C hristian sources. References A ndroutsopoulos, Jannis K. ‘What N ames R eveal about the Music S tyle: A S tudy of N aming Patterns in Popular Music.’ Paper presented at the 7th International Pragmatics C onference, A ntwerp 2000. A rnett, Jeffrey Jensen. Metalheads: Heavy Metal Music and Adolescent Alienation. Boulder, C O: Westview Press, 1995. Ballard, Mary E ., A lan R . D odson and D oris G. Bazzini. ‘Genre of Music and L yrical C ontent: E xpectation E ffects.’ Journal of Genetic Psychology 160.4 (1999): 476–87. Black S abbath. D irs Mario Bava and S alvatore Billitteri. Galatea Film et al., 1963. Boyd, Joe. White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s. L ondon: S erpent’s T ail, 2006. Breen, Marcus. ‘A Stairway to Heaven or a Highway to Hell?: Heavy Metal Rock Music in the 1990s.’ Cultural S tudies 5.2 (1991): 191–203. Brown, C harles M. ‘Musical R esponses to Oppression and A lienation: Blues, S pirituals, S ecular T hrash, and C hristian T hrash Metal Music.’ International Journal of Politics, Culture and S ociety 8.3 (1995): 439–52. Burk, Greg. ‘Children of the Grave: From Black Sabbath to Modern Heavy Metal.’ Into the Void: O zzy O sbourne and Black S abbath. Ed. Barney Hoskyns. L ondon: Omnibus, 2004. 151–9. C layson, A lan. Led Zeppelin: The O rigin of the S pecies: How, Why and Where It All Began. N ew Malden: C hrome D reams, 2006. Clerk, Carol. O zzy O sbourne: The S tories Behind the Classic S ongs. L ondon: Carlton Books, 2002. C oleman, R ay. Clapton: The Authorized Biography. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1994. Crossroads. D ir. John Fusco. L os A ngeles: C olumbia Pictures, 1986. D avis, Francis. The History of the Blues: The R oots, the Music, the People from Charley Patton to R obert Cray. London: Secker & Warburg, 1995. D unn, S am and S cot McFadyen, dirs. Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. Warner, 2006. The Exorcist. Dir. William Friedkin. Hoya Productions, 1973. Fanon, Frantz. Black S kin, White Masks. Trans. Lam Markmann. London: Pluto Press, 1986. Ferris, William Jr. ‘Blue R oots and D evelopment.’ The Black Perspective in Music 2.2 (1974): 122–7. Ferris, William Jr. Blues from the Delta. E d. Paul Oliver. L ondon: N ovember Books, 1970.

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Gross, R obert L . ‘Heavy Metal Music: A N ew S ubculture in A merican S ociety.’ Journal of Popular Culture 24.1 (1990): 119–30. Halnon, Karen Bettez. ‘Heavy Metal C arnival and D is-A lienation: T he Politics of Grotesque R ealism.’ S ymbolic Interaction 29.1 (2006): 33–48. Hendrix, Jimi. ‘Voodoo Child (Slight Return).’ Electric Ladyland. 1968. Music and lyrics by Jimi Hendrix. Bella Godiva Music. Hinds, E lizabeth Jane Wall. ‘T he D evil S ings the Blues: Heavy Metal, Gothic Fiction and “Postmodern” D iscourse.’ Journal of Popular Culture 26.3 (1992): 151–64. Hoskyns, Barney, ed. Into the Void: O zzy O sbourne and Black S abbath. L ondon: Omnibus, 2004. Hoskyns, Barney. ‘Prologue: An Ozznopsis.’ Into the Void: O zzy O sbourne and Black S abbath. Ed. Barney Hoskyns. London: Omnibus, 2004. 1–11. Introvigne, Massimo. ‘The Gothic Milieu: Black Metal, Satanism and Vampires.’ 26 March 2000. C enter for S tudies on N ew R eligions. 6 A pril 2008 http://www.cesnur.org/testi/gothic.htm. Johnson, R obert. ‘C rossroad Blues.’ R amblin’ on My Mind/Crossroad Blues. 1936. Music and lyrics by R obert L eroy Johnson. King of S pades Music. Jones, L eR oi. Blues People. Westport, CT : Greenwood Press, 1980. Konow, D avid. Bang Your Head: The R ise and Fall of Heavy Metal. New York: T hree R ivers Press, 2002. Larkin, Colin. The Guinness Who’s Who of Blues. 2nd ed. Enfield: Guinness, 1995. L omax, A lan. The Land Where the Blues Began. L ondon: Minerva, 1994. Lucifer R ising. D ir. Kenneth A nger. V aughan Films et al., 1972. McIver, Joel. Justice for All: The Truth about Metallica. L ondon: Omnibus, 2004. Moynihan, Michael and Didrik Søderlind. Lords of Chaos: The Bloody R ise of the S atanic Metal Underground. 2nd ed. L os A ngeles, CA : Feral House, 1998. Mudrian, A lbert. Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. L os A ngeles, CA : Feral House, 2004. Murray, C harles S haar. Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and the Post-War Rock ‘N ’ R oll R evolution. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1991. Oliver, Paul. Blues Fell This Morning: Meaning in the Blues. 2nd ed. C ambridge: C ambridge U niversity Press, 1990. Palmer, R obert. Deep Blues. L ondon: Macmillan, 1981. Palmer, R obert. R ock & R oll: An Unruly History. New York: Harmony Books, 1995. Patterson, R . Gary. Take a Walk on the Dark S ide: R ock and R oll Myths, Legends, and Curses. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. Puckett, Newbell Niles. The Magic and Folk Beliefs of the S outhern N egro. N ew York: Dover, 1969. Puhvel, Martin. ‘T he Mystery of the C ross-R oads.’ Folklore 87.2 (1976): 167–77.

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Purcell, N atalie J. Death Metal Music: The Passion and Politics of a S ubculture. Jefferson, NC : McFarland, 2003. R osemary’s Baby. Dir. Roman Polanski. William Castle Productions, 1968. R ussell, Jeffrey Burton. Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World. Ithaca, NY : C ornell U niversity Press, 1986. S chwartz, R oberta Freund. How Britain Got the Blues: The Transmission and R eception of American Blues S tyle in the United Kingdom. A ldershot: A shgate, 2007. S harpe-Y oung, Garry. A–Z of Thrash Metal. London: Cherry Red Books, 2002. S pringer, R obert. ‘T he R egulatory Function of the Blues.’ The Black Perspective in Music 4.3 (1976): 278–88. Stack, Steven, Jim Gundlach and Jimmie L. Reeves. ‘The Heavy Metal Subculture and S uicide.’ S uicide and Life-Threatening Behaviour 24.1 (1994): 15–23. S tearns, Marshall W. The S tory of Jazz. L ondon: Oxford U niversity Press, 1970. S zwed, John F. ‘Musical A daptation among A fro-A mericans.’ The Journal of American Folklore 82.324 (1969): 112–21. T estament. ‘T he Haunting.’ The Legacy. 1987. Music by E ric S tanley Peterson and Alexander Nathan Skolnick, lyrics by Eric Stanley Peterson and Steven Michael S ouza. Zazmar Music. Trzcinski, Jon. ‘Heavy Metal Kids: Are They Dancing with the Devil?’ Child and Youth Care Forum 21.1 (1992): 7–22. Turner, Steve. ‘Black Sabbath: An Unpublished Interview for Beat Instrumental, March 1970.’ Into the Void: O zzy O sbourne and Black S abbath. E d. Barney Hoskyns. London: Omnibus, 2004. 27–9. T urner, S teve. Hungry for Heaven: R ock ‘n’ R oll and the S earch for R edemption. L ondon: Hodder & S toughton, 1988. T urner, S teve. ‘S ympathy for the Ozzy: S abbath, S atanism and Me: U npublished Interview C onducted on July 31, 1984.’ Into the Void: O zzy O sbourne and Black S abbath. Ed. Barney Hoskyns. London: Omnibus, 2004. 95–9. Venom. ‘Black Metal.’ Black Metal. 1982. Music and lyrics by A nthony Bray, Jeffrey D unn and C onrad T homas L ant. N otting Hill Music. V enom. ‘S ons of S atan.’ Welcome to Hell. 1981. Music and lyrics by A nthony Bray, Jeffrey D unn and C onrad T homas L ant. N otting Hill Music. Walser, R obert. ‘E ruptions: Heavy Metal A ppropriations of C lassical V irtuosity.’ Popular Music 11.3 (1992): 263–308. Walser, R obert. R unning with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover, N H: Wesleyan U niversity Press, 1993. Walsh, John. ‘Master of R eality: Ozzy Osbourne Gets a Grip.’ Into the Void: O zzy O sbourne and Black S abbath. Ed. Barney Hoskyns. London: Omnibus, 2004. 143–59. Weinstein, D eena. Heavy Metal: A Cultural S ociology. New York: Lexington Books, 1991.

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Welch, C hris. ‘Purple Pigs Might Fly: L ife before S abbath.’ Into the Void: O zzy O sbourne and Black S abbath. Ed. Barney Hoskyns. London: Omnibus, 2004. 15–29. Wright, R obert. ‘“I’d S ell Y ou S uicide”: Pop Music and Moral Panic in the A ge of Marilyn Manson.’ Popular Music 19.3 (2000): 365–85. Discography T he Beatles. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Parlophone/C apitol/E MI, 1967. Black Sabbath. Black S abbath. V ertigo, 1970. Black Widow. Sacrifice. C BS , 1970. D eep Purple. Concerto for Group and O rchestra. Harvest, 1969. Hendrix, Jimi. Electric Ladyland. MCA , 1968. Johnson, R obert. The Complete R ecordings. S ony Music E ntertainment, 1990. Judas Priest. S tained Class. C BS , 1978. L ed Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin III. A tlantic, 1970. Metallica. Master of Puppets. Elektra, 1986. Onslaught. The Force. Blackend Records, 1986. Osbourne, Ozzy. Blizzard of O zz. E pic, 1980. T he R olling S tones. Beggars Banquet. D ecca, 1968. T estament. The Legacy. New York: Megaforce/Atlantic, 1987. V enom. Black Metal. N eat R ecords, 1982. V enom. Welcome to Hell. N eat R ecords, 1981.

C hapter 5

Images of Human-Wrought D espair and D estruction: S ocial C ritique in British A pocalyptic and D ystopian Metal Laura Wiebe Taylor

S ince its early rumblings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, heavy metal music has often been the target of criticism founded on aesthetic as well as moral grounds, both of which discount the music’s empowering possibilities and potential for social critique. Unsurprisingly, the genre’s sonic aggression and dark imagery have failed to gain many supporters in ‘respectable’ culture. In fact, the social and political institutions that most strongly object to and attempt to discredit heavy metal are usually the very institutions toward which the music and musicians direct their aural and verbal attacks. The narrow-minded aesthetic judgements and conservative moral panics that fuel many anti-metal sentiments fail to recognize that within metal’s images of destruction and despair often lie the seeds of utopian possibility, particularly when such narratives locate the blame for oppressive and apocalyptic outcomes in human society, and leave room for the chance of averting such disaster. For ‘metalheads’, there is pleasure and an embodiment of power in the music, catastrophic narratives and imagery (verbal, musical and visual) included. The pleasure in metal is multi-dimensional – stemming from, for example, the honesty of music that exposes the harsh realities of the world, or the physical stimulation of extreme tempos, distortion and amplification – but the genre’s darker side is not simply about shock tactics and sensory overload. Tapping into the spirit of the dystopian tradition, metal also makes use of its harsh lyrics, sounds and visual imagery to express critical concerns about human behaviour and decision-making and anxieties about the future. V isions of utopia in metal may be rare but the genre does not negate the possibility of utopian hope, and within the vast body of metal texts there are many works that approach images of darkness and destruction from a critical, dystopian position. T he dystopian tradition has a rich history in the U nited Kingdom – many early works of dystopia and science fiction are British in origin – and British metal, from its founding moments through to the current century, has also demonstrated manifestations of that critically pessimistic spirit at times. Artists such as Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Bolt Thrower and Cathedral use (if not consistently) the  S ee also A rnett, who sees in metalheads predominantly alienated youth.

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vocabulary of science fiction, apocalypse and dystopia to expose the horrors that may lie in our futures. The following analysis looks at apocalyptic and dystopian narratives and imagery in the lyrics, sounds and visual display of several works from these four bands’ discographies, examining not just the references to and representations of disaster and destruction but also the potential for social critique. While this music seems, at surface level, to revel in despair, deeper consideration also reveals expressions of concern for the fate of the planet and the human species in the face of unchecked industrialization, political oppression and high-tech warfare, and room for hope, however faint, that disaster may still be averted. Dystopia and Metal Music Dystopia, as a narrative form, is not a complete negation of or attack on utopian possibility; rather, dystopian expression lies on a continuum between utopia and anti-utopia, between militant and resigned pessimism, between open formations that create the potential for hope and closed texts that imply hope is already lost (Moylan 155–7). While specific texts vary in which direction and how far they lean, a dystopian narrative never entirely precludes the possibility of hope, and thus maintains at least a modicum of progressive potential – serving as a warning, not a death sentence (Moylan ch. 5). Such dystopian warnings have proliferated in science fiction literature and film since the Second World War. Following in the tradition of classic dystopian narratives such as A ldous Huxley’s Brave N ew World (1932) and George Orwell’s N ineteen Eighty-Four (1949), these texts – these ‘new maps of hell’ (Amis) – envision conformist or totalitarian utopias as nightmares in our own planet’s future or reveal the apocalyptic disasters that may lie ahead. Metal’s dystopian visions stem from the same popular imagination. A s D eena Weinstein (Heavy Metal 39) and Jack Harrell (94) correctly observe, metal did not invent the discourse of destruction: the images are already there, in pre-existent cultural and artistic traditions and in the conditions of contemporary society. However, while both scholars discuss metal’s preoccupation with chaos, darkness and disaster, and note the genre’s rejection of utopianism, neither actually situates the music and its culture within the dystopian tradition. Weinstein suggests that metal’s chaos ‘overwhelms’ the utopianism associated with the music of the 1960s counterculture (Heavy Metal 39). Harrell offers   See Amis 98–9; Braun 74–5; Hillegas 3–5; Moylan chapters 5 and 6; Samuelson in Moylan 166–7; Sontag 215; Telotte 104; and Weiss 36–7.   Although Weinstein does not link the metal genre as a whole to the dystopian tradition, she does set the stage for a dystopian reading of R ush’s 2112 (1976) and the theocracy it depicts (Heavy Metal 124; see also S erious R ock and ‘Rock Protest Songs’). Both D urrell Bowman and S ean Kelly have expanded upon the relationship between R ush’s music and dystopia. E lsewhere, I discuss the music of N orth A merican bands Fear Factory and Voivod in terms of the critical dystopia.

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a complementary argument about metal’s ‘diatribes of modern corruption’ – specifically, songs by American thrash bands that abandon naive calls for utopian peace to address, instead, the frustration of struggling ‘against the inherent weaknesses of institutional, highly managed societies’ (96–7). Robert Walser similarly argues that metal’s darkness is intertwined with the darkness of contemporary Western society, namely the ‘war, greed, patriarchy, surveillance, and control’ that are part of the ‘modern capitalist security state’ (163). Within this context metal lyrics often pursue ‘fantasies of empowerment’ that resist oppressive control, while some songs – Walser offers a few by Judas Priest as examples – are more specific in their representation of society’s nightmarish side and may be read as products of the serious contradictions brought forth by contemporary capitalism (164–5). Such analyses are insightful and elucidating, and often acknowledge the precise sociopolitical conditions in which metal is produced (and which then inevitably influence that production). However, it is also possible to read some ‘dark’ metal texts in the context of dystopian discourse – not simply as ways of negotiating or fantasizing empowerment and expressing frustration within a contemporary environment, but as a means of exposing and resisting the corruption, inequity, violence and oppression implicated in modern political and economic conditions and visible in the distribution of technology, unchecked development, environmental devastation and war. T ranslated into dystopian metal terms, these concerns take the form of songs about the horrors of war and the risk of annihilating humankind with advanced or nuclear technology, the exploitation and destruction of the environment, and the oppression and destruction of the individual by controlling institutions and global powers – often supported by the failure of those same individuals to think for themselves and learn from society’s past mistakes. Societies’ mistakes have helped make dystopia, rather than utopia, a predominant mode of sociopolitical critique throughout the past century. U topianism generally fell out of favour with artists, critics and philosophers – those who desire change as well as those who do not – as an impossible and dangerous ideal, even while Western capitalist democracy assures us that we are already living the utopian dream (see Jameson 52–5; Moylan 139–40). If, in such an environment, metal has a hard time envisioning a utopian alternative to its images of darkness, it is hardly surprising. But metal’s loss of faith in utopianism, as Weinstein argues, might be more immediately traced to a reaction against the ‘failed youth revolution’ of the 1960s counterculture (Heavy Metal 13), a sentiment captured in an anecdote explaining that Black Sabbath took its name from a horror film title as ‘a corrective to the “peace and love” credo that permeated the youth culture’ of the 1960s (Weinstein, Heavy Metal 33; see also Harrell 97). Early American metal, according to David Szatmary, reflected the ‘militant mood’ of the late 1960s with the music’s

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‘loud, explosive’ sounds (182). British bands like Black Sabbath – although geographically removed from the A merican anti-V ietnam War protests, campus violence and race riots (Szatmary 170–74) – faced a grim enough environment at home, a country that had lost its status and prestige as a colonial power, and was troubled by its own violent conflicts in Northern Ireland and increasing social and economic problems. E ven the geographical origins of British metal offered grim surroundings: Birmingham was, at the time, ‘a crumbling factory town’, and musicians of bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest ‘[came] of age in the years following World War II … surrounded by the bombed-out rubble left by massive Nazi bombing raids’ (Christe 1). Metal music coalesced – and in many cases has continued to be made – in an environment where the failure of capitalist progress and the grimness of military power lay apparent. Militant grimness surfaces in every dimension of metal – its visual imagery, its lyrics and its music. Band logos, concert staging and videos range from unsettling or disorienting to ominous and threatening. L yrics dealing with chaos are a specialty of the metal genre, encompassing descriptions, weak responses and outright challenges – and not necessarily expressions of negation (Weinstein, Heavy Metal 38–41). When metal’s lyrical focus ‘on the bleak but concrete horrors of the real or possibly real world’ (Weinstein, Heavy Metal 50) combines with the genre’s manifestations of social consciousness and critique, its darkness takes a dystopian rather than anti-utopian turn, evoking potential openings for hope within the verbal and visual text or making it possible to take up a critical, even hopeful, position outside it. Metal is also well equipped to evoke dystopian images in sonic form, with distortion and power that can become oppressive at times (Walser 54), evoking a sense of domination and control (Walser 41–9), and through harmonic choices that evoke instability and claustrophobia, or are atonal and dissonant (see Walser 47; Harrell 94). Doom and death metal take this even further with extreme speeds (slow as well as fast), frequent tempo changes, growled, guttural or screamed vocals, down-tuned guitars and the double bass or kick drum. Y et the sound of metal music is not resignedly pessimistic, and the pleasure the music offers – its embodiment and appropriation of freedom and power, the sense of community metal can invoke – makes room for at least the potential of utopian possibility. Metal offers its fans an impression of what utopia might feel and sound like, and although that image may be light-years away from the ideal of a non-fan, it makes room for the possibility of hope within what is often an intensely pessimistic   Other critics have also linked heavy or hard rock bands of the late 1960s with the militant spirit of the times, as has Chuck Eddy when discussing Detroit’s MC5 (Waksman ch. 6).   See Kaplan 60–61; Walser 114; and Weinstein, Heavy Metal 28–31 and 166.   For more on social consciousness and commentary in metal, see also Friesen and Helfrich 269–71; Harrell 96–7; Purcell 45–9; and Weinstein, Heavy Metal 51.   See Berger 57–64; Bogue, Deleuze 88–99 and ‘Violence’ 95; Harrell 93–4; Purcell 9.

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form. And the power that is a primary focus of heavy metal does not simply find representation in the music. R ather, metal enacts power, and the intense volume at which the music tends to be played makes it possible for the listener to share in that power as a bodily experience (Walser 45), not just as an individual but also, in the context of the concert experience, as part of a community of fans.10 A lthough metal’s power has the potential to overwhelm, oppression and claustrophobia are often disrupted or resisted – by melody and by the movement between ensemble and solo sections creating a ‘dialectic of freedom and control’ (Walser 49–50). Displays of instrumental, particularly guitar virtuosity, can evoke notions of heroism, individualism and ‘an escape from social constraints’ (Macan 46; see also Waksman 243 and Walser 75). The listener can share in this as well, experiencing both the power and ‘unitary control’ of the music’s steady, rhythmic pulse and the ‘escape and reintegration’ enacted by accents and deviations, particularly those of the electric guitar and vocals (Walser 49–50). When combined with social critique and visions of possibly real worlds, these small openings create the potential for hope and ensure that some metal expressions are not anti-utopian, but dystopian in nature, a reminder that annihilation is not the best of all available alternatives. This dystopian dialectic of darkness and hope is exemplified in many ways by Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Bolt Thrower and Cathedral. Dystopia in British Heavy Metal: Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Bolt Thrower and Cathedral Dystopianism in metal can be traced back to Black Sabbath – a band frequently credited with founding the genre, establishing its apocalyptic tone and inspiring metal’s more ‘extreme’ subgenres – black metal, death metal and doom.11 Both Black Sabbath, who released its first album in 1970 (Black S abbath), and Judas Priest, who debuted four years later (R ocka R olla, 1974), came from the young, white, male industrial working class of Birmingham, England (Walser x). The other two bands considered here originated nearby in C oventry (although both are sometimes cited as coming from Birmingham), emerging in the late 1980s as   R ichard D yer has argued that entertainment, in general, offers us utopian images – not through direct representation (‘how [utopia] would be organized’) but by giving us an idea of ‘what utopia would feel like’ (20). Walser makes reference to Dyer’s argument in regards to his reading of ‘R unning with the D evil’ by V an Halen with its fantasy of escape from the very social constrictions within which such fantasies are produced (52, 189n61).   See Gross 124; Harrell 100–102; Walser 41–6; Weinstein, Heavy Metal 23, 27. 10  For some of the relevant work on metal and community in relation to power and to the concert experience, see Breen 200; Harrell 101; Walser 114; Weinstein, Heavy Metal 51–2, 207, 272. 11  See Berger 56–7; Bogue, Deleuze 85; Bogue, ‘Violence’ 99; Christe 4; Epstein and Pratto 68; Harrell 97; Walser 8–10; Weinstein, Heavy Metal 14–15.

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part of E ngland’s strong underground metal scene.12 Bolt T hrower, named after a ‘hostile siege device’ from a war-themed role-playing game called Warhammer (Earache),13 released its debut record in 1988 (In Battle There Is N o Law), while Cathedral released its first EP in 1990 (In Memoriam), and both bands have released albums into the 2000s. Black Sabbath’s early œuvre might be termed ‘primordial’ metal, notable for characteristics like low frequency tones and heavy distortion. Judas Priest, on the other hand, is often characterized as part of the N ew Wave of British Heavy Metal predominant in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Bolt T hrower and C athedral have strong ties to the U K grindcore movement – in fact, C athedral’s vocalist, L ee D orrian, was formerly a member of grindcore act N apalm D eath – but Bolt T hrower is generally described as a death metal band and Cathedral as doom (with elements of heavy blues-rock and psychedelia in direct descent from Black Sabbath). The following analysis will examine dystopianism in the works of these four bands, beginning with visual imagery – album artwork and videos – before addressing the lyrics and sounds of the music. Album covers were at one time one of the first representations of a recording that fans would encounter. Although it took the metal genre almost a decade to establish a coherent visual code (Weinstein, Heavy Metal 29), even some of the earliest metal artwork, right down to band logos, offered a fair indication of the ‘heavy’ and ‘dark’ music and lyrics inside. Black Sabbath did not maintain a consistent logo on its album covers over the years, but Judas Priest, by its fourth album, had developed an angular, sharp-edged logo often coloured red or a metallike grey, its lettering underscored by a thick, jagged line. Bolt Thrower’s logo captures the war-like connotations of the band’s name, incorporating arrowheads at the tail ends of several thick, block letters – the letters themselves often shaped and coloured like the blades of swords. Cathedral’s logo evokes, rather than violent aggression, the combination of strength and decay that Walser finds in Iron Maiden’s artwork (153); the letters are thick but rounded, and cracked like the surface of old, weathered stone. Images that disorient and unsettle, that evoke destruction and power, proliferate on the bands’ album covers as well. Although Black Sabbath’s album artwork has demonstrated a wide range of artistic styles and subjects, several covers are dark or disturbing – a distorted photograph of an eerie rural scene with a black cloaked young woman at its centre (Black S abbath, 1970) or a painting of a violent urban 12  This scene is ‘grindcore’, closely related to death metal and strongly influenced by punk. Like other metal musicians, grindcore performers are predominantly white and male. Of the four bands examined here only Bolt T hrower’s bassist, Jo Bench, subverts the stereotype by being female. For band biographies see BoltT hrower.com, C athedralC oven. com and E arache.com. 13  Warhammer is made by Games Workshop, a company that produces ‘tabletop fantasy and futuristic battle games’, and it is one of their most famous; Warhammer 40,000 is set in a future where, as the makers explain (with or without a sense of irony), ‘Mankind teeters on the brink of extinction’ (www.games-workshop.com).

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scene peopled with faceless hooded figures (Mob R ules, 1981), for example. On the front of Paranoid (1970) a blurred, sword-wielding figure in red emerging from a dark forest is more disorienting than threatening, as the ‘warrior’ looks like a young man dressed up in long underwear rather than a trained fighter – perhaps a comment on the common soldier as young man unprepared for war. The artwork was initially designed to reflect the original album name, War Pigs; however, the title (but not the artwork) was changed at the last minute due to record company concerns of possible controversy (see Wilkinson 63 and McIver 55–6). The cover of Master of R eality (1971) is particularly unsettling in its rejection of representation. T he band’s name looms large in fat purple letters but there are no pictures and the album title is a mere (sinister?) suggestion. Judas Priest album covers are more consistent in tone, exploring dark, dystopian, even apocalyptic, imagery through a few different styles. S ome images are religious-themed – the painting of a winged man in a flaming landscape (an angel in hell) on S ad Wings of Destiny (1976), for example – but many more evoke, in varying degrees, dangerous technology and violence. T hese include a futuriststyled eagle/fighter plane (S creaming for Vengeance, 1982) and robot beast/tank (Defenders of the Faith, 1984), and a dragon/motorcycle with saw blade wheels (Painkiller, 1990). This cover for Painkiller shows the motorcycle in mid-air, driven by a winged metallic figure (an angel/cyborg, perhaps – described as a ‘saviour’ in the lyrics of the title track), while in the lower background skyscrapers topple into a lake of lava at whose centre stands a monolith (the trident-like Judas Priest symbol). Even the lettering of the album title points to the destruction captured by this apocalyptic imagery with cracked letters on the verge of explosion, fragments already flying off into the night sky. Bolt Thrower’s violent-themed artwork focuses on scenes of battle, both realistic and fantastical. R eality-based covers range from a photo of a L ondon war monument (Those O nce Loyal, 2005) to a copy of Delacroix’s painting Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople on 12 April 1204 (1804). Others more representative of science fiction and fantasy tend to feature technologically advanced armour and weapons, or sword-wielding warriors and medieval-influenced armour, and human soldiers often facing machines or monstrous enemies (R ealm of Chaos, 1989; Warmaster, 1991; Honour – Valour – Pride, 2001). The original pressing of R ealm of Chaos featured artwork designed by Games Workshop, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere with numerous bodies in the frame, all clustered and piled on top of each other at the centre; it also features the subtitle ‘Slaves to Darkness’.14 The later artwork is less oppressively cluttered, but both covers convey an apocalyptic tone – heavily armoured, technologically equipped soldiers (the odd human face visible) are captured mid-battle, and laser fire, smoke and flames nearly eradicate any sense of setting and surround even the album title. 14 T his is the image available on the band’s website (BoltT hrower.com http://www. boltthrower.com), and later pressings of the album thank the company ‘for the original art on [the] initial printing and all their input’.

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Cathedral’s album artwork tends to be more unsettling than catastrophic or dystopian, but the images on most of the band’s records are chaotic and claustrophobic – surreal and fantastical figures crowded together, some of them threatening or malformed, in paintings reminiscent of works by Jheronimous Bosch.15 T he covers themselves generally show one section of a six-panel piece, visible in full when the booklet unfolds. Some of the figures – human and nonhuman – wield weapons ranging from maces and swords (The Ethereal Mirror, 1993, and Caravan Beyond R edemption, 1998, for example) to guns (S upernatural Birth Machine, 1996) or a missile (The Ethereal Mirror). Images of flawed or sinister authority figures appear as well (The Carnival Bizarre, 1995; S upernatural Birth Machine), as do representations of bondage and torture (Caravan Beyond R edemption, S upernatural Birth Machine, The Ethereal Mirror). Human and other recognizable shapes anchor these paintings to the known world, but in a dark and disturbing, rather than a comfortable way.16 R anging from unsettling or disturbing to outright apocalyptic, the visual imagery used by Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Bolt Thrower and Cathedral sets the stage for the more explicit depictions of dystopia in the bands’ music, and the more vivid representations in their videos. While visually stimulating, their videos most often evoke dystopia in an indirect way, creating a general sense of darkness, disorientation and chaos far more often than explicit social critique. Conceptual imagery, dystopian or otherwise, is rare in early Black Sabbath videos, which tend to present actual concert footage.17 However, these videos do hint at the unsettling and chaotic atmosphere more clearly visible in later performances and videos – including those of Judas Priest, Bolt T hrower and C athedral – with red light bathing a dark stage (‘N.I.B.’, ‘War Pigs’ – both 1970), flashing lights and disorienting effects (‘Paranoid’, 1970), and the band members’ demonstrations of action, excess and rebellion on stage (‘Children of the Grave’, 1974). ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ (1973), an early conceptual video, is more visually disruptive, exploiting the rapid cuts and camera movement, and extreme angles and proximity that would be common (if more expertly used) features of later metal videos.

15  Jheronimus (or Hieronymous) Bosch was active in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and notable for his ‘[f]antastic creatures, monstrous demons, crossbreeds, and strange inventions’ (Marceau 246). He is cited as an influence by Dave Patchett, who painted the artwork used by Cathedral for several of its albums, EPs and singles (www. davepatchett.com). 16 T he N orth A merican pressings of S upernatural Birth Machine and Endtyme feature different cover art from the E uropean releases, but the painting from S upernatural Birth Machine described here is present inside the album booklet of the North American version. 17  The videos are taken from the DVD The Black S abbath S tory: Volume O ne (2002).

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U nsettling, rebellious, violent and dystopian imagery is more readily found in the videos of Judas Priest.18 In live performance sequences (‘staged’ as well as concert footage), band members often wear studded leather clothing, including armour-like arm and leg guards (‘Living After Midnight’, 1980). Flames, red or glaring white lights and thick smoke create a hellish onstage atmosphere (‘Love Bites’), and lasers evoke dangerous technology as they ‘flash around the stage with scary precision’ (Walser 164). A few of Judas Priest’s conceptual videos depict cars or motorcycles in a barren desert setting (‘Heading out to the Highway’, 1981; ‘Locked In’, 1986; ‘Turbo Lover’, 1986) reminiscent of the post-apocalyptic landscape of the Mad Max movies or segments of the Terminator films.19 ‘Painkiller’ is a black and white performance video that replicates the violence and chaos captured in the song’s lyrics and music with its industrial setting, generous use of extremely rapid cuts and shifts in angle and proximity, high contrast flashes of bright white light and visual distortions. The video for ‘A Touch of Evil’ (1990) is the most direct in its critique, overtly condemning an authoritarian dystopia (that is not portrayed in the song’s lyrics). In the opening shot the camera focuses on the word ‘censorship’ spelled out in large letters on a sign in an urban-industrial setting, then pans to a man shovelling cassettes and albums into a furnace. T his is a recurring image, paralleled by close-ups of burning records. In juxtaposition, black and white shots, sometimes superimposed, capture performance segments and a narrative showing a frightened and confused boy who seems to be facing discipline for failing to conform to the rules of the small religious congregation to which he belongs. A fter some erotic clips of a woman and snake (connected to the narrative through associative montage), the closing shot returns to the concept of censorship, revisiting the image of burning records and thus reinforcing the presence and threat of authoritarian control. However, the fact that the listener has just heard the music and seen the video – and the band performing within it – allows for the possibility of resisting that control.20 Bolt Thrower’s output does not include any official home video releases, and the band has made few promotional videos, but those few demonstrate many of the stylistic traits conventional to metal videos – a focus on live performance (and other band activities), or a combination of concert footage with conceptual shots,

18  Videos are taken from Judas Priest, Electric Eye (DVD, 2003); dates approximated from album release dates. 19  Mad Max (1979), Mad Max 2: The R oad Warrior (1981), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985); The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Terminator 3: R ise of the Machines (2003). 20  One could easily draw a connection to the fact that in 1990, the year this video was released, Judas Priest was on trial because of a lawsuit against the band alleging its responsibility in the joint suicide attempt and deaths of two young men; the band was eventually cleared (Walser 145–7; Weinstein, Heavy Metal 254–6).

