Back to the basics: The Real stuff. The rest of the ideas during the Heavy Metal Conference

I don´t need to categorize metal. Luckily I can stay out of these kind of discussions. There is metal that I like and there is some that I don´t.  And that´s enough for me. Ever since I was growing up and started to listen to metal music, I soon got aware of the discussion. Soon I started to know what was considered heavy music. But immediately after that I was in the situation I had to describe the band to the others: was it speed, thrash or death metal?

The bands in the magazine articles told us over and over again new terms like power metal and doom metal. While the others refused to put themselves into any category. The debate about what is metal and what is not is an endless battle field. And people tend to take it personally. Because they care, I think. Those, who identify themselves strictly with belonging to certain group or sub group, care about that the most.

If you think the problem academically, there would have to be solid criteria you can lean on when categorizing. I am sure there is a certain consensus about the mainstream – and with that I am referring to the whole heavy music and talking about the very central area of the flow. At least there has to be certain heaviness in the music. What is heaviness then – not going there. But there are different kind of lyrics, different kind of outfits and the long hair is no longer a clear sign. When it is not heavy any more?

“Manowar are posers.” Daniel Frandsen

loudly announced in the end of his presentation. He had never forgiven Manowar´s bad gig some years ago. That brings us back to the previous posting I made of the metal conference. If there is a certain agreement of being metal considering the mainstream heavy, those in the marginal will fall automaticly to the role of negotiation. I understand the Manowar and posing with the same way they told Poison is False metal. Meaning, that there is a common accusation that those two bands care more about the image than actual music. Is it true or not, I don´t know. But I can sense that it would be against the unspoken and unwritten heavy metal norm. The rule of being authentic. Metal or not was the main question in Daniel Frandsen´s presentation. Whether something is metal or something else is always in relation to something else. That is true. We understand the world with contradictions and limits and categories. That is the theoretical background also in my own PHD thesis.

I can understand Daniel´s point remembering my own experiences. I was astonished seeing Lama (a punk band) and Barbe-Q-Barbies (a rock band) at Tuska Inferno stage in the year 2013. What the hell they were doing there. This was supposed to be heavy music festival – right? I kind of understood the idea of getting something different there but at the same time I felt betrayed. I had the feeling there is something wrong here. And it mattered…because that festival is important to me.

Esa Lilja

“Ozzy always sounds sad”

said Esa Lilja, one of the pioneers in academic heavy music research in Finland, comparing music samples (Mozart and Black Sabbath) with the mixture of major and minor intonations. As a music analyst he pointed out the usual intonations in heavy music saying also that those could be found in other music genres as well. He could easily put Mozart or Bach next to Black Sabbath and Deep Purple and say: listen, there is the similarity. Caviar to the general, I have to say, at least in my case.

“You don´t have to be a muso to be able to hear and recognize musical structures” was Esa´s main point. And he is right. When we grow into our culture and into heavy culture, we learn to recognize – at least something. Like main genres, main structures, similarities. I am sure the majority of us can say when listening to Black Sabbath that yeah, ok, this IS heavy metal. And we all agree.

Owen Coggins from the Open University (UK) had a different angle. He spoke about the letter type similarities in black metal band names and for example in bible. There are several memes about hard-to-read band names. Owen showed us band posters where English band names were translated into English only with another font. He told us also a story about two guys looking at a poster like that. They decided to go even though neither one have heard the band, themusic. But the font told them that the genre is right. It was all the cue they needed. That story reminded me of my journey in finding good bands. I went to a record store and tried to find the most brutal cover – then I bought the LP. Only after getting home I put the record on and listened the new music I owned. Usually I was satisfied with the method. Found lovely new bands like Death or Kreator (ok the cover of that LP is quite wussy).

“Black metal goes beyond music expression” 

Kenneth Granholm

There is the whole culture with various aspects behind black metal – like in any sub genre. Font type, record cover art and certain musical structures are only scratches. Which gives millions of reasons to continue these kind of conferences. Many heavy metal researchers are also music makers themselves. “It is hard to analyze something you love” said Kenneth Granholm. That comes close to the idea of getting everything personally. Having a certain distance is usually a benefit in academic field.

