Metal Music Studies - Volume 7, Issue 2, 2021

Metal music has an exceptional position in Finnish society where the genre is not marginal and the proportion of female fans is considerable. However, studies on female metal fandom emphasize that female fans are in the minority among the male-dominant metal fan community. This has led to conclusions that female fans are acting in a ‘masculine’ manner to avoid sexual harassment, and to get approval and respect for their fandom from male fans. Our aim was to study very feminine metal fans, trying to find out how they perceived their position among metal fans and how they demonstrated their femininity, especially in metal festivals. Based on the results, considering metal a masculine musical genre is not justifiable if the context is female metal fans, not female metal musicians. Very feminine female fans consumed a lot of live music and described metal as beautiful, emotional and empowering. They were quite independent and became more confident in their femininity as they grew older. Part of them demonstrated their self-confidence by dressing up in a very feminine – even hyperfeminine – way, and part of them dressed more modestly, seeing their femininity internally, not externally.

At the 2016 Dimebash event, Phil Anselmo made a Nazi salute and shouted ‘White power!’ at the end of his performance of the Pantera song ‘Walk’ onstage. The attendant YouTuber Chris R shared a video of the incident and thus provoked a discussion about racism in metal that also included widely discussed statements of Robb Flynn and Scott Ian, who both labelled Anselmo’s actions as racist. This is one of many examples that demonstrate changing information flows and increasingly fast-paced communication processes on social media platforms, including metal communities. Online platforms such as YouTube or Facebook not only enable musicians and bands to share videos, songs, tour dates or band gossip, but also to directly engage in discussions with their fans, which may also involve social and political issues. To provide an illustration of metal bands’ possibilities for online interaction, I have created a digital metal landscape that includes a set of digital tools, platforms and applications for different music- and non-music-related activities. Against this background, I discuss here contemporary metal musicians’ political and social engagement on social media and the reach of their comments within metal communities. Based on an analysis of Robb Flynn’s online presence in his The General Journals: Diary of a Frontman and Varg Vikernes’ Thulean Perspective, I will show that in the digital age, it is possible for metal musicians to become important influencers not only regarding music but also regarding social and political issues.

Drawing on a comprehensive sample, composed of album reviews, lead or feature articles and interviews, drawn from the RS archive, my research, in Part Two of this article, shows how heavy metal in the period 1986–91 acquires a notable level of critical or aesthetic legitimation, which it was largely denied in the preceding period, 1980–85. However, this aesthetic as opposed to economic accreditation is conferred on particular bands and album releases rather than the genre as a whole, particularly those emerging from the thrash underground, such as Metallica and Megadeth, with the former receiving their first lead feature in Rolling Stone in January 1989, entitled ‘Heavy metal justice’. It is therefore somewhat ironic that this aesthetic approbation reaches a symbolic plateau with Robert Palmer’s **** review of Metallica’s ‘black album’, an album that in retrospect can be seen to announce a ‘crossover’ strategy that allowed the band to find a wider audience beyond the thrash underground.

Mirror Reaper, by the funeral doom metal band Bell Witch, is an immense 83-minute composition in which tonal organization plays an essential role in enhancing and creating meaning. Little analytical attention has been paid to doom metal; armed with a flexible conception of theories of tonal harmony and my full transcription of the album, I show that slow, repetitive music and rich engagement with musical details are not mutually exclusive. I present an analysis in which the tonal drama centres around slowly shifting bass support for a persistent melody F natural. At first, this F appears as a dissonant ninth over an E♭, then as a hollow fifth above a B♭ and finally as a consonant major third above D♭. I understand this progression as a sonic analogue for the grieving process that, according to interviews with the band, is the album’s main focus.

During the course of the First World War, the generation of British authors known collectively as the War Poets revolutionized the popular culture of their time. Due to their changing attitudes towards armed conflict, their portrayal of war chaos included realist descriptions of life in the trenches, unusual choices of subject matter and an eventual challenge to the political and religious establishment of their time. Metal music, a genre with an inherent lyrical and musical concern about chaos and control, has crafted several songs inspired on the First World War poetry. This specific relationship has not been studied before. Based on Weinstein’s and Walser’s insights on chaos and control in metal music, the aim of this article is to evaluate the ability of metal music to either transmit or refute the War Poets’ discourse on chaos, and to study the textual and musical resources metal bands use to relay and control said discourse. For this purpose, I perform a comparative analysis of nine metal music adaptations and appropriations of six different First World War poems they are based on. A chronological path of the evolution of the First World War poetry is followed. The study concludes that, besides effectively transmitting or contesting the War Poets’ discourse on chaos, metal music exerts chaos control through its use of musical resources, especially in the case of extreme metal subgenres.

The Kalevala (1849), the Finnish folk epic, has inspired all types of artists throughout the years. It could be argued that it was only a matter of time before Finnish metal musicians started adapting material from the epic in their music and lyrics. This article presents two case studies of two lyrics. The first is ‘Lemminkäisen laulu’ (‘Lemminkäinen’s Song’) by Kotiteollisuus. This song is about one of the epic’s main heroes, Lemminkäinen, and his unfortunate marriage to Kyllikki. It draws on poems 11–13 from the Kalevala and on the book Seitsemän veljestä (‘The Seven Brothers’) (1870) by novelist Aleksis Kivi. The second song discussed is ‘Rautaa rinnoista’ (‘Iron from the Breasts’) by Mokoma. The lyrics for this song are inspired by the painting Raudan synty (‘The Origins of Iron’) (1917) by Joseph Alanen. This painting is based on the birth of iron poem from the Kalevala. The interpretation of the lyrics of both songs will show that artists in the same genre have a larger general awareness of other cultural products, including those inspired by the Kalevala and that they use the epic for different purposes. The two case studies will show that adaptation of Finnish folk poetry can be used for various reasons, such as to parodize contemporary society or to voice personal ideas and world-views. Furthermore, the analysis of these lyrics will show that the songs are connected to a sense of Finnishness and the topics and themes of metal music internationally.