Metal Music, Sonic Knowledge, and the Cultural Ear in Europe since 1970: A Historiographic Exploration 3515127879, 9783515127875

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PETER PICHLER

Metal Music, Sonic Knowledge, and the Cultural Ear in Europe since 1970 A Historiographic Exploration

Geschichte Franz Steiner Verlag

SG EI – SHEI – E HI E

Studien zur Geschichte der Europäischen Integration (SGEI) Études sur l’Histoire de l’Intégration Européenne (EHIE) Studies on the History of European Integration (SHEI) Herausgegeben von / Edited by / Dirigé par Jürgen Elvert In Verbindung mit / In cooperation with / En coopération avec Charles Barthel / Jan-Willem Brouwer / Eric Bussière / Antonio Costa Pinto / Desmond Dinan / Michel Dumoulin / Michael Gehler / Brian Girvin / Wolf D. Gruner / Wolfram Kaiser / Laura Kolbe / Johnny Laursen / Wilfried Loth / Piers Ludlow / Maria Grazia Melchionni / Enrique Moradiellos Garcia / Sylvain Schirmann / Antonio Varsori / Tatiana Zonova Band/Volume 34

Peter Pichler METAL MUSIC, SONIC KNOWLEDGE, AND THE CULTURAL EAR IN EUROPE SINCE 1970

A Historiographic Exploration

Franz Steiner Verlag

Gedruckt mit freundlicher Unterstützung des Referats Wissenschaft und Forschung des Landes Steiermark.

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über abrufbar. Dieses Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist unzulässig und strafbar. © Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2020 Layout und Herstellung durch den Verlag Satz: DTP + TEXT Eva Burri, Stuttgart Druck: Beltz Grafische Betriebe, Bad Langensalza Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier. Printed in Germany. ISBN 978-3-515-12787-5 (Print) ISBN 978-3-515-12788-2 (E-Book)

Content

Chapter 1 Introduction

The Dynamics of Sonic Knowledge in European Metal History

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Part 1 Theoretical Structures of Sonic Knowledge Chapter 2 Prolegomena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 3 Narratives, Narrations, and Emplotment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 4 Identities and Identitary Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 5 Europeanness, Transnationalism, and Entanglement . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 6 Time

The Album

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Chapter 7 Space

The Tour

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Chapter 8 Thinking Conceptually

The Pentagon of Sonic Knowledge Theory

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Part 2 Albums, Tours, Events, and Practices

Empirical Examples of Sonic Knowledge in European Metal History Chapter 9 The Construction of Metal’s Time Concept in Europe

Black Sabbath’s Debut Album (1970)

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Chapter 10 Rendering New Space on Europe’s Me(n)tal Map

Motörhead’s ‘Classic’ Tours (1976–1982)

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Chapter 11 Spawning the 1980s

Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast (1982)

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Chapter 12 Spatially Explicating Europe

Manowar’s Hail to Europe Tour (1986)

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Chapter 13 Slayer’s Reign in Blood (1986)

A European Rereading in the 21st Century

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Chapter 14 The Convergence of Space and Time as a Door-Opener to the 1990s

Mayhem’s Concert in Leipzig (1990)

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Chapter 15 How to Survive the 1990s

Pyogenesis’ Journey through the Genres (1992–2015)

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Chapter 16 Black Metal Goes Science

Temple of Oblivion’s Traum und Trauma (2014)

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Chapter 17 A Historian at a Newly Established European Extreme Metal Festival

Metal on the Hill (2016)

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Chapter 18 Black Metal and a Medieval Castle

The Conjuncture of Listening and Watching in a Historian’s Mind (2016)

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Chapter 19 Thinking Empirically

Weaving the Carpet of European Metal History

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Chapter 20 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Figures and tables References Index

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Chapter 1 Introduction The Dynamics of Sonic Knowledge in European Metal History

Heavy metal is a type of popular music that immediately elicits distinct mental images and associations . Kahn-Harris (2007, p . 1; also, see Hein, 2003; Roccor, 1998a; Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 2000) rightly noted that metal has been successful in establishing its own cultural style: anyone confronted with the genre name immediately thinks of loud and aggressively distorted guitar sounds, long hair, black clothes, jewelry (Barratt, 2016), battle jackets (the ‘Kutte’) (Cardwell, 2017), and band T-shirts (Höpflinger, 2014) . These semiotics of ‘metalness’ work everywhere in Europe (Brown, Spracklen, Kahn-Harris, & Scott, 2016a) . Metalness as an identity form has been developing since about 1970; it tells us who should be seen as a member and valued part of the metal scene as well as who is outside . After Weinstein’s (1991) groundbreaking sociology of metal, Walser (1993) was the first to show how the musical sphere and the social world work together in metal in creating this scene . Without a doubt, metal has successfully formed its own cultural and historical narrative (Weinstein, 2016) . One might ask how this history should be told from the point of view of scientific history . When discussing metal’s past, the ‘new cultural history’ (Burke, 2010; Hunt, 1989; Landwehr & Stockhorst, 2004; Pichler, 2017d), which trained cultural historians apply to their subjects today, uses a paradigmatic lens that is different from the ones in other disciplines . Despite significant modifications in the course of the ‘cultural turn’ since the late 1980s (Bachmann-Medick, 2016), history as an academic discipline still fundamentally relies on the ‘historical method’ in all its rigour in researching empirical sources and the construction of theoretically founded narratives (Howell & Prevenier, 2001; Iggers, Wang, & Mukherjee, 2017; Rüsen, 2013; White, 1973) . From such a cultural-historical perspective, moreover a transnational and a European perspective (Pichler, 2017d; Schmale, 2000), important questions have remained unanswered . Is (European) metal history strictly limited to the time and space of the

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Introduction

factual emergence of a phenomenon called heavy metal music in Great Britain about five decades ago? Historically, metal has integrated and ‘recycled’ a whole range of historical narratives, sounds, and images of past eras – from ancient history and the medieval era to modernity and post-modernity (Pichler, 2018b; Walser, 1993) . Yet it has blended all these different historical ingredients into a new and distinct sonic form of sound culture (Berger, 1999, 2010; Elflein, 2010; Walser, 1993), what I call in this book the ‘sonic knowledge’ of metal in Europe (Pichler, 2018c) . This distinctness justifies seeing the time since the beginning of the 1970s as the temporal framing of a European metal cultural history . The next question at hand would be this: What exactly defined metal’s newness, as such a sonic culture form historically, from a predominantly European and transnational perspective? We only have elusive answers at this point . Reflecting on such queries we realise that though, thanks to the emerging discourse of metal music studies (for good introductions, see Bartosch, 2011; Brown, Spracklen, Kahn-Harris, & Scott, 2016b; Gardenour Walter, Riches, Snell, & Bardine, 2016; Heesch & Höpflinger, 2014; Hein, 2003; Wallach, Berger, & Greene, 2011; Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 2000), we do already know a good deal about the past of this kind of popular culture . However, we do not know metal history in academically satisfying ways . We lack research that consciously applies the ‘historian’s gaze’ to heavy metal . There is a fundamental lack of scholarship by trained historians, especially from a European and transnational perspective (Pichler, 2017c, 2018b; Schmale, 2000) . In this book, presenting first explorations into this European cultural history, the analysis of this gap in scholarship forms my point of departure . Herein, I continue the research from my scientific blog on the topic (Pichler, 2014–20) . My explorations into European metal history integrate some elements from this blog; predominantly my book consists of original texts . In these new texts, in order to help nurture an awareness of history in metal studies, I have tried to even more consciously take advantage of my experience as a cultural historian as well as my expertise in European cultural history and European integration history; fields in which I have published widely (Pichler, 2011, 2014, 2016c, 2017d, 2018b) . However, this is only a first attempt and certainly not a complete history – as it is simply not possible at this stage of metal studies . Thus, I intentionally restrict myself to presenting a series of first explorations into the topic, held together by the concept of sonic knowledge in Europe . Perhaps the debates surrounding metal music studies stand on the brink of becoming a full-fledged disciplinary and interdisciplinary discourse, at least a persisting independent field of study . As mentioned in any recent introductory text covering our field (Bartosch, 2011; Brown et al ., 2016b; Gardenour Walter et al ., 2016; Heesch & Höpflinger, 2014; Wallach et al ., 2011), the pioneering phase in the 1990s (Berger, 1999; Gaines, 1991; Roccor, 1998a, 1998b; Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 1991) was followed by a period of growing research intensity and publications in the 2000s (Baulch, 2007; Diaz-Bohne, 2010; Elflein, 2010; Hein, 2003; Irwin, 2007; Kahn-Harris, 2007) . Since 2008 we have witnessed a steady increase, and in recent years even an explosion in the

Introduction

number of monographs, edited volumes, articles, and scholarly events like workshops and conferences (Brown et al ., 2016a) . Today in 2020, we have a peer-reviewed journal called Metal Music Studies (Scott, 2014–20) and the globally operating learned society of the International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS) (2020), both being significant structural signs of the emergence of an independent (inter)disciplinary discourse and its initial institutionalisation .1 These collective projects – a journal and an academic organisation – are forms of group building, maybe even of ‘tribalism’ or ‘scene building’ within academia (Becher & Trowler, 2001) . This stands in sharp contrast to Weinstein’s suggested conclusion that there is an ‘insularity’ when it comes to metal research (Weinstein, 2016; for a critique of Weinstein’s methodology, see Digoia & Helfrich, 2018) . From a cultural historian’s point of view, such early institutionalisation is of great interest . Historically this implies that the birth and following development of the historical focus, namely metal culture itself since 1970, has recently been accompanied by intense academic community building in the field of metal studies . Metal studies scholars are developing a scientific community, which is centred on the topic of metal music . Interestingly, like metal itself, the ISMMS also originated in Great Britain (Brown et al ., 2016a, pp . 8–11; Hickam, 2015) . It is possible that we can observe the on-going constitution of an epistemic community of metal researchers . Of course, in this community we are not merely neutral or bias-free researchers . Much more, we pursue our own interests in research, according to our biographies and living worlds (Huguenin Dumittan, 2014; Pichler, 2017a; Savigny & Schaap, 2018; Spracklen & Spracklen, 2018, pp . 1–8) . One might suppose that this emerging academic community is about to develop its own ‘thought style’ (Fleck) . This argument does not imply that metal studies is a discipline at this point; nonetheless, it is very much in the state of finding shared norms and epistemologies of research, so very likely a thought style (Fleck, 2012) of metal studies indeed . Presently, this global and growingly digital community of metal studies is characterised by a rather fluid, not yet canonised theoretical discourse – also from a historical perspective (Hecker, 2014; Hickam, 2015; Kahn-Harris, 2016; Weinstein, 2016) . Since the 1990s, the field was strongly influenced by female academics (Digioia & Helfrich, 2018; Heesch & Scott, 2016; Riches, 2015; Roccor, 1998a; Weinstein 1991, 2000) Today, metal scholars – predominantly male though – situate themselves more or less deeply involved in the culture of metal (Huguenin Dumittan, 2014; Pichler, 2017a; Savigny & Schaap, 2018) . Such nuanced involvement forms of individually varying kinds should not be interpreted as a theoretical fatality leading to a lack of distancing from the focus of research . However, it follows that the histories of metal fans and metal studies are closely interrelated and cannot be separated from each other .

The author is a member of the ISMMS and a member of the journal’s editorial advisory board . Hence, his narrative is a part of this discourse – written by a historian . 1

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Introduction

This inseparability is a given, and we must focus on the network-like co-development of the histories of metal and metal studies . Metal scholars like the ones engaged in the global community building of the ISMMS write such narratives of metal history . They are living the history and memory building of their scholarly community, which I suggest is on its way to being a distinct thought style (critically, see Brown, 2018; Kahn-Harris, 2016) . Most remain practicing metalheads . In a nutshell, metal and metal studies cycle as a historical tandem, their evolution is a co-development – and this is how we should look at them . ‘Presentness’ and Ahistorical Scene Theories

In an important essay on the ‘next steps in the evolution of metal studies’, Kahn-Harris (2016) has claimed self-reflexive memory building by both the scene(s) and the academic community make up a key task of future metal culture and research . This is one of the aims of a concept he coined ‘Metal beyond Metal’ (2014, 2016) . Until now, metal studies and its academic community have been dominated by theoretical paradigms from the disciplinary worlds of sociology, cultural studies, philosophy, and musicology (for introductory texts, see Bartosch, 2011; Brown et al ., 2016b; Gardenour Walter et al ., 2016; Heesch & Höpflinger, 2014; Hein, 2003; Nohr & Schwaab, 2012; Wallach et al ., 2011; Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 2000) . Notwithstanding Kahn-Harris’ call for reflexive memory and history building, up to the present day the history of metal has been written by sociologists, cultural studies scholars, philosophers, musicologists, and scholars from related academic fields . Of course, this is not ‘wrong’ . These scholars initiated discussions . Nevertheless, sociologists write in the theoretical style of sociology, cultural studies scholars use their own theories, philosophers follow the philosopher’s worldview, and musicologists analyse music itself . The result is a discursive situation in which there still is no history filling the gap, i . e . there is no satisfying (European) cultural history of metal, written by trained historians . Put provocatively, metal and metal music studies are a culture and an academic field, wherein it is accepted that they have a common (European) past and they want to share and ‘memorialize’ it (Brown et al ., 2016a, pp . 1–8) . We even must presuppose such aims when we take Kahn-Harris’ claim seriously . Nonetheless, we are forced to tell it in a way that is unconvincing for historians because there is no scientific historiography of metal, i . e . one also created mainly by trained historians (Pichler, 2018b) . This is where my research comes in . As a trained historian I want to help incorporate the ‘historian’s gaze’ into the field of metal studies . Historians ask their own questions . In the current discourse of metal research, in addition to the concepts of ‘subculture(s)’ and ‘genre(s)’ the notion of ‘scene(s)’, however polymorphicly used in varying works and contexts, prevails in interpreting the history of metal since about 1970 (Baulch, 2007; Bennett & Peterson, 2004; Kahn-Harris, 2007; Straw, 1991; Wallach et al ., 2011;

Three Examples of the Historian’s Gaze

Weinstein, 1991) . There is a mainly sociological bias, where the concept of the ‘scene’ is utilised in embracing metal only in a supposedly ‘holistic’ way (Kahn-Harris, 2007, pp . 9–26), meaning the music itself, its infrastructures, practices, economics, its times and spaces . Recently, scene theorising seems to be conceptually outgrowing subculture(s) and genre(s) (Baulch, 2007; Bennett & Peterson, 2004; Kahn-Harris, 2007; Straw, 1991; Wallach et al ., 2011) . Hence, this terminology of scene(s) is constitutive of metal studies’ current outlook concerning the object of enquiry . The notion grew into a successful and elementary theoretical tool, which captures how metal works in respect to scene formation in societies . However, from the point of view of historians, it suggests an analytical ‘presentness’ in theorising metal . It features a strict normative way of looking at the present spaces of scene(s), e . g . the isolated scene(s) of the 1980s (Fellezs, 2016; Straw, 1991; Zaddach, 2016) . It can explain scene(s) only at their individual point in time, rather oddly isolated in history Thus, the current paradigms of metal studies continue to contain a bias toward presentness, lacking a sophisticated sense of historicity, regardless the claim of reflexive memory building (Kahn-Harris, 2016, p . 5) . Kahn-Harris (2007) moreover seems to not have acknowledged that already some years before his seminal study of extreme metal, which applies Bourdieu’s theory on its subject, Diaz-Bohne (2010) had analysed the weaknesses of Bourdieu’s structuralism . From the point of view of a trained historian, metal research remains ahistorical in many cases (Pichler, 2018b) . Metal is cut off from its deep roots in the broader contexts of the modern and post-modern cultural history of Europe . Context matters a lot . For example, much more than in current research, a historian would ask how 1980s metal culture in Europe was connected to the accelerating process of European political integration (Pichler, 2018b), the final phase of the Cold War (Spohr & Reynolds, 2016) and what Hobsbawm (1994) called the ‘age of extremes’ . Three Examples of the Historian’s Gaze

Let me give examples supporting my argument, from three constitutive phases of European metal history (Bayer, 2009; Christe, 2004; Cope, 2010; Hein, 2003; O’Neill, 2017; Roccor, 1998a; Schäfer, 2001; Wiederhorn & Turman, 2013) . Until today, there has been an on-going debate centred on how the history of the ‘birth’ of heavy metal around 1970, with bands like Black Sabbath, Cream, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin, should or should not be told . Some scholars and popular writers emphasise innovations in the music industry (Weinstein, 1991, 2015), while others stress the eminence of the invention of the heavy metal guitar riff as the basic element, or a combination of both (Cope, 2010; Elflein, 2010; Kahn-Harris, 2007; Walser, 1993) . Consistently, the epoch from the late 1960s to the early 1970s shines through as the era when heavy metal was ‘born’ – stemming from the counter-cultures of the 1960s (Poole, 2016) .

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Introduction

Already here trained historians can bring in a fresh line of thought . Conceptual history, or in German Begriffsgeschichte, initiated by historians such as Reinhart Koselleck in the 1970s (Koselleck, 1979; Müller & Schmieder, 2016), teaches us to think of the history of linguistic concepts themselves as constitutive factors of historical realities . Begriffgeschichte’s theory is not discursive constructivism, though it is closely associated with post-structuralist constructivism’s interest in language and modes of speaking . Most influentially, Koselleck introduced the concept of Sattelzeit, explaining the breakthrough of modernity between 1750 and 1850 (Koselleck, 1972) . The idea of Sattelzeit exploited the metaphor of a mountain saddle to reflect the transition of European history and supposed ascension from pre-modern to modern times . In this metaphor, Europe ‘hiked’ up over a mountain saddle, situated somewhere between 1750 and 1850 . In our context, critically drawing on Begriffsgeschichte leads us to ask where the linguistics of heavy metal actually came from historically (Poole, 2016), and how they were used in broader contexts in Europe around 1970 . Doing so, we quickly realise that around 1970 the term ‘heavy metal’ did not predominantly refer to the heavy guitar riff . In fact, it was borrowed from chemistry and everyday language in the media . It would be highly ahistorical thinking to suppose that at the time heavy metal(s) generally referred to the heaviness of a new form of popular music . Before the notion appeared for the first time in an English book on chemistry, it was used to describe big guns, large calibre ammunition, or great abilities (Duffus, 2001; Walser, 1993, p . 1; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 18–21) . In 1936, the chemical term heavy metal had its debut in English literature, in the translation of the third edition of Niels Bjerrums Inorganic Chemistry (Bjerrum, 1936; Duffus, 2001) . The digital Google research tool Ngram viewer, which searches an immense corpus of about five million digitalised texts on Google books, shows that the notion was already being used in 1750 .2 Then, since the years around 1936 there was a steady trend toward greater usage, and later there was a dramatic increase in frequency (see Fig . 1) . Hence, from 1936 on, the term predominantly referred to toxic chemical elements such as mercury . Lead, another heavy metal, was used in gasoline until the 1980s and then banned due its toxicity . The medical and cultural use of mercury dates back to ancient Egypt . Thus, around 1970, heavy metal did not refer to the heaviness of Tony Iommi’s gloomy and powerful guitar work but the toxicity and environmental damage caused by elements such as lead and mercury . Begriffsgeschichte teaches us that heavy metal, during the time around 1970, was not a newly coined term to glorify Black Sabbath’s riffs (Brown, 2015; Cope, 2010) . In contrast to this common narrative, it is to be seen as a term born out of the need to describe some new obscure phenomenon in popular culture . To do so, popular discourse Using this methodology draws upon Prof . Dr . Wolfgang Schmale’s, University of Vienna, inquiries into the topic of European solidarity . Furthermore, I thank Prof . Schmale for collegial discussions on this methodology (see Schmale, 2017) . 2

Three Examples of the Historian’s Gaze

Fig. 1 The usage of the term ‘heavy metal’, 1750–2008 (source: Ngram viewer, 2018b).

embraced a chemical term – heavy metal – that brought with it all the history of the development of modern chemistry since the 18th century . We cannot cut off the term from its toxic roots in European history . Informed by Begriffsgeschichte, we should suppose that people mentally connected heavy metal with the toxicity of mercury and lead by association, which are indeed negative connotations . We must assume that – right from the start – this new music had to struggle to rid itself of those toxic associations … or use them in a constructive manner . It is telling indeed that Hein (2003, p . 44) speaks of a ‘reputation sulphureuse’ (i . e . sulphurous repute) when describing Black Sabbath’s 1970 image . Current research too weakly connects the chemical terminology to the toxic history of heavy metal (Bayer, 2009; Christe, 2004; Cope, 2010; O’Neill, 2017; Roccor, 1998a; Schäfer, 2001; Wiederhorn & Turman, 2013) . Walser in his classic book, which follows a discourse-oriented approach, gets caught up in this trap (Walser, 1993, p . 1) . He stresses that at the end of the 20th century heavy metal was a chemical notion, but on the same page, in sharp contradiction, he claims that heavy metal meant ‘power and potency’ (ibid .) . Later in his book (p . 8), Walser does write of ‘heavy metal poisoning’ and the chemical discourse but still this is in contrast to his focus on power and potency . Historically, this is not convincing, somehow even weakening Walser’s otherwise thoughtful analysis . Also, Poole’s (2016) concept of heavy metal history as as a ‘palimpsest’ cannot not explain this . Here, consistently applying the historian’s gaze would mean carefully and contextually reconstructing the use of the notion of heavy metal(s) around 1970 and asking how the decades-long chemical history of heavy metal also became a musical one . How did the history of the toxicity of lead, mercury, bismuth, and other elements moreover come to represent the glorious history of musical heaviness? This also leads to a first surprising, contextual cross-reference in European metal history . The years around 1970 were the years of the birth of the music . Moreover, they were the time of the birth

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Introduction

of environmental protection movements and green political parties, whose discourse was heavily centred on the toxicity of heavy metals which pollute our world (Guha, 1999; Hawken, 2007) . Are there any broader connections between those histories around 1970? What has been the discursive interrelatedness between heavy metal as toxic music and heavy metal(s) as toxic polluters of our natural environment? Let us discuss a second example, the history of heavy metal in the 1980s, which often is described as something like metal’s ‘golden age’ (Kahn-Harris, 2007, pp . 1–5; Walser, 1993, pp . 11–16; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 43–45) . Certainly, it is true that the history of metal in this decade was one of consolidation and growth for the genre(s) and culture(s) . Erupting in the late 1970s, there was the ‘New Wave of British Heavy Metal’ (NWOBHM), which in turn was followed by the more extreme music of speed and thrash metal . The latter was developed by bands like Metallica, Slayer, and Exodus in the California ‘Bay Area’, and also in the New York metropolitan area by Anthrax, as well in Germany by Kreator, Sodom, and Destruction (Fellezs, 2016; Kahn-Harris, 2007, pp . 2–3, 102–103; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 48–52; 2015, pp . 235–237) . For a historian, the narrative of a golden age of metal in the 1980s remains unconvincing because it does not take the crucial links between metal culture and the broader contexts of European history in this era into account . Research already emphasises the crucial roles of the media, places of collective consumption, sales and promotion networks; in short, the construction and further development of a transnational scene in this decade . To a trained historian, this question of scene construction mechanisms is essential, but it is not enough to historically understand how metal could grow so vital in that crucial decade (Walser, 1993, pp . 11–16) . To answer the question, we have to ask for contextualisation . In European history, the decade of the 1980s was a very shifting and contradictory one . After the shock of the oil crisis in 1973 and economic decline on the old continent, Western and Central Europe moved on to a phase of accelerated political integration (Kaiser & Varsori, 2010; Pasture, 2015; Pichler, 2016c, 2018b) . The ‘old world’ of Europe started its political and cultural ‘continentalisation’ (Lützeler, 2007) . After an initial enlargement in 1973 (with the accession of Denmark, Great Britain, and Ireland), the then European Community (EC, which developed into the European Union) saw two further rounds of enlargement in 1981 (Greece) and 1986 (Spain, Portugal) . The Single European Act in 1986, as the first major revision of the European founding treaties in 1957 (Treaty of Rome, which founded the European Economic Community, EEC, which later became the EC), paved the road for the Maastricht Treaty and the foundation of the EU in 1992 . The end of this decade brought the ending of bipolarity and the crumbling down of the Berlin Wall . In Europe, this was a decade of Europeanisation . This broader history is also the backdrop for the history of heavy metal in Europe . We cannot make sense of 80s metal networks’ history without historicising its golden age in this broad context, too . Applying the historian’s gaze in this methodological manner, we see that the decade was also the time of the first major tours of genre-defin-

Three Examples of the Historian’s Gaze

ing bands in the ‘old world’ . In 1984, on their ‘Seven Dates of Hell’ tour, supporting British band Venom, and then on the ‘Bang that Head that Doesn’t Bang’ tour, Metallica played their first European shows . This was followed by their first shows in the ‘Eastern Bloc’ in Poland (1987) and Hungary (1988) . Even before that, Iron Maiden played a gig in Warsaw in 1984 . Similarly, the US band Slayer played their first European concert in 1985 . Most strikingly, the self-proclaimed ‘inventors of true metal’, Manowar, called their first headliner tour in 1986 ‘Hail to Europe’ (see chapter 12) . Giving it a basic definition, a tour of one or more metal bands is a diachronic series of concerts on a coherent trip through a single or a number of regions of the globe – in our case of Europe . The bands mentioned planned and took spatial movements through Europe in 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988 . This meant travelling through a continent that was in a period of intensifying regional integration – also in a ‘metal’ way . Here we have to understand European integration as a subcultural process of Europeanisation of now more than five decades, in which a today continent-wide shared inventory of metal knowledge was formed . Basically, every tour can be defined as the regular repetition of a single historical event, the concert (Diaz-Bone, 2010, pp . 304–310; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 199–235), over a period of days, weeks or months, and sometimes even years . The bands travelled from town to town and repeated their shows in intentionally ritualised ways . For a history of Europeanisation, a metal tour is a form of spatial and cultural integration of a geographic region through a ritualised historic event in the form of a concert . So, we can label all those tours as procedures and strategies of Europeanisation in metal . Astonishingly, such processes of European subcultural integration crossed the Iron Curtain as early as 1984 (when Iron Maiden performed in Warsaw, Poland), precisely twenty years before the EU’s ‘Eastern Enlargement’ in 2004 . This raises serious questions not asked so far: Did the Europeanisation of metal history and broader European political integration interact in the 1980s? If yes, did Europe’s ‘metallic’ integration favour a more unified image of Europe in metal culture than before? Did the intensifying political and cultural integration of Europe favour metal’s scene construction processes or vice versa? What was the role of cultural contacts across the Iron Curtain in metal before 1989 and in the overall history of Europeanisation? The historian’s gaze gives rise to such questions . Thinking of a third example, we take up Begriffsgeschichte again . In his seminal book on extreme metal, Kahn-Harris (2007) presented the history of the subgenres of extreme metal music . As a trained sociologist, he uses Bourdieu’s theory of social and cultural capital in exploring the construction of the global extreme metal scene since the 1980s . His narrative is thoughtful . Nonetheless it neglects one aspect, which for a historian seems quite simple to notice . Extreme metal emerged in the 1980s; in the 1990s and 2000s it was fragmented into a mushrooming spectrum of styles and semistyles, of genres and semi-genres, as well as hybrid and fluid mixtures between them . This radicalisation of metal, its transgression from metal to extreme metal happened in the last decade of what is known to historians (and well beyond their disciplinary

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Introduction

framings) as the ‘age of extremes’ (Hobsbawm, 1994) . Well-known British historian Eric Hobsbawm introduced this notion of the age of extremes to characterise and narrate the period from 1914 to 1991, in all its excesses of wars, genocides, violence, the Holocaust, the Cold War, nuclear warfare, and the rise of post-modern capitalism and neoliberalism . Following Begriffsgeschichte again, it is a rather evident historic thought that extreme metal could be interpreted historically as a product of the final phase of the age of extremes . Discursively and narratologically, both notions use the concept of extremity . The emergence of death and black metal, in all their violent imagery, their musical extremes, their sheer will to transcend the established limits (Baulch, 2007; Chaker, 2014; Chaker, Schermann, & Urbanek, 2018b; Kahn-Harris, 2007; Patterson, 2016; Purcell, 2003), could be interpreted as a musical answer to the age of extremes, with a strong focus in Europe . Once more using the Google Ngram viewer tool (activating the case-insensitive search option), we gain an impression of the synchronic use of the terms ‘extreme metal’ and ‘age of extremes’ since 1970:

Fig. 2 The usage of the notions ‘extreme metal’ and ‘age of extremes’, 1970–2008 (source: Ngram viewer, 2018a).

This graph is no statistical proof of a causal interrelation, but it does show that for a large corpus of historical texts in our analysed period both terms tended to be more frequently used after 1994 . That was the year when Hobsbawm introduced his narrative . This is no proof of a historic axiom . Nevertheless, we see in the years from 1994 until 2008 (the year when the analysis ends in Ngram viewer) both were present in texts more frequently . This result raises the question for a possible connection between the semantic fields . Taken together, these three examples of fundamental phases in European metal history illustrate the author’s aim and direction of the research in this book . The intention is to rely on the new cultural history and take a fresh look at metal’s European cultural history over the past five decades since 1970 .

Sonic Knowledge and the Cultural Dynamics of European Metal History

Sonic Knowledge and the Cultural Dynamics of European Metal History

As mentioned above, historians ask different questions from the ones asked by sociologists, philosophers, cultural anthropologists, or musicologists . Historians ask questions according to their professional conditionalisation . I ask for metal in European history (Pichler, 2018b) . The restriction of the chronological focus to the period since 1970 only applies to the history of the actual music discourse . Also, I consider metal’s referential linkages to ancient, medieval, modern, and post-modern periods (Meller, 2018; Spracklen, Deeks, & Lucas, 2014; Swist, 2019; Von Helden, 2017) . I believe that this new perspective can become a powerful and exciting enrichment of metal studies during its present phase of growing into its own (inter)discipline, or at least in terms of the lasting establishing as a distinctive and respected field of study . Above all, I assume that the perspective is an innovative and fresh addition to current metal studies discourse in its bias toward presentness and ahistorical scene construction theories, which often neglect historicity . Hence, in the present work, my discursive goal is to help introduce European (Union) cultural history into metal music studies and vice versa . As many historians and potential readers might not have a detailed understanding of metal history, I usually integrated a broad event history of ‘basic’ metal knowledge into the individual chapters . On the one hand, such a European perspective already legitimises itself based on the events of the history to be told . With artists like Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest, the birth of metal and the following NWOBHM, metal had its primary genesis in Great Britain in Europe . Intentionally, I am avoiding a discussion of Britain’s European status at this point – my readers will see later in this book on several occasions that already this phase of metal history was characterised by networks that integrated Britain and ‘continental’ Western Europe . We also have to take metal’s American and global interconnections into account, as in the history of the emergence of speed and thrash metal (Fellezs, 2016; Kahn-Harris, 2007, pp . 2–3, 102–103; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 48–52, 2015, pp . 235–237) . The fatalities of methodological Eurocentrism can be avoided when acknowledging that this European history and metal’s Europeanness are not the ‘best’ or only history and identity of the culture . The Asian, North American and South American, African, and Australian histories and forms of scenic belonging are no less fascinating (Brown et al ., 2016b; Wallach et al ., 2011; Weinstein 1991, 2015, 2016) . On the other hand, there also are compelling theoretical reasons to reconstruct metal cultural history from a transnational and European perspective . In the decades in question, from the 1970s right up to the 21st century, Europe has been a cultural space of dense historical interactions, oscillations, conflicts, and pulsations . In the 1970s and 1980s, Europe was still the main stage for the Cold War, the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain forming its most obvious materialisations . From 1989 to 1991, communism collapsed, Eastern Europe ‘returned to Europe’ . That European space and time, all its

17

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Introduction

history of cultural contacts, entanglements, constructions, and also deconstructions of elementary boundaries, have likewise formed a key space and time in metal history . This already follows from our three examples discussed . Having this in mind, it is theoretically compelling to ask for a European cultural history of metal . In this respect, I take up Wolfgang Schmale’s theory of a European cultural history, in which he treats Europe as a discursive construction (Schmale, 2000, 2008, 2016), and combine it with my deconstructive theory of European Union cultural history (Pichler, 2011, 2014, 2016c, 2017d, 2018b) . We have critically assessed the normative presentness in current theorising in metal studies . Usually, discourse only focuses on present scene building and disconnects metal from its deep historical roots in broader historical contexts . In this respect, I want to help in broadening the paradigms of metal research with a concept which I coined ‘sonic knowledge’ (Pichler, 2018b) . The starting point is the recent research discourse of ‘sound history’ (Hendy, 2013; Paul & Schock, 2013; Schrage, 2011) . In a special issue of Studies in Contemporary History on the sound history of the 20th century, Dominik Schrage wrote: The musical mode of hearing enables us as subjects to experience comprehensibly the effects of sounds and rhythms, be it contemplatively or expressively – plunging into music or dancing to it . Like images, sounds cannot be transferred to linguistic meaning without fractures; but both are experienced as being in harmony with each other, corresponding with moods, affections, and emotions in the experiencing subject . Sounds, melodies, chords, and rhythms share a basic foundation across cultures, but in different musical cultures they are encoded, systematised and linked to harmony theories in different ways (Schrage, 2011, pp . 269–276) .3

A fruit of the ‘the new cultural history’ (Burke, 2010; Hunt, 1989), sound history scholarship (Hendy, 2013; Paul & Schock, 2013; Schrage, 2011) opens up a more sophisticated approach to metal history . Sound-historical research analyses the ways acoustic sense making – i . e . hearing and listening – influenced cultural history . Sound historians examine how hearing and listening, as ways of sense making, changed over decade-long periods during the 20th century . They elicit the history of the ‘cultural ear’ .4 For instance, the dramatically changing acoustic worlds of big cities in the first decades of the 20th century, when the automobile conquered urban areas, immensely affected how people constructed their view of the new industrialised world (ibid .) . Following this approach, I suggest that metal music also has a distinct sound history since around 1970 (Pichler, 2018c) . In this perspective of the diachronic longue durée, I assume that the historically varying settings in which people have heard metal and listened to metal Author’s translation . I would like to thank all the participants at the ‘History’ panel at the ISMMS conference in Nantes on 19th June 2019 for sharing their thoughts on this matter . 3 4

The Book’s Outline and Research Aim

since the 1970s also affected how scenes were constructed . They affected the ‘cultural metal ear’ in Europe . There is a well-known example . The cultural setting of hearing and listening in 1970, when Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut was released, differed greatly from the one in 2013, when their last LP 13 was issued . In 1970, fans listened to music recordings on vinyl or on the radio . Nowadays, we listen to both the debut album and to 13 on the globally-available Spotify platform . Today, if we do not want to listen to Black Sabbath anymore, we can jump to Rihanna or Kanye West in a moment, or even to another audio-visual medium like YouTube . There is much more fluidity and there are many more cross-genre jumps . We are faced with so much more music to choose from, and it can indeed be overwhelming . Hence, in 2020, we experience very different forms of hearing and listening and have a very different cultural metal ear . These drastic changes need to be studied over periods of decades . From a sound-historical view, these changes also are the diachronic backbone of the development of scene communities . Thinking along these lines, I introduced the notion of sonic knowledge to get a theoretical grip on such long-lasting processes (Pichler, 2018c) . Sonic knowledge is the (intuitive) knowledge of the cultural concepts (i . e . the tour, the album, significant narratives, heaviness, the riff, loudness, speed, metaphors, idioms, etc .) that have characterised metal over the long term since around 1970 . The notion is thought to capture the ways these concepts have changed or have persisted over long periods . The knowledge of these categories keeps scenes together in the longue durée (Berger, 1999, 2009; Diaz-Bohne, 2010; Elflein, 2010; Hein, 2003; Walser, 1993) . All those categories are ‘sonic’ knowledge because they depend on the music and sound at the heart of the culture . In the extended temporal range, scenes are structured by the knowledge of these categories . They structure our culturally programmed ways of listening to metal and hearing metal . This concept should be read in the context of current discussions centered on ‘metal knowledge’ (Kahn-Harris, 2016; O’Boyle & Scott, 2016) . The theory of metal as sonic knowledge is the basis of the interpretation of the cultural dynamics of metal history in Europe developed in this book . The Book’s Outline and Research Aim

This book consists of two major parts . In the first, entitled ‘Theoretical Structures of Sonic Knowledge’, theoretical matters are addressed . It contains sections on important prolegomena regarding such a perspective (chapter 2), on the use of narratives, narrations, and emplotment in metal history (chapter 3), on identities and identitary practices (chapter 4), and on Europeanness, transnationalism, and entanglement (chapter 5) . I proceed by defining ‘the album’ as the crucial temporal category of sonic knowledge (chapter 6) . Then, ‘the tour’ is put forward as the spatial key concept (chap-

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Introduction

ter 7) . In summary, my theoretical results allow to broadly conceptualise the historical notion of sonic knowledge as a pentagon of conceptual terms (chapter 8) . The second part of the book, entitled ‘Albums, Tours, Events, and Practices: Empirical Examples of Sonic Knowledge in European Metal History’, is comprised of ten chapters devoted to empirical examples of albums, tours, events, and practices in European metal history, chronologically arranged from 1970 to the present . All of them are empirically significant phenomena for their individual periods in European metal history; that is why they were chosen for more detailed examination . However, this selection is only a first and necessarily limited one . I start by telling the histories of Black Sabbath’s debut album in 1970 (chapter 9), Motörhead’s ‘classic’ tours between 1976 and 1982 (chapter 10), and Iron Maiden’s key album The Number of the Beast from 1982 (chapter 11) as major empirical phenomena of the 1970s and 1980s in Europe . I continue by looking at Manowar’s Hail to Europe tour in 1986 (chapter 12), and give a 21st century reading of Slayer’s seminal album Reign in Blood from the same year, from a European point of view (chapter 13) . The next sections are devoted to black metal and extreme metal as examples of sonic knowledge in Europe, from the 1990s until today . A chapter on the intriguingly rule-breaking career of the German band Pyogenesis since the 1990s is moreover included . In section 14, I examine Mayhem’s ‘cult’ concert in Leipzig in 1990 as a crucial event in European black metal history . Section 15 looks at Pyogenesis’ career as an example of how it was necessary to alter metal codes to historically ‘survive’ in the 1990s . The next chapter asks how 20th European century history is represented on Temple of Oblivion’s Traum und Trauma album from 2014 (chapter 16) . The final, more experimental chapters are two essays on ego-historiography . First, section 17 relates the author’s experience, as a cultural historian, at a newly established European extreme metal festival in his hometown of Graz, Austria in 2016 . Finally, chapter 18 examines his experience of listening to black metal while hiking up to a medieval castle in the late summer of the same year . A summary recaptures the empirical results (chapter 19) . In the conclusion (chapter 20), I summarise my line of argumentation . Here, it is crucial to give a first description of metal as a discourse of sonic knowledge in 20th century European history . I end with an overview of open research questions, in light of the new insights into European metal cultural history . In this book, my aim is not to give the definitive account of European metal history . At the present point in metal studies discourse, in its state of possibly becoming its own (inter)discipline and yet also having a rather ahistorical paradigm, this is impossible – and I think it will remain impossible . Nonetheless, one can give a narrative of first explorations into the history of sonic knowledge in metal music in Europe since 1970 . Such a history helps in introducing the historian’s gaze to metal music studies, hopefully broadening its epistemic core by building interdisciplinary linkages to scientific historiography and integrating new empirical events and options . My book is such

The Book’s Outline and Research Aim

a first attempt at a European cultural history of metal – no more and no less . I do not want to reinvent metal studies . I want to enrich it by providing a narrative written by a historian trained in European cultural history and EU cultural history .

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Part 1 Theoretical Structures of Sonic Knowledge

Chapter 2 Prolegomena

The ‘New Cultural History’ as a Point of Departure

I start by considering the theoretical foundations . Since at the end of the 1980s the ‘cultural turn’ had taken shape, cultural history became the dominating paradigm of scientific historiography (Burke, 2010; Hunt, 1989; Landwehr & Stockhorst, 2004; Pichler, 2017d; Schmale, 2016) – a development that has both good and bad sides .5 A major flaw can be seen in the ubiquity and arbitrariness, which come with the increased usage of the notion of ‘culture’ in theoretical contexts . Today this notion does have a pluralistic semantic field encompassing several different meanings and definitions, sometimes even contradictory ones . However, the most important achievement of the ‘new cultural history’, which was the fruit of the cultural turn, is its unleashing of theoretical and methodological innovation processes in historical research (i . e . theorisations of sounds, symbolisms, allegories, metaphors, narrations, identities, emotions, or sensations as subjects of research) . Asking for the shared common ground of the different approaches within the stream of the new cultural history, usually the individual and/or collective cultural construction of meaning, cultural sense making, is described as shared epistemic territory . Today’s cultural history asks for the constitution of meaning in sounds, music, narrations, metaphors, practices, emotions, or sensations . This holds true for individual as well as collective forms of sense making . Empirically, research interests embrace all varieties of such forms of the construction of meaning in history . There is intriguing and innovative research on cultural identities, on music and sounds, on borders and border spaces, on images, symbols and metaphors in communication, on media and media history, on aspects of cultural performativity, on gender roles and sexualities, as well as on aspects of theatrality and many other topics . Normally, culture is examined from

5

Those studies give a good introduction and the following considerations draw on them .

