Description: The aim of this anthology is to analyse the relationship between heavy metal and society within a global context. It provides a thorough investigation of how and why metal becomes controversial, how metal 'scenes' are formed and examines the relationship between metal and society, including how fans, musicians and the media create th
Brief description: Titus Hjelm is Lecturer in Finnish Society and Culture at University College London. His main areas of expertise are cultural sociology, sociology of religion, social problems, media and popular culture. He is currently working on a book on social constructionism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and editing a volume titled Religion and Social Problems (Routledge, 2010). He is also a member of the internationally acclaimed metal band Thunderstone. Keith Kahn-Harris is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College. He is the author of Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge (Berg, 2006) and writes the blog Metal Jew (www.metaljew.org). Mark LeVine is Professor of modern Middle Eastern history, culture and Islamic studies at University of California Irvine and author and editor of several books, including Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam (Random House/Three Rivers Press, 2008 and Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books, 2009).
Review Quotes:
Offers rigorous explorations of heavy metal subcultures from leading scholars in the field. This insightful book is a superior source of in-depth research on black metal, in particular, and mainstream media and community responses to it. Also strongly represented are cross-cultural approaches to heavy metal culture, which broach difficult and relevant issues such as religious intolerance and racism in metal. Recommended.
Choice
A powerful addition to the metal studies literature, this book is overflowing with insights into the cultural politics of heavy metal music. With lively writing, interdisciplinary approaches, and a global perspective, these chapters offer ideas that have broad implications for the study of popular music scenes and their dynamics, media scandals, the relationship between music and affect, and the role of culture in social life.
Professor Harris M. Berger, Texas A & M University
From Christian metal to African American metal artists to the pleasures of feeling 'brutal, ' Heavy Metal: Controversies and Countercultures explores a wide array of topics too often neglected in the critical study of the genre. The book is global in both the range of contributors and of its subject matter, and so joins the recent Metal Rules the Globe as proof that the field of global metal studies is in full bloom.
Steve Waksman, author of This Ain't the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk
For long-time (or fresh-faced) metal fans, there's a lot of insightful analysis to enjoy here.
Pop Matters.com
The essays...are surprisingly sophisticated conceptually and theoretically, and they demonstrate what can be accomplished by turning high-culture terms and methods on a supposedly low-culture form like heavy metal. Anthropologists have profitably studied other popular culture/music practices, like the 'rave' phenomenon or psytrance events (see for example Graham St. John's Global Tribe: Technology, Spirituality, and Psytrance, reviewed elsewhere in ARD), and I look forward to reading ethnographic studies of heavy metal concerts, performers, and scenes.
Anthropology Review Database