Metal Music Studies - Volume 3, Issue 3, 2017

Recent research on recording artist entrepreneurism suggests that ‘emerging music professionals need an entrepreneurial spirit’ and that ‘they need to think like an entrepreneur (even if some don’t like the term) to sustain a career in the diverse fields of the music industries’. If recording artists are now facing pressure to be both creative and entrepreneurial subjects, how does this duality then impact many of the traditional expectations and practices of recording artistry and the institutions that surround them? As a case intended to explore this question, this article will examine recording artist entrepreneurism through the economic and scenic practices occurring in extreme metal music proto-markets. Specifically, analysis will focus on the case of the Australian band Ne Obliviscaris, who were the first extreme metal act to successfully use the online patronage platform Patreon. Ne Obliviscaris’ turn to Patreon is representative of a broader transition towards recording artist entrepreneurism, where new funding and revenue options are impacting the traditional relations between the artist, the record label and the audience. Entrepreneurism is therefore interpreted as an emerging institutional norm of recording artistry, with implications for recording artists’ subjectivity, expectations and social positions.

Rock ‘n’ roll, metal music included, is often portrayed as revolutionary music. There is indeed some evidence that loud popular music (LPM) has preceded, or at least been associated with radical political changes in authoritarian regimes, the dissolution of the Soviet Union being the most illustrious example. But very little is known about the causal and social mechanisms that could account for these effects. This is the lacuna that this article seeks to fill by addressing the following two questions: What is the causal link between LPM and authoritarian unravelling? What are the physiological, psychological and social processes at play? The article will pay special attention to the level of individuals, seeking to develop a set of conceptual mechanisms that account for the effects of LPM on individuals that help make them proto-revolutionaries ‘ripe for revolution’. The article will also include empirical examples, using the historical case of the Singing Revolution in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic at the turn of the 1990s and describing how these mechanisms have operated in practice. Similarly, the article will contain a concluding section that ponders the relevance of these mechanisms in the present situation of the changing metal business and markets and that addresses the question of whether LPM will continue to have revolutionary effects in the future.

In the years following the end of the Second World War, the British Empire declined as a global, hegemonic power. In the years of this decline, British children were still taught stirring tales and myths of British military might and British fair-play. In this article, I argue that this mythic milieu served as source of inspiration for Iron Maiden’s songs from Iron Maiden (1980) to Somewhere in Time (1986). I show that themes on these albums deliberately reflect and construct this mythic version of Imperial British masculinity. I then explore how the band has continued to play with Britishness globally. I argue that Iron Maiden’s members and creators have constructed their creative art around imagined white, British imperial identities. They have been raised in the ways of the mythic milieu, and serve its hegemonic interest, whether they are conscious of that fact or not.

Due to glam metal’s ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ attitude, the music was labeled by political groups such as the Parents’ Music Resource Center (PMRC) as being countercultural and therefore dangerous for youth to listen to during its peak in the 1980s. Since then, glam metal has been renewed amid a nostalgic performance circuit, but also in television as softer and more familiar in some respects. Through a critical discourse and semiotic analysis of glam metal in reality television and television advertising, this article considers which attributes of contemporary culture might complement provisional identification with an extinguished subcultural style. Considering the notions of recontextualization and the aesthetic of the apparently real alongside postmodern discussions of identity and authenticity, this article’s findings suggest a move towards commonly held values of mature neoliberalism in the return of the glam metal genre in today’s metal music markets.

This article will consider the significance and meaning of battle jackets within the context of metal subcultures. Beginning with a summary of the history of the practice of customizing jackets by metal fans, ideas of personal subcultural identity and authenticity will then be used to more fully understand the importance of the jackets to those who make and wear them. Consideration of the importance of identity in jacket making will be given in terms of David Muggleton’s concept of ‘distinctive individuality’, whilst Sarah Thornton’s ‘subcultural capital’ and ideas of ‘insider’ hierarchies will be referred to in the discussion of authenticity. The final section will survey some of the practices of customization used by fans in constructing jackets to consider their visual and material aspects using Richard Sennett’s ‘material consciousness’. Following this, the term ‘material individuality’ is proposed to describe jacket practices through bridging the various theories discussed. Observations are drawn from interviews with jacket wearers conducted between July 2014 and June 2015 at ‘Sonisphere’ and ‘Bloodstock’ music festivals, United Kingdom, and at the ‘Modern Heavy Metal Conference 2015’, Helsinki, Finland, as well as from my own experiences within metal subculture.

ISMMS 2017 Boundaries and Ties: The place of metal music in communities, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 9–11 June 2017

Heavy Metal Music and the Communal Experience, Nelson Varas-Díaz and Niall Scott (eds) (2016)

Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 216 pp.,

ISBN: 9781498506380, h/bk, $85.00

Connecting Metal to Culture: Unity in disparity, Mika Elovaara and Bryan Bardine (eds) (2017)

Bristol: Intellect Books, 252 pp.,

ISBN: 978-1-783320-700-8, h/bk, £40, ISBN: 978-1-783320-701-5, e-PDF, ISBN: 978-1-783320-702-2, e-PUB

Queerness in Heavy Metal Music: Metal Bent, Amber R. Clifford-Napoleone (2015)

London: Routledge, 166 pp.,

ISBN: 9780415728317, h/bk, £95

Who Invented Heavy Metal?, Martin Popoff (2015)

Toronto, ON: Power Chord Press, 256 pp.,

ISBN: 9780991896356, p/bk, $36.00 (CAN), $34.00 (US), $43.00 (INT)