One girl's view on being a metal fan...

Are you talking to me: Respecting women in metal

"Like any subculture, the world of heavy metal has rules. There’s an obvious dress code; violate it at your own peril. What you give up in fashion choices, you supposedly make back in community. Millions of misfit kids have made their home in heavy metal, and with that comes a sense of belonging: a tribe. At least, that’s how it works when you’ve got a Y chromosome.

I would have loved to join that headbanger tribe. But because of my dress code choices, the guys, by and large, ignored me. It didn’t help that I was shy. At my small high school, male metalheads seemed to accept me. But at shows? Forget it. While the guys bonded over the band’s riffage, I might as well have been a scuff on the floor."


"I suspect their reasons for loving metal were similar to mine. Some of them – possibly most of them – found something in metal that purged their pain and made them feel powerful. And it didn’t just help with big, life-changing trauma. Frustrated at school? Anthrax’ cover of “Got the Time” provided a three-minute thrash-filled vacation. Feeling like my parents didn’t get me – or my love of metal? Accept’s “Generation Clash” provided the perfect, brooding companion to my angst."

"As metal soldiered on, it branched out. Operatic and folk metal bands place women musicians front and center. Singers like Angela Gossow, Stevie Floyd, and Otep Shamaya have proven they can bellow with the best of them – and rock out without flashing their goods. Mainstream metal acts, from Tool to Lacuna Coil, offer emotional music that doesn't emasculate the audience."


Are you talking to me: Respecting women in metal

Women in Metal

'They have to scream a little louder to be heard.'
Does that mean that metal means so much more to women because of the fact that they are segregated?

'But the ladies' musical backgrounds and achievements often play second fiddle to their luminous cheekbones or dangerous curves.'
Similar things could be said for female FANS of metal - are they objectified due to their appearance because they are a lot rarer than male metalheads?

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/11/the-never-ending-debate-over-women-in-metal-and-hard-rock/247795/

All Girl Metal Bands

A great site for fans of all-girl metal bands.
And all-girl cover bands of the most well known bands from AC/DC to Van Halen.


http://www.metaladies.com/

NEMETON BOREALIS - The Blackwood Gathering, Black Metal in Cumbria

Nemeton Borealis is a unique Black Metal event situated in a birch woodland overlooking Lake Windermere, Cumbria. Limited spaces for camping and camper vans.

The event includes; Outdoor performance area and ceremonial fire, Indoor Bar with real ale and ciders, wild camping, Black Metal record Distro/ merch stalls, moon pond and Sacrificial Altar stone.

"The event is limited to 200 people and so therefore it is essential that gig attendees contact and purchase tickets beforehand. There are some limited spaces for camper vans, please inquire for their availability."

The gig isn't massively well known, and only really attended through social media networks, through friends and groups that are fans of the genre.

Some photographs taken by fans...

  

Gender in Metal?

I have moved towards the notion of gender in heavy metal music. As a fan of the genre, and a female, I feel like I am really drawn to WHY I like what I like and how that reflects in the eyes of the public!

I love these two paragraphs from The Society Pages, written by a woman. It provides me with a general summary of the arguments I would like to support in my dissertation.

"Performers and fans have been overwhelmingly been heterosexual men (Walser 1993).  The promotion of an exaggerated and idolized dominant, heterosexual form of masculinity is not surprising when taking into account the androgyny that also exists within the heavy metal realm.  Androgyny was especially prevalent during the 1970s and 1980s when heavy metal music peaked in popularity.  Male musicians and fans with long hair, make up and tight fitting clothes needed a mechanism to assert their masculinity and heterosexuality.  They found it in promoting a “sex-drug-and-groupies heavy-metal lifestyle” (Breen 1991).  This metal mantra was often at the expense of women and homosexual men, who were designated to the category of “other” and represented as a threat in visual images, lyrics, and video representations (Walser 1993).

Since the 1970s, women have increasingly gravitated towards the heavy metal scene.  Women who choose to participate, especially subgenres such as death metal or black metal that are more misogynistic, are aware of the culture of marginalization (Vasan 2011).  These women often report that the metal scene provides a sense of individual empowerment through breaking away from the gendered restrictions of mainstream society.   However, this freedom comes at a cost, which involves reframing empowerment through a masculine notion of legitimation."

Thesocietypages.org, (2014). Heavy Metal Music and Sociological Imagination » Sociology Lens. [online] Available at: http://thesocietypages.org/sociologylens/2013/11/18/heavy-metal-music-and-sociological-imagination/ [Accessed 16 Oct. 2014].

METAL: A HEADBANGERS JOURNEY

                                     Metal: A Headbanger's Journey (2005)

Documentary Watch!!