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Prolegomena

a deconstructivist and decentred, postcolonial perspective . Europeanisation, transnationalism, globalisation, and entanglement are used in many studies as theoretical frameworks . These trends of writing history in transnational and globalised ways are likely connected to the historical rupture of the year of 1989 (Hobsbawm, 1994; Pichler, 2017d) . Historically and meta-historically (White, 1973), the cultural turn and its new cultural history shape the disciplinary background of a state-of-the-art history of heavy metal music in Europe . European metal history must consider its focus against the backdrop of the history of Europeanisation, transnationalism, and globalisation after 1945, in the last third of the 20th century . In this respect, the current discourse of metal studies reflects the importance of the global ‘metal diaspora’ since the 1980s (Brown et al ., 2016b; Gardenour Walter et al ., 2016; Heesch & Höpflinger, 2014; Wallach et al ., 2011) . Arguably, the reception and mediation of metal history seems to increasingly become decentred and de-westernised . Taking into account this development, the European cultural history of heavy metal music has its roots in European cultural history, interpreted from a postcolonial view (Hansen & Jonsson, 2015) . So, choosing the new cultural history as the point of departure has two compelling reasons . The first is that trained cultural historians, with their empirical methodologies and theories, are the most obvious candidates to tell metal’s history in a satisfying manner . Secondly, as noted above, history by historians may heavily differ, in terms of chosen empirical examples and methodologies, from histories of metal told by other disciplines, and thus the current discourse is enriched . So the new cultural history with its emphasis on the examination of sense making might help in filling in important gaps in current metal scholarship . ‘Heavy (Metal) Music’ as Definitional Framing of the Research Object

We focus on any form of music that can be called ‘heavy (metal) music’ . This attribute and qualification of heaviness is definitive and of crucial importance (Berger & Fales, 2005; Brown et al ., 2016b; Elflein, 2010; Gardenour Walter et al ., 2016; Herbst, 2018; Mynett, 2016; Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 1991) . The European sound history of heavy music seeks to show how the cultural construction of meaning and sense making happened in metal in European forms . To begin with, I want to find out how the music’s discourses were produced and reproduced, and then dispersed in a European framework over the period of the last fifty years . At the same time, this equally means one has to examine the music’s means of reception, its practices, and representations in the media, and finally the medial qualities of the music itself as a mediated artefact – in brief, as what I defined above as sonic knowledge . Basically, all research on metal since the inception of metal studies took up Deena Weinstein’s (1991) focus on musical heaviness when defining the research object . In almost three decades, metal studies has gained a whole new range of reflexivity, but

‘Heavy (Metal) Music’ as Defnitional raming of the Research Obbect

still musical ‘power’, ‘aggression’, ‘loudness’, and ‘speed’ form the key attributes when it comes to characterising metal’s definitional features (Berger, 1999; Elflein, 2010; Roccor, 1998b; Walser, 1993) . This is the traditional narrative . Nonetheless, this narrative has far deeper historical and meta-historical origins, which have not been researched in a thorough way . Recent research on the musical language of heavy metal brought with it important new insights into how exactly the perceived and auditory heaviness of metal is constituted (Berger & Fales, 2005; Elflein, 2010; Herbst, 2018; Mynett, 2016) . Inspired by the new cultural history, we can add a fresh perspective to these findings by interpreting the notion of heaviness – more precisely the sound-historical heaviness of metal music – as a way of sense making in history . What is heavy music from such a viewpoint or perspective? Interpreting the notion of heavy (metal) music against the backdrop of a European, postcolonial, and deconstructivist sound-historical perspective means to self-reflexively expand heaviness’ terminological scope (Kahn-Harris, 2016; Pichler, 2017, 2018b) . For a historian, the heaviness of metal history since about 1970 not only lies in its musical qualities . It also lies in the ways heaviness emerged as an independent cultural token over the past five decades . Metal’s heaviness in European contemporary history, as a narrative, as a metaphor, as a framework of physical practices at concerts, as a way of behaving in public, of listening to the music, is a separate discursive subject, in terms of both space and time . Historically, this object can be described in a manner that is analogous to other sources of history (Burke, 2010; Howell & Prevenier, 2001; Pichler, 2017d) . We can examine heaviness in ways that can be compared to the ones in which, for instance, an archaeologist examines an ancient Roman military helmet (Drewett, 1999; Foucault, 2002) . Similarly, heaviness is not only a qualitative description of metal; moreover, it has become an acoustic, linguistic, sensual, emotional, visual, and praxeological artefact in discourse . To think of metal’s heaviness means more than analysing the music’s foundations in rhythms, riffs, and drumming . The music’s rich history, covering about fifty years, produced its own ‘glocal’ realm, which first allowed historical heaviness to appear culturally . In this realm, heaviness historically appeared as sound, imagery, aesthetics, practices, and institutions . In a nutshell, I do not ask for heaviness solely as a musical quality of metal music, but much more comprehensively, as an object-like entity of a heterogenic character . This entity is a historical source which one can read not that much differently from archival sources like newspapers, legal texts, oral historical testimonials, and others (Howell & Prevenier, 2001) . The cover of Slayer’s classic album Reign in Blood from 1986 is thus to be read as a ‘heavy image’ . Marduk’s lyrics on their album Frontschwein from 2015 is ‘heavy text’ . At the recently established extreme metal festival Metal on the Hill in Graz, Austria, the audience enjoyed ecstatic mosh-pits, which can be interpreted as ‘heavy physical activity’ at a concert (Pichler, 2016a) . In every single one of the three cases, heaviness can be examined as a cultural object in discourse . This understanding of heavy (metal) music leads to a

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Prolegomena

broad spectrum of possible topics in the history of the European sonic knowledge of metal since 1970 . The Topics of the European Cultural History of Metal Music

Looking at metal history, as such a sound history of heavy music, basically every historical dimension of metal culture of the last five decades would be worth of an empirical examination . Like in any scientific endeavour, we are forced to choose among many possible topics of investigation . For this book’s purposes, research topics of European metalness (Hein, 2003; Kahn-Harris, 2016; Walser, 1993) are the most interesting . This follows from the new cultural history’s interest in the constitution of identities . Metalness is a form of identity, constructed in metal history . This is the case in the following list of probable subjects . Still, this range of themes is preliminary and not complete . It can be read as a prolegomena-like topology . Inclusion and exclusion

Every kind of identity construction involves inclusion and exclusion, i . e . the imagination of the ‘self ’ and the ‘other’ . This is the core mechanism of identity building – despite the obvious constructivity of identities in space and time . As a rule, community building in metal scenes is also linked to practices of inclusion and exclusion (Baulch, 2007; Bennett & Peterson, 2004; Kahn-Harris, 2007; Wallach et al ., 2011) . For the new cultural history, constructivist research on modern nationalism – Benedict Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined communities’ (1983) and Ernest Gellner’s research on nations and nationalism (1984) – became a major driving force . Metal research has adopted the concept of the imagined communities and has applied it to several empirical cases (see the conceptual reflections and case studies in Baulch, 2007; Brown et al ., 2016b; Gardenour Walter et al ., 2016; Kahn-Harris, 2007; Nohr & Schwaab, 2012; Wallach et al ., 2011) . To be critical, current scholarship does not fully exploit the historical reflexivity inherent in this approach (Pichler, 2017c, 2018b) . To do so would mean to always conceptualise a metal scene as a community, which is imagined and constructed in relation to other historical narratives of (European) history . Such historical contextualisation is an essential part of the ‘nurturing of memory’ called for by Kahn-Harris (2016) . European metal history ought to interpret all practices of scene building as historical practices of sonic knowledge, usually performing discursive cross references to spaces and times in history that are closer or further away (Elflein, 2010; Pichler, 2017c, 2018b; Von Helden, 2017; Walser, 1993) .

The Topics of the European Cultural History of Metal Music

Authenticity, truth, and essentialism

With the emergence of poststructuralist thought, initiated by French intellectuals such as Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Kristeva, or Deleuze, a deconstructivist form of rationality found its way into history (Angermüller, 2015; Burke, 2010; Hunt, 1989; Pichler, 2017d; Schmale, 2016; Schrift, 2010) . This critical new form of rationality questions forms of historiography, which bring with them claims of historical authenticity and (universal) truth, or interpret cultures in essentialist ways . Today, cultures are theorised to be discursive fields of sense making in space and time . Nevertheless, in many sub-discourses of metal music, concepts of truth, authenticity, and essentialism persist . For instance, the subgenre of true metal, with bands like Manowar (USA), Hammerfall (Sweden), or Grave Digger (Germany) among others, frequently claims to be the ‘true’ and ‘authentic’ kind of metal music – however ironically such claims are taken in and understood by the audience . Moreover, other subgenres such as pagan metal, which works with an imagined and ‘authentic’ heathen history (Butler J ., forthcoming; Manea, 2016; Spracklen et al ., 2014), or black metal, in its streams of misanthropy and anti-Christian ideals (Chaker et al ., 2018b; Swist, 2019) use essentialist fantasies to construct identities . Given the music’s success in Europe and around the globe, one cannot but suppose – despite all the forms of criticism and deconstruction – that essentialism still prevails . Thus, a cultural history of metal in Europe should investigate how such discourses still work in the age of deconstruction and critique . Mainstream, deviance, and the production of normativity

Hinted at in its early conservativism label (Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 1991; Roccor, 1998b), even the first metal music communicated attitudes of being anti-mainstream, even a hatred for mainstream popular culture . Historically, metal culture’s conservative stance and this elitist subcultural attitude were a good match . One can interpret early metal as an attempt to safeguard and keep the values, achievements, and ideals of the counter-cultures of the 1960s (Gildea, Mark, & Warring, 2013) . In contrast to this, today metal tends to be increasingly accepted and respected as a ‘serious’ form of art . The mere existence of an academic discourse called metal music studies, implying that metal is deemed worthy of scientific examination, is an important indicator of metal’s advance into the mainstream of European culture . It will likely even become a part of a restructured form of a much more fragmented mainstream (Huber, 2013; Pichler, 2015a, 2015b) . One cannot doubt that there is a trend towards the social recognition of metal’s value and worth . In this respect, one of the most interesting questions remains how extreme forms of metal, such as black and death metal, already reacted and will react to such

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Prolegomena

tendencies in the time to come (Chaker et al ., 2018b; Kahn-Harris, 2007; Phillipov, 2005; Purcell, 2003), as they seem to historically threaten the musical genre as well as the self-image of the culture . To understand such processes, we can draw on the results of German linguist Jürgen Link’s (2013) research into the production of normativity . Link impressively showed how forms, narratives, and ultimately whole cultures of ‘normalities’ are produced by discourses . This has been a key process of European cultural history since 1968 . For our subject, this suggests that we ought to research how ‘being normal’ and ‘being different’ interacted, or maybe even interfered in metal history . Aesthetics, symbols, and images

Heavy music culture is associated with its own realm of aesthetics, symbols, and images . For instance, for a connoisseur, by looking at a record cover, decoding its images, style of band logos, and record titles, it is easily possible to determine the subgenre of metal before listening (Vestergaard, 2016) . Metal managed to develop its own visual language (Höpflinger, 2014; Kahn-Harris, 2007, p . 1; Roccor, 1998b; Weinstein, 1991) . Darkness, violence, blood, death and dying, skulls, night, madness and insane people, or satanism form frequently appearing thematic clusters of metal’s semiotics . According to this book’s purposes, I intend to also – where necessary – consider the history of this visual realm . Two lines of development are currently proving to be relevant . First, I ask how metal’s imaginaries since 1970 incorporated visuals which already had been there before metal existed (Pichler, 2018b) . For instance, the subgenre of gothic metal integrated visuals, topics, and the narratives of gothic literature from the 19th century and before . Also, since its very beginning, metal used metaphors and semiotics of biblical origins, even yielding a subgenre of Christian metal (Strother, 2013) . Secondly, a cultural history of heavy metal aims to narrate and show how the imaginaries and visuals of metal changed and diversified throughout the music’s development into different subgenres and its global diaspora . Each genre has its own conventions of style, visuals, and symbols (Chaker, Schermann, & Urbanek, 2018a; Kahn-Harris, 2007, pp . 1–9; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 1–58) . Historicity, memory, and memory building

Metal musicians seem to have a fascination with historical topics, may they be factual events of the past or pure fiction positioned in a historical setting . Prominent examples include several Iron Maiden songs like ‘Run to the Hills’ (1982a), ‘The Trooper’ (1983), ‘Powerslave’ (1984), ‘Alexander the Great’ (1986), and ‘Paschendale’ (2003) . Also, other veteran metal bands like Judas Priest in their classic ‘The Ripper’ (1976), or Black Sabbath in ‘War Pigs’ dealt with historical subjects (1970b) .

The Topics of the European Cultural History of Metal Music

This fascination was pushed further in the development of extreme metal styles since the 1980s (Kahn-Harris, 2007) . There, usually the perspectival distance on war, cruelty, and the violence of shocking and brutal past events become lost, and those histories are presented without critical reflection . They are presented from close distance, or even in a glorifying manner . This was already the case in the lyrics to Slayer’s song ‘Angel of Death’ (1986a), which deals with the Nazi figure Josef Mengele, without indicating any criticism or distancing . The song just relates the cruel deeds in isolation (see chapter 13 for a detailed discussion of Slayer’s seminal Reign in Blood album) . In black metal, frequently accused of having ties to Nazism, Marduk deal with the Second World War and the history of the ‘Third Reich’ . In death metal we find bands which follow an exclusively historical concept, like Nile, who thematise the history of ancient Egypt . In brief, in metal history is a broad topic . Given this importance of history in the field, recent research in metal studies stresses the promotion of historical meta-reflection . Kahn-Harris’ (2014, 2016) concept and narrative of ‘Metal beyond Metal’ takes up this path . In this context, history as the science of the past plays a special role . A history of metal in Europe will have to provide answers surrounding how metal music itself deals with historical narratives . In the long run, metal studies will have to provide a history of this discourse from a European perspective . Performativity

Another important facet of metal music history is performativity . Following recent research in theatre studies, the new cultural history took up the concepts of theatrality and performativity (Fischer-Lichte, 2014) . History also acknowledged that identities are not only constituted by texts and images but also by performance . As the concert is the theatrical key event in metal culture, its aspects of performance and performativity fulfil an important function in the music’s ways of sense making (Berger, 1999; Diaz-Bone, 2010, pp . 304–310; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 199–235) . To this end, one has to ask how metal’s theatrics constituted and constitute its history . Gender roles, gender constructions, and deconstruction

Besides a strong stream of cultural conservatism, hypermasculinity with its hypertrophic modes of male and female gender roles was a key part of metal culture since the 1970s (Clifford-Napoleone, 2015; Heesch & Scott, 2016; Roccor, 1998b; Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 1991) . In that hypermasculine rendering of metal scenes in Europe, both women and men were thought to have strictly assigned roles and gender identities: men as the ‘true’ artists and ‘authentic’ fans, women as ‘groupies’ or in other ways in passive and submissive positions .

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Prolegomena

Being aware of this problematic history, recent gender research in metal studies is examining and breaking up those more or less fixed gender assignments, mainly by what Kahn-Harris called ‘engaged scholarship’ (Digioia & Helfrich, 2018; Heesch & Scott, 2016; Hill, 2016; Kahn-Harris, 2016; Patterson, 2016; Riches, 2016) . In the music scenes in Europe, female artists are starting to claim their space . Nonetheless, Myrkur, a Danish artist, even had to face death threats in social media when she entered the ‘male territory’ of black metal in 2014 (Pichler, 2017b) . Applying the deconstructivist approach of European cultural history (Schmale, 2016), the gender history of metal can also be an important sphere of engaged scholarship . It can augment historical reflexivity with its efforts to renegotiate the old-fashioned and out-dated gender clichés of metal . A radically written recent article by Digioia and Helfrich (2018) even brings in a new stream of thought to metal studies, which can be read as a deconstruction of metal studies’ traditional framework in interpreting gender . On a meta-theoretical level, this is also a reflection of rethinking metal studies’ theoretical paradigms (Savigny & Schaap, 2018) . Queerness

Quite similar to women’s gender roles, queer cultures and identities still sometimes face harsh discrimination in metal . Here too, engaged scholarship started to intervene (Clifford-Napoleone, 2015; Diemer, 2013) . This is a reflex of metal music history itself, in which famous artists like Rob Halford, singer for Judas Priest since 1972 and a crucial part of metal history, came out as a homosexual man in 1998 . Usually, Halford’s coming out is referred to as being the first time this happened in the history of heavy metal music . However accurate this historical claim is, it marks an important date in the cultural history of metal in Europe because it put queerness more prominently on the agenda . Kristian Eivind ‘Gaahl’ Espedal, former singer of Norwegian black metal band Gorgoroth, made his homosexuality public in 2008 . During the Bergen Gay Galla in 2010, he was honoured as the ‘homosexual person of the year’ . That episode of the coming out of a gay singer in black metal, notorious for homophobia, violence, and discrimination against homosexuals is, on the one hand, a courageous act by a single actor . On the other hand, it is a process of agenda setting and the beginning of the renegotiation of queerness and queer identities in metal . A European cultural history of metal seeks to integrate queer knowledge into its paradigm of sonic knowledge .

The Topics of the European Cultural History of Metal Music

Aggression, anger, and hatred

Aggression seems to be the central emotion in metal . Since the earliest works of metal studies (Berger, 1999; Roccor, 1998a, 1998b; Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 1991), the emotional setting of heavy metal music is described as loud, powerful, and heavy, expressing anger, frustration, and aggression . In a nutshell, from the point of view of the emotions, metal history in Europe is a history of aggressiveness . Thus one must interpret aggression as a conceptual element of metal’s sonic knowledge . The history of emotions, investigating the ways emotions shaped cultures (and were shaped by them) in the past, is a sub-discourse of the new cultural history (Matt, 2011; Plamper, 2012; Rosenwein, 2010) . We can use its insights in metal studies in exploring how metal’s emotional landscapes of anger were constructed and modified since the 1970s . The element of aggressive emotions, intertwined with and reinforcing heavy metal’s sound, is likely one of its elementary historical driving forces . One cannot think of metal without considering the aggressive and angry spectrum of human emotions . Violence and war

Furthermore, violence and war were two of metal’s fascinations from the beginning . However, with the development of extreme metal and metal’s global spread in the 1980s, related lyrics, pictures, and theatrics became an even more important defining features of its identity (Kahn-Harris, 2007) . That was gratefully taken up by the music’s detractors, such as the American ‘Parents Music Resource Center’ or the German ‘Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien’ (Roccor, 1998b, pp . 232–290; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 237–276) . Their interventions, mostly in the 1980s and 1990s, saw a linkage between metal music, criminality, and violent behaviour in a broad sense . Despite factual criminal acts by (extreme) metal artists like the murders and church burnings by members of the Norwegian black metal scene in the early 1990s (Kahn-Harris, 2007, pp . 45–46; Moynihan & Søderlind, 2003), it would be a much too easy explanation to see a causal linkage between metal culture and violence . Historically, it makes much more sense to view metal’s obsession with such topics as one element within its hybrid ‘bricolage’ of music, lyrics, practices, and institutions (Weinstein, 2000, pp . 1–10) . War and violence are elements of its stylistic language, defining its identities and setting it apart from other cultures . Even the so-called subgenre of ‘war metal’, with artists like Impaled Nazarene (Finland), Beherit (Finland), Marduk (Sweden), Archgoat (Finland), or Sodom (Germany), does not explicitly promote war but should be viewed as a variety of metal’s core language of aggression, heaviness, and power .

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Prolegomena

Religion and religiousness

There are few other semantic fields in heavy metal, which are as contradictory and even paradoxical as religion and religiousness . Frequently and primarily in the past, heavy metal was seen by conservative detractors as a ‘satanic’ discourse (Roccor, 1998b, pp . 232–290; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 237–276) . During the 1980s’ phase of ‘moral panics’, heavy rock music was accused of promoting amorality and satanism, or of even leading young people to commit suicide (Hjelm, Kahn-Harris, & LeVine, 2011; Klypchak, 2011) . Today, the image of metal as satanic music is still prevalent at times . As a matter of fact, in extreme metal genres such as black metal, death metal, or thrash metal, satanism is a default topic, sometimes meant to be taken as a serious religious or identity narrative, and on other occasions it is meant to be ironic, satirical, or provocative (Kahn-Harris, 2007; Swist, 2019) . Furthermore, metal also contains a discourse, ‘white metal’, which uses heavy rock music to promote an explicitly Christian worldview (Strother, 2013) . Rather wellknown groups include Stryper (USA), Mortification (Australia), P . O . D (USA), or As I Lay Dying (USA) . To make things even more puzzling, some of these bands use the supposedly satanic musical vehicle of extreme metal to lead a Christian discourse, for instance the death metal band Mortification . Additionally, some of the artists who were at the centre of the moral panic in the 1980s, among them Slayer, have members who do not make a secret of their Christian confession . Moreover, exactly the same discourse of extreme metal used biblical topics since the 1980s, Metallica’s song ‘Creeping Death’ (1984) from the album Ride the Lightning being one of the best-known examples . Given these paradoxes and contradictions, a cultural history of metal in Europe is not capable of giving definitive statements on religion and religiousness . We have to examine how this paradoxical structure evolved in metal culture and how these tensions, conflicts, and paradoxes have been negotiated from the past to the present . Politics and ideologies

Although many artists, fans and mediators of metal describe themselves as being apolitical, the music and its discourses, like each form of identity construction, has political characteristics . Early works of metal music studies such as Weinstein’s (1991) cultural sociology emphasised the ‘conservative’ and ‘blue-collar’ aspect . Roccor’s (1998b, pp . 232–249) anthropology examined the alleged right-wing tendencies of heavy metal music . More recent research focuses on issues like resilience and memory building in and by metal culture (Kahn-Harris, 2016; Scott, 2016) . Brown (2018) published a ‘manifesto for metal studies’ to put the ‘politics of metal in its place’ . Research on grindcore also analyses aspects of politics (Riches, 2016) .

The Topics of the European Cultural History of Metal Music

Currently, one only can see that metal history definitely has its ever-varying political agenda(s), also in Europe; or at least, as Brown (2018) formulates it, there are politics of metal that always have to be put into their historical contexts . For my topic, this implies two questions . First, where necessary, I want to consider how and why politics (of whatever brand or conviction) are integrated into the historic realm of heavy rock music . Secondly, I will elucidate how and why artists, fans, and other active people make their choices for specific political practices in their specific scene contexts . Media and mediators

Early works on metal, again most notably Weinstein’s (1991, 2015) sociological ones, stressed the importance of mass media in the constitution and global spread of heavy metal (Brown et al ., 2016b; Hein, 2003; Nohr & Schwaab, 2012; Wallach et al ., 2011) . It is clear that if global media would not have been around before the emergence of metal around 1970, there would be no metal at all . Yet historically, this hypothesis of the single-handed construction of metal by the mass media remains reductive . Apart from its clear mass media and sometimes mainstream presence, metal also made its way into history via a myriad of ‘underground’ and informal sites, spaces, and practices – which Kahn-Harris (2007) convincingly described for the global extreme metal scene . Spracklen and Spracklen (2018) give a similar reading of goth culture . Thus, history investigates how media and media coverage formed one constituent of metal among several . Today, the key process in Europe is digitalisation . As a topological introduction to the next steps in the book, all of the European metal history topics and perspectives mentioned include integral narratives . Thus, in the next chapter, I start my theoretical considerations by elaborating on the narratology of metal history as the first key dimension of sonic knowledge theorising .

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Chapter 3 Narratives, Narrations, and Emplotment

Hayden White’s Historiographic Narratology

The late American historian Hayden White (1928–2018) was one of the most influential theorists of narratological theory and the philosophy of history since the 1970s . His widely read (and criticised) magnum opus Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe (1973) provided us with a thoroughly self-reflexive theoretical account of classic European historiography by writers like Ranke, Hegel, Marx, or Michelet . Moreover, it presented White’s narratological theory of historiography . In that book, he further developed the theory of tropology, which examines and conceptualises the metaphorical, allegorical, or figurative uses of ‘tropes’ such as metaphor, irony, or metonymy (Frye, 1990; Mellard, 1987; White, 1973, pp . 31–38) . As I will show in this chapter, it is relevant for my subject in several ways . Applying this theory to historiography, White set out to show that historiography always forms a narratological and linguistic discourse . According to him, historiography is at least as much art as science – for this post-modernist, it forms a kind of ‘proto-science’ which gains its theoretical legitimisation only from acts of narration (White, 1973, pp . 1–42) . For Hayden White, historiography is both an art of telling histories about history and scientific research, which aims to find the truth about the past . It remains noteworthy that the theorist never intended to doubt history’s cultural worth – however, the radical deconstruction of classic hermeneutic and positivist historiography inherent to his tropology is obvious (Ankersmit, Domanska, & Kellner, 2009; Doran, 2013; Goertz, 2001) . In his provocative thought, White followed a structuralist logic and rationality that, coming from French social history, had been prominent in historical theory since the late 1940s (Braudel, 1949; Burke, 1990) . His approach put the notion of ‘emplotment’ into the focus . By this notion he meant the narratological modelisation of explanation in any historiographical narration (White, 1973, pp . 5–11) . Logically, ‘plot’ (and, thus, also emplotment) refers to the storyline of a movie or a book, and in metal music a

Hayden White’s Historiographic Narratology

song or an album . For White, emplotment is the key strategy in historiography . It describes the method and the specific political ideologies historians and storytellers adhere to when structuring their histories (Ankersmit et al ., 2009; Doran, 2013; Goertz, 2001; White, 1973, pp . 22–29) . In that structuralist framework of emplotment, such narrators can use only four archetypes of plot structures, which White (1973, pp . 5–11) defined as the archetypical genres of ‘romance’, ‘comedy’, ‘tragedy’, and ‘satire’ . The types of plot construction correlate to four positions of ideological discourse: ‘anarchism’, ‘conservatism’, ‘radicalism’, and ‘liberalism’ . (pp . 22–41) . Altogether, White’s theory is summarised in a table, which is the visualisation of the structuralist core of Metahistory: Table 1 Hayden White, emplotment [table: (White, 1973, p. 29)] Trope

Mode of tropical representation

Mode of emplotment

Mode of explanation

Metaphor

Representational

Romance

Metonymy

Reductionist

Tragedy

Mechanicist

Radical

Synecdoche

Integrative

Comedy

Organicist

Conservative

Irony

Negationist

Satire

Contextualist

Liberal

ormist

Ideological implication Anarchist

The visualisation shows how the theorist imagined historiography to be . For him, prior to anything else, it is a narratological structure, a narration . For that reason, it is part of broader cultural discourses and contexts . It is part of contemporary social, cultural, and political life (i . e . ideologies such as anarchism, liberalism, conservatism, or radicalism) . Hence, it also touches popular cultures like heavy metal music . White provided us with a deeply grounded theoretical argument: historiography never can be neutral or value-free but must be put into the context of contemporary culture (Iggers et al ., 2017; Partner & Foot, 2013) . European metal culture and the metal ear globally depend on shared norms and rules of emplotment . For heavy metal history, this implies that we interpret history as a narrative in metal music and a narrative of metal music . This twofold perspective, each aspect referring reciprocally to the other one, is characteristic of metal’s sonic knowledge, from a narratological point of view . Diachronically as well as synchronically, metal is both a form of sonic historiography and an object of historical research . Somehow, this argument of the contextual rooting and the probable determinacy of history has become commonplace in theoretical debates in history (Iggers et al ., 2017; Kuukkanen, 2015; Partner & Foot, 2013) . Still, this specific discussion is open-ended … and, perhaps it will never come to an end (White, 1973, pp . 1–42, 426–434) . At this point, the argument is – and this cannot be emphasised enough – that history is always narration . One does not have to follow White in his end conclusion, calling history a ‘proto-science’ . Nonetheless, with Metahistory we gain a lot of ground in his-

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torical theory concerning the nature of any historical narrative . Today, we must always ask for history as narration and narrative . Historical Narrations, Narratives, and Emplotment in Metal Music Studies

Dealing with historical narrations and narratives is not new in metal music studies . A number of more recent works examine the narrations or narratological backgrounds of historic lyrical motives or aesthetics in metal music (Barnett, 2017; Bartosch, 2011; Elflein, 2010; Rafalovich, 2006; Spracklen et al ., 2014; St . Laurent, 2016) . Meller (2018) published an entire book devoted to analysing historically-themed Iron Maiden songs . Still, from a historian’s point of view, current discourse sometimes lacks a sense of clarity . Often, the terms of narration and narrative are used more implicitly rather than in clearly defined ways . The best way to resolve this problematic situation in metal studies theory is to go back to the roots and reread White’s key work . The metaphor of going back to the roots is a common topos in European metal culture, bringing to the fore associations of conservatism, and moreover also of returning to the authentic quality of excellent music . I intend to return to White’s definitions of narration/narrative and, even more importantly emplotment, in order to gain more clarity for a sound-historical narratology of metal in Europe . In this respect, I utilise his theory to examine the modes of historical representation in metal . We have to reread his conceptual key passages . The theoretical core text of White’s Metahistory is already found in the introduction, entitled ‘The Poetics of History’ (pp . 1–42) . Those slightly more than forty pages contain an entire theory of historical narratology, which has become highly influential since the early 1970s (Ankersmit et al ., 2009; Doran, 2013; Kuukkanen, 2015) . In metal, this was the era when the music itself emerged in post-1968 Great Britain with bands like Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Saxon . Already then, these bands told stories in metal and of metal in European cultural networks . White develops his theory in those introductory sections . As said before, his most important theoretical notion is emplotment . Defining this notion, the theorist captures the techniques and modes historians use (in the case of Metahistory: the European historians of the 19th century) to construct the meaning of their narrations, rooted in their disciplinary discourse . This is key in understanding his theory: to construct meaning in a history means to perform an act of composition, in more or less conscious ways . Therefore, the first important parameter in rereading the book is to view it as a study of historical performance and agency . Historians (and historic storytellers in general) act poetically and constructively (Ankersmit et al ., 2009; Doran, 2013; Kuukkanen, 2015) . The terms of narration and narrative depend on this parameter . They define the result of historians’ agency as writers of history . Narrations and narratives

Historical Narrations, Narratives, and Emplotment in Metal Music Studies

are the performative result, the path and form the construction of meaning takes in history (i . e . in a text or other forms of expression, such as in a historically themed song in metal music) . Historical narrations and narratives are therefore the cognitive forms that the production of meaning takes when historians (or other historical storytellers, like artists in metal music) perform their acts of emplotment . In this respect, the second parameter in rereading his theory is to think of historical narrations and narratives as performative results of the agency of historians and historic storytellers . They are contingent forms of coherence, constructed at a certain point in space and time, out of the contemporary world and culture, also in European metal discourse . The author of Metahistory fully develops those two parameters in the mentioned introductory sections . A very concise formulation is already found in the book’s preface (White, 1973, p . IX): In this theory I treat the historical work as what it most manifestly is: a verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse . Histories (and philosophies of history as well) combine a certain amount of ‘data’, theoretical concepts for ‘explaining’ these data, and a narrative structure for their presentation as an icon of set of events presumed to have occured in times past . In addition, I maintain, they contain a deep structural content which is generally poetic (…)6

This theoretical and ontological position enables White to characterise historians’ agency in their performative acts of emplotment (p . 7): Providing the ‘meaning’ of a story by identifying the kind of story that had been told is called explanation by emplotment . If, in the course of narrating his story, the historian provides it with the plot structure of a Tragedy, he has ‘explained’ it in one way; if he has structured it as a Comedy, he has ‘explained’ it in another way . Emplotment is the way which a sequence of events fashioned into a story is gradually revealed to be a story of a particular kind .7

These quotes contain White’s definition of the historians’ work and task . According to the narratologist, historiographers produce a history, the ‘effect of explanation’ of which relates to its mode of plot structure as the results of such acts of ‘emplotment’ . In short, a historical narrative’s meaning depends upon how it is told . Emplotment is the theory of a performative speech act that describes this process (Schmale, 2016) . Going back to the roots in Metahistory means understanding historical storytelling as an act of agency of performative emplotment . Metahistory also implies metalhistory . Now, we can address the question of how this theory of historiography suits the demands

6 7

Inverted commas in the original . Inverted commas in the original .

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Narratives, Narrations, and Emplotment

of metal music studies, in particular the ones surrounding a history of metal’s sonic knowledge in Europe . Materiality and Modality: Sonic Emplotment

Dealing with historical storytelling in metal involves dealing with narratives, which take the form of music and sound . It is a discourse of sonic knowledge where musicians play history, the audience hears history and listens to it . This, in turn, is mediated by mediators of metal discourse (Diaz-Bohne, 2010; Hein, 2003; Pichler, 2018b; Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 2000, 2015) . In an implicit way, this argument already contains the characterisation of emplotment in metal . The audience of metal consists of listeners . The ‘material’ form, the modality that is decisive for metal’s theoretical historic character, structurally and cognitively, is its sonic shape (Berger, 1999, 2010; Elflein, 2010, Walser 1993) . The narratives may be a composite of visuals, lyrics, stage performance, and the music itself, but the definition of this discourse is that it is a music discourse of sonic knowledge . We look for a sonic narratology of metal’s historic emplotment . There are a number of monographs and articles that deal with the narratology of metal music (Barnett, 2017; Bartosch, 2011; Elflein, 2010; Meller, 2018; Rafalovich, 2006; Rowe, 2017; Spracklen et al ., 2014; St . Laurent, 2016) . Nevertheless, these studies approach narratives in metal from musicological, sociological, cultural, or linguistic perspectives . In contrast to this, we are looking for a genuinely historical narratological perspective . This is where we can draw inspiration from Metahistory . Approaching metal’s narratology after rereading Metahistory, interpreting narratives in metal as performative results of the agency of ‘musicians-as-historians’, ‘listeners-as-historians,’ and ‘mediators-as-historians’ (but also ‘historians-as-historians’ who, like the author, write the academic cultural history of metal), we gain a new view of metal’s historic narratology . Within this framework of the sonic performative character of metal music, we see metal as a form of writing history, historiography that works according to the modalities of its discourse, as a bricolage of culture of its own kind (Weinstein, 2000) . Meller (2018) has analysed this for historically-themed Iron Maiden songs . As this historically and by definition is a music discourse, metal is a form of sonic emplotment . In brief, for the sound history of metal in Europe, I understand narratives and narrations as the categories of sonic knowledge in metal, which describe how metal histories of the past are told, can be known, and are thought of . Metal is a way of telling history sonically, applying its own discursive rules and dispositions . The approach’s novelty in metal studies lies in the fact that it is deeply grounded in recent historical theorising (Ankersmit et al ., 2009; Doran, 2013; Iggers et al ., 2017; Kuukkanen, 2015; Partner & Foot, 2013; White, 1973) and conceptualises both narratologically: historical narratives in metal and historical narratives of metal . Sonic emplotment is the knowledge category of telling narratives in metal culture in Europe .

Chapter 4 Identities and Identitary Practices

Identities as Cultural-Historical Constructions

A crucial focus of the new cultural history is the construction of cultural identities (Burke, 2010; Hunt, 1989; James, 2015; Pichler, 2017d) . This interest in cultural identities is shared by almost every other culturally oriented discipline of deconstructive thinking (Angermüller, 2015; Moebius & Reckwitz, 2008; Münker & Roesler, 2000) . Research on identities is thus prominent and highly relevant in metal music studies, most of all in its culturalist and sociological stream of discourse (Brown et al ., 2016b; Heesch & Höpflinger, 2014; Gardenour Walter et al ., 2016; Nohr & Schwaab, 2012; Walser 1993; Weinstein 1991, 2016) . As a rule, cultural-historical (and thus also sound-historical) examinations of identities look at the sense of belonging humans feel towards and for cultural communities, in a collective sense . Individual identities of the self are likewise of interest ( James, 2015; Jörissen & Zirfas, 2010) . Usually metal studies seeks to define scene identities . In many ways, cultural history has continued to look to identities and identitary practices, an approach developed out of constructivist research in nationalism studies initiated by scholars like Gellner (1984) and Anderson (1983), who were already mentioned in our thoughts on the new cultural history as a theoretical starting point in chapter 2 . The new discourse of constructivist thought caused the emergence of a new epistemic view of history, which contested the essentialism of ‘modernist’ theories of identity ( Jörissen & Zirfas, 2010) . Up to the early 1980s, a view that characterised identities as essentialist, ‘primordial’, or ‘natural’ entities was at least normatively and theoretically thinkable – also in relation to history . The idea that this had been an ‘invention of tradition’ (Hobsbawm & Ranger) has become more and more obvious, and today it is virtually unthinkable to stick to an essentialist theory of identity building . Nonetheless, political and metal discourses prove essentialism’s persistence until the present . However, with the deconstructivism of the new cultural history, we see identities as discursive constructions in space and time . They are contingent, contested and may

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Identities and Identitary Practices

change over shorter or longer periods of transformation . This development over long periods is the focus of my research interest . Any forms of European metalness identifications also are products of the practices of metal discourse when it comes to identity construction . Metal’s practices are forms of cultural and scenic sense making . Headbanging, the formation of mosh pits, tape trading in the 1980s and 1990s, the designing and wearing of battle vests (Cardwell, 2017), listening to records and discussing them, and the whole bulk of other practices related to the scene are forms of the construction of metalness . Today, this deconstructivist paradigm defines the academic mainstream of identity research, in cultural history as well as in metal studies . In a sound history of metal on the ‘old continent’ of Europe, I interpret them as fluid yet contingently stable, discursive constructions . Metalness is a cultural product of identitary practices, both conscious and unconscious (Diaz-Bohne, 2010; Kahn-Harris, 2016; Riches, 2016; Rowe, 2017) . Destabilisations of Identities

Until recently, research in cultural history mostly examined the construction of stable cultural identities . At the very least, there was a pronounced interest in historical periods where identitary practices formed stable frameworks of cultural belonging . Acknowledging the highly fluid character of identities in our age of Europeanisation (and ‘de-Europeanisation’, as in the case of the ‘Brexit’), research also started to look at the destabilisation of identities . One example is European integration history, which since the late 1960s saw a teleology of an ‘ever closer union’, and now a shift to forms of disintegration . This is the case in the history of ‘Brexit’, and many other forms of Euroscepticism and renewed nationalism (Patel, 2013; Pichler, 2018b) . Such reflections aim at defining a terminological framework, taking into account the fluidness and contingency of identitary constructions in history . That said, a sound history of the sonic knowledge of metal in Europe also ought to analyse both the construction of seemingly stable identities and the destabilisation of cultural forms of belonging in times of subcultural change, for instance in the 1980s when metal became globalised and was divided into new subgenres . This meant, on the one hand, a globalisation of metalness (Wallach et al ., 2011; Wallach & Levine, 2011) . On the other, it brought a destabilisation of metal identities established in the 1970s . To meet this double goal of our reflections, we can still take inspiration from the perspective of classic nationalism research (Anderson B ., 1983; Gellner, 1984; Jörissen & Zirfas, 2010) . However, to tackle identity destabilisation in European metal history, I put a special focus on forms of destabilisation of identities in discourse . Important scholars who conceptualise destabilisation histories are Judith Butler (1990, 1993), Leela Gandhi (1998), Jean-Luc Nancy (1993), Oliver Marchart (2010), and José Muñoz (1999) . To

reddie Mercury and Queen Bring in New Images

demonstrate how destabilisation has happened in constant interaction with stabilisation in metal history (which already shows that, arguably, the permanent interaction of both is the constant in metalness formation history in Europe), I look at two empirical examples already here . The first one is from the early era of metal in the 1970s and exemplifies identitary practices of gender roles and sexuality . Freddie Mercury and Queen Bring in New Images

Particularly in their early career in the 1970s, famous British band Queen can be seen as a hard rock band (Hodkinson M ., 2005; Jackson, 2002; Sutcliffe, 2009) . This was the phase of the emergence of metal, when the definitions of its key code and of heavy metal as a distinct genre were still more fluid than later in the 1980s . Then, metal and hard rock were not clearly distinguishable (Cope, 2010; Poole, 2016) . Right from the start, Queen’s sound was characterised by guitarist Brian May’s ‘singing’ instrumental work ( Jackson, 2007) . For the band’s onstage performance and their visual appearance, singer and frontman Freddie Mercury became the group’s driving force . His extroverted stage acting integrated routines of his idols Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin) and Jimi Hendrix . Moreover, Mercury added several new and innovative features to Queen’s image . It was Mercury who constructed a huge part of Queen’s public identity – which was taken in and multiplied by music media, mediators, and fans . Born Farrokh Bulsara in African Zanzibar in 1946, Mercury studied art and graphic design in London (Hutton & Waspshott, 1994; Jackson, 1997) . Being a visually oriented musician and artist, he interpreted Queen as an artistic synthesis, combining musical, visual, textual, and discursive facets . The singer’s stage acting therefore became a flamboyant routine of visual references . In concert, Freddie Mercury’s charismatic stage presence was the focus of attention . In his flamboyant style, he integrated movements inspired by classical ballet . With his prancing steps to match the music, graceful moves and running all over the big stages, Queen’s tours in the 1980s presented new physical imagery for rock music . Mercury put his broken microphone stand to use: it became a phallic symbol, a baton, or simply a toy he played with on stage . Additionally, he used hats, wigs, artificial breasts, or other props on stage in an ironic or parodying manner . Here he reproduced, rather directly and aggressively, provocatively queer forms of identitary practices . Finally, Mercury was famous for his ‘singing games’ where he invited the crowd in the audience to sing with him and ‘compete’ in a way . In short, in his live routine, Mercury perfected the image and identity of the rock star since the early 1970s (Weinstein, 2000, pp . 59–91) . This was a history of identity stabilisation . Still, this was only half the story . Going further than his idols before, Mercury in his new identity of a rock star also destabilised the then known standards with the integration of all the aspects mentioned above . His eccentric and extrovert behaviour pushed and transcended the limits of previously used codes . Suddenly, personalities like Jimi

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Identities and Identitary Practices

Hendrix, Robert Plant, or Mick Jagger who earlier set the standard, sometimes seemed bourgeois or even frumpy . Thus, Mercury’s identitary practices, offstage and onstage, in the media, and in his compositions for Queen, not only stabilised identities in discourse but brought forward a history of destabilisation as well . His parody and satire eroded stable images and made them fluid again . In the cultural history of metal in Europe, he was a protagonist of ambiguities: he stabilised and destabilised identities in the same artistic act . Above all, this holds true for gender roles and sexuality . After all, though he had lived as a homosexual man since the 1970s, Mercury did not have a public coming out (Hutton & Waspshott, 1994; Jackson, 1997) . His rather difficult search for his individual sexual identity is also discussed in mainstream culture in the storyline of the recent Queen biographical film Bohemian Rhapsody (Singer & Fletcher, 2018) . The movie’s treatment of Mercury’s sexual biography, how the film plot deals with homosexuality in mainstream culture, would be worth a study of its own . However, Freddie’s onstage behaviour and references to queer identities (already the name Queen can be interpreted in terms of gay cultures where it was a slang word for an effeminate gay man) pushed and destabilised previously established limits . This was not Mercury’s ingenious invention (here, one can think of other artists like David Bowie in the 1970s), but the overall artwork of Queen, embracing heavy music, theatrical images, and performances, was highly innovative . Mercury and Queen brought in new images, and practices of identity, most of all gender and sexual identities, destabilising known practices, and also prevalent images of metalness at the time . This is relevant for the on-going discourse on gender and sexuality in metal studies (Digioia & Helfrich, 2018; Heesch & Scott, 2016; Hill, 2016) . A cultural history of metal in Europe needs to explain both identitary stabilisations and fluid destabilisations . Behemoth Stabilise and Destabilise Identities in a Single History

Let us look at a second empirical example of European metal identities . Polish extreme metal group Behemoth was founded in Gdánsk in 1991 . In their first period, they took inspiration from the sound of the second wave of black metal, globally spreading from Norway and other Scandinavian countries since the early 1990s (Chaker et al ., 2018b; Jones, 2002; Moynihan & Søderlind, 2003; Patterson, 2013) . Until today, singer and guitarist Adam ‘Nergal’ Darski has remained the band’s main protagonist . In several ways, also as the group’s main songwriter, he acts as Behemoth’s main agent and creator of identities and identitary practices . First, the trio remained within the rather small and restrictive genre conventions of early 1990s European black metal . They stuck rather strictly to established conventions of sound, topics, and visuals . Over the last two and a half decades, this has changed towards a sound and visual representation that borrows from the sound of death metal

Behemoth Stabilise and Destabilise Identities in a Single History

and other genres of extreme metal . Also, the band is serious about producing their records in a clear and powerful way, which is in contrast to black metal’s traditional ideology of low-fidelity production (Chaker et al ., 2018b; Elflein, 2018; Herbst, 2018) . The release of their tenth album (Behemoth, 2014) became a crucial event in the career of Darski as well as Behemoth as a band . Prior to the release, the group was respected and known in extreme metal discourse – that changed quickly after the album’s global release . The record The Satanist was quickly seen as the band’s most powerful; in fact, it is sometimes labelled a new classic of extreme metal . For a cultural history of identities and identitary practices in Europe, Behemoth’s breakthrough since 2014 is an empirical example, which is of interest in two ways . To start with, we consider that case’s discursive, textual, and intertextual dimensions (Bartosch, 2011; Schermann, 2018) . As already shown explicitly in the record’s title The Satanist, the album is at its core a programmatic statement of Darski’s ideology and worldview . He composed all the music and wrote most of the lyrics . In fact, the liner notes mention additional authors for only three out of nine tracks on the album: ‘Messe noire’, ‘Ora pro nobis lucifer’, and ‘O Father O Satan O Sun!’ (Behemoth, 2014) . Thus the band’s breakthrough album, discursively, is a highly conservative event in European metal identity history . Satanism, in many different varieties and shades, is a traditional and conservative ideological key concept of black metal (Chaker et al ., 2018b; Jones, 2002; Moynihan & Søderlind, 2003; Patterson, 2013; Höpflinger, forthcoming; for the political aspect of metal, see Brown, 2018) . Using such a conservative and traditional approach enabled Darski and his co-artists to construct an extreme metal identity, which efficiently benefitted from sense making in classic black metal culture . Textually and intertextually, these identitary practices stabilised established black metal culture in Europe . As the other side of the coin, things were different in respect to the musical and commercial approach . The album features modern production that was both powerful and clear, which is in stark contrast to the established black metal approach (Korkmaz & Bingöl, n . d .) . Moreover, Behemoth released the record on the globally run label Nuclear Blast, which has at its disposal a global economic and institutional network of mediators and distributors . Within this network, The Satanist was an innovative, globally negotiated proposal of identitary practices of extreme metal . Musically and economically, the band’s rise to stardom in the scene only became possible because they used musical and business strategies which conflict with established black metal values: global commercial marketing, clean production, and professional instrumental musicianship . From this point of view, the release of the album and the group’s success since then are elements of a history of destabilising classic black metal identities and their subcultural practices by opening them up to this new discursive sphere of musical and commercial professionalism . A European cultural history of metal identities can only make sense of this history when asking conceptually for the fluid interplay, conflicts, and contradictions of stabi-

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lisation and destabilisation . The Satanist, the release of which was a key event in recent extreme metal discourse, stabilised certain historical aspects of black metal identities, namely satanism . Nevertheless, at the same time and in a single subcultural history, it destabilised other core elements of black metal, such as the traditional approach toward production and the genre’s anti-commercial attitude . Hence, in Behemoth’s case, an identitary history can only be productive when asking for the constant interplay of destabilisation and stabilisation . Their latest album release I Loved You at Your Darkest from 2018 continues this history (Pichler, 2018d) . Identities as ‘Fluid Structures’ of Sonic Knowledge

At first glance, having in mind sociological and social-historical structuralism’s universal and ahistorical notion of structures, viewing them as stable and non-changing entities, it probably appears paradoxical to speak of ‘fluid structures’ . Nonetheless, as we have seen for the examples of Queen and Behemoth, and we could likewise see for many other cases of artists’ and scenes’ histories since the 1970s, identities have seldom remained stable structures in such a strict and ahistorical sense . In opposition to the older narrative of a stable core of metal identity (Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 1991), more recent reflections on identities and identitary practices stress the historical fluidity of metalness (Riches, 2016; Kahn-Harris, 2007, 2016; Wallach et al ., 2011; Rowe, 2017) . Discussions on sexual and queer identities in metal are also important here (Clifford-Napoleone, 2016; Heesch & Scott, 2016) . This is where history, with its disciplinary gaze on historical change, might help us to better conceptualise identities in metal music studies, especially when seeing the deep connection between European identity, heteronormativity, and Enlightenment that has been so intriguingly examined by Schmale (2016) Reflecting this trend in metal studies and on-going discourses on destabilisation (Butler J ., 1990; Butler J ., 1993; Ghandi, 1998; Nancy, 1993; Marchart, 2010; Muñoz, 1999), history aims to explain the constant, sometimes conflict-rich and contradictory interplay of stabilisation and destabilisation in metal history . Metal is neither a stable structure of European metalness nor is it a completely formless continuum . European metalness, indeed all metal identities in Europe since the 1970s, (de-)constructed by scene-specific identitary practices, should be defined as fluid structures of sonic knowledge This fluidness comes from how we have been hearing and listening to metal in Europe since around 1970 . Metal’s identitary sonic knowledge in Europe is the result . The key question in metal identity history is not about metalness in dogmatic terms, rather the historical long-term modifications of scenic belonging in Europe .