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in either case relying heavily on rapid montage and extreme camera angles.21 T he live sequences capture the apocalyptic onstage atmosphere – dark, featuring a great deal of smoke and unnatural lighting (flashes, red stage lights and the like) – while the non-performance segments present behind-the-scenes and backstage footage (‘Inside the Wire’, 2001) or juxtapose war-related images with shots of modern life (‘Cenotaph’, 1991). Using this latter style, the ‘Cenotaph’ video cuts back and forth between colour and black and white cinematography. Its live shots are darkly lit with overhead lights of various colours, while the camera moves at a disorienting pace and frames a rapidly-changing series of images: the live footage, a cenotaph shot from various angles, people walking along crowded city streets, an American (not British) flag, airborne fighter jets, and landscape flashing by. The general idea the video conveys is that the people are disconnected from and blind to the ominous political and military activities going on around them, and that the band is a conduit, making the connection visible. While Bolt T hrower’s few videos might reasonably be compared to Judas Priest’s (particularly ‘Painkiller’ and ‘A Touch of Evil’, and those showing concert footage), Cathedral’s videos tend to evoke early Black Sabbath.22 C uts between shots and angles are slightly less chaotic (to complement the band’s slower doom metal) and the frames are often distorted with psychedelic effects; the band members also frequently wear retro clothes that allude to the late 1960s and early 1970s. S uch allusions come across as playful (especially in ‘Midnight Mountain’, 1994), but Cathedral’s videos also draw upon horror films (‘Cosmic Funeral’, 1994; ‘Hopkins (Witchfinder General)’, 1995) and dystopian imagery. Two videos in particular contain dystopian and apocalyptic elements – ‘Ride’ (1993) and ‘Stained Glass Horizon’ (1996). ‘Ride’ is a staged performance video, and during the song’s bridge section the backdrop turns an unstable yellow/orange colour, giving the impression, after earlier background shots of a skyscraper-filled city, that the world beyond the frame has been consumed in flames. ‘Stained Glass Horizon’ makes clearer references to dystopian imagery in some of its conceptual sequences showing a dirt-covered and rag-adorned man in a rough, barren landscape. T his man repeatedly drags a heavy load up a slope, sliding back down in between each ascent – much like the Sisyphus of Greek myth, who is eternally condemned to roll a boulder uphill each time it rolls back to the bottom. This character, like Sisyphus, seems to be stuck in a cycle of meaningless labour, but it becomes clear near the end of the video (in the climactic finale of the song) that the man in the video drags his burden of rocks up the slope so he can throw them back down again, finding his satisfaction in that simple aggressive and potentially resistant act. T his narrative offers a glimpse of hope, but only faintly. T he videos and other visual imagery of these bands contribute to the apocalyptic and dystopian atmosphere of their music, but it is their lyrics and sound that reveal the most explicit dystopian narratives. In the case of Black Sabbath, the band’s 21 V ideo release dates are estimated from album release dates. 22  Videos taken from Cathedral, O ur God Has Landed (DVD, 2001).

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early work is the prime repository of the artists’ dystopian critique. ‘Electric Funeral’, for example (Paranoid, 1970), describes the aftermath of nuclear war – minds decaying and the world dying from radiation poisoning. Master of R eality (1971) also takes up the thread of nuclear warfare, evoking hatred, fighting, ‘the shadow of atomic fear’ and, ultimately, death (‘Children of the Grave’) as well as pollution, ongoing battles and brainwashing (‘Into the Void’). Both ‘Electric Funeral’ and ‘Into the Void’ align human-wrought destruction with diabolical evil, consigning the ill-doers to ‘burning cells’ in hell (‘Electric Funeral’) or an earth that has itself become hell (‘Into the Void’). ‘War Pigs’ (Paranoid) makes a similar comparison but focuses more on the ‘war machine’ and the human powers behind it. Where the lyrics make it difficult to find utopian possibility within the narratives themselves, the songs rely on the strength of the warning, the identification of specific human faults and errors, and the liberatory and empowering elements of the music to maintain the potential for hope, but some songs contain within the lyrics a faint image of utopia, resisting nihilism and despair on multiple levels. T he apocalyptic lyrics of ‘E lectric Funeral’ warn of the disastrous consequences of the loss of individual thought and freewill and can thus be read as a science fiction-infused critique of an oppressive social order. The song does not celebrate the destruction it describes but rather offers it as a warning of the planet’s impending annihilation should we allow ourselves to become unthinking mechanical pawns – ‘robot slaves’ – of the hegemonic regime. T he ensuing damage has catastrophic effects on the environment and the individual, as both the ‘world’ and human ‘minds’ succumb to deadly ‘radiation’. The thick distortion and darkly-coded tonality of the song, the low-frequency power, and heavy use of toms resembling drums of war, all support the dystopian imagery, particularly in the instrumental passage leading up to the frenetic bridge, which itself creates a sense of chaos emphasized by the siren-like guitar wails and the voiced repetition of the title, ‘Electric Funeral’, sounding like an alarm message. D espite the soloing midway through, this song never opens up to the degree of liberating movement as some other Black Sabbath tracks, and the sneering way in which vocalist Ozzy Osbourne delivers the lyrics – phrases such as ‘burning globe of oxygen fire’ or ‘tearing life away’ – suggests nuclear apocalypse is a dismal certainty, while the religious imagery at the end of the song – mention of the ‘Supernatural king’ and ‘Heaven’s golden chorus’, for example – reserves salvation, and the punishment of ‘evil souls’, for the afterlife. A lthough ‘E lectric Funeral’ is not an anti-utopia, its pessimism lies closer to the resigned than the militant end of the spectrum. ‘Into the Void’ (Master of R eality, 1971) also describes the oncoming apocalypse, but this time from the perspective of a rocket engine-powered flight into the stars. The Earth these ‘freedom fighters’ leave behind is polluted, war-ravaged and filled with ‘brainwashed minds’, and the rocket’s passengers are searching for a new planet to colonize ‘where freedom waits’ – a new utopian enclave to establish. A gain the band associates destruction of the planet with S atan and sin – these are among the things left behind: ‘misery and woe’, ‘worry, hate and fear’, and war.

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In a movement away from the dismal descriptions of E arth, each verse ends with a potentially hopeful line, and the song concludes on a verbally optimistic note, with the final verse suggesting the searchers establish a better ‘home’, and find ‘love’, ‘peace’ and ‘happiness’ there. The simplistic utopianism of the lyrics is undercut by the dark sounds of the music, but even in the music there is more potential for hope. T he main riff in the song is very low-pitched, distorted and sluggish, but during the bridge, where the lyrics talk of ‘freedom fighters’, the song picks up its pace, evoking urgency and a sense of forward movement – away from the dirge of a damaged E arth, and although the main riff returns, ‘Into the Void’ ends with a liberating solo. With hope in both music and lyrics, the militant pessimism of this track is clearly on the utopian end of the dystopian spectrum. Like Black Sabbath, Judas Priest makes use of apocalyptic imagery in its songwriting, but Judas Priest, as Walser discusses (163–4), also addresses several specific issues related to the dark underbelly of contemporary society: ‘E lectric E ye’ (S creaming for Vengeance, 1982), for example, tackles government surveillance, while songs from the Painkiller album (1990) examine the seductive but dangerous power of technology. In tracks like ‘Metal Meltdown’ (Painkiller) and ‘Blood Red Skies’ (R am It Down, 1988), technology is not merely a tool of oppressive governments, but an oppressive force in itself – grasping, watching and attacking individuals (‘Blood Red Skies’) or embodying a larger threat, a mobile, explosive power that ‘no one survives’ (‘Metal Meltdown’). In other Judas Priest songs – ‘S creaming for V engeance’ (S creaming for Vengeance, 1982) and ‘Some Heads A re Gonna R oll’ (Defenders of the Faith, 1984), for example – it is not only technological powers that are threatening; power is often misused, and attempts to exert authoritarian control are a source of injustice, pain, fear and/or death. Oppression in this dystopian environment may also be enforced through largescale violence and war, for instance in ‘Metal Meltdown’ or ‘T yrant’ (S ad Wings of Destiny, 1976). Several songs, such as ‘Hell Patrol’ (Painkiller) or ‘Metal Gods’ (British S teel, 1980), depict oppression and/or destruction as a certainty. However, Judas Priest’s lyrics do offer points of resistance. Other tracks – ‘Some Heads Are Gonna R oll’, ‘U nited’ (British S teel) and ‘Blood Red Skies’ – assert the possibility of individual or collective resistance (in worlds that may or may not be our own). ‘Painkiller’, despite its violence, sees ‘mankind resurrected’, while ‘Blood Red Skies’ openly challenges the technologically empowered forces of oppression, declaring that he will ‘fight’ and will not ‘break’ or succumb. While some songs maintain or construct room for hope with their verbal texts, Judas Priest, like all the bands examined here, relies on the music itself at times to keep the possibility of utopia alive – through liberating solos, uplifting melodies and the suggestion of a united resistance, for example. Whether present in lyrics, music or both, the utopian potential within these dystopian texts enables the band and, potentially, its listeners to escape the lure of resignation and despair. Judas Priest takes a fairly sophisticated dystopian science fiction approach on S creaming for Vengeance (1982), portraying a problematic society while setting

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up the grounds for a critical position from which to engage with that portrayal. T he song ‘Electric Eye’ describes a future of constant surveillance and personifies the requisite technology – specifically a government ‘spy satellite’ (Walser 163). As Walser further suggests, ‘E lectric E ye’ conveys both the paranoia-inducing threat of surveillance technology and authoritarian control and the seductive thrill tied up in that kind of power – through the ‘frenetic but precisely controlled music’ and by locating the narrative point of view in the surveillance satellite itself as it switches between its ‘official’, protective attitude and its covert invasiveness (163–4). What Walser does not acknowledge is the critical position the song also makes possible. T he ‘slightly crazed’ way in which vocalist R ob Halford delivers the lines conveying the machine’s pride in its omniscience and omnipotence (163) – lyrics where it asserts that it is always, and inescapably, ‘watching’ and ‘probing’ – makes it possible to doubt the satellite’s reliability as a narrator. The machine has a vested interest in asserting its own invulnerability, yet it is giving itself away with the frenzied timbre of its voice. T he satellite may even be unaware of its own limitations. This potential flaw creates a small opening, a possibility that the oppressive system may not be impenetrable. However, Judas Priest’s strongest nods toward utopia are found in anthemic songs that describe collective resistance. Rarely pointing to specific human mistakes or conditions in need of change (that is left to other songs), these tracks rely on the shared experience of the music to realize the unified opposition of the lyrics – rebellion against authoritarian control. ‘U nited’, for example, features a major chord progression and spaces for the audience to sing along (particularly in a live concert setting), concluding with a choir of voices singing the uplifting, if clichéd, chorus: ‘U nited we never shall fall / U nited we stand one and all.’ T his song offers a utopian contrast to the technological dystopia of ‘Metal Gods’ on the same album, a world where ‘[m]achines are taking all over / With mankind in their command’. In this way Judas Priest sometimes relies on the album form to maintain the militant quality of its pessimism, risking the loss of the critique’s specificity, but still maintaining some sense of or potential for hope. Bolt T hrower’s discography offers a more concentrated line of sociopolitical commentary, taking on the issue of widespread violence and the horrors of war, not in celebration but as a way of confronting and criticizing untamed aggression, lust for power and social and political oppression. Songs like ‘Dark Millennium’, ‘All T hat R emains’ (both R ealm of Chaos, 1989), and ‘As the World Burns’ (The IV th Crusade, 1992) describe the wreckage left behind after catastrophic war. Other lyrics make a more concerted effort to look back into the build-up toward the apocalyptic battle. ‘Warmaster’ (Warmaster, 1991), for example, is an indictment of mankind’s compulsion to act out in violence,23 although the song’s progressive potential is undermined by an attempt to locate the ultimate responsibility for 23  The indictments of ‘man’ and ‘mankind’ often found on these albums offer a critique of patriarchal power through the genre’s choice of terminology – probably unintentional but there nonetheless.

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humanity’s destructive urges in an external, ‘inhuman’ power – the Warmaster; ‘Where N ext to C onquer’ (The IV th Crusade) makes a similar statement about human violence, but without the search for a scapegoat. Other variations on the subject of violence and war are focused more on efforts to address the ‘real world’ powers – technological and political – involved. Songs like ‘The Killchain’ (Those O nce Loyal, 2005) and ‘K-Machine’ (Honour Valour Pride, 2001) describe advanced killing technology, while in ‘Profane Creation’ (Warmaster) and ‘This T ime It’s War’ (The IV th Crusade) technology is actually taking control, and ‘S ixth C hapter’ (Mercenary, 1998) implicates a global authority in mind control and eventually apocalypse. Other tracks are more obviously hopeful – ‘Eternal War’ (R ealm of Chaos) and ‘Dying Creed’ (The IV th Crusade) are calls for change, condemning hatred and greed and ultimately suggesting that it is not too late to ‘open our mind[s]’ (‘Dying Creed’) and find ‘strength in unity’ (‘Eternal War’). Falling somewhere between Bolt T hrower’s expressions of militant and leaningtoward-resigned pessimism, ‘R emembrance’ (… For Victory, 1994) depicts a world that is ‘ruined’, ‘violated’, a ‘nightmare’ – its state a result of ‘mankind’s depravity’ and ‘global lunacy’. T he song begins in the midst of destruction, with the sound of an explosion, its music immediately fast and intense. A lthough there are no solos, the speed at which the musicians play, particularly lead guitar and double bass drums, demonstrates a degree of precision and control that resists utter chaos, and rhythmic changes disrupt the oppressiveness of what is otherwise an insistently steady beat. T he most concrete indication of hope is a question – ‘When we understand / Will it be too late?’ – but it is a faint hope, significantly dampened by the repeated, final line, ‘legacy of hate’. ‘Remembrance’ then shifts its pace dramatically, finishing with a slow, resigned fade out that weakens the militancy of asking questions and identifying the ‘world bureaucracy’ as a key problem, but which also makes it clear that unending violence and a ‘legacy of hate’ are conditions to be regretted, not celebrated. ‘R ebirth of Humanity’ (Warmaster, 1991), on the other hand, evokes a much stronger sense of liberation within its music, offering a more optimistic framework in which it asks: ‘… will man seek to destroy / all that’s been recreated?’ This is a post-apocalyptic vision (‘Have we learnt through our suffering?’), but captured at a moment when humanity is already on the road to recovery: ‘T hrough the ruins of this world / Man shall rise to power.’ The track begins fast and intense, but contains many leads to contrast the weight of the rhythm section, as well as syncopation and a short, frenetic solo. In the past of this alternate world lies a cycle of violence, leading to ‘apocalyptic wars’, but the future has yet to be determined (thus the lyrics leave room for utopian possibility). Like ‘Remembrance’, ‘Rebirth of Humanity’ fades out at the end but the song maintains its momentum as it does, and the lyrics end on uncertainty rather than negation – stating that ‘only time shall tell’ whether the cycle of violence will be broken, and the title itself lends its support to the side of hope. T he controlling world powers that Bolt T hrower indicts are a specialty of Cathedral. Several songs compare humans to ‘robots’, fulfilling programmed

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instructions without questioning the information they are being fed. S ometimes it is unclear who is doing the programming, as in ‘R ide’ (The Ethereal Mirror, 1993), but in some tracks the robots are religious evangelists, trying to convert or programme others, as in ‘Satanikus Robotikus’ and ‘Revolution’ (Caravan Beyond R edemption, 1998). The latter song locates the threat of ‘robotic icons’ in politicians and preachers, but depicts the entire human race as the collective victim of ‘scientific mind control’ (Cathedral). Cathedral highlights the destructive force of war as well: with allusions to Black Sabbath’s ‘Electric Funeral’ and ‘Children of the Grave’, the song ‘E lectric Grave’ (The Carnival Bizarre, 1995) describes an apocalyptic scene in references to ‘atomic spectres’, ‘radiation madness’ and a ‘human mushroom cloud’. ‘E arth Messiah’ (Caravan Beyond R edemption) also refers to a ‘mushroom cloud’ that turns the planet into an ‘atomic crypt’, while ‘Whores to Oblivion’ (Endtyme, 2001) declares critically that ‘war is master’. Some tracks, particularly on Caravan Beyond R edemption, directly address the listener, speaking from an already resistant, critical position, and challenging the audience to recognize contemporary problems and make a change (‘Freedom’, ‘Revolution’), and in this context the distance between ‘alternate’ and ‘real’ worlds in C athedral’s music blurs. ‘Birth Machine 2000’ (S upernatural Birth Machine, 1996), creates this blurring without direct address, using the vocabulary of science fiction to describe a world that comes very close to our own. Here evolution has taken an ‘evil’ turn, and the model of mass production has turned humanity into a ‘programmed nation’. S uch conformity becomes humanity’s downfall, although it is unclear whether doom lies in existence continuing as an infinite ‘circular void’ or in the end of this cycle – the death of ‘returnity’. Individuality is not the only casualty – the planet is damaged as well, its ocean ‘radioactive’. S ome of the causes of this deplorable state of things are identified – such as ‘plastic education’, the ‘high’ of war and the obsessive pursuit of ‘grossmetic beauty’ – and this identification is an initial step toward change. Musically, the song is full of shifts and contrasts, catchy melodies and liberating solos that offer the hope the lyrics withhold. L ead guitar lines offer a resistant response to the pessimism of the verses, for example, and while the fade out at the end of this track implies the repetition of the same mistakes, the guitar soloing that fades along with the final riff maintains the individuality yearned for in the song’s narrative, suggesting that hope is not yet lost. ‘T he U nnatural World’ (Caravan Beyond R edemption) describes a dystopia that is also only slightly removed from our own world, but in this case using direct address and a second person point of view to offer an eye-opening challenge. L ines like ‘ultra bright red planet with inflammable sea’ set up a little critical distance between the audience and the world captured here but the listener, just like the many ‘mechanical slaves to the D oomsday Machine’,24 is also implicated in the planet’s 24  This may be a reference to the Doomsday Machine of Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr. S trangelove, or: How I Learned to S top Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), but the allusion is not sustained.

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decline: ‘S till you won’t listen – you watch the planet burn.’ T he environment is in a precarious state (‘plastic forests’ are merely ‘[g]enetic reproductions’, nature is dying) and rebellious ‘animals’ are safely ‘locked in their cages’ while orchestrated war keeps the rest of the people in check – the ‘Dictator of Destruction has the world on its knees’. Yet the lyrics ask ‘you’, the listener, to ‘see’ what the narrator is ‘trying to say’ and how ‘you’ are contributing to the problem. T he rhythm of this song is upbeat rather than plodding (the pace of some of the other tracks on the album), and the potential for hope is particularly evoked by numerous guitar leads (harmonized in a section after the second chorus) and liberatory soloing that takes place part way through and again in the final seconds. In what might be read as an attempt to use reverse psychology, the lyrics finish with more assertions that ‘you’ will not ‘listen’ or ‘learn’, but ‘T he U nnatural World’ resists the fade out ending, coming to a militant rather than resigned conclusion and capturing the spirit of the dystopian impulse within heavy metal. Discontinuity as (and in) Social Critique S imply because metal’s dystopian critiques maintain potential for hope, it does not follow that audience members will necessarily take advantage of that space to latch on to utopian possibility. Like the listener in Cathedral’s ‘The Unnatural World’, the audience may prefer not to hear and see the message. Or, as D eena Weinstein has insightfully pointed out, songs expressing protest may not be heard as protest songs (‘Rock Protest Songs’ 9–14); even worse, sarcastic indictments may be read literally as celebrations of violence or bigotry (13). Admittedly it can be difficult at times not to lose the often tenuous thread in these metal songs linking hope for a better world with the identification of actual problems that need to be rectified and a concrete movement toward change. A nd after all, music is entertainment. But not just entertainment: it is important to recognize that in metal, the potential for hope can be there – sometimes pointing ‘toward a society that is more just and peaceful’, but always engaged in ‘attempts to survive the present and imagine something better for the future’ (Walser 171). While it is possible for some listeners – critic Marcus Breen, for example – to experience metal as nihilistic negation, such readings are not inevitable or inherent within the musical texts themselves. In Breen’s case, it is clear that he approaches the music as a non-fan, experiencing nausea and disorientation from the metal concert experience (199). However, despite finding nihilism in metal music, Breen acknowledges a contradictory position within the genre – the celebration of not

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just negation, but life as well (199). E. Ann Kaplan identifies a similar disjuncture in heavy metal video (classified as the ‘nihilist’ type of video), the linking of what she describes as ‘a nihilistic ideology’ with ‘an overall vitality and creativity’ (60).25 T his may be the same contradiction Walser sees in other artefacts of metal culture, such as Iron Maiden’s mascot, E ddie, which he describes as ‘an oxymoron of disintegration and power’ (Walser 153). C all it a contradiction, paradox or oxymoron – this discontinuity is one of the crucial cracks through which metal’s utopian impulse emerges. Out of this opening, and through the moments of liberation and empowerment offered (to many metal fans) by the music, metal has the potential to resist completely antiutopian pessimism in some of its darkest expressions, and when combined with lyrics that offer a critical position to the audience, identify contemporary mistakes, or overtly invoke elements of warning and hope, some metal songs become clearly dystopian rather than nihilistic. In fact, S ean K. Kelly has argued that the heavy metal of bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, as well as Iron Maiden and C anadians R ush, produced a ‘community of resistance’ by encoding and embodying resistance within the musical values of the genre itself (153). Yet in the broader culture, metal has not escaped its association with real violence and death,26 and it is clear that the genre is still seen as a repository of anger and aggression more often than it is recognized for any sense of affirmation or consolation it might offer. Y et anger is itself a militant emotion, not a resigned one, and may plant a seed for resistance that need not be nihilistic or reactionary. Metal lyrics do not often offer solutions (Friesen and Helfrich 269), but neither do science fiction dystopias, and – as Walser (who asserts that metal is not nihilistic) notes – bands that are too overt with their calls for change tend to be less popular than those that are more indirect (165). Metal ideology values thinking for one’s self,27 thus listeners do not want to be fed ready answers, especially not by their music. The music of British heavy metal bands – from Black Sabbath’s first experimentations in what would become a new genre, through the face lift given heavy metal by ‘New Wave’ bands like Judas Priest, the intensification of metal by ‘extreme’ bands like Bolt Thrower, and the retro-inspired doom of Cathedral – may offer more maps of hell than directions to utopia, but these works assert tactics of resistance in the face of resignation, demonstrating that metal is not always ready for annihilation or to accept that this world is the best we can have. 25  Idelber Avelar also finds nihilism in metal, but in a very specific context – that of Brazilian death metal in the 1980s and 1990s. ‘[T ]he fast succession of repetitive movements’ that Avelar interprets as ‘the apocalyptic canceling out of time’ (133) might also be read as the suspension of time, fending off the apocalypse to hold out the possibility of averting it. 26 S ee, for example, a BBC special called ‘D eath Metal Murders’ that aired in November 2005 (Brave Words). 27 S ee Berger 267–8 and Purcell 46–8 on the emphasis on individuality, personal freedom, critical thinking and self-motivation in metal culture.

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Discography and Videography Black Sabbath. Black S abbath. V ertigo, 1970. Black Sabbath. The Black S abbath S tory: Volume O ne. DVD . S anctuary, 2002. Black Sabbath. Master of R eality. V ertigo, 1971. Black Sabbath. Mob R ules. V ertigo, 1981. Black Sabbath. Paranoid. V ertigo, 1970. Bolt T hrower. ‘IV th C rusade.’ The IV th Crusade. Music video. E arache/R elativity, 1992. Bolt T hrower. The IV th Crusade. E arache/R elativity, 1992. Bolt T hrower. ‘C enotaph.’ Warmaster. Music video. E arache, 1991. Bolt T hrower. … For Victory. E arache, 1994. Bolt T hrower. Honour – Valour – Pride. Metal Blade, 2001. Bolt T hrower. In Battle There Is N o Law. V inyl S olution, 1988. Bolt T hrower. ‘Inside the Wire.’ Honour – Valour – Pride. Music video. Metal Blade, 2001. Bolt T hrower. Mercenary. Metal Blade, 1998. Bolt T hrower. R ealm of Chaos. E arache, 1989. Bolt T hrower. Those O nce Loyal. Metal Blade, 2005. Bolt T hrower. Warmaster. E arache, 1991. C athedral. Caravan Beyond R edemption. E arache, 1998. C athedral. The Carnival Bizarre. E arache, 1995. C athedral. Endtyme. E arache, 2001. C athedral. The Ethereal Mirror. E arache/C olumbia, 1993. C athedral. In Memoriam. R ise A bove, 1994. C athedral. O ur God Has Landed. DVD . E arache, 2001. C athedral. S upernatural Birth Machine. E arache, 1996. Judas Priest. British S teel. C BS , 1980. Judas Priest. Defenders of the Faith. C olumbia, 1984. Judas Priest. Electric Eye. DVD . S ony, 2003. Judas Priest. Painkiller. C olumbia, 1990. Judas Priest. R am It Down. C olumbia,1988. Judas Priest. R ocka R olla. Gull, 1974. Judas Priest. S ad Wings of Destiny. Gull/Koch, 1976. Judas Priest. S creaming for Vengeance. C olumbia, 1982.

C hapter 6

From A chilles to A lexander: T he C lassical World and the World of Metal Iain Campbell

Introduction Heavy metal has never made an attempt to hide its allusive nature. A s S usan Fast argues about L ed Zeppelin, referring to musical as well as lyrical elements: ‘Overt intertextuality is a fact of rock music’ (19). Film, fiction, history, mythology: all can be found inspiring and underpinning the lyrical content of songs, and through this appropriation being disseminated at second-hand through substantial fan-bases. Within the genre, the debt owed to Norse and Tolkienian mythology is widespread and acknowledged. The thrust of this chapter, however, is to examine the less well-known yet still highly significant role of the classics, through its culture, mythology and literature, in inspiring and informing the heavy metal genre over the last three decades. T his is a particularly pertinent moment to address the issue: the classical world is currently enjoying a resurgence of popular interest, not least through recent cinematic projects such as Gladiator (dir. Ridley Scott, 2000), Troy (dir. Wolfgang Petersen, 2004) and Alexander (dir. Oliver Stone, 2004). This essay aims to subject the lyrical content of a range of works to close reading with a view to shedding light on the influence of this crucial element of European heritage on the writing of heavy metal. A n initial survey of the general classical influence on a relatively wide range of bands will be followed by closer focus on L ed Zeppelin and Iron Maiden, bands whose impact on popular culture has been very significant. Consideration will also be given to the way in which these works

  I would like to thank Simon Swift, Clare Sargent, Simon Hall, Dave Ling, Chris Martin and my wife S am for all their help in getting this chapter written.  A n illustration of the extent of Gladiator’s impact on the popular consciousness is evident in the work of the band Circus Maximus, their name itself presumably inspired by the R oman games. In ‘Glory of the E mpire’ (from The First Chapter, 2005), which is heavily allusive to the film’s plot, there is direct quotation of its most famous line: ‘What we do echoes in eternity.’ An interesting parallel that confirms the film’s impact is found in a completely different genre in ‘T urn the Page’ from O riginal Pirate Material by T he Streets, with its evocation of one of the film’s recurring images (‘In the afterlife gladiators meet their maker, float through the wheat fields’).

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have been received by the current generation of fans through examination of the most accessible fora for debate, namely internet discussion sites. Merely to embark on a cursory survey of metal band names is to reveal dozens of instances of classical terminology. In most cases the allusion goes no further than the name, but for a significant number of bands album names are classically inspired too, and in a few instances lyrics are in L atin or even quote directly from classical authors. In terms of nomenclature, most allusion is to the various conceptions of the classical underworld, and tends to represent an element of the macabre religious allusion of bands inclining towards black metal. Band names include: Hades, C immerian Path, C haron, Persefone [sic!] and E lysium. T he underworld theme is extended in Hades’s instrumentals ‘T ears of Orpheus’ (from If At First You Don’t S ucceed, 1988) and ‘Rape of Persephone’ (Exist to R esist, 1996), while Carpe N octem (1996) by Agathodaimon ironically adapts Horace’s famous E picurean dictum of O de 1.11, ‘carpe diem’, to lend classical weight to its gloomy imagery, while providing what is, in this context, a not unsophisticated pun. Many L atin album titles and original lyrics tend to be grammatically inaccurate compositions, mostly with ecclesiastical leaning, which again are a feature of S atanic or pseudo-S atanic preoccupations. A good example is De Principii Evangelikum [sic!] by A ntaeus, whose name is derived from the Titan (and hence underworld-imprisoned) son of Mother Earth. The album, beyond some subversive references to L atin liturgy, contains no further L atin or classical allusion beyond its ungrammatical title (presumably intended to mean ‘On the gospel of the beginning’). The ‘k’ of ‘Evangelikum’ perhaps adds a T eutonic weightiness to traditional authority one assumes is intended to be derived from the L atinate phrasing. A second sub-group of bands draws on R ome and its armies as a metaphor for domination or an allegory for modern politics, a source of imagery with a long history, going back to Thin Lizzy’s ‘Warriors’ with its lines ‘My heart is ruled by V enus, and my head by Mars’. Finally, and most significantly, it is the Homeric epics and their depiction of heroism, along with what may be termed ‘popular mythology’, the legendary stories that remain part of Europe’s background consciousness, that are most significant for this study.  C enturion’s Arise of the Empire (1999) is the best recent example I have found, containing as it does tracks with names such as ‘Metal Gladiators’ and ‘Snow Covers Imperial A lps’, along with the more contemporarily-themed ‘Guns A re S creaming’.   Outside the realm of British heavy metal, works like Ad Perpetuam R ei Memoriam (1994) by Ataraxia and ‘Nubibus Atris’ from Stoa’s Zal (2001) also work within a classical paradigm. The name Ataraxia derives from a specific technical term in Epicurean philosophy, identifying the state of happiness attained when one is free from anxiety relating to worldly ambition and the existence or machinations of the gods – itself suggesting a significant degree of classical learning in the band members. The band Stoa presumably also takes its name from classical philosophy, from the stoa (colonnade) where Zeno taught in the third century BC and from which Stoic philosophy took its name. Ataraxia in ‘Prophetia’ draw on quotations taken directly from Horace, Cicero and Sallust, and Stoa in ‘Nubibus Atris’ on De Consolatione Philosophiae by the C hristian-Platonist philosopher Boethius.

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D espite the summary nature of this survey, it seems evident that in all of the cases cited, classical allusion, however superficial, is intended to appropriate the traditional gravitas associated with the classical world either through its language or its history, thereby affirming the authority or mystique of the band relative to their audience. T his is arguably something that complicates the commonly-perceived (self-)image of heavy metal as non-elitist. This is a theme to which I will return in the main body of the chapter. With regard to the issue of elitism, I shall only briefly touch on what is common knowledge: academic study of the classical world in Britain, particularly through original Latin and Greek, has always been an elite project, now almost the sole preserve of the public schools and of academically selective grammar schools. Hollywood’s more generalized interest in ancient war and adventure stories, so-called ‘swords and sandals’ movies, is a more superficial and arguably much less elitist phenomenon, and is to be considered alongside the more popular mythology mentioned above. At this point I should make clear my own background and methodology. As a classicist, my analysis is not that of a musicologist. While I acknowledge that it can therefore only be partial, I hope it can contribute to a wider discussion of the music, and that I will not fall into the trap highlighted by R obert Walser in his critique of sociological analysis of ‘reducing the meaning of the song to the literal meaning of its lyrics’ (21). ‘Achilles Last Stand’ and the Hermeneutics of Ambiguity L ed Zeppelin provide a sensible starting point for the main body of this study, thanks both to their role in the origins of the genre and to their (still) massive popularity within it. Their reliance on Tolkien and the world of the Viking is well known, with ‘Ramble On’ and ‘Immigrant Song’ obvious illustrative examples. It appears that only one song from their œuvre draws upon the Classical World, although on first reading its level of allusion seems to be a very significant one. T his is ‘A chilles L ast S tand’, a highly regarded number in their repertoire, and one identified as belonging to the ‘mythic/epic category’ of their work by Susan Fast; interestingly, she also terms it ‘one of the best examples’ of Plant’s use of the ‘narrative mode … generally considered to be a fundamental requirement of myth’ (59). This section will examine the song and produce a first close reading to explore the important theme of Homeric heroism. It will also provide a salutary lesson on just how far we can draw detailed conclusions from heavy metal lyrics on any consistency in an individual song’s imagery. However, the significance of classical allusion is not necessarily in its accuracy or coherency: equally telling to this project is how such material fits into our analysis of the wider allusiveness of the genre mentioned above, and how the fans have reacted to it. A s indicated above, this leads us on to examining the place of a traditionally elitist discourse   See for instance Jenkyns, especially chapter 4, and Lister.

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in a genre that often presents itself as at least inclusive or even, to use a classical frame of reference, plebeian. The title of the song is on first reading unambiguously Iliadic: it is a commonplace that the subject of Homer’s Iliad, Europe’s first work of literature, from its first words of Book 1 is Achilles: ‘Sing, goddess, of the anger of Achilles, son of Peleus, the accursed anger which brought uncounted anguish on the Achaians and hurled down to Hades many mighty souls of heroes’ (3). However, a cautionary note must be sounded immediately: the Iliad in no way focuses on the final moments of Achilles, and indeed what limited treatment of his death by arrow-shot survives in the classical canon emphasizes the randomness of his killing rather than presenting some sort of heroic finale to his career as a warrior as the song title suggests. C learly the original literary treatment of A chilles can be taken only as a starting-point in the naming and creation of the song. The work takes the form of a monologue addressed to an un-named and silent second person. T he opening lines at least seem to hang together with the seeming thrust of the title: although there is no mention of a time of year in the action of the Iliad (‘It was an April morning’), the compulsion of a journey (‘they told us we should go’) fits with the scheme of the heroes to Troy, while the scene-setting (‘As I turned to you, you smiled at me’) could feasibly be meant to reflect the close friendship of A chilles and Patroclus so central to the plot of the Iliad. Probably the single most Iliadic line soon follows: ‘Oh the songs to sing when we at last return again.’ Here the theme of journey and homecoming (the concept of nostos, return, that is the subject of the O dyssey) is clear and central, along with the issue of the deeds of heroes being the subject of song, a theme crucial to the motivation of the heroes of the Iliad. S o far so good: there seems to be a consistent appropriation of Homer’s values to explore the heroic mindset as it were from within via the narrator’s voice. T here are other lines that continue the allusion: ‘to sail away to sandy lands’ (the Greek ships on the beach at Troy are, of course, a recurrent focus of the epic’s narrative, especially in Books 15 and 16); and ‘to laugh aloud, dancing as we fought the crowd’ (here there is a suggestion of charme, the heroes’ ‘joy of battle’, as well as the backdrop of the hosts of common soldiers, although they are of no concern to Homer’s narrative). However, as the song progresses the lyrics become markedly less focused.

