Defiant Sounds: Heavy Metal Music in the Global South (Extreme Sounds Studies: Global Socio-Cultural Explorations) 9781793651853, 9781793651860, 179365185X

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Defiant Sounds

EXTREME SOUNDS STUDIES: GLOBAL SOCIO-CULTURAL EXPLORATIONS Series Editors: Niall Scott, Nelson Varas-Díaz, and Bryan Bardine Music and sound do not take place in a social vacuum. They manifest themselves, and are a reflection of, particular social contexts. They are grounded in geographies, people’s lived experiences, and specific events. Therefore, when we conceptualize music and sound as “extreme,” we do so in recognition of this contextual anchoring, and as an acknowledgment that contexts are both produced, and reflected, through them. Metal music studies have used the terminology of “extreme music” to describe sounds, aesthetics, and practices that are usually interpreted as distant from, and challenging of, the societies in which music is created and consumed. This book series aims to explore how the idea of “the extreme” might serve to understand the roles of sounds in our lives. It aims to address the following questions: What makes some kinds of music and sounds extreme? Is there an aesthetic of extreme in music and sound to be unpacked that can be encountered elsewhere, for example, in the analysis of noise or other forms of experimental music, even in the extremity of the mundane? How do diverse people and communities think about the extreme when referencing music and sound? In other words, it is not always clear what the term extreme refers to, and yet it is all around us. This book series aims to fill this gap. Recent Titles Defiant Sounds: Heavy Metal Music in the Global South, edited by Nelson Varas-Díaz, Jeremy Wallach, Esther Clinton, and Daniel Nevárez Araújo   Music, Sound, and Documentary Film in the Global South, edited by Christopher L. Ballengee

Defiant Sounds Heavy Metal Music in the Global South Edited by Nelson Varas-Díaz, Jeremy Wallach, Esther Clinton, and Daniel Nevárez Araújo

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Varas-Díaz, Nelson, editor. | Wallach, Jeremy, editor. | Clinton, Esther, 1971- editor. | Nevárez Araújo, Daniel, editor. Title: Defiant sounds: heavy metal music in the Global South / edited by Nelson Varas-Díaz, Jeremy Wallach, Esther Clinton, and Daniel Nevárez Araújo Description: Lanham: Lexington Books, 2023. | Series: Extreme sounds studies: global socio-cultural explorations | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022056352 (print) | LCCN 2022056353 (ebook) | ISBN 9781793651853 (cloth) | ISBN 9781793651860 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Heavy metal (Music)—Global South—History and criticism. | Heavy metal (Music)—Social aspects—Global South. Classification: LCC ML3534 .D453 2022 (print) | LCC ML3534 (ebook) | DDC 781.6609181/4—dc23/eng/20221130 LC record available at https:​//​lccn​.loc​.gov​/2022056352 LC ebook record available at https:​//​lccn​.loc​.gov​/2022056353 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

This book is dedicated to three fellow travelers who met untimely ends during the making of this volume: Aries “Ebenz” Tanto, guitarist and prime mover of Indonesian metal stalwarts Burgerkill; Eric Morales, frontman of Puerto Rico’s legendary band Dantesco; and Esther Clinton, our coeditor, metallectual, and Jeremy’s spouse.

Contents

Introduction: Of “Metal” and Metal: A Global South Approach to Metal Studies Daniel Nevárez Araújo, Nelson Varas-Díaz, Jeremy Wallach, and Esther Clinton SECTION 1: CONCEPTUALIZING THE DISTORTED SOUTH Chapter 1: Metal Music in the Distorted South: A Call for Defiance and Reflection Nelson Varas-Díaz, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, Jeremy Wallach, and Esther Clinton SECTION 2: HOPE



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Chapter 2: An Exegesis of Excess: Reverberations and Connotations of Feminisms Cartographed via Metal Music in the Global South Susana González-Martínez Chapter 3: Reclaiming Aotearoa: Stories of Experimentation, Education, and Reflection in Aotearoa Indigenous Metal Music Didier Goossens Chapter 4: “A Whole New Type of Isolation”: Resilience and Hope in the Navajo Nation Metal Scene during the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020–2021 Anthony J. Thibodeau and Sage Bond

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SECTION 3: SOCIAL CHANGE



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Chapter 5: “We Play Heavy Metal Because Our Lives Are Heavy Metal”: A Generation of Metal in the Middle East and North Africa 115 Mark LeVine Chapter 6: Youth Activism and Decolonial Metal: Voice Of Baceprot and Alien Weaponry as Case Studies Paula Rowe

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Chapter 7: Coloniality and Gender in the Argentinian Metal Scene: A Study through Four Cases Manuela Belén Calvo

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SECTION 4: DIALOGUES

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Chapter 8: An Interview on Contar/Cantar Memórias da Resistência Susane Hécate (Miasthenia) and Daniel Nevárez Araújo Chapter 9: Misusing Things in Metal Music: A Dialogue Manuel Gagneux (Zeal & Ardor) and Daniel Nevárez Araújo Chapter 10: The Alternative Side of the Frame: A Dialogue on Southern Inspirations Kobi Farhi (Orphaned Land) and Nelson Varas-Díaz

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Chapter 11: A Dialogue on Metal Festivals and Social Justice Tshomarelo “Vulture” Mosaka (Overthrust) and Edward Banchs

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SECTION 5: DIASPORA

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Chapter 12: The Ultra-Violence: Death Angel and Asian American Presence/Absence in Heavy Metal Kevin Fellezs

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Chapter 13: “Somewhere They Belong”: Metal, Ethnicity, and Scenic Solidarities in Malaysia’s Underground Scenes (1990s to 2000s) 259 Azmyl Yusof and Adil Johan SECTION 6: TRANSGRESSION



Chapter 14: Ancient, Evil, and African: Heavy Metal and Conflict in East Africa Edward Banchs

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Chapter 15: The Influence of Different Satanic Panics on the Transgressive Practices of Metal Music in Egypt, Iran, and Syria 303 Pasqualina Eckerström SECTION 7: RESISTANCE AND COMMUNITY



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Chapter 16: Decolonizing the Mind’s Eye: Images of Resistance in Caribbean Metal Music Nelson Varas-Díaz and Daniel Nevárez Araújo

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Chapter 17: Nongkrong, Value of Community, and Everyday Resistance in the Indonesian Metal Scene Oki Rahadianto Sutopo and Agustinus Aryo Lukisworo

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Chapter 18: Satan Wasn’t There: The Perseverance of the Moroccan Metal Scene Amine Hamma and Brian Trott

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Epilogue: Metal Unbound Esther Clinton, Jeremy Wallach, Nelson Varas-Díaz, and Daniel Nevárez Araújo Index

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About the Editors and Contributors



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Introduction Of “Metal” and Metal: A Global South Approach to Metal Studies Daniel Nevárez Araújo, Nelson Varas-Díaz, Jeremy Wallach, and Esther Clinton

Analyzing the cultural dimensions of heavy metal in Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture (2000), Deena Weinstein posits the following: To say that the core of the metal audience belongs to a persisting subculture is to go beyond demographics to the level of social groups. The term “subculture” implies an integrity that includes and organizes a variety of elements. The subculture as a whole is more valued by its members than are any of its parts. Each part finds its relative place within the whole. One might ask whether this description really fits the metal audience. After all, we are taking about a subculture that is named after a musical genre. (99)

Regarding this last question, Weinstein eventually offers her own answer, arguing that “Music is the master emblem of the heavy metal subculture, but it is not its meaning” (99). There is a lot to unpack in this segment. For the purposes of the present book, we will limit ourselves to one key aspect considered in Weinstein’s analysis: that is, the notion of culture embedded in any discussion of subcultures; this includes heavy metal and its offshoots. It is interesting to note how Weinstein saw, at the outset of what would later become the discipline of metal music studies, the importance of culture in any approach to heavy metal. After all, Weinstein’s original 1991 title, Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology, similarly highlighted the cultural dimensions of metal. Certainly, at the time, both in 1991 and again in 2000, culture meant a few specific things in the world of metal, both as a genre and as a burgeoning area of study. Following Weinstein, metal culture was seen as the province of 1

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male, youthful, white, and blue-collar fans. Needless to say, these categories highlighted a very Western/Northern-centric vision of metal and its elements. In the years since Weinstein’s undeniably important incursion into the world of metal, a great many thinkers have sought to challenge, elaborate, and expand the frame of what constitutes metal culture. Two such interventions are the edited collections Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music around the World (Wallach, Berger, and Greene 2011) and Heavy Metal Music in Latin America: Perspectives from the Distorted South (Varas-Díaz, Nevárez Araújo, and Rivera-Segarra 2021). The present book serves as a sibling of sorts to those books; it extends our considerations of decoloniality, acts of resistance, and the uplifting of alternate voices within the world of metal by bringing to fruition a very necessary dialogue with multiple regions in the Global South. We will get to that in a moment, but first, we would like to consider this notion of culture a bit further. In her pamphlet “‘Culture’ and Culture: Traditional Knowledge and Intellectual Rights” (2009), the Portuguese-Brazilian anthropologist Manuela Carneiro da Cunha offers what we consider to be a highly nuanced approach to the question of culture. In it, Carneiro da Cunha develops a perceptive distinction between “culture” and culture, with the quotation marks on the former meant to highlight the semantic and ideological separation between them. Carneiro da Cunha loosely defines culture as “internalized coherence schemata that organize perception and action in people and allow for some degree of communication in social groups” (4). As such, culture is an overarching set of unifying characteristics which define societies. “Culture,” on the other hand, represents a reflexive attitude groups have towards a collection of more regionalized beliefs, worldviews, choices, and tastes. Simply put, “culture” stands as a reflection of culture. Significantly, “culture” was initially created in the context of colonialism and liberalism as a way to compartmentalize certain aspects of culture in order for these to be marketed to those subjects belonging to the periphery, that is, to subaltern subjects. However, with the passage of time, these subaltern subjects have taken “culture” as “a meta-language” (70) and turned it into a “weapon of the weak” (2). The repurposed “culture” returns to the metropolis to haunt its epistemology, its status, its sense of wholeness, and its position of privilege. If we apply Carneiro de Cunha’s analysis to metal in the context of the Global South, we can see a similar dynamic taking root. Metal music and culture grew out of a need to rebel and create pockets of agency, not just in the Global North, but as we have previously shown, in the Global South as well (Varas-Díaz, Nevárez Araújo, and Rivera-Segarra 2021; Varas-Díaz 2021). However, the development of metal writ large can be seen as one comprised of “metal” in a regional and localized sense. “Metal” made it to different regions, was appropriated reflexively, and returned to the metropolis with a

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vengeance. We would argue that this is the case throughout the span, both temporal and spatial, of metal tradition. And while market conditions and other factors guaranteed that the “metal” produced in the Global North would receive more dissemination and attention, thus placing it in the position of metal (an Ur-metal, if you will), “metal” as a collection of various cultural sets internal to each society would develop according to the dominants of each region and location. This obviously had an effect in the market, but it also influenced definitions of metal that would follow the genre to this day. The present book represents an attempt to consider metal as a “culture” and a culture. We saw this dynamic play out recently during the 5th International Society for Metal Music Studies Biennial in Ciudad de México. Responding to a call to move away from the northern locales of the preceding biennales, the 5th Biennial became the first to be set in a city in the Global South. Participants hailed from the United States, Germany, Finland, Serbia, Spain, and other countries of the Global North. But the biennial also leveled the playing field by bringing in scholars, thinkers, and musicians from various countries in Latin America: Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, among others. During the panels that took place at the conference, ideas were debated, questioned, challenged, amplified, or outright rejected. One thing that had already been a glaring reality for many of us in the Global South became clearer during the event: a multitude of “metal” communities—with their respective spaces, scenes, members, practitioners, artifacts, philosophies, and realities—were increasingly returning to metal with their own messages, their own practices, their own forms of “metal.” In other words, “cultures” are the undeniable lifeblood of culture; “metal” is the undeniable lifeblood of metal. We posit that this change in understanding metal music and its scholarship represents a paradigmatic shift for metal music studies (see chapter 1). The writers and editors of this volume invariably heard the call to bring their respective region’s “metal” into conversation with not just metal, but with “metal” originating from other locales in the Global South. Hence, what started as a focused consideration of the Distorted South limited to Latin America in our previous book (Varas-Díaz, Nevárez Araújo, & Rivera-Segarra 2021) became a demand to open up the conversation to and between other scenes and practitioners in the wider Global South. We saw some of the fruits of our call to metal scholars and practitioners to engage more with other regions in action at the biennial. We saw scholars of the Global North thinking through the repercussions of metal as a (decolonial) practice and philosophy in the Global South. We also saw and heard voices from the Global South speak for themselves and to each other without the need for intermediaries. But we also saw that more needs to be done. We hope this book offers one such pathway into continuing and expanding the

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dialogue between regions. But more importantly, we hope the present book offers a platform and helps amplify the voice and visibility of many regions, scenes, and peoples that have remained too underrepresented thus far. To achieve the task at hand, we needed to account for different modes of knowledge production. First, we recognized that not all knowledge needs to originate or be produced within the structures of the academy. As thinkers like Marisol de la Cadena, Boaventura De Sousa Santos, Mario Blaser, Arturo Escobar, N’gugi wa Thiong’o, and others have shown, epistemology is not one totalizing set of ideas but something polyvalent comprised of and achieved through a multitude of knowledge-creating activities and modalities. Certainly, the essay remains a primary textual medium to communicate information. However, we gave our participants the flexibility to explore other modes of knowledge production. Given that we are still in the midst of a global pandemic, one important modality came in the form of virtual interviews. While many of the essays contained herein started with information gathered through prepandemic fieldwork, the hurdles thrown up by the pandemic created the need for new ways of gathering information from research consultants. This is also the case with the dialogues offered herein. While rejoicing at the opportunities we had in continuing our discussions with artists and thinkers, we also highlight the hybrid mode of research as a path forward in bridging the divides between each self-contained region. Second, and expanding on this notion of the dialogue, we purposefully set off a segment of this book to the capture of actual dialogues, this without the need for accompanying criticism or analysis. This stems from a recognition that musicians and practitioners of all things metal are engaging in their own criticism and analysis, even when they do not name it so. Consequently, our dialogues with Susane Hécate, Manuel Gagneux, Kobi Farhi, and Tshomarelo “Vulture” Mosaka respond to a desire to let these thinkers offer their own critique, analysis, and vision in a setting or medium otherwise usually foreclosed to them. Needless to say, this represents another way of building knowledge. We hope this practice is picked up by others for future books and collections. Third, throughout the years of attending conferences, enjoying shows, and working on publications, we have cultivated friendships and acquaintances, and these have invariably fostered personal conversations but also philosophical musings. As a result, when the idea of this book came up, we knew of individuals whose work and thinking, we had no doubt, could bring to fruition our vision of a metal in the Global South text. Some of these individuals are established or burgeoning scholars; others are journalists, travelers, musicians, and/or fans/cultural agents, some of whom have never published before. Therefore, we saw this collection as an opportunity to promote new voices and ways of research and writing. Perhaps the greatest boon of this

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approach is the fact that some of the chapters contained herein represent the first officially documented historical record of a particular scene or topic. Finally, we have upended what could have been the expected order of topics throughout the book. Instead of opening with metal music as a tool of resistance toward oppression or as a mechanism for social complaint, we have focused on its capacity to build anew. Section one proposes the Distorted South as an epistemological shift in metal music and its study. It is a way to move forward in the field of metal music studies concerned with the Global South. Sections two and three focus on metal music’s capacity to promote hope and social change. Section four shifts gears from the traditional academic essay and includes the dialogues mentioned earlier with artists engaged in these critical reflections. Section five addresses the topic of diaspora, broadly conceptualized as processes of presence, absence, and belonging within metal music. Sections six and seven focus on metal music’s role in transgressing norms, building resistance, and fostering community throughout the Global South. We hope this thematic order further impresses on the readers the ways in which metal music in the Global South requires a different interpretative approach. The music is not solely a mechanism to communicate grievances but rather proposals for a different world. As far as we know, this is the first collection to bring together scholars, insiders, and scholar-insiders from far-flung but vibrant “metal” scenes in Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, as well as BIPOC communities in North America and Oceania. We hope this volume serves as a catalyst for future conversations and writing about metal in the Global South and that it inspires other scholars, musicians, and thinkers in the regions covered, and those yet to be written about, to share their visions, worldviews, and research with their “metal” communities as well as with the metal world at large. REFERENCES Carneiro da Cunha, Manuela. 2009. “Culture” and Culture: Traditional Knowledge and Intellectual Rights. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. Varas-Díaz, Nelson, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, and Eliut Rivera-Segarra (eds). 2021. Heavy Metal Music in Latin America: Perspectives from the Distorted South. Lanham: Lexington Books. Wallach, Jeremy, Harris M. Berger, and Paul D. Greene (eds). 2011. Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music around the World. Durham: Duke University Press. Weinstein, Deena. (2000). Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture, Revised Edition. Da Capo Press.

SECTION 1

Conceptualizing the Distorted South

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Chapter 1

Metal Music in the Distorted South A Call for Defiance and Reflection Nelson Varas-Díaz, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, Jeremy Wallach, and Esther Clinton

It was late 2021 when the message appeared on a social media platform. “Honest question,” its author, positioned in the Global North, wrote as if to highlight the importance of what was being posited for public consideration. “Can I get away with calling a panel on Aztec-themed metal bands ‘Montezuma’s Revenge?,’” he asked his online peers. The writer, a researcher on metal music in the Global North, was quick to take down the post within the hour, but not before one commenter warned him that there was “no humor in the world of the woke.” Although this seemingly insignificant interaction might, at first, appear unrelated to the aims of this chapter, and even to this book as a whole, the post demands multiple levels of analysis, some of which we pose here to the reader as questions for consideration. What motivations, conscious or unconscious, may underlie the desire to name an academic panel on Latin American indigenous metal after what is commonly known as traveler’s diarrhea? Why would a Global North author propose such a derogatory title for an academic panel? What does the phrase “getting away” evidence about the underlying intent of such an act? Why does the mental image of a geographical space in the Global South continue to draw such negative associations? The answers to these questions are undoubtably plentiful and diverse. Still, two things stand out for us as authors and editors of the present volume: first, there is an apparent disconnect between the lived experiences, meanings, and uses linked to metal music in the Global South when contrasted to those originating from the Global North; second, and just 9

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as importantly, there is an undeniable disconnect between the metal-related scholarship carried out between these geographic positions. In light of this historical disjuncture and feeling a pressing need to challenge the isolationism that presently keeps these positions apart, we have developed this edited book highlighting metal in the Global South. If metal scholarship and its practitioners are truly going to push this field forward, we need to move past the occasional “honest question” and invest our efforts into bridging the present divide. WHY DO WE NEED A BOOK ON METAL MUSIC IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH? To understand why this is auspicious timing for a book on metal in the Global South, we must first define the term itself. Following sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s work (2011, 2018), we conceptualize the Global South as both a geographic and symbolic space. The first refers to the geographies of the world that have been historically impacted by the colonial enterprise; the latter has been a centerpiece of the European modern project. This modern project, which gained steam after the fifteenth century and has continued to be perpetuated by others in the Global North to this day (particularly the United States), has served to promote worldviews that create, thrive on, and perpetuate racism, sexism, unbound capitalism, and ecological extractivism. Along with its demand for progress at any cost, there is little doubt today that the modern project has simultaneously represented a culture of death for colonized peoples. As philosopher Enrique Dussel has poignantly pointed out, “modernity utilizes its periphery, exploits and dominates it, prostrating it in a deteriorated state, worse in relation to how it was before colonization” (2000, 31). But the Global South can also be seen as a symbolic space, or as de Sousa Santos (2011) has posited, “a metaphor for the human suffering caused by capitalism and colonialism on the global level, as well as the resistance to overcome or minimize such suffering” (18). This second notion opens up the possibility of understanding instances of oppression related to the aforementioned modern/colonial project experienced by people who, although living in the Global North, experience the effects of invisibility and oppressions usually allotted to those in the Global South. This symbolic space is inhabited by racialized people, women, migrants, and/or members of the LGBTTQ+ community, among others, throughout the geographic Global North who have also been impacted by the legacy of colonialism. As such, we argue that in the geographic and symbolic Global South, an inventive strand of metal music is created, consumed, transformed, and employed in an ongoing effort to survive the perils of everyday modern life and its colonial

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enterprise. The editors and authors of this volume feel it is time for metal scholarship to address these experiences. Advances have been made within metal music studies to understand its manifestations outside the Global North (Wallach and Levine 2011; Green 2012; Sánchez 2014; Clinton and Wallach 2015; MacLachlan 2016; Calvo 2017, 2018; Rivas 2018; Varas-Díaz, Nevárez Araújo, and Scaricaciottoli 2020; Wallach 2020; Varas-Díaz 2021; De La Luz Núñez 2021; Garcia and Gama 2021; Pérez Pelayo 2021). But it is no secret that limitations abound, and much remains to be done. Certainly, it would be unfair to claim that metal scholars have not addressed the manifestations of metal music in the Global South; many have, including ourselves. These efforts have been worthwhile and have infused the field with much-needed diversity. Still, too few of these interventions reach Global North audiences, mainly due to language differences and economic challenges. When examining the field of metal studies as a whole, the manner in which incursions into the Global South have been carried out remains cumbersome and, at times, inadvertently reproduce academic imperialism (Varas-Díaz, Nevárez Araújo and Scaricaciottoli 2020; Varas-Díaz, Nevárez Araújo, and Rivera-Segarra 2021). For example, some scholarly work within metal studies has loosely used the term “global metal” to describe research agendas that, at the outset, seem to be all-encompassing and inclusive of spaces, experiences, and knowledge-building processes outside the Global North (Brown et al. 2016; Bardine and Stueart 2022). Unfortunately, these “global”-oriented efforts frequently fall short in their inclusion of geographies in the Global South by neglecting to address these specific areas of the world (Turner 2018). When they are included, there is an underlying tone of tokenism which frequently neglects to address the diversity embedded in a region. In these efforts, the term “global,” or an equivalent nomenclature, is frequently used as merely a trendy keyword, an elusive indicator, a strategy to make metal studies seem all-inclusive, or at least conscientious of the diversities (e.g., religious, cultural, linguistic, historical) entailed in areas of the world where the music is created and consumed. These efforts, sometimes inadvertently and at other times on purpose, put forth universalistic descriptions of metal music that rely too heavily on the Global North’s examples, theories, and experiences, while almost wholly ignoring the Global South. Some scholars have seen the universalism and neglect of the Global South as forms of academic imperialism (Grosfogel and Cervantez-Rodríguez 2002). Even when metal studies collections have tried to address the issues of diversity that are salient throughout the distinct geographies in which metal music exists, efforts continue to fall short. For example, a recently edited volume on language in metal music, which is one of the most immediately identifiable axes of diversity in the musical genre globally, omitted research

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examples from Latin America and the African continent (Valijärvi, Doesburg, and Digioia 2021). The case of Latin America seems particularly egregious given the rich history of metal music originating from the region, a tradition that was well established early in the genre’s inception globally. As we have shown elsewhere, metal sung in Spanish has been present in the region for decades (Varas-Díaz, Nevárez Araújo, and Rivera-Segarra 2021). Furthermore, Spanish represents one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Therefore, leaving out any representation of Latin America in the aforementioned book seems to us problematic. Similar limitations have become apparent in edited collections on metal, gender, and sexuality. These are axes of extreme importance to understand the experiences of oppression faced by people living in the symbolic spaces of the Global South; still, publications have continued to address these concepts without much consideration of the ways in which these manifest throughout the Global South (Heesch and Scott 2019). Much as Black and decolonial feminisms have pointed out the limitations of conceptualizations of sexuality and gender stemming from the predominantly White Global North (La Colectiva del Rio Combahee 1977; Espinosa-Miñoso 2014; hooks 2015)—conceptualizations which do not include race and ethnicity to inform intersectional (Crenshaw 1991) understandings of oppression, and beyond (Bannerji 2005)—metal scholarship in the Global South must push back on all-encompassing interpretations of metal music generated from the Global North. Topics such as language, gender, and sexuality are but the tip of the iceberg of examples where the diversity that characterizes the Global South should have been present yet remained a blind spot. These blind spots are not limited to academic efforts and published research collections. Other knowledge-building processes throughout the Global North reproduce this myopia. Two examples from documentary film and metal-related media can shed light on this problem. Sam Dunn and Scot McFayden’s (2012) extensive series Metal Evolution, funded by VH1, almost completely neglects the contributions to metal music made from throughout the Global South, particularly Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In the wellknown “metal family tree” developed by the filmmakers, the contributions from musicians in the Global South are glaringly absent. The Global South seems to be relegated to mere exoticism and consumerism. It becomes a place where metal tours from the Global North go to meet their most enthusiastically rabid fans, but where little attention is paid to the musical productions that take place there. The same happens with metal media outlets in the Global North, particularly magazines. The yearly lists of best albums for magazines such as Decibel and Metal Hammer1 rarely incorporate productions from the Global South. In 2021, no metal bands from the Global South made their “best of the year” lists. These outlets are patronized by metal fans all over

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the world and are thus an important piece of the larger puzzle from which knowledge about metal music, the contextual challenges faced by musicians/ fans, and what the music does to challenge the modern/colonial project, could be disseminated and critically examined. But as in other instances already highlighted above, these efforts fall short. In the process of navigating these blind spots, the editors of this book, along with other Global South authors and contributors, have striven to infuse metal music studies with a more diverse outlook via edited books, special issues in academic journals on specific regions of the Global South, and documentary filmmaking. Still, an edited book focusing on metal music in the Global South remained elusive. Thanks to the growing body of work developed throughout the world, the time has come for a more direct and sustained discussion about metal in the Global South. In order to do so, we propose an alternative conceptualization of metal music stemming from this particular geographic and symbolic space. To help us, and by extension the readers, navigate this topic, we have come to develop a framework of thought and analysis which we call the Distorted South. WHAT IS THE DISTORTED SOUTH? We conceptualize the Distorted South as both a geographic and symbolic space where oppressed peoples of the world impacted by the modern/colonial project use metal music to critically reflect on their experiences, inform others about their situations, build (internally/externally) critical communities, and act upon those experiences through liberatory practices. We use the term “distorted” purposely here to denote three salient characteristics we have consistently seen in a growing number of metal acts coming from the Global South. Let us explore each one individually. First, metal music in the Global South has deployed the distortion of sound and image characteristic of metal music as a strategy to challenge oppressive histories and practices. However, not content with just reproducing the sounds of the North, practitioners and aficionados from the Global South have also distorted metal music itself, transforming the genre by including regional sounds and imagery. Sonically, this purposeful distortion allows creators and listeners to differentiate themselves not just from the commonplace musical sounds of their respective societies, but from metal in the Global North as well. Visually, the inclusion of local imagery and folklore, focusing on the region’s particular plights, aides in the transmission of the music’s message by establishing visual parameters that are glaringly distinct from the iconography usually portrayed in metal albums in the Global North. Consequently,

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the plurality of representations possible from each regional context distorts metal, offering all of those willing to listen an amalgam of experiences. It bears repeating: these distorted sounds and images are different. They transmit narratives as produced by those who actually live in the respective regions and carry regional expressions of the self which are simultaneously rooted within the metal music genre and its collective regional and global practices. Second, the transformed sounds, lyrics, and practices deployed by many metal musicians throughout the Global South aim to challenge the oppressive practices linked to the modern/colonial project by engaging in the distortion of official history to which they have been subjected and through which the communal experiences of their groups or regions have been erased, trampled, devalued, and misrepresented. These alternate views on their histories are in fact not alternate views per se. They are narratives of presence and experience. Through their dissemination, they seek to challenge the vestiges of colonialism that have rendered them as “less-than” and even inhuman (i.e., “the coloniality of being”) (Maldonado-Torres 2007) while simultaneously ignoring their knowledge-building practices (i.e., the “coloniality of knowledge”) (Castro-Gómez and Grosfogel 2007). Metal music in the Distorted South challenges universalistic (essentialist) historical points of view, which are deeply intertwined with the legacy of colonialism, through the rescue of local narratives, experiences, knowledges, and worldviews. Finally, musicians and music consumers use metal music to actively engage in acts of distorting defiance. By this we mean the use of novel and varied strategies of action meant to challenge the enterprises of brokers, gatekeepers, and other entities that have held on to power for far too long in their respective settings (i.e., governments, private companies, dominant racial groups, patriarchy) thus perpetuating colonial practices and perspectives. Traditional forms of resistance (such as joining a political party) are looked at with suspicion and are replaced with more fluid and sonic practices directed at defying the ever-present sequelae of colonialism, what Aníbal Quijano (2010, 2020) termed the “coloniality of power” (or coloniality), proposing different worldviews through which these oppressive tactics are questioned, and dismantling them in practical ways. These three practices of distortion (distortion of sound and image, distortion of official history, and acts of distorting defiance), which constitute the defiant sounds invoked in the title of this book, become knowledge-producing and action-inducing acts in different modalities throughout the Distorted South. Therefore, metal music creators and consumers transform this musical genre into praxis, the ultimate goal of which is to fight oppression. In this manner, metal music becomes part of what de Sousa Santos (2018) has termed Epistemologies of the South. For him, the latter represent knowledges “anchored in the experiences of resistance of all social groups that

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have systematically suffered injustice, oppression, and destruction caused by capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy” (1). These epistemologies highlight the knowledges produced by invisibilized subjects on the other side of the “abyssal line,” a metaphorical term used by de Sousa Santos to represent the division that separates the colonizer from the colonized and brings into question the humanity, and even the existence, of the latter. Throughout the Distorted South, metal becomes a mechanism to question coloniality, which is manifested today in a plethora of ways, including racism, sexism, extractivism, and capitalist exploitation. Of course, these axes of exploitation are more intensely experienced by marginalized groups throughout the geographic and symbolic South (e.g., racialized peoples, women, LGBTTQ+, migrants). Thus, metal in the Distorted South reflects these plights, making them an essential part of their lyrical content, sound, and actions on and offstage, as we will see throughout this chapter and others in this book. It should not come as a surprise, then, that we understand the Distorted South as ideas, spaces, and practices that ask metal music to take a stance toward the pressing state of oppression enacted by the modern/colonial project. The Distorted South screams at the world in general, and metal music in the Global North in particular, with a vociferous demand: what is your position amid all of this oppression? It will not accept or condone generalities and ambiguities as an answer. It will no longer be enough for metal music to fall back on its propensity to pose vague or generalized critiques toward the project of modernity, which has been a salient practice of the genre. Interpellated by the Distorted South, metal must be specific in its answers and interventions. It calls for the recognition that the modern project, so frequently criticized by metal music in the Global North, has been in fact embedded within metal of the Global North for a long time. Metal must confront this fact. Furthermore, mentioning modernity in a Global South context elicits a different set of imagery, ideas, and specters; it invokes coloniality as a formidable and ruthless foe. Therefore, the Distorted South reminds metal music in the Global North and everywhere that the modern European project and its consequences, of which metal is one such “consequence,” look and feel different to those in the Global South. As authors like Walter Mignolo and Enrique Dussel have argued, there is no modernity without coloniality (Dussel 1985, 2020; Mignolo 2010, 2011). There is no universalistic idea of progress without the exploitation of the Other (Grosfogel 2013, 2020). The Distorted South demands a more nuanced and engaged critique of modernity. It strives to make audible and visible the colonial dimensions behind the modern project and the colonial wound carried by those affected. In this sense, we believe that the Distorted South provides metal music with distinct and heretofore absent ontological, epistemological, methodological, and ethical

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positionings. We summarize these positions in Figure 1.1,2 and expand our explanation of their reach and the stakes they carry below. Ontological position—What is the nature of the subject represented in and by metal music in the Distorted South? The subject that comes into being through metal in the Distorted South is intersected on all sides by histories of oppression based on the long-term effects of coloniality. Racism, sexism, capitalism, foreign-backed dictatorships, and gang violence are but some of the themes on display in metal music generated in the Distorted South. Some examples shed light on this argument: Kranium’s (Perú) detailed explanation of the abuses suffered by indigenous populations under the hands of the Spanish conquistadors; Puya’s (Puerto Rico) critique of the United States military occupation of the Caribbean island of Vieques; Corpus Calvary’s (Colombia) retelling of the communal massacres perpetrated by the guerrillas and the government in rural communities, including the torturing of women;

Figure 1.1. Multidimensional characteristics of the epistemological change posed by the Distorted South for metal music, and subsequently for metal music studies.

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Seringai’s (Indonesia) account of the CIA-backed mass slaughter of suspected leftists in 1965–1966; and Sarparast’s (USA) feminist and anti-imperialist approach to Black Metal. These are just some examples of how the experiences of oppressed subjects are portrayed in the Distorted South through the distortion of official history explained earlier. It is crucial to notice how many of these metal artists depicting these oppressed subjects link their experiences to fifteenth-century colonialism. They are keenly aware of the constitutive role coloniality has played in today’s manifestations of oppression. These experiences of oppression are not only tales of others. They are brought home by authors in this book such as Mark LeVine and Pasqualina Eckerström who shed light on the oppressive experiences faced by metal fans and musicians themselves in the Middle East and Africa while confronting moral panics, arrests, and persecution. Metal musicians and fans in the Distorted South have embraced the fact that they are not only the storytellers of these experiences; they are witnesses who can attest to these embodied realities. It must be emphasized that the subjects in the Distorted South are not ontologically unidimensional. These subjects are not passive receptors of such oppressive practices. As the title of this book suggests, these subjects are defiant and enact a risky critique of coloniality and its consequences. In the ontological position of subjects portrayed in metal music throughout the Distorted South, we find an unflinching resistance to coloniality (which many have rendered as normal and natural). These subjects understand the past colonial experience and its present-day manifestations, bringing to light versions of history rooted in firsthand experiences as a necessary challenge to adopted “official” histories. See for example Leprosy’s (México) portrayal of the Zapatista uprising, which stands today as one of the most critical decolonial efforts in Latin America; Chaska’s (Perú) depiction of indigenous bodies as combative and assertive; Chewlche’s (Argentina) depiction of street protesters pushing back against the effects of neoliberalism in the region; and Chthonic’s (Taiwan) full-throated endorsement of the Taiwanese independence movement. These are all examples of metal musicians in the Distorted South actively challenging oppressive practices in their region and, more importantly, dismantling existing historical discourses that focus on their alleged passivity and inherent fatalism in facing these problems. In the present book, Edward Banchs examines how this process takes place in the output of metal bands in postcolonial Africa who reinterpret local history as a way to survive conflicts that today remind us of the legacy of colonialism. These are examples of how metal music engages in the distortion of official history, a key component of the Distorted South. Epistemological position—How does metal music become a praxis of knowledge creation in the Distorted South? As we hinted at earlier, metal in the Distorted South uses lyrics, images, and sounds to inform audiences

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of the oppressive experiences faced by those that inhabit these geographical and symbolic spaces. Its lyrics become a strategy for region-specific storytelling that highlights how oppression outwardly manifests, always lurking in the shadows of history. Take, for example, the critiques of coloniality posed by the band Alien Weaponry (Aotearoa/New Zealand) who denounce the colonial worldviews of Europe toward the Maori populations in a song like “Whispers.” These lyrics are used to inform listeners about the ongoing effects of coloniality and the importance of recognizing the humanity of those in the Global South. The praxis of knowledge creation found in metal music in the Distorted South also extends to the visual dimensions of the work produced. Here, the image is used as a form of countervisuality as proposed by Mirzoeff (2011). The image is a way to challenge the official narrative posed by those in power who would suggest to us that “there is nothing to see here.” (1) It raises the alarm, decries, informs, and becomes a vehicle through which metal listeners, or in this case, viewers or viewers-as-witnesses, are informed about oppression throughout the Global South. One could argue, then, that visuality creates a form of kinship whereby the viewers-as-witnesses come to acknowledge the reality of those affected. One recent and clear example of this in action is the striking image of a white police baton against a black backdrop in Zeal & Ardor’s (Switzerland) EP titled Wake of a Nation. The album describes the plight faced by Black and Brown communities in the United States in the face of police brutality and state-sanctioned assassination, both legacies of the colonial project. The image demands the attention of the viewer-as-witness, visually screaming as it imparts knowledge (see our dialogue with Manuel Gagneux in this book). If the official narrative tries to convince us that “there is nothing to see here,” the image reveals that there is in fact something imperative that demands to be seen. What we are asked to see is in the service of witnessing, not spectating. It is a move away from the spectacle (Debord 2002) and toward the recognition of a history of systemic oppression (Sontag 2003). For example, in this book Varas-Díaz and Nevárez Araújo provide a salient example of this practice by exploring the use of the image of the machete in Caribbean metal music as a reminder of the region’s colonial past and the need to fight against current-day coloniality. But the knowledge-building process is not exclusively relegated to the dissemination of information through lyrics and images. It also encompasses the bodily aspects that come into play when getting to know our world, specifically the critical role of emotions in transmitting information, making people feel part of the social fabric, and even constructing the social meanings of events. The epistemological strategy of metal in the Distorted South does not solely rely on relaying information through the usual channels of education, but rather it recognizes the importance of the phenomenology of emotions.

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Thus, the act is twofold: the phenomenology of emotions brought forth by the act of listening with our bodies to music echoes the phenomenology of emotions of bearing witness to senses of oppression. This is why, for example, Peruvian band Flor de Loto integrates Andean instruments into their music to reflect the region’s sense of “melancholy” each time it is forced to ruminate on the effects of coloniality. The same can be found in the music of the band Divide and Dissolve (Australia), who rarely use lyrics and focus on their instrumental doom pieces, and the emotions their sound generates, to critique coloniality, patriarchy, and oppression. All of this is done with a profound acceptance and recognition of their experiences as females of Cherokee and Maori descent. The dual role of cognition and emotion in the praxis of knowledge creation mimics the challenges posed by decolonial theory to the supremacy of rationality in the modern/colonial Western project, through which European and male rationality became the epicenter of knowledge production. The Distorted South recognizes the limits of rationality and uses metal as a generator of emotions, a practice through which people can come face to face with their oppressive plights, think them through, more importantly feel through them, and act upon them. In other words, emotion serves as one prism through which the distortion of sound and image takes place. But it can also be seen as an act of distorting defiance. Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals-Borda (1987, 2009) championed the idea of “sentipensar” to describe an individual’s understanding of the world through both their minds and hearts. The idea stemmed from his work with marginalized communities, specifically fishermen in his country. Metal in the Distorted South has used a form of sentipensar to understand and combat oppression. After all, metal is sound, language, imagery, thought, and lifestyle, all of which invoke the body, the senses, the mind, and the heart in one way or another. It seems natural to us to think of metal as a “sentipensante” intervention. Emotions serve as a gateway through which we gain new forms of knowledge; forms that often go against the supremacy of rationality. Methodological position—Considering metal music’s ontological concern with oppressed/resistant subjects and how the praxis of knowledge creation is intrinsically embedded in this process, the Distorted South can be seen as engaging in a defined methodological agenda. It searches for ways to transform itself and its context. Firstly, it moves to transform itself from within, entailing what we see as the alteration of metal, focusing on its sounds, visual aesthetics, and lyrical content. This transformation is clearly palpable throughout the Distorted South in bands that have integrated local instrumentation into traditional metal sounds, altered how local cultures are portrayed saliently in album artworks, and regionalized lyrical content to reflect the musicians’ positionalities. Here we find another prism through

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which the Distorted South engages in the distortion of sound and image. The examples of this transformation throughout the Global South abound: Arraigo’s (Argentina) integration of instruments like the charango and bombo legüero into its sound; the deployment of traditional percussion instruments and polyrhythms in the sub-Saharan African metal of Arka’n Asrafokor (Togo) and Skinflint (Botswana; see Banchs, this volume); and the subversive Arab melodies of Znous (Tunisia; see LeVine, this volume). The use of Afro-Caribbean imagery by Black Metal concert promoters in Puerto Rico is another critical example of these methodological transformations (Varas-Díaz and Mendoza 2018). Finally, the regionalization of lyrical content is frequent throughout the Global South; one crucial example is Tren Loco’s (Argentina) album SangreSur which directly addresses the region’s colonial past and present in its lyrics. These are all transformations of metal music carried out by examining and reflecting on contextual experiences, sounds, and images. But this is not where the methodological dimension of metal ends. Certainly, we can see the distortion of sound and image taking place in the Distorted South’s capacity for self-reflexivity. But such self-reflexivity also calls forth the Distorted South’s willingness to engage in acts of distorting defiance. As such, a second methodological agenda embedded in music from the Distorted South is its use of metal to transform people’s contexts. If the ontological dimension recognizes that oppression is an everyday experience in these regions and the epistemological dimension engages with building up that knowledge and disseminating it through methodologies invested in emotional potentialities, then a transformation of one’s context should follow, particularly if that transformation takes on the form of active resistance. Metal in the Distorted South has become engaged in these transformations through distinct forms of social activism. For example, fans in Guatemala under the banner of Internal Circle have organized to provide aid to indigenous schools abandoned by the government after the civil war. The Taiwanese band Chthonic has advocated openly for the country’s independence from China. Metal musicians in Indonesia actively participated in the protests that led to the ousting of president Suharto. In Colombia, promoters have created a music festival entitled Metal en la Montaña (Metal in the Mountains), where participating bands are educated on human rights issues in order to raise awareness among metal communities. Female metal fans in Argentina have created protocols to raise awareness of sexist practices within their scene (REEHM 2022). Metal bands like Curare in Ecuador have positioned themselves alongside rural communities to fight extractivist practices brought on by neoliberal government/mining industry collaborations. Female metal artists have engaged in public feminist decolonial reflection within the metal scene (see our dialogue with Susane Hécate from Brazil in this book). Susana

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Gonzalez’s work in this book highlights how metal music in the Global South has taken a feminist approach to combat the oppressive experience faced by women and Queer people. We stress that these forms of activism move away from traditional ways of interacting with the body politic. These are not forms of activism linked to outdated political parties or groups. They are forms of activism intrinsically linked to metal music that allow its participants to feel engaged in transforming society in communal acts without the perils of losing the individuality championed by the metal ethos. Such acts of distorting defiance exemplify the varied ways metal-centric activism occurs. For example, in this book Paula Rowe examines the use of metal as a form of activism among youth in Indonesia and Aotearoa/New Zealand to highlight indigenous roots and challenge social norms related to religion and gender. Also, Manuela Calvo explores how metal music in Argentina allows for intersectional reflections on issues related to race, class, and gender. These are just some examples of metal’s methodological approach toward transforming its context in the Distorted South. We are positive many more abound.3 Ethical position—Once metal music in the Distorted South has recognized its ontological subject and positioned itself as a methodological strategy capable of addressing oppression by invoking a praxis of knowledge creation, it becomes inevitable to think about its ethical dimensions. Metal in the Distorted South takes an ethical position on the side of the oppressed. In doing so, it challenges metal’s frequently neutral and apolitical positionings in the Global North, as documented by authors like Niall Scott (2012) and Keith Kahn-Harris (2007). The latter’s coinage of the term “reflexive anti-reflexivity,” used to describe how metal fans and musicians are aware of the politics surrounding the musical genre, yet decide not to engage with it, is brought into question in the Distorted South. This makes perfect sense academically, as the term was developed based on metal-related research in the Global North and not considering the particularities of the Global South. But the ethical positioning of metal in the Distorted South does not limit itself to challenging metal music’s position toward oppression and the political; it also brings into question traditional conceptualizations of the ethical dimensions of music in general.4 We argue that two conceptualizations of the relation of ethics and music stand out today as salient in academic work. The first is based on a homeostatic approach toward the role of ethics in music, while the latter is seen as an alleviator of conflict. Kathleen Marie Higgins (1991), in The Music of Our Lives, proposes that listening to music “gives us a very immediate sense of enjoyably sharing our world with others” (155). This idea is driven home by an idealized view of the world when she posits that music “involves a sense of sharing life with others” (156). This conceptualization might stem from her overall view of ethics as a way of “living at ease with one’s

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environment” (169) and how music “develops our ability to approach others in a nondefensive, noncompetitive manner” (156). This leaves little room to understand how music, used ethically, has little to do with homeostasis and is more closely linked to challenging historical patterns of oppression through active confrontation that can be uncomfortable for the status quo. Other reflections on music and ethics have pushed back, to an extent, on these homeostatic views. Marcel Cobussen and Nannette Nielsen (2016), in their book titled Music and Ethics, explore music as an art form capable of bringing forth an encounter with the other; those who are different from a central subjective position (in this case, that of Cobussen and Nielsen) and therefore experience the world differently. Although they cement their reflection on multiple views on ethics, it seems particularly significant that they reference Zygmunt Bauman’s (1993) conceptualization of ethics as “being for the other” in light of the oppressions meted out by the modern European project on particular populations. Although this is an important step away from the more homeostatic view on music and ethics outlined earlier, we propose that metal in the Distorted South aims to be more specific and targeted. Mainly because of its decolonial tone, metal in the Distorted South provides its listeners with a different ethical experience, one that is less concerned with fostering homeostatic relations, preferring to explore the tensions generated by social oppression. In essence, metal in the Distorted South posits an ethical position strengthened by its specificity regarding the oppressive experiences people live through and the tensions generated in the encounters between the oppressors and the oppressed. Some examples contained herein will help shed light on the ethical dimensions of metal in the Distorted South. Guatemalan band The Maximones has addressed the medical experimentation to which their country’s population was subjected by the United States during the late ’40s. In this process, local people were purposefully infected with sexually transmitted diseases to examine the course of the disease.5 The band addresses this colonial oppression in the song “Gonococo 44” included in their album Váyanse o Mueran (Leave or Die). A similar example can be found in Puerto Rican metal band Dantesco’s song “Coaybay/4645” from their album El Día que Murieron los Dioses (The Day the Gods Died). The song recounts the death of 4,645 persons on the island after the passing of Hurricane María in 2017. The number is an estimate of deaths by a Harvard University–led study. The local government, in order to appease colonial officials in the United States, insisted that the number of dead was less than fifty. A similar theme of experimentation on vulnerable peoples runs through Didier Goossens’s chapter in this book in which he examines metal in Aotearoa/New Zealand and its broaching the subject of experimentation and control of education as colonial practices.

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These examples serve to highlight how metal music in the Distorted South has engaged in an ethically impelled truth-telling process to confront oppression and coloniality. The bands that engage in a dialogue with these ethical dimensions can be seen as drawing a line in the sand; in other words, they are leading the way when it comes to acts of distorting defiance. THE DISTORTED SOUTH AS A PARADIGMATIC SHIFT IN METAL (AND HOPEFULLY METAL MUSIC STUDIES) The ontological, methodological, and ethical positionings manifested in the Distorted South are not small and meaningless changes happening within metal music. These are seismic alterations of what most people would consider metal music’s canon, its shared worldviews, and its potential role in society. At the risk of sounding overly optimistic, we see these changes emanating from the Distorted South as paradigmatic shifts within metal music and culture. These ways of understanding metal and its role in the lives of musicians and listeners speak to the use of the music as a space to resist coloniality via acts like critical community building (see the work of Oki Rahadianto Sutopo and Agustinus Aryo Lukisworo, and Azmyl Yusof and Adil Johan, in this book) and the championing of hope in the face of historical oppression and contemporary challenges like the COVID pandemic. See for example the case of indigenous metal musicians living in reservations created by US settler colonial practices written by Anthony J. Thibodeau and Sage Bond for this book. The need for dialogue amongst the oppressed peoples of the world is also highlighted in this endeavor (see our dialogue with Kobi Farhi in this book). These perspectives allow us to critically examine how we tell the story of metal music in the Global North (see Kevin Fellezs’s chapter in this book) and who plays a role in that process. Metal in the Distorted South has taken a clear step in siding with those oppressed by coloniality. Of course, much more still needs to happen within those spaces in order to continue to flesh out the consequences of such a challenge, and we propose that metal music’s transformational role needs to be examined longitudinally. The paradigmatic shift posed by the Distorted South certainly has implications for the future of metal studies; but the ripple effects extend beyond metal music itself, influencing the realms of anthropology, sociology, history, cultural studies, and other disciplines. This shift calls for metal studies to engage in multiple course-correcting efforts that will allow metal scholars to have a clearer and broader understanding of where metal in the Global South has been and where it is headed. Furthermore, extending our engagement with metal to address the Global South will not only broaden our horizons to

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consider those locales, cultures, and peoples so far neglected in metal studies, but it will allow for the Global North to reassess its own positionality, its own artifacts, and its own scholarship. Acknowledging the limitless possibilities of such an endeavor brings us—the editors, and hopefully the readers, too—to a juncture where we can, and must, reassess the questions and dilemmas posed at the outset of this introduction. Consequently, we end this introduction with three provocations with which we hope to start answering those questions and also help guide this book and metal studies more broadly. 1.  Metal studies must embrace a critical examination of metal music that surpasses the Global North. Yes, the story of metal in the Global North is important for metal studies, but our collective history does not end there. It is not guided solely, or at least it should not be, by the experiences of people in the United States and Europe. That period in metal scholarship has reached the limits of its shelf life. We can no longer continue “getting away” with it. If the field is to survive and remain relevant, it needs to surpass its ingrained limitations and take metal as a whole, including the Distorted South, seriously and responsibly into its disciplinary purview. 2.  Metal studies must undertake a necessary self-reflection informed by the historical socio-political contexts of multiple regions, by and for those regions. In other words, the disconnect between lived experiences, meanings, and uses of metal must be bridged. It is important to understand the development of metal music, but this process will always be incomplete without an examination of the oppressive contexts in which metal continues to thrive. This perusal cannot become a vague and facile critique of modernity or a lethargic lament of how horrible life, as a generic concept, can be. Peoples’ experiences are situated geographically, politically, and historically. In the case of the Global South this entails an examination of coloniality, particularly from within each context, with boots on the ground, in a fully embedded manner that shuns extractivist scholarship and epistemic violence. This fact cannot be ignored anymore. 3.  We are aware that there is a recent trend of “decolonization” and “decoloniality” in the human sciences. Both terms are thrown around without prejudice, thought, or critical nuance. There is, unfortunately, a bitter irony at the heart of this practice. Some scholars in the Global North can score points by forcefully proclaiming the need to “decolonize” their disciplines and incorporate more perspectives from the Global South. Without concrete changes, however, such aims will remain an unreachable fantasy and, worse yet, a useless academic exercise.

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Understanding the concerns and viewpoints of scholars in the Global South necessarily entails the willingness to abandon the writing about colonial oppression as a fashion statement. We have aimed to challenge this activity throughout this book by incorporating voices from the alleged “margins” in the hopes of bringing them into some sort of center. We have invited them to write for themselves, to collaborate in dialogues, as ways to avoid engaging in what Spivak (2010) called the “ventriloquism of the speaking subaltern” (27). It is time to surpass the disconnect between metal scholarship carried out in diverse geographic positions. Thus, we invite our colleagues and readers to travel to the “margins” themselves and meet decolonial researchers there, to hear what they want to talk about, on their terms. We hope this book is the start to a fruitful dialogue that is noisy, messy, disruptive, and defiant, just like metal music itself, for genuine dialogue only happens when radical rethinking is contemplated. REFERENCES Bannerji, H. “Building from Marx: Reflections on Class and Race.” The Ideological Condition: Selected Essays on History, Race and Gender 32, no. 4 (2005): 144– 160. doi: 10.1163/9789004441620_002. Bardine, B., and J. Stueart. Living Metal: Metal Scenes Around the World. London: Intellect, 2022. Bauman, Z. Postmodern Ethics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1993. Brown, A. R. et al. “Introduction: Global Metal Music and Culture and Metal Studies.” In Global Metal Music and Culture: Current Directions in Metal Studies, edited by A. R. Brown et al., 1–21. New York: Routledge, 2016. Calvo, M. B. “Metal extremo y globalización en América Latina: Los casos de Hermética (Argentina), Masacre (Colombia) y Brujería (México).” In Reflexiones comparadas Desplazamientos, encuentros y contrastes, edited by M. C. Dalmagro and A. Parfeniuk, 170–89. Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 2017. ———. “Perspectiva indigenista en la música metal de Argentina.” Metal Music Studies 4, no. 1 (2018): 147–54. doi: 10.1386/mms.4.1.147. Castro-Gómez, S., and R. Grosfogel. El giro decolonial: Reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global. Colombia: Siglo del Hombre Editores, 2007. Clinton, E., and J. Wallach. “Recoloring the Metal Map: Metal and Race in Global Perspective.” In Modern Heavy Metal: Markets, Practices and Cultures, edited by T.-M. Karjalainen and K. Kärki, 274–82. Helsinki: Department of Management Studies: Aalto University, 2015. Available at: http:​//​iipc​.utu​.fi​/MHM​/Clinton​.pdf ———. “Facing the Musical Other: Alfred Schutz, Emmanuel Levinas, and the Ethnography of Musical Experience.” In The Oxford Handbook of Ethnomusicology

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Higgins, K. M. The Music of Our Lives. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1991. hooks, b. Ain’t I a Woman? Routledge, 2015. Kahn-Harris, K. Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Academic, 2007. MacLachlan, H. “(Mis)representation of Burmese Metal Music in the Western Media.” Metal Music Studies 2, no. 3 (2016): 395–404. doi: 10.1386/mms.2.3.395. Maldonado-Torres, N. “On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the Development of a Concept.” Cultural Studies 21, nos. 2–3 (2007): 240–70. doi: 10.1080/09502380601162548. Mignolo, W. D. “Introduction: Coloniality of Power and De-Colonial Thinking.” In Globalization and the Decolonial Option (1–21). New York: Routledge, 2010. ———. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011. Mirzoeff, N. The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Pérez Pelayo, M. “Building Communitas through Symbolic Performances: Mexican Metal and the Case of Cemican.” Metal Music Studies 7, no. 1 (2021). Quijano, A. “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality.” In Globalization and the Decolonial Option (22–32). New York: Routledge, 2010. ———. Cuestiones y Horizontes: De la Dependencia Histórico-Estructural a la Colonialidad/Decolonialidad del Poder, Revista de Sociología. Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2020. doi: 10.15381/rsoc.v0i28.16897. Red de Estudios y Experiencias en y Desde el Heavy (REEHM). “Protocolo para la Presención y la Intervención Contra las Violencias por Motivos de Género en el Metal.” Buenos Aires: Author, 2022. Rivas, A. “Representaciones musicales en tiempos de violencia: Orígenes del metal peruano durante la crisis general de los años ochenta.” Metal Music Studies 4, no. 1 (2018): 209–18. doi: 10.1386/mms.4.1.209. Sánchez, M. Thrash Metal—Del Sonido al Contenido: Origen y Gestación de una Contracultura Chilena. Santiago, Chile: RIL Editores, 2014. Scott, N. “Heavy Metal and the Deafening Threat of the Apolitical.” Popular Music History 6, no. 1 (2012): 224–239. doi: 10.1558/pomh.v6i1/2.224. Sontag, S. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador, 2003. Sousa Santos, B. de. The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2018. ———. “Epistemologías del Sur/Epistemologies of the South.” Utopía y Praxis Latinoamericana 54, no. 54 (2011): 17–39. Spivak, G. C. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Reflections on the History of an Idea: Can the Subaltern Speak?, edited by R. C. Morris, 21–78. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Turner, J. “Review of the Books ‘Global Metal Music and Culture: Current Directions in Metal Studies’ and ‘Connecting Metal to Culture: Unity in Disparity.’” Popular Music 37, no. 3 (2018): 509–512. doi: 10.1017/s0261143018000314.

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Valijärvi, R.-L., C. Doesburg, and A. Digioia. Multilingual Metal Music: Sociocultural, Lingusitic and Literary Perspectives on Heavy Metal Lyrics. United Kingdom: Emerald Publishing Limited, 2021. Varas-Díaz, N. Decolonial Metal Music in Latin America. London, UK: Intellect, 2021. Varas-Díaz, N., and S. Mendoza. “Morbo ancestral: Reformulando la cultural local a través de la música metal en Puerto Rico.” Metal Music Studies 4, no. 1 (2018):. 165–174. doi: 10.1386/mms.4.1.165. Varas-Díaz, N., and D. Nevárez Araújo. “What Has Latin American Metal Music Ever Done for Us?: A Call for an Ethics of Affront in Metal Music.” In The Cambridge Companion to Metal Music, edited by J. Herbst. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Varas-Díaz, N., D. Nevárez Araújo, and E. Rivera-Segarra. “Conceptualizing the Distorted South: How to Understand Metal Music and Its Scholarship in Latin America.” in Varas-Díaz, N., Nevárez Araújo, D., and Rivera-Segarra, E. (eds) In Heavy Metal Music in Latin America: Perspectives from the Distorted South, edited by N. Varas-Díaz, D. Nevárez Araújo, and E. Rivera-Segarra, 7–36. London: Lexington Books, 2021. Varas-Díaz, N., D. Nevárez Araújo, and E. Scaricaciottoli. “Introduction: A Window into Heavy Metal Scholarship in the Global South.” In In Black We Are Seen: Seven Approaches to Argentinian Heavy Metal, edited by E. Scaricaciottoli, N. Varas-Díaz, and D. Nevárez Araújo, xv–xxiv. London, UK: Intellect, 2020. Wallach, J. “Global Rock as Postcolonial Soundtrack.” In Bloomsbury Handbook for Rock Music Research, edited by A. Moore and P. Carr, 469–85. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. Wallach, J., and A. Levine. ‘“I Want You to Support Local Metal’: A Theory of Metal Scene Formation.” Popular Music History 6, no. 1 (2011): 116–34. doi: 10.1558/ pomh.v6i1/2.116.

NOTES 1. One notable exception has been the work of Rich Hobson who has consistently covered bands from the Global South for Metal Hammer. His efforts are important and evidence a way to move forward in metal-related journalism. 2. We present this diagram as a way to depict and summarize the multidimensional characteristics of the epistemological change posed by the Distorted South for metal music, and subsequently for metal music studies. The diagram is circular in recognition that these dimensions do not emanate in any particular order. For example, sometimes the ontological positionalities can precede methodological concerns. On other occasions the opposite is true. Therefore, the visual representation of the model is not meant to establish a chronological hierarchy. The ontological, epistemological, methodological, and ethical positions of the Distorted South seem to emerge in independently divergent orders according to the individual musicians and scholars and their respective realities throughout the world; this, in turn, is based on their experiences and actions.

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3. A third methodological transformation within metal has to do with metal scholarship itself. The rapid development of metal scholarship throughout the Global South, particularly in Latin America, is clear evidence that there is a praxis of knowledge production related to metal music that sees itself as different and distinct from metal scholarship in the Global North. Only time will tell if those two worlds will meet, engage in dialogue, merge, or continue to exist as separate entities. Initial efforts to bridge this gap began at the 5th Biennial Research Conference of the International Society for Metal Music Studies which was carried out on México City in 2022. Regardless of the outcome, a significant amount of metal scholarship in the Global South can be seen as a strategy to decolonize a field of study. 4. We have discussed our understanding of the role of ethics in some metal music’s positionality elsewhere and have decided to explore it more in-depth here from a Global South perspective. For further reading we suggest examining the following materials: Clinton and Wallach (2023), Varas-Díaz and Nevárez Araújo (no date). 5. It is worth mentioning that Zeal and Ardor have written a song titled “Tuskegee” which similarly captures the US government’s intentional infecting of Black subjects with syphilis to study the course of the illness on bodies. Here is an instance where the different localities in the Global South have been subjected to similar forms of oppression and violence.

SECTION 2

Hope

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An Exegesis of Excess Reverberations and Connotations of Feminisms Cartographed via Metal Music in the Global South Susana González-Martínez

The echoes of the different feminisms have crossed the border of the inaudible and entered the realm of metal music. Their emergence, late and residual, is a disjointed scream immersed in the seemingly perpetual white noise (Clinton and Wallach 2015) of masculinity that drowns this musical genre (Walser 1993; Weinstein 2000; Kahn-Harris 2007). This chapter is an exercise in “exegesis,” or interpretation, from a feminist empiricist perspective, of such artistic-political manifestations. Thus, I propose an approach to “excess”; excess understood as that which overflows; that which remains in the margins, outside with the rest, in exteriority. This is an excess embodied in the feminist artistic-political practices of women, queer people, and some men, and grown in the interstices of metal scenes, where we have been symbolically and practically relegated to the margins of production (Savigny and Sleight 2015). More precisely, it attends to the oozing excess of a geolocated wound in the context of the Global South that is made visible via artistic productions, making such wounds concrete, but also capturing how deeply traversed they are by inescapable, oppressive social realities. From here, I invite readers to listen to the reverberations emanating from reflections initially proposed by feminist theory and praxis, and which are now present in metal music in the Global South (not without tensions and contradictions). In order to achieve this goal, I base my analysis on two related sources. First, I conducted in-depth qualitative interviews carried out with feminist metal bands from the Global South, which include Amurians (Brazil), Blast 33

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Bitch (Argentina), Derrumbando Defensas (Chile), Filosa (Argentina), Furias (Argentina), Hermostra (Argentina), Matriarch (Puerto Rico), Miasthenia (Brazil), Santa Muerte (Brazil), Testosteruins (South Africa/Tunisia), and Tormentress (Singapore). Second, I offer a discourse analysis of the band’s artworks and lyrics focusing on Derrumbando Defensas (Chile) and Miasthenia (Brazil). Both bands have been selected to exemplify my main arguments in this chapter. In order to minimize the possible Eurocentric bias that my interpretations may contain, I have submitted the discourse analysis of the artwork and lyrics to a double review and approval by the bands in question prior to publication. However, I must warn that the present cartography of theoretical-feminist connotations and reverberations in metal bands from the Global South is limited. It is mostly based on almost completely unknown bands that are difficult to locate. The present chapter must be understood, therefore, as a partial view of a much broader picture. I have included in it those bands that maintain an open and direct political discourse, in such a way that it could illuminate an analysis of concepts or categories of analysis identifiable within feminist epistemologies. Those other bands that exhibit more ambiguous, allegorical, or oblique discourses have been discarded from this selection and from this chapter. This does not mean that their contributions are not relevant to the journey of feminisms in metal music1; rather, in order to achieve a clear identification of feminist theoretical interventions in the artistic productions of these bands, an explicit political position was necessary which could serve to pinpoint such an analysis. For this reason, I will refer to these rhetorically explicitly political bands as “feminist metal,” so as to distinguish their work from the reflections around feminism/s, understood as a push for gender equality in metal in general, which could manifest itself in other types of practices or activism. Feminist metal is a complex phenomenon, virtually absent from academic works on metal music. In its discourse and aesthetics, it combines the polychromy of the different metal cultures with a myriad of diverse political positions that produce diverse manifestations in the different contexts where it emerges (González-Martínez 2021a). One of these positions has been identified by Jocson-Singh (2019) as a sign of vigilante feminism, for example, in the band Castrator, but there are many others. Each band participating in my study2—both in the Global North and South—has a distinct political position and way of understanding feminism that is highly affected by their context and life experiences. However, based on my analyses, it is remarkable that feminist metal bands have some common characteristics between many of them. Some commonalities include: the recurrence of issues typical of women’s struggles such as abortion or sexual violence; the use of feminist art strategies such as the appropriation of “cursed” female figures, goddesses,

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and mythological entities and inspiration in the “magical”; or the ways of making art, aligned with the group techniques of so-called Consciousness Raising3 practices (González-Martínez 2021b). Another very noticeable common feature of global feminist metal is that it creates a practice in line with what—inspired by Marisa Belausteguigoitia and Araceli Mingo (1999)—I call a gender fugue.4 By this, I mean the existence of a polyphonic practice (voices and perspectives)—which includes women, men, and Queer individuals in its ranks, who exhibit different feminist political positions. These positions are structured by a counterpoint that gives it a certain harmonic balance. In turn, such balance is defined by the construction of a strategic “vulnerable multiple subject” in the face of gender-based violence. From here, we can elucidate how the plethora of different conceptions around gender, sustained from the various theoretical-epistemological positions in feminist metal bands, focus on an inclusive political praxis far from totalizing positions. This aspect, common in feminist metal bands from both the North and the Global South, recalls the strategic conception of a “subaltern multiple subject” against the system that is typical of some feminisms, such as Latin American autonomous feminism and its humanist tradition (Marino 2019). This is how Heny Maatar, composer and multi-instrumentalist of the self-described “anti-macho African death metal” band Testosteruins (South Africa/Tunisia), expresses this idea: Being a man and feminist is like, for me, obvious. I believe that most fundamental problems for humans come from the feminist question [. . .] Feminism for me is like a preliminary step to work humanism [. . .] Feminists and Queer ideals are fundamentally HUMAN ideals, ideals and values that are of a universal character. Our starting point is the Oppressor VS Oppressed equation, injustice and discrimination.

Consequently, the artistic-political strategies of feminist metal bands are contained in a double subversive exercise (fugue): on the one hand, against binarism and gender injustice; on the other, as a response to the original theoretical-epistemic ties sustained by the different feminist political positions in each band. The same dilemma observed in the discourse of some bands interviewed in this chapter, and in my broader research with feminist bands from the Global North, evidences this fugue to which I refer. This state of fugue reveals the plasticity with which feminist metal is capable of integrating and overcoming the theoretical borders of various theoretical-political positions initially positioned against each other in feminist debates. In any case, even when certain similarities are observable, the feminist metal of the Global South has an imprint derived from its place of enunciation, which distinguishes it from that emanating from the Global North.

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Therefore, it requires specific analysis, from nonhomogenizing theoretical frameworks,5 that allow embracing the distinctions of its artistic-political practice. In this chapter, I intend to delve into a reflection of these feminist bands from the Global South. To do this, I will support my arguments with some categories of analysis used by Black, community, and decolonial feminisms, which allow me to notice the deep marks left by the historical conditions of the place of enunciation in the narratives of the selected bands. In this way I intend to distinguish, on the one hand, a relational tonality of empowerment differentiated in the Global South. On the other hand, based on the discourse analysis of the two selected bands, I will also be able to identify two characteristics of the identity of feminist metal from the Global South: 1) the intersectional polyrhythm, and 2) the decolonial pulse. In what follows, I develop these concepts with greater depth. RELATIONAL TONALITY: EMANCIPATORY (COMMUNITARIAN) EMPOWERMENT A first distinguishable characteristic in feminist metal from the Global South is the communitarian and emancipatory relational tonality6 that guides its conception of empowerment. Authors such as Rappaport (1987) postulate that empowerment implies both a process and an objective. Defined this way, it therefore requires a change at the personal-interpersonal level, and another at the sociopolitical-community level (Breton 1994; Du Bois and Miley 1999; Gutiérrez 1994). Despite this, the global expansion of feminist empowerment with an individualist and postfeminist meaning is in the present notorious for aligning with neoliberal political interests, which do not challenge the system and which, on many occasions, encourages the self-sexualization of women (McRobbie 2004; Gill 2007). An exemplary dichotomy of this postfeminist look has been identified in metal music (Savigny and Sleight 2015). An example of this is the increment in the female presence together with the persevering sexualization of women in metal contexts, which could be linked to this postfeminist vision of empowerment, where the option of freely choosing to be a “sexual subject” is promoted (Gill 2007). This same double-entanglement (McRobbie 2004), typical of postfeminism, navigates the consideration of metal as a masculinist and hostile context for women, while potentially providing the opportunity to negotiate, transgress, or reconfigure the normativity of gender (Hill 2016; Riches 2015; Vasan 2011; Savigny and Sleight 2015, etc.). Ultimately, female agency—understood as freedom and choice—becomes synonymous with feminism and liberation (McRobbie 2009). Ironically, this brand of agency makes invisible how this female subjective “transgression-emancipation” is accessible only to certain

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White Western women (Jess Butler and Simidele Dosekun cited in Giraldo 2020) and ignores considerations of a postfeminist double-entanglement as a regulatory regime of female subjectivity. This, in turn, restores the coloniality of gender and the coloniality of power (Giraldo 2016). Although the communality of feminist metal is already an unquestionable fact from the very formation of the bands as a group of people in artisticpolitical conjunction, it is noticeable that the majority of those that are enunciated from the territories of the Global South raise strong positions critical of the system, at the same time they propose a communitarian praxis. The link between the personal and the political in feminist metal of the Global South generates an overflow favorable to the social-community, which transcends the artistic realm. This same excess or overflow, articulated in the life experiences of local scenes, has been identified by Varas-Díaz (2021) in Latin American decolonial metal bands. In this way, feminist metal bands from the Global South move away from a focus on individualist/group empowerment (for the purpose of personal development or attainment of particular positions), toward action for the purpose of social transformation and the generation of changes in their respective environments and communities. An example of this is the volunteer work carried out by Gwen, the guitarist of the band Tormentress (Singapore) “at the front desk of an abused women and kids service in the Philippines” or the strong overflow toward sociocommunity work that characterizes the band Blast Bitch (Argentina). In the collective voice of its components, Constanza Samhain, Pely Macchi, and Ariel Ledo: Our ideal is to be able in some way to re-educate, inform, that people learn to live in total equality, leaving behind our retrograde and patriarchal teachings [. . .] In our case we wanted to express it theoretically in our lyrics and figuratively in our marches and social participation. Whenever we can we try to be part of donation drives and aid initiatives for people with social inequality or who suffer gender violence.

Additionally, this excess toward socio-community appreciable in the words of Blast Bitch (Argentina) (as well as in other bands we will discuss) matches with the pedagogical action of the decolonial metal bands described by VarasDíaz (2021) through extreme decolonial dialogues. In sum, in feminist metal bands from the Global South, we find activity in and from their communities (physical and virtual) involving, for example: 1) an activist support network and support groups in Argentina or Brazil; 2) the creation of their own spaces and concerts free of gender violence in Argentina; 3) activism in networks, marches and campaigns, and/or dissemination of feminist slogans in most of the bands’ web pages, as well as in their personal profiles in Chile, Argentina,

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and Brazil; and 4) collaboration initiatives with other feminist artists and/or collectives outside of the music world, as donations and/or collaborations and initiatives with and in support of people living through social inequality or victims of gender violence in Argentina and Singapore as well as indigenous peoples in Brazil, among others. In short, the communitarian relational tonality, in almost all the feminist bands from the Global South in this study, is shown as a differentiating key to their vision of empowerment. As I have argued, this distinction in empowerment is not trivial. It is indicative that feminist metal in the Global South is moving away from individualist postfeminist stances, a reflection that the contextual depth is a scar, a mark on these bands. The contextual depth weaves a type of metal that favors the social-community, not limited to the contours of the music scenes, which denotes a vision of the emancipatory ideal in contrast with the one formulated in the Global North. The strong link with their context denotes another relevant issue; a type of “rooted subjectivity”7 in an experience of oppression shared by the broad social-community, itself conditioned by the inescapable experience of inhabiting certain places (territories and bodies) on the other side of the abysmal line (de Sousa Santos 2006). We will be able to glimpse this “rooted subjectivity” in the narratives and artistic discourses explored in this chapter, as well as observe an articulated reflection around the multiple oppressions experienced. INTERSECTIONAL POLYRHYTHM: MAKING THE MATRIX OF INTERLOCKING OPPRESSIONS VISIBLE8 The second hallmark of feminist metal from the Global South is the intersectional polyrhythm9 of its political analysis. When critical reflection on gender articulates the links between the personal and the political, integrating different analytical dimensions from the cultural, intersectionality emerges. The concept of intersectionality arises as a consequence of a revolution produced within another:10 that of the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM). In 1977, the Combahee River Collective issued their landmark statement titled “Black Feminist Statement.” In the statement several controversies are raised, concluding that the personal is political and also cultural (Barriteau 2011). Following Violet E. Barriteau, with the emergence of this line of critical thought of so-called Black feminisms, different authors begin to problematize political economy including and bringing together both racial and gender vectors (Carby 1982; Davis 1981). Similarly, four main oppressions—race, gender, class, and sexuality—are identified in an intertwined way, and a calls is made for the need to carry out analyzes that consider their interdependence (Ransby 2000). For this purpose, new concepts and

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perspectives arise, such as “multiple jeopardy/multiple consciousness” (King 1989) or the better known “intersectionality” (Crenshaw 1991). In the present chapter, and following Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge (2016), I adopt intersectionality as an analytical or critical reflexive form that starts from the consideration of social and personal realities as complexities affected by multiple factors, and as a critical praxis. That is to say, following the authors I see intersectionality as a way in which people produce convergent schemes or are inspired by them for their daily life, work, product creation, and so on. In this conception of intersectionality, the emphasis that the authors place on actions being based on a communitarian practice is notable; something that links intersectionality with the aforementioned relational tonality of empowerment in feminist bands from the Global South. In metal studies influenced by considerations of gender, intersectionality has not been sufficiently reflected upon, aside from some reference texts (i.e., Dawes 2012). As we will see, this will be a key characteristic which marks an extremely important distinction with the so-called White feminism of the Global North, and which defines the analyzed feminist bands within the territories of the Global South. In this intersectional polyrhythmic option, we find most of the participating bands from the Global South in my study: Santa Muerte (Brazil), Blast Bitch (Argentina), Eskröta (Brazil), Tormentress (Singapore), Hermostra (Argentina), Furias (Argentina), Testosteruins (South Africa/ Tunisia), and Derrumbando Defensas (Chile). Likewise, just as each band has different conceptions and positions on feminism, different connotations appear in the way in which they develop an intersectional thought. This point is confirmed by the different nuances of intersectionality that can be found in the words of my interviewees: The idea behind our art is to demonstrate strength, empowerment. . . . We intend to express all the social protests and problems that we all experience in capitalist, sexist, and patriarchal societies. We go against all that and our purpose is to express that awareness, both of social and gender equality. (Blast Bitch, Argentina) Initially when we just started in 2007, our lyrical theme was mostly about feminist rights. Then we evolved to other political related and myth themes [. . .] We thought it would be good to speak up for the minority. (Tormentress, Singapore) Homophobia, racism and xenophobia behaviors are from the same garbage bag, sexism is the most primary one [. . .] Primarily . . . the beginning of everything always starts with contempt for women. Then it evolves into contempt for others. People of other colors or who are simply different. (Heny Maatar, Testosteruins, South Africa/Tunisia)

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As I argued earlier, we can see the different nuances of intersectionality, for example, in the words of Heny Maatar (Testosteruins). It is remarkable how his reflection on the matrix of interlocking oppressions is built on gender inequality in the first place. Something that is not shared in all feminist positions, but that coincides with thinkers such as Rita Segato (2013) as well as Adriana Guzmán and Julieta Paredes (2015). Similarly, intersectionality is also reflected in the lyrics and artwork of these bands. Because of how intersectional eloquent it is, I will highlight here the discursive analysis of the work and the interviews conducted with the Chilean hardcore-metal band Derrumbando Defensas. Intersectional feminist metal bands in the Global South often incorporate approaches that delve into issues stemming from political economy, that is, capitalism and neoliberal practices constitutive of a life-death system (Lidia Fagale in Rauber 2018). This intersection is usually generated from ecofeminist positions, since the artists understand that the global political and economic system, based on dispossession and unlimited exploitation, has irreparable consequences for the environment, living beings, peoples, and life itself on the planet. Derrumbando Defensas is one of the bands from the Global South that reveal this intersection through their lyrics. In words shared by Maritza Aguayo, Constanza Fernández, Mónica Torres, and Carolina Vera in our group interview, we can observe this line of thinking: Our band has been characterized as showing discontent, denunciation and anger against a disastrous system in which abuse, inequality and speciesism reign. We identify with ecofeminism, we give the same value to the fight against the exploitation of women and animals, the territory and the ecosystem, where capitalism and patriarchy are the main oppressors.

Here are three brief examples of the lyrics on their album Confrontar (2017), in which the intersectional character of the band’s reflections stand out. In the song “Fuck Society,” Derrumbando Defensas expressly refers to the responsibility of companies like Apple in the slave labor of more than 40,000 Black girls and boys in the cobalt mines of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Amnesty International 2021a). Thus, we can hear it in the following verses: “What is it about society that disappoints you so much? / Oh, I don’t know. Is it that we collectively thought that Steve Jobs was a great man even when we knew he made billions off the backs of children? [. . .].” In a direct way, they make a conscious critical expression attuned to the constituent axes of neoliberalism (androcentrism, anthropocentrism, imperialism, and racism) on all forms of life and the irreparable environmental damage that adjoins it, unmasking White supremacy’s links to the economy, the double standard of the West, and the lack of ethics in their consumption habits.

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In the following examples, the intersectionality can again be clearly observed. On the one hand, we can appreciate the intertwining between patriarchy, religious dogma, race/ethnicity, class and sexual orientation, in the song “Libre de Elegir”11: “Obligadas a cumplir una política social, avalada por la iglesia a la que temes enfrentar [. . .] Juzgándote mal por tu apariencia y tu actuar, por tu etnia, por tu clase social, hasta por tu condición sexual [. . .].” On the other hand, in the song “Savia,” we identify the intersection between neoliberalism, environmental destruction, racism, and the expropriation of territory from indigenous peoples in Latin America. Specifically, they allude to the conflict of the Mapuche people in the Araucania region in this song as well as in others such as “Abuso y Represión” (Abuse and Repression). It is known that the Mapuche people, unbeatable when confronted with the weapons of the conquerors, have not been able to resist the power of the economic machinery (Klein 2008). Sadly, their current struggle must demand recognition as a native people that guarantees the protection of their rights against neoliberal plunder. To add to the native people’s plight, the Chilean state itself avoids preserving their rights, which encompass the protection of its culture and territory, instead protecting the commercial interests of the large timber corporations (Klein 2008). The song “Savia”12 shouts loudly in the face of this injustice: “[. . .] Bosques nativos aúllan agitados, toda forma de vida se ve amenazada, ¡La maquinaria arrasa sin piedad! ¡No hay conciencia, esto se ha vuelto una guerra! Hoy vemos miseria y sangre derramada, por legítimos defensores, una industria dictó la sentencia y los culpables lucran explotando nuestra tierra.” Similarly, the appreciation of the visual art of Derrumbando Defensas allows us to observe how the image is also a reflection of intersectionality as resistance and denunciation. The most recent cover art made in 2020 for the Spanish reissue of the album Confrontar (2017) shows two hooded female figures with patches on one of their eyes, in clear reference both to the presence that feminists had in the social protests that took place in Chile toward the end of 2019, as well as the brutal repression of the state at such demonstrations (see figure 2.1). During the civil protest demonstrations, thousands of cases of police abuse, arrests, and sexual assaults were reported. Similarly, there were a slew of eye injuries, perpetrated by the security forces against Chilean protesters, caused by impacts of projectiles fired directly into the eyes of hundreds of people (Smink 2019). By showing how Chilean feminist women have put their bodies on the line in the fight against all kinds of oppression and social injustice, Derumbando Defensas makes evident the intersectional character of their criticism. In the same way, the bicolor chromaticism (black and green) of the cover is another sign of the articulated reflection evident in the feminist vision contained in it. Green and black are two colors with strong feminist symbolism in Latin American contexts. On the one hand, the

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Figure 2.1. Mónica Torres (graphic design) and Malditx Sudaca (illustration), (2020). Confrontar, Cover Art (Front), Spanish edition. Source: Image provided by Mónica Alejandra Torres Vilches.

green color that Derumbando Defensas uses is alluding to the fight for the right to abortion in Latin America. On the other hand, the black of the hoods and clothing worn by the figures in the album cover image is the distinctive color and attire worn by the so-called Black Bloc in the feminist movement. The feminist Black Bloc acts through “nonviolent direct action”; doing graffiti, intervening with monuments, acting as a human shield to protect the rest of the people in the marches, and so on (Amnesty International 2021b). The chromatic allusion to feminism is articulated in the same way in the image on the back cover of the album as a way to show intersectionality. In the image, several hooded protesters can be seen—the gender is symbolically indistinguishable—surrounding a burning police car, representative of the reaction of repulsion from the harsh repression suffered during the civil protests (see figure 2.2). Certainly, a visual set shows the aforementioned critical articulation manifested in her thoughts, which we will also see reflected in the special vinyl edition for the same album Confrontar, under the title Ruidos de Resistencia (2018). For this edition they chose a series of small rectangular images forming a collage, where photos of key moments from the Latin

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Figure 2.2. Mónica Torres (graphic design) and Malditx Sudaca (illustration), (2020). Confrontar, Cover Art (Back). Spanish edition. Source: Image provided by Mónica Alejandra Torres Vilches.

American feminist protests Ni una menos, to the marches for free education, along with other protests against repressive violence toward civil protesters, are alternated and captured. This same critical articulation will be evident in the decolonial reflections of feminist bands from the Global South. In short, we will see that this framework of communitarian empowerment and intersectional thought-praxis will be joined by a reflection on the historical conditions that have shaped social injustices and a decolonial emancipatory aspiration. In this way, we witness the configuration of the third characteristic of feminist metal from the Global South. DECOLONIAL PULSE: LOOKING BACK AT THE ORIGIN (OF THE PROBLEM). The third distinctive feature of feminist metal in the Global South is the decolonial pulse13 that serves as an interpretive paradigm and channel for

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true social transformation. Working within the “decolonial turn,” and from this Latin American school of critical thought, María Lugones (2007–2008) reviews the analysis of coloniality and gender in Quijano (2014), through the intersectional framework of black feminisms, to propose what she calls the “modern/colonial gender system.” In this way, she shows how the strands of gender-sexuality-race form a web that configures, from its very base, the tapestry of the coloniality of power (Quijano 2014), of knowledge (Lander 1993), and of being (Maldonado-Torres 2007). Lugones proposes that the modern colonial gender system would have supplanted the original gender relations existing in Abya Yala14 prior to the Spanish and European invasion. Consequently, the conquest would have imposed new dominant patriarchal forms, breaking the nonhierarchical complementary gender communal relations of the peoples, instead imposing the subalternity of women, compulsory heteronormativity, and the elimination of the third gender that exists in many cultures. Other authors, collected in Mendoza (2016), do not completely agree with this analysis, since they consider that there had been a gender hierarchy prior to the conquest. Rita Segato (2013) is one of the authors who lead this position and affirms that, with the conquest, there is an intensification of the patriarchal gender hierarchical system that already existed previously. In any case, the two positions affirm the greater power, recognition, prestige, and respect that women enjoyed before the conquest in the original cultures, since they were holders of their own ontology, spaces, and spheres of power where they were sovereign. We will see that feminist decolonial metal bands have this vision of the modern-colonial gender system and the “patriarchy of Christianity” (Grosfoguel 2018, 37) very present. In the words of one of my interviewees, Susane (Hécate) Rodrigues Oliveira, mastermind, vocalist, and keyboardist of the Brazilian extreme metal band Miasthenia: We want to remember the strength and historical role of women in pre-Columbian America, before the establishment of Christian and colonial patriarchy that demonized, oppressed and punished women’s freedom. In ancient Amerindian cultures, based on gender complementarity and reciprocity, women were viewed and treated with respect as tribal leaders, rulers, warriors, diplomats, priestesses, goddesses, healers, food producers, educators, and holders of knowledge.

From this brief contextualization we can better observe the pulse of feminist metal bands from the Global South that assume decolonial positions. Thus, they broaden the critical view of decolonial metal identified by Varas-Díaz (2021), adding a perspective and critical analysis of the historical gender conditions in the region and its repercussions in the present. In Susane’s words:

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Our music emphasizes the resistance of the Amerindians to colonial domination. It is a feminist approach [. . .] I understand that the struggle for gender equality also involves struggles against racism, colonial heritages, and various other forms of social discrimination that support heteropatriarchal/capitalist power structures.

There will therefore be, from the perspective of these feminist bands, several issues to highlight in their reflections and discourse that will serve as decolonial feminist resistance strategies; 1) they affirm their own history and existence with symbolic references to/in memory, that is, the rescue and awareness of female ancestral figures; 2) they confront the established order from transnational identities-in-politics; i.e., the defense and conception of the body as a political territory with the Earth (body-territory-Earth); and 3) they con-fabulate alternatives of re-existence from the colonial wound, that is, a holistic episteme and healing methodology. I analyze them independently. 1) Affirming One’s Own History and Existence with Symbolic References to/in Memory: Rescue and Awareness of Female Ancestral Figures Decolonial feminist metal bands attempt a rescue of the memory of native peoples, their cultures and the indigenous ancestral female figures. They thus fulfill a double function which is feminist as well as decolonial. This approach will differentiate them from the feminist bands of the Global North and from other non-decolonial bands in the Global South, in which feminist iconography abounds in the use of the “cursed” figures from a large part of Western mythology (González-Martínez 2021a). In this sense, the autochthonous figures rescued in decolonial feminist metal will also be chthonic entities (if we consider it from a Westernized perspective, since in earlier cultures death, the underworld and the dark do not have the same negative meaning, but their complete opposite; they correspond to the same positive cycle of life and rebirth (Dussel 2020)). Nonetheless, such figures exhibit a greater incidence of the telluric; they are figures strongly linked to the earth. Bearing in mind that these figures linked to death and the underworld have a positive, “not cursed,” harmonious meaning within the natural cycles of life and the cosmos, we must consider that the uses and appropriations of the entities, figures, and goddesses made by the different feminist bands must be interpreted from different explanatory frameworks. Seen this way, they allow us to clarify that the uses and appropriations of these entities, in feminist metal, transition from resignifying claims to figures—on many occasions unfairly converted into “cursed” beings such as witches or the Medusa—in the Global

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North, to a restitutive-decolonial function in the Global South, which tries to recover the original meaning of a figure erased from the story. The Brazilian band Amurians is an example of the above. The band rescues these indigenous ancestral female figures erased from history. Each member of the band heroically identifies with an original ancestral goddess/entity. In this way, through their performance, the women of the band assume these identities and their aesthetics; they dress, paint their bodies, carry the weapons or elements attributed to each goddess in their promotional photographs, and so on. With this appropriation and heroic identification on the part of the members of Amurians, an ancestral-matriarchal15 memory is rescued, embodied in figures such as Yebá Bëló; goddess who created the universe according to the Dessanas Indians of Brazil (Cezar 2016). Likewise, Amurians develops an awareness of their own culture and the original feminine power that existed prior to the conquest; restoring the idea of a way of inhabiting the world and relating with others (female sovereignty) linked to mother earth as a source of well-being, harmony, coexistence, and respect for all humanity, the planet and all living beings. This is how the band explains it to its followers on its social networks: One of our missions is to rescue the folklore, the legends, and the feminine figures present in the beliefs of the indigenous nations. In this European Christian society in which we are enveloped, our roots with the ancestral cultures were broken and massacred [. . .] Our facial paintings represent some entities of the indigenous culture: Yebá Bëló, Caipora, Ticê, and Sumá.

Yet another of the imposing ancestral figures rescued, and of great importance, will be the Amazons. The Amazons appear in the work of Amurians, as well as that of other bands. I will now focus on the discursive analysis of the band Miasthenia (Brazil), based on its treatment of the figure of the Amazons, to further my own investigation. Within Miasthenia’s oeuvre—along with numerous references to the goddess in her different meanings, among which Ixchel stands out as the “telluric” goddess of fertility—we find an entire conceptual album dedicated to the Amazons. As Susane Hécate notes, “The lyrics of the album Antípodas (2017) are inspired in the strength and resistance of these women against the Christian-colonial domination that occurred in sixteenth-century America.” With the conquest of Abya Yala, among others, the myth of the Amazons was transplanted to the islands and the American jungles. Consequently, to address the use of the figure of the Amazons in Miasthenia, we must consider how “monstrous femininity becomes Americanized in the New World” (Jaurregui 2008, 205), and how these mythical figures were used as a device of symbolic domination and control, in the form of a terrifying fiction of autonomous femininity (Useche 2018).

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This strategy of symbolic representation of the indigenous Other, particularly of the female Other, will continue in subsequent narratives up to the present day. For example, this is the case in the photographs that would circulate throughout Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, which would serve imperialist purposes (Freire 2015), and whose identical representations of the female indigenous Other we can continue to see reflected in the snapshots of the present (Yujnovsky 2019). We can trace the same stereotyping discourse in the representation of Mexicans, and by extension of all Latinos, in Hollywood cinema (Cristoffanini 2005). Likewise, a large part of current historians, from a scientific-historical discourse which begins in the mid-nineteenth century, interpret gender concepts and relations in the Latin American region based on the chronicles of the past, thus sustaining and perpetuating, with a claim to truth, a story based on the same binary and androcentric scheme (Rodrigues 2006). In addition, the symbolic regime imposed by the conquerors not only authorizes direct domination and dispossession (Rojas Mix 1993; Useche 2018), but also has the consequence of diminishing the political power of the indigenous people (Trexler 1995). In any case, it manages to keep the Other in subjective subjugation. As Julieta Paredes explains: The object of colonization, apart from exploiting the materials and products of the colonized territories, is also to invade, subdue, impose, dominate, exploit and colonize the bodies of the colonized to take their ajayus,16 their energies, their spirits, their forces [. . .] until the invaders gain entrance into the territories of the body, subjectivity, perceptions and feelings of identity, pleasure and desire. (2017, 7)

As we will see, the narrative of the album Antípodas (2017) is going to assume a counternarrative that, using visual and sound qualities, interrupts the continuity of the hegemonic colonial-patriarchal discourse, and dislocates the aforementioned symbolic order. Through a use of the figure of the indigenous/Amazonian, the narrative of Miasthenia is aimed at the restoration of much more than a political agency amputated from the sphere of the symbolic. It serves to create a rhetoric of value through the exercise of the human right to the memory of non-white lineages (Segato 2017) (see figure 2.3). In the same way, it serves in promoting the affirmation of identities, of one’s own existence, the restoration of the ajayu. In the description that the band makes of the album we can appreciate such disruptive intention: The confrontation and strong resistance of these warriors to the troops of the conqueror Orellana in 1542 on the Amazon River, still disturbs the historical Christian and patriarchal order imposed by the colonizers. This album provides a historical poetics that breaks and resists this historical order.

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Figure 2.3. Mário (Blasphemator) Meneces, (2017). Antípodas. Cover Art for the band Miasthenia. Source: Image provided by Susane Rodrigues de Oliveira (Susane Hécate).

The critical concepts developed in Antípodas are full of alter-historiographical details that carry out a type of disturbance/restoration, the result of a thorough review of bibliographical and documentary resources.17 This discourse also expands and transcends the sphere of the artistic through a strategy that delves into social reality itself. In this way, the band shares bibliographic sources on its social networks accompanying the promotion of the album. Again, this type of action resonates powerfully with the aforementioned extreme decolonial dialogues proposed by Varas-Díaz (2021). Also, this poetics that breaks and disturbs the established historical order is noticeable in the visual arts deployed by the band, which includes artwork and music videos. In what follows, I will be alternating my views on the art of the Antípodas album with its lyrics, doing so to obtain a more accurate vision of the narrative that Miasthenia offers in this album. The cover of the album Antípodas (right half of image 3 is the front of the cover/left half of image 3 is the rear of the cover) visually reinforces the lyrics (and vice versa) to achieve the aforementioned dislocation in the conquering historical narrative. For example, it is no coincidence that Miasthenia dedicates the back of the cover (symbolizing the hidden), to the representation of what the invading Other has fictionalized for the imaginary construction of America in the iconography and cartography of the sixteenth century (Ruiz 2021). Thus, the back of the album’s art visually exposes some symbols that indicate the aforementioned narrative of the conquerors, while the lyrics decipher their meanings, contributing to the unveiling of the falsity in the dominant narrative continuum. Thus, we can appreciate how the image captures a representation of the sphere of the impossible, of excess as the antipodal of the civilized world. We observe in the image the representation of barbarism, cannibalism, savagery, monstrous beings such as the blemmyes,

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or the riches of El Dorado. Similarly, the visual symbology on the back of the artwork finds an explanatory statement with a strong critical component in some song lyrics such as “Bestiários Humanos” or “Novus Orbis Profanum.” The title track of the album, “Antípodas,”18 echoes this same exercise when Susane sings, signaling to the aforementioned production of cartographies as instruments of terror: “Mapas antigos / Cosmografias infames de terras longínquas [. . .].” Lyrics such as these position the listener within a critical perspective that helps them identify within the historical narrative the background of an event in which a cover-up campaign of the Other19 was carried out (Dussel 1994). Susane continues by noting the historical construction of two opposite sides of the world based on the projection of an imaginary of excess: “Cinocéfalos teratológicos / Que negam a sua razão [. . .] Imagens do anticristo / Amazonas e Canibais / Seres da Eschatiá / Que habitam as Antípodas / Na mais obscura barbarie [. . .] Antípodas do medo / Separando mundos rivais / Norte e sul / Leste e oeste [. . .].”20 For its part, the frontal image of the cover art will offer us a completely different perspective than the one stated, a luminous face that traces a symbolic restorative justice through the awareness and valuation of elements that symbolize the original peoples, their cultures, and the female warriors. The image shows a scene with multiple representative elements of the indigenous cultures occupying the entire main space. This front part of the cover art shows the cultural richness, with a great temple as a symbol of the architecture of its advanced civilizations. The skulls, adorned with large headdresses on both sides flanking the image, are a symbol of the mythical meaning death has in the worldviews of the original cultures. This symbolic appropriation of the entire central space in the artwork achieves a shift in the centrality and heroism with which the conquerors were represented in some of the plates of the Americae Pasrs Quarta (Benzoni 1594), which relegated the margins of the images to countless monstrous beings. The ideation found in the artwork for the Antípodas album, through a symbolic displacement of the elements, represents a decolonial strategy put into action. For example, we can see how the two invading ships appear reduced in both parts (front and back) to a corner at the margins of the image; they are battered by the waters and half-destroyed. That is to say, a visual displacement occurs that removes (symbolically) from the center of the frame (of reference), dismissing it, that Other who, until now, fulfilled a “constituent” function of subjectivity itself. Let us think of this visual displacement as a decolonial act in the delicate interplay of symbolic recognitions with the Other, which builds our subjectivities (Zaramillo 2002). In this way, the image removes the conquering Other from his central position and nullifies his vampirizing power over the ajayu. The theme “Ossário”21 intertwines this visual movement of the ships with a cry of insurrection to the

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hegemonic narrative: “Um mundo tribal / Insubmisso e perturbador /Que não irá se ajoelhar diante da cruz.” Likewise, the image offers us an approach with a gender perspective that is also noticeable in the lyrics. In the cover art, the gender perspective is provided through the Amazon subject represented in the right side of the frontal image. She is an imposing female figure, her body is adorned with war paint, and she brandishes a bow and arrow in a firing position in defense of the territory (map of America) that serves as her background. Placing her in the foreground manages to magnify her. Thus, the bow that she carries manages to have a much larger presence in the image than the enemy ships represented. The female body of the warrior is well-proportioned, athletic, nonsexualized, upright, defiant, thus, subverting the monstrous representation of deformed, bent bodies, and sagging breasts of the savage indigenous women that appear in the multiple engravings of Indies Occidentalis (1590–1634) of the De Bry22 workshop. Her figure restores the power that the feminine always had before the conquest, and brings to a close the double function of this sonorous-visual disruption that is the Antípodas album. Ultimately, the album’s intention is to disrupt the entire colonial and patriarchal symbolic order. Lyrics such as “1542” and “Coniupuyaras” are good examples of the above. In the song “Ossário,”23 mentioned above, we can see how a gender perspective is perfectly intertwined with decolonial criticism alluding to female warriors: “Imagens de deusas guerreiras / Soldados inimigos / Recusam acreditar / Num mundo tribal / De ordem matriarcal / No ossário das Amazonas / Sacrifícios à grande deusa.” Similarly, the cry of insurrection and confrontation represented in the album serves as a bridge to reflect on yet another decolonial feminist strategy put into action in the work of Miasthenia. 2) Confronting the Established Order through Transnational Identities-in-Politics: Defense and Conception of the Body as a Political Territory with the Earth (Body-Territory-Earth). Decolonial feminist metal in the Global South is enunciated from what we could describe as transnational identities-in-politics,24 understood as strategic nonessentialist identities, from decolonial and community feminisms that assume a holistic relationship, in order to link the body with the earth. Therefore, the bodies are understood as landscapes, “Earth that walks” (Atahualpa Yupanqui cited in Segato 2013, 30). In this conception of the body-territory-Earth, bodies are seen as the result of a dominated, colonized geopolitical space, which constitutes the subject (Segato 2013), and goes through multiple colonial and patriarchal violences (Cabnal 2017). Comparatively, the connection of patriarchy (pre- and postconquest) does to

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the female body the same thing that extractivist economies do to the territory (Paredes 2010). The body is then that significant space of life, in which you are a Being and you Are in the world, becoming the first territory of defense (Cabnal 2017). In the holistic link between the body and the earth there is, on the one hand, a sacred conception of nature from the worldviews of the indigenous nations, but also, on the other, an idea of the ​​ racialized bodyterritory-political that exceeds the conception of race that we have seen in intersectionality since Black feminisms. Thus, race in the body of the Latin American subject is read by the Global North as a mark that need not always be the phenotype of the skin, but rather a “line, trace and imprint of a role that has been played, of a territorial connection [. . .] nothing less than an indication that one was in a certain position in history and that one belongs to a landscape” (Segato 2013, 225) The body thus conceived in decolonial and community feminisms is the place where oppressions have been built and through which it will be possible to free oneself from them. In the words of my interviewee Susane: I understand the body as a political territory [. . .] The body is the political place of habitation of our being. My female characters, in the figure of Amazon warriors, constitute bodies-territories of struggle [. . .] This resistance is daily, it is part of the processes of decolonization of the body.

Continuing with the analysis of the elements that appear in the artwork of Antípodas we will be able to trace this meaning of the earth and the body in conjunction. In the image, untamed nature overtakes the entire scene, becoming another element that offers resistance to the conquest. The waters of the Amazon River pummel the invading ships in alliance with the resistance of the warriors. The pastel shade chosen for the color green—the emblem of the jungle in Amerindian painting—typical of the natural dyes used by indigenous Amazonian artists (Cortés 2015), is successfully emulated in the artwork and floods the entire painting. It ensures that all the elements, including the bodies, are merged into the landscape, symbolizing the reading that I have just advanced of the body-territory-Earth. In this way, the female body of the Amazon is body and earth at the same time in the artwork of the album. The wonderful strategy to integrate this conceptual category of decolonial and community feminisms in the album artwork is cleverly followed in the lyrics, this time capturing the third decolonial feminist strategy mentioned.