Chapter 5 Europeanness, Transnationalism, and Entanglement

Did Europe Exist before 1970?

German cultural historian Wolfgang Schmale (2000, p . 11) began his Geschichte Europas (i . e . history of Europe) asking a surprising question: ‘Did Europe exist before 1453?’ Why? In that year, Constantinople as the capital city of the Byzantine Empire was conquered by Ottoman troops . According to many contemporary authors, this event of late-medieval and early modern history was taken as a symptom of European christianitas being threatened from outside (Bornstein, 2010) . For this reason, Schmale asks whether it was this perception of a presumed and imagined existential threat that should have led to the constitution of a modern notion of Europe . ‘Metallic’ Europe in 1970 was not threatened from outside, but Schmale’s question is a paradigmatic point in case to show Europeanness developed in history . Indeed, as shown above, identities are always constructed in processes of ‘othering’, giving birth to a definition of the ‘other’ to project upon the cultural-historical ‘self ’ . The ‘self ’ is who the ‘other’ is not . More recently, Michael Wintle (2016) analysed Islam as Europe’s ‘other’ . In narratives of the fall of Constantinople, European identity was constructed by defining the ‘Ottomans’ as the ‘other’ . Schmale (2000, 2008, 2016) has illustrated in a detailed manner that modern concepts and images of Europe required an intense continental circulation of actors, goods, and discourses to historically enter Europe’s collective consciousness . Continental or ‘transnational’8 migration and the movement of people and material objects, accompanied by numerous forms of identitary practices, were implicitly needed to establish Europe as a shared notion of culture .

I put the concept in inverted commas because nations are fundamentally a modern category, most of all used after 1800 . 8

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Likewise, one can assume such an entailment in a shift in Europe as well in metal culture, as a sound history of the construction of Europeanness by entanglements and transnational practices in scenic discourses since 1970 (Bauck & Maier, 2015; Chakrabarty, 2000; Foucault, 2002) . That was the point when metal networks, or more precisely networks that would become metal networks, developed on this continent . From the point of view of metal studies, we ask: Did Europe exist before 1970? We should read the year of 1970, maybe more globally ‘the long 1960s’, as the time of the historical apparition of metal in European culture – and reciprocally of Europe in metal (Bayer, 2009; Gildea et al ., 2013; Raphael & Doering-Manteufell, 2012; Weinstein, 1991; Walser, 1993) . The emergence of a new musical subculture led to innovative kinds of spatial movements of people (i . e . artists on tours, fans, mediators, etc .), material goods (i . e . records, concert tickets, photos, etc .) and the development of discourses with distinct scene practices . This is best researched in the context of extreme metal in Kahn-Harris’ monograph on the subject (2007) . It is noteworthy – and raises conceptual questions about his notion of Europeanness – that Kahn-Harris (2007, pp . 105–119) saw the ‘European’ scene in a seemingly similar position to that of the Swedish, British, or Israeli scenes . Also here, he did not reflect on the conceptual weaknesses of Bourdieu’s sociology already thematised by Diaz-Bohne (2010) . Besides their global implications, we ought to examine whether such European movement of agents, material objects, and practices brought about the rise of a distinct ‘metal’ idea of Europe, or at least a shared, however intense European metal culture . We should not be thinking of European metal culture as a monolithic European popular culture . Rather, we should see it as a fluid process of a sound-history covering fifty years, in that Europe-wide knowledge forms (i . e . the album, the tour, the ‘riff ’, rituals at concerts, scene institution forms, etc .) evolved and led to a sound-historical process of ‘continentalisation’ (Lützeler, 2007) . In chapter 7, I will argue that tours as transnational frameworks of geographical and spatial framing were of utmost importance for metal’s Europeanness – and Europe’s metalness . Posing the question ‘Did Europe exist before 1970?’ from a historical perspective, puts a ‘metal’ notion of Europe and its conceptual analysis on the agenda of metal studies . In metal it was not a threat from outside like the fall of Constantinople in 1453 that made metal grow in Europe . It was the networks as structures that produced new sound-hsitorical knowledge templates in a new pop culture in a process lasing fifty years . Europeanness as a Product of Transnationalism and Entanglement

Building another key consequence of the cultural turn (Bachmann-Medick, 2016), a European perspective of history has become an essential feature of academic historiography . In the current state of discourse, looking at almost every topic of history through

Europeanness as a Product of Transnationalism and Entanglement

the lens of Europe is usual, arguably even an accepted academic ‘duty’ (Landwehr & Stockhorst, 2004; Pichler, 2018b; Rietbergen, 2006; Schmale, 2000, 2016) . Europe, and consequently Europeanness, has turned into nothing less than a fundamental paradigm of history . This new concept of Europeanness, as a product of transnationalism and entanglement, is also reflected in metal studies’ literatures since the 1990s (Brown et al ., 2016b; Gardenour Walter et al ., 2016; Heesch & Höpflinger, 2014; Kahn-Harris, 2007, pp . 115–116; Wallach et al ., 2011; Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 1991) . My look at metal history, through the prism of Europe and Europeanness, offers both an enrichment of research as wells as a political and discursive decision in the realm of metal studies (Brown, 2018) . There is no doubt that that trend of the Europeanisation of history went hand in hand with the factual process of European integration after 1945, most of all after the creation of the EU itself with the Maastricht Treaty (1992) . European integration was reflected in metal culture . The European Commission as the EU’s main political institution of governance – financially, politically, and discursively – has supported academic research on European integration . In 1982, there was the founding of a ‘European Union Liaison Committee of Historians’, which since 1995 edits an independent journal on EU history (European Union Liaison Committee of Historians, 2018) . The histories of Europe as a theoretical framework and Europe as the EU are closely interwoven and cannot be separated from each other (Pichler, 2018b) . This comes as no surprise . We know quite well that traditional national historiographies in the 19th and 20th centuries also depended on cultures that were nationally framed (Anderson B ., 1983; Gellner, 1984; Iggers et al ., 2017) . If this discursive reality is a given, then the cultural history of metal’s European sonic knowledge navigates a field spanning the precarious spectrum between a European ethos and analytical thought . We ought to exploit the potential coming with a European perspective when looking at metal history . However, we are obliged to be conscious of the fact that this European history of metal is a product of an academic culture, which is framed in the terms described above . So always thinking self-reflexively is necessary . In metal history, as in many other cultural-historical processes of contemporary European history since 1970, feelings of Europeanness, of European belonging and identity, are to be understood against the backdrop of a factual history of regional integration in the EU, and all its current dramas of disintegration, ‘Brexit’, and multi-faceted crises (Pichler, 2018b) . Every current form of Europeanness is affected by these developments . In metal, Europeanness is not always an explicit identity construction . Rather ‘metallic’ Europeanness is a structurally caused scenic disposition shared in the European metal networks, developed around the above mentioned scenic knowledge forms . They affected the history of the European metal ear . Before describing how they affect Europeanness in metal culture at the end of this chapter, it is necessary to discuss two recent trends, which have the potential of fundamentally changing European metal discourse .

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Entering the Mainstream

Remarkably, heavy metal music, which rose out of the counter-cultures of the l960s and then established itself as a European and global subculture with a strong anti-mainstream attitude, has recently more visibly entered the European mainstream and popular culture (Hjelm et al ., 2011; Roccor, 1998b; Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 1991) . It seems, in modern hyper-dense, mostly digital networks of cultural identities, the growth of metalness is accepted as a ‘normal’, sometimes even an appreciated form of musical expression and pop-cultural identification . This stands in strong contrast to metal’s initial identitary landscapes portraying the music and metalheads as cultural agents whose ‘other’ included mainstream pop music (Huber, 2013; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 93–143) and its fans – also in Europe . Due to a lack of substantial sound-historical research on this first new trend, we cannot decide whether it will alter metal discourse in terms of its substantial code, as it was hypothesised in older metal scholarship (Roccor, 1998b; Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 1991) . However, in this respect the European cultural history of metal’s sonic knowledge seeks to discover whether and how that generic code is renegotiated in relation to a new form of mainstream that is more and more diverse, fragmented, and ‘post’ in many ways . The notion of mainstream itself, aiming at describing and explaining a hegemonic discourse of clearly distinguishable and distinct features, is probably misleading in such new contexts of global ‘provincialisation’ (Chakrabarty, 2000) . As recent research shows, we should re-think and re-evaluate the term (Batchelor, 2012; Baker, Bennett, & Taylor, 2013; Krüger, 2016; Weinstein, 2016) . Perhaps, as Huber (2013) does, we should understand the mainstream as a metaphor with strong normative features coming from the semantic field of the ‘river’, implying normalisation and hegemonisation . Evidently, this process of entering a new mainstream, which we think of as a very broad, pluralistic and ‘glocal’ spectrum of accepted and hegemonic pop-cultural identifications, takes the form of dialectics, oscillating between new adjustments and opening-up – on both sides – toward the pole of the mainstream and the pole of metal . From both, it demands re-reflecting their identitary constructions and practices . There are many European examples . In German-language metal discourse, one of the most discussed ones was singer Heino (2014), who is famous for his Schlager and traditional Volksmusik records . He released a record taking up metal aesthetics, called Schwarz blüht der Enzian (English: ‘Gentian Flourishes in Black’) in 2014 . In German speaking countries, Heino is a well-known artist and usually seen as a prototypical artist of conservative Volksmusik, whereas in metal discourse he has been received as a person of philistinism . Cultural-historically, this example is paradigmatic of metal’s entry into the European mainstream . A protagonist of established pop culture saw the potential of (economic) success in interpreting some of his greatest hits into metal-oriented sounds and aesthetics . In metal discourse, it was broadly rejected, nonetheless this forced metal actors

Becoming ‘Scientifed’

to re-emphasise, re-evaluate, or renegotiate their values in relation to the mainstream . Moreover, the mainstream was in demand of a rethink in terms of metal’s identitary landscapes . Reviews of the record, in both the broader media and the metal media, illustrated the dialectics inherent in this process . In the liberal newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, critic Felix Reek (2014) wrote: Heino did it again . His new album ‘Schwarz blüht der Enzian’ combines his own hits with the rock sounds Rammstein are known for . Still, this does not make him a rocker . (…) Rammstein said they needed to vomit when listening to his version of ‘Sonne’ [author comment: a track by Rammstein] . A little later, the band took it back and asked Heino (…) to join them on stage in Wacken .9

In that review, the release was portrayed and interpreted in an ironic style . Strikingly, it was this ironic trope of receiving the album, which also appeared in a review in the Stormbringer webzine, a widely read Austrian scene medium: Heino discovers the Beelzebub in himself and shocks grannies (…) with heavy metal sounds . On the seventy-five years old’s new record, Gentian Flourishes in Black (…) The performance with Rammstein at the Wacken open-air festival seems to have left a lasting impression on Heino (…) (Anthalerero, 2014)10

In that case from 2014, irony became the rhetorical and discursive mode that enabled the European mainstream and metal to connect . It would be an exciting question for future research to examine whether it is the trope of irony that describes the dialectics in the best way possible . At the current stage of research, one can only be aware of those dialectics and keep an eye on them . Metal’s progressive advance to a renegotiated, digital mainstream is decisive for metal’s Europeanness . Today all other forms of European identities, Euroscepticism, and pro-European discourse are also constructed in digital discourses (Pichler, 2018b; Schmale, 2016) . Metal’s entry to the European mainstream in a ‘glocal’ context and metal’s Europeanness have coincided in recent times . They are highly interconnected processes in terms of the sonic knowledge of the music . Becoming ‘Scientified’

A second noticeable trend in European metal is that the music and its culture are advancing into academia and becoming ‘scientified’ . Usually science itself is historically interpreted as a ‘European’ or ‘Western’ concept; however, we have to critically assess

9 10

Author’s translation . Author’s translation .

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such claims (Vietta, 2019, pp . 45–235) . Cultural-historically, the year of 2014 (exactly the one which saw the release of Heino’s Schwarz blüht der Enzian) was crucial in the process of metal’s ‘scientification’ . The International Society for Metal Music Studies took shape some years earlier after a conference in Salzburg, Austria in 2008, but the year 2014 (more precisely in October of that year, two months before Heino’s album entered the discourse in December), the first issue of the Metal Music Studies journal was published (Hickam, 2015) . Surely the publication of the first issue of a journal strictly devoted to metal research was a crucial discursive event in the history of metal’s European knowledge . It implied the creation of an academic sphere of discourse where metal in all its varieties is researched for its own sake – in the form of a peer-reviewed journal, which indicates new ways of knowledge building in metal studies, according to the principles of peer-review and regular publication of new works of scholarship . Thanks to these new knowledge dynamics, this was a major event for metal’s ‘scientification’ coinciding with metal’s entry to the mainstream . The formations of the ISMMS and the establishment of the journal have mostly happened regionally in Europe . At present, no recent introductory text on metal studies ignores this process of ‘scientification’ and rationalisation; however, usually it is not acknowledged for its full historical meaning and implications (Bartosch, 2011; Brown et al ., 2016b; Gardenour Walter et al ., 2016; Heesch & Höpflinger, 2014; Nohr & Schwaab, 2012; Poole, 2016) . Questionably, recent literature restricts itself to noting the existence of metal studies and appreciating its dynamics, but it does not reflect these processes in terms of a meta-history of knowledge . In an article on the history of metal research and cultural studies published in the first issue of the journal, Hickam (2015, p . 6) wrote: The consensus of the scholars interviewed for this article and myself is that before 2008 we had publications, or studies, on heavy metal, but we did not have ‘heavy metal studies’ . A field of study was not something this group had envisioned . Even after Keith Kahn-Harris’s 2007 book on extreme metal, it was generally expected that we would work in our various fields and that we would occasionally present on metal at conferences, and publish in journals, defined by those fields . Niall W . R . Scott and Rob Fisher’s successful 2008 international conference, the first on heavy metal music changed outlooks, expectations, ambitions and career plans .

The realisation of the emergence of a new field of metal studies is real and appreciated . Nonetheless, it does not tackle the full historic dimensions of the phenomenon . The emergence of heavy metal research is part of the ‘scientification’ of metal, including European metal . As explained below, a shift in knowledge principles towards scientific ways of thinking metal has showed up even in the artistic production of extreme subgenres like black metal . The black metal record by Temple of Oblivion from 2014 discussed below in chapter 16 features a historical narrative that is gradually moving towards a scientific and highly rational style of telling the European history of the 20th century .

Europe in Crisis, Likewise in Metal

On balance, the overall impression is that metal’s ‘scientification’ (and reciprocally the ‘metallisation’ of the world of science, as in the discourse of ‘black metal theory’; see black metal theory website, 2013) is a new historical trend, the full implications of which need more analytical consideration in future research – especially in a cultural history of metal’s European past since the 1970s . This is the case because these dynamics have a strong directional drive which could change, or at least slightly modify heavy metal’s broad discourse, and with it metal’s European sonic knowledge . Presumably, Brown’s recent manifesto on metal studies’ politics is to be seen in this context (2018) . These two essential movements of heavy music’s sonic knowledge in recent years – its entry to a new mainstream and its ‘scientification’ – are decisive for metal’s Europeanness . Entering the mainstream in Europe signifies that metal there also reaches the mainstream’s images of Europe . Furthermore, conceptualising metal in growingly scientific thought formats indicates a closer relationship between heavy metal and academia’s discourses of European integration . Currently, European integration in the EU is in a state of existential crisis . Europe in Crisis, Likewise in Metal

In the long run, perhaps the year of 2016 will prove to have been a turning point in European contemporary history since 1970, at least for the process of European integration in the European Union (Kaiser & Varsori, 2010; Pichler, 2018b) . On 23 June of that year, in the membership referendum, a majority of 51 .89 per cent of British voters voted to leave the union . This was the first time a member state decided to withdraw from the EU framework, and it was even one of the largest members . Due to its historical novelty, this has been a fundamental blow to the EU’s self-image of an ‘ever closer union’ . That topos of the ‘ever closer union’ had been constructed actively and intentionally over six decades by European institutions . Academic history, in interplay with the EU commission, was also a proactive proponent of that framing (Armour & Eidenmüller, 2017; Kaiser & Varsori, 2010; Pichler, 2018b) . Speaking of a turning point already involves a view of European cooperation, which sees EU integration as a reversible history – this is by definition in contrast to the way that the union presents itself in the media . The Treaty of Rome in March 1958, which founded the European Economic Community (EEC), took up the path of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which in 1952 had established the nucleus of continental supranationalism and reintegrated Germany into an international framework after World War II . Since then, politics and institutions saw and narrated the EU as a historical entity having a ‘natural’ telos of always ‘more Europe’ but never ‘less’ . Evidently, the event of ‘Brexit’ cannot be meaningfully integrated into this narrative . At present, Europe is in the process of building new narratives (Pichler, 2018b; Patel, 2013; Van Middelaar, 2014) . Among new possible narratives of EU history, narratives of crisis are the ones that attract the most

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media and popular attention . Debates on the future of European cooperation are centred on notions and descriptions such as the ‘refugee crisis’, ‘Eurozone crisis’, ‘existential crisis’, or ‘most fundamental crisis yet’ (see Dinan, Nugent, & Paterson, 2017; Godby, 2014; Trilling, 2018) . Currently (in the winter of 2019/20), the EU, also facing a new global situation after Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States in 2016, is renegotiating its public self-image in relation to the concept of crisis . It seems the policy field of migration and asylum is to become a fundamental one in this history of reshaping a continent’s regional identity history (Lazaridis, 2015; Trilling, 2018) . The same is true for debates centred on climate change . When observing this history, one cannot help but come to the conclusion that, predominantly, Europe’s history of crisis is a history of modifying, renegotiating, and struggling over the concept of Europeanness at the heart of the EU . This concept is a concept of understanding the EU in specific ways, of thinking about it in specific ways . Until 2015/2016, those resources of knowing and identity were embodied in the notion of the ‘ever closer union’ . Europeanness was an expansive and inclusive concept (Pichler, 2018b) . Astonishingly, the new dynamics of identitary EU knowledge and metal’s new dynamics of sonic knowledge happened rather simultaneously . The emergence of metal studies since 2014, the steady advance into the mainstream, and the ‘scientification’ of heavy metal happened at roughly the same time as the recent EU crisis . This does not logically or necessarily mean that both should or could take the form a common single sphere of debates . However, all these dynamics came about within the same historical space, namely Europe during this period . One must presume that in metal’s advance toward the mainstream and its progress in terms of academic self-construction, a new image of Europe is being built . Unambiguously, it must be an image of Europe in crisis . For this reason, as well the Europeanness of metal, which we asked for by our question ‘Did Europe exist before 1970?’, is a construction of transnationalism and entanglement currently arising out of crisis . Europeanness, Transnationalism, and Entanglement: Describing the Continental Circulation of Sonic Knowledge

To capture Europeanness in metal, I try to formulate a first theoretical answer to the question of if and how Europeanness was constructed in metal history since about 1970 . First, as said above, every form of Europeanness in history is a product of the movement of people, material, and immaterial artefacts on the continent . Europeanness requires European networks of circulation . In this dimension, the EU is nothing more than the historically densest network of continental circulation in European history (Pichler, 2016c; 2018b; Schmale, 2016) . Second, this approach leads us to the empirically rather well-founded hypothesis that, since 1970, with the emergence of metal in the UK and later its European spread,

Europeanness, Transnationalism, and Entanglement

such circulation in the shape of concerts, tours, media campaigns, record sales, etc . in the subculture of metal must have led to the development of forms of Europeanness, at least images and a shared quality of European metalness . European labels, touring companies, promoters, and most of all artists in interaction with metalheads on tours shaped networks, which required all those agents involved to place themselves on the Europe me(n)tal map – in the context of accelerating political and economic European integration . This metal Europe is suggested heuristically by an inductive analysis of these networks . The European me(n)tal map is a shared knowledge inventory . It has been developing in Europe as an emerging metal cultural space since the 1970s and shows itself – often implicitly – in anecdotes, semiotics, memoires of touring artists, and finally the lyrics of the music and the music itself . Covering the geographical space of Europe, we can see the tours (Waksman, 2011) of bands such as Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Metallica, and Manowar as empirical examples of such constructions of ‘metallic’ Europeanness . The touring required the bands, the fans and the scene media to imagine Europe . Moreover, historical narratives about European regions in albums and songs by bands like the aforementioned Iron Maiden (1986, 2003) or Manowar (the group is famous for imagery of a ‘Viking’ era long ago) made metal discourse fantasise a European history . So, rather undoubtedly, heavy metal history in its European networks of media, multipliers, concert locations, record companies, pubs, private homes of fans, etc . made metal forms of sonic Europeanness appear . However, this does not necessarily say that those were explicit or culturally consciously shared and constructed elements of Europeanness . Rather, they moved and wandered below the surface of the attention of the scene . Hence cultural-historically, it remains an urgent need of research to reconstruct metal’s European networks of cultural circulation . Again, Kahn-Harris (2007) thoughts on the extreme metal scene mark a point of departure . Nonetheless, I summarise that the supposedly unconscious but influential constructions of images of Europe in metal were and are historical realities . They build images, metaphors, maps, spaces, and times of sonic Europeanness stemming from the circulation of artists, fans, media, texts, music, images, and practices in European networks of the scene since about 1970 . Tours like Motörhead`s definitive ones between the late 1970 and early 1980s (chapter 10), Manowars explicitly Europe-themed ‘Hail to Europe’ tour in 1986 (chapter 12) as well as many other examples of such sound-cultural transfer encouraged people to practice metal in continentally synchronised ways . The point is not that these forms of concert rituals, dance movements, and listening practices also had a global dimension; the point is that these continental networks broke through still existing boundaries in Europe – above all the Iron Curtain – and so subculturally integrated Europe . The sonic knowledge existing in the scenes is thus a product of discursive transnationalism and entanglement . Entering the mainstream and viewing metal in scientific ways have come about as new trends within these networks . Both trends coincide with EU crises .

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Europeanness, Transnationalism, and Entanglement

Hence, my main result from reflections on Europeanness, transnationalism, and entanglement in metal history is that, indeed, one is able to describe the ways in which metal’s sonic knowledge circulated in Europe . It did so in the form of continental movements of people, practices, material, and discursive objects of all possible kinds . Europeanness, transnationalism, and entanglement thus appear as highly functional terms to describe how the metalness of scene knowledge was, often strategically, built – act by act, practice by practice, tour by tour, album by album (Kahn-Harris, 2007) . Metal’s Europeanness and European subculture is not an explicit affirmation of pro-European feelings . It is the now continent-wide shared knowledge inventory of doing metal in synchronised ways .

Chapter 6 Time The Album

First and foremost, history is a science of time . Similarly, in European metal history, time, the past temporal dimension in relation with and linked to the present and future, is at the centre of interest . History aims to narrate the past in scientific ways, to make rational sense of it for the present and the future . To achieve this, history became institutionalised as a discipline in its own right in the 19th and 20th centuries (Iggers et al ., 2017; Raphael & Doering-Manteufell, 2012) . Various countries and linguistic regions have their own (national) traditions of historiographical writing, however, today the ‘historical method’ is an internationally agreed upon minimum standard for writing history in a scientifically acceptable manner (Howell & Prevenier, 2001) . Here we have to ask what is time? And what is time in metal and metal studies? What Is Time?

Since antiquity, the question of the nature of time has occupied philosophy and many other disciplines, specifically their root discourses in thought history (Callender, 2011; Dyke & Bardon, 2013) . Today, history perceives time as a contingent construct, preformatted by the ways in which we think of time and temporal relations . This is researched in the history of time (Graf, 2012; Hawking, 1988) . In another work (Pichler, 2018a), I have argued that we are logically forced to see historiography as a strictly ‘presentist’ discourse, that can only imagine the past and fantasise about the future within the limits of the present . Herein, the imagination of the past has the highest logical reliability, whereas the future can only be thought of projectively within the logical restrictions of the current present . The logical presentism of history in no way conflicts with our capabilities to empirically research the past – the empirical examination of historic sources as traces of the past happens in present time (Howell & Prevenier,

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2001; Ingram & Tallant, 2018) . Consequently, my above argument on the presentism of current scene theories (introduction, chapter 1) is not merely logical, rather it is also supported . Claiming to look at sources as semiotic traces of a past reality forces us to think historically . This also applies to all sources of metal history . For this reason, a historiography of metal by historians interprets time as a process which logically progresses from a past, which we can be epistemologically sure of and that is factual, over a present that is our temporal reference point, towards a future that has the lowest logical reliability . Hence, for a temporal logic of historiography, time is the loss of logical reliability in the course of its progressive fulfilment (Pichler, 2018) . John Ellis McTaggart’s influential article ‘The Unreality of Time’ (1908) still characterises this logic of time in the best way possible . McTaggart differentiates between an ‘A-series’ and a ‘B-series’ of time, describing the logical options of seeing time . First, we perceive time as personal time, contextually bound to our own subjectivity . This is the A-series, where time is described as our current past, present, and future . Conversely, we can see time as an ‘objective time’,11 which seems to be measured by watches and calendars . This B-series experiences points in time as earlier or later than each other . For instance, the year of 1908 was earlier than 1909 but later than 1907 . For the logic of historiography, the crucial point is that the A-series and the B-series depend on each other (Pichler, 2018a) . In our case, writing about the European cultural history of metal since 1970, in the current actual year of 2020, requires us to conceptualise events between 1970 and 2019 as earlier than 2020, which is the B-series . At the same time, this portion of temporal framing is, from the point of view of our present year of 2020, the past . This is the A-series . Thus, both series are logically interconnected, the A-series is thought of in reference to the B-series and vice versa . ‘Objective’ time and subjective time of history are interrelated in the closest perceivable ways (Pichler, 2018a) . My notion of time as the loss of logical reliability in the course of its own fulfilment is defined by this close interconnection between both series . Nonetheless, this only is the logical side of time in a cultural history of metal . Furthermore, time is a discursive phenomenon, which is analysed in the history of time . Our realised logical qualities of time are the expression of a discourse on time, which began in 1908 with McTaggart’s reflections, and currently is most prominently described by the historiography of time as a discursive concept (Graf, 2012; Hawking, 1988) . In a noteworthy article on time and conceptions of time in contemporary history, Graf (2012) focussed on the changes in our understanding of time during the 20th century:

Here and in the following, inverted commas are used because the objectiveness of this time still is negotiated in discourse, and this seems to not be universal . 11

What Is Time in Metal?

Time, which is fundamental for our understanding of history and our attempts to grasp history, always is social time: Itself and the experience of time are historically variable – the measurement of time depends on social convention, as wells as its experience in terms of social position, gender, education, profession, age, and many other factors .12

This is an essential quote . It tells us that in the contemporary history of metal in Europe since the 1970s, time has a fundamental social quality . The time of metal, and the time in metal, depends on the mentioned factors: class, gender, age, education, and profession, amongst others . Time in metal is experienced by metalheads (the A-series) in the logical course of history since 1970 (the B-series) . Graf (2012) points out what this means for a conclusive interpretation of time in contemporary history: The central task [author comment: of research] remains to historicise it [author comment: time] as well as to research its meaning for a history of time in the 20th century, as well as to examine its effects on our thinking and its function in a contemporary history of time .13

This programmatic statement tells us what time is from a discursive view . Time is a social construction in history . The construction of time, the A-series and the B-series, depends on the position in discourse . It also depends on how agents understand time, narrate time, experience, and perform time . To summarise, in history time is a category of knowledge, which captures the loss of logical reliability in the temporal progression from the past to the present to the future . In the same discursive act, the knowledge category of time stands within the discursive world, which varies through history . Now I turn to the question how metal as a discourse with its own cultural structure creates its own form of temporality . What Is Time in Metal?

Probably the most deserving insight in early metal studies in the 1990s was the theorisation of metal as a historical formation and discourse of its own . It recognised metal and later its study as a phenomenon of distinct qualities, which has to be studied in ways that can describe the individuality of metal . The works by scholars like Weinstein (1991), Walser (1993), Roccor (1998a, 1998b), and Berger (1999) laid the foundation for understanding metal as a unique discourse in history . Feasibly, Weinstein’s (2000, pp . 5–6) metaphoric notion of metal as a ‘bricolage of culture’, which consists of myriads of heterogenic scene identities, practices, and elements, still is the most convincing one:

12 13

Author’s translation . Author’s translation .

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A “bricolage” is a collection of cultural elements . (…) It is not like a machine in which each part is specially adapted to contribute to the proper functioning of the whole . A bricolage is much looser than that . Its parts exist for themselves as much as they do for the whole . They are held together not by physical or logical necessity but by interdependence, affinity, analogy, and aesthetic similarity .

Generally, Weinstein’s approach draws heavily from poststructuralist theories, which are likewise broadly used in the new cultural history (Burke, 2010; Hunt, 1989) . With Weinstein’s theorising comes a very relativistic view of history that finds its most radical expression in the notion of bricolage . Yet, the term suggests a certain unity of metal discourse, also logically in its production of social time . Nevertheless, this paradigm limits and reduces itself to only stating this unity . Yet, as recent research shows impressively, it is quite possible to show how metal discourse works as whole, in which certain discursive units fulfil specific functional purposes (Bartosch, 2011; Brown et al ., 2016b; Gardenour Walter et al ., 2016; Heesch & Höpflinger, 2014) . Above all, the term of scene(s), which in its current forms frequently implies rather ahistorical thinking, conceptualises metal ‘holistically’ (Kahn-Harris) as social units of identities, spaces, and times . They construct meaning according to their own rules (Baulch, 2007; Bennett & Peterson, 2004; Kahn-Harris, 2007; Straw, 1991; Wallach & Levine, 2011) . Kahn-Harris’ (2007) narrative of a ‘reflexive anti-reflexivity’ of extreme metal is current research’s most elaborate attempt at explaining the ‘machine’ of a metal sub-discourse, and interpreting it as a unity within post-modern contexts – yet only for one sub-discourse . However, as we already saw in the introduction, that attempt remained rather ahistorical in its interpretation of scene(s) . The historian’s gaze in metal studies, the centre of which is the interest in a scientific narration of the past, looks sharply at the modes of the production of social time in metal discourse in Europe (Pichler, 2018b) . So, how does the bricolage of metal, also in its ‘reflexive anti-reflexivity’, produce time and its experience? Which category of sonic knowledge is essential to metalheads’ conception of time and history? From my point of view, the best way to begin answering both questions is to look at how (European) metal history is currently represented in scholarship . Typically, historical reflections on (European) metal cultural history start out with a discussion of the origins of the genre, and try to discover the roots of the term heavy metal in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Brown, 2015; Poole, 2016; Roccor, 1998a, pp . 17–89; Walser, 1993, pp . 1–2; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 11–58) .14 Hence, in a first step this history is represented in metal studies as a genealogy of the genre name . Much more revealing is a second step that usually follows . In this step, research characterises metal history as a globalising process since the 1970s . Herein, heavy metal is

14

My later considerations on metal studies’ approach to metal history also refer to these works .

The Album as the Central Temporal Category of Sonic Knowledge

told as a history of scene societies and/or para-societies, discursive units (‘machines’?) working according to their rules . Scene(s) in their global networks of exchanges (internally and with other social networks) are the historic entities which produce the social time of metal . This socially constructed time implies the logic of the loss of logical reliability in time’s progression from the past to the future, as described above . In this schema, where time is experienced and measured within the discursive topology of the infrastructure of scene(s), the categorical framing of time logically must use a temporal category, which is first linguistically close to the language of the scene . Secondly and more importantly, this major temporal category must be one that semiotically denotes the basic character of time (the loss of reliability) in an in the scene intelligible style . Thirdly, this category also has to allow local scenes to interact with other globally scattered scenes and broader cultures . Thus, we are looking for a structure of representing metal in ways that are intelligible even if one is not a metalhead . We see that a temporal category of sonic knowledge in metal in Europe demands three essential conceptual qualities: (1) First, it must be a linguistic index of history which comes from or is very close to scene speech . Most probably, this has to be a category which is well-established in scene discourses . (2) Second, time in metal history logically has to be a category that supplies metal discourse with the conceptual possibilities of experiencing the mentioned basic character of time (the loss of reliability) – in the form of conventional rituals understood by metalheads, being perceptible when having scene experience . (3) Third, it is required to be a conceptualisation of temporal relations, which does not restrict itself to scenic conventions but is also intelligible in global processes of historic entanglements, all the way from the 1970s to the present . Which category of sonic knowledge could be the ‘magic’ multi-purpose tool matching this demanding profile? The Album as the Central Temporal Category of Sonic Knowledge

My suggestion is that the album acts as this ‘magical’ category in European metal culture, metal studies, and their interlinkages to broader contexts . Additionally, in point of fact its ‘magic’ is nothing other than the solid and cleverly performed agency of temporal identity building . Indeed, a cursory glance at the cultural role of the album in metal already shows that it is a crucial category: almost always, metalheads identify ‘classic’ albums such as Black Sabbath’s eponymous debut from 1970, Metallica’s Master of Puppets from 1986, Slayer’s Reign in Blood (both from the U . S .) from the same year, or Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (Norway) from 1994 as hallmarks of metal history (Masciandaro, 2011) . As a rule the accounts of fans, musicians, and the media use such mythical albums as events and units of their narrative positioning and orientation of time within metal history since 1970 .

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Likewise, such classics regularly structure the history narratives of ‘greatest albums of all time’ lists that regularly pop up in metal media and discourse (Hartman, 2018; Weingarten, 2017a, 2017b) . Several examples of scene media also feature extensive, retrospective, sometimes nostalgic reviews of famous albums . For instance, the widely read German webzine www .metal .de has a section called ‘Blast from the Past’ (Rothe, 2018) . Weinstein’s influential cultural sociology of heavy metal, in the second edition from 2000 (pp . 295–297), features a three-pages list of the ‘100 Definitive Metal Albums’ in alphabetical order, from 1970 to 1999 . Hence, this indicates that in both metal and metal studies, time works in the same ways as knowledge production . Taking years such as 1970, 1986, or 1994 as release dates of legendary albums as landmarks within the progress of metal time makes those recordings function like markers of before and after (the B-series), as well as of the past, the present, and the future (the A-series) . Simultaneously, the albums, as artworks that embody and signify metal discourse and artists’ identities at a stable point in history, perform as units of the progressive fulfilment and unfolding of time . It is not years, days, or hours but albums which structure heavy metal’s temporal concept and experience of time . The album is the essential category of temporal knowledge . Quickly, we can think of another strong indicator of the fundamental importance of the album as the temporal key category of metal’s time . Careers of bands and artists, genre developments and diversification, even European metal history at large, follow the famous ‘album-tour cycle’ . Also Diaz-Bohne (2010, pp . 241–322) recognises this pattern . Economic structures, metal media, and scenes have institutionalised this ‘round’ cycle, in which the release of an album causes the start of a tour . After the tour comes another long-play record, followed by another concert journey, and so on . In this way, the release of the album, again, is the central temporal event and unit that structures metal’s temporal continuum . In the album-tour cycle, the album is intrinsically linked to metal’s spatial mapping, which became relevant in the history of important tours in Europe since the 1970s (Kahn-Harris, pp . 105–119; Waksman, 2011) . Already these rather evident remarks make us aware of the fundamental importance of the album as the key category of temporal knowledge . In scenic identity building, by amalgamating metalheads’ own biographic identity narratives with the histories of classic long-play records, the album works as the conceptual tool that creates the blending of individual and collective metalness (Baulch, 2007; Kahn-Harris, 2007; Rowe, 2017) . In the same discursive act, the album solidly positions this amalgamation at a stable point in history, namely at the release date of classic albums, for example in 1970, 1986, or 1994 . Metalheads exactly know when they listened to Black Sabbath, Master of Puppets, Reign in Blood, or De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas for the first time, and how far that first time was from the original release date . Analogically, fans, musicians, and other agents vividly remember famous and important tours, frequently named after the album that the tour follows and promotes . At gigs, bands sell merchandise thematising the new release . The merchandise is bought

The Album as the Central Temporal Category of Sonic Knowledge

by fans and worn proudly . Here, the time-structuring effect of the long-player is the same as in the perspective of ‘classic’ records . This ‘magic’, which the category of the album performs, is in fact not sorcery . The album, as research on the development of music business history and technologies shows impressively (Baker, Strong, Istvandity, & Cantillon, 2018; Burgess, 2014; Vinet, 2004; Weinstein, 2015), is a strategically constructed format for the presentation and structuring of sonic time . It not only captures the time that the music on the record itself contains . It also structures and makes it possible to experience all the forms of time that are connected to an album’s discourse . For instance, the discourse of Master of Puppets is one of the broadest and most sustainable ones in metal history . Albums identify, capture, apportion, dissect, link, or continue temporal experiences in and of metal . Time in metal is the album’s time . Given the complexity of metal’s time, let us remember the necessities which a central temporal category in metal discourse needs to fulfil: (1) First, it must be a notion and terminological construction of time, which is close or even derived from heavy metal’s genre speech . Without a doubt, the notion of the album, in scene talk concerning new releases, fan favourites, etc ., is one of the most frequently used . The album is an integral part of scene linguistics . (2) Next, the category that we are looking for has to logically grasp the basic character of time, its loss of logical reliability in the course of temporal progression . This means this category or notion must be integrable into the perspective of the A-series and B-series . As we have seen in the examples of classic albums, the album-tour cycle, lists of fan favourites, and in metal nostalgia, the album with its release date and discourse is both a category of before and after and a category of the movement from the past to the present to the future . The album meets this necessary demand . (3) Finally, it was stated that the conceptual term we are looking for ought to be able to discursively link scenic cultures around the globe and the broader culture . The album functions in exactly this manner in metal . Looking at references to metal in the mainstream or at cross-references between spatially or temporally distant local scenes, we see the album as the unit of time connecting separated cultural realms . Mainstream media usually take famous albums to portray heavy metal to their audience . Black Sabbath, Master of Puppets, Reign in Blood, and Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast (1982a) are once again perfect examples . Asking for the cross-references between distant scenes, the famous practice of swapping tapes, for instance across the Iron Curtain between East Germany and West Germany, used tape copies of albums (besides demos and other recordings) to communicate (Fellezs, 2016; Zaddach, 2016) . In this third dimension, the album as a category performs interculturally between scenes and between the inside and outside of metal . These findings may be interpreted as follows . The album functions as the central temporal category of sonic knowledge in European metal sound history, due to its functions as a linguistic element of temporal scenic speech, its ability to logically denote the basic character of the movement of time, and its bridge-building between scenes

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and to metal’s exterior . Thus the album, always also signifying the year in which the relevant album was released, structures, apportions, and lets us experience metal’s time . In these three ways – scene language, temporal logic, and outer-scene communication – the album determines how we know and are able to know metal’s history in the long durée of scene building in Europe .

Chapter 7 Space The Tour

I just have discussed the album as the major temporal notion time in European metal history . Now I look at space and spatial framing . Like time, space also has been at the heart of philosophic and scientific inquiry since antiquity . In the early modern period after 1500, Newtonian physics defined a modern paradigm of space and time (Dyke & Bardon, 2013; Graf, 2012; Hawking, 1988) . That modern view was then altered and replaced by the post-modern notion of ‘space-time’, which Einstein’s theory of relativity required in order to make sense of his early findings . In the concept of space-time, time and space became an imaginative amalgam (ibid .) . Already these first remarks allow us to think of space as a concept that changed and changes over the course of European history . A medieval farmer’s concept of space would harshly clash with a 21st century transcontinental tourist’s understanding . Hence, very much like time, our perception and thought of space is preformatted by our spatial concepts (Dyke & Bardon, 2013; Graf, 2012) . We experience space and think of it in the ways our spatial paradigms allow us to . These paradigms are likewise a product of European cultural history . Having this in mind, one of the main theoretical aims is to discover how European metal culture makes sense of space . I want to find out about the central concept and categories of space in metal history since 1970 . In this respect, my hypothesis is that the tour, as a subcultural and scenic way of spatially integrating Europe, through a diachronic series of concerts as repeated, highly ritualised historic events of a constant structure, serves as such a category of experience and knowledge (Waksman, 2011; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 199–235) . In the European metal history of the past five decades, the tour which usually followed a new album has developed into a spatial framework which requires artists, the media, and fans to imagine the tour as a journey and spatial movement through Europe; at least through a certain number of European countries, or a single European region . In the course of this journey, when reflecting on it consciously or experiencing

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it unconsciously, they imagine Europe as a space discovered by the discursive format of the tour, as a protocol of the same historic event (the concert) in many different places . Even if the tour only is a trip on a regional or national level, it requires people to imagine their movements in European space . Elaborating on this line of argument, we first have to reflect on the notion of space itself . How does history conceptualise space after the cultural turn and how is this connected to images and mental maps of Europe? What Is Space?