  Perhaps the best explanation of the Iliadic heroes’ motivation for fighting is given by Hektor in Book 7 before he challenges the foremost Greeks to a duel. He speculates how ‘people will say, even men of generations not yet born’ as they see his victim’s burial mound from the sea, ‘“T his is the mound of a man who died long ago. He was the greatest of men, and glorious Hektor killed him.” This is what they will say, and my glory will never die’ (Iliad 7 ll. 87–91, Hammond 107). Achilles’ position is more pointed: he knows of ‘twin fates’ that he could fulfil, as related in Book 9: returning ingloriously home or the other option, which he chooses: ‘If I stay here and fight on round the Trojans’ city then gone is my homecoming but my glory will never die’ (Iliad 9 ll. 412–15, Hammond 143).

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It is difficult to find the bulk of the lyrics thematically lucid to any extent, and there are plenty of specific references that totally undermine any coherent Homeric reading: thus ‘D ays went by when you and I, bathed in eternal summer’s glow, as far away and distant our mutual child did grow’ refers to subject matter entirely alien to the masculine and martial world of A chilles, and a reference to ‘A lbion’ is both geographically and chronologically out of step with the epic. It may well be a reference to ‘The Dance of Albion’ by William Blake that Robert Plant is said to have been reading at the time of the song’s composition. T he refrain ‘the mighty arms of A tlas hold the heavens from the earth’ that concludes the song seems to be a return to the imagery of Greek myth, but the legend of the T itan A tlas is not mentioned in the Iliad. T he A tlas Mountains, a destination for members of the band at the time of the song’s composition, may actually be a more pertinent identification of the line’s provenance. Indeed, analysing the song through the band’s biography may lead to an interpretation of the title based on a heel injury sustained by Robert Plant in a 1976 car accident – making it potentially an amusingly subversive classical allusion to A chilles but hardly the starting point for an in-depth exposition on Greek epic. Contemporary internet discussion, as on sites such as songfacts.com and songmeanings.net, reinforces the ambiguity of the lyrics: the suggestion is made that Zeppelin appropriated imagery of the warrior and of invasion – as in ‘Immigrant S ong’ – as an allegorical expression for the act of touring foreign countries, while other contributors see the song as fitting into a more general theme of travel and quest, or even the band’s mid-1970s tax exile.10 Others again suggest an allegory with the V ietnam War or even the S econd World War, while J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the R ings is mentioned as a source of inspiration alongside the more obvious classical models. Acknowledgement of the role of Greek mythology ranges from the measured – ‘Originally, I thought it was simply about Homer’s “T he Iliad,” but reading into the lyrics, I’m not sure it’s entirely based on it’ – to the frankly erroneous, as one correspondent claims quite falsely it is written in ‘iambic hexameter, a meter commonly used in Greek epics’ (Homer’s epics are in fact written in dactylic hexameter) and another refers to Achilles as a ‘Roman war-hero dude’.11 A fter protracted re-reading I am inclined to think that exploration of Plant and Page’s travel   Fast relates how Plant’s lyrics tended to be the final element to be put into place during a song’s composition, which runs contrary to a tendency to centralize their importance in analysis of that song (26).   This detail is provided by identical entries in songfacts.com and on Wikipedia.   T hus on songfacts.com: ‘It’s probably about their lives and careers, travelling all over the world, and like No Quarter and the Immigrant song it compares them to warriors conquering foreign lands, but while those two songs used Viking imagery this one uses references to Greek mythology.’ 10  ‘I can say without fear of contradiction that A chilles L ast S tand is about L ed Zeppelin having to move from England because of tax reasons’ (from songfacts.com). 11  From songmeanings.net.

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plans is the dominant lyrical theme in ‘A chilles L ast S tand’, explaining references such as ‘dancing as we fought the crowd’ in terms of concert action,12 and ‘songs to sing when we at last return again’ in terms of their widely documented travels in search of inspiration. Given the ambiguities noted, the following judgement by a fan is perhaps the most measured: ‘T he song lyrics retell a combined rehash of the rich mythological lore Plant was fond of, nothing more.’13 T his caution is a valuable reminder of the danger of imposing too strict a reading on the song, as I suggested at the start of this section. In conclusion, the role of the classics in this song is apparently as one constituent of the inspiration and imagery, but by no means as a coherent or unifying centrality. T he band and their audience of the last 30 years seem to have no issue with the use of an apparently elitist cultural frame of reference, viewing it as a reasonable starting point for song-writing in common with a great range of other cultural material viewed as ‘fair game’ for appropriation. Furthermore, as mentioned above, the lyrics in isolation may be less significant than might be initially thought. A s one fan wrote: ‘I don’t really much care about the song’s meaning … I just know that – to me – it’s the best Zeppelin song there is.’14 Homer and the Heroic: Manowar and the Warrior T he Iliad has had a less ambiguous influence on a number of works since ‘Achilles L ast S tand’, such as ‘On T o Iliad’ by Hades from their 1987 album R esting S uccess. T he song is another anonymous half-dialogue, starting with a possibly unconscious allusion to its L ed Zeppelin predecessor in its reference to ‘sands of foreign shores’, along with a perhaps similarly unintended echo of the key Iliadic character Patroclus in the phrase ‘yesterday’s patronising tears’. ‘When will everybody sing your song?’ is again Homeric (see above for the concept of immortality through song) but could also derive directly from ‘Achilles Last Stand’ (‘Oh the songs to sing’). The main body of the song re-states the events of Homer’s story (‘Priam’s city sees its heroes fall’) but drifts into vagueness and incoherence. Once again, what is important is not the (not very accurate) re-telling of the epic, but the fact that it is seen as a perfectly reasonable starting point for song-writing. T he subject matter of the epic – its competitive masculine values and life and death circumstances – seems attractive to lyricists, whatever the cultural connotations. T he difference between the use of the epic inspiration here (and in the Zeppelin work) and for instance of Boethius and Horace in the songs by Ataraxia and Stoa mentioned above (see footnote 4) is that there seems to be no 12 D avis suggests that ‘T he Ocean’ was Plant’s ‘indelible image of the overheated young crowds that swayed and swirled in front of the stage’ (157), which seems to me to support this interpretation. 13  From songfacts.com. 14  From songmeanings.net.

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attempt to gain authority via the appropriation of ancient, canonical voices. T he songs are narrative, not didactic, and in fact as such their intertextuality arguably demands no allusion beyond the heavy metal genre itself. Manowar, as an American group, cannot be a main focus in this book on heavy metal music in Britain, but ‘A chilles: T he A gony and E cstasy in E ight Parts’, from 1992’s The Triumph of S teel, is a wonderful example of the importance of Homer’s heroism to the writing of one band. T heir preoccupation with the idea of the warrior and the imagery of manliness are near legendary: from the S pinal T apesque visuals of fur loincloths and oiled muscles, through the preoccupation with being the loudest band on the planet, to macho, bellicose album and song titles such as ‘Metal Warriors’. T heir focus on the warrior ranges from the N orse (‘Gates of V alhalla’ on 1983’s tellingly named Into Glory R ide) to the Native American Indian (‘Spirit Horse of the Cherokee’), and in ‘Achilles: The Agony and Ecstasy’ we see the Iliad plundered once again for its martial theme. This work combines quite careful and sympathetic re-telling of Homer’s original, both in terms of structure and incident, with completely random and irrelevant detail. T hus ‘Hector S torms the Wall’ starts the suite off in medias res (the allusion is to Book 12 of the epic) but sensibly and economically enough: the focus is on Achilles’ Trojan rival, whose killing of Patroclus will lead to his own death at A chilles’ hands. S ome lines closely echo Homer’s construction of a divine apparatus allowing brief periods of near invulnerability to various heroes (as in references to a day that ‘was promised to me’ or to the divine gift of a ‘shield’);15 others re-state the heroic preoccupation with reputation as mentioned above; and yet others re-state the characteristically Homeric acceptance of fate (the readiness to ‘die by the sword’).16 Y et some lines are completely irrelevant to the original: ‘I spare not the hammer’ (clearly a hangover from Viking tales); ‘You came here for gold’ (as even the casual reader knows, the Greeks came to win back Helen for Menelaus – any loot from Troy was purely incidental). This pattern continues: the action skips on and there is a sensibly picked monologue from Achilles to the dead Patroclus, but Achilles looks forward to meeting Patroclus ‘in the sky’, which has nothing to do with classical conceptions of the underworld, be it the shadowy realm of Hades with its fields of asphodel where Achilles is located in Book 11 of the O dyssey, or the alternative destination for heroes of the Isles of the Blest. Again, Norse mythology seems the likely source for this image, although Led Zeppelin’s ‘Valhalla, I am coming’ (‘Immigrant Song’) might presumably also be lurking in the lyricist’s subconscious. 15  Hector’s pre-eminence under Zeus in Book 15 is perhaps alluded to here – ‘his ally was Zeus himself in the sky above’ (Iliad 15 ll. 610–11, Hammond 249). 16  Thus Achilles after Hector prophesizes his death: ‘Die! I shall take my death at whatever time Zeus and the other immortal gods wish to bring it upon me’ (Iliad 22, ll. 365–6, Hammond 360) and Sarpedon to Glaukus: ‘if we were going to live for ever … I would not be urging you into the battle where men win glory. But as it is … no mortal can run from [the fates] … so let us go’ (Iliad 12 ll. 322–8, Hammond 196).

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While it is easy for a classicist to pick holes in the suite in this way, such criticism should not obscure the fact that Homer is appropriated so unashamedly, even proudly: even a relatively minor episode of the epic, Hephaistos’ creation of new arms for Achilles in Book 18, is included through the very appropriate mode of a drum solo! Once again a metal band, in fact perhaps the metal band that could be perceived of as encapsulating most wholeheartedly various bone-headed clichés of the genre (one thinks of the self-consciously metallic The Triumph of S teel imagery and lyrics such as the infamous ‘real men play on ten’ from ‘Metal Warriors’) is pleased to appropriate in a very open fashion the cornerstone of the classical canon. A s mentioned above, it seems to be the fantasizing violence of the epic and the warrior’s code of valour that appeal, along with the masculine world of the warrior. T his in turn gives rise to the issue of male comradeship as exemplified by the bond between Achilles and Patroclus, and the implications this has for the way gender is negotiated in metal, an issue ripe for further development from Walser’s work, who, it is interesting to note, chooses to start his examination of gender with a discussion of the classical figure of Orpheus (108). Unfortunately, the regional constraints of this study prevent me from exploring this area further, but I suspect interesting work could be done on the male body in peril and the construction of masculinity, work that could perhaps trace a path from Homer’s heroes and their deaths, through V irgil’s descriptions of young men dying in the Aeneid and ultimately through First World War poets (especially Wilfred Owen) to the music of the present day, for instance in re-hashes of First World War themes in Motörhead’s ‘1916’ and Iron Maiden’s ‘Paschendale’. The final section of this study moves on from the Iliad and centres on three songs by Iron Maiden, examining a more generalized reliance on classical myth and history, as indicated above in the Introduction. Icarus, Odysseus, Alexander: Iron Maiden It is difficult to overstate the importance of Iron Maiden to the metal genre, given their longevity, huge popularity and fanatical hardcore fan-base, and in particular the renewed success of their most recent albums and tours. Over their 30-year career, their œuvre has been remarkable for the diversity of its subject matter: songs draw on an extraordinarily wide variety of inspirations, from a range of literature, other genres of music, various films, historical events and occasionally current affairs. It will come as no surprise that several of their songs draw heavily on the classical world. ‘Flight of Icarus’, from 1983’s highly successful Piece of Mind album, featured regularly in Maiden’s live performances as well as making its impact through record sales.17 Its mythological inspiration is obvious from its title, but as is noted 17  The song reached #11 in the UK charts and #12 in the US Rock Radio charts in April 1983, while the album reached #3 in the UK and went platinum in the USA.

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by the Iron Maiden Commentary, from the remarkable website Maidenfans.com, it is only ‘very loosely based on the ancient Greek myth of Daedalus … the purists in Greek mythology always have had a problem with this song’. The commentary writer goes on: ‘Bruce [Dickinson, lead singer and lyricist of this song] admitted himself that he had slightly twisted the original tale to make it an allegory of teenage rebellion against adult authority.’ In his analysis of the song, Walser suggests Maiden’s work ‘draws upon a variety of religious and philosophical traditions in order to explore and interrogate moralities’ (perhaps misguidedly given the dominantly narrative trend in most songs) and also refers to a ‘paranoid twist’ (152). In fact, the whole scenario conjured up by the song is alien to the original myth as related probably most famously by Ovid in Metamorphoses Book 8. Dickinson portrays a crowd scene rather than the secretive escape from King Minos, with public pronouncements from Icarus and the strange, ambiguous line ‘Now he knows his father betrayed’ before Icarus’s plunge to his death. On listening to the song overall it is the refrain ‘Fly, on your way, like an eagle, fly as high as the sun’ that has most impact: lyrics vague enough to be more redolent of the theme of an adolescent searching for independence than the myth per se. The internet commentary finishes up, not very conclusively: ‘We can … grant the somehow strange lyrics to artistic licence.’ Overall, however, the same pattern has emerged: the classical myth, encountered in whatever form, is deemed available for appropriation and can be used as the author sees fit. Once again, the fans seem untroubled by the potentially elitist starting point. A more recent work by the band follows a similar course. ‘Ghost of the N avigator’, from 2000’s Brave N ew World has been described by Bruce Dickinson as ‘a great big, epic sea-faring journey, and the journey was life’ (Berelian 41) with the setting sun representing death at the end of it. In this allegorical journey, echoing perhaps the famous version of ‘T he R ime of the A ncient Mariner’ featured on 1984’s Powerslave but featuring a wide range of imagery, it comes as no surprise that there is allusion to the O dyssey’s sirens (‘the sirens of the rocks’ are said to ‘beckon me’) as well as to the clashing rocks of Jason’s voyage in the Argo (‘I steer between the crashing rocks’). When one considers that in addition to classical myth and Coleridge the band have based songs on works by writers as diverse and canonical as A lan S illitoe and G.K. C hesterton, the issue of how the archetypal proponents of the N ew Wave of British Heavy Metal draw on a range of relatively high-brow sources rises again. It is therefore particularly easy to take issue with Edward Macan’s identification of Maiden as proponents of Black Sabbath’s ‘primitivist strain’ of heavy metal (38). His work, centred on progressive rock, seems to me to be excessively schematic. He cites ‘two primary subgenres to emerge from the ashes of psychedelia’, developing into different traditions: ‘Progressive rock represents the Apollonian side of the counterculture …. Heavy Metal, on the other hand, represents the D ionysian side of the counterculture, drawing on its undeniable hedonistic streak’ (83). This distinction itself seems

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to me possibly to derive from R ush’s 1978 Hemispheres,18 and to be unhelpfully abrupt. Macan’s characterization of his progressive rockers as middle class and from the pastoral south-east of England in contradistinction to the working-class, Midland metallers (136) seems unduly generalized in the face of Iron Maiden’s roots in London – and the fact that Bruce Dickinson did spend time at the public school Oundle. While I acknowledge Macan’s statement that ‘progressive rock musicians celebrate their middle-class heritage by appropriating the music of high culture’ (166) is based perhaps more on the instrumental than the lyrical content of their work, and that Maiden’s treatment of classical themes is not particularly subtle, songs such as ‘Ghost of the N avigator’ invalidate his over-generalized dichotomy. While it is true that Genesis re-told a very faithful version of the relatively obscure S almacis-Hermaphroditus myth in ‘Fountain of S almacis’, one can find the myth of Midas appropriated in ‘Midas Touch’ by a band as apparently low-brow as S axon.19 T o return to the Maidenfans website, a commentator calling himself ‘Iron Duke’ says of ‘Ghost of the Navigator’ in relation to the O dyssey: ‘It is fitting that Iron Maiden pay homage to a work of such far-reaching influence.’ T here is certainly no sense of generic inferiority or hedonistic triumphalism in such a tribute. T he situation is more complex than Macan suggests. A final close-reading for this study is provided by the bizarre ‘Alexander the Great’ from Iron Maiden’s S omewhere in Time (1986). This ten-minute-plus epic is a simple (and necessarily selective) summary of its subject’s career, which, although never to my knowledge performed live, is a well-known and surprisingly popular item. It has provoked hundreds of words of exegesis on the abovementioned Maidenfans commentary, and it is with this reception of the work that I shall conclude. T he contributors to the site are by no means dazzled by the band. One writes: ‘L yrics-wise it’s the worst of Iron Maiden’s historical epics’ while another suggests ‘[t]he lyrics are at best in the league of a better children’s encyclopaedia article’, before interestingly going on in the sort of defensive vein of one used to Macan’s view of metal, ‘which is more than most people would expect from a metal band anyway’. While the contributors recognize the shortcomings of the song, they are nonetheless stirred to comment on its content, sometimes in massive, line-by-line detail. I include notes on the single line ‘he [A lexander] paved the way for C hristianity’ by way of example: The Greek culture was no more receptive to Christianity than any other Mediterranean culture. It was only the first to get Christianity because of the geographic location, 18 N eil Peart’s lyrics examine the opposition between ‘A pollo, bringer of wisdom’ and ‘D ionysus, bringer of love’, who urges men to ‘throw off those chains of reason’. 19  ‘Midas T ouch’ appears on Power & the Glory, 1983. On the same album, ‘T he Warrior’ alludes to Julius C aesar’s famous ‘veni, vidi, vici’ dictum. A more wide-ranging study could profitably examine the Genesis song in more detail – arguably the subtlety of the narrative and its strict interest in the original Ovid verse do set it apart from its metal counterparts, but I feel Macan is still too prescriptive.

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being the easiest accessible to C hristians during R oman times. T here were C hristian communities in Mesopotamia and Iran, but they were of minor importance and could not destroy the deeply-rooted Zoroastrian faith there. (‘The Iron Maiden Commentary’)

One indulges in generalized under-estimations of the fans of heavy metal at one’s peril. N onetheless, to enjoy such a response to the song is not to over-play the authority of simple and at times clumsy lyrics. Walser writes metal musicians and fans draw on the power of centuries’ worth of imaginative writing to make sense of their own social experiences and to imagine other possibilities. The loss of historical specificity we see in the bricolage of Iron Maiden is surely not something to celebrate in itself, but it is important to see that the loss of monovocal, hegemonic history enables other constructions and connections to be formed. (160)

While few would disagree with his point regarding historical inaccuracy, I am not sure how helpful one can find his generous approbation of the very unspecific ‘other constructions and connections’. Conclusion It should again be stressed that the lyrical content of the songs analysed above is by no means the only significant ingredient of their significance to the listener. Weinstein is at pains to stress this: ‘since vocal power is ordinarily valued more highly than clear enunciation, a song’s inherent meaning of vital power is more important than any delineated meaning presented in the lyrics …. Most lyrics are best understood as a loose array of fragmentary and suggestive signifiers’ (34). While acknowledging, perhaps too generously, that Iron Maiden are ‘highly esteemed for their eloquent and meaning-charged lyrics’ she also points out that in a mid-1980s survey of adolescent listeners 58 per cent were ‘most concerned with the general sound of a song’ than its specific meaning (123). Nonetheless, if we are to adopt her terminology, classical allusion has undoubted significance as one element of her ‘fragmentary and suggestive signifiers’. To recap, then: classical allusion, from band names to album and song titles, to the content of individual lyrics, is apparently used to give the works an historical gravitas and hence mystique, or sometimes a liturgical flavour, to examine historical themes, often those of military action or heroism, or as a narrative starting point. A n apparent contradiction has arisen, namely that a largely youth-orientated and working-class phenomenon is happy to delve into what has traditionally been an elitist preserve, albeit in a sometimes relatively unsophisticated way. A final example from Iron Maiden is highly relevant to this point. Mick Wall’s biography of the band makes much of their humble, even deprived origins in the East End of London, with the partial exception of Bruce Dickinson

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acknowledged. It is regarding one of Bruce’s early bands at school in Sheffield that we encounter the very significant statement: ‘They called themselves “Paradox” and I said … why don’t you call yourself something big and mythical, like Styx’ (208). This is revealing in two ways. Firstly, the adjective ‘big’ confirms what has been suggested above: classical allusion is deemed to provide a certain weightiness for a band. Secondly, Dickinson’s use of the term ‘mythical’, as opposed to ‘classical’ with regard to the name ‘S tyx’ suggests a difference in perspective that may undermine the elitism paradox. A s outlined above, the realm of classical mythology can be viewed as merely a subset of a larger mythological reservoir on which lyricists can draw. T o term such allusion classical and hence part of an elitist discourse is surely to misread the way the allusion is viewed by the writers. E xamination of the fans’ perspective, via the voice granted by the internet fora, confirms this view. The heavy metal community seems to be one of eclectic and egalitarian tastes: the position of the classical world in this community is a testament to its freedom of expression and reception. References Alexander. D ir. Oliver S tone. Warner Brothers, 2004. Berelian, Essi. ‘The Wicked Man.’ Classic R ock Magazine 15 (2000): 36–43. Boethius. De Consolatione Philosophiae. T rans. P.G. Walsh. Oxford: Oxford U niversity Press, 1999. D avis, S tephen. Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin S aga. L ondon: Pan, 2005. Fast, S usan. In the Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of R ock Music. Oxford: Oxford U niversity Press, 2001. Gladiator. Dir. Ridley Scott. DreamWorks, 2000. Hades. ‘On to Iliad.’ R esisting S uccess. 1987. Music and lyrics by D an L orenzo and A lan Paul T ecchio. E xist to R esist Music. Homer. The Iliad. T rans. Martin Hammond. L ondon: Penguin, 1987. Horace. O des. E d. T .E . Page. L ondon: Macmillan, 1959. Iron Maiden. ‘A lexander the Great.’ S omewhere in Time. 1986. Music and lyrics by S tephen Percy Harris. Iron Maiden Publ. Overseas. Iron Maiden. ‘Flight of Icarus.’ Piece of Mind. 1983. Music and lyrics by Paul Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith. Zomba Music. Iron Maiden. ‘Ghost of the N avigator.’ Brave N ew World. 2000. Music and lyrics by Paul Bruce Dickinson and Janick Gers. Iron Maiden Publ. Overseas. ‘T he Iron Maiden C ommentary.’ 3 S ept 2007 http://www.maidenfans.com/imc/ ?url=album06_sit/commentary06_sit&lang=eng&link=albums#track8. Jenkyns, Richard. The Victorians and Ancient Greece. Oxford: Blackwell, 1980. L ed Zeppelin. ‘A chilles L ast S tand.’ Presence. 1976. Music and lyrics by Jimmy Page and R .A . Plant. Flames of A lbion Music.

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L ed Zeppelin. ‘Immigrant S ong.’ Led Zeppelin III. 1970. Music and lyrics by Jimmy Page and R obert Plant. Flames of A lbion Music. L ister, R obert. Changing Classics in S chools. C ambridge: C ambridge U niversity Press, 2007. Macan, E dward. R ocking the Classics: English Progressive R ock and the Counterculture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Manowar. ‘A chilles: T he A gony and E cstasy in E ight Parts.’ The Triumph of S teel. 1992. Music and lyrics by Joey D eMaio. Inar Music. Manowar. ‘Metal Warriors.’ The Triumph of S teel. 1992. Music and lyrics by Joey D eMaio. Inar Music. Rush. ‘Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres.’ Hemispheres. 1978. Music and lyrics by Geddy L ee, A lex L ifeson and N eil E lwood Peart. C ore Music Publ. songfacts.com. 3 S ept 2007 http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=359. songmeanings.net. 3 S ept 2007 http://www.songmeanings.net/lyric.php?lid=7795. T hin L izzy. ‘Warriors.’ Jailbreak. 1976. Music and lyrics by S cott Gorham and Philip Parris L ynott. U niversal Music Publishing. Troy. D ir. Wolfgang Petersen. Warner Brothers, 2004. Wall, Mick. Iron Maiden – R un to the Hills: The Authorised Biography. L ondon: S anctuary, 2004. Walser, R obert. R unning with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover, N H: Wesleyan U niversity Press, 1993. Weinstein, D eena. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. 2nd ed. New York: D a C apo, 2000. Discography A gathodaimon. Carpe N octem. [S elf released],1996. A ntaeus. De Principii Evangelikum. Osmose Productions, 2002. A taraxia. Ad Perpetuam R ei Memoriam. A pollyon, 1994. C enturion. Arise of the Empire. S carlet, 1999. C ircus Maximus. The First Chapter. Frontiers, 2005. Hades. Exist to R esist. Black Pumpkin, 1996. Hades. If At First You Don’t S ucceed. T orrid, 1988. Hades. R esting S uccess. T orrid, 1987. Iron Maiden. Brave N ew World. E MI, 2000. Iron Maiden. Dance of Death. E MI, 2003. Iron Maiden. Piece of Mind. E MI, 1983. Iron Maiden. Powerslave. E MI, 1984. Iron Maiden. S omewhere in Time. E MI, 1986. L ed Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin III. A��������������� tlantic, 1970. L ed Zeppelin. Presence. S wan S ong, 1976. Manowar. Into Glory R ide. Megaforce, 1983. Manowar. The Triumph of S teel. A tlantic, 1992.

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Motörhead. 1916. WT G, 1991. R ush. Hemispheres. A nthem, 1978. S axon. Power & the Glory. C arrere, 1983. S toa. Zal. A lice in, 2001. T he S treets. O riginal Pirate Material. Locked on, 2002. T hin L izzy. Jailbreak. Mercury, 1976.

C hapter 7

E lements of the Gothic in Heavy Metal: A Match Made in Hell Bryan A. Bardine

Since the first heavy metal album, Black S abbath (1970) by Black Sabbath, elements of the Gothic have pervaded the genre, whether in the lyrics, the dress of both the bands and the fans, the album covers, the sound or the culture itself. Bands during the period 1970–83 (roughly), including Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Saxon and Motörhead, to name a few, incorporated various aspects of the Gothic into their lyrics, dress, stage shows and albums, and in doing so helped to give heavy metal a stronger, more powerful image with fans and media alike. More important than the image is the power and feeling that the music generates with the audience, be they in a packed concert hall or headbanging with an iPod in their room. As a crucial source of this power, the Gothic influence permeates all aspects of heavy metal culture, and this influence has helped keep the genre a vibrant form of expression in the music world. This article is broken into five sections, each examining a particular aspect of heavy metal or its background necessary for a better understanding of heavy metal. T he analyses of the lyrics, album covers, music and style of metal are preceded by a brief look at the group of people who, without knowing it, have had an influence on various types of literature, film and, most especially for this chapter, music. Background on the Goths and the Gothic Literature T he Goths were a large group of N orthern E uropean tribes who inhabited much of Europe during the first eight centuries after the death of Christ. Herwig Wolfram, in his book History of the Goths, remarked: ‘Anyone in the field of Gothic history must expect to be misunderstood, rejected, even stigmatized. T his is hardly surprising, for the subject is burdened with the ideological weight of a readiness throughout the centuries … to reject the Goths as an embodiment of everything wicked and evil’ (1). This statement, although about Gothic history, in many ways is parallel to the public and media’s perceptions of heavy metal music, in part because of the darker elements within the music. Because they had no ‘literature or art of their own the Goths came to be seen merely as the corrupters and destroyers of the culture of the Romans’ (Sowerby 16). Unfortunately, it seems the Goths have received the moniker from the Romans that many Germanic and

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N orthern E uropean peoples of the time were given – that they were barbaric and primitive. A s time progressed the meaning of the word moved from referring to a group of people to a broader conception, particularly later in the twentieth century. A ccording to Fred Botting, the word Gothic ‘condenses a variety of historical elements and meanings opposed to the categories valued in the eighteenth century …. U sed derogatively about art, architecture and writing that failed to conform to the standards of the neoclassical taste, “Gothic” signified the lack of reason, morality, and beauty of feudal beliefs, customs and works’ (3). In essence, the term was meant to condemn those aspects of Gothic culture – like the intellect, morality and beauty – that were different from the more popular and respectable aspects of the culture of the E nlightenment. It is easy to see a connection between the way the term Gothic was perceived in the eighteenth century and how much of rock ‘n’ roll, particularly heavy metal, has been analysed and condemned for its perceived subversiveness in the twentieth century. Metal music is often called loud, raunchy, dark, crude, even evil: the reference seems to stick even today. Gothic literature was a name originally given to a collection of novels ‘written between the 1760s and the 1820s’ (Punter, Terror 1). The term Gothic in regard to literature became popular in 1764 with the publication of Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of O tranto: A Gothic S tory. S oon, O tranto became synonymous with the genre, and many of the characteristics in other early Gothic works were evident in this text. Other notable authors of the period were Matthew L ewis, A nn Radcliffe, William Beckford and many young writers who would become more famous as E nglish R omantic poets of the early nineteenth century, such as Percy Bysshe S helley, S amuel T aylor C oleridge and L ord Byron. Over the centuries the term Gothic has continued to be applied to many genres of literature and film, and it has persistently remained popular because the public keeps demanding to see more of it. So, what aspects of this literature make it Gothic? Typically, Gothic stories from the period took place in medieval settings, which were often archaic, like castles, abbeys, convents, or just dark cave-like structures. Also, the literature contained supernatural elements, the occult, suspense, violence, vice, religion – in particular the demonization of the C atholic C hurch, abandonment of female characters and an overall darkness, both in tone and in the settings in which the stories took place. Furthermore, ‘the Gothic novel demonstrated uninhibited libido, even outright perversion with incest, rape and sadomasochism of all varieties’ (Hinds 153). Much of the early Gothic writing took place during the Enlightenment era in Europe, more specifically in England. Roy Porter lists a few of the characteristics when he writes that there was ‘a general commitment to criticizing the injustices and exposing the inefficiencies of the ancien régime; to emancipating man … from the chains of ignorance and error, superstition, theological dogma, and the dead hand of the clergy’ (5). Several beliefs of the Enlightenment philosophers made their way into the writings of Gothic novelists like Radcliffe and Lewis. Both authors consistently criticized the power of the C atholic C hurch and its control over its followers. T ypically, both writers would use C atholic clergy as the villains

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in their works. Also, several Gothic writers, including Radcliffe, Lewis, Charlotte Smith and Horace Walpole, exploited the lack of control which women had over their lives. In many cases, female characters were locked away in a castle or abbey until the male hero of the story could rescue them, if the woman was lucky. In other stories the heroine was murdered or became a nun. T he notion of the supernatural was a common characteristic of Gothic literature, although it was approached differently by various authors. For instance, A nn R adcliffe would often include a supernatural element in a story, but soon after it appeared she would explain it away. In The Italian, the two protagonists are disturbed by a ‘hollow sigh, that rose near them’ (140); less than a page later Radcliffe lets the reader know that the sigh came from an aged monk praying in another cell. By contrast, Horace Walpole, in The Castle of O tranto, writes of a giant helmet ‘an hundred times more large than any casque ever made for human being’ falling from the sky and killing his young son (19). The helmet is never explained and the reader is left to ask questions regarding where it came from and why it killed the young man. While the genre is often condemned as the ‘pulp fiction’ of its era, there is certainly evidence to show that Gothic literature was at the same time a serious response to the social and philosophical changes introduced by the E nlightenment. Heavy Metal Lyrics and ‘The Gothic’ Deena Weinstein, in her book Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture, discusses some themes in heavy metal lyrics similar to Gothic elements: ‘Heavy metal brings its images to the forefront, empowering them with its vitalizing sound. It stands against the pleasing illusions of normality, conjuring with the powers of the underworld and making them submit to the order of the music and nothing else’ (38). Weinstein is establishing a connection between the dark tone of the lyrics, the images they portray and the power the music exudes. S he continues her analysis by examining metal lyrics in terms of ‘disorder, conflict, opposition, and contradiction. It incorporates images of monsters, the grotesque, mayhem, and disaster. It speaks of injustice and of resistance, rebellion, and death’ (39). While the Gothic elements grew out of the notion of the primitive and chaotic aspects of culture, as the Goths themselves were seen by most of society, so too are heavy metal music and its lyrics seen as primitive and chaotic to much of mainstream society. It is hardly surprising, then, to find that many heavy metal bands incorporate these Gothic elements into their lyrics. The song ‘Black Sabbath’ by the band Black Sabbath is one of the first examples of incorporating Gothic lyrics into a song. T he Gothic element S abbath is using is the occult, particularly S atan. From the band’s self-titled debut album, the song begins with a thunderstorm pounding as a church bell chimes in the background, before lead vocalist Ozzy Osbourne begins to sing. In the second verse the lyrics

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discuss S atan’s role in everyone’s lives. Osbourne’s distressed voice adds to the haunting effect of the ‘Big black shape’ of Satan that is described as ‘smiling’. T he occult imagery and the notion of S atan in these lyrics can also be seen in Gothic literature. The works often contain demons or demonic figures. For instance, Helen S toddart, in The Handbook to Gothic Literature, notes that ‘S atan is the most common and singular example of a demonic presence, though others would be evil spirits, devils, ghosts and supernatural disturbances’ (43). While the Devil shows up in some Gothic works, such as Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796), though he is disguised, more often than not the authors would give Satanic characteristics to humans. For example, characters such as A mbrosio in The Monk, S chedoni in A nn R adcliffe’s The Italian (1797) and Falkland in William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (1794) each ‘bear, sometimes literally, an identifiably demonic stamp’ (44). Following Black Sabbath, bands of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) incorporated Gothic lyrics into their songs. Through its lyrics, Iron Maiden, one of the world’s foremost metal bands, has long had an association with Gothic themes. On its third album, The N umber of the Beast (1982), Iron Maiden refers to the occult – just as Black Sabbath did, in the form of the Devil – in the title track ‘The Number of the Beast’. However, rather than have the Devil watching, even smiling at the destruction he brings, Iron Maiden lets the listener see a sacrifice taking place amidst ‘sacred chants’, with ‘fires burning bright’ around a ‘ritual’ that celebrates ‘Satan’s work’. T he lyrics certainly help listeners visualize a chaotic, frenzied scene associated with visions of Satanic worship and human sacrifice. The Gothic aspect of this visualization lies in the frenzy the band creates with the first three lines of the lyric. L isteners can see worshippers crying in pain and raising their hands to their demon lord, all the while hoping not to be chosen for sacrifice. Iron Maiden’s use of the occult imagery here is Gothic in its simplest form, regardless of the band’s intent. T he occult is not the only way that N WOBHM bands have incorporated Gothic themes. Other groups incorporate themes of violence and abuse into their lyrics. For instance, S axon, in its song ‘Warrior’, sings about a primitive village being attacked by a group of barbarians ‘from over the sea’ who ‘rape and … slaughter’ and ‘pillage the wealth’. Unlike Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, Saxon have incorporated one of the original meanings of Gothic – the notion of the barbarian – into their music. Moreover, the acts of rape and pillage have a greater connection with the Gothic than the notion of violence against a tribe or group of people because of their relation to the primitive aspect of human nature. R obin S owerby notes that the Goths themselves were known as ‘thoroughgoing pillagers, ravagers, looters, and spoilers’ (17). The terms that Sowerby uses to describe the Goths certainly mirror the language used to explain characteristics associated with characters and events in Gothic fiction. As mentioned earlier, one of the many themes inherent in Gothic literature is that of chaos. T he lyrics and music in this S axon song let the listener hear the chaos generated by the attacking hordes. Other NWOBHM bands have incorporated this invasion and chaos theme into their music. Iron Maiden, on

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its album The N umber of the Beast, has a song titled ‘Invaders’, which details a Viking invasion of a Saxon village. The chaotic imagery is enhanced by the battle scene and its ‘wounded fighters’, whose ‘severed limbs’ and ‘bloody corpses’ cause a ‘smell of death and burning flesh’. The local Saxons are described as ‘overpowered victims’ at the mercy of the Viking warriors. Furthermore, within the refrain the lyrics relate what the invaders are doing to the S axons, not only to the men but also to the women and children: ‘pillaging’, ‘looting’, ‘fighting’, ‘marauding’, ‘raping’ and ‘plundering’. Another form of chaos often referred to in Gothic fiction appears within a character’s mind. A merican author E dgar A llan Poe was a master at showing his readers the gradual breakdown of a character’s psyche. For example, in ‘The TellTale Heart’ Poe deftly takes his audience through the narrator’s mental collapse. As the story begins, the narrator tries to convince the audience that he is not insane: TRUE! – nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? T he disease had sharpened my senses – not destroyed – not dulled them. A bove all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the Heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! And observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story. (303)

Poe uses punctuation and emphasis to great effect throughout this short passage. He incorporates many abrupt sentences and phrases, with several starts and stops so that the man’s speech sounds choppy and nervous – as he says he was and is throughout his ordeal. While certainly a different type of chaos than that which S axon and Iron Maiden are singing about, the internal chaos that the narrator goes through during the story concludes with him admitting his murder and dismemberment of the man he claimed to love and care for. T here is a connection between the structure of the short story and the two songs mentioned above. Poe has incorporated many short sentences or fragments set apart by different types of punctuation. In doing so, he gives his text a very choppy sound, which places emphasis at various important parts. For instance, toward the end of the story the narrator believes that the police who have come to the house to check on the old man know that the narrator has buried his body under the floor boards of the room in which they stand. He says: ‘T hey heard! – T hey suspected! – T hey knew! – They were making a mockery of my horror’ (306). Similarly, both the S axon song and the Iron Maiden song incorporate the musical equivalent of what Poe is doing in this short story – by using short lyrics and a short refrain, the sense of chaos is increased. In the Iron Maiden song, the refrain simply describes the invaders with two words – ‘pillaging’ and ‘looting’ – but the message inherent in those words is one of violence and certainly chaos. In the S axon song, part of the refrain is ‘warrior came, warrior saw, warrior conquered’, which, like in the Iron Maiden and Poe examples, is brief and gives the listener a sense of foreboding and a vision of the chaos that just occurred.

