Event Title
Session 5B: Metal and Culture
Location
Kennedy Union, Room 331
Start Date
7-11-2014 9:30 AM
End Date
7-11-2014 10:45 AM
Description
Brad Klypchak: "Authenticities, Anomalies, and Animetal USA"
Considerable scholarship examining hard rock and heavy metal as global phenomena has emerged over the last decade. Much of this academic attention focuses upon how metal scenes have emerged in locations wherein the music comes to reflect not only larger metal subcultural practices, but also how adaptations and innovations tap into local culture as well. Japan has a well documented history of having a vibrant metal fanbase and is home to a number of bands which have achieved subcultural recognition internationally. One such band is Animetal, a group comprised of prominent Japanese performers united through their collection love of anime. From 1996 through the band’s dissolution in 2006, Animetal released ten full length records all consisting of metal adaptations of theme songs to anime shows.
From 2011, a “supergroup” of Western performers formed Animetal USA, a tribute act to Animetal, albeit with lyrics translated to English. With a primary emphasis on representing anime culture, the band has adopted stage outfits and stage names inspired by anime stylings.
In summer 2012, in conjunction with the US release of the Animetal USA Special Edition compilation record, the group, previously focused solely on Japanese markets, began actively marketing itself to North American audiences with intentions of creating a Stateside following for their “foreign” novelty. The result is a curious blend of innovation and global cultural poaching, one in which traditional authenticity standards within the metal subculture become challenged. The resulting rhetoric of fans and journalists alike offers a unique opportunity to examine the hybridization of Western artists embracing foreign culture in such a manner which arguably transgresses traditional rock hegemonies.
Kyle Koeppe: "Blossoms Will Sprout from the Carcass: American Culture in American Black Metal"
As heavy metal grows and spreads at a global level, the established genres maintain a consistency in sounds as local variations on a theme alter the styles as they were initially conceived. In metal’s proliferation, the ever-increasing abundance of metal to listen to, many bands simply echo what has come before them, as can be seen in the advent of ‘retro’ bands and genres, and even when not a trend, for a number of genres mimicry is the normal state of things. However, some bands in the American black metal scene seek to innovate the genre as a whole by creating a distinctly American sound influenced by its roots in this different context.
US black metal, in defining itself as something distinct from other scenes, distinguishes itself from its European progenitor by incorporating ideas specific to the regional and cultural contexts that it emerges from, whilst maintaining the original black metal sound. The burgeoning American black metal scene has become discussed and defined, both within the scene and by the media, more by its supposed inversion of black metal politics from right to left and less for its musical qualities. Even when bands disavow any connection in their music to socialist or anarchist politics, these bands champion themes of rebirth and renewal as opposed to the apathy and nihilism of the Scandinavia acts, even if the trait of misanthropy is shared by both.
Albeit diverging from the ideological roots of black metal, this strand of US black metal maintains the spirit of the original Scandinavian subculture through the way that the music confronts the audience with the particular, contextualized truth of ecological ruin, troubling listeners and maintaining the genre’s distance from the mainstream. In this paper, I argue that when American black metal taps into very localized sounds, from the fiddle to the banjo, and social concerns, from coal mining to deforestation, it demonstrates the ability of the music to reflect specific lived experiences in a localized culture, providing not only artistic expression for the musician but a form of meaning making for the audience. This inquiry seeks to delve into the conditions of production and answer what is at the source of black metal’s form and content, the sound and the issues they address in the world.
Jamie Patterson: "Suit up!': Soldier as Metaphor in Everyday Discourse"
Metal has often been described as a “warrior” culture, representing a group (or class) of individuals who celebrate strength, courage to face challenges, vigor, and a sense of freedom. Whereas the term warrior recalls romanticized images of the past (Native American warriors on horseback, Japanese samurais, Vikings), the modern image is more that of a soldier. The soldier figure in contrast is weathered, grittier, part of a larger force, someone who deals with everyday, potentially hostile conditions on the ground.
This paper examines soldier metaphors that emerged through ethnographic research with extreme metal fans (all women) in Raleigh, North Carolina. While none of the women interviewed had enlisted in combat forces, many used terminology that simulated bodies in states of war, and alluded to themselves as soldiers at arms. Informants described situations in which they used clothing as protection when entering threatening environments, an idea I call “clothing as armor.” They commonly used language such as “soldier up” and scorned everyday worries in lieu of discussions they considered to be more meaningful, those involving injustice and issues of life/death. For example, when defining “strength” and camaraderie, they relayed stories of friends who were dealing with the death of family members or referenced death row inmates who often wrote to metal shows on the local college radio station. Some informants, with traumatic backgrounds, had described themselves being attracted to extreme metal partly because they heard in it sounds of torture, violence, and war.
Drawing on musicologist Jonathan Pieslak’s research with soldiers in the US military and Harry Berger’s work on perception and oppositional identities among fans of death metal, I ask what the soldier means in the context of these individuals’ lives, its relation to metal and American culture.
