Metal Rules the Globe. Heavy Metal Music Around the World. Edited by Jeremy Wallach, Harris M. Berger and Paul D. Greene. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2011. 381 pp. ISBN 978-0-8223-4733-0

The aim of the study is to describe metal music albums of the year 2018 from the genre, textual and artistic aspects, looking for the common and diverse in the Latvian metal music world. It is recognised that there is still no unified collection of Latvian rock and metal music resources, and that makes the researcher’s work more interesting. Even though only ten metal albums came out in 2018, their metal styles are quite wide-ranging from symphonic metal and through thrash, groove, industrial metal to classic heavy metal, which is also played in an acoustic format. Album designs, in the author’s opinion, are classic but qualitative and do not damage the first impression, especially designs of those albums that were released on physical media. Because physical media is becoming an exclusive case, the trend continues to sell albums only in digital format (at least at first); this has been done by the bands “Revelation Attic”, “Yomi”, “Seira”, “NUVO”. Perhaps knowing that Latvia is too small to live on music only, as well as wishing to expand their audience and be noticed abroad, the 5 of the albums in question are recorded in English. The debuts of several newly formed bands (“Seira”, “Revelation Attic”, “Māra”) confirm the unlost interest in metal music and also show the attempts of these groups to build their way to Latvian and the world metal music scene, which manifests in their search for a strange sound (“NUVO”) or a strong female vocal use (“Oceanpath”, “Seira”, “Māra”). In general, Latvian metal music representatives continue the world’s metal music traditions, where it is extremely difficult to surprise because the number of existing bands is so large that it is almost impossible to be original, while the population of the planet is so big that many bands can access the listener so that each band also searches for its audience, both online and in concerts.

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CLASSICS AND HEAVY METAL - (K.F.B.) Fletcher, (O.) Umurhan (edd.) Classical Antiquity in Heavy Metal Music. Pp. xii + 260, ills, map. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Cased, £90, US$120. ISBN: 978-1-350-07535-1.

The Classical Review ◽

10.1017/s0009840x21000044 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-2

Author(s):

Gemma Farrell

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Heavy Metal ◽

Classical Antiquity ◽

Metal Music ◽

Heavy Metal Music

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‘A Cockroach Preserved in Amber’: The Significance of Class in Critics' Representations of Heavy Metal Music and its Fans

The Sociological Review ◽

10.1111/1467-954x.12181 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 62 (4) ◽

pp. 719-741 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Andy R. Brown ◽

Christine Griffin

Keyword(s):

Heavy Metal ◽

Middle Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Critical Discourse Analysis ◽

Contemporary Music ◽

Media Representations ◽

Critical Examination ◽

Metal Music ◽

Heavy Metal Music ◽

The Uk

In this paper we engage with new cultural theories of class that have identified media representations of ‘excessive’ white heterosexual working-class femininity as a ‘constitutive limit’ of incorporation into dominant (middle-class) modes of neoliberal subjectivity and Bourdieu's thesis that classification is a form of symbolic violence that constitutes both the classifier and the classified. However, what we explore are the implications of such arguments for those modes of white heterosexual working-class masculinity that continue to reproduce themselves in forms of overtly masculinist popular culture. We do so through a critical examination of the symbolic representation of the genre of heavy metal music within contemporary music journalism. Employing a version of critical discourse analysis, we offer an analysis of representative reviews, derived from a qualitative sample of the UK music magazine, New Musical Express (1999–2008). This weekly title, historically associated with the ideals of the ‘counter culture’, now offers leadership of musical tastes in an increasingly segmented, niche-oriented marketplace. Deploying a refined model of the inscription process outlined by Skeggs, our analysis demonstrates how contemporary music criticism symbolically attaches negative attributes and forms of personhood to the working-class male bodies identified with heavy metal culture and its audience, allowing dominant middle-class modes of cultural authority to be inscribed within matters of musical taste and distinction.

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