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Judas Priest takes a slightly different approach when it looks at the brutality that S axon and Iron Maiden sing about. In the band’s song ‘T yrant’, from the 1976 album S ad Wings of Destiny, it is examined from the perspectives of both the aggressor and the oppressed. T he song opens with the tyrant letting those under his control know exactly the rules of the game: as ‘the commander’ and ‘hideous destructor’, the voice tells his listeners to ‘surrender’. In this song the power comes in two forms. First, lyrically, in the utter control that the tyrant is showing to the oppressed, and second, musically, in the speed and intensity in lead vocalist R ob Halford’s voice and in the twin guitars of K.K. D owning and Glenn T ipton. D uring the parts of the song when Halford is singing as the tyrant, the music is much faster and more intense, compared to when he takes on the role of the oppressed who are ‘chained and shackled’ and have lived ‘in dread’ ever since their tyrant has been ‘enthroned’. Halford’s voice is also noticeably different when he sings these lines. His phrasing is slower and he puts more emphasis on the words ‘oppressed’, ‘shackled’, ‘choked’ and ‘enthroned’ to show the desperation and pain evident in a people who have lost not only their freedom but also hope. With a song like ‘Tyrant’, Judas Priest explores the Gothic notions of violence and subjugation in new ways. In much of the early Gothic fiction, the Catholic Church played the role of the tyrant that Judas Priest sings about. In The Italian, A nn R adcliffe criticizes the Church through her portrayal of the evil monk Father Schedoni and also by using the Holy Inquisition. Schedoni is portrayed as a ruthless kidnapper and conniver by the way he attempts to control the lives of the protagonists E llena and V ivaldi. He kidnaps Ellena so she will not marry Vivaldi, and he has Vivaldi falsely accused of a crime and imprisoned by members of the Inquisition. S chedoni manipulates others – such as V ivaldi’s mother, the L ady Marchesa – through threats, violence and cunning, all in the name of self-promotion. T he Inquisition acts as the enforcer within the story. A s V ivaldi waits in his cell wondering what will happen next, he hears terrifying screams of pain and torture. R adcliffe’s comments are not only on the impending threat to V ivaldi, but also on the evil the C atholic C hurch forced upon thousands of people during the time of the Inquisition. T hough different in scope to Judas Priest’s ‘T yrant’, The Italian’s S chedoni and the Holy Inquisition do essentially the same things. After Ozzy Osbourne left Black Sabbath in 1979 the band found a new vocalist in former Rainbow and Elf front man Ronnie James Dio. Dio was known for his fantasy lyrics, such as ‘the parable “S targazer” – about a wizard who cripples civilization by attempting to build a stone tower to the stars’ (Christe 68). While D io’s lyrics with S abbath continued to incorporate fantasy themes, he also wrote some darker, more Gothic lyrics. In the song ‘Lady Evil’, on the album Heaven and Hell (1980), his first with Black Sabbath, he moved away from the traditional Gothic theme of the weak, subjugated woman to a powerful temptress who kills those that she meets, a somewhat similar theme to that explored by Black Sabbath in the song ‘E vil Woman’ on their self-titled debut album.

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Many bands took Gothic themes and played with them as Dio and Sabbath did in this song. Placing the action in ‘Witches’ V alley’ adds an occult dimension to the song. As the song progresses Dio sings ‘Thunder cracks the sky, it makes it bleed’. T he blood imagery adds to the Gothic aspect because in this verse blood is substituted for rain, a clear sign of impending doom or death. T he themes of violence and evil are also addressed. N otably, another dimension of the Gothic can be construed from this song as L ady E vil is quite possibly a vampire. L ater in the song, Dio’s lyrics state that the lady cannot ‘face the light’ but will find her victim ‘for the night’. These references to darkness and Lady Evil’s need to come out only at night could imply that she is a vampire, or at the very least something associated with darkness – a demon or monster of some kind. While ‘Lady Evil’ may well be examining a demonic figure or a vampire, an interesting contrast exists between this song and L ed Zeppelin’s classic ‘S tairway to Heaven’ from the album Led Zeppelin IV . T he main character in both ‘L ady E vil’ and ‘S tairway to Heaven’ is female, but the comparison ends there. T he most intriguing contrast between the two songs is that while they both incorporate images of nature, they use those images to achieve quite different purposes. In ‘L ady E vil’ the action occurs in ‘a place just south of Witches’ V alley’, certainly a place of foreboding. Witches’ V alley is a place where ‘they say the wind won’t blow’ and ‘the rain won’t fall’. S uch negative images leave the listener with a feeling of dread, which of course is one of the purposes of much Gothic fiction. By contrast, the first natural image in ‘S tairway to Heaven’ is much more peaceful and serene – ‘in a tree by the brook there’s a songbird who sings’. This image, along with the slow tempo and acoustic guitar played by Jimmy Page relaxes and calms the listener; on the other hand the tempo of ‘L ady E vil’ remains consistently fast throughout the song. Another natural image in the Black Sabbath song is the above-mentioned ‘thunder cracks the sky and makes it bleed’, another reference to impending doom or danger. Further, there is no light in ‘L ady E vil’. A t various times in the song she cannot face the light, moreover she ‘feeds the darkness’ and is described as ‘the queen of the night’. Each of these dark images makes Lady Evil a strong female character, even if she is a negative force. Black Sabbath seems to have reversed the image of the female in Gothic texts – making her strong, individualistic and even deadly. By contrast, there is no dark imagery whatsoever in ‘Stairway to Heaven’. T he images of a new day dawning, wind blowing and of the ‘lady we all know who shines white light’, while not Gothic, do show a powerful character, but it is good, not evil. Both bands have used natural imagery to achieve their own purposes; Black Sabbath to show a powerful, deadly woman, and Led Zeppelin to show a more positive, optimistic female. Black Sabbath makes their Lady quite Gothic in terms of the dark imagery and the control she has over those who visit Witches’ V alley, while L ed Zeppelin creates a more traditional, feminine woman who is never seen outside of the light. A nother Gothic theme used by N WOBHM bands was madness. Iron Maiden, on their album Piece of Mind, address insanity in the song ‘S till L ife’. T he notion of insanity occurs often in Gothic fiction and the ‘fear of insanity is a fundamental

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source of terror in Gothic Literature’ (Small 152). As Helen Small writes, ‘for the early practitioners of the genre [Gothic literature] it was first and foremost a powerful shock tactic’ (152). Furthermore, madness itself is a form of mental chaos, or the opposition to the rational world. Iron Maiden uses a character’s steady progress toward insanity as a way to show his movement away from rational thought and toward his own death and the death of his partner. A ccording to S teve Harris, Iron Maiden’s bass player and principle songwriter, the song is ‘the story of a guy who is drawn like a magnet to a pool of water. He sees faces in the lake. He has nightmares about it and in the end he jumps in and takes his lady with him’ (qtd. in Stenning 91). At the beginning of the song, as the narrator stares into a pool and its ‘dark depths’, he feels like he is being drawn in by the faces he sees in the water. A s his nightmares increase, so too does his madness. He no longer wants to hurt just himself, but has decided he must also take his companion ‘down there’ into the water with him so that they will ‘drown together’. T he only way the narrator can end his suffering is to end his life. T he music in Iron Maiden’s ‘S till L ife’ adds to the Gothic ‘feel’ of the song. T he song begins in an uncharacteristic way for Iron Maiden: very slowly. Bruce Dickinson is not singing at the beginning of the song: the lyrics are spoken to match the slow, haunting guitar. T he man in the song is telling his companion that he is being called to by faces within the pool. Because the music is slow and Dickinson is just speaking, not singing, there is no urgency in the song yet. Once the next stanza begins, the tempo increases, and Dickinson begins to sing the lyrics. The man realizes his companion does not believe him and he begins to get frustrated; Dickinson’s voice places more emphasis on this line, further displaying the man’s frustration. From here, the music continues to increase in speed and the man becomes more desperate in the final line of the second stanza when he feels drawn to the pool and no longer knows ‘what to do’. At this stage, the man’s mind has begun to lose touch with reality – he believes he sees faces in a pool who call to him. T hough the refrain is just one word, ‘N ightmares’, it is emphasized and the music is more intense. T he tempo of the song remains fast, and the man seems to give in to his fate when he talks about his approaching death, the moment when he will join the faces ‘at the bottom of the pool’. Again, Dickinson puts more emphasis on this last line of the stanza, further exemplifying the man’s stress and increasing removal from rational thought. The complete break from reality occurs when the man decides he needs to take his companion to see the faces as well. The only respite the man gets from his terrible nightmares is through his own death and that of his lover. The song ends abruptly with Dickinson singing ‘Now we rest in peace’. N ot only does Iron Maiden give the listener a stirring musical composition with this song, they also make the lyrics easy to visualize, so the images they present are even more horrific. Through their evocation of non-rational fears, the lyrics follow in the Gothic tradition of questioning the E nlightenment belief in the power of the human mind to explain reality. The metal bands examined above drew on elements like the occult, Satanic imagery, brutality against the weak, chaos, darkness and madness to help more

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clearly create visual images of their songs in their listeners’ minds and because of their obvious connection to the power of the music. A nother connection between heavy metal and the Gothic, in particular Gothic fiction, is subversiveness. Both forms of expression are subgenres of larger genres: rock ‘n’ roll and literature, respectively (Hinds 156–7). Locating this subversiveness, Hinds announces that ‘Gothic fiction and Heavy metal epitomize this subgeneric behaviour because they manifest the “sub” in several conceptions: subversive, substandard, subliminal … these two “Satanic” offspring go to great lengths to define and illustrate “difference,” and further, a difference “beneath,” hidden under the socially acceptable’ (157). NWOBHM bands, like Gothic fiction writers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, wanted to be different, to express themselves differently to those that came before them. One of the ways the bands felt they could do that was by writing lyrics that addressed issues that were opposed to the accepted behaviour of the day in E ngland, where most of the early heavy metal bands were from. T he result was loud, fast music that dealt with issues that the average pop music listener would not want to talk about. The power of the music was brought about in other ways: ‘T he loudness and intensity of heavy metal music visibly empower fans’, and the experience ‘energizes the body, transforming space and social relations’ (Walser 2). Gothic Elements in the Album Covers R epresentations of power exist beyond the lyrics and the music itself. A lbum covers are another way that bands show their power and passion for the music and the fans. A lbum covers serve more than one purpose, as D eena Weinstein argues: first, the buyer should be able to acquire an idea about the band’s ‘desired image, attitude, and emotion’ (28); second, it is an obvious way for the fans to recognize their favourite groups (28). Colours are very important on heavy metal album covers. It is rare to see covers that are not steeped in black and/or red. T hese are chosen primarily because neither colour is relaxing or portrays a gentle feeling. In most cases, they are used because they are ‘intense, exciting, or ominous’ when combined with the other images on the covers (29). Typically, the imagery found on heavy metal album covers is meant to be ‘unsettling, suggesting chaos and bordering on the grotesque’ (29). Some of the ways that the album covers display this chaos is by incorporating Gothic elements, particularly darkened scenes, violent images and supernatural or occult settings. Furthermore, according to Weinstein, ‘the visual imagery contextualizes the music or at least provides a clue to its meaning’ (29). Basically, it is easy to pick out the heavy albums just by the covers. One of the bands with the most recognizable album covers is Iron Maiden, who has used E ddie, a ghoulish heavy metal mascot, on each of their album covers since 1980. He has taken various incarnations, from a puppet master for the devil on The N umber of the Beast (1982) to an Egyptian pharaoh on Powerslave (1984) to the

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grim reaper on Dance of Death (2003). In each case Eddie remains recognizable and he is virtually always placed in a position of power. For instance, on Iron Maiden’s second album, Killers (1981), he is seen holding a hatchet dripping in blood as the two hands of his victim are sliding down his shirt. T he only light on the darkened street is shining on Eddie and we see a menacing smile as he seems to stare at the record buyer. T he name of the album is written in dripping blood and the band’s name is written in red in its own distinctive font at the top of the cover. The message is clear: this album evokes power, passion and music that present darker themes and images. In another of his personas, Eddie has his power taken away, when he is placed inside a rubber room in an insane asylum on the album Piece of Mind (1983). A lthough not in control as he usually is, we get the same sense of power from the images. Eddie has been placed in a straight jacket and chained to the walls, although it is clear he is trying to break free and lunge at the buyer of the album. His eyes are nothing but black sockets with yellow points of light where the eyeballs should be and his body is straining to break away from the chains. He is surrounded by black, except for a yellow light that allows us to see the rubber room in which he is chained. Further, by looking closely we see that the top half of his head has been cut open and his brain has been operated on – both halves of his skull are bolted together and blood trickles down his forehead. The name of the band appears in large red letters at the top of the cover and the title of the album is written in small, yellow script just above E ddie’s head. T he chaos and anger in E ddie’s face tells everyone that this will not be an easy-listening record. In fact, by the look on his face, it is easy to imagine Eddie breaking out of the asylum and coming after his next victim. T he Gothic elements of insanity, violence, certainly chaos – whether in his mind or by his outward expression – let us see the power the band intends to unleash on its listeners. Other bands have incorporated similar Gothic elements into their album covers as well. The first true heavy metal band, Black Sabbath, while not as grotesque in their album cover design, certainly included Gothic elements that gave the listener an idea of what their music would be about. T he cover of the band’s debut album, Black S abbath (1970), ‘depicted a dilapidated English cottage overgrown with barren brush, partially obscuring the image of a pale green enchantress. T he interior of the album’s gatefold sleeve contained few details beyond a grim gothic poem inscribed in a giant inverted crucifix’ (Christe 4). The enchantress seems to be walking toward the record buyer, a look of numbness or nothingness in her eyes. T he brush and trees around her are tinted a reddish colour, leaving the impression of death and decay. The poem, ‘Still Falls the Rain’, uses Gothic images like ‘rain’, ‘darkness’, ‘blackened trees’, ‘unseen violence’, ‘poppies bleed’ and ‘young rabbits, born dead in traps’. T he poem is reminiscent of the graveyard poetry that preceded much of the Gothic fiction of the eighteenth century. As David Punter argues in The Literature of Terror, graveyard poetry is important to Gothic fiction and, by extension, heavy metal music for many reasons:

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because its involvement with death and suffering prefigures the Gothic novel; because it marks an early stage of the renewed desire for literary ‘novelty’ which characterised the later part of the century; because it challenges rationalism and vaunts extremity of feeling; and because its actual influence on Gothic fiction was considerable … (30)

Clearly, graveyard poetry influenced the Gothic writers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. C onsider the often ominous plots and preponderance of death which takes place in Gothic fiction. More importantly, the graveyard poets’ influence on the Gothic authors empowered them to move away from rationalism toward feelings of emotion and passion and even chaos in their writing. T heir focus was meant to bring about a variety of emotions from their readers: fear, terror, horror, excitement and passion, to name a few. Just as graveyard poetry was an appropriate introduction for the Gothic fiction on the horizon, so too were ‘Still Falls the Rain’ and the cover of Black Sabbath’s first album introductions to this new kind of music. The combination of the visual image of the cover and the implied images in the poem leaves the record buyer with a shuddering sense of doom. As the opening song, ‘Black Sabbath’, begins, we hear rain falling as a church bell chimes, a clear connection to the poem and to the remainder of the songs on the album. Four years later, on S abbath Bloody S abbath (1974), Black Sabbath’s cover art is much more graphic and overt. It shows a ‘graphically satanic ritual in full swing’ (Popoff 46). Predominantly red and black, the cover shows six naked or semi-naked people attacking a prone woman on a bed. The headboard is a skull with arms reaching toward the woman as she is being mauled by the other six figures. Written in the headboard is the number ‘666’ – the Devil’s number. The cover also contains images of several rats and a snake coiled around the sacrificial woman. Each of the other figures have long finger nails and cloven feet, giving more clear evidence that a Satanic sacrifice is about to occur. All of the people and the images on the bed are tinged in red, while the background is black and yellow. Red and yellow stand out against the black background, and the red picture leads the viewer to think of blood, death and pain, especially when examining the frightening scene in concert with the colours. T he album title appears at the top of the cover, again tinged in red with the letter ‘S’ in the title written like lightning bolts. T he band’s name appears in very small white letters at the bottom of the cover. T he band seemed to be going for something a little different here: they want to emphasize the title, and by reproducing it mostly in red they are showing a closer connection between the name of the album and the image on the cover, not the name of the band. By including ‘666’ on the cover a further connection to S atan and the occult is added to the mix.

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The Gothic Elements in the Style of Heavy Metal Musicians and Fans The look of heavy metal musicians is just as important as the other aspects that have been discussed so far in this chapter. The look of the musicians of the NWOBHM period is similar to that of metal musicians today, although today because there are so many genres of metal there is more variety in dress. For the N WOBHM period there was a bit of a shift from the early days (late 1960s and early 1970s), when groups tended to wear ‘the “authentic” look of the time, wearing the street clothes – jeans and t-shirts – and long hair that served as the everyday uniform of the male members of the youth counterculture of the West’ (Weinstein 29–30). Interestingly, the early dress of the metal bands, while not their own creation, still set themselves apart because of their association with the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was very much like the Gothic literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the clothes and hair styles worn by the bands made them look different from most people in society. In essence, the early metal musicians borrowed from an existing group. A s time progressed and heavy metal became more cemented in the music culture, the dress changed as well. The band Judas Priest introduced a biker look in the mid-1970s, which was emphasized by ‘the metal-studded leather fashion … reminiscent of an earlier British youth culture, the rockers’ (Weinstein 30): black leather jackets, pants, biker boots and studs which were often on their jackets and on black forearm guards as well. Sometimes studded cod pieces were worn. Further, as Weinstein points out, ‘[s]imilar to the biker style and derived from it is the style associated with the S&M subculture’ (30). The biker-wear associated with Judas Priest and other bands of the time connects to the Gothic because of the taboo nature of the clothes themselves. T he S &M subculture that Weinstein discusses reflects, at least to mainstream society, a subversive element of the culture, much like many of the themes Gothic authors were writing about in their books. As Weinstein explains, the early ‘uniforms’ of jeans and t-shirts connected the performers to the fans, while the biker look that followed combined the ‘system of rebellion, masculinity, and outsider status that fit in with the other elements of the heavy metal culture’ (30). A s far as the fans are concerned, they dress in many ways similar to their idols, and their style is also meant to pay homage to them. For instance, many metalheads wear a ‘black t-shirt, worn with denim jeans (often with tears or holes in them) and a leather or denim jacket’ (Arnett 424). Often, metalheads will have band logos sewn on their jackets (Weinstein 128). Furthermore, the t-shirts often have band name logos or other visual representations of the band on them (Weinstein 127). The Gothic connection is clear – the shirts are black and most often the images on the t-shirts depict violent, aggressive scenes that might be on the album covers or sung about in the songs. These images mirror the kind of Gothic images or taboos that early Gothic authors were writing about. Often the t-shirts are from concert tours the bands have completed, and those ‘are more highly valued than those bought in stores, and shirts from long-ago tours are the

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most highly respected of all’ (Weinstein 127). Metalheads often wear a variety of pins and rings depicting ‘icons associated with heavy metal in general, rather than specific bands … skulls, skeletons, snakes, dragons, and daggers, maces, and other instruments of pre-gun mayhem’ (Weinstein 128). These icons connect to the Gothic because of their connections to the pre-industrial past. Many of the icons are copies of weapons used in medieval times; the monsters (dragons, snakes and so on) are often associated with medieval or fantasy stories and texts. Finally, the most important and most necessary fashion statement a (male) metalhead can make is to have long hair. It is the most obvious way to include oneself in the group, and it is also an easy way to differentiate oneself from most of society. Wearing long hair references one of the primary credos of the ‘Gothic’ discussed earlier – resistance and rebellion. Conclusion Heavy metal music has flourished for nearly 40 years, and some of the most important and influential bands came from the NWOBHM. These groups set the stage for much of the metal that is played today, and part of that influence came from not only the music they played, but also the lyrics they wrote, the album covers they used and their style of dress. Incorporated into each of these areas was a Gothic influence – whether the darkened, violent images inherent in the album covers, the occult or barbaric references in the lyrics, the notions of the rebellious outsider in the dress, or the powerful, bombastic music. In each case, the ‘Gothic’ influenced the NWOBHM, and without that influence, heavy metal would be a completely different form of music. References Arnett, Jeffrey. ‘Three Profiles of Heavy Metal Fans: A Taste for Sensation and S ubculture of A lienation.’ Qualitative S ociology 16.4 (1993): 423–43. Black Sabbath. ‘Black Sabbath.’ Black S abbath. 1970. Music and lyrics by T erence Butler, A nthony Iommi, John Osbourne and W.T . Ward. Westminster Music. Black Sabbath. ‘Lady Evil.’ Heaven and Hell. 1980. Music and lyrics by T erence Michael Butler, Anthony Frank Iommi, Ronnie James Dio and W.T. Ward. Westminster Music. Black Sabbath. ‘Still Falls the Rain.’ Black S abbath. V ertigo, 1970. Botting, Fred. ‘In Gothic Darkly: Heterotopia, History, Culture.’ A Companion to the Gothic. Ed. David Punter. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. 3–14. C hriste, Ian. S ound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.

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Hinds, E lizabeth Jane Wall. ‘T he D evil S ings the Blues: Heavy Metal, Gothic Fiction, and “Postmodern” D iscourse.’ Journal of Popular Culture 26.3 (Winter 1992): 151–64. Iron Maiden. ‘Invaders.’ The N umber of the Beast. 1982. Music and lyrics by S tephen Percy Harris. Iron Maiden Publ. Overseas. Iron Maiden. ‘T he N umber of the Beast.’ The N umber of the Beast. 1982. Music and lyrics by S tephen Percy Harris. Iron Maiden Publ. Overseas. Iron Maiden. ‘S till L ife.’ Piece of Mind. 1983. Music and lyrics by S tephen Percy Harris and D ave Murray. Iron Maiden Publ. Overseas. Judas Priest. ‘T yrant.’ S ad Wings of Destiny. 1976. Music and lyrics by R obert John A rthur Halford and Glenn R aymond T ipton. Gull S ongs. L ed Zeppelin. ‘S tairway to Heaven.’ Led Zeppelin IV . 1971. Music and lyrics by Jimmy Page and R obert Plant. S uperhype Music. Poe, E dgar A . ‘T he T ell-T ale Heart.’ Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Vintage, 1975. 303–7. Popoff, Martin. The Collector’s Guide to Heavy Metal: Volume 1 – The S eventies. T oronto: C ollector’s Guide, 2003. Porter, R oy. The Enlightenment. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990. Punter, D avid, ed. A Companion to the Gothic. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Punter, D avid. The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day. Volume 1: The Gothic Tradition. L ondon: L ongman, 1996. R adcliffe, A nn. The Italian. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. S axon. ‘Warrior.’ Power & the Glory. 1983. Music and lyrics by Biff Byford, Stephen Dawson, Nigel Ian Glockler, Oliver Graham and Paul Anthony Quinn. A xis Music L td. S mall, Helen. ‘Madness.’ The Handbook to Gothic Literature. E d. Marie MulveyRoberts. New York: New York University Press, 1998. 152–7. S owerby, R obin. ‘T he Goths in History and Pre-Gothic Gothic.’ A Companion to the Gothic. Ed. David Punter. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. 15–26. S tenning, Paul. Iron Maiden: 30 Years of the Beast. N ew Malden: C hrome D reams, 2006. S toddart, Helen. ‘T he D emonic.’ The Handbook to Gothic Literature. E d. Marie Mulvey-Roberts. New York: New York University Press, 1998. 43–5. Walpole, Horace. The Castle of O tranto. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Walser, R obert. R unning with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover, N H: Wesleyan U niversity Press, 1993. Weinstein, D eena. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. 2nd ed. New York: D a C apo, 2000. Wolfram, Herwig. History of the Goths. Trans. Thomas J. Dunlap. Berkeley, CA: U niversity of C alifornia Press, 1988.

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Discography Black Sabbath. Black S abbath. V ertigo, 1970. Black Sabbath. Heaven and Hell. V ertigo, 1980. Black Sabbath. S abbath Bloody S abbath. V ertigo, 1973. Iron Maiden. Dance of Death. E MI, 2003. Iron Maiden. Killers. C apitol, 1981. Iron Maiden. The N umber of the Beast. C olumbia, 1982. Iron Maiden. Piece of Mind. E MI, 1983. Iron Maiden. Powerslave. E MI, 1984. Judas Priest. S ad Wings of Destiny. S ony, 1976. L ed Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin IV . A tlantic, 1971. S axon. Power & the Glory. C arrere, 1983.

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Par t III Heavy Metal S ocieties

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C hapter 8

The Unmaking of the English Working Class: Deindustrialization, Reification and the Origins of Heavy Metal R yan M. Moore

In his monumental work, The Making of the English Working Class (1963), E.P. T hompson documented the formation of class consciousness and culture among the E nglish proletariat in response to industrialization in the years roughly between 1780 and 1850. Working-class culture was radicalized by the Jacobins of the French R evolution, T homas Paine’s R ights of Man, R obert Owen’s vision of socialism and Luddite destruction of machinery. But English workers’ responses to industrialization were not always so political. T he same time period saw the dramatic rise of millenarian movements that prophesized apocalypse with reference to the Book of Revelation, the most popular of which was Joanna Southcott’s ‘cult of the poor’. A lthough easy to dismiss as paranoid fantasy, T hompson’s historical analysis treated those millenarian movements as an important ‘sign of how men felt and hoped, loved and hated, and of how they preserved certain values in the very texture of their language’ (49). These prophesies of impending doom took hold among people whose communities and traditions had been uprooted, only to find themselves de-skilled, impoverished and threatened with sickness and starvation in E ngland’s overcrowded industrial cities. T hompson’s social history demonstrated that class exploitation can have cultural consequences in which power and chaos are only indirectly confronted through fantasy and metaphor. E ven the most bizarre and paranoid visions cannot be written off as mere ‘false consciousness’ (Marcuse 208). T hompson wrote that the Industrial R evolution was ‘a time when men’s psychic world was filled with violent images from hell-fire and Revelation, and their real world was filled with poverty and oppression’ (801). However, he might just as easily have been referring to the emergence of heavy metal in a time when deindustrialization was decimating many of these same factory towns in the late twentieth century. S ome of the self-anointed mystics T hompson described bear a striking resemblance to the heavy metal doomsayers who surfaced from declining industrial cities like Birmingham and Sheffield. Consider the Unitarian minister Ebenezer Aldred, a ‘dreamy and wild’ man with ‘grey hair flowing down his shoulders’ who ‘lived in a kind of solitude’ (Thompson 382); or ‘Zion’ Ward, a crippled shoemaker who believed he was Christ but that he had once

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been S atan during his lifetime. T hompson reports that Ward’s lectures calling for the overthrow of all clergy ‘drew enormous audiences’ of up to 2,000 during the summer of 1831, until he was eventually found guilty of blasphemy and imprisoned for two years (799). His story thus parallels many heavy metal bands whose profane performances achieved massive popularity along with persecution from the powers-that-be. Ward also gained a following among young people with a message of sexual liberation and A ntinomianism (the belief that C hristians are not obliged to obey moral law), preaching ‘If you love one another, go together at any time without any law or ceremony’ (Thompson 802). This chapter will draw a parallel between the ways that heavy metal and punk reacted to the social crises of the 1970s and 1980s and the millennial cults and radical social movements during the Industrial Revolution. Punk directly and dramatically confronted the social system and its hegemonic culture, like postmodern successors to the socialists and L uddites who raged against the machines of industrialization. Not surprisingly, punk has received far more attention from radical intellectuals and activists (for example Hebdige; Marcus; and Savage). Heavy metal, on the other hand, dwells in a world of demons, monsters and other forces of evil and destruction, and like millennial cults it has fulfilled its apocalyptic imaginations with Biblical prophesies, from Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’ to Iron Maiden’s ‘T he N umber of the Beast’ to V enom’s ‘T he S even Gates of Hell’. Because of a perceived lack of political engagement, as well as its low cultural status (cf. Bryson), heavy metal has received far less attention from scholars, despite higher album sales and concert attendances that suggest greater popularity than punk. And yet heavy metal may hold the keys to understanding the plight of working-class youth in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly their failure, inability or refusal to confront the social inequalities and injustices stemming from deindustrialization. I will begin by illuminating the relationship between heavy metal’s origins and the restructuring of political economy, and then advance to an analysis of how heavy metal exhibits a reified form of class consciousness. Deindustrialization, Working-Class Masculinity and the Origins of Heavy Metal D eindustrialization refers to the decline of the manufacturing sector in the advanced capitalist economies of Western E urope and the U nited S tates beginning in the early 1970s and continuing into the twenty-first century. In Britain, the number of manufacturing jobs declined from 8 million in 1971 to 5.5 million in 1984 (Lash and Urry 99). The crisis reached its peak in 1976, when the number of unemployed reached 1.5 million, representing 6.4 per cent of the workforce, the highest unemployment figure since 1940 (Savage 229). Deindustrialization has been inextricably linked to globalization and the emergence of a ‘post-Fordist’ economy, as manufacturing jobs have often been outsourced to low-wage and nonunion regions, particularly in the Third World (see Bluestone and Harrison; Harvey,

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Postmodernity; and Amin). It is also part of a process of spatial restructuring whose consequences were especially harsh for large industrial cities: in Britain the cities of L ondon, Manchester and L iverpool lost a disproportionate number of jobs and experienced a 15 to 20 per cent decline in their populations between 1971 and 1981 (Lash and Urry 99). D eindustrialization must be seen in the context of a wider strategy in which capital has gone on the offensive against labour since the 1970s by busting unions or demanding givebacks, depressing wages and cutting benefits. The evisceration of the British Welfare S tate began as the International Monetary Fund called for £1 billion in austerity cuts for 1977–78 (Savage 229). As conservatives came to political power after the elections of Margaret T hatcher in 1979 and R onald Reagan in 1980, they further enabled capital flight through neo-liberal policies of deregulation and exacerbated its consequences with dramatic cuts in social services and the Welfare S tate (cf. Harvey, N eo-Liberalism). Britain’s Employment Acts of 1980, 1982 and 1984 were such that ‘national unions and the labour movement in general were the object of attack’ (Lash and Urry 274). Meanwhile, capital has increasingly come to rely on more easily disposable pools of contingent workers, especially temps and part-timers who earn lower wages and are entitled to fewer benefits. In Britain, service employment grew from 11.3 million in 1971 to 13.3 million in 1984 (Lash and Urry 99). As a result, real wages have declined since the 1970s, the inequalities in the distribution of wealth have become more extreme, and organized labour and its agenda of social democracy are marginalized from mainstream politics. D eindustrialization has contributed to the polarization of the class structure, but it has also been experienced in gendered terms as a crisis of masculinity. T he job losses and downward mobility caused by deindustrialization have emasculated working-class men, and this insecurity has coincided with the increasing numbers of women in the workforce and the overall visibility of the feminist movement, which many men have interpreted as another threat to their privileged status in society. T he transition from a goods-producing to a service-based economy has also redefined work in a way that is threatening to previous conceptions of masculinity. The skills that service work demands and rewards, such as selfpresentation, emotional labour and customer service, have historically been defined as ‘women’s work’. Conversely, the conventional meanings of masculinity, especially among working-class men, have rested on attributes that are associated with the manufacturing economy, such as production, muscle and the mastery of heavy machinery. A t the same time, the culture of consumerism and media saturation has ushered into men’s lives the cycle of objectification and vanity once reserved for women. A s consumers and spectators are bombarded with an endless flow of images, celebrities and brand name commodities, masculinity has been redefined along the lines of the ‘new lad’, as British and Australian media have dubbed him (see Mort; Nixon; and Edwards). This transformation of workingclass masculinity was light-heartedly depicted in The Full Monty (2002), where recently unemployed Yorkshire steelworkers find new jobs as male strippers.