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3) Con-fabulating Alternatives of Re-Existence from the Colonial Wound: A Holistic Episteme and Healing Methodology The narratives of decolonial feminist metal from the Global South project into the community (turning the latter into fabulized connivance: con-fabulate) the possibility of imagining alternatives of re-existence, from a decolonial holistic epistemological paradigm; that is, from an ontological paradigm that represents an antipode to Western thought. The notion of reexistence (which overtakes the idea of resistance) as a possibility and pedagogy (from the arts) affirming identities, was proposed by Adolfo Albán Achinte (2013). Nelson Maldonado-Torres (2017) maintains that reexistence is anchored to the affirmation of the body and the territory. Similarly, it affirms that art as a territory of reexistence alludes to: 1) the creation of zones of affirmation of life, 2) the expression of the scream as criticism of the established world, and 3) the expression of the desire of other forms of life, relational with the Other. Having reviewed in Antípodas the first two invocations of reexistence that Maldonado cites, I briefly explore the last one: the consideration of other forms of life from the colonial wound as an episteme. As I have mentioned, indigenous magical/mythical thinking is constituted in the Global South as a pair opposed to Eurocentric rationality (Quijano 2014). This ethicomythical core configures the horizon of meaning in the worldviews of the original peoples (Dussel 2020). It represents “[a]n existence governed by the value-community at its center, which is defended by a vital symbolic density of beliefs, rituals, and spiritual practices” (Segato 2013, 41). This ethicomythical nucleus is an epistemic and interpretative source of the world, but it also produces a healing methodology. Healing through ritual/spiritual practices, which may well be artistically manifested in feminist metal (GonzálezMartínez 2021b), releases internalized feelings of oppression. Consequently, the decolonization of the body to which Susane refers, goes through a healing of the colonial wound (Mignolo 2005 from Anzaldúa). Such a colonial wound connects past and present, explains the pain and consequences of coloniality on the subjectivity of people who do not fit the mold predefined by EuroAmerican stories (Mignolo 2005). This concept of colonial wound is identifiable in the verses of the song “ARAKA’E”25: “Passado presente / De um mundo antigo / De um continente desconhecido / Que sangrou por histórias, mentiras [. . .] Cicatrizes profundas / Nas memórias de tempos ancestrais / De sabedoria selvagem / Que corre em minhas veias / Memórias da resistência.” As we can see, Susane’s translation, conversion, and packaging of the theoretical background in artistic terms is brilliant. She condenses in a few verses the meaning advanced above about the colonial wound, while defining it as a place of embodied knowledge. Since the colonial wound is conceived as an

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epistemic and biopolitical place, from which “the African diaspora in Césaire, the skin in Fanon or the border in Anzaldúa” originated (Mignolo, cited in Herrera 2010, 652). Susane explains this concept in our interview as follows: The colonial wound is linked to the processes of exclusion, subjugation and violence, still in force in our society marked by processes of formal colonization in the past. It is a wound left by the destruction, denial and subjugation of indigenous and African ancestral knowledge, identities and practices [. . .]. Through historical fiction we problematize and question the official history that erased our leading role. We resist this pain through the construction of strong historical figures, with wisdom [. . .].

As I have argued, and notably echoed in Susane’s words, the decolonization of the body goes through the healing of the colonial wound. Following Lorena Cabnal (2020), through the liberation of internalized feelings of oppression, healing becomes a cosmic-political path; a multidimensional cosmogonic political element to liberate not only bodies (broad sexism, racism) but also nature (capitalism, extractivism, speciesism, etc.), and other knowledges (coloniality of knowledge). Community feminisms’ belief that women carry in their bodies the memory of ancestral knowledge capable of healing wounds, power relations, epistemic violence, territorial displacement, and so on (Cabnal 2015, 2017, 2020) is reflected as we have seen in Susane’s verses: “De saberoria selvagem / Que corre em minhas veias / Memórias da resistência.”26 This is a memory sedimented in the body of women, a knowledge bequeathed in the practices of daily resistance that the acts of decolonization of the body suppose, and that exceeds those of “Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the embodiment of knowledge” (de Sousa Santos 2018, x). In Susane’s words: I understand the body as a political territory [. . .] That is why it is from this place that we reflect and produce art, a place where we constantly fight against the processes of inscribing our bodies in territories marked by the coloniality of being [. . .] This is a daily resistance, which is part of the decolonization processes of the body.

We have been able to observe how the narratives scrutinized in decolonial feminist metal bands, concretized from the analysis of Miasthenia’s work, project a discourse onto the community that opens the possibility of imagining other ways of living and relating. In this sense, the work of anthropologist Marisol de la Cadena on cosmopolitics is revealing. De la Cadena (2017) makes visible those other possible ways of living and relating through the definition of its excess. For the author, excess is that which is ontologically impossible to understand through modern Western reason. This includes everything that is

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impossible to imagine and recognize in an intelligible way; for example, the conception of time in a circular way or accepting that a mountain is an Earth Being. Therefore, it is in the antipode of westernized thought, or in the excess that I have been discussing, where we could find the emergence of an alternative possibility to imagine other forms of existence that are respectful of life. In the review carried out on the Antípodas album, it has been palpable how this excess is the foundation of the re-existence alternatives that are projected and brought together in/with the community-audience. In short, and to conclude, it is at and through the excess visited throughout this chapter in its different manifestations, from which feminist metal in the Global South speaks. From “Nas fronteiras do possível”27 in the words of Susane, to bring together the idea that “another world is possible, from the long memory of the peoples [. . .] a community of communities, where power is a conjugable verb: I can, you can . . . ” (Paredes 2016, virtual presentation). DISCUSSION In this brief approach to an exegesis of excess, as a liminal space in which feminist metal is situated, I have tried to collect the pronouncements of the various feminisms contained in a doubly peripheral type of metal. The geopolitical and biopolitical sphere from which the feminist metal is enunciated in the contexts of the Global South doubly and triply conditions its marginality in the face of similar manifestations in the Global North. In the “cultural race,” they start from territories, peoples, cultures, bodies, and subjectivities depleted by colonialism and imperialism. This means that, at present, the dynamics of the coloniality of power also cross the metal music scenes in which they are inserted. By way of example, this becomes perceptible if we think about the causes that lead to a structural weakness of the music industry in Latin America, through the maintenance of its dependence on the North— where the production of records is mediated by licenses granted by the North or where concert ticket prices are inflated up to three times their value in the North, at the same time that microcredits are offered to pay for the tickets. We can equally see that the scene is equally crossed by a strong racism,28 and also sexism derived from the so-called “connection of patriarchies” (Guzmán and Paredes 2015). Thus, by merging the reflections of Nelly Richard (1983) and Cristoffanini (2003) on art and representations or narratives emerging from the Global South with those of Varas-Díaz (2021) on decolonial metal, we could identify some vectors for such marginal ostracism: 1) what is allowed for Latin American art is to connect with international models through copies; 2) the incorporation of the historical context to the products or narratives entails a critical reflection which disrupts the act of enjoying (consumption)

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the snack of the North; and 3) its export requires, on many occasions, a process of fetishization or exoticization that removes the controversial symbols/ signs. Aware of these vectors, we can easily deduce to what extent feminist metal from the Global South is challenging the discursive hegemony of the Global North. It supposes an insurrection to be a mere replica, instead commenting with its own voice about the realities that influence their lives, subjectivities, bodies, and territories. Feminist bands from the Global South are creating aural-visual devices that introduce an alteration, a disorder in the narrative uniformity emanating from the centers of power, as well as in the hegemonic feminist narratives themselves. This interruption violates the expected orders, disputing the place of discursive legitimation and achieving an alteration in the dominant symbolic order. In short, it creates an ethic-aesthetic far from any “harmonious fusion” contained in hybrid, anthropophagic or alter-modern conceptions, which other authors such as Isabel Cristina Costa Louzada (2017) have argued in the case of bands such as Miasthenia, alluding to phenomena such as the hybridism of Canclini or the Brazilian artistic anthropophagic movement. As Carlos A. Jaurregui (2008) indicates, such hybrid considerations remove the true sense of resistance that cultural products contain. Personally, I adhere to the vision that Varas-Díaz (2021) defends in the face of this same controversy about “hybridism” in decolonial metal, relying on the criticism of authors such as Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. Throughout the text, we have observed several categories of analysis within the various modes of feminism which have helped us identify the “excess” in the artistic narratives and political praxis of feminist bands from the Global South. In this way, I have observed a relational tonality which tends toward an emancipatory communitarian empowerment, which has its origin in the deep imprint of the oppressive realities visited upon people, as well as a strong link with the community-environment as a way to guarantee the very possibility of existence in the Global South. All of this takes place while facing the empowerment of individualist/group dynamics in the Global North. The contextual shell of feminist metal in the Global South inscribes in its practice two other important theoretical deployments from feminisms writ large: these are intersectional and decolonial theories. Most of the bands incorporated in this chapter, as well as others considered in my other work, will align with the intersectional polyrhythmic practice. However, the most notable would be, in my opinion, that place of enunciation from the colonial wound, as a creative-epistemic space that follows the type of metal whose pulse is in tune with the decolonial feminist side. It does so, first, by dignifying history and existence itself, through restorative symbolic references in biased memory, the rescue and valorization of ancestral female figures and original cultures. Second, by confronting the established order and affirming

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strategic transnational identities-in-politics, through a defense of the body (particularly the female/feminized body) as political territory, highlighting their link with the violence and injustices they suffer in their contexts but also a relationship of respect with other forms of life, holistic with the earth. In the third and last place, bringing together alternatives of re-existence projected from an awakening to a decolonial consciousness, where sensitivity, spiritual practices, rituals and non-Western knowledge become important as an epistemic source and methodology for healing the aforementioned colonial wound. All of the above are a sign of a very fine thread given the complexity of the realities in the contexts of the Global South, based on a decolonial and feminist analysis. Its results, when implemented using an artistic tool such as metal music—which should prudently not be originally attributed to the Global North until sufficient analysis is carried out by applying a hermeneutic of suspicion in the face of Eurocentric narratives—create, as I have already mentioned, an aural-visual artifact that exceeds the contours of a genre in the musical, conceptual, epistemic, discursive, relational, as well as physical realms of its own scenes. It may be a few “isolated” voices, but let’s remember that the strength of one, at the right point, is enough to unleash an avalanche. REFERENCES Albán Achinte, Adolfo. “Pedagogías de la re-existencia, artistas indígenas y afrocolombianos.” In Pedagogías decoloniales: Prácticas insurgentes de resistir, (re)existir y (re)vivir, edited by Catherine Walsh, Tomo 1, 443–68. Quito: Abya Yala, 2013. Amnesty International. “¿Hay trabajo infantil detrás de los dispositivos de Apple?” Accessed Nov. 31, 2021a. https:​//​www​.es​.amnesty​.org​/actua​/acciones​/trabajo​ -infamtil​-cobalto​-apple​-mar16​/ ———. México: La era de las mujeres. Estigma y violencia contra las mujeres que protestan. London: Amnesty International Ltd., 2021b. https:​//​reliefweb​.int​/sites​/ reliefweb​.int​/files​/resources​/AMR4137242021SPANISH​.PDF Barriteau, Violet Eudine. “Aportaciones del feminismo negro al pensamiento feminista: una perspectiva caribeña.” Boletpin ECOS 14 (2011): 1–17. https:​//​www​ .fuhem​.es​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2019​/10​/Aportaciones​-del​-feminismo​-negro​_V​.E​.​ -BARRITEAU​.pdf Belausteguigoitia, Marisa, and Araceli Mingo. “Fuga a dos voces. Ritmos, contrapuntos y superposiciones del campo de los estudios de género y la educación.” In Géneros prófugos. Feminismo y educación, edited by Marisa Belausteguigoitia y Araceli Mingo, 13–54. México, D. F.: Paidós, 1999.

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NOTES 1. I am grateful for the clarification provided in this regard by Mónica Mayer and Karen Cordero, two of the most influential Latin American figures in feminist art and feminist art criticism, respectively, with whom I have had the opportunity to exchange impressions on the matter for further research. Both agree that feminist art would include all those contributions that have contributed to opening spaces or to the struggle of women and people of non-normative gender, even if the artists do not expressly declare themselves feminists. Both defend that, on many occasions, feminist criticism appears obliquely and indirectly in artistic production, as a strategy against the possible reactions or aggressions to which a direct feminist message can expose the artist, especially in certain oppressive contexts. This position is shared by other feminist art historians and critics such as Patricia Mayayo and Andrea Giunta. In addition, authors such as Francesca Gargallo (2014) put forward another reason for those women who clearly carry out a fighting action in favor of women, rejecting

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the term feminist, as long as it is understood in hegemonic terms. Therefore, they do not recognize themselves within feminism as they consider it one more example of Western imperialism, experienced through perspectives (i.e., programs, NGOs) that impose a certain way of understanding feminism on them. 2. In total for my study on feminist metal I have conducted interviews with twenty-one bands. On the one hand, eleven bands from the Global South, previously mentioned. On the other, ten bands from the Global North: Illmara (Sweden), Nightmärr (Sweden), Castrator (USA), Völva (Sweden), Feminazgûl (USA), Heavy Bleeding (Sweden), War on Women (USA), Fayenne (Sweden), Nachtlieder (Sweden), and Yxxan (Sweden). Additionally, members from the feminist bands Denigrata (UK), Eskröta (Brazil), Yucca (Argentina), and November Grief (Canada) have collaborated with the study and are therefore included in this effort. 3. Consciousness Raising were political reflection groups formed by women, in which critical thinking was developed from the sharing of their life experiences. They were very common in the Women’s Liberation Movement. Likewise, they were fundamental in the creation processes in the feminist art of the ’70s and ’80s in America (North and South). 4. Fugue: polyphonic musical composition in which several voices called subjects and countersubjects appear, which structure different musical themes as responses to the previous voice. The musical counterpoint allows coherence and harmonic balance between the different voices. Marisa Belausteguigoitia and Araceli Mingo (1999) use the metaphor of escape within the field of feminism and education to point out a strategy where different voices coexist with different perspectives and discourses. The authors thus allude to the transit between knowledges, and to the configuration of points of affiliation between those voices that speak from hybrid positions, fugitives from essentialist theoretical or methodological affiliations. 5. A question well-argued by Violet Eudine Barriteau in her writings (2011, 3): “Ironically, while most feminist theorists are quite inclined to discern the parameters of exclusion in which the production of hegemonic knowledge moves, they tend to reproduce these practices of exclusion by establishing new generalizations.” 6. Tonality: refers to the system of relationships between the sounds of a group. 7. The idea of “rooted subjectivity” fits well with the theorizing of Francesca Gargallo (2014) on community feminisms, since they consider that the subject has an indissoluble personal/individual part and another social/community part. The community is conceived as a body and each person a piece of that body. 8 The “oppression matrix” is a conceptual category proposed by Patricia Hill Collins within feminist approaches to intersectionality. See: “Feminist Perspectives on Intersectionality” (Cejas and Ochoa 2021). 9. Polyrhythm: refers to the musical system in which several accents or combined rhythms are used. The African poet Léopold Sédar defines it for the first time as the rhythmic counterpoint between the rhythm of the word and the rhythm of the drums in African music. 10. I do not want to fail to show that this brief review of the concept of intersectionality forgets those Latin American women who, since 1930–1940, raised in their speeches the intertwined vision of oppressions, although they did not give it the same

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terminology (Marino 2019). Similarly, Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge (2016) name the contributions and intersectional work of women like Savitribai Phule in nineteenth-century colonial India. 11. Translation—Libre de elegir (Free to choose): “Forced to comply with a social policy, endorsed by the church that you fear confronting [. . .] Judging you badly for your appearance and your actions, for your ethnicity, for your social class, even for your sexual orientation [. . .].” 12. Translation—Savia: “[. . .] Native forests howl in agitation, all forms of life are threatened, machinery rampages mercilessly! There is no conscience, this has become a war! Today we see misery and bloodshed, for legitimate defenders, an industry passed the sentence and the guilty profit from exploiting our land.” 13. Pulse: like the cyclical life and death patterns in nature or the beating of the heart, musical rhythm is often organized in regularly recurring patterns. The pulse is the heartbeat that bases the rhythm, configures its structure. 14. Abya Yala means “Live Land,” it is the name given by the Tule-Kuna indigenous people and proclaimed as the proper name of the American continent in the World Council of Indian Peoples (1975) (Eraso, s.f.). 15. The conception of matriarchy is not opposed to that of patriarchy (an imposition of women on men), but rather an alternative relational form emanating from the balance of mother nature, compatible and respectful of life and well-being among all living beings in the world/planet. 16. Ajayu is a word that designates the force where feelings and reason are contained in the Andean world. 17. Susane Rodrigues holds a doctorate in history from the University of Brasilia. Her doctoral thesis focuses on the study of female figures in literary sources and historical chronicles of the conquest. 18. Translation—Antípodas (Antipodes): “Ancient maps/Infamous cosmographies of distant lands [. . .].” 19. Enrique Dussel (1994, 47) maintains in this title, the process of invention and cover-up of the Other: “The Other is the ‘beast’ [. . .] uncovered rustic mass to be civilized by the European being of Western culture, but on-cover in its Otherness.” 20. Translation—Antípodas (Antipodes): “Teratological kinocephalics / Who deny their reason [. . .] Images of the antichrist / Amazons and cannibals / Beings of Eschatiá / Who inhabit the Antipodes / In the darkest barbarie [. . .] Antipodes of fear / Separating rival worlds / North and south / East and west [. . .].” 21. Translation—Ossário (Ossuary): “A tribal world / Insubmissive and disruptive /Who will not kneel before the cross.” 22. De Bry was one of the printmaking workshops responsible for disseminating the wild, feminized, and monstrous imagery of the new world in European society at the time through his works. See: Bueno, Alfredo, “La representación gráfica de seres fabulosos en el «Nuevo Mundo» por el Taller de Bry,” Cuadernos de Arte. University of Granada 41, (2010): 93–110. 23. Translation—Ossário (Ossuary): “Images of warrior goddesses / Enemy soldiers / Refuse to believe / In a tribal world / Of matriarchal order / In the ossuary of the Amazons / Sacrifices to the great goddess.”

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24. Transnational identities-in-politics is a concept used in the Decolonial Aesthetics Manifesto (2011), proposed by the Transnational Decolonial Institute (from Walter Mignolo 2007) to refer to “border” “hybrid” (artistic) identities as strategic political subjects, distancing themselves from political positions (essentialists) promoted from identity politics. This nonethnocentric/nonessentialist aspect is reminiscent of Gayatri Spivak’s (1987, 1998) postulations of a subaltern subject, and the use of “essentialism” in strategic terms. 25. Translation—ARAKA’E: “Past present / Of an ancient world / Of an unknown continent / That bled for stories, lies [. . .] Deep scars / In memories of ancestral times / Of wild wisdom / That runs in my veins / Memories of resistance.” 26. Translation—“Of wild wisdom / That runs in my veins / Memories of resistance.” 27. Translation—verse of the song Novus Orbis Profanum, “On the borders of the possible.” 28. Information obtained in private communication with a European manager and promoter based in Latin America who prefers to remain anonymous (July 31, 2020).

Chapter 3

Reclaiming Aotearoa Stories of Experimentation, Education, and Reflection in Aotearoa Indigenous Metal Music Didier Goossens

(With the support of Shepherds Reign, Alien Weaponry, and Pull Down the Sun)  

Nō aku tīpuna Paratiamu me Parani me Hōrana, engari; I tipu āhau i te maru o te maunga Markvallei; I te taha o ngā awa kō Mark me Hollandse Loop; I te rohe i tōku whānau i Antwerpen Kō Didier Goossens āhau.1

In this chapter, I explore how Indigenous metal artists from Aotearoa/New Zealand reproduce Indigenous experiences and knowledge in metal music and culture. They thereby engage in extreme decolonial dialogues that allow musicians to (i) experiment with the organic but contentious intersection of Indigeneity and metal, (ii) educate themselves and their audiences on the enduring oppressions of Indigenous communities, and (iii) reflect on personal and ecological concerns through Indigenous stories and philosophy. These conclusions stem from narrative interviews with three Aotearoa/New Zealand Indigenous metal bands: Shepherds Reign, Alien Weaponry, and Pull Down the Sun. Their stories ground an analytic discussion with the pepeha (a Māori epistemological custom) as a guiding principle, complemented by cultural and narrative approaches to metal, culture, and identity. 67

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Indigenous communities of Aotearoa—the island’s original name in te reo, the Māori language—prioritize oral storytelling to reproduce identity and knowledge (James 2015).2 Hence, the use of narrative interviews and their analysis through Indigenous epistemology is intentional. Music scholars increasingly involve Indigenous communities as participants, consultants, and coauthors, and their situated epistemologies ground interpretive analyses in an effort to decolonize research methods and analytical practices. Examples include Hilder’s studies of politicized Samí festival performances (2015), hip hop communality in Wellington Pacific communities (Henderson 2018), and Latin American, Native American, and Māori decolonial practices in heavy metal (Thibodeau 2014; Varas-Díaz et al., submitted; Lucas 2021; Varas-Díaz 2021). Accordingly, this chapter is written with the participation and explicit support of the bands to amplify their narratives before discussing them through the aspects of pepeha. This epistemological and oral Māori custom is used to introduce oneself in everyday interactions via four parts that echo oneness with the land, energies, and ancestors, which in turn become metaphors for identity and knowledge (Diamond 2021). The first part is the maunga (land mass), which represents grounded inspiration and responsibilities, but also new perspectives. Second is the moana (bodies of water), which signifies emotional attitudes and values developed around basic needs. The third is the awa (flowing waters), or formalized ways of being that shape boundaries and communities. Finally, the hapū (past and present kinship) represents ancestral and social belonging. As such, pepeha represents lived historical, spiritual, and contemporary narratives and their associated social and moral codes.3 While these four elements are part and parcel of Indigenous experiences and knowledges, they also resonate with specific metal experiences. Storytelling equally informs metal music by drawing on subjectivities, mythologies, and musicological and performative traditions that infuse it with distinctly local experiences. In Global South contexts, metal can foster what Varas-Díaz (2021, 2) has coined as extreme decolonial dialogues, or ways in which music labeled as extreme can help “to cope and transform oppressive contexts in light of the profound and ever-present consequences of colonialism.” This chapter argues that, in the Aotearoa context, such situated dialogues emerge from pepeha-based analyses of narrative interviews. HISTORICAL CONTEXT First, some contextualization of Aotearoa’s history and Indigenous communities is crucial. Polynesian travelers began to settle Aotearoa by canoe around 1200 AD, gradually developing a system of iwi (tribes) and hapū

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(subtribes) that collectively designates itself as tangata whenua (people of the land). After British colonization, they began identifying as Māori (normal or natural), as opposed to Pākehā (white foreigners, nowadays indicating New Zealanders of European descent). Following the founding Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi) of 1840, successive New Zealand governments began seizing Māori lands through cultural-linguistic incongruencies over ownership and governance in the English and te reo versions of Te Tiriti. This led to the systemic social, political, and cultural marginalization of Māori, who suffer high rates of illiteracy, child mortality, homelessness, addiction, and incarceration (King 1997; Ross 2020). Despite pushes for tino rangatiratanga (Māori sovereignty in governing and policy-making), which helped to improve health and education conditions, sociocultural marginalization is still experienced in contemporary Aotearoa, even leading to the near-extinction of te reo in the 1980s. To this day, Māori and other Pasifika communities—which include Samoan, Tongan, and Fijian minorities—are affected by inequalities in health access, incarceration, and education (Public Health Association of New Zealand [PHANZ] 2019).4 Since the 1990s, successive governments have re-examined the partnership and self-governance principles in Te Tiriti, leading to reparations and support to protect māoritanga (shared cultural traits of Māori). Remarkably, New Zealand’s adoption of a neoliberal political-economic system often links it to the Global North, putting its Indigenous people under a double coloniality: as the people of a formally colonized geography (geographic Global South) and as marginalized Indigenous communities (symbolic Global South). This duality permeated the conversations I held with musicians. RESEARCH METHODS I interviewed members of three Indigenous Aotearoa metal bands selected from preceding research and personal acquaintance (Goossens 2019; Lucas 2021). Interviews were conducted online because of COVID-19 in the summer of 2021 and recorded for transcription and analysis.5 Interlocutors were continuously involved in this process: they received questions beforehand, reviewed transcripts and draft manuscripts, discussed analyses of their narratives—with space to elaborate, correct, and/or withdraw statements—and indicated what identifiable information they allowed in print. Finally, we agreed to future research collaborations. To contextualize and emphasize their experiences, I employed narrative analysis. This method focuses on how our stories are embedded in specific historical, cultural, and spatiotemporal settings. By discussing past and present events and time spans, interlocutors reveal how they construct themselves

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and others in those settings. Transcripts of narrative interviews are reorganized into thematically coded sections that can be connected to overarching sociocultural, aesthetic, and epistemological approaches (Benwell and Stokoe 2006; Freeman 2015; De Fina 2015). To make room for analyses that focus on interlocutors’ situated experiences, I diverted from the temporal focus by preparing interview-specific questions around four main subjects: (1) history; (2) Indigenous background; (3) music, themes, and performances; and (4) local and international reception. I then reorganized transcripts into three conversation reports that highlight important topics like Indigenous identities and experiences, intersections with metal music and performances, and the local and international reception and cultural impact of Indigenous metal. I subsequently discuss how these themes illustrate that Aotearoa Indigenous metal bands reflect the elements of pepeha in their music, performances, and narratives, and thereby engage in extreme decolonial dialogues. A WORD ON POSITIONALITY Given New Zealand’s colonial legacy and the erasure of Indigenous knowledges in Western institutions (Dell 2021), the analysis and discussion of Aotearoa Indigenous narratives must be duly considered. Furthermore, narrative analysts must take into account their conversational and interpretive role during interviews and analysis. It was, therefore, important to scrutinize my physical and contextual distance as a Dutch-Belgian researcher from Aotearoa Indigenous identities in metal and from metal artists in general, who often struggle to discuss deep-seated themes like identity. I, therefore, draw on Slembrouck’s (2015) discussion of the interviewer’s coconstructive role in eliciting subjects that interlocutors might struggle to elaborate on. To exercise this in a meaningful manner, I opened this chapter with my pepeha, adapted for non-Māori users.6 While introducing the practice, I predominantly wanted to acknowledge my interlocutors’ life world and express my willingness to understand their stories through a lived Indigenous epistemology. Formulating my own pepeha also helped me understand its aspects in their proper context and position myself in relation to this layered practice. During conversations, however, I principally positioned myself as a fellow metalhead, as I share this background with my interlocutors (Goossens et al., 2022). Building on diligent preparation and a rudimentary understanding of keywords related to their respective Indigenous identities, we fostered a conversational setting more akin to journalistic conversations, flexibly shifting between a serious and relaxed tone of voice so that their lived experiences could emerge naturally. Occasionally veering off-topic about moshpits and our favorite albums, we discussed coloniality and racism with equal ease,

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to their explicit appreciation. Hence, while I connected with my interlocutors through metal, I ensured my awareness of talking with Indigenous artists about Indigenous concerns, which carried into their feedback on my ensuing narrative analyses. This also strengthened mutual resolves toward future collaborations. CONVERSATIONS REPORTS To contextualize the state and popularity of metal in Aotearoa, I interviewed David Ridler, former Head of Music of NZ On Air (2016–2022), an independent Crown agency that supports local music, film, and television productions. Compared to more popular genres like R’n’B and reggae, metal has a relatively small audience among Aotearoa’s population of five million. Furthermore, its geographic distance from capital-rich areas like Australia hinders the development of sustainable music careers. Nevertheless, David mentioned the existence of “a heaving underbelly of harder metal bands,” including this chapter’s interlocutors—Shepherds Reign (SR), Alien Weaponry (AW), and Pull Down the Sun (PDtS)—who incorporate Indigenous languages, performances, aesthetics, and knowledges into metal. “WE DIDN’T SET OUT TO BE AN INDIGENOUS BAND”—SHEPHERDS REIGN Shepherds Reign did not form in 2015 with the idea of involving their Indigenous and migratory backgrounds in metal. Only when the video clip for their song “Le Manu” (2019) went viral (over three million YouTube views at the time of writing) did they realize the full potential of their organic experimentation to engage with expectations surrounding Indigeneity and metal— especially in light of fans’ contentious takes on their music. Before delving into this topic, however, we discussed the band’s diverse composition. According to Oliver Leupolu, who plays guitar, SR reflect the diverse, migratory history of Aotearoa, their members having Samoan, Pākehā, Southeast Asian, and Māori roots. I met with Leupolu (Samoan–New Zealand European), guitarist Gideon Voon (Thai and Malaysian-Chinese), and singer Filiva’a Taue’etia James (Samoan), who also plays the Pātē log drum.7 All residents of South Auckland, most members encountered metal as teenagers, having been exposed to everything from classical piano and choir training to guitar instrumentals. Filiva’a explained this varied background as a result of metal’s modest popularity in Auckland and Polynesian communities at large, especially compared to reggae, rap, and pop. Consequently, he stressed their

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initial musical independence and minimal contact with other bands as defining factors in their growth. To this, Gideon added that he likes “to do things that may or may not be quite metal.” Experimentation with their Indigenous roots fueled their rise to fame. In mid-2019, SR re-recorded their song “Legend” with Pātē drums and released a video clip representing five Polynesian communities (Māori, Fijian, Cook Island, Niuean, and Tongan) (2019). Oliver added that around this time, SR also started “including the culture in our image. So obviously, we look Polynesian and then we got like afros and stuff, and then we’re wearing . . . our [shark tooth] necklaces by then.”8 In late 2019, “Le Manu” became a veritable turning point when SR began to fully lean into this image and experiment with lyrics in Samoan. Filiva’a stated that positive comments—especially from his Christian family as well as local and diasporic Samoan communities—gave him the confidence to continue this. Oliver adds that “instead of just being seen as a kind of fringe genre,” SR received significant validation through several victories at the Polynesian Music Awards New Zealand. However, Oliver and Filiva’a were quick to stress that “we didn’t set out to be an Indigenous band” or to copy bands that combine Indigeneity and metal, like Sepultura or Alien Weaponry. Ultimately, though, Filiva’a appreciates the idea, so long as their Indigeneity is not equated with being Samoan, “’cause we’re not all Samoan.” Gideon agrees: the categorization makes sense for their image and lyrics, but “I guess musically . . . it transcends being Polynesian, like, in metal. And music-wise, I think it’s just . . . normal, just like anything out there in the world . . . ” Finally, Oliver stressed: This definitely wasn’t something we set out to do so, we were a band . . . before people started calling us a . . . Polynesian metal band. That all actually started from after “Le Manu,” so we actually got a whole album out, our first album— none of the songs are in Samoan, and that’s . . . when we just used to write whatever we’re influenced by, and that’s what came out there. And then, probably that first album, that’s when you can hear all our different influences the most [Shepherds Reign (2019)]. But then . . . our profile just shot up from “Le Manu” going viral, and then obviously just people looking at us and then: “Oh, these guys . . . Well, most of them look Samoan, so Samoan metal band.” . . . That’s kinda how that happened.

While self-representation was a process of organic experimentation for SR, they came upon the Indigenous metal trope rather coincidentally. However, the naming discussions led by international fans proved instrumental in realizing its potential. For a band from a Global South geography and community, this visibility in a predominantly white genre of Global North origin was crucial for their breakthrough. Gideon echoed this when he expressed how the

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inclusion of Samoan culture was “really, really clever . . . from a marketing side.” But regardless of those short-handed commercial discussions about what makes SR an Indigenous metal band, it helped them realize the value of their experimentation with different styles and perspectives. As Oliver clarified, “our music’s kind of growing, it’s . . . reaching a lot of people in our world that don’t normally listen to heavy metal, or they have that kind of narrow stereotype of what heavy metal is.” This was crucial for SR’s understanding of the deeper meaning and impact of their music, which emerged in our discussion of how the band overcame stereotypes, not just about what metal is supposed to be, but also who is supposed to be in it. For example, Gideon stressed how in comparison to most metal bands focusing on heaviness, SR are unique for drawing on Pasifika musical culture because “the music they naturally grew up with, has a lot of rhythmic focus.” Furthermore, SR’s diverse composition also breaks a sociocultural mold. Late in our conversation, Oliver repeated his initial assessment of SR as a “mixture of cultures,” but this time in a very geographic sense that ties into Aotearoan history: “[W]e’re all born in New Zealand and brought up in New Zealand. But [we] all have a range of different backgrounds . . . New Zealand’s like an immigrant country made up of people that have moved here over the years, and that’s kind of what we represent as well.” As opposed to the contentious commercial labels of some fans, Oliver’s statement does not allow the diversity of SR to box them in. While songs like “Le Manu” and “Legend” address Samoan and Aotearoan history and identities—which knowledgeable fans also point out by explaining SR’s diverse composition to others—others, like “Aiga,” focus on the importance of family. Filiva’a elaborated: One of the funniest things was releasing “Aiga.” And I saw a comment and someone put up like, the rest of the world’s probably wondering what kind of crap I’m talking about and that I’m probably like just an angry Samoan or something like that—when “Aiga,” I’m actually singing about my family, and you know, just my love for my family and things like that. So all of it . . . That’s all positive for us, and we’re trying to be positive and nothing . . . bad, well, we try not to be bad.

This personal connection to a rather universal theme does not only overcome (generally Western) assumptions about Polynesian culture, but also engages with prejudices about Polynesian communities and metal’s place in them. He elaborated that growing up in South Auckland in the 1970 and ’80s, this place was the ghetto . . . where all the gangsters were . . . where like everyone looked down at South Auckland, like the fact “That place is shitty, . . . that’s where all the brown people are,” whatever. And you know, seeing a metal band

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come out of nowhere and just, you know, reaching all corners of the world . . . that’s breaking another stereotype.

Oliver added that their popularity helped their community comprehend that metal can positively represent their Indigenous identities and deconstruct associations of Indigeneity and savagery. Through online spaces, this cathartic pride also has a global impact: Oliver explained that in recent months, SR received expressions of solidarity from Indigenous fans and communities in Australia, North America, the Middle East, and Latin America. The stories of Oliver, Filiva’a, and Gideon show the growth of SR through organic experimentation that taps into their personal experiences as members of Aotearoa’s Indigenous and diasporic population. Specific songs like “Le Manu” and “Aiga” engage their backgrounds in experimental interactions with local Indigenous communities and the international metal scene. And while their relation to the latter can be contentious, their situated specificity and commercial popularity do not rule each other out, as SR utilize their newfound popularity for the expression of Indigenous perspectives on identity and family.9 “WE’RE EDUCATING PEOPLE WITH IT”—ALIEN WEAPONRY I met Turanga Porowini Morgan-Edmonds (bass, backing vocals; Ngāti Rārua, Ngāti Wai, and Ngāti Hine) and brothers Henry Te Reiwhati (drums, backing vocals) and Lewis Rararuhi de Jong (guitar, vocals; Ngāti Pikiao and Ngāti Raukawa) of Alien Weaponry during promo interviews for their sophomore album Tangaroa (2021).10 Internationally famous threshold-breakers for Aotearoa metal, their signature hybrid of te reo and metal frequently and critically addresses the historical and contemporary sociocultural and economic oppression of Māori. While this speaks to local and international audiences, it demands Alien Weaponry balance these interests. First asked why and how they began to write metal in te reo, Henry replied: It was probably after we wrote “Rū Ana Te Whenua” [e.g., 2013–2014]. I mean, we wrote the song so that we could enter it in this competition that . . . Pretty much, you gotta be incorporating your native language or your culture somehow into your music. So we wrote “Rū Ana Te Whenua” and performed that, and that kind of was our gauge of . . . how people reacted to it. And people seemed to actually love it, so that was our starting point . . . going forward with writing in Māori and writing about New Zealand history and about our family and everything relating to our . . . being Māori.

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However, he added that this was not a key moment, but rather one for experimentation, which took off “like a slow, rolling snowball,” to Lewis’s agreement. What then made this combination so appealing? Musically speaking, Turanga explained that in comparison to other Polynesian languages, te reo “is a harsh, consonant language . . . The Māori language suits itself to that aggressive sound that metal does, you know? It’s a percussive language . . . and metal is a very percussive genre of music.” Furthermore, he emphasized the use of acoustic guitars in waiata (songs), opening lower registers that resonate with the plosive language. While this seems to draw on earlier conflations of “aggressive” Indigenous and metal culture, their critical lyrics are equally important, addressing land and housing expulsions (“Raupatu,” “Ahi Kā”) and commemorating and celebrating Māori history and ancestry (“Kai Tangata,” “Rū Ana Te Whenua,” “Hatupatu”). However, they had to learn most of Aotearoa’s Indigenous history by themselves. Henry explained: I feel like a lot of what we’re talking about isn’t actually learned by a lot of people in New Zealand. So the education you get at school, as far as New Zealand history goes, is basically learning about Waitangi Day [annual celebration of Te Tiriti’s signing on 6 February 1840]. . . . And then, if you want to learn more, you can take Māori, which nearly every New Zealander doesn’t do at school. So education on New Zealand history is not very common, especially colonial history and kind of that settlement period when colonial settlers were first coming to New Zealand. [emphasis added]

This echoes the enduring impact of coloniality on not just Māori, but education about Aotearoa and its Indigenous populations too, including the near-extermination of te reo. Henry and Lewis were partially educated on these subjects in a kura kaupapa Māori (lingual and cultural immersion school) and continued to self-educate afterward, turning their knowledge of Māori history into music. In this way, AW reshape Māori cultural traditions in new contexts, including metal festivals and media platforms. Reviving knowledge of the history, colonization, and contemporary identities of Māori, I asked what they considered their music’s main impact. Henry responded: It makes it easier for people to talk about, I feel: cause it’s never gonna be an easy subject for people to talk about, especially if they’re feeling that shame and embarrassment because it was their ancestors that actually did the thing . . . Like I was saying before, it’s opening up ways that people can start a conversation, you know: “Ah, you’ve listened to this band, what do you think of this song?” And that’s where the conversation starts, rather than “Oh hey man, how are you feeling about that really racist thing my ancestors did . . . you know, years back?” It’s a different way of approaching it, which I feel allows people more freedom and being able to actually talk about the issues.

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This conversational affordance is primarily directed at local audiences and taps into a major concern of Aotearoa society: shame. In Māori communities, this is particularly felt as whakamā, a culturally engrained intergenerational shame rooted in colonial trauma and cultural inferiority/erasure, suppressing personal and collective Māori expression in Pākehā society (Dell 2016). While AW are found to address whakamā for young Māori metal fans (Lucas 2021), Henry’s quote particularly accommodates Pākehā discussions of colonial history and guilt. I will further explore this apparent tension in the discussion section. Although AW are among the first to engage in discussions about Aotearoa/ New Zealand’s coloniality through a Global North genre like metal, such discussions stretch far back—yet Māori still suffer from systemic marginalization and face sociocultural prejudices. Henry explained that “Māori focus aspects in a lot of schools are generally . . . seen by most people as the worst area of the school. So it’s still not quite at the level where Māori language and Māori culture has become reintegrated into New Zealand society. You know, it’s still . . . an outcast in most peoples’ eyes.” Rising far above ground level in a cultural niche with global appeal, AW are optimally positioned to observe this, most notably in relation to how stringently the band is policed by “super, super-white people,” and “keyboard warriors,” which has a lot to do with skin color, said Turanga. Henry elaborated how, due to their Dutch lineage, Lewis and he “look so white,” but feel more connected to their Māori heritage. Conversely, he explained that AW’s cultural impact puts them in a position to observe how, despite governmental pushes to protect Māori language and culture, it is hard to distinguish genuine from performative action “because a lot of people who are seen publicly . . . wanna be seen supporting causes like Māori rights, and . . . you know, us being an accepting, non-racist nation.” Given AW’s popularity, their decolonial education reaches far beyond Aotearoa. Like SR, they are both welcomed and scrutinized for being Indigenous in a Western-centric subculture. This became especially clear when we discussed their genre categorization. For example, Turanga, who joined the band in mid-2020, recounted how he initially liked “haka metal” for its aggression-based association with metal culture (Goossens 2019; Lucas 2021), but since changed his opinion, especially with Tangaroa “encompassing Māoridom as a whole.” Henry appreciated “te reo metal:” “[i]t tells you exactly what it is, while not feeling like something that someone who didn’t know anything about te reo Māori would come up with, you know? Te reo metal sounds Māori, so . . . it’s very fitting for the band.” Turanga added that, like SR, their use of te reo does not define AW, as half of their repertoire is in English and also addresses more general topics like mental health and family (“Holding My Breath,” “Dad”). Conclusively, Lewis values “Māori metal” for its encompassing nature, as it covers their metal and non-metal influences.

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Despite AW’s coming to terms with their impact, Turanga remarked that there was “clearly an aspect of fan [sic] that purely understands and . . . only knows the Māori aspect of the band.” But to Henry, that is not necessarily negative because while AW did not set out to become an Indigenous metal band, they found that, like SR, they move people to actually go and learn more about what we were singing about, because . . . for the majority of New Zealanders as well as other people around the world, they don’t know pretty much anything about what we’re singing about—which is kind of cool. You know, we’re taking these things that pretty much no one in the world understands, and we’re educating people with it.

Considering metal’s limited national market and difficulty in even reaching Australian audiences, this makes AW’s global success and impact all the more remarkable. Within Māori communities, that has not gone unnoticed. Turanga described the newness of becoming musical and cultural role models, especially for Henry and Lewis: We get the kids that are like, “Oh, I wanna play drums like you, Henry,” . . . And then you get the fellow young Māori kids that are like, “Oh man, that’s cool what you’re doing,” you know, spreading . . . the awareness or whatever. So it’s definitely there, but I know the boys try not to . . . focus on maintaining a title like that ’cause it’s hard work, you know? . . . They are musicians. It’s just a benefit to be able to express the culture in a way that we can.

But the incorporation of specific Māori practices and narratives into metal’s global industry has also caused tension surrounding particular tikanga (rules). Similar to SR’s worries of community unfamiliarity, Turanga explained how AW relate to specific iwi, as many are closely interconnected through centuries of stories, trade, and war. To make this comprehensible, especially for non-Māori audiences, they often focus on the main groups, causing some dismay. When asked whether AW receive more criticism from Māori than non-Māori audiences, Turanga described the general importance of precautions for AW to respect Māori culture in lyrics, music, and merch. For example, when a bootleg site put the face of one of the main characters from the “Kai Tangata” video (2018) on a cup, he explained that [I]n Māoridom, that is a big, big no, having a person’s face on some form of . . . something that goes towards your mouth, you know, like a bowl or a spoon or a cup. So they got a lot of complaints from family and other Māorikind, like, “What the heck?! You know this is not allowed,” . . . and they said, “We didn’t do it. This is some random from the other side of the world that’s just taken the

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image.” But you know, for them, it didn’t matter; they’ve just seen that you’ve broken one of the rules.

The stellar trajectory of AW reflects one of decolonial (self-)education at the crossroads of Māori and Pākehā (and international fans by extention). While vehemently activist in performance, our conversation showed that AW are still figuring out the delicate balance between local decolonization and international renown—as one does not exclude the other. Recently, Lucas described how their hybrid style appealed to both Indigenous and international audiences by creating an intersectional space that is “unapologetically Māori and unapologetically postmillennial” (2021, 14). Moreover, AW are increasingly engaging with different audiences in the education of Aotearoa’s colonial history and legacy by continuously building on their own histories and experiences.11 “OUR TREES WON’T DIE/THESE ROOTS HAVE GROWN INSIDE”—PULL DOWN THE SUN Ko Ruapehu te maunga; Ko Whanganui te awa; Nō Whanganui ahau; Ko Wegman tōku whanau, Ko Koert tōku ingoa, Ko Ngati Te Whiti te Iwi, Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Early in our conversation, Koert Wegman, who performs guitar and vocals in PDtS, presented his pepeha, connecting him to the Ruapehu mountain, Whanganui river area, and Ngati Te Whiti iwi.12 This inspired our talk about personal and ecological reflections in the music of PDtS, which increasingly sees them engage with their Indigeneity as a decolonial dialogue with themselves, their families, and Aotearoa. Drawing their name from the demigod Maui hooking and slowing the sun to stretch the days, the stories of Aotearoa and the Whanganui area, where Koert was born and raised, pervade the music of PDtS. Out hunting possums with his Māori father, eerie noises were explained as the Tūrehu, “a kind of . . . mythical being [sic] that would live up in the hills and come down to fish at night,” which predate the first Māori settlers. Koert’s interest in these stories grew from a rebellious urge against his religious upbringing, as well as his teachers’ limited knowledge about their meaning—echoing Henry’s frustration with New Zealand education. Building on his knowledge of Whanganui’s

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spiritual and historical significance as a trading bay for early Pākehā settlers, he explained that PDtS try to “bridge the gap between Tūrehu, Patupaiarehe, Māori, or any other settlers that came to New Zealand.” This is a noteworthy intent that shows the mutative meanings of Māori narratives, as the Tūrehu (coincidentally called Patupaiarehe or Pākehā) are described as light-skinned, red/fair-haired people that merged with early Māori settlers. Hence, stories of the Tūrehu not only explain the arrival of European settlers, but can also signify the reality of many contemporary New Zealanders who share Māori and Pākehā heritage (Wikaira 2007). Moreover, PDtS focus on the meaningful, rich, yet unforgiving landscape of Whanganui and Aotearoa. Compared to common metal tropes like death and Satanism, Koert explained that their lyrics communicate “maybe death, but in a different kind of sense, you know?” Drawing on the band’s shared experiences as fathers, he explains that lyrics like “Our trees won’t die/These roots have grown inside” (“Of Valleys and Mountains,” 2022) manifest their personal concerns about the world their children will inherit. This can be connected to general ecological concerns, but Koert’s citation also alludes to the kauri, hulking native trees that are taonga (treasured) to the mana (spiritual dignity, respect, and authority) of iwi residing in their vicinity. In recent years, an incurable kauri dieback pathogen has spread, threatening the survival of these ecologically and culturally vital giants. Despite the inclusion of Māori knowledges in preservation strategies, these have yet to take full flight (Lambert et al., 2018). Near the end of our conversation, Koert pooled these thematic branches of stories and nature into an overarching third narrative centered on the concept of time. With the incredible changes that the twenty-first century has seen, he sees the music of PDtS as an opportunity to offer his kids a means to reflect on their natural and social history and future. In this way, he hopes that they can “figure what they wanna do first before they go out and try and figure everything else out.” In this way, PDtS engage in dialogues not just with themselves, but with their ancestral and present families too. Furthermore, he also described his explicit hope that these musical moments of reflection about historical and future responsibilities to each other and to nature, reach others as well: Not many people take in the fact . . . where they’re from . . . It’s cool to be able to bring it back in a way. Even our song titles, it does start the conversation; all the themes in our music, even though we sing in English, people go, “Hey, what is the Tūrehu?” And it starts the conversation. So I think that is the main goal for us as well. Yeah, it’s just trying to bring back . . . Yeah, the history, the mana.

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But regarding what (new) perspectives might emerge from such deeply lived conversations—which resonate with the pepeha’s maunga and hapū—Koert seemed hesitant to elaborate. In relation to the Tūrehu example, he explained that PDtS do not wish to state the course of events, but rather to make sense of the stories and how they influence Aotearoa to this day. Such selective explanatory actions are key to Māori narratives about history, nature, and kinship (King 1997). However, through them, PDtS afford discussions about coloniality in Aotearoa, grounded in intrinsically Māori knowledges and epistemologies revolving around nature and kinship, which are primarily transmitted through kōrero (stories and speeches) and waiata. This is known as mātauranga Māori (Mead 2003; Dell 2021). When asked about his relation to these conversations, Koert’s response was unexpected: Even up until after the album was out, I didn’t quite think of us as an Indigenous band. When I think of an Indigenous band, I think Sepultura. That was my only sort of beacon for that style of music . . . You hear it in the music, you hear it in the lyrics, you hear it in the translation of songs like “Ratamahatta,” and without knowing that we were kinda doing that, we’d sorta pulled elements into our music, because well, “Fuck, we’re from New Zealand, I want people to hear we’re from New Zealand,” probably subconsciously . . . You know, it takes a conversation like this to figure out, “Fuck, maybe we are a bit Indigenous!” Who knows?

While akin to SR’s and AW’s statement on not intentionally starting out as Indigenous metal bands, Koert’s Indigeneity eventually came to challenge coloniality. Exploring it through PDtS, Koert clarified the difficulty of doing so because of whakamā, that deep-rooted intergenerational shame. Like Henry, he described the stifled cultural growth and enduring socio-economic and cultural ostracization of Māori. Despite new policies that include mātauranga Māori, Koert mentioned how in news broadcasts, “they’ll intro the show in Māori and they’ll get, you know, hundreds of complaints from elderly white males and females, just ripping the shit out of them.” Conversely, he echoed the stories of Filiva’a and Turanga on (fears of) criticism from Indigenous communities, calling it the “tall poppy syndrome,” “where you just chop people down because they’re doing good.” However, Koert found it easier to declare his heritage among Aotearoa audiences: “You know, maybe it’s just because we’re from New Zealand, or people—because the scene’s so small here in New Zealand—people know us personally . . . so they go, ‘Oh yeah, I know that he’s part Māori.’” This closeness to Aotearoa audiences also shone through in our discussion of the pepeha:

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It’s a good way to tie yourself into the country and the country into yourself, and where you’re from, you know  .  .  . [I]t’s taught to Pākehā  .  .  . it’s taught to Māori, it’s taught to Tongan, it’s taught to Fijian—because we’re all New Zealanders. You know, we’re all from Aotearoa, so . . . You know, I think that it’s quite another thing that plays into the music as well, is the pride of, a pride of where we do come from.

While they are different, PDtS, SR, and AW share this sense of self-discovery and Indigenous pride. Comparisons to both abound, although Koert was keen to avoid them. But while he expressed discomfort about singing in te reo, Koert also emphasized that their differences transcend language: I think it was more of a respect thing as well; we didn’t wanna step on toes or any of all that. And it was never anything that would put us off . . . PDtS is what it is, and the themes are what they are, and . . . it would’ve been the same if it was sung in Māori or English, as it is. So, you know, the heart and soul of PDtS would have still been exactly the same.

For Koert, this heart and soul seem to reflect his childhood stories. Beyond that, they also indicate a growing push for a deeply felt Indigenous consideration of kinship and natural relations past, present, and future. This sees PDtS contribute to Aotearoa Indigenous causes through their own style of metal music. Nevertheless, he stressed the significance of AW and SR going viral and growing their audiences, especially given the modest Aotearoa metal industry and its relative anonymity compared to reggae and roots (as David Ridler previously stated): “[A]ll it takes, man, is one band to open those floodgates. I mean, look at Gojira from France, you know[?].” Not only does that generate opportunities for new bands, but it also kickstarts local and global extreme decolonial dialogues about mātauranga Māori. Although Koert rarely signifies his Indigeneity in PDtS, its presence is felt in the mātauranga Māori of their lyrics. Through personal stories and ecological concerns that manifest their Māori heritage, PDtS reflect elements of pepeha that show how Aotearoa Indigenous metal bands, by being themselves in spite of coloniality, engage in extreme decolonial dialogues. Hesitant at first, but inspired by other Indigenous metal bands like AW and SR, these dialogues are meant for their families and Aotearoa at large, but also increasingly involve self-reflection about who and where they are in the world. DISCUSSION In this discussion section, I aim to contextualize the general narrative themes of these conversations—organic experimentation, decolonial education, and

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epistemological reflection—as echoes of the pepeha; and argue how these echoes, in their adaptation to metal music, embody extreme decolonial dialogues. This helps to explain how situated narratives, experiences and knowledges are framed in Aotearoa Indigenous metal music, influencing the bands, their successors, and (inter)national fans. Let us explore this adaptation of the pepeha via metal in each of its aspects. Maunga: New Decolonial Perspectives through Metal Music The maunga—which embodies grounded inspiration, responsibilities, and new perspectives—is represented by the new standpoints that interlocutors have developed by immersing their Indigeneity in metal contexts, thereby producing extreme decolonial dialogues. However, the associated idea of Indigenous metal is nothing new: bands like Sepultura have been credited for involving politicized cultural identities in metal with their Roots album (1996), albeit in a narrow sense that attracted mainly Western audiences (Harris 2000; Lucas 2021). Nevertheless, their influence was clearly mentioned by members of SR and PDtS. Across the conversations, it became clear that SR, AW, and PDtS draw inspiration from their Indigenous heritages as well as respective musical backgrounds. Whether related to the perception (SR, AW) or meaning (PDtS) of their music, all of them emphasized that this was never intentional, but rather a spontaneous combination of personal and musical influences. But even if these bands are still figuring out their own impact, their self-conscious works afford extreme decolonial dialogues on histories of trauma and oppression through education and discussion. With SR, this is found in their organic experimentation that is intrinsically Indigenous to musical hybridization and social consciousness, while simultaneously relying on traditional metal aesthetics that are discernible to international metal scenes—similar to Toni Morrison’s assessment of the relationship between the art and experiences of Black Americans (Gilroy 1993b). Next to preserving Indigenous identities and knowledges, AW and PDtS also shape new decolonial wisdom by digging up the colonial history of New Zealand for discussion through metal music. In the case of PDtS, this is done through a philosophical lens that is decidedly Māori. Furthermore, the outpouring of enthusiastic international support for their works shows that decolonial metal’s contextual specificity does not hinder the global outreach of Indigenous plights. The internet is notably crucial for crossing socio-economic and spatial boundaries that keep the Global South divided and separate from the Western-centric metal industry. It must be noted, however, that while their activist potential is generally acknowledged, AW mostly orient their conversational affordances toward

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Pākehā audiences. Considering how the interlocutors draw inspiration from both Indigenous and metal backgrounds, the maunga of their works here seems affected by metal’s Western-centric origins and industry, as well as a general perception of Aotearoa as part of the Global North rather than South. This difficulty for decidedly Indigenous approaches and considerations of their music to emerge was also heard in interlocutors’ general refusal to compare their band to the others. In light of this, Lewis’s statement that you have to “keep reminding people you still exist in this day and age” suggests a representative emotional labor for Aotearoa Indigenous metal artists within the metal industry. Nevertheless, by being themselves, these bands afford extreme decolonial dialogues that support conversations about Indigenous history and trauma from complementary and pluriversal Indigenous points of view. This contributes to a slow process of healing through which Indigenous Southern epistemologies emerge. Moana: Extreme Meanings of Aotearoa Indigenous Metal The moana—emotions, meanings, and values that interlocutors identified—is a key component of these extreme decolonial dialogues. Varas-Díaz (2021) explains their extremity as either local unfamiliarity with metal’s aesthetic, sonic and lyrical assault, or uneasiness over situated sociopolitical issues that decolonial metal elicits. Such extremity was present across all conversations, like SR feeding the harsh historical and contemporary conditions of Pasifika lives through metal; AW educating Māori and Pākehā audiences on New Zealand’s colonial atrocities; and PDtS inserting Indigenous reflections on the future into a metal framework. While each struggled with (fears of) community backlash, their extreme messages that integrate Indigenous traditions into metal music’s template also break new ground among audiences that rarely associate Aotearoa/New Zealand with metal. Moreover, they do so in decidedly Indigenous ways. For example, Koert’s discussion of his stories and experiences as Māori in the music in PDtS not only preserves these, but also provides situated opportunities for future knowledge building, as mātauranga Māori. This imbues his performances with wehi, a spiritual and emotional response to his embodied hopes of restoring mana (Kruger 1984). Generally speaking, the conversations also reflected on the various interpretations that circle the ‘Indigenous metal’ moniker. For example, SR indicated their avoidance of the label, but appreciated its representational capacities, implying the transcendent power of Indigenous metal to explore contemporary Aotearoan and Samoan identities. However, discussions on the many categorizations for the bands also revealed an uneven and stereotypical standard for Indigenous authenticity in metal, with many revolving around

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language, instrumentation, and imagery (Gilroy 1993a; Hoad 2019). Yet SR and AW frequently utilize this as bonding-and-learning opportunities, echoing how extreme decolonial dialogues can turn prejudice into communal empowerment and cultural pride (Varas-Díaz 2021). Such reappropriations that resonate with local and global audiences (without foregoing reflections of hurt) were present in each conversation.13 Additionally, PDtS’s implicit mātauranga Māori also shows that language alone does not make metal Indigenous. Then what does? The full scope and impact of extreme decolonial dialogues in Aotearoa Indigenous metal seem unfulfilled for now, but bands and audiences alike are on the verge of it—aided by recent governmental efforts to properly enact Te Tiriti. New meanings are produced through engagements of local and global concerns that reflect Indigenous perspectives in metal’s unusual context, marking them as extreme. As a shared outcome of this, the works of SR, AW, and PDtS start various important conversations, whether out of interest or abhorrence. Regardless, their lyrical and aesthetic extremity—which is metal for Indigenous instead of metal’s sake—proved little hindrance. Awa: Being Indigenous and Being Metal Awa—or the ways in which communities are created and sustained—is echoed in the narratives of Aotearoa Indigenous metal and fosters extreme decolonial dialogues on coloniality by bringing people together around Indigeneity and metal alike. Such dual belonging is most strenuous for the band members themselves. On the one hand, their music contributes to “a space for discussion and reflection between equals who might have differing points of view on how to overcome a specific social or political problem . . . ” (Varas-Díaz 2021, 9–10)—the oppression and marginalization of Aotearoa Indigenous peoples in this case. This tension became prevalent in SR and AW’s discussion of sociocultural scrutiny within their communities, but especially so in Koert’s hesitancy to claim his Indigenous identity and experiences in the music of PDtS. Describing the aforementioned tall poppy syndrome, he touches on the whakamā that suppresses and complicates Indigenous expressions within metal’s Western-centric genre and industry. Circumventing lingering cultural prejudices towards Indigenous communities, the bands’ stories connect to Pākehā and international audiences by feeding their Indigenous identities through metal’s extreme aesthetic. As such, while Indigenous metal makes whakamā negotiable for both Māori and Pākehā and introduces Indigenous communities to new forms of belonging and thought (tying into the maunga),

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the effects of coloniality are not dispelled and possibly take on new forms within the genre. On the other hand, this tension is also felt in international contexts, where metal’s economic centers remain largely Western-centric and predominantly white, male, heteronormative, and cisgender. Many interlocutors hint at the weight of this, for example, through the tenuous discussions of their commercial appeal—echoing earlier discussions of cultural stereotypes and emotional labor. As such, whakamā bears the negative influence of coloniality on Indigenous metal within a globalized aesthetic. Despite this heavy burden, SR, AW, and PDtS are among the first in Aotearoa to perform metal through Indigenous lenses. This empowers metal as a decolonial and representative force while imbuing it with an aura of seriousness (Gilroy 1993a) and invites (inter)national attention to Indigenous plights that transcend their communities. Therefore, the ever-growing popularity of AW, SR, and PDtS introduces new audiences to a specifically Indigenous approach to metal music (the moana), even if bands or fans are not fully conscious of this. This not only builds communities that engage in extreme decolonial dialogues, but it also makes those dialogues accessible for future generations. Hapū: The Past, Present, and Future of Aotearoa Indigenous Metal Considering the groundwork that SR, AW, and PDtS lay for a decolonial transformation of metal music in Aotearoa, this discussion concludes by contemplating the connected past, present, and future of this transformation—the hapū. The first comes from drawing on Indigenous stories. Fitting historical and heroic narratives into metal aesthetics constitutes selective attempts to explain the course of events or contextualize their social, cultural, and ecological significance. Although a difficult and contested process, Koert explicitly described how metal helps to recover Indigenous knowledges, kinship, and pride. This could be felt across conversations, as the narratives, music, lyrics, and performances of SR, AW, and PDtS draw from the past to impact the present and future—embodying mātauranga Māori. Furthermore, they draw on their presently lived Indigenous and metal experiences—even if they initially did not engage with them as such, as Turanga and Koert indicated. However, by creating metal-based interruptions in Indigenous identities, histories, aesthetics, and performances, they expand and transform Indigenous culture, creating a framework for extreme decolonial dialogues about trauma and identity. These dialogues echo mātauranga

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Māori by reasserting the importance of situated meanings and values for Indigenous and natural futures. Being among the first metal bands from Aotearoa Indigenous communities, the impact of SR, AW, and PDtS is considerable. Their diverse epistemological reflections provide social and ecological considerations that both Indigenous and international audiences engage with. What decolonial changes might then be conjectured? Within Aotearoa Indigenous communities, these bands dispel not only stereotypical fears about metal, but also reclaim Indigenous identities through conversations about whakamā, kinship, and nature. Furthermore, their works stimulate transnational solidarity among Global South Indigenous artists. Internationally speaking, the frequently skewed gaze of the (Global North) metal industry increasingly turns to Aotearoa. Time will tell if the ensuing emotional labor for Indigenous artists, and its related power dynamic, will be acknowledged. Nevertheless, bands like SR, AW, and PDtS increase the visibility of their scene, generating opportunities for other Indigenous bands. Even if these bands did not set out to make Indigenous metal, their success ensures its continued existence. Managing life under Aotearoa’s double coloniality, they reclaim their Indigeneity in meaningful ways that are beginning to dismantle stereotypical framings in the Global North. CONCLUSION In this chapter, I explored how Aotearoa Indigenous metal artists reproduce Indigenous experiences and knowledges through a pepeha-based narrative analysis of conversations with Shepherds Reign, Alien Weaponry, and Pull Down the Sun. Their stories represent extreme decolonial dialogues that experiment, educate, and reflect on Indigenous experiences through three main points. First, these bands are decolonial by being themselves. Through their music, conversations on Aotearoa/New Zealand’s colonial trauma and legacy become accessible. Second, they did not set out to make Indigenous metal. Nevertheless, that in itself is a decolonial act, as it keeps Indigenous knowledge alive in organic, creative, sustainable, and activist ways. Finally, they inspire both local and international Indigenous fans to educate themselves and engage in extreme decolonial dialogues of their own. In other words, they get the conversation going. REFERENCES Alien Weaponry. 2021. Tangaroa. CD. Napalm Records.

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“Alien Weaponry—Kai Tangata” (Official Video) | Napalm Records.” YouTube video, 07:16. Posted by “Napalm Records,” May 12, 2018. https:​//​www​.youtube​ .com​/watch​?v​=5kwIkF6LFDc. Benwell, Bethan, and Elizabeth Stokoe. Discourse and Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006. De Fina, Anna. “Narrative and Identities.” In The Handbook of Narrative Analysis, edited by Anna De Fina and Alexandra Georgakopoulou, 351–68. Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2015. Dell, Kiri. 2016. “The Great Māori Shame Legacy.” Kupumamae (July 17, 2016). https:​//​kupumamae​.com​/2016​/07​/17​/the​-great​-maori​-shame​-legacy​/. ———. 2021. Just What Is Mātauranga Māori? Kupumamae (July 27, 2021). https:​//​ kupumamae​.com​/2021​/07​/27​/just​-what​-is​-matauranga​-maori​/. Diamond, Piki. 2021. “Knowledge through a Pepeha Lens.” Keynote, Exploring Multidisciplinary Approaches to Indigenous Methodologies: Scotland and Neyond, May 31–June 4. https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=VVyL1KMllFo. Freeman, Mark. “Narrative as a Mode of Understanding: Method, Theory, Praxis.” In The Handbook of Narrative Analysis, edited by Anna De Fina and Alexandra Georgakopoulou, 21–37. Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2015. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London and New York: Verso, 1993a. ———. Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black Cultures. London: Serpent’s Tail, 1993b. Goossens, Didier. “‘Māori Metal’: Analysing Decolonial Glocalisation in the Themes, Performances and Discourses Surrounding Alien Weaponry’s Debut Album Tū (2018).” MA thesis. KU Leuven, 2019. Goossens, Didier, Nelson Varas-Díaz, and Edward Banchs. “Lost in the Field: Lessons from Metal Music Studies Fieldwork in the Global South.” Metal Music Studies 8, no. 2 (2022): 163–82. https://doi.org/10.1386/mms_00073_1. Harris, Keith. “‘Roots?’: The Relationship between the Global and the Local within the Extreme Metal Scene.” Popular Music 19, no. 1 (2000): 13–30. https:​//​www​ .jstor​.org​/stable​/853709. Henderson, April K. “Giving Back in Wellington: Deep Relations, Whakapapa and Reciprocity in Transnational Hip Hop.” In Made in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand: Studies in Popular Music, edited by Shelley Brunt and Geoff Stahl, 167–77. New York: Routledge, 2018. Hilder, Thomas R. Sámi Musical Performance and the Politics of Indigeneity in Northern Europe. Lanham and London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015. Hoad, Catherine. “Critical Introduction: What Is ‘Australian’ about Australian Heavy Metal?” In Australian Metal Music: Identities, Scenes and Cultures, edited by Catherine Hoad, 1–15. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 2019. James, David. “Māori Orality and Extended Cognition: A Cognitive Approach to Memory and Oral Tradition in the Pacific.” PhD diss., Victoria University of Wellington, 2015. King, Michael. Nga Iwi o te Motu: 1000 Years of Maori History. Auckland: Reed, 1997.

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Kruger, Tamati. “The Qualities of Ihi, Wehi and Wana. In Nga tikanga tuku iho a te Māori: Customary Concepts of the Māori (A Source Book for Students), edited by (Sidney) Hirini Moko Mead, 228–36. Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington, 1984. Lambert, Simon, Nick Waipara, Amanda Black, Melanie Mark-Shadbolt, and Waitangi Wood. “Indigenous Biosecurity: Māori Responses to Kauri Dieback and Myrtle Rust in Aotearoa New Zealand.” In The Human Dimensions of Forest and Tree Health: Global Perspectives, edited by Julie Urquhart, Mariella Marzano, and Clive Potter, 109–38. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Lucas, Olivia R. “Kaitiakitanga, Whai Wāhi and Alien Weaponry: Indigenous Frameworks for Understanding Language, Identity and International Success in the Case of a Māori Metal Band.” Popular Music (2021): 1–18. http:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1017​ /S0261143021000131. Mead, Hirini Moko. Tikanga Māori: Living by Māori Values. Wellington: Huia, 2003. Public Health Association of New Zealand. “PHA Inequality and Health: Policy Statement.” 2019. Accessed March 12, 2022. https:​//​www​.pha​.org​.nz​/resources​/ Documents​/PHA​%20policy​%20statement​%20​%20Inequality​.pdf. Pull Down the Sun. Of Valleys and Mountains. CD. Pelagic Records, 2022. Ross, Mike. “The Throat of Parata.” In Imagining Decolonisation, edited by Rebecca Kiddle, 21–39. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2020. Sepultura. Roots. CD. Roadrunner, 1996. Shepherds Reign. Shepherds Reign. CD. Independent release, 2018. “Shepherds Reign—‘Aiga’—OFFICIAL VIDEO.” YouTube video, 05:18. Posted by Shepherds Reign, December 6, 2020. https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​ =X8fWTIUWU2U. “Shepherds Reign—‘Le Manu’—OFFICIAL VIDEO.” YouTube video, 04:25. Posted by Shepherds Reign, December 26, 2019. https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​ =BSNb1LXXk40. “Shepherds Reign—‘Legend’ (Resurrected)—Official video.” YouTube video, 05:17. Posted by Shepherds Reign, August 13, 2020. https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​ =HAqJ58UtsLo. Slembrouck, Stef. “The Role of the Researcher in Interview Narratives.” In The Handbook of Narrative Analysis, edited by Anna De Fina and Alexandra Georgakopoulou, 239–54. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2015. Thibodeau, Anthony J. “Anti-Colonial Resistance and Indigenous Identity in North American Heavy Metal.” MA thesis. Bowling Green State University, 2014. Varas-Díaz, Nelson. Decolonial Metal Music in Latin America. Bristol: Intellect, 2021. Varas-Díaz, Nelson, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, Eric Morales, Juan Rosales, and Rosales David. “Heavy Metal Music as Decolonial Activism: A Latin American Case Study.” Contention: Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest, submitted. Wikaira, Martin. “Patupaiarehe—Encounters with Patupaiarehe.” Te Ara—the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. September 24, 2007. Accessed November 23, 2021. http:​//​www​.TeAra​.govt​.nz​/en​/patupaiarehe​/page​-2.

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NOTES 1. My ancestors come from Belgium, France, and Holland, though I grew up/raised in the sheltering arms of the Markvallei/cleansed by the streams of Mark and Hollandse Loop/and nourished by the people and land of Antwerp/I am Didier Goossens. 2. In order to acknowledge the colonization of Aotearoa, I only use its given English name to refer to its government, using the original te reo otherwise. Furthermore, in an effort to decolonize academic writing and create space for Indigenous epistemologies as interpretive frameworks, this chapter does not italicize non-English words. 3. While pepeha and other analytical concepts in this chapter are specifically Māori, their significance also resonated in conversations with SR’s Pasifika interlocutors. Nevertheless, future research can and should expand this approach with non-Māori Polynesian epistemologies to properly reflect Aotearoa’s diverse Indigenous and diasporic communities. 4. Māori, although part of Indigenous Pacific Islanders populations (comprised of Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian peoples), are often identified separately in New Zealand policies as the island’s first settlers and its largest Indigenous population today. 5. As agreed with interlocutors, these recordings will not be shared. 6. I am indebted to Dr. Piki Diamond (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Tūwharetoa), who not only helped me to formulate my adapted pepeha as a non-Māori person, but also suggested that I employ pepeha as an epistemological framework. I also want to thank Dr. Aileen Dilane and the members of the Rotterdam Popular Music Studies group (RPMS) for their respective comments on positionality and outline. 7. Drummer Shaymen Rameka (Ngāi te Rangi, Te Arawa) and bassist Joseph Oti-George (Ngāpuhi) did not attend. 8. Oliver later explained these are called Ula Nifo (necklace tooth), and were traditionally crafted from boar teeth (Facebook message to author, November 30, 2021). 9. Nevertheless, the weight of commercial appeal on Global South metal bands (especially those of Indigenous descent) and the associated economic power dynamic, is deserving of further research. 10. Henry and Lewis had to leave after an hour; Turanga and I continued for another thirty minutes. 11. Notably, Turanga received his mataora (facial tattoo specifically for Māori men) not long after our conversation. Using it as a talking point, he grew a TikTok and Instagram following with educational videos on Māori language, (pop) culture, history, and identity. 12. Guitarist Jason Healey and drummer Stefan Bourke did not attend. 13. Some also referenced brotherhood, implying male companionship. While provisional, this suggests intersectional dynamics in metal culture between gender and Indigeneity. Although beyond this chapter’s scope, it presents opportunities for future research.

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“A Whole New Type of Isolation” Resilience and Hope in the Navajo Nation Metal Scene during the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020–2021 Anthony J. Thibodeau and Sage Bond

The Navajo Nation in the southwestern United States is an Indigenous community where heavy metal musicians and fans have been strongly engaged with this art form for many years. This chapter relates the experiences of some artists and others in the Navajo Nation metal scene during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which started in 2020 and was stretching into its third year at the time of writing this contribution. Our objective in this chapter is to explore how metal artists from the Navajo Nation have been affected by, and responded to, the stress and anxiety of the COVID-19 pandemic. For working musicians especially, how has the pandemic affected their livelihoods and the ability to perform, produce, and distribute their music? How has the pandemic affected these individuals emotionally and mentally, as they have had to cope with the stress of a public health crisis, including seemingly perpetual lockdowns and a disproportionate death toll in their communities? Just as important, how have they faced the effects of the pandemic through metal music? In order to address these questions, we present responses gathered directly from four metal musicians from the Navajo Nation in Arizona and New Mexico, as well as a promoter of metal shows in and around the largest Indian reservation in North America. While some of the responses in the interviews clearly relayed a message of isolation in the face of anxiety and despair, a theme of hope emerged as well. The ways some interviewees responded to the crisis show the strength and resilience of this community. This resilience has been a consistent response 91

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to how the Diné (Navajo) people have responded to military imperialism and colonial oppression for generations as these forces have sought to subjugate their people and destroy their culture. In this historical backdrop, metal music has served as a way to address isolation and foster resilience. THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC’S IMPACT ON THE NAVAJO NATION In 2020 the world was rocked by a deadly pandemic, which affected people across the globe. However, as indiscriminate as the impact of the highly infectious COVID-19 virus appeared on the surface, many communities suffered worse under this pandemic than others, due to disparities in access to healthcare and other social services, frequently the result of long-standing inequities rooted in oppressive colonial power structures (Stiglitz 2020, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2020). One community severely impacted early on in the pandemic was the Navajo Nation, which spans the Four Corners area of the US Southwest, including portions of the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Due to the sheer size, rugged terrain, and remoteness of many Diné communities, providing services in normal conditions has always been challenging, but the pandemic exacerbated the virus’s impact in this area. The Navajo Nation, the largest Indigenous group in the United States, became one of the hardest hit communities by the pandemic in the United States (Romero 2020). The Diné are spread across the vast Navajo Nation, scattered in family units or small villages, some based on traditional activities like sheep herding, with only a handful of more densely populated towns such as Window Rock, Tuba City, Kayenta, and Shiprock. “Border towns” such as Gallup, Farmington, Flagstaff, and Page, have historically served as important resource centers for the Diné, who often travel several hours just to visit a decent grocery store. These towns have also become increasingly appealing for Diné people who want to take advantage of the employment and educational opportunities these towns offer, while staying close to their families and communities. Many who remain on the reservation struggle to survive, often without or with limited access to modern amenities such as running water, central heating, and high-speed internet. From the very beginning of the pandemic, when hygienic practices were emphasized by agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it probably never occurred to many Americans that the simple act of washing your hands was not as easy as just turning on the faucet for some. It was not until later during the pandemic, after the rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations in the spring of 2021, that many Indigenous communities in Arizona, including the Navajo Nation,

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began to see a slower spread of the virus due to relatively higher rates of vaccination in those communities and the imposition of some of the most stringent restrictions and mitigation strategies in the United States (Romero 2021; Silversmith 2022). The disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic among Indigenous populations and the challenges faced to prevent its spread have to be understood in light of historical oppression faced by these communities. Like all Indigenous groups in the Americas, the Diné have been dramatically impacted by historic forms of colonial oppression since their first contact with European imperial forces. For the Diné, this oppression has been most pronounced from the US military and government, culminating in “The Long Walk,” the forced expulsion of the Diné people starting in 1864 from their homelands on the Colorado Plateau to Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico, over 300 miles, where they were incarcerated at Fort Sumner (Bailey 1998). Many Diné people died of exhaustion or malnourishment during the forced march, and conditions at the internment camp at Fort Sumner when they arrived were abysmal (Kelley and Francis 2019). Of course, colonial oppression did not start with The Long Walk for the Diné, but it is remembered as a definitive event in their history. Its consequences have reverberated in Diné society and culture for many subsequent generations. As noted by Diné scholar Jennifer Nez Denetdale, in the years following The Long Walk, when Diné people returned to their ancestral lands, “The U.S. government sought to strip Navajos of their very identities” (2007, 148). This was done through a range of policies that had direct negative impacts on the health of Diné people, including a livestock reduction program in the 1930s, described as “one of the most psychologically traumatic events in Navajo history” (Bailey and Bailey 1986, 223), which devastated the community’s subsistence and encouraged a reliance on government commodity foods. This led to further health issues over the years on the Navajo Nation, such as obesity and diabetes. Furthermore, extensive coal mining on Diné ancestral lands began in the early 1900s (Kelley and Francis 2019), and uranium mining started in the 1930s (Pasternak 2010), the consequences of which still directly impact the health of some Diné people. The recent COVID-19 pandemic compounded health challenges on the Navajo Nation that have existed for years as a direct result of colonial power structures. It is against this historical backdrop that metal music exists on the Navajo Nation.

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“REZ METAL” AND THE NAVAJO NATION METAL SCENE Though a full analysis of why metal resonates so strongly with fans on the Navajo Nation is beyond the scope of this discussion, previous work has painted a picture of a small but vibrant metal scene built on the local level by musicians and fans out of sheer love for the music and dedication to their community (Soltani Stone and Zappia 2020, Tolton 2018, Turkewitz 2015). Dozens of bands are scattered across the Navajo Nation, clustered in the larger communities of Kayenta, Tuba City, and Shiprock, as well as border towns such as Gallup and Farmington. Driving long distances on rough rural roads across the Navajo landscape just to go to the grocery store is a common experience for many of the Diné, and this is no different for metal bands traveling to gigs or even to get together at rehearsal spaces in garages and hogans (the traditional multisided one-room dwellings that many Diné families still maintain along with their primary modern residences). In the 2021 documentary film, Rez Metal, and the accompanying book of the same name, filmmakers and scholars Ashkan Soltani Stone and Natale A. Zappia (2020) follow the story of one band from the Navajo Nation, I Don’t Konform, and their journey to record with Metallica recording engineer Flemming Rasmussen. The term “rez metal” is used consistently throughout the film and book, and Kyle Felter, guitarist and singer for I Don’t Konform, discusses this term at the end of the film: “I call our music rez metal, I’ve always called it that . . . it’s like, we live on the rez, we play, fuckin’ practice in a hogan, it’s rez metal” (Felter in Soltani Stone 2021). The term indicates an association of metal music with reservation life and culture experienced by Indigenous communities in North America. However, the term is apparently not entirely embraced even by some participants in the Navajo Nation metal scene: With me I don’t really see the problem with it, cuz it is rez metal. So me personally I don’t have a problem with it, but I see it as . . . kitschy. I wouldn’t use that, I would try to find a better word for it. I think it’s just . . . the colonial word for our metal, I guess [laughs]. There was a metal band in Shiprock back in the mid-2000s, they called themselves “Diné Béésh,” which in Navajo is “Navajo metal.” I would do something like that, I would want to do something more to a Native name to it . .. but far be it from me to tell people not to use it. (Randall Hoskie, Diné concert promoter, Rancid Savage Productions)

Whether it’s called “rez metal” or something else, heavy metal clearly has an impact on both older and younger fans in the Navajo Nation. As noted by the authors and directors of Rez Metal, “Rez metal culture is also in some

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ways Diné culture, played and listened to by multiple generations on and off the reservation” (Soltani Stone and Zappia 2020, 7). While specific parallels between metal and Diné culture remain unexplored, the aesthetics and sonic aggression of metal may align with the sense of helplessness and alienation felt by many younger musicians and fans on the Navajo Nation confronted with the harsh realities of everyday life on the reservation. As Jerold Cecil, manager for the band I Don’t Konform, posits: “I don’t know why it’s such a huge cultural thing on the rez, is it because of our anger? Discontent with everything? We’re pissed off . . . nobody can catch a break . . . nobody’s throwin’ us a fuckin’ bone, and I think that’s why heavy metal is as big as it is on the reservation” (in Soltani Stone 2021). METHODS For the sake of consistency with contemporary usage, we use the term “Indigenous” in this chapter, though in the US Southwest the term “Native” is still commonly used, even within Indigenous communities. We use “Diné” in reference to members of the Navajo Nation, which is generally the preferred identifier in the community. However, the term “Navajo” is still ubiquitous across the region, and we use it in this chapter when referring to current proper terms (such as “Navajo Nation”). This research relies on semi-structured interviews with metal musicians from the Navajo Nation conducted during the fall and winter of 2021. All interviews were done remotely to protect participants’ safety. Thibodeau conducted the interviews from his location in Flagstaff, Arizona. He contacted seven different metal bands from the Navajo Nation, all of which included Indigenous members, mostly through social media, text, and email messages, to potentially be interviewed for this project. He had some difficulty soliciting responses to his requests for interviews, ironically due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting challenges that this posed for everyone at the time. However, in late 2021, he was able to conduct interviews with four metal artists from the initial pool that was contacted, all from the Navajo Nation. Thibodeau first interviewed guitarist and frontman Darius Yazzie (Diné) and guitarist David Kinsel (Diné) from the band Testify, an ensemble from Thoreau, New Mexico, that plays metalcore and thrash-influenced metal. He also interviewed Sage Bond, a Diné and Nde (San Carlos Apache) singer/songwriter and guitarist from Cow Springs on the Navajo Nation, located north of Tuba City, Arizona, who later became the second author for this chapter. Though Bond has had roles as a guitarist for metal and country bands, she currently performs and records solo, primarily using acoustic guitar. While most of her vocals are “clean,” she

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also incorporates death growls into her music and embraces a metal aesthetic in her performances. Billy Crawley II (Diné) is the singer and guitarist and sole founding member of the band Ethnic De Generation, which he started in the mid-1990s. Billy resides in Kayenta, Arizona, in the northern part of the Navajo Nation, about twenty miles south of the Utah border. Thibodeau also conducted an interview in early 2022 with concert promoter Randall Hoskie (Diné), based out of Window Rock, Arizona. In addition to working at the local tribal hospital near Window Rock, where he has experienced the impact of COVID-19 on his community firsthand, Randall also has a live music booking company called Rancid Savage Productions, and has been involved in the Navajo Nation metal scene for more than twenty years. In the following section we present a selection of interview responses grouped by themes and based on the questions that were asked each participant. At the end of each section, we provide some analysis and context based on the participants’ responses. CHALLENGES OF LIVING ON THE NAVAJO NATION THROUGH COVID-19 RESTRICTIONS One of the first topics addressed in the interviews was the challenges faced by participants while experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic. Their experiences were varied and echoed the historical health disparities faced by the Navajo Nation and the difficulties of living on the reservation. Sage Bond mentioned the following: The thing is, when COVID came about, the first thing you think of is the elders. I was taking care of my grandmother at that time, and I had to get her groceries, clean ’em all up before I could barely get into the front door of her house and just drop it there, like a few feet in, but not talk with her, not make contact with her, cuz it was too scary, it was too risky. With my mom working at the hospital, she would tell me, “yeah, they’re starting to reuse the PPE because they don’t have enough, we don’t have enough resources and because it’s the reservation, we’re not really getting more [resources], and all the stores are running out of stuff,” so [we] could not just catch a break. You think of . . . the people that still live in hogans and no electricity or running water, way the heck out there, your neighbors are like miles away. It meant a lot to me that I could still be of use to her [her grandmother], bring her stuff and take her to her appointments, but when I started school, and really got busy, I couldn’t keep risking visiting her, I didn’t want to bring back COVID to her. My aunt from Portland ended up just moving my grandmother from Red Lake to Portland [Oregon, to live with her and her family].

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Being at home was nice . . . I’m high risk . . . I have asthma, so it was scary . . . it was risky living in Flag[staff], because the high elevation affected me already . . . So I . . . tried to stay home as much as I could, except for the one grocery run every two weeks. You have to make sure you have everything listed, because you have to go two hours away to get your groceries, you can’t forget anything. Everything is high-priced at the grocery store, Bashas’, cuz they’re the only store that’s allowed on the reservation, they can do whatever they want with the prices. My mom told me about the PPE shortage, and I was like, damn, this is getting too scary. My mom kept saying, people are quitting at work, and I don’t wanna get sick, but the hospital’s putting us at risk, and we can’t really do anything about it, because we’re being overworked.

Another participant, Billy Crawley II, explained how the everyday hardships faced on the reservation made the implications of the pandemic even worse, including feeding his family: I guess it depends on what you do and where you work. For me, when this whole thing started, the curfews started happening, and the restrictions, mask mandates, we closed the restaurant [that he manages] for like three or four months, so I was just home. As far as people that work, [who] have only a certain time to go places and do things for their families, it kinda sucked for them. I hear stories like, “man, I don’t even have time to go to Bashas’ and get food,” or go and haul wood, I can’t even leave because of the restrictions, we have to be in at a certain time. It was really early, I’m sure it drove a lot of people nuts. As for me, I was living with my grandma and my mom . . . it was a good thing for me, to keep my family safe. Going to the store, not leaving the reservation, it didn’t bother me too much, but you gotta get supplies that we don’t have on the reservation, that’s the thing. Things are expensive on the reservation, and you can get maybe two or three times more than you can get on the reservation, pricewise, you can get more leaving the reservation, going to the border towns [like] Flagstaff, Farmington, Page, Cortez, where I’m at [in Kayenta]. So that was a big thing too. It’s like, man, I can’t get this here, it’s too expensive, I could get more if I went over there, but then you have to think about, man, I gotta be back at this time, I gotta run through town real quick, hope I don’t get stopped, y’know you see people getting stopped on the side of the road, oh my gosh. And they were talking about, I don’t know how much the penalty was, they said you’d get fined and stuff.

The challenges posed by the pandemic surpassed issues of mobility and access to goods. Randall Hoskie explained how the pandemic made it difficult to live as a community, a vitally important part of Diné culture:

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When it [the pandemic] first started, when there were a lot of unknowns about . . . what it does and how it gets around, and just seeing people die from it. There was a total lockdown, you couldn’t go nowhere, unless you were going to the grocery stores, or to take care of essential business. And it couldn’t be everybody, it could only be one person out of the family could go. And a lot of conveniences such as fast food and restaurants were all closed down, everything closed. It showed you how much we rely on stuff like that. Thankfully we were taught young how to cook, and what to cook by our mom, so we were OK, we cooked every day. It was the lockdowns that I think really took hold of a lot of people, cuz they couldn’t go nowhere, they couldn’t see nobody. My family and us we were kind of lucky because we’re more . . . technically inclined, I guess? So we were able to Zoom and talk and chitchat on computers and whatnot. And my mom lives just right down the road from us, so we were able to go and just stand apart outside and just talk and hang out. So it wasn’t too hard on us, as a family. But hearing stories of others, it was very hard, being in lockdown, being away from everybody, being away from community, because the Navajo Nation is a community. We’re village [and] family-based, we rely and want to see each other, so that took a toll. The thing I enjoyed about that period was, we live not too far off the main highway and me and my wife would just sit outside at night, build a fire in our backyard, and our backyard is facing the highway . . . quiet, just quiet . . . peaceful, it was awesome. I put out my drone, full moon, film going down the road, and it was awesome cuz there was nobody on the road. It was surreal because the only time you would see anything was when there was an ambulance going by, and there were a lot, all night long, that’s all you would see.

In the responses above, the participants described some of the difficult conditions that are commonplace on the Navajo Nation, many of which existed prior to COVID-19, but which seriously hindered people’s ability to survive the lockdowns associated with the pandemic. Sage Bond’s comments emphasized the importance of elders in Diné life, and what the loss of those individuals can mean to a community. Randall Hoskie noted how important community is to Diné people, and how difficult it became during the pandemic to be away from family and friends, since much of Diné life depends on that contact. Both Sage Bond and Billy Crawley II described the difficulty in access to a good grocery store, and the stranglehold certain chain stores have on the Diné people. Of course, access to affordable fresh food is a key element to maintaining good health in any community. ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Some interviewees emphasized the economic implications of the pandemic. In an already impoverished setting, the pandemic would worsen the existing

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dire circumstances by cutting off other sources of income. Darius Yazzie explained: For a sure thing, when we do shows out of town and all, everything comes out of our own pocket, you know, fuel, food, hotels if we’re not able to make it a one-day trip deal. The way that we usually make the money back was through our merchandise, CD sales, we even have a tip jar out there. Of course, not doing shows impacted us in that way. And then also, when it came to opening up for big-name acts . . . some promoters would give us a percentage of the ticket sales that we would make. So when the touring business stopped, of course that impacted us as well, local bands. So financially it was a struggle. Of course, our guitars aren’t cheap and our equipment’s not cheap, some of us have financial plans to pay off loans and debts, to take care of those, and not having that income of course was really rough. I even had a few friends in the music business who had to sell their equipment just to get by when the shutdown happened. That was kind of a scary thing to think about. Thankfully through the Navajo Nation there was a business grant that was given to us from Washington, so we were able to get a little bit of assistance. Since technically we are a business on the Navajo Nation, through our production, we were able to have a little bit of financial support through with that. Even when things started to reopen now, we still haven’t been able to make any profit at all. But I always say, to us it’s really not about the money, it’s more about getting our music put out there.

Sage Bond explained how their shows were cancelled, thus limiting musicians’ income: Economically, it sucked, for everyone. I had all these shows lined up, it was going so good, this was the most bookings I ever got, like lined up, kinda felt steady. All the way into, I think October [2020] I was booked. Then the COVID hit, and then here and there shows started dropping out, they were just like, “due to this [pandemic], we can’t have the show, you gotta wear masks, it’s scary, no one can be face-to-face, it can’t be in-person.” I was like, OK, there’s a few hundred bucks out there.

In light of these cancellations, engaging with audiences through social media seemed to be the only option for many. Billy Crawley II explained how he took to the internet to help his band survive: I tried to keep the band alive through social media. I bought stickers to sell, I posted old videos of us. I tried to do acoustic stuff, I do that too on the side. I turned our metal songs into acoustic stuff, it sounds cool, man. I even got masks made [with the band’s logo]. I sold a lot of those, it was cool to see them out there, y’know? If I wasn’t playing I was still promoting the band.

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The participants’ responses above emphasize the marginal nature of many of these bands’ work, and how quickly the economic toll of the pandemic affected their ability to practice and perform. It is significant to note these artists’ resourcefulness to continue to create and maintain their connection to their fans during a public health crisis, whether it be through small business grants or developing new merchandise. IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON THE WRITING PROCESS Even amidst the pandemic, metal artists on the reservation engaged in the writing of new songs as a way to cope with the experience of isolation. The feeling of being able to create music, even in the midst of such uncertainty, served to lift their spirits. Darius Yazzie described this process in our interview: Before everything happened, David and I, we’d get together and brainstorm ideas with riffs and all. When things started happening, I did a lot of recording on my own, and then saved those recordings. The first time we met, we recorded and put it on YouTube. Even then David and I, we’re really cautious around one other, wearing a mask, and staying on separate sides of the room. It felt good to throw ideas again out to each other, once we were able to meet, and then when the full band came around, it was even better. The Navajo Nation was on a curfew, I think it was 6PM, everyone had to be back indoors, so it was hard to get the band out, to practice and rehearse. So now I think we’ve had at least two rehearsals to where we’re finally getting the band to work on these new songs that we got. There’s one song that we wrote, and we debuted it about a year before the pandemic started, but once everything happened, that song had a lot more meaning to it, and that song is “Here We Stand.” It’s kinda the first song that, lyrically, I wrote regarding politics, religion, and just everything social out there. I got really fed up with everything. That song speaks out for itself, and we actually were talking about doing a music video for that song professionally, and my idea is to have us playing that song in Window Rock in front of the Navajo Nation council chambers. Just kind of a real rebellious . . . the title says it all, “Here We Stand.” As people we have feelings too, and we have voices as well, but sometimes it seems that, especially since this pandemic, we’ve been overlooked . . . right now the council that we have, it’s a mess. There’s so much disorganization, there’s no structure . . . I think we can all relate to it, the four guys, when we play that song live.

Billy Crawley II explained how the isolation impacted their ways of creating music:

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As far as coming up with stuff as a band, no. Individually, I dabbled in some stuff, I wrote some stuff down. But as far as the other guys, they had their own things too. My bassist, he has a band too, on the side, that he does, I’m sure they were doing things. My drummer has bands too, he plays with, and Logan, he used to live in Durango [Colorado], so he was way over there. But we would call each other, once in a while, like, hey, just keep practicing, cuz we wrote some new stuff before all this happened, so just keep working on those, the leads, just practice them at home. That was basically it.

While clearly the pandemic made it much more difficult for bands to continue their normal writing process, it is significant to note that Darius Yazzie saw new meaning in a song that his band wrote before the pandemic. His desire to play “Here We Stand” “in front of the Navajo Nation council chambers” underlines who the song is directed at, and where his frustration lies in his community. It is especially significant in this context, since his father, Edmund Yazzie, is the drummer for the band Testify, as well as a member of the Navajo Nation Tribal Council. Consequently, the band was challenging the authority of the tribal council, itself a remnant of colonial power instituted by the federal government. In another part of the interview, Darius acknowledged that this was a source of discomfort with his father, though his father understood the sentiment and the frustration expressed in the song and respected his son’s perspective. It is evident that even while navigating the complex waters of the pandemic, metal musicians continued to find ways to stay creative and even address long-standing concerns through their music. HEALING FROM THE EMOTIONAL IMPACT, STRESS, AND TRAUMA OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC The COVID-19 pandemic left scars in people’s bodies and psyches. Participants in the interviews for this project were keen on expressing the negative impact of the pandemic, while also recognizing the importance of healing through metal music. In this section we explore the emotional impact of the pandemic before presenting examples of the healing process. Darius Yazzie sets the tone of this section, explaining the emotional toll the pandemic took on him: At first, for me, I thought the thing would blow over fast. It really hit me when we lost our first loved one to the virus. That’s when . . . emotionally and mentally, it changed my perspective on everything. I also, at the time in April (2020) I had my first-born son. I really became protective of not having visitors come over, not going out into any stores, not letting anyone from my household go out.

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Right now, I think not seeing a lot of people over a long period of time is different. I recently went to a Slipknot concert, and this was my first concert since everything that happened. I’ll admit, it was really nerve-wracking being around so many people. It was kind of a distraction for a little while to actually enjoy the show, thinking, what’s going to happen after this? Is there someone that’s sick sitting next to me? Did I touch something [that had the virus on it]? I’m here to enjoy a show, I’m here to get back to normality, but still I’m having thoughts in the back of my head. I think it really affected a lot of people in that way, but, to me it’s just, we have to think about, this is how it’s gonna be from here on out, this is it. Adjusting is pretty tough, but we have to regardless.

David Kinsel explained how his view of the pandemic changed once the loss of family members became a commonplace experience: You start to know this is serious when you start to hear a family member or a friend’s family member, getting it and unfortunately not recovering from it. That’s I guess how I knew it was serious. Once you hear that [losing family members], then it’s just, your mindset’s different than how it was a year and a half ago.

Sage Bond discussed how she experienced and managed isolation and loss during the pandemic and what losing elders in the community means for their collective history: During quarantine, there was a whole new type of isolation. I am an introvert. I love going out, seeing shows, I love seeing fans and everything, but I really love being by myself. I’m super shy, so I like to have my own space, and keep to myself, that’s how I get songs done, by being by myself for a long time. There’s a difference between [being] isolated because it’s your choice, and then also when you have to stay home for the sake of safety for other people. A lot of people didn’t listen, there’s a lot of deaths, and that made me sad. Especially losing elders, whole stories, so many stories you can get from them, and it’s not always recorded. You get your stories if you sit with an elder long enough and they tell you about their life. My mom kept telling me . . . it’s a lot, and she was getting stressed, I could see how stressed she was.

Some interviewees expressed having experienced mental health issues for the first time in their lives during the pandemic. Billy Crawley II explained his experience and how the anxiety-ridden process ended with his engagement in metal music: For me, it was bad, cuz I actually did not know the feeling of anxiety, I didn’t know I could have it, and I did. I was depressed . . . it was terrible, I did not know it could exist in me. The way I am, the person I am, and how I deal with

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things, I drove myself nuts, I was stressed out, depressed, I didn’t even touch my instruments, I didn’t play. I think the depression part of it was I just didn’t want to do anything, and that’s supposed to be my outlet, the music. I think I was more worried about, like, OK, I went to the store yesterday, so I’m gonna count five, seven days and see what happens, kind of thing, that’s how bad I was. I was to the point to where that’s all I worried about, just surviving, and staying alive. We heard of family members, all around us, our neighbor having it. In the hospital, I’ve lost a couple relatives to it. At the same time I have a boy, I have a six year old, so when this first happened I didn’t see him for like, four months, because . . . I couldn’t, cuz I was afraid for him. So that put me in this hole, so deep, I just stayed there. My own sort of bubble, and I was here with my mom and grandma, trying to keep them safe, keep people away. It was crazy, man, it was a dark time. I went to the hospital, because I thought something was wrong with me. I told them, you need to test me, I don’t know if I have it [COVID-19]. I was walking around the house, in the middle of the summer, sweatpants and a sweatshirt on, because I was having chills, and I was like, what is going on with me? I walked around at night, I didn’t sleep, I went to the hospital, [they said] “nothing’s wrong with you, you don’t have it, but your high blood pressure is bad. You need to calm down, you need to sleep,” chill out basically [laughs]. There’s where I was, man, and it took me a long time to get out of it. I think maybe last year by November [2020], I started to get better, because I started seeing my son again, I think that was a big part of me, family, right before it got bad again. OK, the numbers are zero, one, two a day, you know what I mean, calm down. It was hard to have someone talk to me through it, I had to do it myself. My goal was to see my son as much as I can, and I have to be safe. The restaurant opened up and that made me learn how to make contact with people, but just to-go. I was the guy, two masks, goggles, and a face shield, and the gloves, that was me, man. January came, February this year [2021], finally, a vaccine. The joy, man, the joy of that. I couldn’t even listen to the news anymore, when I was in that anxiety state, the TV was off . . . Then we did a show in August [2021], that was the first show of this year. That was the metal fest over in Tico Time [River RV Resort] over by Durango. That was fun, I was looking so forward to it . . . everyone’s got their shots, everybody with the shot can hang out now. Me, I sang with a mask on still. I almost backed out. This was right before the delta variant [of the COVID-19 virus] came. We were hearing about it, it’s not here yet. But we did it man. We didn’t practice, nothing! And we sounded great. We just clicked, my guys I have with me, we just click. So that was motivating.

Billy Crawley II continued to explain how music had allowed him to heal from the experience:

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I’m grateful, I’m here, I’m humbled, I’m blessed, just to still be here, but I’ve lost a lot of friends that were musicians too. I was asked to do a tribute show in Albuquerque, but I couldn’t get to go. It was a band called Red Earth, Ira Wilson, he lost his life, I don’t know if it was from COVID, I didn’t ask, but he was in the hospital for a while. And then there were a couple other musician friends, and I just [shakes head]. So I started doing the acoustic stuff, I did a tribute to them, tried to get people to sooth their minds and to listen to some good music. For me, it was a healing thing for me to play, to post videos.

