Music at the Extremes

Away from the spotlight of the pop charts and the demands of mainstream audiences, original music is still being played and audiences continue to engage with innovative artists. This collection of fresh essays gathers together critical writing on such genres as Power Electronics, Black Metal, Neo-Folk, Martial Industrial, Hard-Core Punk and Horrorcore. The contributors report from the periphery of the music world, seeking to understand these new genres, how fans connect with artists and how artists engage with their audiences. Diverse music scenes are covered, from small-town New Zealand to Washington, D.C., and Ljubljana, Slovenia. Artists discussed include Coil, Laibach, Whitehouse, Insane Clown Posse, Wolves in the Throne Room, Turisas, Týr, GG Allin and many others.

Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Scott A. Wilson is a senior lecturer in the Department of Performing and Screen Arts at Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland, New Zealand. He has published on topics as diverse as abjection and reality television, road safety advertising, and the role of monster movies in post-9/11 cinema. He lives in Auckland.

Edited by Scott A. Wilson

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 276
Bibliographic Info: 8 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2015
pISBN: 978-0-7864-9450-7
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2006-0
Imprint: McFarland

Preface and Acknowledgments 1
Introduction: Hush, May I Ask You All for Silence?
(Scott A. Wilson) 4
Elitist Aesthetics: Extreme Metal Fans as ­Taste-Makers and ­Gate-Keepers
(Damion Sturm) 13
Noise as Power: Bad Brains and the Aesthetics of Race in Hardcore Punk
(Shayna Maskell) 30
The Bodies of Metal: Imaginaries, Aesthetics and Shadows
(Alessandro Porrovecchio) 45
Power Electronics and Conventionally Transgressive Assembly Work
(Andrew Whelan) 59
Laibach Is Laibach: Overidentification as Dissensus in Neue Slowenische Kunst
(Janus C. Currie) 85
Scandinavian Heavy Metal as an Intertextual Play with Norse Mythology
(Anna G. Piotrowska) 101
Black Metal, Forked Tongue: Satanism, Paganism and the Persistence of the Medieval
(Brenda S. Gardenour Walter) 115
Where Myth and Metal Collide: Finnish Folk Metal
(Tai Neilson) 129
“In the Name of Satan”: Violence, Extreme Metal and Young People in Colombia in the ’80s and ’90s
(Saul Mauricio ­Rodriguez-Hernandez) 143
The (Un)Popularity of ­White-Power Music
(Kirsten Dyck) 157
“The Price of Existence Is Eternal Warfare”: Industrial Masculinity and Coil
(Gregory Steirer) 177
Heavy Metal’s Ironic Edge: Distortion, Demonization and Noise Control
(Sabatino DiBernardo) 195
Blossoms Will Sprout from the Carcass: Ecological Thinking in American Black Metal
(Kyle Koeppe) 213
Doused with Scorn and Dollars: Insane Clown Posse’s Paradox of Cool and the Culture Industry
(Rahima Schwenkbeck) 227
Outlaw Christ: Sacred Revolt in the Work of GG Allin
(Thomas Fabisiak and Joseph Laycock) 245
About the Contributors 267
Index 269