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The adolescent years are crucial in the formation of working-class masculinity, particularly as it is mediated by schooling, peer groups and parent culture. In Learning to Labor, Paul Willis describes the ways in which non-conformist working-class boys become especially concerned with their performances of masculinity, which is expressed in their rebellion against school authorities and the educational process in general. In an economy where manufacturing jobs were still relatively plentiful, this socialization into working-class masculinity was somewhat functional, as the rebelliousness of working-class boys ensured their failure in the educational system and lack of social mobility, while their investment in masculinity, as Willis argues, prepared them to embrace a future of manual labour. But the consequences of deindustrialization have disrupted this link, and so heavy metal found its audience among the first generation of working-class youth and masculinist rebels who did not have a factory job waiting for them when they left school, and who would therefore constitute a surplus population subject to intensified processes of social control. In the United States, the connections between deindustrialization, downward mobility and heavy metal subculture have been elucidated in D onna Gaines’s ethnography of headbangers growing up in Bergenfield, New Jersey during the 1980s. Tagged as ‘losers’ by their peers, shuttled between remedial schools, drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinics and mental institutions, and confronted with a labour market where personal appearance is of paramount importance, these self-described ‘burnouts’ looked to the future like ‘animals before an earthquake’ (Gaines 155). T he rise of heavy metal coincided not only with the decline of heavy industry but also the decline of the 1960s counterculture. Heavy metal evolved as a hybrid of the hippies and previous working-class youth cultures. Heavy metal subculture appropriated the hippie counterculture’s rebellious symbols (long hair, dope, loud music) and attitudes (lessened inhibitions about sex, inherent suspicion of authority, passive indifference to achievement). However, along with punk, it shunned the utopian dreams of the Woodstock Nation. Heavy metal merged these with the styles of antecedent working-class subcultures, like the rockers in E ngland and Hell’s A ngels in the USA , who were also rebellious yet characterized by hyper-masculinity and patriarchal gender roles, militarism and xenophobia, and fear of racial and sexual difference (see Straw; and Weinstein). The context of deindustrialization and its threats to working-class masculinity further intensified the search for symbolic forms of compensatory power. Although metalheads take pride in their rebelliousness, they generally adhere to conventional gender identities and reproduce hegemonic relations between and within the sexes (Krenske and McKay). So whereas the more middle-class, post-hippie New Age subcultures of the 1970s cultivated an aesthetic of naturalness and authenticity, the culture of heavy metal was replete with images of power, violence and hedonism. This is not to say that heavy metal represents a grass-roots or authentic workingclass culture, as the connection to its audience is mediated by the corporations of the music industry and other powerful economic interests (Chapple and Garofalo; Gross; and Negus). However, heavy metal achieved popularity because its

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dominant themes of power, alienation and violence resonated with this audience, and in turn heavy metal performers fashioned their music and iconography to meet the expectations of their fans. Indeed, heavy metal has some of the most loyal and intense fans of any form of popular culture, identifying themselves as ‘proud pariahs’ (see Weinstein, ch. 4). Live albums, from Deep Purple’s Made in Japan (1973) to Led Zeppelin’s The S ong R emains the S ame (1976) to Iron Maiden’s Live After Death (1985), were essential to heavy metal from the beginning, and in time audience participation became an integral element of these live recordings (for example, Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson repeatedly calling on fans to ‘S cream for me, L ong Beach’ during the recording of Live After Death). With the rise of MTV , heavy metal videos also began to use concert footage in which fans were prominently featured, such as the music videos for Ozzy Osbourne’s version of ‘Iron Man’ (1982), Judas Priest’s ‘Electric Eye’ (1987) or Def Leppard’s ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’ (1987). In heavy metal, it becomes very difficult to separate text from audience; instead, meaning is created in the reciprocal flows of social interaction between the two. It therefore must be examined both as a cultural practice whose meanings are collectively constructed and, historically, as a cultural practice shaped by working-class encounters with deindustrialization. Rei.cation and Class Consciousness in Heavy Metal My argument is that in the imagery of heavy metal music and subculture, workingclass consciousness in the context of deindustrialization is mediated by reification. Reification was first conceptualized by Georg Lukács as a metamorphosis in which ‘a relation between people takes on the character of a thing and thus acquires a “phantom objectivity”’ (83). Under the capitalist mode of production, society’s creations appear to have a life of their own independent of human control, as if they are forces of nature and are therefore timeless and immutable. Lukács traced reification back to Marx’s notion of commodity fetishism, in which exchange value reshapes social relations among people such that they ‘assume, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things’ (Marx, Capital 77). Reification is therefore a consequence of capitalist societies in which people lose control over the production process and social relations are determined by economic forces that operate with mysterious objectivity, as suggested by the common metaphor of the ‘invisible hand’ of the market. Lukács thus brilliantly reconstructed the young Marx’s concern with alienation, and he was also influenced by Max Weber’s theories of rationalization and bureaucracy as well as Georg S immel’s studies of money and exchange. T he common denominator between alienation, rationalization and the money economy is the way that people create social forces which then take on an objective form which is beyond their ability to control. Reification expresses the sense of being at the mercy of processes that are absolute and overwhelming in their consequences, yet invisible and impersonal in their origins. In heavy metal, reification is evident in the way that social forces

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of power and destruction are envisioned as inhuman or supernatural beings that cannot be comprehended, much less resisted, by ordinary human beings. It is an expression of the powerlessness of people in the face of socio-economic forces, ‘like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells’ (478), in the words of Marx and Engels (alluding to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’) that also resemble the lyrics of many heavy metal songs. C onsider, for instance, the parallels between this passage from Marx and Engels and the way Black S abbath depicts humanity as the slaves of supernatural forces in ‘L ord of T his World’ (1971), which exist in a realm dominated by ‘evil ways’ and a cruel ‘master of the world’. In short, reification describes how people make the things that will become their masters, selling their souls along the way, but come to believe that these masters have actually been created by ‘someone above’. And yet reification is not only apparent in the way that heavy metal subculture represents the powers-that-be as demons and monsters, but also in the instances where it tries to harness supernatural forces as sources of resistance and empowerment. While the extent of heavy metal’s associations with S atanism and witchcraft has certainly been overblown into a moral panic (see S tanley Cohen; and Richardson), it is also clear that some young metal fans have indeed experimented with the occult in an attempt to gain magical powers or get revenge on authorities or peers. Likewise, while the music of Black Sabbath usually portrays S atan and the supernatural as forces of destruction, in ‘T he Wizard’ (1970) they contrastingly fantasize about magical forms of resistance against demonic evil. T he wizard causes the ‘demons’ to ‘worry’ and thus brings forth ‘joy’, even making people ‘happy’. A leister C rowley, the notorious E nglish occultist and drug enthusiast, has occupied an analogous role in heavy metal lore, from Jimmy Page’s purchase of his estate to Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Mr. Crowley’ (1981) to Iron Maiden’s ‘Moonchild’ (1988). Heavy metal’s search for mystical sources of empowerment also speaks to a profound sense of disempowerment in the social world, for it can only imagine fantastic and otherworldly methods of resistance to power. Reification thus operates in a dual sense, both in the way that heavy metal depicts oppressive authorities as evil spirits and in its fantasies about resistance derived from magical energies. In either case, the imagery of heavy metal expresses a mystification of power relations, a general sense of confusion about how social power subjugates young people and the working-class and how exploited peoples can take power and resist their exploiters. T he notion that heavy metal’s devils, monsters and evil spirits are actually metaphors for social power contradicts the prevailing view of heavy metal as escapist fantasy. Like the millennial movements of the Industrial Revolution, its apocalyptic imagery is a cultural response to socio-economic disruption and injustice. However, the reification of class consciousness in heavy metal poses the same problem that it did for Lukács and his successors in the Frankfurt School: if capitalism appears to be natural, timeless and operating with a life of its own,

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how is it possible to imagine social change? Indeed, the cultural politics of heavy metal are typically anti-authoritarian but libertarian. Its symbolism is ripe with opposition to individuals and institutions that exercise power visibly and directly, but the same ideology of libertarianism is complicit with economic forces that are often more destructive in their consequences but are largely invisible or seem to be inevitable. The remainder of this chapter will examine three forms of reification in heavy metal music and subculture: the representation of power as demonic or supernatural; the displacement of power into ancient mythology and history; and the fetishism of commodities and spectacles that signify power. E ach of these forms of reified power will be discussed in association with a seminal British heavy metal band: Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, respectively. As is well known, each of these bands also emerged from working-class communities in industrial cities during the peak of deindustrialization and urban decline in the late 1960s and 1970s: Black Sabbath and Judas Priest from Birmingham, and Iron Maiden from E ast L ondon. Children of the Grave: Black Sabbath and the Meaning of Satan Black Sabbath solidified the partnership between heavy metal and demonology. Musically, as Robert Walser observes, they ‘took the emphasis on the occult even further, using dissonance, heavy riffs, and the mysterious whine of vocalist Ozzy Osbourne to evoke overtones of gothic horror’ (10). On Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut album (1970), Satan appears as a force of destruction to be feared, not a deity to be worshipped. On the terrifying eponymous song, Ozzy Osbourne sings from the perspective of someone being chased by S atan, screaming ‘Oh no, no, please God help me’, as bells ring ominously alongside the guitar drone. E veryone is running to escape S atan by the time the song reaches its climax. In ‘N .I.B.’, the Devil is a manipulator who steals people’s souls and takes psychological control over their whole persona. T his song is sung from the D evil’s perspective as he gains complete power over someone by using the promise of a better life based on ‘love’. The enticing invitation ‘My name is Lucifer, please take my hand’ reveals the devious ways of the D evil. T hese two sides of power – a force of violent annihilation on some occasions, an omnipotent master of personal deception and control in others – characterize Satan’s appearances in most other Black Sabbath songs. T hese are primarily songs about power, whether it is power over an entire community of people or total control over one individual. The paradigmatic example of how Satan and black magic symbolize the social powers that create war, poverty and injustice is ‘War Pigs’, in which the architects of war are portrayed as witches, sorcerers and evil minds. First released on Paranoid (1970), ‘War Pigs’ begins with the sound of air raid sirens and Tony Iommi’s distinctive heavy but slow guitar sludge, with Osbourne singing about military leaders ‘in their masses’ who are likened to ‘witches at black masses’

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who ‘plot destruction’. While the music’s tempo increases, ‘War Pigs’ charges that politicians start wars ‘just for fun’, but they leave poor people to do the fighting, treating them like ‘pawns in chess’. As the song comes to a close, it is Judgment Day, God is taking vengeance, and the warmongers are on their knees begging for mercy. S atan appears in the song’s last line, laughing and spreading his wings, perhaps knowing that although his minions have been destroyed, he will live on to create more episodes of destruction in the future. ‘War Pigs’ is a powerful anti-war song, but again it reifies warfare by portraying it as a conflict between supernatural forces in which divine intervention is the only hope for peace. S atan had made previous appearances in the history of popular music before heavy metal, but his meaning was somewhat different. In the blues, the devil periodically materialized as a ‘trickster’ with whom someone like Robert Johnson, according to blues legend, could make a deal in exchange for extraordinary powers on the guitar (see also Farley’s chapter in this volume). This image has its roots in West African folklore, as George Lipsitz has written: ‘The trickster figure at the crossroads – often interpreted in the romantic tradition as the devil – is really Eshu-Elegbara (Legba, Elebgba, Esu), not the incarnation of evil, but an unpredictable deity with the power to make things happen, a god described … as “the ultimate master of potentiality”’ (120). In the blues, Satan is often encountered at the crossroads, a symbolic place where decisions must be made and multiple possibilities arise. He is not a force of unequivocal evil and destruction in the same way that he is in Black Sabbath songs, but rather a spirit with the ability to make things happen and instil people with creative powers. In 1968, the R olling S tones’ ‘S ympathy for the D evil’ was recorded in the midst of a worldwide revolt of young people. In this song, the D evil ‘introduces’ himself as a figure who has presided over other revolutionary and apocalyptic moments in history. The Devil is to be feared and respected but is not a figure of unambiguous evil, for he also personifies the spectre of change which entranced millions of youths all over the world in 1968. In Marshall Berman’s readings, the D evil in this song is akin to the one Goethe created in Faust, in which experimentation and annihilation are irrevocably bound together in modernity’s spirit of creative destruction. ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ urges the 1960s generation to know who they are dealing with – to guess his name and the nature of his game – but it does not caution them to stay away. T he R olling S tones had summoned the D evil during the previous year in Their S atanic Majesties R equest, but the results were notoriously disastrous, as they levitated the D evil into a cosmic psychedelic imitation of T he Beatles’ S gt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. S atan was better suited for 1968, the cataclysmic year when the impossible was demanded and the forces of law and order responded, in V ietnam and at home, by laying young souls to waste. T he differences in the meanings of S atan from ‘S ympathy for the D evil’ to Black Sabbath’s songs express an extraordinary loss of confidence in social change among young people in just a few short years. T he revolts of the 1960s were fuelled by a sense of possibility as well as discontent. Y oung people had inherited the self-assurance of a society steeped in economic affluence, in which youth was

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made a symbol of post-war optimism. T he young generation maintained that belief in their collective importance even as they came to oppose the dominant social system; perhaps naively or arrogantly, they believed they would make history. S o, for instance, in 1967 A bbie Hoffman, Jerry R ubin and the Y ippies organized an anti-war action in which they fantasized that supernatural spirits might be conjured to serve peace, as they costumed themselves as witches and humorously performed a ritual to levitate the Pentagon and exorcise its evil spirits. T his sense of possibility had largely evaporated by 1970, as the N ew L eft deteriorated into vulgar sloganeering and violent clashes with the police, while the counterculture watched its music and lifestyle become increasingly commodified and co-opted. Years later, punk captured the despair and nihilism of young people with the battlecries of ‘no future’ and ‘no values’. But the feeling of impotence was already evident in ‘War Pigs’, where it is God, not the anti-war movement, who brings the war machine to justice, and even then S atan just laughs, spreads his wings, and presumably lives on to fight another day. Powerslaves: Iron Maiden, Mythology and History Iron Maiden also dwelled on demonic imagery but further expanded the scope of images of power borrowed from history and mythology. T he band originally formed in London’s East End, where working-class subcultures of skinheads and mods had previously emerged from neighbourhoods razed by urban redevelopment (Phil Cohen). Iron Maiden initially cultivated an urban, street-tough image drawn from the punk movement that surrounded them in the late 1970s. Their original singer, Paul Di’Anno, looked and performed more like a punk rocker. Also in a sensibility that was closer to punk than heavy metal, their mascot Eddie was conceived by his creator Derek Riggs to embody ‘the idea that the youth of the day was being wasted by society’ (qtd. in Christe 72). Eddie appeared against a background of city streets on the album covers of Iron Maiden (1980) and Killers (1981), as well as the singles for ‘Running Free’, ‘Sanctuary’ and ‘Women in U niform’. D espite his undead form, the early version of E ddie was strictly an urban creature. S o although Iron Maiden’s music was always distinguishable as heavy metal, its imagery of urban decay, political violence and ‘wasted youth’ was quite similar to punk’s depiction of social chaos. ‘Running Free’ exemplifies the early Iron Maiden’s aesthetic, where power appears in more socially realist forms, if only as something to be escaped. T he song introduces a protagonist who resembles so many of Iron Maiden’s fans who are young, broke, with bad luck, nothing to do and ‘nowhere to call’ their own. The protagonist soon finds himself in jail, though he assures the listener that ‘they ain’t got a thing on me’. T he single’s cover art similarly depicts a young longhair trapped in an alley and running from some ghoulish-looking monsters. The song’s triumphant moment is certainly its chorus, one of the great heavy metal singalongs that prompts its audience to affirm collectively: ‘I’m running free, yeah.’

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‘R unning Free’ became a staple of Iron Maiden’s concerts, and the sound of thousands of young misfits singing along with this chorus, as recorded in Live After Death (1985), speaks volumes about heavy metal. This sensibility continued on their next single, ‘S anctuary’, which again narrated a tale of escape from the law. The cover art for ‘Sanctuary’, however, depicted Eddie holding a knife over the dead body of Prime Minister Margaret T hatcher, apparently after she had been caught tearing down one of the group’s posters. Iron Maiden’s representations of power were thus more direct and realistic in their early years, locating themselves and E ddie in the decaying urban environment of L ondon in the late 1970s, escaping if not resisting authority and the law. But they changed dramatically after 1980 with the release of The N umber of the Beast and addition of singer Bruce Dickinson. Iron Maiden continued to present images of power and authority, but these became increasingly reified as they drew not only from the supernatural and demonic but also from mythology, literature and history. Various songs were inspired by the Book of Revelation, Greek mythology, Viking conquerors, Egyptian pharaohs and Japanese samurais, as well as science fiction, Romantic poetry, Second World War battles and various historical figures. For subsequent albums and tours Eddie was costumed as a British soldier, a lobotomized prisoner, an E gyptian pharaoh and a mummy, and a futuristic cyborg. As an eclectic (some would say incongruous) mixture, Iron Maiden’s imagery was abstracted from its social and historical context, and abstraction reified those images of power by making them appear to have a life of their own (see Walser 151–60). Iron Maiden’s selectively appropriated histories and mythologies of conquest, slaughter and slavery depicted the powers-that-be as overwhelming and irresistible. In 1988 they released the concept album S eventh S on of a S eventh S on, whose songs fit together in a story of fate, power and evil. The album plays on the mythology that boys who are the seventh son of a father who is himself a seventh son are born with special powers of clairvoyance. On the album’s first song, ‘Moonchild’, S atan confronts the expectant mother with news of her son’s sealed fate and warnings that he will ‘torment’ her should she try to escape this prophecy. The final threat is that her ‘soul will bleed to death’ in solitude. Meanwhile, the next song, ‘Infinite Dreams’, finds the father tormented by nightmares and visions he cannot understand and is powerless to resist. He ‘cannot move’ and is ‘scared to sleep’ because his mind is ‘in turmoil’. N ext, the father approaches a prophet with a crystal ball in ‘C an I Play with Madness?’ but the old seer has nothing but bad news, telling him that his ‘soul’s going to burn in a lake of fire’. T here is no hope of running free from these powers and prophesies, no sanctuary to be found from these otherworldly authorities. When the child is finally born in ‘S eventh S on of a S eventh S on’, he seems to be a pawn in the struggle between the forces of Good and E vil. A t the end of the song, the line ‘S o it shall be done’ makes clear he will have no agency in the matter. As he gets a little older, the child foresees the destruction of his community in ‘T he Prophecy’. But despite his special powers, the child is powerless to intervene in the destruction of his village.

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Not only do the other villagers ignore him, but when catastrophe finally strikes they actually condemn the seventh son, believing that he has cursed them, even though it is the child who is the truly tormented one. A s the album comes to an end we are told that ‘only the good die young’ and ‘all the evil seem to live forever’. In sum, although S eventh S on of a S eventh S on dwells in fantasy and magic, it is not difficult to see how this is a story tailor-made for alienated heavy metal youth who feel helplessly doomed by the powers-that-be in the real world. T he seventh son can see his community’s imminent destruction but he is powerless to do anything about it, and no one is listening to him anyway. When disaster strikes, he is turned into a scapegoat in much the same way that rebellious young people and youth culture have been demonized throughout recent history. Hell-Bent for Leather: Judas Priest, Spectacle and Commodity Fetishism If Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden established heavy metal’s association with occultism and mythology, Judas Priest was largely responsible for defining its style, specifically in their fetish for leather and motorcycles. In the early 1980s, Judas Priest led the way in establishing heavy metal as a unique style of its own as they dropped their earthy aesthetic and adopted a more fetishistic look dominated by leather, studs and spikes. This was a style that Halford cultivated while shopping in L ondon’s clothing stores that cater to sado-masochistic tastes and lifestyles. Halford remained a closeted gay man throughout the peak of Judas Priest’s career and up until the late 1990s, and when he did come out some wondered how he was able to maintain such an exalted place in ‘the most Neanderthal-posing rock genre in music’ and consistently ‘[fill] arenas with nasty beer-drinking, head-banging hetero boys’ (Wieder). While there are certainly strong elements of homophobia in heavy metal subculture, it also exhibits a lot of latent homoeroticism and, especially outside of its ‘glam rock’ variations, largely excludes all things feminine (see ch. 4 in Walser; and Weinstein 102–6). In short, Judas Priest defined heavy metal style as a masculinist style in which masculinity is realized by the exhibition of power and domination, and power and domination are channelled through fetishized commodities like leather and motorcycles. Judas Priest represented reified forms of power through commodity fetishism, and their performances can be usefully described as a ‘spectacle’ in the sense that Guy D ebord meant it, further elaborating on Marx’s notion of the commodity. D ebord revisited Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism in developing his theory of the spectacular society in the mid-twentieth century. T he spectacle is also an outgrowth of Marx’s critique of religious illusion, in which religion is not merely the ‘opium of the people’ but the objectification of social relations and power (‘Critique of Hegel’ 54), an objectified social force which then appears to seize power over the people who created it. Judas Priest concerts were spectacles in the sense of a social interaction between performer and audiences that is about the exhibition of power, and where power is mediated by things like motorcycles,

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macho fashion, machines and earsplitting music. T he band’s sado-masochistic style was complemented by Halford’s piercing vocals, the Harley D avidson motorcycles he would ride on stage, and Judas Priest’s duelling rhythm guitars and giant stacks of amplifiers. The way that these commodities seem to magically embody properties like power is analogous to how gods or idols or, in this case, rock stars, are endowed with extraordinary qualities by the people who worship them. D ebord observed: ‘T he spectacle is the material reconstruction of the religious illusion. S pectacular technology has not dispelled the religious clouds where men had placed their own powers detached from themselves; it has only tied them to an earthly base’ (#20). Judas Priest endowed the spectacle with duelling possibilities for both oppressive power and empowering resistance, just as we have said that the reification of power more generally haunts heavy metal’s fantasies of both exploitation and empowerment. In ‘E lectric E ye’, one of their most well-loved songs from S creaming for Vengeance (1982), Halford sings from the perspective of a machine of surveillance. From somewhere ‘up … in space’ the ‘lasers’ can ‘trace’ everything people do. T he ‘I’ of the song is ‘watching all the time’. T his is the spectacle as reified power in the sense of Foucault’s panopticon, here imagined as a machine with a life of its own which is irresistible because it is watching all the time and able to penetrate into private lives, while those who are being watched cannot know if and when the machine is watching. Meanwhile, in the music and Halford’s vocals, Walser elucidated, ‘T he eye’s persona is split: the first stanza is official and public, marked by Halford with measured, middle-range singing and by added chorus and reverb that suggest spatial power and social legitimacy’ (163). However, the video for ‘Electric Eye’, filmed in 1986 during the Turbo tour and aired to promote Priest… Live (1987), reveals the other dimension of the spectacle that involves religious illusion in the social interaction between performer/ commodity and audience/consumer. T he video is shot at a Judas Priest concert, beginning with blue lights illuminating what looks to be some sort of machine on stage. T housands of fans scream in anticipation and throw their hands up in the famous metal/devil salute, and the machine explodes as the guitar riff reaches its triumphant moment, with pyrotechnics and fireworks shooting in every direction. T hen a new, larger robot begins to arise, and R ob Halford comes on stage to join his bandmates. T he robot’s mechanical arms lift him up as he begins to sing the opening lines of ‘E lectric E ye’, thus literally positioning him ‘up in space’ and ‘looking down on’ us, his fans. The fans scream for Halford as the robot lifts him, and they keep screaming when he points back to acknowledge them. T he video for ‘E lectric E ye’ thus depicts the spectacle of the Judas Priest concert not simply as a technological force of inhuman power but also as a source of ecstasy for its audience. T his aspect of the Judas Priest concert reveals it to be a spectacle in the sense of a religious ceremony, one which may be profane in many ways and tied to ‘an earthly base’, as D ebord put it, but which is still shrouded in mystical imagery and the worship of idols that continue to resemble ‘the religious

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clouds where men had placed their own powers detached from themselves’ (#20). T he ceremonial or ritualistic elements of Judas Priest concerts – humorously captured in the short cult film Heavy Metal Parking Lot (1986) – depict how the collective power of the audience is transferred to the God-like performer, who in turn wields the power to induce his worshippers into a state of religious, if intoxicated, frenzy. In other instances, however, these sources of empowerment have not only been channelled for religious ecstasy but also for political resistance against the spectacle itself, as in the early promotional video for ‘Breaking the Law’ (1980), where Judas Priest use their guitars and the volume of their music to rob a bank and overpower some bank tellers and customers. The second image we see in this video is a surveillance camera in a bank, with the next shot being a security guard asleep at his job in front of the camera. N ext we see Halford riding in a car and singing the blues of a newly unemployed drifter, ‘out of work’ and forced to ‘drift from town to town’. Since ‘nobody cares’ what happens to him, he decides to find ‘some action’. A s the video progresses, the formerly sleeping security guard is transformed into a rocker overcome by the urge to play air guitar. Meanwhile, Judas Priest’s guitarists have terrified the tellers and customers by pointing their guitars at them menacingly while Halford sings, and they escape after using their guitars to open the bank vault (however, in a moment of pure self-promotion, they take only a gold record of their own album). ‘Breaking the Law’ is therefore a fantasy of resistance in which heavy metal music overpowers the surveillance machine and the capitalists it serves, in part by the sheer power of the music itself but also by converting the worker who supervises the financial system into a headbanger. Conclusion: Hell Awaits In heavy metal as a whole, there are some moments of what might be called ‘class consciousness’, like ‘Breaking the Law’ or Motörhead’s ‘Eat the Rich’ (R ock ‘n’ R oll, 1987). But otherwise the most noticeable thing about the extent of class politics in heavy metal is its absence. At least to my knowledge, there are no heavy metal songs about deindustrialization or factory closings in the style of Bruce S pringsteen or Billy Joel’s ‘A llentown’ (The N ylon Curtain, 1982), for instance. From the perspective of A lthusserian ideology critique, it is precisely this absence or omission – that which is not said and indeed cannot be said – that must be explained as the ‘problematic’ of heavy metal (see Althusser 1969; 1971). Along with punk, heavy metal came of age in a historical moment of social crisis catalysed by economic restructuring, but unlike punk it only rarely confronted those social conditions directly. In the face of deindustrialization, heavy metal’s predominantly working-class performers and audiences became entranced by images of devils, monsters and supernatural catastrophes, much like the hundreds of thousands of

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followers of S outhcott’s ‘cult of the poor’ and other millennial prophets of doom did during the Industrial R evolution. I have argued that reification in part explains the relative absence of class consciousness in heavy metal. When reified, socially constructed forms of exploitation and power are represented as otherworldly in their origins and overwhelming in their effects, while on the other hand resistance can only be imagined in mystical or fantastic terms. As Marx and then Lukács originally diagnosed it, reification is a consequence of the capitalist mode of production that seems to operate with mysterious objectivity while transforming social labour into commodities that appear to possess magical properties independent of their producers. On the concrete terrain of everyday life, the reified iconography of heavy metal in 1970s and 1980s Britain corresponded to working-class youth’s socio-political experience – they knew they were screwed, but it was hard to articulate why. Alienated youth might admonish power when it is exercised directly, like when schools discipline them, parents abuse them, police bust them or the government tries to censor their music. But deindustrialization, globalization, outsourcing and automation are not so easily represented or resisted; they just seem to happen. C ultural studies originated with the need to theorize resistance at the point of consumption, in the way that young people fashion subversive style from the commodities they consume (for example Hall and Jefferson; Hebdige; and Willis, Common Culture) or audiences contest ideological messages encoded in media texts (for example Hall; Johnson; and Fiske). But the events and changes of the past 35 years or so suggest that cultural studies also needs to seek to explain the relative absence of resistance as international capital and neo-liberal ideologies have achieved a kind of broad consensus, even among many of their victims. T he challenge is to do this without resorting to disingenuous arguments about the manipulative machinations of the corporate media or dismissing all but the most politicized forms of culture as variations of false consciousness. Heavy metal represents an exemplary case study in how popular culture embodies contradictory tendencies and methods, one which is similar to the alternately recuperative and oppositional elements of working-class culture that E.P. Thompson charted for the early nineteenth century. Overall, however, it is a case study better suited to explaining why there was little or no culture of working-class resistance in the face of deindustrialization. Heavy metal’s absence of class consciousness also points to the need for a new labour movement, now growing into a global network of movements, which can expose capitalism as a social rather than supernatural phenomenon that people have the collective power to resist and change. References A lthusser, L ouis. ‘Ideology and Ideological S tate A pparatuses.’ Lenin and Philosophy and O ther Essays. New York: Monthly Review, 1971. 121–73. A lthusser, L ouis. For Marx. New York: Pantheon, 1969.

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A min, A sh. ‘Post-Fordism: Models, Fantasies, and Phantoms of T ransition.’ PostFordism: A R eader. Ed. Ash Amin. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994. 1–39. Berman, Marshall. All That Is S olid Melts into Air. New York: Penguin, 1982. Berman, Marshall. ‘S ympathy for the D evil: Faust, the ’60s and the T ragedy of D evelopment.’ American R eview 19 A ugust 1974: 23–75. Black Sabbath. ‘Black Sabbath.’ Black S abbath. 1970. Music and lyrics by T erence Butler, A nthony Iommi, John Osbourne and W.T . Ward. Westminster Music. Black Sabbath. ‘Lord of this World.’ Master of R eality. 1971. Music and lyrics by T errence Butler, A nthony Iommi, John Osbourne and W.T . Ward. Onward Music. Black Sabbath. ‘N.I.B.’ Black S abbath. 1970. Music and lyrics by T erence Butler, A nthony Iommi, John Osbourne and W.T . Ward. Westminster Music. Black Sabbath. ‘War Pigs.’ Paranoid. 1970. Music and lyrics by T erence Butler, A nthony Iommi, John Osbourne and W.T . Ward. Westminster Music. Black Sabbath. ‘The Wizard.’ Black S abbath. 1970. Music and lyrics by T erence Butler, A nthony Iommi, John Osbourne and W.T . Ward. Westminster Music. Bluestone, Barry and Bennett Harrison. The Deindustrialization of America. N ew York: Basic, 1982. Bryson, Bethany. ‘ “A nything But Heavy Metal”: S ymbolic E xclusion and Musical Dislikes.’ American S ociological R eview 61 (October 1996): 884–99. C happle, S teve and R eebee Garofalo. R ock ‘n’ R oll Is Here to Pay. C hicago, IL : N elson-Hall, 1977. C hriste, Ian. S ound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Cohen, Phil. ‘Subcultural Conflict and Working-Class Community.’ The S ubcultures R eader. Ed. Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton. New York: Routledge, 1997. 90–99. C ohen, S tanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2002. D ebord, Guy. The S ociety of the S pectacle. Detroit, MI: Black & Red, 1983. E dwards, T im. Men in the Mirror: Men’s Fashion, Masculinity, and Consumer Culture. L ondon: C assell, 1997. Fiske, John. ‘British Cultural Studies and Television.’ Channels of Discourse, R eassembled. E d. R obert A llen. C hapel Hill, NC : U niversity of N orth C arolina Press, 1987. 284–326. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. New York: Viking, 1979. The Full Monty. D ir. Peter C attaneo. R edwave, 1997. Gaines, D onna. Teenage Wasteland: S uburbia’s Dead End Kids. C hicago, IL : U niversity of C hicago Press, 1990. Gross, Michael. ‘Heavy Metal Music: A N ew S ubculture in A merican S ociety.’ Journal of Popular Culture 24.1 (1990): 119–30. Hall, S tuart. ‘E ncoding/D ecoding.’ Culture, Media, Language. E d. S tuart Hall et al. L ondon: Hutchinson, 1980. 128–38.