Since enlightenment philosophy’s discovery of the postulation of space and time as mental categories, we know that space is also of existential significance in framing our thinking . As human beings, we move in space, and must position and orient ourselves in space . Thus, space and spatial thinking, conceptualising how the human mind is positioned in the world in history, is of utmost importance . The same is true for a European metal history and how space frames the perception of the European metal ear . With the cultural turn, the notion of space and the theories of spatial framing changed . For instance, in her important book Cultural Turns: New Orientations in the Study of Culture, Doris Bachmann-Medick (2016) suggested the ‘spatial turn’ as one of the ‘sub-turns’ of the overall cultural turn(s) since the 1990s . As explained by Löw (2015) in the below quote, the culturally acknowledged space is a discursive and social construction in time: They years of 1990–2000 represent the spatial turn . The spatial turn, so it seemed to many, closed the 20th century . In brief, the spatial turn (…) stands for the insight that spaces (architectural spaces, urban spaces, regions, nation states, bedrooms, theme parks, river landscapes) are social products . Not only in the sense that there are professions, which plan and shape those spaces, but also as the overarching insight that spaces for human beings become spaces only because they are shaped as social products . (…) Societies are fundamentally structured by spaces .15

In this respect, space is not a ‘natural’ structure in the world of history but a product of discourses (also, see Döring, 2008; Günzel, 2010, 2017) . In European metal history, scene(s) thus produce their own spaces . Such spaces are clubs, concert venues, fan shops, the private domiciles of listeners, recording studios (Diaz-Bohne, 2010, pp . 288– 292), and equally crucial, all the spaces mentally imagined in metal culture . My interest lies in Europe as a geographical region and as a cultural product . How is Europe as a region experienced and imagined in metal history? Which knowledge category does metal culture use to imagine this space?

15

Author’s translation .

What Is Space?

To start answering these questions, one ought to take a closer look at the spatial turn and its implications for the cultural history of Europe and European integration (Necker, 2014; Landwehr & Stockhorst, 2004, pp . 176–77; Rau, 2013) . In the German-language disciplinary discourse of history, Karl Schlögel’s influential book Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit: Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik (2003) (English: ‘We read time in space: On the history of civilisation and geopolitics’), which argued for a rehabilitation of spatial theorising in history, catalysed the spatial turn . In 2013, Susanne Rau, professor of history and cultures of spaces at the University of Erfurt, Germany, published her introductory monograph Räume: Konzepte, Wahrnehmungen, Nutzungen (English: ‘Spaces: Concepts, perceptions, usages’), which gives a disciplinary reading of the spatial turn paying specific attention to the needs of history . In her reading, Rau defined space in history as a notion that requires the analysis of four dimensions: (1) types and configurations of spaces; (2) spatial dynamics, such as the emergence, change, or dissolution of spaces; (3) the subjective construction of spaces: perceptions, memories, and representations; and (4) spatial practices, especially usages of spaces . Going back to Bachmann-Medick (2010), we can explain the far-reaching consequences of such a new understanding of space: The most consequential development in the study of culture is the emergence of a modified understanding of space . The traditional understanding of space as a container of traditions, of cultural identity and even homeland is superseded . Instead, now space is seen as a factor of the shaping of social relations, differences and entanglements (…)16

Such a broad definition of space in the new cultural history goes beyond the conception of space in the recent theorising of space in metal studies, because it also stresses the historicity of spaces . The historian’s gaze enriches current metal theorising through a historical reading of a long-range perspective that includes spaces in diachronic transformations . That said, we can interpret the history of metal in Europe, and Europe in metal, as such a spatial history in which Europe as a cultural notion of space was constructed in metal networks since 1970 . At this point, we now know what space is in the new cultural history, drawing inspiration from the spatial turn . Space is a cultural and social production, and as such also a cultural and social reality . This reality is not permanent or ‘natural’ but changes in the course of history . That was the central insight of the spatial turn in history . Hence Europe in metal sound history must also be considered as a space that is constructed in discourse . The fundamental questions here are: What is space in metal and how can we perceive Europe as a space in metal? Which established categories does metal have to grasp Europe as a space and how does this affect the history of the metal ear?

16

Author’s translation .

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What Is Space in Metal?

Reflecting on the character of space and spatial framing in metal culture, we first go back to the notion of scene(s), which generally is used for the imagination of space in the emerging field of metal studies . In their influential theory of metal scene transformation, Wallach and Levine (2011, p . 118) defined scene(s) in this way: We regard metal scenes as loosely bounded functional units containing a finite number of participants at any one time . (…) 1 . They act as conduits to the global circulation of metal sounds and styles . 2 . They provide gathering places for the collective consumption of metal artefacts and the display of metal-related fashion and expertise . 3 . They provide sites for local performance and artefactual production . At this point some interaction with the larger economic order of society becomes unavoidable, and scenic institutions become vital . 4 . They promote local artists to the larger network of scenes . These promotional aims are not usually oriented towards commercial interests and are rarely focused on one single, exceptional band . (…) .17

Wallach and Levine claim this to be a functionalist definition of scene modification . To be interested in scene transformation is, in fact, a historical question . Arguably, their definition of the spatial framing of scene(s) remains rather ahistorical, since it only mentions local sites of consumption, performance, production, and promotion . This definition does not describe how spatial framings change in the long run – which also is of interest . Similarly, other recent theorising on scene(s) keep their concept of space restricted to the analysis of always present scene spaces (Baulch, 2007; Brown et al ., 2016b; Gardenour Walter et al ., 2016; Kahn-Harris, 2007; Straw, 1991; Wallach & Levine, 2011; Wallach et al ., 2011) . The spatial turn in history gives us a temporally and historically more accurate notion of space and European spatial framing . In her cited concept of space, Rau stated four essential qualities of spatial analysis in history . We must consider metal’s spaces in all four dimensions: (1) types and configurations of spaces; (2) spatial dynamics, such as the emergence, change, or dissolution of spaces; (3) the subjective construction of spaces: perceptions, memories, and representations; and (4) spatial practices, especially of usages of space . In Rau’s reading of space, we find a whole new dimension of historicity, also applicable to the history of European metal culture . Most of all, the emphasis of spatial dynamics (emergence, change, dissolution of spaces) in history modifies metal studies’ concepts of scenes, in a way that we additionally embrace the spatial dynamics of

17

Italics in the original .

What Is Space in Metal?

scenes . Unambiguously, Europe is a space that was permanently present in metal history since 1970, and we do not yet know how this space emerged, changed, or persisted in metal . Furthermore, Rau’s focus on memory and representation of spaces adds to current research . Kahn-Harris’ (2014, 2016) concept of ‘Metal beyond Metal’ and his claim for reflexive memory building, both by metal agents and metal scholars, could integrate such a modified historical notion of space . Let us apply the four dimensions to the cultural production of space in metal history in Europe . (1) First, the types and configurations of spaces in metal are manifold . They include all the material spaces such as concert sites, pubs, stores, record studios, and private residences, but also imagined spaces, such as nations and Europe . (2) The spatial dynamics of metal are virtually unresearched at this point . Scholarship since the 1990s stresses the European birth, then global diaspora and globalisation of metal, but as a matter fact, we do not have a theory of global and European mental maps of metal . The dynamics of the spaces within those metal maps are a key desideratum . (3) Thirdly, the subjective construction of spaces happens in all personal narratives of metal (Rowe, 2017), in lyrics, in personal accounts by fans, in scenic media, and last but not least in metal scholarship, when metal academics describe representations and memories of metal (Brown, 2018; Kahn-Harris, 2016) . (4) Finally, space is a question of spatial practices . There is a whole range of spatial practices in metal culture: Performative and physical rituals like headbanging, mosh pits, and air guitar movements at concerts happen within spaces; they claim space (for the example of mosh pits in grindcore, see Riches, 2015) . Also, the fact that in 2016, in the Styrian capital of Graz, Austria, the newly established Metal on the Hill extreme metal festival took place in the historic centre of the town was a matter of spatial practice: extreme metal claimed and received space (see chapter 17) . Tours with artists, fans, and other metal actors travelling in coaches and planes through European space are spatial practicing . In short, space in metal is the cultural production of spatial imaginations on a local, regional, national, European, and global scale, and (1) has distinct spatial configurations; (2) is characterised by distinct spatial dynamics; (3) knows unique ways of the subjective construction of space; and (4) developed spatial practices of its own . Metal discourse, also in Europe, was able to construct space and historically modify it in its five decades of history . We can analyse metal’s space more accurately relying on those four modes of historical spatial explanation . Nonetheless, the final question is still open at this point: Which spatial category, which is established in the cultural production of space in metal, is capable of theorising all four features of metal’s space in Europe? I propose the notion of the tour as such a major spatial concept of metal’s sonic knowledge .

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The Tour as the Central Spatial Category of Sonic Knowledge

We are looking for a concept of space, which meets the demands described above . Again, this should also be a notion which is established and used in metal and metal studies . I assume that the tour is the spatial notion we are searching for . As a rule, in the album-tour cycle, where every newly released record is followed by a tour – at least in the case of major bands, but usually also in the case of underground acts . The album is therefore the necessary temporal category of sonic knowledge, and it is intrinsically linked to the notion of the tour . This is not everything . Usually, fans, artists, and the media remember important tours and concerts as part of their narratives of metal history . That is already an indication of the importance of tours in the subjective construction of space . Drawing on the spatial turn, we can give a detailed description of the tour as a spatial concept . In fact, a tour is nothing other than the repetition of a highly ritualised historic event – the concert – on a spatial journey (Diaz-Bone, 2010, pp . 304–307; Riches, 2015; Roccor, 1998a, pp . 136–141; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 199–235) . Artists, the media, and fans move through the space the tour covers, and thus also through the established mental maps of metal culture . The crucial point is that the tour consists of the repetition of the same immensely ritualised and preformatted spatial event of the concert . Usually occurring in the evening, the event is repeated on an almost daily base . The tour not only shapes today’s forms of spatial movements of artists, which have been established for centuries (e . g . circuses, etc .) . The Grand Tour to Southern Europe was also a compulsory concept of knowledge for elites since Renaissance times (Pieper & Imorde, 2008) . The Grand Tour was connected to ideas of research, intercultural exchange, and education . The tour in heavy metal culture is a genuinely spatial concept – and a crucial category of metal’s agents’ experiences of space and ‘doing space’ . During tours, the artists’ entourages move through the space the tour covers . Thus, in many cases the tour not only covers spaces but even discovers spaces . In a very literal sense, this was true in the historical examples of first tours behind the Iron Curtain before 1989, for example the already mentioned Iron Maiden concert in Warsaw in 1984 . Another case was the first tours of American thrash metal bands such as Slayer and Metallica in Europe in the mid-1980s . In those cases, the tour even became an epistemological spatial concept that produced new knowledge in metal . Fans saw their idols for the first time, and bands could visit and learn about new towns and venues . This logical spatial structure of the tour, as a planned and highly rationalised journey through a space, which must be imagined, apportioned, planned, and mentally integrated prior to the tour itself, is deeply rooted in metal history . Here again, the standardised character of performing the same historical event in many different places and connecting those places on metal’s mental maps is what is so important . If we take up Rau’s historical definition of space, we acknowledge how fundamentally important the tour is as the major spatial category of metal’s sonic knowledge .

The Tour as the Central Spatial Category of Sonic Knowledge

(1) To begin with, the tour, which follows a new album, is the central form in which bands and fans imagine the spatial configurations and types of spaces in metal history . Reflecting and experiencing all the spaces on the long journeys on highways and in airplanes makes metal agents conceptualise the types and configurations of spaces during tours . For instance, the first American thrash metal tours in Europe doubtlessly made fans and artists aware of the spaces available in metal culture at this point (spaces like America, Germany, or Europe); and also of spaces which were newly discovered for metal’s spatial arrangements . The tour embraces the configurations and types of spaces in metal history . (2) Secondly, we consider spatial dynamics . This is crucial for metal studies’ current paradigms because those dynamics enrich scholarship’s concept of historicity, the changing of spaces in the mode of longue durée Once again, the example of touring the Eastern Bloc before 1989 is important . Touring Poland, Hungary, then Russia itself during the final phase of the Cold War materially and in personam (artists, fans, other actors who toured) dynamised metal’s spaces . It started to integrate Eastern Europe . The tour describes spatial dynamics in these ways . Also, the tour as a concept is very well suited for a new historicity in metal studies due to the fact that, as a spatial notion, it is logically connected to the album as the central temporal concept . Connecting both should make us more aware of historicity . (3) Thirdly, when thinking of the subjective constructions of spaces, these constructions also happened and happen in forms of utilising the concept of the tour in order to remember and represent the spaces of metal, for instance in personal and individual accounts . As mentioned previously, fans and artists frequently are asked about their favourite tours . Usually, they reply by describing their favourite tours subjectively as accounts of spatial journeys . Concerning this dimension, the tour fulfils the function of enabling personal narratives of the subjective construction of metal’s space in memory and the representation of spaces . (4) Finally, the question of spatial practices in metal touring is likely the most evident one . The tour itself as a journey through Europe or parts of European spaces is a spatial practice . The concerts in different places happen in different local spaces . The attendance of concerts includes spatial practices of backstage, stage and spectator spaces, and their separation, which Weinstein described accurately (Weinstein, 2000, pp . 199–235) . The tour consisting of the ritual of the concert describes these spatial practices in historical terms . To recap, in all four important dimensions of historical space in metal’s European sonic knowledge, the tour should be seen as the central spatial category . It allows us to identify the types and configuration in metal history since 1970 . It moreover enables metal and metal studies to experience and conceptualise the spatial dynamics of this sonic discourse . Additionally, subjective constructions of spaces in memory and representation processes heavily rely on the notion of the tour . Last, the tour is the central concept in the description of ‘doing space’ in spatial practices in metal history .

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I presume that the tour as a diachronic series of the same historic event, most of the time following the release of an album, is the major spatial category . Tours describe how Europe was subculturally integrated, how images of Europeanness and metalness were linked in the development, stasis, or expansion of mental maps . Thus, it would be a tempting academic enterprise to write a history of the mental maps of touring in Europe since 1970 . It is that mental map from which the history of the European metal ear has flourished .

Chapter 8 Thinking Conceptually The Pentagon of Sonic Knowledge Theory

In the six previous sections, I have discussed, described, and defined the individual categories of sonic knowledge as a theory of the history of metal in Europe since 1970 . In this discussion, the cultural turn with its emergence of the new cultural history at the end of the 1980s and moreover the discourse of sound history was the point of departure . The new cultural history’s poststructuralist, de-centred, post-colonial, and transnational paradigm of history seeks to find out about the construction of meaning in metal history . All forms of metalness, sense making in metal history over the past five decades, are potential directions for research . Focussing on sense making, we saw processes of identity and scene building in the long temporal range spanning decades, always connected to processes of othering, as the main interest of such a perspective . Thus, topics like inclusion and exclusion, truth and authenticity, gender and sexuality, emotions, war, violence, performativity, and many other forms of meaning construction in scene-related histories are of empirical interest . This characterisation of sonic knowledge theory’s foundation led me to identify the individual terminological categories that constitute its paradigm . I have found five important categories of such knowledge, the terminological web of which, with its knots and edges, defines a first version of a historical theory of metal in Europe . (1) First, sonic emplotment captures metal’s modes of historical storytelling, its narrations and narratives – in lyrics, aesthetics, performances, etc ., all kept together by metal’s global character as a sonic discourse . I understand narratives and narrations as knowledge structures describing how histories are told . Metal is a way to tell history sonically, applying its distinct rules and forms . The notion’s terminological novelty lies in the fact that it is deeply grounded in recent historical theorising (Ankersmit et al ., 2009; Doran, 2013; Iggers et al ., 2017; Kuukkanen, 2015; Partner & Foot, 2013; White, 1973) . Sonic emplotment conceptualises narratives . (2) The second discovery was the one of identities as fluid structures of metalness in Europe . At first glance, it might appear paradoxical to speak of ‘fluid structures’, as

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structuralism seems to indicate a non-temporal view . However, keeping the most recent research on identities and identitary practices in mind, we remember that identity building is always a matter of both stabilisation and destabilisation in discourse . We analysed such dynamics in the examples of Queen with singer Freddie Mercury and Behemoth with singer/guitarist ‘Nergal’ . Historical metalness was and is sometimes more stable, later or earlier more fragile, fluid, and destabilised (Butler J ., 1990, 1993; Ghandi, 1998; Nancy, 1993; Marchart, 2010; Muñoz, 1999) . All metal identities in Europe since the 1970s, constructed by scenic identitary practices, are to be historically conceptualised as such fluid structures of sonic knowledge Belonging to scenes, fandom and the like are sometimes shaky and contradictory histories . (3) Thirdly, I examined Europeanness in the continental circulation of sonic knowledge . I discussed the modern concepts of Europeanness, transnationalism, and entanglement . Recent research proved Europeanness to always be the resultant product of the continental circulation of ideas, material goods, and people (Schmale, 2000, 2008, 2016; Pichler, 2016c, 2018b) . Europeanness is an issue of discursive construction, shaped in the diachronic histories of regional, national, and continental circulation of images of Europeanness – also in metal sound history . Most probably, unconscious and intuitive but influential constructions of Europeanness are realities in metal . They build images, metaphors, maps, spaces, and times of Europeanness that structurally stem from the circulation of artists, fans, mediators, texts, music, images, and practices in European networks of scenes since 1970 . Europeanness, transnationalism, and entanglement are theoretically related to the continental circulation of sonic knowledge . (4) I proceeded by looking at the question of time in metal history . For historians, scientific knowledge of time and temporal experience is at the very heart of their disciplinary expertise . Thus a European cultural history of metal is obliged to define its own concept and category of time . This category must tackle metal’s time in a threefold way . It is to be a linguistic device that is close to or even stems from metal’s scene-related speech; it has to be a term having a logic that catches up with what we analysed as the basic historic logic of time (the loss of logical reliability in the progress of time from the past over the present to the future); and thirdly, it is required to be a notion of temporal experience connecting scene and scene-external cultures . We discovered the album to be this crucial category . Due to its functions as a linguistic element of temporal scenic speech, its ability to logically denote the basic character of the movement of time, and its bridge-building between scenes and to metal’s exterior it is the central temporal category of sonic knowledge . The album structures, apportions, and lets us experience metal’s time . The album as the central temporal category of sonic knowledge could be one of the innovations introduced by the historian’s gaze into metal studies . (5) Fifth, I asked for space in metal . I have interpreted space as a social construction, drawing inspiration from the spatial turn as a ‘sub-turn’ of the cultural turn in history . We found out that space is not only a geographic ‘container’ of metalness and Europeanness, rather it is much more a social space, changing in the course of history . For

Thinking Conceptually

instance, the pre-1989 European space of the Cold War in metal culture differed heavily from post-1989 European space because of the crumbling of the Iron Curtain . Taking up Rau’s (2013) comprehensive historical definition of space, I intended to construct a category of space that meets four demands . It must include the types and configurations of space in metal, its dynamics (emergence, change, or dissolution of spaces), the subjective construction of metal space (perception, memory, and representation of spaces), and spatial practices (for instance, headbanging, and forming mosh pits at concerts) . We identified the tour as the central spatial category of sonic knowledge that meets all four requirements . It allows us to theorise the types and configurations in European metal history since 1970 . It enables metal and metal studies to experience and conceptualise the spatial dynamics of this discourse . Moreover, subjective constructions of spaces in memory and representation processes rely on the notion of the tour . Also, the tour is the central concept describing doing space in spatial practices in this metal history . The tour as a diachronic series of the same historic event, most of the time following the release of an album, is the major spatial category . Tours describe how Europe was subculturally integrated . Spatial sonic knowledge in metal means knowing tours . At this point of reflection, I can summarise my theory, the concept of sonic knowledge as a first attempt at theoretically underpinning metal history in Europe since 1970 . First, sonic knowledge is characterised by sonic emplotment, encompassing narratives of metal and in metal . Second, such knowledge is determined by the fluid structures of metalness, describing identities and identitary practices . Third, Europeanness, to be understood as the result of continental circulation of sonic knowledge, is of equal importance . Then, the album, forming the central temporal category of our theory, is of utmost significance for a professional European history of metal . Fifth and finally, the tour is the major spatial category of sonic knowledge . All taken together, the terminological network of the five defined notions, with all of its knots and edges, forms a theoretical pentagon which theorises European metal history as a history of the metal ear since 1970 . This is the pentagon of sonic knowledge:

Fig. 3 The pentagon of sonic knowledge [created by the author].

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Looking at this figure, the arrows always mutually and reciprocally linking both categories connected, each category also being in the pentagon’s network linked to every single other of the five, the pentagon delineates and defines a theoretical realm of its own . There is an inside and an outside of sonic knowledge . Sonic knowledge is all the historical space and time, which develops and can be analysed when we think of European metal sound history as the history within this pentagon . This history can be identified and differentiated from other histories . It is the history of the metal ear in Europe . So, I think of it as a history that develops out of the web of the categories of sonic emplotment, metalness, Europeanness, the album, and the tour . By using sonic emplotment, this history features narratological self-reflexivity . Grasping historical forms of metalness, it captures historical varieties of scenic identities . Stressing the Europeanness of metal, this history furthermore defines a European yet non-Eurocentric narrative . Looking at metal’s time through the album, I relate this as a history of independent temporality, fruitfully exploiting what I called the historian’s gaze . Finally, relating this history’s space through the prism of the tour, we gain more historico-spatial reflexivity . Metal’s history in Europe since the 1970s – according to my proposal – can start to be told as this history .

Part 2 Albums, Tours, Events, and Practices Empirical Examples of Sonic Knowledge in European Metal History

Chapter 9 The Construction of Metal’s Time Concept in Europe Black Sabbath’s Debut Album (1970)

Questioning the Traditional Narrative

On Friday, 13 February 1970, Black Sabbath released their self-titled debut album . Already choosing the date of a Friday the 13th shows that their record company Vertigo was aware of their image of darkness, occultism, and satanism, constructed as an anti-pole to the hippie movement . Usually, the album’s is described as the ‘birth of heavy metal’ . This is the traditional narrative . It tells us that Black Sabbath should be considered as the ‘first heavy metal album’ . At least two generations of journalists, mediators, and metalheads grew up with this narrative . All of them developed their own position in the history of metal in relation to this mystified classic (for this narrative, see Iommi, 2011; Osbourne & Aires, 2009; Seward, 2004) . Critic Steve Huey (n . d .) recaptured the traditional history in his review: Black Sabbath’s debut album is the birth of heavy metal as we now know it . Compatriots like Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple were already setting new standards for volume and heaviness in the realms of psychedelia, blues-rock, and prog rock . Yet of these metal pioneers, Sabbath are the only one whose sound today remains instantly recognisable as heavy metal, even after decades of evolution in the genre .

This narrative is an invention of tradition – though it seems to aptly capture history, at least at first glance . I consider it an essentialist account of metal history . Metal studies has started its deconstruction . Anthropological, sociological, musicological, philosophical, and narratological studies show that it was constructed ex post, underpinning metal’s self-mystification and othering (Barnett, 2017; Cope, 2010; Elflein, 2010, 2018; Irwin, 2013; Poole, 2017; Roccor, 1998b; Weinstein, 1991) . Not always acknowledged by metal research in languages other than German, combining formal musicological analysis and a discursive approach, Dietmar Elflein (2010, pp . 97–134, 2018)

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provided an important account of Black Sabbath’s influence . Furthermore, Elflein (2011) authored an individual analysis of the album’s title track, which also questions the standard reading . However, Cope’s (2010) view, from a musicological perspective, re-confirms the group’s role as the ‘inventors of metal’ . Indeed, Cope provides a thoughtful argument for this hypothesis (summarised well in his introduction, pp . 1–6) . Hence, research on the album is in the ambivalent position of attempting to question the established narrative yet also giving attention to its importance in heavy metal’s genesis in Europe . At this stage, there is no consensus on the question of how this importance took shape and how it is to be interpreted historically . It is noteworthy that Birmingham, as Black Sabbath’s hometown, is therefore often considered as something like the ‘cradle of heavy metal’ (Cope 2010, pp . 7–42) . Moreover, Birmingham is located in Great Britain, which was in the process of aligning politically and economically with the then European Communities in the late 1960s . The UK joined the supranational European club in 1973 . Hence metal originated in an overall context of growing Europeanisation . This is the point of departure for my empirical discussion . I want to look at this album through sonic knowledge’s temporal notion of the album . At the time of writing this chapter, the author returned to his role as a metalhead himself and gave this mystified record several sessions of listening . As mentioned in any writings on the record, the album begins with the sound of rain, thunder, and a bell; the following first playing of the title track’s crushingly heavy main riff appears to sonically mark the exact temporal point of the birth of heavy metal (Cope, 2010; Elflein, 2011) . Nonetheless, this auto-ethnographical remark does not satisfyingly answer the questions raised by the sonic knowledge notion of the album . The album was released on 13 February 1970, but what time defines the time of content of this heavy metal record? What about its time as the historical integration of aspects of heavy riffing in rock music before? What about the integration of ‘gothic’ narratives before (Spracklen & Spracklen, 2018)? What of the references to broader European history after the climax, early decline, and critique of the hippie culture around 1968? Four Modes of Time

Attempting to answer such questions, Black Sabbath is a temporal signifier of European metal history, which works on at least four levels and modes of time: (1) its factual release time in 1970; (2) the content time of its music, lyrics, images, etc .; (3) its integration and rewriting of the time of heritage of previous European culture and its context of European and global history in 1970; (4) moreover, its role as a materialised cognitive tool that temporally portions, dissects, and establishes metal history for metalheads, artists, and the media . Next, I will look at all four dimensions and their interplay .

our Modes of Time

(1) The album was issued on Vertigo Records (Black Sabbath, 1970) . The release date seems to be a clear historic event lacking any potential for misinterpretation or controversial temporal readings . The album was on shop displays from that day onwards – and that seems to be all the available and necessary information to describe this mode of time . Applying the historian’s gaze of sonic knowledge theorising, this is not convincing . That was an event in the ‘objective’ time of McTaggart’s B-series . It is ‘prior to’ or ‘later than’ in relation to other events in metal history: Led Zeppelin’s self-titled first album was released in the US on 12 January 1969 and in the UK on 31 March 1969 . Later in rock history, Black Sabbath’s famous follow-up to their debut, Paranoid, was released in the UK on 18 September 1970 and in the US on 7 January 1971 . In the B-series, Led Zeppelin debuted before Black Sabbath Paranoid’s massive success happened after Sabbath’s debut . In the B-series, the release of the album Black Sabbath is a historic event of certainty which enables all agents and discourses related to metal culture since then to give an ‘objective’ start to metal history . Nonetheless, this certainty is an ex-post construction . This ex-post construction is revealed historically by also putting the event in the perspective of the A-series of subjective time . In this series, an event is defined as past, present, or future: Today, the event is a part of our past . When the band recorded the album on a single day on 16 October 1969, the release date was the future . This uncertainty of the event, its changing character progressing from a factual and safe past, over an already less reliable present time, towards an open future makes the event one which can be reread, re-interpreted, or maybe in a few hundred years even forgotten . History combines both perspectives, the certainty of the B-series and the uncertainty of the A-series . The result is a view of the album, based on temporal logic, which characterises Black Sabbath’s first appearance in the European hard rock scene as an event that at the same time was indisputable/certain and disputable/uncertain . Thus, for a historian, the 13 February release was not only the debut of a pioneering and genre-defining band; much more, it was a historic event that introduced into emerging metal culture the complexities of the synchronic co-presence of temporal certainty and uncertainty . This event opened up a time sphere which produces a reliable starting point for narratives, and simultaneously options of rereading, changing, deleting, even forgetting the event . This provides us with a strong empirical indication that the album was not the ‘birth of heavy metal’ but the birth of a heavy metal time concept of a parallel coexistence of certainty and uncertainty . (2) I now turn to the time that is recorded, reproduced and conserved on the album, i . e . its content time . I do not have to go into full detail about the global discussion of the track listing, the lyrics, or the production . My interest lies in viewing the content time of the album – all its songs, sounds, lyrics, visuals, cover art, etc . – as a temporal mode that in strange ways was ‘frozen’ in both the A-series and the B-series . For a historian, the interesting and crucial aspect is that this dimension of time does not change in history . What was recorded in Regent Sound Studios in London on 16 October 1969 remains the same every time, for everybody who listens to the record, female or male,

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old or young, metalhead or metal detractor, musician or not, veteran or ‘newbie’ in heavy metal scene (Guibert & Guibert, 2016; Rowe, 2017) . Of course, it is technologically possible to edit, change, or delete the album’s content time . However, that very rarely happens in metal culture . Metal knows re-releases, re-recordings, and re-masters, nonetheless the time conserved on an important album has a fetish-like, idolic, and religious character . It must be conserved . It is a metalhead’s alleged duty and learnt habitus to adore, protect and worship the time, which is burned onto the album . Analysing the time on Black Sabbath, one gains a surprising insight . All of the seven tracks featured on the album’s first pressing, with a running time of 38 minutes and 12 seconds, have a specific function and role in European metal history’s sonic knowledge . They form minutes of fetish-building, deontic worshipping, and the establishing of a religious time . In this mode of content time, the time ‘frozen’ on the album becomes a time that can be connected to the fetish-like, ritualistic, and thus religious features of metal . How this early metal worked sonically and from a musicological-analytical point of view is amazingly well explained by Elflein (2010, pp . 97–134) and Cope (2010) . On Black Sabbath, this means of temporal knowledge and experience had a radically new facet: it established the discursive connection between metal’s temporal continuum and metal’s religiousness . The worshipping of the music is intrinsically linked to metal’s concept of time . This lets me suggest that this album served in European metal history, and beyond, as the one that introduced into the new genre a temporally grounded form of religiousness . (3) The third dimension of this album’s time concerns its contextualisation in European and global history . Two years after the emblematic year of 1968, hippie culture and the counter-cultures of the late 1960s slipped into crisis (Gildea et al ., 2013) . In European integration history, the time from 1969 to 1973 was one of pivotal dynamics . Three years after the ‘Empty Chair Crisis’ of 1965/66, during which Charles de Gaulle blocked the European institutions by withdrawing French officials, the Hague Summit (1/2 December 1969) was a breakthrough . Under the auspices of the catchphrases of ‘completion, enlargement, deepening’, the European leaders convened in The Hague . ‘Completion’ meant the completion of the single market for the community, ‘enlargement’ meant the accession of new member states (predominantly the UK, which as noted above became a member state in 1973), ‘deepening’ signified intensified economic and monetary cooperation . So, the European context was one of coping with crisis under the auspices of the catchwords of completion, enlargement, and deepening . Black Sabbath coincided with European crisis and re-adaption . On a global level, the year 1970 brought changes in the bipolar system of the Cold War . This year saw the first intra-German summits between the leaders of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic (Spohr & Reynolds, 2016, pp . 15–42) . In 1972, there were summits between American and Soviet as well as American and Chinese leaders (ibid ., 2016, pp . 43–94) .

our Modes of Time

As was already mentioned in my introduction, those years were moreover the era of the emergence of environmental protection movements and green parties, the discourse of which was heavily centred around the toxicity of heavy metals, polluting our world (Guha, 1999; Hawken, 2007) . Black Sabbath appeared in the discourse in a period which was adapting its European and global mental maps to a changed Cold War . Also, this new political culture promoted awareness of the toxicity of heavy metals such as lead – and soon this was also the name of a dark, menacing, perhaps ‘evil’ and ‘satanic’ form of loud and powerful rock music . The album’s emotional landscapes appear as a sonic reflection of this context . Current research reflects this contextualisation when asking for the origins of heavy metal (Barnett, 2017; Cope, 2010; Elflein, 2010; Irwin, 2013 Roccor, 1998b; Weinstein, 1991) . Yet, one can dig deeper and gain a better and clearer understanding when reflecting upon how the group’s first long-play recording took up, re-wrote, or further added to European cultural heritage . The albums’ lyrics of darkness, occultism, and depression were not innovative per se, because such topics were on the agenda of rock culture since the decade before . A novelty, indeed, was the sonic form of the emphatic focus on the metal riff as the shape in which the topics were treaded, narrated, and presented as what was to develop into the culture of metalness (Cope, 2010; Elflein, 2010) . Furthermore, the album re-reflects the tradition of gothic culture since at least the 17th century with writers like Walpole, Irving, Baudelaire, Hoffmann, Poe, Lovecraft, and Shelley (Baddeley, 2002; Bardine, 2009; Brill, 2008; Davenport-Hines, 1999; Hodkinson, 2002; Spracklen & Spracklen, 2018) . Within this framing of metal time between contextual novelty and heritage as tradition, the two cover songs on the album are crucial . Covers represent a very interesting historical form . Covers take a sonic form – a song – with all its time and re-perform it at a new point in the A-series and B-series . On their debut album, Black Sabbath did so with ‘Evil Woman’ by the American band Crow (originally 1968) and ‘Warning’ by British Ansley Dunbar Retaliation (originally 1967) The most notable temporal and historic effect of both covers remains that it was the re-performance by Black Sabbath which made both songs and their original interpreters in the first place a part of metal history . Hence, the cover as a kind of sonic intertextuality (Schermann, 2018, pp . 91– 94) made it temporally possible for the covering group, Black Sabbath, to appear as the inventors of metal by using rock heritage; at the same time the covers allowed the covered artists, Crow and Ansley Dunbar Retaliation, to not be forgotten and become a part of metal tradition . In this mutual dependence, the time of the cover is a sonic form of intertextuality we could probably even coin ‘intersonicality’ . The cover goes back to tradition and simultaneously pushes aggressively towards the future by showing that the new artists, Black Sabbath, are worthy of interpreting heritage, an enrichment of tradition . In this third mode of time, Black Sabbath’s debut album absorbed the European and global time of crisis between 1968 and 1970 . Moreover, the long-player temporally

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put into this context the tradition of gothic culture and the already established rock music of the 1960s . Heritage was embossed on the new contextual time . Within the ambivalent interplay of new context and traditional heritage, the cover was the crucial nexus . On the album, linked by two covers, a specific kind of the interconnection of novelty and tradition was born . Thus, at this crucial stage of metal’s past, tradition and innovation were positioned as an ambivalent temporal couple at the heart of European metal’s time . In this respect, Black Sabbath was the album that gave birth to the specific form of relation between conservative tradition and contextual novelty in metal’s time concept . It is an empirical example of what the German historian Achim Landwehr (Landwehr, 2016, pp . 149–165) called ‘chronoference’ – the relation between the current present and absent past times . (4) The final and fourth reference to time, connected to the modes above, is its functioning as a time-creating, epistemic tool of knowledge . Today in 2020, and for a long time in metal discourse history, the record has been considered to be a foundational classic . This narrative is a time-creating social narrative . It constitutes all three times: its release date of 1970, its content time, its reference to context and heritage . All of this became audible and perceptible via the social creation of time . The Birth of Heavy Metal’s Time Concept in Europe

As a tool of knowledge, this record has served a multitude of purposes: it gives heavy metal a narratological beginning on 13 February 1970, which also makes distinguishable a ‘pre-metallic’ period before that date and a ‘metallic’ period after . Also, it established the temporal connection between the time ‘frozen’ in the content of the album and metal culture’s autopoietic self-worshipping . Additionally, it introduced metal’s form of the amalgamation of traditional conservativism and contextual novelty, in the ‘chronoference’ of two cover songs . Black Sabbath as an artistic collective, then journalists, metalheads, and many other agents have constructed the album Black Sabbath as an epistemological tool, which establishes, dissects, apportions, and initiates metal’s time in the mentioned manner . On balance, this empirical discussion gives clues of a different, more self-reflexive historical reading, through the lens of the album as the major temporal category of sonic knowledge . Using this notion, one can deconstruct the traditional narrative of the ‘first heavy metal album’ and the ‘birth of metal’ and also acknowledge its important historical significance . Many facets of heavy metal had existed before . What had not really existed was the new time concept in rock discourse, which this album and its discourse of reception introduced . This time concept gave metal a reasonable starting point (however constructive it remains), established the connection between content time and the religiousness of metal, and allowed the ambivalent interplay of conservativism and progressiveness to

The Birth of Heavy Metal’s Time Concept in Europe

emerge . In fact, those are some of the essential facets of the generic code of metal described by early metal studies (Berger, 1999; Roccor, 1998b; Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 1991) . Most likely, the code itself is the historical result of the time concept . Historically, I conclude that Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath should be considered the emerging point of metal’s concept of time . This new time concept can be analysed empirically through the category of the album . It would be tempting to compare metal’s system of time to the ones of other discourses of European and popular cultures in the 20th and 21st centuries . The album itself, as described theoretically above (see chapter 6), is the category that carries this time concept through metal history . The album was recorded in Great Britain, which was on its way to joining the then European Community, which happened in 1973 . Thus, this is an aspect of metal’s Europeanness precisely at the start of metal culture .

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Chapter 10 Rendering New Space on Europe’s Me(n)tal Map Motörhead’s ‘Classic’ Tours (1976–1982)

Fronted by singer and bass guitar player Ian Fraser ‘Lemmy’ Kilmister (1945–2015), metal culture sees one of its defining bands in the UK’s Motörhead . Also broadly popular, Lemmy usually is portrayed as a cliché of a heavy metal and rock musician personality (Pichler, 2016b; more broadly, see Diaz-Bohne, 2010, pp . 246–267; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 59–92) . For instance, in the foreword by German punk musician ‘Bela B .’ (from Die Ärzte) to the German translation of Kilmister’s autobiography, he is called the ‘personified conscience of rock’n’roll’ (Kilmister & Garza, 2006, p . 2) . Analogically to the traditional narrative of Black Sabbath’s debut’s history, this builds a myth of metal discourse . This narrative participates in metal’s image building, moreover the narrative’s promotion has become a crucial commercial strategy in Motörhead’s marketing efforts – despite the group’s disbanding after Kilmister’s death . Sonic knowledge theory’s notion of emplotment captures this narratological dimension . Moreover, current metal music studies critically acknowledges the group’s role in metal history (Roccor, 1998a, p . 42–44; Weinstein, 2000, 2015, pp . 235, 241, 254; Elflein, 2010) . ‘Classic’ Tours

In this chapter, I empirically discuss another dimension of Motörhead’s history . I recollect the band’s tours between 1976 and 1982 . The concert journeys of that period are revealed to be important and lucid examples of metal’s emerging European spatial framing, the emerging scene’s European mental maps from the late 1970s to the early 1980s . They demonstrated how tours shaped space, created metal’s Europeanness and Europe’s metalness . They were processes of the continental circulation of agents, material and immaterial goods in discourse, thereby adding to the emerging fluid structures of metalness and Europeanness in early metal scene(s) .

‘Classic’ Tours

Being founded by Kilmister in 1975, the years from 1976 to 1982 were Motörhead’s ‘classic’ period . Once again, here we find the notion of classicness in all its constructivity . Nonetheless, those were the years of the band’s most successful line-up . In 1975, drummer Phil ‘Philthy Animal’ Taylor (1954–2015) joined the group, which was completed by new guitar player ‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke (1950–2018) a year later . That line-up released six studio albums, among them the successful Ace of Spades (1980), furthermore the well-known live record No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith (1981) . The fact that today none of the members of that manifestation of Motörhead is still alive catalysed the band’s mystical status inside and outside the metal scene(s) around the globe (Pichler, 2016b) . In this respect of myth construction, I want to use the notion of the tour as sonic knowledge’s most important category of spatial framing to examine the concert journeys of the ‘classic’ period . The empirical fact that the band’s official website provides all people interested in Motörhead’s history with an extensive ‘definite’, seemingly complete online-catalogue of their tours (Loi, n . d .)18 in chronological order since 1975 forms another indication of the significance of these years’ touring activities and of tours in general . The band started their concert history in 1975, and the ‘classic’ line-up’s touring activities began in England in 1976 . In 1978, according to the mentioned tour history, the band debuted outside Britain and put on shows in France for the first time . The space of their touring network expanded and grew until 1982 . Finland, the Netherlands, and West Germany (all three in 1979), Ireland, Belgium, and Italy (all three in 1980), then Switzerland, Luxemburg, Sweden, and Spain (all four in 1981), and finally Denmark, Austria, and Croatia (all three in 1982, already after Eddie Clarke left the band in June 1982 and was replaced by Brian Robertson) became integrated areas of Motörhead’s European roadmap, putting cities as dots on it . In 1981 and 1982, they also went to the United States and Canada for a long tour, and also in 1982 to Japan for five performances . This allows me to assume an intrinsic, network-like connection between global and European spatial framing; perhaps similar to what Kahn-Harris (2007, p . 99) thought of when he illustrated the ‘hierarchies’ of scenes – global, European, national, regional, local – using the metaphor of nested Russian dolls . In total, in that period the band toured 15 European countries, performing almost 300 concerts on European soil . It is noteworthy that, as mentioned, the group performed a concert in socialist Yugoslavia in 1982, in the Croatian capital of Zagreb . Already since 1948, after Josip Broz Tito’s split with Stalin, the country was an important agent of the Non-Aligned Movement (Lees, 2010) . Also, current metal studies (as summarised by Brown et al ., 2016a, pp . 2–8) acknowledges parts of this history, but does not analyse the full implications of Europeanisation effects .

18

I will reference this source later .

