“For example, the US band Cannibal Corpse had to produce ‘censored’ versions of their cover art in order for their albums to be stocked in various countries. The Christian right has occasionally and erratically attacked extreme metal. For example, one Christian schoolteacher in Germany made a concerted attempt to ban Cannibal Corpse from playing certain venues during their 1995 tour. In 1996, in a speech that received some media coverage, US presidential candidate Bob Dole attacked Cannibal Corpse as part of a general attack on the media. The attack rebounded when Dole admitted he had never heard the band. In 1999, presidential candidate Gary Bauer attacked a number of ‘anti-Catholic’ artists, including ‘the homosexual music group Rotting Christ’. Rotting Christ is a Greek black metal band with no known connections to homosexuality.” HA-HA-HA!
“The history of extreme metal music represents a radical and systematic process of removing metal from this kind of cultural dialogue. The blues roots of metal are virtually imperceptible in extreme metal. Additionally, the connection with baroque music has been weakened (although not severed) as the importance of guitar solos has declined. While, as we shall see in Chapter 6, extreme metal has increasingly reinstituted a dialogue with a number of other kinds of music, the principal musical trajectory of the scene in its formative period in the 1980s was to close itself off in a self-conscious attempt to explore the radical potential of metal.”
“Modes are eight-note, one-octave scales featuring particular arrangements of tones and semitones. Walser points out that: ‘Most heavy metal is either Aeolian or Dorian, for example, although Speed Metal is usually Phrygian or Locrian; most pop songs are either major (Ionian) or Mixolydian’ (1993: 46).”
“The Locrian is the only mode to contain a flattened fifth – the so-called ‘tritone’. Famously, the use of this interval was discouraged by the medieval Catholic Church and referred to as the diabolus in musica.”
“One common metal guitar technique is downtuning, in which the pitch of the guitar is lowered by one or two steps. Extreme metal bands have taken downtuning to extremes, with the bottom E string often tuned as low as B or A. This level of downtuning requires the use of a heavier string gauge, together with specialist amplification and production techniques. Different extreme metal sounds are put together in different ways. Some may be based on extremely ‘clear’, compressed but still heavily distorted sounds, such as the famous ‘Florida sound’ of death metal, developed in the late 1980s at Morrissound Studios, Tampa, by the producer Scott Burns with bands such as Deicide and Obituary.”
“Black metal guitars are generally not downtuned and are often played at a higher register and produced with considerable treble.”
“Extreme metal voices are also overdriven, but vocalists generally do not use sustain or vibrato, neither is there any ‘brightness’ in their vocals.”
“Generally speaking, death metal bands use growled vocals and black metal bands use screamed vocals. Vocals may also be semi-spoken, chanted or simply shouted.”
“Tempo is one of the most transgressive elements of extreme metal. Songs often range between 150 and 250 beats per minute (BPM). Extreme metal bands also pioneered the ‘blast beat’, drumming at 300–400 BPM and above.”
“Conversely, guitarists may play ‘tremolo’ riffs of 500–600 BPM while the drummer plays at slower tempos. The use of tempos of 200 BPM and above can create an odd effect of stasis in the music. This paradoxical stasis, together with the simultaneous combination of fast and slow tempos on drums and guitar, can make the music seem both fast and slow.”
“For all its exploration of transgressive sounds, the scene constantly emphasizes musical control. Extreme metal bands almost never improvise on stage and strictly control guitar feedback. They also set strict limits on the use of solos, never letting them dominate the songs themselves.”
“This constant flirtation with the formless sonic abject produces dominance of the abject. In doing so, extreme metal is associated with a form of masculinity that is based on a fear of feminine weakness. The ‘musical fundamentalism’ that Deena Weinstein identifies in extreme metal can be seen in its strict discipline, and its obsessiveness. The abject cannot simply be controlled once; dominance has to be proven again and again. This obsessiveness produced extreme metal as its logical conclusion and produces thousands of identical-sounding recordings to this day.”