My main focus on the Heavy Metal Conference was pure interest to the subject. Also, I wanted to know if I was finally feeling like home with these researchers. I have been looking for so long an academic group I could truly relate to. I was hoping to get the same kind of feeling of belonging that I have been having among the metal gig audience. Did not find it. Not accusing anyone but myself, though. So, continuing my journey without the burden of loyalty to any certain group. Taking the benefit of distance.

Tips of the day

Metal Music Studies First published in 2015 http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=236/

Metal Syndrome, trailer, a short documentary exploring the world of heavy metal music through the eyes of Finnish metal musicians https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwarJSv5hH0

The Distorted Island, trailer, a documentary that describes the metal history and scene in Puerto Rico http://youtu.be/tYyZVmMngmU

More about me: https://amholappa.wordpress.com/this-is-what-i-do/

Just observing. The first day of the Heavy Metal Conference

The first day of the Heavy Metal Conference behind me. Oh well, the first for me. The conference began at Monday night but I had to miss the first two days because of getting sick. Damn, was I on a bad mood. I would have wanted to hear Deena Weinstein´s keynote. She is a classic. A pioneer.  I had no paper on my own this time. But if you´re having a heavy metal conference in your home town you just have to be there.

What kind of people are there in heavy metal conference?

Are they one to one with Tuska Open Air festival audience? Well, more or less. I counted more than ten different types of band t-shirts in the first session I participated. Maybe not the common number with other conferences. The possibilities are actually quite large; you can look the metal phenomena through lyrics, music, marketing, culture, rituals, history, singing, gender issues, ethnicity, sub genres – you just name it.

The good example was Susanna Mesiä and Paolo Ribaldini introducing the view of seeing the importance of vocals, not just the lyrics but also how it sounds. The common person – not dedicated to the subject – might find it surprising how highly technical and with quite large of variety can heavy metal singing be, moving smoothly from stage to another, from grunt to whistle. Perhaps it is no need to mention that even though Paolo has a remarkable voice himself, in the presentation I enjoyed mostly the examples like Dimmu Borgir.

“I´m not worried about my gender at all” The critical audience

The first session was about gender. This a subject that always and every time causes debate. It is not easy subject in academic world. Is it even relevant, was my first question just to myself before heading to the conference.  I mean being a woman and liking the metal. Not to mention being a woman and playing metal. Since forever there has been the division in all art fields: there are writers and female writers, artists and female artists, musicians and female musicians. But today in Finland? It is not that strange to be a Finnish woman and like metal music.

But still, I have to say that it is not that simple. When I used to date a musician I noticed that my opinion was worth nothing when there were discussions about music. Maybe, just maybe, if I was a musician myself and would have talked with proper terms like c-parts or bridges. I wouldn´t know. They might have probably thought me trying to be better than them – the actual (male) musicians, the real experts.  And that is something that was not accepted, at least not in Oulu at 1990s. You had to know your place.

Rosemary Lucy Hill from The University of Leeds hosted the gender session. Her own paper was about discussing the masculinity of metal music. She argued that there are other meanings for the listener than just embracing the masculinity in music. The personal relationship with music and the meanings given in the process overrides the general superficial “masculine” meaning.  It is a feeling of belonging and not being alone. Like she told us about seeing Elvis as a teddy bear – comforting in need. Or Killswitch Engage like a friend in a despair of heartache.

“Touching is a huge part of extreme metal.” Gabby Riches

Gabby Riches from Leeds Beckett University , a woman wearing Cephalic Carnage t-shirt (wow!) had studied female mosh pit practices. With that she brought the embodied view into the discussion. Affect moves you, also physically. Gabby´s informants were describing the mosh pit experience like it´s getting drunk with the atmosphere. It is risky but not dangerous. Well that I have to disagree. I tried mosh pit once, when I was in my twenties. I got pushed around and I was hurt – and I have been avoiding the mosh pits ever since. What a wimp and sissy you think. Not worth being a metal head. In my point of view I just have always had the common sense with me. That´s all. Nowadays I usually get irritated when the band in the stage demands, asks or pressures the audience making a mosh pit. Like it was the only way of enjoying the live gig. Nah! In the end Gabby admitted that when you get older you don´t wanna get bruises. Then you just watch the band. I still don´t see it any lesser way for enjoying the gig.