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Subcultural European Integration: ‘Going East’

On balance, the subcultural European integration of space during their tours had a rather clear directional drive . The spatial framing had its source point in their home country (England), then concert by concert, tour by tour, their space enlarged predominantly to the east – but partially also west, south, and north . Hence, a direction of ‘going east’ proposes itself as the spatial key dynamic of the classic concert trips . However, the dynamics did not take a straightforward moving form but more of a ‘two steps forward, one step back’ approach in which the new space of Europeanness was absorbed into metal’s realm slowly, network-like, in concentric and oscillating circles – once more we are reminded of Kahn-Harris’ metaphor of the Russian dolls . Those were processes of continental circulation in discourse, constructing Europeanness . The augmentation of space paralleled with the emergence of the NWOBHM . Hence, this also was a new wave of European heavy metal . Interestingly, in contrast to this subcultural form of European integration on tour from 1976 to 1982, for the broader European integration in the European Community this was a phase of slowing down, crisis, and institutional stagnation . The German economist Herbert Giersch (1985) introduced the notion of ‘Eurosclerosis’ to make sense of this period and describe how markets and economies of the community were hindered by overregulation, consequential unemployment, and the slow creation of new jobs . Eurosclerosis is a metaphorical narrative of stagnation and crisis prior to a new phase of dynamics with the accession of Greece (1981), Spain, and Portugal (1986) . Moreover, 1986 was the year of the Single European Act, which was the treaty that paved the historical way towards the creation of the European Union with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 . Motörhead’s ‘going east’ paralleled Eurosclerosis, and hence as a dynamic framework of subcultural European integration, predated the new launch of broad European integration in the mid-1980s . Also, this supposed interrelatedness needs further research . Compare, for example, a ‘constitutional’ European treaty like the SEA with a series of concerts . Both are risky business endeavours, and they were both culturally relevant in the same way: They acted as events in the European space that accelerated cultural Europeanisation in all of its forms, including metal . As described in my theoretical definition, a tour is a diachronic series of the same historical event – the concert – over a certain period of time, put into a spatial shaping, creating new or re-affirming established spatial framings . Of course, the concerts on different tours varied, but for the duration of each individual tour it structurally and logically remained the same . In a review of No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith, which documents three concerts in England in 1981 after the release of the highly successful Ace of Spades in 1980, Sid Smith (2007) wrote:

Subcultural European Integration: ‘Going East’

Recorded in Leeds and at two sell-out concerts in Newcastle’s City Hall (…) this is the band in its natural element, on a concert stage in front of a horde of their adoring fans . (…) There are some live albums which magically capture the moment when everything comes right: the performances, the choice of material, the performances themselves, the crowd, and the whole convoluted backstory leading up to this very point . Whilst this falls short of that kind of classic status it nevertheless shows them at their peak enjoying a head-banging communion with their leather-clad kin . They would never again achieve the commercial return they did with this one but that doesn’t really matter . Their work here was done, having spawned a whole new metal genre and set an example of unparalleled excess which new generations would attempt to emulate .

The notion of ‘magic’ is not a scientific one . Looking at this review through the prism of my notion of the tour, I am inclined to give another reading . As a matter of fact, the tours after the release of Ace of Spades were the most successful ones and the band was able to represent its image of ‘the loudest band in the world’ on stage in the historical event of the concert . Yet what here became essentialised as ‘their peak’ is, interpreted in my tour terminology, a substantialisation of solid space, a creation of Motörhead’s spatial home in England . That building of a spatial home base happened, as it is told, in the narration of three concerts in their home country, in Leeds and Newcastle . Those touring activities as spatial practices were the springboard for more tours as journeys of subcultural European integration . In his autobiography, we find a striking passage where Lemmy describes how such discoveries of new European space presented themselves to him as a main agent of this spatialising, namely in a rather subtle and implicit, perhaps subconscious way . In 1979, as mentioned, his band played for the first time in Finland . These are Kilmister’s memories of that premiere: Some incidents stand out, though, and Finland’s Punkaharjuu Festival, which we played in June 1979, is certainly one of them . (…) It took place at the side of a lake, in a forest of pine and birch, like fucking Peer Gynt, you know . (…) We were given this terrible caravan as a dressing room . There was no cooling in it, and Finland in the summer is fucking hot with loads of mosquitoes flying around, not the frozen place it becomes in the dead of winter . (…) So we felt, well, we fucked up the caravan (…), so we had better disguise the fact by sailing it into the lake and setting it on fire – give it a Viking funeral (Kilmister & Garza, 2004, pp . 128–129) .19

For three reasons, this spatial memory, as a subjective construction of space by a crucial actor, illustrates how the emergence of new space worked . First, Kilmister does not

19

Italics in the original .

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mention or maybe does not even remember that that was their first gig in Finland . Second, nonetheless there is strong evidence that he had a feeling of novelty during that remembering, because he introduces Finland in the summer as supposedly unknown space to his readers, which he must compare to the well-known images of Peer Gynt . Third, in his auto-narrative, Finland gets a place on his European me(n)tal map by telling the only seemingly superficial and humorous story of the rock star who destroyed his caravan-as-dressing-room . In fact, the anecdote of the ‘Viking funeral’, which is nothing less than a cliché image of Northern Europe (Von Helden, 2017), introduces Finland as space (Karjalainen & Sipilä, 2016) . From this case, we gain important insights on the form of the augmentation of European space during tours . At least in this example, the integration of new, subcultural space happened unconsciously . Still, the novelty of the space newly discovered was the crucial dimension . The subjective construction of space, often in the seemingly innocent and superficial narratives of anecdotes, metaphors, and memories, is the practical form of integration of space into a tour’s Europeanness (Rau, 2013) . Austria, November 1982

We can grasp more profoundly the dynamics of European spaces in those years of Motörhead’s ‘classic’ tours by looking at the relation between the local and the European . In 1982, the band debuted in Austria . They played three gigs in total: one in Linz (in the venue of the Sporthalle, 4 November 1982), one in Pinkafeld (in the Martinihalle, 6 November 1982), and one in the country’s capital of Vienna (in the Stadthalle, 7 November 1982) . The three cities visited by the group are scattered over Austria’s northeast . In a review of the concert in Vienna published in the working-class newspaper Arbeiter-Zeitung (1982), which for over a century from 1889 to 1991 was the central newspaper of Austria’s social democrats, we read: Lukewarm Motörhead – thanks, that’s it! Saying that the audience was bad afterwards is the easiest excuse for any band . But even the most enthralled fan loses his enthusiasm when he is forced to wait for an excessive amount of time and is then presented with a lukewarm performance . That is why fans left the Stadthalle during Motörhead’s concert in droves, disappointed by the supposedly loudest band in the world, which was not even especially loud and did not deliver any action on stage . (…) Despite the fact that the fans sent on their sympathy for the three leather-clad men from England with the help of Austrian ‘No Bros’, who as the opening act made people stand on their chairs .20

20

Author’s translation, bold text in the original .

Enhancing the European Me(n)tal Map

In Vienna, the mentioned group No Bros from Innsbruck acted as Motörhead’s ‘special guests’ . No Bros had local and regional success in the early 1980s and are active again today . Furthermore, Castrum from the east of Austria were playing before them . In that concert critique, the supposed stars – Motörhead – who were on their first tour in Austria, are disparaged in favour of the local act, No Bros . This makes the review a narrative of the discovery of new European space in which the local dominates the European . From this finding, we can gain new empirical insights . The fact that the concert review was published in a working-class newspaper seems to confirm early metal’s working-class appeal (Roccor, 1998a, pp . 123–128; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 1–58) . From the point of view of European spatial framing, the more significant dimension remains that the local is constructed in interplay with the European . Empirically, that implies that discovering the European required a local spatial experience . This idea is further nourished by looking at the semiotic dimension of the concert in Vienna . A tour poster advertising the concert as the ‘sensational heavy metal event 1982’ is archived at ‘Wienbibliothek im Rathaus’ (Number One Music, 1982) . On the poster, as the contemporary visual representation introducing and constituting the concert, we find a clear hierarchical pyramid in which Motörhead’s logo is displayed larger than and superior to No Bros’ . Their name in turn is announced in larger type than Castrum’s . That imagination in discourse literally worked like a pyramid: Motörhead were the main agents of spatial discovery yet they logically needed the local opening acts at the base of the pyramid to be able to play at all . The pyramid, as a visualisation of the discovery of Vienna as Austria`s capital in Motörhead’s European mental map, could not have been built without the local . In this case, the group, at the climax of their success with the Ace of Spades album, discovered new European space by touring Austria, herein also relying on the force of the local . That a bootleg of the concert circulates on the internet gives these findings even stronger significance . Noteworthy and affirming our hypothesis, the tour poster is archived in a library that is situated in the Austrian capital’s town hall . This means that, as a subcultural event, the concert was considered ‘worthy’ of being stored in a library in the heart of Vienna . Metal reciprocally reached the formation of collective memory . Enhancing the European Me(n)tal Map

We can summarise our examination of Motörhead’s ‘classic’ tours . We know that this narrative of classicness, as any other myths in metal discourse, requires a deconstructivist historical approach . I employed such an approach by applying my notion of the tour . From this perspective, the tours between 1976 and 1982, having a stable status of the band’s collective in the most successful line-up, were projects and operations of spatial framing in metal history . Concert by concert, even song by song, the band act-

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ed as spatial discoverers who integrated new European space into their me(n)tal map . This implied reciprocal dynamics of metal’s Europeanness and Europe’s metalness . Taking up this definition of the tour, there are two important conceptual aspects that are the most striking ones in this empirical case . First, using Rau’s (2013) helpful definition of space, we ask for the dynamics of space to find out how metal’s European mental map changed, shrank, or grew . In this example, the telos in the modification of European space on tour is a rather clear directional drive to ‘go east’ . The band started in England and headed to other European countries . One could object and say that this ‘going east’ is simply caused by England’s geographical position . However, the tour histories of other groups such as Iron Maiden, who debuted in Poland behind the Iron Curtain in 1984, or Queen, who went to Hungary for a massive arena show in Budapest in 1986, also suggest such a directional pulse . That said, further research should also focus on the question of ‘going east’ in the early 1980s, and how this correlates with metal’s Europeanness . The other facet of spatial dynamics is the ways in which the directional drive happened and was put into historical reality . ‘Going east’ was not a straightforward move; much more, it was a question of spatial trial and error, of ‘two steps forwards, one step back’, of oscillating moves in concentric circles, always having the spatial framing’s home base in England . Further research should try to reach theoretical concepts, which precisely capture this specific form of spatial pulsations in metal . They appear to be a characteristic feature of metal’s European mental maps . Asking for the dimension of the subjective construction of space in memories and identity building, at least in the example of Lemmy’s memories of the Finnish debut, the intriguing fact is that the discovery and integration of new space, despite the apparent novelty of the Finnish space, happened seemingly implicitly, and perhaps unconsciously . The discovery of a new area on the tour map was put into the form of ‘funny’ anecdotes and clichés of the north (Peer Gynt, Vikings) . This finding should make us aware that seemingly superficial ironic or bizarre anecdotes in metal can have a far deeper meaning and significance in terms of spatialising practices . In a nutshell, the tours the band went on in their ‘classic’ period were not only their most successful years and the backbone of the band’s present fame; they moreover had an impact on the European me(n)tal map . They integrated new European areas of space in the ways described . This paralleled with the NWOBHM which also followed the same directional drive . From a cultural historian’s view, Motörhead and Lemmy are not only the discursively constructed ‘conscience of rock’n’roll’ (Kilmister & Garza, 2006, p . 2); rather, they are also a collective of people who worked as spatial operators in the years concerned . Their concerts and tours became epistemic tools of sonic knowledge, which rendered new European space in metal and for metal – that was the spatial history of the metal ear in that period .

Chapter 11 Spawning the 1980s Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast (1982)

The Early 1980s: ‘Toxic’ Heavy Metal Smoke and Moral Panics

Starting out with verses from the bible, Revelation 12:12 and 13:18 (Carroll & Pricket, 1997, pp . 309, 311), the lyrics to the title song of the highly successful Iron Maiden album The Number of the Beast (1982b) are their probably best-known . Artistically processing explicit religious formulas sourced from the cultural history of the imagination of Satan, those also were the lines that caused a stir back in 1982 (Walser, 1993, pp . 151–157) . When the British band went on their ‘Beast on the Road’ tour to the United States, they were accused of satanism, leading to rather bizarre events . For instance, in one case the band’s LPs were destroyed using hammers due to Christian fundamentalists’ fear that burning them could have set free ‘toxic’, perhaps ‘devilish’ smoke (Young, n . d ., p . 32) . In that incident involving a fundamentalist fear of ‘toxic smoke’, we see a resurfacing of the notion of toxic heavy metal described in the introduction . The ascribed poison of heavy metal seems to have also haunted the early 1980s . Nevertheless, or more likely also because of the stir, the album meant the band’s full breakthrough . Today, the metal community sees the record issued on 22 March 1982 as a fundamental one . Periodically, the LP pops up in the top ranks of ‘best metal albums ever’ lists (Weingarten, 2017a) . Having in mind its mythologised status in metal, I want to approach the album and its surrounding discourse (inside and outside of metal, from 1982 to the present) from another perspective . On the record, as an empirical example of early 1980s European metal history, I apply my notion of the album, deconstructing it in temporal ways, focussing on its content time (Elflein, 2010, pp . 205–242; Roccor, 1998a, pp . 44–47; Walser, 1993, pp . 11–16; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 27–48) . Doing so, The Number of the Beast reveals itself as a historically fundamental record of heavy metal’s ‘golden age’ in that decade, which – despite all the attention it has gained – is not yet fully researched . Indeed, looking at this classic through the prism of

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the album as a temporal category, we gain strong empirical evidence that the reception and renegotiation of the album’s content time formed a significant part of what could be called the temporal spawning and creation of its decade, i . e . the European cultural scene of heavy metal in the 1980s . Metal and metal studies describe the decade as the one of ‘moral panics’ in the US, the UK, and other European countries (e . g . Germany), discursively revolving around metal’s alleged ‘satanism’, ‘amorality’, and ‘seduction of the youth’ (Diaz-Bohne, 2010, p . 241; Klypchak, 2011; Roccor, 1998a, pp . 161–179; Walser, 1993, pp . 123–172; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 237–275) . There were similar discourses in several countries and we still miss a more comparative evaluation of this in metal research (Hein, 2003; Hjelm et al ., 2011) . In this context of contradictory and conflicting negation discourses surrounding the flourishing European metal scenes and the detractors of heavy metal, The Number of the Beast, with all its allegories, metaphors, and resources of enigmatic interpretations, functioned as an epistemic tool of sonic knowledge . In paradigmatic ways, it allowed metal to temporally construct its then present time: the 1980s . As the other side of the coin, using well-known tactics of othering by both metal and metal detractors, it served as one of the records that underpinned the moral panics . Using my notion of the album, I want to explain how the album enabled Iron Maiden, their fans, and multipliers, as well as all other scene agents and institutions, to spawn their contemporary present as a genuine one – their own important time of metalness in Europe . The album was an empirically highly significant part of those negotiations . Examining and Deconstructing the Album’s Content Time

In my earlier theoretical reflections, I suggested that time in European metal culture is the time of albums . There are few other records illuminating this aspect more lucidly than the example at hand . In its 39 minutes and 11 seconds of running time, the eight songs making up the record’s content provided key elements of the topics, images, performances, sounds, attitudes, and slogans that constituted the 1980s as a ‘metallic’ period . How was the album able to do so and what is the empirical evidence to prove such a claim? To state and prove my hypothesis, I look closely at the album’s content time, its time recorded in 1982 . I start by looking at the current reception of it as a ‘cornerstone of the genre’ . In his review for the AllMusic online database of popular music, Steve Huey (n . d .) wrote: Steve Harris’ [author comment: Iron Maiden’s founder, bassist, and main songwriter] writing gets more ambitious, largely abandoning the street violence of old in favour of fittingly epic themes drawn from history, science fiction, and horror . (…) the title track’s odd-meter time signature keeps the listener just slightly off balance and unsettled, leading into the

Examining and Deconstructing the Album’s Content Time

most blood-curdling Dickinson scream on record; the lyrics, based on nothing more than Harris’ nightmare after watching a horror movie, naturally provoked hysterical accusations of Satan worship (which, in turn, naturally provoked sales) (…) A cornerstone of the genre .

This is the traditional and conservative, globally known version of the album’s history of significance and sense making . I want to temporally go beneath that mythological narrative’s surface by deconstructing the content time . Taking this view, the first aspect is a break in the group’s history of songwriting and studio recording, caused by personnel changes . Paul Di’Anno left and Bruce Dickinson was introduced as the new vocalist in 1981 . He cultivated a new way of ‘operatic’ singing, today usually considered the defining classic and melodic heavy metal vocal style . Already Dickinson’s vocals, in this specific way, spawned an essential dimension of the metal culture of the following years . However, we also have to take into account the innovations brought in by other artists, for instance Judas Priest’s Rob Halford . This first break depended on the single contextual fact of Dickinson’s first appearance on a Maiden record and illustrates the contingency of European metal cultural history . Next, there were novelties in the lyrical themes of the songs . Prior to The Number of the Beast, matching Di’Annos rougher and more punk-influenced vocal style, many of the group’s tracks contained narratives of gang and street culture, as well as violence and crime . Historically, this made sense up to the Killers album from 1981, still with Di’Anno . The record I am examining introduced the new topics mentioned by Huey: ‘fittingly epic themes drawn from history, science fiction, and horror’ . Empirically, this topical break was a significant historic event, something like a lyrical and topical initiation ritual for new motives, developing into standard resources of heavy metal in that decade . Historical themes and narratives are important in the group’s opus, and also in many other subgenres of metal music . Recently, Meller (2018) published a monograph devoted to history-themed lyrics by the band . Science fiction was present in rock and metal lyrics before, but since the 1980s it became a staple in more traditional heavy metal music subgenres (McParland, 2018, pp . 113–117; Sodomsky, 2017) . Horror, corresponding to metal’s darkness and heaviness as emotional landscapes of choice, remains a rather obvious fascination . In its most extreme form, that is what Kahn-Harris described in detail as extreme metal’s fascination with the ‘abject’ (2007, pp . 29–30) . Here, the point is seeing Iron Maiden’s third album as a crucial event in creating the decade’s topical realm . In hindsight, the album, more accurately its content time, tied a knot in European metal cultural history, where this new realm could be opened, helping to spawn the decade . Of course, this was not the sole outcome accomplished by the band in wilful, conscious, or strategic ways . When writing the songs, Harris did not intend to create a golden metal era (Wall, 2004, pp . 223–308) . Yet, he significantly participated in the era’s genesis .

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Using my temporal notion of the album, the decisive matter is to see the creating and bringing forth of the 1980s as a complex process of negotiations, in which the content time of the record held a crucial position . To get a more comprehensive empirical understanding of this time of negotiation discourses, in all their laborious hardships, I examine the record itself as well as the contemporary reception and memories by looking at important European agents of the networks involved, inside and outside of the metal scene(s) . For the spawning of the 1980s, the reciprocal othering by metal detractors and metal agents was constitutive . To analyse the record itself, the album’s detailed track listing of the LP pressing from 1982 serves as the content’s temporally most clear representation: Side One 01 . ‘Invaders’ (3:20) 02 . ‘Children of the Damned’ (4:34) 03 . ‘The Prisoner’ (5:34) 04 . ‘22 Acacia Avenue’ (6:34) Side Two 01 . ‘The Number of the Beast’ (4:25) 02 . ‘Run to the Hills’ (3:50) 03 . ‘Gangland’ (3:46) 04 . ‘Hallowed Be Thy Name’ (7:08) (Iron Maiden, 1982a)

In its structural, logical, and temporal simplicity the track listing is the backbone of the album’s content time . It details that time recorded in 1982, dissects and apportions it into eight individual tracks of metal music . In certain contexts, the tracks can stand for themselves, nevertheless to capture their overall significance we need their network-like integral view as an album . This forms the anatomical skeleton of the album . In the following, I discuss the track list, chronologically starting with the opener on side one, and link the album with the contemporary discourse of moral panics in Europe . Maiden’s third full-length album begins with ‘Invaders’, a historically-themed song dealing with the Nordic invasion of Britain starting in 793 AD, an event from European history . In his detailed analysis of the song, Meller (2018, pp . 45–46) strikingly points out that the song uses temporal modes in historical storytelling that have the effect of directly emotionalising the listener . The piece uses simple present, present perfect, or present continuous tenses . In other words: the past time of the late eighth century became present time in 1982, and it still does so every time somebody listens to the record . To the record’s ‘frozen’ temporal resources, this strategy of making the past alive in the present constitutes a temporal mechanism in which history-as-the-present created the European metal’s scene time of the 1980s .

Examining and Deconstructing the Album’s Content Time

The second song is ‘Children of the Damned’ . Having a rather slow-paced beginning, it increases in speed and heaviness over its playtime of four and a half minutes . The inspiration came from two movies, the horror film Village of the Damned (Rilla, 1960), and its topical sequel Children of the Damned (Leader, 1964) . The films themselves reworked the novel The Midwich Cuckoos (Wyndham, 1957) . The rather obscure plot is about women of an English village becoming pregnant with alien babies . The track’s function for the album consists of establishing a bridge to mainstream horror and sci-fi culture . The next track, ‘The Prisoner’, once again draws upon popular culture . It recounts the story of a TV series of the same name (McGoohan, 1967/1968), telling the tale of a former secret agent who was abducted and imprisoned in a mysterious village at the seaside . ‘The Prisoner’ also expands the album’s intertextuality (Bartosch, 2011; Schermann, 2018) . Together, this song and ‘Children of the Damned’ build a two-piece, sonic, and temporal strategy in metal music establishing a firm, inter-medial bridge between metal and the mainstream . The pair of songs constituted a gateway to film and TV culture . The first side closes with ‘2 Acacia Avenue’, which takes up the theme of an earlier Maiden song, ‘Charlotte the Harlot’ from their debut Iron Maiden (1980) . It continues the tragic story of a prostitute in London’s East End . So again, the track’s lyrical main mode is intertextuality . In contrast to ‘Children of the Damned’ and ‘The Prisoner’, it reconnects its release date in 1982 with the time around 1980, when the debut was released . On balance, the four songs on the first side, as half the duration of the album’s content time, use historic emotionalisation and – above all else – intertextual strategies (Bartosch, 2011; Schermann, 2018) to create its temporal sphere of horror, history, science-fiction, and street culture . They form a ‘bloc’ of intertextual time of almost twenty minutes, which serve in a highly efficient manner in establishing and keeping links to mainstream culture, European history, and their own band biography . After all, this ‘bloc’ already introduced 1980s topics; nevertheless, it still did so in the disguised methods of intertextualities . In exactly this way, it served as an extensive and useful, strategically constituted prooemium, laying the groundwork for the temporal spawning of new time on the other side of the LP . Paradigmatically, this new time is represented in the second side’s first two songs, the title track and ‘Run to the Hills’ . Together, they constitute the centrepiece of the record, and are considered to be two classics . They are benchmarks of popularity in European metal culture and also live favourites . After the prooemium of the first side, this centrepiece with ‘The Number of the Beast’ (the song) and ‘Run to the Hills’ sets in with an eruption . In hindsight, they are important examples of constituting the decade’s specific metal culture: topically, narratologically, visually, musically, in regard to both sound and performance . That spawning of the 1980s needed intense discourses of negotiation, in metal and also outside of metal, and between both worlds . In those conflict-rich, sometimes bizarre discussions in the media, within the scene and even in state institutions like

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the US Congress, maligners of metal and artists acted as the most powerful agents (Klypchak, 2011; Roccor, 1998a, pp . 161–179; Walser, 1993, pp . 123–172; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 237–275) . Their paradoxical and reciprocal opposition in discourse, in which the Number of the Beast was a major subject, grew into the contradicting tandem that finally brought forth the ‘golden age’ of metal . We research voices from both poles of the spectrum, European metal detractors and pro-metal voices, to recapture the productive paradox . Walser’s analysis (1993, pp . 151–157) of the title track already hinted at its specific role in this discourse, but he focussed on the American ‘moral panics’ . A comparative view of European discourse is lacking . Let us start with the maligners here . Ulrich Bäumer, a highly conservative Christian author from Germany, wrote in his book Wir wollen nur Deine Seele Rockszene und Okkultismus: Daten–Fakten–Hintergründe (English: ‘We only want your soul . The rockscene and occultism: data, facts, backgrounds’) (1984, pp . 66–68): The British heavy metal band Iron Maiden caused a stir with the release of the LP ‘The Number of the Beast’ in 1982 . The presentation of the album’s title song is a highlight of their shows . Fanatic excitement reaches Bruce Dickinson from the audience when he sings about the (…) Antichrist (…) (…) [A] number of today’s rock records and their interpreters are an open testament to the effect of evil forces – but nobody seems to interfere with this …21

Today, such a rather thoughtless commentary appears more bizarre than thought provoking . Yet, Bäumer acted as an empirically significant participant in a discursive network . In that network, in which the paradoxical and reciprocal othering between metal and maligners of metal music occurred, both camps were enabled to draw a rather clear demarcation line between metal and its surrounding contexts . Exactly in that field of othering, the 1980s took shape, exemplarily on and through The Number of the Beast and its then notorious title track . The main author and composer, Steve Harris has different memories . Wall (2004, p . 228) quotes him as saying ‘It was mad . They completely got the wrong end of the stick . They obviously hadn’t read the lyrics . They just wanted to believe all that rubbish about us being satanists .’ Despite the at least playful, probably calculated re-imagination of the traditional symbolisms of Satan and satanism in cultural history in Harris’ discourse, we do not have to normatively judge his statement . Instead, we again take it as the necessary counter-position in the discourse, drawing a clear line of demarcation around metal’s cultural territory . Both statements – Bäumer’s and Harris’ – as performative speech acts (Schmale, 2016) illustrate the intense negotiation processes over the years, which had a climax

21

Author’s translation .

Examining and Deconstructing the Album’s Content Time

with the senate hearing 99–529 on record labelling in the US in 1985 (Weinstein, 2000, pp . 245–275); an ‘American’ event that was heavily discussed in Europe as well . The result of the productive paradox was 1980s European metal culture, constituted exemplarily in the centrepiece of the record we are examining . The second song on the second side of the album is ‘Run to the Hills’, retelling the history of the genocide of the American indigenous population, especially the Cree nation in the 19th century . Again Meller (2018, pp . 56–60), in his monograph on history-themed songs by the group, provides us with a detailed analysis . Interestingly, he identifies two different collective speakers in the song, both intoned by Bruce Dickinson: the American native nations and the conquerors . Meller concludes: ‘(…) in spite of giving a voice to the Native Americans and to a critical mediator, the song leaves no doubt as to who the winners of this battle were, however unfairly .’ (2018, p . 59) . All the global, European, and national (in this case: British) entanglements of sonic emplotment reveal themselves here in the fact that a European band from Britain tells this history . This first pair of songs on the second side has formed the centrepiece of the longplay album’s reception, also in the negation processes of metalness and Europeanness that opened up the 1980 as a ‘metallic’ era . The pair connected religiousness and provocation in the title song with historical storytelling in ‘Run to the Hills’, forging all of that into a highly effective tool of temporal knowledge . They drew a clear demarcation line between metalheads and the ‘others’ – and vice versa . It harkened back to the religiousness of the temporal concept established on Black Sabbath’s debut in 1970 . Since then, the combination of both has proven to be the historical door-opener for classic 1980s European metal culture, at least in Iron Maiden’s contribution to its establishment . I have yet to interpret the two remaining songs on the record . The first of them, ‘Gangland’, is topically a step back in the group’s history . Perhaps consciously, the song comes after the progressive pair before and thematises gang culture and violence . Like ‘22 Acacia Avenue’ on the first side, the track utilises intertextuality in its lyrics to go back in time to Maiden’s established topical realm before the shift of The Number of the Beast . ‘Hallowed Be Thy Name’ closes the album . It is one of the best-known songs by the group . In his review, Huey (n . d .) described the song as featuring ‘some of Harris’ most philosophical lyrics’ . Having a duration of more than seven minutes, starting with a slow and melodic motif, the song is an ‘epic’ . It relates the last thoughts of a prisoner who is about to be hanged . In his final reflections, the protagonist comes to the conviction that life could be just an illusion and, above all, time mattered . It should catch our attention that the album closes with reflections on time . Doubtlessly, this again proves the empirical significance of albums as being key to metal’s time concept and experience of time .

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Spawning the 1980s

Having undertaken a track-by-track examination of the record, its anatomy represented by the track list, divided into the original two sides of the vinyl pressing from 1982, we now can formulate a more comprehensive answer to the question of how the record participated significantly in forming the European metal sound history of the 1980s . It managed to establish its crucial historical standing by providing the on-going negation discourses with fundamental discursive material: new topics, established topics, history, and intertextualities were the album’s content time . The form of the album as a ‘temporal container’ was a necessary prerequisite for this . Empirically, Iron Maiden’s third full-length record is a case of an album as a time-creating discursive package of eight songs that spawned new time by using the time on an LP . The 1980s in Europe were paradigmatically constructed on this LP .

Chapter 12 Spatially Explicating Europe Manowar’s Hail to Europe Tour (1986)

The Contradictions of Authenticity

Manowar was formed in New York in 1980 . The best-known members of the group since their first days are bassist and main songwriter Joey DeMaio and singer Eric Adams . DeMaio acted as their spokesman, the driving force, and thus the head, heart, and face of the group . The band have fashioned themselves in the discourse as the inventors of ‘true metal’ – a genre most successful in Europe, above all in Germany . However satirically and ironically this claim has been taken up in media, the scenes, and the mainstream, their image’s main topos and myth to this very day remain ‘trueness’ and authenticity . I discussed the problematics of authenticity claims at several points in my reflections and argumentation . Like each myth in metal, the group’s founding myth builds a discursive product, ‘handmade’ by the artists, scene agents, and other multipliers in discourse . Nonetheless, in the case of Manowar, the claim of authenticity represents the very core of their auto-historical founding myth, for instance shown in the band biography on their official website (Manowar, 2018) . Their authenticity narrative has become the discursive network and field of agency where they produced their success and were ridiculed – also with a strong focus on European metal media . The intra-scenic and extra-scenic otherings drew the line between the band (respectively their imagined community of devoted ‘manowarriors’) and the ‘others’ who ridicule, detest, or openly questioned their narrative . Hence, the authenticity narrative is a double-edged sword producing a lucid example of how ambiguities and their resulting conflicts were handled or were not handled in metal history . Being founded in 1980, the band achieved success during the following ten years, their album Kings of Metal (1988) usually being deemed their artistic peak . On that LP, we find ‘Pleasure Slave’ with explicit and undeniable misogynist lyrics as well as lines about rape in ‘Hail and Kill’, which are interpreted as the glorification of sexual

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abuse and violence against women . Both songs are subjects of on-going discussions . Being aware and highly critical of the toxic misogynist and hypermasculine traditions of metal culture, those traditions are also being deconstructively examined by important recent research from a gender and feminist perspective (Digioia & Helfrich, 2018; Heesch & Scott, 2016; Hill, 2016; Patterson, 2016; Riches, 2015) . As might be expected, this feminist strand of engaged scholarship will add to on-going discursive processes of a normative re-evaluation and re-balancing of Manowar’s authenticity claim . At this point in metal history and metal research, this is an open discussion, but one can expect a much more critical handling of those songs as examples of misogyny in metal . In this respect, gender remains one of the most significant aspects of intra-scene and extra-scene handling of the group’s contradictions . ‘1986’ on a T-Shirt: The Existence of Europe as a Cultural Reality

I explore a specific space and time in the group’s history: ‘metallic’ Europe in 1986 . Since their early career, Manowar were more successful in Europe than in the U . S . and the Americas at large, predominantly Germany making up their top market . This has resulted in an empirically significant situation . The band’s history of authenticity narratives, misogyny, and their implied ambiguities and paradoxes have become mainly European phenomena . They have been mainly constructed in Europe, despite the band’s American background . In this context of a European-American history of contradictions, the year of 1986 was a fundamental one, for the band and the scene construction of European spaces on tour – so it was for the broader context of European integration history (Gehler, 2018; Pichler, 2018b) . 1986 was the year of the release of Metallica’s Master of Puppets and Slayer’s Reign in Blood, both followed by important touring activities by these American bands in Europe . It was also the year in which Manowar went on their first headliner tour . They were headlining Europe, and strikingly the whole tour was called ‘Hail to Europe’ . Having chosen that title means that this trip formed one of the earliest cases of metal culture in which the construction of Europe as a space happened in an overall explicit and overt manner . Europe was actively mentioned in the tour’s naming and imaginary . Thus, evidently Europe, as a fundamental space, was existing at that point in metal sound history . This must have required the construction of identities of European metalness and ‘metallic Europeanness’ before 1986 . Therefore, I come to assume that between Motörhead’s above analysed tours and this tour, in the period from 1982 to 1986, significant processes of subcultural European integration must have happened – this is an essential topic of further research . How allegorically explicit and structurally developed the European spatial framing in metal was in 1986 is semiotically exemplified by a photograph of an official tour t-shirt, as a part of the collection of Andreas Freitag, a devoted German fan:

‘1986’ on a T-Shirt: The Existence of Europe as a Cultural Reality

Fig. 4 Manowar tour shirt, Hail to Europe (1986).

Breaking through the prism of the band’s founding narrative, the images of this piece of merchandise exactly depict the state of European spatial framing in metal in 1986 . On the front side, we see a superhuman, muscle-bound, male figure – the Roman-like warrior (an image from ancient European history) carrying a sword – and behind and beneath him a blonde, barely clothed woman, drawn in the same aesthetical style . The semantic main act of the front side is that this hyper-masculine warrior, the personification of the band, places his flag, which carries the established European symbols (golden or yellow stars on a blue background, today this is also the code of representation of the EU) (Pichler, 2018b; Wintle M . J ., 2009), on the European landmass . For the first time as headliners, Manowar toured an apparently already known and established landmass, which must have been made known and established in the years before . The submissive position of the depicted woman shows how immensely interwoven gendering, othering, and constructing authenticity happened in Europe’s metallic spatial framing . Gendering, othering, and authenticity building have become integral parts of this image of Europe . This was a semiotic process of subcultural European integration on a T-shirt . This also requires further discussion . The shirt’s back takes up the front narrative, first by exemplifying and chronologically detailing the history . Being a spatial operation of the performance of the structurally similar historic event (the concert), the Hail to Europe tour included thirteen shows in five European countries between 23 March and 6 April 1986: in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, and Belgium . As one might expect, Germany witnessed the greatest number of shows (four), followed by the Netherlands and Belgium (each three), then Switzerland, and Denmark (each one) . The sword and spear on the reverse side of the shirt could be interpreted as a hint at the band’s readiness to act . Sword and spear are weapons to ‘conquer’ the cities mentioned, which historical-

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ly means they were established as urban dots on their me(n)tal map . That the shirt’s sleeves were cut off by the owner could be interpreted as, in a sense identifying with the masculine figure, the shirt owner also revealed his shoulders and upper arms . Subcultural and Political European Integration: A Parallel Montage

What does this example of Europe’s iconography in metal tell us empirically about the year of 1986 and the Hail to Europe tour as a significant series of events taking place in this year? First, the overall representation of Europe in the tour discourse, as was already mentioned, makes us assume that, in 1986, Europe was an established space in metal . This follows from the fact that the t-shirt, as a semiotic historical source, prominently used the established iconographical representation of Europe (like in the European flag today) to create metalness . That Manowar toured this known landmass reveals a surprising spatial mechanism . It was the known space of Europe with its already established scene networks, Europe as a metal space, which cultural-historically enabled the band to organise and accomplish a first headliner tour . Hence, it was not Manowar discovering Europe but, exactly the other way around – Europe’s existing, ‘metallic’ space making the band a big player in heavy metal – in all their integral practices of gendering, misogyny, authenticity, and, sometimes, irony . The group’s debut as a headliner was a consequence of prior spatial framing, yet at the same time it was another affirmation of Europe’s metal space . Secondly, all the powerful and historically successful European visualisations of the tour cannot be explained without putting it in the context of the history of the European Union . 1986 was not only the year of Manowar’s first headliner tour, it was moreover the year in which the SEA was signed in Luxembourg and The Hague on 17 and 28 February 1986 (Gehler, 2018, pp . 132–145; Loth, 2014, pp . 259–309; Pichler, 2018b; Schmale, 2008, pp . 105–130) . The SEA was the first major revision of the founding treaties of the European Economic Community (Gehler, 2018, pp . 110–123; Loth, 2014, pp . 26–74) . The revision from 1986 went into legal force in 1987 and set free new impulses for the deepening and intensification of European political integration . Furthermore, the SEA constitutionally codified European Political Cooperation, which was the historical forerunner of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy . This relance of European integration, initiated only some weeks before the tour start, must be interpreted as part of the tour’s surrounding European context in discourse . Hence, Manowar’s first headlining concert journey and the new start of European integration can be told as a cultural-historical parallel montage of significant mutual cross-references . Metaphorically, paving the way towards the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, the SEA made the EC/EU ‘politically headline’ Europe . The European iconography used by the band had been adopted as the official flag of the EC/EU only a year before . Seen the other way around, Manowar on their Hail to Europe tour committed a

Subcultural and Political European Integration: A Parallel Montage

subcultural political act by even more intensely integrating an already known space in metal, but in their own specific ways through misogyny, hypermasculinity, and myth building . The band’s first European tour, so explicitly and overtly designed in pro-European aesthetics, referenced on-going discourses on European integration . Strikingly, we must also assume that, due the fact that the European space was established in metal before 1986, European subcultural integration predated EU integration in that period . This is nothing less than an important empirical finding for European Union cultural history (Pichler, 2018b) . The EC saw accessions of new member states in 1981 (Greece) and 1986 (Portugal and Spain) . However, this new empirical finding encourages to assume that this decade already knew a higher degree of (sub)cultural integration, as has been confirmed by current research in EU studies (Kaiser & Varsori, 2010) . To conclude, the Hail to Europe tour spatially defined Europe in a new explicit way and thereby once more affirmed the continent’s subcultural integration . In this period around 1986, subcultural and political European integration worked as a symbiotic network of the cultural production of meaning for both metalness and Europeanness .

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Chapter 13 Slayer’s Reign in Blood (1986) A European Rereading in the 21st Century

On 7 October 1986, Def Jam and Geffen Records issued the third album of American thrash metal outfit Slayer, Reign in Blood . Like their American fellow thrashers Metallica’s Master of Puppets released in March 1986, the record is once again widely considered, to be a ‘cult’ album . In many ways, this status and narrative as a legendary and thus mystified LP has to do with its content time . In the form of its original vinyl pressing from 1986, the album was comprised of ten songs, which only had a total running time of less than half an hour, i . e . exactly 28 minutes and 58 seconds . In terms of aggressiveness, tempo, and lyrical contents of historical themes, horror, and satanism, the album has grown to become a benchmark . Until today, the typical narrative of Reign in Blood makes it the most extreme metal album of its time (Ferris, 2008) – also in Europe . As a first suggestion of a European rereading of the long-play record in 2020, we note that this canonical judgement has to do with the concept of extremes, characterising the album’s content time (for extremeness as a concept in history and metal studies, see Hobsbawm, 1994; Kahn-Harris, 2007) . Aiming at providing a 21st century reading of the record’s history, using sonic knowledge theory and the temporal key notion of the album as our lens, we do not have to normatively judge this narrative . Perhaps it was the most extreme metal album in 1986, and perhaps it was not . The crucial issue builds on the historical fact that the long-player, in its recording and live representation as well as its reception and circulation in Europe, was constructed and narrated as the most extreme album of its time . Hence, questions arise: How did the construction of this narrative happen? What is the album’s content time like, and what was its position in the metal cultural history of European sonic knowledge? To what extent is this American album actually European? As my hypothesis, to be substantiated by empirically examining the history of those processes, I assume that Reign in Blood, in its content time, formed a temporal sphere of liminality between metal and extreme metal (Turner, 1974; Thomassen, 2009) in European metal history . It characterised the year of 1986 as a scenic rite de passage be-

Historisation has Already Started …

tween metal and extreme metal . It formed a major contribution to a liminal year in which the sonic knowledge of metal changed . Seen from today, its ‘liminoid’ (Victor Turner) character made the record, and with it the year of 1986, a chaotic playground of metal history, re-structuring sonic knowledge . That this stimulus came from ‘outside’ the European thrash metal scene is noteworthy . The album still featured ‘old’ metal yet at the same time it integrated a new way of organising chaos in the sonic shape of atonality and dissonance, already pushing towards ‘new’ extreme metal . Thus, my thesis states that as a discursive knot in this sound history, the album played a major part in a modification of metal’s sonic knowledge resources, leading to the emergence of extreme metal since 1986 . This history had a major focus in Europe as the Cold War was entering its final stage . In my reading, this proves to have been only possible because of the liminoid character of the album’s time, of the record as a temporal artefact . In this view, the European year of 1986, with the album centrally positioned within its timeframe, is not a mere temporal bridge between metal and extreme metal; moreover, it is also a distinct year of its own . Historisation has Already Started …

Notably, in metal’s and extreme metal’s collective memories, Slayer’s key album is no longer only memorialised as a mystified one but also as an already partially historised one . This suggests a certain critical and rational distance, nonetheless a high level of nostalgic appraisal and appreciation . Metal studies has participated in developing a more critical approach to the band and Reign in Blood (Kahn-Harris, 2007, pp . 3, 56–57, 82–83, 95, 136; Roccor, 1998a, pp . 52–55; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 48–52, 2015, pp . 235–239) . Interestingly, research started to re-evaluate the controversy surrounding Slayer’s alleged Nazism (Kahn-Harris, 2007, p . 41; Roccor, 1998a, pp . 172–179) that followed the album release in 1986 related to the lyrics to the song ‘Angel of Death’ . The lyrics give a very graphic and intimate look at the history of the sadistic Nazi perpetrator Josef Mengele . I interpret the discourse on the alleged Nazism, most of all in the context of recent critical research, as also being part of memorial negotiations in intra-scene and extra-scene debates (for black metal, see Chaker et al ., 2018a) . Journalistic discourse has thematised the record and its time in a rather broad manner . For instance, the Decibel magazine published an ‘exclusive oral history of Slayer’ that was sixteen pages in length in August 2006 (Bennet, 2006) in which the record’s history was discussed by the band, the producer, and their artistic and business collaborators . This was no scientific history, nonetheless it contains the central agents’ memorial ego-narratives from 1986 as the year of its recording, release, and first reception . In a similar vein, Ferris with his book Reign in Blood (2008) claims to have written the first English-language book about Slayer – however true this might be; it deals with the record’s history written from a devoted fan’s perspective, who labels

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the record as ‘the best heavy metal album, by the best metal band’ (p . 9) . Unsurprising, the book does not deconstruct the band’s history . Nonetheless, we come to see it as a significant discursive artefact of the collective memorialisation of the LP, which seems to have begun in the second half of the 2000s . The publication years of McIver’s (2008) band biography and Szubrycht’s (2006) Polish book on Slayer underpin this assumption’s likelihood . Thinking of the band’s announced retirement after a ‘farewell tour’ in 2018/19, an intensifying memorial integration of the album in scenic narratives appears even more plausible . Quite apparently, the group’s career – and the album’s historisation – has already started and is gaining momentum . For a current European rereading, this is the context and starting point . Historical Liminality

Before going into empirical details, I have to make clear what I understand by the terms ‘liminality’ and ‘liminoid’ . Today, both are key notions of post-structuralist cultural studies (Bachmann-Medick, 2016) . Originally introduced by Dutch-German ethnographer Arnold van Gennep in his classic work on cultural rites, Les rites de passage (1909), the theory of liminality was further developed by British anthropologist Victor Turner since the 1960s . With Turner (1974), the concept of liminal cultural phenomena describes stages of ritualistic processes in which the agent who undergoes the process of a rite of passage no longer carries his former status and cultural identity (for instance, that of a young boy or teenager) yet he has not reached his end status (for example, as an adult man) . Taken up by cultural studies and applied to collective phenomena, theorising on liminality and liminoid phenomena has been adopted to the interpretation of historical revolutions, breaks, or shifts (Bachmann-Medick, 2016; Thomassen, 2009) . For the work of historians, the strength of the concept lies in its way of describing such liminal periods as having distinct characteristics of specific, contingent possibilities and limits, which structure them as unique phases and historical events . As Turner (1967) put it, such periods or events are ‘betwixt and between’ which lends them their distinct historical uniqueness . In Thomassen’s (2009, p . 20) introductory article on the concept, we find a useful historical definition: If historical periods can be considered liminal, it follows that the crystallization of ideas and practices that take place during this period must be given special attention . (…) The playfulness of the liminality period is at one and the same time unstructured and highly structuring: the most basic rules of behaviour are questioned, doubt and scepticism as to the existence of the world are radicalized, but the problematisations, the formative experiences and the reformulations of being during the liminality period proper, will feed the individual (and his/her cohort) with a new structure and set of rules that, once established, will glide back to the level of the taken-for-granted .

