Gabber: Raising hell in technoculture1

Gabber is a hardcore electronic dance music genre, typified by extreme speed and overdrive, which developed in the Netherlands, with Rotterdam as its epicentre, during the early 1990s, when house music-inspired dance events dominated. The use of distorted noise and references to popular body horror, such as Hellraiser, dominated its scene, and soon gabber was commented on as ‘the metal of house music’, a statement that this article aims to investigate. Applying a genealogical discographic approach, the research found that the electronic noise music aesthetic of industrial music was crucial for the formation of the sound of gabber. The hardcore electronic dance music that developed from this is at once ironically nihilistic, a contrary critique, and a populist safety valve. The digital machine noise of hardcore seems to offer an immersive means to process the experience of (emasculating) fluidity within post-human accelerated technoculture, itself propelled by rapid digital capital and information technologies.

Culture-specific production and performance characteristics: An interview study with ‘Teutonic’ metal producers

Viking metal, Teutonic metal, Mesopotamian metal – labels of this kind are common in fan discourse, media and academia. Whereas some research has investigated such labels and related them to the artist’s stage presentation, music videos, artwork and lyrics, there is still a lack from the perspectives of music production and performance as to how such culturally and geographically associated labels differ musically. This article explores culture-specific production and performance characteristics of Teutonic metal, focusing on how metal from Germany differed from British and US-American productions in the 1980s and 1990s, during which time metal spread to Continental Europe and German speed metal achieved an international reputation for its original interpretation of metal. The study is based on a qualitative interview design with three record producers who were crucial for the rise of German metal labels and their bands: Harris Johns for Noise Records, Siggi Bemm for Century Media and Charlie Bauerfeind for Steamhammer. The findings suggest that performances differed between bands from Germany, America and Great Britain regarding timing, rhythmic precision, ensemble synchronization and expressiveness. Likewise, production approaches varied due to distinct preferences for certain guitar amplifiers, drum tunings, microphone techniques, mixing concepts and studio acoustics. Despite such culture-specific differences, it proved difficult for the interviewed producers to identify distinguishing features. Genre conventions seem to have a stronger impact than cultural origin overall.

Espíritu del Metal: LA Conformación de la escena Metalera Peruana (1981–1992) (‘The spirit of metal: Formation of the Peruvian metal scene [1981–1992]’), José Ignacio Lopez Ramirez Gastón and Giuseppe Risica Carella (2018)

Review of: Espíritu del Metal: LA Conformación de la escena Metalera Peruana (1981–1992) (‘The spirit of metal: Formation of the Peruvian metal scene [1981–1992]’), José Ignacio Lopez Ramirez Gastón and Giuseppe Risica Carella (2018) Lima: Sonidos Latentes Producciones y Discos Invisible, p/bk, 31 soles

‘Another Version of the Truth’: The politics of affect and the externalization of threat in Trent Reznor’s Year Zero

This article explores Nine Inch Nails’ album Year Zero (2007) with reference to what Brian Massumi calls the ‘politics of affect’ in the post 9/11 era. The sociopolitical discourse of managed threat both contextualizes and shapes the album’s conceptual basis, but also its lyricism, live manifestation and marketing. I propose a trajectory in Trent Reznor’s lyricism from an early introspective and confessional style to defensive and anxious tropes, emotions within a structure of feeling synonymous with the post 9/11 years. I argue that the album is a document that both reflects and critiques the overlapping social, cultural and political arenas of this era, and was particularly responsive to neoconservative discourse in its delivery, accompanying media and live performance.

Structuring subjectivity: Pain of Salvation’s The Perfect Element: Part I (2000)

This article examines how Pain of Salvation’s album The Perfect Element: Part I (2000) develops narrative subjectivity through a range of compositional and performative parameters. We reveal a myriad of ways in which the music contributes to the expression of human subjectivity and offers significant moments of interpretive clarity. Attending to the expressive aspects of music, we focus in particular on how the song structures are articulated through the following elements: formal, harmonic, temporal, thematic and textural/timbral content. Contextualizing the concept album narrative within the genres of progressive rock and heavy metal and offering a framework for analysis derived from narrative theory, we interpret how the musical parameters convey the song lyrics and overall album concept. Pain of Salvation’s narrative of human trauma emerges through musical structures that are channelled to shape storyworld and subjectivity. Presenting analytic snapshots of the twelve album tracks, our aim is to create a sense of analytic ‘immersion’, whereby the reader engages actively with the multifaceted expressive content of words and music.

Innovation and tradition in metal music production

Contemporary music technology affords limitless potential and has changed the way record producers need to work with metal music, often employing a far more fragmented approach. This article explores technology’s influence on producing metal records through the lived experiences of seven renowned metal music producers, and it is argued that what can be perceived as traditional production processes are production processes that favour capturing performances, embracing the potential of technology. In contrast, the construction of recorded performances through anticipated uses of technology often embodies innovative production methodologies. There are tensions caused by the anticipated use of technology and the participants highlight that commercial and artistic pressures have informed prescriptive and homogenous production methodologies under the guise of innovation.

Femininity in metal fanship: ‘I do not need to take anyone along’

Metal music has an exceptional position in Finnish society where the genre is not marginal and the proportion of female fans is considerable. However, studies on female metal fandom emphasize that female fans are in the minority among the male-dominant metal fan community. This has led to conclusions that female fans are acting in a ‘masculine’ manner to avoid sexual harassment, and to get approval and respect for their fandom from male fans. Our aim was to study very feminine metal fans, trying to find out how they perceived their position among metal fans and how they demonstrated their femininity, especially in metal festivals. Based on the results, considering metal a masculine musical genre is not justifiable if the context is female metal fans, not female metal musicians. Very feminine female fans consumed a lot of live music and described metal as beautiful, emotional and empowering. They were quite independent and became more confident in their femininity as they grew older. Part of them demonstrated their self-confidence by dressing up in a very feminine – even hyperfeminine – way, and part of them dressed more modestly, seeing their femininity internally, not externally.

‘We Are the Dead’: The War Poets, metal music and chaos control

During the course of the First World War, the generation of British authors known collectively as the War Poets revolutionized the popular culture of their time. Due to their changing attitudes towards armed conflict, their portrayal of war chaos included realist descriptions of life in the trenches, unusual choices of subject matter and an eventual challenge to the political and religious establishment of their time. Metal music, a genre with an inherent lyrical and musical concern about chaos and control, has crafted several songs inspired on the First World War poetry. This specific relationship has not been studied before. Based on Weinstein’s and Walser’s insights on chaos and control in metal music, the aim of this article is to evaluate the ability of metal music to either transmit or refute the War Poets’ discourse on chaos, and to study the textual and musical resources metal bands use to relay and control said discourse. For this purpose, I perform a comparative analysis of nine metal music adaptations and appropriations of six different First World War poems they are based on. A chronological path of the evolution of the First World War poetry is followed. The study concludes that, besides effectively transmitting or contesting the War Poets’ discourse on chaos, metal music exerts chaos control through its use of musical resources, especially in the case of extreme metal subgenres.