“Nick Terry (1998) has argued that extreme metal and hardcore in the 1990s are characterized by an obsession with the apocalypse and millenarianism. War, particularly nuclear war, has long been an obsession in all forms of metal.”
“Estrangement from non-metal friends can make it difficult for some members to find sexual partners. Since the scene is male dominated, heterosexual scene members are forced to look outside the scene for a partner, which can be a difficult process”
“While bands do send unsolicited CDs and demos to large metal labels, this is almost never successful.”
“More prevalent, in fact, is a ready display of affection for parents and family, even from those who produce highly transgressive music. Acknowledgements on album sleeves frequently contain expressions of musicians’ gratitude to parents, as in the following example from Cult Of The Initiated by the US satanic death metal band Pessimist (1997):
I endlessly and profusely thank ‘Pessi-Mom’ and the ‘Big Guy’ for putting up with practice three times a week, for sleeping through countless parties and noisy late-night load-ins, for feeding and providing a crash pad for countless bands and other assorted derelicts . . . and for always supporting me 100% in everything I do . . . I love you both”
“Even those parents who disapproved of extreme metal themes offered support in other ways, a testimony to the efforts made by scene members not to antagonize them.” Estranho, pelo menos no Brasil!
“Many scene members are married and have children. The support for the family within the scene is conceivably part of the ambivalence towards sexual excess and women that I discussed in the previous chapter. Certainly, including the family in extreme individualist and satanic discourses creates surprisingly few problems. For example, one Swedish black metal musician explained to me that having a family did not contradict his individualism as he aimed to be like an animal and animals have ‘hoards’ that they protect.”
“A solipsistic outlook or, at the very least, a capacity to be alone, is an important element of a reflexively managed scenic career. Unlike other scenes, the extreme metal scene is not based on collective experiences involving gatherings of large numbers of people. Of course, in many parts of the world, there are frequent gigs and some members do interact within the scene with small groups of friends. But, as we shall see in the next chapter, the scene is so diffuse that its institutions have developed in such a way that isolated members can easily participate.”
“With few exceptions, bands cannot get a recording deal or sell their recordings solely by playing live. Live performance can help a band to develop musically and to solidify a reputation, but it is not the principal route to a scenic career. Similarly, a non-musician within the scene quickly finds that greater involvement within and enjoyment from the scene cannot come without writing letters, contributing to bulletin boards, writing fanzines and hunting them down.”
“This discourse of professionalism is not, perhaps, what we might expect from a scene so devoted to the production of transgression. Other scenes frequently emphasize opposition towards the mundane world of work. For example, a frequently reported element of punk discourse is its concern about ‘selling out’ and negative attitudes to those who make a living from music (Fox 1987). Making a living from the scene is problematized much less in the extreme metal scene than in other scenes.”
“For Tony, the pleasure of contributing to the scene fades as it becomes simply routine. The pleasure that many scene members feel when they start to write letters and receive demos is threatened when letter writing becomes a daily chore. There is a danger that a scenic career may simply become a job like any other. This is particularly the case for those who earn a living from the scene, who may be unable to simply leave:
KKH: What do you listen to at home? Do you listen to death metal?
R: I don’t listen to anything any more because you used to sit here eight hours or ten hours and –
KKH: You got fed up with it?
R: Yeah. You know before I started with this thing, I played in four bands in the same time, one after the other just, well I stopped playing because it was too much, so I miss that part of it. Actually you shouldn’t work with the thing you love . . . But I don’t know what I would do otherwise so. I don’t want to stand in the car factory. (Goran)”
“In music making, very few all-female bands exist. Female musicians tend to be vocalists or, more rarely, keyboard players or bass guitarists and tend to be more numerous in bands playing more melodic forms of extreme metal.”
“While loose groupings of gay heavy metal fans occasionally emerge (such as the satirical glam metal act Pink Stëël), there has been absolutely no overt organization of gay and lesbians within the extreme metal scene.”