Historical Liminality

This definition of historical liminality, combined with the temporal concept of the album, provides us with the resources to undertake a current rereading of the year of 1986 and the release of Reign in Blood in Europe . It was a year ‘betwixt and between’: the wave of the American and European thrash metal movements, with U . S . bands like Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax, and Megadeth, and European bands like Sodom (Germany), Celtic Frost (Switzerland), and Destruction (Germany) spearheading the wave, had reached its climax of new benchmarks of extremity and spawned an established subgenre (Fellezs, 2016; Roccor, 1998a, pp . 47–57; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 48–52) . At the same time, extreme metal with pioneering bands like Slayer, Celtic Frost, Destruction and Sodom, and furthermore Venom (UK), Possessed (USA), Death (USA), Bathory (Sweden), Slaughter (Canada), Morbid Angel (USA), Obituary (USA), etc . had not yet crystallised as a full-fledged sub-scene and separate structured discourse (Kahn-Harris, 2007, pp . 1–8; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 288–289) . As my empirical thesis, I consider the year 1986 and Reign of Blood as a substantial part of it as a liminal year ‘betwixt and between’ metal and extreme metal, very much also in European metal networks . Turner’s definition of liminoid phenomena accurately describes the album’s content time in this sense . According to Turner (1974), such phenomena, amongst other qualities, are described as being ‘often parts of social critiques or even revolutionary manifestoes – books, plays, films, etc . – exposing the injustices, inefficiencies, and immoralities of the mainstream (…)’ (p . 86) . Here, the notion of mainstream refers to economic and political spheres . It can easily be adopted in the interpretation of a heavy metal album . In all its playfulness, radicalism, and scepticism, Reign in Blood deconstructed established metal . In that ludic historical way, it structured the year of 1986 as a scenic rite de passage between metal and extreme metal . The album was liminoid in that sense . It was an epistemological playground of change for metal’s sonic knowledge by re-structuring its control of chaos, which still shaped (and has persisted to shape until the present) one of metal’s discursive key codes (Walser, 1993, pp . 53–54; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 38–43) . Seen from our time of the early 21st century, over thirty years after its release, the album worked liminally according to the liminoid structure of its content time . That said, I assume that its liminoid nature required this content time to take a certain, meaningful form of sonic knowledge, to be able to serve as such a hinge between two phases . This distinct, liminoid sphere required unique features . I now want to empirically unwrap the specific way the album served this purpose . Again, a review on the digital AllMusic (Huey, n . d .) database provides a good starting point: Reign in Blood opens and closes with slightly longer tracks (the classics ‘Angel of Death’ and ‘Raining Blood’) whose slower riffs offer most of the album’s few hints of melody . Sandwiched in between are eight short (all under three minutes), lightning-fast bursts of aggression that change tempo or feel without warning, producing a disjointed, barely controlled effect (…) The riffs are built on atonal chromaticism that sounds as sickening as

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the graphic violence depicted in many of the lyrics, and Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman’s [author comment: the band’s two guitar players] demented soloing often mimics the screams of the songs’ victims . It’s monstrously, terrifyingly evocative, in a way that transcends Reign in Blood’s metal origins The album almost single-handedly inspired the entire death metal genre (at least on the American side of the Atlantic), and unlike many of its imitators, it never crosses the line into self-parodic overkill Reign in Blood was a stone-cold classic upon its release, and it hasn’t lost an ounce of its power today 22

This is a 21st century review of the album, containing a narrative of liminality . Why and how liminality? At first glance, it just seems to be another review of a supposed ‘classic’ . Digging deeper, the key is to read the text as an intertextual conglomerate, taking up a description of the album’s content time and linking it to a historic judgement . The crucial lines are the ones I put in italics, most of all a short remark: ‘The album almost single-handedly inspired the entire death metal genre’ . This short remark tells the album’s history as a liminoid one . In its ludic atonality and dissonances, especially the mentioned soloing, it has been a sonic structure, a playground of old and new sounds, the historic position of which in the discourse is best described as a liminal one . Due to its liminoid sonic textures, it can be narrated as a discursive hinge between metal and extreme metal . Huey already explicitly mentioned some parts of the answer to the question of what exactly made the record, sonically and as realising sonic knowledge, liminoid: atonal chromaticism, and one of the band’s trademarks, the seemingly chaotic guitar solos by Hanneman and King . Historically, that new quality of chaos (and its attempted control) structured 1986 as a liminal year . Dissonance and atonality on a new level and newly unleashed forms of sonic chaos as innovative cultural artefacts produced historical liminality . Still, at this point in our analysis I do not have strong enough empirical data to substantiate my hypothesis . In contrast to my interpretation of Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast, where I started with the record’s lyrics and music, it is appropriate here to start from the other end . I ask how the album’s liminoid content features were received by extreme metal agents in order to find out how their experiences of the record structured 1986 as such a liminal year . Approached from this pole of discourse, a first indicator is that a tribute sampler issued by the Metal Hammer Germany magazine (2016) comprised ten Slayer songs, of which nine were interpreted by artists rather clearly positioned in the spectrum of extreme metal: Carnifex (USA), Battlecross (USA), Enslaved (Norway), Hypocrisy (Sweden), Krisiun (Brazil), Cataract (Switzerland), Dark Funeral (Sweden), Six Feet Under (USA), and Vader (Poland) . Only the Finnish cello artists of Apocalyptica, who provided a medley of ‘South of Heaven’ and ‘Mandatory

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Author’s emphasis .

Chaos and Chaos Control

Suicide’ cannot be but into this framing . Already the nationalities of the bands show that this was also a European undertaking stimulated by global impulses . Chaos and Chaos Control

The reception of the album’s liminoid content after 1986 becomes fully empirically palpable when reading oral history interviews from the Kerrang website . In late June 2018, the magazine published, for the duration of a week, a daily feature entitled ‘The first time I saw Slayer’ (2018) . In this week of daily features, musicians who performed with Slayer on their ‘farewell’ tour as supporting acts (Anthrax, Lamb of God, Behemoth, Testament), told about their first contacts with the headliner and Reign in Blood . Empirically, among these interviews, the two led with artists who had their breakthrough in the scene(s) relatively later than Slayer themselves (Behemoth, Lamb of God) form the most interesting ones, because they evidently document Slayer’s and this specific LP’s influence on them . Nergal (2018) from Behemoth remembered: When we were kids, a friend of mine was always ahead of me when it came to metal . He really liked thrash, and my barrier wasn’t pushed that far yet . And I remember he’d play me Raining Blood, and I was like, ‘Oh, man, that’s too much . I can’t take it, it’s just too extreme . It’s not even music, it’s chaos!’ I must’ve been 8 or 9? (…) Slayer influenced me musically, too . There’s a song called No Sympathy For Fools on Zos Kia Cultus [author comment: Zos Kia Cultus (Here and Beyond), Behemoth’s sixth studio album from 2002] that has this total Slayer vibe . The Slayer groove will come out occasionally in Behemoth’s music as well . Or sometimes, ‘How about using a Slayer harmony here?’ Obviously our music is different, but there’s a huge Slayer part in what we do .23

Told by the guitarist, singer, and main composer for a Polish extreme metal band that had their rise to scene stardom with the release of their tenth full-length recording The Satanist (2014), this autobiographical narrative describes which feature of Reign in Blood makes Nergal’s first and formative memory of it . The memory is captured by the line ‘it’s chaos!’ . Apparently, it was the album’s sonic use of new structures of chaos (and chaos control) in metal music that struck Nergal . After this first overwhelming contact, again, it was Slayer’s musical approach influencing the songwriter . In this oral history source, the album’s liminoid qualities come precisely from the sonic organisation of chaos . For Nergal (2018), Reign in Blood added to the massive experience of a liminoid rite de passage from a Catholic boy to a European scene member . The textures

23

Author’s emphasis .

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of chaos and chaos control enabled him to take this diachronic journey transcending the boundary between the identities . The second interview I focus on was with Randy Blythe, vocalist for the group Lamb of God, founded as Burn the Priest in Virginia, USA in 1990 . In this source (Blythe, 2018), the singer recounts his memories of his ‘first time’ with Slayer’s hallmark album and the band’s influence on him: (…) I went to the record store and I was like, ‘What Slayer record should I get?’ This was before South of Heaven [author comment: South of Heaven, Slayer’s fourth studio album from 1988] had come out, so [the record store clerk] was like, ‘Reign in Blood’ . It was the first album I ever bought with a parental advisory sticker on it . I listened to it, and I was like, ‘OH MY GOD, DUDE . This is so aggressive!’ It’s fast, and there’s this raw energy to it . (…) I’m pretty sure I didn’t see Slayer again until July of 2003 [author comment: after Blythe’s first attending of a concert of the group more than ten years before] when they took us to London to play two sold out nights at the Astoria, a historic venue that no longer exists . This was a very impactful thing on me, as a musician, and on my band . People always ask, ‘What were some of these magic moments you’ve had on stage?’ The first was playing at CBGB [author comment: a well-known music club in New York, which closed in 2006] for the first time; the second was Slayer taking us out of the country (…) for the first time .

Blythe is not the main composer for Lamb of God, nevertheless his narrative of Reign in Blood works according to the exact same rules as Nergal’s . He remembers his first contact with the album (in the post-1986 but pre-1988 period) as an overwhelming sonic experience . Likewise here, the overwhelming sonic experience (told in the passage: ‘OH MY GOD, DUDE . This is so aggressive! It’s fast, and there’s this raw energy to it .’, which refers to chaos once more) is narratologically linked to a scenic process of initiation, made possible by the record’s liminoid organisation of chaos . Both interviews reproduce the same narrative, marking the album as liminoid . Here, the year of 1986 shines through as a time of liminality, and the album formed a substantial part of it . Its liminoidness creating a distinct sonic sphere distinguishable from prior as well as later metal music, which stemmed from the new representation of chaos and chaos control . Dissonance and atonalities have grown into new benchmarks of extremity, and as such reshaped sonic knowledge . Empirically, this supports my thesis that the album’s content time has a liminoid historical character . It made 1986 a metal year with a distinct rite-of-passage quality pressed on a record . Thus, one should not ask for the album as a conglomeration of ten individual tracks (which makes sense in other contexts); it is more informative to look for an overall interpretation of the liminoid reality . En total, the liminoid structure arises from the entire network of dissonances and atonalities on the record . A good way to stimulate such an interpretation is to ask how the artist who drew the famous front cover image, Lewis Carroll (1986), visually gave an overall reading of the

A Playground of Sonic Knowledge

music . The cover artwork is a significant part of the album’s initial memorial historisation (Bennet, 2006; Ferris, 2008) . In metal’s European and global collective memories, the image functions as an icon, as an allegory of what the music lets listeners experience: a chaos of darkness, violence, and horrific visions (Stafford, 2015) . Indeed, the dominant feeling when looking at the artwork is one of a visually and semantically overwhelming experience, trying to cope with an organised chaos of demonic and demon-like monsters and figures . In this way, the artist perfectly managed to translate the album’s sonic knowledge into an image . It shows the album as a liminoid construction of heavy metal’s 1986, the distinct quality of which comes from a new way of organising chaos . What Hanneman and King expressed in their manner of soloing was translated into visual language by Carroll . A Playground of Sonic Knowledge

In a nutshell, our 21st century empirical examination of Slayer’s Reign in Blood from a European perspective makes us see the LP as a historic playground of sonic knowledge . We can view the year of 1986 as a seminal one in this metal history . This has already been revealed in current journalistic and academic discourse . Interpreting the album in the framework of sonic knowledge, however, makes the perspective more accurate . Instead of being narrated only as ‘classic’, or the historically, teleologically necessary missing link between metal and extreme metal, we can say precisely how the year was important . We do not look back to metal from extreme metal, or the other way around; in contrast, we take the position that 1986 itself was a contingent and unique historical year . In our 21st century rereading, starting from 1986 as a distinct liminal year, we imagine prior classic and thrash metal and later extreme metal as a non-predictable history . It was Slayer’s (and other artists’) ludic playing with then current forms of sonic knowledge, most of all the new form of the organisation of chaos in atonalities and dissonances, which made 1986 into a contingent room of radical games . In this way, this album was more extreme than later extreme metal, which for itself became a schema and paradigm . Nonetheless, Slayer’s 1986 did not predetermine what came later; however, it did constitute a liminal room of possible modes of change . This finding adds to the existing narrative of chaos in metal and metal’s specific use of guitar sounds (Elflein, 2010, 2018; Mynett, 2016; Walser, 1993, pp . 53–54; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 38–43) . For our interest, a main point is to what extent this is a European history of an American thrash metal album . As we have seen, the album – in its transgressive reformulation of then current sonic knowledge forms – came from outside and entered European metal culture, helping to shape a new discourse of extreme metal . In its fascinatingly innovative sonic templates, with a bit of metaphorical irony, it was something

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like a metal ‘Marshall Plan’ for the European extreme metal cultural milieu – providing fundamental new forms of sonic knowledge . There is one more important lesson to learn . Indeed, the record’s history teaches us how important artists as actors are in European metal history . At least in this individual, specific, and contingent case, the guitar playing of Hanneman and King wrote metal history . It wrote history by playing metal music in an innovative way, as well as recording it and performing it for the public . Thus, we urgently need an ontology of metal in metal studies (Savigny & Schaap, 2018; Weinstein, 2016) .

Chapter 14 The Convergence of Space and Time as a Door-Opener to the 1990s Mayhem’s Concert in Leipzig (1990)

Captured in many photographs and historical narratives, the pictorial collective memory of the fall of the Berlin Wall, masses of people passing the border between East Berlin and West Berlin on 9 November 1989 has become an icon of European history (Pichler, 2017d; Spohr & Reynolds, 2016) . In their iconic structures, connecting us to an important point of reference in discourse, images and narratives of the falling of the Berlin Wall work in the same ways as cover images of essential albums in heavy metal, such as the cover of Reign in Blood discussed in the previous chapter . Such images frame a semiotic space in history, which can be remembered at any later point . On a factual level, this event in 1989 is an element of the European revolutions in that year, which led to the end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc, and the Soviet Union’s disintegration (Spohr & Reynolds, 2016) . The years 1989 to 1991 closed a chapter of a long period in European history that began in 1945 ( Judt, 2005) . According to Hobsbawm’s (1994) influential historical writing, the events even marked the ending of a whole century, the ‘short 20th century’, by him labelled as the age of extremes . Spanning all the time between the outbreak of World War I, through the inter-war years from 1914 to 1939, then to the atrocities of World War II, to the Cold War and post-war era, the age of extremes is a global narrative . However, both world wars beginning as European conflicts, furthermore the Cold War having its primary focus in Europe, it is also a strongly European narrative . The major ingredient, which colours, characterises, and integrates this narrative is extremeness as a concept of thought: extreme atrocities such as the Holocaust and other genocides, extreme new kinds of warfare with the industrialised battlefields between 1914 to 1918, extreme cultural, economic, and social dynamics related to the global crisis after 1929 and the ‘golden age’ (Hobsbawm) between 1950 and 1975, and many other forms of new historical superlatives . Here, extremeness as a concept of thought describes the historical changes and modifications of our cultural frame-

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works of experiencing time and space, and in this way the concept integrates the short 20th century . Extreme metal, as a spectrum of rather well-defined subgenres, has its roots in the final decade of the age of extremes (Chaker et al ., 2018a; Elflein, 2018; Kahn-Harris, 2007; Purcell, 2003): the 1980s . In my previous case study, I argued that Slayer’s album from 1986 earmarked this specific year as a liminal one between metal and extreme metal in Europe . In broader European integration history, 1986 also was the year of the SEA (Gehler, 2018; Loth, 2014; Pichler, 2018b) . Hence, 1986 was also a liminal time in European Union history due to the transition between the ‘old’ European Community before and the ‘new’ one after the SEA . The broad political shift of the SEA and the subcultural one in metal history, from metal to extreme metal, happened simultaneously . This requires further research, exploring possible cross-references and intertextualities between extreme metal and the age of extremes in the EC . We would have to ask here about the interaction between the networks of metal culture and broader integration . Clearly – as we have seen in the case of Manowar’s ‘Hail to Europe’ tour (chapter 12) – there was a certain level of semiotic and discursive involvement . A First, a Second, and a Third Wave …

That intersectional historical sphere was also the historical space-time I look at in the present empirical case study . On 26 November 1990, Norwegian black metal group Mayhem, still with singer Per Yngwe ‘Dead’ Ohlin (a short life from 1969 to 1991 – on 8 April he committed suicide in the band’s house), played a concert at the Eiskeller club in Leipzig, in the German state of Saxony . Not even two months before, on 3 October 1990, Saxony, as a part of the former socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR), had been officially reintegrated into a unified German Federal Republic . That concert was recorded, wherein first it circulated in the Norwegian scene as a tape, then Italian label Obscure Plasma Records pressed it on vinyl as Live in Leipzig in 1993 . The performance was a crucial event for early black metal, one of the major subgenres within extreme metal After a ‘first wave’ since the early 1980s, with bands like Venom (UK), Hellhammer/ Celtic Frost (Switzerland), Bathory (Sweden), or Mercyful Fate (Denmark), in the ‘second wave’ of the early 1990s, black metal (Berndt, 2012; Chaker, 2014; Chaker et al ., 2018a, pp . 7–12; Fuchs & Majewski, 2000; Langebach, 2003) was codified as a distinct discourse with its own patterns . Groups such as Mayhem, Immortal, Emperor, Darkthrone, Burzum, Satyricon, Gehenna, and Ulver (all from Norway) gave black metal the traditional patterns that it is still know for today . The history of the early Norwegian scene, most of all in the city of Bergen, is an integral part of metal’s collective memorial hypertext, certainly a fundamental one for the European extreme and black metal scenes (Schermann, 2018; Walch, 2018) . Presently, we seem to be witnessing a ‘third wave’ of ‘post’ black metal, which integrates new elements of aesthetics, lyrics,

antasising Time and Space Convergently

performance, and sound (Chaker et al ., 2018a, pp . 9–10) . Currently, this new discourse is moving toward a phase of crystallisation, and this is accompanied by a new wave of memorialisation of the first two phases (Schermann, 2018; Walch, 2018) . For my theory of sonic knowledge, Mayhem’s concert and Live in Leipzig as its documentation, form a challenging case study . As a live record, integrating the space-time of a concert, Live in Leipzig documents and recounts an important event of the subgenre in its early days . Being one of the few records on which both the mystified Mayhem personae of vocalist Dead and guitarist Øystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth (1968–1993 – usually considered the ‘father’ of second wave black metal, he was murdered by fellow musician and band member Kristian ‘Varg’ Vikernes on 10 August 1993) appear, it has been fashioned into a discursive object immensely involved in memorial processes . For black metalers, it is commonly deemed a ‘must-have-listened-to’ record . Methodologically, this case is challenging and I think thus rewarding to examine because the live record is structurally characterised by the convergence of both the temporal key notion of the album and the spatial term of the concert as a touring activity . Researching this empirical case shows how applying both key notions on an individual historical event, the concert in the former GDR on 26 November 1990, can nurture historical understanding of such phenomena in European metal history . Fantasising Time and Space Convergently

As my thesis, I put forward the assumption that in the shape of the record, the spacetime of that Monday evening in 1990 was transformed into a spatio-temporal convergence through memorial discourse . Until today, the live recording has allowed a hybrid imagination of both space and time . In European memorial discourse, this live album has acted as the bearer of a conglomerate of spatial and temporal fantasies, which paved the way for 1990s black metal culture . Consecutively, I show that the imagination of such a convergent hybridisation of spatio-temporal fantasies functioned as one of the door-openers, perhaps even as a sound-historical gatekeeper to second wave culture in Europe . To substantiate this claim, I use my notion of the album and the tour in parallel when examining the memorialisation discourse surrounding the concert . In the case of that event, it is important to start the inquiry with auto-historiographical reflection . In my research, I went back to the record Live in Leipzig and gave it several listening sessions . Such auto-ethnographical reflection (Berger, 1999, 2010) is insightful because historiography intersects with memorial processes . Ego-ethnographical thinking, also perceiving of the individual approach as listener, nurtures self-reflexivity and prompts new insights . The first insight from such a view is that the record, until today, went through processes of multimedia translations . Originally circulating on tape in the early 1990s, then as an LP on vinyl and a CD, at the time of writing I listened to the tracks on the

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Spotify music platform . Structurally, for the way of listening, and thus for a sound history of the album, this forms a significant difference . My cultural ear today is different from that of 1993 . Listening to tapes or LPs can happen in collective form . However, more frequently such media was listened to in private settings of medial isolation, for example living rooms, etc . In the context of Spotify, where the record’s convergence of space and time is streamed online, as a knot in an intertextual framework of a myriad of other media, the way of listening is drastically different and contrastive . Much more, it has become listening in a hypertextual network structure, offering many more opportunities for trans-genre jumps . These new digital structures appear quite similar to developments Spracklen and Spracklen (2018, pp . 123–136) identified for goth online subculture(s) since the 1990s . Othering in the Band’s Own Opus

I now turn to the insights into the memorialisation of the concert, which can be gained from a phenomenology of listening to the record as a listening historian, considering the record as a historical source of sound history (Berger, 1999; Pichler, 2018c) . When I went back to the record in this digital discourse, the sensual and auditory experience was characterised predominantly by two distinct impressions . On the one hand, the record made me feel as if I was part of the space and time of a past event, the authenticity of which seemed to come from Ohlin’s vocals . The vocal expression appeared to produce authenticity thanks to the fact that his vocal style differed from the one of Hungarian singer Attila Csihar, who sang four tracks of the Leipzig concert’s set list on the group’s first full-length studio effort, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (1994) . This first experience of othering by the vocal style makes an important mechanism of memoralisation of the record . On other hand, the raw live sound experience let me feel as if I was joining a community of black metalers, who seem to have the exclusive opportunity of re-imagining the concert’s space-time authentically . It was the difference between the raw live sound in comparison to the versions on the studio debut that constituted this impression . The imagined community of the fantastically and fictionally revived crowd of November 30, once again was established – in my mind’s phenomenological construction – by setting the raw live sound in othering distinction to the band’s later studio debut . Moreover, this is a significant mechanism in positioning the concert in scenic memorial discourse . Hence my first, ego-historical result, also as a starting point from which to deeper penetrate beneath the memorial discourse’s surface, is the assumption that the live album’s authenticity stems from sonic differences to De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas . Its authenticity seems to come from this evocation of difference by diachronic comparison, a way of ‘sonic othering’ while listening .

Othering in the Band’s Own Opus

A comparison of both record’s covers, looking at their graphical framing of the content time on each of both records underpins this thought . In its graphical framing, the cover of Live in Leipzig (Mayhem, 1993) on the LP pressing from 1993, is highly structural, even conservative and traditional . Under the band’s logo, typed in magenta and covering about a third of the available pictorial space, there is a black-and-white photograph of Dead in a characteristic concert pose . Thus, the content time of the concert is depicted in a highly formal, traditional, and orthodox style . The crucial aspect lies in the fact that deceased vocalist Ohlin is presented as the single and individual bearer of all the space-time encoded on the LP . Later pressings and the cover image on the Spotify network used photographs of Dead, too, realised in the same way . We compare it to the cover artwork of the group’s debut De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (Mayhem, 1994) . The framing of the studio debut’s music in the picture on its front has the same proportions . Under the logo, in white writing, the band put a schematic blue-and-black depiction of a church . It shows the eastern side of the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway, one of the country’s best-known church buildings . In the lowest position, there is the album title, which surprisingly forms the whole image’s least eye-catching element . Hence, the music on the record is offered in a manner associated with the depicted building, serving the purpose of fictionally ‘housing’ its content time . Comparing the two records, the difference between both, which in the music is marked by the othering between the vocal styles and the more ‘polished’ studio sound, was straightforwardly taken up by the imagination of the content time on the covers . For Live in Leipzig, the proposed carrier of fantasising about the content is Dead, ‘classic’ singer of Mayhem, who committed suicide in 1991 . The album was thus suggested as a memorial to him, already in 1993 . That sharply contrasts to De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas . Though following the same mode of framing proportions of the available space (which also comes from the limits of record covers as media), the studio album shows a church . First, we have a ‘real’, ‘authentic’, and ‘live’ depiction of a central actor of Mayhem, on the other, a well-known historical building as the crucial bearers of memories . Already graphically, this affirms the distinction of the event in Eiskeller in 1990 from the time around the studio release in 1994 by establishing a binary opposition between the already deceased – and hence to mystify and memorialise – Dead (and Euronymous) as a human actor and the material, ironically dead manifestation of the cathedral . Seen sound-historically, this reveals a key strategy of how the memorialisation of the concert was undertaken . In its media representation, it was consciously decided to foster a fantasy of a space-time when Dead (and once more, also Euronymous) was alive and well, and about to give birth to black metal . Live in Leipzig’s music in exactly this way is both: live and alive . In memory discourse, this was a good match with De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, which surprisingly yet necessarily had a ‘dead’, historical building as its graphic embodiment . Since its release, therefore, the studio debut was

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marked as a ‘dead’ record, however paradoxically this appears . In memory discourse, the opened-up divide between the fantasising of an ‘alive’ and a ‘dead’ record played an essential role because it helped produce first collective memorial contents . Those contents produced nothing other than the hypothesised convergence of spatio-temporal fantasisings . How exactly did this work in memory discourse? Most recent scholarship on black metal suggests taking a closer look at the Norwegian scene’s early history through a combination of cultural memory studies and musicology . Walch (2018) looks at Norwegian black metal’s self-consciousness as a construction of a distinct past and Klanglichkeit, a ‘sonicality’, something that ‘never had been’ . Equally important, Elflein (2010; 2018) examines song structures in Norwegian black metal with a methodology combining cultural memory studies and formal musicological analysis . Starting from there, we can analyse two essential dimensions of Norwegian black metal discourse: the music’s formalities and memory-building .24 Mayhem’s concert and the live album give an opportunity to hone this methodology by more precisely and empirically researching how the combination of both work in the fantasies evoked by listening to the live record . This has the shape of a convergence of space and time in our minds, accessible through sonic knowledge theorising . ‘Ad fontes!’: The Slayer Fanzine and the Lords of Chaos Book

To take this next step in our case study, we thus go ad fontes, directly to the crucial historical source texts . Black metal’s collective memorial clusters are structured by a rather small inventory of key texts . They fulfil functions of gathering and witnessing what happened in Norway during the early history of the second wave . Fundamental texts of this corpus of historical sources are Jon ‘Metalion’ Kristiansen’s (2012) Slayer fanzine and the Lord of Chaos book by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind (2003) . Published first in Norwegian and then English in twenty issues between 1985 and 2010, the Slayer fanzine, is seen as a textual sphere of interviews, reviews, pictures, etc . in European scene memory, which seems to accurately document the Norwegian scene’s history from within . Kristiansen, as a fan and oral history agent, narrated the scene’s history from a very close perspective . This first example of texts, in memory building, is nothing other than a mechanism of a canonisation of historical events . The book Lords of Chaos, though rejected by many scene members in its narrative, claims to tell of the ‘bloody rise of satanic metal underground’ (subtitle) in an accurate and already historicising way . Also drawing on the Slayer fanzine, it was a discursive catalyst that drew broad attention from audiences within and outside the scene to the second

This does not mean expert analysis by musicology but how historians can work with musicology’s results . 24

‘Ad fontes!’: The Slayer anzine and the Lords of Chaos Book

wave’s historical roots . This second example of a book worked as a catalyst in memory construction . It discursively forced the scene’s memory to normatively judge the roots of black metal, in the light of a broader context . It worked in a highly convoluted way on the thin line between providing information and stereotyping history . In memory, it has become a trigger of memory shifts . Recently, the book has been adapted as a rather successful and critically acclaimed film (Åkerlund, 2018), the discussion of which would be worth study on its own . Before we go back to both texts, let us think of the result of the memorisation, paradigmatically surfacing in a review of Live in Leipzig by Tovey (2015) What makes a ‘classic’? In the case of Mayhem’s Live In Leipzig (…) it’s primarily down to what it represents – (…) an important document in the development of both a scene and a genre . It’s impossible to look into the early days of ‘second wave BM’ without running into a reference to Live In Leipzig (…) References to it tend to spend longer talking about its classic status, the ‘atmosphere’ or the events of the scene it helped give birth to than the music itself (… .) Still an essential history lesson for those interested in early 90’s Scandinavian BM, but not always an easy one to swallow, and some fans will find themselves blasphemously glad that Black Metal has been so thoroughly house-trained .

Straightforwardly, the review represents the resultant narrative of memory discourse, perhaps seeing it as an ‘essential history lesson’ . But how did the narrative become important enough to be deemed such a history lesson? I suppose that it did so through intra-scene and extra-scene imagination of a sound-historical convergence of space and time . I have to provide evidence for this hypothesis . Up to the present, the source texts Slayer and Lords of Chaos have functioned as important stimuli for an imagination portraying the concert’s contemporary scene and world . Strikingly, neither the concert nor its recording was mentioned explicitly in both source texts . Yet they precisely seem to depict the atmosphere (Gumbrecht, 2011) which characterised the period . Not mentioning the concert or reviewing its recording, perhaps even in a bad review, constituted a significant blank space that can be filled with backward nostalgia . This blank space, in memory discourse making nothing more than a robust invitation for imagining the concert in the readers’ minds, first emerged in the Slayer fanzine . Jon Kristiansen started the journal already in 1985 . However, since the early 1990s, it turned toward the crystalising discourse of black metal, Metalion himself being in the double position of both a member and also a testimonial of the Norwegian scene working in the media . In his therefore structurally ambiguous position of both being an active scene member and a writing observer of the history of the second wave, Kristiansen fashioned his fanzine neither into a subjective affirmation of the scene nor into an objective, historical description . Throughout its twenty issues between 1985 and 2010 (being altogether edited as an anthology two years after the final issue) (Kristiansen, 2012), the journal

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oscillated and shifted between the poles of scene identity affirmation and critical observation . Cultural-historically, it has been this double-headed way of speaking to the scene and those outside at the same time, which made the magazine such an important milestone in memory discourse . In its stream of periodical publications on the scene over twenty-five years, 1990s black metal’s sonic knowledge was introduced, discussed, multiplied, and criticised . Leaving the blank for the concert in Leipzig in 1990 created a free space where the practical imagination of such knowledge (answering question such as: ‘How was black metal played at this point? What made up black metal identity in this period?’) could profoundly and effectively take place . In the eighth issue in the spring of 1991, Kristiansen (2012, pp . 209–211) presented a first and extensive interview with Mayhem members Dead and Euronymous . Among the topics discussed then, we find the planning of the studio debut De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas released in 1994, after the deaths of these two members of the band: Do you think we can expect a new lp from you guys in 1991? (E .) [author comment: ‘E’ . refers to Euronymous] – ‘Yeah, we are now working hard on trax (sic!) for the next lp, and at this moment we need about 3½ more before we have the 8 trax (sic!) which are necessary . This time it won’t be more delayed, if not something extreme happens (…)’ About your lp, will it be a concept lp dealing with this book ‘DE MYSTERIIS DOM SATHANAS’ only? (D .) [author comment: ‘D .’ refers to Dead] – ‘No, it won’t be a concept lp . Only one song on it will have to do about the book . (…) As for the book itself, I must find it before some wimpy mainstream jerk will do that . I think I’ll have an expedition on my own around the world to find it . It’s so dark, darker than death .’ (p . 209) .25

At first glance, the answers by Dead and Euronymous seem to be just some informal chatting about what Mayhem planned concerning their first studio album in 1991 . But, if we take their statements as historical source texts, as sources of the history of the European dynamics of sonic knowledge, we discover a second, highly significant discursive layer . Already in 1991, both Dead and Euronymous used the central temporal sonic knowledge concept of the album when looking from their current present to the future – which they could not know would consist of their untimely and violent deaths . Seeing this new layer for what it turned out to be, namely the highly significant construction of an independent temporal realm of the early Norwegian scene, the first studio album plans around the narrative of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas build the point of departure for the creation of the blank space in memory discourse we want to explore . That created the knot where the convergence of space and time on Live in Leipzig could intervene . Already here, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas was set up as the contrasting,

25

Capitalisation and underlining in the original .

‘Ad fontes!’: The Slayer anzine and the Lords of Chaos Book

musical ‘other’ of the live record . The void of the blank left free for the space-time of Live in Leipzig was perfected in the Lords of Chaos book, namely in the passages where crucial scene members (including Kristiansen) discuss their ‘authentic’ memories of Mayhem concerts around 1990 . Kristiansen organised a concert in Sarpsborg, where he lived . He remembers that occasion in an interview session for the book (Moynihan & Søderlind, 2003, pp . 56–57): What Mayhem concerts were you aware of? There was a Jessheim [author comment: a Norwegian town in the municipality of Akershus] gig in ’89 . They played in February ’90 in Sarpsborg, where I live . I organized the gig . Euronymous always wanted an extreme stage show, and Dead was also into this, having as extreme a live show as possible . Corpsepaint, blood, and everything else . Dead ripped up his shirt with a bottle .26

Perhaps due to his specific position within the scene, Metalion’s description of Mayhem in concert remains surprisingly neutral and descriptive, not expressively detailed or even excited . This stands in contrast to the memories of Bård ‘Faust’ Eithun, drummer for Mayhem’s fellow Norwegian black metal group Emperor (Moynihan & Søderlind, 2003, pp . 53–54): You attended the Mayhem Gig in 1990 [author comment: in Sarpsborg], which was one of their rare public shows. Yes, it was their first official gig . Dead cut himself very badly – intentionally of course (…) . He was supposed to go to the hospital afterward but he arrived too late so it was no use to give him stitches . I remember after the gig he was very sick and in pain because he lost a lot of blood . Was this the infamous gig with the pigs’ heads? Yes, pigs’ heads on stakes . When this gig occurred I was living with Mayhem and they had to make these pig heads, putting stakes into them . Dead was having big difficulty in getting the stake through the skull of the pig . (…) When did Dead mutilate himself? It was in the middle, during the set . He had been talking about it before the set, so expectations were high and he had to do it . It was during a track with almost no vocals, so he had the time to do it . He took a bottle and crushed it, took a sharp edge and did it .27

These two nuanced memories of two important agents are crucial oral history sources for the memoralisation of the concert in Leipzig and the live album it is documented on . They give the readers sometimes very pictorial, in parts explicit and violent re-

26 27

Bold text in the original . Bold text in the original .

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sources enabling them to imagine what a Mayhem concert looked like in 1990 – probably also in Leipzig in November 1990 . These memories, contained in two pieces of historical source texts, also constitute images encapsulating the show in Leipzig, at least in our fantasy . They make imagine Mayhem on stage, with Dead and Euronymous, the first cutting himself in self-destructive manner, the second consciously encouraging him to do so . These are almost overwhelmingly emotional resources of the imagination of a concert’s space-time . Pig heads also appeared in Leipzig and Ohlin also cut himself on stage there . Thus those proposals by Metalion and Faust of historically fantasising about Mayhem on stage in 1990 perfectly matched the space left empty in the discourse for the event we are examining . The Lords of Chaos book provided discourse with the necessary dark colours to paint the collective image of the show in Eiskeller . By not mentioning the concert itself, it was left to memorial imagination to constitute that event in metal history . In this case, no mention at all was the best way to mention the event . Opening the Door to the 1990s in Europe

We now have at hand all the empirical material we need to conclusively give our view of this event . We see it as at the sound-historical imagination of a convergence of space and time, analysable through the lens of the sonic knowledge notions of the album and the concert as a part of the tour . Historically, thinking of the long-range effects of that event, it was the convergence of space and time, established in memory discourse, that paved the way to 1990s second wave black metal in Europe . Probably, this structural linkage of space and time in memory building even worked as a gatekeeper which until today discursively marks the thin line between the history of early 1990s black metal culture and other metal music histories . How did this come together? First, listening to the live record has revealed ‘sonic othering’ as setting Live in Leipzig in binary opposition to De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas as the basic way in which the realm of the event was constituted in memory . This also was reflected in the cover images of both records . Rereading the canonical source texts of the Slayer fanzine and the Lords of Chaos book empirically underpinned the assumption . Not mentioning the concert and its documentation, and at the same time introducing the De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas concept, as well as the normative narrative of how one should imagine Mayhem in concert supplied the discourse with the necessary resources to constitute the event in cultural memory . Structurally, in this constitution of the event, the convergence of both space and time built the core mechanism . It is the time we imagine on the live record and the space we fantasise about during listening that define this historical event . Space and time come together, become a space-time of Live in Leipzig and create the event as a narrative . The narrative’s function in a European metal history is an immensely sig-

Opening the Door to the 1990s in Europe

nificant one . In our memorial fantasising, it established the door through which we must pass to discover ‘classic’ black metal in Europe in 1990 . The hybrid convergence of space and time constructed this doorway, text-by-text, phrase-by-phrase . Finally, the agents who seem to have built that door (agents like Faust, Metalion, and several others) also appear as the ones who guard the door and possess the power to decide who shall be allowed to proceed past it to black metal country . This gatekeeping effect is what we should reflect upon . Arguably, this boundary set here is also a boundary or cultural limit of metal’s Europeanness .

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Chapter 15 How to Survive the 1990s Pyogenesis’ Journey through the Genres (1992–2015)

Much has been written and said by journalists, scientists, musicians, and fans about the 1990s as a period of change and friction, and at the same time also ‘revivals’ in metal and rock history (Baker et al ., 2018; Christe, 2004, pp . 215–322; Hein, 2003; O’Neill, 2017) . In scholarship, at this point there is no consensual narrative of the 1990s (Brown, 2011; Brown et al ., 2016b; Gardenour Walter et al ., 2016; Poole, 2016; Roccor, 1998a, pp . 76–86; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 277–294) . Metal studies lacks a clear narrative of how to make sense of the decade, even more from a European viewpoint . As was discussed in my chapter based on the example of Mayhem, the ‘sub-history’ of black metal as a single partial sphere of metal seems much clearer (Chaker et al ., 2018a) . When it comes to evaluating the knots in discourse that connect metal with other rock genres, such as grunge and alternative, we find many open research questions . Basically, metal research needs a history of the dynamics of sonic knowledge in the 1990s, from both European and global perspectives . Of course, I cannot supply such a comprehensive narrative here . A Fascinating Decade in European Metal History

Nevertheless, the 1990s were a fascinating period of European metal history . Significant scene narratives summarise this period under the auspices of crisis and/or ‘sell-out’ (Kahn-Harris, 2007, pp . 131–139; Roccor, 1998a, pp . 76–86; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 277–294) because important agents – most notably Metallica on their self-titled ‘black album’ (1990), then Load (1996) and Reload (1997) – proactively engaged with sounds of alternative rock (Irwin, 2007; Smialek, 2016) . On the other side, the decade saw an intense globalisation of metal (Wallach et al ., 2011; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 277– 294) . Furthermore, in the second half of the 1990s there was a ‘revival’ of to-the-bone

The Incredible Journey of Pyogenesis

conservative forms of metal, a renaissance of ‘true metal’, paradigmatically illustrated with the example of the massive success of Swedish band Hammerfall’s first album Glory to the Brave (1997) . For the European cultural history of metal, this lets one suppose that crisis and ‘sellout’ must have had opened metal’s inventory of traditional codes to new discourses . However, those key codes such as hypermasculinity, blue-collar identities, and Dionysian themes resurfaced (Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 277–294), and were alive and well at the end of the decade . At this stage of research and scene memory building (Kahn-Harris, 2016), we cannot give a full or global account of those years of metal history . Further research, especially by trained historians, should address the period under auspices of the parallel occurrence of dynamic and stasis in metal’s sonic knowledge . The Incredible Journey of Pyogenesis

In this respect, the history of the German band Pyogenesis makes an empirical case study of how European scene agents attempted to cope with the changes in metal’s sonic knowledge arrangements . Founded out of the ashes of a local band named Immortal Hate in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg in 1991, the band released eight studio albums between 1992 and 2017 . They took an extensive break from issuing new material between She Makes Me Wish I Had a Gun (2002) and A Century in the Curse of Time (2015) . From their initial phase in the early 1990s to the middle 1990s, then again with their comeback in 2015, the band took a peculiar, seemingly bizarre stylistic journey and crossed the boundaries between very different genres of rock and metal . Starting out as a death and doom metal outfit, with Twinaleblood (1995) and Unpop (1997) breaking genre boundaries, they jumped from metal to alternative rock, punk, and pop . Interestingly, after their long break between 2002 and 2015, both of their recent releases, A Century in the Curse of Time and A Kingdom to Disappear (2017), take a much more ‘metallic’ approach again . However, musically their period of rock and pop appeal still shines through, above all in terms of ‘poppy’ vocal lines . How far their journey in the early period went is best illustrated by the graphical renderings the music found on the album covers . These are the covers of the debut Ignis Creatio – The Creation of Fire (1992) and of Unpop (1997):

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Fig. 5 Pyogenesis, Ignis Creatio – The Creation of Fire (1992).

Fig. 6 Pyogenesis, Unpop (1997).

The picture on the left, the first album’s cover, is done in black and white, showing an image of the interior of a gothic building, probably a medieval church . Conventionally themed, that graphical rendering depicts the album’s content time . Ignis Creatio – The Creation of Fire is a conventional death doom album, presenting a dark and gloomy, ‘gothic’ (Bardine, 2009) atmosphere . That stands in extreme contrast to Unpop, from only five years later . The cover shows a naked young man, with an acoustic guitar covering his genitals, standing in a shower; a funny, ironic picture in bright colours . It reflects the album’s content time of mellow pop, alternative, and punk rock . In only five years, Pyogenesis went from death metal and death doom metal to pop rock . Obviously, here, the first question that comes to mind would be why the group undertook this journey . Reflecting on that tour de force within our conceptual frame, this is not the most significant question . Reasons why could have been, for instance, artistic, personal, or economic – the band themselves has mentioned artistic motivation (Buchbender, 1997) . In our context, the crucial matter forms the question of which discursive contexts and structures enabled them to accomplish such a boundary-ignoring trip through the 1990s; namely, while on their trip somehow being capable of opening metal’s cultural conventions and renegotiating them . Undoubtedly, in the 1990s, metal key codes became much more fluid than before and more ready for hybridisation and trans-genre modifications in Germany and Europe as well as on a global level . Not without reason, that was the decade of the prominent emergence of cross-over as a hybrid genre on the border between metal and rap, also connecting metal to other forms of pop music (Christe, 2004, pp . 215–322; Baker et al ., 2018; O’Neill, 2017; Roccor, 1998a) . Nonetheless, the probing question remains: What happened there in terms of metal’s sonic knowledge? Pyogenesis, going all the way between the poles of the spectrum, from extreme metal to pop rock

Identity Crisis?!?

and back, cultural-historically measured the realm of the 1990s . Their ‘incredible’ journey is a European case study of how to ‘survive’ the 1990s; surviving the decade’s crisis and ‘sell-out’ allegations by radically and eclectically operating in metal’s cultural realm . In the following analysis, I cannot fully answer the question of what happened on that journey – this is impossible, because as told, research does not have a convincing interpretation of the 1990s on a macro-scale . Nevertheless, going back to the scene discourse, by using the notions of the album, emplotment, and metalness, one can empirically reconstruct significant snippets of the journey and their underlying cultural dynamics . Identity Crisis?!?