Session 5B: Metal and Culture
Kennedy Union, Room 331
Brad Klypchak: "Authenticities, Anomalies, and Animetal USA"
Considerable scholarship examining hard rock and heavy metal as global phenomena has emerged over the last decade. Much of this academic attention focuses upon how metal scenes have emerged in locations wherein the music comes to reflect not only larger metal subcultural practices, but also how adaptations and innovations tap into local culture as well. Japan has a well documented history of having a vibrant metal fanbase and is home to a number of bands which have achieved subcultural recognition internationally. One such band is Animetal, a group comprised of prominent Japanese performers united through their collection love of anime. From 1996 through the band’s dissolution in 2006, Animetal released ten full length records all consisting of metal adaptations of theme songs to anime shows.
From 2011, a “supergroup” of Western performers formed Animetal USA, a tribute act to Animetal, albeit with lyrics translated to English. With a primary emphasis on representing anime culture, the band has adopted stage outfits and stage names inspired by anime stylings.
In summer 2012, in conjunction with the US release of the Animetal USA Special Edition compilation record, the group, previously focused solely on Japanese markets, began actively marketing itself to North American audiences with intentions of creating a Stateside following for their “foreign” novelty. The result is a curious blend of innovation and global cultural poaching, one in which traditional authenticity standards within the metal subculture become challenged. The resulting rhetoric of fans and journalists alike offers a unique opportunity to examine the hybridization of Western artists embracing foreign culture in such a manner which arguably transgresses traditional rock hegemonies.
Kyle Koeppe: "Blossoms Will Sprout from the Carcass: American Culture in American Black Metal"
As heavy metal grows and spreads at a global level, the established genres maintain a consistency in sounds as local variations on a theme alter the styles as they were initially conceived. In metal’s proliferation, the ever-increasing abundance of metal to listen to, many bands simply echo what has come before them, as can be seen in the advent of ‘retro’ bands and genres, and even when not a trend, for a number of genres mimicry is the normal state of things. However, some bands in the American black metal scene seek to innovate the genre as a whole by creating a distinctly American sound influenced by its roots in this different context.
US black metal, in defining itself as something distinct from other scenes, distinguishes itself from its European progenitor by incorporating ideas specific to the regional and cultural contexts that it emerges from, whilst maintaining the original black metal sound. The burgeoning American black metal scene has become discussed and defined, both within the scene and by the media, more by its supposed inversion of black metal politics from right to left and less for its musical qualities. Even when bands disavow any connection in their music to socialist or anarchist politics, these bands champion themes of rebirth and renewal as opposed to the apathy and nihilism of the Scandinavia acts, even if the trait of misanthropy is shared by both.
Albeit diverging from the ideological roots of black metal, this strand of US black metal maintains the spirit of the original Scandinavian subculture through the way that the music confronts the audience with the particular, contextualized truth of ecological ruin, troubling listeners and maintaining the genre’s distance from the mainstream. In this paper, I argue that when American black metal taps into very localized sounds, from the fiddle to the banjo, and social concerns, from coal mining to deforestation, it demonstrates the ability of the music to reflect specific lived experiences in a localized culture, providing not only artistic expression for the musician but a form of meaning making for the audience. This inquiry seeks to delve into the conditions of production and answer what is at the source of black metal’s form and content, the sound and the issues they address in the world.
Jamie Patterson: "Suit up!': Soldier as Metaphor in Everyday Discourse"
Metal has often been described as a “warrior” culture, representing a group (or class) of individuals who celebrate strength, courage to face challenges, vigor, and a sense of freedom. Whereas the term warrior recalls romanticized images of the past (Native American warriors on horseback, Japanese samurais, Vikings), the modern image is more that of a soldier. The soldier figure in contrast is weathered, grittier, part of a larger force, someone who deals with everyday, potentially hostile conditions on the ground.
This paper examines soldier metaphors that emerged through ethnographic research with extreme metal fans (all women) in Raleigh, North Carolina. While none of the women interviewed had enlisted in combat forces, many used terminology that simulated bodies in states of war, and alluded to themselves as soldiers at arms. Informants described situations in which they used clothing as protection when entering threatening environments, an idea I call “clothing as armor.” They commonly used language such as “soldier up” and scorned everyday worries in lieu of discussions they considered to be more meaningful, those involving injustice and issues of life/death. For example, when defining “strength” and camaraderie, they relayed stories of friends who were dealing with the death of family members or referenced death row inmates who often wrote to metal shows on the local college radio station. Some informants, with traumatic backgrounds, had described themselves being attracted to extreme metal partly because they heard in it sounds of torture, violence, and war.
Drawing on musicologist Jonathan Pieslak’s research with soldiers in the US military and Harry Berger’s work on perception and oppositional identities among fans of death metal, I ask what the soldier means in the context of these individuals’ lives, its relation to metal and American culture.