“At gigs they see other women with their partners or female friends, often dressed glamorously, but they see few autonomous women who are not defined by their sexuality. Women who enter the scene with partners are often subtly marginalized in scenic interaction.”
“As Walser argues (1993), a key element of metal is the misogynist fantasy of a world without women. Metal masculinity is founded on notions of strength and power, embodied, as Weinstein shows, in the ‘pumped up’ torso that many scene members aspire to.”
Black metal sem black people.
“There was a brief period in the early 1990s when a few bands were signed to ‘major’ labels, such as Morbid Angel who were signed to Giant/Warner in the USA, and the British label Earache even had a short-lived licensing deal with the American giant Columbia. However, there was never any major commercial breakthrough and today only a small number of extreme metal bands such as Slayer are signed to major labels.”
“For example, the Swedish death metal band Entombed issued three demo tapes (two of which appeared under their former name, Nihilist) before the release of their debut album, Left Hand Path (1990). Today, with the erosion of tape trading and with bands selling their recordings from an early stage, scenic activity involves an earlier and greater engagement with capital. Bands and labels have adopted business practices drawn from the wider music industry. Larger labels generally behave like large independent labels in any other scene. Bands sign a contract for one or a number of albums and are either paid an advance, from which recording costs must be met, or have their recording costs paid for them in return for a lower royalty rate.”
“the highly influential US death metal band Morbid Angel were signed in 1989 by the prominent UK label Earache on the basis of the personal recommendations of members of a number of bands already associated with the label.”
“The structure of extreme metal bands varies greatly. Some resemble the traditional stereotype of the rock band: a gang of close male friends playing together for years. More commonly, extreme metal bands are characterized by a great fluidity of personnel, with members continually dropping in and out. In contrast to Bennett’s (1980) argument that the identity of rock musician is only possible inside a rock group, the identity of the extreme metal musician does not necessarily have to involve being in a group.”
“Scandinavian bands, for example, are notorious for their constantly revolving lineups. Scandinavian musicians are often associated with three or four bands simultaneously. For example, the Swedish guitarist Michael Aamodt used to play in the death metal bands Carcass and Carnage. He now plays in the death metal band Arch Enemy and the psychedelic doom metal band Spiritual Beggars. He has also played as a ‘session’ member of a number of other bands. Within the scene there is a strong culture of relocation. Many of the personnel in the bands that developed the influential death metal scene in Florida in the 1980s had moved from other parts of the country. International collaboration is also common (for example, Michael Aamodt’s previous band, Carcass, was based in the UK).”
“Demos are often indistinguishable from ‘proper’ releases in terms of sound quality, and this was frequently true even in the 1980s. Bands generally pay for as much time as possible in the most expensive studio they can afford. Although the scene contains an aesthetic of fast and ‘dirty’ production, particularly within black metal, this aesthetic is fairly marginal. Extreme metal is a difficult music to record and, as a result, certain studios and producers have come to specialize in its production such as Fred Nordstrom’s Studio Fredman in Gothenburg.”
“The number of recordings that bands need to sell to make a living varies. However, most musicians I have spoken to generally agreed that bands needed to sell at the very least 60,000–100,000 CDs to make even a subsistence living and few bands are able to achieve this.”
“Many tours do not visit Scandinavia or the UK, owing to the extra travel expenses involved. In areas marginal to the scene, the scarcity of live performances may ensure relatively large audiences.”
“Big summer outdoor European festivals such as Wacken (Germany), Fury Fest (France) and Graspop (Belgium) bring fans from across Europe in their tens of thousands. Their line-ups also tend to contain heavy metal, nu metal and sometimes punk bands as well, but extreme metal tends to dominate the running order, even if the headliners are from more popular genres.”
“Some prominent fanzines that developed in the 1990s, such as Finland’s Isten and Norway’s Nordic Vision became as likely to criticize bands as they are to encourage them. In this way, fanzines have come to resemble the wider music press (Toynbee 1993).”
“Magazines differ from fanzines in that they use telephone or face-to-face interviews, have paid staff and are available from a wide selection of outlets.”
