The extreme metal ‘connoisseur’
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v6i1.164Keywords:
connoisseurship, counterculture, extreme metal, heavy metal, low cultureAbstract
This article draws on the author's research with extreme metal fans to consider the construction of extreme metal community in the UK, in the light of controversies and set against a wider culture that is increasingly celebrating the extreme. It considers a discursive strategy by fans to define extreme metal against a mainstream and legitimate their taste by adopting a system of values and distinctions that position themselves as ‘connoisseurs’. The author demonstrates that her respondents’ consumption of extremity contrasts with their presentation of selves as connoisseurs of ‘high’ art who value knowledge, virtuosity, distance and expert judgement. Such an emphasis upon connoisseur values and ‘high culture’ characteristics place extreme metal music as art, removing allegations of profanity and distancing extreme metal music and community from the ‘low’ culture of the popular mainstream.
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Berger, Harris M. 2004. ‘Horizons of Melody and the Problem of Self’. In Identity in Everyday Life: Essays in the Study of Folklore, Music and Popular Culture, ed. Harris M. Berger and Giovanna P. DelNegro, 43–87. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Boothroyd, Dave. 2006. ‘Cultural Studies and the Extreme’. In New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory, ed. Gary Hall and Clare Birchall, 274–92. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. ‘Sport and Social Class’. In Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies, ed. Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson, 357–73. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Epstein, Debbie, and Deborah Lynn Steinberg. 2003. ‘Life in the Bleep Cycle: Inventing Id-TV on the Jerry Springer Show’. Discourse 25(3): 90–114. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/dis. 2005.0002
—2007. ‘The Face of Ruin: Evidentiary Spectacle and the Trial of Michael Jackson’. Social Semiotics 17(4): 441–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10350330701637049
Fiske, John. 1992. ‘The Cultural Economy of Fandom’. In The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, ed. Lisa A. Lewis, 30–49. London: Routledge.
Frank, Thomas, and Matt Weiland. 1997. Commodify Your Dissent: The Business of Culture in the New Guilded Age. New York: W. W. Norton.
Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. 2003. Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity. New York: New York University Press.
Halnon, Karren Bettez. 2005. ‘Alienation Incorporated: “F*** the Mainstream Music” in the Mainstream’. Current Sociology 301(3): 743–79.
Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi. org/10.4324/9780203139943
Hills, Matt. 2005. The Pleasures of Horror. London: Continuum.
Jancovich, Mark. 2002. ‘Cult Fictions: Cult Movies, Subcultural Capital and the Production of Cultural Distinctions’. Cultural Studies 16(2): 306–322. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 09502380110107607
Jenson, Joli. 1992. ‘Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization’. In The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, ed. Lisa A. Lewis, 9–29. London: Routledge.
Kahn-Harris, Keith. 2004. ‘The “Failure” of Youth Culture: Reflexivity, Music and Politics in the Black Metal Scene’. European Journal of Cultural Studies 7(1): 95–111. http://dx. doi.org/10.1177/1367549404039862
—2007. Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. Oxford: Berg.
Kosut, Mary. 2010. ‘Extreme Bodies/Extreme Culture’. In The Body Reader: Essential Social and Cultural Readings, ed. Lisa Jean Moore and Mary Kosut, 184–200. New York: New York University Press.
McNair, Brian. 2002. Striptease Culture: Sex, Media and the Democratisation of Desire. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203469378
Moore, Ryan M. 2009. ‘The Unmaking of the English Working Class: Deindustrialisation, Reification and the Origins of Heavy Metal’. In Heavy Metal Music in Britain, ed. Gerd Bayer, 111–60. Surrey: Ashgate.
Moynihan, Michael, and Didrik Søderlind. 1998. Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground. Venice, CA: Feral House.
Mudrian, Albert. 2004. Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. Los Angeles, CA: Feral House.
Nead, Lynda. 1996. ‘Troubled Bodies: Art, Obscenity and the Connoisseur’. Women: A Cultural Review 7(3): 229–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09574049608578279
Nilsson, Magnus. 2009. ‘No Class? Class and Class Politics in British Heavy Metal’. In Heavy Metal Music in Britain, ed. Gerd Bayer, 161–79. Surrey: Ashgate.
Purcell, Natalie J. 2003. Death Metal Music: The Passion and Politics of a Subculture. North Carolina: McFarland.
Redhead, Steve. 1997. Subcultures to Clubcultures: An Introduction to Popular Cultural Studies. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sandvoss, Cornel. 2005. Fans: The Mirror of Consumption. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Straw, Will. 1997. ‘Sizing Up Record Collections: Gender and Connoisseurship in Rock Music Culture’. In Sexing the Groove, ed. Sheila Whiteley, 3-16. London: Routledge.
Terrorizer. 2006. ‘Bloodstock ‘06’. December, issue 151. London: Dark Arts Limited: 84-85.
Tester, Keith. 1994. The Flâneur. Oxon: Routledge.
Thornton, Sarah. 1995. Club Cultures: Music Media and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Walser, Robert. 1993. Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. London: Wesleyan University Press.
Wright, Robert. 2000. ‘“I’d Sell you Suicide”: Pop Music and Moral Panic in the Age of Marilyn Manson’. Popular Music 19(3): 365–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0261143000000222
Published
2012-05-14
Issue
Section
Countercultures
How to Cite
Allett, N. (2012). The extreme metal ‘connoisseur’. Popular Music History, 6(1-2), 164-179. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v6i1.164