METAL: A HEADBANGERS JOURNEY

Sam Dunn is a 30-year old anthropologist who wrote his graduate thesis on the plight of Guatemalan refugees. Recenly he has decided to study the plight of a different culture, one he has been a part of since he was a 12-year old: the culture of heavy metal. Sam sets out on a global journey to find out why this music has been consistently stereotyped, dismissed and condemned and yet is loved so passionately by its millions of fans. Along the way, Sam explores metals' obsession with some of life's most provacative subjects - sexuality, religion, violence and death - and discovers some things about the culture that even he can't defend. Shot on location in the UK, Germany, Norway, Canada and the US, this documentary is the first of its kind. It is both a defense of a long-misunderstood art form and a window for the outsider into the spectacle that is heavy metal.


This documentary gave answers to a lot of questions I want to explore in my dissertation.

ORIGINS OF METAL:
As much as I want to avoid a 'history' of metal in my dissertation, metal itself has its firm roots in the 1960/70s and a lot of the subgenres of metal remain unchanged since such a time.
Bands that 'started' metal:
Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath
Sabbath being the most notable and described as creating every well known metal riff!!

Metal was derived from the working class man's blues music, and used a lot of the 'Devil's Note' - the tritone (http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1767,00.html)

A nerw wave of metal was then brought forth in the late 70s and the 80s with bands like Saxon, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Motorhead,

Other musical roots could include dark classical music - Richard Wagner (1813 - 1833)
Due to the use of a lot of bass - tubas, octobass etc and a lot of improvisation, much like Van Halen.

ENVIRONMENTS:
The band members themselves almost always come from very rough / poor backgrounds. This makes a lot of the fans of metal relate to their heroes, as they also tend to come from a similar background. The sound (and indeed the name) of metal comes from a working background - the mines, steelworks etc.

FANS:
Metal fans: Young, hetrosexual males, generally. However, more and more female fans are becoming apparent - myself included.
Heavy metal fans love the music they do because of the sense of confidence and strength it gives them. And getting together in a community of like minded people allows them to be weird, where they aren't considered so by mainstream society!

This can be seen mainly at festivals - Bloodstock, UK is where i went in 2014, but in this film they travel to Wacken.

Metalhead love the tribal feeling they get at festivals. A sense of community and a brotherohood, and a sense of belonging.


METAL CENSORSHIP:
In 1985, the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center) released a list of 15 songs to be banned called the filthy 15. (www.nndb.com/lists/405/000093126/)

They targeted one band member in particular - Dee Snider of Twisted Sister

Dee Snider 1985 in court
defending his music

The PMRC picked him as a target because of his apparent unintelligent attitude - and were blown away.
He described the music he had written was not INTENDED in a perverse way, and every person who listened to the music interpreted it in their own way, and for them to assume it were perverse, meant they were the ones who thought in such a way - YOU LOOK, YOU FIND.






GENDER & SEXUALITY:
Male dominated 'boys club' and very unsympathetic to females.
It was led by the strong working class man.
HARD FAST STRONG.

It allows young teenage boys anxiety of growing up to disappear, and to worship heroic male idols.
This was then challenged by glam metal:
Leather & Lace, obsessed with female sexuality
Dressing feminine to provoke attention / trouble
to 'FREAK PEOPLE OUT'
GUTS TO BR GLAM.

Ladies in metal:

Girlschool - all girl metal
band in the 80s

GIRLSCHOOL
The first PROPER all girl metal band that did nothing differently to the men! In interview in the film, they felt sexy, powerful and in control. Female fronted bands are popular now (Arch enemy)






RELIGION & SATANISM:
Religious symbolism is used a lot in metal. Some bands praise the devil, and some, like Black Sabbath, warn of the devil.

Norwegian Black Metal:
Burning Churches
A Statement to break Christianity, satan is the liberator, satan is freedom


DEATH & VIOLENCE:
Death metal - Cannibal Corpse depict the glamorisation of violence, fascinated with death, opposed to being afraid. Ideas of a primal desire - which all humans have.

Murder & suicide:
 Metal has been frequently used as a target or a reason as to why teenagers commit suicide.
Metal, by the fans, is actually seen as being empowering, a sense of not being alone.
It confronts what is being ignored and thats why it invokes such a negative reaction.

Bloodstock 2014

As a fan of the genre itself, I found myself heading off to the best metal festival the UK has to offer: Bloodstock.

Before even booking the tickets, I studied the line-up with a few friends who might want to attend.

Amon Amarth, Megadeth, Down, Evil Scarecrow, Hellyeah... I was sold.

We bought our tickets for 5 nights camping in a field, with some of the best bands I could think of. We then began performing what could be referred to as being 'rituals'.

I made sure my battle jacket (also known as a kutte, cut-off or battlevest) was up to withstanding the moshpits, walls of death etc and had all the patches I wanted sewn on, so fellow metalheads could identify what bands and genres I was into:

Jacket before bloodstock...

Here are a collection of photographs taken at Bloodstock 2014 by myself and my group...

Megadeth!!

Hellyeah

Carcass

Met Carcass!!

Amon Amarth