“For a long time, most extreme metal bands never made videos. This may have been partly an ideological decision (despite their popularity Metallica never made a video until ‘One’ in 1988) but there were few outlets for extreme metal on television until the 1990s. Until its cancellation in 1995, MTV’s ‘Headbanger’s Ball’ did show some extreme metal videos, live shows and interviews (particularly on its ‘Into The Pit’ feature).”
“Even if sales of downloaded music have as yet not replaced sales of CDs and other formats, online file sharing systems such as Soulseek contain a vast array of extreme metal recordings, including notable rarities and demos.” Up to this day!
“Extreme metal tends to be most popular and productive in provincial areas within powerful countries. In the UK, extreme metal has always been much more important in the Midlands and South Yorkshire than in London. Similarly, in the USA, the most important extreme metal scene has been in Tampa, Florida, rather than Los Angeles. Globally, extreme metal is similarly important in countries that are close but not too close to global centres of power; so Norway and Sweden are superpowers in extreme metal terms.”
“Although bands have continued to emerge sporadically from the Bay Area, the scene has lost its productive, genre-defining edge. In truth though, the Bay Area scene was a product of a set of bands and live shows and lacked enduring and globally extensive institutions such as fanzines, distros and record labels.” É engraçado pensar em Metallica e Megadeth como extreme metal.
“An important part of the Tampa scene was the bands’ use of Morrissound Studios and the engineers Tom Morris and Scott Burns. Albums produced at this studio by Morris and (particularly) by Burns had a highly distinctive sound – highly ‘produced’, clean and ‘middle range’ with crisp, drum sounds and an almost inaudible bass. The prestige of the Tampa bands gave impetus to another generation of Tampa and Florida bands, such as Malevolent Creation and Cannibal Corpse, which were quickly signed to record labels. Further, Morrissound Studios attracted bands from across the world and in doing so helped to standardize death metal in the late 1980s and early 1990s.”
“The great attention given to Tampa in the late 1980s and early 1990s resulted in a greater number of bands from the area being signed to labels and although this may have acted as a stimulus to local musical production, it was not necessarily a sign that the Tampa scene was any more popular or more vibrant than anywhere else. Indeed, gigs appear to have been no more frequent in Tampa than anywhere else in the USA. But more importantly, the Tampa scene was not especially institutionally productive. No long-standing or influential fanzines, labels or distros came out of it and even Morrissound was never primarily a metal studio.”
“The history of the Tampa scene illuminates the coexistence of vibrant musical creativity with weak institutional creativity that characterizes most American extreme metal scenes. There has been no shortage of important and popular American extreme metal bands and at times these bands have been concentrated in particular local scenes. But the development of key scenic institutions has been much more erratic. Important American fanzines such as Grimoire of Exalted Deeds and important labels such as Relapse, have largely developed completely unconnected from any kind of local scenic anchor.”
“An exception is the New York scene, which has historically benefited from the city’s strong punk and hardcore scenes to develop a productive and long-lasting extreme metal scene, based largely around death metal. The New York scene is also an exception to the rule that global metropolises are relatively unimportant in extreme metal.”
“America’s weak welfare system and massive divides between the rich and the poor make it more difficult than in some other countries for members to find the time and resources to devote to the scene. The history of persecution of American youth cultures, including metal, and the relative disenfranchisement of American youth (high drinking ages, youth curfews, etc.) only reinforce this difficulty.”
“The American scene remained musically conservative, tied to death metal until the end of the 1990s, only slowly and erratically adopting black metal. Black metal emphasizes austerity, self-control and solipsism whereas American metal culture emphasizes partying and live performance. Black metal emphasizes ethnicity and national identity. American metal culture is so much at the heart of global music culture that it has found it hard to see itself as ‘different’ in any way. Interestingly, two of the American bands that have been most interested in drawing on ideas of ethnicity and difference have drawn on heritages entirely alien to them: Absu, who have drawn on a bizarre mixture of Scottish and Mesopotamian mythology, and Nile, who draw on Egyptian mythology.”