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Hall, S tuart and T ony Jefferson. R esistance Through R ituals. New York: Routledge, 1976. Harvey, D avid. A Brief History of N eo-Liberalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Harvey, D avid. The Condition of Postmodernity. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1989. Heavy Metal Parking Lot. Dirs John Heyn and Jeff Krulik. Factory 515, 1986. Hebdige, Dick. S ubculture: The Meaning of S tyle. New York: Routledge, 1979. Iron Maiden. ‘C an I Play with Madness?’ S eventh S on of a S eventh S on. 1988. Music and lyrics by Paul Bruce Dickinson, Stephen Percy Harris and Adrian S mith. Iron Maiden Publ. Overseas. Iron Maiden. ‘Infinite Dreams.’ S eventh S on of a S eventh S on. 1988. Music and lyrics by S tephen Percy Harris. Iron Maiden Publ. Overseas. Iron Maiden. ‘Moonchild.’ S eventh S on of a S eventh S on. 1988. Music and lyrics by Paul Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith. Zomba Music Publishers. Iron Maiden. ‘T he Prophecy.’ S eventh S on of a S eventh S on. 1988. Music and lyrics by S tephen Percy Harris and D avid Michael Murray. Iron Maiden Publ. Overseas. Iron Maiden. ‘R unning Free.’ R unning Free. 1980. Music and lyrics by Paul D i A nno and S tephen Percy Harris. Iron Maiden Publ. Overseas. Iron Maiden. ‘S eventh S on of a S eventh S on.’ S eventh S on of a S eventh S on. 1988. Music and lyrics by S tephen Percy Harris. Iron Maiden Publ. Overseas. Johnson, R ichard. ‘What Is C ultural S tudies A nyway?’ S ocial Text 16 (1986): 38–80. Judas Priest. ‘Breaking the Law.’ British S teel. 1982. Music and lyrics by K.K. D owning, R obert John A rthur Halford and Glenn R aymond T ipton. A pril Music. Judas Priest. ‘E lectric E ye.’ S creaming for Vengeance. 1982. Music and lyrics by K.K. D owning, R obert John A rthur Halford and Glenn R aymond T ipton. E MI S ongs. Krenske, Leigh and Jim McKay. ‘“Hard and Heavy”: Gender and Power in a Heavy Metal Music S ubculture.’ Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 7.3 (2000): 287–304. L ash, S cott and John U rry. The End of O rganized Capitalism. Madison, WI: U niversity of Wisconsin Press, 1987. L ipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness. Philadelphia, PA : T emple U niversity Press, 1998. Lukács, Georg. History and Class Consciousness. C ambridge, MA : MIT Press, 1971. Marcus, Greil. Lipstick Traces: A S ecret History of the Twentieth Century. C ambridge, MA : Harvard U niversity Press, 1989. Marcuse, Herbert. O ne-Dimensional Man. Boston, MA : Beacon Press, 1964. Marx, Karl. Capital. Vol. 1. New York: International Publishers, 1967.

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Black Sabbath. Paranoid. V ertigo, 1970. D eep Purple. Made in Japan. PS P, 1972. D ef L eppard. Best O f: The Videos. DVD . Mercury, 2004. Iron Maiden. Can I Play with Madness? E MI, 1988. Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden. C apitol, 1980. Iron Maiden. Killers. C apitol, 1981. Iron Maiden. Live After Death. C apitol, 1985. Iron Maiden. The N umber of the Beast. C apitol, 1982. Iron Maiden. S eventh S on of a S eventh S on. C apitol, 1988. Joel, Billy. The N ylon Curtain. C olumbia, 1982. Judas Priest. Electric Eye. DVD . S ony BMG, 2003. Judas Priest. Priest… Live! C olumbia, 1987. Judas Priest. S creaming for Vengeance. C olumbia, 1982. L ed Zeppelin. The S ong R emains the S ame. S wan S ong, 1976. Motörhead. R ock ‘n’ R oll. GWR , 1987. Osbourne, Ozzy. Blizzard of O zz. Jet/E pic, 1980. Osbourne, Ozzy. Don’t Blame Me: The Tales of O zzy O sbourne. DVD . S ony, 2000. T he R olling S tones. Beggars Banquet. D ecca, 1968. T he R olling S tones. Their S atanic Majesties R equest. D ecca, 1967. V enom. The S even Gates of Hell: S ingles 1980–1985. S anctuary, 2003.

C hapter 9

N o C lass? C lass and C lass Politics in British Heavy Metal Magnus N ilsson

T he aim of this chapter is to analyse how social difference is represented in the British heavy metal subculture, and to investigate the political implications of these representations, or rather, as I will argue later, their political potentials. I will base my argumentation on an analysis of heavy metal lyrics, mainly the lyrics of Motörhead. This is, for several reasons, a somewhat problematic approach. First of all, the heavy metal subculture is made up of a bricolage of both textual and non-textual elements, where lyrics are just one component. S econdly, as D eena Weinstein puts it in Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture, ‘heavy metal is not a genre that privileges lyrics and its followers do not evaluate them as elements in a coherent, fully articulated, worldview’ (123). Nevertheless, if treated with caution and placed within the appropriate context(s) and theoretical framework, heavy metal lyrics offer a good entry into the heavy metal subculture. The Concept of ‘Subculture’ T he basic function of a subculture is to create a community in which social problems are solved. Within the discourse of the urban micro-sociology of the C hicago S chool, which emphasizes the dialectics between how individuals perceive themselves and how they are perceived by others, subcultures are seen as social organizations in which certain ‘status problems’ that arise from this dialectic can be solved. The idea can be exemplified by a quotation from Albert Cohen’s essay ‘A General Theory of Subcultures’ (1955): Our ability to achieve status depends upon the criteria of status applied by our fellows …. T hese criteria are an aspect of their cultural frames of reference. If we lack the characteristics or capacities which give status in terms of these criteria, we are beset by one of the most typical and yet distressing of human problems of adjustment. One solution is for individuals who share such problems to gravitate towards one another and jointly to establish new norms, new criteria of status which define as meritorious the characteristics they do possess, the kinds of conduct of which they are capable. (51)

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A similar view on subcultures can be found in work theoretically affiliated with the Birmingham S chool, in which youth subcultures are often described as attempts to produce symbolic answers to social problems. T his is spelled out in a typical way in Lawrence Grossberg’s analysis of the ‘rock formation’ in We Gotta Get out of this Place (2002). According to Grossberg, one of the main functions of rock music was to offer the post-war youth a place where they could ‘find some sense of identification and belonging, where they could invest and empower themselves in specific ways’ (205). In recent years subcultural studies – and the very concept of subculture itself – has been subjected to massive criticism, a criticism that has resulted in the emergence of a whole new field of study, namely ‘post-subcultural studies’. This field is constituted by the assumption that (what was previously known as) subcultural phenomena have undergone profound changes in our post-modern world. T hus, as D avid Muggleton and R upert Weinzierl put it in their introduction to The Post-S ubcultures R eader (2003), the analyses undertaken within subcultural studies ‘no longer appear to reflect the political, cultural and economic realities of the twenty-first century’ (5). The aim for post-subcultural studies, therefore, is to ‘retheorize and reconceptualize youth (sub)cultural phenomena on the shifting social terrain of the new millennium, where global mainstreams and local substreams rearticulate and restructure in complex and uneven ways to produce new, hybrid cultural constellations’ (3). E ven if post-subcultural studies clearly has made valuable contributions to the understanding of subcultural phenomena, this article will not – primarily – draw on theories emanating from this field. One reason for this is that the post-subcultural theoretical framework – as has already been pointed out – has been developed in close dialogue with contemporary, post-modern cultural practices. T hus it is not automatically applicable to my object of study, namely British heavy metal from (mainly) the 1970s and 1980s. Another reason for my (relative) unwillingness to adopt theoretical perspectives from post-subcultural studies is that these are often dialectically tied to the work of the Birmingham S chool. A ccording to Muggleton and Weinzierl, the ‘thematic unity’ within post-subcultural studies lies in the acknowledgement of ‘the seminal 1970s British subcultural theory of the C entre for C ontemporary C ultural S tudies … as revered, yet critical, benchmark against which to mark out and assess subsequent developments’ (4). Since my analysis mainly focuses on subcultural functions of the kind theorized by the Chicago School – that is, the solving of status problems –   Grossberg is not concerned with heavy metal, but with the historical ‘rock formation’. In my view, however, heavy metal can be seen as a sub-category of this formation.  In ‘Heavy Metal and S ubcultural T heory: A Paradigmatic C ase of N eglect’, A ndy R . Brown argues that 1970s heavy metal ‘ought to have qualified for subcultural status’ (209), and in Heavy Metal, Weinstein convincingly argues that ‘[a]s a distinctive social formation …, the metal audience is usefully understood in terms of the sociological concepts of “taste public” and, particularly, “sub-culture” ’ (97).

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too close an engagement with post-subcultural theory might thus incorporate relatively irrelevant theoretical issues into my argument. One aspect of post-subcultural studies is, however, very important to my argument in this chapter, namely the criticism of the conceptualization of politics within traditional subcultural studies. A s Muggleton and Weinzierl point out, post-subcultural theory’s main criticism of the Birmingham S chool is that its approach was marked by ‘romanticism’ in that it constructed youth subcultures as phenomena ‘“heroically” resisting subordination through “semiotic guerrilla warfare”’ (4). In contrast to this ‘romanticism’, post-subcultural theorists argue that a ‘more pragmatic approach’ is needed (4). In this chapter I will try to give a concrete example of such a pragmatic approach to the question about the relationship between subcultures and politics. A t the same time, however, I will also try to overcome a problem within postsubcultural theory’s understanding of this relationship. T his problem – which could be attributed to the strong links between post-subcultural studies and the Birmingham S chool – has been formulated by Muggleton and Weinzierl in the following way: ‘[I]f the CCCS [C entre for C ontemporary C ultural S tudies] over-politicized youth formations, the post-modernist and other post-subcultural positions have been equally guilty of under-politicizing them’ (14). Heavy Metal as a Working-Class Subculture Heavy metal’s subcultural function is often thematized in its lyrics. One good example of this is Judas Priest’s ‘U nited’ from the album British S teel (1980). T he lyrics of this song – which the audience at live performances often sings together with the band – aim to create a feeling of community and empowerment by establishing an antagonistic opposition to outsiders. T he division of the world into a ‘we’ and a ‘they’, as well as the antagonism between the two groups, is established already in the first verse which creates a contrast between the ‘us’ that ‘look around’ and the ‘they’ who are ‘movin’ in’. In the following lines the empowerment-theme is spelled out when it is declared that the enemy’s attack is doomed to fail because they will ‘never get near’ and are therefore invited to ‘get out of here’. T he subcultural function of heavy metal is also the main theme of Judas Priest’s ‘Take on the World’ (also a ‘sing-along song’ when performed live) from the album Killing Machine (1979; also released as Hell Bent for Leather), as can be seen in the song’s chorus. There, the lyrics create a kind of communality through ‘our voices’ that promises to ‘take on all the word’.   My interest in the approach to subcultures formulated within the C hicago S chool could, however, be seen as a post-subcultural position, since a similar approach can be found in S arah T hornton’s Club Cultures (1995), a book described by Muggleton and Weinzierl as one of the ‘ “core” texts’ within the field of post-subcultural studies (4).

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In the work associated with the Birmingham School, subcultures are almost always conceived of as working-class phenomena. This can be illustrated with the following quotation from Phil Cohen’s ‘Subcultural Conflict, Working-Class Community’ (1972): ‘From my point of view, I do not think the middle class produces subcultures, for subcultures are produced by a dominated culture, not by a dominant culture’ (97). Potentially, this is a highly problematic approach since it too easily equates dominance with class dominance and thereby makes invisible other forms of oppression such as racism, sexism and so on. In the case of the British heavy metal subculture, however, the links to the working class are very strong. As Weinstein has shown, the majority of the actors in this subculture came from the working class, at least during the formative period in the 1970s: ‘T he majority of the members of heavy metal bands that started before 1980 came from working-class backgrounds. They were little different from their fans’ (75). Weinstein also points to the fact that this social heritage was often underlined in the heavy metal subculture’s self-representation: ‘Indeed the heavy metal press tends to stress humble origins. Black Sabbath, they constantly remind readers, were Birmingham “toughs”, AC/DC came from a working-class environment in Australia, and Jimmy Page was brought up in a London slum’ (75). This thematization of heavy metal’s working-class roots can also be found in the lyrics of numerous songs. In Black Sabbath’s ‘Back Street Kids’, from the 1976 album Technical Ecstasy, the lyrics aim at convincing the listener that despite its success the band has not lost its intimate connection to the lower classes, concluding in the promise that ‘I’m a back street rocker and I will be till the day I die’. T he same motif can be found in S axon’s ‘N ever S urrender’ on Denim and Leather (1981), but without the pledge of allegiance to the slum found in ‘Back Street Kids’. The representations of the artists’ working-class roots in the song’s ‘back streets’ and ‘dark side’ could be understood as an attempt to achieve authenticity. Jeremy Gilbart and Ewan Pearson argue that in the British rock discourse during the period 1976–88 this concept was linked to the idea that the artist was to ‘represent the culture from which he comes’ (164). This, in turn, was connected to an ambition to construct a sense of community with the audience, based on the idea of a shared cultural heritage: ‘In speaking the truth of his situation he must speak the truth of his audience’s situation.’ Thereby the artist could erase the distance between artist and audience and construct a ‘hypostatic communion in which we would all be the same, speaking with one voice, feeling the same thing’ (164–6). A similar idea can be found in Grossberg’s analysis of how rock’s construction or expression of ‘community’ is enabled by an ability to ‘articulate private but common desires into a shared public language’. T his ‘demands that the performer have a real relation to his or her audience – based on their common experiences’ (207). A uthenticity can thus be understood as an attempt to represent a culture that is common to artist and audience alike, and to give voice to collective desires. In the examples from Black Sabbath and Saxon cited above, both the common culture and the common desires are described in terms of social status

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(lower-class background and the possibility/ambition to move upwards on the social and economic ladder). This is, however, not always the case in heavy metal. V ery often the common experiences and desires are represented through references to the subculture itself rather than to external, social conditions. A good example of this can be found in S axon’s title song on Denim and Leather. Here the typical heavy metal uniform is celebrated as something that binds the audience together as a community: ‘D enim and L eather / Keeps us all together.’ A nd the common desires are represented as the ambition to become a heavy metal artist, ‘playing guitar or … the drums’, maybe even becoming the person to ‘front the band’ to whose ‘command’ everybody listens. T his can be understood as an example of what Johan Fornäs in Cultural Theory and Late Modernity (1995) calls ‘cultural or meta-authenticity’. This is a kind of authenticity that ‘moves within (and derives legitimacy from) the level of the symbolic expressions (texts) themselves’ (276) or, to put it more simply, refers to style rather than to social conditions. What, then, does the occurrence of meta-authenticity in British heavy metal mean? C ould it be interpreted as evidence that the subculture is not based on class but rather constitutes an autonomous system of representation that creates cultural cohesion with a point of departure in its own symbolic practices? My answer to this question is no, but before I elaborate on this I would like to point out another question that it brings to the fore, namely the question about subcultural selfreflexivity. Are subcultures ‘conscious’ of their own conditions of existence? In Profane Culture (1978) Paul Willis argues that social contradictions, such as class oppression, are ‘lived through’ in culture. T his ‘material practice’ does not have ‘the benefit of prior validation’, but is ‘embedded in the real engagement of experience with the world’ (1). This does not, however, mean that ‘cultures do not “know” the nature of the conditions which produced them’ but that they know them differently: They know them …, not in words, but in their structures, form and style. They ‘know’ them as the unsaid preconditions for certain kinds of behaviour, as the only possible if silent context which make particular repertoires of action mean anything at all. … This is, precisely the dialectic of cultural life. (1–2)

T he bottom line in Willis’s argument is that the symbolic level of subcultures achieves its meaning in relation to underlying social problems. A similar, but perhaps more complex, line of thought can be found in Fornäs. He argues that cultural or meta-authenticity has become more and more important in late modern popular culture, and that the reason for this is that it ‘seems increasingly difficult to forget all intermediary links of social and cultural constructions between subjects and texts, between human feelings and stylistic manifestations’ (276). This leads Fornäs to the following conclusion: ‘One may now have the best chance to attain social and subjective authenticity if the symbolic contexts are made conscious’ (277). Thus it could be argued that a subculture’s symbolic level does not ‘obscure’ the underlying social conditions but rather highlights them in a more ‘realistic’ way.

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T he question about ‘the social origin’ of the heavy metal subculture – that is, the question about whether or not the meta-authenticity represents a detachment from the social world – cannot be solved by a simple content-analysis. It requires a full-scale sociological analysis of the kind Weinstein undertakes in Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. Her conclusion is that heavy metal came into existence as ‘a response to the cultural marginalization of the working class’ (114), and it therefore represents an emblematic working-class subculture: C onsidered from the viewpoint of historical sociology, heavy metal music is the master emblem of the subculture of a well-defined segment of youth. Not all those who form the audience for metal are white, male, blue-collar youth. N ot all white, male, bluecollar youth are members of the metal subculture. But the core of the metal audience is a subculture whose members have those demographic characteristics, not by chance, but because heavy metal music came to express the utopian desires, the life-style, and the discontents of a structurally defined segment of youth. There could have been no heavy metal music if there had been no incipient subculture ready to guide and embrace it. (101–2)

The Proud Pariahs Fight Back What, then, is the problem that the members of the heavy metal subculture are trying to solve? In the following I will argue that it is none other than the statusproblem arising from the hegemonic representation of the working class. In Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming R espectable (1997), Beverley Skeggs identifies a dominant discourse about the working class which constructs it as ‘dangerous, polluting, threatening, revolutionary, pathological and without respect’ (1) – in short, as ‘all that is mad, bad and dangerous’ (160). This is conceptualized by Skeggs as a devaluing of the cultural capital of the working-class. For the working-class subject, one strategy of dealing with this discourse is to try to become respectable through ‘disidentification’ with the working class and a ‘dissimulation’ of practices that denote affiliation with that class (74). A nother strategy, however, would be to embrace the dominant representations of the working class but at the same time try to question the devaluing implicit in them, that is, to assign positive value to practices and attributes represented as anti-respectable in the bourgeois discourse. A ccording to R obert Pattison, the inversion of ideas about respectability constitutes one of the most important features in rock-culture. In The Triumph of Vulgarity: R ock Music in the Mirror of R omanticism (1987), he presents a narrative about how rock represents a vulgarized version of Romantic pantheism. One of his most important theses is that the founding myth of rock posits an intimate relationship with ‘the primitive’ (36). The primitive is understood as, among other things, a negation of accepted morality: ‘in its total permissiveness, rock represents everything that opposes accepted morality, and hence it is S atanic, since Satan opposes God and God ordains the prevailing ethic’ (176).

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Pattison discusses rock in general, but Weinstein makes a similar claim about heavy metal, when she summarizes the major themes in the genre’s lyrics with the metaphors ‘D ionysian and C haotic’: D ionysian experience celebrates the vital forces of life through various forms of ecstasy. It is embodied in the unholy trinity of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. The Dionysian is juxtaposed to a strong emotional involvement in all that challenges the order and hegemony of everyday life: monsters, the underworld and hell, the grotesque and horrifying, disasters, mayhem, carnage, injustice, death, and rebellion. (35)

Just like Pattison, Weinstein points out the dialogic nature of this anti-respectability: ‘R espectable society tries to repress chaos. Heavy Metal brings its images to the forefront’ (38). It is thus in relation to the hegemonic (bourgeois) values that the D ionysian and chaotic themes gain their meaning within the heavy metal subculture. T his dialogism is also captured in the metaphor Weinstein uses to describe the self-image of heavy metal fans, namely ‘proud pariahs’: ‘Proud pariahs wear the grounds for their rejection from society as a badge of honor’ (271). And one of the most important grounds for society’s rejection of members of the heavy metal subculture is the working-class identity that is signified in their visual and behavioural style. As Weinstein puts it, ‘the heavy metal bands look like blue-collar … heroes. T attooed, booted, sweating, with muscled arms and hairy chests exposed, heavy metal performers eschew all bourgeois and yuppie symbols’ (219). T his is a perfect illustration of the subcultural mechanisms described by A lbert K. C ohen. Within the heavy metal subculture, those attributes (that is, anti-respectability) that stigmatize the (male, white and adolescent) workingclass subject are re-defined as meritorious in direct dialogue with the hegemonic bourgeois discourse. In this dialogue the antagonisms are stepped up. A ccording to Weinstein, the proud pariah-strategy escalates the conflict between the heavy metal subculture and dominant society: ‘Dominant society looks unfavorably enough on the groups that it marginalizes; it becomes militantly hostile against groups that flaunt the grounds for their rejection as marks of virtue. The proud pariah invites cultural warfare’ (271). T he proud pariah’s challenge has been accepted over and over again. Heavy metal has, especially in the 1980s, been a favourite target of moral criticism (see L ynxwiler and Gay, the introduction to Grossberg, as well as Weinstein 1–3 and chapter 7). This criticism has sometimes come from the political left (cf. Weinstein 239–44 and Pattison 166–74); in most cases, however, it has been launched from right-wing and bourgeois critics and organizations. T he crusades against heavy metal in the U nited S tates by organizations such as the PTA (Parent T eacher Association) and the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center) are emblematic examples of this. In their article ‘Moral Boundaries and Deviant Music’ (2000), John Lynxwiler and David Gay show that dislike for heavy metal ‘is significantly related to rising family income and increased church attendance’ (74), which

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indicates that the basic dividing line is parallel to that between a conservative bourgeoisie and the working class. Bethany Bryson reaches a similar conclusion in her article on the negative attitudes toward different musical genres, ‘A nything But Heavy Metal’ (1996). In summarizing her argument she states that ‘negative attitudes toward social groups result in negative attitudes towards the types of music associated with that group’. She goes on to claim that class is the key factor in this: ‘I find that highly educated people in the United States are more musically tolerant, but not indiscriminately so. I provide evidence of class-based exclusion in that the genres most disliked by tolerant people are those appreciated by people with the lowest levels of education’ (895). And the genre most disliked in the upper and middle classes is, of course, heavy metal. T hus, the cultural warfare waged by the proud pariahs of the heavy metal subculture seems to be a class war. Political Shortcomings? Whether or not this cultural warfare can be described as an act of real resistance to the subordination of the working class in a capitalist society is, however, something that can be questioned in several ways. One criticism of the politics of subcultural resistance is the one that has been repeatedly formulated within subcultural studies. A good summary of this position is presented by Keith Kahn-Harris, who argues that there is a proclivity within subcultural theory to question the radical potential of subcultures because of its inability to develop into revolutionary mass movements: T he ‘tragedy’ of subcultures was that they were too unstable and too marginal to ever provide more than fleeting challenges to capitalist power. Subcultures could not be sustained over long periods of time and could not grow to become genuine mass movements that might produce large-scale structural change. T he potential growth of subculture was always stunted through self-defeating obscurity, through moral panic or through transformation into neutered commodified ‘style’. (96)

T his sense of tragedy was to a large extent made redundant by the post-Marxist shift of focus in subcultural studies away from questions of social change towards the idea that subcultures provide ‘a means for the “survival” of individual subjects within new forms of symbolically creative community in a complex and difficult world’ (96). But according to Kahn-Harris, the very ‘practices of empowerment and personal survival that post-CCCS researchers have focused on are precisely those … that make it extremely difficult for … youth culture … to provide any kind of precursor to wider societal change. … For all the political nature of everyday life and the aestheticization of politics,’ he writes, ‘there is still no substitute for  T his ‘post-Marxist’ idea resembles to a high degree the C hicago S chool-position that has been described earlier in this article.

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“traditional” political practice’ (109). This comment could be interpreted as an example of that dichotomizing of politics aiming at ‘redistribution’ and politics aiming at ‘recognition’, which N ancy Fraser, in Justice Interruptus (1997), finds to be typical for the ‘postsocialist’ condition (2–3), a question that I will come back to later. A second kind of questioning of the efficiency of subcultural resistance can be found in the criticism of ‘countercultures’ formulated by Joseph Heath and A ndrew Potter in N ation of R ebels (2004). Their main argument is that countercultures give priority to ‘rejecting society’ over fighting injustice: What people need to be liberated from is not a specific class that oppresses them or a system of exploitation that imposes poverty upon them. People have been trapped in a gilded cage and have been taught to love their own enslavement. ‘S ociety’ controls them by limiting the imagination and suppressing their deepest needs. What they need to escape from is conformity. A nd to do so, they must reject the culture in its entirety. They must form a counterculture – one based on freedom and individuality. (31)

What Heath and Potter add to subcultural theory’s criticism of the politics of subcultural resistance is the idea that sub- and countercultures are not only insufficient but also counter-productive. Not only do they operate outside the sites of social struggle, they also hide this withdrawal from politics by claiming to be genuinely political, and thus function as ‘false consciousness’ (Marcuse 208). A similar line of argument can be found in Pattison’s description of rock’s politics: In rock, the universe is composed of two cities. The City of the World is peopled by the zombies who have succumbed to cash. … The City of Self is peopled by rockers who acknowledge only one vulgar order of primitive feeling. … Faced with the City of the World, the rocker may become a rebel, but rarely a revolutionary. … The rocker objects to the C ity of the World, but he is already a citizen of another better city, the City of Self. (159)

In this ‘C ity of S elf’ a new class system is established. Pattison discloses what he calls ‘the myth of the great rock ‘n’ roll swindle’, a myth that ‘incorporates rock’s other myths, developing them to explain the rocker’s role in the world’. T his myth ‘develops its own class system … and enunciates a political program in the tradition of Romantic pantheism’ (146): The myth of the great rock ‘n’ roll swindle pivots on three terms – class, cash, and politics. The point of the myth is to propose a class system in defiance of the usual class order proposed by academic socioeconomics and to suggest a pantheist politics that subverts the existing political structure by ignoring it. (151)

Thus what looks like traditional class politics in rock is really not:

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Rock actively propagates the notion that there is one true pantheist class to which all rockers belong, regardless of accidents of birth or wealth. This class is loosely identified with the proletariat of traditional political theory, and rock can easily slip into what sounds like battle cries in the class war. But most rock is as uninterested in traditional class politics as it is in any other transcendent theorizing. … By confusing this pantheist lower class with the traditional terminology of politics, rock creates a new idea of politics engrafted on the old. In this politics, the goal is to amalgamate all people in a new universal order without attacking the existing social structure. (153–4)

According to Pattison, rock’s notion of class is an inheritance from Romanticism. In his words, rock ‘recreates in a vulgar way the folk culture which the first age of Romanticism invented, and rockers embrace the folk for the same reason their eighteenth-century counterparts did’ (78). The main difference lies in rock’s vulgarity: ‘The Romantic conventions of art, vulgarized by rock, are now the property of the industrialized Western Masses’ (84). This has led to a substitution of ‘the people’ for ‘the working class’. However, this class is not defined in social or political terms but rather in terms of identity: ‘In the modern world, anyone can become lower-class, or Cockney, if he achieves vulgarity. Every legitimate rocker is vulgar, and therefore all are lower class. It is a label rockers welcome’ (153). Anti-Respectability and Subcultural Themes in Motörhead’s Lyrics Having shown that British heavy metal constitutes a subculture aimed at reevaluating the cultural capital of the working class, and having presented some aspects of the criticism of this aim formulated within subcultural and postsubcultural theory, I will now turn my attention to some concrete examples. In the following section I analyse Motörhead’s lyrics in order to show how they express subcultural and anti-respectable themes. T hereafter I evaluate these lyrics from a political point of view, before I return – in the last section of the chapter – to the more general question about class and class politics in heavy metal. Motörhead have excelled in provoking anti-respectability from the very beginning of their career. T heir self-titled debut album from 1977 opens with the song ‘Motorhead’. In the first verse the song makes clear that the band’s name signifies neither someone who is over-enthusiastic about cars nor a stupid person, but rather someone who takes amphetamine and is therefore ‘sky high’ and ‘in an amazing state’ from ‘righteous stuff’. T his explicit reference to – and celebration of – drugs, which places the band well outside the boundaries of bourgeois respectability, is then followed up in other songs on the album where more non-respectable themes are addressed. In ‘V ibrator’ the singing voice presents itself as a de-humanized means for pure sexual pleasure. ‘Greased and ready’ and ‘with a powerpack for a heart’ the singer is sure to be ‘the boy for you’ and also quite happy to be ‘put … away’ afterwards. T his is a good

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illustration of Weinberg’s thesis that sex in heavy metal is freed from romance, and her conclusion that ‘[s]ex in heavy metal is anything but respectable’ (36). In the fourth song on the album, ‘Iron Horse/Born to L ose’, traditional family values are rejected in favour of a celebration of the free biker life on the ‘open highway’, a theme that gets its most pregnant expression in the chorus: ‘Iron Horse his wife, Iron Horse his life’. Taken together these themes illustrate an embrace of anti-respectability that is one of the foundations of Motörhead’s textual universe. To illustrate the consistency in Motörhead’s anti-respectability, I would like to point out that several of the themes from ‘Motorhead’ are also present on the group’s 2006 album, Kiss of Death, as can be seen in at least two of the songs: in ‘One N ight S tand’ the singer as a ‘travelling man’ hopes that ‘every night was a one-night stand’. In ‘Sucker’, the singer confesses to have ‘tasted blood’ and to ‘want more’, even stating about murder that ‘we like it fine’. T hese celebrations of anti-respectability can be understood as an exponent of the ‘proud pariah-strategy’, that is, as an inversion of the bourgeoisie discourse about the non-respectable working class. And this interpretation becomes even more plausible when the recurrent links in Motörhead’s lyrics between manifestations of anti-respectability and thematization of subcultural functions is made visible. In many cases the lyrics aim at creating a binary opposition between an antirespectable ‘we’ and a respectable ‘they’, and this in turn is often linked to ideas about empowerment. A good example can be found in one of the band’s ‘themesongs’: ‘We Are Motörhead’, on the album with the same name from 2000. The anti-respectable stance is epitomized in the second chorus: ‘We are Motörhead and we don’t have no class.’ And this statement is in turn linked to a subcultural thematic. T he ‘we’ in the chorus of course refers to the band, but it is also inclusive of others, at the same time as it constitutes a dividing line against outsiders. T his is spelled out in the following lines: ‘We are the ones you love, or we’re the ones you hate’; ‘We are the ones you need, the ones that you despise.’ This can be read as a reminder of the different regimes of truth that exist inside and outside the heavy metal subculture. If you are an insider you will love the band; if you are not, you will not just dislike it, but hate it. That the reward for love is empowerment is repeated over and over again: ‘We charge all batteries, we save your soul’; ‘We bring the firestorm to brighten up your life.’ The empowering community is defined as the heavy metal subculture itself – the band presents itself as the bringer of rock ‘n’ roll. Motörhead and Class Politics How, then, should Motörhead’s ‘proud-pariah-strategy’ be evaluated from a political point of view? In order to answer this question, I will first focus on the second aspect of the criticism of subcultural politics presented above, which deals with the ‘subcultural world-view’. After that I will come back to the question about the relationship between subcultural practice and political action.

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How are the social differences that constitute both the underlying cause for the existence of the heavy metal culture and the rationale for adopting the ‘proud pariah-strategy’ represented in Motörhead’s lyrics? Are they made visible to the members of the subculture, or are they ‘obscured’ by a mythology which, in Pattison’s words, proposes ‘a class system in defiance of the usual class order’, suggests ‘a pantheist politics that subverts the existing political structure by ignoring it’ and thus results in rebellion, but never revolution (151)? In the Motörhead lyrics discussed above there is virtually no trace of social difference. N o reference is made to exploitation or inequality. A uthenticity is not established through references to shared social conditions, but rather by pointing out the symbolic level itself – anti-respectable behaviour and values such as taking drugs, rejecting both traditional family values and romance, and listening to loud rock music – as the common ground that makes empowerment possible for members of the subculture. Thus, if the function of Motörhead’s lyrics is to solve problems that are specific to the working class, this is done by arguing that questions about identity are more important than questions about social and political conditions and positions. Whether or not this builds up to a mythology and whether or not this mythology contains ‘a class system’ that is antagonistic to traditional ideas about social class is, however, still an open question. My first step towards answering it will be to analyse how the term ‘class’ is used in Motörhead’s lyrics. The first Motörhead song in which class is mentioned explicitly is ‘No Class’ on O verkill (1979). This song has the form of an address to a second-person addressee, formulated more or less as an insult. T he addressee is told to shut up and ‘fade out’ because he does not ‘fit in with the crowd’. This inability to fit in is linked to the song’s title, ‘No Class’. Thus ‘class’ here denotes consent to the values of ‘the crowd’. In ‘Just ’C os Y ou Got the Power’, from the album N ö S leep at All (1988), class is used in very much the same way – to establish groups of insiders and outsiders. Here, however, both the insiders and the outsiders are more clearly characterized with reference to social positions. T he addressee is described as a corporate manager whose economic assets give him power. Like the addressee in ‘No Class’ this ‘financial wizard’ is described as lacking class. This is explicitly formulated in the last two lines of the first verse, which state that whereas one ‘might buy half of the nation’ it is nevertheless impossible to ‘buy class’. In ‘D og-Face Boy’, from the 1980 album Sacrifice, ‘class’ is used in a somewhat different way than in the songs mentioned above, in that the term takes on negative connotations. T he song describes a ‘D og-Face Boy’ who is ‘poor’ and has no class. It is, however, not only the fact that the boy is poor that leads to the conclusion that he lacks class; much more important is a lack of refinement and respectability, manifest in his animal-likeness, and the attribute ‘weirdo’. Nevertheless, he is still described in a sympathetic way, as a ‘Werewolf Hero, Pride and Joy’. These examples of how the term class is used in Motörhead’s lyrics demonstrate that it represents difference as well as likeness, belonging as well as exclusion. In

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‘No Class’ and ‘Just ’Cos You Got the Power’ the lack of class is a sign for not ‘fitting in’ with ‘the crowd’ to which the song’s voice belongs. In ‘Dog Face Boy’, on the other hand, a sense of solidarity is established with point of departure in the lack of class. In some of the songs the inclusion and exclusion of people who either have or do not have class is connected to social positions. In ‘D og-Face Boy’ the sympathy of the text lies with the ‘poor’ outsider, and the lyrics of ‘Just ’C os Y ou Got the Power’ position themselves in relation to the rich and mighty. A t the same time, however, one can trace a tendency to describe economic factors as relatively unimportant. T he yuppies may be rich, and the ‘D og-Face Boy’ poor, but the antipathy toward the former and the sympathy for the latter is decided by much more abstract qualities. The yuppies are disliked for the same reason as the addressee in ‘No Class’, namely their inability to ‘fit in’. If concepts such as ‘poor’ and ‘rich’ have anything to do with this ability, it is as metaphors for being inside or outside the mainstream. T hus, it seems that Pattison’s criticism could very well be applied to Motörhead’s lyrics. The symbolic treatment of social antagonisms does, at least to some extent, take the form of a rather romantic and/or countercultural ideology, where questions of identity and style are more important than inequality and exploitation. If combined with the idea of ‘the tragedy of subcultures’ – the idea that subcultures seldom function as incubators for social movements – this analysis almost inevitably leads to pessimistic conclusions about the political implications of the heavy metal subculture (at least for scholars who are interested in radical class politics). Singing vulgar songs does not produce politically oriented social movements, one could argue; and then continue by pointing out that it is, therefore, hard to see how the symbolic inversion of bourgeois representations of the working class could lead to effective political action. And if the vulgar songs on top of this are seen as saturated in ‘false consciousness’, the pessimism appears to be well founded. Political Potentials One way of dealing with this pessimism is to try to refine the theoretical perspectives underlying it. For example, one can point out that the idea of a rock mythology obscuring social reality, and hence able to be described as ‘false consciousness’, rests firmly on the very weak assumption that symbolic representations are always interpreted as mimetic. It is also unrealistic to suggest that the users and producers of these representations are unable to reflect on their own practice and to use cultural artefacts as anything but maps of social reality. One can also argue that the idea about the tragedy of subcultures is based on a very narrow definition of politics that entirely ignores both its symbolic dimensions and the significance that an empowering sense of community can have for oppressed groups. However, as N ancy Fraser has shown, the ‘either/or choice’ between ‘class politics’ and ‘identity

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politics’ is a false one (3). In her view, ‘identity politics’ becomes ‘pernicious’ – in that its ‘stress on cultural difference’ displaces ‘the characteristic “socialist” stress on social equality’ – only under certain circumstances, namely when cultural politics is decoupled from social politics. Instead of condemning identity politics, Fraser argues that researchers should try to ‘develop a critical theory of recognition, distinguishing those claims for recognition of difference that advance the cause of social equality from those that retard or undermine it’ (5). T his does not mean, however, that subcultures must be celebrated. T o chose between celebration and condemnation is a false option, even if it is very common in academic circles, as has been pointed out by T oril Moi: ‘Whenever something turns out not to be absolute, in our disappointment we turn around and declare that it is nothing at all’ (141). A more pragmatic approach should therefore be tried. S uch an approach could for example be applied to the question about the failure of subcultures. Of course empowerment is not the same as resistance: but as Grossberg, rather modestly, has pointed out, ‘empowerment sometimes enables people to resist their subordination’ (2). Thus one has to investigate the specific forms of empowerment enabled in the heavy metal subculture and its political potential. Here Skeggs’s investigation of how working-class women ‘negotiate and understand them“selves”’ can serve as a source of inspiration (1). Skeggs does not consider the strategy of respectability to be revolutionary. On the contrary, she quotes E ngels’s description of respectability as ‘a false consciousness bred into the bones of the workers’ (3). At the same time, however, she argues that respectability is a rational strategy in certain circumstances. One of her theoretical points of departure is that class conceptualizations ‘influence access to economical and cultural resources’ (5). To be working class is to be ‘born into structures of inequality’ which provide ‘differential amounts of capital’ and thus circumscribes ‘movements through social space’ (161). This means that disidentification with the working class through investment in respectability becomes not only an empowering strategy on a purely ideological level but also a way to gain access to real resources. Even if this strategy had its limitations for the women in Skeggs’s study, it was appropriate for the social situation in which it was adopted. It had no effect on the total social system: ‘T hey were able to generate their own local trading arenas with their own distinctions, but these barely influenced the supralocal arenas for capital exchange and conferral of legitimacy.’ N evertheless the strategy – given the conditions under which it was adopted – was relatively successful: ‘T heir claims for respectability were movements in systems of value which they entered at a disadvantage in which access to positive valuations were limited or closed, but in which they were forever trying to make the best out of limited resources’ (161).