Sage Bond’s response above touches on the role of elders again, and really affirms the vital role they play in Diné culture to maintain collective memory for the community. Loss of any community member as a result of illness is of course tragic, but in the case of elders, that loss is compounded by the loss of the stories and cultural knowledge they hold, much of which, as Sage notes, is not recorded. The responses from both Darius Yazzie and Billy Crawley II above also reiterate the emotional toll from the pandemic and related lockdowns on the Navajo Nation, and Darius relays the fear he experienced just going to a live concert (Slipknot) again, giving us a glimpse into how the pandemic affected metal culture and practices in a broader sense. However, both also allude to metal’s capacity to heal, and how that was stripped away from these artists during the pandemic. It seems that this power was intensified once bands could get together again and perform, and Billy’s comments especially relate the sheer joy of being able to play again in front of an audience. The experience allowed musicians to reflect on what was happening around them beyond the pandemic. Sage Bond discussed how she created new music and song lyrics based on experiences of injustice faced by other marginalized communities: Emotionally, mentally, I’m drained. I was drained that whole year, just like, school sucks and I’m having a hard time and I’m not writing as much music as before [the pandemic]. My money is low and everything. I knew how to deal with my depression and anxiety before that, I would always turn to guitar and just play a riff, whatever, do something. During that time [of the pandemic] it was harder to do that. It was a new type of anxiety, a new fear added, but a realistic fear, not just fear that’s in my head, my doubt telling me stuff. This was a real fear that’s going on in the world, and I’m scared for my family, and money stuff, and not being able to pay the bills and stuff. I tried to think of a way to help raise money to donate to organizations. And then I wrote a song, I wrote “Truth” after the death of George Floyd. That really hurt to explain to my younger brother the reality of this situation. He asked me: “Why did the police do that to him?” And it broke my heart to tell him that as people of color, we’re not always safe, in those types of situations, they can get

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way out of hand, just because we’re brown. And I told him . . . just explaining the realities, that this is not new to anyone, it’s just the first time it was covered by news, and it spread worldwide, and everyone saw it because we were at home watching TV already, and we were on our phones already. It made a few hundred bucks that I sent to the local hospital [75% of proceeds from “Truth” were donated to the Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation] and it felt really good to do that. That was the only song I put out [during the first year of the pandemic]. It took a lot, it was a lot of energy to put into that. I had an idea to make a music video for the song. So I called up [Diné filmmaker] Deidra Peaches, and we set up a little storyline, just to get the idea of what we both wanted out of it. She came out during Navajo Nation lockdown. On Saturdays, no one was allowed to be out. Sundays, weekends, everything was like eight to five on the weekdays. After that, no one was on the roads. I was only unmasked on the parts where I needed to sing, in front of the camera. But we did it, and I’m really proud of that work. Also, I got to release something during that quarantine time.

Sage Bond’s comments above demonstrate another avenue for healing, using her music as activism to address systemic racism in the United States. The lyrics for the song she produced in response to the murder of George Floyd

Figure 4.1. Photomural of Sage Bond at an abandoned gas station in Gray Mountain, Arizona on US89 on the edge of the Navajo Nation. Mural by James E. (Chip) Thomas, 2020. Sections of this photomural include lyrics from Sage Bond’s song “Truth,” as well as a QR code for visitors to scan that links to the video for the song online. Source: Photo provided by Anthony J. Thibodeau.

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are reprinted below. Some of the lyrics even made their way into murals in the Navajo community (see figure 4.1). While this song shows a certain level of solidarity with other oppressed communities in the United States, it is also worth reiterating that the proceeds from this song went to provide support for local healthcare services in her community. Also, the first two lines in the last verse (“Black and brown . . . ”) link the issues of racism and environmentalism, both of which are important issues confronting the Diné community, as well as all Indigenous peoples. “Truth,” by Sage Bond See the world through my eyes Measure the pain through their cries Lead us down, the hopes we’ll never rise Fates warning, the struggle to divide Common road can break the bitter man, life’s awaiting defeat Memories of dreams pushed aside, can you dream for me? Mother, hold my hand Hold on to the price of my life Tears haven’t dried Always in strife Take from me the colors from the truth, people dying to be heard Awaken now, creation of a day, can you live for me? Black and brown, can you bleed for me? Wounded earth, can you die for me? Take these words, can you fear for me? When I’m gone, can you sing for me?

EVENT ORGANIZATION AS A HEALING PRACTICE The comments shared above illustrate the need for communal interaction amid the isolation experienced throughout the pandemic. One way in which this was achieved was through the organization of concerts once the pandemic started to recede. Having previously organized one Navajo Nation metal festival in 2015, as well as many other metal shows on or around the Navajo Nation, Randall Hoskie knew the power these events had to lift the spirits of Diné metalheads. Hoskie had brought the Maori metal band Alien Weaponry (see Goosens and Rowe, this volume) from Aotearoa/New Zealand to the Navajo Nation twice before and built a close relationship with the band. The band identified with Diné culture and fans through the common bonds of Indigenous identity and a shared history of global colonial oppression and wanted to return to the Navajo Nation during their 2021 tour of the United States (see figure 4.2).

Figure 4.2. Flyer for the Navajo Nation Metal Fest - Naaki (Two), November 20, 2021. Source: Image provided by Randall Hoskie.

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Once Hoskie was able to confirm the band and a venue, the Window Rock Sports Center, he began building a lineup around Alien Weaponry for the oneday festival, mostly inviting bands from the Navajo Nation metal scene he had worked with before. However, only weeks before the day of the festival, the Navajo Nation tribal government rescinded permission to use the original venue when some officials became aware of the planned event and expressed their concerns about COVID-19 transmission at the time in the community. After scrambling to find another venue, Hoskie secured a smaller space in Gallup, New Mexico, very close to the southeastern border of the Navajo Nation. Though there was a country band already booked for the date of the festival, the venue was willing to reschedule this band, telling Hoskie that country bands are “a dime a dozen.” Hoskie reflects here on the experience: I was very upset. I didn’t want to cancel it cuz everybody was just really psyched and happy. They see it happening in Albuquerque and Phoenix, all these shows . . . I wanted to bring that back to the people cuz they need it, they needed to release that stress, they needed to get out, mosh and just enjoy it again. I was happy we were able to find another venue in Gallup. It’s not the Navajo Nation, but it is considered the heart of Indian country [laughs]. So it was the next best thing. Navajos are everywhere in that town anyway, so . . . [laughs]. [On the success of the festival] Ultimately, overall, yes, in doing what we wanted it to do, bringing Alien Weaponry back, bringing other headlining acts to the area, getting all the bands back together . . . because the Navajo Nation metal scene is such a small, close, tight family, everybody knows everybody, everybody watches everybody [play]. The fans loved it, they were excited. Leading up to it we had some new COVID policies we put in place where everybody, no matter their [vaccination] status, had to be checked. We had a company from Tempe offer their services for nasal swabbing on-site, right there, and within five minutes you’d get your results. Nobody complained, everybody waited outside for five minutes, got their wristbands and [were] happy to walk through that door and enjoy it. So it accomplished what we initially wanted it to do; to bring the music back to the people.

DISCUSSION The members of the Navajo Nation metal scene who were interviewed for this project expressed similar experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the recurring theme of isolation was evident. On the Navajo Nation, isolation has always been a fact of life tied to living in a very rural area, with families and towns spread across the high desert landscape of the Colorado Plateau, partially a result of further colonial marginalization through government policies when the Diné returned to their homelands after The Long

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Walk. However, even though the Diné are spread thin across the Navajo Nation, they are still able to maintain a strong sense of community. This highlights how important even small daily interactions are to the Diné, and when social activities like family gatherings, ceremonies, and fairs are shut down, the consequences can be devastating to members of the community. This sense of community is truly at the core of what has allowed the Diné to persevere for centuries in the face of seemingly overwhelming oppression. When Randall Hoskie described what it was like to finally be able to have the Navajo Nation Metal Fest, what it meant to him and all the bands and fans in attendance, he was not speaking in hyperbole. Community gatherings have been critical to the survival of the Diné for generations, whether it be a music festival or for a traditional ceremony. They alleviate the isolation that is part of living on a reservation, where your nearest neighbors may be miles away. The community is what gives individuals the strength to survive in difficult conditions, and it is what gives people the hope that the time will come again to play a live show, practice with your bandmates, or mosh in the pit with your friends. Three artists interviewed in this study, as well as the promoter, Randall Hoskie, alluded to how much of a role metal and music normally play in their lives in providing hope in the face of stress and trauma. In a published interview prior to the pandemic, Sage Bond stated: When people talk about metal, they always associate it with anger and rage and being scary and never showing sad emotions, or happy emotions . . . But metal heads feel things also, and they write about all the emotions. Music is just pretty much therapeutic to me. (Sage Bond in Locke [2020])

The song that Sage Bond wrote during the pandemic, “Truth,” is another example of the power of metal to heal. In this case she is responding to a shocking incident of systemic racist violence, but within the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis and the violence faced by her own community. While she initially intended this song to simply be a way to raise some funds to help her community deal with the pandemic, she adeptly connects the injustices of police brutality to inequities in healthcare across marginalized communities, using her words and music to confront some harsh realities, which is a first step in the healing process. The responses from the interview participants not only revealed the role that metal plays in their individual lives, and how that was disrupted by the pandemic, but they also provide a glimpse into the lasting effects of a long history of colonial oppression. Ongoing challenges such as the persistent lack of access to clean water and healthy food are not simply a harsh reality for any rural community, but for Indigenous peoples they are a direct result

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of centuries of intentional marginalization by the federal government and settler colonialism. It is also clear from the responses that the effects of the pandemic made it very difficult for Diné people to practice their traditional culture, as community gatherings were restricted, and family units locked down. As noted above, while the Navajo Nation is an extremely vast landscape, the Diné have always been able to maintain a strong sense of community. Unable to support each other through shared ceremonies, markets, fairs, and other events, the sense of isolation was profound. The loss of elders to the pandemic is an especially devastating blow to the Diné, who were already struggling to sustain vital cultural elements such as their language, and these culture-bearers play an essential role. However, as evidenced by some of the new music created by these artists during the pandemic, as well as rising above the challenges of the pandemic to finally come together to enjoy live music again, these individuals were able to successfully transcend a history of colonial injustice and use metal music to help navigate these traumatic experiences. The experiences of the musicians interviewed here may parallel that of artists from other musical genres and traditions. For example, ethnomusicologist Kristina M. Jacobsen’s recent study of Navajo country music explores how country reinforces authenticity and what she calls “social citizenship” in Diné culture (2017, 1), and metal may serve this same function. In Rez Metal the book, Soltani Stone and Zappia suggest that both country and metal, as well as hip-hop, are subversive forms of expression in contemporary Diné society, resisting the norms of these genres in the dominant culture (2020). Future research on the relationship between metal and country music on the Navajo Nation may provide insight into how these scenes intersect to create new expressions of Diné identity, and how experiences of collective trauma such as the global pandemic both inform and are informed by engagement with resistance through musical artistry. REFERENCES Bailey, Garrick, and Roberta Glenn Bailey. A History of the Navajos: The Reservation Years. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1986. Bailey, Lynn R. Bosque Redondo: The Navajo Internment at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, 1863–68. Tucson: Westernlore Press, 1998. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Introduction to COVID-19 Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities.” December 10, 2020. Accessed March 25, 2022. https:​ //​www​.cdc​.gov​/coronavirus​/2019​-ncov​/community​/health​-equity​/racial​-ethnic​ -disparities​/index​.html​#print.

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Denetdale, Jennifer Nez. Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2007. Jacobsen, Kristina M. The Sound of Navajo Country: Music, Language, and Diné Belonging. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Kelley, Klara, and Harris Francis. A Diné History of Navajoland. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2019 Locke, Katherine. “Singer and Heavy Metal Artist Sage Bond Shares How Music Helps Her Heal.” Navajo-Hopi Observer (Williams, AZ). February 11, 2020. Accessed October 7. 2021. https:​//​www​.nhonews​.com​/news​/2020​/feb​/11​/singer​ -and​-heavy​-metal​-artist​-sage​-bond​-shares​-how​/ Pasternak, Judy. Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed. New York: Free Press, 2010. Romero, Simon. “Navajo Nation Becomes Largest Tribe in the U.S. After Pandemic Enrollment Surge.” New York Times (New York, NY). May 21, 2021. Accessed January 28, 2022. https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/2021​/05​/21​/us​/navajo​-cherokee​ -population​.html ———. “Checkpoints, Curfews, Airlifts: Virus Rips through Navajo Nation.” New York Times (New York, NY). April 9, 2020. Accessed January 28, 2022. https:​//​ www​.nytimes​.com​/2020​/04​/09​/us​/coronavirus​-navajo​-nation​.html Silversmith, Shondiin. “Arizona’s Indigenous Communities See COVID Increase at Slower Rate Due to Higher Vaccination Rates.” Tucson Sentinel (Tucson, AZ). January 7, 2022. Accessed January 26, 2022. https:​//​www​.tucsonsentinel​.com​/local​ /report​/010722​_native​_covid​_vax​/arizonas​-indigenous​-communities​-see​-covid​ -increase​-slower​-rate​-due​-higher​-vaccination​-rates​/ Soltani Stone, Ashkan, and Natale A. Zappia. Rez Metal: Inside the Navajo Nation Metal Scene. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2020. Soltani Stone, Ashkan, dir. Rez Metal. 2021; Salt Lake City: AKS Media. Streamed on the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian website in November 2021. https:​//​nmai​.brand​.live​/c​/rez​-metal Stiglitz, Joseph. “Conquering the Great Divide.” International Monetary Fund, Finance & Development, Point of View. September 2020. Accessed March 25, 2022. https:​//​www​.imf​.org​/external​/pubs​/ft​/fandd​/2020​/09​/COVID19​-and​-global​ -inequality​-joseph​-stiglitz​.htm Tolton, Clarke, dir. Metal from the Dirt: Inside the Navajo Reservation’s DIY Heavy-Metal Scene. 2018; Everything Is Stories, for Revolver Magazine. Accessed on YouTube March 29, 2022. https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=a3AnyzzkDzA Turkewitz, Julie. “Looking to Uplift, with Navajo ‘Rez Metal.’” New York Times (New York, NY). January 25, 2015. Accessed March 29, 2022. https:​ //​ www​ .nytimes​.com​/2015​/01​/26​/us​/looking​-to​-uplift​-with​-navajo​-rez​-metal​.html

INTERVIEWS CITED Darius Yazzie and David Kinsel from Testify, videoconference interview with Anthony J. Thibodeau on November 6, 2021.

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Sage Bond, videoconference interview with Anthony J. Thibodeau on December 2, 2021. Billy Crawley II from Ethnic De Generation, videoconference interview with Anthony J. Thibodeau on December 8, 2021. Randall Hoskie, Rancid Savage Productions, videoconference interview with Anthony J. Thibodeau on January, 5 2022.

LYRICS CITED “Truth,” by Sage Bond. Released July 15, 2020, Sequoyah Productions 2020. Lyrics provided courtesy of Sage Bond, December 4, 2021.

SECTION 3

Social Change

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“We Play Heavy Metal Because Our Lives Are Heavy Metal” A Generation of Metal in the Middle East and North Africa Mark LeVine

Heavy metal might not have provided the soundtrack most people remember when they look back on the Arab uprisings era of late 2010 through the summer of 2013. But for anyone who was listening, extreme forms of metal (e.g., death, thrash, black, speed, doom, metalcore), later joined by other forms of extreme youth music (EYM) such as hardcore punk and gangsta rap, both narrated the prehistory of the regionwide protests and foreshadowed how most would turn out. Floating slightly above the historical ground, metal and its sister genres of EYM were among the most aesthetically embedded (Bohlman 2002) forms of cultural production and performance in the societies of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the broader Muslim world, deeply shaped by and shaping the larger cultural and political landscapes of the societies in which they were embedded. A dozen years after the onset of the revolutionary era, metal still flows strong in the blood of young metaliens (to borrow the Egyptian pronunciation of metalhead) across the MENA, despite any number of crises afflicting the scenes of the region (cf. LeVine 2022; Barone 2019). Indeed, throughout the entire Muslim world, a new generation has been creating innovative hybrids and styles, even as their ears remained attuned to Iron Maiden, Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, and Metallica. What seemed like scattered if powerful subcultures when I was researching Heavy Metal Islam (2008) went on to become politically salient countercultures in many countries, and the training 115

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ground for intense and even revolutionary political activism in a few more. During this same period, metal and its many (sub)cultures, styles, and sounds moved in from the academic avant-garde, with an international cohort of scholars—a disproportionate number from the Global South—engaging in theoretically as well as methodologically innovative research on the social and political potential and valence of the music, the musicians who create and perform it, and the fans who compose the scenes (ISMMS 2022). In this chapter, I discuss what I see as the most important sonic, social, and political developments in metal scenes of the last decade across one of the regions of the Global South with the most developed metal scenes: the Middle East and North Africa. Drawing on fieldwork from Morocco to Pakistan, and focusing particular attention on the position of metal artists and scenes within the landscape of protests that have upended politics and cultures across the region, my research points to new directions and methodologies for research and writing about heavy metal, with the hope that it helps encourage increased collaborative and comparative research, particularly with regard to how practitioners and members of metal and other EYM scenes can take center stage in the creation and dissemination of our research and pedagogy. STAGING METAL IN THE MENA ACROSS FOUR DECADES Fifteen years ago, I published my book Heavy Metal Islam as a hopeful paean to the future. In the ensuing period, it became a book of history, one chronicling the first stage of the coming-of-age of a unique generation. In the years since its publication, that generation moved from the subcultural margins to the countercultural center and the revolutionary avant-garde, only to wind up largely pushed to the margins again, with too many people either crushed or literally pushed right out of their homelands into exile, if not into prison and even far-too-early graves. How might we most accurately understand the history of metal during the last three decades in the MENA region? Metal and EYM, more broadly, have always had the potential to be more than just subcultural salves or vehicles for escaping the problems of the world. They have also functioned as countercultural tools, and during a brief period in a few locations, as revolutionary weapons to educate, motivate, and mobilize a rising generation. When not tools proper, they have at least positioned themselves as a certain kind of avant-garde, for the wars of position and ultimately maneuvers—that is, the mass uprisings and even revolutions—that were approaching the horizon in the final years of the aughts. The message of angry and even joyful rebellion at the heart of the extreme forms of metal that dominated

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the MENA region remains as powerful today as it was before a decade of coups, counter-revolutions, civil wars, and stunted transitions turned EYM from cathartic fantasy into documentary reality for musicians and fans from Morocco to Indonesia (where local EYM scenes were active players in the revolutionary transformation from dictatorship to vibrant democracy a decade before). We can divide the longue durée of metal’s history in the MENA into three stages or periods. The first, from the arrival of the genre across the region in the late 1980s and early 1990s until around 2005, constitutes the period of emergence and subcultural development, maturity, and consolidation of the scenes. Metal implanted itself in the Middle East and North Africa via cassettes and (less so) albums often smuggled in by visiting relatives, locals returning from overseas trips, and relatives who worked for airlines tasked with the enviable obligation of purchasing all sorts of music during their layovers. The increasing prevalence of satellite television, especially signals from Europe, and shows like MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball, were also important vehicles for diffusing the music. By the 1990s, metal appealed to young people across the MENA region for the same reasons their peers were drawn to it everywhere else: it offered a space—even if deep underground—for individuality, solidarity, creativity, and rebellion in culturally and politically oppressive societies that were in the midst of neoliberal structural transformations that had increasingly little room for a large share of the generation then emerging into adulthood to become productive members of society, never mind express themselves freely (cf. LeVine 2005b, chapters 3–5). By the second half of the ’90s, there were burgeoning scenes from Morocco to Pakistan (and in Southeast Asia as well—see chapters in this volume by Oki Rahadianto Sutopo and Agustinos Aryo Lukisworo, and Azmyl Yusof and Adil Johan). These scenes had a core group of bands, a sustainable fanbase, and even shows featuring various levels of professionalism (and legality). Soon enough, however, the scenes began to encounter strong resistance in Arab/Muslim countries, for the same reasons conservative Christians were opposed to heavy metal in the United States. Metal scenes, the music, and musicians who comprised them were accused of promoting anti-Islamic (and, in Lebanon, anti-Christian) values and practices, including drugs, mixing of sexes, and, of course, Satan worshiping, which was accompanied by the near-ubiquitous accusation of killing cats and drinking their blood. These accusations occurred in an atmosphere of increasing political tension and, in Egypt in particular, religiously inspired violence, leading in 1997 to major Satanic metal scares in Egypt,1 Iran, and Lebanon. Other countries also experienced crackdowns, perhaps most importantly Morocco in 2003, although Tunisia and other Arab countries also saw their share, with varying

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levels of disruption (see Eckerström, this volume). As a (then) still officially secular country that was in the midst of its own, albeit troubled, democratic transition, Turkey did not experience a major disruption to its large metal scene during this period (see LeVine 2008 for a description of some of the more important events during the 1990s and 2000s across the region). There were three scenarios in which the scares of the late 1990s and early 2000s unfolded. In Iran, for example, where metal shows were already largely (if not completely) prohibited, they just kept the scene firmly and literally underground. In Egypt, home to one of the most developed scenes in the region, the 1997 arrest and threatened execution of almost 100 metalheads, pushed the scene underground for at least half a dozen years. “The shows were sooooo big back then,” is how one leading metal artist put it to me, thinking about the pre-’97 era. In some ways, twenty-five years later, it still has not recovered fully, while other genres, like hip hop and mahraganat (the hugely successful form of Egyptian electro-dance music), became ubiquitous. It is worth noting here, however, that key figures in both mahraganat (Mahmoud Refat, founder of its most important label) and hip hop (the rapper Abyusif), both began their careers as metal drummers. The third, and in many ways sui generis case, is Morocco, where the arrest and prosecution of fourteen metalheads in 2003 produced an unprecedented response by the metal scene, who, with the aid of international supporters and media, forced the overturning of their prosecution; one of the first and only examples before the Arab uprisings of young people successfully challenging an authoritarian regime in the MENA region. In the wake of this unprecedented victory, the country’s, (and, in fact, the region’s) first grassroots metal festival, the Boulevard de Jeunes Musiciens (today, l’Boulevard), saw the number of people attending grow exponentially; it remains today the best attended grassroots festival in Africa. For their part, Turkey, Tunisia, and Pakistan’s scenes form specific groups in the relative lack of either political or societal harassment, despite the prevalence of highly conservative religious sentiments in a significant portion of the population. A defining dynamic of this period was the role of rapidly developing “new media” technologies and the rise of social media (epitomized by MySpace, where a large share of bands had pages by 2005), which enabled the metal scenes to grow virtually even when their ability to perform live was constrained. This period of subcultural development and consolidation paved the way for a countercultural moment as the first generation of metal artists and fans took the rebellious and angry spirit of the music into adulthood, including into careers in IT, journalism, and, in a few but crucial cases, political activism. Musically, most bands in the first phase of metal’s MENA history were composing and performing traditional Euro-American metal, in English, with

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few attempts (other than Israel’s Orphaned Land) to create some sort of local hybrid that would bring together Arab/Muslim sounds, scales, and instrumentation, with the classic sounds, instrumentation, and arrangements of metal. Apart from the periods of crackdown, concerts and festivals were being held (even in Iran; although there, the government prohibited vocals, female singers, and standing during shows) (see LeVine 2008, 2009; Siamdoust 2017). The second period in MENA’s metal history, from 2005–2012, is characterized by countercultural power and revolutionary outbursts. The clandestine shows that kept the scenes alive across the region enabled the further development of the scenes, preserving the collective memory of a generation in the making, while also offering possibilities for new imaginaries. By the time we reach the mid-aughts, the Satanic panics are largely (although not completely) in the rearview mirror, scenes are coming out of the underground and holding concerts again, the number of bands is growing in most countries, as is the level of professionalization. A few groups began to perform outside their home countries and even the region, particularly in smaller metal or alternative festivals in Europe; some—like Egypt’s first all-female metal band, Massive Scar Era—were even supported by the governments. Paralleling the use of local instruments and styles in Latin American metal (Varas-Díaz 2021), so-called “Oriental metal”2 became more popular as the genre became indigenized—that is, locally rooted and self-sustaining—with Orphaned Land, despite being an Israeli Jewish band, achieving cult status among metalheads across the region. Groups from Morocco to Pakistan increasingly featured local instruments, scales, and even languages in their music. Despite their growing travails, the MENA metal scenes were achieving significance that extended beyond the music and its aural significations. Not only had these scenes become among the most globalized spaces of cultural production, but they also attracted an expanding global fanbase. Politically, the coming of age of the first metal generation was well timed, their level of education and technical competence well placed. The skills, experiences, and solidarity forged as underground scenes with countercultural significance, plus the broad despair at their countries ever democratizing or fulfilling their economic potential, led to a broad and near complete alienation from the ruling systems. The situation came to a head, of course, with the eruption of the Arab uprisings in late 2010 through 2012, where metalheads in several countries played a prominent role as organizers and protagonists—from hacking into police cameras in Tunisia to organizing Tahrir Square and becoming vocal members of the left and human rights centered political forces in the immediate aftermath of successful protests (LeVine 2022). On the other hand, the metal and other EYM genres that so well captured the zeitgeist of a generation, were neither very adaptable or utilizable for mass protests, nor could

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they move from critique to reimagination and articulate a different and more positive future. These roles were played by hip hop, folk, and more toned-down and sonically palatable rock music, exemplified by more rock-centered artists like Muhammad Mounir and Ramy Essam in Egypt and singer Emel Mathlouthi and rapper El Général in Tunisia, who were soon enough joined by other artists, especially rappers, across the region. The fact that the metal scenes were still viewed with some, albeit lessening, suspicion by societies across the MENA also made it far less likely to play a directly political role in a struggle that had suddenly moved from the subcultural underground to the megaphones of the street and the cameras of the world. Nevertheless, the revolutionary era, especially the liminal two years between 2010–2012, when seemingly anything was possible, was a moment of expanded possibilities for the scene, as musicians imagined that the political opening would open new spaces for the scene to spread, grow, and secure a broader stage in their countries’ cultural milieu. This sentiment was well captured in a 2014 interview with Sherif Tarek, the founder of the Egyptian group Origin, one of Egypt’s few “Oriental metal” bands. As he reflected back on the revolutionary year of 2011, he told an interviewer for the alternative news portal Mada Masr, “Three years ago I was living metal in Egypt . . . I used to play four or five times a month” (Magid 2014). That situation would change for the worse once the counter-revolution crushed the counterculture in the July 3, 2013, military coup. The third and final stage of metal in the region can be dated to the summer of 2013, with the end of Egypt’s democratic experiment, which was coterminous with a massive escalation in the violence and repression in Syria and Yemen and the harsh crackdown on young protesters in Turkey. By this time, whatever momentum toward freedom had been generated by the 2010–2011 protests was largely dissipated. In the wake of these crackdowns (and indeed, even during the relatively open 2011–2013 period), musicians and artists who directly criticized governments, were harassed, imprisoned, and forced into exile. Because most metal bands and their music were not directly involved in the protests as artists, the scenes have not suffered the kind of crackdown suffered, for example, by Egypt’s hugely popular mahraganat scene, which was effectively shut down publicly in response to the music’s unflinching portrayal of young nonelite Egyptians’ everyday life. On the other hand, as more international (and particularly American and European) fans have been exposed to the region’s EYM scenes, the MENA’s metal artists graduated from smaller regional festivals to Eastern European and other global festivals, including Glastonbury, Roskilde, Wacken, and SXSW. As COVID closed everything down in early 2020, the metal scenes of Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf inhabited a kind of stasis,

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with greater freedoms to play and societal acceptance not followed by an increase in popularity in anything like the numbers generated by hip hop– related genres. For its part, in Turkey, even as some popular artists were jailed and died of hunger strikes in the wake of the crushed Gezi uprising of the summer of 2013, many Turkish metalheads concluded that the Gezi protests and the rise of political Islam, in fact, helped reinvigorate extreme metal, keeping the scene on edge. As one artist interviewed by German metal scholar Pierre Hecker put it, the Gezi protests and their otherwise depressing aftermath “gave a great opportunity to [do] black metal” because it forced people “to find their own sound” (quoted in Hecker, LeVine, Siamdoust, and Wallach 2022). Iran’s scene remained erratic and unstable. The country experienced more regular concerts and even some where singing was allowed; however, some metal bands, most famously the groups Arsames and Confess, were harshly persecuted for blasphemy, forcing band members to flee the country over the mountains to avoid lengthy prison sentences or worse. The situation is even more dire in Syria, although even in the midst of such violence, artists like Step to Eternity and Mir Cyaxares have declared their intention to “make life out of death” (Step to Eternity member Bahaa Nassar, quoted in 2017 documentary We Are Warriors). In reality, however, most of the artists that had such a courageous attitude are today in exile, either in Turkey, Europe, or North America. What the disappearance of almost any space for political art or music in the MENA region points to is the overwhelming question about the efficacy and aura—without the ability of artists and fans to create a truly public public—to perform, meet, and protest publicly. Without actual scenes operating in the physical rather than just virtual/online world, how can the music and the members of the scenes act transversally and help push their societies forward (even if primarily as a consequence of the music rather than a deliberate political praxis)? This dynamic, in fact, raises important comparative questions vis-à-vis scenes in the more formally democratic Latin American scenes, for example, where metal has often developed a far more directly political edge and the issue of public performance is less constrained. RESISTANCE? REBELLION? AGENCY? LOVE? Heavy metal and other forms of EYM have long been understood as attracting fans and participants because of their “energetic” and “rebellious” culture (Weinstein 2000, 63). But rebellion has never taken precedence over the sheer pleasure and even psychological and intellectual benefits even the harshest music can elicit in fans (Neilstein 2021; cf. PsychCentral 2021; Goupil and

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Aucouturier 2019). From the (seeming) opposite side, the intensity and ritualistic nature of metal, even more than other genres of music, raise obvious similarities with religious expression, performance, and experience (indeed, religion and music have been “conceptually inseparable” since the dawn of recorded history (Morley 2009, 162)). At the same time, however, shared affective, aesthetic, bodily, and cognitive experiences (cf. Baranowski 1998) can equally breed mutual distrust even between normatively religious people and metalheads in the MENA, precisely because the shared emotional, psychic, and even corporeal terrain on which they perform operate with very different underlying ontologies and epistemologies. This creates a sense of competition between them, which is why Orthodox Muslim scholars have long declared music to be haram, or prohibited, under most circumstances (Moberg 2012; Bennett 2001; Klassen 2014; LeVine 2015). The similarities in rhythmic pulsation as well as repetitive body movements between Sufi and metal performances (e.g., Gnawa, Zar ceremonies), for example, help explain how both music and religion ostensibly about death can actually “affirm life,” and more specifically be experienced as ameliorating either individual or collective mental illness (LeVine 2008), through creating senses of belonging, purpose, community, and even family (cf. Varas-Díaz and Scott 2016). Of course, the intimate hostility directed toward metal by some conservatively religious Muslims in the MENA has long been weaponized by governments across the region, who could always count on a Satanic metal panic (see Eckerström in this volume) to shift attention away from more pressing issues whenever a distraction was needed (though it is worth noting that this hostility has waned in recent years, along with lowered hostility toward music more broadly). At the same time, metalheads, rock musicians, and fans across the Muslim world have long had ambivalent relationships with Islam (and in the case of Lebanon and Egypt, Christianity), similar to their counterparts globally vis-à-vis the dominant religions in their societies. While most, if not all, metalheads are at least nominally Muslim and many are religious, some are (albeit usually silently) atheist and even hostile to Islam (there are a few Satanic black metal bands across the MENA). And because of the open hostility toward metalheads by so many religious groups and authorities, many have harbored their own hostility toward their more religious peers, even when they have not displayed any hostility to metal or any other form of music (cf. LeVine 2008, chapter 2 for a good example of this dynamic).

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MUSIC OF/AS RESISTANCE? A final aesthetic-affective-phenomenological question related to the music is the extent to which its creation and performance, and/or the actions of the musicians and fans in the MENA scenes, can be understood as acts of resistance or rebellion (or both). Is creating and consuming the music itself an act of resistance or rebellion against the conservative, patriarchal powers-that-be in their societies? Even more, can they be considered not merely defiance of norms but as resistance and/or rebellion against politically oppressive rulers, whether done in their own “private publics” in underground/subcultural spaces, or in the public sphere as direct political acts (Lilja et al. 2017, Scott 1985)? At its core, resistance is about “disrupting civil order and stability” (US Joint Staff 2010, 206); it is hard to find music you can more easily accuse of doing just that than extreme metal and other forms of EYM. If Gene Sharp famously described resistance as a “refusal to obey,” the actions of members of the metal scene comprise two kinds of resistance: “acts of omission” such as refusing to “perform” or conform to societal expectations of young people, as well as “acts of commission,” meaning the actual performance of acts—in this case music “which they usually do not perform, are not expected by custom to perform, or are forbidden by law or regulation from performing; or a combination of both” (Sharp 1980, 218). And yet discussions with a range of metal artists and fans over the last two decades remind us not to conflate personal rebellion or resistance against cultural conformity with actual political resistance or rebellion. Few artists in the region perceive their music as deliberately rebellious or as an act of resistance, and even fewer would admit to it if they did (at least not while they are in their home country), given that such explicitly political music has led to harassment, attacks, imprisonment, and exile. Nor is it the case that most artists understood the skills they were developing to protect and cultivate their scenes and their music could be used to spread far more directly political ideas and messages, as in fact happened in countries such as Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, and Iran in 2009–2012, when activists who honed their sub- and countercultural skills in metal scenes applied them to the protests. What is clear is that the EYM scenes across the MENA served as canaries in the coal mine of political discontent, harbingers of a generation that had lost any faith in or respect for the existing order and which was willing to take increasing risks to express itself in ways that challenged regimes defined increasingly by violence, repression, and sheer domination rather than hegemony over most of their citizens. If everyday forms of resistance

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and the agency they reflect have been defined by Sharp (1980) and Scott (1985), among other scholars, as cornerstones of larger movements when they emerge, being a metalhead (whether musician or fan) is an assertion of agency, especially in the context of authoritarian social and/or political settings, that leave no room for public political opposition, even through art. Even when relegated to the private realm, agency can have a long-term impact, creating what Derrida (1978) terms a state of “play” (and here we can note that the French for “play,” jeu, is from the same root as jouer, to play music). Such play states are free from the oppressive and controlling constraints that exist in what could be termed “state space” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987; Derrida 1978, 289). Whereas just playing heavy metal or other forms of EYM can put members of these scenes literally and figuratively in a “state of exception” (Agamben 2005; LeVine 2022), the performance of metal—that is, literally “playing” it—can be understood as generating “visceralectric” states of play that “disrupt” the presence of societally hegemonic or dominant modes of behavior and belief (LeVine and Reynolds forthcoming). There is, of course, a well-known history of even the most politically courageous and direct artists having their music coopted, commercialized, and ultimately defanged, even while being celebrated for their political courage and power. When cooptation fails, of course, the next step authoritarian governments will take against highly political art will likely be direct repression, from censorship to imprisonment. In this context, simply the creation, performance, circulation, and consumption of metal and other forms of EYM constitute at the very least an act of “sonic agency” (LaBelle 2018), one with the potential to transform these scenes and their participants from sub- to counter- and even revolutionary cultures. This potential is itself an inchoate form of resistance, even while scenes remain underground, inaudible to the mainstream of society. As LaBelle argues, the “agentive potentiality” of the scenes provides “a means for enabling new conceptualizations of the public sphere and expressions of emancipatory practices” (ibid., 4). In that regard, one can today find numerous good examples of how bands that are expressly apolitical can nevertheless create music with undeniably political undertones, and even overtones (if one knows how to listen beyond the brutal singing). One example is the album Cloaked in Darkness by the pioneering Bahraini group Motör Militia, which I had the occasion to be introduced to by the band literally on the day in March 2011 that the Saudi government sent troops across the bridge connecting the two kingdoms to help quash the pro-democracy uprising. Tracks like “Flames of Oppression,” “Cries of the Innocent,” and “al-Nakba” (“The Disaster,” the term applied to the expulsion of three-quarters of a million Palestinians from their homeland in 1948) perfectly captured the sense of foreboding and even impending doom felt by protesters earlier that same day. The band, however, remained resolutely

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apolitical, and the music was not part of the sonic universe of Bahraini protesters (for more on the Bahraini metal scene, see McDonald 2021). One can see a similar dynamic with bands across the region, from Egypt’s Scarab to Israel’s Orphaned Land, all of whose music deals with themes such as corruption, violence or intercommunal conflict, and hatred that were clearly defining issues in their respective societies, even as the bands did little to engage more directly in political speech or activism, even during the short periods when it was possible (in Orphaned Land’s case, the band’s refusal directly to condemn the Occupation and the routinization of war crimes and apartheid has caused some Arab fans to criticize the group, despite its history of working with Palestinian citizens of Israel). Other groups, like Egypt’s first all-female metal group, Massive Scar Era (see Eckerström in this volume), focus on the politics of women’s freedom and rights (a path taken by many of the region’s growing cadre of female rappers as well). Even when not explicitly political, however, studying these scenes provides a deeper understanding of the broader political, economic, and cultural struggles experienced by their societies. This knowledge is particularly powerful because the music is not just a repository of experience; it’s an incubator, a tool, and sometimes a weapon in the ongoing struggles against the still dominant patriarchal, authoritarian, corrupt, and violent political and cultural orders across the region. Contextualizing metal vis-à-vis dynamics of resistance, rebellion, and agency reminds us that metal in its various incarnations does not exist in either a musical or a political vacuum. In countries with much larger and more deeply established and robust metal scenes, there may be less movement toward other scenes like hip hop and hardcore/punk by musicians and fans (although there are crossovers and collaborations and points of convergence, like thrash and rap metal). In MENA countries where metal scenes are more precarious, it should not be surprising that some of the most creative musicians move toward hip hop, EDM, or other more popular and commercial scenes as they reach a level of professionalism that cannot be served in scenes that have few income-generating opportunities. Most metaliens, however, keep the flame alive, and even when they are skilled enough to earn a living in other musical genres, choose metal as an avocation and way of life, rather than abandon it for another genre. AN AURA OF PRAXIS Music changes the fundamental dynamics of the long-term slog against oppressive systems through both songs and performances, and through the transfer of skills involved in participating in such scenes to sub- and

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potentially countercultural political pursuits. If we consider activist, playwright, and documentarian Toni Cade Bambara’s eloquent declaration that the role of great art is to “make revolution irresistible,” then there is ample evidence that the metal scenes did their part in pushing key members of the millennial generation toward challenging a system in which they had little place and even less of a future. In Gramscian terms, at a moment when the system (whose downfall protesters young and old would call for beginning in late 2010) had lost much of its hegemony, music helped a growing field of opposition to move from a war of position to a war of maneuver, turning what he evocatively described as the “phantasms” of a small vanguard into the more concrete yet fluid and directly political imagery, ideas, and identities required to engage in direct political conflict (Gramsci 1975, 253–54, 351–55). In short, for Gramsci and for most political artists—especially when the art in question is aesthetically extreme—“art is praxis” (Salamini 2014, 205), no form more so than music (an argument Edward Said (1991) similarly made about classical music). Because of its theatricality, intense performativity, physically transformative impact on listeners’ bodies and minds, and strong emotional/affective dimension, metal and other forms of EYM, more than most other genres of music, possess the kind of “aura” that was lost as music and other forms of art were commodified at an industrial scale and constantly mediated through corporate control, advertising, and changing consumer tastes beginning in the nineteenth century. In particular, if the power of artistic experience—its aura—was tied precisely to the immediacy of its experience (i.e., one experienced music, paintings, poetry, or theater directly and in person), it was either lost with the transition to mass-(re)production or was replaced by a politically neutered “aura of style” (Benjamin 1936; Adorno 2001; 2002). However, the rise of digital technologies and practices of production, circulation, and consumption that have fueled the current era of late modern, neoliberal globalization fundamentally changed these dynamics, nowhere more so than with music. Suddenly, recording, circulating, and consuming music, particularly that produced outside the commercial mainstream, could now occur outside the chain of commodification—and equally important, government control and/or censorship. This enabled what I term a return of the aura to the work of art, and with it, its transversal political potential. This dynamic is especially visible in the MENA vis-à-vis extreme metal and other forms of EYM that are defined aesthetically by the kind of cathartic, dissonant, and transgressive sound and aesthetic that provide the music with its politically valent aura. If Jacques Attali powerfully argued (1985) that music functions as a sonic code that “orders power, privilege, and difference within society,” metal, as well as other forms of EYM, constitutes a counter-disorder, a kind of antiauthoritarian creative destruction which, to borrow a phrase from the

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Zapatistas, helps people imagine “a world where many worlds fit” (un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos). These ideas are well aligned with what Varas-Díaz, Wallach, Clinton, and Nevárez Araújo describe as the distorting practices of metal music, which help people challenge official historical narratives, and confront their histories of oppression (see the introduction to this volume). Yet as the last decade of largely failed protests have strongly suggested, the return of the aura of music would only achieve a transformative level of social and political power if the music and the people participating in it were able to move from the digital to the material/physical realm. Just as my friends in the Egyptian activist group Kefaya joked in 2006 that thousands of Facebook likes translated into dozens of people at demonstrations, so too their power to affect politics directly depended on the possibility of people gathering together in the same physical space. That is why the clandestine or secret metal shows, whether in north Tehran basements or desert villas outside Cairo, were so important for the survival and development of the scenes, holding both the collective memory of a generation in the making, and possibilities for new imaginaries as well. If we consult Wallach and Levine’s (2011) analysis of the mechanics of metal music scene formation—acting as conduits to the circulation of sounds and styles, providing gathering places for collective consumption and embodied performance, and sites for local performance and artifactual production, and finally promoting the local artists to the wider world, we see that the dynamics are quite similar to how such scenes transform from sub- to countercultural and even revolutionary under the right conditions (Wallach and Levine 2011; cf. LeVine 2022). METAL BEYOND THE COLONIALITY OF POWER A core argument of this volume is that metal both can be viewed as decolonial practice and that it should be analyzed as such when applicable, particularly in the Global South, which epitomizes the ongoing and inherent colonial structures at the heart of governance, cultures, and economies in societies whose postcolonial condition is that of “sovereign” states that replicate the very structures of governance that defined colonial rule (cf. LeVine 2020). My questions, in light of the experiences in the MENA documented here, are the following: Is it enough for artists to hold a metaphorical and often fuzzy mirror up to society through their art? Or does a decolonial approach—by necessity a praxis—demand direct engagement through art with issues driving social and/or political conflict, violence, and oppression?

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We know that heavy metal was born out of the pain and “shit”—as Tony Iommi described it—of incipient structural adjustment and deindustrialization in northern English cities like Birmingham (processes that would soon spread to cities like London and New York, generating punk and hip hop as it moved) (cf. Weinstein 2000). It is also clear that the same feeling of hopelessness generated by the first generation of victims of neoliberal capitalism, in Europe and the United States, became all too common in the countries of the MENA by the later 1970s, and worse with each successive decade. Not surprisingly, then, the harder the metal or hip hop, the more likely it was to attract an audience, however small at first, among the millennial generation of the region. As Moroccan metal pioneer Reda Zine so succinctly put it to me, “We play heavy metal because our lives are heavy metal.” And yet, the appeal of metal is about more than its ability to reflect and embody harsh realities or, even more, catharsis. As an Iranian metalhead who grew up during the horrors of the Iran-Iraq war, explained it to me, “You can’t imagine how a music about death can affirm life.” This holds true today when the enemy is not the neighboring country, but one’s government, or even one’s neighbors, or a world economy that has increasingly little need for huge swaths of the world’s population. Sonically, lyrically, and performatively, heavy metal remains a uniquely powerful form of music to expose the realities of the existing systems of domination in which people live, albeit less so to imagine alternative, more positive futures. If we consider, as I have previously argued (2005a and b), that colonialism is the generative order of capitalist modernity, then any form of artistic production that exposes the colonial grounding of the modern world in which we live—in decolonial terms, its coloniality of power (Quijano 2000)—can function to some degree decolonially (cf. Varas-Díaz 2021), or as a form of critical praxis. In some cases, it can be an immanent critique from within the system and cultures that first produced it, which is how we might consider the first generation of metal in the UK, along with other extreme genres that emerged in the postindustrial United States. Not surprisingly, it would be harder for metal to play such a directly pedagogical, never mind political role, in authoritarian countries where it arrived as a stranger (however intimate for some) that violated local social, sexual/ gender, generational, and political norms. On the other hand, the extreme metal and related scenes that developed in the Global South, from Latin America to the MENA and beyond, not only saw through the mirages of capitalist modernity but did so with a highly transversal edge, which pushed at least some bands to a more critical level of analysis and more positive alternatives to imagine in its place. That is no doubt why the music has been politically salient and even powerful not merely in the MENA, but in Southeast Asia (especially Indonesia, as demonstrated by the research of Wallach and

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Clinton and Oki Sutopo and Aryo Lukisworo in this volume) and in Latin America (cf. Varas-Díaz 2021). Despite growing recognition of popular music studies, full recognition of both the political and artistic/aesthetic innovations and power of youth music has yet to be achieved. Nor has the ease with which all these forms of music have been hybridized, indigenized, and otherwise transformed been adequately interpreted. My own research, as well as that of scholars such as Daniel Nevárez Araújo, Esther Clinton, Jeremy Wallach, Pierre Hecker, Nahid Siamdoust, Edward Banchs, Titus Hjelm, Keith Kahn-Harris, Thomas Burkhalter, Nelson Varas-Díaz, Jim Donaghey, Stefano Barone, and my fellow contributors to this collection, and the rising cadre of scholars (and often, scholar-practitioners) of metal, hardcore/punk, hip hop, EDM and other forms of EYM who explore these genres in the Global South, together reveal that these transformations cannot be fully appreciated in isolation from each other, but rather should be explored as much in relation to each other as to their broader societies, since they intersect aesthetically, technologically, sociologically, and politically in so many ways. To be sure, there are few, if any, instances in the MENA of metal artists involved in the kind of decolonial pedagogy with young people that Varas-Díaz describes in his research in Guatemala (2021, chapter 9), or even of female artists winning the kind of acceptance as the all-female metal group Voice of Baceprot has in Indonesia. But in order to tease out the factors that produce such different experiences, we need new research paradigms and parameters, based not only on a decolonial framework that bursts through the Eurocentric and modernist paradigms governing (however submerged or sublimated) most contemporary research on popular music, but on a kind of collective, collaborational, and comparative research ethos that enables subaltern voices within these scenes and between scenes and scholars in the Global South and North to be heard as loud as necessary, in order to change the governing narratives, styles, and problematics of their disciplines. Another issue that requires more attention is the role of violence in these scenes. Certainly, most of the countries of the MENA region have witnessed significant societal and political violence, including major wars. The same can be said for Indonesia under its brutal dictatorship and across Latin America. If societal tension and violence seem to encourage metal, as Barone’s research on Tunisia has demonstrated, more stable and even democratic transitions tend to reduce the raison d’être of the scenes, leading in the case of Tunisia to “striking . . . collapse” of the scene (Barone 2019, 2). Whether ongoing corruption, political instability, and disillusionment with neoliberal reforms—not to mention the July 2021 autogolpe by President Kais Saied and the worsening political crisis that has unfolded since—will lead to a metal renaissance remains to be seen. Beyond explorations of the

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different experiences within the MENA and broader Muslim world, comparisons with the situation in Latin America are clearly warranted, which points to the importance not only of collaborative but comparative research. At the same time, there are growing indications of a direct use of the notion of decoloniality within the MENA region’s EYM scenes. Specifically, we see it with the Hardzazat Festival in Morocco, which explicitly describes itself on its Facebook page as a “decolonial” festival guided by a “proud punk aesthetic and fierce anti-colonial, anti-fascist rhetoric.” The festival considers itself “by and for non-white people under systemic racism. . . . an occasion to regroup people from southern countries, talk about racism issues, organize local [mutual aid] and frequent events. The decolonial issues are part of a more general political engagement of the fest, treating problems like racism, sexism, homophobia, in order to build an autonomous movement of revolted and revolutionaries.” In pursuance of this decolonial ethos, the organizers went so far as to ban French hardcore bands from performing at the 2019 edition (despite its main base of support being in the French hardcore scene) in order to address the imbalances of travel for bands—French bands can come to Morocco without a visa, but Moroccan bands have an increasingly difficult time getting into France (cf. LeVine 2022, chapter 1). It should be noted, however, that regardless of how anti- and decolonial its discourse, Hardzazat has never openly criticized the king or the ruling system, which would be the target of a critique directed at the ongoing coloniality of power governing postcolonial societies, suggesting that the festival is more an occasion for anticolonial discourse or “decolonizing” the festival circuit than a true decolonial event in the way Latin American scholars who first deployed the concept intended it. I have encountered similar confusion in the use of “decolonial” to mean more traditional “decolonizing” in many academic and artistic settings, which highlights the need to foreground the truly radical critique at the heart of decolonial epistemologies and arguments in our research, pedagogy, and performance. A more directly decolonial critique is offered in the music of the Tunisian hardcore/metal band Znoos (“species” in Tunisian Arabic), which is comprised of political lyrics and a beautifully angry sound that are “fueled by social and political injustices in post-revolutionary Tunisia,” as well as an explicitly sophisticated decolonial critique that is more self-aware and reflexive than the more awkward “decolonial” arguments at Hardzazat. As one Tunisian band’s deliberately anonymous member explained to me in an October 2021 interview in Tunis, “We’re doing music as a historical document. Our job is to counteract colonial narrative and the religious and patriarchal system still governing our country, but we’re also having fun making music and expressing ourselves.” This approach comes closest to what

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Nelson Varas-Díaz (2021, 2) describes as the “extreme decolonial dialogues” at the heart of radical metal in Latin America, which offer “a way to cope and transform oppressive contexts in light of the profound and ever-present consequences of colonialism.” In our case, in the MENA, the question becomes who is listening and wants to talk. If to be colonized is to “have your imagination and identity driven from you” (Varas-Díaz 2021, 3), then decolonization involves both restoring the stolen past and self-identity and creating a new one, which can only be done collectively, in struggle. As with decolonial scholarship, decolonial art, and metal with it, needs to be understood as both an analytical task and a political project, which is why it is so important for scholars and musicians to work collaboratively. In contrast to merely attempting to “decolonize” metal in the MENA, a decolonial approach would both study and create music in a manner that highlights practices of resistance (however mundane or quiet) as well as the attempts to imagine, if not create, positive alternative realities to the world that is at the heart of extreme music. The xwélmexw (Stó:lō) scholar Dylan Robinson’s (2020) push to transform scholarship from “hungry,” and appropriative listening toward the far more grounded and holistic “resonant listening” strategies practiced by Indigenous communities, offers an important example of how such decolonization of the ways in which we study metal and other EYM scenes in the MENA might work. One advantage of Indigenous approaches to analyzing and creating art is that the art so created is equally a weapon of resistance and an instrument of hope and imagination for a generation with increasingly little room for either. As the growing corpus of publications dealing with Indigenous theories and methodologies makes clear, a focus common to them all is on collaborative knowledge production with the communities with whom one works, performs, and/or does research, joint “ownership” of any knowledge or culture produced through collaborations, and responsibility of the artist and/ or scholar to the community in terms of how the art, scholarship, or other products created out of their cultural heritage and knowledge systems are used. While these issues grow directly out of the historical appropriation and misuse of Indigenous knowledge and traditions by Western scholars, Indigenous theorists are explicitly describing this approach as being relevant to both research and artistic collaboration more broadly, especially in situations where there is a significant imbalance of power between collaborators (cf. Smith 2021; Wilson 2008; Chilisa 2012; Connell 2007; Comaroff and Comaroff 2016). I argue that the praxis-oriented methodological guideposts and designs developed by Indigenous scholars and practitioners offer a powerful paradigm for metal studies research, not just for Indigenous scholars working

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with Indigenous bands (still a relatively rare coincidence in this field) but for non-Indigenous scholars working with Indigenous bands (as ably demonstrated by Goossens’s insightful research in this volume) and on artists from the Global South more broadly—especially in the MENA region which, while not home to large Indigenous communities, is among the most deeply colonized regions of the world, and thus strongly benefits from such approaches. A collaborative and truly decolonial approach to research is particularly important when we study online/virtual/metaversal environments of the internet and social media, and how they transform the scenes in countries, such as in the MENA, where repression and war continue to make regular performances and public scenes difficult to sustain. In this regard, Northern Irish punk studies scholar and musician Jim Donaghey’s (2017) innovative research into punk cultures in Northern Ireland and Indonesia utilizes the work of Linda Tuhiwai Smith and other Indigenous/First Nations scholars to develop research methodologies and designs grounded squarely in the narratives, needs, and understandings of the artists with whom he works as to what is important to preserve and share with those outside the community. In so doing, they help ensure that their voices, and with and through them, the aura of the music, are most powerfully and authentically conveyed to readers and listeners—and musicians—alike. With each new iteration and experience of metal and EYM more broadly, the power of the young people behind the music to tell their own stories, and the urgency to listen to their voices, becomes more difficult to ignore. Extreme youth music, like other forms of intense artistic expression, remains a bullet and a bullhorn, raising awareness and alarm about the ever-graver threats to societies by brutally oppressive and unendingly corrupt regimes, and shooting down the propaganda and false consciousness deployed—along with the violence and coercion—to maintain their control over the largest and potentially most powerful group within almost every country from Morocco to Indonesia: young people, who have the greatest interest in bringing about truly revolutionary changes in the way their societies, and the global political and economic system more broadly, are governed. The music offers hope, solidarity, and strength to precisely the members of these societies who are most likely to push them forward toward a different and more just future, and for these musicians, more than most, the music is truly their lives. REFERENCES Adorno, Theodor. The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. London: Routledge, 2001. ———. Essays on Music. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

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Agamben, Giorgio. State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Attali, Jacques. Noise: The Political Economy of Music, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985. Baranowski, Ann. A Psychological Comparison of Ritual and Musical Meaning.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 10, no. 1 (1998): 3–29. Barone, Stefano (2019). Metal, Rap and Electro in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia: A Fragile Underground. London, UK: Routledge. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Online English translation of essay at Marxists.org. (1936). www​.marxists​.org​/reference​ /subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm. Bennett, Andy. Music and Popular Culture, London: Open University Press, 2001. Bohlman, Philip. World Music: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Chilisa, Bagele. Indigenous Research Methodologies. London: Sage Publications, 2012. Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America Is Evolving Toward Africa. London: Routledge, 2016. Connell, Raewyn. Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2007. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” In Writing and Difference. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978. Donaghey, Jim. “Researching ‘Punk Indonesia’: Notes towards a Non-Exploitative Insider Methodology.” Punk & Post-Punk 6, no. 2 (2017): 291–314. Goupil, Louise, and Jean-Julien Aucouturier. “Musical Pleasure and Musical Emotions.” PNAS 116, no. 9 (2019): 3364–66, available at https:​//​www​.pnas​.org​/ content​/116​/9​/3364. Gramsci, Antonio. Quaderni del carcere. Edizione critica dell’Istituto Gramsci (4 volumes), Torino: Einaudi, 1975. Hecker, Pierre, Mark LeVine, Nahid Siamdoust, and Jeremy Wallach. “Epilogue.” In We’ll Play Till We Die: Journeys across a Decade of Revolutionary Music in the Muslim World, eduted by Mark LeVine. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2022. ISMMS. “Heavy Metal Music in the Global South,” 5th Biennial Conference of the International Society for Metal Music Studies, Mexico City, June 7–10, 2022. Klassen, Chris. Religion and Popular Culture: A Cultural Studies Approach. Oxford,: Oxford University Press, 2014. LaBelle, Brandon. Sonic Agency: Sound and Emergent forms of Resistance, London: Goldsmiths Press, 2018. LeVine, Mark. Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine, 1880–1948, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005a. ———. Why They Don’t Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil. Oxford: Oneworld Press, 2005b. ———. Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam. New York: Random House, 2008.

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———.“New Hybridities of Arab Musical Intifadas.” Jadaliyya, October 29, 2011, available at https:​//​www​.jadaliyya​.com​/Details​/24562. ———. “Music and the Aura of Revolution.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 44 (2012): 794–97. ———. “When Art Is the Weapon: Culture and Resistance Confronting Violence in the Post-Uprisings Arab World.” Religions 6 (2015): 1277–313. ———. From Neoliberalism to Necrocapitalism in 20 Years.” al-Jazeera, July 15, 2020, https:​//​www​.aljazeera​.com​/opinions​/2020​/7​/15​/from​-neoliberalism​-to​ -necrocapitalism​-in​-20​-years. ———. We’ll Play Till We Die: Journeys across a Decade of Revolutionary Music in the Muslim World. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2022. ———. Art Beyond the Edge: Creativity and Conflict in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, forthcoming. LeVine, Mark, and Bryan Reynolds. “The Miraculous Love Kids: Grrrl Power, Rock’ n’ Roll, and Rebellion in Afghanistan.” In Music and Resistance: From 1900 to the Present, edited by Igor Contreras Zubillaga and Helena Martín-Nieva. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, forthcoming. Lilja, Mona, Mikael Baaz, Michael Schulz and Stellan Vinthagen, “How Resistance Encourages Resistance: Theorizing the Nexus between Power, «Organised Resistance» and «Everyday Resistance»,” Journal of Political Power, x/1 (2017): 40–54. Magid, Pesha. Raging Online: Egypt’s Young Metalheads Take to the Internet to Reach Fans.” Mada Masr, October 24, 2014, available at https:​//​www​.madamasr​ .com​/en​/2014​/10​/24​/feature​/culture​/raging​-online​-egypts​-young​-metalheads​-take​ -to​-the​-internet​-to​-reach​-fans​/. McDonald, David A. “Reimagining Protest, Reform, and the Public Sphere in Bahraini Hip Hop and Heavy Metal.” In Music in Arabia, Issa Boulos, Virginia Danielson, Anne K. Rasmussen, eds. (268–86). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2021. Moberg, Marcus. “Religion in Popular Music or Popular Music as Religion? A Critical Review of Scholarly Writing on the Place of Religion in Metal Music and Culture.” Popular Music and Society 35, no. 1 (2012): 113–30. Morley, Iain. “Ritual and Music—Parallels and Practice, and the Palaeolithic.” In Becoming Human: Innovation in Prehistoric Material and Spiritual Culture, edited by Colin Renfrew and Iaian Morley, 159–75. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Neilstein, Vince. “Study Shows Listening to Metal Reduces Anxiety, Blood Pressure and Heart Rate.” Metalsucks.com, February 11, 2021, available at https:​//​www​ .metalsucks​.net​/2021​/02​/11​/study​-shows​-listening​-to​-metal​-reduces​-anxiety​-blood​ -presure​-and​-heart​-rate​/. PsychCentral (2021), “Yes, Listening to Metal Can Benefit Your Mental Health,” review article on research on the effects of metal on mental and physical health, available at https:​//​psychcentral​.com​/health​/benefits​-of​-listening​-to​-metal​-music​ #recap.

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Quijano, Anibal. “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.” Nepantla: Views from South 1, no. 4 (2000): 533–80. Robinson, Dylan. Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2020. Said, Edward. Musical Elaborations: The Wellek Library Lectures. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1991. Salamini, Leonardo. The Sociology of Political Praxis (RLE: Gramsci): An Introduction to Gramsci, London: Routledge, 2014. Scott, James. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985. Sharp, Gene. Social Power and Political Freedom, Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1980. Shepherd, Jessica. “World’s First Heavy Metal Conference Hits Salzburg.” The Guardian, October 29, 2008. Available at https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​/education​ /2008​/oct​/29​/research​-music​#comments. Siamdoust, Nahid. Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017. Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, London: Zed Books, 2021. US Joint Staff. Joint Publication 1–02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, November 2010. Varas-Díaz, Nelson. Decolonial Metal Music in Latin America, Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2021. Varas-Díaz, Nelson, and Niall Scott, eds. 2016. Heavy Metal Music and the Communal Experience. London, U.K.: Lexington Books. Wallach, Jeremy, and Alexandra Levine. “‘I Want You to Support Local Metal’: A Theory of Metal Scene Formation.” Popular Music History 6, nos. 1–2 (2011): 116–34. Weinstein, Deena. Heavy Metal: The Music And Its Culture. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 2000. Wilson, Shawn. Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Toronto, CA: Fernwood Publishing, 2008.

NOTES 1. That same year, Egypt suffered its worst terrorist attack at Luxor. 2. This label represents the most widely adopted way to refer to MENA bands that have used a metal sound that is infused with musical and iconographic elements associated with the region and its cultures. Needless to say, the term carries within it many problems and contradictions that continue the Orientalizing tendencies pointed out by Edward Said and others. The author’s deployment of the term here and elsewhere in the paper responds to said mainstream usage and not to some acceptance of the terminology and its indiscriminate utilization.

Chapter 6

Youth Activism and Decolonial Metal Voice Of Baceprot and Alien Weaponry as Case Studies Paula Rowe

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF COUNTRY I live, work, and wrote this chapter, on the lands of the Kaurna people. Sovereignty has never been ceded; it always was and always will be Kaurna land. I pay my deep respect to Kaurna Elders past and present as the custodians of the lands, waterways, and skies of the greater Adelaide region. I extend my respect to other First Nations peoples across Australia and to those who may be reading this in other parts of the world. I recognize the past atrocities against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of this land, and that Australia was founded on the genocide and dispossession of First Nations peoples. I acknowledge that colonial structures and policies remain in place today and recognize the ongoing struggles of First Nations peoples in dismantling those structures. To remember and address this nation’s past is a crucial step toward individual and collective healing. INTRODUCTION The ongoing struggle for justice depicted above in the Australian context reflects the unfinished business of decolonization projects globally. Colonialism continues to manifest in complex and ever-changing ways 137

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across generations, and, as a youth researcher, I am especially interested in the ways young people use their voice as active citizens to educate others and encourage the dismantling of oppressive systems. In this chapter, I write specifically about young people using decolonial metal, defined as metal music that aims to make evident the ongoing effects of colonialism and actively challenge them (Varas-Díaz 2021), in a bid to leverage change in the Global South. Definitions of youth (as a life stage) vary, but my research interest is in the twelve- to twenty-five-year-old age group that is faced with navigating transitional spaces between childhood and adulthood, while recognizing that transitional contexts vary significantly in terms of the structural levers and cultural norms that can hold young people back from attaining independence, or quite the contrary, can fast-track their adult status and concomitant responsibilities (Nilan 2011). Researching this age group is pertinent given that most countries in the Global South have very young populations; hence, rock and metal have been, and continue to be, potent social forces there. At the center of all this, young people mostly live in family, social, and political systems in which adult mechanisms fundamentally exclude youth participation in decision-making, whether or not they live in democratic societies. Typically, youth occupy subordinate social positions in relation to adults, a reality that arguably parallels discourses of colonialism (De Jong and Love 2015, 489). Like other “-isms,” adultism1 is rooted in oppression by virtue of adult control over young people’s access to political and economic participation and other privileges of society. This is further complicated for youth who occupy multiple disenfranchised social categories. To be young and poor, young and LGBTQIA+, young and nonwhite, young and living with a disability can (and does) remove youth voice even further from decision-making processes in micro and macro contexts—with cultural, religious, and gendered norms also impacting the degree to which youth voice is promoted and acted upon, if at all. In response, young people have learned to resist oppressive systems and structures in innovative ways, as well as through some of the more organized youth participation mechanisms in democratic societies like school representative councils and municipal advisory groups. However, some young people do not have organized options available to them or do not feel welcome to join, so they devise alternate ways of being heard on matters that affect them, like playing heavy metal music, as this chapter highlights. From this initial view of youth as an oppressed social category in general, the focus of this chapter shifts to look at multiple layers of decoloniality informing the music of metal youth tackling issues in the Global South. The broad research aim of my study was to discover and promote positive youth leadership in unanticipated contexts like heavy metal music

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communities of practice in the Global South. Accordingly, it was guided by two key research questions: 1.  How and why do young heavy metal bands deploy their music to raise awareness of social issues in the Global South? 2.  What challenges and opportunities can metal youth identify for politically activating their voices in the Global South? Metal youth are not a homogenous group by any standard, including their career trajectories as emerging metal artists. This chapter features two case studies of young metal bands selected because of their Global South positioning and their remarkable achievements, aligned with decolonial metal, at incredibly young ages; namely Voice Of Baceprot (VOB) from Indonesia and Alien Weaponry from Aotearoa/New Zealand. Each band’s rather meteoric rise to international visibility occurred in parallel fashion during their early teenage years, and both bands have taken subsequent (and significant) steps to try and disrupt the colonial systems that intersect with their lifeworlds. The gender representation2 of female and male band members adds further value to this study, given the underrepresentation of women in the decolonial metal literature. BACKGROUND Youth Activism Studies of youth activism tend to focus on two main themes: 1) the identity formations of young people engaging in social causes (see Fullam 2017; Montague and Eiroa-Orosa 2018; Moussa 2019; Terriquez 2015; Vestergren, Drury, and Chiriac 2017); and 2) the nature and extent of youth participation in social action (see Earl, Maher, and Elliot 2017; Peterson et al. 2020; Rowe 2018a). Both fields have generated much debate as to what activities constitute “genuine” activism and how much influence identity seeking has on young people’s choice of causes and activities to engage in. For example, some authors argue that social media has given rise to clicktivism—a term used to describe ways that people voice (or click) their support for issues by adding “likes” and sharing posts without taking any further action beyond “clicking” to support the efforts of others (Halupka 2018). Further, slacktivism has been coined to characterize a phenomenon that Kristofferson, White, and Peloza (2013, 1149) define as “a willingness to perform a relatively costless, token display of support for a social cause, with an accompanying lack of willingness to devote significant effort to enact

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meaningful change.” Social media is again implicated as a conduit for youth “slacktivists” to engage in token actions like embodying a cause by wearing apparel or some other type of paraphernalia (ribbons, buttons, etc.) as one goes about daily life. However, in the case of the Arab Spring revolution in the early 2010s, social media was used to mobilize uprisings in far more consequential ways than status changes and “likes” to show support or ribbon wearing. Therefore, the ways that tools and strategies cohere for youth activists are not straightforward and may certainly be different throughout the Global South. This raises questions as to where youth protest music in the form of decolonial metal might fit in the contemporary schema. Music, Metal, and Youth Voice Stories of oppression and injustice have been told through song long before digital technologies entered the picture. Despite the rise of social media-oriented activism strategies, music continues to be a vitally important mechanism for “critiquing oppressive structures or political injustice as they are being lived by youth today” (Guerra et al. 2020, 5). Songs of protest also serve clear educative and healing purposes. For example, Sprengel (2019) argues that in the post–Arab Spring return to authoritarian rule, Egyptian youth music served to bypass political engagement and work directly on the senses to heal and form community bonds at the street level. In this way, musical organizing was less political than it was healing and strengthening for a fractured and anxious community. Sprengel (2019, 63) further notes that while many of the street music projects began as public celebrations of the revolution’s victory, they “slowly evolved into practices that were believed to continue the revolution itself,” thus capturing some of the challenges in attempting to demarcate musical activism from musical healing and identity work (see also LeVine, this volume). Indeed, there are many examples of musical genres intersecting politics and community resolve, including heavy metal. Since its inception, metal music has been fierce in drawing attention to oppressive conditions, as seen with metal’s early dark imagery capturing the bleak social alienation of the working class in Birmingham, England (Weinstein 2014). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to debate the intention and legitimacy of metal’s political voice throughout its history, but there is a lot of good research and media commentary on this for readers to explore, including Wallach and Clinton’s (forthcoming) synthesis of complexities in assessing metal’s relationship to politics against the backdrop of tremendous growth in sociocultural diversity in and between metal audiences around the world. Suffice it to say, the scope of metal’s political concerns continues to expand across enduring and emerging issues of local and global concern. However,

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specific scholarly interest in the political voice of metal youth remains underdeveloped in critical discussions of metal and politics. Metal youth are not intentionally excluded from such discussions or research projects, but an explicit youth studies lens is rarely applied to their political participation. For example, Mustamo (2020) recently reported on black metal countercultures resisting against the welfare state. The interviewees were described as “mostly young adults” (72), and the manuscript was published in a leading youth studies journal. However, no further definitions or characteristics relating to age were provided. Mustamo’s conceptual framework was meticulously outlined in relation to studies of black metal, but it did not address any youth-specific research considerations or theoretical frames. In contrast, my previous longitudinal metal research did apply a critical youth studies frame to track early metal identity formations as acts of resistance through high school into post-school environments in Australia, but the political transformations that interviewees achieved were very individualized and characteristic of growing up in the Global North (Rowe 2018b). For example, participants in that study were all ostracized in some way at school, many were bullied or rejected from peer groups, and they described themselves as loners or outsiders. Respondents drew on metal’s negative stereotypes to protect themselves against further harassment by looking “dangerous” and scaring people away. For them, metal preferences functioned as individual remedies to identity politics at school in the Global North. While youth in northern and southern contexts can share many similarities, there are also many differences, and some are extreme for youth living under violent political regimes or with little access to basic resources. I subsequently became interested in learning how metal youth in the Global South might politically activate their voice through metal, particularly against the backdrop of burgeoning youth movements around the world. Guerra et al. (2020, 5) note the challenges in situating music at the center of critical youth studies but argue the importance of understanding the nexus of music, identity, and political protests through a deep exploration of youth narratives in “songs that sing a crisis.” It is timely for this study to specifically investigate how and why metal youth in the Global South might be singing, or shredding, the collective crises in their young lives. METHODS Conceptual Framing of the Study Youth as a life stage is conceptualized here as an oppressed social category under adult rule, but there are tremendous variations in the ways that young

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people experience oppressive conditions and the extent it impacts them. No unified set of theories can account for youth diversity in general, and researchers need to pay particular attention to contextual assumptions about youth that simply do not align with the lived experiences of youth in the Global South3 (Cooper, Schwartz, and Mahali 2019). To navigate this, I framed the study around intersecting categories of 1) youth, 2) creators of metal music, and 3) being part of the Global South (both geographically and symbolically, as outlined in the introduction to this collection). An intersectional lens was crucial for investigating multiple layers of decoloniality intersecting with young lives. My social work practice and research have a distinctly critical orientation underpinned by values of empowerment, while recognizing that the (re) claiming of one’s own voice and the power to use it are contingent on available resources and opportunities. Hence, my interest lies in ways that young people manage to exercise their agency in relation to (or despite) the contexts that shape their circumstances. My work is unabashedly strengths-focused and firmly aligned with the research movement encouraging scholars to stop perpetuating deficit constructions of youth, particularly in the Global South (Cooper, Schwarz, and Mahali 2019; Cuervo and Miranda 2019). Research Methods The promotion of youth voice is a central focus of my work, so qualitative methods were required to elicit the richness of participants’ lived experiences in their own words. Participants were identified and recruited based on three selection criteria: 1) writing metal songs during their teenage years, 2) writing metal songs with decolonial themes; and 3) being part of the Global South due to geographic positionality or experiencing some manifestation of oppression based on the legacy of colonialism. I recruited VOB through their management and promotions team at 12WIRED, and Alien Weaponry via the Rick Sales Group and Napalm Records Berlin. Ahead of contacting the bands and conducting interviews, the research was approved by the University of South Australia’s Human Research Ethics Committee. I conducted video interviews via Zoom conference meetings with VOB in Indonesia and Alien Weaponry in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Both bands had remarkably busy workloads around the time interviews were conducted. VOB had their single “God Allow Me (Please) to Play Music” released the week prior to our interview, and Alien Weaponry’s album Tangaroa was due for release several weeks postinterview. As such, the bands were extremely busy with media obligations, and I was truly fortunate they could make the time to speak with me. I am indebted to them and their management representatives for seeing the merit in this project and agreeing to participate.

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Given the tightness of their respective schedules, I crafted a structured interview guide4 to capture their reflections on the past, present, and future of politically activating their voices. Interviews were approximately forty minutes in duration, with extra time allocated with VOB to offset the use of a translator who was well known to the band members. Interviews were audio recorded, and I personally transcribed them. The transcriptions were thematically analyzed in three stages using narrative coding methods. Initially, broad codes (school, power, politics) were applied and then refined at subsequent stages of analysis to locate nuanced webs of choice, control, and empowerment that emerged as critical career moments unfolded for each band. CASE STUDIES Voice Of Baceprot (VOB) is an Indonesian metal band formed in Singajaya, a very small village 20 km from Garut, West Java, in 2014 when they were roughly fourteen years of age (see figure 6.1). The female-identifying trio consists of Firda Marsya Kurnia (vocals and guitar), Widi Rahmawati (bass guitar), and Euis Siti Aisyah (drums). Taken from the Sundanese language, the word baceprot means “noisy voice” and is representative of both the music they play and their social voice. VOB does not identify as any

Figure 6.1. Indonesian metal band Voice Of Baceprot. Source: Photo by Anton Ismael. Photo provided by Hadi Sulistia.

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specifically defined genre of metal. However, some of their early influences included Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lamb of God, Metallica, and Slayer. Alien Weaponry is a male-identifying thrash metal trio formed in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand, in 2010 by brothers Henry Te Reiwhati de Jong (drums) and Lewis Raharuhi de Jong (guitars, vocals) when they were ten and eight years old, respectively. In August of 2020, Tūranga Morgan-Edmonds (bass guitar) replaced Ethan Trembath, who played bass from 2013–2020 during the band’s early formative years. Like VOB, they also cite Rage Against the Machine, Metallica, and Lamb of God as key influences. Despite Alien Weaponry forming several years earlier than VOB, members of both bands are roughly the same age (all born around 2000, give or take the two-year age difference between Henry and Lewis) and have climbed similar trajectories in terms of the international attention they have received, albeit for varied reasons that will be explored below. The case studies are organized in thematic groupings of past reflections, present beliefs, and future aspirations of band members in relation to their musical careers and social opinions. Let us explore each case study individually. CASE STUDY #1—VOICE OF BACEPROT Starting Out Forming VOB was initially borne from a deep dissatisfaction with schooling. In 2014, while still attending their rural high school, Marsya, Widi, and Sitti5 (then aged fourteen) were first introduced to metal by their school guidance counselor Abah Erza.6 The trio felt conflicted at school and reported that they were often in trouble for protesting the lack of options and choices for students. They joined an extracurricular arts program and began playing makeshift instruments that could capture some of the sounds of the metal artists that Erza was playing for them. Marsya told me that “the first time we heard metal, we were hooked straight away because metal music could get our adrenaline pumping and erase our fears.” She further explained that metal offered them tremendous freedom to express themselves in ways that had not previously been available in the school system, and it provided an opportunity to break the stereotypes of what was expected of them as young women growing up in a conservative rural location. Marsya described how their early musical influences also alerted them to the value and possibility of using metal as a voice:

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We felt these bands were trying to deliver various messages and various criticisms in a very honest manner, and we hoped it could do that for us as well. The idea of delivering such honest messages in a powerful way was a huge revelation to us growing up in a small town. (Marsya)

Activating Youth Voice through Metal The band spent a year practicing cover songs in secret to hone their skills and master their instruments before setting their sights on writing original songs. Their breakthrough song was “School Revolution,” and I invited them to tell me about the inspiration and motivation behind the song: “School Revolution” has its roots in our experiences at school and the education system. We felt it treated students as robots who are only there to memorize things instead of developing into their full potential. We soon realized that wasn’t just happening in our school but in other schools across the country. Kids would try to make their voices heard by doing things like writing on bulletin boards, and they would always get silenced, including us, before we finally decided to start using music as a medium to express our ideas and criticisms. (Marsya)

I asked how other students responded to the song, given that they were still at school at the time: Most of our fellow students were quite apathetic at the time to our ideas and to the song, although they probably agreed that what was happening at school was wrong, and they agreed with the song and what we were singing about, but they just accepted it because that’s how school is. . . . It’s important to remember we were from a very small village and not much information would come in about the latest developments that were happening around the world, so others thought it was just about us playing music. . . . They didn’t really get the point that it was more than that, it was a way to have a voice. (Marsya)

There was a sense of disappointment that other students had not tried to take more of a stand at school. Aside from the bulletin boards mentioned above, Marsya said other special interest groups would occasionally form at school, but even when the names of groups changed, it would still be the same outcome of not being heard and needing to follow rigid rules, so they would dissolve very quickly. These ineffective or tokenistic mechanisms for youth voice were a strong motivator for these three young women to try other means, like music. From the outset, however, VOB were making musical choices that were considered against the grain in school, family, and community contexts.

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Marsya told me they initially had trouble getting support in their local metal scenes7 “due to various stigmas like being from a small village, being women, and wearing a hijab.” The first positive acceptance for the band came from overseas, long before they were recognized in Indonesia: At first, there was press coverage from The New York Times and The Guardian, and then suddenly, the Indonesian press started jumping on the bandwagon, and there were all these media requests that started coming in from Indonesian media. The international media came to the attention of Tom Morello. He retweeted our video and it went viral. That was really the turning point. (Marsya)

The New York Times article (Cochrane 2017) certainly captured the imagination and support of the international metal community. However, early mainstream media presented VOB as more of a human-interest story than a musical one. The article documented the death threats they had received online and the time they were pelted with rocks when leaving a recording studio. The verbal and physical attacks came because of their refusal to stop playing metal and start conforming to that which was socially expected of them as young Muslim women in a small rural farming community. But as local and international popularity grew, family and community attitudes began shifting toward accepting and even celebrating VOB. Some social media comments still infer that the band is blaspheming Islam and that they are transgressing gender norms. However, their families now support their aspirations, and community support in Indonesia is ever-increasing. Metal as a Foundation for Youth Leadership Youth leadership has been receiving a lot of media attention in recent years, so I asked the band if or how they currently position themselves as youth leaders in the context of contemporary youth activism: The youth of today have a spiritual connection, so our movements will continue to affect each other, whether directly or indirectly, such as when Greta (Thunberg) came out with her movement on climate change which influenced youth around the world to take action. (Sitti)

Although VOB were conversant in youth leadership initiatives, they stopped short of claiming leadership status for themselves, despite the fact they were clearly leading the charge for women’s empowerment through their music.

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Issues of Interest and Values In terms of social agendas, the band described their overarching message as one of freedom and independence, especially for women. They elaborated on this when describing the inspiration for their single “God Allow Me (Please) to Play Music” (released August 17, 2021): The idea for the song came out of a phase when we were feeling exhausted by confronting people who had the opinion that women in hijab should not play music, especially not metal, and we felt it would be a waste of energy if we continued to clash with people. When there were people fighting to take away our freedom in God’s name, we decided to ask permission from God directly because we know that he or she is the one who can give permission and is the Almighty. (Marsya) Metal is just a medium to express whatever is important to the person, especially something that involves God. That is just a belief that someone has; it doesn’t apply to everyone. (Sitti) The song was also inspired by reading about movements that have been started by women around the world, which is not easy, to begin with, especially when it’s difficult to create and do something for ourselves and the environment. . . . We talk a lot about issues to do with the environment and gender equality, and humanity because, for us, these three issues are interconnected and affect one another. (Widi)

Indeed, VOB used the official music video for “God Allow Me (Please) to Play Music” to flag some of these interconnected themes beyond those addressed in the song itself. The set design for the video had a wall of roughly one hundred television screens and computer monitors stacked on top of each other, with messages displayed on them addressing themes of sexual harassment and emotional abuse while also alerting viewers to practices of changing people’s names by people who cannot pronounce them. Freedom and independence were recurring themes in their narratives, so I asked them to describe what ultimate freedom might look like to them: Freedom to choose, that’s something that’s still quite difficult to do here. People still judge us and try and restrict us from making choices, any type of choices, especially if it involves being women. Even something that is so private, like our music, people still try to get involved in it. Like back when we were in our hometown, it wasn’t just our parents who objected to our decisions, but also everyone in the community because they felt that it didn’t follow the social norms of what women should do. (Marsya)

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Picking up further on gender norms, I asked what they thought about media articles and public commentary that focus on their gender and their clothing. Marsya said it was “definitely annoying” but conceded that whether they liked it or not, it was probably what “made them known” and gave them a platform for being heard. Future Voice Going into the interviews, I knew that Alien Weaponry had incorporated taonga pūoro (traditional musical instruments) in their brand of decolonial metal, so I was interested to know if VOB was considering any traditional instruments or music from Indonesia that they might merge with metal: We include musical elements that we feel need to be included, but we don’t feel that is necessary for now. We don’t yet need to insert any elements of traditional music, but in the future, who knows? We still have a long way to go in exploration of music. (Widi)

As it turns out, the future was not far off because three months after we spoke, the band embarked on their 2021 European tour and premiered an instrumental piece based on a traditional Sundanese pentatonic scale. At the time of the interviews, touring was a clear priority so that the band could travel and connect with their fans. VOB were booked to play the Wacken Open Air Festival and other European tour dates in 2021/2022, but they were understandably concerned that COVID might derail their plans. So it was pleasing to see that their tour not only went ahead as planned but was an enormous success. Aside from touring, the band was also excited to write and record new music, having made important connections with Indonesian metal mentors who were assisting their musical development. This was made possible when the trio moved to Jakarta in 2019 with support from their management and promotions team at 12WIRED. Considering the relocation support they received and its undeniable effect, I asked what life might be like for them now (postschool) if they were not playing music: We would not have choices in our village. The stereotype back in our village is that girls of a certain age, once they leave school, they should get married, so if we weren’t playing music, we would probably be following whatever our parents would want, and we would get married, and we might work as something like a babysitter or a shopkeeper. (Marsya)

Indonesia has the seventh highest rate of child marriages in the world, which is more pronounced in rural areas such as where VOB grew up (girlsnotbrides.org). More than 20 percent of girls in rural areas are married before age

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eighteen (compared to 5 percent of boys), which points to the gender gaps in education and literacy in rural Indonesian communities arising from assumptions that girls will marry and not need an education to fulfill basic laboring work (girlsnotbrides.org). VOB were acutely aware of this and fiercely determined to make their own choices on marriage and career paths, which now sees them enjoying tremendous success as metal artists. Therefore, my final question was to ask them what they hoped their music could achieve over the course of their careers. Widi wanted longevity out of their music so it could span generations of interest, and Sitti wanted to continue writing songs that could drive new perspectives and nurture innovation for others. Marsya closed by saying: I want our music to be a symbol of independence and freedom. The important thing for us in the future is to see women having the choice and freedom to do what they want to do without people judging them. (Marsya)

To date, VOB have achieved much in their lives and their music, which is impressive enough at such a young age, but it is even more impressive that they have managed this while navigating numerous axes of potential oppression in the Global South. From the very beginning of their careers, as fourteen-year-old hopeful metal artists, they have had to find ways to push through the challenges of growing up under the weight of social expectations in their small rural village; challenges that intersect with gender roles and religious norms. Having provided an overview and some examples of the philosophies driving VOB, let us now have a look at the band Alien Weaponry and the ideas fueling their work. CASE STUDY #2—ALIEN WEAPONRY Starting Out The members of the band Alien Weaponry were seemingly destined to become metal musicians, at least if we take drummer Henry’s word. Henry was proud to claim that he and brother Lewis “pretty much came out of the womb listening to metal.” He told me that they were listening to bands like Rage Against the Machine and Metallica before they were born, as the brothers grew up in a very metal-oriented family context (unlike VOB, who initially had to hide their music). From the outset, Lewis and Henry’s parents played active roles in all facets of musical production, management, and promotion. Early musical influences on the band were similar to VOB’s (e.g., Lamb of God, Metallica, Rage Against the Machine), as were the aspects of metal

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that drew them in, like the intensity of the music and vocal styles. However, exploring narratives in metal lyrics came later (than VOB) for Alien Weaponry, which is unsurprising given that brothers Henry and Lewis were only ten and eight years old when they formed the band. They adopted the name Alien Weaponry after watching the science-fiction movie District 9, which had alien weapons in it. Activating Youth Voice through Metal Alien Weaponry have gained international acclaim for their inclusion and promotion of te reo (Māori language) in their music (see Goossens, this volume). The inspiration for this has been well documented in numerous media stories and documentaries, like the seminal Vice documentary Alien Weaponry: Thrash Metal and Te Reo Māori released in 2018, which traced the family history of then fourteen-year-old Lewis and sixteen-year-old Henry and their commitment to telling stories of trauma and loss at the hands of British colonizers in their songs. The brothers grew up listening to their father Niel tell historical stories of events that have impacted Māori families across generations, including their own, and these narratives have factored heavily in their songwriting. Henry recalled being around fifteen, and Lewis thirteen, when they first attracted attention for the song “Ruana Te Whenua” (The Trembling Earth), which told the story of their great-great-great-grandfather’s death while defending his home territory against the British colonial army. Their performance of the song drew second place at Smokefree Rockquest 2015, an annual musical competition for Aotearoa/New Zealand school students. In 2016, they went even further and won the event with another song sung in te reo that captured another series of conflicts with colonizing forces in the 1800s. Again, the timeline of Alien Weaponry’s success is well documented in the media, but Henry reiterated that the awards, the prize money, and the media attention reinforced that they “were doing something important”: We kind of tested the waters with that competition and found that people really liked it [singing about historical events in te reo], so there was kind of no deciding moment before that where we thought this is what we’re going to be doing from now on, it was more like we slowly moved in that direction, and it worked out well. (Henry)

The school environment, however, was not as celebratory or understanding of their success. Lewis felt this acutely when opportunities to tour internationally arose while he was still attending school:

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I don’t really remember ever enjoying school at all, probably only when I dropped out, to be honest. The school kind of said to me, “Hey, you need to make a decision, it’s either stay at school or go on tour,” so I was like, “Well, I guess I’ll fuck off overseas then . . . I feel at some point, people did start recognizing what I had done, but most of the school people had been making fun of me for doing it. (Lewis)

I was also keen to hear Henry’s perspective on schooling and whether he had tried to join any other youth voice mechanisms at school, given the political nature of their songs: No way. At school, I was that dude that was like literally only into music. Well, computers and music. That made me a huge fucking nerd. That generally is the way things go if you’re like into metal at school, you’re generally not one of the sporty types. . . . Probably 95 perent of people just didn’t understand why we would wanna play music like that. . . . Even when we left [school], we had so many people who still couldn’t understand it whatsoever, so it was just like this real kind of weird thing where we were being nationally recognized for the music that other people just couldn’t see what was good about it. (Henry)

There are similarities with VOB here in that both bands viewed metal as a deviant path to resisting the conformist and adultist institutional context of their schooling, and this is also consistent with other metal youth with whom I have worked (Rowe 2018b). The bigger point that Lewis and Henry wanted to make about school was the fracturing of bilingual education and the importance of reclaiming language and culture to push back against colonial education systems, such as those they encountered at various points in their own schooling. Metal as a Foundation for Youth Leadership As I had with VOB, I asked Alien Weaponry if or how they positioned themselves as youth leaders in the context of global youth activism. Henry said he did not consider himself to be an activist as such, nor did he deliberately follow any other youth leaders and movements. Varas-Díaz (2021) has similarly noted metal bands tackling coloniality outside the traditional conceptualizations of political activism, and VOB and Alien Weaponry both seem to reflect the same position. Alien Weaponry’s overarching message, and their self-awareness in terms of delivering it through their music, was clear. Henry reflected on the fact that “a lot of people are not aware of certain conflicts” or the extent of damage to Māori identities as a direct result of colonization, and he felt it was crucial to ensure Māori voices are heard in historical accounts of colonization:

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A lot of people, in general, do actually know who we are and what we’re doing  .  .  . it’s a good feeling for me because I know how suppressed Māori voice has been throughout our history, and to be able to feel like we are a part of that voice and making the voice of Māori louder in New Zealand is a really good feeling. (Henry) Yeah, it’s buzzy to think that it’s reached people on the other side of the world who are taking an interest in Māori culture, and they don’t even speak English; that kind of stuff gives me a bit of hope. (Lewis)

The significance of telling these histories through decolonial metal and the linkages to tackling present-day oppression is examined further in the discussion section of this chapter that follows the case studies. Issues of Interest and Values Given that they did not self-identify as youth leaders, I asked the trio to describe how values and social concerns were discussed and incorporated into their music: I guess I just kind of surround myself with people that share similar views. I feel like all the people that I consider close friends are very open and accepting of people regardless of things like race, sexuality, any of that stuff. You know, if I do come across someone who tends to have a problem with things like that, I just distance myself. (Lewis)

Indeed, principles of inclusion, diversity, and justice are clear in their music and the imagery used in their music videos. Environmental justice is prominent in their new single “Tangaroa,” from the album of the same name released on September 17, 2021. Tangaroa is the Māori god of the sea and all creatures who live there, and the song addresses environmental concerns impacting the health of oceans and ocean life. When we spoke, the band was about to embark on a collaboration with Sea Shepherd, a nonprofit environmental organization: We wanted to do something more than just writing a song, so we started talking about what else we could do to really make this more impactful than just releasing an album and a song titled “Tangaroa.” So, we thought about the work that Sea Shepherd are doing and how close it ties in with the kind of values that we all share . . . so they’ve got a video coming out that they’ve shot with an interview that we did, so that should be really interesting. (Henry)

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Alien Weaponry and VOB have both written songs about environmental concerns, which is interesting in the context of the current global youth action in this space. While both bands have very distinct social agendas unique to each band, they are both also making space to address environmental justice, as many young people are currently doing in numerous ways. I asked Tūranga if Alien Weaponry’s commitment to social justice and human rights factored into his decision to join the band in 2019: Definitely! From the minute they started, I was like, “Oh wow, now there is something with big potential, musically because it sounds cool, but really importantly, because of the purpose to share that voice and get that message out.” . . . All of a sudden now we’re not just trying to fight our fight within the country, now it’s reaching across the globe. (Tūranga)

In terms of “sounding cool and getting a message out,” I could not help but be reminded of the impact that Sepultura’s 1996 album Roots had on indigenous metal, and with the global reach that Tūranga described. Therefore, I asked Alien Weaponry if they compared any aspects of their work to Sepultura’s: Yeah, I find that interesting because we hadn’t really heard of Sepultura, so it was like this awesome moment where people were commenting on our videos going, these guys are like Sepultura, so we went and looked at Sepultura’s stuff and went, “Damn, this is wild!” (Henry)

Future Voice Alien Weaponry were now addressing environmental issues on the new album, so I was interested to know if they had plans to pick up any other social issues they were not yet writing about. The timing of the question was probably unfair because they were only two weeks away from the album Tangaroa being released, they were planning for a tour of North America and then Europe (COVID permitting), and they were incredibly busy making and releasing videos and responding to a significant volume of media requests. This was the time to be working hard on promoting the album that was about to be released, not planning the next one. That said, Henry explained that he was “open to whatever came up next,” and as we will see in the discussion to follow, soon after we spoke, the band seized media opportunities surrounding the album release to progress international awareness of contemporary colonial structures that continue to harm Māori people in their everyday lives.

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DISCUSSION In this section, I discuss some ways that both bands narratively and performatively constructed their decolonial voice using the three main themes of: 1) motivations and methods, 2) values and culture, and 3) outcomes and aspirations. Let us examine each in detail. Motivations and Methods Youth movements are often formed as a reaction to an obvious event; this is the case, for example, of a group like March for Our Lives, organized by students in Parkland, Florida, to challenge gun legislation in response to a 2018 mass shooting at their high school. In contrast, the path to action for VOB and Alien Weaponry was a process that unfolded over time, with social issues revealing themselves incrementally and symbiotically with their musical development as they matured toward ever greater intention in their songwriting. While the path to forming metal preferences was different for each band, there were similarities in the role that schooling played. Both bands spoke of being outsiders in their school systems. VOB expressed this explicitly, first in their descriptions of how the band was formed after feeling alienated by a lack of choice in “regular classes” (or getting in trouble for disagreeing, as they described it); and second in their breakout song “School Revolution” which was the catalyst for finding their voice through metal. Despite initially pushing back against a lack of choice and control over decision-making for all students, the early negative feedback VOB received in their community quickly became gender-focused, which created the impetus for them to reflexively push back even harder against gendered expectations of young women in the Global South, first at school and then more broadly. I pick this up again in the final section of this discussion in terms of how they have expanded their agenda using their latest single, “(Not) Public Property” (released March 2022) as leverage against gendered oppression in and beyond the Global South. In subtler ways, gendered expectations for boys at school also played out for Alien Weaponry, not in the sense of forging a metal identity, but certainly consolidating it. Henry was clear that being into music and computers made him a “huge fucking nerd” that placed him (and his music) well outside the dominant masculine sporting culture at school, and this is consistent with many research conversations I have had with male-identifying metal youth about their high school experiences (Rowe 2018b).

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But both bands have taken up decoloniality projects much bigger than school identity politics. Recent metal research has argued a need to examine decolonial approaches and shed light on how bands engage in such reflections (González Hernández 2021; Varas-Díaz and Morales 2018; Varas-Díaz 2021; Wallach 2020), and here we can see VOB and Alien Weaponry engaging with this as young teens in their school environments in response to institutional and gendered constraints on choice and control in decision-making. Neither band felt that mainstream options were available to them for being heard, like school advisory groups or the ineffective bulletin boards that VOB described, whereas playing metal bypassed school systems and launched their voice to international audiences. Values and Culture Values and culture have underpinned the creative trajectories of both bands. In the case of Alien Weaponry, decolonial metal has played a leading role in the expression of values that explicitly defends Māori identities with an objective to reclaim language and culture fractured by colonization. Lewis and Henry grew up being influenced by family stories of historical events that they have embedded in their songs. However, promoting Māori cultural elements was also a condition of entering and ultimately winning the Pacifica Beats (now Tangata Beats) music competition in 2016, which played a significant role in catapulting them onto the world stage. Without a doubt, promoting Māori culture has been highly marketable from a career perspective, but more importantly, it has generated meaningful opportunities for consciousness-raising and promotion of healing through language, music, and culture. The way that local culture has played out for VOB is different than for Alien Weaponry, as the former grew up under the weight of Sundanese culture intersecting with strong religious norms and gendered expectations of women’s roles. And while forming VOB was initially an act of resistance against limited options for girls (their descriptor) at school, they soon took aim at whole-of-life issues for girls and women in Indonesia, like the high rates of child marriages for girls in rural areas and the concomitant gender gap in education and literacy. Voicing these issues (and others) led to VOB’s appointment as beneficiaries of the Malala Fund, which financially supports advocates for the rights of women and girls (Malala Fund 2022). What began as their own lived experience of gendered expectations in their small farming village has grown to incorporate global concerns for the rights and freedoms of all women around the world. Embedding their worldview into their brand of decolonial metal has seeded their broader agenda of women’s rights, and with a growing international profile, they are widening the scope of possibility for driving change with women around the world. VOB’s flip

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to what Ife (2009) calls “change from below” tackles the patriarchal legacy of colonialism at its core by actively leading the change instead of being passive recipients of change and, as such, is a key marker of women’s empowerment. After the interviews, I reflected on each band’s proximity to the issues they were addressing in their lyrics. At times, VOB have taken significant risks to promote their social agendas. Although the comments they receive now on social media in Indonesian are overwhelmingly positive and supportive, that was not the case in the early part of their career. When starting out, they risked being ostracized by family and community, they were verbally assaulted and threatened online many times, and were physically assaulted when leaving a recording studio, but their resolve remained strong. The changes VOB seek to make in the Global South affect their own lives directly at a micro level (e.g., changing gendered expectations that girls should marry on leaving school and making a career in music possible). Their proximity to issues demanding change resonates with McAdam and Paulsen’s (1993) argument that the closer the actor is to an issue, and the greater the impact on their life, the greater the risks they will take to address it, as VOB certainly have. Promoting lost language and culture is vitally important for healing and restoring Indigenous peoples’ rights and wellbeing while challenging the legacy of colonialism. Importantly, Alien Weaponry’s “fight” to address this is intergenerational, so it seems more closely aligned with meso or macro level change to benefit all Māori people, which is probably less likely to have such a significant bearing on band members’ immediate life outcomes (as VOB’s fight for change does). That is not to undermine the importance of Alien Weaponry’s fierce stand against the long-lasting effects of colonialism in the Global South, nor the positive impact on their own well-being and sense of satisfaction at taking up the cause for and with Māori people. It just points to an urgent, pressing need for VOB to make changes that enable them and other young women in the Global South to avoid forced marriages and instead take up opportunities like playing music, and even metal, which Alien Weaponry have not been blocked from doing. In fact, in the case of Alien Weaponry the experience is quite the opposite; young men who play metal (including Alien Weaponry) are positively regarded and encouraged to perform masculine displays of power (at least by other metal people), whereas young women who play metal are more often viewed as dangerous transgressors of feminine expectations (like VOB have been portrayed). The masculine-normative judgment and exclusion of women (particularly women of color) in metal is something that the field of metal studies has long grappled with (e.g., see Dawes 2012; Hill 2016; Jocson-Singh 2019; Overell 2014; Vasan 2011). It is timely that newer research is moving to include dialogues surrounding women in decolonial metal (see Calvo and GonzálezMartínez in this volume).

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Outcomes and Aspirations While there was no deliberate planning (or articulation) of activist strategies early on, both bands reflected on feeling very satisfied with how their efforts had played out. I sensed that they were maturing into a deeper understanding of the power and possibility of seeding social change by raising consciousness through their music, and now they were starting to think more deliberately about future opportunities. As both bands continue to evolve and incorporate wider social concerns in their music, their value base remains steadfast to decoloniality. This is amplified not only in their songs but in all the available technologies that wrap around their metal careers, like media interviews, social media content, and the selection of imagery depicted in their music videos. They might not have been articulating activist aspirations (at the time of the interviews), but their actions were telling a much different story, and in the months following the interviews, both bands had ramped up their deliberate attempts to disrupt colonizing practices in the Global South. For example, after the interviews took place in August 2021, both bands had significant media exposure and were taking every opportunity to voice and expand their agendas. In a September 2021 interview with The Guardian’s Matt Mills (2021), Alien Weaponry dialed up the volume by explicitly calling out the institutional racism and colonial structures that continue to deplete Māori culture and negatively impact life outcomes for Māori people. Lewis was blunt in describing the inequitable treatment of Māori people as “unacceptable” and warned that “until that changes, we’re not finished.” Henry further detailed the structural barriers to reclaiming and maintaining language and alerted readers to the recent defunding of schoolteachers fluent in speaking te reo. In the same interview, they also drew attention to institutional racism in the justice system, social exclusion and poverty, and legislative attempts to defund Māori TV, and gave compelling examples to alert readers to ways that systemic violence manifests in the everyday lives of Māori people. Alien Weaponry’s actions are significant here because, in the first instance, their decolonial music serves as what Varas-Díaz (2021, 13) calls a “vessel” for oral histories of oppression that some listeners might never otherwise be exposed to (myself included, as I have learned a lot of historical facts from their music of which I was unaware). Further to this, Alien Weaponry seize media opportunities to highlight new and emerging forms of oppression occurring right now that are directly tied to colonizing practices. Educating others, particularly youth, on historical memories of colonization and the linkages to current experiences of oppression is vital work for steeling the next generation of advocates for social reform in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Alien Weaponry very clearly present issues specific to the Māori people, and Varas-Díaz (2021, 13) proposes that decolonial metal grounded in such

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historical specifics can lack international reach, which can “hinder a band’s efforts to find a wider audience.” However, Alien Weaponry’s international reach includes an appearance at Copenhell Festival in Denmark, 2019, where thousands of metalheads famously joined in a haka8 to greet the band. This might have just been all in good fun, but it did generate a raft of social media comments suggesting that people were inspired to learn more about a range of social issues. We need to look no further than Brazil’s Sepultura as a beacon of global influence on decolonial metal in many distinct locations around the world. And while barely in their twenties, the full reach and scope of Alien Weaponry remains to be seen. VOB also continues to capitalize on media opportunities, recently detailing their environmental concerns, including local groundwater depletion impacting the availability of clean water in their rural hometown (Gordon 2021). But their international reach with women’s rights is far more apparent, and their critical media commentary has ramped up with forthright statements about the “suppression of women and our common designation as objects and second-rate human beings” (Thee 2021, n.p). In perhaps the strongest declaration of intent to affect social change since the interviews were conducted, VOB have taken the next step of clearly positioning themselves at the forefront of a movement by using their latest single, “(Not) Public Property” (released March 8, 2022, on International Women’s Day) as leverage. I received the following media release from their promotions team at 12WIRED in March 2022, seven months after I spoke to the band: Everywhere you look today, basic rights are being challenged. Women are in an all-out war to retain the rights to do what they want with their own bodies. [NOT] PUBLIC PROPERTY is a movement initiated by young Indonesian female trio Voice Of Baceprot that is positioned to serve as a reaction to issues surrounding the violation of women’s bodily autonomy around the world. The movement will initially roll out with the following activities: 1. The release of a song under the same title. 2. Advocacy and education through video messages delivered by female icons via mass and social media. 3. The raising of funds to help victims of sexual abuse and violence.