In the group’s long career, their album Twinaleblood from 1995 primarily catches our attention . After the debut and Sweet X-Rated Nothings (1994), that record marked the beginning of their radical trans-genre jumps . Much more radical and transgressive than their fellow doom death band Paradise Lost (UK) at that time (Paradise Lost’s flirt with electronic pop music dated from 1998, on their controversial album Host), they began to prominently use sounds from mainstream and alternative rock . Only the still heavy guitar production on Twinaleblood remained more ‘metal’ sonically . Having the indicative heading of ‘a very confusing album’, a review by user DagZeta (2013) from the Encyclopaedia Metallum online database exemplifies the scenic discourse on Pyogenesis’ stylistic travels: Pyogenesis is known as that band that used to be a really good death metal act that for some reason decided to become a pop punk band and then disappeared [author comment: the review was written during the band’s extensive break between 2002 and 2015] . (…) I was a bit surprised by this album . It’s not nearly as bad as I expected it to be . It’s also one of the most confusing albums I’ve ever listened to . (…) I get the impression that the band listened to a bunch of Blink 182 and then tried to integrate that into their old sound without fully abandoning the old sound . This is just one of those albums that you’re just not sure what it’s trying to be . I’m all for albums being diverse, but I get the impression that Twinaleblood is just one big identity crisis (that ultimately ended up solving itself in a way none of us really wanted) .

The review, written before the band returned to their metal roots, delivers two catchwords describing the band’s beginning journey through the 1990s: ‘identity’ and ‘crisis’ . One can suppose that those two terms moreover are paradigmatic of the shocks that hit metal on a macro-scale in this period . Yet more importantly, both catchwords were blended into the meaningful notion of ‘identity crisis’, making the album a recorded,

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musical version of such a period of uncertainty, fear, and self-reflection . Normatively judging the reviewer’s taste is not of interest here . The point is to understand what the usage of the trigger words of identity and crisis, then even blending them into identity crisis, symptomatically meant for the deeper layers of European metal sound history in the middle of the 1990s . Surprisingly, this descriptive operation of linking both words to identity crisis appears to be clearly applicable to metal’s dynamics of the period . What happened then, most prominently illustrated by the discourse on Metallica’s alleged ‘sell-out’ and commercialisation (Smialek, 2016), affected metal identities as fluid structures . Metalness slipped into upheaval . The culture of metal, on a macro-scale, seemed to have slipped into a full-blown crisis . However, the notion of identity crisis itself does not fully capture the dynamics of sonic knowledge back then . Cultural-historically, it is the discursive logic behind the operation of constructing the concept, blending the elements of identity and crisis into an identity crisis that reveals the deeper layers . It is not the notion itself, but the way this notion was constructed that captures 1990s metal history . Paradigmatically to be experienced on Twinaleblood, the usual sonic knowledge templates of metalness – all of metal’s core ideals described so impressively by Weinstein (1991) and Walser (1993) – became fluid by critique . Criticism was close to crisis, and the critique thus caused the crisis . By the logic of linking both a new awareness of identity and the feeling of crisis, the discourse was able to balance the tensions . The question to examine is this: How did Twinaleblood, broken up through the prism of the notion of the album, function as a time-constituting discursive statement that more or less liquefied metalness in the context of crisis? It is not easy to answer this question historically or precisely because we lack relevant historical sources which give us exact clues on this matter . However, again taking up scenic discourse, looking at the content time of the album as its temporal backbone proves to be insightful . Systematically and methodologically, the LP’s track list represents the content time: 01 . 02 . 03 . 04 . 05 . 06 . 07 . 08 . 09 . 10 . 11 . 12 .

‘Undead’ (5:57) ‘Twinaleblood’ (2:35) ‘Weeping Sun’ (3:08) ‘Every Single Day’ (4:09) ‘Abstract Life’ (4:05) ‘Empty Space’ (2:53) ‘Sinfeast’ (3:02) ‘Those Churning Seas’ (3:07) ‘Snakehole’ (3:19) ‘Addiction Pole’ (1:57) ‘God Complex’ (6:04) ‘Supavenus’ (5:16)

Identity Crisis?!?

13 . ‘Bar Infernale’ (1:06) 14 . ‘I’m Coming’ (6:52) (Pyogenesis, 1995)

Having a total running time of fifty-three minutes and thirty seconds, the record features fourteen songs . Among them, the longest is the last one, ‘I’m Coming’, and the shortest one is the piano interlude ‘Bar Infernale’, directly before it . Already listener DagZeta (2013), in his quoted review, gives significant space to an analysis of the content time: You have songs like the title track which is just a pretty bad pop punk song, then you have songs like ‘Abstract Life’ which sounds like it could have easily been a leftover song from when they were writing Waves of Erotasia [author comment: Waves of Erotasia, a death metal EP by the group from 1994] . Then there’s also songs like ‘Every Single Day’ which sounds like a doomy pop punk song . The music isn’t that complex, but I have to ask, ‘What is this supposed to be?’ (…) There’s actually some good stuff on this album . There are a few riffs you can write home about buried in punk styled ‘riffs’ that keep trying to force their way in . While strange, the songs that try to mix the old sound and the pop punk actually work somewhat well . On the other hand, the songs that are almost entirely pop punk are really bad, namely the title track and ‘Addiction Pole’ . Call me crazy, but it’s rarely a good sign when a song starts with an extended ‘yeah’ as the first word . And while I’m on the subject of lyrics, what the hell is a Twinaleblood? I’ve checked dictionaries, and found nothing . (…) If you’re somewhat open to non-metallic elements seeping into your metal, give this identity crisis of an album a shot .

Trying to linguistically and analytically tame the album’s genre hybridisation, DagZeta gives a reading in which he sees ‘the songs that try to mix the old sound and the pop punk’ as the ones that ‘actually work somewhat well’ . Trying to find out about the opening of metal conventions, this is a significant statement . What the author says here is that to him – of course, only to him and in his contingent setting of listening to the record – the songs that made fluid and hybridised metal’s knowledge resources made the most sense . That reading also implies they made him able to make sense of the band’s identity of mutated metalness . This is a first empirical trace of this history . It lets me assume that it was a time when neither pure metal nor pure pop and rock but their liquid hybridisation made most sense for the band’s career . In fact, rather creatively, probably only out of the need to somehow artistically ‘survive’ in a drastically changed cultural context of crisis and ‘sell-out’, they went from metal to alternative rock . In the zone between both discourses, crystallised into the pieces of their music which ‘mix the old sound and the pop punk’, they could get a grip on their then contemporary European space and time .

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In this zone in between, metalness was broken, refurbished, and augmented by punk and rock aspects . The album functioned as a ‘third space’ (Homi Bhabha) and made a virtue of the necessity of crisis by starting to travel across the rock and metal galaxy . Beneath the surface, that causally presupposed a context in European metal history in which, firstly, the awareness of crisis was a given and communally accepted in the scene . Secondly, and more importantly, that logically required a historical situation in which metal already tried to cope with the crisis of metalness . From such a perspective, Twinaleblood, released at the exact middle of the decade, was an attempt at subcultural crisis governance; a shot at attempting to save what was left to save of metalness . Another review on the AllMusic platform (Anderson J ., n . d .) underpins this thesis: Pyogenesis completely abandons their doom/death and gothic roots on Twinaleblood, a strong but confusing effort from the German outfit . The transition from their prior sound (…) to the radio-friendly alternative metal is extreme, and while texturally similar, this new conceptual approach confused the band’s following . (…) This (…) release can’t challenge discs from the likes of Creed and Stone Temple Pilots, but considering the oxymoronic pop-metal genre’s conspicuous ambitions, perhaps Pyogenesis was attempting to fill what is perhaps the greatest artistic vacuum within the myriad of metal subgenres . For that, they deserve a little credit .

Hidden within this quote, two phrases and their diachronic reading in text are crucial . First, this one: ‘The transition from their prior sound (…) to the radio-friendly alternative metal is extreme (…)’ . This is to be read in association with the other elemental line: ‘(…) perhaps Pyogenesis was attempting to fill what is perhaps the greatest artistic vacuum within the myriad of metal subgenres’ . What the author states here, in disguise, is my thesis that Pyogenesis was making a virtue of the necessities of a highly fluid discourse, trying to embrace new forms of metalness . Surviving the 1990s in Europe

For this case study, in summary, this leads to the following conclusions: Actually, Pyogenesis’ incredible journey from death doom metal in 1992 to punk rock in 1995, then back to metal in their comeback after 2015, was not odd or bizarre at all . Much more, it appears as a rather conscious, perhaps even courageous oscillating movement in a significantly changed environment of sound history . Metalness was questioned, critiqued, in crisis, and needed reflection and renovation . In the exact year of 1995 when Twinaleblood was issued, German and European metal was in a state of known crisis and was attempting to find ways out of it . It comes as no surprise that 1995 was the exact release year of Rammstein’s debut Herzeleid, that paved the way for the discourse of ‘Neue Deutsche Härte’ (NDH) . NDH became crystalized in the fluid sound history sphere of the second half of the 1990s . This is how Twinaleblood functioned, i . e . as a

Surviving the 1990s in Europe

tool of subcultural crisis governance . That is how Pyogenesis ‘survived’ the 1990s in Europe . That Metallica released their controversial Load and Reload albums shortly after gives another supporting indicator of our conclusions . Several other important agents in metal culture changed their musical approaches in exactly those few years, some radically and some more slowly . Just to mention a few: Kreator on their album Cause for Conflict (1995), W . A . S . P . on Kill Fuck Die (1997), and Paradise Lost on One Second (1997) . That many of metal’s key artists went to highly differing genres outside of the conventions of classic metal music, from industrial to country to pop, proves how fluid metal’s state of culture was in the 1990s . Transgression in those ways lends itself as the major topic of the decade, demanding more research on modes of transgression in the 1990s (Kahn-Harris, 2007, 2016) . That said, Pyogenesis’ great journey between 1992 and 2015, a massive swing from extreme metal to pop rock and back, made perfect sense . It was their way of surviving the 1990s as a period of crisis in European metalness . Their first period of intense releases lasted until 2002, so they made it out of that decade . The fact that they took a break and returned with metal music in 2015 is the other side of the coin . At this point in the research, one can only suspect that after the crisis of metalness in the middle of the decade, there was a restrengthening of old metal ideals, which with some modification has lasted until today . However, those core ideals did not again reach their initial stable configuration of the 1970s and 1980s . The further pluralisation and diversification into subgenres document a prevailing flux of metalness until today (Brown et al ., 2016b; Wallach et al ., 2011) . Pyogenesis, in their latest studio effort, did not deny their pop era but integrated some of it, thus my interpretation . On balance, the 1990s are a highly fascinating period of European metal history, of crisis, of alleged ‘sell-outs’, of crisis reigned in by the refortification of old values and at the same time acknowledging the period’s novelty . The decade deserves much more substantial research . Sonic knowledge theory could be applied on it, asking for pluralisation, diversification, and stasis in European cultural framing . The open question at the end of this case study – as an invitation for further research – is why this extreme form of trans-genre trangsgression happened in Europe, and whether there are other similar European cases, and also cases in other regions around the globe (Wallach et . al, 2011; Weinstein, 2016) .

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Chapter 16 Black Metal Goes Science Temple of Oblivion’s Traum und Trauma (2014)

The Representation of History in European Black Metal

In European black metal culture, history as a lyrical subject holds an important position (Chaker et al ., 2018a; Schermann, 2018; Von Helden, 2017; Walch, 2018) . Moreover, the historical self-awareness (especially of the Norwegian scene of the early 1990s and the second wave of black metal), in the form of self-referential narratives of the scene, has grown (Kahn-Harris, 2016; Kristiansen, 2012; Moynihan & Søderlind, 2003) . In this ambiguous sphere between a cultivated tradition of history as a subject and historic self-reflection, the representation of history matured into two specific modes . The one side is the conservative and traditional way of the representation of history, representing in music a ‘true’ and ‘authentic’ history of a pre-Christian past (commonly in an anti-Christian ideological framing), which keeps being promoted (Kahn-Harris, 2007; Swist, 2019) . First black metal artists in the 1980s, then also the second wave in the 1990s used this mode, and it is significant as one of the subgenre’s core conventions until today (Chaker et al ., 2018a; Schermann, 2018; Von Helden, 2017; Walch, 2018) . In this first form of sonic emplotment, representing history works as quite naïve narrations of ‘authentic heritage’, however constructive that might remain (Butler J ., forthcoming; Spracklen et al ., 2014) . The other side are more recent developments, which established another, more self-reflexive, and deconstructive representation of history . In the currently crystallising third wave of post black metal, where the subgenre’s specific core ideals are being renegotiated, there also appears a type of sonic emplotment reflecting on the constructiveness of history . Artists experiment with new forms of historical storytelling in extreme metal (Chaker et al ., 2018a) . This builds the second mode, a more deconstructivist representation of history we could label the ‘post’ approach . So, simultaneously appearing in both forms of ‘authentic’ heritage and increased self-awareness, the representation of history in European black metal culture has been

Temple of Oblivion’s Traum und Trauma (2014)

dynamized in the last few years . Currently oscillating between both poles, black metal’s historical gaze reflects an ambiguous mindset . Consequently, it has changed the relationship between the contemporary ‘now’ and the past ‘then’, which always have to be linked in narration . From my point of view, both history as subject and historic self-awareness are crucial issues of metal’s dynamics of sonic knowledge . Space, time, metalness, Europeanness, and emplotment in black metal have become increasingly fluid . ‘Going Mainstream’ and ‘Scientification’ in Black Metal

In this respect, two broader trends in metal, which I already discussed in my theoretical consideration of Europeanness (chapter 5), arouse empirical interest . These trends are, first, metal music’s advance into a modified mainstream, at least showing a growing mainstream interest in metal (Batchelor, 2012; Huber, 2013) . Secondly, the ‘scientification’ of metal, which is documented by the very existence of a field called metal studies (Brown, 2018; Kahn-Harris, 2016; Savigny & Schaap, 2018) . Metal studies has its initial institutionalisation of publication forms in Europe – I consider Great Britain a part of the European metal flux . Both trends affect the ways scene and external agents produce, perceive, listen to, and think about the music . However, this makes for an on-going and open-ended history . At this point, the latest developments let one suspect that the dynamics of ‘going mainstream’ and ‘scientification’ also affect the modes of the representation of history for black metal in Europe . This comes unexpectedly, as the extreme and (suggested) anti-mainstream ideologies of the subgenre could also have proved to be immune to mainstream allures . Nonetheless, several recent examples show that the innovation pressure on the extreme metal scene, exerted upon it by mainstream attention and scientific interest, cause even the extreme black metal world to adapt to the new context . The representation of history has been modified towards narration forms, which (graspable through the theoretical categories of the album, the tour, identities, Europeanness, and sonic emplotment) come closer to being scientific historiographies . The innovation pressure exerted upon black metal effects a more mainstream-oriented and ‘scientified’ mode of history telling . In the following, I examine an empirical case of the representation of European 20th century history in black metal . This gives empirical indications of how things are changing . Temple of Oblivion’s Traum und Trauma (2014)

Hailing from Chemnitz in Saxony (as a part of the former GDR, then called ‘KarlMarx-Stadt’, German for ‘Karl Marx Town’), Temple of Oblivion belonged to the younger generation of German black metal groups . In August of 2018, Chemnitz also

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was the location of far-right riots causing massive media coverage and mainstream discussions on the rise of right-wing extremism in Saxony . The band was rooted in regional and local culture . Being active since 2006, they labelled their music ‘epic black metal’ (Temple of Oblivion, n . d .) . Their music blends traditional black metal, orchestral parts, and historical samples, predominantly political speeches . Besides a number of EPs and a compilation, they issued two full-length studio records: Morituri Te Salutant (2011) and Traum und Trauma (2014) (Discography of Temple of Oblivion, 2018) . The band thematised 19th and 20th century history, as well as local and regional mythologies . They group split up in 2019, however their members are still highly involved in the scene . ‘Templář Khenaz’, as vocalist and main lyricist, followed a ‘Germanocentric’ approach when it comes to historical storytelling . Of course, this makes one suspicious of their political orientation, suggesting a possible völkisch or far-right, perhaps even Nazi or fascist orientation . The group denied holding such ideologies; nonetheless, their discourse rather openly constructs their version of a ‘better German past’ . Hence, their music is open to nationalist and essentialist interpretations, and could even provide building blocks for such perspectives . Furthermore, they engaged in local and regional touring and promotion networks in which there is not a recognisable or clear critique of or distancing from such views (Temple of Oblivion, n . d .) . Given their integration in these contexts, it is surprising to find that their narratives also reflect the new dynamics of the representation of history . Even such remote areas of nationalism-oriented scene discourses are modified by the new dynamics . I am highly critical of the band’s narrative, due to its potential for promoting toxic nationalism (Anderson B ., 1983; Gellner, 1984; Temple of Oblivion, n . d .) . Thinking along critical lines, it becomes even more important to also deconstructively analyse how their representation of history works . In doing so, I look at their second studio album from 2014, Traum und Trauma . The title forms a German alliteration of the words for dream (‘Traum’) and trauma . In the lyrics of the thirteen tracks, some of them being instrumental or sampled interludes, Templář Khenaz introduced their concept of the history of the first half of the European 20th century . The following long quotation is worth reading as it contains the band’s description of the album’s representation of history (Templář Khenaz, 2014): ‘TRAUM UND TRAUMA’ is a concept album and deals with the fateful years of the first half of the 20th century . History builds the background and the political events build the storyline’s framing . The focus is on man himself . It should be noted that the figure of the protagonist is fictional, nevertheless it is inspired by biographies of different real historic personalities . The story sets in around the turn of the century, in the border area between Saxony and Czechia . ZISLEITHANIA [author comment: the second track] tells of the dark and mystical beauty of the home of the Ore Mountains [author comment: a mountainous region

Temple of Oblivion’s Traum und Trauma (2014)

in Bohemia and Saxony] and the search for a new and better life in the vast and different, yet diverse and peaceful lands of the Habsburg Monarchy . MIT VEREINTEN KRÄFTEN [author comment: the third track] marks the transition from carefree adolescence to the horrors of World War I . After an expectant time of waiting, the protagonist is drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army and sent to the Italian front . The frosty war of position in AM ISONZO [author comment: the fourth track] changes the expectant image of the triumphant Gebirgsjäger [author comment: the monarchy’s mountain infantry troops] to an image of ceaseless horror . Those were the fateful battles of the peoples of Austria-Hungary . Despite the glorious Wunder von Karfreit [author comment: ‘Wunder von Karfreit’ constructively refers to the twelfth battle at the front at Isonzo River, in which Austria-Hungary was unexpectedly victorious in late 1917], the lost war swept away any zeal and hope . The German as well as the Habsburg empires broke apart . The slowly coming peace, with its oppressive emptiness, is documented in the intermezzo DURCH BÖHMENS WIRRSAL [author comment: the short fifth track .] . BLÜTE DER FÜGUNG [author comment: the sixth piece] illustrates the neediness and joy of the 1920s . While in the first half of the song, the protagonist complains about the misery of workers in the cities, the second half leads him back to the rural Bohemian border area, where he can follow his envisioned destiny, together with his wife and children . In the meanwhile, more and more the conflict between German Bohemians and Czechs flares up . The song SAAT DER NIEDERTRACHT, with speeches and short musical sequences takes a look at the complexity of the Sudetenkrise [author comment: this German term refers to the international crisis before the Munich Agreement of 30 September 1938, permitting Nazi Germany’s annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia], which led to the Munich Agreement . After the outbreak of World War II, the story in VON DER SUTJESKA [author comment: the eighth track] predominantly tells of the bloody conflicts between the numerically superior German forces and Tito with his Yugoslav partisans . After the insurgents’ escape and the failure to win, the last battles close to his home are also lost . The search for the perfect world in the days of adolescence remains unlucky . After his arrival in Czechoslovakia began the humiliating revenge and expulsion of the Sudetendeutschen [author comment: the country’s German population] with their culture that had developed over centuries . The protagonist flees VON ORT ZUR ORT [author comment: ‘from place to place’, the title of the tenth track] with his family in the direction of Saxony, towards his own roots . Nonetheless, even there nobody regards him with benevolence and his last belongings are taken away from him . He spends his life’s meagre last years in the new Saxony [author comment: which became a part of the Socialist GDR in 1949] . Indifferently, he looks back at his life: in the end, only lost dreams and lasting trauma remain .28

28

Author’s translation, capitalisation and italics in the original .

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Empirically, this extensive explanation by the author himself is an illuminating example of how things are changing in European black metal . Of course, the essentialist ‘Germanocentric’ narrative dominates here, and its destructive potentials are clear . In order to understand how it works, we look at this historic source’s mode of representing European 20th century history . Intriguingly, in the lyrics, the telling of history happens in a narratological mode coming pretty close to scientific historiography’s traditional forms of emplotment established by Ranke and German ‘historism’ in the 19th century (Beiser, 2011; Iggers et al ., 2017; Koslowski, 2006; White, 1973) . Historism’s ideals of an ‘objective’ science of history postulated the importance of chronological and synoptic narrations: Gesamtdarstellungen, a disciplinary word of art for full accounts of a certain period or subject of history (Rüsen, 2013) . What is represented on Traum and Trauma comes as close to that ideal as black metal discourse currently allows . Chronologically and completely, the protagonist tells of his history between 1897 and 1954 . This obviously creates a fictional account – yet it is a fictional account told proto-scientifically (Kuukkanen, 2015; White, 1973) . How far the new concept goes becomes evident when looking at the album’s track list, as an anatomical image of its content time: 01 . ‘Glück auf! (1897)’ 02 . ‘Zisleithania (1912)’ 03 . ‘Mit vereinten Kräften (1914)’ 04 . ‘Am Isonzo (1917)’ 05 . ‘Durch Böhmens Wirrsal (1920)’ 06 . ‘Blüte der Fügung (1926)’ 07 . ‘Saat der Niedertracht (1938)’ 08 . ‘Von der Sutjeska (1943)’ 09 . ‘Auf Freund Hains Spuren (1945)’ 10 . ‘Von Ort zu Ort (1947)’ 11 . ‘Pfad der Vergessenheit (1949)’ 12 . ‘Traum und Trauma (1953)’ 13 . ‘Auf bald! (1954)’ (Temple of Oblivion, 2014)

In the parenthesis, behind each individual song title, we find the years the tracks stand for in chronological order, from the end of the 19th century to the early Cold War . In this way, structurally, the track listing comes close to the prototype of a scientific historic narration (Beiser, 2011; Koslowski, 2006) . It does so in three ways: The first is the mentioned chronological character . The second comes from the fact that history is told from a first-person perspective . However fictionally it remains, the approach is linked to the recent discourse of ‘ego-history’ in academia, which references the biographical, first-person perspective (Mascuch, Dekker, & Baggerman, 2016) . Thirdly, spanning an entire fictional life between 1897 and 1954, the record gives a Gesamtdarstellung, a full account of the first half of the age of extremes (Hobsbawm, 1994), discursively

Black Metal Goes Science

wrapped into the protagonist’s moving life and times . Taken together, the three modes of chronology, ego-narration, and narratological globality bring this representation of history close to scientific history’s forms of emplotment (Beiser, 2011; Iggers et al ., 2017; Koslowski, 2006; White, 1973) . Black Metal Goes Science

In the case of Traum and Trauma, thinking of that German black metal album as a piece of discourse from 2014, the narratological triplet of chronological storytelling, first-person perspectivism, and topical totality characterises the representation of European history . Opening the toolbox of sonic knowledge terms, the most important notions are, as a first step, the album and sonic emplotment, and as a second step, space, Europeanness, and metalness . As an album, the long-player recollects and offers history . It stores the past era of the first half of the 20th century, told in the contemporary present of 21st century discourse . The specific mode of storage and presentation is part of this triplet . Consecutively, it is appropriate to compare Traum and Trauma as a ‘historiography’ in black metal to a scientific, historiographic monograph on that period in European culture, time, and space . The record does not come with all the prestige, habitus, and cultural modes of distinction of such a monograph (Bourdieu, 1990) . Nonetheless, structurally, it represents history in the same way . Adding to this, an examination via the term of sonic emplotment means that we can further underpin this claim . As a form of sonic emplotment, the triad of chronological storytelling, first-person view, and topical totality structures the album’s emplotment forms, and moreover its narratology in music . Once more, this makes the LP a ‘scientified’ black metal history in musical form . In a second step, each time the group performed music from the record at concerts, space came into play as well . Concerts position this ‘scientified’ history in space . On the same level of explanation, Europeanness is the category one can use to measure the album protagonist’s travels through 20th century Europe, a Europe of war and peace . Ironically, the figure’s Europeanness comes into conflict with the band’s ambition of promoting ‘Germanocentrism’ – whether they are aware of this or not (Templář Khenaz, 2014) . Finally, metalness grows out of this ‘scientified’ narrative because it also is a metal one . On balance, the empirical example at hand gives us clues about the dynamics of sonic knowledge in recent European black metal, on its way to ‘postness’ of the third wave of post black metal (Chaker et al ., 2018a; Schermann, 2018; Von Helden, 2017; Walch, 2018) . In reaction to rigid innovation pressure, applied upon heavy metal by mainstream’s increased interest and the academic recognition of this formerly peripheral cultural phenomena as ‘proper’ art, even essentialist black metal representation of history is forced to change . It needs to adapt itself to a scientific, ‘enlightened’, and

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rational worldview . In a nutshell, this European black metal goes science . Already the debates on ‘black metal theory’, a hybrid, two-headed intellectual creature existing on the thin line between black metal and philosophy reflected such dynamics (Black metal theory website, 2013) . Today, these developments stand in full bloom . It is crucial to fully recognise that the mentioned dynamics of sonic knowledge – ‘going mainstream’ and ‘scientifying’ black metal – developed out of the continental networks of metal culture in Europe . Thus they have produced ‘metallic’ Europeanness in exactly these shifting ways .

Chapter 17 A Historian at a Newly Established European Extreme Metal Festival Metal on the Hill (2016)

The Context

On 13 August 2016, as a historian working in metal music studies, who also is a longtime practicing metalhead, I attended the Metal on the Hill festival in my hometown of Graz, Styria, Austria (Metal on the Hill festival website, 2016) . It was the premiere of an (extreme) metal festival in the capital of the province in the southeast corner of Austria . Organised by the metal label Napalm Records (n . d .), the event took place in the venue of ‘Kasemattenbühne’ (English: ‘casemates stage’) on the ‘Schlossberg’ (English: ‘castle mountain’), the hill in the centre of the city . Kasemattenbühne is an old vault of brick walls, which had been used for storage of the town’s castle in Renaissance times (City of Graz official website, 2016) . Under historical auspices, also looking to practices of historic re-enactment (Braun, Heeg, Krüger, & Schäfer, 2014), it had been re-functioned as a ‘Freilichtbühne’, a small open-air arena . This is where this European extreme metal festival took place for the first time . This is not only another indication that metal touches on areas of the cultural mainstream . It means moreover that, spatially and semiotically, the culture of extreme metal has reached the very heart of a European city . Hence more closely than before, the city has been integrated into the European metal networks . In this sense, when attending the festival’s premiere I acted as an agent of these networks . Graz is the second largest urban agglomeration in Austria with about 310,000 inhabitants (City of Graz official website, 2016) and has integrated extreme forms of heavy metal into its municipal culture . To be sure, the fact that Napalm Records is based in Eisenerz in Northern Styria did help smooth this process . Next, I examine the empirical case of Metal on the Hill 2016 as the subject of a piece of experimental writing of ego-historiography and auto-ethnography within the framework of sonic knowledge theory (Berger, 1999, 2010; Mascuch et al ., 2016) . Using the theory’s

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explanatory powers, I analyse the imagination and experience I had at the event itself, and when reflecting on it afterwards . The festival, for the artists as a part of their touring activities, happened in a specific place at a specific time in European contemporary history . Empirically placing the distinct form of historical imagination initiated by the event in the framework of sonic knowledge lays open underlying structures of cultural flux . They are symptomatic of the contemporary state of the cultural metal ear in Europe . Conservative Imagination and Experience

On the day of the festival, I arrived at Kasemattenbühne at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon . There, I already encountered a rather large number of attendants . My first impression was that it was going to be both well received and well attended . I started to have a look around the venue and its architectural features . The place has a modern roof, however, its reddish brick walls create an atmosphere and sense of history (Gumbrecht, 2011), of ‘old Graz’ (Strahalm & Laukhardt, 2008) . At that point, I felt like I was a part of the city’s history since the medieval and Renaissance eras – with all the connections to the history of greater Europe . This is a picture I took of the brick walls, which forms the audience space’s lateral boundaries:

Fig. 7 Audience and brick wall, Metal on the Hill, Graz, 13 August 2016 [photograph: Peter Pichler].

Conservative Imagination and Experience

My experience combined a feeling of joining local, municipal history and the scenic community of metal music . Regional identity and metalness merged into a single narrative, the festival’s narrative . It is barely surprising that metal’s conservatism (Roccor, 1998a, 1998b; Walser, 1993; Weinstein, 2000) and the atmospheric experience of traditional European architecture made a good match . In the first place, the festival offered a conservative experience and relatedly caused, traditionally structured, mental imaginations of metal in the historical realm of Graz and Styria . It was an experience of extreme metal music happening within my normal framework of regional belonging, identity, and history . Still, the day’s framework and schedule also greatly relied on metal’s imaginary and culture of rebellion, anarchy, and being ‘against the establishment’ . I captured this aspect in another picture of the ‘crowd’, showing the ‘metal horns’ as one of metal’s key practices at concerts:

Fig. 8 Audience, Metal on the Hill, Graz, 13 August 2016 [photograph: Peter Pichler].

The combination of both traditional architecture and traditional metal culture characterised the entire day’s experience, thus likewise my imagination afterwards . Strikingly, there is no logical, phenomenological, or structural difference or conflict between my two mental modes of looking back at the event, first as scientist working in European cultural history, and secondly, as metal fan . My metalness identity enjoyed being part of the event; to function in sense making, it required the empirical experience of that

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specific cultural setting on Schlossberg . My scientist identity worked in another, complementary way . It approached the empirical experience as data to satisfy my curiosity concerning new sensations in metal studies (Pichler, 2017a; Savigny & Schaap, 2018) . Noteworthy, both identities were grounded in the same empirical material, my inner imagination in that setting . They did not conflict logically or structurally . They were different ways to make sense of internal landscapes . Methodologically, the question of distance, objectiveness, and emotional involvement in metal research is not answered in a satisfyingly way by citing such complementary connections (Pichler, 2017a; Savigny & Schaap, 2018) . I come back to it in my concluding analysis of Metal on the Hill . To better understand what happened there, I attempt decoding the event’s distinct imaginative structures in a historical perspective . ‘Conservative Chaos’

The billing of the festival featured long-standing, successful bands and also newcomers in extreme metal: Moonspell (Portugal), Mantar (Germany), Satyricon (Norway), and Arch Enemy (Sweden) were some of the acts . At least two groups are alternative metal and rock: And Then She Came from Germany and Lacuna Coil from Italy . The performances lasted from about 2 o’clock in the afternoon until 10:30 at night . Those eight and a half our hours offered a dense time of music, sounds, images, and imaginations at a metal concert event (Weinstein, 2000, pp . 199–235) . Extreme metal culture dominated (Kahn-Harris, 2007) . There are two photographs I took of performances (see Figs . 9 and 10) . The pictures illustrate how the day was being witnessed by myself and hundreds of other people – it was a traditional (extreme) metal experience in terms of sound, camaraderie, atmosphere, and imagery . It was loud and it was crowded, and the performances were charged with symbolism of riot, of revolution, of satanism, anti-Christian ideology, and mysticism . Hence, at the Metal on the Hill 2016 festival, European (extreme) metalness was constituted within the space of traditional Styrian history . Its discourse progressed to the heart of Styrian regional and local history, materially made solid in the architecture of Kasemattenbühne on the Schlossberg in the centre of Graz . Being both a historian and a metalhead in a single body, I experienced the festival as something a bit odd and contradictory, which could be categorised as an experience and a feeling of a ‘conservative chaos’ . The junction of local history – in the architecture and locality of the venue – and traditional metal practices of chaos (Weinstein, 2000, pp . 38–43) gave birth to that strange brew . It was conservative and chaotic all at once .

‘Conservative Chaos’

Fig. 9 Performance at Metal on the Hill, Graz, 13 August 2016 [photograph: Peter Pichler].

Fig. 10 Performance at Metal on the Hill, Graz, 13 August 2016 [photograph: Peter Pichler].

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Beneath the Surface: The Local Dynamics of Sonic Knowledge

So far, we have found out about the form of historical imagination, which that event made appear in my mind, the mind of a historian and metal fan . Ego-history and auto-ethnography, taking my own experience and imagination as empirical data, enabled us to empirically reveal the distinct phenomenological structure of the event . Still, this imaginative stream of feelings, thoughts, and pictures only structures the surface of the event; it does not clarify the view of the deeper dynamics of sonic knowledge in Europe . Penetrating beneath the thick surface of the mental objects, we ask how the auto-analysis of ‘conservative chaos’ relates to the broader framework of sonic knowledge . In this respect, my imagination was structured by the notion of ‘conservative chaos’, and once more yields nothing more than empirical data . This argument seems to support Berger’s phenomenological findings (1999, 2010) in respect to perception in metal culture . To assume the distinct thought stream in my mind, aside from personal and individual prefiguration, also depended upon the stream of sonic knowledge in the deeper cultural layers circulating through the metal networks in Europe . Let us start capturing those deeper layers in a rudimentary way, using the notions of space, time, Europeanness, metalness, and emplotment . Sound-historically, the crucial fact is that on 13 August 2016, extreme metal and metal culture unfolded their distinct forms of sense making in the very heart of the city of Graz . Thus, exactly within the Kasemattenbühne on the Schlossberg between 2 p . m . and 10:30 p . m . on that Saturday, fundamental current trends of sonic knowledge surfaced: the growing interest and awareness of metal, even extreme metal in mainstream culture; an initial appreciation of metal in the mainstream; the conjunction of the imaginative rooms of traditional, regional narratives of history (as embodied by the architecture of Kasemattenbühne), and metal’s key codes (Brown et al ., 2016b; Wallach et al . 2011; Weinstein, 2000) . Discursively, ‘conservative chaos’ was the result of those streams beneath the surface . In all of this, space is the most significant dimension . ‘Centre of Graz’, ‘heart of the city’, ‘Schlossberg’, and ‘Kasemattenbühne’ are spatial indications and specifications . They make us think about spaces . Examining these spaces, using my notion of the tour, we gain another insight into the local dynamics of sonic knowledge . Tours are series of concerts, travelling through Europe or other continental regions, which epistemically integrate these regions into the subcultures of metal, As the performances by all the artists at Metal on the Hill (Mantar, Moonspell, Satyricon, Arch Enemy, Lacuna Coil, And Then She Came, etc .) (Metal on the Hill festival website, 2016) were historic events in each band’s touring framework, and the spaces were locally imagined, these were then put into the framework of the continent-wide processes of subcultural integration . This also implicates an on-going construction of Europeanness . The album was the content presented to the audience . Sonic emplotment is the macro-term

Beneath the Surface: The Local Dynamics of Sonic Knowledge

for historiographical imagination, also in the form of ‘conservative chaos’ . Metalness showed up as extreme metalness . The key relevance of these insights lies in the level to which, in this case, a European local history and global metalness intertwined and formed such a densely textured web of metal culture . These modes of sense making are shared all over Europe . They evolved in the network structures, of which Metal on the Hill is also a part . In this sense, the festival was only one dot on the European me(n)tal map in 2016 . This case study should be interpreted in terms of its similarities and differences when compared to the characteristics of other European events and institutions in metal . The European scene case studies in the anthologies by Brown et al . (2016), Nohr & Schwaab (2012), and Wallach et al . (2011) are a point of departure for further research into this area . Especially Guibert and Guibert’s (2016) study of the attendants of the French ‘Hellfest’ festival is an important read . At the closing point of my line of argumentation, we encounter the relationship between closeness/distance and rationality/emotional involvement in the methodology of metal studies (Brown 2018; Huguenin Dumittan, 2014) . My double-headed identitary mindset of being both a historian and a metalhead did not hinder a fruitful examination in that distinct and individual case, though of course I cannot say that it also will be the same in other historic cases . We simply do not know at this point . However, the fact that imagination made empirical data for delineating, demarcating, and distinguishing both approaches could become more helpful for current and future methodological debates (Digioia & Helfrich, 2018; Hecker, 2014; Kahn-Harris, 2016; Savigny & Schaap, 2018; Weinstein, 2016) .

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Chapter 18 Black Metal and a Medieval Castle The Conbuncture of Listening and Watching in a Historian’s Mind (2016)

In the previous empirical case study, I exploited the resources of an auto-historiographic approach to a historian’s experience and imagination at an extreme metal festival, linking European local culture and metal culture . In a similar vein, in my present and final empirical chapter, I want to go further in terms of pushing the boundaries of historical self-reflection in metal studies . Discussing another example, I want to reflect on how historical imagination is constructed, seen, spoken, written, and therefore experienced, thought, and felt by a historian who writes on European metal history (Ankersmit F . R ., 2005) . In this chapter, I self-reflexively reimagine and review thoughts and feelings I had when visiting the medieval castle of Ruine Gösting (n . d .) in Graz and listening to black metal music while hiking up and looking around the ruins of this castle . As an everyday historic experience by a historian, the phenomenology of that visit (Berger, 1999, 2010) is also to be reflected on in the context of sonic knowledge/sound history theorising (Paul & Schock, 2013; Pichler, 2018b; Schrage, 2011) . The phenomenological structure of the event of my hike there (Berger, 19999, 2010; Elflein, 2010, 2018; Walser, 1993) consisted of a dense network of two spheres of experience: first, the experience of listening to black metal music as a contemporary art form; second, my reactions to the material remains of a medieval castle as stimuli for historical imagination, triggered by a set of material objects that are over 900 years old . The ego-historiographical exploration of the intersectional network of both spheres turns this last case study into an empirical essay (in the original French meaning of the word: an attempt), working experimentally with sonic knowledge theory . In this, at least four of the five notions of this theory fulfil explanatory purposes: the castle I visited belongs to the sphere of our imagination of European medieval time – usually this era is seen as a ‘European’ one . Then, listening to an American black metal album while walking up to the castle involves the album as the central temporal notion, as well as the sonic narration of history . Furthermore, my own metalness was involved in the process .

Listening to Black Metal as a Historical Experience of Sonic Knowledge

The Context

On 2 September 2016, a warm and sunny late summer day, I took the short hike up to the medieval castle of Ruine Gösting (n . d .) . The castle’s remains are a popular sightseeing destination, located in the northeast of Graz . It is reached via a short and steep walk of about half an hour from the city district of Gösting Historically, the castle (or what is left of it today) was mentioned in local and regional sources for the first time in 1042 (Baravalle, 1995, pp . 9–13) . From the late Middle Ages to the modern period, it was an important fortress and checkpoint in the northeast of the city . The location on a hill, topographically situated about two hundred meters higher than the urban area itself, enabled medieval Styrians to observe and control the area . Hence, the castle was an important building and institutional element of regional defence, governance, control, organisation, administration, and culture . Used as the city’s gunpowder storage until 1723, the fortress has grown to become an important element of local culture and narratives . Having its own, material history since at least 1042, Ruine Gösting is a spatial site of intense historical experience . For any visitors, its thick walls, towers, and little tunnels and dungeons evoke feelings and thoughts that (seem to) lead to this past . This makes the site nothing other than a material source of history; an epistemic machine constituting local sonic knowledge, a methodological experimental zone, a playground of sonic knowledge research . Listening to Black Metal as a Historical Experience of Sonic Knowledge

The remains are situated on the top of Göstinger Ruinenberg While hiking up I was listening to black metal, using in-ear headphones . I felt that listening to new black metal music, released in 2016, would produce a good soundtrack for that activity . I decided to listen to American post black metal (Chaker et al ., 2018a) project Panopticon’s Revisions of the Past (2018), a compiled rerelease of the older On the Subject of Mortality (2010) and Social Disservices (2011) albums . Founded by Austin Lunn, Panopticon is a one-man project based in Louisville, Kentucky (USA) . Lunn’s art should be interpreted in the context of the third wave of post black metal (Chaker et al ., 2018a; Kahn-Harris, 2016) . He promotes leftist political ideas . Part of this new wave, Lunn’s is not the only artistic project promoting leftist politics . However, many orthodox or more traditional artists in the genre’s history have chosen to proclaim themselves apolitical, or promote ideologies of anarchism, nihilism, satanism, destruction, or other ‘blackisms’ (Chaker, 2014; Kahn-Harris, 2007) . As of January 2020, Lunn has released nine full albums . Panopticon’s name is inspired by the theoretical metaphor of the same wording, a cultural concept introduced by Michel Foucault (1977) in his ground-breaking works of the 1970s . In the late 18th century, it was originally a concept of a penitentiary invent-

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ed by philosopher Jeremy Bentham, in which every inmate can be observed from a centrally located single watchman . Foucault used the concept’s metaphorical logic to describe modern societies’ structures (Semple, 1993) . Interestingly, already this history behind the project’s name gives history a crucial function in Lunn’s discourse . He uses a metaphor from European philosophical thought . Admittedly, I do not know exactly why I decided to listen to Panopticon when approaching Ruine Gösting . However, Revisions of the Past in my mind evoked internal imagery and moods atmospherically coherent with the ambience of the castle’s remains . Ancient castles, woods, knights, sorcerers, dungeons, monsters and so on, are well-known stereotypes and clichés, even kitsch in metal music . So we have to think of the connection between recent black metal discourse (Chaker et al ., 2018b) and material historical sources (Benett & Joyce, 2010; Howell & Prevenier, 2001) . Both are fields of historical experience (Ankersmit F . R ., 2005) that we need to explore critically, in the mode of cultural deconstruction . These are photographs I took during my visit at the remains of the castle:

Fig. 11 The path to Ruine Gösting, 2 September 2016 [photograph: Peter Pichler].

Fig. 12 Approaching Ruine Gösting, 2 September 2016 [photograph: Peter Pichler].

Listening to Black Metal as a Historical Experience of Sonic Knowledge

Fig. 13 Ruine Gösting, outer walls, 2 September 2016 [photograph: Peter Pichler].

Fig. 14 Ruine Gösting, inner courtyard, 2 September 2016 [photograph: Peter Pichler].

We can reflect on these photographs in connection with the album cover of Revision of the Past (Panopticon, 2016) and Lunn’s self-representation on press images, in which forests, landscapes, mountains, and history form central themes of visualisation that sonically illustrate his music (Panopticon, 2018) . Together, in our minds all those pictures combine to form a single, integral portfolio . This collection of images represents the structure of my mental imagination when hiking up to the old castle and listening to Panopticon . Both fields of imaginaries, Lunn’s post black metal and the castle, stimulated historical fantasising in the same way, as sense making in the form of the internal imagery of forests, mysticism, old and secret buildings . The phantasies were gloomy, mysterious, in a sense of stepping away from the everyday, disappearing into history, a sort of escapism (Fletcher, 2014; Spracklen et al ., 2014; Von Helden, 2017) . Thus a self-reflexive, ego-historiographical examination of my imagination on 2 September 2016 unveils this mental structure as an integral one . As a historian, my imagination was a network-like representation of history, integrating black metal music and the historical materiality of a medieval fortress . It was an amalgamation of listening and watching in a historian’s mind .