  Moi writes about literary critics, but I think it is safe to assume that they are neither worse nor better than other scholars.

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Could, then, the proud pariah-strategy be seen as sensible? If one looks at the potential to increase the possibilities of subjects’ ‘movements through social space’, the answer seems to be no. If the discourse about the non-respectable working-class devalues the cultural capital of that class, then wearing your anti-respectability on your sleeve will probably not make it easier for you to move through the social space of mainstream society. A nd it could even be argued that the subcultural re-valuation of working-class cultural capital often leads to even bigger status problems outside the subculture. T his has been pointed out by A lbert K. C ohen: ‘Insofar as the new subculture represents a new status system by sanctioning behaviour tabooed or frowned upon by the larger society, the acquisition of status within the new group is accompanied by a loss of status outside the group. T o the extent that the esteem of outsiders is a value to the members of the group, a new problem is engendered’ (52–3). The esteem of outsiders is of value to workingclass people because it is this esteem that allows movement in social space. T his apparent problem with the proud pariah-strategy is, however, balanced by more positive effects. According to Skeggs, the strategy of respectability is based on self-policing and feelings of guilt: T he way class was experienced was through affectivity, as a ‘structure of feeling’ …. T his is the emotional politics of class fuelled by insecurity, doubt, indignation and resentment (but also lived with pleasure and irreverence). These affective responses presuppose an imagined (and sometimes real) superior other that enabled them to police themselves and open out every aspect of their lives, their bodies, their appearance, their homes, their caring practices and their emotional attachments to others, to judgement and scrutiny. … Their attempts to claim respectability locked them into systems of selfregulation and monitoring, producing themselves as governable subjects. (162)

The proud pariah-strategy is not very likely to produce governable subjects, nor cause discomfort arising from an inability to live up to standards set by others. From this point of view the heavy metal subculture could obviously be seen as revolutionary, whereas the respectability strategy could be interpreted as reformist. Thus, both the weaknesses and the strengths of the proud pariah-strategy have been identified, and a foundation for a serious critique of its political implications has been laid. However, this instantly leads on to another question, namely that about the purpose of such a critique. My reason for raising this question is my belief that Marx’s programmatic formulation in his eleventh thesis on L udwig Feuerbach – ‘Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it’ (15) – is the best possible point of departure for academic research (even if, unfortunately, it is often very hard actually to make a departure from this point). To take this as one’s point of departure inevitably means changing focus from the question about the political implications of the representation of social difference in British heavy metal to the question of its political potential. Instead

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of predicting the political consequences of subcultural practices, one should ask how these practices could be used to achieve social and political change. In the continuation of this change of focus lies, of course, the question about how scholars can connect with subcultures and take up the role of ‘organic intellectuals’, that is, systematize counter-hegemonic ideas and practices into counter-ideology and political resistance. T his chapter is, however, not the ideal forum for questions of that magnitude. Instead I will modestly try to point out that one cannot take it as a matter of course that subcultures (or cultural practices in general) are static. Rather they have to be seen as evolving and open to change; and this is true also of their political ‘implications’. A s Grossberg points out, the ‘political possibilities of rock are not inscribed within its musical forms and social relationships. … There is nothing intrinsic to its practices (including its place vis-à-vis the “mainstream”) that guarantee that it delivers its audience to a specific political position. This does not mean that rock, or specific practices, cannot be articulated to political positions and struggles’ (137). Which, then, are the political potentials of the proud pariah-strategy? How could the heavy metal subculture be articulated to class politics? Firstly it is important to see that the existence of working-class subcultures may be of political significance in itself. T he feelings of community that are established in subcultural practices and the empowerment that these feelings make possible could very well form the foundation for political action. It could even be argued that they constitute a necessary precondition for emancipatory political action. For, as Fraser points out: ‘It is certainly true that one cannot stand up for oneself when one is crippled by selfhatred’ (203). Secondly, the symbolic processing of collective experiences could also have important political effects in its own right. A s Pierre Bourdieu argues: ‘Private’ experiences undergo nothing less than a change of state when they recognize themselves in the public objectivity of an already constituted discourse, the objective sign of their recognition of their right to be spoken and to be spoken publicly …. Because any language that can command attention is an ‘authorized language’, invested with the authority of a group, the things it designates are not simply expressed but also authorized and legitimated. T his is true not only of establishment language but also of the heretical discourses which draw their legitimacy and authority from the very groups over which they exert their power and which they literally produce by expressing them: they derive their power from their capacity to objectify unformulated experiences, to make them public – a step on the road to officialization and legitimation – and, when the occasion arises, to manifest and reinforce their concordance. (170–71)

Whether or not the symbolic representation of class-oppression in British heavy metal is ‘correct’ or not, these representations are of value because they transform individual experience into the basis for collective practice. T he subculture of British heavy metal makes this possible for actors that do not have full access to the bourgeois public sphere. A s Fraser argues, ‘it is not possible to insulate special discursive arenas from the effects of social inequality’; and ‘where societal inequality persists, deliberative processes in public spheres will tend to operate to the advantage of

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dominant groups and to the disadvantage of subordinates.’ S he also claims that ‘these effects will be exacerbated where there is only a single, comprehensive public sphere’, and that it is of great importance for members of subordinated groups to have access to ‘venues’ where they can ‘undertake communicative processes’ that are not ‘under the supervision of dominant groups’ (81). T herefore the relative autonomy of the heavy metal subculture probably aids the transformation of ‘private’ experience into public discourse that Bourdieu writes about. With this in mind, it is not hard to see wherein the political potential of the British heavy metal subculture lies. It lies in the possibility to connect its symbolical representations of social difference and its establishing of collective, empowering identities to political action. T his means that the subculture in itself is not radical: but there is no evidence that it could not be used for radical purposes. References Black Sabbath. ‘Back Street Kids.’ Technical Ecstasy. 1976. Music and lyrics by T erence Butler, A nthony Iommi, John Osbourne and W.T . Ward. E ssex Music. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A S ocial Critique of the Judgement of Taste. T rans. R ichard N ice. L ondon: R outledge, 1984. Brown, A ndy R . ‘Heavy Metal and S ubcultural T heory: A Paradigmatic C ase of N eglect?’ The Post-S ubcultures R eader. E d. D avid Muggleton and R upert Weinzierl. Oxford: Berg, 2003. 209–22. Bryson, Bethany. ‘ “A nything But Heavy Metal”: S ymbolic E xclusion and Musical Dislikes.’ American S ociological R eview 61 (1996): 884–99. C ohen, A lbert K. ‘A General T heory of S ubcultures.’ 1955. The S ubcultures R eader. Ed. Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. 50–59. Cohen, Phil. ‘Subcultural Conflict, Working-Class Community.’ 1972. The S ubcultures R eader. E d. Ken Gelder and S arah T hornton. L ondon and N ew York: Routledge, 1997. 86–93. Fornäs, Johan. Cultural Theory and Late Modernity. L ondon: S age, 1995. Fraser, N ancy. Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condition. New York and London: Routledge, 1997. Gilbert, Jeremy and E wan Pearson. Discographies. London and New York: R outledge, 1999. Grossberg, L awrence. We Gotta Get out of this Place. London and New York: R outledge, 2002. Heath, Joseph and A ndrew Potter. N ation of R ebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture. New York: Collins, 2004. Judas Priest. ‘Take on the World.’ Killing Machine. 1979. Music and lyrics by R obert John A rthur Halford and Glenn R aymond T ipton. C rewglen.

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Judas Priest. ‘U nited.’ British S teel. 1980. Music and lyrics by K.K. D owning, R obert John A rthur Halford and Glenn R aymond T ipton. C rewglen. Kahn-Harris, Keith. ‘The “Failure” of Youth Culture: Reflexivity, Music and Politics in the Black Metal Scene.’ European Journal of Cultural S tudies 7.1 (2004): 95–111. L ynxwiler, John and D avid Gay. ‘Moral Boundaries and D eviant Music: Public A ttitudes toward Heavy Metal and R ap.’ Deviant Behavior 21.1 (2000): 63–85. Marcuse, Herbert. O ne-Dimensional Man. Boston, MA : Beacon Press, 1964. Marx, Karl. S elected Works. Vol. 1. T rans. W. L ough. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969. Moi, T oril. ‘Meaning What We S ay: T he “Politics of T heory” and the R esponsibility of Intellectuals.’ The Legacy of S imone de Beauvoir. E d. E mily R . Grosholz. Oxford: C larendon, 2004. 139–60. Motörhead. ‘Dog-Face Boy.’ Sacrifice. 1980. Music and lyrics by Michael R ichard Burston, Philip Anthony Campbell, Micael Kiriakos Delaoglou and Ian Fraser Kilmister. Warner C happell Music. Motörhead. ‘Iron Horse.’ Motörhead. 1977. Music and lyrics by E dward A llan Clarke, Ian Fraser Kilmister, Guy Lawrence and Philip John Taylor. Motor Music. Motörhead. ‘Just ’Cos You Got the Power.’ N ö S leep at All. 1988. Music and lyrics by Michael R ichard Burston, Philip A nthony C ampbell, Ian Fraser Kilmister and Philip John T aylor. Motor Music. Motörhead. ‘Motorhead.’ Motörhead. 1977. Music and lyrics by Ian Fraser Kilmister. E MI U nited Partnership. Motörhead. ‘No Class.’ O verkill. 1979. Music and lyrics by Edward Allan Clarke, Ian Fraser Kilmister and Philip John T aylor. Motor Music. Motörhead. ‘One Night Stand.’ Kiss of Death. 2006. Music and lyrics by Philip Campbell, Micael Kiriakos Delaoglou and Ian Fraser Kilmister. Notting Hill Music. Motörhead. ‘Sucker.’ Kiss of Death. 2006. Music and lyrics by Philip C ampbell, Micael D elaoglou and Ian Fraser Kilmister. N otting Hill Music. Motörhead. ‘Vibrator.’ Motörhead. 1977. Music and lyrics by L awrence Wallis. Zomba Music Publishers. Motörhead. ‘We Are Motörhead.’ We Are Motörhead. 2000. Music and lyrics by Philip Campbell, Mikkey Dee and Ian Fraser Kilmister. Warner Chappell Music. Muggleton, D avid and R upert Weinzierl, ed. The Post-S ubcultures R eader. Oxford: Berg, 2003. Pattison, R obert. The Triumph of Vulgarity: R ock Music in the Mirror of R omanticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. S axon. ‘D enim and L eather.’ Denim and Leather. 1981. Music and lyrics by Peter Byford, S teven D awson, Peter Gill, Graham Oliver and Paul Quinn. S axongs.

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S axon. ‘N ever S urrender.’ Denim and Leather. 1981. Music and lyrics by Peter Byford, S teven D awson, Peter Gill, Graham Oliver and Paul Quinn. S axongs. Skeggs, Beverley. Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming R espectable. L ondon: S age, 1997. T hornton, S arah. Club Cultures: Music, Media, and S ubcultural Capital. Hanover, N H: Wesleyan U niversity Press, 1996. Weinstein, D eena. Heavy Metal: A Cultural S ociology. 2nd ed. New York: Da C apo Press, 2000. Willis, Paul E . Profane Culture. L ondon: R outledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. Discography Black Sabbath. Technical Ecstasy. Warner, 1976. Judas Priest. British S teel. E pic, 1980. Judas Priest. Killing Machine. C olumbia, 1978. Motörhead. Kiss of Death. S PV, 2006. Motörhead. Motörhead. Chiswick, 1977. Motörhead. N ö S leep at All. GWR , 1988. Motörhead. O verkill. Bronze, 1979. Motörhead. Sacrifice. C MC , 1980. Motörhead. We Are Motörhead. C MC , 2000. S axon. Denim and Leather. C apitol, 1981.

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C hapter 10

Rocking the Nation: One Global A udience, One Flag? Gerd Bayer

Heavy metal began as a uniquely British invention: born in the industrial midlands of an economically struggling Great Britain, the genre of heavy metal carries with it discourses that relate back to the difficult process of national identity formation in the U nited Kingdom after the S econd World War and the subsequent collapse of the British E mpire. T he social, economic and industrial developments of that period are also reflected in popular music. Ronald Bogue argues that rock ‘n’ roll music ‘depends for its existence on electric industrial technology’ (100); and it was probably only with the 1990s unplugged-craze (and with the S eattle grunge scene) that the relationship between rock and technology was somewhat changed. D espite its ongoing development and willingness to undergo various metamorphoses, heavy metal remains closely linked to the discourse of nationhood and Britishness, seemingly confirming Anthony Smith’s contention that amongst ‘collective identities … national identity is perhaps the most fundamental’ (143). T his assertion is, however, given the lie to by how British heavy metal increasingly shed its national identity during the 1990s. E .J. Hobsbawm, in N ations and N ationalism since 1780, describes national movements in the late twentieth century as ‘essentially negative, or rather divisive’ (164), seeing in them the desire of many nations to separate themselves from other nations. Writing in the new post-cold-war E urope of 1990 – and without   For the early history of heavy metal, see Weinstein, Heavy Metal 14–18 and C hriste 7–26.  S ee C hriste, 230–32. T he importance of technology is demonstrated, for instance, in the artwork of Swiss artist H.R. Giger on Steve Stevens’s Atomic Playboys. Giger’s work implies that the guitarist is a strange hybrid of animal skin and computer motherboard, a cyborg combining natural force and highly developed technical skills. Stevens here clearly claims membership in the super guitarist circle that became influential in the late 1980s, and which was fuelled by the work of Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and others; see Walser 98–102.  E rnest R enan also offers, in his famous 1882 lecture, negative criteria for the definition of the nation. For him, one ‘essence of a nation is that all individuals … have forgotten many things’ (11). Often, one could add, it is national amnesia that leads to the formation of subcultural movements such as heavy metal, whose partial aim is to bring to the fore some of what the dominant culture has buried.

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foresight of the dot.com implosion, the gathering forces of globalization, or the war on terror – Hobsbawm describes the post-S econd World War period in E urope as being less nationalistic than the E urope after the fall of the Berlin Wall: ‘U ntil the 1960s “Britishness,” in terms of law and administration, was a simple matter of being born to British parents or on British soil, marrying a British citizen, or being naturalized. It is a far from simple matter today’ (181). Jeremy Paxman, in his fin-de-millénaire book The English, concurs: his portrait of the E nglish people begins with the ironic (and elegiac) admittance that ‘[b]eing English used to be so easy’ (vii). Englishness seems to have gone through a series of crises in the second half of the twentieth century. British heavy metal became a global export good during this difficult period of British identity formation, between the S econd World War and the end of the twentieth century. In this chapter I argue that British heavy metal became a popular form of entertainment around the world not because of the numerous features of Britishness that date back to its genesis as an art form of the English workingclass in the 1970s and 1980s, but rather in spite of these features. T he irony of bands like Saxon, Motörhead or Iron Maiden becoming internationally successful despite the fact that their textual reality is so heavily imbued with British cultural identity at a time when Britishness had lost its global (and imperial) significance begs the question of how Britishness is packaged in these cultural texts. A second line of argument investigates whether heavy metal tends to adopt the post-national cultural identities of turn-of-the-millennium identity politics in terms of its musical and lyrical qualities. The Art of the Nation The concept of the nation has been famously redefined by Benedict Anderson as an ‘imagined community’, a discursive practice that he follows back to notions of limitation, sovereignty and community as coming together in the creation of the nation (7). However, it is worth pointing out that for Anderson the existence of the nation, despite its predominantly rhetorical and therefore questionable ontology, is not put in doubt. On the contrary: for A nderson ‘nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time’ (3). That the nation can also be put in play or even in doubt becomes clear through a look at the progressively postnational tendencies within the field of heavy metal. To apply Anderson’s notion of national identity to the kind of ‘nation’ that is created as an aesthetic reality might be stretching A nderson’s point, which stems, after all, from a discourse in political theory. N evertheless, if one conceptualizes the heavy metal community as an A ndersonian nation or even a globally ‘imagined world’ – to use a phrase that A rjun A ppadurai develops from A nderson’s writing   For further readings on Britishness, Englishness and nationalism see Appadurai; Colley; Easthope; Mergenthal; Rose; and Smith.

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in order to describe the spatial distribution of cultural traditions (33) – a number of its features become more obvious. A nderson’s concept of limitation certainly applies to heavy metal since, like the political nation, the heavy metal scene has ‘finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations’ and communities (7). A nderson’s second category, sovereignty, derives its legitimacy from the historical fact that the nation was conceived of as sovereign ‘because the concept was born in an age in which E nlightenment and R evolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm’ (7). While all rock music probably shares this revolutionary spirit that debunks traditional forms of hierarchies and control (see Altschuler), the anarchistic spirit of rock seems to run counter to the idea of sovereignty, at least if that idea is based on an assumption of power and control. A s a subversive art form, heavy metal can hardly subscribe to a system of legitimacy. It therefore cannot be considered an ‘imagined community’ of the kind Anderson describes as a nation. A nderson’s third argument, however, reveals great parallels between the global fan community of an art form and the nation as an imagined community that ‘is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship’ (7). In particular if one brackets out as external the inherent class conflict of heavy metal’s working-class consciousness – discussed by R yan Moore and Magnus N ilsson in the previous two chapters of this book – and its ostensible and exclusionary distinction from the social mainstream (see Benjamin Earl’s chapter in the first part of this book), the heavy metal ‘nation’ takes on aspects of community that mirror the kind of wilful affiliation found in the process of national identification. If heavy metal fans are seen as belonging to a nation, it is hardly the kind of spatially defined homogenous nation that late nineteenth-century visions of nationalism tried to create. Rather, it is a nation filled with inner conflict and contrast. Just as Homi Bhabha has deconstructed the supposed homogeneity of the nation with his concept of ‘dissemiN ation’, heavy metal is ripe with interior divisions and conflicts. Bhabha describes the nation as a semantic practice that reacts to the political upheaval of displacement and exile: ‘The nation fills the void left in the uprooting of communities and kin, and turns that loss into the language of metaphor’ (291). Bhabha conceptualizes his notion of ‘double-writing or dissemi-nation’ as deriving from ‘cultural liminality – within the nation’ (299). A s the reason behind ‘the liminality of the nation-space’ Bhabha sees the ongoing process where ‘“difference” is turned from the boundary “outside” to its finitude “within”’ (301). For Bhabha, then, the nation is no longer a narrative in the singular, but rather has to be theorized as a collection of narratives that, at least in part, contradict each other. Rather than seeing the nation, like Anderson, as a singular ‘imagined community’, Bhabha focuses on the lines of fissure that run through the nation, turning it into the kind of liminal, in-between space that allows for a range of discourses to co-exist. In this multiplicity of voices, somewhat akin to M.M. Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia (see Brennan 53–5), the nation becomes a sort of polyphonic discourse, a heteroglossic text.

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T o apply this concept to the world, or nation, of heavy metal is to focus on the interior divisions of a genre that has broken up into power metal, glam metal, black metal, alternative metal and so on: the timeline in Ian C hriste’s S ound of the Beast illustrates the development well (viii–xi), as does the bonus material included in the DVD version of Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen’s film, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. The interior divisions of what used to be a British genre of rock music thus mirror both the growing interior heterogeneity of Britishness itself and, following Appadurai, the transnational locus of enunciation that marks the global phase of heavy metal as a commodity. Just as the national narrative becomes more fragmentary, so change the particular affiliations of British rock bands. The shifting political and ethnic set-up of Western nations is, of course, not the only reason for this development. Rather, the growing importance of international markets, corporations and ideologies influenced the way that British heavy metal changed in the 1980s and beyond. One result of this growing internationalization is evident in how song lyrics and the overall critical potential of rock music is increasingly directed not simply at the political or social situation within a particular nation, but rather finds its targets within the globalized system of the world economy. That this process of globalization has also spawned its detractors is a well-established fact. Hobsbawm, maybe too optimistically, predicted in 1990 that a future world history ‘will see “nations” and “nation-states” or ethnic/linguistic groups primarily as retreating before, resisting, adapting to, being absorbed or dislocated by, the new supranational restructuring of the globe’ (182). Ulrich Beck and Naomi Klein have described various aspects of this post-national world of globalization, and their analyses do not always call for jubilation when it comes to the consequences that a global reign of corporate identity has brought into the world. E choing Hobsbawm’s optimism, A ppadurai, by contrast, sees in the tendency toward postnational identities, fuelled as they are by ‘mass mediation and migration’ (21), the potential for a more peaceful future (23). T he following argument deals with this move from somewhat celebratory Britishness to globalization. D ivided into parts dealing with Judas Priest, T hin Lizzy, Iron Maiden and Motörhead, the rest of this chapter analyses how, within the field of British heavy metal, the role of Britishness changed between the early 1970s and the end of the twentieth century. Judas Priest: British Metal One of the earliest stars of heavy metal music in Britain, Judas Priest were also one of the most obvious proponents of their British background. With their British S teel record, released in 1980, they presented an album cover that brought together the toughness and force of heavy metal music with the typical Britishness of their

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social background. As bass player Ian Hill remembers, at the time of the publication of the album British steel workers were on strike. Part of the reason for choosing this particular album title and artwork was that it was ‘sympathetic with what was going on … in the steelworks at the time’. By using an icon of Britain’s struggling industrial landscape, the band wanted to express solidarity with the working class. The razor on the album cover also evoked memories of what guitarist K.K. D owning recalls as typical British family life, in particular the masculine shaving routine of their grandfathers and their use of British-produced cultural objects. Hill summarizes the significance of the album title, saying ‘that’s exactly what we are, you know: British steel’. Rob Halford seconds this notion. Speaking about the song ‘R apid Fire’, he notes that the lyrics are ‘very very British’ and even detects particular E nglishness in the accent used on his recording. Halford claims that listening to the song causes one to think, ‘this is a British bloke singing’, evoking both issues of masculinity and of Britishness. Halford places his lyrics in the tradition of not only E nglish literature, referring to canonical greats like Shakespeare and the stage actor Laurence Olivier, but also to less elitist art forms like movies or the English tradition of nonsense poetry, made famous by L ewis C arroll and his Alice in Wonderland. Like Carroll, Halford frequently invents words, using them for their particular sonic or rhythmic qualities, like the word ‘isolationing’ in the song ‘Rapid Fire’. With British S teel, the band clearly positions itself as British, taking its cultural and national background as direct reference points for its own music. While posing as underdogs and rebels places Judas Priest in sharp contrast to official culture, the band nevertheless holds on to the notion of national identity, even trying to ‘save’ this imagined community and its cultural legacy by re-inscribing its traditions into popular culture. Thin Lizzy: The Metal Race The racial make-up of heavy metal, which is predominantly a white musical genre both in terms of its musicians and fans, may lend itself to the assumption that racism is part of the genre’s tradition and ‘national’ narrative. For some fringe elements within the heavy metal circuit this is certainly true. However, as R obert Walser argues for the U nited S tates, attitudes towards race within heavy metal are  A ll band quotes are from the DVD British S teel, released in 2001, both from the main feature and the bonus material, which has a special section on the album title and art work.  T he racist tendencies of at least one heavy metal scene have been researched: see Moynihan and Søderlind for a discussion of the situation in Scandinavia. The immense success of the Swedish crossover band Clawfinger shows that there are also anti-racist tendencies in heavy metal: their album Deaf Dumb Blind (1993) begins with a song that very explicitly criticizes racism. British band Skunk Anansie, on S toosh (1996), and the

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representative of the rest of society: ‘N either the lyrics nor the fans are noticeably more racist than is normal in the United States; in fact, the enthusiasm of many fans for black or racially mixed bands, like Living Colour and King’s X, and their reverence for Jimi Hendrix suggest the opposite’ (17). The racially diverse US band R age A gainst the Machine followed in this tradition: their self-titled debut album (1992) addresses racism within the larger society; and with The Battle of Los Angeles (1999) they turned to even more direct political statements in the tradition of Malcolm X (see Ingham 176). Other bands have addressed similar issues: the ironic title of Black R adio Won’t Play This (1992), by the legendary black funk-metal act Mother’s Finest, addresses systemic resistance against heavy metal music within the A frican-A merican community and thus reminds its audience of the racial politics of popular music. In the British context, the band T hin L izzy offers some insight into the racial politics of heavy metal. T he band is centred on singer and bassist Phil L ynott, the son of an Irish mother and a (mostly absent) Afro-Brazilian father. Born in Birmingham in 1950, L ynott grew up in Belfast, N orthern Ireland. He played in various rock bands in Dublin before moving to England, where Thin Lizzy became a hugely influential band, inspiring fellow musicians like Iron Maiden with their harmonized guitar lines (Christe 19 and 35). In terms of generic purity, T hin L izzy hardly belongs at the centre of heavy metal, but songs like ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’, from their album Jailbreak (1976), made heavy rock popular with a massive audience. T he post-chorus bridge in the song also provides a good example of T hin L izzy’s original use of dual guitar melodies. With Lynott’s personal bi-national and multi-ethnic background, it is no surprise that the issue of national or ethnic identity occasionally features in the music of Thin Lizzy. Their first big hit, ‘Whiskey in the Jar’, later famously covered by Metallica, is based on a traditional Irish folk song. A comparison to Metallica’s rendition of the song on the Garage Inc. album (1998) highlights the differences: Metallica follows the sonic characteristics of their own material at the time and therefore sounds like the kind of pop-commodified heavy metal song that the band created in 1991 with their self-titled album (a.k.a. The Black Album) (see Weinstein, Heavy Metal 277). Metallica’s ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ clocks in at 135 bpm, has doubled vocals and melodious guitar lines, but also the typical L ars U lrich drum sound. By contrast, T hin L izzy’s version on their 1972 single alludes to the Irish musical tradition through its guitar introduction, its barely distorted racially diverse Dutch-German funk metal band Scäm Luiz both use heavy metal as a platform for anti-racist statements.  T he fact that they are included on the 30-year anniversary album put out by the legendary L ondon music club T he Marquee, which does not include any heavy metal acts, would put Thin Lizzy in the regular (hard) rock category, alongside acts like T. Rex, Mott the Hoople, C ream, Jethro T ull or S tatus Quo, all of which are also featured on this anthology. However, their sonic and musical quality shows they belong to a different category in relation to the other bands on this album.

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rhythm guitar (only present during the bridge in Metallica’s version), its moderate tempo of about 125 bpm, and the emotional rendition of the vocals. T hin L izzy thus appears rooted in their Irish-C eltic tradition. T heir success in Britain can be seen as a wilful protest on the side of their listeners against dominant British policies in Ireland, making the band a symbol for a very British expression of anti-establishment national pride. L ynott’s popularity at the same time puts in play the notion of a racially homogenous British identity, emphasizing the shift in national identity that Bhabha describes. Iron Maiden: The Nation and War From their early days, Iron Maiden have been one of the most influential bands of the N ew Wave of British Heavy Metal, which around 1980 reinvigorated the heavy metal scene (Weinstein 44). Started in London’s East End, the band frequently deals with E nglish and/or British themes. Its hugely successful live album Live After Death, recorded at L os A ngeles’s L ong Beach A rena in 1984, begins with a recording of Winston C hurchill’s speech to the House of C ommons on 4 June 1940. Probably as a tribute to the lasting success of their live album, the band continues, in the twenty-first century, to use the recording to open their shows in the U K and abroad. C hurchill’s legendary address, which includes the memorable phrase ‘we shall defend our island whatever the cost may be’, has become part of the UK’s national myth. Whether Churchill’s words make sense off the island is a different matter. According to the information printed in the album booklet, the tour took the band to 24 countries. Many of the fans in this international setting may easily have listened to the recording without knowing of its political and historical context. T he audience in the US that attended the recorded shows may, for example, simply have taken the Churchill speech to refer to nationalism at large, without considering the particularly British notion of defending the territory against the German V2 rockets. Or listeners could simply take the recording as an introduction to the war-themed songs to follow. In Iron Maiden’s ‘T he T rooper’, originally from the album Piece of Mind (1983), the band creates an intertextual reference to Alfred Tennyson’s 1854 poem ‘T he C harge of the L ight Brigade’, which deals with the deadly fate of 600 soldiers, sent to their certain death by indifferent superiors. In T ennyson’s poem, the pointless slaughter of soldiers for the greater glory of their nation is presented as a necessary contribution to the progress of the British E mpire. A lready in V irginia Woolf’s modernist novel To the Lighthouse (1927) the poem is reread as a fragmented moment of personal (and national) crisis (23). In the Iron Maiden song, the first verse begins with all the usual braggadocio of a military song, stating in unequivocal terms, and using the tone of military bravery, ‘You’ll take my life but I’ll take yours too’, implying that the speaker is convinced of his sure   The lyrics to all Iron Maiden songs are taken from the Live After Death booklet.