The remainder of the press release detailed the message in the song, the unveiling of the movement during International Women’s Day commemorations, the initial activities of the movement, the partner organizations, and ways for “like-minded individuals” to participate.9 Forging this movement now shows a clear, strong, and organized intention to tackle gender reform— it transitions VOB’s hopeful ideas into intentional ones, and decolonial metal is the pivot point for joining up a staged plan, collaborators, mobilization of networks and forces, and self-funded opportunities to maintain momentum

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and sustain the movements’ activities. VOB are tackling the unfinished business of decoloniality by escalating their efforts to emancipate women’s bodies from patriarchal control and expectation, a key component of colonialism and its ever-present effects. CONCLUDING REMARKS The case studies presented in this chapter are strong examples of two young metal bands in the Global South building music careers in tandem with building their decolonial voice. Each musical step they take that builds success (whether measured in sales, career expansion, fan base, or media presence) creates further opportunities to turn the volume up on their social messages. For these young bands, the process of “doing activism” is tightly bound to “doing metal,” and they show us the tremendous value of youth involvement in broadening the reach of decolonial metal. REFERENCES Alien Weaponry: Thrash Metal and Te Reo Māori. Produced by Ursula Grace. Vice Media, 2018. Cochrane, Joe. “In Indonesia, 3 Muslim Girls Fight for Their Right to Play Heavy Metal.” The New York Times (digital edn, September 2, 2017). Viewed March 13, 2021. https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/2017​/09​/02​/world​/asia​/indonesia​-voice​-of​ -baceprot​-girls​-heavy​-metal​.html Cooper, Adam, Sharlene Swartz, and Alude Mahali. “Disentangled, Decentred and Democratised: Youth Studies for the Global South.” Journal of Youth Studies 22, no. 1 (2019): 29–45. Cuervo, Hernan, and Ana Miranda (eds.). Youth, Inequality and Social Change in the Global South. Springer: Singapore, 2019. Dawes, Laina. What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal. Bazillion Points, 2012. DeJong, Keri, and Barbara Love. “Youth Oppression as a Technology of Colonialism: Conceptual Frameworks and Possibilities for Social Justice Education Praxis.” Equity & Excellence in Education 48, no. 3 (2015): 489–508. Earl, Jennifer, Thomas Maher, and Thomas Elliott. “Youth, Activism, and Social Movements.” Sociology Compass 11 (2017): e12465.  https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1111​/soc4​ .12465 Fullam, Jordan. 2017. “Becoming a Youth Activist in the Internet Age: A Case Study on Social Media Activism and Identity Development.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 30, no. 4 (2017): 406–22.

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Girls Not Brides. Child Marriages in Indonesia. Viewed March 30, 2022. https:​//​atlas​ .girlsnotbrides​.org​/map​/indonesia​/ González Hernández, José Omar. “Appropriating the Extreme: Interculturality and the Decolonization of the Image in Extreme Metal in México and Colombia.” Metal Music Studies 7, no. 1 (2021): 119–28. Gordon, Arielle. Voice Of Baceprot: How Indonesian Muslim Trio Found Freedom in Heavy Metal. “Revolver (digital edn, October 21, 2021). Viewed October 30, 2021.  https:​//​www​.revolvermag​.com​/music​/voice​-baceprot​-how​-indonesian​ -muslim​-trio​-found​-freedom​-heavy​-metal Guerra, Paula, Carles Feixa Pàmpols, Shane Blackman, and Jeanette Ostegaard. “Introduction: Songs That Sing the Crisis: Music, Words, Youth Narratives, and Identities in Late Modernity.” Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research 28, no. 1 (2020): 5–13. Halupka, Max. “The Legitimisation of Clicktivism.” Australian Journal of Political Science 53, no. 1 (2018): 130–41. Hill, Rosemary Lucy. Gender, Metal, and the Media: Women Fans and the Gendered Experience of Music. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Ife, Jim. Human Rights from Below: Achieving Rights through Community Development. Cambridge University Press. Leiden, 2009. Jocson-Singh, Joan. “Vigilante Feminism as a Form of Musical Protest in Extreme Metal Music.” Metal Music Studies 5, no. 2 (2019): 263–73. Kristofferson, Kirk, Katherine White, and John Peloza. “The Nature of Slacktivism: How the Social Observability of an Initial Act of Token Support Affects Subsequent Prosocial Action.” Journal of Consumer Research 40(April 2014): 1149–66. Malala Fund. “Traditional Approaches Aren’t Cutting It.” 2022. Viewed March 30, 2022. https:​//​malala​.org​/our​-work​?sc​=header McAdam, Doug, and Ronnelle Paulsen. “Specifying the Relationship between Social Ties and Activism.” American Journal of Sociology 99, no. 3 (1993): 640–67. Mills, Matt. “‘Racism Is rampant’: Alien Weaponry, the Metal Band Standing Up for Māori Culture.” The Guardian (digital edn, September 28, 2021). Viewed September 30, 2021. https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​/music​/2021​/sep​/28​/racism​-is​ -rampant​-alien​-weaponry​-the​-metal​-band​-standing​-up​-for​-maori​-culture Montague, Anne, and Francisco Jose Eiroa-Orosa. “In It Together: Exploring How Belonging to a Youth Activist Group Enhances Well-Being.” Journal of Community Psychology 46, no. 1 (2018): 23–43. Moussa, Ben Mohamed. “Rap It Up, Share It Up: Identity Politics of Youth ‘Social’ Movement in Moroccan Online Rap Music.” New Media & Society 21, no. 5 (May 2019): 1043–64. Mustamo, Aila. “The Crisis of the Welfare State and the Politics of the Past in Black Metal and Folk Metal Subcultures.” YOUNG 28, no. 1 (2020): 69–84. Nilan, Pam. “Youth Sociology Must Cross Cultures.” Youth Studies Australia 30, no. 3 (2011): 20–26. Overell, Rosemary. Affective Intensities in Extreme Music Scenes: Cases from Australia and Japan. Palgrave MacMillan, 2014.

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Peterson, Andrew, Mark Evans, Martá Fülöp, Dina Kiwan, Jasmine B-Y Sim, and Ian Davies. “Youth Activism and Education Across Contexts: Towards A Framework of Critical Engagements.” Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. Ahead-of-print. 2020. DOI: 10.1080/03057925.2020.1850237 Rowe, Paula. “Co-Production and Strategic Youth Planning: Challenges and Opportunities in Local Government Contexts.” Radical Community Work Journal 3, no. 1 (2018a): 1–16. Rowe, Paula. Heavy Metal Youth Identities: Researching the Musical Empowerment of Youth Transitions and Psychosocial Wellbeing. Emerald: London, 2018b. Sprengel, Darci. “‘More Powerful Than Politics’: Affective Magic in the DIY Musical Activism after Egypt’s 2011 Revolution.” Popular Music 38, no. 1 (2019): 54–72. Terriquez, Veronica. “Intersectional Mobilization, Social Movement Spillover, and Queer Youth Leadership in The Immigrant Rights Movement.” Social Problems 62, no. 3 (2015): 343–62. Thee, Marcel. “Voice Of Baceprot: Indonesian Metal Trio Forge Ahead to Wacken Open Air in Defiance of Sexist Mudslinging.” NME (digital edn, July 19, 2021). Viewed October 13, 2021. https:​//​www​.nme​.com​/en​_asia​/features​/music​ -interviews​/voice​-of​-baceprot​-indonesian​-metal​-trio​-wacken​-open​-air​-2995377 Varas-Díaz, Nelson. Decolonial Metal Music in Latin America. London: Intellect, 2021. Varas-Díaz, Nelson, and Eric Morales. “Decolonial Reflections in Latin American Metal Music Religion, Politics and Resistance.” Théologiques 26, no. 1 (2018): 229–50. Vasan, Sonia. “The Price of Rebellion: Gender Boundaries in The Death Metal Scene.” Journal for Cultural Research 15, no. 3 (2011): 333–49. Vestergren, Sara, John Drury, and Eva Hammar Chiriac. “The Biographical Consequences of Protest and Activism: A Systematic Review and a New Typology.” Social Movement Studies 16, no. 2 (2017): 203–21. Wallach, Jeremy. “Global Rock as Postcolonial Soundtrack.” In Bloomsbury Handbook for Rock Music Research, edited by Allan Moore and Paul Carr, 469–85. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. Wallach, Jeremy, and Esther Clinton. “Is Heavy Metal a Protest Music?” In  The Oxford Handbook of Protest Music, edited by Noriko Manabe and Eric Drott. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming. Weinstein, Deena. “Birmingham’s Post-Industrial Metal.” In Sounds and the City: Essays on Music, Globalisation and Place, edited by Brett Lashua, Karl Spracklen, and Steven Wagg, 38–54. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

NOTES 1. Adultism is defined as behaviors and attitudes promoting the assumption that adults are superior to anyone not identified as an adult. Adultist beliefs in adult superiority legitimize structural processes that advantage adults and exclude youth. Adultism parallels with ageism in fighting age discrimination but occupies a unique space of addressing the discrimination of young people.

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2. Recruiting is now underway for stage two of this study that seeks to research with nonbinary gender-identified youth, as well as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth, and young people living with disability. 3. Reminders like this are essential for researchers like me who were initiated into youth research via the traditions of British sociologies of youth with a very Eurocentric lens on youth transitions and youth culture. 4. Had time permitted, I would have enjoyed a much looser conversation that could follow their lead in matters they might want to discuss in more detail. But the structured questions worked well because I was able to supplement my research interviews by reading participants’ media interviews and social media posts and invested time in consuming their music and music videos. Both bands have a big media footprint from which I was able to fact-check or substantiate timelines in their careers thus far. 5. Note that these are the band members’ nicknames, which, as is typical in Indonesia, do not necessarily resemble their given names listed above. 6. Band members affectionately refer to Cep Erza Eka Susila as “Abah Erza,” Abah being the Arabic word for “father” or “sir” demonstrating another example of Indonesian naming conventions. 7. For more on the expansive Indonesian metal scene (much of it located in West Java), see Sutopo and Lukisworo, this volume. 8. The haka is a ceremonial Māori war dance or challenge characterized by rhythmic chanting and vigorous stamping of the feet. Haka are usually performed in a group and represent a display of a tribe’s pride, strength, and unity. 9. Interested readers can learn more and participate by visiting https:​ //​ www​ .instagram​.com​/not​.publicproperty​/.

Chapter 7

Coloniality and Gender in the Argentinian Metal Scene A Study through Four Cases Manuela Belén Calvo

PRELIMINARY WORDS: THE ARGENTINIAN SCENE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF DECOLONIAL FEMINISM In 2011, when I began to think of metal not only as a passionate musical interest but also as a worthy subject of study with great social import, I had only been able to access scant literature about it, mainly due to the fact that, geographically, I have been far from the texts that are only available in the capital, a metropole. Adding to the logistical limitations, most of the academic texts available online are written in English, a language that was mostly inaccessible to me at that time. Most of these publications described metal in “universal” terms; I eventually came to see this same trend in works written in Spanish. In hindsight, I have come to realize that most of them had been written from a White and Western point of view. Furthermore, most of these works did not have a nuanced critical perspective. In the mainstream collective imaginary, metal is seen as having the same origins as rock; it is argued that the genre emerged from various processes of musical and cultural hybridization between rock music and the blues. For its part, the genealogies of each genre exhibit a strong Anglo-European tradition (Regev 2013). Nevertheless, as many Latin American scholars have highlighted in contrast, there is no single history of metal (Janotti Jr. 2004; Varas-Díaz et al. 2020), despite the apparent influence of White and Western characteristics. In fact, a large number of studies (Wallach et al. 2011; Varas-Díaz and Scott 2016) have demonstrated the dynamism and permeability of metal itself, which has 163

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contributed to the emergence of different scenes in various countries around the world. Despite the singular meaning constructed by cultural practices of production, circulation, and consumption of metal, each of these scenes has its own particularities that depend on the local characteristics of their respective contexts. As a consequence, metal scenes carry their own stories from their countries and regions. The close linkage of metal scenes with the sociopolitical situation of their respective contexts has several outcomes. Firstly, metal scenes have developed with great inequalities, mainly as a result of metal becoming popular in the eighties in the context of globalization and mass culture. In that sense, metal and its development have similar economic inequalities that occur between different regions of the world. In this way, countries that lie at the periphery of affluent economic worldwide centers are populated by underground bands, the latter having minimal possibilities of joining the international circuit and being recognized globally. Secondly, metal has been apprehended by its fans from a multiplicity of experiential positions, which not only depend on individual experiences at a personal level, but also on local sociopolitical histories at a collective level. This is because metal is not only considered a musical artifact that is heard, sung, or performed but also a culture that allows for collective participation and empowerment. The relationship between metal and the local culture of each respective scene depends on the particularities of each situation. In the case of Latin America, there is a strong need to give voice to local ethnic characteristics, not only through the production of metal songs fused with indigenous and folkloric music and sounds but also through the integration of local languages, dialects, and customs to the practices that are specific to metal as a musical genre and cultural scene. Argentina offers a great example of this process in action: the small scenes that build the tapestry of Argentinian metal reveal various characteristics of the regions in which they are located. In other words, through the musical productions and cultural practices that the agents integrate into their respective metal scenes, it is possible to find different ways of interpreting and constructing Argentinidad—Argentineness or an Argentinean national identity.1 For its part, the Argentinian metal identity is constituted in a plural and heterogeneous way. This is due to a multiplicity of factors which include: the subjectivity of the agents, the diversity that characterizes the vast geography and demography of the country, the historical processes that have influenced the formation of Argentina as a democratic nation-state, and the way in which different social constructions of ethnicity, class, age, and gender have developed over the years. This preliminary description at a general level originates from two postgraduate theses2 that I previously developed (between 2011 and 2019) about metal in Argentina. In the first, I researched the band Almafuerte, their music

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(called metal pesado argento), their productions, and interaction with fans; the latter proving to be an active audience with their own identity practices. In the second, I analyzed the bonaerense metal scene (a space characterized by the complex relationship between the national capital Buenos Aires and the homonymous province), highlighting the ways in which fans of the band Hermética appropriated that group’s work.3 At the time of each study, metal music was becoming an emerging field of study within Latin American social sciences. For this reason, it was necessary to mine strategies that aided in introducing metal as a relevant research topic. In my case, I used a wide theoretical and methodological set that did not question the coloniality of the scientific system. Furthermore, as I explained at the beginning of this chapter, most of the available literature on metal had not been critical and had not adopted a local perspective. However, from the exchanges taking place among colleagues and the consolidation of metal studies in our region, it is possible to rethink our earlier works through a situated perspective (Haraway 1995) in the Global South. In the aforementioned studies, I concluded that the agents of the Argentinian metal scenes have mostly adopted metal as music capable of identifying and debating their various conditions of marginality and oppression in the face of different systems of domination: these include capitalism, Catholicism, colonialism, and patriarchy. In other words, metal enables these agents to empower themselves through positive identification with metal and its culture, opening up a space where they can become “proud pariahs” (Weinstein 2000, 138). One of my contributions was to bring to the foreground the high agency of these subjects, with the aim of rescuing them from the prejudiced analyses that studied them as alienated masses and elicitors of moral panics. Following the postulates of Jeremy Wallach (2020) from the perspective of the epistemologies of the South, it is also possible to affirm that the diverse views that Argentinian metalheads have about music and Argentinidad also show that metal did not turn out to be “(. . .) a particularly seductive form of Western cultural imperialism” (p. 472). On the contrary, as Nelson Varas-Díaz (2021) explains, the celebration of local culture - conceptualized by said author as “regionalization” - constitutes a decolonial strategy against the Western and globalized origin of metal itself. According to Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2018), “The epistemologies of the South concern the production and validation of knowledges anchored in the experiences of resistance of all those social groups that have systematically suffered injustice, oppression, and destruction caused by capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy” (p. 1). Indeed, as Varas-Díaz (2021) showed in his study on the expression aguante in Argentinian metal, the agents of this scene use music as a form of resistance to the oppression of multiple

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systems. I agree with Varas-Díaz, but I consider that there is more to this complex characteristic. More specifically, I was able to observe that at times these same agents preserve the moral rules of two systems: the nation-state and the hetero-patriarchy. This is presented most clearly in the celebration of Argentinidad and various forms of alternative masculinity. Thus, the objective of this chapter will be to revisit the results of my two investigations, this time emphasizing issues related to race and gender. To do this, I will use the theoretical framework of decolonial feminism developed by María Lugones (2010). Lugones takes as her starting point the notion of coloniality of power as developed by Aníbal Quijano, the latter understanding it as residing at the constituting crux of the global capitalist system of power. For Quijano, coloniality refers to the classification of the world’s populations in terms of races; the configuration of a system of exploitation articulated in forms of labor control under the hegemony of capital and the rationalization of labor; Eurocentrism as a mode of production, and control of subjectivity; and the hegemony of the nation-state as a control system of collective authority that excludes racialized populations as inferior. Lugones takes the coloniality of power further, noticing that Quijano did not perceive the heteronormative and patriarchal character of the social relations that occur in this system as equally important factors. As Lugones states The gender system is not just hierarchical but racially differentiated, and the racial differentiation denies humanity and thus gender to the colonized. (. . .) gender is a colonial imposition, not just as it imposes itself on life as lived in tune with cosmologies incompatible with the modern logic of dichotomies, but also that inhabitations of worlds understood, constructed, and in accordance with such cosmologies animated the self-among-others in resistance from and at the extreme tension of the colonial difference. (p. 748)

Taking this as my starting point, I intend to give visibility to some decolonial expressions that have developed in the Argentinian metal scenes, which have been related to issues of race and gender, despite the complexities, ambiguities, and even contradictions that have been presented in these processes. In addition, I will question whether women and gender and sexual dissidences4 have actually had the chance to participate in these forms of resistance. Because decolonial feminism seeks to “provide a way of understanding the oppression of women who have been subalternized through the combined processes of racialization, colonization, capitalist exploitation, and heterosexualism” (Lugones 2010, 747), I intend to explore the ways colonized women claim agency to overcome the coloniality of gender. In this way, I organize this chapter around the analysis of four particular cases that represent forms

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of resistance to the coloniality of power, on the one hand, and to the coloniality of gender, on the other. First, I address the inclusion of the gaucho as a topic in the Argentinian metal productions originating from Río de La Plata; second, I analyze the implications of a particular chant performed by Argentinian metal audiences; third, I refer to one visit by the British band, Iron Maiden, to Buenos Aires; and finally, I analyze the activity of the metalhead women’s group called Madres Metaleras del Norte (Metal Mothers from the North). By looking at these expressions of decoloniality, I intend to offer a nuanced critical perspective that moves past the universalism of previous work on the region. GAUCHOS IN ARGENTINIAN METAL Like other Latin American countries, Argentina has a colonial history. In addition, the process of its formation as a nation-state has been complex and has been marked by strong political disputes. Much of this is due to the diversity of conceptions that have been assumed about the nation. In previous works (Calvo 2016a), I refer to the description made by Nicolás Shumway (1993) about the two dominant tendencies regarding the formation of the Argentinian nation. The first tendency sees Argentina as a liberal and elitist nation. This conception takes as a model the progress of Europe and North America, which in turn sets up the rejection of the popular classes. The second tendency prefers to see Argentina as a heterogeneously composed nation that could be identified as traditionalist and nativist, more linked to the popular and marginalized classes. At various times in Argentinian history, the first trend was identified with the country’s capital and the second with the “interior” provinces. The opposition between the two was materialized with the confrontation between the Unitarios and Federales, who disputed, among other things, the geographic location of the capital as a center of power and the consequent political and economic organization of the state. In general, the defense of these positions was based on ideological views that arose from the strong inequalities that were established between the capital city and the provinces, in addition to the conflictive relationship that simultaneously existed between the new creole government and indigenous peoples. Thus, over time, the city of Buenos Aires has functioned as the port capital that has received various waves of immigrants, mostly from Europe. As a consequence, Buenos Aires became a cosmopolitan and heterogeneous city where the aboriginal peoples were relegated to invisibility. In contrast, the provinces in the interior of the country have built diverse forms of Argentinidad, in which the native inhabitants have played a greater role. This contributed to the preservation of regional cultures, which have their own histories and, in

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some cases, interact more closely with the folkloric customs of neighboring countries as opposed to those originating from the capital. A large part of these disputes about the formation of the Argentinian nation and its citizenship were maintained over time, although they were redefined. Part of this can be seen in the plurality of ways of conceiving Argentinidad in the Argentinian metal scene. This musical genre originated in the late seventies with the development of rock pesado (heavy rock). Having been inspired by Anglophone rock and local Argentinian popular music, it retained the Western and urban streak of the hegemonic rock tradition. However, based on the trend created by Ricardo Iorio with the band Hermética, a large number of bands and other agents began to integrate elements of the local culture into the metal scenes. Consequently, metal became a tool to reflect and talk about the country and the region. One key example is found in Iorio’s third group, Almafuerte, which, through various artistic mechanisms, achieved a strong identification with the Argentinian identity. Some of the resources the group tapped into were its use of language, particularly the varieties used in Argentina (Spanish, lunfardo,5 and dialectal vocabulary); the inclusion of issues from Argentinian history in the songs’ lyrical content; the use of national symbols in the creation of album covers and promotional flyers (e.g., the inclusion of the colors of the Argentinian flag and representative figures of the country’s economy and politics); and an ongoing dialogue with folclore6 and tango, the two most representative musical genres of Argentina. Through the interaction with these two music genres, the band has tried to refer symbolically to the entire country. For example, tango was identified with the suburban history of Buenos Aires, and folclore was related to the rural experiences that were developed in the provinces of the interior of the country. This last case is relevant, since in previous times it was unthinkable for rural audiences to feel attracted to metal. In this way, in some of my ethnographies, I was able to observe metalheads who built their looks through a mixture of classic metal clothing from the Anglo-European and Anglo-American tradition (black T-shirts, leather clothing, chains, and studs) with attire typical of the rural inhabitants and workers (berets, bombachas de campo,7 and espadrilles). Almafuerte’s intention to exalt Argentinidad can be analyzed as a regionalization strategy against the coloniality of Western rock and metal. However, within Argentinian history, the point of view adopted by the band—positioned in the cosmopolitan metropolis—can also be considered White and Western. Thus, I observed an interesting turn in the complex dialogue centered on ethnicity: the folkloric culture adopted by Almafuerte is identified as characteristic of Río de la Plata and recreates the gaucho as an Argentinian male prototype. This figure references the inhabitant of the countryside. But from the Gauchesca literature point of view of the early twentieth century,

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this archetype was used to oppose everything that was identified as foreign (Archetti 2007) and was reinscribed as a symbol of the entire nation. In this way, the gaucho stopped being characterized as a rural worker and was constructed as a solitary rider who spent his days galloping on horseback (Garavaglia 2003). As a consequence, the Argentinian identity represented by Almafuerte is identified with a view of Argentinidad as criolla and rioplatense. This perspective coincides with the hegemonic vision that excludes the contributions of indigenous people and Afro-descendants in the formation of Argentina as a nation. Indeed, as Matthew Karush (2012) explains On the question of race and nation, the dominant Latin American paradigm has never applied to Argentina. In Mexico, Brazil, and elsewhere, twentieth-century nationalists crafted ideologies of mestizaje that broke with European and North American models by celebrating the indigenous or African as crucial elements in a new racial mixture. Yet most Argentine intellectuals rejected this sort of hybridity and instead constructed national identities that were at least as exclusionary as those produced by their North American counterparts. The only mixtures they countenanced were those that followed from European immigration. Just as the United States was a “melting pot,” Argentina was a crisol de razas (crucible of races), in which Spaniards, Italians, and other immigrant groups were fused into a new nation. This ideology, visible in the well-known aphorism that “Argentines descend from ships,” marginalized Argentines of indigenous and African descent and eventually erased them from national consciousness. (2012, 215)

Nevertheless, Almafuerte has self-identified with a marginalized character. This is because, at the end of the nineteenth century, president and educator Domingo Faustino Sarmiento had characterized gauchos as barbaric and uncivilized. Later in the early twentieth century, intellectuals of the Argentinian cultural elite redefined its inhabitants as a glorious race that opposed the gringos (European immigrants8) (Garavaglia 2003), another marginal social sector of the Argentinian population. As a result, Almafuerte’s productions enact a redefinition of the dispossessed social sectors, although there are various tensions and complexities that come with such a move. The topic of gender can equally be analyzed through Almafuerte’s constant identification with a male character. The gaucho was characterized by Argentinian elite intellectuals as lazy, unsanitary, and quarrelsome. The listed characteristics were classified as masculine and contrasted greatly with the figure of the china, a rural woman dedicated to domestic activities. In the case of Almafuerte, the archetype of the gaucho resembles the male, Western vision of the metalhead as rude, slovenly, and untidy, but female characters were not included in their musical output. Women are only described a few times in their songs as mothers or prostitutes from a sexist

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and cis-heteronormative perspective (i.e., the former are valued for their care tasks, and the latter are criticized for not being maidenly or modest). In spite of this, Almafuerte has cultivated a loyal female audience who do not find an issue with such characterizations. On the contrary, they consider metal to be a musical style that empowers them; as such, they value ​​Almafuerte’s intention to pay homage to an Argentina oppressed (especially in the 1990s) by neoliberalism and cultural imperialism. In other words, they recognize the band’s effort to resist the coloniality of power, but not the coloniality of gender. In any case, the presence of these metalhead women on the scene constitutes an irruption of the coloniality of gender in the metal scene, because their agency in the public sphere breaks the Argentinian metal discourse that describes women through domestic and submissive roles. WE ARE METALHEADS: NEGROS BUT NOT BOURGEOIS Argentinian metal audiences are usually characterized by the fervor they show during concerts and this, in part, is a legacy of the practices of the audiences during fútbol (soccer) matches. In addition to the moshpit or pogo, another of its distinctive practices is the intonation of chants similar to those of fútbol fans. As I have explained in earlier work (Calvo 2016b), these chants can be interpreted as expressions of aguante.9 Within the Argentinian concerts, there is a very popular song in the Argentinian metal scene that was developed by the fans themselves. The lyrics go: Baila la hinchada, baila de corazón. Somos los Negros, somos los grasas, pero conchetos no. This sentence is very difficult to translate,10 and it is necessary to analyze it in parts. First, the concept hinchada is used by fútbol fans to talk about their preference and the support they offer their respective teams. In this sense, they like metal with the same passion as the fans of fútbol teams. This comparison is relevant because fútbol occupies an important position in Argentinian popular culture and has contributed to the construction of a collective sense of belonging (Alabarces and Rodríguez 1999). Second, this song is chanted while the fans jump up and down in unison and the enactment of the dance (baila) makes reference to that movement, which is quite similar to moshpit practices. Third, the lyrics pit the popular classes against the elites: by adopting the terms Negro and grasa (greaser), metal fans position themselves as members of the popular classes and clarify that they are not “stuck-up” and they do not belong to the upper classes. Throughout my ethnographic work, I have heard this song performed at a vast number of metal concerts, especially those involving bands that highlighted the character of Argentinians. I am not sure how this song arose in the

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metal culture, but it is possible to understand why it took root: the term Negro (black) has a racial connotation referring to the blackness of Afro-descendant people; however, in Argentina, it has adopted a populist meaning to refer to people of the popular classes. According to Karush (2012): The word “Negro” is a commonplace in everyday speech, functioning both as a hateful insult and, paradoxically, as a term of endearment. Equally mysteriously, the insult usually alludes to indigenous rather than African ancestry. Typically, these usages are traced to the Peronist era. During his first two terms in office (1946–55), Juan Perón built a powerful working class movement that challenged the nation’s hierarchies. Perón’s opponents attacked his followers in racial terms, labelling them cabecitas negras (little blackheads) or simply Negros, epithets aimed at the dark-skinned and black-haired migrants from the Argentine interior who had been pouring into Buenos Aires since the late 1930s in search of industrial jobs. By applying the term “black” to these largely mestizo migrants and conflating this racially defined group with the working class and with the followers of Perón, anti Peronists constructed their own identity in both class and racial terms: they were middle-class, and they were White. Peronists, for their part, responded by embracing the racial slurs directed at them, just as they did with more obviously classist insults like descamisado (shirtless one) and grasa (greaser). (216)

Karush explains that the Peronists adopted the identification with Negro as a synonym for popular, taking tango as a reference. According to Karush, In the tango milieu, in particular, White artists who wanted to signal their affiliation with the poor had already created a black identity for themselves. Colour words like “morocho” and “Negro” already referred to dark phenotype, lower-class status and a counterhegemonic national identity; it was only natural for elites to apply them to the dark-skinned lumpen that had invaded their city. (245)

How does this adjective come to the metal scene? In Argentina, various scholars have posited that metal emerged from the audiences and musicians of rock pesado, many of whom were industrial workers who came from the slums of the capital city and the Buenos Aires suburbs (Vila 1985; Alabarces 1995). That is to say, they came from the same social sectors and from the same territories that were identified with the inhabitants of conventillos,11 those who contributed to the origin of tango and were Perón’s followers. Possibly these coincidences contribute to the identification with Negro and grasa; consequently, these adjectives are used in the same sense one would use Weinstein’s “proud pariahs.” By locating metal as a musical genre tied to the popular classes, it is inferred that cultural practices originating outside the scene are those that come from the upper classes and are consequently

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linked to capitalism and hegemonic culture. So, by identifying metal with the popular classes, metal music has been able to break free from its own White character, allowing the genre to be used to give voice to a group of racialized agents. Nonetheless, it is imperative to point out that the use of this concept in the metal scene exhibits many contradictions. The identification with Negro is complex and conflicting because audiences of the cumbia villera also identify with the same qualifier and with the same geographic origin.12 Cumbia villera is a massive musical genre that originated in the late 1990s in the slums of Buenos Aires city, through the hybridization of various tropical rhythms. The particularity of this genre resides in the lyrics, which tell stories of crime, drug and alcohol consumption, and female sexual objectification (Semán and Vila 2011). Cumbia villera’s choice of subject matter has resulted in moral condemnation from the hegemonic social sectors and stigmatization by the media. Thus, as I have already explained, the use of the adjective Negro accounts for class prejudice through a racialized category. In cumbia villera, those people who are discriminated against by the self-identified White elites proudly adopt the adjective Negro. However, within this conceptualization of blackness there is a distinction between “black skin” and “black soul.” The first refers to some racial phenotypic traits (dark and brown skin and black hair), the second, to a moral qualification; having morally reprehensible behaviors, tastes or customs according to hegemonic criteria (Silba and Vila 2017), among which we can mention the celebration of crime and overt female objectification. Metal’s opposition to cumbia derives in part from a debate around the authenticity of the music that originates from the tradition of Argentinian rock. José Garriga Zucal (2008) explains that rock fans have criticized cumbia and electronic/dance music because they have considered their lyrics to lack any deep social commitment, exalting fun, love and sexual conquest instead. In the case of cumbia villera, metal’s rejection of the genre and its fans occurs through two different attitudes: toward the work culture and the macho condemnation of female sexual freedom. Regarding the first, through ethnographic work I was able to notice that, despite criticizing capitalism, a large number of metal fans consider work to be a worthy activity through which an individual can address the material conditions of existence. By extension, belonging to the working class is a characteristic that makes metalheads proud. In contrast, the musicians and fans of cumbia villera celebrate crime. According to Eloisa Martín (2011), the exaltation of theft does not constitute an “apology for crime,” but an alternative to labor exploitation and a way of relativizing work as the main legitimate practice to obtain sustenance. The second attitude sees metalheads placing great value on monogamy and heteronormative relationships, this in stark opposition to cumbia villera.

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In the world of Argentinian metal, women who morally comply with these mandates are valued. As such, metal is seen by metalheads as the ideal moral high ground. In this way, the criticism of metal toward cumbia villera responds not only to aesthetic but also moral reasons. This is clearly seen in a phrase uttered by Ricardo Iorio during a television interview, “The yuta exists because of you, not because of us.” The concept yuta is a term in lunfardo that refers to the police forces. With this phrase he tried to say that the violence exerted by the police was a consequence of the immoral actions of cumbia villera fans and not of metal fans. Throughout the interview, Iorio spoke disparagingly of the villa/slum inhabitants in general, using terms and judgments similar to those that the Argentinian elites had used to disqualify gauchos, Indigenes, and Afro-descendants at the end of the nineteenth century: these included words like “brutes,” “barbarians,” and “uncivilized.” The reference to the police, for its part, is based on the fact that during the ’80s and ’90s, metal fans were some of the young people who had been most persecuted and mistreated by the police forces, who judged their look as part of a dangerous appearance.13 According to Iorio, the police action is motivated by crimes related to the villeros.14 The chant that I quoted at the beginning of this section can be read in decolonial terms, since the adjective Negro, despite making more reference to class identification than ethnicity, allows fans to show resistance against the coloniality of power identified with the elites and the hegemonic culture. However, once again it is possible to see the continuity of the coloniality of genre, since cumbia is discredited by metalheads who consider it a music that represents moral virtues different from the hetero-patriarchal tendencies of metal: cumbia celebrates crime and female promiscuity. Argentinean metalheads prefer to show men as honest workers and women as maidenly and demure. In this sense, one would have to ask what place racialized female and sex-gender dissidences have within the Argentinian metal scene. THE STRANGE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IRON MAIDEN AND THE ARGENTINIAN AUDIENCE Using YouTube in a netnographic approach, I was able to rescue a file that is relevant to address the issue of ethnicity in the Argentinian metal scene. On this online platform there is a video of the performance of the British band Iron Maiden at Vélez Sarsfield Stadium in Buenos Aires city in 2001,15 during which the audience begins to boo the band after the singer, Bruce Dickinson, waves the British flag during the song “The Trooper.” The song contains lyrics that describe the Crimean War of 1854 through the perspective of a

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British soldier. Unexpectedly, the audience began to sing a chant that was born during street protests in the context of the Malvinas/Falklands War. This chant said “¡El que no salta es un inglés!” (The one who does not jump is an Englishman!). With this, it was intended that people identify the “otherenemy” as English and, at the same time, join the Argentinian collective identity through singing and body movement, like a hinchada (soccer fandom). Later it was added to the repertoire of songs chanted by Argentinian rock audiences, including some metalheads. The audience reaction was not a response to the Iron Maiden song, but to the performance of waving an English flag. To understand this, it is necessary to analyze, first, the origin of the chant and, then, its reply almost twenty years later. The Malvinas/Falklands War took place in 1982, within the framework of the last civic-military dictatorship of Argentina. This conflict had the particularity of generating what Esteban Buch and Camila Juárez (2019) called a “culture of war.” This concept referred to the process through which society as a whole consented to a warlike conflict. This consent was produced through various popular manifestations at the cultural level to support the Argentinian fighters. Some examples are the aforementioned popular chant and the Festival de la Solidaridad Latinoamericana (Festival of Latin American Solidarity), a concert at which some rock musicians performed with a slogan in favor of peace and with the aim of collecting aid items for young people who were fighting in the war. The festival proved controversial because it was financed by the dictatorial government. As Buch and Juárez explain, the Argentinian musicians did not express a desire for democratization, but neither did they act out of sympathy for the military or seemed motivated by a fascist ideology. In reality, their motivations rather combined a didactic view of nationalism and a pacifist anti-imperialist impulse. In the context of that war, Argentinian rock gained relevance, because the dictatorial regime had censored English popular music and had prohibited radio broadcasts of songs in the English language. These governmental measures allowed Latin American music and particularly rock in Spanish to gain popularity. In addition, rock fans stopped being a persecuted and marginal group and became temporarily almost official representatives of Argentinian youth (Buch and Juárez 2019). However, some pop, punk and metal bands questioned the concessions that some rock musicians made to the military government. Despite this disagreement, they also expressed their support for the combatants. According to Martín Müller (2020) in the Argentine metal scene, the musicians and the audience tend to position themselves within a “double sentiment” when it comes to the question of the Malvinas/Falklands War. First, they have a high degree of empathy toward ex-combatants and conscripts, in whom they recognize bravery and heroism. And second, they have an ambiguous feeling: they deny the portion of Argentine territory

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occupied by a “world power,” but they criticize the military commanders for the repression, surrender and subjugation of thousands of young people recruited during the war. In addition, it is necessary to clarify that the rivalry between Argentina and Great Britain had a correlation in the 1986 Soccer/Fútbol World Cup, during which the Argentinian and English teams had to face each other in the quarterfinal stage. During the match, Diego Maradona scored the notoriously controversial goal that has been nicknamed “The Hand of God.” This sporting confrontation was relevant because it “played an important part in the updating of old national conflicts, in which the Falklands/Malvinas defeat remains an important issue” (Alabarces and Rodríguez 1999, 126). In other words, this specific geopolitical conflict had an impact over time on the Argentinian culture, especially in practices that display forms of nationalism, such as fútbol and the World Cup. Therefore, the Argentinian audience’s rejection of the English flag displayed by the Iron Maiden musicians in 2001 derived from the same popular tradition that originated in the Malvinas/Falklands War. Metalheads also account for the anti-imperialist sensitivity that circulated among the Argentinian people within that context: 2001 saw one of the deepest economic debacles in Argentinian history, the year ending with one of the most violent social and economic crises. A large part of the causes of this conflict were the neoliberal measures that were sustained throughout the 1990s. At that time in the Argentinian metal scene, the local discourse prevailed. In the analyzed case, Argentinian audiences did not despise the Anglo-European origin of the band and metal music, but specifically disapproved of the display of the British flag, which was seen as a national war symbol. It is necessary to clarify that, despite the reaction of the Argentinian audience in 2001, Iron Maiden visited Buenos Aires in the following years during all of its world tours and its concerts took place in packed fútbol stadiums, with attendees who traveled long distances from their provinces to see the band live. In the Argentinian stop of their 2016 world tour, bassist Steve Harris used a T-shirt of the Argentinian fútbol team during one of the songs. Later, Dickinson introduced the song “Blood Brothers” and stated that he was English, but considered himself a friend of Argentina. In this way, the song not only appealed to the “brotherhood of metal” (Weinstein 2000), but also to the friendly bond between countries. In 2019, the Nation’s Chamber of Deputies declared the band an “honorary guest” and presented a recognition during a formal ceremony. The critical reaction of the Argentinian audience to the English flag flown by Bruce Dickinson in 2001 can be analyzed, I would argue, as a decolonial act. In this context, it represented a way of resisting the neoliberal processes that developed after the Falklands/Malvinas war. At the same time, it

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constitutes a form of resistance to the coloniality of metal to the extent that it produces a break with those visions that characterized the Iron Maiden audience as a global tribe (Dunn and McFadyen 2009; Ury-Petesch 2016). In this sense, it is possible to complete Varas-Díaz’s postulate: concerts are not only decolonial because of the proximity between the agents and because they develop as spaces for celebration, but also because they allow the immediate reaction of the audience which, in this case, was booing the artist performing on the stage, usually a space of power. If we take into account that part of that audience was made up of women, this reaction can be analyzed as a criticism of the coloniality of gender. In this way, in that performance Bruce Dickinson embodied a “colonizer” in a double sense: first, as he symbolically represented a nation that has colonized Argentina territorially, politically and commercially; and, second, because he is a cis-gender White male who built his position as a band frontman through a masculine metal style. Boos are interpreted as forms of resistance against what symbolizes the coloniality of power and the White and Western patriarchy. MOTHERS OF METAL In the three previous cases it was possible to analyze the decolonial efforts that were presented in some actions by the agents of the Argentinian metal scene. Despite the fact that, in some of them, complexities and ambiguities were also observed in the local history of the context itself, it was possible to see forms of resistance to the coloniality of power. However, these same cases did not seem to question the coloniality of gender. Rather, they demonstrate a certain attachment to hetero-patriarchal moral norms and celebrate cisgender, heterosexual, and alternative forms of masculinity. Situating this analysis from a position of the epistemologies of the South, it is necessary that I assume the responsibility of my place as a female and Latin American researcher and not only denounce the moments in which the coloniality of gender is imposed on the Argentinian metal scenes, but also reveal the ways in which women and sex-gender dissidences resist such oppression, as proposed by decolonial feminism. For this purpose, I have decided to dwell on the case developed by the collective Madres Metaleras del Norte (Metal Mothers from the North). This group is located in La Quiaca—a city in the province of Jujuy-—and was formed in 2019 by a large group of female metal fans from Salta and Jujuy provinces who decided to organize a concert called “Mama Fest” to celebrate Mother’s Day in Argentina. In addition to featuring extreme metal bands with adult members, there was a recreational space with games for children.

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In this way, these women sought to identify themselves at the same time as mothers and headbangers. Through this concert, they sought to enjoy music and also be responsible and protect and integrate their daughters and sons into all things metal. In addition to containing the data of the show and the logos of the extreme metal bands that were going to participate, one of the promotional flyers16 announcing the first edition of “Mama Fest,” held in 2019, contained as its background illustration a painting by Mamani Mamani, a Bolivian artist who has origins in the Aymara17 indigenous communities. The painting is called “Selling Potatoes and Moons” and it depicts a Kolla18 woman carrying her son on her back and trading typical crops from the northern region of Argentina. This image is relevant for two reasons: first, “Mama Fest” engages in a dialogue with the identity of the inhabitants before the Argentine nation. In previous work (Calvo 2018), I explain that the indigenous trend within Argentinian metal was characterized by addressing the aboriginal topic through White and Western musical resources. This flyer represents a diverging instance because it performs a hybridization between White iconographic elements typical of metal (the logos of the bands) and a painting that develops an indigenous topic and was also made by an aboriginal artist. Second, the example analyzed highlights a form of female identity: the woman is identified as a mother. Motherhood has had different views in the different currents of Feminism and has varied according to its various historical and geographical contexts. For example, in Argentina another example of motherhood socialization (Martínez 2009; Felitti 2016) occurred with leftist militant women during the civic-military dictatorship between 1987 and 1983. Through collective organizing, these women were able to continue their militancy activities without neglecting their children. In addition, this model was opposed to the traditional Christian family that was the basis of nationalism and dictatorial ideology. Besides, in the analyzed case, motherhood in the Andean regions has an ancestral value and power, linked to the ground (Pachamama). Consequently, Madres Metaleras del Norte defy the coloniality of gender through various strategies: first, they view themselves as women and they also identify as mothers collectively and this breaks with the prototype of the Christian, White, and middle-class mother that integrates the ideal of the Argentinian family imposed by certain forms of Argentinidad and Argentinian nationalism; second, by organizing a concert in which they are honorees, they manage to disrupt the masculine and Western rules of metal and the prototype of women imposed by the hetero-patriarchy itself; third, being geographically located in what could be deemed a “double periphery,”19 they show resistance against the hegemonic circuits of metal circulation and against the hegemonic discourses of Argentinidad that are built from the capital of Argentina; finally,

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as they are women who live in territories that are highly disadvantaged by capitalism and where the oppression of Indigenous peoples is a constant situation to this day, these women manage to resist the coloniality of power. FINAL WORDS: THE SOCIAL POWER OF METAL MUSIC IN SITUATED CONTEXTS Throughout this chapter I have described four ways in which the agents of the Argentinian metal scene carry out decolonial efforts. In this sense, the ways in which they confront the coloniality of power and the Western character of metal itself are more visible. Despite this, I have shown that in some examples the forms of vindicating Argentinidad stem from Western and hegemonic perspectives. As a consequence, certain ambiguities appear that demand a situated analysis that understands the functioning of these practices in their own particular context. At times, these contradictions are related to forms of gender coloniality, due to the fact that the moral parameters of hetero-patriarchy are maintained and alternative masculinities are revalued, leaving the agency of metalhead women invisible. In contrast, I have posited the case of the Madres Metaleras del Norte as a challenge to coloniality in various ways. As I mentioned at the beginning, adopting a perspective located in the Global South means assuming the responsibility of denouncing the oppressions in which we are submerged. Although part of this translates to the difficulties and limitations of our university systems, it is also necessary that our subjects be studied in a situated way—that is, integrated into their own context—and that we also contribute to valuing the agency of the scene’s members in their multiple roles. In this sense, the chosen cases have not only been selected for their importance as decolonial acts, but also because they are valued within the collective memory of the Argentinian scene, which I have been able to verify through written publications on Argentinian metal and through ethnography. Likewise, by positioning myself as a female, metal lover, Latin American, and feminist researcher, I felt the need to show the ways in which the coloniality of gender is perpetuated within the metal scene, but also to reveal the actions of a women’s group that shows resistance to it. To conclude, I can affirm that metal continues to be a powerful window through which we can analyze the social situation of various regions, since the agents themselves realize its relevance based on the uses they give to music in different situations and historical moments. The ways in which the agents incorporate elements of their local cultures into the practices of metal allow us to analyze the interpretations that are produced about particular

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social and political contexts, at the same time that metal is constituted as a tool of empowerment in the face of their situations of oppression. REFERENCES Alabarces, Pablo. Entre gatos y violadores. El rock nacional en la cultura argentina. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Colihue, 1995. Alabarces, Pablo, and Rodríguez, María Graciela. “Football and Fatherland: The Crisis of National Representation in Argentinian Soccer.” Culture, Sport, Society 2, no. 3 (1999): 118–33, DOI: 10.1080/14610989908721849 Angenot, Marc. El discurso social: Los límites históricos de lo pensable y lo decible. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2012. Archetti, Eduardo. “Masculinity, Primitivism, and Power: Gaucho, Tango, and the Shaping of Argentine National Identity.” In Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America, edited by William French and Katherine Bliss, 212–29. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. Buch, Esteban, and Juárez, Camila. “Músicos y Malvinas. La cultura de guerra en la Argentina.” Nuevo Mundo MundosNuevos (2019). DOI: https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.4000​/ nuevomundo​.76091 Calvo, Manuela B. “Almafuerte: Metal pesado argento and Its Construction of Argentinian Nationalism.” Metal Music Studies 2, no. 1 (2016a): 21–38. DOI: http:​ //​dx​.doi​.org​/10​.1386​/mms​.2​.1​.21​_1 ———. “Acerca de la heterogeneidad del rock: el ‘aguante’ en el heavy metal en Argentina.” El oídopensante 4, no. 2 (2016b). Available at http:​//​revistascientificas​ .filo​.uba​.ar​/index​.php​/oidopensante​/article​/view​/7513 ———. “Indigenista Perspectives in Argentine Metal Music.” Metal Music Studies 4, no. 1 (2018): 155–163. DOI: https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1386​/mms​.4​.1​.155​_1 ———. “Ricardo Iorio e metal argentino: uma genealogia dos seus nacionalismos.” Tropos: Comunicação, Sociedade e Cultura 10, no. 2 (2021). Available at: https:​//​ periodicos​.ufac​.br​/index​.php​/tropos​/article​/view​/5266 Castelnuovo, Enrico, and Carlo Ginzburg. “Centro e periferia.” In Storia dell’arteitaliana, Partei, vol. I, edited by Giovanni Previtali, 285–352. Turín: Einaudi, 1979. Clinton, Esther, and Jeremy Wallach. “Recoloring the Metal Map: Metal and Race in Global Perspective.” Modern Heavy Metal: Markets, Practices and Cultures (2015) 274–82. Available at https:​//​www​.researchgate​.net​/publication​/329950556​ _RECOLORING​_THE​_METAL​_MAP​_METAL​_AND​_RACE​_IN​_GLOBAL​ _PERSPECTIVE DeNora, Tia. After Adorno. Rethinking Music Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. De Sousa Santos, Boaventura. The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. Díaz, Claudio F. Variaciones sobre el “sernacional.” Una aproximación sociodiscursiva al “folklore” argentino. Córdoba: Ediciones Recovecos, 2008.

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Dunn, Samuel, and McFadyen, Scott, dir. Iron Maiden: Flight 666. Toronto: Banger Productions, 2009. Felitti, Karina. “Maternidades y militancia en la Argentina de los 70s. Notas históricas para pensar las maternidades colectivas contemporâneas.” Revista de História Regional 21, no. 2 (2016): 432–58. DOI: 10.5212/Rev.Hist.Reg.v.21i2.0006 Frith, Simon. “Música e identidade.” In Cuestiones de identidad cultural, edited by Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay, 181–213. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu Editores, 1996. Garavaglia, Juan Carlos. “Gauchos: identidad, identidades.” América: Cahiers du CRICCAL 1, no. 30 (2003): 143–51. García Fanlo, Luis. Genealogía de la Argentinidad. Buenos Aires: Gran Aldea Editores, 2010. Garriga Zucal, José. “Ni ‘chetos’ ni ‘negros’: roqueros.” Trans. Revista Transcultural de Música 12 (2008). Available at: http:​//​www​.sibetrans​.com​/trans​/a89​/ni​-chetos​ -ni​-negros​-roqueros Haraway, Donna. Ciencia, cyborgs y mujeres. La reinvención de la naturaleza. Madrid: Cátedra, 1995. Hennion, Antoine. La pasión musical. Buenos Aires: Editorial Paidós, 1993/2002. Janotti Jr., Jeder. Heavy Metal com Dendê. Rock pesado e mídia em tempos de globalização. Rio de Janeiro: E-Papers editora, 2004. Karush, Matthew. “Blackness in Argentina: Jazz, Tango and Race before Perón.” Past and Present 216 (2012): 215–45. DOI: https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1093​/pastj​/gts008 Lorenzino, Gerardo Augusto. “Immigrants’ Languages, Lunfardo and Lexical Diffusion in Popular Porteño Spanish.” PAPIA 24, no. 2 (2014): 357–79. Available at http:​//​revistas​.fflch​.usp​.br​/papia​/article​/view​/2202 Lotman, Iuri. La semiosfera I. Semiótica de la cultura y el texto. Madrid: EdicionesCátedra, 1996. Lugones, María. “Toward a Decolonial Feminism.” Hypatia 25 no. 4 (2010): 742–59. Available at https:​//​www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/40928654 Martín, Eloísa. “La cumbia villera y el fin de la cultura del trabajo en la Argentina de los 90..” In Cumbia: nación, etnia y género en Latinoamérica, edited by Pablo Semán and Pablo Vila, 209–44. Buenos Aires: Gorla, 2011. Martínez, Paola. Género, política y revolución en los años setenta. Las mujeres del PRT-ERP. Buenos Aires: Imago Mundi, 2009. Müller, Martín Elías. Rugen las islas: la causa Malvinas en la voz del metal pesado nacional. Esquel: Self-published, 2020. Plesch, Melanie. “Demonizing and Redeeming the Gaucho: Social Conflict, Xenophobia and the Invention of Argentine National Music.” Patterns of Prejudice 47, nos. 4–5 (2013): 337–58. DOI: 10.1080/0031322X.2013.845425 Regev, Motti. Pop-Rock Music. UK: Polity Press, 2013. Semán, Pablo, and Vila, Pablo. Cumbia: nación, etnia y género en Latinoamérica. Buenos Aires, 2011. Silba, Malvina, and Vila, Pablo. “Músicas migrantes y la construcción de ‘lo negro’ en la Argentina contemporánea.” Etnografías Contemporáneas 3, no. 5 (2017): 120–51. Available at: https:​//​revistasacademicas​.unsam​.edu​.ar​/index​.php​/ etnocontemp​/article​/view​/444

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Shumway, Nicolás. La invención de la Argentina. Historia de una idea. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1993. Ury-Petesch, Jean-Philippe. “The Numbers of the Beast: Surveying Iron Maiden’s Global Tribe.” In Global Metal Music and Culture: Current Directions in Metal Studies, edited by Andy Brown, Karl Spracklen; Keith Kahn-Harris; and Niall Scott, 145–66. New York: Routledge, 2016. Varas-Díaz, Nelson. Decolonial Metal Music in Latin America. UK: Intellect, 2021. Varas-Díaz, Nelson, and Niall Scott. “Heavy Metal Music and the Communal Experience: An Introduction.” In Heavy Metal Music and the Communal Experience, edited by Nelson Varas-Díaz and Niall Scott, vii–xiii. London: Lexington Books, 2016. Varas- Díaz, Nelson, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, and Eliut Rivera-Segarra (eds.). Heavy Metal Music in Latin America. Perspectives from the Distorted South. Maryland: Lexington Books, 2020. Vila, Pablo. “Rock Nacional. Crónicas de la resistencia juvenil.” In Los nuevos movimientos sociales, edited by Elizabeth Jelin, 8–12. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1985. Wallach, Jeremy. “Global Rock as Postcolonial Soundtrack.” In The Bloomsbury Handbook of Rock Music Research, edited by Allan Moore and Paul Carr, 469–85. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Wallach, Jeremy, Harris M. Berger, and Paul D. Greene (eds.). Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music around the World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Weinstein, Deena. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture (revised edition). United States: Da Capo Press, 2000.

NOTES 1. In a previous work, I used the concept of “double periphery” of Castelnuovo and Guinzburg (1979) to describe the disadvantaged position of the metal scenes of Argentinian provinces. This is because Argentina is a peripheral country within the global circulation of metal, but within it the provinces are even more peripheral than the capital. 2. The theses are respectively titled “A Comparative Socio-semiotic Analysis of Discourses of Metal Pesado Argento of Almafuerte Band” (for my MA degree in comparative cultures and literatures from the Faculty of Languages, National University of Córdoba) and “The Bonaerense Metal Music Scene: Study around Hermética Band as Center of Senses and Debate” (for my PhD Degree in communication from the Faculty of Journalism and Social Communication, National University of La Plata). This last work was carried out thanks to a grant financed by the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET). The institution in which I developed my doctoral research was the Institute of Geography, History and Social Sciences (IGEHCS) of CONICET Tandil and the National University of the Center of Buenos Aires province. Throughout my academic career I have identified myself

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as a researcher from the province, to revalue regional contributions in the face of the difficulties of living in a small city and being far from the capital. 3. The theoretical framework deployed there was highly influenced by the social semiotics of Iuri Lotman (1996) and Marc Angenot (2012), who proposed that the production of meaning is carried out socially and that discourses are not only developed on a verbal plane, but also on a visual plane, that is, through sound and body. Furthermore, I also rely on the ideas of Simon Frith (1996), Antoine Hennion (2002), and Tia DeNora (2003) who posit that music functions as a social tool used in the service of shaping identities and audiences as active and plural agents. The material considered throughout includes: 1) musical and visual productions of some bands along with the face-to-face and virtual ethnographic survey of concerts and meetings centered on metal, held in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires—the Argentinian capital—and various cities from the Buenos Aires and Córdoba provinces, between 2012 and 2017; 2) interviews with musicians, fans, producers, intermediaries, and other agents of the Argentinian metal scenes, which included both men and women who were between fifteen and fifty years of age; 3) a survey of graphic and audiovisual files, some available on the web; 4) and a netnographic exploration of the information uploaded by fans and their verbal exchanges with musicians and promoters on social networks, especially Facebook and a few YouTube channels. 4. I use the concept of gender and sexual dissidence—or sex-gender dissidence—as used by Queer (or Cuir) Theories. I am referring to gender identities and sexual orientations that are dissident/different/resistant to the heteronorm. Here we can include the LGTBIQA+ collective. 5. Lunfardo is a Spanish urban variety spoken in the Rio de la Plata area, in Argentina. It emerged as “(. . .) a specialized language (or jargon) employed by its speakers to mask communication from the police, their victims and witnesses in order to carry out their unlawful practices. It has also been described as the language used by prisoners in the penitentiaries of Buenos Aires. Lunfardo’s origin among the criminal types who shared the conventillos with immigrants and native Argentines has been the accepted scenario for its emergence ever since the first references to this ‘thieves’ language’ appeared in the mid-1870s” (Lorenzino 2014, 359) However, “Over the past century, lunfardo words have undergone the types of modifications that typify language change in general. In the case of lunfardo, however, words attached to the underworld life seem to have relinquished their criminal ties. This ‘decriminalized’ variety of lunfardo has become, together with an additional cohort of Italian words mediated through cocoliche, an essential component of everyday porteño Spanish” (Lorenzino 2014, 377). 6. I use the Spanish version of the concept that in Argentina refers to a specific discursive field formed in 1930s that brings together various musical genres from the interior of the country. The cultural industry and the presence of the mass media allowed these rhythms to be grouped together as a single musical genre considered “popular music,” different from tango. Folkloric musical expressions are centered around the idea of “national ​​ identity,” which was legitimized through the consolidation of certain musical forms (made up of folkloric genres, such as chacarera, chamamé, and zamba) and linguistics. Within this plane, the language recreated in the

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literatura gauchesca of the early twentieth century is used as an expressive resource. Most of the topics of the songs are based on what Claudio Díaz (2009) calls “myth of origin,” which values the ​​ gaucho as an Argentine prototype and national symbol. In this way, the Argentinian folclore tries to vindicate the rurality, the provinciality, and the customs and typical elements of the inhabitant of the countryside, in what it calls nostalgia por el pago perdido (nostalgia for the lost place) due to the growing urbanization. 7. These are the typical trousers used by male rural workers. Nonetheless, in the present they are increasingly worn by women, too. 8. Eduardo Archetti (2007) explains “By the First World War, the nationalists had found, in the male gaucho—the free cowboy riding in the pampas, hunting, gathering and working for a wage when he needed—a symbol to represent the cultural heritage of the nation under ‘threat’ by immigration.” This was because the liberal Argentinian intelligentsia and its social engineering fundamentals wanted immigrants from North and Central Europe (especially from Germany, France, and England). Sarmiento and other liberal-positivist intellectuals supposed that North America had more civilization and progress than Central and South America because that territory had the inheritance of Anglo-Saxons, and they were a superior race than Spanish people. Then, under the ideal of a White and Western nation, political elites wanted to purify the race and civilize the population through the “crucible of races” (García Fanlo 2010). Nevertheless, the immigrants were not the expected: a lot of Italian, Spanish, Jewish, and Middle and Far Eastern people arrived at that time. Accord to Melany Plesch (2013), “Immigration brought the needed labour force but it also brought labour militancy—a phenomenon previously unheard of in Argentina—as well as the doctrine and ideas of anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism and socialism. (. . .) The massive presence of foreigners—29.9 percent at the peak of the immigration boom—disrupted the existing social order and gave rise to perceptions of cultural incoherence and internal dissolution” (350). Other changes in modern urban life were the increase in crime, social unrest, and the rise of feelings such as alienation and anonymity. All these characteristics were deposited in the immigrants, who became the new “other” or the new “barbarism.” In this way, “Out of this context emerged a redefinition of the concept of national identity that led to an essentialist cultural nationalism that turned to the countryside and the world of the heretofore despised gaucho in search of the national ethos” (Plesch 2013, 350). 9. In this article I analyzed the particular case of the chant that the Argentinian audience created for the song “Symphony of Destruction” by Megadeth (Calvo, 2016a). 10. A close translation could be: “The fan base dances, it dances with heart (with passion). We are the negros, we are the greasers, but we’re not stuck-up.” 11. Conventillos were a type of collective urban housing that used to be the first home of many immigrants recently arrived from Europe to Argentina at the beginning of the twentieth century. Several families and single men who rented rooms lived in them. They had only one shared bathroom and kitchen. These houses used to have poor sanitary conditions, due to overcrowding. Some famous conventillos are located in the neighborhood of “La Boca” in Buenos Aires city.

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12. One of the most popular cumbia villera albums is by the band Damas Gratis [Ladies Free] and is called 100% Negro Cumbiero. 13. This is a point that should be studied in greater depth. Argentinian studies about rock carried out during the 1980s describe metalheads as an audience that is characterized by violently attacking people and public spaces. However, the testimonies of the fans themselves and some declassified police documents allow us to understand that they were a cultural group particularly persecuted by the police forces. 14. Iorio’s question has its own complexity and also requires situated analysis. Part of this detail can be found in an article I wrote on the subject (Calvo 2021). Briefly, it is necessary to clarify that despite having identified as a nationalist from the beginning of his career, his philosophy has changed over time. For this reason, I previously analyzed the productions of Almafuerte and considered that it was not appropriate to qualify them as fascist (Calvo, 2016b), mainly because in the context of the ’90s in Argentina, neoliberal economic measures were being carried out. For this reason, it could be understood that singing about the local culture was presented as an anti-imperialist and anticolonial attitude. I also took into account that Iorio had made jokes making fun of Jews and transgender people, but I did not regard him as an anti-Semitic person, since in his songs he was in favor of the fight for human rights and against dictatorships. Naïvely, I believed that some of those jokes had been reproduced from the workplace that his family came from, which was representative of the immigrant communities, which implied possible rivalries between the different groups. In this sense, the mechanism of antireflexive reflexivity (Kahn-Harris 2007) used by Iorio through humor seems to have been in effect. However, starting in 2017, Iorio showed his explicit support for pro-Nazi politicians and those belonging to extreme-right-wing political parties. This led a large number of analysts to reassess our previous studies about the productions of Iorio, in which we can observe the coexistence (at times, incoherent) of popular impulses with the celebration of reactionary, racist, homophobic, and misogynistic characters. This can be seen in the example cited: while his songs pay tribute to the popular classes, in interviews he has referred in discriminatory ways to agents who come from the same social sectors but who are morally judged in a negative way. In Argentina, the case of Iorio is not the only one where there is contact between metal and extreme-right-wing ideology. There are also bands that celebrate White supremacy and honor anti-democratic military men. However, these bands do not have massive audiences. In general, they move in a very underground way. As Esther Clinton and Jeremy Wallach (2015) have noted, “Hate metal constitutes a marginal though disturbing portion of the contemporary global metal movement” (275). 15. This video is available at: https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=UNFqwbq​_7LQ 16. The picture is available at: https:​//​www​.facebook​.com​/108986040584747​/ photos​/a​.115022863314398​/115022836647734 17. Aymara are an indigenous people originating from South America, who have lived on the Altiplano, a vast windy plateau of the central Andes in Perú and Bolivia and parts of northern Argentina and Chile. 18. Kolla or Colla is the name that refers to the culturally syncretic and homogeneous group of Andean Indigenous peoples originating in the provinces of

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northwestern Argentina, mainly in the west of Jujuy, Salta, and Catamarca. In Bolivia, these Andean women are called cholitas. 19. In a previous work I used the concept of “double periphery” of Castelnuovo and Guinzburg (1979) to describe the disadvantaged position of the metal scenes of Argentinian provinces. This is because Argentina is a peripheral country within the global circulation of metal, but within it the provinces are even more peripheral than the capital.

SECTION 4

Dialogues

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An Interview on Contar/Cantar Memórias da Resistência Susane Hécate (Miasthenia) and Daniel Nevárez Araújo

The following interview was conducted via email from February 2022 to April 2022. This formal choice was made due to Susane’s busy schedule, which entails teaching university courses, conducting research, and recording/promoting/performing with Miasthenia. The questions were written in Spanish, the answers provided in Portuguese, and the text translated into English, with Susane having a final look at the document and signing off on the end result. DN: How do you define metal? SH: Metal for me is freedom and contestation. That’s why it’s an art of rebellion and resistance to standardization, dogmatization, and social oppression. DN: How did you find metal? SH: I had my first contact with metal music through the radio and television of the late 1980s. When I was thirteen, I heard the song “One” by Metallica, and it immediately captivated me. It was then and there that I identified with metal for the first time. I had no mentors. My parents were always evangelical, and against this musical taste of mine, so I had to face a lot of conflict at home. It was in the neighborhood and at school that I made some friends in the early 1990s, and that made it possible for me to acquire extreme metal records and tapes. Aside from that, I grew up in a neighborhood (in Guará in Brasília) where there was a strong influence of Death Metal bands (Embalmed Souls, Nauseous Surgery, and Valhalla), and that also made a powerful impression on me. DN: What were the first influences? 189

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SH: There were bands like Carcass, Kreator, Sarcófago, Mercyful Fate, Samael, and Rotting Christ. DN: How does the name Miasthenia originate? Why do you choose it? Why call it pagan black metal? SH: The name Miasthenia derives from a disease called myasthenia gravis that temporarily paralyzes part of the body. At the time, we chose this name because our main references for band names came a lot from grind and death metal. We attribute a special meaning to this disease, thinking about the paralysis of people in the face of ignorance, so we put a “i” in the middle to differentiate our invention from the actual disease. From the beginning, the band’s philosophy was to produce a sound with influences of black and death metal, but with a pagan theme throughout, thus making it different from Satanic and Luciferist approaches. We wanted to go straight to the point, without the influence of a Christian vision on beliefs, philosophies, and ancient pagan rituals. While I appreciate some satanic-themed bands, I wanted to demystify this demonological and stereotypical view of ancient paganism, to expose its diversity, if you will. The Christian view is very limited and prejudiced about non-Christian cultures, especially Indigenous and African ones. As a historian, during the early years of Miasthenia, I was very much interested in the history of witchcraft, occultism, and Satanism in the Christian West, and this led me to an understanding of the very complex historical process of using religion, government, class, race, and gender in the exclusion and domination of the “other.” Our first demo (“For the Allure of the Sabbat”) already addressed the theme of pagan resistance to Christianization. It was the beginning of our interest in understanding this process, which itself led us to explore instances of colonial Indigenous resistance. I see the European Sabbats as a symbolic and ritual form of resistance to dogmatization and the oppression of women, which is why they were persecuted and demonized by the Catholic Church. This experience of the demonization and rejection of the beliefs, knowledge, and people who escaped the Christian and patriarchal logic arrived in America with colonialism, impacting Indigenous societies, and this has effects that manifest even in the present. Indigenous beliefs and rituals are still seen as evil and satanic, based on stereotypes that still promote the exclusion and marginalization of the knowledge and practices of these peoples. Demonization is part of the racist and sexist colonial power structure against which we position ourselves. Pagan black metal allows us to rediscover what was demonized and refused by Christianity. We want to touch what was obscured; so it is an extreme musical option in every way, because it addresses lyrical themes that have historically been stigmatized, refused, and erased, precisely for its disturbing, dissident, and destabilizing content, which attacks the Christian/patriarchal hegemonic power. DN: How has your life influenced the music you create and vice versa? SH: My life and Miasthenia’s music have gone hand-in-hand from the beginning. Miasthenia’s musical project originates as a result of my studies in the

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field of history as well as my political beliefs and social values. It’s all related, but that might not seem so evident, as Miasthenia’s lyrics are very metaphorical and poetic. I really like to express myself historically and politically through historical fiction. Presently, I realize that I have been producing a kind of “historiographical metafiction” in the lyrics of Miasthenia, and I’ve done so for a long time as a way of expressing my contestation and resistance, not only to traditional history, but also to the fundamentalist Christian values ​​that oppress us. Miasthenia’s music is a way of expressing something that is socially very extreme; that is, the refusal of Christian, colonial, and patriarchal values. I learned all this as a historian in my master’s and doctoral research on the European imagination about the Incas of ancient Perú, especially when it comes to gender identities and those relations that escaped colonial patriarchal logic. In this sense, Miasthenia greatly influenced my career as a historian. And my studies are reflected a lot in Miasthenia’s lyrics. DN: Does metal frame how you see the world? How do you see yourself? SH: Yes, metal frames my worldview, and I see myself inside metal as someone in the process of expression, always trying to communicate something through it. I am always searching for this expression of my worldview in an extreme, poetic, and historical way. I use extreme and historical fiction language to communicate in metal, because it fascinates me, and I identify a lot with this type of expression and identity. There has to be something very rebellious and indomitable in the soul of someone who wants to express themselves in this way. For me, this can’t be something empty of meaning; it’s not just noise for noise. It’s

Figure 8.1. Susane Hécate form the Brazilian metal band Miasthenia. Source: Photo provided by Susane Hécate.

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something that surrounds me. When playing heavy, aggressive, and fast music, I also project myself as an extreme being. It is my moment of strength and resistance (see figure 8.1). DN: Do you see any relation or connections between metal and social justice? SH: Like all types of art, metal is a form of communication that can express both justice and social injustice. All art has a political dimension, although this is much denied by some extreme metal bands who think their lyrics are neutral or that they just provide entertainment and pure fun. There are those who use metal to defend gratuitous violence or to condemn all types of oppressive violence. There are those who use metal to express their hatred, trauma, and disaffection, but there are those who use metal to idealize or rebuild the world or empower oppressed people. There are no limits to what can be communicated today in the world of metal music, and no one has control over it, which makes metal quite controversial. Metal conveys emotion, strength, power, and the will to resist, so it is quite plausible, necessary, and urgent that we also use this language to raise awareness or promote social justice. Extreme metal, for example, does this sometimes in a very controversial way, through extreme pedagogies, because we approach, in a very heavy and aggressive manner, certain sensitive topics related to violence, power, or religion, a practice which is not well understood by those who do not appreciate this musical genre or who do not understand well its symbolic dimension. For our society, it is strange that within extreme metal, there is some kind of expression in favor of social justice, because our music and stage performances or music videos sound very violent and dark. We often mobilize images and symbols of violence, use offensive language, and react lyrically or visually with violence to social injustices or against those who oppress us. It is no coincidence that many bands have had to respond to legal challenges for these practices. It is extreme when I sing, “May Christian blood be shed.” This may sound very intolerant and aggressive; it certainly does not convey peace. But I am singing a story from the point of view of someone who resisted evangelization and oppressive colonialism. Without understanding the lyrical context, this can be quite misinterpreted. It’s like in a movie; there is no use in isolating a scene. You have to watch the whole movie to understand it. In music, this also makes sense. There is a whole thematic, symbolic and performative context involved, which cannot be isolated. In extreme metal, we also deal aggressively against oppression, because the fast and heavy sounds also lead us to this extreme movement. Interesting that, in our daily lives, most of us do not react physically or verbally in an aggressive and violent way against social injustices, because we are aware that this would not be the way to achieving transformation. Instead, investing in an aggressive and heavy musical/artistic expression is an important part of this transformation. At some point, we have to refuse and confront injustices aggressively, brutalizing our emotions against them. We need this symbolic and emotional overflow that extreme metal allows us, in order to continue resisting against this unfair world. DN: Do you see any correlation between what you do and social justice?

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SH: Yes, if you understand that telling/singing (contar/cantar) your version of history is also a way of intervening in the world against the history that we were taught in schools which naturalized the social injustices in this country. My lyrics are an aggressive reaction against these injustices committed by a racist and sexist Eurocentric historiography that unjustly painted us as inhuman, savage beings devoid of knowledge, political organization, and resistance, thus legitimizing our subjugation, extermination, and slavery. The history taught in schools still commits serious injustices, perpetuating images that victimize us and construct us as subservient beings incapable of critical thinking and political mobilization. DN: Do you see what you do as activism? SH: In a way, yes! In addition to being in it for the sonic pleasure that metal provides us, there is a lyrical and aesthetic content forged in my own activism in the field of history pedagogy. As a historian, I stand with the social groups that denounce the racist and sexist Eurocentric character of history taught in Brazilian schools, defending the importance of a history that educates to combat racism and sexism. At the university, this translates into projects that I, along with other teachers, promote in schools in the training process. In metal, I do it in another way, with poetic license, through the production of historical fictions that aggressively convey a critique of Eurocentric historical images about pre-Columbian Indigenous peoples and their resistance to colonial domination. I’m looking for the stories of what is possible! DN: What led you to study history? Tell me about this academic trajectory. SH: It was my journey through the libertarian and anarcho-punk movement in Brasília in the early 1990s. In 1993 I made some friends in the punk movement and was invited to some anarchist meetings, debates, and protests, and through that exposure, I learned a lot. Up until 1994, I thought about studying physical education, but when I went to take the entrance exam, I ended up opting for the history course, because I became interested in intellectual, historical, and political content. I earned a history degree in 1997. But it was when I traveled through archaeological sites in Bolivia and Perú that my life ended up changing a lot. I had the intention of committing suicide in January 1998. I had been feeding this idea of a certain date for years. But after I made this trip, which lasted almost a month, I came back with a different perspective on life, history, and Latin America. And it was there that I developed a research project for my master’s degree. I was interested in understanding the Spanish imaginary and its vision of Inca religiosity in the context of the conquest and colonization of Tawantinsuyo. I studied for my master’s degree between 1999 and 2001, and continued with the doctorate between 2002 and 2006, both in the area of history ​​ and in the subject of the history of the ancient Incas of Perú. I looked closely at Hispanic chronicles, a type of narrative genre produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, through which I analyzed the European imaginary about culture, gender relations, and the role of Inca women in society. At that time,

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the line of research in which I developed these studies had professors and researchers engaged in feminist and gender studies in the field of women’s history, and this provided me with a broad experience of poststructuralist studies and feminist readings that became the basis of the theoretical-methodological approach of my publications to this day. Between 2002 and 2006, I was a professor of the history of education in pedagogy departments at private colleges in Brasília, and this experience also opened up new horizons for research focusing on education and the teaching of history. In 2009, I completed the requirements to become a professor in the area of theory ​​ and methodology of teaching history at the Department of History at the University of Brasília (UnB). While still at UnB, I also started to work in the postgraduate program in history as a master’s and doctoral advisor in the area of cultural history, memories, and identities, where I specifically guided research on women’s history, gender relations, intersectionality, decoloniality, feminisms, history pedagogy, and Indigenous history. My most recent research and publications deal with gender and representations of violence against women in historical school narratives. I am the author of the book For a History of the Possible: Representations of Inca Women in Chronicles and Historiography (published by Paco Editorial in 2012) and co-organizer of the collections Mulheres e Violências: Intersectionalidades (2017), Relatos, Análises e Ações no Enfrentamento da Violência contra Mulheres (2017) and Gênero, Subjetivação e Perspectivas Feministas (2019), all of which are the result of my activism in the field of feminist studies. DN: How did you balance your studies and now your work as an educator with your musical career? SH: It’s very difficult, but I’ve never given up on Miasthenia and have not stopped performing. As difficult as it is to reconcile careers, I need to be in both spaces, and I try to balance it all. Thormianak (guitarist), my partner and bandmate, and I chose not to live financially off the band, because in Brazil this would be unfeasible. There is not enough space or support for shows, and the conditions are still precarious. We’ve had to dedicate ourselves in parallel to other professional careers to feed this dream of continuing to play and compose extreme metal. As a professor at UnB I can’t dedicate myself to long tours, so our shows usually happen on weekends or during my vacations. We keep up the band with a lot of commitment and dedication, and we still feel very motivated to continue. Now, with the addition of two new female members to the band, we feel even more motivated for a new phase of Miasthenia. We now have Aletea Cosso (ex-Estamira) on bass and Ariadne (ex-Valhalla) on drums, two very mature and experienced musicians. And that’s how we continue on this long journey of twenty-three years, always renewing the spirit and motivation. We go through several phases, some very difficult and stressful, but with time we always manage to overcome and chart a new course so that things can keep flowing. DN: Does metal inform your academic work and vice versa?

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SH: Yes, it was always like that with Miasthenia. I always read and study a lot to compose the lyrics. And it was through my interest in lyrical themes of pre-Columbian history and religiosity, and colonial Indigenous resistance that I also found the motivation to study for a master’s and doctoral degree. DN: Which books and thinkers have influenced your vision both academically and in metal? SH: In the 1990s, I read many books that made me think about Christian/patriarchal values ​​and prevailing power relations and how all of this was historically forged in the experience of colonialism, slavery, and the “witch hunt” in both Europe and America. I arrived at these themes interested in understanding Satanism, paganism, and witchcraft, and I ended up delving into the historicity of the Christian demonological imaginary and the knowledge/power relations that constitute the process of overlapping Christianity with paganism in the West. In this initial journey I read works such as Bruxaria e História: as Práticas Mágicas no Ocidente Cristão by Carlos Roberto Figueiredo Nogueira; Chacina de Feiticeiras by Anne Llewellyn Barstow; O diabo e a Terra de Santa Cruz: Feitiçaria e Religiosidade Popular no Brasil Colonial by Laura de Mello e Souza; Luna, Sol y Brujas: Géneros y Clases en Los Andes Prehispánicos y Coloniales by Irene Silverblatt; A heresia dos Índios by Ronaldo Vainfas; and De la Idolatría: una Arqueología de las Ciencias Religiosas by Carmen Bernand and Serge Gruzinski. These books influenced me both academically and in the composition of Miasthenia’s lyrics, expanding our perspectives within black metal. DN: How do you see the Portuguese language? How is your relationship with the language? Have you considered adopting a language other than Portuguese? SH: Miasthenia was born in 1994 with the idea to sing in Portuguese, because this is the language we master and in which we express ourselves best. At first, this was quite challenging, because singing in English is the norm, and to this day, I see comments about how bold and weird Miasthenia is still singing in Portuguese. But we showed that this is possible within extreme metal, and I see today the impact on the way people better understand our lyrical themes and have come to value Portuguese as a language of expression within national metal. In recent decades, several Brazilian extreme metal bands have also felt inspired to compose their lyrics in Portuguese. It is also important to say that this is not an obstacle to being appreciated or recognized outside Brazil. On the tour we did in Europe in 2018, some people were impressed with how Portuguese can sound very well within extreme metal, and we received a lot of praise and support for that. In fact, that made people more interested in the themes of our lyrics, with many of these coming to talk to the band about it after the shows. Singing in one’s own language has the advantage that we know how to use words and expressions better in a symbolic and poetic way. People don’t always know how to use their own language to communicate poetically. This is worse when they do it in a language they don’t fully understand. Anyway, I see the

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composition and musicalization of lyrics as a job that requires a lot of care and study; it requires not only knowledge of grammar, but also common sense in producing rhymes that do not distort the flow of words. DN: Let’s talk about a few songs and lyrics specifically. What drew you to the Popol Vuh? And why do you use it as a basis for many of your songs? SH: During my doctoral studies, I researched a lot about pre-Columbian myths and rituals, and I came across some publications of the Popol Vuh that also helped me think about the way in which Indigenous “myths” were belittled, demonized, and resignified by Europeans in the process of conquest and colonization, because my thesis was about gender and female identities in the Incan myths of the creation of Tawantinsuyo, in the view of European and Indigenous chroniclers. These represent ancestral knowledges that bring together memories and stories produced in another language and that relate to the values and ​​ modes of the political and social organization of a people. Calling the knowledge of these peoples a “myth” was one of the colonizers’ weapons of cultural/intellectual domination, as a form of epistemicide, with the aim of erasing the diversity of forms of organization of society and identities, that is, of what I call “stories of the possible” or the stories of other possible worlds, which would help to broaden our horizons about organizations, identities, and human relationships over time. This is because the hegemonic history, produced from a colonialist and Eurocentric point of view, tended to erase this diversity, imposing universal patterns of behavior, identity, and social organization, limiting and controlling our ways of being and being in society. What history does not say, did not exist! I was inspired by the Popol Vuh in the composition of the album Legados do Inframundo, an album with a conceptual theme, because it portrays my journey through the universe of death in the conception of the ancient Mayans. This Mayan (pre-Columbian) cosmological narrative is very existential, and its symbolic language brings us other values and possible conceptions of life and death, different from Christian conceptions of life, creation, and hell. For the Mayans, everything is interconnected as in a great cosmic tree, and our existence is connected with this cosmogony that involves not only human beings, but also nature, animals, land, gods, food, and political and social organizations. I learned a lot from this journey to Xibalbá, and psychologically it was a great therapy to enter this journey to the underworld of the soul, to the most decadent and depressing moments of our existence. The Popol Vuh teaches us that we are part of this movement, “everything goes, everything passes,” and that at some point in our lives, we will go through a great “hell,” a series of sufferings and adversities to resurrect “enthroned in death,” but we continue fighting and following in this often hostile reality. It is in the “underworld of the soul” that we find the strength and meaning for this existence. DN: Why the interest in Mesoamerican/pre-Hispanic history and narratives? SH: Because my interest is precisely in what has been erased or excluded from a history written from a Christian, colonialist, and Eurocentric point of view.

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Pre-Hispanic stories and narratives show us other points of view, what I call “stories of the possible.” We badly need other historical perspectives to rethink the decadent, moralistic, and unjust values that govern our society. I don’t think of it as a return to the past, but a kind of learning from difference. Understanding that in the past, things were different can stimulate us to think about the historicity of the world and human relationships, and stimulate us to transform or recreate the world. Things weren’t always the same! DN: In Legados do Inframundo, you sing: “Life and death, creation and destruction, coexisted and complemented each other in a necessary dynamic opposition.” You also have the album Antípodas. I see an interest in this concept of dynamic opposition both in Legados and in Antípodas. Is it intentional? If so, why? What is the importance of these oppositions in your philosophy as a writer? Do you see parallels of this opposition in how you see the Global South and the Global North in the present? SH: Yes, it is intentional. I want to problematize these oppositions that are at the base of modern Christian/Western thought, from pre-Hispanic Indigenous perspectives that go beyond these dualities. I approach these oppositions because it disturbs the Christian imagination a lot. They are at the base of a system of power that divides, opposes, and creates hierarchies: man/woman, life/death, heaven/hell, god/devil, culture/nature, creation/destruction, and so on. These dichotomies create limitations and patterns in the ways of seeing and conceiving the world and life. What is outside of that seems impossible. In Legados do Inframundo, I am talking about cosmological conceptions where these oppositions do not make sense. In Antípodas, I am talking about a place historically constructed as the “other,” within this modern colonial dichotomy. This place is the antipode of civilization. It is a place of strangeness and difference that hegemonic history tries to subject and reduce. This also has to do with the Global South and the North’s opposition; it was also built from this dichotomous modern thinking. We are in the South, in the “zone of non-being,” of “human bestiaries,” a place that since colonial times has been used for the exploration and enrichment of northern countries (meaning Europe and the United States). The North was projected as superior and civilized, as a universal model of an ideal, White, and patriarchal society, so we resist at the opposite ends. I appropriate these dichotomies to problematize them. I approach pre-Hispanic themes to problematize and contest the dominant forms of thought—dichotomous, Eurocentric, universalist, Christian, and colonialist. DN: In the song Antípodas, you sing: “In the Antípodas, resist.” There is also the song “Araka’e” in which the lyrics say:  

Mythical projections of old enemies deep scars Memories of ancient times Of wild wisdom

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That run in my veins Memories of the Resistance Araka’e I feel that the concept of resistance is addressed a lot in your work. Historically, I clearly understand the interest in the Amazons and the Coniupuyaras. But what relevance do you see in these warrior figures for the present? SH: In the Western Christian imagination, the Amazon warriors symbolize opposition to a patriarchal regime based on the power of the father and the domination of men over women. Since classical antiquity, matriarchal societies with the presence of women warriors were reduced to the domain of myth and the primitive as a form of control over their existence and the possibility of inspiration in the transformation of this regime. I like to bring up these images because their symbolism is extreme and disturbing to Christian patriarchy. The Amazons represent the disorder of what was conceived as sacred and natural for gender relations. For me, they are powerful symbols of our feminist resistance against patriarchy and gender inequalities. Today we have a lot of archaeological evidence of societies with the presence of women warriors and rulers, but this is still erased and rejected by an androcentric history that serves the purpose of historically legitimizing or naturalizing the current order of power. DN: Where do you see the acts of resistance today? SH: In various spaces and languages, including metal and historical fiction. We resist not only through public policies in favor of social change, but also through imagination and art, evoking symbols, images, and conceptions that problematize the Christian/colonialist patriarchy and inspire us to resist in some way. It is important to say that art uses the symbolic, the fictional, and the fantastic to communicate something. This does not mean that we literally do what we express in our lyrics. For me, Indigenous historical and cosmogonic conceptions represent the greatest source of resistance and inspiration. They teach us about other ways of being and being in the world, helping us to resist the ways of seeing, feeling, and thinking that reduce and control our existence in the present tense. DN: Talking about Amazons and women warriors, can you talk about feminism in relation to metal? SH: About the Amazons and women warriors, an earlier question already talks a little about this. Yes, feminist expressions have been present in metal for a long time. Since the 1970s, we have had some female bands with rebellious and contesting attitudes. Metal is a musical genre that is very conducive to that. That’s why I was attracted to metal, to its rebellious spirit. There are those who want to take that away from metal, evoking conservative, fundamentalist, or Nazi-fascist conceptions, but nothing takes away its rebelliousness. It is still difficult to talk about feminism within metal because there is a very idealistic and illusory type of conception that in the metal scene, there are no inequalities

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of gender and race. I myself have been confronted with this conception, because I am respected by some men, as if there was no reason to be a feminist, since, in the view of these men, I do not suffer any prejudice or discrimination. They don’t understand what we’re talking about, because they don’t realize or don’t want to admit that sexism is so subtle and ingrained that it goes unnoticed. So they think feminism is for troublemakers, unloved women, or bad musicians. Metal is not a parallel universe, it is within a sexist and racist society, and this is reflected in the relationships and hierarchies within the scene. I don’t want to be exclusive or exceptional. I don’t want to be the representative only of women. Men want you to feel privileged for this, so they don’t see the need to support or ally with other women in the scene. The presence and respect of a single woman in the scene or in a band cannot be used to shut up other women. This is sexism, because it is based on the idea that women are all the same; one represents all. Although there is a feminist brotherhood that recognizes that the female presence is important for all of us, this is still very problematic in practice, because our representation is still very limited. It is not enough to accommodate our diversity. It is necessary that our diversity and plurality also have space and recognition! DN: How is feminism practiced in the Global South different from what is seen up North? SH: Because as women, we experience the world in very different ways. The White and Eurocentric feminism of northern countries cannot represent the interests of all women because not all of them fit their gender experiences and the model of the white and bourgeois family from which their positions emerge. This White feminism often does not include the antiracist struggle in its agenda, which leaves out the problems faced by other women in the world. The problem is that this type of feminism imposes itself hegemonically on others, dictating a universal way of making public policies for women. Black, Indigenous, and mestizo women from the Global South experience racial and class inequalities in a very intertwined way with gender inequalities. That’s why there are different forms of feminism both in the North and in the South. DN: Is this feminism anticolonial? SH: Not always! In Brazil, for example, many White and bourgeois feminists ignore the effects of colonialism on gender relations. Black, Indigenous, community, and decolonial feminisms, on the other hand, have an anticolonial dimension, because they understand that our female experience of exclusion and marginalization has its origins in colonial—slave and genocidal—relationships between Indigenous and African populations. Anticolonial feminism is a type of feminism that recognizes the complexity of modern capitalist systems of oppression and, therefore, its agendas of struggle are both antiracist and antisexist. DN: In relation to the previous questions, I think about the lyrics of “Novus Orbis Profanum”:

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“Free as the wind/Indomitable.” It reads like a feminist mantra. Was this your intention? SH: If you thought that was my intention, I’m very happy, because that’s right! Feminism, for me, represents freedom and contestation, and I try to insert that perspective into the characters I create for my lyrics. DN: I was drawn to the images of the Borôro communities in the video for “Araka’e.” How did the idea come about? And what is the purpose of including the images in the video? SH: I was already aware of this old video of Borôro rites and parties, filmed in 1917 by the Rondon Commission. We found it interesting to include some excerpts because it is one of the rare videos that show real Indigenous people in their rituals still in the early twentieth century. The lyrics refer to the ancient and ancestral world, and those Borôros are great representatives because they have an ancient line of descent. There are records about them from colonial times. In addition, the lyrics also speak of genocide and the Borôro. Although few are still alive today, they resisted the process of colonial domination that resulted in the death and disappearance of thousands of Indigenous people in Brazil. The Borôro represent resistance and connect us with this ancestral past. DN: Finally, and with much respect, can you talk to us about Fernanda Galvão? SH: She was a great friend who valiantly battled cancer for eight years. She conferred her powerful voice to us in this record, days before she died. She sings, along with me, Raquel Dias, and Priscila Cordano in the songs “Ymaguaré” and “Coniupuyaras,” in the excerpts that invoke ritual chants. For us, Fernanda was a very strong and warrior-like woman, just like the Amazons in the video clip, because until the end, she believed in life and kept her head held high.

Chapter 9

Misusing Things in Metal Music A Dialogue Manuel Gagneux (Zeal & Ardor) and Daniel Nevárez Araújo

The following conversation took place via Zoom on October 17, 2021. The conversation captured here was preceded by a jovial discussion about music, the upcoming US tour with Opeth and Mastodon (a month away from the date of this conversation), the then-forthcoming self-titled album (released in February of 2022), art, creativity, and personal details. The conversation was then followed by further discussions about the notion of the Global South and privilege. I (Daniel) must point out that Manuel initially expressed discomfort at the notion of his work and his identity somehow being aligned with a Global South positionality. But upon further comparisons, contextualization, and discussion, he did see some tenuous ties. Nonetheless, he sees his fluidity in terms of nationality, race, artistry, and other components, as being more complex than merely a question of being located in either the Global North or the Global South. His positionality and thinking reflect the challenges of trying to define or contain experiences into strictly defined categories. The following conversation hopefully reflects that fluidity and respects Manuel’s vision without trying to enclose him in one box or another. Portions of this conversation have been edited for the sake of fluidity, clarity, and economy of space. DN: Manuel, thank you for accepting to do this. MG: Gladly. DN: I’m interested in your trajectory and the philosophy behind your music. 201

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Where is it born? I’ve seen plenty of interviews out there about the 4Chan start of this whole thing, but I do want to delve a little bit deeper. So the first question is, how do you define yourself as an individual, your identity? I’ve heard Yoruba culture coming up, popping up here and there, but not in detail, so I just want to get a sense of your sense of belonging, your identity- if there is any, sort of like, migration or movement in that identity. So, let’s start with that. MG: Yeah, sure. Well, I was born in Switzerland, but evidently, I don’t really look particularly Swiss. So, I couldn’t really have, like, a foothold in the local culture, or maybe I just refused, ’cause, I don’t know, I didn’t really want to belong, I guess. Then, in my early twenties, I moved to New York for a couple of years. I noticed that by that time, I no longer have those firm connections with that world either. So, I’m like in this limbo of, I guess, restlessness? Or you know, ex-nationality, and so, I just kind of pick and choose what I like, and I guess I have this weird compromise of national identity. DN: Ok, and your family life, your mother and your father? I know it’s come up that he played drums or percussion. MG: Exactly. DN: So that exposure to those separate cultures, does that inform anything in you? Do you tap into that every now and then? MG: Well, slightly. My father is the White one, by the way, and he was very into polyrhythms, and he went to Africa a couple of times. He spent years in the Congo, just doing research with primate studies in genealogy, but also to study these polyrhythms and, basically, Yoruba culture in the end. But, me being his son, of course, I can’t like the music he is into. So I went to metal, and I guess, out of, like, a teenage stubbornness, refused to participate in his neck of the woods. However, I was exposed to it nonstop. So, yeah, it did inform me. DN: So, he’s Swiss, and your mother is African American, is that correct? MG: Exactly. Yeah. DN: Where was she from? Or where is she from? MG: She’s from North Carolina. They met in New York, and then, first, my brother happened. They moved back to Switzerland. Then, I happened. DN: So, the Yoruba link is just accidental? There is no lineage? Or, like, on the side of your mother, any connection to Nigeria, or anything? MG: Well, I mean, maybe, I don’t know, but, yeah. (Laughter) No, but it’s actually, not passed on to me. I went to these sessions, I’ll call them. You know, just as the kid who was sticking around and bored out of his mind. DN: Interesting, interesting. Before we continue, I did see the Slay-at-Home performance. MG: Yeah? Hahaha.

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DN: And thoroughly enjoyed it. But one thing that drew my attention, and following on the whole lineage thing, you mentioned the loss of both your grandmothers due to COVID. MG: Exactly, yeah. DN: And so, I guess, I want to hear perhaps a little bit about that if that’s not too much prying. You know, the mourning process—if music has been a part of that and if that, in any way, is going to show up in the new album? MG: Well, I’m not even sure about a mourning process. Of course, I love both my grandmothers. I was kind of estranged to one because she was suffering from dementia. The one in Switzerland, she was an Ikebana world minister, like she would do the royal gardens of the Jordan king’s family. Do, like aesthetic gardening, I guess? And since it all happened really in a closed time frame—like in the space of a month, both of them passing—and there was, you know, heaps of other not great things going on, I just kind of piled it up into this mental garbage section of lamentable things. And I guess I have been mourning with music. I think the way I process any larger emotions, I guess, I just need music, and through that, I am kind of centered. And you know, maybe years later, I listen to a song, and I go, like, “Oh, that’s obviously about that.” But it’s a subconscious thing. DN: Do you see the mourning process as something just personal, or is it informed by, again, family members or that mishmash that you say of borrowing from here and there? MG: Well, it’s fairly solipsistic. Because the way my brother sees himself, for instance, is he’s very Swiss. My mother elects to see herself as American, and I just don’t want to be either, frankly. So, I’ve always been out and about on my own. I guess it is informed by the different elements of cultures that I just picked out, but it’s my personal hodge-podge, and I don’t think there is too much to be said about how good that is. I don’t want to preach it, is what I mean. DN: So, you’re Manuel in a nutshell. MG: Yeah, pretty much. DN: Not Manuel with an adjective of, you know, I am this or that. MG: Exactly, yeah. DN: Cool. What’s your relationship to metal music? Either as a youth or even now? MG: Well, there’s a very active political scene and leftist scene in my hometown. So, I went to punk shows at an early age, just, like, from twelve on, and I really liked that. I liked this music, and my parents hated it. Then I heard about metal, and then I realized, holy shit, there’s actually brilliant music that’s also harsh out there, and I was immediately lost, and I don’t know, I mean, I think metal has this weird way of kind of connecting similarly minded people. I

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mean, this is oversimplifying it by far, but there’s the catharsis of aggression in the music that sparks happiness in a very particular kind of person. (Laughter) DN: Yeah. (Laughter) MG: You know about this. And from then on, it became this social thing, not only this private cultural experience. Shortly thereafter, I had my first black metal band with a guy from the village over, and it’s just been a part of my life since then. DN: And is it always left-leaning? Any metal that comes out of there or anything that comes out of that area? MG: Oh, no, no, no. There is also very terrible things from here, but . . . DN: Yeah? MG: At least the things that I have experienced or that I came in contact with are overwhelmingly left-leaning. DN: OK, and you just naturally gravitated toward that, or did anyone push you in that direction, or was the music the lure? MG: Well, I think it was a lot of my friends were already—I think their parents were socially active, and then, they elected to go to these squat shows. I mean, first, it was free beer, and then there was “Oh my god, there’s music,” and then there’s friends. DN: Based on that, do you see a relationship between metal music and social justice? MG: Definitely, I think it kind of sprung out from, I guess, the frustration. Because, it’s not a stop sign. It’s just a declaration of “I am not really content with the situation.” And from then on, I think there was the injection of, you know, “This is how I think about it,” but in its essence, it’s “I feel bad because of x, and that’s why I’m yelling.” DN: Yeah. I ask the question between those two linkages because I think of the prototypical metal bands. Iron Maiden, I don’t think social justice. Metallica, I don’t think social justice. Opeth, I don’t think social justice. MG: Black Sabbath, I kind of do, in a weird way. DN: Yeah, Birmingham, working class. MG: Yeah. DN: Where did you see that taking root, or the linkages, and by extension, which bands were influential in that regard, in tapping into social justice topics in metal? MG: Well, for me, it was System of a Down, I think. Because they did address their own heritage with the Armenian genocide. And not very subtly drove

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attention to other issues. That was also the time I got into metal when they were releasing their first album, the self-titled one which was in ’98-ish, and of course, I did, you know, the Iron Maidens, and what have you, also, but there was something there that was unique, be it musically or in mentality that really made me gravitate toward it. DN: OK. Do you still seek out that type of music, like the System of a Downs of the world? MG: Not exclusively. I think I’m pretty egalitarian about that. I also listen to things I shouldn’t. I’ve lately been listening to—it’s called the whole Wagner debacle, like the guy was a dick, but the music’s brilliant. DN: Yup. MG: Yeah. Is music its own entity? Is Roland Barthes, you know, right when he says it’s the death of the author, or artist, or whatever? DN: Yup. MG: I just like the music. (Laughter) DN: I want to come back to that, too, Barthes, but I don’t want to jump the gun. MG: All right. DN: So this is metal in general. But what about Zeal & Ardor, Birdmask, and everything that you do? Do you see a connection between what you do and social justice? MG: I think that would be tooting my own horn quite loudly. I think we did an EP with Zeal & Ardor last year, in which I definitely do see a connection to certain issues, but other than that, I think it’s so vague that you could pin pretty much any issue to it and find some confirmation. While I do think it’s important to have a stance toward issues, I don’t think it’s, frankly, very efficient, as a vector, in music. DN: Yeah, but it’s interesting that you say vague. I would push back against that, respectfully, right? You are the artist. You are the one that came up with it all—but giving an interlude the title “I Can’t Breathe” or giving a song the title “Tuskegee” . . . MG: Yeah, that was that EP. Yeah, exactly. DN: It’s not vague. You are inviting people to read or look at the music through a particular historical or socially conscious frame. MG: Exactly. Yeah, that was . . . like the insular incident of that EP where I really dislike the thought of having a didactic role as an artist because that is—frankly, I’m a fucking musician, I’m not a sociologist. You can’t really trust musicians to know accurate historical facts. We just have an audience, and that is such a dangerous thing. (Laughter)

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DN: (Laughter). MG: I’m really shy to do so. Whereas with that EP I consulted a lot of my well-read friends and smarter people before anything happened. DN: I’m interested in that process of consulting. Was that an arduous process? Where there one-on-one sessions? Did you just, like, text someone and be like, “Hey, do you know anything about Tuskegee, and the experiments, and can you fill me in on that,” or was it . . . MG: It’s not dissimilar to how we’re chatting now. I think I held seven sessions with three different people over the course of like a week, and it was like, just basically, “If I were to say this, how would I frame it in a positive way or in a smart way?” Because I think you can accuse people of something, but that’s just yelling at a wall. Whereas you can also entice people to go, “Wait, what is this about?” and to read more about it. And, you know, it’s the didactic thing again. You can make people curious, but I don’t think I should be preaching to anyone. DN: OK. Were these friends? Were these academics? Teachers? MG: Friends and academics at the same time. DN: Cool, and so are they in the areas of history or sociology? MG: There was one psychologist, one historian, and one sociologist. DN: And you have these conversations often with them as friends, but also as professionals? MG: Yeah, exactly. And I wanted to isolate it and form my questions properly. We have jovial times, and I just wanted to have a nonjovial discussion of this prior to doing anything stupid. DN: It’s fascinating to me. I would pay to see that process from seed to the song itself. But again, I push back against that idea of vagueness. I think that you did invite, and you did write that piece a year after the EP came out1 and voicing that frustration of, you know, I made these songs. I don’t know if you expect any change or anything to come from them, but reading that thing a year later felt like some sort of frustration. MG: Yeah, there was, of course, that element of it, and it’s also because of the type of music that we make, frankly. I’m also appropriating African American culture, just as I am, you know, Scandinavian culture to a lesser degree. If we’re taking those elements, I think it would be only fair to address that, so that’s what I do. DN: Which is another interesting thing that you’re saying, that you’re appropriating that. I read an interview where you push back on that notion. So let’s speak about appropriation. A lot of what has been written about you, you know, particularly, is looking at the slave spirituals, more than anything, not so much

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metal itself. I’ll give you an example of the direction I’m thinking toward. There’s a band called Acrania from Mexico. MG: Uh-huh. DN: They play a type of metal that fuses metal with salsa, like percussive salsa. They have trumpets and . . . MG: And timbales and everything? DN: Exactly. MG: (Laughter). DN: It is super fascinating. They’re wild. And during one interview, they basically said, we’re basically committing antropofagia, I don’t know the word in English, but we’re eating something, and from eating that, producing something that is completely different. So, they’re looking at metal as the tools of the master, and then the act of appropriating them as, precisely that, an act of appropriating, eating something that is not yours and then producing something completely new. So, I’m wondering if you have philosophized about that, like not just in the sense of people focusing so much on the slave spirituals, but metal itself. MG: Well, yeah, I think I have to preface that with saying that when I say I appropriate these things, it’s more of out of a defensive stance because I would never say I appropriate it, but I think I could be accused of that. DN: OK. MG: I think I’m just misusing things, but I think that Acrania have a beautiful way of seeing that, and I think it’s very apt, actually. DN: Yeah, it’s a form of agency, I think, right? MG: Definitely, yeah. DN: I mean, if you are using it for the wrong purposes, then I would be the first one in line to accuse anyone. But if you are appropriating it, I guess, to fight the empire, to fight colonialism, or to fight misinformation, I would imagine that’s something different then. I see your work as doing that, like they can accuse you of all sorts of appropriation that they want, but ultimately, in producing something like “Tuskegee,” and even before that, like Stranger Fruit, and even the first one, and the demos, and everything else, I think, you’re doing it as an F-you, which you have said. MG: Exactly. DN: Who’s the target of that F-you? Beyond just a 4Chan guy. Is there a bigger F-you target? MG: I think the F-you is more . . . it’s so comfortable to be on the side of an accuser that I’m inviting people to be part of the finger-stretching people.