“Since the turn of the century, the American scene has produced a new distinctive subgenre sometimes called the new wave of American heavy metal. Bands such as Killswitch Engage and God Forbid have drawn on metalcore (a cross between metal and hardcore) and Swedish death metal to create a music that is becoming increasingly popular worldwide. Yet it is unlikely to become globally dominant in the way that nu metal or 1980s American metal was. Rather, the new wave of American heavy metal perhaps represents the American scene coming to terms with its position as just another scene and concentrating on producing interesting new takes on extreme metal rather than dominating the global scene.”
“In the early 1990s a number of bands in Gothenburg emerged playing a highly distinctive form of death metal featuring noticeably melodic rhythm guitar patterns. From the mid 1990s a number of these bands, particularly In Flames, Dark Tranquillity and At The Gates, rose to global prominence.”
“Musicians will often play in several bands at once, playing different forms of music in each. One example of this is Peter Tägtgren who plays in the death metal band Hypocrisy and the industrial metal band Pain.”
“As Robert Burnett argues, Sweden’s music industry is a ‘substantial earner of foreign exchange for the Swedish economy’ (2001: 16) and ‘this makes Sweden one of the largest net exporters of popular music, after the US and the UK’ (2001: 18). Part of the reason for the strength of the Swedish music industry is the country’s high level of support for musicians. Music education, both in schools and municipal music schools is strongly supported financially by the state. Estimates from the 1980s suggested that 200,000 young were studying music in schools at any one time,1 and Burnett states that 400,000 people sing in choirs.”
“Unlike in the UK, for example, metal bands are often found on national television and bands with extreme metal roots such as In Flames have been nominated for Swedish Grammie awards. Indeed, metal can come close to being part of the Swedish establishment – in 2006 the popular power metal band Hammerfall recorded a video with the Swedish women’s Olympic curling team! While the more difficult forms of extreme metal are much less visible, there are many exceptions to this. For example, in 1998 the black metal band Dark Funeral played the large annual Hultsfred music festival.”
“Some ‘serious’ UK bands such as Carcass and Gorerotted have had a markedly tongue-in-cheek attitude to some of the more outrageous aspects of extreme metal.”
“Black metal’s ‘no fun’ slogan was always out of step with UK metal culture and UK black metal bands such as Cradle of Filth have emphasized irony and an earthy normality in interviews.”
“The Jerusalem scene in particular has thrived off the seeming contradiction of its location within a ‘holy’ city, producing amongst other things, the black metal band Arallu’s iconoclastic Satanic War in Jerusalem (2002). In contrast, the Tel Aviv scene benefits from its location in the heart of secular Israel in a city with a vibrant alternative music culture.”
“Metal is very popular in a number of South-East Asian countries, particularly Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, with active scenes producing the full range of musics and institutions. (…) Few bands from this region have ever made more than a minimal impression on the global scene (Singapore’s Impiety and Indonesia’s Kekal being rare exceptions).”
“Japan has long provided a lucrative market for some bands and has also produced a number of influential bands such as S.O.B., Sigh and Loudness.”
Deranged
“Some extreme metal bands have also refined their sound in less esoteric ways, coming close to producing a new form of ‘alternative rock’. For example, the UK’s Anathema were originally a doom metal band, but went on to develop a form of music with strong similarities to Pink Floyd and Radiohead. The Gathering from the Netherlands, also previously a doom/death metal band, now play a form of psychedelic/gothic rock.”
“Other bands such as Sunn0))) or Blut Aus Nord play music at the fringes of the avant-garde. The music of such bands still circulates almost exclusively within the extreme metal scene.”
“Nu metal has become an ‘other’ against which subcultural capital can be claimed”
“One reason for nu metal’s pariah status is its perceived ‘trendiness’, particularly regarding its emphasis on visual image.”
