A Growing ‘Fear of the Dark’

“In 1986 something strange happened, heavy metal became the most popular music in the world and everywhere you looked kids were growing their hair long, flashing the ‘devil horn’ sign and playing air guitar”

- Sam Dunn (2005) -

This introduction to Sam Dunn’s adventurous documentary Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, is a direct insight into one of the worlds most controversial and equally interesting musical movements in history.

Heavy metal is a sub genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. With its roots in blues-rock and classical music, the genre’s pioneers developed a thick and heavy sound characterised by highly amplified distortion, fast guitars and a variety of vocal styles. During the 1980s it became evident that heavy metal was slowly growing to become one of the most popular and controversial styles of music, and its ascendancy began to be associated with artists such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple.

However, according to writer Malcolm Dome (2005), as heavy metal grew in popularity it quickly became subject to an array of criticisms similar to criticisms of 1950s blues rock. Just as blues became recognised as an ‘oppressed movement’, heavy metal was seen as a “celebration of unsophisticated music for unsophisticated people” and was “dismissed by many conservative groups as music riddled with over-the-top adolescent theatrics and evil lyrical content” (Dome 2005 cited in Dunn 2005). However, despite these difficulties, heavy metal continues to be one of the most consistently popular forms of rock music ever created, and is able to adapt to the times while, at the same time, keeping its core appeal intact. As a long-misunderstood art form, this post will attempt to highlight the way this alternative style has grown to become both one of the largest music cultures in the world and one of the most highly censored and equally suppressed art forms in music history.

“Metal confronts what we’d rather ignore, it celebrates what we often deny, it indulges in what we fear most and that’s why metal will always be a culture of outsiders.”

- Sam Dunn (2005) -

The first thing to recognise when studying heavy metal culture is that it is, in fact, a subculture. The term ‘subculture’ is used to refer to “any aspect of social life in which young people, style and music intersect” and is regularly used to describe “visual and behavioural sensibilities of youths belonging to a particular group” (Bennet et al, 2004: 2-3). They represent accumulated meanings and means of expression that negotiate or oppose the dominant meaning system and, as a result, have provoked both positive and negative media attention worldwide. As with many subcultures, the popular music press usually provides minimal press coverage for anything related to the heavy metal despite famous groups such as Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple considered to be at the forefront of the genre’s conception. It is this that has had various commentators recognising the gap that exists between pop and alternative music press coverage – particularly because heavy metal deals with (and, according to some commentators, celebrates) notorious and often controversial themes and music styles.

According to Dunn (2005) “because mainstream support has come and gone over the years, metal is kept alive by a dedicated core of fans. They are the ones who publish magazines, program college radio shows, run independent record labels and host new sites and chat-rooms on the internet”. It is the strong emotive power of heavy metal music, with its ability to evoke and intensify a range of feelings in its admirers that has ignited fan determination to keep the genre alive. Through a variety of techniques, fans work hard to defend accusations by mainstream media press of heavy metal being a “scandalous category of bad taste” for they tend to see ‘quality and innovation’ where others see only formula and convention (Jenkins 1992 cited in Bennett et al. 2004: 151). While any conversation regarding music involved the contestation of taste, heavy metal is constantly subject to stereotypes and generalisations that have led to it being isolated from mainstream press coverage and appreciation.

In my next post I will discuss how the introduction of ‘extreme metal’ subgenres in the 1980s and 90s ignited a ‘moral panic’ across the world leading to various censorship laws and even instances of government intervention.

Lilen Pautasso

Words: 720

References:

Bennett, A. & Kahn-Harris, K. (2004) ‘Introduction’ in Bennett, A & Kahn-Harris, K (eds.) After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Coelho, J. (1998 ) ‘On the Border: Some Notes on Football and National Identity in Portugal’ in Brown, A. (ed.) Fanatics! Power, Identity and Fandom in Football. London: Routledge, pp. 158-173.

Dunn, S. & McFayden, S. (2005) “Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey” (DVD)

Fiske, J. (1992) “The Cultural Economy of Fandom.” in Lewis, L. (ed.) The Adoring Audience. New York: Routledge, pp. 30-49.

“Metal History”: ‘Global Metal’ and ‘Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey’ [online websites]. Available from: http://www.metalhistory.com/ [Accessed 21 May, 2008].