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(Laughter) And once people are on your side, they can pick their own targets, and I think there’s many afoot. So, yeah. (Laughter) DN: No, that’s good. 4Chan jokes aside, was there anything that drew you to the slave spirituals? MG: Yeah, yeah, I was at a couple of gospel concerts when I was in New York, and there’s this immense power there, and of course, there’s this heavy rhythmic . . . just the musical intensity of it, ’cause it’s such an enticing type of music. It’s so basic that, you know, the vocals, again, invite you to be on their side, and that’s such a disarming, powerful thing that, you know, it made perfect sense in my head, and that’s what drew me to it. DN: And, on their side, right? There’s a sense of community in what you’re saying. I’m wondering if that was something that drew you to it? Wanting to belong to a type of community. ’Cause you basically said no, I’m isolated over here. MG: Yeah. DN: So that’s an interesting dichotomy of . . . MG: I see what you’re saying. DN: Metal is seen a lot like a community, and then, obviously, the act of going and performing collectively in any sort of slave spiritual seems to be a collective thing for healing. How do you marry those? MG: Yeah, I think the communal thing comes in because I always compose my music alone, and the thought that people might actually enjoy it, or let alone, you know, want to be part of it, is something I strive for. So, I think yeah, there’s maybe this hunger for social confirmation to a certain degree. But it wasn’t a conscious effort, which makes it probably more indicative of what’s going on in my head. (Laughter) DN: (Laughter) Well, that’s cool. Earlier, you mentioned Roland Barthes. The simple fact that you mention the name makes me, obviously, think that you’re well read, and that you’re not someone—I don’t know, I don’t want to say misinformed. I don’t want to say something elitist—but clearly, if you know Roland Barthes, you know philosophy, or you’ve read something on cultural studies or something like that. So, I’m interested in what you read. What type of texts have you read recently? What informs you? Is there any philosophical text that you gravitated toward more than anything? What informs you in those realms? MG: Well, there was a cringey time where I did enjoy, like, a young Wittgenstein a little bit too much. (Laughter) I do like to read philosophy papers and books, but right now, it’s like relegated to podcasts ’cause there’s so much stuff coming out that the drizzle needs to be kind of funneled. But yeah, I used to also think I was a determinist, and now with, you know, quarks, I can’t be so sure anymore. Yeah, I just like to basically read anything, be it biology or philosophy.

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DN: And do you apply any of that to writing? I understand the musical influences, but what about philosophical influences? MG: To a certain degree. But every time I think that I did, there’s so many arguments to say that I failed miserably. (Laughter) That by this time, I just want to make music. The other thing is that if you infuse your music with some grand thought that you think is obvious; you’re going to be the only one who thinks of it. (Laughter) No one else on the planet will notice, in my experience. DN: Any reading into postcolonialism, colonialism, and theories of the Global South? Have you tapped into anything like that? MG: Well yeah, also a bunch. I used to be in this anarcho-syndicalist collective. We squatted houses, and it was, like, basically, a book club for arrogant teenagers, I guess. So, like Bakunin and, you know, some Chiapas stuff. Right now, it’s like, more specific to what’s happening now. So, yeah, colonialism is a huge one, as well as anarcho-economy, blah blah, libertarian bullshit. DN: Do you see your music or your work as being anticolonial at any point? Has that thought come across your mind? ’Cause obviously, you know, issues of racism have been prevalent in your work, but in interviews and anywhere else, I have never heard the words colonialism, anticolonialism, or anything like that come up. That clearly influences or informs a lot of that history, so I’m wondering if you have any thoughts or engagement with that. MG: Well, I do. My thing is that it’s hugely hypocritical because if I strive to be culturally relevant, I am actually colonialist at the same time. Also, we’re traveling the world, preaching our message. It’s literally, we are the bad guys of this, or we are the things that we would accuse colonial power of being. So, that’s why I’ve elected not to use that point. DN: OK, so how are you a colonialist? What exactly do you see as your part in that? MG: Well, if it’s something as mild as having people agree, or having people like my music by playing to them, that’s a culturally aggressive act or proactive act. We’re not going to France to play French music. We’re there repeating our thoughts and our values, basically. DN: OK. Let’s talk about the music itself and the work itself. Specifically, the trajectory of the band. I have noticed certain themes throughout. We can do a quick survey of these. One that comes up, often in my mind listening to your music, is the notion of hope. MG: Yeah. DN: Particularly hopelessness, right? MG: Exactly.

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DN: Slave music tends to be infused with an aura of hope, right? You’re at the lowest of lows, and yet, salvation will come. We shall overcome, all of that stuff. Then, you’re flipping the script into like Satanism, and run, you’re going to die. Burial,2 and all that stuff, seems to be increasingly moving in a direction of losing that hope. So, could you comment on that? MG: Yeah. The short way of thinking about it is, yeah, it’s nihilism, and everything is bad, but I think there is an absolution in knowing that it’s futile, and crossing that threshold is actually bliss. So, it’s still actually aiming for hope, just hope via tabula rasa, I guess. DN: That hopelessness and that nihilism, is it possible to overcome? MG: Of course. DN: Are we trapped within the empire? In our century now, you know, it’s not colonialism in the old sense, but it’s capital colonialism, right? MG: Yeah. DN: The means of production are controlled by the empires. So, do you see any hope in breaking with that? MG: I mean, being in an anarcho-syndicalist group would be a dumb idea if I thought that it was hopeless. (Laughter) But I would also have to preface, a lot of it is hyperbole, and it’s a simulacrum of metal. It’s not going to be, the sun is out, and let’s go have a picnic. DN: Yeah. MG: And bring the kids to the barbecue. But I think it lends itself well to . . . well, first of all, you know, the racism issues, as well as the black metal side of things. DN: There also seems to be a trajectory between the first material or at least the EP and the few songs that have come out for the next album. I would frame it as a move from a form of fiction to something more grounded in reality. MG: Yeah. DN: Is that a good assessment? Do you disagree with that, or are you moving more and more toward an engagement with the real, if you want to put it that way. Because you mentioned simulacra, after all. MG: No, that’s an apt assessment. I think, well, basically, I’m also bored with what I produced there as a fictional space, but also, you know, with what happened over the couple of past years. It would be frankly cowardice of just saying, “Well, we’re still going to fucking sing about alternate history.” There’s this German term called zugzwang. It’s when you play chess. You have to move a piece, or else you lose, and I feel like I’m in that space. ’Cause, yeah, if I were to just, you know, continue on comfortably, it would just lose any gravitas and any weight.

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DN: That is also reflected in the sound. The new songs sound more—I guess I would call it industrial, though not industrial, but there seems to be more of like that Ministry sound. The elements of black metal are still there, but production-wise, there seems to be a movement into different musical territory. MG: Definitely. I think, to summarize, I don’t want to make the albums or the songs that my audience wants me to do. DN: Yes. MG: Right now, I’m just kind of—this is fairly masturbatory, but I just want to make music that I like, and oddly enough, it kind of resonates with people. I think it’s just more honest, and that’s why I don’t want to just regurgitate, like, “OK, we’ll do a little bit of spirituals, a little bit of black metal there, and just a dash of whatever.” Rather, I kind of wanted to sound like this, and that’s where we’re going. DN: But that sounds like an act of resistance in itself. In some of your interviews, you’ve said you believe that this isn’t going to last. Like it’s a flash in the pan, or a gimmick, and people are seeing it that way. MG: Yeah. DN: I get the sense with each record that your vision becomes more and more materialized. So, in saying, like, “I don’t want to create the record that my audience wants,” it feels like an act of resistance. So, are you resisting something, or am I reading too much into that? MG: I guess one could say that. I don’t want to put myself on that kind of pedestal. I mean, I don’t want to give in to the expectations of my audience. I also want them to be happy. It’s not like a fuck you just as a fuck you, because I want to do that. It’s just, I think I might surprise them positively also. So, it’s both. DN: OK. MG: I guess I’m just resisting the urge to be lazy, in that sense. DN: Yeah, it’s a good curveball you’re throwing too fast. I know you thought I was going in this direction, but I’m going on this one. MG: Precisely, yeah. DN: Cool. Let’s talk about Wake of a Nation. Lots of things in there. To me, it seemed like a turning point in the trajectory of you as a musician and of the band. Do you feel that way? MG: Yeah, yeah. Because, to my surprise, there was still a grand part of our audience that was surprised. Like, “Oh god, these guys are political. How annoying.” (Laughter) By that point, I was like, how the fuck did you get here?! (Laughter) DN: (Laughter)

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MG: So, I mean, I guess we weeded out some people. And I think that was like the first time we just addressed things directly as they are. Look, this shit happened in our fucking world. We’re going to sing about it. You might want to look it up. Yeah, and I guess in that sense, it was a turning point, where it’s not just, you know, skirting around the actual issues, just kind of vaguely pointing in that direction, but naming it. So yeah. DN: OK, and so, very specifically, the cover, the batons. Was that your idea? Was it a graphic artist that came up with it? And, is it just that straightforward in terms of the meaning or iconography of it, or do you have anything else? MG: I was thinking about what we could put on the cover, and I just figured . . . I was thinking about, you know, what do police stand for. I think the sheriff star as a pentagram was one idea, which just wound up looking terrible. And then, I just sketched out the police batons, and I was like, this kind of looks like an inverted cross, and then I rendered a 3D model of it, and that’s what’s on the cover. It’s my fault that it looks like that. DN: Jumping ahead, the new cover with the hands. What is that one about? I want to come back to Wake of a Nation, but I don’t want to lose this thread. MG: That is, actually, Baphomet. (Manuel brings a table-sized sculpture of Baphomet to the screen.) DN: Yes! MG: It’s the “as above, so below” hand signs, the magician’s pose in tarot, I guess. Yeah, that’s the idea. DN: Is the blackness of the skin incidental? Like just the background? MG: Oh no. (Laugher) Oh no. DN: OK. MG: I have a friend with really beautiful hands. Because I think we’re striving for equality. And “as above, so below” is exactly that; in the end, it flatlines. So having that imagery, there is basically just shorthand for that. DN: OK. There’s a line in one of the songs; I think it’s the last one, where you say, “Bow down to the American way.” MG: Yeah. That’s all about self-power, I guess. I guess that is why I think we are also colonizers in that when we as a band perform somewhere, it is our creed, it is our values, that you’re subject to. The way America does it is just, with guns and planes and stuff, so . . . (Laughter) DN: OK. MG: So, yeah, it’s about Pax Americana and soft power. As simply as that.

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DN: OK, so wait. Is that something that is strictly limited to the American way as it is in this world, or do you see that also from the perspective of Europe? Like, can we also say, “Bow down to the colonialist way?” MG: By extension, the Western way, yeah. DN: The Western way, yeah. MG: Yeah, ’cause there’s no dialogue about that. It’s either join or perish. So, bow down. DN: Right, there’s the American way. There’s also the fact that you use a lot of German throughout your music. Is there a reason behind it? Is it like not finding the right words in English? MG: I think I was striving for neutrality. A lot of our music, even—you’ve been to, I don’t know how many countries, and I’d venture to guess that a healthy amount of the bands you listen to there are singing in English, in some odd way. DN: Yes. MG: And I just want to kind of break that mold because why the fuck does a Brazilian black metal band that plays in my hometown in a German country speak English? The fuck, why do they sing in . . . ? Yeah, so it’s that. DN: Yeah. MG: Also, it sounds really harsh, which is a fun little quirk about the German language. (Laughter) DN: Yeah, I have to agree. I mean, obviously, the English thing has a lot to do with, unfortunately, bow down to the American way. MG: Exactly! DN: So, the marketing . . . MG: Yeah. DN: Even the practitioners of the genre, if they want to break with that, if you want to succeed, unfortunately, a lot of that demands that you bow down to . . . MG: Exactly! You have to conform. DN: . . . the restrictions of the metal tradition which dictates that you have to sing in English. Which is one of the fascinating things about metal, particularly in Latin America. Which is, it’s been a big F-you, like no, we sing in Spanish. MG: Oh, hell yeah! Awesome! DN: Even from the beginning, the rise of the Metallicas of the world, and Exodus and Slayer, was parallel with bands like V8 from Argentina. MG: Yeah, like, of course, Sepultura, and stuff like that.

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DN: Sepultura in Brazil, Ratos de Porão. That’s a big F-you. That’s a big anticolonialist attitude. MG: Really. DN: Again, I do agree it sounds forceful to hear the words in German, but I wondered if there was something behind the choice. If it was a linguistic thing—like there’s this word that doesn’t exist in this other language. MG: There’s a couple of instances of that. Also, there’s quotes from Goethe in there, who was also a fairly occult dude, and that’s why. DN: All right, cool. Let me see. I think it’s in that EP. Is that where there’s a song that says, “A good god is a dead one”? MG: That’s from the first one. DN: That’s from the first album. I still want to come back to Wake of a Nation, but the first time I heard that, that lyric, I immediately was thinking, there have been films, and there have been representations of the US South, during Jim Crow, even during slavery, where they say, “A good n-word is a dead one.” MG: Yeah. DN: So, I was wondering if you were flipping the script with that line? If you were projecting the status of a god to a Black man or to Black women? ’Cause I read what you wrote, “A good god is a dead one,” but my brain immediately sent me to that history of “A good n-word is a dead one.” MG: Yeah. I mean, it was just a subversion of that, but in my mind—and this is why I will never see my songs the same way as anyone else, which is good—still, in my mind, Christianity was not the Black people’s first choice as it were. It’s basically the God, in that sense, is the slave owners and masters. Yeah. For me. DN: One other trajectory that I see from the first album—and even now, which is explicit, because now you have a song called “Run”—is this notion of running, of fleeing, of “Fly, you fool.” And it’s fascinating when you said movement, because I get this sense of movement throughout a lot of the stuff that you write, and so I wanted to pick your head on why the recurrence of running? Why the recurrence of that trope in the music? And I’ll ask the second part of that question ’cause I don’t want to lead you into a particular trajectory, but I want to hear it from you first. MG: Well, first of all, it’s to convey urgency, and I think running, yeah, it could be seen as flight, but even flight has a goal somewhere. You’re not just running toward a wall. The other thing is just agency and urgency. I think those are my two intentions with that. Now, watch me lean into what you say. (Laughter) DN: Oh, no, no, no. I wrote down a few of the lyrics, right? In “Vigil,” you say, “Won’t you help me run now?”; “Devil Is Fine,” “Little one better run for

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your life”; “Tuskeegee,” “Run, father, they’re killing you to help themselves”; “Gravedigger’s Chant,” “Watch yourself, you can’t run, you can’t hide.” So, running, movement—it makes sense to me in the frame of the slave, in the sense of slaves—so I guess the second part of the question is, these characters that populate your songs, I understand that these are slave narratives, but to what extent do you visualize them as slaves and to what extent do you visualize them as maroons? The notion of marronage—of moving, of seeking freedom, of isolating, and being away from everyone. MG: In my mind, they are just at the cusp of being a maroon. And I think the most narratively interesting point is when that decision, or when that switch flips. So, I guess in their heads, they’re, I guess, in a limbo between those two states, where they just need a nudge or just need a well-intended whisper for them to go for the edge. Yeah. DN: Yeah. MG: Or maybe, I’m just a lazy lyricist who likes to use the word run. Who knows? (Laughter) DN: I wouldn’t say that. There is an intentionality in your music, and there’s tropes that you’re tapping into. MG: There certainly are. (Laughter) DN: It fascinated me because a lot of that running and fleeing is obviously seeking freedom. But then, that takes me back to the earlier questions about hope and hopelessness, and then, you know, if we just see it as the slave trying to flee but never achieving freedom, then it becomes an extension of that hopelessness. MG: I think the inertia would entail that. I think if the slave would just hear these words and say, “No, I’m not going to run,” then you are in that hopeless land, but you still have agency, you still have that one fleeing chance, (pause) fleeting chance. (Pause) Fleeing fleeting chance. (Laughter) DN: Yeah. That’s a good one. I was reading this interview that you did in The Creative Independent. The person asked you, “Living in Switzerland, do you feel like you have a certain distance from what’s going on in other parts of the world?” And your answer was, “Well, I do have an outsider’s view of things, but it’s a global issue. There are right-wing extremists gaining political popularity globally, and that’s not normal. That hasn’t been normal, ever. Even here in Switzerland, it’s palpable. In regards to the US, of course, I have an outsider’s view, but this stuff is cooking here, too. It’s not pretty.” I appreciated that notion of the “glocal,”’ like the local and the global . . . MG: Yeah. DN: . . . in that answer, so that leads me to want to ask—Wake of a Nation, that investment in “I Can’t Breathe” and “Tuskeegee” and that frame in the United States, from that position in Switzerland—do you see yourself as looking at that

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as a Swiss citizen? Do you see it as a Black man? Do you see it as a person, with that mixed history of African American and Swiss? I understand the outsider, but I want to understand what type of outsider, and to what extent are you also commenting on it as an insider? MG: I think, as both, because I don’t really have a choice in that. I am a dual citizen, but I also do not live in the United States at the moment. So, while my family are dealing with these things that are happening in front of their door, I, from a safe distance, can just make my astute observations. Whereas, at the same time, here in Switzerland, like a month ago, a Black man was shot by the police. So, yeah! It’s, it’s— DN: It’s global. MG: It is global. DN: It’s global and local. Yeah, that’s why I appreciate that answer because the issue of racism knows no borders. MG: Yeah. DN: Do you still have family in South Carolina and parts of the United States? MG: Yeah! I have a couple of uncles who live out there. One has a church. He still loves me, which is nice. There’s also like a couple of people in the New York area. DN: OK. MG: There’s still a connection, yeah. DN: So, your engagement is, again, just to make it concrete, as an outsider from Switzerland and as a Swiss citizen, but also as an insider, as a US citizen, as a Black man. MG: Precisely. DN: We are looking at things from Global South perspectives, and some of the lyrics have points that make us think of these positionalities of what’s called the epistemologies of the South and contesting the empire and the pervasive Northern gaze. So, there’s the song “Fire of Motion,” “Streaks of blood are turning somber, Rotten like the end of summer,” and then I found this line interesting: “And when we’ll face to the east, To bring the best to the beast.” What is that East? MG: Well, that’s two things. It’s about underground railways at one point, and it’s also about . . . in occult satanism, you face to the East to summon this guy— Baphomet. It’s those two things, yeah. DN: OK. I ask because for the longest time—you probably know Edward Saïd, “Orientalism”—there was this distinction between the East and the West. MG: Yeah.

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DN: So, now, we’re moving beyond that realm to consider, like, North and South optics, and how those inform everything everywhere. Like, you can be someone with an epistemology of the Global South living, like I said, in New Orleans or South Carolina. MG: Yeah. DN: So I was wondering if—I understand you mentioned Baphomet and the Underground Railroad—there was sort of that type of positionality or those dimensions in that mention or your life in general. MG: Certainly, because my girlfriend at that time was studying Islam studies, and also, any time we went to the East, even the eastern part of Europe, there was this discrepancy. I wouldn’t call it diaspora, but something noticeable there. And I guess at the same time, you pray to the east, toward the east, and if you talk to any Western European, the east is just the most miserable place in the world. So, it’s bizarre. (Laughter) DN: Alright. Then there’s “Row, Row”: “We are the last of the legion, The last of the bastion, we are the best of the bastards, and slaves to none.” Again, I personally read a lot of Global South epistemology in this statement or along those lines. Like this notion of the bastards, the savages . . . MG: Yeah. DN: . . . that the empire has come to colonize and, you know, we have to fight back. The notion of marronage and everything. So, is there any of that in that positionality or not at all? MG: It’s precisely that. It’s actually taking that and, you know, waving it as a flag, and owning it basically. ’Cause you can accuse people of anything, but if they actually take pride in it, there’s no point in even accusing them; just empowering them. DN: OK, and this is the last thing I want to ask. There was a Loudwire interview where you made a comment about Satanic imperialism. (Laughter) MG: (Laughter). DN: I know it came out as a joke. I’m not much of a Freudian. But I think there was something latent, something like in the subconscious that came out when you . . . MG: Oh, there might have been, yeah. DN: . . . when you uttered that. MG: No, there was an episode in the Satanic Temple. It used to be this very, you know, liberal, open-minded, basically, socially active place, and then the alt-right showed up, and they kind of, you know, colonized the Satanic Temple. So that was what I was alluding to, but not being a member of the church or the temple, I didn’t want to, like, call them out in fucking Loudwire. (Laughter)

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DN: (Laughter) All right, well, I appreciate all the answers and the time you’ve provided. MG: This was a treat! DN: Awesome! Glad to hear.

NOTES 1. Gagneux wrote a short meditation about race, George Floyd, and the events that led to him writing the songs that became the Wake of a Nation EP. The text can be found at https:​//​knotfest​.com​/culture​/under​-the​-influence​-of​-ambivalence​-zeal​-ardors​ -manuel​-gagneux​-pens​-a​-powerful​-piece​-one​-year​-after​-wake​-of​-a​-nation​/. 2. For allusions to burial, a common trope in Zeal and Ardor’s songs, read lyrics like “Gravedigger’s Chant” and “You Ain’t Coming Back,” both found in the album Stranger Fruit (2018).

Chapter 10

The Alternative Side of the Frame A Dialogue on Southern Inspirations Kobi Farhi (Orphaned Land) and Nelson Varas-Díaz

This dialogue took place on February 22, 2021. Kobi Farhi is the singer for the Israeli band Orphaned Land. Nelson and Kobi had a conversation focusing on social justice issues in metal music, metal as a form of social intervention, and the varied sources of inspiration for social justice in the Global South. The conversation has been edited for clarity and due to space limitations. NVD: I want to tap into this idea of metal and social justice from a regional perspective. How do the situations you live through influence your music? How do you understand the relationship between metal music and social justice? Is there such a thing in your view? KF: Well, if I go to my youth, before I found metal music, I was listening to pop music. I was a big fan of the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, but something happened to me that first moment when I discovered Iron Maiden. I felt that music was not trying to be radio-friendly or hit some huge consensus of people. It didn’t have any commercial agenda, but rather it was very true to what these people were doing. That was my first impression as a teenager. Metal music was always the alternative side of the frame. It is not for everyone. It is not mainstream music. I think that due to that fact that you are not obligated to execute a radio-friendly song, all metal music has its own freedom to express yourself. (. . .) That was the first time that I felt that I belonged. I wanted to be one of these guys in this community because I felt that this wasn’t a world of plastic. I found this to be real. I wanted to start a band and express myself as well. I felt that Israel was a tremendous territory of conflicts, history, bloodshed, and confusion. I immediately thought that metal should be my way of dealing with social and political problems. If you take the first song that we ever wrote, it was about dealing with 219

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the social problems of the Middle East, the political problems of the Middle East. It was never about my ex-girlfriend. It has never been about my private life. It’s more about social situations. NVD: The music can be sonically transgressive because it’s in your face, the volume, and the distorted guitars, but that linkage to social justice is not really evident in a lot of the music we grew up listening to. How did that click for you? I mean, how did you, as a musician, come to link social justice to music? KF: No. In 1991, the Middle East experienced the Gulf War. Iraq conquered Kuwait, and the United States started bombing Iraq. There was a lot of oil involved, of course, in all of that. Saddam Hussein was trying to get Israel involved in this war, so he launched missiles from Iraq all the way to Israel. I remember that during the very first days, I was listening to metal music. We got these gas masks from the army, so every time there was a siren alarm, I immediately had to go into the closet of my room. My mother and I had to put these masks on. Every time during this period, there was this yelling siren, this terrifying siren. Like the war sirens! One night, I’m sleeping in my room listening to a Metallica tape, Ride the Lightning. I’m half asleep or half awake, you know? While the cassette was playing, the song “Escape” came up. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that song, but at the end of it, there’s this siren going on and off. Since I was half asleep, I was sure that it was the siren to run away from the missiles. I fell from my bed, woke up my mom, and then figured out that it was a false alarm. It was Metallica! It was the alarm in that Metallica song. At that moment, I felt, and it might sound strange, but I felt that Metallica was with me in these times of war. You will not hear a war siren on a mainstream song. You will not hear it on a Michael Jackson song. You will not hear it on an Elvis Presley song. You will not hear it on a Rihanna song. So I felt at that moment that Metallica understood me. It was like a sign, like a revelation. They understand what I’m going through. It was at that moment when I realized that metal music was dealing with social problems and political problems. It was at that moment where I felt that metal was the home that I wanted to live in and the thing that I wanted to do in my life. NVD: I agree with you that we identify with the music that speaks to us, but when I listen to your music, it seems to me like you’ve taken it to a different level in terms of integrating social justice and oppression issues into the lyrics and the sounds. Right? Metallica is kind of singing about generalities in life, but your music, it’s very location-specific. KF: Yeah, I think that we have taken further than Metallica due to the reality in the Middle East. Just imagine, I’m sitting now in Israel surrounded by countries that their regimes are enemies. I don’t see the people in these countries as my enemies. At this moment, there are 100,000 missiles targeted at Israel—no one is firing them. Well, imagine you’re living in a country where 100,000 missiles are ready to drop on you like rain. Taking the reality of the Middle East and how we’re alive, I always felt that there was a lot to talk about. We are not talking

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about mythology. We’re talking about real problems. We’re talking about things that are happening here and now. I feel that I’m living in the most fucked place in the world, but also the most inspiring place in the world. NVD: So metal music has changed you and how you see the world. Would you say that is accurate? KF: Yeah. Let me tell you about another life-changing experience I had. I grew up in Jaffa, which is a very mixed city. There were only 50,000 people in Jaffa, but they are mixed between Jews and Muslims, and Christians. I saw my grandma working in a factory sewing with Muslims and Christians, and they were laughing all day long! I realized how coexistence was possible. Right? These are your neighbors, and you just want to get along, and you’re not following your leaders who will lead you to hell. I saw a lot of brainwashing because, as a teenager, newspapers were always full of stories about terrorism. Growing up as a young boy, before I started the band, I saw terror attacks and soldiers killing civilians. There was an incident where a girl who was just waiting for a bus to school was killed by a Palestinian terrorist. He killed her with a knife. Just imagine . . . a little girl sitting at a bus stop. She could never know what was coming toward her and how she would end up being murdered. Even though I grew up in a very coexisting environment, when you are a teenager, you’re very extreme, very stupid. I thought that the Arabs wanted to kill me. I remember we went to her funeral, and after her funeral, I wanted to find Arabs and beat them. I wanted to find innocent Arabs, and I wanted to beat them as revenge. We’re looking for Arabs and couldn’t find any. In my frustration, I just went to one of the grocery stores, bought a can of spray paint, and painted graffiti all over my city that said, “Fuck Arabs.” I wrote it! I sprayed it on the walls of my city! This is just a story to show you how brainwashing is strong. Imagine how strong it also is in the Arab world toward Israelis. I became an extremist myself, but then I started the band. I decided the band would sing about these topics. Then the most surprising thing on Earth happened to me because we started to have Arab followers. Those followers, they taught me and helped me realize how much we are all victims of our political leaders. NVD: That is a very powerful personal experience. Can you think of one event related to your music where you felt that you were fostering unity between Palestinians and Israelis? Any particular example that struck you as important? KF: Of course. This conflict is all over the Middle East. Israel was at war with Egypt and with Syria. Of course, the Palestinians are part of the conflict. Iraq was firing missiles on Israel. Syria was at war with Israel. Jordan is at war with Israel. Egypt was also involved in the war. So, when we played shows, and people from these countries attended, interesting things happened. I’ll give you an example. One time we arrived in Berlin. It was a rainy day, and we saw one of our fans waiting for us and freezing to death. He introduced himself as a guy from Syria. He’s a fan whose home was completely destroyed in Syria’s civil war. The irony was that he found himself as a refugee in Germany. His dream

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of seeing Orphaned Land came true there because he could never see us in Syria since Israel and Syria are enemies. He could never come to Israel. We could never play in Syria. So being in Berlin and being able to see our show was a very hopeful moment of light for him in a reality of disaster. I sat with him on the stage and explained how I didn’t see the size of the phenomenon of our band like you said earlier. I saw it as something small because I still live in this reality that is bigger than the phenomenon of Orphaned Land. So I told him, “Listen, I know that we change the minds of a lot of people. I know we influenced a lot of people. But we have never saved the life of one child because of metal music. And, I still feel like a failure because of it.” And then he told me, “How do you know that you haven’t saved the life of a child? What if a hopeless human being listened to your music and got hope, and this hope brought him back on track? It gave him hope, and he would not do all these destructions hopeless humans do? What if I am this person?” I realized then that we’re just messengers, and our fans are teachers. They are the bravest ones. We write the music, that’s true. We write the lyrics. But they are the brave ones that make the journey to change their minds, to think, and hope. (. . .) So, every time we’re playing a show, people come with flags of Palestine, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. We meet these people. We hug each other, and we talk to each other. Then you realize how big this is and how we are victims of our regimes and politicians. Everyone wants to live a peaceful life! With justice, without oppression. It’s apparently too much to ask for many people. NVD: Correct me if I am mistaken, but it seems to me like the fans are telling you that your music and your band are some sorts of intervention in these problems. Right? It’s not only about entertainment. You are actually intervening. You might not be saving the life of that baby, but you’re doing other types of savings. Right? KF: It’s definitely not entertainment. It’s more of a movement. We’re using music as a tool, as a platform, to share very deep ideas and messages of unity. I have discovered that music, and metal music, are the best weapon to do that. It used to be considered as completely utopic! Lebanese and Israelis holding their flags? They would never do that. They would be terrified to do it. I think it’s illegal to do it in our countries. NVD: And yet, Kobi, while you and I have had these discussions about metal and social justice before, there’s a large section of the international metal community that would rather us not discuss these political issues in music. What does somebody like you say to others who propose this idea? Because your music is so very much embedded in the political. KF: Yeah. I mean, look. If if you’re living in Holland, maybe your life is more peaceful, and the subjects and topics addressed. . . . It gives you the privilege to look to mythology. I don’t know, subjects that are more . . . legends and stuff like that. Because your reality is not the Middle Eastern reality. (. . .) You should reflect, in a way, your own reality. In some places, I don’t know, that’s not such

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a big thing—issues like dying kids, dying people, missiles, or wars. So, I would say everyone is entitled to do whatever they want because we live in different places, different realities, and so on. NVD: With your experiences living through these war-ridden situations, does that make you feel more connected with metal music in parts of the world that are going through similar situations? I’m thinking about your link to the Chilean singer Victor Jara. It still feels surreal to me how you engage his music. KF: Yeah. NVD: It seems to me like there is something from Latin America or the Global South that speaks to you. KF: I think metal music is my weapon to express my ideas. Back in the day, I felt that metal music was very sincere. Not necessarily on social or political problems, but I just felt that metal music was sincere. So, I figured that metal music would be the best platform to express my ideas. However, I think that the guitar of Victor, may he rest in peace, it’s his metal music. To be honest, with you, metal is not my favorite music. It is a music that I like, but I love the lyrics. I love ideas. Let’s put it another way. Take the songs of Victor Jara, “Derecho de Vivir,” and of course “Manifiesto.” Some of the songs are very, very touching but not ones that I musically love. But the lyrics behind them, the ideas, the power of his lyrics . . . I mean, it’s beyond magic to me. It’s beyond metal. It’s beyond music. It’s complete magic. When he says on “Manifiesto,” “canto que ha sido valiente, siempre será canción nueva,” or when you see 50,000 people standing with guitars in Chile singing “El Derecho De Vivir,” you realize . . . that is what he said! The songs that have bravery in them will be forever new songs. That’s what he said at the end of “Manifiesto.” Then you see people singing “El Derecho de Vivir” fifty years after he died, and it’s still a relevant song! It’s a new song. They stand and sing it with their guitars. This is the way they protest. Victor has not been here for fifty years, and they still do this last year. So those words are like words of prophets to me. I don’t like some of the chords, but this is still magic to me. Of course, when I listen to Iron Maiden, I’m not necessarily looking for the same topics, but some singers have the power and ability to do it with music. I wish I could say that I’m a quarter of the level of people like Victor Jara or Mercedes Sosa. NVD: I agree those were very powerful musicians, particularly because of what they were saying in their lyrics. There is a lot of that in your music. To me, listening to Orphaned Land also feels like a teaching moment. KF: Yeah, and I am learning all the time, as well. Because I see our fans as my teachers. I came to know about Victor Jara and the Nueva Canción when we toured South America. I’m sitting with this guy, and he’s telling me about the man. I mean, I didn’t know all the songs, and obviously, I don’t understand all the lyrics, so sometimes I needed help, and the fans teach me. So when Mercedes Sosa sings, “si se calla el cantor calla la vida, porque la vida, la vida

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misma es todo un canto,” these lyrics are amazing. She was singing this song and then she was arrested by the police and deported from her homeland! Then you realize the power of the singer. When the singer is silenced, life is silenced, like the song says. These songs, and especially the Nueva Canción movement in South America, are so inspiring to me as a writer and as a musician. Although I don’t live in the Argentina or Chile of those days, I can feel my heartbeat and feel for the people because I can understand the oppression, desperation, and the hope that they got from musicians. NVD: So, these experiences of oppression throughout the world seem to be working as a way of linking people’s ideas and emotions. KF: Of course. Of course. Every country that suffered from oppression should have poets and musicians write about it. Even if you take, I don’t know, someone like Bob Marley, for example. When he’s singing “Redemption Song,” he’s saying how long should they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look? These lyrics were a very big inspiration for me in our last album (Unsung Prophets and Dead Messiahs); think about all the places those prophets are coming from. It could be poets like Victor Jara. It could be leaders like Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or Ché Guevara. They always kill them. NVD: Killed most of them while they were young. KF: Yeah! Yeah, only the good die young. So, then you realize when Bob Marley says: How long should they kill our prophets? You see that they always kill them! Even if you take Abraham Lincoln, who came to free the United States from slavery and was assassinated. A minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, who was the closest to making peace with the Arabs. He was assassinated. Ché Guevara wanted to change all of South America. He was assassinated! The examples are never-ending. They just kill our prophets all the time. NVD: It’s interesting because when you start going down the road of social justice and music, you kind of stray away from metal. You look for inspiration in other places. So is it fair to say that you have made metal music more porous in order to allows things from the outside to come in and influence the way this music is created? Because it’s not monolithic. It’s very contextual, right? It’s looking for contextual cues to transform itself. KF: Yeah, and it’s mainly because I’m a big fan of words and texts. I don’t find a tremendous guitar solo when I listen to Victor Jara. I find ideas and texts that are new and make my brain explode. I definitely want to take it into metal because, for me, metal is my weapon. There was also an African musician, Fela Kuti, who said music was the weapon of the future. You realize that if you want to explore and investigate, why would you close yourself only to the metal community? The whole world is out there for you! NVD: Kobi, where do you see metal music going in the next decade in terms of these interactions with social justice issues? Do you see it becoming more involved, or do you see it being more distant?

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KF: I see it becoming more distant and more mainstream. It’s what I see anyway. I don’t think that people are touching important topics, speaking in a very general way. There is a very old saying: “If you want to know a place you are visiting, read its poems.” So, if you want to know about Chile, read the poems about Chile. If you want to know about Israel, read the poems about Israel. And I’m feeling that we’re losing it in the world of information—a world of instantly famous people, reality music, reality TV. I mean, there is always room for a Victor Jara. (. . .) I mean, Orphaned Land is not more famous than Justin Bieber, you know? I feel that I am very loyal to what I do and that I’m doing a very meaningful thing. Then who knows . . . maybe in 500 years from now, someone would still remember Orphaned Land and not Justin Bieber! I mean, you cannot tell. You cannot know. So, be loyal to yourself and try to be the voice of the people. The power of the poet is to be the voice of the people. Because in writing and expressing through words what people feel lies the power of the poet. It’s the power of Victor Jara. Reading his words and saying: “I felt it . . . and he wrote it!”

Chapter 11

A Dialogue on Metal Festivals and Social Justice Tshomarelo “Vulture” Mosaka (Overthrust) and Edward Banchs

For over a decade now, the Botswana-based death metal quartet, Overthrust, have organized their own metal festival—the Overthrust Winter Metal Mania Festival—in the sleepy, dusty town of Ghanzi. Located in northwestern Botswana, the otherwise quiet town sits in the middle of the Kalahari desert and is known locally for an annual agricultural festival and as a resting point for travelers heading to the country’s more notable natural attractions in Botswana’s north. However, because of Overthrust’s festival, Ghanzi’s identity has become a focal point for both the national heavy metal scene and wanderlust-driven metal fans interested in more than local game parks. Their metal festival has become so well known that not only has it garnered press from major media outlets, but the festival has also allowed the national metal scene to step into a greater international spotlight as it continues to receive press from outlets such as the BBC (Adepitan 2016), CNN (Tutton and Barnett 2017), and The Guardian (Banchs 2013), among others. For the festival’s organizer, though, Overthrust’s vocalist and bassist, Tshomarelo “Vulture” Mosaka, the Overthrust Winter Metal Mania Festival has allowed him to do more than promote the country’s metal scene, as he uses the revenue gained to assist Ghanzi district schools and orphanages in order to provide local children who are living below living standards a grasp of hope. Though the festival hit a speed bump as a result of the global shutdowns triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, Vulture pushed through organizing a streaming version of the Overthrust Winter Metal Mania Festival (Harrisberg 227

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2021), which will once again see Ghanzi swell with rabid metal fans for its fourteenth edition in 2023. Further, Vulture has built on his magnanimous efforts by splintering into another charity-driven endeavor in the form of a new festival known as the Vulture Thrust Metal Festival, which was inaugurated in October of 2022 in his hometown of Rakops, a village in Botswana’s Central District, that raised money and awareness for local children with disabilities. This dialogue took place on July 14, 2022, and was edited for length and clarity. EB: Tell me about the Overthrust Winter Metal Mania Festival. TVM: When we started Overthrust back around 2008, we introduced a project that was in the form of a charity. That was in 2010. Because when I came to Ghanzi township (Note: Vulture had been working as a police officer at the time), I found that there were a lot of kids roaming the streets—disadvantaged kids. So, we had to come up with a plan to help them as a metal band. So we started the Overthrust Winter Mania Metal Fest to raise funds for them. In the process of the festival to help them with their basic needs of life: food, housing, as well as health-wise. We have been doing this since 2010, so it has been doing very well. EB: Is it a specific orphanage that you work with? Or are there several you work with? TVM: Currently, we are working with the Department of Social and Community Development. We are linked with their office, where they will choose beneficiaries from different settlements across Ghanzi district. EB: Why Ghanzi? TVM: When I went there to work as a police officer, I found that there were lots of children roaming the streets. Like they needed some kind of help. I had to choose this because I was seeing this situation right in front of me. So, I had to come up with a plan of how we can assist as a metal band. (Note: Another member of the band at the time was also a local police officer.) EB: Did you think it would work? TVM: Yeah! (Laughs) Before we introduced this project, people were—they were surprised: “What kind of music is this?” Obviously, they knew rock music, the softer part of rock. They didn’t know the hard part of it, or the extreme one. They were scared of us. They were even associating us with devils and stuff like that. Scary stuff—horrific. So, once they learned that two of us in the band were police officers, then they would start to wonder: “But how come these guys from this good department are now on the other side of hell? Ah, this is no good.” And then they said, “There might be something special about these guys . . . after all, they are nice guys!” And that is how actually Ghanzi developed a rock ’n’ roll and heavy metal subculture. From us.

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And when this project came . . . it evolved into the community itself, stakeholders from other departments. So we got to interact with them and then, special authorities, then to the community. This is how it spread. This is how they accepted us. EB: Your first festival was in 2010. What was the turnout like? TVM: When we started in 2010, we had less than fifty people attending. Our metalheads here, they wear the dress code. It’s scary. Like leather outfits, spikes, and stuff like that. So, seeing them from a distance, it made people not want to come to our venue. But we had some strategies of getting one on one with them. Telling them about metal, like telling them about the concept of metal: “Metal is kind of music like this, this, this.” And the message spread—“just nice people doing the music that we love.” After two years now, we had more than we expected. We had 250 plus. And then after five years, 500 plus. Now we have many. EB: Now you get bands that are not just Botswana-based. You get bands from outside of the country and outside of the continent, right? TVM: Yes. Honestly speaking, the media has played a very important role in exposing the metal scene. Like, Frank Marshall from South Africa had some photographs that spread across the world. And now, people like to discover that there was this unique, special thing in Botswana. And then some other photographers and documentarians came. When they came for this fashion style (see Banchs 2022, 56–85), they discovered that there are also metal bands in there. And then that actually boosted our exploits across the world (see figure 11.1).

Figure 11.1. The band Overthrust from Botswana. Source: Photo provided by Adrian Breda.

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EB: Ghanzi was hesitant at first, but now Ghanzi has really embraced this. Correct? TVM: Yeah, that’s correct. When we started, we were not appreciated because they heard some things about metal music. But we did not give up or be angry with them. We just tried to explain to them nicely, taking our time until they realized we are actually nice people. And now Ghanzi is the reception of heavy metal. They are aware that one of the biggest metal festivals in Botswana is organized in Ghanzi. A lot of them are now metalheads. We have new metalheads there! EB: Do you know of any other scenes that are doing this? In Guatemala, there is a group of metal musicians called Internal Circle doing something similar. They help raise money to repair rural schools in Guatemala and provide the children with school supplies. Apart from this, do you of anyone else that’s doing other things to raise awareness for a cause? And do you think metal bands could be doing more? TVM: Actually, in my country, we have some artists from other genres who are also involved in charity work, like buying foodstuff for people. Another guy, Odirile Santo1 (Vee), he is popular, so he is engaged in lots of charity works. And other artists that I know. In metal, currently, it’s also Botswana metalheads in different paths and combined with other bands, doing it together as a team. And also, Vulture Thrust, my company, has engaged with promotions and organizing music. I have spread charity to my home village in Rakops this October. We have six settlements (villages) that we will be doing some small business (sic) for them (micro-lending) so that they could run and start to help the business mind (sic). In October, we have bands from Switzerland, Germany, South Africa, and we have about twenty bands playing. It’s a five-day campaign.2 EB: (Note) I begin to ask my next question as Vulture interjects politely . . . TVM: Actually, Metal Orizon3 had a festival back in the day—I think?—in Maun. It was Rock Against AIDS. EB: Yes. I heard about that. I remember Skinflint4 telling me about this. TVM: Actually, I want to approach them (Skinflint) to take over the festival if they will agree. Or to partner with them. It has not been active for a very long time, so I want to approach them so that I can also organize Rock Against AIDS in Maun. EB: Do you think metal can help people in a positive way? TVM: Yes, that’s true. Metal music can actually change the world for the better because heavy metal music is more in numbers than any other genre. In metal shows, there’s a lot of promotion for positivity. . . . We have different kinds of race, backgrounds, religion, and these people they come together under one roof to enjoy the music. They are united by the music, not stereotypes. Everybody is

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accepted, and everything goes very well. So I think this is a very great, positive thing that is happening in metal. EB: How hesitant was the government office: “You are a death metal band, and you want to raise money for an orphanage?” TVM: (Laughs) Surprisingly, with the government, there was no problem at all. We even found out that lots of them in the government offices, they are actually metalheads. They listen to old-school rock ’n’ roll, blues, stuff like that. When we introduced death metal, they were a little bit surprised because they were used to the soft part of it. And they were very appreciative. And that is why now that metal has spread a lot. When you hit from the head, it goes to the whole! EB: It’s been thirteen years since you started this. What has happened to the first group of kids that were beneficiaries of your actions? TVM: Currently, there is positivity. In Ghanzi right now, the number of the kids roaming the streets has reduced a lot. We have seen most of them that were not going to school, they are back at school. We have our program at Winter Fest. Within our metalheads, there are people that are psychologists and who are advisors . . . and mentoring them. So there’s a lot of change. EB: So the money has helped! TVM: Yeah. The funds that we donated to them and the basic needs have actually contributed positively to their lives because now they have the ability and now have the confidence of doing things that other people do. EB: Where do you see Winter Mania Rock and Metal Festival in the coming years? Do you see it still happening? Any challenges that you feel will prevent this from occurring someday? TVM: I see Winter Mania getting bigger in the next coming years. Though our biggest challenge is lack of sponsorship, especially to get (sic) our own sound system, and so on. That is the biggest challenge. We dream big for this event, and that is why we have no intention of stopping it, come rain or high water. We will continue rocking.

REFERENCES Adepitan, Ade. “Where Traditional African Culture and Heavy Metal Collide.” The Travel Show: Music, BBC, February 5, 2016. https:​//​www​.bbc​.com​/travel​/article​ /20151218​-where​-traditional​-african​-culture​-and​-heavy​-metal​-collide Banchs, Edward. “Desert Sounds—Kalahari Metalheads Pursue a Dream.” The Guardian, February 10, 2013. https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​/world​/2013​/feb​/10​/ kalahari​-metalheads ———. Scream for Me, Africa!: Heavy Metal Identities in Post Colonial Africa. Bristol UK: Intellect Press, 2022.

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Harrisberg, Kim. “In Botswana, Heavy Metal Bands’ Fame and Fortune Grow Online in Pandemic.” Reuters, December 29, 2021. https:​//​www​.reuters​.com​/article​/us​ -botswana​-music​-tech​-feature​/in​-botswana​-heavy​-metal​-bands​-fame​-and​-fortune​ -grow​-online​-in​-pandemic​-idUSKBN2J80O9 Tutton, Mark, and Errol Barnett. “‘Africa Is the Last Frontier for Metal’: Botswana’s Metal Heads Still Rocking.” CNN, July 6, 2017. https:​//​www​.cnn​.com​/2014​/02​/13​ /world​/africa​/africa​-botswana​-metal​-heads​/index​.html

NOTES 1. Plays what is known as Kwaito Kwasa music. 2. The Vulture Thrust Festival. 3. A long-running hard rock band based in the city of Francistown. 4. An internationally known heavy metal trio based in the country’s capital, Gaborone.

SECTION 5

Diaspora

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The Ultra-Violence Death Angel and Asian American Presence/Absence in Heavy Metal Kevin Fellezs

“When I was really getting into music, I was falling into some rocker/ stoner crowds out there in Concord [California], and I was definitely the rare, non-White dude in that mix.” Rob Cavestany, founding member, main composer, and lead guitarist for Death Angel

Asian Americans are often ignored in studies of popular music of any genre, not simply in metal studies. There are studies of metal in Asia, but there seems little interest in studying Asian American musicians involved with heavy metal beyond the less-often-than-you’d-think mention of guitarist Kirk Hammett’s Filipino heritage. It is not unusual—or difficult, it seems— to ignore Asian Americans and their contributions to popular music (Castro 2007). While there is a small cohort of high-profile Asian American musicians in popular music, including guitarist Dick Dale (Lebanese), guitarist Tommy Bolin (Syrian), the Van Halen brothers—guitarist Edward “Eddie” and drummer Alex (Indonesian), guitarist and vocalist H.E.R. (née Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson, Filipina), vocalist Arnel Pineda (Filipino) of Journey, vocalist Bruno Mars (Filipino), vocalist Olivia Rodrigo (Filipina), guitarist James Iha (Japanese) of Smashing Pumpkins, and MC/guitarist Mike Shinoda (Japanese) and DJ Joseph Han (Korean) of Linkin Park, with the exception of Shinoda and, more recently, H.E.R., most of these artists have not explicitly 235

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referenced their Asian heritage in their music. Nor, it should be added, does their Asian heritage play into discussions of their musicking.1 In this essay, I think through this predicament—that is, the absence of Asian Americans in heavy metal music histories—by focusing on Death Angel, a thrash metal band founded by Filipino musicians, who were part of the subgenre’s early formation, yet have been relatively ignored in most accounts of San Francisco Bay Area thrash. Initially formed in Daly City, a San Francisco suburb known colloquially as “Little Manila” due to the large numbers of resident Filipino families, it is small wonder that both the early thrash metal band Death Angel, and the seminal Filipino turntablist crew, the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, emerged out of this suburban enclave (O. Wang 2015). In any case, Death Angel were early participants in the development of a style of heavy metal initially called speed metal but which has become more commonly referred to as thrash metal in San Francisco Bay Area rock clubs and other public spaces throughout the 1980s. Despite Kirk Hammett’s early promotion of the band, including producing the band’s demo (or “demonstration” recording produced to interest record labels), Death Angel remains a cult favorite. Touring relentlessly while periodically releasing recordings, Death Angel has managed to forge a successful career despite their relative marginalization in thrash histories (never mind the exhaustingly larger heavy metal history project). What role does the band members’ racialization as Asian American—troubled and debated as the term might be in the twenty-first century—play in Death Angel’s position in thrash metal history? In 1982, a quartet of Filipino musicians hailing from the same extended family—Rob Cavestany on lead guitar, Gus Pepa on rhythm guitar, Dennis Pepa on bass, and Andy Galeon on drums—formed a metal band, eventually settling on the name Death Angel. Soon, another member of the band’s extended family, Mark Osegueda, joined as vocalist. In the wake of the success of their demo tape, Hammett’s advocacy helped the band eventually get signed to the Enigma/Restless record label in 1987. The band’s debut recording from that year, The Ultra-Violence (see figure 12.1), which inspired the title of this essay, heralded the multiracial nature of the emerging thrash metal scene centered in the San Francisco Bay Area despite an overarching discursive rendering of metal music culture as an articulation of white working- and lower-middle-class suburban masculinity (Fellezs 2016). While that view of metal has been challenged, problematized, and expanded, at least within metal music studies, and there has been an increasing awareness of women, queer, Black, and Indigenous participants in the global metal scene, the category Asian American continues as absence. I have explored Asian American absence in jazz (Fellezs 2007), particularly in relation to blackness and the (US) American-ness of jazz while acknowledging the larger Black/white binary framing that relationship. Due to the ways in

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Figure 12.1. Artwork for the album The Ultra-Violence (1987) by the band Death Angel. Source: Image provided by Robert Cavestany.

which whiteness continues to shape heavy metal discourse, thinking through Death Angel as a “problem” to be “solved” in heavy metal approaches Asian American absence from the other side of the Black/white binary. However, I hope to dislodge the centrality of that framing and replace it with a pluralism that mirrors the theorists and activists of the so-called Global South (itself a colonialist construct) concerned with decolonizing knowledge production and dismantling colonialist structures of feeling as well as restructuring the material institutions established by settler-colonialism through the implementation of indigenous and subaltern knowledges (Canclini 2014; Chakrabarty 2000; Ciccariello-Maher 2017; Hessler 2018; Mignolo 2000, 2021; Steintrager and Chow 2019). I mobilize this line of critique to suggest that the contributions and, indeed, attention to the legacies of Asian American musicians to global popular music cultures indicate their foundational presence.

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In addition, I am in sympathy with Deborah Wong’s rationale for studying Asian American musicians: “If anything, I have gravitated toward the position that any music being performed or created by an Asian American is Asian American music, and I don’t think this is as dissembling as it might seem. Rather, I want to understand why some Asian Americans make music, what sounds they make, and for whom. This is a very different question from the more common one of whether Asian American music exists” (Wong 2004, 12, added and original emphasis; see also Castro 2007). Accordingly, I am not presenting Death Angel as representative of a particular Asian or Filipino American musical formation within metal but, rather, as a specific case study of Filipino American musicians performing in a musical genre that is not only heard as “white” but that also challenges the Asian American “model minority myth,” which pigeonholes Asian Americans as eager assimilationists into mainstream US American culture with little interest in artistic pursuits or creative careers. Additionally, I want to measure the band’s challenge to the model minority myth against a Filipino-specific stereotype, namely, their purportedly native affinity and fluency with non-Filipino popular musicking, especially in “the West,” from jazz and ballroom dance to rock and disco. Death Angel’s presence in thrash metal echoes against these two racialized discourses, each bouncing off one another in a complicated dance between race and sound. WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE: DEATH ANGEL TRAPPED “BETWEEN SELF-ORIENTALIZING AND SELF-ERASURE”? A couple of qualifiers before I begin: First, I am focused primarily on Death Angel within a context of US (North) American discourse and practices; and second, I am interested in how a perception of Asian American-ness (and Filipino-ness in Death Angel’s case) plays any role in their critical and listener reception, though I am more interested presently in guitarist Rob Cavestany’s reactions to the reception Death Angel evokes. The band’s over thirty-year history allows us to think about how a band that enjoys a large discography and videography, including an online presence with numerous interviews and live performances throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas over the past decade or more, not only survives but thrives in a current music industry inundated by overlapping crises of overproduction, media hypersaturation, and the 24/7/365 demands of streaming culture. Yet, despite the renewed attention to thrash metal history, I am compelled to inquire into the band’s near-absence in recent thrash metal documentary films and books.2 Tellingly, even in a 2015 documentary focused on the band,

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Death Angel: A Thrashumentary, Randy Blythe of Lamb of God opines near the end of the film, “Well, Death Angel is one of those, like, legendary bands, y’know? They’re totally—old, [growling] older than us, you know? [laughs] So, they were part of the first wave of thrash metal, you know? And, in a way, I don’t think they ever really got the accolades that they were due.” Following up, Chris Adler of Lamb of God, states somewhat later in the film, “The way I always viewed them, is they were kind of the underdogs . . . not necessarily the innovators but the guys that were constantly overlooked because they were just a little bit before when the flames caught for the whole scene to blow up but I think they played a huge part in how and why all of us do what we do today.”3 Adler seems to contradict himself—how is it possible for Death Angel to fail at being innovators yet overlooked because they were around a little bit before the thrash scene blew up and yet somehow remain an influence on “what we do today”? How, in other words, are they not part of the innovative scene that gave birth to thrash metal? Adler’s response characterizes the predicament as I would like to pursue it. Namely, Asian American participation in heavy metal registers as absence— even in a documentary on Death Angel. This is especially poignant at a time when the term is under pressure from Asian Americans themselves as an inadequate category of belonging (Espiritu 1992; Kang 2021; Lee and Zhou 2004). Yet the term appears in media accounts to describe a community under increasing assault in a xenophobic, pandemic-era United States. Another term, Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI), a similarly contested category, further complicates any sense of a cohesive collective identity formation (Hall 2015; Kauanui 2004). In this context, Asian American musicians, particularly those involved with popular music, are often seen as anomalous to mainstream popular culture rather than as integral to its formation—or lending any substantial contributions, for that matter. Meanwhile, scholarly attention to Asian Americans’ involvement with music has generally focused on genres such as folk, jazz, hip hop, punk, and classical music (Balance 2016; Fellezs 2007; Tongson 2013; G. Wang 2015; O. Wang 2015; Wong 2004), with the tendency to argue for their inclusion based on virtuosic technical abilities and against a larger backdrop of a general lack of familiarity with Asian musical traditions by American-born artists of any Asian ethnicity. In other words, Asian Americans cannot organically occupy a place in popular music but must prove they are worthy of inclusion by being exceptional. But exceptionalism is never ascertained in terms of drawing from their Asian heritage—virtuoso koto (Japanese zither) players need not apply. As journalist Ligaya Mishan put it, “Asian [American] musicians in the West have . . . had to navigate between self-Orientalizing and self-erasure” (Mishan 2021, n.p.).

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Christine Bacareza Balance (2016) pushes productively against this convention, mentioning both Metallica and Death Angel, noting that “both bands . . . happened to feature Filipino musicians” (124) in her study of Filipino American involvement in non-mainstream popular music through a translocal examination of indie rock scenes in San Francisco and Manila. But Balance is not interested in heavy metal per se and the scene around Bindlestiff Studios, which opened in 1989 in the Mission District of San Francisco and that serves as one of her primary research sites, had little to do with the emergence of thrash metal in the early 1980s. I will think through Death Angel’s predicament—their presence/absence in heavy metal history—by listening to three songs, which are taken from three distinct periods in the band’s long history. “The Ultra-Violence” appears on Death Angel’s 1987 debut recording of the same name. “A Room with a View” appears on the band’s commercial high-water mark, 1990’s Act III (Geffen Records). Finally, rounding things out is “The Dream Calls for Blood,” the title track from the band’s 2013 recording (Nuclear Blast Records), which sees the current iteration of the band take thrash into the twenty-first century. Each song reveals the band’s wide range of musical influences as a reflection of guitarist and main songwriter Rob Cavestany’s eclectic musical interests and ability to integrate new approaches into his fundamental orientation in thrash metal. “THE ULTRA-VIOLENCE”: THE MODEL MINORITY MYTH AND THE RACIALIZATION OF FILIPINO MUSICALITY I want to begin with Adler’s assertion that Death Angel was not innovative or among the early metal bands in the San Francisco Bay Area that shaped thrash metal. As mentioned, Death Angel formed in 1982, and while a demo recording was recorded in 1983—the same year as the debut recordings of Slayer (Show No Mercy) and Metallica (Kill ’Em All)—their debut recording would not appear until 1987.4 In terms of innovative moves, however, none of the early thrash bands recorded a nearly eleven-minute instrumental as fully conceived as “The Ultra-Violence” on their debut recordings.5 The band recorded this remarkable track when Rob Cavestany, the composer of “The Ultra-Violence,” was the oldest member of the band at nineteen, while the drummer and youngest member, Andy Galeon, was fourteen. However, the music press attention to their young age would quickly feel less than complimentary to the band members as interviews and media attention seemed fixated on their ages rather than their music.

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No matter how you sliced it, 1987 was a banner year for heavy metal: Besides Death Angel, debut albums were released by influential bands such as Death (Scream Bloody Gore) and Heathen (Breaking the Silence); sophomore recordings were issued by Candlemass (Nightfall), Celtic Frost (Into the Pandemonium), Exodus (Pleasures of the Flesh), Faith No More (Introduce Yourself), Helloween (Keeper of the Seven Keys: Part I), King Diamond (Abigail), Sepultura (Schizophrenia), Racer X (Second Heat), and Joe Satriani (Surfing with the Alien); while Anthrax (Among the Living), Bathory (Under the Sign of the Black Mark), and Voivod (Killing Technology) released third albums. This is not to mention releases from stalwarts such as Black Sabbath (The Eternal Idol) and KISS (Crazy Nights), while Metallica put out a record covering a mix of songs from the Misfits, Budgie, and Diamond Head, among others, reflecting the wide listening practices of thrash musicians, titled The $5.98 E.P.—Garage Days Re-Revisited, and Mötley Crüe released Girls, Girls, Girls. In other words, there were all sorts of flavors of heavy metal music in 1987, meaning Death Angel was part of a mature field, as Bourdieu might define it (Bourdieu 1993). This field enjoyed a robust ecosystem of production and circulation of music recordings (including videotape recordings by the 1980s) but also required a corresponding performative commitment by fans in terms of fashion and speech, for instance, as well as global networks of consumption and reception in activities such as cassette tape trading and ’zine culture (Drew 2019; Waksman 2009). My point in attending to this chronology is to underline the fact that Death Angel were not only innovative but were among the first crop of San Francisco Bay Area thrash metal bands. Despite their relative youth compared to most of their thrash metal peers, Death Angel was not part of a “second generation” or “next wave” of thrash. They were present from the outset, opening for bands such as Metallica, Exodus, and Megadeth, as well as performing as headliners at San Francisco Bay Area clubs throughout the early 1980s. As Adler’s comments indicate, Death Angel’s artistic ambitions did not always register as such, however. Beginning with a motif related to “Tubular Bells,” Michael Oldfield’s instrumental theme and title to his debut recording, which became a hit when it was used for the film The Exorcist (1973, Warner Bros., William Friedkin, director), “The Ultra-Violence,” the longest track on the recording by far, announced Death Angel’s willingness to explore the limits of speed/thrash metal. Coincidentally, Oldfield was nineteen years old when “Tubular Bells” was released in 1973, for which he was lauded as a prodigy realizing his potential. Why was Cavestany, a composer of the same age, not accorded similar acclaim? In attempting to answer this question, I want to draw attention to two interrelated, though not entirely overlapping issues. The first concerns the model

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minority myth, which sits atop other Asian racializations that are more easily seen as pernicious, such as the perceived threat of a perilous yellow Asiatic horde—all resting on a bedrock assumption in the US American imaginary in which Asians are not automatically assumed to be “native” US American citizens but, rather, are seen as “perpetual foreigners”—constantly pressured to assure white Americans, in particular, of their native bona fides (Chou and Feagin 2010; Lee 1999, 2010). Second, and salient in considering Death Angel, Filipinos have been seen as preternatural musicians with a proclivity for emulating musics of non-Philippines origin (Castro 2007). Asian Americans—or, more specifically, post–WWII Japanese Americans (later expanded to include Chinese and, more recently, South Koreans and South Asian Indians)—suffer from the so-called model minority stereotype. The emergence of the model minority stereotype supported the racial status quo with its congratulatory attitude toward Asian American conformity to bourgeois White Anglo-Saxon Protestant norms in their efforts to climb the social ladder from their Asian immigrant parents’ working-class origins into the middle class. This post–WWII “silent generation” of Japanese Americans (again, soon expanded to include other Asian American groups) would be stereotyped by their focus on upward social mobility, a tendency toward political passivity, and an abiding belief that, despite the racial discrimination Japanese Americans had endured in the US concentration camps during the Second World War,6 the American system was based on a meritocratic ideal in which they could excel through educational achievement and adherence to a strong work ethic; in essence, the “color blind” American Dream ideology of the Cold War period, which insisted on a social order built on the foundation of a heteronormative nuclear family structure held together by males focused on their careers and a domestic sphere of women and children (Peterson 1966; Gupta, Szymanski, and Leong 2011; Lee 2010).7 The model minority myth, which emerged in the mid-1960s, retained earlier stereotypes of Asian males as emotionless automatons, figuring them as bland individuals who lacked deep personal feelings or commitments other than to material success and the attainment of middle-class social status (Chiswick 1983; Gardner et al. 1985; Hirschman and Wong 1986; Mar 1999; Sakamoto, Liu, and Tzeng 1998; Wu 2013). One of the consequences of the model minority stereotype taking hold was in its support of figuring Asian Americans as technocrats rather than as artists, as brains—though not intellects—with little heart—meaning, emotionally distant—and therefore unable to inhabit an artistic sensibility. Despite a desire to melt into the broader US American body politic, Asian American males remained an insular population, corralled for the most part in Asian American spaces and disconnected from the broader culture and thereby indelibly maintaining their “forever alien” status (Chou and Feagin

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2010; Fujino 1997; Gupta, Szymanski, and Leong 2011; Hurh and Kim 1989; Hwang, Saenz, and Aguirre 1997; Shek 2007). As Won Moo Hurh and Kwang Chung Kim argue, “The success image of a minority group does not . . . necessarily reflect the increased acceptance of the minority group by the dominant group in the society’s mainstream. In other words, Asian Americans remain a socially segregated minority, whether they are called ‘model’ or ‘successful’” (Hurh and Kim 1989, 531; also, Chou and Feagin 2010, particularly chapter 5). Filipinos reside somewhat outside of this particular Asian racialization, however. Due to the long history of non-Asian colonization in the Philippines, from the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century to the transfer of authority to the United States in 1898, Filipino musicians and audiences have enjoyed and performed non-Asian music, running the entire gamut of art to popular music, soon creating their own versions of such music, which became the basis for new hybrid forms of Filipino music (Keppy 2019). The model minority exceptionalism that would accrue to Japanese and other so-called Far East Asian groups did not adhere to Filipinos or Southeast Asians more generally. Filipinos, in other words, were relegated along an Asian “color line” that privileged lighter-skinned Asians and “Far East” Asians over darker-skinned South and Southeast Asians (Cortes, Boncan, and Jose 2000; Espiritu 1995; Root 1997). This racialized cultural taxonomy, however, allowed Filipinos, known as the “entertainers of the East” since the early twentieth century, to be heard as particularly adept by Asian audiences and critics in emulating the latest Western popular music styles (Keppy 2019; Ng 2005). The nearly four centuries of Spanish rule had also bequeathed Filipino popular music culture with, for example, the performance practice of male serenading, as well as dance forms such as the pandanggo, or “Filipino fandango,” and the Spanish jota and Cuban habanera (Villaruz n.d.). Their status as exalted entertainers, however, did little to displace other stereotypes US Americans held toward “their little brown brothers,” as William Howard Taft infamously described Filipinos in his justifications for US intervention in the island nation. Understanding colonialism as a conduit for popular music that granted Filipino musicians and dancers a deep understanding of Western music as well as the ability to travel abroad, however, is a twisted and limited reading of the interlocking matrix of imperialist histories and discourse about Filipino musicians (Castro 2011). The point of this historical digression is that Filipino Americans’ popular music sensibilities were rendered “natural” due to their centuries-long colonization. Given their association with dark skin, Filipinos’ seemingly natural affinities for Black American music styles such as swing jazz, soul, and hip hop or dance-related genres such as disco, are heard as innate given this larger

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historical and discursive backdrop. Unlike other Asian musicians, they are less apt to appear as soloists in international European art music concertizing, however, and their acceptance in genres such as gospel remain largely limited to intra-Filipino markets and audiences. But, as Mary Talusan’s exemplary study reveals, this is not a new story. One of the most celebrated ensembles of the early twentieth century was the Philippine Constabulary Band (PCB), led by African American officer Lt. Walter H. Loving, which rivaled the world’s best military marching bands, including the US Marine Band under John Philip Sousa’s baton. Talusan notes, “The [PCB’s] popularity with American audiences, therefore, was much more than an appreciation for musical artistry; the band’s achievements validated the political aims of US imperialism and provided aural and visual proof of the success of ‘benevolent assimilation,’ a concept rooted in a proclamation by President McKinley that the United States intervened in the Philippines ‘not as invaders or conquerors, but as friends,’ in order to ‘win the confidence, respect, and affection of the inhabitants of the Philippines’” (Talusan 2021, 4, added emphasis). Dispatched to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, the PCB’s “orderly, disciplined bandsmen performing familiar American patriotic marches were juxtaposed with unassimilated tribal people of the Philippines playing ‘primitive’ music in order to impress upon fairgoers the magnificent progress achieved by US colonization” (Talusan 2021, 4). As this history reveals, Filipino popular musicians have faced a double-edged critical perspective that, on the one hand, praises them for their musicality yet denigrates them because of their purported lack of an indigenous music culture, on the other. Consequently, their artistic impulses are seen as cultivated by their familiarity with Western music rather than through their own aesthetic sensibilities and creative traditions. Similarly, because of their race and their youth, Death Angel was seen in its early years as coming into heavy metal not as “natural” participants but, rather, as facile mimics. In fact, the music press in Death Angel’s early years emphasized their young age rather than their music and creative work, including some of the cover artwork produced by various band members throughout the years. Similar to the PCB, Cavestany and Osegueda have been portrayed as exceptional Filipino American musicians—which they certainly are—but their skills have been gained at the price of assimilation into a white-identified genre, echoing the stereotyping of the model minority myth and the “exceptional but unoriginal Filipino musician.” Death Angel challenged this reading of their work, however, by consistently pushing against the boundaries of what constituted “real” thrash metal.

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“A ROOM WITH A VIEW”: MAJOR LABELS AND RAISING ASPIRATIONS AND VISIBILITY A mere three years after their debut, Death Angel signed with Geffen Records, releasing their third studio recording, Act III (see figure 12.2). The band members were beginning to see all their road work pay off with major label support, which included chartered travel and full-service tours in and outside of the United States, heady with the promise of global fame and fortune seemingly around the corner. Given their new label home with more resources at their disposal, Cavestany and Osegueda had been publicly critical regarding the eclecticism and experimentalism of their second album, Frolic Through the Park (Restless Records, 1988). In our conversation, Cavestany surmised that there were “too many cooks in the kitchen” (personal interview 2021)

Figure 12.2. Artwork for the album Act III (1990) by the band Death Angel. Source: Image provided by Robert Cavestany.

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and that trying to include everyone’s increasingly divergent tastes may have been a mistake. At the same time, Act III revealed a band continuing to develop beyond the aesthetic strictures of “heaviness” and thrash. There was no surer sign of this move in the band than the song, “A Room with a View,” penned by Death Angel’s main composer and lead guitarist. Cavestany begins the track strumming an acoustic steel-string guitar, the pick noticeably sounding against the strings. Taking the perspective of a blind person, Cavestany’s lyrics caution against the sighted feeling any sense of superiority or advantage. Following a short acoustic guitar solo, the electric guitar finally enters as the voice of the blind individual’s emphatic declaration of autonomy due to an awareness gained beyond mere physical sight, linking the power of metal music with the delicacy of a singer-songwriter’s acoustic guitar. Ending as a fingerpicking acoustic guitar figure takes center stage, the electric lead guitar slowly fades to the background. The blind yet visionary protagonist may yet lead the sighted yet blind to “true sight” or enlightenment. “Who’s fooling who?” asks Cavestany, but he gives no answer, allowing listeners to answer the question for themselves, only offering that “the boundaries of [the blind man’s] wisdom” are obscured by “the solitude of his kingdom.” Did Cavestany feel isolated as his aspirations began to encompass more than simply being the heaviest band in thrash? As Cavestany repeated a number of times in our conversation, he had long been attracted to “heavy music.” His initial introduction to heavy metal was a 1979 KISS concert: “We always credit KISS as our original ‘What the fuck is this?! It’s amazing!’ That was our first real concert. I saw KISS in ’79 at the Cow Palace on the Dynasty tour. I was eleven . . . and we all saw that and said, we gotta do that. That’s what we’re gonna do. KISS and that show was responsible for us getting a dream of making a band” (personal interview, 2021). When I spoke with Cavestany, he was clearly excited by the memory of this concert—chaperoned along with his cousins by his mother and aunts—which remains an affective high moment, echoing in the music he performs today. Yet, when compelled to demonstrate his growing musical sensibilities, Cavestany turned to the acoustic guitar and the romantic ballad form rather than a heavy, riff-oriented song. While it is a rare rock ballad in the band’s repertoire, it reflects Cavestany’s formative listening years. “When I was really young and listening to my dad’s records, I just totally wore out all the ’70s music. That’s my original heart and soul of music. Like Elton [John], Stevie [Wonder], Earth, Wind, and Fire, Fleetwood Mac, and, like, Pink Floyd, Bread, The Guess Who. All these killer ’70s rock and, not necessarily rock, but just killer ’70s music. So, that’s always in my heart, and until this day, I can sing every word to all that music because I just heard it so much back then” (personal interview, 2021). “A Room with a View” readily

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calls to mind 1970s-era recordings from bands such as Led Zeppelin, Bad Company, and Traffic, with its acoustic guitar and vocal introduction, slowly bringing the rest of the band along with the song’s transformation from a singer-songwriter acoustic ballad, including a tasteful acoustic guitar solo, before the band “goes electric” into a full-tilt rock anthem, leading to a brief climactic, searing electric guitar solo. As the solo ends, the song returns to the softer, acoustic beginning, complete with a false “silent” ending before fading out with a psychedelic-flavored electric guitar solo sailing above the acoustic strumming and restrained drumming of the final cadenza. This refashioning of the young thrash band’s focus on heavy riffing and power drumming through an injection of Cavestany’s early taste formation in 1970s “classic rock” was not entirely self-motivated. Cavestany readily acknowledges the benefits of being signed to Geffen beyond the material support of touring busses and technical staff: [I began to compose differently] because then we had a fucking serious producer, Max Norman. That era is where I learned the most of everything. That’s where we turned from a boy to a man, going through that album . . . We went to a major label and working with Max Norman, and they weren’t just allowing us to do whatever. They are making us write and write and write so much, and [the label would say] “Okay. That’s pretty good. Let’s hear more songs, more songs.” I was getting so fucking pissed. I was like, “You already have plenty of songs. There are fifteen songs. That’s enough songs.” They’re like, “No, better songs.” We wrote like thirty songs for that album, but that taught us how to work hard. Very, very hard. Much more than we thought we were doing before. (Lehtinen and Syrjälä 2020, n.p.)

Cavestany’s idea of work and maturing as a laboring musician, as well as developing an interest in expanding his aesthetic limits, blossomed under Norman’s tutelage. “A Room with a View” reveals Cavestany’s foundational musical formation with the soft rock of his father’s record collection lyrically, as well. The lyrical concerns hew closer to Bread than Iron Maiden (though, perhaps, we might now hear the connections between the two bands irrespective of their genre placement), centering the protagonist of “Room” in the solitary, alienated space of the “too wise for the world” recluse, who is “looking through you” from his room with a view. This period of growth and achievement would come to a devastating end, however, in a bus crash in 1990, nearly ending the life of drummer Andy Galeon and effectively shuttering Death Angel as a performing unit for the next twelve years. At the time, the band members considered the ending permanent. The band’s absence from the metal scene for the next few years— including Cavestany’s retreat into funk-rock, among other nonmetal styles— speaks not only to the frustrations these Asian American musicians felt at the

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time as their career aspirations came grinding to a halt. It also speaks to Death Angel’s singular Asian American presence within the seminal San Francisco Bay Area thrash scene, which meant that when the band was no longer in the mix, Death Angel’s absence became even more acute. “THE DREAM CALLS FOR BLOOD”: CONTESTING AND CONFORMING TO THE MODEL MINORITY MYTH While Death Angel entered the scene younger in age than most of the other participants in the local San Francisco Bay Area metal scene, Cavestany is now one of the elder statesmen of thrash metal. Age, in other words, continues to be a talking point about the band though the racial aspect is more pronounced four decades after “The Ultra-Violence” announced a Filipino American presence in heavy metal. Pointing to their still-youthful appearance, guitarist Gary Holt (Exodus, Slayer) notes, “They’re stalwarts, you know. They’re still here, making some of the best music they’ve ever made now. And kicking serious ass, and they still look sixteen! That’s the important thing, right?”8 Guitarist Doc Coyle of God Forbid and Bad Wolves, spins the race canard despite being biracial (Black/white) himself, stating, “They look younger than me, y’know what I’m sayin’? It’s like, you know, got them good Asian genes, you know? [They] never age, doing crunches and kickboxing and all the pre-show workouts that they do. You know, they are very fit gentlemen.”9 Underlining Holt and Coyle’s assessment of Cavestany, Osegueda, and Aguilar’s physical appearance, “The Dream Calls for Blood” invokes an even more robust metal than their high-spirited youthful debut recording (see figure 12.3). If “A Room with a View” represents Cavestany’s aesthetic development and sense of maturing as a composer, “Dream” is a return to the intensity of the band’s original impulse for creating thrash metal. Heavier, louder, more intense—the eternal grail of sonic submersion for thrashers, as one of the band’s early songs, “Thrashers,” attests—makes its return in Death Angel Mark III, as Cavestany joked.10 The vocals remain in classic thrash mode, certainly as performed by Osegueda over the decades, and while he growls with the aggression required of the subgenre, he is clearly more influenced by older metal “bel canto” vocalists such as Ronnie James Dio rather than the guttural vocal style of death and black metal vocalists like Kam Lee (né Barney Kamalani Lee) of Death.11 “Dream” opens with an aggressive rhythm guitar, taking advantage of the heavily compressed yet overdriven timbre of contemporary metal guitar to produce a two-guitar wall of sound. Part of the attraction of this sound is the

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Figure 12.3. Artwork for the album The Dream Calls for Blood (2013) by the band Death Angel. Source: Image provided by Robert Cavestany.

way guitarists are able to articulate the rhythm with the brief silences allowed by the various picking and strumming techniques that necessitate damping and muting (or the strings would continue to sound, attenuating the desired rhythmic effect). The compressed distorted metal guitar rhythmic-sonic trope is part of the other desired trait, namely, heaviness. The silences alert listeners to the antecedent and subsequent sounds, lessening the sense of a determinate pitch and serving a percussive rhythmic function produced by dramatizing the difference between sound and silence in metal (Mynett 2017; Brown 2012; Pillsbury 2006). Osegueda describes the song as “brutal,” which is a “major theme of this record” (Osegueda 2013, n.p.). However, Osegueda also describes “Dream” as a cautionary tale to listeners: “It’s about whatever you’re into, whether it

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be music, athletics, any sort of thing if you truly want to make that happen for a living, you know, you’ve got to bleed for it. And it’s blood, sweat, and tears, but, mainly, you gotta bleed for it. You do. If you want your dream to happen” (Osegueda 2013, n.p.). This idea of paying your dues as one of the preconditions for success drives the band with its relentless work ethic of touring, recording, and composing. Espousing this ideal of hard work and its rewards for its value as a sign of self-discipline as well as for its purported economic benefits may fall too easily into line with the model minority myth, but it indicates the depth of internalization by many Asian Americans of the myth—even by those who wield metal axes onstage. LEFT FOR DEAD: RE-FORMING THE BAND In some ways, Osegueda is describing Death Angel’s own renaissance in 2001, when they reformed for a one-concert-only reunion for the Clash of the Titans benefit concert for Testament vocalist Billy “Chuck Billy” Child, who was undergoing cancer treatment. Cavestany had been concentrating on his then-current band, The Swarm, a group with a very distinct musical agenda from Death Angel, blending funk and hard rock to produce groove-oriented rock (but not metal) music. Frustrated that audiences continued to yell out for Death Angel songs at Swarm gigs, Cavestany was ready to abandon the musician’s life due to a perceived lack of audience (and label) interest for The Swarm. Perhaps most discouragingly, Cavestany was troubled by a past in which he had once been a member of a band that had been signed to a major label but was now relegated to traveling in a band van, sharing motel accommodations, and sometimes playing to near-empty rooms. Importantly, he was not getting any younger. The call to re-form Death Angel was not entirely welcome, though, notwithstanding the travails of The Swarm. Describing the final days of the original Death Angel as “a trap,” Cavestany listed the reasons for his hesitancy in reforming the band: “At that point [of disbanding Death Angel to form, first, The Organization and, then, The Swarm], to be honest, we were sick of the metal scene. You know, we were going through a time of just trying to expand our musicianship, listening to different kinds of music and trying to open up [our] mind into the entire music world and the entire music scene, and then starting to see and not like a lot of the closed-minded-ness of the heavy metal world” (personal interview, 2021).12 Yet, despite only having two rehearsals with then-new guitarist Ted Aguilar before nervously debuting at the 2001 benefit concert, the band “kicked ass!” (personal interview with Cavestany, 2021). Following their triumphant performance at the benefit, Cavestany and Osegueda began receiving calls to

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tour and record. Initially, Cavestany remained reluctant, claiming that he had retired from music. Relenting, finally, to perform at the Dynamo Festival in Holland, other performing dates and recording opportunities began to accumulate, finally inducing Cavestany and Osegueda to resume their musical careers in a band called Death Angel. As Cavestany noted with wry humor toward the end of our conversation, “Now, nineteen years after [the benefit concert], we’re still here! We managed to rise from the dead once again. And not only that, but come back strong” (personal interview 2021). “UNDER PRESSURE”: SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC It is not as if no one knows the band was formed by Filipino American rock musicians or that it continues to be led by Filipino American founding members Cavestany and Osegueda. In Thrashumentary, Osegueda describes the way in which relative “newcomer” (he’s been with the band for two decades now), guitarist Ted Aguilar, fit in easily with the band: “[Aguilar] is a great guy. Has a great vision for the band . . . for people who don’t know Death Angel from anything but pictures, they just assume he was an original member because he [is] Filipino [laughs].”13 Osegueda is less phenotypically “Filipino” than Cavestany or Aguilar—and there are two white band members, Will Carroll on drums and Damien Sisson on bass—but everyone knows Death Angel as the “Filipino thrash band from San Francisco.” In 2019, Death Angel was nominated for a 2020 Best Metal Performance Grammy for their song, “Humanicide.” Tool won for their song, “7empest,” which, as Cavestany admits, is “not very metal.” He continues, clarifying, “Tool is a great fucking band. I’m not trying to put them down. They’re incredible musicians. I think they’re fucking amazing. For the category, our songs, to me, sound the most metal for sure” (Lehtinen and Syrjälä 2020, n.p.). While it is relatively unimportant in the overall scheme of things that Jethro Tull beat Metallica in the first year that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) recognized heavy metal with the Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrumental Grammy award, the mixed title award is indicative of heavy metal musicians’ relative perch within the cultural pecking order, at least as deigned by NARAS and the Grammy awards. Still, it is quite an accomplishment for a relatively obscure thrash metal band to be nominated along with the more recognizably popular and well-known bands and musicians such as Tool and Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi (nominated for a Candlemass recording on which he is featured). Another visible sign of the band’s ability to persevere despite personal tragedies, music industry constraints, and the inevitable “growing up in

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public” issues of a group of teens trying to forge a career in popular music, can be seen in the band’s continuously expansive view of music it considers “metal.” Speaking to me about a series of COVID-related mishaps that hit the band since the spring of 2020, Cavestany remains optimistic: Let me throw in that we recorded, during that time, while the pandemic was in full swing and [drummer] Will [Carroll] was in ICU [due to COVID], and while the massive riots were going down because our country was a burning hell. At the same time, during this time, me and Mark [Osegueda] got together and created the Under Pressure EP, which we put out [as] an all-acoustic EP. We were feeling that, you know, everything was under pressure, and it was a perfect song [for the times]. We’re big fans of Queen and David Bowie, so we did that. Then, while we were at it, we wrote a new song called “Fated Remains,” we did a new version of “Room with a View” and a song called “Revelation Song” off of our recent album, Humanicide” (personal interview 2021).

With the cover of Queen and Bowie’s collaborative hit, Cavestany’s father’s record collection continues to prove its long-lasting influence on the guitarist. ALIVE AND SCREAMING: DEATH ANGEL AND ASIAN AMERICAN PRESENCE IN METAL Along with creating a body of substantive work, giving future Asian American metalheads pride of place in the metal sanctorum may be among Death Angel’s most lasting legacies—and they still have plenty of time yet to build on the solid foundation they have been constructing since The Ultra-Violence. Their influence, in any case, will cast a wide shadow, covering more than the US metal scene as the band enjoys a large, devoted following in Europe and Asia. Cavestany described the band’s reception in the Philippines: “We’ve played the Philippines, like, five separate times. We show up, and they’ve got signs, they’ve got banners with, like, ‘Welcome, Death Angel’ with our logo and all this stuff, singing along to songs. It’s amazing!” (personal interview 2021). Thrashumentary closes with Death Angel performing in Manila at an outdoor festival concert. The crowd is enthusiastic, headbanging along with the music, singing along to songs composed before many of them were born. After the concert’s final song, “Thrown to the Wolves,” the crowd remains enthusiastic, chanting “Death Angel! Death Angel!” while the band members stroll around the stage, throwing the devil’s horn hand sign, dispensing guitar picks into the audience, and high-fiving and fist-bumping fans gathered around the stage. It is no surprise, after all the road work Cavestany and

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Osegueda have put in, the artistic growth they have continuously challenged themselves to achieve, and despite the tragedies they have endured, to hear the crowd scream for more. Just before throwing out his Death Angel–embossed wrist band, guitarist Aguilar turns to look directly at the camera and says, “It’s the Philippines,” then, turning to Cavestany, yells excitedly, “We’re in the Philippines!”14 Cavestany replies with equal enthusiasm, “Oh, hell yes! I’ve got this, too, bitch!” before both musicians fling their wristbands out into the clamoring crowd. Figuring out an Asian American absence/presence in metal history may not be the central issue, after all. It may, in fact, be more productive to listen for the pluralism Death Angel brings to thrash metal as a gift from these Filipino American musicians caught among Asian American and Filipino stereotypes, the discursive limits of metal music culture, and the economic imperatives in dealing with the music industrial complex. Cavestany’s eclectic musical interests beyond thrash speak to the pluralist sensibilities of Asian American musicians who, on the one hand, must negotiate hegemonic understandings of their place in the world and, on the other, carve out their own space for musical creativity regardless of their racialization. Death Angel continues to embody and express the central tenets and contradictions of heavy metal: an individualism tucked within a larger sense of collective belonging; a performative display of power alongside an identification with the oppressed; and a critique of normative social relations cloaked within a sometimes-puerile cloth. In the final reckoning, however, Death Angel offers a potent response for those replying from the “Global South” to their erasure and silencing. In many ways, Death Angel has used this double-consciousness15 to write its own metal history, answering the dream’s call for blood with their uncompromising music and forcibly challenging the global metal culture to recognize Asian American contributions. As The Ultra-Violence’s opening track, “Thrashers,” announces, “Posers strike us in the back, I can’t take their bullshit, turn around and attack.” No members of a passive orientalist model minority, willing to “go along to get along,” Death Angel’s Cavestany, Osegueda, and Aguilar—as well as original members, Andy Galeon and Dennis and Gus Pepa—are musicians who, as self-defining agents, “turn around and attack” Asian/Filipino American stereotypes as well as the racist biases of the music industrial complex to stake a powerful claim for their— and other Asian American metalheads’—rightful place in metal music culture. REFERENCES Balance, Christine Bacareza. Tropical Renditions: Making Musical Scenes in Filipino America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016

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Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production. New York: Polity Press, 1993. Brown, Jake. Behind the Boards: The Making of Rock’n’Roll’s Greatest Records. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Books, 2012. Canclini, Néstor García. Imagined Globalization. Translated by George Yúdice. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Castro, Christi-Anne. “Voices in the Minority: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the Asian American in Popular Music.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 19, no. 3 (2007): 221–38. ———. Musical Renderings of the Philippine Nation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Cavestany, Rob. Personal interview with author. February 9, 2021. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000. Chiswick, Barry R. “An Analysis of the Earnings and Employment of AsianAmerican Men.” Journal of Labor Economics 1.2 (1983): 197–214. Chou, Rosalind S., and Joe R. Feagin. The Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism. New York: Routledge, 2010. Ciccariello-Maher, George. Decolonizing Dialectics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. Cortes, Rosario Mendoza, Celestina Puyal Boncan, and Ricardo Trota Jose, eds. The Filipino Saga: History as Social Change. Quezon City, Philippines: New Day Publishers, 2000. Drew, Rob. “The Cassette in 1980s Indie Music Scenes.” Rock Music Studies 6, no. 2 (2019): 138–52. Espiritu, Yen Le. Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. Espiritu, Yen Le, ed. Filipino American Lives. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. Fellezs, Kevin. “Silenced but Not Silent: Asian American Jazz.” Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian America, edited by Mimi Thi Nguyen and Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, 69–108. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. ———. “Voracious Souls: Race and Place in the Formation of the San Francisco Bay Area Thrash Scene.” In Global Metal Music and Culture: Current Directions in Metal Studies, edited by Andy R. Brown, Karl Spracklen, Keith Kahn-Harris, and Niall W.R. Scott, 89–105. New York: Routledge Press, 2016. Fujino, Diane. “The Rates, Patterns and Reasons for Forming Heterosexual Interracial Dating Relationships Among Asian Americans.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 14.6 (1997): 809–828. Gardner, Robert W., et al. “Asian Americans: Growth, Change, and Diversity.” Population Bulletin 40.4 (1985): 3–48. Gupta, Arpana, Dawn M. Szymanski, and Frederick T.L. Leong. “The ‘Model Minority Myth’: Internalized Racialism of Positive Stereotypes as Correlates of Psychological Distress, and Attitudes Toward Help-Seeking.” Asian American Journal of Psychology 2.2 (2011): 101–114.

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Hall, Lisa Kahalaole. “Which of These Things Is Not Like the Other: Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders Are Not Asian Americans, and All Pacific Islanders Are Not Hawaiian.” American Quarterly, Special Issue: Pacific Currents 67, no. 3 (September 2015): 727–47. Hay, Jeff, ed. The Internment of Japanese Americans. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2012. Hessler, Stefanie, ed. Tidalectics: Imagining an Oceanic Worldview through Art and Science. London and Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2018. Hirschman, Charles, and Morrison G. Wong. “The Extraordinary Educational Attainment of Asian-Americans: A Search for Historial Evidence and Explanations.” Social Forces 65.1 (1986): 27. Hurh, Won Moo, and Kwang Chung Kim. “The ‘success’ image of Asian Americans: its validity, and its practical and theoretical implications.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 12.4 (1989): 512–538. Hwang, Sean-Shong, Rogelio Saenz, and Benigno E. Aguirre. “Structural and Assimilationist Explanations of Asian American Intermarriage.” Journal of Marriage and Family 59.3 (1997): 758–772. Jones, Tommy. Death Angel: A Thrashumentary. Culver City, CA: Nuclear Blast Records, 2015. DVD. Kang, Jay Caspian. “The Myth of Asian American Identity.” New York Times, October 5, 2021: https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/2021​/10​/05​/magazine​/asian​-american​-identity​ .html​?searchResultPosition​=5 Kauanui, J. Kēhaulani. “Asian American Studies and the ‘Pacific Question.’” In Asian American Studies after Critical Mass, edited by Kent Ono, 123–43. New York: Blackwell, 2004. Keppy, Peter. Tales of the Southeast Asia's Jazz Age: Filipinos, Indonesians and Popular Culture, 1920–1936. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2019. Lee, Jennifer, and Min Zhou, eds. Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity. New York: Routledge, 2004. Lee, Robert G. Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999. ———. “The Cold War Origins of the Model Minority Myth.” In Asian American Studies Now: A Critical Reader, edited by Jean Yu-Wen Shen Wu and Thomas C. Chen, 256–71. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2010. Lehtinen, Arto, and Marko Syrjälä. “Death Angel Guitarist Rob Cavestany Discusses ‘Humanicide,’ the Band’s Past and More: Interview with Rob Cavestany of Death Angel.” Metal-Rules.com. March 29, 2020, n.p. https:​//​www​.metal​-rules​.com​/2020​ /03​/29​/death​-angel​-guitarist​-rob​-cavestany​/ Lowe, Lisa. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996. Mar, Don. “Regional Differences in Asian American Earnings Discrimination: Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino American Earnings in California and Hawaii.” Amerasia Journal 25.2 (1999): 67–93. Mignolo, Walter D. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

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———.The Politics of Decolonial Investigations. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021. Mishan, Ligaya. “The Asian Pop Stars Taking Center Stage.” New York Times, August 11, 2021, n.p. https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/2021​/08​/11​/t​-magazine​/asian​-women​-pop​ -music​.html​?action​=click​&module​=Editors% 20Picks&pgtype=Homepage\ Mynett, Mark. Metal Music Manual: Producing, Engineering, Mixing, and Mastering Contemporary Heavy Music. New York and Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017. Ng, Stephanie. “Performing the ‘Filipino’ at the Crossroads: Filipino Bands in Five-Star Hotels throughout Asia.” Modern Drama 48, no. 2 (2005). doi:10.1353/ mdr.2005.0034. Ng, Wendy. Japanese Internment during World War II: A History and Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. Osegueda, Mark. “Death Angel—The Dream Calls For Blood (OFFICIAL TRACK BY TRACK 1).” Nuclear Blast Records (YouTube channel), October 6, 2013. https:​ //​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=knK1G7DfCJ4​&ab​_channel​=NuclearBlastRecords. Peterson, William. “Success Story, Japanese American Style.” New York Times Magazine, January 9, 1966: 20–21, 33, 36, 38, 40–41, 43. Pillsbury, Glenn T. Damage Incorporated: Metallica and the Production of Musical Identity. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Root, Maria P. P., ed. Filipino Americans: Transformation and Identity. Thousand Oaks, CA, London, and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2007. Sakamoto, Arthur, Jeng Liu, and Jessie M. Tzeng. “The Declining Significance of Race Among Chinese and Japanese American Men.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 16 (1998): 225–246. Shek, Yen Ling. 2007. “Asian American Masculinity: A Review of the Literature.” The Journal of Men’s Studies 14.3 (2007): 379–391. Steintrager, James A., and Rey Chow, eds. Sound Objects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019. Talusan, Mary. Instruments of Empire: Filipino Musicians, Black Soldiers, and Military Band Music during US Colonization of the Philippines. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi, 2021. Tiongson, Jr., Antonio T. Filipinos Represent: DJs, Racial Authenticity, and the Hip-Hop Nation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. Villaruz, Basilio Esteban S. “Philippine Dance in the Spanish Period.” Republic of the Philippines National Commission for Culture and Arts. Date unknown. https:​//​ ncca​.gov​.ph​/about​-ncca​-3​/subcommissions​/subcommission​-on​-the​-arts​-sca​/dance​/ philippine​-dance​-in​-the​-spanish​-period​/ Waksman, Steve. This Ain’t the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Wang, Grace. Soundtracks of Asian America: Navigating Race through Musical Performance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Wang, Oliver. Legions of Boom: Filipino American Mobile DJ Crews in the San Francisco Bay Area. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Wong, Deborah. Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music. New York: Routledge, 2004.

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Wu, Ellen D. The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.

NOTES 1. There are a number of Asian American artists in hip hop such as the Neptunes’ Chad Hugo (Filipino) and the Black Eyed Peas’ Apl.de.ap (né Allan Pineda, Filipino). A recent New York Times article, “The Asian Pop Stars Taking Center Stage” (August 11, 2021), by Ligaya Mishan, features a number of Asian American female popular music artists of various genres a generation younger than cult favorites such as Mitski. 2. See, for example, the band’s glancing mentions in Harald Oimoen and Brian Lew, Murder in the First Row, 2nd printing (New York: Bazillion Points, 2012, book); Get Thrashed: The Story of Thrash Metal (Rick Ernst, dir., Saigon1515 Productions, 2008, documentary film); and Bay Area Godfathers: The True Story of Bay Area Metal (Bob Nalbandian, dir., UMN LLC, 2020, documentary film). 3. Death Angel: A Thrashumentary, Blythe, 02:11:14–02:11:38; Adler, 02:11:39–02:12:04. 4. The Kirk Hammett–produced demo, Kill as One, was recorded and released in 1985. 5. Metallica recorded bassist Cliff Burton’s four-minute instrumental, “(Anesthesia)—Pulling Teeth,” on their debut, Kill ’Em All (Megaforce 1983). Megadeth begins its debut, Killing Is My Business . . . And Business Is Good! (Combat 1985) with a brief instrumental introduction titled “Last Rites,” which was based on Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor.” “The Ultra-Violence” remains in the band’s live setlist as fans have continued to cry out for the song, even when Cavestany was leading The Organization and The Swarm, two bands he formed in attempts to extricate himself from thrash and heavy metal, as described in the body of the text. 6. The ten concentration camps have been more widely known by the euphemistic term, “internment camp.” There were also what are known as “assembly centers,” which refers to the initial removal of Japanese Americans from their homes into recently vacated horse stalls at racetracks throughout California, often for weeks, sometimes for months, before transport to one of the camps (Hay 2012, W. Ng 2002). 7. The “silent generation” was described in a November 5, 1961, issue of Time magazine as “waiting for the hand of fate to fall on its shoulders, meanwhile working fairly hard and saying almost nothing. The most startling fact about the younger generation is its silence . . . It does not issue manifestoes, make speeches or carry posters.” (http:​//​content​.time​.com​/time​/subscriber​/article​/0​,33009​,856950​,00​.html). This silent generation was born between 1925–1942, immediately preceding the baby boomers. 8. Death Angel: A Thrashumentary, Holt, 02:13:25–02:13:37. 9. Death Angel: A Thrashumentary, Coyle, 2:13:38–2:13:53. 10. Cavestany is referencing the way in which the many lineup changes in Deep Purple are known variously as “Mark I/II/III, etc.” versions of the band.