Gabby Riches had asked her informants where did they have learned how to mosh. That made me think of the process I became a metal head in the first place. Ok, I am middle-aged, fat, ugly and a mother of two. Is that suitable role for me at all? It is, because I was a metal head back when I was an ugly teen, when I was a pretty young woman and now. My musical preferences haven´t changed during the time. I was no part of the international demo postal system network. Everything I heard in mid 1980´s was already processed in some way; through heavy theme nights via national (and later local) radio broadcasts or through Finnish rock magazines. Finding my own subgenres among all the variety of metal genres took time. My experience of being a metal head is an experience of being a member of broad-minded community, a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes and interests, feeling of shared understanding beyond the words. I don´t usually listen to lyrics but add the vocals just as an instrument with the other instruments. For me the lyrics aren´t meaningful. The meaning I create for myself through the music is the feeling of power.

Laura Wright from the University of Birmingham was talking about post-metal. What is post metal? She said it is something beyond heavy metal conventionalities. I was still confused. She writes it is sometimes linked to the sounds of drone, doom and black metal with common song structures absent. Really? I had no idea that I am into post metal. That again tells me about the backbreaking tendency of labeling the music. Sometimes maybe outside the “real world”? Because presenting this paper in the gender session there had to be a point considering that aspect as well. Wright claimed that post metal as a genre is actively trying not to appeal in any particular gender. She carefully suggests that maybe we could talk about… post gender.

The critical audience responded to the gender discussion. First one said that she has heard of the heavy metal masculinity just too much in the last days and it is crap. Let´s move on. Meaning that it might have been the situation once, but is it still that, today? The other one criticized the whole gender point of view: we are all capable of doing all things, both women and men, moshing, head banging, stage diving, playing, listening. Why raising the gender issue at all? Gabby Riches answered her well referring to social processes of becoming an actor of metal scene. In spite of the capability, the journey might be different. Also as Rosemary Lucy Hill claimed as a conclusion of her presentation, masculinity is more social process than feature of any music. I would myself talk about cultural processes – but that´s just hair-splitting between research fields.

Rosemary Lucy Hill, Laura Wright and Gabby Riches all used interviews. How much we can really learn from interviews, was the critical audience asking once again. Of course methodological questions belong to the academic discussion. Interviews are qualitative data, they have limitations. I noticed also myself that results in all three cases included descripitions. Rosemary Lucy Hill asked her female informants to describe heavy metal. It was described as loud, heavy, fast and, anger. The greatness of heavy music was different to different people. It was visually challenging live experience or a musical journey to the fantasy land. When describing the post metal Laura Wright mentioned the feeling of connecting, seremoniality and escaping from the real world. And Gabby Riches´s informants were describing the mosh pit experience. There are two sides when thinking about the interviews. The audience pointed out the limits of language. Rosemary Lucy Hill saw it in the other way: there are possibilities in language expanding or understanding what music is doing to people.

The authentic metal?

In the latter session I was participating very short-haired John McCombe from the University of Dayton spoke enthusiastically about hair metal trying to convince us that it is a metal genre, part of metal canon and part of the family tree. Despite all the other opposite claims being False metal  etc. Oh, well. Not buying it. Can´t say metal and think of Poison. Which feels plastic.

But the top of the cake for me was Corky “I go way back” Laing who has been playing drums since…forever.

“This is as authentic as you get: 50 years living through this shit”

he replied to McCombe and all the others about the question of authenticity.

Still quoting Mr. Laing:

“If they don´t have a good drummer they don´t have a good band. Pop is when you pour milk to your corn flakes. Rock started when the drum was getting louder. Heavy metal is just another name for making an impact, for commitment in music.”

Tips of the day:

Metal History Through Fanzines, digital archive www.sendbackmystamps.org

Dokken VS. Chicken https://youtu.be/OL91wt5wNeI

More about me: https://amholappa.wordpress.com/this-is-what-i-do/