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victory or at least does not mind the possible deadly outcome of the encounter. It is only with the closing lines, which describe the wounded soldier as ‘forgotten and alone’ breathing his ‘parting groan’, that the song expresses the individual fate of the soldier. It is a loneliness created by the indifference of the national leaders. T ennyson, by contrast, does not allow for the thematization of this individual suffering because he only ever refers to the group of six hundred and never to an individual soldier. Iron Maiden placed the song in the third spot on their live album. It follows two other songs, ‘A ces High’ and ‘2 Minutes to Midnight’, that also deal with the horrors of war. Both songs begin in what could be read as a mood of military jingoism. ‘A ces High’ in particular seems to celebrate the technological power of war machinery. T he song, however, refrains from any references to a particular national framework, allowing listeners, therefore, to insert their own national contexts. Only the reference to the enemy’s Me-109s alludes to a particular kind of enemy, namely the German Messerschmitt planes of the Second World War; one can only speculate as to how many audience members would know about this piece of military history. While ‘Aces High’ thus starts off the show on a fierce note, the second song, ‘2 Minutes to Midnight’, uses subtle irony to express a more clearly anti-military stance. Phrases like ‘Here’s my gun for a barrel of fun’ or ‘We oil the jaws of the war machine and feed it with our babies’ indicate that the midnight alluded to in the song’s title is a ghostly moment of recognition in which the nation is exposed as a war machine. In fact, the national leadership is indirectly mentioned in the phrase ‘the Madmen play on words and make us all dance to their song’, placed as a closing remark that reveals the real nature of war. With the pointless death of the lonely soldier in ‘T he T rooper’, Iron Maiden’s live album clearly enters into an ambiguous relationship with the issue of nationalism. While the recording of the famous C hurchill speech with which the show opens evokes support for the national cause, the first three songs on the album question (military) nationalism. The mythological and religious themes that characterize the remaining songs of Live After Death bypass all notions of British nationalism. T he album ends with two songs that celebrate A merican ideas of individual freedom, while criticizing the state’s wielding of control. Both ‘R un to the Hills’ and ‘R unning Free’ can thus be seen as a negation of the national narrative, inviting listeners not to identify with the discourse of nationalism that creates the imagined community of a nation. U ltimately, the audience is invited to deny their allegiance to the nation as a war machine. Motörhead: Leaving England Just as Iron Maiden frequently takes on the topic of war in a highly critical manner, the history of Motörhead shows a music group that increasingly uses album covers, song lyrics and musical references to debunk the idea of a stable and uniform E nglish tradition. T he band formed around L emmy Kilmister in 1976

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(Weinstein 17) and, on their debut album Motörhead (1977), soon found its fast, straight sound, marked by Lemmy’s characteristic if not exactly melodic voice. Robert Walser sees in Motörhead ‘an important pioneer of speed metal’ but also notes their affinity to punk (14). The band has used their English background very openly on band t-shirts and album covers. For instance, the cover of the live album N ö S leep at All (1988) shows a heavy-duty equipment case with the famous band logo that has the words ‘Motörhead’ and ‘England’ circle the band ‘mascot’, a skull with military helmet, tusks and various steel chains. While the skull appears on most albums, the reference to E ngland starts to disappear in the 1990s, mirroring L emmy’s move to L os A ngeles in 1990. On the 1916 album, published in 1991, the band replaced what looked on earlier artwork like pride in their national origin with a more critical look at nationalism: the cover refers to the First World War and its technological destruction of human lives. The battle field scenario is evoked by chain-link fences, a war plane, smoke caused by explosions and rows of anonymous military graves. T his scene on the album cover is also encircled, this time by ten flags. The Union Jack is still present, but is placed alongside nine other flags. Britishness is relegated to a position of only relative importance, as one discourse among many others. With March Ör Die (1992) Motörhead returned to the skull-and-two-semi-circles design, but the band had, by this point in time, shed its allegiance to E ngland: the country’s name is replaced by the album title, implying that pride in one’s own art has superseded what used to be a symbol for national identity. However, the themes of the songs on March Ör Die continue to deal with issues of nationalism, in particular with the brutality of war. T he title song, ‘March Ör Die’, evokes in its tempo, two-(power-) chord verse and overall theme Bob D ylan’s ‘Masters of War’ (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, 1963), itself based on a traditional folksong. Both songs express anger at the fact that wars senselessly kill countless people, evoking the repetitive, technological and anti-human nature of war through sonic features that render the underlying structure of the song, the traditional blues progression through IV and V, almost unrecognizable. T he orchestration of the song, which uses bagpipes and thus hints through its C eltic resonances to the distant past of the British Isles,10 closes the album on a   A similar use of flags to evoke the postnational identity of a global audience (and a global market, one could add) is found on the covers of Manowar’s Kings of Metal (1988) and of Gary Moore’s album After the War (1989). The title song of the latter also takes a critical look at war. As an Irishman and past band member of Thin Lizzy, Moore here does not, understandably, claim an overly British position. That the use of a national flag does not imply nationalistic or conservative attitudes is emphasized by the Bruce S pringsteen album Born in the US A (1988), which shows Springsteen, an artist who is able to take a critical look at his home country, before the US flag. 10  Such use of stereotypical British signifiers was ridiculed by Spinal Tap (in the film This Is S pinal Tap) when the model of Stonehenge that should have lent a folk-inspired song

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rather domestic note. During the fadeout of the song, noises of a storm refer back to the mention of Armageddon in the third line of the song. Motörhead use this return to their national musical tradition not so much as an accusation of ‘E ngland’, a word and thus national allegiance they have for a long time featured alongside their band name on countless t-shirts, but rather to express a post-national dissatisfaction with the globalized world. T he source of all the deadly developments mentioned in the song seems to run across particular nation borders: the song argues that the death of ‘[o]ur forests’ and the ever-growing materialist exploitation of ‘the earth for gold’ occurs despite the fact that ‘no one knows’ why things are happening this way. By addressing a global crisis, Motörhead imply a move away from a national context of political investment and toward a transnational focus on globalization. Conclusion: British Metal No More T hat heavy metal in Britain is no longer a purely British tradition at the end of the twentieth century conforms to the larger development of travelling consumer goods. T he developments of the 1980s and 1990s have contributed to an increasingly global music market that transgresses the boundaries of what used to be national music traditions.11 Like other traditions within popular music, heavy metal has become part of a global tradition towards post-national art. A nthony S mith notes that ‘the basic motifs, ideas and styles of post-modern cosmopolitanism are folk or national in origin’ (159). That the English roots are still remembered in the field of heavy metal music is therefore only appropriate. Even a funky American skater metal band like Ugly Kid Joe,12 which sometimes sounds like a mixture of Guns ‘n’ R oses and the R ed Hot C hili Peppers, pays tribute to the British metal greats. T heir album As Ugly as They Wanna Be (1991) ends with the short track ‘Heavy Metal’, which parodies the tone and mode of (speed) metal. But, following Linda Hutcheon’s description of the dual function of parody, one could argue that the song also continues the tradition of British heavy metal. T he album furthermore includes a funkalized version of the Black Sabbath tune ‘Sweet Leaf’ that both its historical gravitas on stage was produced on too small a scale. Their picture disk Bitch S chool (1992) exists in a limited edition cut in the shape of a prehistoric dolmen. S pinal Tap here ridicules the notorious Stonehenge incident during Black Sabbath’s Born Again tour, when the set designer built a model of Stonehenge using the wrong scale; see McIver 167. 11 N abeel Zuberi has presented a comprehensive analysis of pop and technological music that debates the E nglishness of those genres. 12  The link between skater metal and rap also leads to a blurring of musical traditions usually associated with diverse racial groups in the USA , in particular ‘white’ heavy metal and ‘African-American’ funk and rap. Such a morphing marks, for instance, the work of Infectious Grooves, which Ingham argues contributed much to the formation of nu metal (109). Their song ‘Infectious Grooves’, on The Plague that Makes Your Booty Move … It’s the Infectious Grooves (1991), features a heavily gated snare drum, undistorted guitars and rapped lyrics, alongside a typical heavy metal guitar solo; see also Christe 210.

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serves as a basis for U gly Kid Joe’s music in the tradition of British heavy metal and also points the direction to possible future developments of the genre, inside the U K and beyond. T his turn to the British tradition is part of a larger cultural move, namely the postmodern fascination with nostalgia, as described by Fredric Jameson. T he lasting success of the global heavy metal scene can thus also be seen as a nostalgic response to the short-lived stardom of many pop music idols. Whether the popularity of the genre around the world is also a triumph of Britishness remains somewhat unclear. The triumphant story of (British) heavy metal, however, continues even beyond the disintegration of national identity concepts. As a remarkably physical and bodily experience of pop music, heavy metal, and its ‘intensity of experience’ (Walser 53), provides an almost ideal form of pleasurable consumption (see Appadurai 83). D espite its roots in a British political, historical and cultural environment, heavy metal has become a transnational space of musical expression. E ncouraged by the crisis in (British) nationalism in the late twentieth century to shed its local flavour, heavy metal nevertheless carries a distinct notion of Britishness into the often virtual space of global fandom. Like the process of ethnic implosion that Arjun Appadurai describes as an inherent by-product of modernity (149–57), heavy metal embodies the changing importance of national culture. T he waning of the nation state translates, in this case of one musical genre, into nostalgic references back to a moment in Britain’s post-war history; it also creates playful references to British traditions beyond the search for national identity. References A ltschuler, Glenn C . All S hook Up: How R ock ‘n’ R oll Changed America. N ew York: Oxford University Press, 2003. A nderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of N ationalism. R ev. ed. L ondon: V erso, 1991. A ppadurai, A rjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN : U niversity of Minnesota Press, 2003. Bakhtin, M.M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. T rans. C aryl E merson and Michael Holquist. A ustin, T X: U niversity of T exas Press, 1988. Beck, Ulrich. What Is Globalization. Trans. Patrick Camiller. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000. Bhabha, Homi K. ‘D issemiN ation: T ime, N arrative, and the Margins of the Modern N ation.’ N ation and N arration. E d. Homi K. Bhabha. L ondon: R outledge, 1990. 291–322. Bogue, Ronald. ‘Violence in Three Shades of Metal: Death, Doom and Black.’ Deleuze and Music. E d. Ian Buchanan and Marcel S wiboda. E dinburgh: E dinburgh U niversity Press, 2004. 95–117. Brennan, T im. ‘T he N ational L onging for Form.’ N ation and N arration. E d. Homi K. Bhabha. L ondon: R outledge, 1990. 44–70.

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C hriste, Ian. S ound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. C olley, L inda. Britons: Forging the N ation 1707–1837. N ew Haven, CT : Y ale U niversity Press, 1992. D unn, S am and S cot McFadyen, dirs. Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. Warner, 2006. E asthope, A nthony. Englishness and N ational Culture. L ondon: R outledge, 1999. Gellner, E rnest. N ations and N ationalism. Ithaca, NY : C ornell U niversity Press, 1983. Hobsbawm, E .J. N ations and N ationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, R eality. C ambridge: C ambridge U niversity Press, 1990. Hutcheon, L inda. A Theory of Parody. L ondon: R outledge, 1991. Ingham, C hris. The Book of Metal: The Most Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Metal Music Ever Created. New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 2002. Iron Maiden. ‘2 Minutes to Midnight.’ Powerslave. 1984. Music and lyrics by Paul Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith. Sony-BMG. Iron Maiden. ‘A ces High.’ Powerslave. 1984. Music and lyrics by S tephen Percy Harris. S ony-BMG. Iron Maiden. ‘T he T rooper.’ Piece of Mind. 1983. Music and lyrics by S tephen Percy Harris. S ony-BMG. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991. Klein, N aomi. N o Logo. New York: Picador, 1999. McIver, Joel. S abbath Bloody S abbath. L ondon: Omnibus Press, 2006. Mergenthal, S ilvia. A Fast-Forward Version of England: Constructions of Englishness in Contemporary Fiction. Heidelberg: Winter, 2003. Motörhead. ‘March Ör Die.’ March Ör Die. 1992. Music and lyrics by Ian Fraser Kilmister. Warner C happell. Moynihan, Michael and Didrik Søderlind. Lords of Chaos: The Bloody R ise of the S atanic Metal Underground. V enice, CA : Feral House, 1998. Paxman, Jeremy. The English: A Portrait of a People. L ondon: Penguin, 1999. R enan, E rnest. ‘What Is a N ation?’ N ation and N arration. E d. Homi K. Bhabha. L ondon: R outledge, 1990. 8–22. R ose, Jacqueline. S tates of Fantasy. Oxford: C larendon, 1996. S mith, A nthony D . N ational Identity. L ondon: Penguin, 1991. T ennyson, A lfred. ‘T he C harge of the L ight Brigade.’ 1854. The N ew O xford Book of Victorian Verse. Ed. Christopher Ricks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 32–3. This Is S pinal Tap. D ir. R ob R einer. S pinal T ap Productions, 1984. Walser, R obert. R unning with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover, N H: Wesleyan U niversity Press, 1993. Weinstein, D eena. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. 1991. R ev. ed. N ew York: Da Capo, 2000. Woolf, V irginia. To the Lighthouse. L ondon: Penguin, 2000.

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Zuberi, N abeel. S ounds English: Transnational Popular Music. U rbana, IL : U niversity of Illinois Press, 2001. Discography and Videography Clawfinger. Deaf Dumb Blind. Warner, 1993. D ylan, Bob. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. C olumbia, 1963. Infectious Grooves. The Plague that Makes Your Booty Move … It’s the Infectious Grooves. E pic, 1991. Iron Maiden. The History of Iron Maiden, Part 1: The Early Days. DVD . E MI, 2004. Iron Maiden. Live After Death. E MI, 1985. Iron Maiden. The N umber of the Beast. DVD . E agle V ision, 2001. Iron Maiden. Piece of Mind. E MI, 1983. Iron Maiden. Powerslave. E MI, 1984. Judas Priest. British S teel. C BS , 1980. Judas Priest. British S teel. DVD . E agle V ision, 2001. Manowar. Kings of Metal. A tlantic, 1988. The Marquee: 30 Legendary Years. Polydor, 1989. Metallica. Garage Inc. V ertigo, 1998. Metallica. Metallica. [The Black Album]. Elektra, 1991. Moore, Gary. After the War. V irgin, 1989. Mother’s Finest. Black R adio Won’t Play This. S cotti Bros., 1992. Motörhead. 1916. S ony, 1991. Motörhead. March Ör Die. E pic, 1992. Motörhead. Motörhead. Chiswick, 1977. Motörhead. N ö S leep at All. GWR , 1988. Motörhead. R ock ‘n’ R oll. GWR , 1987. R age A gainst the Machine. The Battle of Los Angeles. S ony, 1999. R age A gainst the Machine. R age Against the Machine. S ony, 1992. S axon. The Eagle Has Landed. C arrere, 1982. S cäm L uiz. The Power of Live. Metronome, 1992. Skunk Anansie. S toosh. V irgin, 1996. S pinal T ap. Bitch S chool. MCA , 1992. S pringsteen, Bruce. Born in the US A. C BS , 1984. S tevens, S teve. Atomic Playboys. Warner, 1989. T hin L izzy. Jailbreak. Mercury, 1976. T hin L izzy. The Very Best of Thin Lizzy. Mercury, 1996. U gly Kid Joe. As Ugly as They Wanna Be. Polygram, 1991.

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Index

7000 D ying R ats 61 A baddon 83 AC /DC 164 A dorno, T heodor W. 7, 53–5, 59, 65 adult-oriented rock (AOR) 42 A eon 8 A frica 74–5, 150 A gathodaimon 112 Akercocke 84 Allen, Rick 44 alcohol 75, 79, 146; see also drugs Alexander (film) 111 alternative metal 184 A lthusser, L ouis 155 amb����� ient 55 anarchism 55, 58, 60–61, 183 A ngel Witch 82 A nger, Kenneth 79 T he A nimals 77 A ntaeus 112 A nthrax 23 A ntinomianism 144 A nvil 82 apocalypse 7, 25, 89–90, 93, 95–103, 105, 143–4, 148, 150 A rmored S aint 73 A rs E lectronica 55, 65 Astley, Rick 46 A taraxia 112, 116 authenticity 7, 18, 34, 37, 39–47, 59–60, 65, 136, 146, 164–6, 172, Bailey, R ichard 37 Bakhtin, M.M. 183 Ballard, R uss 41 bass guitar 5, 21, 25, 38, 42, 64, 79, 92, 94, 102, 132, 185–6 Bathory 82 Bava, Mario 80 BBC 22, 66, 105, T he Beatles 78, 150

Beck, Jeff 76 Beckett, Samuel 54, 65 Beckford, William 126 Bench, Jo 94 BerlinWall 182 Berry, Chuck 77 Bhabha, Homi 183, 187 T he Bible 25, 143–4, 152 Birmingham 2, 57, 58, 74, 78–9, 92–3, 143, 149, 164, 186 Birmingham S chool 162–4 Birthday Party 64 British Blues Boom 73–4, 76–8, 80, 84 Black Flag 59 Black Mass 79, 80, 149; see also S atanism black metal 4, 8, 59–60, 74, 82–3, 93, 112, 184 Black Sabbath 1, 2, 6–8, 23, 35–6, 42, 56–7, 73–4, 79–81, 84, 91–6, 99–100, 103, 105, 119, 125, 127–8, 130–31, 134–5, 148–50, 153, 164, 190 Black S abbath (film) 80 Black Widow 81, 84 Blackmore, Ritchie 3, 40–42, 81 Blake, William 115 blues music 3, 4, 7, 17–18, 21, 37, 39, 57, 73–84, 94, 150, 155, 189 Boethius 8, 112, 116 Bolt T hrower 7, 94–8, 101–3, 105 Bon Jovi 39 Bond, Graham 78 Bonham, John 36, 79 Bonnett, Graham 40 Bosch, Hieronymous 96 Bourdieu, Pierre 6, 34–47, 176–7 Brando, Marlon 27 Bray, A nthony, see A baddon Brazil 1 Brecht, Bertolt 59 BRIT awards 62 Broadrick, Justin56, 58, 60 Broonzy, Big Bill 77

196

Heavy M etal Mus ic in Br itain

Brown, Willie 76 Brutal T ruth 23, 59–60, Bullen, Nik 61, 64 Bunch, William, see Wheatstraw, Peetie Burke, Solomon 77 Butler, T erry ‘Geezer’ 79–80 Byron, L ord George 126; see also R omanticism C age, John 54 C alifornia 74, 82, C ampbell, Phil 76 C annibal C orpse 62–3 C arcass 6, 23, 57, 59–60, 62–3, 66–7 C athedral 7, 73, 89, 93–4, 96, 98, 102–5 C atholicism 126, 130; see also religion C attle D ecapitation 60 Cave, Nick 18 censorship 5, 67, 97, 156 C handler, C has 77 C haron 8, 112 C hesterton, G.K. 119 C hristian metal 26; see also religion C hurchill, Winston 187–8; see also nationalism; war C icero 112 C immerian Path 112 cinema 7, 27, 62–3, 73, 75–6, 79–80, 97, 111, 113, 185; see also horror films C ircus Maximus 111 C lapton, E ric 76 Clark, Steve 76 Clarkin, Tony 45–6 T he C lash 18, 61, 119 class 2–3, 8–9, 17, 21, 27–8, 54–5, 57, 79, 93, 120–21, 143–9, 151, 155–6, 161, 163–77, 183, 185 C oleridge, S .T . 8, 119, 126; see also R omanticism Colosseum (band) 36 commercialism 2, 6, 22, 33–5, 37, 39–47, 57, 81 Cooke, Sam 77 counterculture 27, 44, 45, 90, 91, 119, 136, 146, 151, 169, 173 C oventry 93

cover artwork 22, 26, 37–8, 46, 59, 62, 64, 73, 78, 80, 83, 94–6, 98, 125, 133–7, 151–2, 184–6, 188–9 C rass 58, 61–3 C rass C ollective 58 C ream 74, 77, 80, 186 C ronos 83 Crossroads (film) 73, 75–6 C rowley, A leister 78, 79, 84, 148 cyborg 95, 152, 181; see also robot dada 61 dancing 27, 64, 75, 114, 116, 188 D ashwood, S ir Francis 79 D ean, R oger 37–8 death metal 5, 39, 55, 57, 59–64, 66, 82–4, 92–4, 105 D ebord, Guy 153–4 D eep Purple 1, 3, 35–6, 38, 42, 81 D ef L eppard 33, 35, 42–5, 76, 147 deindustrialization, see industrialization/ deindustrialization D elacroix, E ugène 95 Demon (band) 73 Derek and the Dominos 77 D evil, see S atanism D evil’s music 75, 81, 82, 84 D i’A nno, Paul 151 D iamond Head 21–3 Dickinson, Bruce 119–22, 132, 147, 152 D io, R onnie James 40, 42, 73, 130–31, D ie Kreuzen 59 Discharge (band) 58 DIY (do-it-yourself) ethos 21, 58, D onington 22 doom metal 1, 92–4, 98, 135 T he D oors 18 D orrian, L ee 94 D owning, K.K. 130, 185 Dr. S trangelove, or: How I Learned to S top Worrying and Love the Bomb (film) 103 drugs 5, 78, 84, 127, 146, 167, 170, 172 drums 5, 24–6, 36, 38, 44, 56, 58, 61, 64, 67, 79, 82, 92, 99, 102, 118, 165, 186, 190 D unn, Jeffrey, see Mantas D ylan, Bob 189

IN DEX dystopia, see utopia/dystopia E arache R ecords 6, 58, 66 Earth (band) 80 Eddie (Iron Maiden mascot) 26, 105, 133–4, 151–2 Elf (band) 130 elitism 7, 65, 113, 116, 119, 121–2, 185 E lysium 8, 112 E picurus 112 Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP) 45 E ngels, Friedrich 8, 148, 174 environment, see nature the E nlightenment 8, 126, 127, 132, 183 E xodus 73 The Exorcist (film) 78 E xtreme N oise T error 62, 64 Fanon, Frantz 75 fans 1, 4, 5, 7, 19–24, 26, 36–9, 43, 45, 58, 82–4, 92–4, 104–5, 111–13, 116, 118–22, 125, 133, 136, 147–8, 151, 154, 164, 167, 183, 185–7, 191 fascism 4, 60, 83, 92 Faust (legend) 76, 79, 81, 84, 190 Fear Factory 90 Final 56 First World War, see war Fisher, George 63 Fist (band) 26 folk music 37, 42, 47, 77, 186, 189–90 Foucault, Michel 20, 60, 154 Frankfurt School 6, 148 French R evolution 143 fretboard 73 Freud, S igmund 28 The Full Monty (film) 145 gangsta rap 18 Gannon, Jim 81 garage punk 18 Gardner, Gerald 78 Generation Y 2 Genesis (band) 120 Giger, H.R . 181 Girlschool 19, 22 glam metal 1, 184 glitch 55 Gladiator (film) 111

197

globalization 9, 144, 156, 182, 184, 190 Glover, R oger 42 Godflesh 6, 56, 58, 64 Godwin, William 128; see also R omanticism Goethe, J.W. von 8, 148, 150 gothic (metal genre) 1 Gothic (literary genre) 8, 83, 125–37 Grammy awards 2 Gray, D avid 84 Green, Peter 76 grindcore 6, 7, 53–67, 84, 94 grunge 1, 181 guitar 3, 5, 17–18, 20, 24–6, 36, 38, 40, 42, 45, 56–9, 63–4, 67, 73, 75–81, 92–3, 99, 102–4,130–32, 149–50, 154–5, 165, 181, 185–7, 190 Guns ‘n’ R oses 190 Hades (band) 112, 114, 116–17 hair 20, 26–7, 57, 136–7, 143, 146 hair metal 25–7 Halford, R ob 27, 101, 130, 153–5, 185 hardcore punk 56–9 hard rock 2, 4, 18, 21–2, 25–6, 81, 92, 186 Haynes, T odd 54 Headbangers Ball 2 Heavy Metal Parking Lot (film) 155 Heavy Metal S oundhouse 22 heavy rock 18, 81, 186 Hegel, G.W.F. 53, 153 Harris, Mick 56, 61 Harris, S teve 21, 25, 132 Hecate E nthroned 84 Hell’s A ngels 27, 146 Hendrix, Jimi 77–80, 83, 186 Hensley, Ken 37 hip hop 1 hippies 79, 146 Hoffman, A bbie 151 Holocaust 59 Holy Magick 78 Hooker, John Lee 77 Homer 112–18 Horace 8, 112, 116 Horkheimer, Max, 54 horror films 57, 59, 91, 98; see also cinema House, S on 76 Howlin’ Wolf 77

198

Heavy M etal Mus ic in Br itain

Huxley, A ldous 7, 90 Icarus (legend) 8, 119 identity 9, 47, 53–4, 64–7, 78, 167, 170, 172–4, 182, 184, 186 national identity 181, 185, 187, 189, 191 ideology 1, 4, 6, 8, 20, 24, 27, 33, 45, 47, 54, 63, 81, 105, 125, 149, 155–6, 173–4, 176, 184 Industrial R evolution 143–4, 148, 156 industrialization/deindustrialization 7, 90, 143–7, 149, 155–6 Infectious Grooves 190 T he Infernal A lliance 83 Iommi, T ony 57, 79–80, 149 Iron Maiden 8, 21–6, 43, 58, 82, 94, 105, 111, 118–22, 125, 128–34, 144, 147–9, 151–3, 184, 186–8 Jacobins 143 Jaguar 22 James, E lmore 76 Japan 1, 64, 152 jazz 4, 36, 54, 61, Jethro T ull 37, 77, 186 Joel, Billy 155 Johnson, R obert 76–81, 83–4, 150 Johnson, T ommy 76 Jones, John Paul 79 Joy D ivision 64 Judas Priest 7–8, 23, 25–7, 38, 58, 74, 82, 91–7, 100–101, 105, 125, 130, 136, 149, 153–5, 163, 184–5 Kafka, Franz 54 k.d. Lang 55 Kerrang! 22 Khmer R ouge 59 Kilmister, L emmy 188–9 King, B.B. 77 King’s X 186 KL F 62 Kristeva, Julia 7, 55, 62 Kronos Quartet 55 Kubrick, Stanley 103 L ange, R obert John ‘Mutt’ 43 L ant, C onrad, see C ronos

L aV ey, A nton 78, 80, 83 L awnmower D eth 66 L ed Zeppelin35–7, 39–40, 44, 78–9, 111, 113, 115–17, 131 L ee, S tan 22 L emmy, see Kilmister, L emmy L ewis, Matthew 126–8 L iverpool 145 T he L ocust 61, 66 L ondon 21–2, 77, 95, 120–21, 145, 151–3, 164, 186–7 L ord, Jon 38, 81 L ordi 81 L os A ngeles 80, 187, 189 L iving C olour 186 Lucifer R ising (film) 79 L uddites 144 Lukács, Georg 8–9, 147–8, 156 L ull 56 L ydon, John 47 L ynott, Phil 186–7 Mad Max films 97 Magnum 6, 35, 37–8, 41, 44–6 Malmsteen, Y ngwie 81, 181 Manowar 116–17, 189 Manson, C harles 80 Mantas 83 Marcuse, Herbert 143, 169 T he Marquee 186 Marshall (amplifier manufacturer) 24, 26 Martin, Kevin66 Marx, Karl 8, 147–8, 153, 156, 168, 175 masculinity 5–6, 17–28, 117–18, 136, 145–6 Masonna 64 Matthews, R odney 38, 46 MC 5 92 Megadeth 23 Melody Maker 41 Mercyful Fate 82 Merzbow 64 melodic rock 6, 39–40, 43–4, 47 Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (film) 4, 184 Metallica 2, 6, 23, 43, 47, 82, 186–7 microsound 55 middle-of-the-road 47

IN DEX Misfits 59 mods 151 Monsters of Rock 22 Moorcock, Michael 38 Moore, Gary 189 Morbid A ngel 61, 73 mosh pit 64 Mother’s Finest 186 Mötley Crüe 26 motorcycles 27, 38, 95, 97, 136, 153–4, 171 Motörhead 9, 23–7, 76, 82, 118, 125, 155, 161, 170–73, 182, 184, 188–90 Mott the Hoople 186 MTV 1–2, 19, 23, 147 Mythology (band) 79 mythology 8, 79, 111–13, 115, 117, 119, 122, 149, 151–3, 172–3 N ailed 84 N apalm D eath 6, 7, 23, 56, 58–61, 64–6, 84, 94 nationalism 9, 181–3, 187–9, 191; see also identity, national identity nature 28, 91, 99, 104, 131, 147 N azism, see fascism N ietzsche, Friedrich 28 nihilism 58, 60, 99, 104–5, 151 N ew A ge 146 N ew L eft 151 new wave 22 N ew Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) 4, 20–22, 43, 73, 81–3, 94, 119, 128, 131, 133, 136–7, 187 New York 56 N octurnus 61 noise (avant-garde music genre) 55–6, 61, 64–5 N onesuch R ecords 55 Norse folklore, see Vikings nu metal 2, 190 Onslaught 82, 83 Orwell, George 7, 90 Osbourne, Ozzy 2–3, 74, 79–80, 99, 127–8, 130, 147–9 Ovid 119–20

199

Owen, R obert 143 Owen, Wilfred 118 Pace, C harles 78 Page, Jimmy 76–9, 115, 131, 148, 164 Paine, T homas 143 Painkiller (band) 61 Patchett, D ave 96 Patton, C harlie 76 Persefone (band) 112 Pesky Gee! 81 PiL 47 Pink Floyd 77 Plant, R obert 36, 78–9, 113, 115–6, PMRC 167 Poe, E dgar A llan 8, 129 the Polka Tulk Blues Band 80 Pop, Iggy 18 popular/pop music 1–2, 6–7, 18, 21, 33, 37, 39–40, 43, 46, 58, 63, 66, 133, 150, 181, 186, 190–91 Possessed 73 post-subculture 162–3; see also subculture power metal 184 powerchord 44–5, 56, 82 Presley, E lvis 76 progressive rock 4, 21, 34, 37–9, 46, 57, 119–20 PTA 167 Public E nemy 18 public sphere 9, 176–7 punk music 1, 4, 6–7, 18, 21–3, 34, 47, 55–63, 81–2, 94, 144, 146, 151, 155, 189 R &B 18, 78 race 5, 17, 18, 60, 74–6, 92, 146, 164, 185–7, 190 R adcliffe, A nn 126–8, 130; see also R omanticism R age A gainst the Machine 186 R ainbow 6, 33, 37, 40–43, 45–6, 130 rap music 18–19, 190 R aven 22 R eagan, R onald 145 the R ed Hot C hili Peppers 190 R eich, S teve 55 religion 1, 4, 5, 8, 75, 78–9, 126, 153

200

Heavy M etal Mus ic in Br itain

resistance 7, 9, 33, 36, 100–101, 105, 137, 148, 154–6, 168–9, 174, 176, 186 T he R est 79 (Book of) Revelation, see T he Bible R ichard, L ittle 77 R ich, Jeff 44 Riggs, Derek 151 R obertson, Brian 76 robot 95, 99, 102–3, 154; see also cyborg Rock, Bob 43 rock ‘n’ roll 17, 77, 83–4, 126, 133, 169, 171, 181 rockers 120, 136, 146, 169–70 Rockett, Nige 83 the R olling S tones 18, 77–8, 150 R omanticism 8, 126, 152, 166, 169–70 R osemary’s Baby (film) 78 R ubin, Jerry 151 Rush (band) 90, 105, 120 R ush, Otis 77 S &M 27, 126, 136, 153–4 S allust 112 S an Francisco 77, 80 S anders, A lex 78, 80–81 S atanism 4, 28, 73, 75–84, 128, 133, 135, 148–50, 154–5; see also religion S atriani, Joe 181 S atyricon 8 S axon 19, 22–3, 26–7, 38, 43, 79, 82, 120, 125, 128–30, 164–5, 182 saxophone 61 S chiller, J.C .F. von 59 Schönberg, Arnold 54 science fiction 7, 38, 89–90, 95, 99–100, 103, 105, 152 S eattle 181 S econd World War, see war S epultura 1 T he S ex Pistols 56, 59 sexuality 6–7, 18, 26, 28, 60, 74, 76, 131, 135, 145, 153, 164, 170 Sheffield 121, 143 S helley, Percy Bysshe 126; see also R omanticism S hines, Johnny 76 S illitoe, A lan 119 S immel, Georg 147

Sir Lord Baltimore (band) 21 Sisyphus (legend) 98 S ituationist movement 57; see also D ebord, Guy skater metal 190 skinheads 151; see also fascism ������� Skrewdriver 60 S layer 23 S mith, C harlotte 127 songwriting 36, 41, 43, 45, 100, 115, 132 sound 7, 20, 24, 38, 43–4, 56–8, 63–6, 80, 82, 89–90, 92, 94, 98–100, 102, 114, 121, 125, 127, 129, 149, 152, 170, 186, 189–90 S ounds (magazine) 21–2, 41–2 S outhcott, Joanna 143, 156 speed metal 1, 189–90 S pinal Tap (film) 117, 189–90 S pivey, V ictoria 77 S pringsteen, Bruce 155, 189 Stanway, Mark 38 Star-Club (Hamburg) 80 Status Quo (band) 44, 186 S teer, Bill 59 S tevens, S teve 181 S toa 112, 116 S tonehenge 80, 189–90 T he S treets 111 S tyx 122 subculture 6, 19, 22, 28, 33–5, 39–41, 43–4, 46–7, 83, 136, 146–9, 151, 153, 161–8, 170–77 suicide 74, 97 S un R a 54 surrealism 61, 96 surveillance 91, 100–101, 154–5 S wans 56 T aylor, ‘Jess’ Zoot 81 techno 18, 55 T ennyson, A lfred 187–8 Terminator films 97 T errorizer 59 T en Y ears A fter 80 Testament (band) 47, 73, 82 T hanatos 8, 28 T hatcher, Margaret 7, 21, 27–8, 58, 60, 145, 152

IN DEX T helemic religion 79; see also religion T hinL izzy 76, 112, 185–7, 189 thrash metal 1, 82–3 T hrobbing Gristle 61–4 T ipton, Glenn 130 Tolkien, J.R.R. 8, 79, 111, 113, 115 Top of the Pops 22, 45 T . R ex 186 tritone 82 Troy (film) 111 t-shirts 19, 26, 136, 189–90 T urner, Joe L ynn 41–2 T ygers of Pan T ang 82 U gly Kid Joe 190–91 Union Jack 189 U riah Heep 37–8, 41, 44 utopia/dystopia 7, 89–105, 146, 166 V ai, S teve 73, 81, 181 V an Halen 93 veganism 60 video 26, 92, 94, 96–8, 105, 147, 154–5 V ietnam War, see war Vikings 8, 79, 111, 113, 115, 117, 129, 152; see also mythology violence 5, 63, 91–2, 95, 97, 100–102, 104–5, 118, 126, 128–31, 134, 146–7, 151 virtuosity 6–7, 34, 37, 42, 56–7, 66–7, 73, 76–7, 79, 81–2, 84–5, 93 V enom 23, 25–6, 82–3, 144 Voivod 90

201

Walker, Jeff 57 Walpole, Horace 127 war 98–104, 149–51, 162, 182, 187–91 First World War 118, 189 S econd World War 79, 90, 92, 115, 152, 181–2, 188 V ietnam War 92, 115, 150 Ward, Bill 79 Ward, ‘Zion’ 143–4 W.A .S .P. 26 Waters, Muddy 18 Welfare S tate 60, 145 Wells, H.G. 7 Wheatley, D ennis 80 Wheatstraw, Peetie 75, 78 Wilco 55 The Wild O ne (film) 27 Williamson, S onny Boy 77 Witchfynde 26 women 4, 17–19, 21, 25–6, 28, 127, 129, 145, 151, 174 Woodstock 146 Woolf, V irginia 187 working class, see class the Y ardbirds 77–8 Y es 37–8 the Y ippies 151 yuppies 167, 173 Zappa, Frank 54, 65 Zorn, John 61