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11. Both Cavestany and Osegueda have expressed some indifference, if not antipathy, toward black metal’s “cookie monster” vocal style. When I asked about black/ extreme metal, Cavestany admitted, “To me, [when black metal appeared on the scene, heavy metal] was starting to sound stiff and sterile and mechanical. The vocals were less melodic and more guttural and monotone. I just wasn’t digging it, you know? It was going against what I wanted. I wanted more groove, more soul and melody. And that wasn’t the flavor of the month.” He would also joke with me, that black metal is “way too Satanic!” As he recalled, “Like, we were just kidding when we were talking about devil’s metal and shit like that. We weren’t trying to burn down churches and shit. So, yeah, we weren’t wanting to be attached to that, so [the 1990s] was a weird time for us” (2021). As Cavestany’s remarks reveal, Death Angel’s engagement with such iconography and symbolism draws more from the world of horror films—he is an admitted fan of Hammer horror films, for instance—than any involvement with actual Satanism. Like many thrash metal bands, Death Angel played with Satanic and sacrilegious iconography and rhetoric as a response to mainstream rock as well as broader social norms. 12. Cavestany spent the years between The Organization and The Swarm performing music that was not meant to launch a professional music career nor had anything to do with heavy metal. 13. Death Angel: A Thrashumentary, Osegueda, 00:58:16–00:58:28. This same misapprehension does not seem to occur with the “Mark III” band members, drummer Will Carroll and bassist Damien Sisson, who are white. 14. Death Angel: A Thrashumentary, Aguilar, 2:27:48:14–2:28:01. 15. The concept of double consciousness was initially developed by W. E.B. Du Bois, who coined it to refer to Black/African American’s difficult positionality within the United States as both American and Black individuals, and the ways in which this push and pull of both identities influences, reveals, but also weighs on the Black experience in the United States.

Chapter 13

“Somewhere They Belong” Metal, Ethnicity, and Scenic Solidarities in Malaysia’s Underground Scenes (1990s to 2000s) Azmyl Yusof and Adil Johan

When we initially proposed this chapter to the volume editors, we were intrigued by the possibility of uncovering a niche area of heavy metal music in Malaysia from the perspective of an ethnic minority. Indeed, heavy metal culture has a rich history in Malaysia, associated with the mass rural-urban migration and rapid (and unequal) economic development of the era that coincided with a proliferation of glam metal and thrash metal groups.1 Metal and rock are predominantly associated with Malay-Muslims, who form an ethnic and political majority in Malaysia. Thus, research on heavy metal music in Malaysia (and also neighboring Singapore and Brunei) has naturally focused on its association with “Malayness” (kemelayuan). For example, Liew and Fu (2006), Fu and Liew (2009), and Azmyl (2010) reveal the alienation and demonization of Malay-Muslim youth who perform and participate in heavy metal (and rock) subculture in Singapore and Malaysia by the press and state authorities, while Amalina and Zawawi (2017) highlight how metalhead identity is negotiated within the conservative Malay-Muslim monarchy of Brunei. The mass media moral-policing and state-imposed crackdowns on heavy metal gigs (and, by extension, underground music) during the early 2000s effectively suppressed a once-vibrant and flourishing music scene (Azmyl 2010). Beyond nation-state borders, Wallach (2011) analyzes the Malay ethnocultural identity as part of an infrastructure that connects the metal scenes of Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. However, less has been said about “non-Malayness” and metal in 259

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this context. While Ferrarese (2014) charted the multicultural aspects of the metal scene in Malaysia during the 2010s, this study is limited to a single group on the urban, cosmopolitan island of Penang. Upon further inquiry into “Chinese-Malaysian Metal”—amid the context of publications on metal in Malaysia centered on Malay identity and inter-regional networks between Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and Indonesia—we found ourselves drawn to a history of the diverse and flourishing Malaysian underground scene of the 1990s and early 2000s. Our personal experience, growing up as musicians and fans of the Malaysian underground scene during this period, underscores the observations presented in this chapter. We also consider our own ethnic backgrounds—Azmyl is Minangkabau-Bugis-Javanese, and Adil is of mixed Malay-Tamil-Cantonese parentage2—and how these intersect with our personal interactions with the scene and the musicians interviewed here, who are also our friends.3 Azmyl reflects on his own foray into said scene via formative experiences during his college years in the Klang Valley. This led Azmyl to reach out to his contacts who were active in the underground scene—many of whom identify as Chinese-Malaysian. Adil, on the other hand, while also growing up with exposure to grunge and metal in 1990s Penang, decided to focus on a close friend, who was one of the two lead guitarists in metal-hardcore band Nyiblorong4 during the late 1990s and early 2000s in the Klang Valley underground scene. Through Azmyl’s own personal narrative and our interviews with Malaysian underground practitioners from the period studied, we consider how the entire concept of race and ethnicity in examining Malaysia’s musical cultures needs to be thoroughly challenged. In doing so, we hope to add to the chorus of Malaysian scholarship on performing arts, literature, and popular culture that departs from outdated social science approaches to understanding the management of “inter-ethnic divisions, tensions, and conflicts” between fixed racial categories of “Malay,” “Chinese,” “Indian,” and “Other” communities within the country (Mandal 2004, 50, cf. Khoo 1995, xvii). Therefore, we align our ethnography with Mandal’s (2004) call for reading the “transethnic solidarities” of Malaysians, who “actively” engage in cultural life “without respect to ethnic background and . . . reject . . . primordial notions of ethnicity” (50). While race features prominently in the authoritarian structures and quotidian experiences of Malaysians, the “spirit” or “jiwa” of heavy metal and its influence/presence in the Malaysian underground scene provided (and continue to provide) a means for its practitioners/artists and participants/fans to loudly and defiantly challenge the limitations of racialized hegemonies and boundaries. Ultimately, this chapter hopes to relate a narrative about belonging that is not defined

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by state or ethnicity, but rather, cemented through experiences of solidarity found in Malaysia’s diverse underground music scene of the 1990s and early 2000s. While recognizing our privileged position as Malay-Malaysians in the racialized political structure of the country, we note potential criticism of obscuring the unequal power dynamics of ethnic exclusion and inclusion in this music scene. However, we believe that such social dynamics in Malaysian underground music are not limited to issues of ethnicity and (inter-)racial tensions. Further, the power dynamics of “Malay” vs. “Chinese” vs. “Indian” vs. “Others” also need to be read in terms of other lived social realities, in which “the cultural politics of language . . . intersect” with “ethnicity and class” (Mandal 2004, 51). What tensions and solidarities emerge when a Malay-speaking Malay musician enters a predominantly middle-class, Chinese-speaking underground scene in Malaysia? What reflections might a working-class Malay- and an English-speaking person of mixed Chinese and Indian ethnicity have on a racially and musically diverse underground music scene? While acting as intimate interlocutors, we present the reader with the voices of non-Malay artists from the scene, very rarely heard in Malaysian mainstream discourse about music. Thus, in highlighting these issues, we begin the following section, related through Azmyl’s personalized and reflexive ethnography of the Malaysian underground scene and its intersections with heavy metal during his formative years, growing up and musicking in the Klang Valley. Alongside his navigation of the Malaysian underground scene, biographies of musicians (Joe Kidd, Yong Yandsen, Boon) and the Chinese-Malaysia underground music collective Huang Huo5 are explored. In the final section, Adil interjects with a biography of Kenneth Soon, guitarist of Malaysian metal-hardcore group Nyiblorong, and gathers the former’s reflections on race and diversity in Malaysia’s underground music scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The following section begins with Azmyl’s auto-ethnography of the Malaysian metal and underground landscape. FORMATIVE INTERSECTIONS WITH METAL IN MALAYSIA As a teenager who entered high school right at the start of the 1990s, my first personal encounters with metal were through the ubiquitous recorded works of Metallica, whose 1991 so-called “Black Album” was inescapable for most Malaysian teens then—even those who were not into rock music. My first experience listening to a local metal band occurred in 1992 through a Malay friend who used to skip his class (he was younger by a year) and

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sometimes hang out at the back of my classroom during lessons. I sat at the very back of the room near a window while he squeezed himself to the side of the windowsill out of view from my teacher as he listened to his Walkman at full volume. One day that year, I had to hush him, as the music was so loud, I could hear it just sitting next to him. He was listening to the legendary Malaysian death metal band Suffercation’s album Day of Darkness (1992), which had just been released. The album’s cover, which featured a group of skeletal grim reapers carrying a coffin, intrigued me. I was also shocked to realize, as I was flipping through the cassette insert, that the band was not only local, but also from the northern rural and conservative state of Kelantan. As noted by Ferrarese (2016) and Zawawi (2016, 27, cf. Shirlene 1992, 58), ethnic Malay male youths (mostly working-class)—who listened to rock and heavy metal, had long unkempt hair, and dressed in tight jeans and T-shirts—were associated with the derogatory term mat rock (“rock dude”). My friend, his classmates, and I often felt more like outside observers of this demonized subculture, because we never really got into metal until much later, but could empathize with its appeal. I recall watching Jon Bon Jovi’s “Blaze of Glory” music video on television with his entire head and face blurred out (due to censorship)—such was the state of rock in Malaysia by the early 1990s. It came to a head on November 1, 1992—a dark moment in the history of Malaysian rock. Threatened with increasing censorship from the state, popular rock bands Search and Wings had their long locks cut on live television by the Minister of Information to avoid being banned from appearing and performing in national media (Juhaidi 1992). Fast-forward to college in 1995, when while sorting out my registration during the first few days, I was approached by a group of bookish, bespectacled ethnic Chinese teens my age who probably heard that I sang and played music. I was eager to look for any peers who played music then, and I had yet to meet anyone with similar musical inclinations (“college alternative” rock bands like R.E.M. and ’60s rock), let alone willing to step into a jamming studio. They were looking for a singer and asked me if I could sing Metallica (the Black Album, of course). I told them I could (lying), so they invited me to jam with them at a studio in Ampang (just on the edge of the capital city of Kuala Lumpur). They were very friendly and happy but also intense and direct. I thought maybe they too were new to this, and we would journey onward together. Maybe, I had finally found my bandmates. I was very wrong. As I entered the jamming studio, the quartet was blasting through “Enter Sandman” sans vocal, and the sight was jarring to my naïve self: four studious-looking Chinese nerds headbanging (sans long hair) in unison. Once

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they noticed me, they stopped and invited me to the microphone to go through “Enter Sandman” and a few other songs. Without a lyric sheet, I sang what I could and did my best James Hetfield impression—and I failed. The guitarist told me to take a seat, took over the microphone, and I sat through their jamming session in awe. When growing up in ethnically diverse Malaysia, one easily falls for racial stereotypes. My college experience in the suburbs of Subang Jaya, almost an hour’s commute from where I lived, was an eye-opener. These guys had probably already been jamming in high school, whereas I had walked into a jam session for the first time at the ripe old age of eighteen. Later, I discovered that the band had heard I played music from an ethnic Chinese classmate named Calvin, who played drums and was a metalhead too. But it was also easy to spot people who were into rock—we were identifiable by our rock T-shirts, and mine were mostly R.E.M. T-shirts. Calvin wore his Metallica and Megadeth T-shirts most of the time, and we eventually got a trio together with another older classmate named Azwan—an ethnic Malay (who didn’t wear rock T-shirts)—on bass, and my first band was formed. Although we didn’t last long as a unit and didn’t play any metal, I was introduced to the subterranean world of suburban jamming studios. Heavy Metal and the Malaysian Underground Scene (1990s to Early 2000s) The Malaysian underground circuit hit its peak sometime around 1996 to 1997, when the mainstreaming of alternative rock made it “acceptable” for bands to write and perform their own songs. The mad dash of underground bands being signed to labels mirrored what had transpired in the American Northwest in the early 1990s—grunge was very popular, and gigs were dominated by bands that took a leaf from the Eddie Vedder or Kurt Cobain songbook. Flannel was a popular weekend “uniform” in the Malaysian tropical heat. The underground’s bubbling to the surface was enabled by the DIY work ethic of the punk music subculture. A lot of the bands that emerged under the corporate “alternative rock” label were groups that had done their rounds in the underground scene, leading to the first breakout band, Old Automatic Garbage (OAG) in the mid-1990s with their hit song “60s TV” (Zulkifli 2016). Practically unseen among the general public, the metal subculture carried on with what it did best, with gigs and bands alongside the punk and emerging “indie” circuits. As per any metal scene, its subterranean nature is a given, with little desire to be co-opted into the larger music industry—although, in fact, a lot of the popular bands that were later known as rock kapak or rock leleh bands6 had metal roots. In addition, homegrown companies such as

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Valentine Sound Productions (VSP) were actively distributing local and international independently released heavy metal across the region in the 1990s and early 2000s (Wallach 2011, 99; cf. Baulch 2003, 201). METAL AS A MUSIC-MAKING GATEWAY The “specter” of metal emerges as an integral issue in this chapter as most underground Malaysian musicians acknowledge its seminal roots in creating a subculture among the many youths who migrated from out of state to the capital of Kuala Lumpur. Metal was a “gateway” for many underground musicians, regardless of whether or not they became “true” metalheads for life. Just as Azmyl’s introductory personal anecdote reveals, metal was the introduction for (mostly male)7 Malaysian youths in the 1990s to eventually discover other genres and participate in collective music-making and listening experiences. Without metal, jamming studios would not have come into existence in the 1980s, and these were important sites of contact in the underground scene in Kuala Lumpur. Since, unlike in most Western countries, there are no specialized music venues or music clubs that cater to underground music, most gigs happened at nightclubs or bars that rented out their space in the afternoons or evenings before their main business started later at night. What is also often lost in a lot of accounts of the underground music scene in the 1990s is the diversity in terms of race and ethnicity, which tends to compartmentalize these categories to specific genres. This is a notable trend since a lot of the studies on underground music scenes or subcultures, tend to focus on their relationship with the state and the various “crackdowns” that used to happen almost seasonally with ethnic Malay male youths at the center of the hegemonic concern (Azmyl 2010, 2015; Wallach 2011). The correlation and misguided assumptions about Malay ethnicity and heavy metal in Malaysia are best summarized by Wallach (2011, 90): The fact that . . . (Malaysian) metal’s largest contingent is composed of disgruntled, economically marginalized members of the dominant “racial” group resembles the situation in Western heavy metal scenes with regard to the stereotypical working-class affinities and the assumed “whiteness” of the music’s fan base. (It should be added, however, here and not in a footnote, that like all assumptions of ethnic homogeneity [especially where metal is concerned], the exclusive Malayness of metal is entirely illusory. Non-Malays have played and continue to play key roles in the regional scene despite their minority status . . . )

Thus, it is revealed here, through our own participatory experience and those of other underground scene participants, that ethnicity and race for Malaysian

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metal are easily dismantled, if not illusory. For example, Azmyl’s initially held stereotypes about “nerdy Chinese guys” were dismantled upon his attempt to jam with them. The sense of belonging—read as “transethnic solidarity” in Mandal’s (2004) view on the dynamics of Malaysian ethnicity—is a central part of the appeal of the underground and subcultural scenes and, aside from the simplified ethnic and music genre lines drawn by detached observers (new entrants like Azmyl at the time) and the state, this sense of belonging is widely misunderstood. In major city centers of both Peninsular and East Malaysia, diversity is a given, and the racial polemic, which is more prevalent now, was less of an issue for most youths in the 1990s. There was a genuine sense of belonging and solidarity if one was middle-class, urban, and played in bands or even checked out gigs happening around town. Prior to the 1997 Asian economic crisis, the relative economic stability of the Mahathir era8 saw youths looking to the Global North (read the West) for their musical direction—both as fledgling band musicians and popular culture consumers—and aligning with Western (read American and British) perspectives on what connoted youth cultural and subcultural practices and identities. The music might not have been wholly original, exotic, or even groundbreaking, but what the urban and suburban spaces elicited was an invitation to collective participation—something Azmyl never experienced until college, coming from the relatively quiet and conservative university and factory township of Bangi, south of the capital city, where nothing much happened culturally. NAVIGATING THE MALAYSIAN UNDERGROUND Writing about the Malaysian underground scene means navigating the emotional minefield of those who were involved. Archivist and legendary punk rock figure Joe Kidd personally related his own frustrations with an old friend who, as a student, was a housemate in Australia with members of veteran Malaysian thrash metal band Cromok—whose 1992 demo released by VSP was pivotal to the thrash metal scene. His friend was reluctant to talk on the record about his experiences during Cromok’s seminal years. To Joe—an ethnic Malay originally from the mostly rural maritime East Coast state of Terengganu—Kuala Lumpur was a mecca for working-class youth who wanted to escape and participate in emerging youth cultures and subcultures sorely lacking in their hometowns. In his punk community of Terengganu during 1979–1980, there was no opportunity to play original music—so jamming studios in Kuala Lumpur offered refuge to those who were musically inclined. By the mid-1980s, growing from the fertile soil of the underground, these studios proliferated, with mostly metal bands

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frequenting and creating the demand for jam studios, whose owners were ethnically diverse (Kidd 2021). With seminal metal bands like Black Fire and Punisher emerging from the northern states of Perlis and Kedah, the “uncommercial” underground scene emerged from 1987 onward, predating Joe’s arrival in Kuala Lumpur in late 1988, a move prompted by his discovery of the scene in the capital city. They were “uncommercial” because a lot of metal bands were slowly co-opted by record labels and were required to sing rock ballads for which they were popularly known. Central Market Kuala Lumpur (also known locally as Pasar Seni, aka Art Market)—a former Art Deco–styled wet market that was repurposed as a commercial and cultural mall—was the center of this new community, where artistically inclined people hung out. It was also the public transport and busking hub of the time. According to Joe, in “the underground scene there were a few non-Malays, it’s always open—it’s always been inclusive, was never racist. The KL scene was made up of people from outside of KL—early adherents were working class.” I experienced the two different sides of the Malaysian urban education system. I went to public school (now called “national schools”) during my primary education in Kuala Lumpur and private secondary school (still new in the 1990s) in the Chinese-majority suburb of Cheras. I experienced a shift from being an ethnic majority during my primary years (my classmates were all ethnic Malays) to being a minority (among a majority of classmates who were ethnic Chinese). This formative experience informed my encounter with key figures of the Chinese underground scene, which happened sometime in the year 2000. I had just returned from my tertiary studies in Perth, Australia, where I also began my vocation as a busker in the city (my first real “paying” gig). I amassed a body of self-produced lo-fi cassette albums for myself. I was still finding my feet in the circuit (although I had somewhat established a name with my cassettes because Joe Kidd had written about my debut ‘folk’ EP on his online zine Blasting Concepts in 1998 when online music cultures were still limited to email lists and a few Geocities websites). As the spaces of music gigs were often shared, my experimental improv-rock band, The Maharajah Commission, would often play gigs alongside grindcore and metal bands at the then-usual space of Actor’s Studio Black Box, underneath Dataran Merdeka (Independence Square) located at the historical heart of Kuala Lumpur across from the iconic Sultan Abdul Samad Building. We were introduced via Joe Kidd to Yong Yandsen, whom I came to know first as a musician who founded a label called Monkey Records with a studio in Cheras. Meeting Yandsen was like meeting an old classmate from my high school years. Since I spent most of my formative years with mostly ethnic Chinese (and ethnic Indian) classmates, I may have had a different experience of diversity from most of my peers from my hometown (I traveled at least an

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hour to secondary school daily). I did not perceive the Chinese underground scene as something separate from the larger underground scene at the time, although, through my practice and conversations, I became more aware of its history and became particularly curious about Yandsen. YONG YANDSEN AND MOXUAN A year older than me, born in 1976 and raised in the port city of Klang before moving to Cheras as a teenager, Yandsen credited his metalhead older brother with opening him up musically (October 3, 2021): My older brother studied in Perth, Australia, in the 1990s. So, he came back with some crazy CDs and cassettes. He brought back Carcass cassettes, and he was wearing Carcass T-shirts every day. He had long hair, wore jeans and denim jackets, but he never played music (instruments). I think he even went to a Carcass concert when he was overseas. Then he introduced me (to) some other heavy metal music and bands, so that’s all. That’s how I started to get into metal. You know, at that time, I think he’s cool, so cool, man. Like he was so different from other people.

Playing in bands, however, was out-of-bounds for most Chinese parents. Yandsen elaborated: I think it’s rare. At that time, in most Chinese traditional families, you were not supposed to play music, you don’t talk about rock and roll, pop music. You are not supposed to play pop music, just play classical music (and) you’re OK. Even in my family. So, my brother was a rebel, so it started with him. He was like a “freak” to the family. Luckily, he started that, cleared the path for me, and I just walked smoothly. My younger brother, Yong Yen Nean, just went to a rehearsal one day with me, and he picked (up) playing the drums, liked it, and became Moxuan’s drummer. He is a more quiet person. Only both of us, the middle brothers (of four), play music.

Moxuan—along with the quartet Chong Yang—were the two key bands from the Chinese underground scene that were brought to the fore by the Huang Huo collective. Chong Yang was headed by Keong, who played bass and was the founder of the Huang Huo collective. Huang Huo was a collective of like-minded Chinese-Malaysian artists that had its headquarters in a terrace house in Cheras, which served as a cultural hub for gatherings, discussions, and film screenings. Bands from the Huang Huo collective sang exclusively in Chinese—mostly Mandarin, some also in Cantonese. While

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often described as a post-punk band, Moxuan’s roots, according to Yandsen, were metal. By the time I met Yandsen in 2000, Huang Huo had ceased to exist, and the remaining members of the bands and collective split into two—Mak Wai Hoo founded Soundscapes Records while Yandsen and Tham Kar Mun (formerly the guitarist of Chong Yang) were putting together a compilation of like-minded bands through their new label Monkey Records. Although most of the bands were from the Chinese underground scene, the compilation also featured my band, The Maharajah Commission (the label would also eventually produce and co-release our only full-length album in 2003) and Joe Kidd’s project, The Shitworkers. I would only learn later that Yandsen and Tham were key figures in the Chinese underground scene; at the time I had no clue. Moxuan was easily the most abrasive and visceral band of the lot. Yandsen explains: We started by playing metal—the band members were loosely made up of friends. The name in Mandarin: “Mo-” means like a devil, or something demon(ic) or devil(ish), “-xuan” means freedom. At that time, our influences were nü metal bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit . . .

Although now active as a free jazz saxophonist and an important figure in the small but functioning improvisation and experimental music scene in Kuala Lumpur, Yandsen personally felt it was metal that made him more open-minded to different music and played a formative role in his musical journey: I think it is the “fire” you find in metal—the direct “fire” for me. So, it opens up to other music like jazz music. I could not listen to jazz just like that because it’s not our culture. You need some other entry or way in for the music.

The band’s first drummer, Boon, is also Yandsen’s friend from the city of Klang9—they met at the popular Black Widow jamming studio (which also had a branch in the city of Petaling Jaya west of Kuala Lumpur). He would eventually play drums for Chong Yang as Yandsen’s younger brother took over the drums in Moxuan. Two years younger than Yandsen, Boon described how his band formed organically around jamming sessions with a revolving roster of bassists (before settling in with Yandsen’s good friend Chen Kang in their final stable line-up) and their shared love of metal. He recalled: I got into heavy metal when someone, I still can’t recall who exactly, passed me Metallica’s Black Album cassette to me. I don’t know why but it just connected when I heard the Black Album the first time. Maybe we were playing like too much Nirvana and Pearl Jam, you know? When we had started jamming, we

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played the songs from that album a lot. Then we got into Korn, and we tried to copy and play like Korn, nü metal style.

Like Yandsen, Boon’s only other familial connection to music was another relative who played electric guitar but was more interested in being a professional musician than indulging in underground or metal music. He noted that his relative “was more interested in Yngwie Malmsteen, that kind of stuff. So, we never really connected musically, and he never got interested with what Huang Huo was doing.” What made Moxuan distinct eventually was Yandsen’s desire to compose and perform his nü-metal-influenced original songs in Mandarin. According to Boon: He (Yandsen) wanted to write simple lyrics in Mandarin—our handle of formal Mandarin was basic—and when we played live, I didn’t really understand what he was singing, but it didn’t really matter because you can sense from his energy and the way he jumped around and screamed/sang, it was political.

Their DIY zeal—while maybe not apparent to themselves then—was already present, as the first few gigs the band played in Klang were organized by themselves, the first at a roller-skating rink which, according to Boon, had a small, but diverse set of attendees made of friends and curious youths. Their association with Huang Huo began when they both drove up to Penang to attend what most attribute as the first-ever Chinese underground concert at KOMTAR (Kompleks Tun Abdul Razak). Yandsen recalls: I had heard about the collective from friends, so I went to their first concert at George Town, Penang. It was . . . (a) big (deal) to be (in a) concert. All Chinese bands. Heavy metal rock and roll, a lot of Penang bands, I think. I made contact, so I joined as a member. I can’t remember details, but I met Keong and asked for a gig.

According to Boon, the bands at this first gig and subsequent Huang Huo gigs were predominantly metal bands or metal-inspired rock bands: One of the bands called Arcadian reminded me of Iron Maiden. That time most of the bands were metal, except Chong Yang, which was known as the “weird” band, sounding like Sonic Youth or Blur. At that moment, all the bands played metal, including Moxuan.

Joe Kidd’s first experience of attending a Huang Huo show was memorable:

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I was totally fixated when I saw Moxuan for the first time because, musically, they were a bit complicated, which I love. That’s why I say it’s post-punk rock because I like experimenting with other sounds and stuff. I do think that Yandsen had that nü metal basics, because I can see that in the band. I personally don’t like nü metal much, but that could be a good gateway for a lot of people. Yeah, so there is that tendency or so, I think there’s bits of like Rage Against the Machine (RATM). Things like that. Even RATM is still kind of post—to what happened because they were attempting to do something different.

The metal roots of the Chinese underground scene could be traced to its own intra-community response to a phenomenon that was popular in the Chinese community: Canto(nese) rock.10 At least in the Malaysian popular media, “Cantorock” would be the most visible genre for the ethnic Chinese community, aside from popular actor-singers from Hong Kong who dominated mainstream Malaysian-Chinese popular culture. Cantonese is also the most widely spoken dialect in the Klang Valley amongt ethnic Chinese Malaysians, although Mandarin remains the formal language taught in Chinese-language schools. The popularity of Hong Kong films and film stars also made the association concrete with other ethnic groups. Sometime in 1995, Polygram Records and beer company Guinness-Anchor came together to collaborate as a platform by organizing a Cantorock band national competition. As alcohol sponsorship was discouraged in the predominantly Malay-Muslim mainstream rock music market, this collaboration’s commercial viability was premised on the popularity of Hong Kong bands like Beyond in the ethnic Chinese community. Most of the bands that became active in the Chinese underground scene were formed just to take part in this competition. Music journalist Daryl Goh remembers: It was money-driven. I couldn’t tell you a single Cantonese- or Mandarin-speaking local band. I didn’t know any. Suddenly there was a nationwide competition. Bands like Baby Amps and Alienoid (the eventual winner) and all that were kind of like the popular ones. Metal or alternative rock—and more on the showmanship-type kind of bands, not your heart-on-your-sleeve Nirvana type. I wasn’t sure if these bands were actually already functioning before the Cantorock thing or that the competition was this open call that made everybody come together. I would think these bands were maybe jamming, but they didn’t have a scene. And then they were all put together on this bandwagon that toured all the pubs in Penang, Johor, KL, and the competition itself. It probably lasted maybe two or three years, with, I think, a year later from the Cantorock competitions or the Polygram record deals. Only Polygram released the CDs—no other record labels did. Usually, at that time, major labels copy each other in riding what was popular, but this was, I think, a very bold move by Polygram. You would

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think if something at least was huge, there will be copycat labels, but the Canto Rock thing really kind of tapered off after a few years. Some of the bands that eventually became Huang Huo bands did also win some of the categories and came in third.

Mak Wai Hoo co-wrote many of the Huang Huo collective’s articles in their weekly column in the local Sin Chew Jit Poh newspaper, played drums in KRMA for a short while, and later founded Soundscapes Records. He noted this “tapering off” era as the starting point of the Chinese underground scene (Mak 2013, 274–75): It was early 1997, the post-Canto Rock era, after the commercially sponsored event was dissolved, local Chinese rock bands were left with no avenue to perform. Many were forced to disband or become pub cover band(s). The situation clearly indicated that most of the bands formed during that period were only eyeing the lucrative cash prizes and recording deal offered by the competition. It’s all about fame and glory. And the irony is, many were seen adopting the musical style of Hong Kong band Beyond, in order to qualify [for] the competition. In December 1997, the scene was given a new glimpse of hope by Huang Huo, the label that introduced the spirit of DIY culture and underground music to the Chinese community. From there on, Malaysian Chinese underground music found its path and never looked back.

Sometime around the years 1996 or 1997, on the parallel Malaysian underground landscape, Joe Kidd’s punk band Carburetor Dung played a show in Taiping in the northwest Peninsula Malaysia state of Perak (before his eventual knowledge of the Huang Huo collective). He recalls how the first day (of the gig) featured all metal bands and the second day was all punk bands, and we played with Subculture and also along with my old friend, who was a part of local punk band Karatz, it was their homecoming show. It was a good show. And of course, all these out of KL shows, apart from Penang, are mainly Malay bands, you know, you don’t see bands that feature other races. So anyway, we’re playing in Taiping, and while we were playing, there was a bunch of kids, Chinese kids, they were kind of like trying to mosh in the middle and on the side.

Curious about this uncommon sight in a small-town underground gig back then, he asked the kids after the show ended, “‘Do you guys have a band?’ and they replied, ‘Yeah, we’ve got a band.’ So, I asked, Why didn’t they play tonight? (To which they replied) ‘They won’t call us, you know,’ and it was then (that) I realized the difference between Kuala Lumpur and Penang, you know, like, other places, they were kind of like being ignored although they were playing the same music.” Thus, while there was a degree of inclusivity

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present at this gig, there was latent exclusion revealed by these non-Malay metal fan-musicians. Joe adds: I think there were two or three jamming studios in Taiping, so they have been jamming. But they will not (be) considered as part of the scene somehow, which is really sad. But they came to the show, and they enjoyed themselves, so it just felt like they were being alienated. And you know, I mean, which for me is very sad because you know in KL if there’s a band like that then usually you will be called to play in a gig if I organized it. And for me, I never invited any of the Huang Huo bands before because I didn’t know them at that time until I met them at a Cheras show they organized sometime in 1998.

Around the same time, things were starting to happen in George Town, Penang. Mak (2013, 274) noted: It all started with a self-financed gig at Komtar, Penang, recognized as the first Chinese underground gig in Malaysia. “Huang Huo” (literally meaning “Yellow Fire”) . . . (was) actually the title of the gig, organized by the members of Chong Yang, who later become the founding members of Huang Huo Productions. In a typical underground gig style, the show is done without much financial support and publicity. The production team was formed by band members who, at the same time, are responsible for setting up the show. I still remember those days when we travel in a small car that (was) loaded with equipment, traveling from one venue to another, playing to a small crowd that don’t even know who we are. But we still enjoy it. It means we’re growing and pushing the boundaries of our own ideologies. The gig at Komtar was a huge success! After that, Huang Huo Productions started to take shape as an indie label. In 1998, the first compilation album named “Extremist Crap” (“Ji Duan Fen Zi”) was released, highlighting bands like Moxuan and Chong Yang. The two bands led the charge, followed closely behind by bands such as KRMA, Arcadian, Jiu Tian, and Dai Shop. Huang Huo went on to organize gigs at various cities, such as Penang, Ipoh, JB [Johor Bahru], Malacca, and Klang. The scene is a little different at that point. It has this strong sense of unity and friendship that holds everyone together.

Yandsen recalls the buzz of activity once in the Huang Huo fold: A lot [of] gigging. At least once a month, or twice. I think we played at the Black Box at Actor’s Studio Dataran Merdeka and Petaling Jaya at Colors Pub (both popular underground gig venues at the time). Others were smaller clubs in Johor or Penang. We played out of KL shows a lot. There was a lot of people because there was a fanzine, and the fanzine will have all the info for the gigs. They were very good at planning, very organized. They are very good at that. I think 80 percent or 70 percent of the audience was Chinese. The shows were ticketed. Huang Huo was very good at organizing their gigs—they accepted good bands,

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they didn’t just accept the same or one genre. I think without Huang Huo, the Chinese scene wouldn’t have happened because there were a lot of bands during the time—one gig, my band would play, but the following one, my band wouldn’t, we took turns. Bands like KRMA and other bands played. They gave every band a chance to play.

Picking up from the post–Canto Rock Polygram Records and Guinness-Anchor organized competitions that fizzled out by 1998, Huang Huo aimed its cannons toward the mainstream Chinese-language music industry. The collective was driven to open the minds of the ethnic Chinese community—specifically its youth—to different forms and genres of music and pushed for originality, both in composition and ideological stance. This focused sense of curation was further extended with a presence in the local Chinese-language press as the collective was given a column space in Sin Chew Jit Poh which created some heated responses from the community itself with its ideological tone and radical stance uncommon in the community at the time, but which was meant to challenge and enlighten the ethnic Chinese status quo. Mak (2013, 275–76) recalls: In that same year (1998), Huang Huo was given the opportunity to start its own music column in one of the major dailies. The very first article entitled “Destroy Local Produced Music” was published, and its critical content cause considerable controversy within the Chinese community, mainly the mainstream music market. In the ’70s and ’80s, Chinese music market was dominated by cover songs from Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as classics and oldies. There weren’t many original songs, because recording labels are not interested and same goes to the music listeners. In order to promote originality, a group of musicians started a movement that emphasize on “writing original songs” to encourage young musicians to pick up guitars and start composing their own music. With the new concept, the group has succeeded in injecting a breath of fresh air to the Chinese music market. . . . As a result, many of them started forming their own musical ensembles and start releasing their own materials. And the words “Support Local Produced Music” would later become a slogan or to be more precise—a product tagline. It was widely used by Chinese artists as a promo-tool to gather support from the media and consumers, sometimes to the point that music becomes secondary to their hype. Furthermore, the lack of creativity and diversity in their works were very obvious. The same approach being used over and over again, ideas were being duplicated from Taiwan and Hong Kong pop music, which leads to stagnation. The article then caused a heated debate between Huang Huo and some of the core members of the above-mentioned group. Huang Huo insisted that music should be perceived as an art form, and its aesthetic qualities must be preserved.

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By this point, the music of the bands on the second compilation by Huang Huo began to diversify genre-wise, moving away from the more subcultural elements of the first compilation and aiming for a greater goal that went beyond just music at the risk of having the collective isolate itself from the broader underground scene due to its bands and musicians composing in Mandarin and Cantonese, as opposed to English, which was still the norm in the underground and emerging indie rock scene (the Malay language only became common in the 2000s). Moxuan, still the most metal-influenced band in the fold, was nevertheless at the forefront, along with the more indie-rock inclined Chong Yang, as the poster bands for the collective. It was these two bands that eventually toured China, which in all likelihood ended the collective prematurely, as documented in 2005’s Surviving Beijing film, directed by Lam Li, one of the key female members of the collective who also contributed to their columns. It was during this doomed tour that Yandsen became disenchanted with the music Moxuan was making. He recalls: I think when we were touring in China, I felt quite sad because at the gigs we played, ten local Chinese bands would be on the bill, and all were playing metal, and it felt so boring. And most of the songs feel like the same songs, and it was really tiring. That was the impact of the tour musically.

Joe Kidd added: So, when I see Huang Huo I realized that, I believe, instead of being ignored, they just did their own thing. And that’s what they did. And, and that’s great, me being me, I started to call them (the Huang Huo bands) to play the usual local underground gigs starting with The Actor’s Black Box underneath Dataran Merdeka and several other shows, then I think there’s another few shows. I can’t remember, but after a while, Moxuan split up, and Yandsen started doing his own thing.

KENNETH SOON AND NYIBLORONG Born in 1982 and growing up mostly in Kuala Lumpur, Kenneth Soon graduated with his secondary school examinations (Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia, trans. Malaysian Certificate of Education) from the prestigious Royal Military College in Malaysia. However, due to a combination of the late-1990s Asian Economic Crisis and affirmative action quota policy in Malaysia that prioritized citizens who were officially Malay or from other (officially recognized) indigenous communities (bumiputera) to receive government aid, Kenneth was denied the opportunity to pursue his first choice of a medical degree under a government scholarship program. Upon completing his

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pre-university studies and disheartened by being unable to pursue a medical degree on scholarship (despite his hard work achieving academic excellence), he proceeded to earn a wage as a shipping port laborer in the port city of Klang. In the following years, he unexpectedly found an opportunity to study marine engineering (under a Malaysian government-sponsored program) and proceeded to advance a storied international career toward his current qualification of chief engineer. During his years as a pre-university student, port laborer, and marine engineering student, he was also a guitarist for the hardcore-metal band Nyiblorong, which was active in the Kuala Lumpur underground scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Aside from Kenneth (guitar), the band consisted of Wan Hazril (bass), Muzammil (drums), Mohd Nazir (vocals), Shahrul Azlan (vocals), and Nurazri (guitar). Kenneth was the only non-Malay member of the band—he is of mixed Chinese and Indian parentage and speaks, reads, and writes Malay and English fluently, with varying conversational proficiency in other languages such as Hakka and Tamil. Nyiblorong released a self-published, four-track EP titled Suffocated by Passion (1999), and at their peak, released five tracks on a regional compilation titled Blast from the Far East #1, released by Life on The Edge Records in 2004. In an interview with Adil, Kenneth (November 29, 2021) related the sense of purpose that drove his band and peers in the Malaysian underground scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Gigs were flourishing across the Klang Valley at the time, and young audiences would gain entry with a modest cover charge of RM 5.00 (USD 1.70): [T]he thing is, musicians back then, they had like this honor they had to keep, like, we’ll make your five bucks worth it . . . you know? So even if we get paid peanuts, or if we don’t get paid at all, it doesn’t affect how much we put into the show. Why? Because we genuinely enjoy playing it. We genuinely do.

He also added, in response to the earlier contextualization of the interview— in which Adil mentioned how this study was interested in understanding how Chinese-Malaysian identity featured in the experience of being a metal artist—that “the context of” such a “question is very hard to answer” as he “never felt like a Chinese” and further, “never ever felt any racial tension” in the underground community. In recalling the energy of underground gigs in late 1990s Kuala Lumpur, Soon considered the energy and atmosphere that starkly contrast with live music in present-day Malaysia. Kenneth revealed that, unlike now, he never or hardly ever drank alcohol (also in stark contrast to the present day). Adil joked that “now you have to drink” to enjoy the music, to which he replied:

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(Live music in Malaysia today is) not bad. It’s just that . . . you tell me, as a musician. When was the last time you played and you got an adrenaline rush? I used to have it. You know, I bought like a twenty-foot guitar cable, so (that) I could jump down into the crowd. You don’t get that nowadays. Yeah, I mean, even with the underground gig, compare that to an event like Rock the World (in recent times). It’s like that underground gig (from the late 1990s) is still wilder. . . . There’s some sort of rawness and some sort of honesty to it. And that’s why I’m genuinely saying . . . maybe it didn’t hit me (then). But there was zero racial tension back then. It just did not exist. In fact, it was impossible to exist. I mean, yeah, there are fights and everything. But that’s just because you have a full place of people that are testosterone-fueled, hyped up full of adrenaline. Nobody ever died. Nobody ever ended up in a hospital. Maybe your pride gets scared a bit. Yeah, recover later on in the moshpit, lah. You know, it’s like (if you) want to settle anything, go to the moshpit, punch anyone you want. Nobody’s gonna take it personally.

In response to a question about the diversity of the underground scene and whether there was a wildness about it, Kenneth opined: You know, it wasn’t really, I wouldn’t say . . . (the scene) was like super wild or super violent, but you got a bunch of kids, you know, under a lot of pressure from their parents to succeed in life. They’re also struggling with their identity. You know, they had Mohawk(s), they had colored hair, you know, new influences. It was the time where they were first exposed to music and . . . (they were) very heavily influenced by it. You know? You got people wearing punk clothing, skinheads, you got everything. Do they really understand what it is? They don’t, they are looking for their identity, they are looking for somewhere they can belong, and they are looking for somewhere they can belong because obviously, whatever life they had before this, they did not belong. You know, so, they came there. And there was no violence or anything, but there’s a lot of pent-up frustration that they need to release somewhere. So I would, I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but I would like to believe that they would go in there pent-up and they would leave a lot calmer.

Kenneth thus recalled a diversity of styles (fashion and music) that converged in the Malaysian underground scene at the time. He revealed that the scene provided a sense of community that was formed out of a need to belong among a varied group of people, somewhat united in their search for identity amidst societal pressures that were forcing them to conform to unrelatable expectations. Thus, in response to Adil’s queries about race, Kenneth’s personal experience is reflective of an underground scene that consisted of a community of frustrated, young, (mostly) male Malaysians where racial difference was not an issue. Ultimately, there was an atmosphere of solidarity

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that focused on creative originality and authentic expression, overlooking any artificial disparities in ethnonational terms. CONCLUSION The ethnography presented here of Malaysia’s metal and underground scene of the 1990s to early 2000s seeks to offer an alternative narrative to the hegemonic discourse of race relations in Malaysia. Instead of “race relations,” what we found was a scene greatly defined by human relationships that are structurally and culturally tied to ambivalent experiences of ethnic difference. Such notions of ethnic differentiation represent political-cultural “baggage” that we ourselves, as authors, had initially submitted to in our initial inquiry. However, as we delved deeper into our subject and connected more with both our individual experiences and personal relationships (such as with the interlocutors interviewed), we realized that our initial perspectives and expectations (in line with the spirit of metal and this book) needed to be aggressively challenged and upended. Hence, the stories and informal genealogy of Malaysian metal and its underground scene have revealed an authentic narrative about finding a sense of belonging in the face of everyday racial-cultural struggles experienced by Malaysian youth. The sense of belonging uncovered resonates with Wallach’s (2011) notion of “scenic infrastructures” found in heavy metal communities across the Malay world, and Mandal’s (2004, 50) idea of “transethnic solidarities . . . whereby Malaysians actively participate in society without respect to ethnic background and by rejecting primordial notions of ethnicity.” Upon reflecting on the complex interconnections found in Malaysia’s underground music past, we believe that a notion of scenic solidarities shaped the experiences of artists and participants of the Malaysian underground, cemented together by the defiant, frustration-releasing power and spirit of heavy metal and an accepting community of like-minded “deviants” who had found a place— beyond the restrictive expectations of their biological families and the nation-state—where they truly belonged. REFERENCES Adil Johan. Cosmopolitan Intimacies: Malay Film Music from the Independence Era. Singapore: NUS Press, 2018. Adil Johan, and Mayco A. Santaella, eds. Made in Nusantara, Global Studies in Popular Music. New York: Routledge, 2021.

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Amalina Timbang, and Zawawi Ibrahim. “Malay Metalheads: Situating Metal Music Culture in Brunei.” Situations 10, no. (20172): 7–26. Azmyl Md Yusof. “Facing the Music: Music Subcultures and ‘Morality’ in Malaysia.” In Media, Culture and Society in Malaysia, edited by Seng Guan Yeoh, 179–96. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010. Azmyl Yusof. “Panic in the Peninsula: A Case Study on the Religious Model Reporting Style and Mediated Moral Panics in Malaysia.” In MediaAsia 2015 Conference: The Asian Conference on Media & Mass Communication Official Conference Proceedings, November 12–15, 2015, Kobe, Japan. IAFOR, Nagoya, 209–19. https:​//​papers​.iafor​.org​/proceedings​/conference​-proceedings​-mediasia2015​/ Baulch, Emma. “Gesturing Elsewhere: The Identity Politics of the Balinese Death/ Thrash Metal Scene.” Popular Music 22, no. 2 (2003): 195–215. Ferrarese, Marco. “Kami Semua Headbangers: Heavy Metal as Multiethnic Community Builder in Penang Island, Malaysia.” International Journal of Community Music 7, no. 2 (2014): 153–71. ———.“ Southeast Asian Glamour: The Strange Case of Rock Kapak in Malaysia.” In Global Glam and Popular Music: Style and Spectacle from the 1970s to the 2000s, edited by Ian Chapman and Henry Johnson, 232–44. London: Routledge, 2016. Fu, Sin Yin Kelly, and Khai Khiun Liew. “Deghettoizing Subcultures: The Multicultural Evolution of Mat Rock in Singapore.” In Race and Multiculturalism in Singapore, edited by P.S. Goh, Matilda Gabrielpillai, and Phillip Holden, 157– 72. Singapore: Routledge, 2009. Hirschman, Charles. “The Meaning and Measurement of Ethnicity in Malaysia: An Analysis of Census Classifications.” The Journal of Asian Studies 46, no. 3 (1987): 555–82. Imanjaya, Ekky. “The Other Side of Indonesia: New Order’s Indonesian Exploitation Cinema as Cult Films.” Colloquy: Text, Theory, Critique 18 (2009): 143–59. Juhaidi, Yean Abdullah. “Members of Rock Group Search and Wings Agree to Cut Hair.” Sunday Times. September 20, 1992. Khoo, Boo Teik. Paradoxes of Mahathirism: An Intellectual Biography of Mahathir Mohamad. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Lee, Joanna Ching-Yun. “Cantopop Songs on Emigration from Hong Kong.” Yearbook for Traditional Music 24 (1992): 14–23. Liew, Khai Khiun, and Kelly Fu. “Conjuring the Tropical Spectres: Heavy Metal, Cultural Politics in Singapore and Malaysia.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 7, no. 1 (2006): 99–112. Lockard, Craig A. Dance of Life: Popular Music and Politics in Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998. Mak, Wai Hoo. “Huang Ho!” In #ProjekBuku: Collected Writings from Malaysians in Music, edited by Adly Shairi Ramly, 273–82. thewknd.com, 2013. Mandal, Sumit. “Transethnic Solidarities, Racialisation and Social Equality.” In State of Malaysia: Ethnicity, Equity and Reform, edited by Edmund Terence Gomez, 49–78. London: Routledge Curzon, 2004. Metzer, David. “The Power Ballad.” Popular Music 31, no. 3 (2012): 437–59.

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Scott, Margaret. “Kutu Culture Clash: Punk Rockers Emerge as the Flipside of the Islamic Revival.” Far Eastern Economic Review, 1989. Shirlene, Noordin. “Mat Rockers: An Insight into a Malay Youth Subculture.” Honours Dissertation, National University of Singapore, 1992. Tan, Sooi Beng. “The Performing Arts in Malaysia: State and Society.” Asian Music 21, no. 1 (1989/1990): 137–71. Wain, Barry. Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Wallach, Jeremy. “Unleashed in the East: Metal Music, Masculinity, and ‘Malayness’ in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.” In Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music Around the World, edited by J. Wallach, H.M. Berger, and P.D. Greene, 86–107. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Wessing, Robert. “Homo Narrans in East Java: Regional Myths and Local Concerns.” Asian Folklore Studies 65, no. 1 (2006): 45–68. ———. “Dislodged Tales: Javanese Goddesses and Spirits on the Silver Screen.” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 163, no. 4 (2007): 529–55. Zawawi, Ibrahim. “Disciplining Rock and Identity Contestations: Hybridization, Islam and New Musical Genres in Contemporary Malaysian Popular Music.” Situations 9, no. 1 (2016): 21–47. Zulkifli, M. How 60’s TV Changed the 90s: The OAG Story. Petaling Jaya: Merpati Jingga, 2016.

INTERVIEWS CONDUCTED Goh, Daryl. Interview by Azmyl Yusof. Zoom Video Call. Malaysia. November 10, 2021 Joe Kidd. Interview by Azmyl Yusof. Zoom Video Call. Malaysia. November 8, 2021 Mak, Wai Hoo. Interview by Azmyl Yusof. Zoom Video Call. Malaysia. November 5, 2021 Soon, Kenneth. Interview by Adil Johan. In Person, Damansara Perdana, Selangor, Malaysia. November 29, 2021 Tan Kok Hui @ Boon. Interview by Azmyl Yusof. Zoom Video Call. Malaysia. November 12, 2021 Yong, Yandsen. Interview by Azmyl Yusof. Zoom Video Call. Malaysia. October 3, 2021

NOTES 1. For observations on rock and heavy metal subcultures in Malaysia since the 1980s, see Scott 1989; Tan 1989/1990; Lockard 1998, 256–258; Azmyl 2010; Ferrarese 2014, 2016; Zawawi 2016; Adil and Santaella 2021, 14–16.

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2. Adil (2018, xx–xxi) provides a detailed reflection of this in a study on Malay film music of the 1950s and 1960s. Identification with race and ethnicity in contemporary Malaysia is associated with a postcolonial legacy of racial classifications in census data initially collected by the British colonial administration (Hirschman 1987). 3. The authors and their friends interviewed here are named according to varying conventions in naming. Azmyl Yusof and Adil Johan are Malay patronymic names, thus, they are referred throughout the chapter as “Azmyl” and “Adil.” Chinese names list surnames first. However, due to the personal nature of our interactions, we felt it best to represent our interviewees by their first names (“Yandsen” for Yong Yandsen; Kenneth for “Kenneth” Soon) and their chosen names (“Joe Kidd” and “Boon”). 4. ‘Nyi Blorong is a mythical Javanese goddess of the coast associated with sensuality, wealth, and snakes; popularized by actress Suzzanna in the film Nyi Blorong, Puteri [Princess of] Nyi Roro Kidul (1982, dir. Sisworo Gautama Putra) (Wessing 2007, 534–37; also see Wessing 2006 and Imanjaya 2009, 148). 5. Please note the discrepancy between the spelling for “Huang Huo.” In the cited book chapter title it is spelled as “Huang Ho”; however the author proceeds to refer to the music collective with the spelling “Huang Huo” (Mak 2013). 6. The terms are translated as “axe rock” and “melting rock,” modeled after glam rock/ heavy metal bands that were known for their “power ballads,” such as Scorpions, Warrant, Def Leppard, and Guns N’ Roses, who were especially popular in Malaysia (Metzer 2012, 448; Ferrarese 2016, 236). 7. It appears through this narrative that males predominated in the heavy metal and underground scene. However, the scene did include female fans and musicians as well. There is a glaring paucity of representation of women (and LGBTQ+ people) in studies on Malaysian rock and metal. In the absence of this, the authors would like to direct readers to metal-inspired all-woman group rock group Candy from Sarawak, East Malaysia; the virtuosic rock trio, Tempered Mental, led by vocalist-bassist Melina William; punk group Tingtong Ketz led by transgender visual artist-vocalistguitarist, Shika Corona; and Malaysia’s first officially LGBTQ+ group, Shh . . . Diam! This chapter focuses on the dynamics of race and ethnicity in the underground scene, however there is further need for a dedicated study on gender and sexuality in Malaysian underground music. 8. Malaysia’s prime minister from 1981 to 2003, Mahathir Mohamad was associated with a period of rapid economic development and prosperity while weathering the Asian financial crisis of 1997. See Khoo (1995) and Wain (2009) for detailed political biographies of Mahathir. 9. Klang, also known as “Port Klang” is the coastal port city, located 40 kilometers east of Kuala Lumpur. 10. Lee (1992, 14) notes the initial use of the term by “Billboard correspondent Hans Ebert in 1974.” She notes the genre’s stylistic relation “to American and British rock of that period . . . characterized by electric guitars and heavy percussion” (Lee 1992, 14). However, the style demurred in its abrasiveness, aligning more with “British-American soft-rock” and took on the term “Cantopop” instead, past “the 1980s” (Lee 1992, 14).

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Ancient, Evil, and African Heavy Metal and Conflict in East Africa Edward Banchs1

The realities that Africans have had to endure since the era of independence, which began in the late 1950s and found its stride in the 1960s, are striking in relation to their counterparts in the Global North. Whereas nations in the Global North had the opportunity to build their borders and their identities through agreements, expansion, and recognition of sovereignty, African states saw their borders created and molded by a Western expansion that was motivated by a scramble for resources and labor. These overreaches have had deleterious results in the decades since the modern continent was carved out by European leaders. Notably, “In the past 30 years, more than three quarters of African countries have been involved in warfare in one form or another, resulting in countless losses of life and causing untold misery to the common African” (Musisi and Kinyanda 2020, 2). Warfare has also had a profound economic impact on most of the continent’s population of over 1.4 billion (World Population Review 2022), which sees over half of the world’s global poor residing in Africa (World Bank 2018, 3). This reality establishes a different playing field for Africans when it comes to pursuing artistic endeavors as well, not only when it comes to the resources that are available to them in order to perform, but also in how they are perceived and viewed by their contemporaries in the Global North. What connects many heavy metal bands, and to an extent rock bands, in the Global South is their relation to postcolonial dysfunctions that were established by colonizing governments that saw their overseas possessions as mere business models. The dysfunctions inherited by postcolonial populations 283

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include civil conflicts, mass poverty, incredibly low social mobility, disgusting levels of income disparity, derisory educational opportunities, inaccessible medical care, and the stark reality that one who lives in the Global South cannot readily access the Global North. This latter point has come to light throughout multiple trips to the African continent and many interviews with metal musicians in several African nations. They are not oblivious to their lot in the world. This is what has linked the Global South and its various metal scenes to each other—collectively, they are defined as “the others” by that dominant, all-consuming Northern gaze. This realization of place has become the focal point for some metal bands in Africa’s various metal scenes who have used their postcolonial lived experiences and channeled their frustrations through their music. One such act is the Ugandan doom metal band Vale of Amonition, on whom the present chapter will focus. FROM THE BLOOD-STUNG VALLEYS In 2012, an otherwise unassuming, inconsequential region in Northern Uganda, and a little-known rebel group that utilized child soldiers for their cause, became the focal point of a global dialogue. With celebrities making this region the focus of their latest “cause du jour,” international leaders voiced their concerns too, vowing to ramp up efforts in the region. All of this was a result of the short documentary Kony 2012 (Russell 2012). The film, which focused on one of the world’s most sought-after fugitives, became a pre-streaming service sensation that drew in over eighty million viewers via the popular internet platform YouTube in the first two weeks of being posted and has since received over 100 million views. The film tells the story of Joseph Kony, a rebel leader in northern Uganda, whose Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) was insistent on overthrowing the national government and installing the Ten Commandments as law. Though this was not the first instance of a Christian radical causing havoc and committing mass murder in Uganda (see Atuhaire 2020), the interest in the story of Kony, a former choirboy who saw himself as a prophet, garnered the attention it did because of his notorious use of child soldiers for his cause, separating children from their families; at times killing parents so the children could be inculcated to see him as their true savior; often drugging children before ordering them to commit acts of brutality. Thus, children lived in fear in the region, hiding and running away—hence the term “lost children”—to evade capture and recruitment on behalf of Kony’s devilry. Though it could be argued that this region had long known despair, most of this hopelessness was lost on the rest of the world, especially in the Global North, until this film.

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For one particular Ugandan, Victor Rosewrath (his adopted stage name), the story of Joseph Kony, the horror of the “lost children,” and the lingering despair of his Uganda proved to be a catalyst for a deeper, more introspective view of life in his country. Though he was not directly affected by Kony’s terror, having grown up in the country’s capital city, the effect that this campaign had on Ugandans, as well as the tumultuous postindependence life of his country, led him to find an escape. Forming a band in 2009 alongside bassist Dan Wonder and drummer Malice (stage name), Rosewrath gave his newly founded group a name that connected their music to their country and the struggles that they felt were permanently affecting Uganda: “Valley of Ammunition” is the real English translation of Vale of Amonition. When I was growing up, child soldiers (in northern Uganda and the DRC) was a hot-button issue. I was part of a high school amateur news team, and I wrote a fair bit of pieces about what that meant to me. It got my mind working about what that situation could be, and I ended up placing it in a fantastical realm that became the band. About how East Africa could house a sanctuary for inadvertent war makers and retrain them to exorcise their personal demons and attack the real enemies that were tyranny and dictatorship, and neocolonialism. (Rosewrath 2020)

Having since become a duo with fellow Ugandan guitarist Solomon Dust (also a stage name) after their co-founders’ departure, Vale of Amonition has continued recording and performing for over ten years since its inception. Though their influences range from the venerated within the genre—Judas Priest, Iron Maiden—to the extreme—Morbid Angel, Mayhem—Vale of Amonition identifies as a doom metal band, a subgenre that sits on the margins of heavy metal (Coggins 2018a, 6). Marked by a fuzzier, detuned guitar sound, doom metal is typically played to a much slower tempo than other metal subgenres; eschewing traditional song structures—intro/verse/chorus/ verse/solo—in favor of a central ominous, “doomy” riff to carry the song. As Scott and O’Boyle posit, “the musical styles found in both drone and doom metal open a contrasting meditative space, where the music is slow, grave, low pitched and deeply resonant” (Scott and O’Boyle 2015, 348). Further, doom artists are likelier to perform songs that run longer than traditional ones. It is not uncommon for a doom metal band to release an album that runs over an hour long and features only a handful of songs. The doom subgenre is exemplified by seminal acts that include the widely influential Black Sabbath, as well as Cathedral, Electric Wizard, St. Vitus, Candlemass, and Pentagram, to name a few. Further, the lyrics of revered doom bands reveal themselves through ominous themes that lean on the

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occult, particularly early doom metal acts that lionized witches and witchcraft (Coggins 2018b, 310). Rosewrath himself lyrically summons themes of war, destruction, and death in a manner that allows listeners to engage with the circumstances that have shaped Vale of Amonition’s lived experiences, inviting an audience from the Global North into a headspace that is seldom—if ever—considered in doom metal. My introduction to Vale of Amonition’s music came by way of an extensive research push I conducted in late 2011 and early 2012 via internet searches to locate heavy metal bands in Africa for a book I was writing (Banchs 2016). Upon learning of the band, I emailed an interview request to Rosewrath, who responded and participated in an email exchange with the understanding that I could use his responses in my book, although these were unfortunately not included. In 2019, while attending the Nairobi Metal Festival in Kenya, I had the chance to meet Rosewrath in person as his band was performing that weekend. During this trip, he agreed to conduct a follow-up to our initial interview by way of a personal visit to Uganda in the coming months. However, the COVID-19 pandemic that halted global travel, and the instituted shelter-in-place orders throughout much of the world in 2020, changed everything. Thus, we decided to conduct our interviews electronically. The quotes from Rosewrath in this chapter stem from our email exchanges in 2012, 2020, 2021, and 2022 and are noted throughout. ANCIENT: A JOURNEY INTO THE PRECOLONIAL What pulled me into Vale of Amonition’s performance during their set at the 2019 Nairobi Metal Festival was the ominous tone set by the band2 as they opened their set. Summoning the audience closer to the stage, Rosewrath stepped forward, clutching his microphone, speaking ominously: “Tonight: We are going to keep it ancient, evil, and African,” setting the audience on a journey into a darker, more unfamiliar Africa that evening, which was drawn from the band’s album, Ancient, Evil & African (Vale of Amonition 2019). His comments also alerted me to the trope that has long existed about Africa: that of a savage, dark land with cannibalistic savages that only wanted to cause harm to visitors and whose savagery needed to be taught submissive behavior—and that only Europeans could tame and reform Africa, teaching them the ways of civilized gentry. These narratives came to permeate European societies by way of missionary journals, adventurer travelogues, and diplomatic intrigue that were keen on establishing trading routes to more distant lands only to “discover” a continent riddled with riches. When Joseph Conrad published his classic novella Heart of Darkness in 1902, readers were transported to a continent that

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would haunt and diminish what was not only truly happening then, but also what continued to happen throughout Africa in the decades that followed. By being introduced to Conrad’s protagonist, Mr. Kurtz, who had gone “native” by indulging in cannibalism and displaying his bounties with the horrendous image of severed human heads in rows to adorn his dwelling, readers were quick to paint an image of a continent steeped in horror and disaster. A lot of the book’s messages have been misinterpreted, though. The man who has gone “native” and becomes very much the “brute” he had gone to tame was instead troubled by what he had done and the acts he committed, not because he was immersing himself in his surrounding, but because he viewed Africans as inferior, a revelation that comes to light at the end of the book. Much of what Conrad discusses was because of his disgust with what he witnessed Europeans doing in the Congo almost ten years prior to the book’s publication. As Michela Wrong writes, the “darkness” of the book’s title refers to the monstrous passions at the core of the human soul, lying ready to emerge when man’s better instincts are suspended, rather than a continent’s supposed predisposition to violence. Conrad was more preoccupied with rotten Western values, the white man’s inhumanity to the black man, than, as is almost always assumed today, black savagery. (Wrong 2001, 10)

Though many readers do not interpret Conrad’s classic as a strong rebuke of colonialism and the true savagery being committed by Europeans toward Africans, the reputation of what many in the West saw as Africa and African people never wavered, and this image has continued to reside in the imagination of Westerners ever since. But for Rosewrath, his “evil” is the reality that his “Africa”—what he lives through—is a continent plagued by what Europeans left behind and the reality that they were the ones that caused this torment, including in the valley of ammunition, where Western governments have aligned with various factions jockeying for power and control to ensure that their interests were met by the victors, leaving behind a plethora of weaponry and ammunition for the taking. Featuring only three songs, the self-released album delves into a stream of haunted consciousness that forces one to confront an Africa that is outside of the realm of the known world. When describing the band’s sound, Rosewrath states, “we make deliberately dark and thematically tense, serious, and unsettling music” (Rosewrath 2021). This proclamation becomes apparent seconds into the band’s album, as the sound of strong winds comes across in stereo for the better part of a minute, joined by an ominous vocal chant that fades into the mix before isolating itself plainly. Seconds later, Rosewrath begins his

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lead vocals accompanied only by various overdubs of those chants, providing the listener multiple voices to focus on during the chilling album opener, “Tones of the First-Formed; Fleshless and United with the Wind.” With nothing but a voice serving as a guide, the commencement of the album’s vocals is a journey into a firsthand encounter with a country that has never been part of heavy metal; electric guitars are not introduced until five minutes into the album. If listeners are not aware that the track they are listening to is being performed by a band from the Global South, Rosewrath’s isolated vocal track crudely brings this to life: And I come from carnage, from the most violent song of man. You think you know me and the ones that mourn me? Then come sit awhile where your darkness summoned me. We are the flesh of darkness, the first-formed when all was darkness. You think you know God through pale form and tongue morose? Then with haste depart from me for only darkness fathoms me. East and North; these old tones. We were Gods in these halls beneath the Nile. (Vale of Amonition 2019)

“Ancient, Evil & African,” the album’s second track, does not follow its predecessor’s structure. Instead, this song begins with a guttural growl delivered by Rosewrath over a drumbeat eschewing a standard 4/4 rhythm into its own realm, while the adjoining guitar steps into the mix fifteen seconds in. This time around, Rosewrath’s delivery is aggressive, foregoing the clear-throated chanting for a stronger push. His strength as a performer comes by way of utilizing various vocal styles3 (Rosewrath 2021) to create different moods. Through his employment of various vocal deliveries, Rosewrath is able to dictate the album’s narration more effectively as a fatigued orator in a land— a place that would be otherwise conjured up in a wretched mind—laced with horror, corruption, and a diabolical ennui that is difficult to disguise through metaphor. This track also follows along the theme of placing listeners into the “blood-stung valleys . . . this land of ancient masters” (Rosewrath 2019). In this land, Rosewrath invites listeners to consider life before the colonial era, before modernity, by referencing modern countries as places “they” (Europeans) named and referring to others such as Kemet—which was what ancient Egyptians called their land—and the “bloody gates of Timbuktu,” alluding to the powerful trading center at the heart of the Malian empire. He also highlights Dhar in the album’s third song, “For the Glory of Hell” (Vale of Amonition 2019), as a nod to one of West Africa’s Tichitt cultures in what

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is now Mauritania, one of the earliest examples of a large-scale society within West Africa. Owen Coggins posits that lyrically, doom and drone metal’s proclivities are capable of transporting listeners into the distant and ancient, prehistoric places (Coggins 2018a, 86). Coggins says that the “experience evoked is understood as unrestricted to distant times and cultures but as eternal, universal and transtemporal” (Coggins 2018a, 88). Further, he notes that doom and drone metal listeners tend to evoke the same sort of locations when they imagine distant and ancient places: India, Africa (and Ethiopia and Egypt, if particular African countries are named), Tibet, “Arabia” and the Middle East (described with these phrases, rather than particular country names) are most often mentioned, places which for many listeners imply ancientness, particularly in a Western European, orientalist, postcolonial imagination. That these are imaginative fictions rather than historical comparisons is emphasized by the prevalence of visions, hallucinations and dreams in descriptions of places. (Coggins 2018a, 90)

The lyrics on Ancient, Evil & African, however, are not of an imagined place, nor are they of a conjured-up time. Rosewrath’s place and time are very much in the present and represent a lived experience shared by Ugandans. A postcolonial nation that has continually found itself searching desperately for an identity belonging to a place before colonial pencils drew lines through the aspirations of a people whose existence was a settled matter and whose identity would soon be corrupted by what Europeans had thought they should be. Uganda’s existence today is one marked by a heartache that is so permeated into their beings that generations of Ugandans who have yet to inhabit this earth are set to inherit a pain that will never be known to the Global North. During one of our conversations, Rosewrath indicated that his lyrics are a form of metaphysical escapism: the listener is taken to another place, an elsewhere that is familiar to the performer, yet may not be as well known to the listener. Though Rosewrath is not deliberately performing the album as a character, the record could easily be interpreted as such. As he states, “Ancient, Evil & African is made of strands of different things. There is the mythological base, yes, but the angle is driven towards the historical and personal. I am writing more about how I feel about things than giving people a lesson in African folklore” (Rosewrath 2020). The ability of the musicians to play with myths enables the artists to bridge reality to fiction, as mythology “creates a disturbing liminal zone—a gray area. And in that space, all of a civilization’s weak spots and shortcomings, and hypocrisies are made visible (Cornell and Kelly 2012 in McKinnon 2016, 190).

Figure 14.1. Victor Rosewrath performing at the 2019 Nairobi Metal Festival. Source: Photo provided by Edward Banchs.

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FROM THE ANCIENT TO THE PRESENT Uganda’s shortcomings have been a part of the nation’s story since its independence in October 1962. Less than a decade later, Uganda’s first elected president, Milton Obote, was overthrown by the country’s military, whose ruling commander came to define the very essence of evil: Idi Amin. Amin’s rule was marked by an incredible amount of corruption and failed economic policies that sent the country into an economic tailspin, as well as nefarious human rights abuses that placed citizens in a constant state of fear. It is estimated that between 300,000 to 500,000 Ugandans died under Amin’s rule (Keatley 2003). And, “[w]hile the regime was not necessarily responsible for every death, the prevailing anarchic conditions provided the cover for ethnic massacres and the settlement of private scores” (Roberts 2014, 695). In a peculiar twist of irony, not only would Amin be overthrown by the Tanzanian military and a group of Ugandan dissidents after his army was ordered to invade Tanzania to locate Ugandan defectors, but Milton Obote would also once again be re-elected the country’s president in 1980 following Amin’s ouster. During the second term of Obote’s presidency, rival factions, some still loyal to Amin, began to launch antigovernment insurgencies. Two notable factions included the National Resistance Army (NRA) and the Ugandan National Liberation Army (UNLA), both of whom would engage in a civil war between 1980 and 1985, a conflict known as the Ugandan Bush War. Joseph Kony’s insurgency against the government of Uganda began in 1987 as a response to the ascension of the NRA’s leader Yoweri Museveni, who seized control of the country in January of 1986—the country’s third coup in twenty-five years—on the heels of the Ugandan Bush War. Initially, Kony’s group “started as an Acholi (an ethnic group found in northern Uganda and South Sudan) militia and then adopted Christian rhetoric with a heavy dose of mysticism” (Borger 2012). His shift away from Acholi nationalism was abrupt, as according to Kony, he was sent by God to liberate the northern part of the country from Museveni’s NRA, and because he saw himself as a prophet, he felt his orders were sent to him directly by spirits4 before being passed on to his military commanders (Van Acker 2004, 348). These spirits told Kony that “children were to kill or to serve as porters, cooks or spies. In the worst cases, girls were given as rewards to high-ranking commanders and turned into sex slaves” (Nkabala 2017, 92). Acholi have long had a history of producing spirits to help them to fend off evil. Known as jogi, these spirits came to their region as foreigners in the era of colonialism and have remained ever since (Behrend 2000, 105–106). These spirits are able to manifest themselves as any variety of living things,

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including trees, animals, as well as other humans, and have taken various names. For example, Jok Omwod Gagi is a spirit that arrived with slave and ivory traders; Jok Ala came after the First World War and brought disease5; Jok Munno and Jok Rumba both arrived after the Second World War and assumed European behaviors and personalities (Behrend 2000, 109–110). These spirits are among the many that have represented the many difficulties of Acholi. As Heike Behrend writes, A number of Acholi elders told me that there had once been no or only a few free jogi but that they had constantly increased in number during the colonial period and were continuing to do so in post-colonial times. The catastrophic experiences the Acholi underwent around the turn of the century and thereafter—the experience of the slave and ivory trade, various epidemics, the loss of their cattle, colonial rule, forced labor, migrant labor, the death of many Acholi soldiers, especially in the Second World War, and much else, in short: danger from external powers and the increase of internal tension and conflicts—found expression in the appearance of these foreign spirits. With them, the threat was recognized and represented, and at the same time they provided a means to meet it. (Behrend 2000, 110)

Spirits were also peppered into the Christian teachings introduced by missionaries to the region, thus allowing these spirits to coexist with new teachings being brought into their region with new “holy spirits” called tipu maleng, which arrived after moments of crisis. This is where the story of Kony and modern Uganda intersect. Further, and it must be noted, the concept of believing in spirits, possessions, and ancestral communications is a reality that has existed in the continent for thousands of years before Western religions came to be. This idea that Africans should live within the guidelines of Western religion and teachings is itself a construction that has permeated the Global North in what could best be described as a form of cultural supremacy validated by the arrival of missionaries representing a wide array of monotheistic faiths. Thus, the advent of these faiths into Africa is a disruption of precolonial practices that are not in line with the practices of many African norms yet have been adapted to exist in unison with wellestablished practices. For Kony, there were two factors that led to his malice. First, the entrance of Christianity into Uganda with the Acholi understanding that these spirits were meant to bring good will to their region. And secondly, an unfortunate power vacuum that came to plague postcolonial Uganda, especially in the country’s north. The predominantly Acholi region in northern Uganda that Kony hails from has historically been marginalized by not only colonial rulers—the British saw the north as a “reservoir for cheap labor” and used the region to recruit

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soldiers (Van Acker 2004, 340)—but also by postindependence rulers. In 1972, Amin had ordered the massacre of Acholi troops after they loyally served in the national military, and Museveni, after signing a peace accord to end the Bush War, vowed to destroy those he feared could potentially topple his rule. Sadly, Acholi civilians “suffered extreme brutality at the hands of the NRA during this period, with crops and domestic animals being destroyed” (Van Acker 2004, 341). For Kony, the continued betrayal of this region by colonial and Ugandan leadership, unfortunately, made it easy to recruit soldiers for the LRA (not to mention the training that many already had in the wake of the Bush Wars and the excess numbers of weapons available to rebel groups). Thus, the LRA exemplifies this postcolonial ennui. As stated by Musisi and Kinyanda: Most of these groups arise because of the ever-present anxiety we see in Africa, most of which stems from war, poverty, famine, and mass disease or epidemics as well as abuse of Human Rights; all mixed with ignorance and the African traditional beliefs in magic and supernatural forces. They cause much discomfort among Africans who get manipulated into believing them to be “saviors” as a means to escape the mass poverty, suffering, misery, and the attendant constant anxiety, all of which stem from chronic warfare. (Musisi and Kinyanda 2020, 8)

During his reign of terror, Kony assumed a mystical, almost Godlike status among members of the LRA. In researching the LRA, Helen Nambalirwa Nkabala interviewed former child soldiers during her fieldwork in the country and identified that members of the LRA understood Kony to be a savior. They took his word as law, much like the role assumed by Moses in the Bible, killing those (including other children) who chose not to obey Kony. They also amputated limbs as a form of punishment within the LRA (Nkabala 2017, 92–94). Further, if children were not being utilized in the field of battle, they would be forced into labor. Youth hijacked from their homes; transformed into assassins; made to destroy families, lives, and their country for a man they were told was their savior: Rosewrath would verbalize all of these experiences of despair in the album’s closer “For the Glory of Hell”: I will watch as your doom manifests. Watch as one by one your children burn. And as you their maker quakes. And vanishes into the dust . . . (Vale of Amonition 2019)

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EVIL: CONFLICT AND HEAVY METAL Though neither Rosewrath nor Solomon Dust were directly affected by the LRA’s campaign or any of their conflicts, the existence of the organization in Uganda has had a negative effect on their lived experiences and has become a part of their music. As Rosewrath says: I felt there were a lot of hidden agendas and political games that went on at the expense of human lives and livelihoods. It wasn’t as simple as just that there were rebel militia in the north of Uganda. The government was inscrutable and held up a thick wall against the actual realities that needed reporting. (Rosewrath 2021)

The difficulty of warfare and the unnecessary suffering dealt to the country have affected both of them, as the stress of conflict, the trauma of war, alongside the feelings of helplessness, despair, and stress that come on the heels of such conflicts strongly affects nearly everyone in the country and nearby regions (Musisi and Kinyanda 2020, 5). And throughout this despair, many, both within and outside of Africa, have turned to music to distract themselves from violence. One example outside of the African continent can be found in the country of El Salvador, a nation in Central America that, like Uganda, has continually existed in hopelessness and conflict in its postcolonial life. And, as in other countries throughout the Global South, metal has served to fill a void in this postcolonial space. Christian Pack, in an essay that discusses the effect that violence has had on the population of El Salvador and its metal scene, particularly its death metal scene, states that the citizens of the country lived in a “constant state of trauma and fear. [And] the only way for many to deal with the phenomenon is to attempt to find more expressive and non-violent means of dealing with the violence around them” (Pack 2021, 48). And as Pack highlights, the death metal scene that grew around the civil war in El Salvador used music to not only cope with the violence but also to inform the public about the war itself (Pack 2021, 49). Using music as a coping mechanism and as an educational tool away from the world of metal has also been noted by anthropologist Susan Shepler, who, in her work on postwar youth and music in Sierra Leone, states that, “Popular music, like other forms of popular culture, not only expresses socio-cultural reality, but generates it” (Shepler 2010, 628). The civil war in Sierra Leone was one of the more horrible conflicts in recent history. Lasting between 1991 and 2002, leaving over 50,000 dead—over twenty-five times more than perished in Kosovo (Shah 2001), a conflict that was treated far differently by the global community—the civil war in Sierra Leone witnessed mass executions

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of civilians and saw armies of child soldiers recruited and drugged in a manner that was eerily similar to the methods exploited by Kony. Shepler’s research focuses on these youth, who, after coming out of the war, lived with an unbearable sense of hopelessness as a result of their nation’s tragic narratives. The power of music served to invigorate a sense of democratic awakening in the postconflict nation’s adolescent population (Wai 2008 in Shepler 2010, 633), with youth critiques of the “neo-patrimonial (emphasis original) political system of most post-independent African states” playing themselves out in various ways (Shepler 2010, 631). By looking inward, Vale of Amonition are also reflecting on the violence and struggle caused by the LRA. This invocation of memory harkens to the idea of “liberation psychology,” a school of thought that arose from the conflict in El Salvador in the 1980s. What this entails is the consideration of the oppressed voices and the efforts of liberation (Flores Osorio 1999 in Rivera-Segarra, Ramos, and Varas-Díaz 2021, 289), and is done by considering three themes: recovery of historical memory, deideologization of reality, and an awareness of a collective (Martín-Baró 1994). In this similar vein, artists in Latin America have used metal to cope with the fallout of armed conflict within their nations, as metal there has served “as a vehicle for a psychosocial process of trauma recovery by engaging in committed actions aimed at emancipating people from oppression and, thus, echoes the ideals and practices of liberation psychology” (Rivera-Segarra, Ramos and VarasDíaz 2021, 290; see also Varas-Díaz 2021; Wallach 2020). A similar approach has, in all likelihood, equally informed Rosewrath’s efforts to reconcile with the events that have caused havoc within his nation, inviting local fans to also connect with these atrocities in a manner that forces Ugandan listeners to confront that this was once their reality, that aspects of their lives are shaped by these moments, and that their future does not have to be shaped by horror. Since 2019, Rosewrath has made his home in Nairobi, Kenya. His move was influenced by the fact that Kenya has a metal scene more suitable to his pursuits by way of better access to Western goods and a better-developed infrastructure. The band’s assimilation into the Kenyan scene has been welcomed, as they are not the only heavy metal band in this country (they were one of only two in Uganda). Further, they have also joined other extreme metal acts6 in this scene, such as Lust of a Dying Breed, In Oath, Nelecc, and Chovu. For these bands, their existence has also been challenged by conflicts in recent decades that erupted in the wake of disputed election results in 2008. The violence exploded after one of the two men running for president, incumbent Mwai Kibaki from the Party of National Unity (PNU), declared victory over his opponent Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM)

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party, which had decidedly won the parliamentary vote. Odinga had declared that Kibaki had “flooded the (electoral) commission with his cronies” (BBC 2007). The announcement of Kibaki’s upset sent the country into a downward spiral. The flashpoint was not only spurred on by atavistic undercurrents but was also ignited by the ever-lingering sense of hopelessness that comes with living in a developing nation unable to break from its colonial shadow. Further, where there is a paucity of economic, political, and social resources, citizens often feel forced to compete for material goods. In this climate, a level of mistrust emerges as another layer in an already fractured society (Aiken 2008, 12). For supporters of the candidates, violence was drawn along ethnic lines, with supporters of Odinga carrying out bloodshed against Kibaki’s ethnic group, Kikuyu (Kenya’s largest ethnic group). Attacks were concentrated primarily in two regions, the Rift Valley province in the nation’s west, and in Nairobi. The violence that ravaged the nation from December 2007 into January 2008 left over 1,000 Kenyans dead and over 100,000 displaced. International observers would later confirm that the election was so poorly conducted that it was too difficult to confirm the victor (Kanina 2008). As Daniel Branch and Nic Cheeseman lament, “Kenyan ‘democracy’ was clearly neither as stable nor as consolidated, as many had dared hope just days before” (Branch and Cheeseman 2008, 2). For metal fans and musicians, these events had profound effects on their lives and their music. The Kenyan metal scene reached its stride in the early 2000s with the formation of the bands that would be the first to perform and record original punk/metal/hard rock in the country. With the postelection violence of 2008, which again afflicted the nation after elections in 2017 (Moore 2017), musicians in Nairobi, which is not only where much of the postelection violence was centered but also where the national metal scene is based, had their lives shaped by the lingering aftermath of the violence in ways that are not visible, yet are present in their art. The fracturing of the populace based on ethnicity happened because the most vulnerable Kenyans, those who felt left out of the country both socially and economically, reached toward their ethnic groups in order to reinforce a sense of belonging. “Feelings of marginalization can lead community leaders to assert their difference to their neighbours, and in some cases to forge new alliances to strengthen their voice,” and to sow distrust among political leaders because of their ethnicity (Lynch 2006, 61). These vestiges of ethnicity are the result of the blueprint created by colonial governments, which pitted these groups—at times creating new ethnic groups (see Ranger 1992)—against each other in order to validate their rule. These “divide and rule” tactics produced cynicism among Western leaders who felt that African nations were never going to be ready for

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self-governance and did nothing to ensure that their transitions to independence would be smooth. Where there were those who felt that their ethnic group had left them behind, art has not only served as a bridge to pull away from these experiences, but has also filled a void as the conditions of conflict can “lend themselves to the development of stronger social identities” (Muldoon and Lowe 2012, 208). What Vale of Amonition and various bands in Kenya have done musically is a result of the realities and circumstances that have shaped their lives: war and conflict. In the case of both countries, Uganda and Kenya, these are instances that are never too far and have tended to resurface with far too much frequency, as it did in Kenya in 2017 (Moore 2017) and continues in Uganda, where at the time of this writing Yoweri Museveni still rules by graft, strong-arm tactics and, as recently as 2021, attacking, arresting and torturing political opponents, supporting antigay legislation that criminalizes homosexuality, and belittling journalists to the point of shutting down the national internet services in order to silence information (Latif Dahir 2021, A-12). Whatever the circumstances, it is clear that metal plays an important role in the lives of Africans who are ambitiously asking the Global North to consider them, their lives, and experiences with the same validation given to their peers. CONCLUSION It is fair to argue that if not for colonial and cultural supremacy, Joseph Kony would have likely remained anonymous to the world. Though it is quixotic to consider what life would have been like without colonial conquest throughout the world for the inhabitants of the Global South, one aspect remains salient: the complications, uncertainty, and hopelessness that have defined the inhabitants of the Global South, would likely have never been. For Rosewrath and Solomon Dust, their relationship with their country and their continent is one of “great ambivalence” (Rosewrath 2021). Too much of what transpired in Uganda during their postcolonial rule, much like in Kenya, was passed on by colonial rulers who viewed the citizenry with disregard, creating atavistic tensions for the sake of domination. Even the spirits that have consumed evil-doers in Uganda were colonized. This hate, fear, and disregard for humanity is what the continent needs to step away from in order for any form of success to truly happen; yet reality and expectations are not on a collision course in the near future. As Rosewrath posits, “There’s so much work that has to be done . . . Especially in unlearning so much of

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the detrimental self-hating and counterproductive modes of being we’ve had passed down” (Rosewrath 2021). Adding: I don’t know if “evil” is an apt word for defining any of the problems and the general amount of wrong that Uganda labors under. “Evil” does not seem concrete enough and is a word steeped in an almost mythological understanding of human behavior, or rather, a religious one, since modern-day Uganda is as religious as the colonialists left it. Ergo the evil thing about Uganda is that it still bears (proudly) the marks of colonialism; the failure to figure out how to co-exist with each other since all the African borders were arbitrarily drawn, as if to ensure that the inherent differences of all these diverse tribes would cripple them to the point that they’d foster unstable nations with deeply divided people. (Rosewrath 2022)

The darkness that is reflected in the music of Vale of Amonition and others in the African continent is their mirror, one that reflects the horror of a postcolonial continent that has seen stumble after stumble. However, instead of constructing boxes around their existence, these musicians have constructed their existences through art. And what metal has done is provide a “different reality . . . to cope with the oppressions that a subject can experience and suffer” (Chacón 2021, 93). Metal has allowed its participants to heal and to participate in a scene that lifts them beyond Nairobi, Uganda, El Salvador, or anywhere else ravaged by the savagery of colonialism, and into a global subculture of voices that are eager to break away from the wounds of the past. REFERENCES Aiken, Nevin T. “Post-Conflict Peacebuilding and the Politics of Identity: Insights for Restoration and Reconciliation in Transitional Justice.” The Canadian Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies 40, no. 2 (2008): 9–38. Atuhaire, Patience. “Uganda’s Kanungu Cult Massacre That Killed 700 Followers.” BBC News, March 17, 2020. https:​//​www​.bbc​.com​/news​/world​-africa​-51821411. Banchs, Edward. Heavy Metal Africa: Life, Passion and Heavy Metal in the Forgotten Continent. Tarentum, PA: Word Association, 2016. BBC News. “Kibaki Named Victor in Kenya Vote.” BBC News. December 30, 2007: http:​//​news​.bbc​.co​.uk​/2​/hi​/africa​/7164890​.stm. Behrend, Heike. Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirits: War in Northern Uganda, 1985–97. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2000. Borger, Julian. “Q&A: Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army.” The Guardian. March 8, 2012: https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​/world​/2012​/mar​/08​/joseph​-kony​ -lords​-resistance​-army. Branch, Daniel, and Cheeseman, Nic. “Democratization, Sequencing, and State Failure in Africa: Lessons from Kenya.” African Affairs 108, no. 403 (2008): 1–26.

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Chacón, Pedro Manuel Lagos. “The Role of Death Metal in the Colombian Armed Conflict: The Case of the Band Masacre.” In Heavy Metal Music in Latin America: Perspectives from the Distorted South, edited by Nelson Varas-Díaz, Daniel Nevárez Araújo and Eliut Rivera-Segarra, 81–105. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2021. Coggins, Owen. Mysticism, Ritual and Religion in Drone Metal. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018a. ————.“Evil I?: Witchfinder’s and the Magical Power of Ambiguity at Stake in Doom Metal.” Metal Music Studies 4, no. 2 (2018b): 309–28. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. United Kingdom: Blackwood’s Magazine, 1902. Economist, The. “Alice Lakwena, Obituary. January 27, 2007. https:​//​www​.economist​ .com​/obituary​/2007​/01​/25​/alice​-lakwena. Feldman, Robert L. “Why Uganda Has Failed to Defeat the Lord’s Resistance Army.” Defense & Security Analysis 24, no. 1 (2008): 45–52. Kanina, Wangui. “Kenya’s Election Seen as Badly Flawed.” Reuters, September 18, 2008. https:​//​www​.reuters​.com​/article​/uk​-kenya​-election​-idUKLI38786120080918​ ?edition​-redirect​=uk. Keatly, Patrick. “Idi Amin.” The Guardian, August 17, 2003. https:​//​www​.theguardian​ .com​/news​/2003​/aug​/18​/guardianobituaries. Latif Dahir, Abdi. 2021. “Ugandan Leader’s Brutal Grip Is Testing Patience of the West.” The New York Times, January 31, 2021. https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​ /2021​/01​/30​/world​/africa​/uganda​-museveni​-us​-eu​.html​?action​=click​&module​ =RelatedLinks​&pgtype​=Article. Lynch, Gabrielle. “Negotiating Ethnicity: Identity Politics in Contemporary Kenya.” Review of African Political Economy 33, no. 107 (2006): 49–65. Martín-Baró, Ignacio. Writings for a Liberation Psychology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University, 1994. McKinnon, Colin A. “Metal and Comics: Strange Bedfellows?” In Heavy Metal Studies and Popular Culture, edited by Brenda Gardenour Walter, Gabby Riches, Dave Snell and Bryan Bardine, 189–208. United Kingdom: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016. Moore, Jina. “Violence Flares and Tensions Rise after Kenya Presidential Vote.” The New York Times, October 28, 2017. https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/2017​/10​/28​/world​/ africa​/kenya​-election​-uhuru​-kenyatta​-raila​-odinga​.html. Muldoon, Orla, and Lowe, Robert D. “Identity, Conflict, and the Experience of Trauma: The Social Psychology of Intervention and Engagement Following Political Violence.” In Restoring Civil Societies: The Psychology of Intervention and Engagement Following Crises, edited by Kai J. Jonas and Thomas A. Morton, 208–21. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Musisi, Seggane, and Kinyanda, Eugene. “Long-Term Impact of War, Civil War, and Persecution in Civilian Populations—Conflict and Post-Traumatic Stress in African Communities.” Frontiers in Psychiatry 11, no. 20 (2020): 1–12. Nkabala, Helen Nambalirwa. “The Use of Violent Biblical Texts by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda.” Transformation 34, no. 2 (2017): 91–100.

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Pack, Christian M. “Decomposición Cerebral: The Salvadoran Civil War and the Birth of Salvadoran Brutal Death Metal.” In Heavy Metal Music in Latin America: Perspectives From the Distorted South, edited by Nelson Varas-Díaz, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, and Eliut Rivera-Segarra, 39–59. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021. Ranger, Terrance. “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa.” In The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terrance Ranger, 211–262. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Rivera-Segarra, Eliut, Ramos, Jeffrey W., and Varas-Díaz, Nelson. “A Scream That Makes Us Visible.” In Heavy Metal Music in Latin America: Perspectives from the Distorted South, edited by Nelson Varas-Díaz, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, and Eliut Rivera-Segarra, 287–384, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021. Roberts, George. “The Uganda-Tanzanian War, the Fall of Idi Amin, and the Failure of African Diplomacy, 1978–1979.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 8 no. 4 (2014): 692–709. Rosewrath, Victor. Email interview. January 8, 2012. ———. Email Interview. December 2, 2020. ———2021. Email Interview. October 17, 2021. ———2022. Email Interview. March 16, 2022. Russell, Jason. Kony 212. Invisible Children, Inc.: California, 2012. Scott, Niall, and O’Boyle, Tom. “Doom Values: Deceleration Promoting a Philosophy of Progression through Opposites.” In Proceedings—Modern Heavy Metal: Markets, Practices and Cultures, International Academic Research Conference, June 8–12, 2015, edited by Toni-Matti Karjalainen and Kimi Kärki, 347–53. Shah, Anup. “Sierra Leone.” Global Issues, July 23, 2001: https:​//​www​.globalissues​ .org​/article​/88​/sierra​-leone. Shepler, Susan. “Youth Music and Politics in Post-War Sierra Leone.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 48, no. 4 (2010): 627–42. Vale of Amonition. Ancient, Evil & African. Self-Released: Uganda, 2019. Van Acker, Frank. “Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army: The New Order No One Ordered.” African Affairs 104, no. 12 (2004): 335–57. Varas-Díaz, Nelson. Decolonial Metal Music in Latin America. London, UK: Intellect, 2021. Wallach, Jeremy. “Global Rock as Postcolonial Soundtrack.” In Bloomsbury Handbook for Rock Music Research, edited by Allan Moore and Paul Carr, 469–85. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. World Bank. Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2018: Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 IGO: https:​//​openknowledge​.worldbank​.org​/bitstream​/ handle​/10986​/30418​/9781464813306​.pdf World Population Review. 2022. “Africa Population 2022.” Author, 2022. https:​//​ worldpopulationreview​.com​/continents​/africa​-population Wrong, Michela. In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu’s Congo. New York: Harper/Perennial, 2001.

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NOTES 1. Para Margha. Te extraño mucho: “Love is love . . . is love . . . is love . . . ” 2. Rosewrath and Solomon hired two Nairobi-based musicians to perform with them live. 3. Rosewrath notes that the album was written with characterization of the narrator as a second feature, and insists that the record is not “character based” (Rosewrath 2021). 4. In the years previous to founding the LRA, Alice Lakwena, an Acholi spirit medium formed the Holy Spirit Movement (HSM), and led a movement against government forces—in the name of the Holy Spirit—after believing herself to be consumed by the spirit of a European soldier. Her followers were unarmed, using only stick and stones; they would often rub shea oil on their bodies as protection from the bullets and never hid during battles. Lakwena has long been seen as the primary influence on Kony’s campaign; some believed that they were related, a claim she has refuted. She died in 2007 (The Economist 2007). 5. The arrival of Jok Ala would have coincided with the influenza outbreak of 1918. 6. I liken doom to the extreme metal scene of death metal and black metal as fans of these genres are likelier to support doom metal than fans of other metal subgenres.

Chapter 15

The Influence of Different Satanic Panics on the Transgressive Practices of Metal Music in Egypt, Iran, and Syria Pasqualina Eckerström

From its early days, metal music has been linked to numerous Satanic panics both in the United States and Europe. Members of Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and Venom, along with musicians across a variety of subgenres have faced accusations of recruiting people into Satanic cults, hiding occult messages in their music, and instigating crimes. A Satanic panic is a form of moral panic. It is characterized by a disproportionate public reaction to behaviors that stray from established social and cultural standards; they often emerge in connection with subcultural groups, youth culture, drugs, and religious deviations (Turner 2006). As a result, governmental actors may abuse the law to persecute people labeled as dangerous (Victor 1998). Although the Satanic panic over heavy metal has faded from most secular societies (Klypchak 2012), metal artists in some countries in the Global South are still experiencing the effects of several panic waves. A good number of studies have addressed heavy metal and Satanic panics in the West (Hjelm et al. 2009, Richardson, Reichert, and Lykes 2009, to name a few) but there is a lack of research pertaining to this phenomenon in the Global South, especially in the Middle East. The struggles metalheads face in the Middle East vary from country to country as the region is far from uniform (LeVine 2009). Metalheads have suffered different forms of censorship depending on the political system of each government (Epp 2015). Thus, the perpetually evolving Middle East region is a rich field for further 303

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exploring popular culture and its intersections with transgression, oppression, and resilience. In this study, I examine the heavy metal scenes in Egypt, Iran, and Syria in light of several Satanic panic waves and their transgressive attitude toward them. To develop this inquiry, I present the perspectives of musicians who play extreme metal, despite waves of Satanic panics that repeatedly try to suppress the genre. The fear of Satanism that affected metalheads in Egypt, Iran, and Syria in the late 1990s and early 2000s left behind a variety of societal conditions many still struggle with today. I concentrate on these territories since they exhibit similarities in the way metal musicians have been regarded as Satanists; yet, the end results differ widely in each territory, which by extension leads to differing perceptions of metal and its transgressions. In the pages that follow, I will look closely at Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s (1994; 2009) categorization of moral panics and the way it can be applied to the three case studies analyzed. Further, I also explore the rise of interest in the transgressive attitude of heavy metal bands in the Middle East. I will then discuss the development of extreme metal music and transgression in the Middle East; this will provide a basic context for the analysis that follows. Lastly, I will discuss Satanic panic in relation to Islam. Heavy metal is banned in some Islamic-majority countries1 due to its traditional association with Satan, drugs, sex, and alcohol. In spite of this, bands have been playing metal music to express their right to self-actualization. A single paper cannot cover everything concerning these three countries; nonetheless, the goal of the present chapter is to provide a starting point for further exploration. DIFFERENT PATHS OF MORAL PANIC Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994) have posited that moral panics (including Satanic panic) occur when the media, the police, politicians, action groups, and the general public respond disproportionately to an event that leads to the identification of folk devils. They identify five criteria to comprehend the impact of this phenomenon: concern (the worrying over a behavior), hostility (an increased opposition against the members identified as a threat), consensus (the coalescing of opinion within a large segment of a particular society), disproportionality (the uneven and excessive reaction to things outside the norm), and volatility (the sudden development of fear and its institutionalization by authorities). As the present case studies will show, the Satanic panics in Egypt, Iran and Syria have all shared the first four criteria, while volatility distinguishes the artists’ particular experiences. According to Goode and Ben-Yehuda, some panics fade out, others leave some residual effects, or in some cases, moral anxiety translates into laws. In



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addition, they posit the idea of there also being instances of elite engineered moral panic. Some instances of this may include, for instance, a group within a society or nation that purposefully launches a campaign to incite fear. Usually, such a moral panic is designed to divert attention away from real social issues. Moral anxiety can be better understood by recognizing the social and political circumstances of the context in which it appears. Thus, I will provide a brief overview of the development of heavy metal transgression in the Middle East along with a quick survey of the main studies which inform this paper. THE RISE OF EXTREME METAL MUSIC AND TRANSGRESSION IN THE MIDDLE EAST The confrontational nature of heavy metal, especially in its most transgressive forms, has traditionally appealed to marginalized audiences worldwide. Kahn-Harris (2006) notes that most extreme metal bands do not live transgressive lifestyles or engage in political activism. As I have discussed extensively in a previous study (Eckerström 2022), his conclusions may hold true in secular contexts, but they may not apply to extreme metal bands living in the Global South. For their right to free expression, metalheads face harsh repercussions in many Muslim-majority countries. The Middle Eastern musicians I met for this study do not deny the political implications and transgressive nature of their music. Furthermore, their tendency to transgress signals the interdependence between limit and transgression, as famously theorized by Bataille (1986). Although seemingly opposed, transgression and limit are related concepts in Bataille’s view. Similarly, defiant musicians are driven to break the rules, oftentimes, by the existence of the limit itself. However, the transgression enacted by young artists in the Middle East is not destructive as transgression prevents cultural stagnation (Jenks 2003). It does so by challenging established and outdated limits; consequently, through their transgressive practices, young artists in the Middle East promote cultural progress, despite the risks of harsh punishments. As prison, torture, and censorship are still common forms of persecution of metal artists in this region, the topic has now attracted the attention of the press, human rights advocates, and consuming audiences. Additionally, scholars have researched the phenomenon, especially within cultural studies, Middle Eastern studies, sociology, and religious studies. LeVine (2008; 2009) provided the first published accounts of heavy metal and resistance in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In his work, he analyzes how metalheads build communities to exercise autonomy and use

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their music to convey a message of change. According to LeVine’s observations, metal bands in the Middle East reflect the complex social and economic conditions they experience. Hecker’s work (2016) provides further insights into musical defiance in the Middle East. His research focuses specifically on Turkish black metal. He found metalheads in Turkey are defying social norms and claiming spaces that challenge social and moral conservative values. Moreover, Hecker regards metal culture as a new tool to overcome social and ethical barriers. Robertson (2012)2 offers a similar analysis but in the Iranian context, looking at the country’s underground music scene. Her work noted the reactionary tendencies in the Tehrani underground music scene, with musicians writing lyrics reflecting the social context in which they exist.3 The present chapter builds on this literature, focusing specifically on the interactions between metal music transgression and Satanic panic. METHODOLOGY For this study, I interviewed five extreme heavy metal artists from Egypt, five from Iran, and three from Syria. I approach the data using narrative analysis to facilitate the interviewees’ sharing the subjective significance of their experiences. Narrative analysis provided the space and time for the researcher to build trust with the participants. Because their stories contain painful recollections, it is critical to use an approach that places the study subjects at the center of the process and enables them to assign meaning to their stories (Anderson and Kirkpatrick 2016). Furthermore, I based some parts of this study on my previous research (Eckerström 2022), in which I investigated the case of the band Confess and their actions against the blasphemy law in Iran. When needed, I present the artists using a pseudonym, to protect their identities. The participants have read the final version of the interview transcriptions and approved their quotes. Since some participants are still at risk, I decided not to include their lyrics. EXTREME HEAVY METAL IN EGYPT: RESILIENCE AND HERITAGE REVIVAL At a first glance, Egyptian metal bands are emerging and becoming better known to metalheads across the globe. Some have played live in Egypt and at prominent international festivals such as Wacken in Germany. These bands are far from achieving international fame; nonetheless, they have managed to



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gain some fans and continue to put their music out into the world. They have, however, paid a high price for their careers. During the 1990s, heavy metal in Egypt took root with many bands playing cover songs at various local venues. Eventually, Egyptian metal musicians decolonized the genre by incorporating their ancient heritage into the sound and iconography. As a result, a handful of bands managed to create their own original brand of extreme heavy metal. It is important to identify two historical moments that influenced the actions and music. The first moral panic and crackdown on heavy metal bands came in 1997 (LeVine 2009), when the press labeled adolescents engaging in innocent meetings as Satanic youth. Sammy, the singer of the death metal band Scarab, was not part of this first investigation, but as part of the community, he notes: we were meeting outside the Baron Palace. It was appealing because of its gothic style and demonic statues. The propaganda saying there were metal concerts inside was false. It had no electricity inside; it was forbidden to enter.