“Within the scene sexuality is something to be ignored, or conquered with an excessive masculinity. The fact that nu metal bands often conceal a rampant misogyny and fear of femininity behind their anxiety does not matter – the presence of femininity in any shape or form cannot be tolerated within the extreme metal scene.”
“Partly in response to the rise of nu metal, the extreme metal scene has, since the mid 1990s, begun to (re-)incorporate elements of traditional heavy metal.” “This nostalgic tendency was consolidated by subsequent revivals of thrash and power metal. By the late 1990s, power and heavy metal bands such as Iced Earth, Nevermore and Hammerfall had achieved great popularity within the scene and some 1980s bands that had lost popularity in the 1990s, such as Manowar, became popular again.”
“In my research into the extreme metal scene I have encountered many apparently baffling instances of unreflexivity in which the practice of reflexivity seemed to be absent or limited. For example, I met an ex-punk scene member who claims to be committed to anti-fascism who also told me that ‘Enoch Powell was right’. There is the strange case of the prominent Norwegian black metal musician who has made many racist comments, but is, in fact, of Moroccan descent.”
“Susan Sontag defined camp as the ‘love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration’ (1982: 105), as ‘art that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is <too much>’ (1982: 112).”
“I always had a tongue in cheek attitude towards it [black metal]. When it first started out I just couldn’t believe these things that these people were saying and that other people actually thought that they really seriously meant what they were saying half the time, like Euronymous saying I wouldn’t care if all my friends died and they just didn’t, they just made me laugh, these sort of things. I didn’t take them seriously. (Tony)”
“Metal parody bands such as Insidiöus Törment, Pink Stëël and Nanowar, generally parody the conventions of mainstream heavy metal (such as the ‘heavy metal Umlaut’ in the case of the first two bands – see the Wikipedia entry of the same name).”
“Another black metal parody, Impaled Northern Moon Forest, a side project of the grindcore band Anal Cunt, play songs with titles such as ‘Gazing At The Blasphemous Moon While Perched Atop A Very Very Very Very Very Very Very Forsaken Crest Of The Northern Mountain’.”
“So highly developed is the practice of reading elements of extreme metal as comic that some scene members initially had difficulty in reading Norwegian black metal as serious. For example, Digby Pearson, manager of the British label Earache, initially could not believe on meeting him that Varg Vikernes was a Nazi as he claimed to be, only realizing that he was sincere when his activities in Norway were later revealed (Mudrian 2004).”
“Yet why attempt to avoid controversy at all? Why not embrace fascism and racism? If Darkthrone had gone down this route, the band would have become enmeshed in public controversy within and outside the extreme metal scene. Moreover, their ‘attitudes’ would have been foregrounded at the expense of their music and this is anathema to most extreme metal musicians.”
“Transgression of anti-sexist and anti-racist discourses would perhaps not be so problematic if it were to take place within a project of ‘total’ transgression (perhaps similar to the ‘aesthetic terrorism’ advocated by Parfrey 1990). Such a project would undoubtedly be nihilistic, in that it would render every discourse worthless and all politics impossible. However, nihilism does at least provide a continuous revelation of the fragile discursive underpinnings of the world. This is a similar project to poststructuralism, which has been accused of being nihilistic but, nonetheless, provides one of the most searching critiques of existence ever produced, providing a powerful antidote to intellectual arrogance and essentialism. Moreover, the work of post-structuralist feminists has shown that reclaiming an anti-essentialist politics is still possible (e.g. Butler & Scott 1992).”
Einstürzende Neubauten
“The suspicion that scene members have of the political is widely shared throughout popular music culture. For example, No Direction Home (2005), the acclaimed documentary on Bob Dylan, shows the singer repeatedly denying that there was any political relevance to his work, despite the evident impact that his music had on the politics of the 1960s. It may be that the de-politicization of the extreme metal scene is simply part of a wider problem with music itself.”
“Extreme metal has always walked a knife-edge – between destruction and continuity, between obscurity and popularity, between unity and fragmentation, between radicalism and conservatism.”
Seclusão Anagógica 