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Black Metal and a Medieval Castle

Imagination as a Historical Source of Sonic Knowledge

As in my prior examination of imagination at the Metal on the Hill festival, about three weeks before I went up to Ruine Gösting, this last empirical example can also productively be put into the framework of sonic knowledge thinking . Once more, it is key to think of my imagination as a single mental structure, a historical source that can be researched and read in ways similar to medieval documents or a website on the internet . The characteristic feature of this source is the conjuncture of the sensual modes of listening and watching . Both Revisions of the Past and the optical stimuli made me imagine an inner discourse of history . Already here, we see this inner discourse as a cognitive one, knowledge in common sense . In our minds, the present flows into the past, and, vice versa, the past flows into the present . Both depend on each other, forming a fluid discourse . This is how imagination works, also in this specific case . Within the pentagon of sonic knowledge, we can best make sense of such mental composites taking them as what they structurally are: sources of history, in our heads and in our feelings (Pichler, 2018a) . The crucial aspect of evaluating such sources is not that they are material in our minds alone, rather that we need to carefully dissect their mental and sensual modes . In my case, those were the modes of listening and watching . Both came together, matched, and constituted a very localised and highly specific representation of history, which integrated global black metal discourse and local medieval materiality in Graz on 2 September 2016 . In sonic knowledge thinking, such an imagination-as-source should be taken as material of space, of time, of Europeanness, of metalness, and sonic emplotment . In that specific case, most evidently, Revisions of the Past was the album . Mentally, this album’s time was linked to the physical and spatial activity of the hike . In this way, Ruine Gösting became a dot of my European me(n)tal map, and reciprocally the album became anchored locally . This has consequences . Currently, Panopticon avoids any touring activities, the artist’s official Facebook site (2018) states: ‘No shows ever’ . Nonetheless, in an imaginable future, where Lunn changed his mind and played a show in Graz, and I attended the concert, his extreme metal – music by an American artist from Minnesota – would in my mind also re-trigger my imagination at Ruine Gösting . We can leave this ‘perhaps’ dimension of sonic knowledge to imagination . Yet, in all of that, Europeanness analyses the visuals of medieval castles as a one of the first associations coming to mind when thinking of the European Middle Ages . Emplotment discusses how the imagination-as-source would be put into a narrative . In fact, the current chapter itself is such a narrative . Metalness was my personal identitary outcome of this day in 2016 . Summing up, this final empirical case study makes me assume that in European metal cultural history, historical imagination should be treated as a historical source in quite a conventional sense (Pichler, 2018c) . The methodological challenge for future research (Digioia & Helfrich, 2018; Hecker, 2014; Kahn-Harris, 2016; Savigny & Schaap, 2018; Weinstein, 2016) would be to develop methods that fully grasp such phe-

Imagination as a Historical Source of Sonic Knowledge

nomena like the conjuncture of watching and listening in that individual case . Crucial for further research is the idea that this imagination, in its constitution of metalness, was a product of the European metal ear that had been activated and stimulated by the material remains of a medieval castle . I visited this special place as a listener whose metal listening habits are conditioned by the metal culture of ‘metallic’ Europe since 1970 .

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Chapter 19 Thinking Empirically Weaving the Carpet of European Metal History

At this point, I am at the end of my examination of albums, tours, events, and practices as examples of the dynamics of sonic knowledge in European metal history . I have discussed ten cases of empirical phenomena, spanning a period of almost five decades . I started with Black Sabbath’s debut in 1970 and ended with my visit to Ruine Gösting in 2016 . Thus, detailing the empirical histories of these ten examples leads to a sampling covering almost fifty years of the European history of the metal ear . Neither is Black Sabbath’s first LP the definitive beginning nor is my hike to the medieval castle the (current) absolute ending point of this history; it cannot be . What is accomplished at this point is more something like a first approach to empirical phenomena of sonic knowledge, empirically applying my theoretical insights . My examples each build an individual historical micro-narrative (Magnússon & Szíjártó, 2013) of European sonic knowledge . Only the first stones have been laid in an unfinished and open-ended historiographic mosaic . However, metaphorically, these first ten stones arranged in our mosaic enable us to recognise some European trends . When I speak of ‘trends’ or ‘tendencies’, I do so very cautiously . The trends that are depicted in the sum of my case studies remain preliminary in terms of two major points . First, they are merely the first case studies of the project, my number of empirical cases is a small and necessarily restricted one, which needs to be elaborated upon in further research . Yet the chosen phenomena are relevant, theoretically and empirically, for the European metal ear . The ‘classic’ albums and tours are relevant because of their still prominent position in metal history; the less prominent examples highlighted significant European aspects . Secondly, the selection of my cases was also preconfigured by my preliminary theoretical decisions, so I cannot question my own categories in an overall self-destructive manner . We cannot destroy our own foundations . Coming research should additionally look to empirical spheres where this theory can be tested more critically . That said, let me sum up the results in a table, with the aim of identifying and assessing first historical tendencies, that is to say preliminary tendencies .

Thinking Empirically

Table 2 Overview of empirical case studies [created by the author]: Name Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath Motörhead’s ‘classic’ tours

Year(s) 1970 1976–1982

Description of sonic knowledge dynamics Discursive construction of metal’s time concept in Europe Integration of new European space on tour, ‘going east’

Iron Maiden, The Number of the Beast

1982

Conceptualising 1980s European metal discourse in an album’s time

Manowar’s Hail to Europe tour

1986

Spatial integration and explication of Europe in metal on a tour

Slayer, Reign in Blood

1986

Establishment of a liminal year of time in European metal culture (1986), transition from metal to extreme metal

Mayhem’s concert in Leipzig

1990

Establishing of 1990s European black metal culture in memory discourse, mode of the convergence of space and time

Pyogenesis’ career

1992–2015

Eclectic renegotiation of metal culture to adapt to the changed context of the 1990s in Europe

Temple of Oblivion, Traum und Trauma

2014

Scientifcally oriented representation of 20th century European history on a black metal album

Metal on the Hill festival, Graz

2016

Localising of global sonic knowledge dynamics at a newly established European festival

Visiting Ruine Gösting, Graz

2016

Imagination of local sonic knowledge

In the table above, I put the case studies in chronological order, each representing a distinct micro-history of sonic knowledge . We have three columns . In the first, entitled ‘name’, I gave the micro-narratives an individual and identifying title . Historiographically, in this first column, we can identify ten different empirical phenomena, literally giving them individualising and distinguishable labels . This is similar to calling the years between 1789 and 1799 the French Revolution (Ankersmit, F . R ., 1982; Kuukkanen, 2015) . The entries in the second column contain the year(s) in which the phenomena happened . They are arranged in chronological order . Certainly, it moreover would be feasible to arrange them in non-chronological order . Nonetheless, standing at the probable beginning of a specific historiography of metal in Europe, it makes sense to cut diachronically through the available material, exploring first regularities and identifying important years . Historiographically, this diachronic stabilisation of the phenomena in a diachronic series remains, like every form of historiography, constructed (White, 1973) . It was constructed adhering to the strict rules of scientific history and the historical method . The final column for each case study supplies us with a short, concise description of the individual dynamics of sonic knowledge, i . e . what happened then in European

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metal sound history . Following indexical logic, this descriptor constructs the sense of each micro-history . Hence, since this is the micro-level of historical sense making, I act as carefully as possible (Kuukkanen, 2015) . This implies that each descriptor does not give a universal timeless analysis but only a contingent description at this point . On balance, the table enables me to suggest two empirical tendencies in European metal history since 1970 . Looking at the second column, some years or periods seem to be (much) more important than others . Four out of ten of my cases began or ended in the 1980s, exactly between 1982 and 1986 . Within that decade, the year of 1986 unsurprisingly was a significant one . In contrast, only two of the case studies dealt with the 1990s . Here, a more critical assessment of empirical selection criteria of events in history, however, will sharpen the results . Interestingly, the last six years of metal cultural history since about 2014, also with metal studies’ formation as an institution, reflect an acceleration in terms of historical developments . As a first diachronic tendency, I hypothesise that after its initiation around 1970, not as often claimed already the NWOBHM in the late 1970s yet only later in the 1980s, the pluralisation, diversification, and global spread of the culture markedly energised metal’s history in Europe . Herein, key albums, as time-constituting tools, and important tours, as spatialising movements through Europe, played essential roles . The years between 1982 and 1986 seem to have been sound-historically crucial ones . Empirically, one could label those five years as the ‘Enlightenment years of metal’ in Europe . Completing roughly the first fifteen years of the metal ear since 1970, the culture’s salient knowledge forms (its times, its spaces, its Europeanness, concepts of metalness, and emplotments) significantly crystallised into new forms of hearing metal and listening to metal across the continent, spanning the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain – in a way this reminds a historian very much of the Enlightenment philosophy in the last decades of the 18th century . Then, thinkers like Rousseau, Kant, and Voltaire, among several others, created modernity’s knowledge framing of the world (Himmelfarb, 2004; Koselleck, 1972) . Late 18th century Enlightenment stabilised the (Eurocentric) outlook of the world, along with the world’s spaces, times, and mankind in it . It provided modernity’s knowledge frame that has nonetheless always remained a constructed frame . Between 1982 and 1986, analogous things seem to have come about in metal in Europe . Metalheads lived the new metal ear that was created in these crucial years between 1982 and 1986, and this made metal last there . If one takes the words of the Enlightenment literally, from today’s post-modern point of view, that would mean that the last decades of the 18th century shed an immensely bright yet authoritarian light on the question of how we are obliged to know the world . Probably, in the long run historically, metal’s progress in 1982/86 will prove to be of a likewise ‘elucidating’ and compulsory character in Europe . This supposed Enlightenment of metal happened after the culture’s introductory and emergence phase in the 1970s (Cope, 2010; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 14–43) . Of course, the birth and maturing of heavy metal in this period were significant; nonetheless, my

Thinking Empirically

empirical results suggest that the years from 1982 to 1986 were more important – they made metal last . After the 1980s came the 1990s, which was a fascinating period in metal history (Roccor, 1998a, pp . 75–86; Weinstein, 2000, pp . 277–294), shifting between new dynamics and the reaffirmation of metal conservativisms . In that way, the ambiguity of coping with the Janus face of metal culture in that period seems to be characteristic . Indeed, the period deserves much more scholarly attention, also in currently neglected empirical fields besides topics such as the rise of Norwegian black metal (Chaker et al ., 2018a), with a much stronger focus on European developments . Moving on, my table of empirical results supposes another diachronic tendency . Four out of ten cases studies began or ended in the past six years of European metal cultural history since 2014 . This is an interesting finding . Again, research to come should address selection criteria for empirical examples more critically . At the present stage of empirical analysis, summed up in the table, the years since around 2014 seem to be pivotal ones . They appear to reveal another empirical trend . In this short timespan, metal studies discourse gave birth to a learned society and its own peer-reviewed journal; both have a strong European institutional focus . Moreover, scholarly writing and other publications have reached a range not expected before . This is a historical knowledge process bridging the gap between the subculture of metal and academia . Moreover, as we have seen at several points during my theoretical and empirical reflections, the subculture itself flirts with scientifically structured knowledge framings and the cultural mainstream . Hence, what has come about in metal over the past six years, and continues to this day, affects the European knowledge core supposedly crystalized into a new version of the popular metal ear between 1982 and 1986 . Thinking of a historiographic metaphor and analogy, 21st century European heavy metal culture seems to have moved into its ‘reformation years’ . The Reformation, initiated by Martin Luther and others around 1500, was first a process of knowledge and knowledge communication, heavily relying on new media (Appold, 2011; Lindberg, 2009) . Protestantism dynamised, pluralised, and localised (i . e . by using local and regional languages besides Latin in the liturgy and in translations of the Bible) Christianity’s knowledge resources, leading to a much more diverse and critical regional and local religious culture, which still remained transnationally connected . A new European framework was constructed . What started out as a rather small knowledge base in Luther’s micro-culture in Wittenberg, Germany around 1517 reached and transformed the ‘mainstream’ of Catholicism . In this, the new media of printing technology was an essential requirement . For a historian, current metal discourse astonishingly reminds of Europe’s Reformation years about five hundred years ago in terms of knowledge dynamics . In metal, at the moment there are parallel dynamics of globalisation, Europeanisation, and localisation that happen at once and change our ways of hearing metal and listening to metal, so also the metal ear . Most of all, the medial transformations of digitalisation and the recent development of social media modify the modalities of metalness and

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metal knowledge . At the heart of those new dynamics in Europe lie the mentioned forays into the mainstream and an even more ‘scientified’ worldview . Very much reminiscent of early Protestantism, a former periphery and enclosed subculture opens its knowledge base to broader contexts and is reciprocally influenced . Nevertheless, as of 2020, metal’s reformation – ‘glocalisation’, ‘scientification’, academisation, entering the mainstream, medial transformation – is an unfinished project with an uncertain outcome in Europe . I posit that, all over the continent, metal is currently in its most intense phase of transformation since the mid-1980s – due to the structural changes of metal sound history in the reformation phase . Thinking along the lines of this historico-metaphorical interpretation might sharpen our view of it, introducing the historian’s gaze . Additionally, the historian’s gaze views both metal’s enlightenment and metal’s reformation, however precarious the historical analogies remain, as connected periods . In this view, astonishingly, the enlightenment happened before the reformation, which provides serious impetus for further historical thinking in metal studies . Recapping, my empirical sections dealt with ten cases of historical phenomena in European metal cultural history since 1970, micro-histories of albums, tours, events, and practices . When describing the mode of empirical thinking that is behind this first exploration, and as well its first results, we remain modest . What we have achieved so far is nothing more than putting the first coloured stones into a complex mosaic . The first more nuanced and contoured areas of the mosaic are the years of enlightenment and reformation, proposals for sense making which require much more critical assessment . Hence, we should see the inquiries, at this stage, as the weaving of an empirical tapestry of European metal cultural history . Perhaps we have found the basic intellectual mechanisms, tools, and know-how (sonic knowledge theory) of how to weave the fabric of metal; nevertheless, it is clear that the mechanisms, tools, and know-how develop and improve over time in any forms of craftsmanship, as well in the academic world .

Chapter 20 Conclusion

This book is intended to present first elements of a narrative of European metal sound history since 1970, specifically this history’s dynamics of sonic knowledge . My point of departure has been the finding that, notwithstanding metal studies’ high level of change as an interdisciplinary field, there is to date no European metal history that has been carried out by trained historians . Such a new narrative relies on what can be called the ‘historian’s gaze’, or the historians’ disciplinary outlook on metal music . In order to start filling this gap in scholarship, I have discussed theoretical and empirical aspects of a European metal history since its inception at the beginning of the 1970s . My ambition is not to fully fill this gap, rather it is to initiate new debates . In the first broader section, devoted to theoretical reflection, I have introduced the analytical framework of sonic knowledge . Drawing on the recent discourse of sound history (Hendy, 2013; Paul & Schock, 2013; Pichler, 2018b; Schrage, 2011), I argued that, in Europe, heavy metal music ought to be interpreted as a discourse of the history of sonic knowledge and thus of the cultural metal ear . Since 1970, the discourse’s knowledge resources have been constituted and further developed in the course of a European cultural history of acoustic communication . This is formed by the structurally changing ways we hear metal and listen to it, the ways in which we have heard the music and listened to it in the past, and how will do so in the future . All of this constituted this European sound history of the late 20th and early 21st centuries . Five theoretical notions have been defined: sonic emplotment (chapter 3) as a means to describe metal’s forms of narratologies; identities of metalness as fluid structures (chapter 4); the new category of Europeanness in the field that is a result of the continental circulation of metal’s knowledge forms (chapter 5); the album as the major temporal notion (chapter 6); and finally the tour as the most significant spatial category (chapter 7) . Mutually connected through the edges and lines of their terminological network, the five notions construct my theory, depicted as the pentagon of sonic knowledge (chapter 8) . The theory shapes a historical sphere of explanation, which suggests a conceptual inside and an outside . Within its theoretical realm, I define met-

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Conclusion

al music as the European discourse of sonic knowledge . The pentagon depicts metal historically and discernably . Nonetheless, at this early point of research, this is a preliminary concept that is provisional in character . We should treat it as a first look at metal in Europe by applying the historian’s gaze . Historians know very well that their theoretical grasp of newly discovered phenomena tends to become sharper over time . We should thus make a virtue out of constantly keeping our categories open to innovative theoretical interventions . In the second part of the book, ten empirical examples of albums, tours, events, and practices of sonic knowledge in European metal history have been discussed (chapters 9 to 18) . They cover the period from 1970 to 2016 . As I have hypothesised in my empirical summary (chapter 19), above all the years between 1982 and 1986 seem to be the ‘enlightenment years’ of metal in Europe (in which its knowledge forms grew more stable and metal became more lasting) . Then the years from 2014 to the present appear as a time of ‘reformation’ for metal in Europe (which sees the open-ended dynamics of pluralisation, ‘glocalisation’, diversification, and medial transformations) . They seem to be of pivotal empirical importance . However, the period of the 1990s appears to be under-researched, and academia needs to learn much more about this era of ambiguities . Additionally, heavy metal’s emergence period of the 1970s deserves historical research to put those years in a cultural long-range perspective, connecting them to the 1980s and beyond . The main result of this book is a first and thus preliminary description of metal as a form of sonic knowledge that conditionalises the European metal ear . There are four important points: Firstly, this cultural ear is characterised by a distinct temporal structure of experiencing time, determined by the metal album . Metal’s time concept was formatively introduced in Europe in 1970, with the issuing of Black Sabbath’s debut LP (chapters 6, 9) . The importance and structuring of metal history using albums (chapters 11, 13, 15, partially also chapter 14) underpins this claim . The release dates of LPs mark important historical dates factually . Moreover, albums depict the logical character of time (chapter 6) and connect metal to scene-external contexts . Secondly, prefiguring the European metal ear’s spatial ways of sense making, metal culture in Europe constituted a distinct spatial sphere . Metal’s integration modes of transnational scene structures usually rely on tours as spatial journeys (chapters 7, 10, 12, 14, 17) . Metal tours, as diachronic series of repetitions of ritualised historical events structure metal’s spaces, where the concert is a single event repeated on an almost daily base . Touring activities discover new spaces and make the already known ones last . Thirdly, this spatial sphere is also a sphere of Europeanness . Avoiding any form of Eurocentrism, metal mainly originated in Europe, especially in Great Britain (chapters 1, 9) . Hence, one can assume that important touring activities (chapters 7, 10, 12, 14, 17) must have established a ‘metallic Europeanness’ as well as, reciprocally, a European metalness . The continental circulation of sonic knowledge via the tour has led to the enculturation of a way of doing metal in a European and transnational framework .

Conclusion

Motörhead’s European movements of ‘going east’ on tour (chapter 10) and Manowar’s Hail to Europe tour (chapter 12) paradigmatically illuminate how this frame was constructed over decades . Of course, the thesis of the existence of such Europeanness does not mean that it builds the ‘best’ or most significant form of metalness . I am highly critical of jingoistic Eurocentrism, as such an ideology even puts severe methodological obstacles in our way when it comes to developing an accurate view of metal’s Europeanness (Hansen & Jonsson, 2015) . African, American, Middle Eastern, Asian, and all other continental, regional, and local metal identities are no less fascinating and significant (Banchs, 2016; Baulch, 2007; Brown et al ., 2016b; Wallach et al ., 2011) . This dimension has also been spatially influencing the metal ear since 1970 . Fourthly, as a discourse of sonic knowledge, metal is a historically produced European cultural form that has unfolded its specific character over a period of five decades . To assess it historically, historians’ emphasis on the longue durée (Braudel, 1949) is of utmost relevance . For instance, to make sense of the enlightenment years of metal, we also need to connect them to the reformation years, as well as to the 1970s and the 1990s . In this respect, context matters a lot . As seen on several occasions, the broader European contexts of political European integration in the EC/EU and the global age of extremes likewise set the pace in the history of metal . On balance, the European metal ear evolved in a process of acoustic communication in the European metal networks since 1970 . These networks and their respective agents initiated a subcultural process of ‘metallic’ European integration, the main fruit of which is a continent-wide shared propensity for making sense of metal – via the shared metal ear of today . In these networks, tours (as spatial integration operations) and significant albums (as media of temporal coherence production) determined the spatial and temporal logic of cultural flux . To give the European metal ear – its integrative Europeanness – a first characterisation with adjectives: it is ‘fluid’, historically contingent, and varying over a timespan of decades . It is interested in loud, distorted, and powerful sounds from both global and local origins . Above all, it has the intriguing capability to amalgamate worldwide shared sense making patterns with local ones . This is how it produces ‘metallic’ Europeanness . In a nutshell, in Europe, the metal ear is the cultural bridge and ‘missing link’ between the local and the global . Its function is building bridges over these temporal and spatial distances in ‘metallic’ Europe . For instance, it is the cultural bridge spanning the distance between Black Sabbath’s Birmingham in 1970 (chapter 9) and the author’s hometown of Graz in 2016, where the Metal on the Hill festival took place (chapter 17) . The metal ear integrates both places and times into one sound history and narrative . This leads to the final question of what this result implies for coming research in the ‘booming’ field of metal music studies .29 From my point of view, some of the most One point of coming research is the role of law-related phenomena in metal sound history . For the years from 2020–23, the author is leading a broad research project at the University of Graz, in which this is being researched for the Styrian metal scene since 1980 . For information on this, see University of Graz (2020) . 29

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pressing open questions arise from metal’s linkages to broader European and European Union history (Pichler, 2018b) . For example, having in mind Manowar’s explicit Europeanism (Schmale, 2008) in 1986 as the year of the SEA (Gehler, 2018, pp . 325–414; Loth, 2014, pp . 259–309), how are metal’s subcultural European integration and EU integration connected? Does the first influence the latter, or the other way around, or is there a mutual dependency? How are metal’s forms of sonic knowledge to be compared to other forms of culture of contemporary contexts, such as literature, theatre, other musical forms, and finally political and medial culture in the long run? To spark a debate on this, I end my book with a consciously experimental, perhaps fictional (yet factual) historical arrangement . If we think of European ‘metal integration’ and EU integration together, this means that we think of them both as a single narrative, containing crucial events in both forms of European integration . We can imagine such a narrative by connecting the years of my ten empirical case studies to pivotal events of EU integration . For instance, the year of the release of Black Sabbath’s first LP in 1970 can be considered in combination with the event of the Hague Summit in 1969 (Gehler, 2018, pp . 280–284; Loth, 2014, pp . 163–169) . Whereas Black Sabbath introduced metal’s time concept, the Hague Summit determined how the time of the 1970s was structured in European political integration . Then we could match the four cases of Motörhead’s ‘classic’ tours from 1976 to 1982, Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast (1982), Manowar’s first headliner tour (1986), and Slayer’s Reign in Blood (1986), all mostly from metal’s enlightenment years, with the Schengen Agreement from 1985 and the SEA (Gehler, 2018, pp . 325–414; Loth, 2014, pp . 211–309) in EU history . Those four metal histories fortified metal’s spaces and times, including a ‘borderless’ touring room in (western and central) Europe, while the Schengen Agreement, in its first form from 14 June 1985, abolished internal EC borders between Belgium, France Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands . The EU integration event of the Single Act drew Europe together as a synchronised Europe with a single market, a political community, and a common foreign and security policy; metal’s enlightenment drew Europe as a space in which metalheads did metal in transnationally synchronised ways . Taking Mayhem’s concert in Leipzig in 1990, it could be connected to the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 (Gehler, 2018, pp . 373–376; Loth, 2014, pp . 310–357) . Mayhem’s concert opened the door to 1990s black metal culture, which had a strong spatial focus in the northern areas of Europe, most of all Norway . The Maastricht Treaty established the EU and was accompanied by the EU’s northern enlargement when Austria, Sweden, and Finland joining the EU club . Astonishingly, Norwegians decided in a referendum to not join the club . Finally, taking the bulk of the last four cases of Pyogenesis’ breathtaking trans-genre trip from 1992 to 2015, Temple of Oblivion’s Traum und Trauma (2014), the Metal on the Hill festival (2016), and the author’s hike to Ruine Gösting (2016), we could match it with Britain’s decision to vote ‘Leave’, causing ‘Brexit’, which is currently becoming

Conclusion

reality and part of an overall systematic crisis of the EU (Betts & Collier, 2018; Gehler, 2018, pp . 760–775) . All four metal events have a high degree of experimentality; from Pyogenesis’ risk-taking musical experiments, through the new ‘scientific’ form of historical emplotment on Traum und Trauma, and the risk of establishing a new metal festival in Graz, to the experimental character of my last empirical essay . From a historical perspective, in many ways, ‘Brexit’ is also a historical experiment with an unknown outcome – an unprecedented case of disintegration in the EU . If we think in a proactive and experimental way, and envision a table which integrates all those events of both spheres, subcultural ‘metal integration’ and EU integration, into a single narrative, this is what the table looks like: Table 3 Connecting European ‘metal integration’ and European Union integration [created by the author] Event(s) of ‘metal integration’

Event(s) of EU integration

Shared topic(s)

Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath (1970)

The Hague Summit (1969)

Constituting European time

Motörhead’s tours (1976 to 1982); Iron Maiden, The Number of the Beast (1982); Manowar, Hail to Europe tour (1986); Slayer, Reign in Blood (1986)

Schengen Agreement (1985); Single European Act (1986)

Abolishing national borders; envisioning Europe

Mayhem’s concert in Leipzig (1990)

Maastricht Treaty (1992)

Creating the Europe of the 1990s; northernness

Pyogenesis’ career (1992–2015); Temple of Oblivion, Traum und Trauma (2014); Metal on the Hill (2016); hike to Ruine Gösting, (2016)

EU crisis and ‘Brexit’ (2016 to the present)

Experimental practicing

Evidently, it is no problem at all to create a single narrative of ‘metal integration’ and EU integration, all the European way from 1970 to the present . Very easily, the events can be put together, and – to the point – such a narrative makes sense due to its shared topics . It would seem quite clear that moving forward in this direction simply makes good sense (Pichler, 2018b) .

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Figures and tables

Figures

Fig . 1: Fig . 2: Fig . 3: Fig . 4: Fig . 5: Fig . 6: Fig . 7: Fig . 8: Fig . 9: Fig . 10: Fig . 11: Fig . 12: Fig . 13: Fig . 14:

The usage of the term ‘heavy metal’, 1750–2008 [source: (Ngram viewer ‘heavy metal’, 1750–2008, 2018b)] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The usage of the notions ‘extreme metal’ and ‘age of extremes’, 1970–2008, [source: (Ngram viewer ‘extreme metal’, ‘age of extremes’, 1970–2008, 2018a)] . . . . The pentagon of sonic knowledge [created by the author] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Manowar tour shirt, Hail to Europe (1986) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pyogenesis, Ignis Creatio – The Creation of Fire (1992) [© Osmose Productions] Pyogenesis, Unpop (1997) [© Nuclear Blast Records] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Audience and brick wall, Metal on the Hill, Graz, 13 August 2016 [photograph: Peter Pichler] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Audience, Metal on the Hill, Graz, 13 August 2016 [photograph: Peter Pichler] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Performance at Metal on the Hill, Graz, 13 August 2016 [photograph: Peter Pichler] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Performance at Metal on the Hill, Graz, 13 August 2016 [photograph: Peter Pichler] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The path to Ruine Gösting, 2 September 2016 [photograph: Peter Pichler] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Approaching Ruine Gösting, 2 September 2016 [photograph: Peter Pichler] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ruine Gösting, outer walls, 2 September 2016 [photograph: Peter Pichler] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ruine Gösting, inner courtyard, 2 September 2016 [photograph: Peter Pichler] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

13 16 75 103 128 128 142 143 145 145 150 150 151 151

Tables

Tables

Table 1: Hayden White, emplotment [table: (White, 1973, p . 29)] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Table 2: Overview of empirical case studies [created by the author] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Table 3: Connecting European ‘metal integration’ and European Union integration [created by the author] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

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Index

Aarseth, Øystein (see also Euronymous) 117 Adams, Eric 101 Age of extremes 11, 16, 115–116, 138, 161 Aggression 27, 109 – as central emotion in metal 33 Album 19–20, 27, 31, 34, 37, 45–46, 51–52, 55–56, 65, 70–72, 75–76, 79–85, 87, 89, 91, 93–100, 101, 106–114, 115–120, 122–125, 126– 133, 135–136, 138–139, 146, 148–149, 151–152, 154–156, 158, 160–161 – as central temporal category 57–64, 74, 159 ‘Album-tour cycle’ 62–63, 70 AllMusic (online database) 94, 109, 132 Anderson, Benedict 28, 41 ‘Angel of Death’ (song) 31, 107, 110 Anthrax (band) 14, 109, 111 Anthropology 34 Antiquity 57, 65 Arbeiter-Zeitung (newspaper) 90 Bachmann-Medick, Doris 66–67 Bathory (band) 109, 116 Behemoth (band) 44–46, 74, 111 Berlin Wall 14, 17, 115, 156 Black metal 16, 20, 29, 31–34, 44–46, 52, 107, 115–125, 126, 134–140, 148–153, 155, 157, 162 Black Sabbath 11–13, 17, 19–20, 30, 38, 55, 61, 79–85, 155, 161 Black Sabbath (album) 79–85, 86, 99, 154–155, 160 Blythe, Randy 112 Butler, Judith 42 Castle 141, 148–153, 154 Celtic Frost 109, 116 Chemnitz 135 Circulation 47, 54–55, 68, 74–75, 86, 88, 106, 159–160

Concert 20, 27, 43, 48, 55, 62, 69–71, 75, 86–92, 103–104, 112, 115–125, 139, 146, 152, 155, 160, 162–163 – as historical event 15, 65–66, 144 – theatrics of 31, 143 Conservativism 28, 84, 157 Constructivism 12 ‘Continentalisation’ 14, 48 Counter-culture(s) 11, 29, 50 ‘Creeping Death’ (song) 34 Crisis 14, 53–54, 82–83, 88, 115, 126–127, 129–133, 137, 163 Cultural ear (see also metal ear) 18, 118, 160 Cultural history 7–8, 25–35, 40, 41–42, 44– 45, 49–50, 53, 58, 60, 65, 67, 73–74, 93, 95, 98, 105–106, 127, 143, 152, 167, 157–158, 159 – in metal music studies 10–11, 16–18, 20–21 Cultural turn 7, 25–26, 48, 66, 73–74 Culture(s) 8–11, 14–15, 17–19, 28–35, 37–40, 44–45, 47–51, 59, 61, 63, 65–71, 74–75, 80– 85, 86, 94–95, 97, 99, 102, 113, 116–118, 124, 130, 133, 134, 136–137, 139–140, 141, 143–144, 146–147, 148–149, 153, 155–158, 160, 162 – meaning of 25–26 – ubiquity of the notion of 25 Darski, Adam (see also Nergal) 44–45 Death (band) 109 Death metal 29, 31, 34, 44, 110, 128–129, 131 Deleuze, Gilles 29 DeMaio, Joey 101 De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (album) 61–62, 118–119, 122, 124 Derrida, Jacques 29 Destruction (band) 14, 109 Di’Anno, Paul 95 Dickinson, Bruce 95, 98–99

182

Index

Eastern Bloc 15, 71, 115 Emotion(s) 18, 25, 73 – history of 33 Emplotment 19, 73, 75–76, 86, 99, 129, 134– 135, 138–139, 146, 152, 156, 159, 163 – in Hayden White’s work 36–38 Encyclopaedia Metallum (online database) 129 ‘Enlightenment years of metal’ 156, 160–162 Entanglement 18–19, 26, 47–56, 61, 67, 74, 99 Essentialism 29, 41 Euronymous (see also Aarseth, Øystein) 117, 119, 122–124 Europe 7–8, 10–12, 14–20, 26–27, 29, 31–35, 36, 38, 40, 42–46, 47–50, 52–56, 59–62, 64, 65–67, 69–72, 73–76, 79–85, 86, 90, 92, 94, 96, 99–100, 101–105, 106–107, 109, 115–117, 124–125, 128, 132–133, 135, 139–140, 142, 146–147, 153, 155–158, 159–163 – modern notion of 47 European integration 8, 15, 42, 49, 53, 55, 67, 82, 88–89, 102–105, 116, 161–162 European Union 14, 18, 49, 88, 104–105, 116, 162–163 – crisis of 53 European Union Liaison Committee of Historians 49 Europeanisation 14–15, 26, 42, 49, 87–88, 157 Europeanness 17, 19, 72, 85–86, 88, 90, 92, 99, 102, 105, 125, 135, 139–140, 146, 152, 156, 159–161 – as theoretical notion 47–56, 74–76 Extreme metal 11, 15–16, 20, 27, 31, 33–35, 44–46, 48, 52, 55, 60, 69, 95, 106–107, 109–111, 113–114, 116, 128, 133–135, 141–147, 148, 152, 155 Extremity 16, 109, 112 Female academics 9 Feminist perspective 102 Festival 141–147, 148, 152, 155, 161–162 Foucault, Michel 29, 149–150 Freitag, Andreas 102 Frontschwein (album) 27 Gellner, Ernest 28, 41 Gender 25, 31–32, 43–44, 73, 102 Graf, Rüdiger 58–59 Guitar 7, 11–12, 69, 86–87, 110, 113–114, 128–129

‘Hail and Kill’ (song) 101 Halford, Rob 32, 95 Hanneman, Jeff 110, 113–114 Hard rock 43, 81 Harris, Steve 94–95, 98–99 Heaviness 12–13, 19, 26–27, 79, 95, 97 Heavy metal 7–8, 26–27, 30, 32–35, 37, 43, 50, 50–55, 60, 62–63, 70, 86, 88, 91, 93–95, 98, 104, 108–109, 113, 139, 141, 156–157, 159–160 – origins of 11–14, 79–85 Historical method 7, 155 – as minimum standard in scientific historiography 57 Historical theory 36, 73, 155 Historian’s gaze 8, 11–16, 76, 81, 158–160 – as enrichment in metal studies 10, 20, 60, 67, 74 Historiography 10, 25, 20, 29, 36–37, 39–40, 48, 57–58, 117, 141, 155 Homosexuality 32, 44 Identity 17, 33–34, 43–46, 48, 54, 61–62, 67, 73–74, 92, 108, 122, 129–131, 143–144 – construction of 41–42, 49 – metalness as 7, 28 Ignis Creatio – The Creation of Fire (album) 127–128 I Loved You at Your Darkest (album) 46 Imagination 28, 36, 57, 68–69, 91, 93, 98, 117, 119, 121–122, 124, 142–144, 146–147, 155 – as source of historiography 148–153 International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS) 9, 52 Iron Maiden (band) 15, 17, 20, 30, 38, 40, 55, 63, 70, 92, 93–100, 110, 155, 162–163 Judas Priest 17, 30, 32, 38, 55, 95 Kilmister, Ian Fraser (see also Lemmy) 86– 87, 89 King, Kerry 110, 113–114 Kings of Metal (album) 101 Kristeva, Julia 29 Lamb of God (band) 111–112 Lemmy (see also Kilmister, Ian Fraser) 86, 89, 92 Leipzig 115–125, 155, 162–163 Live in Leipzig (album) 116–117, 119, 121–124 Lyotard, Jean-François 29

Index

Mainstream 29, 35, 42, 44, 63, 97, 101, 109, 122, 129, 136, 157–158 – and metal 50–55, 135, 139–140, 141, 146 Manowar 15, 20, 29, 55, 101–105, 116, 155, 161–163 Marchart, Oliver 42 Marduk (band) 27, 31, 33 Master of Puppets (album) 61–63, 102, 106 Maastricht Treaty 14, 49, 88, 104, 162–163 May, Brian 43 Mayhem (band) 20, 61, 115–125, 126, 155, 162–163 Meaning 18, 26–26, 38–39, 52, 59–60, 73, 92, 105, 148 Megadeth 109 Memory 28, 69, 71, 75, 89, 111, 115, 124 – collective building of 10–11, 30, 34, 69, 91, 119–123 Mental map(s) 66, 69–70, 72, 83, 86, 91–92 Mercury, Freddie 43–44, 74 ‘Metal ear’ (see also cultural ear) 19, 37, 49, 66–67, 72, 75–75, 92, 142, 153, 154, 156–157, 159–161 Metal music studies 8, 10, 17, 20, 29, 34, 38, 40, 41, 46, 86, 141, 161 Metal Music Studies (journal) 9, 52 Metal on the Hill (festival) 27, 69, 141–147, 152, 155, 161–163 Metallica 14–15, 34, 55, 61, 70, 102, 106, 109, 126, 130, 133 Metalness 7, 28, 42–44, 46, 48, 50, 55–56, 62, 72, 73–76, 83, 86, 92, 94, 99, 102, 104–105, 129–133, 135, 139, 143–144, 146–148, 152–153, 156–157, 159–161 Middle Ages 149, 152 Morbid Angel 109 Motörhead 20, 55, 86–92, 102, 155, 161–163 Muñoz, José 42 Musicology 10, 120 Myth(s) 86–87, 91, 101, 105 Nancy, Jean-Luc 42 Narrations 19, 25, 36–40, 60, 73, 89, 134–135, 138–139, 148 Narrative(s) (see also emplotment) 7–9, 12, 14–16, 19–21, 27–28, 30–31, 34–35, 46–47, 52–53, 55, 60–62, 69–71, 73, 75–76, 79–81, 84, 86, 88, 90–91, 95, 101–103, 106–108,

110–113, 115, 120–122, 124, 126, 134, 136, 138– 139, 143, 146, 149, 152, 154–155, 159, 161–163 – in Hayden White’s work 36–40 Nationalism 28, 41–42, 136 Nazism 31, 107 Nergal (see also Darski, Adam) 44, 74, 111–112 Network(s) 10, 14, 17, 38, 45, 48–50, 54–55, 61, 67–68, 74–76, 87–88, 96, 98, 101, 104–105, 109, 112, 116, 118–119, 136, 140, 141, 146–147, 148, 151, 159, 161 ‘New cultural history’ 7, 16, 18, 25–28, 31, 33, 41, 60, 67, 73 New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) 14, 17, 88, 92, 156 Obituary (band) 109 Ohlin, Per Yngwe) 116, 118–119, 124 Performance 31, 38, 40, 43–44, 51, 68, 73, 83, 87, 89–90, 94, 97, 103, 116–117, 144–146 Philosophy 10, 36, 37, 66, 140, 156 ‘Pleasure Slave’ (song) 101 Politics 34–35, 53, 67 Possessed (band) 109 Punk 86, 95, 127–179, 131–132 Pyogenesis 20, 126–133, 155, 162–163 Queen (band) 43–44, 46, 74, 92 Queerness 32 Rau, Susanne 67–70, 75, 92 ‘Reformation years of metal’ 157, 161 Reign in Blood (album) 20, 27, 31, 61–63, 102, 106–114, 115, 155, 162–163 Scene(s) 7, 9–11, 14–15, 17–19, 28, 31–33, 35, 41–42, 45–46, 48, 51, 55–56, 58–64, 66, 68– 69, 73–74, 81–82, 86–87, 94, 96–98, 101–102, 104, 107, 109, 111, 116, 120–123, 126–127, 129, 132, 134–136, 147, 160–161 ‘Scientification’ 52–54, 135, 158 Schlögel, Karl 67 Sense making 18, 25–27, 29, 31, 42, 45, 73, 95, 143, 146–147, 156, 158, 160–161 Sexuality 43–44, 69 Single European Act (SEA) 10, 84, 88, 104, 116, 162–163 Slaughter (band) 109 Slayer (band) 14–15, 20, 27, 31, 34, 61, 70, 102, 106–114, 116, 155, 162–163 Sociology 7, 10, 34, 48, 62

183

184

Index

Sodom (band) 14, 33, 95, 109 Sonic knowledge 8, 26, 28, 32–33, 35, 37, 40, 42, 46, 49–51, 53–55, 60–61, 63, 69–72, 80–82, 84, 86–87, 92, 94, 106–107, 109–110, 112–114, 117, 120, 122, 124, 126–128, 130, 133, 135, 139–140, 141–142, 146–147, 148–149, 151–152, 154–155, 158, 159–162 – concept of 18–19 – pentagon of 20, 73–76, 152, 159–160 Sound 7–8, 18–19, 25, 27, 33, 40, 43–44, 50–51, 55, 68, 79, 80–81, 94, 97, 109–110, 113, 117–119, 126, 129, 131–132, 144, 161 Sound history 18, 26, 28, 40, 42, 48, 63, 67, 69, 70, 72, 76, 100, 102, 107, 118, 130, 132, 148, 156, 158–159, 161 Space(s) 7, 11, 17–18, 25, 27–29, 32, 35, 39, 41, 54–55, 65–72, 74–76, 86–92, 102, 104–105, 115–125, 130–132, 138, 142, 144, 146, 152, 155–156, 160, 162 – in metal 68–70 Spatial turn 66–68, 70, 74 Speed 14, 17, 19, 27, 97 Stormbringer (webzine) 51 Subculture(s) 48, 50, 55, 118, 146, 157–158 – as theoretical concept 10–11 Süddeutsche Zeitung (newspaper) 51 Temple of Oblivion 52, 134–140, 155, 162–163 Testament (band) 111 The Number of the Beast (album) 20, 63, 93–100 ‘The Number of the Beast’ (song) 93, 97–98

The Satanist (album) 45–46, 111 Theatrality 25, 31 Theory 11–12, 15, 18–19, 36–39, 41, 53, 65, 68–69, 73, 75, 86, 106, 108, 117, 133, 140, 141, 148, 154, 158–159 Thrash metal 14, 17, 34, 70–71, 106–107, 109, 111, 113 Time(s) 7–8, 11–14, 17–18, 27–30, 39, 41–42, 44, 48, 51, 54–55, 57–64, 65–68, 70, 72, 74–76, 79–85, 88, 90, 93–100, 102, 106–110, 112, 116–125, 127–131, 135, 137–139, 141–142, 144, 146, 148, 152, 155–158, 160–163 – history of 57–59 – in metal 50–61 Tour(s) 14–15, 19–20, 43, 48, 55–56, 62–53, 65–72, 75–76, 86–92, 93, 101–105, 108, 111, 116–117, 124, 128, 135–136, 142, 146, 152, 154–156, 158, 159–163 – as central spatial concept 70–72 – as processes of European integration 15, 55–56, 65, 88–90, 104–105 Toxicity 12 – in heavy metal music 13–14, 83, 93 Transgression 15, 133 Transnationalism 19, 26, 47–56, 74 – as theoretical concept 54–56 Twinaleblood (album) 127, 129–132 Unpop (album) 127–128 Vikernes, Kristian 117 Violence 16, 30–33, 73, 94–95, 99, 102, 110, 113 White, Hayden 36–40

Research on the process of European integration is usually restricted to the political, economic and legal aspects of Europeanisation. Still, we do not know enough about “practiced Europeanisation” in terms of everyday life and popular culture. Here, Peter Pichler explores a new area of research. He links the latest insights into the cultural history of the European Union with interdisciplinary research on heavy metal as a subculture throughout Europe. He presents the first historiographic exploration of European integration in this subculture since 1970.

ISBN 978-3-515-12787-5

9

7835 1 5 1 2 7875

In general, subcultural Europeanisation predates even political Europeanisation, as evidenced by networks of the metal scene breaking through the Iron Curtain in the beginning of the 1980s. The European metal scene constituted a borderless space. Today, the shared knowledge of rituals, codes, clothes, history and values of metal are present across the continent. Pichler interprets this from a cultural-historical perspective against the background of Europeanisation after 1945.

www.steiner-verlag.de Franz Steiner Verlag