The press fed the public’s fear of dangerous Western influences on the young generation for several weeks. As Sammy points out, “The government had to interfere because it went viral.” According to Ismaeel, leader of the band Crescent, the press at the time decided to use metalheads as a scapegoat: “It was a move to distract the public from a political stagnation or important legislation discussion in the parliament. Unfortunately, musicians paid the price.” There was a widespread belief among the public that metalheads would kill children, eat cats, and tear apart the Qur’an. Ali, leader of the band Osiris, underlines that while today we can look back at the period as a hoax created by the media, the consequences were real and severe. The National Security Force was involved and about one hundred metalheads were arrested. Ali himself was not detained, probably because of his dual citizenship. As Ali explains: kids with dual passports were not arrested as the government wanted to keep it quiet. Still, it was scary. Seeing your friends arrested is shocking. I heard that many musicians from other bands were tortured while in prison. Many left Egypt as their lives were destroyed.

Notwithstanding persecution, Osiris defiantly published their music in the summer of 1997. Crescent followed suit with their EP in 1999, two years after the first arrests occurred. As Ismaeel states, “it was black metal, and I was a completely insane person to do that. I am rebellious by nature. I did not calculate any consequences.” Osiris and Crescent’s music was not satanic but rather inspired by the ancient history of Egypt. They had to wait many years

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before their society shared the same desire to rediscover the Egyptian heritage represented in their music. The second satanic panic incident came in 2012, when the late Muslim Brotherhood–affiliated president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, took office. Morsi brought an extraordinary number of court cases against media and journalists on account of offenses against the president and Islam (Mansour 2012). While not all the participants in this study experienced censorship (e.g., Ismaeel felt he was free to express his music during Morsi’s presidency), others felt heavy metal was again under attack. Specifically, a lawyer for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) accused the club El-Sawy Culture Wheel of holding Satanist rock concerts (Blabbermouth 2012). El-Sawy was one of the few places where heavy metal musicians found a safe haven, but not without compromises. The venue was allowed to host underground artists but they operated under self-censorship (Gordon 2008). For example, the venue would check the bands’ lyrics prior to performances. Artists could not perform acts deemed explicitly political or offensive to religion. Still, the Muslim Brotherhood judged the concerts unlawful and attempted to rally the public against the heavy metal scene. Extreme metal musician Horus was arrested and suspected of belonging to Satanist and antiauthoritarian organizations. He was soon released under the premise that he could be persecuted again in the future if new evidence emerged. In a traditionally patriarchal country, female metal musicians suffered even more. Cherine, the founder of the all-female band Massive Scar Era, was used by the media as the face of the Satanic takeover. As a female, she had to confront social constructions of gender rules within a patriarchal society. While the authorities accused men of belonging to anti-authoritarian and Satanist organizations, Cherine was asked questions directly related to her gender. Her screaming vocals and powerful stage presence led the authority to suspect that she was possessed by the devil. She states the following in our interview: The Muslim Brotherhood guy was very keen to show I was doing black magic. They asked me if I was channeling the devil because that is not the voice of a woman. There were other male musicians, but he only presented me. Seeing a woman owning the stage with an electric guitar, screaming in front of people, well, it was just unacceptable. To him, I was doing black magic.

Cherine has suffered a higher price than the other participants have. She has a unique perspective on these events, especially when it comes to women’s rights in Egypt. The patriarchal system was apparent in both Egyptian society and its metal scene. When entering a male-dominated industry, Massive Scar Era refused the common image of a woman in metal as a sexy or goth femme



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Figure 15.1. Cover artwork for the album Color Blind (2018) by the Egyptian band Massive Scar Era. Source: Photo provided by Cherine Amr.

fatale (see figure 15.1). They opted to wear trousers and T-shirts to allow the attention to be focused on their talent and not on their gender or sexuality. Various aspects of the band were contrary to their context, from their image to the guttural female voice. Their lyrics similarly went against the expectations of Egyptian society; this includes songs such as “Pray,” which screamed the frustration young women felt: “Are you done? Frustrated? So am I. Why are you so calm? . . . Pray for some time to reload my guns. Rocket and rounds put asleep all the sound. Why are you so loud?” Such a strong and confrontational female character was outside any scheme of the Egyptian society at the time. Her experience also demonstrates that religion is only one of the factors that fed the Satanic panic in Egypt. According to Cherine, the primary reason she was investigated and used as the face of Satanism was that she

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was a woman and did not conform to societal expectations. In contrast to her male counterparts, she was considered a possessed individual rather than an active participant in an anti-authoritarian plot. Metalheads at the time were also invited to TV shows to explain the nature of their music and this had a surprising outcome. As Horus states, the public suddenly started to support them. “They hated our music, but they hated the Muslim Brotherhood more. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Those who opposed the Muslim Brotherhood feared that they would lead Egypt into the type of Islamist authoritarianism observed in Iran. This concern was reflected in the 2012 presidential election. Morsi was overthrown, and all activities of the Muslim Brotherhood movement were designated as terroristic (Jaraba 2014). Egypt’s attitude toward heavy metal has changed. Since the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood calls for a moderate Islamic tradition and practice have become part of political and societal discourse. A major consequence of this is a renewed interest in ancient Egyptian culture. Many bands believe that metal music can be an active part of the heritage revival initiated in the country; the very same traditions that bands such as Osiris, Scarab, and Massive Scar Era have celebrated for years. Egypt is now rediscovering its traditions by commissioning new excavations, opening new museums, and teaching hieroglyphics in schools (Egypt Independent 2021). For Sammy, who celebrates the ancient Egyptian civilization through death metal, resistance nowadays is about reinventing the heritage and fixing the political and social system: “there has been a lot of talk about rediscovering and including the commandments of Goddess Ma’at in the law. Her commandments are meant to provide a richer and just life.” These are slow and small steps that, according to Sammy, can bring a better understanding of human rights and freedom of expression to Egypt. To Cherine, the current problem in Egypt is not about religion but social control as “the State is not religious, but it is very protective. The colonialism culture is still present. There is an understanding that any cultural interferences are an invitation to colonialism in one way or another.” Cultural interferences are a concern for government officials. These interferences are largely conducted through social media, and the Egyptian authorities sent a clear message in 2020 when five girls were sentenced to prison for videos they posted to TikTok, allegedly for violating Egyptian family values (BBC 2022). As noted by Lewis (2002, 151) “the long quest for freedom has left a string of shabby tyrannies, ranging from traditional autocracies to new-style dictatorships, modern only in their apparatus of repression and indoctrination.” The persecutions of musicians and internet personalities is a clear example of this phenomenon. Musicians today are aware of the lines that a band should not cross. As Cherine argues “today the censorship is on bands



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that sing in Arabic and have lyrics against the government. The government can censor them by not issuing permission. Officially for security reasons.” In conclusion, the Satanic panics that affected Egypt in 1997 and 2012 seem to have faded to the point that musicians can freely perform nowadays, reflecting the first typology of moral panic theorized by Goode and Ben-Yehuda. There have been instances of heavy metal controversies post2012. However, according to the participants in this research, they were not fueled by political or religious limits; rather, by technicalities such as last-minute venue changes and insufficient permissions. Still, my data shows that today’s restrictions on extreme forms of heavy metal are not caused by Satanic panic outbursts but by some laws meant to protect every religion. As the association between metal music and folk devils is now in the past, Egyptian metalheads are willing to compromise with their society. However, it would be incorrect to claim that Egypt has resolved its issues of restricting freedom of expression. Musicians who openly criticize the authorities are at risk. On May 2, 2020, the media reported that the twenty-four-year-old filmmaker Shady Habash had died in an Egyptian prison after being imprisoned without trial for more than two years. Habash was jailed in March 2018 for directing a music video for exiled Egyptian rock musician Ramy Essam (Michaelson 2020). In response to the death of filmmaker Shady Habash, the United Nations and numerous human rights organizations requested a full investigation (EgyptWatch 2020). Artists in Egypt have once again realized that while they can perform their music today, there are limits. EXTREME HEAVY METAL IN IRAN: TRANSGRESSION AND BLASPHEMY The fate of the Iranian artists participating in this study was determined long before they were even born. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 ushered in a strict Islamization of the country, which led to the ban on popular music, dancing, and solo performances by women. Ayatollah Khomeini, the first leader of Iran’s Islamic Republic following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, had for a long time regarded radio and television as colonizers and banned all forms of popular music once in power (Youssefzadeh 2000). This government’s restrictive approach also reflected a fear of the Westernization of the country. Due to its ability to seduce people, music has been a popular topic of discussion in Iran. Over the years, some governments have permitted some popular music. Yet, these rare occurrences follow very strict guidelines, like no headbanging and only instrumental music. Ajmal remembers “in the ’80s you had to have a certificate to carry musical instruments. The regime injected

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the idea that music was a sin.” A similar situation is recalled by Iranian black metal musician Sina Winter, leader of the band From the Vastland: Before social media, a simple black T-shirt and long hair could get you to jail. Once Iranians understood black metal and the ideology around it, the media wrote about Mayhem and the whole deal. So, going out in the ’80s and ’90s was a problem. Also, during job interviews, they always asked me if I was a Satanist. They wanted to kick me from the University three times just because of my hair [sic].

Transgressions became easier as new technologies became available. In the ’90s, analog satellites provided access to the world outside Iran (Eckerström 2022). Ajmal says metalheads used them immediately: It spread like fire among the metal community. For example, we could watch a Turkish channel that played rock and metal. It was on Monday. So, every Monday, I made sure not to work and to be home to record it on VHS. All my friends were doing the same. Then digital arrived, and there were just too many channels where to find rock and metal [sic].

Music was traded at school and illegal underground parties. Normally, someone was assigned the role of watchdog, alerting others if the police showed up. This fear-mongering did not cease. In 2008, the government channel TV3 aired a documentary entitled The Shock of Rap and Satanism, which vilified rap and metal music. The documentary promoted the notion of metalheads as perverted individuals. This gave rise to further Satanic fear among adults. As Nikan, leader of the band Confess, recalls: The documentary was heavily promoted before it aired. They showed Marilyn Manson, Metallica and pushed the idea that if your children are in their room, they are probably doing drugs and listening to Satanic music. This music can affect the brain. The documentary pushed the idea that the USA is working very seriously on a cultural invasion mission through Satanic rituals.

The documentary featured young people asking forgiveness for listening to Satanic music. However, none of the Iranian metal musicians I interviewed recognized the individuals in the film. As Ajmal explains, “the scene is small. We all know each other. I am sure they were actors because none of us knew them.” In the documentary, metalheads are portrayed as criminals while mothers are shown in tears. While the metal community laughed at it, many parents accepted it as truth. In Iran, metalheads are still associated with blasphemy and defiance of authority. Less than a decade later, in 2015, Nikan Khosravi and Arash Ilkhani from the band Confess were arrested on accounts



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of blasphemy and propaganda against the system, among other charges (Eckerström 2022). Some of the arrests of extreme metal musicians in Iran have reached the Western media. Iranian Black Metal Story, a documentary by Finnish music journalist and filmmaker Janne Vuorela, tells the story of black metal musician Magus. Magus is the founder of various bands, including Beaten Victoriouses and Mogh (see figures 15.2 and 15.3). The musician has been arrested multiple times for performing black metal even while he had official permission to do so. On one occasion, Warrior of Peace, Magus’s art group, planned a performance in an art gallery in 2005. The show was legal since Magus applied for and received permission. The United Nations Association of Iran, the Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization, and, paradoxically, the Organization for Defending Victims of Violence (ODVV) all sponsored the event. Despite the permission, the police arrested many, including Magus, who was blindfolded and later tortured. Today, the war against heavy metal in Iran has gone online. The Islamic Republic is keeping up with social media and instant messaging systems. Musicians and fans are tech-savvy and have remained one step ahead thanks to the use of VPNs. Today, there is a small but steady number of heavy metal musicians who want to preserve the genre and overcome censorship. The most popular subgenres of metal in Iran are extreme, especially black, death, and thrash metal. These extreme manifestations of metal are

Figure 15.2. Magus Faustoos Crowley from the Iranian metal band Mogh. Source: Photo provided by Magus Faustoos Crowley.

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Figure 15.3. Iranian metal band Mogh. Source: Photo provided by Magus Faustoos Crowley.

also the most dangerous. Iranian black metal, akin to its Western counterpart, often engages with ancient themes. While Scandinavian black metal draws on Norse mythology, Iranian musicians use their music to share tales from the pre-Islamic era. The authorities define this as blasphemy for being anti-Islamic. Sina had to leave Iran after performing in 2013 at Inferno Music Festival in Oslo and participating in the documentary Blackhearts in 2016. His lyrics mostly focus on Zoroastrian and ancient Persian tales. Sina offers as an example the song “The Cadavers Tower,” from the album Daevayasna: this song is about the burial ritual of the dead body in ancient Iran, specifically in Zoroastrianism. You can see Iranians’ strong connection to nature, not only in terms of their gods and demons, which are all about natural elements but also in the way they lived their everyday lives, their beliefs about life after death, the other side of life, which is completely against the beliefs in Islam.

Despite being a protected minority in Iran, Zoroastrians face increasing restrictions and mass arrests (Boroumand 2020). As Sina states: when you come from a country like Iran, everything is political. In Iran today, not only artists, but almost everyone considers the pendant I wear [The Faravahar, ancient symbol of Zoroastrianism] as a way to express opposition to the regime that promotes Islam. It’s not about religion. In a way, it’s against



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religion. We use this symbol to indicate that Islam is not our religion despite their best efforts. I write about ancient Persia before the Islamic era. It’s seen somehow against Islam.

Just like Sina, Magus continues his fight for freedom of expression through his art. His bands aim to draw insights from the pagan teachings: “in our musical projects; we have two aspects: the ancient wisdom and against the current religion and politics, which is chaos, and we want a better future for the new generations.” Today, artists like Sina and Magus are the few who promote what the Iranian authorities consider to be a blasphemous heritage. The same happened with the death metal band Arsames, who were sentenced to fifteen years in prison in 2020 for playing Satanic music and writing lyrics inspired by Persian history and mythology (Pasbani 2020). The Islamic republic has long judged extreme heavy metal as degenerate music that diverts people from their religious beliefs. This sentiment has been propagated through Satanic propaganda. The panic was not a one-time occurrence, but rather an ongoing organizational process. This reflects what Goode and Ben-Yehuda call a routinized or institutionalized moral panic. As a result of the constant accusations of devil worship and irreligious art punishable under the blasphemy law, musicians have developed a “come get me!” attitude. EXTREME HEAVY METAL IN SYRIA: OUTCASTS AT WAR Aleppo and Damascus harbor the main centers of the Syrian metal scene. Metalheads have historically been vilified as Satanists in the country with many spending time in jail. Before the civil war,4 the authorities banned heavy metal and metalheads would be arrested simply for their long hair. The first serious crackdown came in 2006. As was the case in Egypt, Syrian media functioned as the epicenter of the Satanic fear of metalheads. Using pictures from the website DeviantArt depicting alternative looks of individuals covered in piercings and tattoos or alternative looks, newspapers spread the fear that this is how metal fans look, and warned that they were ready to physically attack religious people. This resulted in studios being raided, owners jailed and music stores being crushed. Despite the harassment and growing violence against metalheads, the scene eventually grew. Metal bands began to play shows, not without some arrests taking place. Because Syria is a secular country with a population that practices different religions, the country possesses specialized courts for each of the major religions. Consequently, a Muslim will be referred to the Islamic court, while a Christian will be

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referred to the Christian court. Ittack, an extreme metal musician, was arrested while performing in 1999. While not a practicing Christian, he was sent to the Christian court because of his family background. The musician was required to sign a document stating that he would no longer play metal music. Meanwhile, his friends with Muslim backgrounds were sanctioned according to Islamic law. In addition to physically abusing them, the Islamic police cut off their long hair. The situation escalated once again in 2003 when a major wave of moral anxiety swept through the country. As with other cases elsewhere, television programs disseminated false narratives of metal fans eating unborn children and other obscenities. Ittack was arrested again. He recalls the occasion, saying: “this time it was political, and it was very scary. We were coming back from a gig. We were wearing black and we had long hair; a typical metalhead look. The police beat us in their car. We were in Aleppo, a region where strict understanding of Islamic law is dominant.” Despite the hostile environment, Ittack continued to hold thought-provoking discussions. In 2014, Ittack’s story took a turn after he wrote a song against Islam out of frustration with religion: I was kidnapped and arrested multiple times because of this religion. I wrote this black metal song to say “let us live.” “Stop forcing me to accept a religion.” I used a Qur’anic verse in the song, and it was about peace. So, you want to be a hypocrite. I will bring you things from your book! Here you go. I did not publish it, but two people took it from me, and a friend of mine got arrested on the way to Aleppo by the IS [Islamic State]. They found the song. They interrogated him. They asked if I was a Satanist and he gave my name. I hid at the university, I graduated, and after that, I escaped.

Despite the escalation of Satanic panic, metal artists persisted. Omari, another active member of the extreme heavy metal community, was arrested four times between 2004 and 2008 and has left the country. During that time, he organized street concerts to protest the limitations on freedom of expression. To him, it was a movement, as “our gang had problems with societies, families, everybody kicked us, we were alone in this fight.” As the war began in 2011, authorities faced more serious problems than children listening to metal. Omari claims that the government used some musicians to distract from the effects of the war by allowing some bands to perform. Omari explains: some of my metalhead friends were on the other side fighting, and some died. My music is my revenge; it is anarchist and purely Satanic. I am wanted in Syria, but I do not care. My dream is to open a music school there because there is only one and it belongs to the government.



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While around these musicians a war erupted and the country was divided by extreme violence, the scene grew into a family. Among the bands growing out of this context is Maysaloon, one of the most vocal Syrian metal bands presently active (see figure 15.4). For Jake, the frontman, it is up to the artists to make a change and lead others on that front. Maysaloon looks at their music as a form of resistance meant to highlight paganism and the pre-Islamic heritage. One example of this is the song “The Truer One.” As Jake explains “this song is about the destruction of Bal Temple in Palmyra by Isis.” The site was dedicated to the Phoenician god of storms and the sky. Maysaloon uses very poetic language to harken the listener to an earlier era: “The truer Baal shall bask the earth / and shun the lies in you / Those pools of blood shall see the birth / Of His light all anew.” Thus, their protest is crafted through

Figure 15.4. Cover artwork for the album A Lip to Earth, a Lip to Heaven and a Tongue to the Stars (2021) by the Syrian metal band Maysaloon. Source: Image provided by Maysaloon.

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metaphors. While the text might not be overtly transgressive, conservatives still view metal musicians as Satanists. With this in mind, the band is aware of the dangers they face. In addition to the label of Satanist, the war has increased the risks associated with performing live. According to Jake, “I was not deliberately playing while mortars were being fired. However, they would occasionally fire them. It was frightening, the constant feeling of unsafety.” Jake is only one of many young Syrians who feel forgotten by the world and want to use their music to fight assumptions about metal and their country: “Resistance is the essence of what we are doing, it is the reason for our passion and love for achieving our dreams,” he stated in our conversation. The artists persecuted before the war are now planning to regroup and continue what they consider a fight against cultural censorship while coping with a conflict that has left the new generation feeling forgotten. It would be incorrect to say that in Syria the moral panic has been institutionalized. Rather than dealing with the government, metalheads must face a conservative community who think they are folk devils. Thus, panic events that do not result in institutional repercussions may nevertheless leave a mark on society as “[They] are likely to have had some impact in the informal or attitudinal realm” (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994, 169). Some artists have fully embraced the label of Satanists and have learned about this ideology. Others have written anti-religious music out of pain and frustration. The Syrian musicians I met all opened our conversation with the same message: “I am shocked people remember about us.” In addition to having suffered persecution and exclusion because of their music, metalheads in Syria believe that the rest of the world is simply looking the other way. Meanwhile, they must worry whether their concert will be interrupted by mortars or whether they will stand on the street with a guitar and watch their childhood friends fighting on the other side. In addition to using their music as a form of resistance, metal musicians also use their loud music to mask bomb blasts and cope with the image of destruction. SATANIC PANIC AND ISLAM As discussed earlier, in most Middle Eastern countries heavy metal is regarded as a Western genre of music. The public has come to regard heavy metal as a potentially dangerous pathway that can lead adolescents to lose their cultural roots. The moral panic concerning heavy metal comes mainly from the lifestyle associated with the musical genre. Traditionally, heavy metal music has been associated with Satan, drugs, sex, and alcohol; therefore, it can be considered harām, forbidden, according to Islamic traditions (Eckerström



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n.d). Muslim jurists and scholars (LeVine 2009; Otterbeck 2008) generally refer to the Qur’anic verse 31:6–7 as proof of why heavy metal music can be understood as sinful. In it, God forbids everything that diverts attention from beneficial activities, like stories with no basis, amusements, and idle talk. Jurists also use ahadith5 to decide on legal rulings. Some ahadith mention music as punishable. Nevertheless, we must be cautious when approaching complex topics such as Islamic jurisprudence and its sources. Some ahadith instead mention music in favorable terms. It is well known that the prophet allowed music to be played during religious ceremonies (Leaman 2014). Thus, it is important to emphasize that authorities use religion to justify the persecution of artists. The moral panic outbreak within the region often conceals ulterior political motives. This reflects the overlap of politics and religion in the countries analyzed. DISCUSSION As a result of the participants’ stories, I focused on the Satanic panics that shaped the metal scenes in Egypt, Iran, and Syria. By focusing on the roots of the Satanic fear one can gain a greater understanding of the metal communities’ attitudes and intentions as public and national elite reactions contributed largely to its development. Transgression is a complex phenomenon in parts of the Middle East, where advocacy and music often converge. It requires the ability to respond to alienation with an active and constructive approach to influence change. It is quite the contrast with the Satanic panic experienced by Western musicians. Certainly, there have been instances where moral panic has affected bands, but these did not result in torture, jail time, and the infringement of civil rights. Therefore, if scholars remain content with the findings of studies conducted on Satanic scares in the Global North, they will miss a broader understanding of this phenomenon in relation to different forms of government systems and religious beliefs. Additionally, it becomes easier to assume that the transgression of a heavy metal band in a Muslim context is similar. The artists from the countries analyzed have shared experiences. Yet, the data shows their current situation diverges according to the different developments of Satanic panics in their respective countries. There is no doubt that many artistic expressions and manifestations of self-actualization are interpreted as “proper” or “improper” based on culturally accepted characteristics. Therefore, context plays an important role in understanding transgressive dynamics, and they need to be analyzed in light of their specific socio-historical contexts (Müller 2004). Additionally, studies into transgressions beyond the secular realm contribute

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to a deeper understanding of transgressions and transgression-related lives in new contexts. As the presence of censorship and persecution reveals the effects of a faulty political system, scholars and human rights activists can both gain insight from studying the origins, development, and responses to the folk devil label in the Middle East. Given the severity of persecutions extreme metal musicians suffer, the genre is undoubtedly a powerful tool to explore the nuances of moral panic and forms of resistance outside of the Global North. REFERENCES Anderson, Claire, and Susan Kirkpatrick. “Narrative Interviewing.” International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy 38, no. 3 (2016): 631–34. doi: 10.1007/ s11096-015-0222-0. Asprem, Egil. “Heathens up North: Politics, Polemics and Contemporary Norse Paganism in Norway.” Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies 10, no. 1 (2008): 41–69. doi: 10.1558/pome.v10i1.41. Bank, Charlotte. The Contemporary Art Scene in Syria: Social Critique and an Artistic Movement. London: Routledge, 2020. Bataille, George. Erotism: Death and Sensuality. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986. BBC. “Egypt Female Tiktok Star Jailed for Three Years for Human Trafficking.” BBC News. April 18, 2022. Retrieved June 29, 2022, from https:​//​www​.bbc​.com​/ news​/world​-middle​-east​-61139566. Blabbermouth. “‘Satanic’ Heavy Metal Concert in Egypt Prompts Police Investigation.” Blabbermouth.Net. 2012. Accessed February 12, 2022. https:​//​www​.blabbermouth​ .net​/news​/Satanic​-heavy​-metal​-concert​-in​-egypt​-prompts​-police​-investigation​/. Boroumand, Ladan. “Iranians Turn Away from the Islamic Republic.” Journal of Democracy (2020). Accessed March 25, 2022, https:​//​www​.journalofdemocracy​ .org​/articles​/iranians​-turn​-away​-from​-the​-islamic​-republic​/. Eckerstöm, Pasqualina. “Extreme Heavy Metal and Blasphemy in Iran: The Case of Confess.” Contemporary Islam, 16(2), (2022): 115–133. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11562-022-00493-7. Egypt Independent. “Egypt’s Education Ministry to Teach Hieroglyphs in Schools Next Year.” 2021. Accessed March 25, 2022. https:​//​egyptindependent​.com​/egypts​ -education​-ministry​-to​-teach​-hieroglyphs​-in​-schools​-next​-year​/. EgyptWatch. “UN Demands an Investigation into the Death of Shady Habash.” EgyptWatch. May 7, 2020. Retrieved June 29, 2022, from https:​//​egyptwatch​.net​ /2020​/05​/07​/un​-demands​-an​-investigation​-into​-the​-death​-of​-shady​-habash​/ Epp, André. “Worshipping the Devil or (Sub-)Cultural Expressions against Authorities?” Lied Und Populäre Kultur/Song and Popular Culture 60/61 (2016): 87–98.



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Goode, Erich, and Nachman Ben-Yehuda. “Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction.” Annual Review of Sociology 20, no. 1 (1994): 149–71. doi: 10.1146/annurev.so.20.080194.001053 ———. Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. 2nd ed. Chichester, UK; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Gordon, Lillie S. “Emerging Spaces: A Review of Nonprofit, Nongovernmental Music Venues in Cairo, Egypt.” Review of Middle East Studies 42, nos. 1–2 (2008): 62–70. Hecker, Pierre. Turkish Metal: Music, Meaning, and Morality in a Muslim Society. London, England: Routledge, 2016. Hjelm, Titus, Henrik Bogdan, Asbjørn Dyrendal, and Jesper Aagaard Petersen. “Nordic Satanism and Satanism Scares: The Dark Side of the Secular Welfare State.” Social Compass 56, no. 4 (2009): 515–29. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1177​/0037768609345972 Jaraba, Mahmoud. “Why Did the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Year-Long Rule Fall?” Zeitschrift Für Politik 61, no. 1 (2014): 61–80. Jenks, Chris. Transgression: Key Ideas. London: Routledge, 2003. Kahn-Harris, Keith. Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. London: Berg, 2006. Klypchak, Brad. “‘How You Gonna See Me Now’: Recontextualizing Metal Artists and Moral Panics,” Popular Music History 6, no. 1 (2012): 38–51. doi: 10.1558/ pomh.v6i1/2.38 Leaman, Oliver. Controversies in Contemporary Islam. Routledge, 2014. LeVine, Mark. Headbanging against Repressive Regimes: Censorship of Heavy Metal in the Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia and China. Report/Freemuse 9. Copenhagen: Freemuse, 2009. ———. Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2008. Lewis, Bernard. What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Mansour, Sherif. “On the Divide: Press Freedom at Risk in Egypt.” Cpj.Org. 2012. Accessed February 12, 2022. https:​//​cpj​.org​/reports​/2013​/08​/on​-divide​-egypt​-press​ -freedom​-morsi​/. Michaelson, Ruth. “Egyptian Film-Maker Who Worked on Video Mocking President Dies in Jail.” The Guardian. 2020. Accessed March 12, 2022. https:​ //​ www​ .theguardian​.com​/world​/2020​/may​/02​/egyptian​-filmmaker​-who​-mocked​-president​ -dies​-in​-cairo​-jail. Müller, Beate. Censorship & Cultural Regulation in the Modern Age: Critical Studies. Amsterdam: Brill, 2004. https:​//​search​.ebscohost​.com​/login​.aspx​?direct​ =true​&db​=e000xww​&AN​=119831​&site​=ehost​-live​&scope​=site. Accessed March 26, 2022. Otterbeck, Jonas. “Battling over the Public Sphere: Islamic Reactions to the Music of Today.” Contemporary Islam 2, no. 3 (2008): 211–28. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1007​/ s11562​-008​-0062​-y Pasbani, Robert. “Metal Band ARSAMES Escape from Iran after Being Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison for ‘Playing Satanic Music.’” Metalinjection.Net. 2020.

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Accessed March 12, 2022. https:​//​metalinjection​.net​/news​/metal​-band​-arsames​ -escape​-from​-iran​-after​-being​-sentenced​-to​-15​-years​-in​-prison. Richardson, James T., Jenny Reichert, and Valerie Lykes. “Satanism in America: An Update.” Social Compass 56, no. 4 (2009): 552–63. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1177​ /0037768609345976 Roberts-Hughes, Rebecca. “Transgression and Conservation: Rereading Georges Bataille.” Journal for Cultural Research 21, no. 2 (2017): 157–68. doi: 10.1080/14797585.2016.1239608 Robertson, Bronwen. Reverberations of Dissent: Identity and Expression in Iran’s Illegal Music Scene. New York: Continuum Publishing Corporation, 2012. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. Duke University Press, 2018. Turner, Bryan S. The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Victor, Jeffrey S. “Moral Panics and the Social Construction of Deviant Behavior: A Theory and Application to the Case of Ritual Child Abuse.” Sociological Perspectives 41, no. 3 (1998): 541–65. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.2307​/1389563. Youssefzadeh, Ameneh. “The Situation of Music in Iran since the Revolution: The Role of Official Organization.” 2000.

DISCOGRAPHY Confess. 2022. Revenge at All Costs, Rexius Records. CD, Digital Album. Crescent. 2021. Carving the Fires of Akhet, Listenable Records. Vinyl, Cassette, CD, Digital Album. From the Vastland. 2020. The Haft Khan, Satanath Records. CD, Digital Album. Massive Scar Era. 2018. Color Blind, Independent. CD, Digital Album. Maysaloon, 2021. A Lip to Earth, a Lip to Heaven and a Tongue to the Stars, Independent. Digital Album. Mogh. 2009. Allaho Asghar. Germany, Zurvan Production. CD, Digital Album. Osiris. 2021. Meanders a Soul​ . . . , Satanath Records. CD, Digital Album.

NOTES 1. Metaldeads are viewed as folk devils not only in the Middle East. The topic of transgression and heavy metal in the Global South as a whole is complex and well worth exploring. 2. My doctoral dissertation aims to give updated and contemporary narratives of extreme metal and transgression in Iran. 3. It is my intention to provide a fresh and contemporary look at Iranian heavy metal, defiance, and irreligiosity in my doctoral dissertation.



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4. The Syrian civil war is an ongoing conflict that began in March 2011. While many factors led to this conflict, it erupted into a full-scale war between the Syrian government and the anti-government rebel groups. 5. A collection of Prophet Muhammad’s sayings, together with accounts of his daily practice (the Sunna), it serves as the most important source of guidance for Muslims aside from the Qur’an.

SECTION 7

Resistance and Community

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Decolonizing the Mind’s Eye Images of Resistance in Caribbean Metal Music Nelson Varas-Díaz and Daniel Nevárez Araújo

Clear to the naked eye, the chimneys that were crucially important for the processing of sugar cane in Caribbean plantations during centuries past still stand today. These towering structures once spewed smoke from the cauldrons employed in guarapo processing. As Puerto Ricans who grew up on the island and spent much of our childhood there, these structures were a silent part of our landscape throughout our lives. Mostly abandoned, now vestiges of our past history, the chimneys could be found in an empty field, on the outskirts of a suburban neighborhood, or even in a shopping mall parking lot. The Central Cambalache in the town of Arecibo, Hacienda Clementina in Peñuelas, Central Aguirre in Salinas, and Central Buenavista in Carolina are just some examples of the past’s lingering in present-day Puerto Rico. They stand as reminders of a time when European colonial empires used the Caribbean islands as sites for sugar monoculture through the exploitation of local people and institutionalized slavery. They stand as silent witnesses to our colonial history. Not only do they dominate the external landscape; they also haunt our mind’s eyes. Although the linkages between sugar cane, colonial plantations, and metal music might seem like a stretch for some readers, we as Caribbean subjects see a direct line connecting them. In this chapter we aim to explore how metal musicians and artists in the Caribbean region incorporate imagery related to the sugar plantations, specifically the machete, as a form of decolonial education and resistance. In order to do so, we begin by providing a succinct description of the plantation’s role in the Caribbean colonial experience. 327

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THE CARIBBEAN SUGAR PLANTATION AS A SITE OF COLONIAL OPPRESSION Sidney Mintz’s work stands as one of the most incisive depictions of the role of sugar in the colonial relations between European empires and their territories in the Caribbean region (Mintz 1985). Focusing on the British empire, he explores how this region had been historically entangled in the dynamics of European imperial control. He explains how changing tastes in the European ruling classes, which he ties to the “human liking for sweetness” (xxiii), made the production of sugar in their colonies a top priority. His work provides vivid descriptions of work in the plantation as a labor-intensive process where sugar cane was cut, transported, boiled, and processed with incredible speed. He describes these work sites as ones where “the heat and the noise were overpowering,” harbingers of the “considerable danger involved.” (49). Plantations were sites where colonial land appropriation and human exploitation stood side by side as the norm. In the sugar plantation, slavery coexisted with indentured servitude and colonial subjects bore the brunt of the process in their bodies and minds. Mintz’s documentation of the human toll of working in the sugar plantations continues well into the mid-twentieth century, most saliently through his portrayal of the life story of a sugar cane worker in Puerto Rico named Taso (Mintz 1974). In his depiction of the Barrio Jauca in the town of Santa Isabel, where he began working in 1948, he describes the colonial and exploitative effects of the plantation on this sugar cane worker. He brings to life “the shouts of the mayordomo, the grunting of the men as they swung their machetes, the sweat and dust and din [that] easily conjured up an earlier island era. Only the sound of the whip was missing” (xvi). The sound of the slaver’s whip may have been absent, but the effects of colonialism lingered, particularly since North American imperialism, present in Puerto Rico after 1898, would continue to use the Island as a sugar production site much like it had already done in other parts of the Caribbean. “The year begins and ends with the swish of the machetes,” Mintz would state in his work, as if to imprint on the reader the ever-lasting nature of the colonial experience (23). The sounds of the machetes identified by Mintz do not seem arbitrary to us. The machete was a key item in the everyday lives of servants and slaves who worked the sugar plantations. Its elongated and heavy blade made it a necessary tool to cut down the sugar cane, which could reach multiple inches in diameter, making them difficult to chop. A hard grass required an even harder tool, and thus the machete became a staple of the Caribbean region’s agriculture. But the blade has also garnered different meanings in the region, as the machete that cut down the sugar cane could also be used, potentially, to

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bring the colonial master to his knees. Therefore, it should not be surprising that a symbol so intimately linked to colonial exploitation in the plantation setting has also been used by political resistance movements in the Caribbean (Fernández 1996). Equally unsurprising, metal music in the Caribbean region has incorporated the machete as an important visual component that ties bands to the territory and its history. Metal in the Caribbean, we will argue in this chapter, has used the machete symbolically as a way to engage its listeners in decolonial reflections. METAL MUSIC’S DECOLONIAL ROLE IN THE CARIBBEAN REGION We have argued elsewhere that metal music in Latin America and the Caribbean engages in critical reflections pertaining to the colonial history of the region (Varas-Díaz and Morales 2018; Varas-Díaz 2019; Wallach 2019). This type of metal music understands that the legacy of the colonial process is enduring, and that its consequences remain an ongoing concern, representing a process that Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano has termed coloniality (Quijano 2007, 2010, 2020). We have posited that metal confronts coloniality through extreme decolonial dialogues (Varas-Díaz 2021; Varas-Díaz, Nevárez Araújo, and Rivera-Segarra 2020). We define the latter as “invitations, ones particularly interested in promoting transformation, made through metal music to engage in critical reflections about oppressive practices faced by Latin American communities in light of coloniality” (Varas-Díaz 2021, 9). We label these experiences dialogues to highlight the exchange of information pertaining to the effects of coloniality between equals, as proposed by Paulo Freire (Freire 2000). This notion is posited in opposition to a didactic top-down approach, in which some allege to possesses unequivocally correct information at all times. They are decolonial precisely because “metal bands engage in dialogues that are concerned with the historical process of oppression faced by the region, stemming from XV century colonialism and its lingering effects into the present day.” Finally, these dialogues are extreme primarily because they are perceived as threatening by “those unfamiliar to metal aesthetics and sounds” and because they address issues related to “death, violence, and oppression” which tend to “worry unfamiliar listeners in the region; this includes politicians and the media.” They address issues of extremity (e.g., colonial violence, murder, political repression) that some people in the region would rather soon forget. These extreme decolonial dialogues are not meant to be understood as exclusively verbal conversations. On the contrary, they are manifested via polymorphic strategies that encompass the use of musical sounds, lyrics,

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and artwork, among other tactics, to critically examine coloniality through metal music (dos Santos Silva and Medeiros 2021; González Hernández 2021; Varas-Díaz and Mendoza 2018; Wallach 2020). In this chapter we draw attention to the visual dimension of this musical genre and how it aids in understanding our colonial past and its current influence on our daily lives. This use of the visual image to decolonize our worldviews has been championed by scholars like Walter Mignolo (2014), Nicholas Mirzoeff (2011), Enrique Dussel (2020), and Zulma Palermo (2014) when they highlight how the arts, for example, can serve to critically examine coloniality as the legacy of European modernity. Still, probably the most engaged use of the visual image as a decolonial practice stems from the work of Bolivian scholar Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, who proposed a sociology of the image as a decolonial strategy (Rivera Cusicanqui 2015). We gather two important lessons from her work that can help us see how metal music becomes decolonial. First, her work distances itself from the detached, uninvolved observation of the Other, characteristic of visual anthropology, and proposes a sociological analysis of the image by communities themselves. This process entails the analysis of local images generated throughout history, from within, in order to understand how our communities have experienced coloniality. Second, for Cusicanqui the image is a key aspect in decolonial analysis and action as systems of language and the words they disseminate within the colonial system “encubren” (hide things), leave things unsaid, and naturalize the colonial racial order as “sentido común” (common sense) (175). The image, on the contrary, can be enlisted in the service of revealing this hidden agenda, helping us understand the colonial experience, while also opening up spaces for decolonization. Metal music in the Caribbean has almost inadvertently used the image in this manner. Here we provide examples from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic to make our case for how the image of the machete became an important part of Caribbean metal’s decolonial strategy. AGAINST EMPIRE—THEN (CUBA) Several men sit on the ground and face the camera. They are being interviewed by the film’s director, who remains conspicuously off-camera. The men look beaten, sullied, and wounded. One of them stares directly at the camera, addressing the viewer: “We had never fought against a weapon like that,” he says. The weapon in question here is the machete. Soon after, one of the other men explains that Cubans “did not use machetes the way we use the sword,” a phrase that helps the audience understand that these actors, despite speaking with noticeably heavy Cuban accents, are meant to depict Spanish combatants during the Ten Years’ War. As if to highlight the machete’s role

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in that conflict, one of the Spaniards states that for the Cubans “we were not men,” adding that they were cut down by their blades much like “vines, plants, trees.” “There is no fencing that can defend against that,” one of them summarizes, bringing the point home. The dialogue makes one thing abundantly clear; the protagonists here are not the men but, rather, the machetes that have cut through them and others in battle, serving as tools that changed the tide of the conflict. The scene detailed above takes place in the film La Primera Carga al Machete (The Machete’s First Charge), a movie centered on the Pino de Aire battle which took place on October 26, 1868, in Cuba’s Oriente province. This event would see the clash between local Cuban plantation owners and the colonial Spanish government, becoming, along with other such conflicts, a catalyst for Cuba’s independence from Spain. Directed by Manuel Octavio Gómez, the film was released in 1969, a century after the events depicted and a decade after the Cuban Revolution had taken place. For the present-day observer, it might feel strange to encounter the movie’s hybrid mixture of traditional narrative film with a then-unconventional mockumentary style. Still, films like this one played an enormous role in cementing the Cuban revolutionary spirit, helping to symbolically link the latter to earlier independence efforts against foreign enemies (Juan-Navarro 2006). Surprisingly, our first encounter with the film came in the form of snippets found in the video for the song “Al Machete” by the Cuban metal band Tendencia. However, in hindsight, such an encounter makes a lot of sense. “This is not a song we did just for the fun of it,” explained Sergio Ernesto Puente Becerra, the band’s guitarist. “It took a lot of time to put together; we researched it, and did a well-thought-out process with it.” Sergio would go on to explain why they had decided to write this song as part of their 2004 release entitled Rebeldes (Tendencia 2004), which they subsequently rerecorded for their compilation Añejo 25 (Tendencia 2020): “We have always sought to sing about our ancestros, and this includes our wars of independence.” The video for the song clearly encapsulates the band’s intent as it juxtaposes their musical performance with segments of the film, showing Cubans attacking the Spanish army with their blades all the while screaming “al machete” at the top of their lungs. He explained the significance of these images: “Al Machete” has been a classic Cuban cry for more than five hundred years. From the wars of independence until today. It was the cry that the mambises uttered. These were people who fought in the war of independence against Spain (. . .). They shouted “machete” and they all ran into battle (. . .). The mambises were nothing more than peasants. People trying to become independent from Spanish colonialism that did so much damage in Cuba. This war of independence, which began in 1895, was necessary. Think of the disadvantages they

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faced. There were 53,000 mambises against 270,000 Spaniards. And what did the mambises have? While the Spanish had state-of-the-art weapons, the Cubans had to fight with machetes. It was quite courageous to go against a firearm with a machete and yet that is exactly what they did.

The use of the film as part of the band’s video had multiple objectives. First, Sergio explained that the band wanted to “pay homage to Cuban cinema.” This movie in particular is part of the Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano movement which aimed to use film as a tool of social critique, particularly against the effects of colonialism in the region (Solanas and Getino 1997). The band wanted to offer a tribute to this tradition, deploying the use of art in the service of a committed political analysis. More importantly, Sergio saw it as an educational opportunity geared towards a newer generation of viewers and listeners. “We wanted people to know about the wars of independence, and about those who had the courage to fight.” He immediately explained the important wartime roles taken up by figures such as Máximo Gómez, Calixto García, and Antonio Maceo. All of them were mentioned as potential role models for today’s youth. As we continued to converse with Sergio, it became readily evident that the use of the machete as a symbol in the band’s lyrics and imagery did not only stem from an interest in the country’s historical past. It also served as a symbol capable of capturing their personal experiences growing up in post-revolutionary Cuba. “Cuban youth have had machetes, and we have had to work with them,” Sergio explained. He mentioned how the band members, having grown up in the countryside of Pinar del Río, were part of the escuelas en campos (schools in the countryside) programs developed by the revolutionary government. “We all studied there and after school we would work the tobacco fields.” He stated this rather proudly and mentioned that as a sixteen-year-old at the time he saw it as a formative process. He explained that handling a machete was a dangerous task. “It is long and heavy, and if you are not careful you can cut your leg.” More importantly, he mentioned that “once you have held a machete in your hand, you think about how these men could have taken on the Spanish army with them.” After a moment of silence, he explained that “it must have taken a lot of courage.” That courage, while still there, had to be transformed centuries later to deal with Cuba’s present-day problems. In another attempt at contextualizing the machete into their present, Sergio explained how it remains an invaluable tool in this century’s Cuban countryside. He linked its continued relevance to what is perhaps the key sociopolitical issue hovering over the Island today: the ongoing US embargo (Haney 2005; Amnesty International 2009). The US empire’s protracted policing of Cuban commerce and shores has made it impossible to bring advanced farming machinery and technology into the

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country. “Remember that in Cuba we don’t have the same farming technology as in other countries; the USA and Europe,” he explained. “Here we still work with machetes and not large machinery. Our problems with gas entail that farmers have to rely on the machete.” Sergio’s personal experience with the machete as part of his after-school education, and his reflections surrounding the present-day implications of the US embargo for farmers, brought the tool into clear perspective. Their music video might seem to some like a useful tool to foster reflections on the country’s resistance during its colonial past, but to us it appeared to be much more than that. Tendencia was using the machete as an emblem of the struggles and attendant resistance easily found in today’s Cuba, a country still marked by the legacy of colonialism and imperialism. However, as we soon found out, they were not alone in this deployment of the machete as a symbol of resistance. Another example of the use of the machete in Cuban metal music can be found in the work of the metal band Combat Noise. The band was formed in Havana in 1995 and remains active as of the completion of this chapter. The band, whose third full-length album is entitled Anthems of Carnage (2013), have made a name for themselves thanks to their integration of war imagery and themes into their lyrical content. The aforementioned concept album, released in 2013, specifically addresses the events that transpired during the Ten Years’ War. The machete is showcased front and center throughout the album’s artwork (see figure 16.1). The cover depicts two machetes crossed into an x shape and drenched in blood on top of a battle-worn Cuban flag. The CD’s booklet includes other depictions of the machete. One in particular exhibits machetes arranged in the form of a pentagram, an aesthetic more akin to those associated with extreme metal music. The visual dimensions of the machete in the artwork are certainly stunning. It may be argued that, at first glance, the imagery can be read as yet another instance of gratuitous violence; however, such an interpretation would be shortsighted without a consideration of its relation to the album’s lyrical content. The album’s lyrics describe the events that led to the Ten Years’ War and its ultimate outcome. Throughout this process the band meditates on a plethora of colonial era themes, including forced evangelization, slavery, and ultimately, the wars for independence. As if to tell the island’s story through a colonial lens, the album opens with the instrumental song entitled “Christianization till Extermination.” It then goes on to describe the horrors of the Spanish government’s Catholic-sanctioned slave trade. They describe the capture of Africans, the shackling of their bodies, and the subsequent overcrowding of these bodies in coffin-like ships. The band’s lyrics link the slave trade and the resultant suffering to the proliferation of sugar plantations in the Americas. The song entitled “Slave’s Grinder” explicitly makes this connection:

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Figure 16.1. Cover for the album Anthems of Carnage by Cuban metal band Combat Noise. Source: Image provided by Juan Carlos Torrente.

Doomed to extreme work conditions Treated like beasts they were whipped Into refinery’s machinery You grinded flesh and sugar cane The sweet juices were mixed with blood

The last line of the stanza seems particularly relevant to us. The graphic imagery of blood and cane juice commingling serves as a reminder of the plantations’ dependence on oppression and violence. There is, admittedly, a somewhat morbid proposition in asking the listener to invoke their sense of taste. But therein also lies the band’s challenge to the listener, demanding that we not make light of this legacy of violence. The band uses these linkages between sugar plantations and blood as a literary strategy to introduce the machete into the story. The album describes in detail a few of the skirmishes that took place between Cubans and the Spanish army. In this narrative process, the Cuban peasant, particularly the mambí, is cast as the story’s hero. The mambises were Cubans from different

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social classes and races who saw the fight against Spanish control as a needed step in the country’s development. The band introduces them into the story, machetes in hand, in the song entitled “Butchering the Spaniard Infantry.” In it the local people’s attack on the Spaniards is subtly depicted as a conscientious, courageous choice, even when for most this choice meant coming face to face with almost certain death, a sentiment that echoes the earlier reflections expressed by both Sergio (music) and Octavio Gómez (film). But while the Spaniards may have had their long-range weapons, the mambises had their machetes. This disparity in weaponry becomes a source of national pride, with the machete serving as the symbol materializing that sentiment. The machete makes its first incursion into the album with the following lines: Naked on the horses we emerge from the forest Machete at hand on a killing spree The attack turns to lunacy The Spaniards scream in shock None will survive our deadly cuts

The results of the machete-laden encounter are described in detail and the choice of words, emphasizing a visual component, echoes the gruesome lyrical styles listeners are accustomed to when it comes to death metal and grindcore music (Overell 2012). Enemies that “look like minced meat,” and mambises “drunk with the taste of blood,” “fascinated with the acts of carnage” are but a few examples. Other songs shed further light on the motivations behind the war, stressing the importance of love for the homeland and the need to remain faithful to the “flag of the lonely star” in a clear reference to the Cuban banner. The outcomes are positive for the Cubans as they sing “Free Cuba! Spain has died” and rejoice that “forever their empire falls down.” The album booklet reads like the band’s statement of intent, dedicating the work to “all the braves who fought the Great War between Cuba and Spain (1868–1878).” Even more telling of its linkages to the island’s revolutionary history is the band’s mention of Cuban figures Carlos Manuel de Céspedes (a Cuban plantation owner who freed his slaves), Máximo Gómez (credited with teaching the mambises how to fight with machetes), Ignacio Agramonte (leader of the uprising in the Camagüey province), José Martí (Cuban independence leader, poet, and philosopher), and Antonio Maceo (mambí military commander) as inspirational figures. Vocalist Juan Carlos Torrente explained that at one time in his life he was “a bit unaware” of his country’s history but once he started to learn more and more, he “felt very proud of it.” He had chosen to write about this particular war because it “broke with the silence surrounding centuries of Spanish dominion.” Furthermore, the heroics of

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the Cuban fighters made him “want to write about other wars in my country’s history.” It was not lost on us that the figures mentioned in the album’s liner notes were aligned with those Sergio had described as potential models for today’s Cuban youth. Both Tendencia and Combat Noise had focused on these events to reflect on Cuba’s colonial past and present-day plights. The machete, as each band’s main symbol and protagonist, served to coalesce these ideals. But would this emphasis on the machete have any effect on the lives of their respective audiences? We asked Sergio about the utility of the machete as a present-day symbol. Confronted with this question, he explained the following: I think that nowadays it is a bit obsolete to use a machete to go fight with someone. This is mostly seen in street fights. But the concept behind the machete as such is to fight. Fight for yourself. Fight for your country. Fight for your family, for your freedom, for your independence. You can do it with a pen . . . however you want to do it. But it is also a message that we are giving to them saying, “if they did it, so can we.” The youth should know that they can fight for their well-being and for their country through Cuban culture.

AGAINST EMPIRE—NOW (PUERTO RICO) In 2017, a group of Puerto Rican bands came together under the Puerto Rican Metal Alliance banner in order to release a compilation of local metal music. The album, organized by local promoter Rafael Bracero, had a special meaning for all those involved as it was the first metal vinyl compilation to be released on the island. Personal communications with the organizer pointed at the project’s significance. As he explained, a great deal of thought had been put into the project’s artwork. Local artist Kadriel Betsen was brought in to develop the cover art for the record. In the end, the compilation, released under the title Metal Alliance Attack III, boasted a cover that included a skull emblazoned with the colors of the Puerto Rican flag surrounded by sixteen bloody machetes in circular arrangement (see figure 16.2). We had the opportunity to interview the artist and discuss the album’s artwork, his use of the machetes as a centerpiece, and how he understood the instrument’s linkages to local history, both past and present. Betsen was quick to explain how the machete had been part of his childhood. “I was raised in the countryside. In Mayagüez, between Las Marías and Maricao. Obviously, there were tasks to complete in the farm,” he stated as an introduction. Betsen explained that he would spend his days helping his grandmother with farm chores; as a result, his abuela handed him his first

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Figure 16.2. Cover for the album Puerto Rico Metal Alliance Attack III. Source: Image provided by Kadriel Betsen.

machete. Although her message seemed clear (he was going to work), Betsen infused this moment with a childlike sense of adventure. “She put a machete in my hands, and I thought I was fighting with someone,” he expressed while clarifying that these were flights of fantasy. But amidst the descriptions of horseplay with the machete, one thing rang particularly true: “you feel like you have something powerful in your hands,” he mentioned. There was a “certain sense of strength in an object that can be used to cut sugar cane and just as easily chop a man’s head off.” This duality expressed by Betsen on the use of the machete is not coincidental. His answer to our very first question had pointed to the varied meanings ascribed to the blade in the local context. On the one hand, the mention of sugar cane alluded to experiences of foreign oppression in the plantation which was characteristic of the colonial experience. On the other,

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the possibility of chopping a man’s head off projected on the blade the possibility of resisting such oppression. Betsen seemed aware of this double meaning, and it became all the more apparent during our conversation when he described the views he had heard expressed by regional farmers, or jíbaros, as they are known locally. As he explained: The machete stands for different things in our culture. It is a symbol of imposition because they put a machete in our hands and told us to get to work so that others could get rich. Later during Puerto Rico’s industrialization (period), there were machines to do this, but there has always been a workforce doing this by hand. One man chopped cane while another collected the raw material and loaded it onto trucks. These people worked the land. The machete was the tool for the job. These were people working farms with their machetes and hoping that one day the land would be theirs. That was never going to happen. So, the machete was imposed on us, but at the same time it was a weapon. Conflicts were solved with machete blows. So, you have two things there that make it an important element (. . .). If you crossed one of those jíbaros, he would cut you in two.

Betsen’s view of the jíbaro seems particularly important here. In his characterization one could sense a clear duality. The jíbaro represents a figure who was oppressed through the foreign control of the land, particularly for the cultivation and exportation of sugar cane, while also being a potential actor in violent resistance. Betsen seemed to concentrate on the later and had no qualms about expressing his admiration for the figure of the jíbaro. “Look at the life of the jíbaro,” he stated. “He woke up at 4:30 AM, drank a buche of coffee, and headed to work the fields.” With a bit of tobacco in his inner cheek “he could work until 10 AM and only then get some food in his system.” He explained how this grueling daily routine always ended with the “sharpening of the machete” in anticipation of repeating the same tasks the next day. “It was a hard life, always accompanied by the machete.” At one point, Betsen almost unconsciously shifted from a third-person to a first-person narrative. “If we worked the field and returned home at night through dark paths, the machete was there as protection. It was always there.” This shift seemed to reflect to us that some of the characteristics of the jíbaro he was describing seemed pertinent, and personal, still today. Betsen was aware that his perspectives on the jíbaro were not widely shared by some sectors of Puerto Rican society. He explained that on frequent occasions the term was used pejoratively to describe people that were perceived as uneducated or lazy. It is not uncommon for local people to say one has engaged in a “jibarada” when doing something that is perceived as dated or backward. Furthermore, individuals are often alerted and warned to “not be a jíbaro” (no sea un jíbaro) when making comments that are perceived as

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lacking knowledge about a particular topic. “Maybe in some places the term is used contemptuously, but it is also an issue of great pride. It all depends. That is what is interesting about it,” he stated in our interview. This duality surrounding the figure of the jíbaro captured in Betsen’s comments is not unprecedented. Lillian Guerra, in her excellent and influential analysis of the jíbaro, explains how this duality came about, dating its origins to the attitudes harbored by late nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century local elites (Guerra 1998). She posits that once the latter lost influence as a result of the 1898 American invasion and the accompanying colonization of the island, they were left excluded “from the ranks of political power and cultural prestige.” (68) Therefore, they appropriated the figure of the jíbaro as a way to ideologically challenge and counter the new American colonizers. This entailed the transformation of the jíbaro from an ignorant and lazy subject into a figure viewed as the natural inheritor of some form of Spanish heritage. The jíbaro exemplified all the positive qualities working-class Puerto Ricans should aspire to, at least in the minds of the local elites. In this process of reinvention, the jíbaro was portrayed as a racially white and morally tireless worker. The jíbaro harkened to a romanticized past in the minds of local elites and offered the hope for an idealized future where “North Americans were out of the picture, and in which the elite presided over a colonial society that operated much more on their own terms” (101). In the process of controlling these polysemic interpretations, the jíbaro was conveniently constructed as passive and accepting of his lot in life. In this manner, he could not become a threat to the local elites once that idealized future was achieved. Guerra expands on this duality found in the jíbaro by mining for artifacts such as local literature and poems. But this duality also manifested in the twentieth century through the work of local artists who depicted the jíbaro in seemingly contradictory ways. Take, for example, the painting Jíbaro Negro (1941) by Oscar Colón Delgado where the jíbaro is portrayed as a skinny man whose arms and legs can barely fill his garments. These are held up by a tightly wound belt that makes his shirt bulge. Compare this depiction to Augusto Marín’s painting El Agricultor (1958) where the jíbaro is imagined as a highly muscular man whose bulging legs and arms can barely be contained by his clothing. Due to the perspective of the painting, he stands towering above the sugar cane before la zafra (the harvest); a near physical impossibility considering that sugar cane can grow up to fifteen feet in height. The visual arts, just like the literature examined by Guerra in her analysis of the jíbaro, reflect the tense meaning-making processes related to this figure. It is interesting to us that metal music would embark on yet another reinterpretation of the jíbaro at the start of the twenty-first century. After reflecting on the contradictory local views surrounding the jíbaro, Betsen returned to the topic of the album cover to explain the inclusion of

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the machetes in the artwork. “Obviously traditional metal covers have many metal elements; chains, spikes, swords,” but he distanced himself from that. As he explained: But machetes are a real thing, right? There we have the look, but it’s also a call to Puerto Ricanness (. . .). The intention in that cover was to speak of the machete as a tool of labor and as a symbol of oppression, but also to reflect on its more potentially violent side when used as a weapon. A weapon of revolution or rebellion. There we can forget a little bit about being oppressed. Okay, you put a machete in my hands, and I made it part of my life, but this is who I am now. Now if you come to me . . . I will cut you.

Within the context of this symbolic threat against oppression, it doesn’t seem fortuitous to us that the artwork has bloodied machetes as opposed to glinting, unsullied ones. These are not machetes stained by fieldwork and sugar cane; they are stained by blood. This is a distinct departure from the clean machetes used as part of the artwork for other local metal bands, Puya being the prime example. These machetes have seen war, albeit a symbolic one. Puerto Ricans were no longer fighting against the colonial imposition of sugar cane crops, but they still faced other incursions of colonial power. Having their territory used as bombing ranges by the US Navy, being unable to vote for representatives in the US Congress, and having their country controlled by a Congress-appointed board, were just some of the most recent examples. Thus, Betsen saw in the machete, the jíbaro’s constant tool and appendage, a potential symbol capable of capturing the mood of present times. We asked, “what message are you sending to other metal fans?” He stared at us and after a few second answered: “Easy. The need to avoid the renunciation of one’s own being.” LIVING INSIDE THE EMPIRE—FOREVER? (THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC) Originally from the Dominican Republic, hardcore metal band La Armada have lived and worked out of the city of Chicago for the better part of the last decade, after their decision to migrate in search of better economic and musical opportunities. Their imagery is intimately tied to their country of origin and its colonial history. The band’s artwork is known for depicting antislavery uprisings, traditional Dominican masks (e.g., lechones de Santiago), and more significant for the purposes of our chapter in this book, the machete as part of their logo (see figure 16.3). One of their most recent releases, aptly titled Anti-Colonial Vol. 1 (2018), makes the band’s interest in colonial

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Figure 16.3. Cover artwork for the album Songs of the Exiled by Dominican/USA band La Armada. Source: Screenshot of a public post on the band’s Facebook page.

struggles even more explicit. We spoke with band members Paul Rivera and Juan Marte to explore how they experienced this anticolonial worldview now living as immigrants within the United States empire. Marte was eager to explain that even though they lived in Chicago, their ties to the Dominican Republic were “still very strong.” He mentioned that “most band members still had their parents and friends on the island” and they spoke over the phone on a daily basis. He stressed that they “learned to play instruments and put on their first show there.” For him, La Armada “was a hybrid between the two countries” they now inhabited. This hybridity manifested itself in “the band’s sound and lyrics.” Their use of Caribbean imagery and rhythms would drive the point home. They may have been playing in Chicago, but the sense of being from elsewhere, a place impacted

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by colonialism and imperialism, accompanied them constantly. This idea of hybridity, or inhabiting places in between, echoes the complex positionalities of people living in borderlands and margins, much like Gloria Anzaldúa explained about her life lived in the US/Mexico border zone (Anzaldúa 1987). The process yields something new, yet still recognizable. In the case of La Armada, we encountered Dominicans living in a large metropolitan city in the United States, nevertheless using the machete, a rural and Caribbean symbol, as an image of power and resistance. The fact that these are Dominicans who migrated to the United States must inform any attempt at understanding this band’s choice of topic and the symbols that accompany their message, as these are fully embedded in their home country’s larger story of colonial imperialism. Pablo Mariñez’s (1998) examination of the role of farmers in the social struggles in the Dominican Republic sheds light into the intricate relationship between US imperialism and the local peasantry. Focusing on the US invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1916, Mariñez highlights two fundamental consequences of this process. First, the US invasion of the Dominican Republic was accompanied by the expropriation of lands from local ownership and the accompanying proliferation of foreign-owned sugar mills. Sugar was king and having more land to plant sugar cane became an essential step towards the fulfillment of imperial desires. Second, the presence of the United States military entailed the need to prevent any form of disruptive resistance. Therefore, the US Marines confiscated weapons from local peasants. Mariñez explains that a total of three million small weapons, taken from the latter, were buried at sea by US Marines. This seemed to have long-term effects on the local population, including paving the way for the Trujillo dictatorship to trample over a population rendered defenseless. The control over Dominican land, and the crushing of resistance in its population, were key outcomes of the US invasion. Therefore, it seems particularly significant to us that a Dominican hardcore metal band would so clearly self-identify as anticolonial and adopt as its symbol a machete, which is so closely linked to the Caribbean colonial experience. As mentioned earlier, the band have lived in the belly of the imperial beast for a decade now. Metal music guided their migration process, as one of us (Névarez Araújo 2021) has explained elsewhere. Their connection to Chicago emerged from contacts with record companies and other diasporic bands they began to cultivate while living in the Dominican Republic. A Chicago-based distribution company had sent them metal and punk albums from other Latin American bands, including some that were living in the United States. “We were already looking for a place to move within the US and that gave us an idea,” Rivera explained. “It seemed beneficial because a lot of people spoke Spanish and some bands were even singing in Spanish!” This decision

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echoes published literature on migration which states that people move to places where others share similar cultural characteristics when possible. This is one reason why Dominicans frequently migrate to Puerto Rico, as they can inhabit a US territory, all while continuing to speak their own language (Funkhouser and Ramos 1993). With this context in mind, La Armada’s move to the United States seems particularly courageous to us. Although Chicago has a large Latinx Spanish-speaking population, it is still within the mainland United States, a fact that brings with it a more diverse set of challenges for migrants. Rivera explained the band members’ positionality in the United States as an ongoing duality: Like many aspects of life, it is a duality of feelings and situations. On the one hand, there is the fact that from here we have been able to promote the band, play on big platforms, and travel the world. These things would have been impossible from our condition in the Caribbean. We also play the role of migrant children who help support their homes and their parents in the Caribbean, much like other people who have left their country in search of opportunities. On the other hand, there is the reality of living in an extremely superficial and consumerist society; in an Empire that has done so much damage throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. In light of that, we seek to use our band as a platform to educate where we can and to serve as an example by trying to do our work in a dignified, responsible, and high-level manner.

The process of Dominican migration to the United States, as described by Rivera, is riddled with a multitude of difficulties and is rendered all the more complex by a historical process heavily marked by the remnants of colonial dynamics. As Ramona Hernández (2004) has explained, Dominican migration to the United States increased during the ’60s when Joaquín Balaguer’s government implemented policies geared toward economic growth and the neutralization of the political opposition. The US-backed policies through which political dissidents were secretly granted visas to enter the United States, eventually opened the flood gates for a large migration process. This pattern declined in the ’80s as immigration policies changed in the United States. Today, the process has transformed into the large-scale, systematic process of deportation of migrants to the Dominican Republic (Padilla et al. 2018). Understanding migration from the Dominican Republic to the United States requires a consideration of the sociostructural factors that foster migration (Pessar 1982). In this landscape, coloniality manifests front and center, a reality very much present in that equation. With this context as a backdrop, Rivera’s description of the challenges faced by the band members, and more importantly how these are overcome, becomes more significant. Their move was far from easy. The band started looking for jobs in order to buy equipment and instruments. “We had to pay

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for a place to practice. Buy a van to move around. It took us several years to get established.” Rivera immediately explained that they received a lot of support from the local Latin American scene in Chicago and that allowed them to become ingrained in the local community. Marte interjected in the conversation to explain the importance of the local migrant community. “The community has a lot of influence in the Chicago scene. They know we are a politically committed band that does social work. That is why they opened their doors to us.” The opening of doors and the process of fitting in were described as a learning opportunity for all. The band would learn about their new context and the audience, in turn, would learn about the band’s Dominican roots. “They have learned about merengue music,” Rivera mentioned. “They ask us about the rhythms we integrate into our music and we explain they are from the Island.” They both saw this as a teachable moment between communities in the United States and the Caribbean. “We have been nurtured by knowing about other countries in the Chicago diaspora,” he explained. “I am a richer person for it, and it is a product of the linkages formed here.” Marte echoed the sentiment and mentioned that “people seem to feel identified with us because we really represent the community via musical activism and solidarity.” This musical activism was clearly anti-colonial as espoused by their album’s title. It was also anti-imperialistic as evidenced by their song lyrics. The band is keenly aware of their positionality within a modern-day empire as evidenced by their song “Unquenchable,” which was released in 2018. In it they pose a blistering critique of the treatment of immigrants in the United States. They characterize the United States as “cannibalistic” and fostering a “greed that is unquenchable.” The song’s lyrics shift from English to Spanish to question who is benefiting from xenophobia and racial hate. Hell itself is described as a “prisión para inmigrantes” (a prison for immigrants). The band highlights its present-day reflections on empire and greed as it mentions the wall proposed by the Trump administration and posits “immigrant blood” as fuel to “feed the complex.” These themes carry throughout their latest EP entitled Songs of the Exiled I: Chicago, where their positionality as Dominicans within the empire becomes a key to their critique. A machete graces the cover alongside a traditional lechones de Santiago mask. The video for the song “All We Know” has Rivera wearing a facemask (evidence of the continued COVID pandemic1) embroidered with machetes arranged in an x shape. The use of imagery to identify them as Dominicans is everywhere and the machete plays a crucial role in their anticolonial reflections. La Armada’s systematic use of imagery that links them to the geography, politics, and history of the Dominican Republic, amidst an experience of violent migration in the United States, functions as a way to gather support from other local migrant communities and to engage in collective activism

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through music against the present-day manifestations of coloniality and imperialism. The prominence of the machete gains more importance in an urban context far from the sugar cane fields. The colonial plight has changed, but simultaneously remains eerily unaltered. The blade positions the band as different from others and provides them with a sense of power against coloniality, which is channeled through sound and imagery. It echoes what Frances Negrón-Muntaner (2017) has called the “look of sovereignty,” or a practice in which imagery is used to reflect power over oneself and one’s context. In this migratory scenario into the bowels of a colonial power, the machete seems like a perfect icon to express resistance and survival. The band knows that this struggle for survival is constant, as evidenced by the introductory remarks to one of their latest songs, and the accompanying video, entitled “White Jesus.” In it the voice of a US television newscaster is heard stating that “the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore” as “massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people and they are changes that none of us ever voted for and most of us don’t like.” La Armada is part of those demographic changes and uses its music to challenge these racist ideas based on coloniality. It is no surprise that machetes are both the opening and closing images to their music video. DISCUSSION As we have argued throughout, metal in Latin American and the Caribbean is as much a visual practice as it is a sonic practice. In its sonic dimension, but moreso in its visual dimension, it actively adopts an observant attitude. It is certainly observant as a praxis that looks to visualize, that is, add a visual accompaniment to the sounds that permeate the genre. But it is also observant in a more socially engaged tenor, one that reminds us of Cusicanqui’s call for a sociology of the image. Caribbean and Latin American metal, as we have shown, is attuned to the socio-political and historical context from which it originates. And that observant praxis predominantly takes as its prime focus and target the history of colonialism in the region. In Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, the shadow of colonialism influences and continues to inform lived experience. The chimneys alluded to at the beginning of this chapter are but one of the ways the specter continues to haunt us to this day. In response, the bands and artists highlighted in this chapter have adopted an anticolonial icon, the machete, as an important element in their work. The machete then becomes a tool enlisted in the service of both education and resistance. Consider the figures these musicians and artists have invoked in their mediations and explanations in this chapter. Tendencia and Combat Noise showcase the mambises. These bands are not only invested in educating

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fans regarding the historical conflicts influencing the country’s trajectory, but they also want to present fans with icons of resistance as a way to challenge colonial impositions. In their eyes, the mambise ethos—al machete—captures their desire to challenge something as hindering as the US embargo and reclaim Cuba’s sovereignty. Kadriel Betsen similarly enlists the jíbaro as a figure worthy of study and emulation, at least when it comes to the jíbaro as an emblem of hard, honorable work and survival. In Betsen’s vision, the jíbaro brandishes the machete against the plundering of the land by foreigners as well as against the “progress” of capitalism. Finally, La Armada calls forth the figure of the immigrant. Being immigrants themselves, they can attest to the effects of having an empire not only take away a peoples’ land. They can also offer a stark critique of the inherent hypocrisy of that same empire then turning around and expecting the displaced to not “invade” the land the empire has claimed as its own. Moreover, the immigrant as a figure carries within the ethos of the worker. Therefore, we see a continuum of sorts in the figures invoked by each of the participants in this chapter. The mambises, the jíbaros, the immigrants, the workers, and, of course, the slaves represent the bodies on which the empires and the subsequent nations that have inherited the spoils of these empires were built. As such, the imagery of blood called forth by Combat Noise represents a response to this reality. It attests to the violence enacted on all of these figures and represents one of many connecting threads that unite them. The resistance and survival of the mambises against the Spaniards; the challenge of the jíbaro against Spain, the United States, “progress,” and capitalism; the perseverance of the immigrants in a world that takes away their land; the protest of the worker who has been conscripted to a degrading life of work at the service of another:2 all of these were responses to the continuous and lingering effects of colonialism. And all of these would coalesce, at one time or another, around the image of the machete. As such, we see the machete as enacting what Mirzoeff has posited as the act of countervisuality. In The Right to Look, Mirzoeff (2011) writes that “all visuality was and is imperial visuality, the shaping of modernity from the point of view of the imperial powers” (196). We see this notion playing out in the decolonial practices showcased here and argue that what we are witnessing is an exercise that is intent on reclaiming the images and iconography which had heretofore been deployed by the empire in its efforts to define and distinguish the “civilized” from the “primitive.” As a targeted affront, Tendencia, Combat Noise, Betsen, and La Armada take the machete and deploy it as a challenge to imperial visuality; in other words, they are engaging in an act of countervisuality. Mirzoeff goes on to add something that proves quite revelatory to us and gives rise to another of our preoccupations when it comes to the specter of colonialism. Whereas visuality had been the prerogative of the individual

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hero, imperial visuality was an abstracted and intensified means of ordering biopower. It understood history to be arranged within and across time, meaning that the “civilized” were at the leading edge of time, while their “primitive” counterparts, although alive in the same moment, were understood as living in the past. Embedded within empires, and made starkly noticeable through imperial visuality, is the obsession with the figure of the hero. Empires go to great lengths to define and control the definition of who is called a hero. Part of the spoils mentioned earlier is that prerogative bestowed on the victors; hence, they get to define themselves as heroes. Needless to say, in the case of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, Spain and the United States hover over the three. Invariably in each case, Spain and the United States have defined their own as heroic, while cataloguing its others as anything but heroic: they can be savages, uncultured, and even terrorists. In light of these battles for the definition of who has “the right to look,” the examples provided here show the machete also serving as a challenge to the definition of that hero narrative. The mambises, the jíbaro, and the immigrant are cast as figures capable of contesting the empire’s insistent desires and demands in defining said heroic narratives. As such, there is an active shift away from the dominant point of view of imperial visuality, call it a gaze if you will, to an observant praxis guided by experience, participation, and immersion. Furthermore, one could argue that the DIY aspect captured in each of these three stories and their context encapsulate the adoption of a philosophy of resistance and survival. In each case, brandishing the machete and claiming it as a tool, an icon, a symbol, became a way to act and not sit idly by. They are, in fact, mimicking the figures they have come to admire. In summary, claiming the machete and deploying it serves, we believe, as a first step in decolonizing the mind’s eye. Precisely because of the historical imposition of imperial visuality on the part of the colonizers, the mind’s eyes of both the colonized and the colonizer served the agenda of the colonial gaze for far too long. Interventions such as the ones presented here represent important challenges to that gaze. Therefore, we would like to finish by positing that, in the context of Latin America and the Caribbean, and perhaps even the Global South as a discursive whole, the challenge is not only to question who has “the right to look,” to paraphrase Mirzoeff, but more importantly to claim “the right to look back” as perhaps a more imperative and useful step towards decoloniality. To look back—to brandish the machete, both as an object and an idea—is to fight back.

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REFERENCES Amnesty International. “The US Embargo Against Cuba: It’s Impact on Economic and Social Rights.” 2009. Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands—La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco, California: Aunt Lute Books, 1987. Armada, La. Anti-Colonial Vol. 1 [CD]. Philadelphia, PA: Creep Records, 2018. Combat Noise. Anthems of Carnage [CD]. Havana, Cuba: Brutal Beatdown Records, 2013. Dussel, Enrique. Siete Ensayos de Filosofía de La Liberación: Hacia Una Fundamentación Del Giro Decolonial. Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 2020. Fernández, Ronald. The Disenchanted Island: Puerto Rico and the United States in the Twentieth Century. Florida: Praeger, 1996. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th Anniv. New York: Bloomsbury Academics, 2000. Funkhouser, Edward, and Fernando A. Ramos. “The Choice of Migration Destination: Dominican and Cuban Immigrants to the Mainland United States and Puerto Rico.” International Migration Review 27, no. 3 (1993): 537–56. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.2307​ /2547099 González Hernández, José Omar. “Appropriating the Extreme: Interculturality and the Decolonization of the Image in Extreme Metal in México and Colombia.” Metal Music Studies 7, no. 1 (2021). Guerra, Lillian. Popular Expression and National Identity in Puerto Rico. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1998. Haney, Patrick Jude. The Cuban Embargo: The Domestic Politics of an American Foreign Policy. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. Hernández, Ramona. “On the Age against the Poor.” Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Services 2, nos. 1–2 (2004): 87–101. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1300​/J191v02n01 Juan-Navarro, Santiago. “Cine, Mito y Revolución (La Primera Carga Al Machete— Manuel Octavio Gómez, 1969).” In Cuba: Cinéma et Révolution, edited by Julie Amiot-Guillouet and Nancy Berthier, 105–13. Lyon, France: LE GRIMH, 2006. Mariñez, Pablo. “Luchas Campesinas y Reforma Agraria En República Dominica.” In Historia Política de Los Campesinos Latinoamericanos, edited by Pablo González Casanova, 143–206. Madrid: Siglo Ventiuno Editores, 1998. Mignolo, Walter. “Aiesthesis Decolonial.” In Arte y Estética En La Encrucijada Descolonial II, edited by Pedro Pablo Gómez, Walter Mignolo, Adolfo Albán Achinte, and Madina Tlostanova, 31–54. Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Signo, 2014. Mintz, Sidney W. Worker in the Cane: A Puerto Rican Life Story. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1974. ———. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Penguin Books, 1985. Mirzoeff, Nicholas. The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Negrón-Muntaner, Frances. “The Look of Sovereignty: Style and Politics in the Young Lords.” In Sovereign Acts: Contesting Colonialism Across Indigenous

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Nations & Latinx America, edited by Frances Negrón-Muntaner, 254–84. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2017. Nevárez Araújo, Daniel. “Metal Migration: The Latin American Diasporic Experience in Heavy Metal.” In Heavy Metal Music in Latin America: Perspectives from the Distorted South, edited by Nelson Varas-Díaz, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, and Eliut Rivera-Segarra, 305–32. United Kingdom: Lexington Books, 2021. Overell, Rosemary. “‘[I] Hate Girls and Emo[Tion]s: Negotiating Masculinity in Grindcore Music.” Popular Music History 6, no. 1 (2012): 198–223. https:​//​doi​.org​ /10​.1558​/pomh​.v6i1​/2​.198 Padilla, Mark, José Félix Colón-Burgos, Nelson Varas-Díaz, Armando Matiz-Reyes, and Caroline Mary Parker. “Tourism Labor, Embodied Suffering, and the Deportation Regime in the Dominican Republic.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 32, no. 4 (2018): 498–519. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1111​/maq​.12447 Palermo, Zulma. “El Arte Latinoamericano En La Encrucijada Decolonial.” In Arte y Estética En La Encrucijada Descolonial, edited by Zulma Palermo, Irene López, Justo Pastor Mellado, and Adolfo Albán Achinte, 9–15. Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Signo, 2014. Pessar, Patricia R. “The Role of Households in International Migration and the Case of U.S.-Bound Migration from the Dominican Republic.” International Migration Review 16, no. 2 (1982): 342–64. Quijano, Aníbal. “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality.” Cultural Studies 21 nos. 2–3 (2007): 168–78. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1080​/09502380601164353 ———.“ Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality.” In Globalization and the Decolonial Option, 22–32. New York: Routledge, 2010. ———.Cuestiones y Horizontes: De La Dependencia Histórico-Estructural a La Colonialidad/Decolonialidad Del Poder. Revista de Sociología. Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2020. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.15381​/rsoc​.v0i28​.16897 Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia. Sociología de La Imagen: Miradas Ch’ixi Desde La Historia Andina. Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón, 2015. Santos Silva, Melina Aparecida dos, and Beatriz Medeiros. “‘This Gave Me a Mastodong’: A Decolonial Analysis of the Black Twerking Dancers in Mastodon’s The Motherload Music Video.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 2 (2021): 1–17. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1177​/1367549421994242 Solanas, Fernando, and Octavio Getino. “Towards a Third Cinema: Notes and Experiences for the Development of a Cinema of Liberation in the Third World.” In New Latin American Cinema, edited by Michael T. Martin, 33–58. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1997. Tendencia. “Rebeldes [CD]. Habana, Cuba: Independent, 2004. ———. Añejo XXV [Digital]. Havana, Cuba: Egrem, 2020. Varas-Díaz, Nelson. “Decolonial Hope: From the ‘Nueva Canción to Heavy Metal Music in Latin America.” Oral Presentation at the 4th Biennial Research Conference, International Society for Metal Music Studies. Nantes, France: International Society for Metal Music Studies, 2019. ———. Decolonial Metal Music in Latin America. London: Intellect, 2021.

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Varas-Díaz, Nelson, and Sigrid Mendoza. 2018. “Morbo Ancestral: Reformulando La Cultural Local a Través de La Música Metal En Puerto Rico.” Metal Music Studies 4, no. 1 (2018): 165–74. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1386​/mms​.4​.1​.165 Varas-Díaz, Nelson, and Eric Morales. “Decolonial Reflections in Latin American Metal: Religion, Politics and Resistance.” Theologiques 26, no. 1 (2018): 229–50. Varas-Díaz, Nelson, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, and Eliut Rivera-Segarra. “Conceptualizing the Distorted South: How to Understand Metal Music and Its Scholarship in Latin America.” In Heavy Metal Music in Latin America: Perspectives from the Distorted South, edited by Nelson Varas-Díaz, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, and Eliut Rivera-Segarra, 7–36. London: Lexington Books, 2020. Wallach, Jeremy. “Decolonizing Metal Studies: The Documentary Films of Nelson Varas-Díaz and Puerto Rico Heavy Metal Studies.” MUSICultures 46, no. 1 (2019): 163–66. ———. “Global Rock as Postcolonial Soundtrack.” In Bloomsbury Handbook for Rock Music Research, edited by Allan Moore and Paul Carr, 469–85. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020.

NOTES 1. The fact that the band has shot a video where all members except the singer are wearing protective masks represents yet another politically and socially engaged choice made by the band at a time when the simple act of wearing such a mask has become politically charged. This choice greatly contrasts, for example, with those made by a band like the classic American thrash metal group Vio-lence, who released a video for their cover of the Dead Kennedys’ song “California Uber Alles,” which sees the band adopting an antimask stance which equates wearing a protective mask to being uniformed sheep. 2. Although maroons do not form part of the material addressed here, they are nonetheless a key component of and influence on this ethos of resistance, defiance, and affront, a fact that demands recognition.

Chapter 17

Nongkrong, Value of Community, and Everyday Resistance in the Indonesian Metal Scene Oki Rahadianto Sutopo and Agustinus Aryo Lukisworo

Spreading across thousands of islands in the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the South China Sea, Indonesia is home to a population of 270 million people, which itself is representative of more than two hundred ethnic groups, various forms of religions, and hundreds of languages including English and Mandarin. Singer Keenan Nasution writes imaginatively about his country in a song titled, “Jamrud Khatulistiwa” (“Emerald of the Equator”) from 1978. He shows that people are happy living prosperously on the equator, surrounded by beautiful nature, plenty of flowers, purple sunshine, and friendly mankind. The lyrics allude to the fact that Indonesia is a country of extraordinary cultural, social, and biological diversity. However, this beautiful country has a long and bloody colonial history which shapes its contemporary lifeworld. Colonized by the Dutch for roughly 350 years and for shorter spans by the Portuguese and the British, Indonesia would experience an additional four years of occupation by Japan during the Second World War before proclaiming its independence, which it gained in 1945.1 Since, the country has experienced a dynamic sociocultural and political life which can be divided into four distinct eras: the Old Order (1949–1965), the New Order (1966–1998), the Reformation era (1999–2004), and the post-Reformation era (2005–present).2 Historically, it can be argued that the moment of emergence for youth culture in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, happened during the 1950s to 1960s (Barendregt, Keppy and Nordholt 2017). Nevertheless, there are 351

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few Indonesian academic studies of music-based youth culture. This is quite shocking since demographically almost 26 percent of the Indonesian population consists of young people (see Rencana Aksi Nasional Kepemudaan 2016). Previous studies of music during the New Order and the early Reformation era have been carried out by academic scholars both within and outside Indonesia, with many applying mono-disciplines as well as multidisciplines ranging from musicology to popular music studies (Piper and Jabo 1987, Supanggah 2003, Weintraub 2010). Previous studies which emphasized music-based youth subculture in Indonesia focused on identity and resistance against the authoritarian regime (Baulch 2003, Wallach 2008a, Wallach 2008b). At the global level, studies about youth culture are developing rapidly and have become influential in the academic world (Blackman 2005, Woodman and Bennett 2015). A similar positive trend is also happening in international metal studies, which has made a significant contribution to the field, in particular, due to its focus on comparative global tendencies (Wallach, Berger, and Greene 2011, Brown, Spracklen, Kahn-Harris, and Scott 2016, Varas-Diaz 2021). The present chapter draws from narratives of metal musicians to investigate the practice of nongkrong (hanging out) as the engaged construction of community values and acts of resistance in the contemporary neoliberal era in Indonesia. We build on previous studies and fill the gap in the literature on the contemporary Indonesian context using empirical data collected in Yogyakarta and Jakarta between April and August 2019, and through our own reflections as long-term critical insiders in the music scene. We further develop the meaning of nongkrong (hanging out) using a narrative approach and utilize it as the basis for theoretical abstraction related to the politics of everyday life in the metal scene. YOUTH CULTURE, MUSIC, AND RESISTANCE In the field of youth studies and popular music, the phenomena of youth culture, music, and resistance often intersect as ways of understanding the complexities of rapid social change at the local, national, and global level shedding light on the interlinkages of these with “new” youth subjectivities (Bennett and Guerra 2018, Woodman and Bennett 2015). Arguably, the development of interdisciplinary studies should not be separated from the dynamic of knowledge production in the social sciences, in particular, under conditions of continued global inequalities (Bhambra and Holmwood 2021, Connell 2007, Santos 2014, Go 2016). In this chapter, we try to elevate the voices of our subjects, especially their forms of social practice which represent everyday struggles. Based on a critical mapping of the abundant



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intersecting scholarship on youth culture, music, and resistance, we summarize previous relevant studies below in order to build on a new argument in this chapter. In international youth culture studies over the past four decades, the debates between subculture and postsubculture are ongoing and have been valuable as tools of analysis to understand the dynamics of global youth culture (Blackman 2005, Bennett 2011, Bennett and Kahn-Harris 2004, Hebdige 1979, Hodkinson and Deicke 2007, Weinzierl and Muggleton 2003). By way of summary, the subcultural approach, proposed by Stuart Hall and comrades from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), famously known as the Birmingham School, is a Gramsci-inspired neo-Marxist theoretical response to the established “social deviance” framework associated with the Chicago School rooted in positivistic sociology. In their theoretical overview, Clarke, Hall, Jefferson, and Roberts (1976) innovatively reconstruct subcultures as sites of counter-hegemonic resistance to dominant ideology; in other words, these serve as collective responses to changes in the contradictory structure of late capitalism. Thus, “spectacular” youth such as mods, skinheads, and punks, among others, practice counter-hegemonic rituals in order to create and express autonomy and difference from parents, along with the simultaneous need to keep those parental identifications which assist them (Cohen 1972). Many scholars from various traditions have criticized the CCCS’s idea of subculture for more than five decades. For example, Nayak (2003) and Huq (2006) critically questioned the relative absence of minority youth in the collections and foreground the pivotal roles of hybrid youth culture in multicultural Britain. Other critics highlight the deterministic tendency of CCCS’s basic assumption of people’s working-class backgrounds, which leads to “imaginary” ways of solving structural problems, risks of incorporation into commercialized styles, and, ultimately, research that contains minimal voices of youth subculture participants themselves (Bennett 1999, Muggleton 2000, Redhead 1990, Thornton 1995). Countering such objections, Hodkinson (2002) retheorizes subculture using constructed indicators of “subcultural substance” such as consistent distinctiveness, identity, commitment, and autonomy in his ethnographic study of Goths. These theoretical debates reached a greater consideration when self-proclaimed “postsubcultural” theorists garnered significant influence starting in the 1990s. In the contemporary era, the various forms of youth cultural practices are no longer coherently associated with working-class backgrounds and framed as forms of symbolic resistance. Additionally, Bennett argues that underlying the move toward postsubcultural analysis is an argument that subcultural divisions have broken down as the relationship between style, music taste, and identity has become progressively weaker and articulated more fluidly (Bennett 2004). In short, postsubcultural theorists

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highlight the element of agency, fluidity, playfulness of identity construction, as well as the importance of lifestyles choices and consumption (Bennett 2000, Chaney 1996, Muggleton 2005, Sweetman 2004), in essence, as a response to the shift away from grand narratives in the “postmodern” era (Baudrillard 1998, Harvey 1989). Even so, some scholars criticize this postsubcultural approach, arguing that a concept like the “neo-tribe,” for example, is of little use as an analytical structure, since it is essentially a description of a form of sociality and affect that arises from such things as dancing in nightclubs (Kahn-Harris 2007). Shildrick and Macdonald (2005) argue that the focus of postsubcultural studies neglects the importance of social divisions and inequalities in contemporary youth cultures. Hesmondhalgh (2005) takes the argument even further, suggesting that both the conceptions of subculture and postsubculture are irrelevant; instead, he proposes alternative concepts such as genre and articulation in order to understand popular music and the youth that consumes and creates it. To summarize, both subculture and postsubculture overemphasize distinct features and overstate particular readings of youth culture. For us, contextualization of both stances needs to be done in order to prevent Northern parochialism. Comparatively reviewing global subculture and postsubculture debates leads us to consider how such debates and the ideas surrounding them apply to Indonesia. We argue that the sociocultural, historical, and political circumstances encountered by our subjects matter greatly. Thus, instead of viewing them through a never-ending debate between class-based resistance and fluid identity, the expressions of youth culture in Indonesia, especially among marginalized subjects, are best viewed as more dynamic and complicated. In particular, the intersecting variables of class, gender, ethnicity, religion, and space come together as modalities capable of raising marginal voices against multiple forms of oppression, ranging from global to local. Furthermore, it is a sui generis fact that the intersecting studies of youth, music, and resistance remain in a peripheral position in the Indonesian academic field. One of the main reasons for this stems from the New Order regime’s emphasis on economic and developmental studies (Hadiz and Dhakidae 2005); consequently, the focus was on applying the apparatus of governmentality (Foucault 1980) to the enhancement of national economic growth and the preservation of the equilibrium within the social system. During the total control of an authoritarian regime, popular music and youth subculture can be viewed as a form of symbolic resistance manifested through lifestyle and idealistic values which were suitable to the agenda of democratization (Wallach 2005). Yet, further questions can be asked which may include, what is next after the common “enemy” has stepped down? The Reformation era following the 1998 demise of the New Order dictatorship brought more democratic values and academic freedom; however, these newfound liberties did not last long.



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Based on our critical reflection, not much has changed in the post-Reformation era, since the current regime led by Joko Widodo (a confirmed metalhead) is practicing a new developmentalism focused on building infrastructure and deregulation (see Warburton 2016). In other words, the honeymoon was over from its inception. Instead, we are presently facing neoliberal hegemony, which has taken over most aspects of everyday life in Indonesia. In the Indonesian context, neoliberalism serves as a continuous form of coloniality (Mignolo 2007) which included the negation of noneconomic value through the marketization and commodification of youth culture-based products. Thus, the role of youth and music as “subcultural heroes” (Stahl 2003) has changed significantly. The following sections provide a summary of previous studies about the decentering tendencies of youth culture, music, and resistance in the post-Reformation era. DECENTERING TENDENCIES OF YOUTH CULTURE, MUSIC, AND RESISTANCE IN INDONESIA James and Walsh (2015) explore the importance of values, ethics, and subcultural capital in the death metal communities in Bandung, West Java, and Yogyakarta, Central Java. Applying the mundane-transgressive subcultural capital distinction, as suggested by Kahn-Harris (2007), to the death metal community, the act of congregating in public wearing black gore metal T-shirts can be considered transgressive and slightly threatening in the current atmosphere characterized by social conservatism. This finding shows the importance of shared identity and collegiality among members of death metal communities. It also highlights their marginal position in Indonesian society. Thus, James and Walsh (2015) highlight the complex relationship between mundane and transgressive cultural capital and the locality of the death metal community in the post-Reformation era. Writing about the indie music community in Bandung, Luvaas (2013) offers an interesting explanation about the saliency of the interconnection between global and local to the construction of values of authenticity and autonomy. He argues that for Indonesian youth, there is no longer an exemplary center; there are, instead, multiple, conflicting models, adopted in part or in whole, which rise to prominence at particular moments and dissipate in others (Luvaas 2013, 106). Thus, in order to demonstrate their authenticity and autonomy, indie music communities practice two alternate strategies: 1) establishing historical and aesthetic continuity between authentic foreign indie acts and their local variants, and 2) radically diversifying genre influences to make it impossible to place a band in any category other than indie (Luvaas 2013).

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In contrast to Luvaas (2013), Martin-Iverson’s works on the hardcore scene in Bandung, West Java, highlight the significance of “autonomy” and “community” values in order to resist capitalism. Both values are expressed and practiced through the intersubjective relationships negotiated through the organization and performance of hardcore music (Martin-Iverson 2014). Thus, DIY hardcore offers not only a critical representation of alternative ways of life, but also seeks to establish a viable alternative value system; yet, the autonomy of the scene is in constant conflict with and dependent on the wider capitalist system (Martin-Iverson 2014). His work takes the values of autonomy and authenticity beyond the framework of identity and lifestyle in this music-based youth subculture. Moreover, Martin-Iverson contextualizes the politics of value among punk scenes in Bandung, Indonesia in order to understand the multiple struggles that have happened under Bandung’s massive transformation into a “creative city.” He argues that an underground scene is crucial to maintaining the value of autonomy among creative workers, activists, and urban youth. The concept of “underground value” remains significant to understand the political struggle in urban Southeast Asia (Martin-Iverson 2021, 110). In addition, based on ethnographic study in the extreme metal scene in Yogyakarta, Sutopo, Wibawanto and Lukisworo (2020) explain that the values of authenticity (otentisitas) and autonomy (kemandirian) are paramount in negotiating with neoliberal state policies and the commodification of the scene. However, resistance is not homogeneous. Instead, they propose three modes of resistance, namely: rookie, in-between, and aficionado based on young metal musicians’ degree of commitment to being do-it-yourself (DIY) careerists. The rookie is in the process of internalizing scene values. In-betweens facilitate their scene-related resistance by doing nonmusic work to earn money. Aficionados gain an income exclusively from the independent metal scene, while at the same time practicing collective-autonomous values of resistance. This chapter continues previous discussions about youth culture, music, and resistance mentioned previously, while differing in several aspects. Drawing on narratives of metal musicians categorized as aficionados in two Indonesian cities, Yogyakarta and Jakarta, we add the third “value of resistance,” namely the value of community (komunitas) which is nurtured through activities called nongkrong (hanging out). Clinton and Wallach have argued rigorously using a Schutz-inspired social phenomenological approach about the meaning of hanging out and talking metal among metalheads in Indonesia. They explain that metal’s imagined communities are not only built on the practice of consumption but, more importantly, rooted in lived experiences of talking about music while hanging out with other metalheads (Clinton and Wallach 2016). We take Clinton and Wallach’s analysis further by arguing that nongkrong is productive not only as an activity to forge and



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maintain social ties but, more significantly, as one that creates and maintains the value of community (komunitas) relevant to struggles against social injustices in the contemporary Indonesian context. Thus, for us, nongkrong is a realization of embodied social practice by marginalized metalheads which produces praxis value. This particular value intrinsically contains the element of everyday life politics which we develop as manifestations of 1) an existential struggle to resist the dehumanizing force of neoliberalism as a continuation of coloniality and 2) a communal struggle to negotiate with hegemonic neoliberal-inspired creative economic policies and the commodification of metal scenes. In this chapter, we view community (komunitas) as fragmented, yet embedded, liminal spaces which situationally and continuously serve as nodal points to experiment with resistance. RESEARCH METHOD This chapter uses an interpretive qualitative method, specifically employing a narrative approach to reveal metal musicians’ lived experiences. Grounded in the logic of social constructivism, the narrative approach is based on the underlying assumption that empirical knowledge should be built upon people’s stories which are articulated through a particular language. We consider the rise of “the narrative turn” that limited the domination of objective-minded, postpositivist approaches (Bruce et al. 2016). We are also aware of the paradigmatic shift that occurred within youth cultural studies at the end of the twentieth century, in part represented by criticism against CCCS’s textual approach (Bennett 2005, Muggleton 2000). Moreover, a narrative approach fits with the changing context of contemporary social life characterized by the increase of risk, uncertainty, and fragmentation, thus forcing metal musicians to reflexively build their own life biographies (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002, Beck, Giddens, and Lash 1994). This chapter draws on pre-COVID pandemic fieldwork conducted from April to August 2019 by the researchers in Yogyakarta and Jakarta, Indonesia, two cities known for their dedicated metal scenes. In total, we recruited sixty informants; however, we focused on the stories of two metal musicians as representatives of the aficionados suitable for our framework in this chapter. Informants have participated in the metal scene for more than ten years. We also use other informants’ insider knowledge as metalheads in order to understand broader aspects of extreme metal scenes in Indonesia. The in-depth interviews were conducted using Javanese, the local language, and Bahasa Indonesia, the national lingua franca. Both languages were used differently based on the specific sociocultural setting; in particular, we followed the implicit “rules of the game” during nongkrong activities. In

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short, both languages were used in order to maintain the informal relationship between informants and interviewers.3 Informants were interviewed for approximately two hours each, in spots like coffee shops and music studios. We applied our nongkrong (hanging out) knowledge in the Yogyakarta and Jakarta metal scene in order to obtain deeper reflections upon our informants’ intended meanings (Clinton and Wallach 2016, Sutopo 2018). A SNAPSHOT OF EXTREME METAL IN INDONESIA During the New Order era, specifically in the late-’80s to early-’90s, it can be argued that extreme metal music began to be part of everyday life among middle-class youth in Indonesia. Compared to its rock and heavy metal predecessors, extreme metal brought a different narrative in terms of its stronger sense of agency and DIY culture manifested in occasions such as gigs, recording sessions, buying cassettes/CDs, and hanging out. As described by our informants Anto, Arif, and Yudha during interviews in 2019, metalheads often bought imported extreme metal records instead of products offered by national music distributors. Metalheads also wrote letters and emails to communicate with metal bands abroad (see Wallach 2012, Wallach and Levine 2011). In contrast to rock and heavy metal, which had a strong relation with the music industry and corporations, extreme metal has its roots in local music communities in Jakarta, Bandung, Denpasar, Yogyakarta, and other major urban areas (Baulch 2003, Lukisworo and Sutopo 2017, Wallach and Levine 2011). Based on the interview data, extreme metal in Indonesia can be seen as a generic term for speed metal, thrash metal, black metal, grindcore, doom metal, and heavy metal. The musicians who play the aforementioned genres shared space not only in terms of performance but also in their mundane nongkrong activity. Hardcore and metalcore were also included in these collective activities. The existence of local music communities as the infrastructure for extreme metal scenes provided an independent space for musicking practices (Small 1998). Additionally, its combination with social networks between scenes had served as a foundation for a specific communal value among metal musicians (Interview Anto 2019). Furthermore, it also became part of the formation of the extreme metal imagined community across Indonesia throughout the ’90s (Wallach 2008b). Although developed under the hegemony of an authoritarian regime, extreme metal music can be seen as more political compared to its predecessors. Many less extreme musicians tried to “play it safe” by avoiding political content within their music in order not to be defined as outlaws. However, extreme metal musicians overtly expressed their criticism of the Indonesian



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political field and their political interests through lyrics, recorded albums, and fashion styles (Wallach 2002, Wallach 2008b). This conflict between the extreme metal scene and the Indonesian government was more obvious in the mid-’90s, especially after the 1993 Metallica riot in Jakarta (Baulch 2003). This situation pushed extreme metal scenes into a subordinate position within Indonesian society. As a consequence, the scene continued to grow surreptitiously; thus, the DIY value became a very important aspect of its survival. For example, extreme metal scenes started to hold their own music festivals, such as Bandung Berisik (Noisy Bandung) by the Ujungberung metal community, founded in 1995, and Jogja Brebeg (Noisy Jogja) by the Jogjakarta Corpse Grinder community, founded in 1996, among others. After the downfall of the New Order regime in 1998, the relation between the extreme metal scene and the state changed gradually. Extreme metal music was no longer constructed as a condemned and outlaw genre, but rather as a promising commodity. There were massive, open to the public, professionally organized extreme metal music festivals; two of them were Rock in Solo (Surakarta) in 2004 and Hammersonic (Jakarta) in 2012. Extreme metal musicians also started to perform in various private-company-funded music events such as Locstock, LA Light Indiefest, and DCDC Pengadilan Musik (Sutopo, Wibawanto, and Lukisworo 2020, Final Regional LA Lights Indiefest 2008, “The Merge of Various Musical Genre” n.d.; “MUSIKKITA | Karinding Attack x Annabelle” n.d.). Recently, it would be plausible to claim that extreme metal cannot be separated from the Indonesian national agenda of the creative economy. Alongside the fully funded abroad tour scheme for Indonesian bands by the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy (Sutopo, Wibawanto, and Lukisworo 2020), this support has also been demonstrated through the promotional sponsorship for extreme metal music festivals by local governments (Gatra 2021). BUILDING THE VALUE OF COMMUNITY (KOMUNITAS) THROUGH NONGKRONG For extreme metal musicians categorized as aficionados, nongkrong is no longer seen as a consumption practice nor talking about music with other metalheads. Nongkrong is a pivotal aspect of production specifically related to the value of community (komunitas) which supports emancipating the alienated self, enhancing deeper commitments as well as maintaining economic and social sustainability at the individual/communal level. Below we describe the narratives from metal musicians based on in-depth interviews and participant observational data.

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Sharing Is Caring Gala is a drummer who has participated in the Yogyakarta metal scene for more than fifteen years. He is still active as a metal drummer and also runs his own recording studio dedicated to the metal scene’s development. As a musician mostly building upon his career in the middle of the transition into a digital era, nongkrong is a crucial materialized element of production in many moments of his musical trajectory. He told the researcher during an interview in a coffee shop in the Northern district of Yogyakarta that through nongkrong, he found the moment of “resurrection” (hidup kembali) in terms of positive encouragement to play thrash metal in the local music festival: Our genre was not popular. You know, we felt unconfident (kurang percaya diri), very unconfident indeed because the death metal scene is huge here in Yogyakarta. But my bandmates and friends were supportive and gave us a chance to play in the Locstock festival. It was a moment of resurrection! (Interview Gala 2019)

Gala and his band performed four original songs which they had just finished a week before the gig; however, they were confident and rocked the stage practicing the spirit of “pancal ae” (Keep on going and let’s see what happens on stage!). Although they had to prepare in a relatively short time, fellow metalheads in the music studio were keen to share various thrash metal references via mp3 compilations and older metalheads gave valuable suggestions on how to perform like rock stars on stage. During the show, fellow metalheads came to the gigs and communally gathered in front of the stage, headbanging. Thus, it can be interpreted that the process of building and strengthening the value of community does not only manifest in giving moral support to “play what metal musicians really want to play” but extends into sharing relevant metal subcultural capital (Bourdieu 1993, Kahn-Harris 2007, Thornton 1995). Based on our interviews with Okto and Agus, in predigital-era Yogyakarta, metal music material such as cassettes, CDs, and magazines—forms of objectified subcultural capital—were very rare. Senior militant metalheads, often with the do-it-yourself (DIY) spirit, compiled hundreds of metal cassettes and distributed them to fellow metalheads in order to be copied again. Thus, we would like to argue that nongkrong also facilitates the intergenerational transfer of material and symbolic metal subcultural capital relevant to reproducing the value of community. Gala also reflects that through nongkrong his thrash metal band was able to expand their gigs with the help of fellow metalheads. At first, some of the offers were to perform in internal networks of metal scenes in the Northern



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and Southern districts of Yogyakarta; then, they expanded into nonmetal gigs such as on campuses and in hotels, as he explained: Yeah, after the festival, our friend invited us to perform in Borobudur Plaza. There, we got inspired by one of the local metal bands which changed the lyrics of the Indonesian Youth Pledge [Sumpah Pemuda] into American [English]. So, we produced 100 CDs and gave them away to the audiences. Then, we got offered to play at the welcome party on campus and the funny thing was we shared the performance with a dangdut band hahahaha4 . . . (Interview Gala 2019)

A similar experience was described by Adi, a drummer from the Jakarta metal scene. He admitted that nongkrong activities in his town were not as common as in Yogyakarta; however, it still opened up his chances to get gigs and expanded social networks with bigger metal scenes at the national level, as he told us during an interview in South Jakarta: Slowly, it made me realize that hanging out can be a good start to get a gig. It was a massive metal scene here, right?! Many metalheads gathered not only from around Jakarta but also from other regions (daerah). The metal scene was very militant! And of course, you also know all the pioneers here such as Siksa Kubur, Grausig, Ritual Doom, Panic Disorder . . . (Interview Adi 2019)

Both experiences of nongkrong described by Gala and Adi above showing the process of developing and maintaining the value of community (komunitas) were demonstrated through sharing social networks not only at the local but also translocal scene levels (Bennett and Peterson 2004). Moreover, sharing social networks is not only a matter of knowing other metalheads, hanging out, and headbanging at gigs. For aficionados like Gala and Adi, social networks mean opportunities to get gigs, which can also be developed into other productive activities, both in the form of musical and nonmusical collaborations. However, it does not mean they are narrowly defined as social networks which can be converted into money; it is a matter of building, strengthening, and maintaining the value of community (komunitas). Deeply Involved and Fighting for the Metal Scene Gala’s continuous involvement in the nongkrong activities resulted in his point of view about how determined metal scenes’ members were in terms of berkarya (producing music) with a strong spirit of “rewo-rewo.”5 Thus, as a full-time musician, Gala commits himself not only to maintaining the sustainability of his music career but also the metal scene. He described it to us in a very down-to-earth way:

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To be honest, I really like the metal scene here in Jogja. You know, although it seems like they are very unorganized, the metal bands are always focused on producing music, writing new songs and CDs, although sometimes the quality is not superb. The most important thing is to keep on producing music (yang penting mereka berkarya). (Interview Gala 2019)

He carried on, explaining his commitment to the metal music community: In the end, what matters is the music you produce, right?! It is not your snare drum, guitar pickup, or amplifier. All of them will be useless if you as a musician are unable to transfer your energy to the instrument and later in the recording equipment. That is exactly what I want to contribute to the metal scene through my recording studio, to produce music which is more human (musiknya lebih manusiawi). (Interview Gala 2019)

Gala added that he also wants to make sure that every metal album born from his recording studio is high quality and creates a huge impact (album yang baik dan punya impact yang oke) in the targeted metal scene. In a similar way to Gala, Adi, who is still active as a guitarist in the Jakarta metal scene and had successfully received recognition at the national level, also highlights the significance of music quality: Quality is important, though. Metal bands also have to defend their vision and mission. You know, it is important so that you can reach the global level. It has to start from the bands themselves, that’s the secret to survival. If you don’t have it as a formula, I am not sure if your band will last long in the metal scene. (Interview Adi, 2019)

As an aficionado in the metal scene, Adi has made various present and future investments for the sustainability of his music career. He continues playing for his well-known metal band at the national level while, at the same time, he works as a session player and also runs his own music studio. The interview excerpt below explains his unquestionable dedication to the value of community (komunitas) in the metal scene: I want to make a record label so I will be able to promote many metal bands who are still in a marginal position in the scene. You know, unknown metal bands but who are actually having a good quality; so that metalheads can respond like, I’ve never heard about these bands before, but whoaaa . . . they sound awesome! (Interview Adi 2019)

For aficionados like Gala and Adi, despite joining the metal scene from two different cities, it can be argued that both of them are deeply involved and take every aspect of metal music seriously. They felt obliged to keep



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and maintain the value of the metal community alive. They were willing to contribute to the enhancement of a wider spectrum of the metal music scene ranging from musicians’ skill, recording quality, musical arrangement, and networks to the global metal scene. Their autonomous practice is not only for themselves, but more importantly also for the whole metal scene. They “live from and live for” metal music. VALUE OF COMMUNITY AND THE POLITICS OF EVERYDAY RESISTANCE Narratives from metal musicians above show the crucial role of nongkrong as a mundane manifestation of the ontological aspect of human beings as Homo socius. Under the multi-dimensional destructive impact of neoliberalism, socius fulfills the complex needs of human beings, ranging from the dimensions of consciousness, affect, and the body. Metal musicians’ practice of “sharing everything” from social networks, references, to moral support, shows their commitments not only to individual purpose but also to the community. Nongkrong and community become sui generis entities which produce and reproduce their own collective effervescence (Durkheim 1995) relevant for metal musicians. As shown from the narrative of the aficionados, the mutual relation between individual and metal scene is a complex cumulative and nurturing process that happens in the past, present, and future. Gala’s past experience of personal “resurrection,” which materialized in the form of his commitment to contribute to the metal scene, not only temporarily but also as part of his life, shows the complexities of mutual relations between individual and community. Additionally, it demonstrates how the practice of nongkrong can also be a medium to accelerate the coalescence between “self in the community” and “community in the self” to prevent being trapped as a Homo economicus (Bourdieu 1998) or an entrepreneurial subject (Foucault 1994) as a result of neoliberal hegemony. Thus, being able to keep the sustainability of the material and symbolic aspect of socius is important in order to survive in the contemporary neoliberal era in Indonesia. The practice of building and maintaining community reveals the politics of everyday resistance among metal musicians in Indonesia. Their acts of resistance are not explicitly directed to the neoliberal-driven creative economic policy. Instead, their acts of resistance represent the everyday political struggle to determine the value of human action (De Angelis 2007). Metal musicians’ small actions, such as sharing subcultural capital and social networks, work to symbolically negate the neoliberal doxa which is taken for granted in everyday life. “Sharing everything” is an action that refuses to convert metal products (karya) into economic value as promoted by the creative

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economy policy. “Sharing everything” is also a strong statement of metal musicians’ refusal to be reduced only to laborers who work for targeted economic growth at the national level. Furthermore, it can also be argued that the acts of resistance in everyday life are directed towards the risks of becoming alienated oneself; in essence, alienated from productive activity, the product, fellow musicians, and human potential (Marx 1932). These acts of resistance in everyday life will not be able to drastically change the neoliberal system in Indonesia. However, this complex condition of impossibilities can function as scattered liminal spaces that enable metalheads to keep their utopian views and, perhaps, achieve their ideal lives in the future. CONCLUSION The purpose of this chapter has been to explain the practice of nongkrong, the production of community value, and the manifestation of acts of resistance. Based on narratives of metal musicians, we argued that nongkrong as an activity is not only about hanging out and talking metal. Nongkrong is a productive practice to build, strengthen, and maintain the value of community, which offers support to emancipate the self from alienation, increase commitment, and maintain economic and social sustainability at the individual as well as communal level. The value of community is implicitly political and represents a form of resistance in everyday life among metal musicians in Indonesia’s contemporary neoliberal era. It also provides scattered liminal spaces to maintain metal musicians’ idealistic views. Thus, similar to the “Latin American experience” (Varas-Diaz, Nevárez Araújo and Rivera-Segarra 2021, 8), metal musicians in Indonesia never lose hope for the future. REFERENCES Barendregt, Bart, Peter Keppy, and Henk-Schulte Nordholt. Popular Music in Southeast Asia: Banal Beats, Muted Histories. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. Baudrillard, Jean. The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures. USA: Sage Publication, 1998. Baulch, Emma. “Gesturing Elsewhere: The Identity Politics of the Balinese Death/ Thrash Metal Scene.” Popular Music 22, no. 2 (2003): 195–215. Beck, Ulrich, and Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim. Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences. London: Sage, 2002.



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Nayak, Anoop. Race, Place and Globalization: Youth Cultures in a Changing World. Oxford: Berg, 2003. Piper, Suzan, and Sawung Jabo. “Indonesian Music from the 50s to the 80s” Prisma 43 (1987): 25–37. Redhead, Steve. The End of the Century Party: Youth and Pop towards 2000. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990. Rencana Aksi Nasional Kepemudaan 2016–2019. Jakarta: Kementerian Pemuda dan Olahraga, 2016. Santos, Boaventura Souza. Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. New York: Routledge, 2014. Shildrick, Tracy, and Robert Macdonald. “In Defence of Subculture: Young People, Leisure and Social Divisions.” Journal of Youth Studies 9, no. 2 (2005): 125–40. Small, Christopher. Musicking: The Meaning of Performing and Listening. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1998. Stahl, Geoff. “Tastefully Renovating Subcultural theory: Making Space for a New Model.” In The Post-Subcultures Reader, edited by David Muggleton and Rupert Weinzerl, 27–40. USA: Berg, 2003. Supanggah, Rahayu. “Campur Sari: A Reflection.” Asian Music 34, no. 2 (2003): 1–20. Sutopo, Oki Rahadianto. “Learning by Doing: Young Indonesian Musicians, Capital and NightLife” In Nocturnes: Popular Music and the Night, edited by Geoff Stahl and Giacomo Botta. London: Palgrave, 2018. Sutopo, Oki Rahadianto, Gregorius Ragil Wibawanto, and Agustinus Aryo Lukisworo. “Resist or Perish! Understanding the Mode of Resistance among Young DIY Indonesian Musicians.” Perfect Beat: The Asia Pacific Journal of Research into Contemporary Music and Popular Culture 20, no. 2 (2020): 116–33. Sweetman, Paul. “Tourists and Travellers? Subcultures, Reflexive Identities and Neo-Tribal Sociality” In After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture, edited by Andy Bennett and Keith Kahn-Harris, 79–93. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Thornton, Sarah. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995. Varas-Diaz, Nelson. Decolonial Metal Music in Latin America. USA: Intellect Books, 2021. Varas-Diaz, Nelson, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, and Eliut Rivera-Segarra (Eds). Heavy Metal Music in Latin America: Perspectives from the Distorted South. New York: Lexington Books, 2021. Wallach, Jeremy. “Distortion-Drenched Dystopias: Metal in Island Southeast Asia.” In Reflections in the Metal Void, edited by Niall W. R. Scott, 101–19. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2012. ———. Living the Punk Lifestyle in Jakarta. Ethnomusicology 52, no. 1 (2008a): 98–116. ———. Modern Noise, Fluid Genres: Popular Music in Indonesia, 1997–2001. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008b. ———. “Underground Rock Music and Democratization in Indonesia.” World Literature Today 79, no. 3/4 (2005): 16–20.

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———. “Exploring Class, Nation and Xenocentrism in Indonesian Cassette Retail Outlets.” Indonesia 74 (2002): 79–102. Wallach, Jeremy, Harris M. Berger, and Paul D. Greene (Eds). Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music around the World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Wallach, Jeremy, and Alexandra Levine. “I Want You to Support Local Metal: A Theory of Metal Scene Formation.” Popular Music History 6, no.1 (2011): 116–34. Warburton, Eva. “Jokowi and the New Developmentalism.” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 52, no. 3 (2016): 297–320. Weintraub, Andrew. Dangdut Stories: A Social and Musical History of Indonesia’s Most Popular Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Weinzierl, Rupert, and David Muggleton. “What Is Post-subcultural Studies Anyway?” In The Post-Subcultures Reader, edited by David Muggleton and Rupert Weinzierl, 3–26. New York: Berg, 2003. Woodman, Dan, and Andy Bennett (Eds). Youth Cultures, Transitions and Generations: Bridging the Gap in Youth Research. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

NOTES 1. Although generations of Indonesian students were taught that Indonesia achieved independence with the Proclamation, Indonesians had to fight a bloody four-year war with the returning Dutch before their national autonomy was recognized by the international community. 2. We argue that the Reformation and post-Reformation era indicate contemporary history in Indonesia which is characterized by an ambivalent and contradictory ongoing transition at many levels of the lifeworld. Yet, neoliberalism has become the ultimate doxa and has taken over most aspects of everyday life in Indonesia. 3. Both authors are fluent in the non-standard variants of Javanese and Indonesian spoken informally in Yogyakarta and Jakarta. 4. Dangdut is a music genre associated with lower-class taste. 5. Rewo-rewo is a Javanese term which can be described as mixing improvisation, togetherness, and personal freedom.

Chapter 18

Satan Wasn’t There The Perseverance of the Moroccan Metal Scene Amine Hamma and Brian Trott

In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, G. W. F. Hegel stated that Africa “is no historical part of the world,” (quoted in Adindilile 2016, 128) reducing the continent to a recipient of foreign development, rather than a contributor to global history. In 2007, French president Nicolas Sarkozy reiterated Hegel’s claim, saying: “The tragedy of Africa is that the African has not fully entered into history” (quoted in Ba 2007). The history of Africa has often been presented from an outsider’s perspective. This has equally been the case for its northwest country, Morocco. This chapter represents a collaborative effort between Moroccan and American writers seeking to provide a local voice to the story of Moroccan heavy metal, a subject dominated by writers in the Global North. An independent nation since 1956, Morocco lies a mere fifteen kilometers south of Europe. The country has endured many occupations, which have included the Romans, the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the French. While its official languages are Arabic and Tamazight (the pre-Arabic indigenous language), French is still considered the language of business and the elite. The local vernacular is called Darija. While not officially recognized, Darija is so distinct from other forms of Arabic that it is often treated as an entirely different language. Koranic Standard Arabic is widely understood across the Arabic-speaking world, including Morocco where it is taught at school. However, Darija remains the common spoken language of the country. Moroccans consume a vast array of popular culture imported from the Global North. As a result, since the early 1960s the country has consistently 369

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produced artists who have adopted foreign styles of popular music. Some examples include the rock group Golden Hands, funk singer Fadoul, and the Moroccan king of soul, Vigon. Relative to other rock genres, Morocco hosts a strong heavy metal scene. Thanks to a meticulous search of concert flyer archives, a survey of local blogs, and conversations with scene participants, we have accounted for a total of 136 metal bands since the genre’s emergence in Morocco; this amount is well over the thirty-one bands listed on Encyclopaedia Metallum (albeit, the website includes a limited spectrum of subgenres that it considers true metal). In this chapter we will provide a historical narrative of the Moroccan metal scene, highlighting major events and formations beginning with the first local metal band. This project aims to explain metal as it has developed in Morocco and bridge the narrative gap between the original and current generations of Moroccan metalheads. A discussion of the concept of “scenes” will provide us a loose definition with which we can address how Moroccan metal fans participate in the act of scene formation. While outlasting other rock genres, such as punk, metal cannot match the popularity of international genres like hip hop and fusion, which manage to absorb local music, like gnawa and isawa, into their productions. In our conversations with Moroccan metalheads, some have lamented that the national scene is too small to be discussed in terms of specific locales (Soufiane 2021). This reflects a concern that treating Moroccan metal in such a way would be divisive and detrimental to the health of the national scene. However, there are several localized units within Moroccan metal with their own particular qualities. Due to the limitations of our sources, the present narrative is overwhelmingly focused on the country’s largest city and economic capital, Casablanca, which hosts over a third of Morocco’s metal bands. Nonetheless, Rabat-Salé, Meknes, and Agadir also host notable scenes with their own peculiar qualities. The neighboring cities of Rabat and Salé have long held a close relationship with Casablanca, trailing behind the country’s largest metropolis in musical production. Following these larger hubs, Meknes had the earliest documented metal scene. Many of its seminal shows were held at the Centre Culturel Michel Jobert. Today, organizers book concerts at le Cercle Culturel Bathae. Ismail Grine, drummer of the punk band Blast, has been instrumental in organizing concerts for foreign hardcore acts in Meknes, including Russia’s Convince, Struggle Session from China, and the Colombian grindcore act Misticia. Notable bands from Meknes have included Alcantagram, Imperium, CYN, and Torpedo. In contrast, the city of Agadir has been a stronghold for black metal since the 2000s, hosting bands such as Abanabak, Pain Emotion, Kharab, and Tagat. It is also home to a rising star in Morocco: the industrial death metal band Nexus 7.17. Metal bands have

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been documented well beyond these hubs, in distant locales like Tetouan, Laâyoune, Kalaat M’gouna, and Marrakech. Contemporary Moroccan metal artists have greater access than their predecessors to the technology needed to record and share music. Most current bands are documented online and can utilize recording software and upload their projects to platforms like Bandcamp, Soundcloud, and YouTube. This has led to greater exposure abroad, resulting in a handful of bands putting out releases on independent record labels in Europe. Growing internet accessibility has expedited the development of a grassroots media produced by members of the local scene. Such access contrasts greatly with Morocco’s first generation of metalheads, who gathered music news via foreign media outlets, while they depended on word of mouth or the occasional ’zine to get updates on the local scene. Today, there are several blogs and social media pages dedicated to Moroccan metal.1 These platforms help users discover what’s new in the world of metal at home and abroad. While researching this project, we submitted calls for interviews on the Moroccan Metal Community Facebook page, some of which are cited in this chapter. THE FIRST WAVE The first wave of heavy metal arrived in Morocco by the late 1980s. Teenagers discovered the music through relatives and friends who brought Deep Purple and Black Sabbath records from their travels to Europe. These youths convened in schoolyards exchanging band names, cassettes, and any additional knowledge they had about the music. After school, teenagers from working-class Casablanca neighborhoods, like Bourgogne and Derb Sultan, would venture into the villas of the city’s wealthy enclaves, such as CIL or Anfa, where their classmates blasted hard rock albums on home stereos. It wasn’t until around 1992 that young Moroccan rockers began gathering in public, sharing their musical tastes and showcasing their “metalness.” While kids from wealthy families could blast music at home without disturbing their neighbors, their working-class peers lacked the privacy to do the same. Necessity pushed them into public spaces to meet, pass around tapes, show off riffs, and awaken their “scenic consciousness” (Wallach and Levine 2011, 121). Parks, corners, beaches, and even the roof of an old movie theater became gathering places. Most of these spots were also places to practice extreme sports like skateboarding, BMXing, and surfing. The presence of metalheads in public spaces established the foundation of a budding scene. Academics have outlined varying definitions of the term “scene,” most of which serve our discussion of the Moroccan metal scene. Descriptions of “scenes” by Keith Kahn-Harris, Emma Baulch, Mark Olson, and Will Straw

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all center around an interaction between a “media text” or art form (typically music), the art’s creators, its consumers, and the spaces in which they operate. Majmar Web Radio co-founder Amal Khafaoui defines scenes as “a dynamic process including people and space” (Khafaoui 2021). Locally, a scene’s spaces are where the art is collectively produced and consumed. For Jeremy Wallach and Alexandra Levine, this includes formal sites of musical circulation: venues, record stores, and hangout spots (Wallach and Levine 2011). A lack of shops and venues catering to heavy metal left the budding Moroccan scene centered in outdoor hangout spots. A scene is an alliance and, like any alliance, its definition can vary according to its scale: global, national, or local (de Sousa Santos 2018). Therefore, it is expected that there are general stylistic preferences that make Casablanca’s metal scene differ from Rabat’s. However, both help define the broader national scene. For Zohair Abdellaoui, singer of the seminal Moroccan punk band, ZWM (Zlak Wla Moot, the translation in Darija of Skate Or Die), local environments were reflected in the sounds of Morocco’s early metal scenes. More specifically, first generation Moroccan metal captured the aggravating density of Casablanca while Rabat’s sound reproduced the loose sprawl of the city: It was different between the cities. In Casa, the majority of the bands played black metal and death metal. I love the bands of Casa. In Rabat, you don’t have bands like this. You have more bands that are melodic, like Iron Maiden, Guns N’ Roses. In Casa, they are full of rage. You have Reborn, you have Total Eclipse, you have Tormentor of Souls. Really, I love the names. I don’t know where they got these names. You have what else? Fallujah. You have Nekros. In Rabat, it’s a little soft. In Rabat, there are really, really cool bands, like Anaconda. It’s stressful in Casa. If I was from Casa I would be a death metal boy.

More significant than environmental factors are the media texts that enter a scene and the avenues through which they arrive. For much of the African continent, heavy metal has moved north from South Africa. Two of the founders of the South African metal scene, Voice of Destruction and Groinchurn, were influenced by grindcore bands from the United Kingdom. This northward transmission can be observed as far as Nairobi, home to the electro-grind band, Duma. In his study of the Nairobi metal scene, Ekkehard Knopke calls scenes “movements that reference movements” (Knopke 2014, 113): local scenes are reinterpreted across their chains of transmission and eventually alter the global scene. Among definitions of scenes by Knopke, Baulch, Olson, and Kahn-Harris is a common line that they are unique interpretations of global media texts. Local scenes draw on the practices of the imagined world of the original subculture, typically situated in the Global North. As

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such, it is a process of interpretation. In this sense, “scene” is most effective at the local scale, as the “global scene” is practically synonymous with its wider subculture, transmitted from the Global North. Prior to the internet, the flows that relayed these imagined worlds consisted of touring bands, ’zines, and tape trading networks. A variety of factors, such as signature studio production styles, the influence of prominent bands on local scenes, and the efforts of music journalists to define regional styles, has resulted in many subgenres being referential to particular scenes: New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Bay Area Thrash, Florida Death Metal, the Gothenburg sound, and Norwegian Black Metal. Furthermore, the total subculture is influenced by local interpretations of itself. Often a scene stemming from an earlier interpretation becomes a reference point for subsequent ones. For example, Sepultura drew influence from Teutonic thrash metal, when devising the sound that would become Brazilian death metal, not to mention inspiring the spread of third world folk metal (Harris 2000). Metal’s northward migration across Africa was halted by the Sahara and, across the desert, North Africa received a different flow. European metal bands weren’t touring through Morocco and the cost of shipping was prohibitive for Moroccans trying to mail-order albums. They relied on friends routinely visiting family members abroad. They would give these friends money and lists of albums to seek out while making their trips to relatives in Europe or North America. These albums would be taped and then loaned to the next person who would, in turn, duplicate the previous copy until the last metalhead in the crowd had the noisiest, most inaudible version of the original LP. Knowing what albums to ask for required knowing what was coming out. This early scene coincided with the rise of satellite television in urban Morocco, bringing with it foreign music channels and their metal programs: MTV’s Headbangers Ball, Blah Blah Metal from France’s MCM channel, and Metala on Germany’s Viva Zwei. Headbangers Ball, a three-hour block of metal music videos, was taped weekly by metalheads who had VCRs. If they had enough tape, they could capture the whole program. Otherwise, fans were certain to catch the “Triple Thrash Treat” portion, where the most extreme bands were featured (Trott 2018, 18). These tapes were circulated and copied within the fledgling scene. Some hard rock could be heard on local radio stations, but nothing heavier than Guns N’ Roses. On a rare occasion in 1992, Morocco’s national television channel aired footage of an Anthrax concert, which was taped and circulated among metal fans. In 1993, a fluke in the diffraction of radio waves brought Morocco the Portuguese radio station, Antena 3, featuring a weekly metal program, Alta Tensão, hosted by António Freitas. The program would include underground artists, like the Portuguese black metal act Moonspell. Over a decade later,

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Moonspell would headline the metal portion of the Casablanca music festival, l’Boulevard des Jeunes Musiciens. Like everything else, episodes of Alta Tensão were taped and exchanged among metalheads. Before there were any metal concerts, metalheads would gather at booms, a local term for DJ nights at clubs. There, they would wait around for the DJ to slip in one or two rock songs amongst the techno and pop. On one glorious night between 1993 and 1994 the rockers of Casablanca organized their own boom at a friend’s home, while his parents were away. For 30 Moroccan dirhams (a little over 3 USD), anyone could enter and enjoy a night of heavy metal (Hamma 2016). It would not be until 1996 that bands started forming, beginning with Immortal Spirit. The group practiced in their families’ homes when parents were away. They worked up to renting garages and eventually connected with a Casablanca nightclub owner by the name of Maurice, who allowed them to rent a studio in his club (Hamma and Guibert 2006). Within months, Immortal Spirit was joined by a metal band comprised of Spanish students from the Juan Ramón Jiménez Institute in Casablanca. They called themselves Kodigo de Birra (KDB), a play on the Spanish phrase for barcode, replacing “bar” with the Arabic word for “beer.” Three months after forming, Immortal Spirit and KDB played their first show: a party for the French business school at the Casablanca Hyatt Regency. Afterward, the bands started organizing concerts at the Bab al Bahr wedding hall. This would become the place where metalheads from all around Casablanca would connect and form bonds that ultimately materialized into more bands. In 1997, Carpe Diem, Dust N’ Bones, and Orion joined the scene. Like KDB, these bands favored hard rock influenced by the likes of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Immortal Spirit remained the most distorted band of any genre in the country, drawing inspiration from Swedish death metal bands like Entombed, Unleashed, and Dismember. In 1998 two more acts joined the roster of Casablanca metal bands: Total Eclipse, followed by In the Nightmare. Whereas In the Nightmare played death metal, Total Eclipse performed a blend of progressive metal and grunge. Total Eclipse was the first Moroccan metal band to consist of formally trained musicians and the first to exclusively perform and record original compositions. That same year, Immortal Spirit guitarist Guemha moved to the United States, resulting in the band’s dissolution (see figure 18.1). Without a band, the remaining members focused on their ’zine, Underground, which reviewed local and international metal acts. They distributed the photocopied ’zine at In the Nightmare gigs, often including a mixtape. It was an alternative to foreign metal media, from which metalheads could learn about their local scene. The year that followed witnessed the formation of another Casablanca death metal act, Nekros, and

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Figure 18.1. The Moroccan band Immortal Spirit plays live at the F.O.L. Casablanca on December 2, 2000. Source: Photo provided by Amine Hamma.

the grindcore combo, Killer Zone. As the scene grew, it found itself at the center of a conflict between the Moroccan state and civil society. THE TRIAL OF THE FOURTEEN MUSICIANS In September 2002, Morocco’s Islamist party, the Justice and Development Party (PJD), won the legislative elections. Led by Mustapha Ramid, they pursued a campaign to combat a perceived threat of immorality in the country. Through a series of editorials, party members instigated a moral panic over satanic rockers who reportedly stalked the streets, murdering cats.2 On February 14, 2003, this panic culminated in the arrest of members of Reborn (a supergroup consisting of members of Immortal Spirit, Nekros, and Killer Zone), Nekros, Infected Brain, and five of their fans. Police apprehended a handful of metal fans at their homes and the rest at Café L’Egyptien, a popular metalhead hangout. Their bedrooms were raided for band posters, shirts, and anything with a whiff of Satanism. They were charged with breaking Article 220 of the Moroccan Penal Code: “incitement to shake the faith of a Muslim.” French-speaking newspapers like TelQuel and le Journal provided coverage for the fourteen metalheads and the ensuing trial became a media spectacle,

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sparking a debate over freedom of expression in Morocco. Support for the metalheads led to protests in Rabat and Casablanca, the latter hosting about 5,000 attendees (Caubet 2016, 252), resulting in the liberation of the fourteen defendants one month later. The victory represented the power of Moroccan civil society over the state, only four years after the end of the repressive regime of King Hassan II. It also signified the importance of young voices. TelQuel’s chief editor, Driss Ksikes, summarized the state’s misapprehension of the youth, stating: “Morocco’s young people will not feel at home in their own country. I think our judicial system needs psychologists if they don’t understand that young people are by essence subversive and like to shock.” Upon their release, public panic turned away from the threat of Satanism and toward Islamist extremists. On May 16, 2003, a series of explosions across Casablanca claimed the lives of thirty individuals and twelve of the fourteen suicide bombers. Promoting youth culture—particularly rock music—was a strategic way for the government to combat fundamentalism and appear liberal in the eyes of its ally, the United States, which was in the early years of the “War on Terror.” For Moroccans growing up since the Satanic Affair, the event is recalled through the 2007 film les Anges de Satan. Though produced locally, Ahmed Boulane’s fictionalized depiction of the event excluded the names and music of any Moroccan metal bands, featuring a French-composed soundtrack instead. With few recordings, the real-life bands represented in the film remained obscure for future generations. Boulane’s narrative was exaggerated and full of clichés to the dismay of the actual arrestees, thus earning the derision of the scene. With band names like Satanic Wolf, Belzebuth, and Hell’s Rockers, it is apparent that not all Moroccan metalheads disavow Satanic gimmicks. However, many musicians remain apprehensive of such themes. It is generally viewed as a cheap way for bands to garner attention. At best, Satanism is viewed as part of a global metal tradition figuratively representing the radical individualism of the genre. When asked her opinion of Satanic themes in metal, Amal Khafaoui stated: I’m OK with that. Satan as a symbol is an interesting topic of study. The stigmatization of evil has gone beyond any rational intellectual debate. It is moved more by fear than real concern about society, morals and cultural constructs. We should learn to debate about everything no matter how stigmatized it gets.

Themes surrounding mythology and horror are more popular in Moroccan metal lyrics, but a number of bands have taken an introspective approach to the dark themes of their music. Black metal artists such as Barzakh, Starless Skies, and Give Me a Joint (from Salé), Pain Emotion, Lifesenseless, Eternal

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Misery, and Kharab (from Agadir), and Ahakay N’ Bror (from Marrakech) favor DSBM (depressive suicidal black metal) over the blasphemous themes associated with black metal. Metal fans have described the Affair as a blessing, bringing the metal underground into the public eye and creating a friendlier atmosphere for bands to perform. Members of the imprisoned bands would pursue accomplished musical careers. In 2005, Saad and Abdesamad of Reborn joined the world-touring Hoba Hoba Spirit and Betweenatna, and have become icons of Moroccan fusion music. While the event helped amplify the voices of young artists, hip hop gained the most, integrating itself into mainstream popular culture. Although metal music is more tolerated post-2003, it is still commonly viewed as anathema to Moroccan society. At the 2018 l’Boulevard, a group of hooligans began assaulting metal fans. The group was targeting “3abada,” a transliteration of the Arabic word for “worshippers” used to disparage the alleged devil worshippers. The resurfacing of this term along with antimetal violence suggests that metalheads remain at odds with society. However, the presence of metal at major festivals indicates greater acceptance of the scene in general. FESTIVALS AND THE RISE OF YOUTH CULTURE Festivals have been a major part of Morocco’s musical landscape since its independence. In 1959, King Mohammed V announced the first National Festival of Popular Arts hosted at Chellah in Rabat. The event offered a depoliticized representation of Morocco’s diversity through performance and material culture. Festivals became increasingly prominent in the cultural landscape. By the 1990s regional festivals proliferated across the country including: Gnaoua Festival in Essaouira, the Amazigh Theater Festival in Casablanca, Timitar in Agadir, and the World Sacred Music Festival in Fes, all subsidized by the state (Boum 2012, 22). The year 1999 witnessed the birth of Tremplin des Jeunes Musiciens, a battle of the bands competition organized by Mohammed “Momo” Merhari and Hicham Bahou. The event took place at Le Federation des Ouvres Laiques (FOL) theater. FOL became a major metal venue in Casablanca, following the era of shows in wedding halls. The “Springboard for Young Musicians” took place over a weekend in June and offered a cash prize for the winning band. The idea behind the event was to provide an outlet for “marginalized music” (Thorne 2009). The lineup featured Carpe Diem, Dust’N’Bones, Ait Siaar, Saturne, Funny Guys, Tech-B, Disagree, Golden Heart, Africa Salam, Kif Kif, and Extase. A pass for the event cost fifty Moroccan dirhams, less than six USD today.

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By 2000, Hicham and his association, EAC l’Boulvart, split the festival into two events. Tremplin remained a springboard for budding local musicians but the winners would then headline a larger fest the following week titled l’Boulevard des Jeunes Musiciens, featuring major local and international acts. Past invitees have included international bands such as Kreator, The Exploited, Paradise Lost, Napalm Death, Moonspell, Gojira, Septic Flesh, Carcass, and Sepultura. The 2010 edition of l’Kounache, l’Boulevard’s annual magazine, boasted the success of Tremplin in launching the careers of new bands. Sakadoya, who won the grand prize at both Tremplin and the Generation Mawazine competition in 2008, had just released Back to the Age of Slaves, lauded as the first full-length recording by a Moroccan metal band (Saadi 2010). While they had advanced their career since winning the competitions, Sakadoya remained obscure internationally. Some artists are apprehensive of the festivals as the promise that the “springboard” will launch them into successful careers often falls short. After leaving the stage at l’Boulevard the metal champions return to their relative anonymity, seeing little gain from the exposure (Krim 2021). That has not been the case for Sakadoya who fortunately remain active and are presently working on another album. State-sponsored festivals follow the tradition of moussems or “saints’ days.” Historically, the monarchy has reinforced its spiritual legitimacy by donating to local Sufi orders for these events (Boum 2012, 22). Sponsoring art and music festivals has also helped legitimize the Makhzen’s connection to various aspects of Moroccan culture. Following the Satanic Affair and the bombings in 2003, the royal establishment sought to present a more liberal façade. The State became increasingly tolerant of metalheads and concerts, while condemning Islamism and its devotees. Furthermore, Morocco has experienced significant socioeconomic growth over the past two decades, which it has linked to festivals and the arts. The kingdom now recognizes culture as having a transversal impact on the national economy. Unlike other major festivals like Mawazine, l’Boulevard has maintained independence from the government and continues to seek funding through private sponsors. This was originally in the form of local sponsors like Royal Air Maroc and le Reporter. The festival has since gained the financial support of major international businesses which have included: Nokia, Red Bull, and HuffPost. It is also sponsored by the OCP Group, a regional phosphate mining company. King Mohammed VI does, however, provide funding for Boultek, the venue and studio space operated by EAC l’Boulvart. This growth in sponsorships has come to the dismay of some of the events’ diehard supporters, who see the festival as increasingly corporatized. A less corporate alternative to l’Boulevard has come in the form of Hardzazate, an annual do-it-yourself (or debber rassek in Darija) festival outside of Ouarzazate that

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promotes anarchism, feminism, and other progressive ideals, and features local and international metal, punk, hip hop performers, and street artists. While youth identities have not been widely recognized in Moroccan society (Cheikh 2020), festivals like l’Boulevard and Tremplin provide visibility for the various youth cultures found at these events which have collectively been referred to as Nayda. The term comes from the Darija word for “it’s moving,” and was one of the first widely recognized youth movements in the country (Caubet and Hamma 2017, 24). Meanwhile, conservative media outlets continue to scapegoat young festival goers by questioning their Muslim faith, perhaps sowing seeds for future panics and retaliation. CITY ROCKERS The Moroccan metal scene is an urban phenomenon. According to Will Straw, scenes make sense of the “chaotic flux of city life” (Barone 2015, 23). They provide a sense of community in places where human life is densely packed and communal relations thinly spread. But more than providing logic to urban life, scenes depend on cities to provide the bodies and infrastructure from which they are made. While not always essential for a scene’s survival, cities supply large populations with arrays of taste from which to draw like-minded people into a visually identifiable network. Visually identifying a scene involves participants collectively performing rituals that reinforce the communal identity. One such ritual is the act of looking metal. For the first wave of metal fans, band shirts were coveted and circulated like tapes. Someone would score a band shirt from a family member abroad, wear it until faded, and pass it down the chain of friends. If someone could not possess the original shirt they would copy its design onto a blank one (Canar 2016). Some youth even coaxed their mothers into embroidering band logos on jackets (Hamma and Guibert 2006). In his study of the Tunisian metal scene Stefano Barone notes that metalheads often wore whatever metal-related gear they could acquire (Barone 2019). Fans would often wear shirts for bands they did not even like, so long as it was roughly similar to bands they actually did, or featured a skull or anything else that could be associated with metal. If they could not acquire that much, a black T-shirt and jeans would suffice. Likewise for Moroccans, a black top would suffice in place of a band shirt. For many Moroccan metalheads the decision to look metal is respected, but secondary to consuming, performing, and behaving metal, as put by Into the Evernight bassist, Mamoun Belgnaoui: “We did what we watched on MTV videos and even if we didn’t have long hair, we headbanged like the Western metalheads.”

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The most common ritual in any scene is the concert. In order to operate and thrive, concerts depend on the hard infrastructure provided by cities: these include clubs, cafes, warehouses, garages, and sometimes an abandoned abattoir. Heavy metal demands loudness and the wattage to meet that demand, so access to enough electrical output to power guitar amps and a PA is essential (Knopke 2014). Thus far, we’ve gathered that two definitive characteristics of heavy metal as a scene are that it is loud and, in Morocco, urban. Cities provide the power for metal’s volume and the space for its performance. The urban planning in Morocco’s cities complicates this relationship. Excluding the stand-alone villas of its upper-class neighborhoods, the residential architecture of Morocco’s cities is dominated by dense tenement blocks endlessly built upward by the cranes hovering over the horizon. Looking up at any major Moroccan city, one comes face to face with a skyline marked by stork nests and cranes. Downtown commercial centers are likewise composed of concentrated blocks of storefronts, offices, and apartments. There is little room to be loud without irritating neighbors directly above, below, or beside you. It is typically in wealthy and industrial neighborhoods that spaces for loud music have managed to exist with little complaint. One of Casablanca’s longest running venues to regularly host metal concerts, Boultek, is located across the parking lot from a supermarket in the suburb of California. The now defunct bar-venue B-Rock was located on the city’s coastal strip of high-end bars and nightclubs called la Corniche. Alternatively, the venue and rehearsal space l’Uzine has operated in the industrial district of Aïn Sebaâ since 2014, initiated by the philanthropist Karim Tazi. Due to the limitations imposed by Morocco’s urban planning, festivals are another form of infrastructure that has become critical to the survival of metal. Festivals are a form of human infrastructure that has gained temporary access to large spaces, such as les Anciens Abattoirs. Hardzazat was originally housed in a space provided by the University of Ouarzazate, but the festival was forced to move to a private campground roughly an hour’s drive from the city, after the university sought to distance itself from the event’s radical politics. For Wassim Ahenjir, frontman of Casablanca’s eminent thrash act Thrillogy, organizing and attending concerts is paramount to the survival of the metal scene: Well, it is getting better, because we used to play two or three shows per year. Now, we try to make it eight or ten, but we need to keep working our asses off and we need more support from the crowd and Moroccan metalheads, because being a metalhead is not just about sitting in your room and listening to metal. . . . If you want to see Moroccan metal getting bigger . . . I think the metal spirit

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itself, defines itself with supporting your local scene and your local metal bands and going to every show.

True to his word, Wassim has done a great deal of organizing, such as his semi-annual concert series Moshkill. Unfortunately, attending every concert is not something all Moroccan metalheads can afford. BACK TO THE DIGITAL AGE Internet access was introduced to Morocco in 1995 (Ibrahine 2005). Initially, most of the public would go online at cyber cafes where individuals could use PCs for as much as ten dirhams per hour. By 2012, 51 percent of urban Moroccan households had home internet access (The National Agency of Telecommunications Regulation 2013). Most of these households received their internet via 3G dongles which could be purchased through national telecommunications companies like Maroc Telecom, Orange, and INWI. Today, the majority of users access the internet via smartphones, rather than desktops or laptops (The National Agency of Telecommunications Regulation 2021). The internet provides a wide stream through which global cultural flows (Knopke 2014) can reach far off locations. It also allows for direct interaction with fans and musicians in metal’s metropolitan scenes. Early Moroccan metalheads had a narrow stream of texts through which they could define metal: satellite television, radio, tape trading, and band shirts, among others. Today, they can interpret metal as directly presented to them by metalheads in countries considered central to the subculture, such as Norway, Sweden, or England. They also have access to a wider variety of metal through digital streaming platforms than previously available. This has allowed for subgenres not commonly found on television or radio, such as the aforementioned DSBM, to take root. Because the first wave of metal musicians had limited access to recording equipment, they focused their energies on preparing their live performances. There is little aural documentation of these bands, especially online. Recording studios were few and expensive for the first generation of metal bands and their personnel were typically unfamiliar with rock production values. By contrast, with the increased availability of recording equipment and software, the later generations of metalheads can record at home and produce a larger output of music than their predecessors. Digital interactions between Moroccans and metalheads abroad have even facilitated international music projects. Give Me a Joint formed as a collaborative effort between Moroccan and Peruvian artists. The project then became an entirely Moroccan effort

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renamed In Decay with Salé black metal musician Ayman Lafaz replacing Peruvian “Neito Kevorkian.” Black metal, as a subgenre, isn’t always evident in concerts or gatherings. Popularized by Burzum, and practiced by artists like Judas Iscariot, Leviathan, and Xasthur, “bedroom projects” in which a solitary musician plays and records every instrument have become a hallmark of the subgenre. These recordings were classically circulated through mail-order tape trading networks, without ever being performed live. The internet has further fueled bedroom projects online and the increasing presence of computers in Moroccan homes makes it easier for solo artists to make their own multitrack recordings. The artist Barzakh, a luminary of Moroccan black metal, is in fact a single artist, Krim, who writes and records every instrument for the project. In 2015, he became one of the few Moroccan metal artists to have an album receive a physical release on a foreign label with his CD, Shallow Ocean, on Russia’s Haarbn Records. Other solo black metal projects in Morocco include ALL, In Decay, Brume, Black Stripe, and Starless Skies. Increasing internet availability in Morocco has also expanded the outside world’s access to the Moroccan metal scene and granted bands greater exposure abroad. Since the 2000s, Moroccan metal bands have actively documented their existence online by uploading band profiles on popular genre forums such as www​.spirit​-of​-metal​.com and www​.metal​-archives​.com. From 2006 to 2008 the Meknes band, Imperium, maintained a blog on www​ .skyrock​.com where they updated fans on upcoming concerts and recordings. These sites have proven instrumental in compiling a list of Moroccan metal bands for the sake of this project. Expanding interactions between metalheads in Morocco and abroad has yielded a coveted prize for a small handful of Moroccan artists: an album released on a foreign label. In 2013 Abnabak’s CD Under the Mask of Humanity was released on the British label Cold Raw Records. Haarbn Records released Sawlegen’s Stories from an Old Empire in 2014. The year 2015 saw three more Moroccan black metal bands receive international releases: Triumph of Death, Abnabak’s split with Finland’s Mormant de Snagov on Cold Raw Records; Tagat’s Ourar n Itran on Winterwolf Records in Germany; and Barzakh’s Shallow Ocean. It is typical for the first wave of any metal scene to sing in English, even if it is not their native tongue (Wallach and Levine 2011). English is the lingua franca of rock. For Krim of Barzakh, English is preferable, because Darija isn’t aesthetically cohesive with metal and “there is no local audience anyway” (Krim 2021). Not only does this reflect cynicism toward the scene, but also a practical choice: by singing in English, he can appeal to an audience online that offers greater opportunities for releasing his albums.

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Headbanger’s Ball has been on and off the air since the 1990s. However, YouTube has become a major outlet for metal music and news in Morocco. Ayman, of In Decay and Starless Skies, cited the recommendations bar on YouTube as being instrumental in redirecting him from mainstream metal bands like Linkin Park and Three Days Grace toward the extreme metal he currently plays (Lafaz 2021). The website has also provided a platform for local metal fans to produce their own music coverage. Moroccan YouTube channels like Sir Kritik, Majmar Web Radio, l’Ma3adine, and the now defunct Artwood Shrine, all provide interviews with Moroccan metal bands as well as reviews of their concerts and recordings. Sir Kritik and Artwood Shrine have produced detailed explanations of different metal subgenres in Darija. Artwood’s series, Black Metal Tamazɣa, provided overviews of black metal across North Africa. Current Moroccan metal fans have alternatives to the commercial music outlets the previous generation depended on, which not only cover major metal acts abroad, but also those in their own scene. As physical and digital tools of production are increasingly accessible, more musicians are recording at home, sometimes without drums. Artists like Tagat, Abnabak, and Abu Lahab remain anonymous for fear of persecution. The trauma of the Satanic Affair remains in their minds. A new black metal scene is emerging outside Casablanca. Artists like Enlil from Meknes, Her Suffering from Khouribga, Kharab and Eternal Misery from Agadir, and Grey, In Decay, and ALL from Salé, suggest that metal remains a way of life for young fans. Magnates in the metal community like Thrillogy, Hold the Breath, and Into the Evernight, have impacted the musical landscape, organizing concerts at home and abroad. In conclusion, the Satanic Affair helped defuse an otherwise hostile environment and members of the first generation have gone on to operate institutions like l’Boulevard, l’Uzine, and Studio Hiba, places where metal can be consumed and new generations of bands can perform (Wallach and Levine 2011). This impact, paired with rising internet accessibility, has helped Moroccan metal overcome the social and economic difficulties faced by the scene’s founders. However, rock and metal still reside outside the Moroccan mainstream. Rappers remain the spokespeople of Morocco’s youth. Cameleon, the latest album of Moroccan hip hop artist El Grande Toto is the most played artist on Spotify in MENA (Drbyos 2021). With its incendiary lyrics, hip hop voices the discontent of youth and the politics of daily life in the common language of the street. As the scene enters what Wallach and Levine call the “third phase of cultural replication” (Wallach and Levine, 2011, 120) we are witnessing more metal artists, like Tagat and Kharab, integrating Darija and even Tamazight, instead of English, into their lyrics resulting in new and original variations of heavy metal. For today’s metalheads,

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the generation of bands before the digital age seem obscure, but they helped create an amicable atmosphere which Moroccan metal fans now enjoy. REFERENCES Abdellaoui, Zohair. Interview by Brian Trott, July 21, 2016. Ahenjir, Wassim. “Message from Wassim/Thrillogy to the Moroccan Metal Scene, H. METAL IN MOROCCO #5 BONUS \ ARTWOOD S.” Uploaded by Artwood Shrine. Youtube, March 9, 2018. https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=D​ -k1CTpfc4U​&t​=0s Andindilile, Michael. “‘You Have No Past, No History’: Philosophy, Literature, and the Re-invention of Africa.” International Journal of English and Literature 7, no. 8 (2016): 127–34. Ba, Diadie. “Africans Still Seething Over Sarkozy Speech.” Reuters, September 2007. Barone, Stefano. “Fragile Scenes, Fractured Communities: Tunisian Metal and Sceneness.” Journal of Youth Studies 19, no. 1 (2015): 20–35. ———. Metal, Rap, and Electro in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia: A Fragile Underground. Routledge, 2019. Belgnaoui, Mamoun. Interviewed by Amine Hamma, October 26, 2021. Boum, Aomar. “Festivalizing Dissent in Morocco.” Middle East Report 263 (2012): 22–25. Canada, Immigration and Refugee Board. “Responses to Information Requests. Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.” 2018. Accessed March 28, 2022. https:​//​www​.justice​.gov​/eoir​/page​/file​/1069501​/download Canar, Youssef. Interview by Brian Trott, June 25, 2016. Caubet, Dominique. “D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) in Morocco from the Mid-Nineties to 2015: Back to the Roots?” In Make It Fast: An Approach to Underground Music Scenes, edited by Paula Guerra and Tania Moreira, 2. Instituto Politécnico de Tomar a Faculdade de Letras Universidade Do Porto, 2016. Caubet, Dominique and Hamma, Amine. “Jil Lklam: Anthologie des poètes urbains.” Editions Sirocco/Senso Unico Editions. 2017. Cheikh, Mériam. “The Intimate Life of the Disenfranchised and Criminalised Moroccan Working-Class Youth.” Hespéris-Tamuda 55, no. 3 (2020): 431–48. De Sousa Santos, Boaventura. End of the Cognitive Empire. Duke University Press, 2018. Drbyos. “El Grande Toto, the Most Listened to Moroccan Rapper in the MENA Region.” Archytele (June 2021). https:​//​www​.archytele​.com​/el​-grande​-toto​-the​ -most​-listened​-to​-moroccan​-rapper​-in​-the​-mena​-region​/ Encyclopaedia Metallum. “Browse Bands—By Country—Morocco.” Accessed March 28, 2022. https:​//​www​.metal​-archives​.com​/lists​/MA Hamma, Amine, and Gérome Guibert. “De l’Internationale-Metal Au Conflit Sociétal Local: La Scène de Casablanca.” Volume! 5, no. 2 (September 2006): 153–77. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.4000​/volume​.550. Hamma, Amine. Interview by Brian Trott, July 15, 2016.

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Harris, Keith. “‘Roots’?: The Relationship between the Global and the Local within the Extreme Metal Scene.” Popular Music 19, no. 1 (2000): 13–30. Ibrahine, Mohammad. “Morocco: Internet Making Censorship Obsolete.” Arab Reform Bulletin 3, no. 7 (September 2005). Khafaoui, Amal. Interview by Brian Trott, August 30, 2021. Knopke, Ekkehard. “Headbanging in Nairobi: The Emergence of the Kenyan Metal Scene and Its Transformation of the Metal Code.” Metal Music Studies 1, no. 1 (October 2014): 105–25. Krim “Barzakh.” Interview by Brian Trott, September 21, 2021. Lafaz, Ayman. Interviewed by Brian Trott, September 19, 2021. The National Agency of Telecommunications Regulation. “Annual ICT Indicators Collection Survey Households and Individuals 2012.” The National Agency of Telecommunications Regulation (May 2013). ———. “Observatoire Des Abonnements à Internet au Maroc.” The National Agency of Telecommunications Regulation (March 2021). Saadi, Meryem. “Puissance En Vue.” L’Kounache Del Boulevard 38 (2010). Soufiane “Artwood.” Interview by Brian Trott, September 19, 2021. Thorne, John. “Morocco’s Metalheads Make Return.” The National, May 6, 2009. Accessed March 29, 2022. https:​//​www​.pressreader​.com​/uae​/the​-national​-news​ /20090506​/281908769093993. Tremlett, Giles. “Moroccan Judge Jails Metalheads.” The Guardian. March 2003. Trott, Brian. “Faouda Wa Ruina: A History of Moroccan Punk Rock and Heavy Metal.” MA thesis. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2018. Wallach, Jeremy, and Alexandra Levine. “‘I Want You to Support Local Metal’: A Theory of Metal Scene Formation.” Popular Music History 6, no. 1 (2011): 116–34.

NOTES 1. Artwood Shrine https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/c​/ArtwoodShrine​/videos Majmar Web Radio https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/channel​/UCtRTSN1Eb4mxBYjXY​_TbC4w Moroccan Metal Community https:​//​www​.facebook​.com​/groups​/MoroccanMetal Community 2. Killing and mutilating cats is a recurring theme in satanic panics surrounding heavy metal in Muslim majority countries. In 1997, about 100 Egyptian metal fans were picked up in sweeping arrests. Among their accusations was the drinking of cat blood. In 1999, Turkish media accused local metalheads of killing cats.

Epilogue Metal Unbound Esther Clinton, Jeremy Wallach, Nelson Varas-Díaz, and Daniel Nevárez Araújo

Like a Gibson Les Paul through a Marshall stack, European and American colonists have historically amplified the ethnocentric inclinations of colonized peoples and cultivated ethnic chauvinism as a key component of their divide-and-conquer strategy.1 Their rancid legacy is ethnonationalism and the devastation it has wrought, both within and between nation-states.2 In its fifty-plus-year history, metal music has, at different moments, both affirmed and defied national communities. In some geographies, the forceful assertion of national autonomy by metal artists can be an act of decolonial defiance, as the essay in this volume by Varas-Díaz and Nevárez Araújo illustrates. Yet in its long history of worldwide diffusion, metal’s ability to transgress national and cultural boundaries is equally compelling. In the Malaysian case study presented by Azmyl Yusof and Adil Johan in this volume, metal bridges the deeply entrenched social boundaries among Chinese, Indian, and Malay Malaysians. Likewise, Israel’s Orphaned Land has been celebrated for its pan-MENA fanbase, encompassing Jews, Christians, and Muslims (see Farhi interview, this volume). The world’s colonized peoples have a fraught, tragic relationship with the nation-state. Yet the Maori group Alien Weaponry, as evidenced in the chapters by Goosens and Rowe, has attracted fans throughout the globe, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, including forming ties with the burgeoning Navajo metal scene (see Thibodeau, this volume, and Stone and Zappia 2020). Worldwide, “metalhead” is sometimes treated like a “universal” category, an example of what Benedict Anderson (1998) calls an “unbounded series,” 387

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that is, an identity not circumscribed by geographical or national limits.3 But is this a progressive development for the Global South, for those areas once colonized and/or currently threatened by the very places where heavy metal originated? It depends on whom you ask. To refuse to inhabit the devalued pole of binary opposition, such as colonizer/colonized, is both a strategy of self-empowerment and a form of complicity through its elision of unequal power dynamics. Metalheads from the Global South cry out, in effect, “Don’t tell me that I’m not made of the same flesh and blood as the humans who came up with this music.” All social movements for equal rights are made up of what late feminist theorist Ann Snitow calls “lumpers” and “splitters” (1990), that is, some in the movement argue for minimizing difference, others for accentuating it. Heavy metal music mediates these poles, as it does with so many other binary oppositions. After all, as Weinstein (1991) pointed out long ago, metal culture has always bridged the divide between the inchoate spiritual yearnings of the hippie counterculture and the this-worldly, blunt social realism of the punks. Benedict Anderson’s imagined community thesis (1991[1983]) has been cited endlessly, but its complexities and implications remain underexplored. It points to the centrality of entertainment (in his case, mass-produced popular stories in vernacular print languages) for the construction of national consciousness—of the pivotal role of popular culture in forging translocal identity. A corollary to this is that cultural forms like metal music, often regarded as merely entertainment, can have profound social effects when they constitute solidary communities. Wallach has written previously that metal and other extreme rock music were never meant to change the world, but did so anyway (Wallach 2014a). Indeed, just as rock and roll was the unofficial soundtrack to decolonization (Wallach 2020), metal and other “extreme youth music” (Mark LeVine’s term) form the soundtrack to current youth rebellion (see LeVine, this volume, and Hecker et al. 2022) and what Varas-Díaz and Nevárez Araújo have called extreme decolonial dialogues (Varas-Díaz 2021; Varas-Díaz, Nevárez Araújo, and Rivera-Segarra 2021). It may be that metal’s greatest contribution to human emancipation will be in the years to come, in places its originators never imagined; in the geographical and symbolic space that we respectfully and emphatically call the Distorted South. REFERENCES Anderson, Benedict. R. O’G. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991[1983].

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———. Nationalism, Identity, and the Logic of Seriality. In The Spectre of Comparisons:  Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World, 29–45. New York: Verso, 1998. Hecker, Pierre, Mark LeVine, Nahid Siamdoust, and Jeremy Wallach. “By Way of an Epilogue: The Joys of Resistance.” In We’ll Play Till We Die: Journeys across a Decade  of Revolutionary Music in the Muslim World edited by Mark LeVine, 251–85. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2022. Smith, Anthony. Ethno-Symbolism and Nationalism: A Cultural Approach. New York: Routledge, 2009. Snitow, Ann. “A Gender Diary.” In Conflicts in Feminism, edited by Marianne Hirsch, Evelyn Fox Keller, 9–43. New York: Routledge, 1990. Soltani Stone, Ashkan, and Natale A. Zappia. Rez Metal: Inside the Navajo Nation Heavy Metal Scene. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020. Varas-Díaz, Nelson. Decolonial Metal Music in Latin America. UK: Intellect, 2021. Varas-Díaz, Nelson, Nevárez Araújo, Daniel, and Rivera-Segarra, Eliut. Conceptualizing the Distorted South: How to Understand Metal Music and its Scholarship in Latin America. In Heavy Metal Music in Latin America: Perspectives from the Distorted South, edited by Nelson Varas-Díaz, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, and Eliut Rivera-Segarra, 7–36. London: Lexington Books, 2021. Wallach, Jeremy. Foreword. Hardcore, Punk, and Other Junk: Aggressive Sounds in Contemporary Music, edited by Eric James Abbey and Colin Helb, ix–x. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014a. ———. “Indieglobalization and the Triumph of Punk in Indonesia.” In Sounds and the City: Essays on Music, Globalisation and Place, edited by Brett Lashua, Karl Spracklen and Stephen Wagg, 148–61. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014b. ———. “Global Rock as Postcolonial Soundtrack.” In The Bloomsbury Handbook of Rock Music Research, edited by Allan Moore and Paul Carr, 469–85. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. Weinstein, Deena. Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1991.

NOTES 1. This epilogue is primarily based on conversations between Esther and Jeremy. The ideas are mostly hers. 2. See Smith (2009) for an authoritative study of the relationship between ethnic symbolism and nationalism. 3. For a discussion of Anderson’s “unbounded seriality” in relation to a closely related subculture, punk, see Wallach (2014b).

Index

Note: Page references for photographs or tables are italicized. Abdellaoui, Zohair, 372 Acrania (band), 207 Act III (album), 240, 245, 245–48 Adler, Chris, 239 adultism, 138, 161–62n1 Africa, 228–31, 283–98, 372. See also Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) Aguilar, Ted, 250–51, 253 Ahenjir, Wassim, 380–81 “Aiga” (song), 73 Aisyah, Euis Siti, 143, 146, 147, 149 album covers, 18, 41–43, 42, 43, 48, 48–50, 51, 212, 237, 245, 249, 262, 309, 333, 334, 336, 337, 339–40, 341 Alien Weaponry (band), 18, 74–78, 82–86, 106–8, 142, 144, 148, 149–58, 387 “Al Machete” (song), 331–32 Almafuerte (band), 164–65, 168–70, 184n14 Amazons (myth), 46–51, 48, 198, 200 Amurians (band), 46 Ancient, Evil & African (album), 286, 287–89, 293, 301n2 Anderson, Benedict, 387, 388 Anthems of Carnage (album), 333–36, 334

Antípodas (album), 46–54, 48, 197–98 Aotearoa/New Zealand, 22–23, 67–86, 89n2, 149–53 Arab uprisings, 115–16, 119–20, 140 “Araka’e” (song), 52, 197–98, 200 Argentina, 17, 20, 21, 37–38, 163–79, 182nn5–6, 183n8, 183n11 Arka’n Asrafokor (band), 20 Arraigo (band), 20 Arsames (band), 121, 315 Asian Americans, 235–53, 257n1, 257nn6–7 Australia, 19, 137, 141 Bahrain, 124–25 Balance, Christine Bacareza, 240 Barriteau, Violet E., 38, 63n5 Barzakh (artist), 382 Ben-Yehuda, Nachman, 304–5, 311, 315 Betsen, Kadriel, 336–40, 346 black metal, 17, 121, 141, 190, 258n11, 312, 313–14, 376–77, 382, 383 Blast Bitch (band), 37, 39 Blythe, Randy, 239 Bond, Sage, 95–97, 99, 102, 104– 6, 105, 109 Boon (drummer), 268–69

391

392

Index

Botswana, 227–31 Boulevard des Jeunes Musiciens (festival), 118, 374, 377, 378–79 Brazil, 37–38, 46–47, 189, 193–94, 199 Brunei, 259 “Butchering the Spaniard Infantry” (song), 335 Cantonese rock / Cantorock, 270–71, 280n10 Carcass (band), 267 Caribbean island region, 16, 18, 20, 327–47 Carneiro da Cunha, Manuela, 2 cassette trading, 117, 241, 360, 371, 373, 382 Castrator (band), 34 Cavestany, Rob, 235, 236, 238, 240, 244, 245–47, 250–51, 252, 253, 257n5, 258nn11–12 Chaska (band), 17 Chewlche (band), 17 Chile, 41 Chinese dialects, 267, 269, 270–71, 274 Chinese ethnicity, 260–63, 266–75 Chong Yang (band), 267–68, 269, 272, 274 Christianity, 44, 117, 190–91, 195, 196– 98, 214, 284, 292, 315–16, 333 Chthonic (band), 17, 20 Clinton, Esther, 140, 184n14, 356–57 Cloaked in Darkness (album), 124–25 “Coaybay/4645” (song), 22 Coggins, Owen, 289 Colombia, 16, 19, 20 coloniality: cosmopolitanism as, 167–69; dehumanizing influence of, 10, 14–15, 52–54, 76; in education, 75–76, 144–45, 150–51, 154–55, 157, 178, 193; extreme decolonial dialogues, 37, 48, 67–68, 70, 81–86, 127–31, 137–41, 329–30, 387–88; and gender, 43–56, 166–67, 169–70, 176–78, 198–200; of industry, 327– 29, 336–36; and modernity, 10, 15,

128; “official history” in, 14, 16–17, 126–27, 190–91, 193, 196–97, 368n1; in religion, 44, 46, 177, 190– 91, 196–98, 214, 292–93, 298, 333 Combat Noise (band), 333–36, 334, 345–46 concerts: audience behavior at, 170, 173–74, 175–76, 252–53, 360; during COVID-19, 102–4, 106–8, 109, 148, 202–3, 227– 28; decoloniality of, 175–76; organization of, 106–8, 227–231, 272, 370, 380–81; underground, 119, 127, 263–64, 269, 272–73, 276 Confess (band), 121, 306, 312–13 Confrontar (album), 40–43, 42, 43 Conrad, Joseph, 286–87 Corpus Calvary (band), 16 COVID-19 pandemic, 23, 91–93, 96–110, 120–21, 203, 227, 251–52, 286, 344, 350n1 Coyle, Doc, 248 Crawley II, Billy, 96, 97, 99, 102–4 Crescent (band), 307 Cromok (band), 265 Crowley, Magus Faustoos, 313– 15, 313, 314 Cuba, 330–36 culture, definition of, 2 cumbia villera, 172–73 Curare (band), 20 Dantesco (band), 22 Death Angel (band), 235–41, 237, 244– 53, 245, 258n11 death metal, 189, 231, 294, 355, 373, 374 Derrumbando Defensas (band), 34, 40–43, 42, 43 de Jong, Henry Te Reiwhati, 74–77, 78, 80, 144, 149–53, 154, 157 de Jong, Lewis Rararuhi, 74–77, 83, 144, 149–53, 157 de la Cadena, Marisol, 53–54

Index

de Sousa Santos, Boaventura, 10, 14–15, 165 Dickinson, Bruce, 173, 175–76 Divide and Dissolve (band), 19 Dominican Republic, 340–45 doom metal, 19, 285–86, 289, 301n6 The Dream Calls for Blood (album), 240, 248–50, 249 Dust, Solomon, 285, 294, 297 Ecuador, 20 Egypt, 117–18, 120, 125, 127, 140, 306–11, 385n2 El Salvador, 294, 295 extreme metal, 115, 192, 195, 358–59. See also black metal; death metal; doom metal; thrash metal Fals-Borda, Orlando, 19 Farhi, Kobi, 4, 219–25 feminism, 20–21, 33–56, 62n1; communality of, 36–38; as decolonial force, 43–56, 166–67, 176–78, 199; ecofeminism, 40; intersectionality of, 12, 38–44, 51, 166–67, 199; vs. postfeminism, 36–37 5th International Society Metal Music Studies Biennial, 3, 29n3 Filipino ethnicity, 235, 236, 238, 240, 243–44, 251, 252–53 Flor de Loto (band), 19 Floyd, George, 104–6, 218n1 folclore (music genre), 168, 182–83n6 “For the Glory of Hell” (song), 288–89, 293 Gagneux, Manuel, 4, 201–18 Galeon, Andy, 236, 240, 247 Galvão, Fernanda, 200 gauchos, 167–70, 183nn6–8 “global metal,” 11 Global South: definition of, 10; as “the Distorted South,” 13–25, 16, 28n2; epistemologies of, 14–15, 16, 165–66, 216–17, 237; feminism

393

in, 33–56, 62n1, 166–68, 176–78, 198–200; migration from, 342–44, 346; as “other” to Global North, 10, 197, 283–84; youth in, 138–39, 141–42, 351–52 “God Allow Me (Please) to Play Music” (song), 142, 147 Goh, Daryl, 270–71 Goode, Erich, 304–5, 311, 315 Gramsci, Antonio, 126 Guatemala, 20, 22, 129, 230 Guerra, Lillian, 339 Habash, Shady, 311 Hall, Stuart, 353 Hammett, Kirk, 235, 236 Hardzazat Festival, 130 hate metal, 184n14 Headbanger’s Ball (TV program), 117, 373, 383 Heart of Darkness (novella), 286–87 Hécate, Susane, 4, 44–45, 46, 51, 52–53, 64n17, 189–200, 191 Hecker, Pierre, 306 Hermética (band), 165, 168 Higgins, Kathleen Marie, 21–22 Holt, Gary, 248 Horus (musician), 308, 310 Hoskie, Randall, 94, 96, 97–98, 106–8, 109 Huang Huo collective, 261, 267–74 I Don’t Konform (band), 93–94 Immortal Spirit (band), 374, 375 Indigenous peoples: of Africa, 202, 288–89, 291–93; of Aotearoa/New Zealand, 67–86, 89n4, 150–53, 155, 156, 157, 162n9; of Australia, 137; of Latin America, 41, 44–54, 169, 177, 184nn17–18, 190, 193, 196, 199–200; of North America, 91–110; scholarship among, 131–32 Indonesia, 17, 20, 117, 128–29, 143, 144–49, 155, 259, 351–52, 354– 64, 368nn1–2

394

Iorio, Ricardo, 168, 173, 184n14 Iran, 117–18, 119, 121, 128, 306, 311–15 Iron Maiden (band), 167, 173–74, 175–76, 219 Islam: censorship of metal under, 117–18, 120–22, 146, 304–5, 308, 311–16, 318–20, 375–77; metal musician practitioners of, 122, 144– 49, 259; reactions against, 122, 310, 314–15, 316, 376 Israel, 125, 219–223 James, Filiva’a Taue’etia, 71–74, 80 James, Kieran, 355 jamming studios, 262–63, 264, 265– 66, 268, 272 Jara, Victor, 223, 224, 225 jíbaros, 338–39, 346, 347 Kahn-Harris, Keith, 21, 305, 355 Karush, Matthew, 169, 171 Kenya, 286, 295–97, 372 Khafaoui, Amal, 372, 376 Khosravi, Nikan, 312–13 Kidd, Joe, 265–66, 268, 269–70, 271–72, 274 Kinsel, David, 95, 100, 102 KISS (band), 246 Kodigo de Birra (band), 374 Kony, Joseph, 284–85, 291–93, 297, 301n4 Kranium (band), 16 Kurnia, Firda Marsya, 143, 144–46, 147, 148, 149 La Armada (band), 340–45, 341, 346 Lebanon, 117, 122 Legados do Inframundo (album), 196 “Le Manu” (song), 71, 72 Leprosy (band), 17 Leupolu, Oliver, 71–74 Lugones, María, 44, 166 Luvaas, Brent, 355–56

Index

Maatar, Heny, 35, 39–40 machete (as symbol), 327–47, 334, 337, 341 Madres Metaleras del Norte, 167, 176–78 The Maharajah Commission (band), 266, 268 Mak Wai Hoo, 268, 271, 272, 273 Malaysia, 259–77, 387 Maldonado-Torres, Nelson, 52 “Mama Fest,” 176–77 mambises, 331–32, 334–36, 345–46, 347 Maori, 67–69, 70–71, 74–86, 89n4, 150–53, 155, 156, 157, 162n9 Mariñez, Pablo, 342 Marley, Bob, 224 Marte, Juan, 341–42, 344 Martin-Iverson, Sean, 356 Massive Scar Era (band), 119, 125, 308–10, 309 The Maximones (band), 22 Maysaloon (band), 317, 317–18 Metal Alliance Attack III (album), 336, 337 Metallica (band), 189, 220, 240, 257n5, 261, 262–63, 268 metal music: “aura” of, 125–27; awards for, 72, 150, 251, 270–71; as coping mechanism, 91, 100–110, 222, 294–95; as culture, 1–5, 164 (see also metal scenes); emotional phenomenology of, 18–19, 109, 192; environmentalism in, 40, 79, 152–53; ethical stances of, 21–23, 140–41, 154–59, 172–73, 192–93, 219–23; female performers of, 19, 20–21, 33–56, 119, 125, 129, 144–49, 154–59, 189–200, 280n7, 308–10; feminist, 20–21, 33–56, 63n2, 125, 147–48, 154–56, 198–200; festivals of, 20, 106–9, 107, 118, 120, 130, 176–77, 227–31, 286, 359, 377–79, 380; Global North-centrism of, 3, 9–13, 15, 24, 54–55, 163–64;

Index

ideologies of, 172–73; journalism of, 12–13, 273, 371, 374, 383; language use in, 11–12, 74–75, 168, 195–96, 213–14, 267, 269, 270–71, 274, 344, 382; local instrumentation in, 19–20, 71–72, 118–19, 148, 207; Muslim performers of, 122, 144–49, 259; mythic/folkloric elements of, 45–54, 78–81, 152, 196–98, 222–23, 289, 310, 314–15, 317–18; origins of, 2–3, 128, 140, 163–64; regionalization of, 2–4, 13–14, 19–20, 164–65, 168–69, 220–21, 372–73; “Satanic panics” against, 117–18, 122, 228, 303–20, 375–77, 385n2; visual dimensions of, 18, 46, 177, 330 (see also album covers; music videos); vocals of, 95–96, 248, 258n11, 287–88, 308; metal music studies: conferences on, 3; deficiencies of, 9–13, 141, 163; future of, 23–25, 28–29n3, 131–32 metal scenes: charity work in, 20, 37, 104–6, 227–31; class in, 171–73; definition of, 371–73; fashion in, 168, 229, 262, 263, 276, 379; female fans in, 20, 170, 176–78, 280n7; feminism in, 20–21, 176–78, 198–99; formation of, 127, 163–64, 370, 371– 75; in Latin America, 121, 163–79, 294; in the Middle East/North Africa, 115–32, 221–22, 303–20, 370–84; in the Navajo Nation, 94–95, 99–110, 387; race in, 170–73, 235–41, 244– 53, 259–77; sexism in, 20, 172–73, 198–99; sociality in, 262–63, 265, 356–57, 359–64, 371; social/political activism in, 20–21, 37–38, 115–17, 119–20, 123–25, 127–32, 140, 192– 93, 219–22; in southeast Asia, 117, 128–29, 259–77, 352, 355–64; in sub-Saharan Africa, 228–31, 295–97, 372; violence in/against, 117–18, 120–22, 129, 184n13, 276, 375–77;

395

methodologies, 4–5, 69–70, 95–96, 141–43, 306, 357–58 México, 3, 17, 207 Miasthenia (band), 34, 44–45, 46–54, 48, 55, 182n3, 190–91, 191, 194–98, 200 Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA), 115–32, 219–25, 303–20, 369–84 Mintz, Sidney, 328 Mirzoeff, Nicholas, 18, 346–47 Mogh (band), 313, 314 moral panics, 304–5, 315. See also “Satanic panics” Morgan-Edmonds, Turanga Porowini, 74–78, 80, 85, 89n11, 144, 153 Morocco, 117–18, 130, 369–84 Mosaka, Tshomarelo (“Vulture”), 4, 227–231, 229 Motör Militia (band), 124–25 Moxuan (band), 267–70, 272, 274 music industry: in Aotearoa/New Zealand, 71, 77; in Latin America, 54–55; in Malaysia, 270–71, 273 music videos, 71, 105, 147, 200, 331– 32, 344, 350n1 Mustamo, Aila, 141 mythology: Egyptian, 310, 317–18; Latin American, 45–54, 196–98; Maori, 78–80, 152 Nairobi Metal Festival, 286, 290 Navajo Nation, 91–110 Navajo Nation Metal Fest, 106– 8, 107, 109 Nevárez Araújo, Daniel, 18, 387–88 New Zealand. See Aotearoa/ New Zealand Nexus 7.17 (band), 370 nongkrong (“hanging out”), 352, 356–58, 359–64 “(Not) Public Property” (song), 154, 158 “Novus Orbis Profanum” (song), 49, 65n27, 199–200 nü metal, 268, 269, 270

396

Index

Nyiblorong (band), 260, 261, 275, 280n4 “Oriental metal,” 119, 120, 136n2 Origin (band), 120 Orphaned Land (band), 119, 125, 221– 22, 225, 387 Osegueda, Mark, 236, 244, 248, 249– 50, 251, 253, 258n11 Osiris (band), 307, 310 Overthrust (band), 227–31, 229 Overthrust Winter Metal Mania Festival, 227–31 Pack, Christian, 294 paganism, 190, 195, 196–98 Pakistan, 118 Paredes, Julieta, 47 pepeha, 67–68, 70, 78, 80–81, 82–86, 89n3 Perú, 16, 17, 18, 193 Philippines, 243–44, 252–53 Portuguese language, 49, 50, 52, 195–96 postfeminism, 36–37 Puente Becerra, Sergio Ernesto, 331–33, 336 Puerto Rico, 16, 20, 22, 327, 328, 336–340, 343 Pull Down the Sun (band), 78–81, 82–86 Puya (band), 16, 340 Quijano, Aníbal, 14, 44, 166, 329 race: and appropriation, 131, 206–8; Black/White binary of, 236–37; and class, 169, 171–73, 261; and feminism, 12, 38–39, 44, 51, 166–67, 199; hybrid identities of, 73, 76, 202, 203, 215–16, 258n15, 275; “model minority myth” of, 238, 241–44, 250; violence related to, 18, 104–6, 214–16, 221, 296–97 Rahmawati, Widi, 143, 147, 148, 149 Reborn (band), 375, 377

resistance, 13–15, 16, 20–21, 123–25, 198, 355–56, 363–64 Rez Metal (book/film), 94–95, 110 rez metal (subgenre), 94–95 Ridler, David, 71, 81 Rivera, Paul, 342–44 Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia, 55, 330, 345 Robertson, Bronwen, 306 Rodrigues Oliveira, Susane. See Hécate, Susane “A Room With a View” (song), 240, 246–48 Rosewrath, Victor, 285–289, 290, 293– 94, 295, 297–98 “RūAna Te Whenua” (song), 74, 150 Sakadoya (band), 378 Samoan ethnicity, 71–74 Sarparast (band), 17 “Satanic panics,” 117–18, 122, 228, 303–20, 375–77, 385n2 Satanism, 122, 190, 195, 216, 217, 258n11, 318, 376 Scarab (band), 125, 307, 310 “School Revolution” (song), 145, 154 Sepultura (band), 72, 80, 82, 153, 158, 213–14, 373 Seringai (band), 17 Sharp, Gene, 123 Shepherds Reign (band), 71–74, 82–86 Shepler, Susan, 294–95 Sierra Leone, 294–95 Singapore, 37, 259 Skinflint (band), 20, 230 “Slave’s Grinder” (song), 333–34 slave spirituals, 206–7, 208, 210, 214–15 social media, 99, 118, 132, 139–40, 157–58, 313, 314–15, 371, Songs of the Exiled (album), 341, 344 Soon, Kenneth, 261, 274–77 Sosa, Mercedes, 223–24 South Africa, 372 Spanish language, 12, 41, 168, 182n5, 213, 342–43, 344

Index

speed metal, 236 Step to Eternity (band), 121 subcultures, 1–2, 353–55. See also metal scenes Suffercation (band), 262 The Swarm (band), 250, 257n5 Switzerland, 202, 215–16 Syria, 120, 121, 221–22, 315–18 System of a Down (band), 204–5 Taiwan, 17, 20 Tangaroa (album), 74, 76, 142, 152, 153 tango, 168, 171 Tarek, Sherif, 120 Tendencia (band), 331–33, 345–46 te reo (language), 74–75, 76, 81, 150 Testify (band), 95, 100, 101 Testosteruins (band), 35, 39 “Thrashers” (song), 248, 253 thrash metal, 236, 238–39, 240–41, 244–53, 258n11, 259, 360 “Tones of the First-Formed; Fleshless and United with the Wind” (song), 288 Tool (band), 251 Tormentress (band), 37, 39 Torrente, Juan Carlos, 335–36 Total Eclipse (band), 374 Tren Loco (band), 20 “The Trooper” (song), 173–74 “Truth” (song), 104–6, 105, 109 Tunisia, 117, 118, 119, 120, 129, 130 Turkey, 118, 120, 121, 306, 385n2 “Tuskegee” (song), 29n5, 205, 206, 207, 215 Uganda, 284–85, 289, 291–94, 297–98

397

The Ultra-Violence (album), 236, 237, 240–41, 252, 253, 257n5 “Unquenchable” (song), 344 Vale of Amonition (band), 284, 285–89, 290, 295, 297–98 Varas-Díaz, Nelson, 18, 37, 44, 48, 54, 55, 68, 83, 129, 131, 151, 157, 165–66, 176, 387–88 Voice of Baceprot (band), 129, 139, 142–49, 143, 151, 154–59 Voon, Gideon, 71–74 Wake of a Nation (album), 18, 205–6, 218n1, 211–12, 215–16 Wallach, Jeremy, 127, 140, 165, 184n14, 259, 264, 277, 356–57, 372, 383, 388 Walsh, Rex, 355 Wegman, Koert, 78–81, 83, 85 Weinstein, Deena, 1–2, 388 “Whispers” (song), 18 Winter, Sina, 312, 314–15 Wong, Deborah, 238 Wrong, Michela, 287 Yazzie, Darius, 95, 99, 100, 101–2, 104 Yemen, 120 Yong Yandsen, 266–69, 272–73, 274 youth activism, 137–41, 144–59 youth culture studies, 138–43, 352–57 Zeal and Ardor (band), 18, 29n5, 205–6, 215–16218nn1–2 Zine, Reda, 128 Znoos (band), 20, 130 Zoroastrianism, 314–15

‌‌About the Editors‌‌

Varas-Díaz, Nelson. Professor of social-community psychology at Florida International University’s Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies. His work related to metal music addresses issues of community formation, linkages between culture and music, and metal music as a decolonial strategy in Latin America. His most recent book is titled Decolonial Metal Music: A Latin American Perspective (2021). He coedited the books Heavy Metal Music and the Communal Experience (2016), Heavy Metal Music in Argentina: In Black We Are Seen (2020), and Heavy Metal Music in Latin America: Perspectives from the Distorted South (2021). His work has also been published in multiple journals, including Metal Music Studies, International Journal of Community Music, and the Journal of Community Psychology, among others. He produced and/or directed the award-winning documentaries The Distorted Island: Heavy Metal and Community in Puerto Rico, The Metal Islands: Culture, History and Politics in Caribbean Metal Music, Songs of Injustice: Heavy Metal Music in Latin America, and Acts of Resistance: Heavy Metal Music in Latin America. Together, the films have garnered more than fifty sets of laurels in international film festivals. He is one of the editors of the Metal Music Studies journal published by Intellect. Wallach, Jeremy. Professor of popular culture in the School of Cultural and Critical Studies at Bowling Green State University. A scholar of popular music and globalization with interests in phenomenology, postcolonial studies, and semiotics, he has written or cowritten more than thirty research essays. Dr. Wallach also coedited, with Esther Clinton, a special issue of  Asian Music (2013) and authored a monograph, Modern Noise, Fluid Genres: Popular Music in Indonesia, 1997–2001 (Wisconsin, 2008), which was translated into Indonesian by Komunitas Bambu (2017). In 2011, he coedited, with Harris Berger and Paul Greene, the collection Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music around the World (Duke) and chaired the organizing committee for the 2013 BGSU Heavy Metal and Popular 399

400

About the Editors and Contributors

Culture International Conference, now recognized as the first meeting of the International Society for Metal Music Studies. He has given research presentations throughout North America and Indonesia, as well as Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. Several of Jeremy’s best-known publications are collaborations with his late wife, Dr. Esther Clinton, including “Recoloring the Metal Map” (2015) and “Talking Metal” (2016). Clinton, Esther. A scholar with diverse areas of interest and expertise. Trained originally as a folklorist, Dr. Clinton taught in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) for sixteen years on topics ranging from traditional narrative to popular novels to advanced cultural theory. She received her MA and PhD in folklore at Indiana University with a focus on narrative, proverbs, comparative mythology, and Old Norse and Old English literature. Her work has appeared in Asian Music, Journal of the National Medical Association, Proverbium, Journal of World Popular Music, Metal Music Studies, and in the books Archetypes and Motifs in Folk Literature, The Palgrave Handbook of Leisure Theory, Theory for Ethnomusicology, The Oxford Handbook of the Phenomenology of Music Cultures, Modern Heavy Metal, Heavy Metal and the Communal Experience,  and  Connecting Metal to Culture. Dr. Clinton researched heavy metal music extensively and was one of the organizers of the BGSU Heavy Metal and Popular Culture International Conference in 2013. Her other research interests included popular literature (particularly mystery, fantasy, and science fiction), folk religion, folktales and legends, tricksters, monsters, and Southeast Asia. Esther’s tragic, untimely death at age fifty cut short her exploration of these topics, but her many students carry on her legacy. Nevárez Araújo, Daniel. Assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Puerto Rico–Río Piedras. He holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. He has published work in a wide array of topics, including disability studies, AIDS/HIV literature and film, comedy, documentary film, immigration, identity, and heavy metal music in publications such as The Journal of Fandom Studies, The Massachusetts Review, Trespassing Journal, Sargasso, and Metal Music Studies. He has coedited the books Heavy Metal in Argentina: In Black We Are Seen (2020) and Heavy Metal in Latin America: Perspectives from the Distorted South (2021) with Dr. Nelson Varas-Díaz. He has also coedited various special issues for the Metal Music Studies journal, published by Intellect Books. In addition to his academic work, Nevárez Araújo has also worked as a translator. In his free time, he enjoys Brazilian jiu jitsu, long-distance



About the Editors and Contributors

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running, hiking, cooking, and the unpredictable adventures of entertaining his seven-year-old daughter. ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS Banchs, Edward. Freelance writer and independent scholar who holds a BA in political science from Florida Atlantic University and an MA in African studies from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. His interests in Africa and heavy metal have allowed him to focus much of his research on the emerging metal scenes throughout the African continent. His writing and research on the subject have been featured in various publications including The Guardian, Metal Hammer, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, OGlobo, Afropop, NPR, Decibel, and Metal Music Studies. He is the author of two books on the subject, Heavy Metal Africa: Life, Passion and Heavy Metal in the Forgotten Continent (Word Association, 2016) and Scream for Me Africa! Heavy Metal Identities in Post-colonial Africa (Intellect, 2021). He is a very active participant of his local metal scene in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Bond, Sage. Singer-songwriter from the Diné and Nde tribes and enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. She is also a composer, heavy metal lover, and student working toward a bachelor of arts in music. Sage has been performing since the age of thirteen, joining and collaborating with bands of several genres and building a fanbase in her community. Throughout her music performance career, Sage has auditioned for American Idol and The Voice and was nominated for a 2016 Native American Music Award (NAMMYs) in the category of Best Female Vocalist for her self-titled EP. In 2018, Bond released an LP album titled Prisoner and during the pandemic, released a single along with her first music video, titled “Truth.” She donated the proceeds to a local hospital in need of funds for personal protection equipment. Calvo, Manuela Belén. PhD in communication studies, MA in comparative cultures and literatures, and professor in Spanish and literature. In her two postgraduate theses she has studied Argentinian metal music and its culture, especially through nationalism and masculinities issues. She has published several academic articles, book chapters, and book reviews in Spanish, English, and Portuguese with the results of these studies in multiple journals like Metal Music Studies and El Oído Pensante. She is member of the Network of Studies and Experiences in and from Heavy Metal (REEHM) and, in this group, she collaborated with the development of Protocol against Gender-Based Violence in Metal Practices. She has previously integrated

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About the Editors and Contributors

several research groups dedicated to metal and the social studies of music, including the International Society for Metal Music Studies board for a short time. At present, she is postdoctoral scholar of National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) of Argentina with a workplace in National University of the Center of Buenos Aires Province (UNICEN), where she researches about youths, arts, gender, and moralities in small cities. Eckerström, Pasqualina. Doctoral researcher in religious studies at the University of Helsinki. She focuses on dynamics of artistic transgression in religious authoritarian countries. Her dissertation investigates how extreme metal musicians in Iran and Saudi Arabia use and produce music to express their subversive identities and promote their right to self-actualization. Eckerström has presented her work at numerous conferences, such as International Society for Metal Music Studies’ (ISMMS) 5th Biennial Conference; ARTHRIC-2021: Art and Human Rights International Conference; SIEF2021 15th Congress: Theme: Breaking the Rules? Power, Participation, Transgression. Research is one of the tools she uses to advocate for social change. Currently, she is completing an internship at Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML). In 2022, she was elected doctoral researcher representative for the Doctoral Programme in History and Cultural Heritage and board member for the association Hyvät (The University of Helsinki PhD Students). She is also an Ordinary Member of the Executive Board ISMMS. Eckerström hosts a metal music podcast called MetalBreak. Having had a long career as a music journalist, she encountered brave artists who resist censorship under Muslim authoritarian systems. Therefore, she decided to take this topic to the academic realm. Farhi, Kobi. Israeli musician, lead singer, and founder of the band Orphaned Land. He has received honorary awards for peace from the Istanbul Commerce University, the mayor of Çankaya in Ankara, and the government of Turkey. In 2014, his band received the Global Metal Award from Metal Hammer Magazine’s Golden Gods awards. In September 2018, Orphaned Land won the Video of the Year Award for their video of the song “Like Orpheus” at the Progressive Music Awards in London. Fellezs, Kevin. A Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) associate professor of music and African American and African Diaspora studies at Columbia University. His recent book, Listen but Don’t Ask Question: Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar across the TransPacific (Duke University Press, 2019), is a transnational study of the ways in which Hawaiian belonging is articulated by Kanaka Maoli and non-Hawaiian guitarists in Hawai‘i, California, and Japan. The book was awarded a 2021 Honorable Mention for the Best



About the Editors and Contributors

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Subsequent Book Award from the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. His first book, Birds of Fire: Jazz, Rock, Funk and the Creation of Fusion (Duke University Press, 2011), is a study of fusion (jazz-rock-funk) music of the 1970s and was awarded the 2012 Woody Guthrie Book Award from the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, US Branch. He has published articles on music from Hawaiian slack key to jazz, heavy metal, and enka in Jazz Perspectives,  the  Journal of Popular Music Studies, and the  Journal of the Society for American Music, as well as in numerous anthologies. Gagneux, Manuel. Swiss-American musician who has been the lead creative behind the bands Birdmask and Zeal & Ardor. Zeal & Ardor have released the albums Devil Is Fine (2016), Stranger Fruit (2018), Wake of a Nation (2020), and Zeal & Ardor (2022). Gagneux was born in Basel, Switzerland, to an African American mother and Swiss father. His work is characterized by the intersection of Black metal and Black spirituals. González-Martínez, Susana. PhD candidate in arts and education at the University of Granada. She is a social worker and holds two master’s degrees: one in aesthetic research and education: arts, music, and design and a second one in feminist, gender and citizenship studies. Her field of inquiry-action focuses on areas related to community work, social intervention, and pedagogies through the arts, metal music, feminist theory, and gender studies. She has worked as a cultural manager in the organization of events, concerts, and exhibitions at the University of Jaén, where she has directed projects related to sociocultural intervention, such as the Rock and Metal Encounter. She has given conferences and sessions on social intervention through the arts, feminist artivism, participatory research methodologies, and feminism and metal music as a guest speaker at congresses, seminars, postgraduate studies, and conferences at European and Latin American universities. She has been invited as an evaluator of research projects in the MA in Gender Studies and as a member of the academic committee of the International Colloquium on Gender Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Part of her work on metal has been published in the journal Metal Music Studies. Goossens, Didier. Staff member at CEMPER (Centre for Music and Performing Arts Heritage in Flanders, Belgium) and external PhD candidate at Erasmus University Rotterdam’s department of Arts & Culture Studies in the ESHCC (Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication). His metal-related research focuses on questions of identity and locality in metal music and culture. Through extensive narrative interviews, he pays close attention to artists’ individual perspectives on these matters and fosters sustainable

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About the Editors and Contributors

cooperative projects. He is currently working on research about the notions of identity and heritage in Black metal from the Low Countries (Flanders and the Netherlands). He has written about his research as well as the general trends and legitimization of metal music studies for different academic and popular media, including Metal Music Studies, Sociologie Magazine, Cultural Studies Leuven, Studio Brussel, and Vlaamse Scriptiekrant. Furthermore, he has discussed these topics in academic presentations, guest lectures, and podcasts, and has moderated various panels on metal music and culture, earning him the nickname “Metal Professor” in Belgian media. In his spare time, he works as a merchandiser for metal bands Psychonaut and Pothamus. Hamma, Amine. Musician and activist in the cultural field in Morocco. He played in one of the first rock/metal groups in Morocco in 1996, then created a fanzine dedicated to this musical aesthetic in 1999. He was one of the fourteen rockers in the “satanist affair” in 2003. He set up other experimental musical projects with musicians who would become the spearhead of Casablanca music. He also set up musical projects in Paris, such as Café Mira (World Music) and Acyl (Maghrebian Ethno metal). He was interviewed by Gérome Guibert in the popular music review, Volume! Les scenes Metal, and by Mark LeVine in the book Heavy Metal Islam. He also writes in the Kounach magazine of the L’Boulevard festival in Casablanca, where he is an artistic advisor. After eleven years in Europe, he returned to Morocco in 2014 to work as a project manager at cultural NGO Fondation Hiba. In 2016, he published the book Jil Lklam, co-written with Dominique Caubet, dedicated to the Moroccan urban music scene, and is trying to set up his music label, Tricinty. Hécate, Susane. Founder, vocalist, composer, and keyboardist of the band Miasthenia since 1994. Her lyrics written in Portuguese on pre-Columbian themes and colonial indigenous resistance are present on five Miasthenia albums: XVI (2000), Batalha Ritual (2004), Supremacia Ancestral (2008), Legacies of the Underworld (2014) and Antípodas (2017). In the academic field, she works under the name of Susane Rodrigues de Oliveira. She is a historian and associate professor in the area of theory and methodology of teaching history in the History Department of the University of Brasilia (UnB, Brazil). She holds a master’s degree (2001) and a doctorate (2006) in history from the UnB. She completed a postdoctoral degree in the Postgraduate Program in History at Unicamp (2018) and at the Feminist Research Institute of the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain, 2018–2019). She is the author of the book Por uma História do Possível: Representações das Mulheres Incas nas Crônicas e na Historiografia, published by Paco Editorial in 2012.



About the Editors and Contributors

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Johan, Adil. Research Fellow at the Institute for Ethnic Studies (KITA), The National University Malaysia (UKM). His research analyses aspects of popular music in the mass media that intersect with issues of interculturalism, cosmopolitanism, intimacy, affect, and gender, focusing on the Malay world and Southeast Asia. He wrote Cosmopolitan Intimacies, a book on Independence-era Malay film music (NUS Press, 2018); was an invited special section editor for the Journal of Intercultural Studies (2019), and published a study on Malaysian popular music and social cohesion in Kajian Malaysia (2019). He is also coeditor for the volume, Made in Nusantara: Studies in Popular Music (Routledge, 2021). Currently, he is heading a fundamental research project funded by the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education on the intercultural mobilities of Malaysian popular music artists and groups. He performs and records as a saxophonist for Nadir. LeVine, Mark. Professor of history at UC Irvine and chair of the Program in Global Middle East Studies. A 2020–2021 Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author and editor of more than one dozen books, including Why They Don’t Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil (Oneworld 2005), Heavy Metal Islam (Random House 2009), Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine since 1989 (Zed Books, 2009), Islam and Popular Culture (Texas 2016), and We’ll Play Till We Die: Journeys Across a Decade of Revolutionary Music in the Muslim World (UC Press, 2022). He is also producer, among other projects, of Flowers in the Desert (EMI 2009) and Before the Spring, After the Fall (Bonne Bioche 2013) and co-founder of the refugee music organization Kakuma Sound (Kakuma-Sound.org). Lukisworo, Agustinus Aryo. Lecturer of sociology at Universitas Atma Jaya Yogyakarta. His research interests include youth culture and (extreme) metal music. He has published several journal articles and book chapters about Indonesian extreme metal musician practices, including “Resist or Perish! Understanding the Mode of Resistance among Young DIY Indonesian Musicians” (2021, coauthored with Oki Rahadianto Sutopo and Gregorius Ragil Wibawanto). Mosaka, Tshomarelo “Vulture.” Lead vocalist and bassist for the Botswana-based death metal fury that is Overthrust. Apart from performing, he also runs a production company that organizes the charity focused Overthrust Winter Metal Mania Festival in Ghanzi, Botswana, as well as the Vulture Thrust Festival in Rakops, Botswana. As a member of Overthrust he has released three albums and has performed throughout southern Africa and Europe, including at the venerated Wacken Festival in Germany. He resides in Letlhakane, Botswana, with his family.

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About the Editors and Contributors

Rowe, Paula. Lecturer in social work and community development at the University of South Australia. Paula is one of the few metal scholars to research metal youth as a specific cohort, and she does this from a strengths approach to researching metal as a positive developmental tool in young people’s lives. She has studied metal identity formations and metal community connectedness as protective factors for mental health and well-being, and holistic ways that metal has assisted youth transitions through schooling and into postschool environments. Paula has also researched metal as a critical building block for active citizenship and empowerment and studied the political activation of youth voice at the level of individual, community, and broader decolonial agendas. Her publications include numerous manuscripts in academic journals and a full-length book titled Heavy Metal Youth Identities: Researching the Musical Empowerment of Youth Transitions and Psychosocial Wellbeing (2018). She has been a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the Metal Music Studies journal since its inception and regularly reviews manuscripts relating to metal and youth for various other academic journals. Sutopo, Oki Rahadianto. Associate professor of sociology and director of the Youth Studies Centre at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada. His research interests include youth studies, cultural sociology, and sociology of knowledge. He has published his work in Journal of Youth Studies, Perfect Beat, Asian Music, Sociological Research Online, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, and Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal. Thibodeau, Anthony J. Director of Research and Collections, Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA), Flagstaff, Arizona. Anthony is an anthropologist and holds an MA in popular culture from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He has held professional positions in museums and has worked closely with Indigenous groups in Arizona and New Mexico for over thirty years. He has also taught cultural anthropology at Northern Arizona University and curated The Force Is with Our People exhibition at MNA in 2019–2020, which explored the cultural connections between Star Wars and contemporary Indigenous art from across the American Southwest. Anthony’s 2014 master’s thesis from BGSU is titled Anti-Colonial Resistance and Indigenous Identity in North American Heavy Metal, and his publications since include “‘Among the Rocks and Roots’: A Genre Analysis of Cascadian Black Metal” in the collected volume Heavy Metal Studies and Popular Culture (2016). Trott, Brian. An independent scholar. He completed his master of arts degree at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee with his thesis “Faouda Wa



About the Editors and Contributors

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Ruina: A History of Moroccan Punk Rock and Heavy Metal” (2018). He is an occasional contributor to Slingshot and Razorcake magazines. He continues his involvement in the punk rock scene, organizing concerts and performing with the Milwaukee-based hardcore-punk band, Curbsitter. Yusof, Azmyl. Touring underground recording artist and an academic in media and cultural studies at the Department of Film & Performing Arts, School of Arts, Sunway University. He has published on popular culture, music subcultures, and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the threechords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see.”