Hardcore, punk, and other junk : aggressive sounds in contemporary music PDF
Preview Hardcore, punk, and other junk : aggressive sounds in contemporary music
Hardcore, Punk, and Other Junk Hardcore, Punk, and Other Junk Aggressive Sounds in Contemporary Music Edited by Eric James Abbey and Colin Helb LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK Published by Lexington Books A wholly owned subsidiary of Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom Copyright © 2014 by Lexington Books Amorphis. All Amorphis lyrics used with permission courtesy of Nuclear Blast Records and Amorphis. Eluveitie. All Eluveitie lyrics used with permission courtesy of Nuclear Blast Records and Eluveitie. Korpiklaani. All Korpiklanni lyrics used with permission courtesy of Nuclear Blast Records and Korpiklanni. Stone Vengeance Lyrics. All lyrics used with permission courtesy of Michael Coffey. Stone Vengeance Epigraph. All lyrics used with permission courtesy of Michael Coffey. Hellmouth. All lyrics used with permission courtesy of Jay Navarro and Hellmouth. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hardcore, punk, and other junk : aggressive sounds in contemporary music / edited by Eric James Abbey and Colin Helb. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-7605-4 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7391-7606-1 (electronic) 1. Hardcore (Music)--History and criticism. 2. Punk rock music--History and criticism. 3. Heavy metal (Music)--History and criticism. 4. Noise music--History and criticism. 5. Popular music--Philosophy and aesthetics. 6. Popular music--Social aspects. I. Abbey, Eric James, 1976- editor of compilation. II. Helb, Colin, editor of compilation. ML3534.H373 2014 781.66--dc23 2013050231 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America For those who struggle with aggression. Contents Foreword ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction xiii 1 Food For Thought: On Sid Vicious’s Cannibalization of “My Way” 1 Evan Ware 2 Let the Shillelagh Fly: The Dropkick Murphys and Irish – American Hybridity 21 Sean Ahern 3 Am I Evil? The Meaning of Metal Lyrics to Its Fans 35 Mika Elovaara 4 By Demons Be Driven? Scanning “Monstrous” Voices 51 Marcus Erbe 5 Heavy Metal Music in the Caribbean Setting: Politics and Language at the Periphery 73 Nelson Varas-Diaz, Eliut Rivera-Segarra 6 No Fun: Noise Music, Avant-garde Aggression, and Sonic Punishment 91 Ross Hagen vii viii 7 The Last Report: Throbbing Gristle and Audio Extremes 107 Brian Cogan 8 Black Metal Soul Music: Stone Vengeance and the Aesthetics of Race in Heavy Metal. 121 Kevin Fellezs 9 “The Time is Right to Set Our Sight on Salvation”: The Strange Tale of How the Hare Krishnas Came To Play Hardcore Punk 139 Colin Helb 10 The Cult of Hellmouth: The Success of Contemporary Hardcore 169 Eric James Abbey Afterword 181 Bibliography 185 Contributors 195 Index 199 Foreword Jeremy Wallach Aggressive music was not supposed to change the world. At the outset it was imagined more as a rearguard action, a cathartic outlet. It was what frustrated young men and women turned to when the world didn’t go their way, when it instead attacked them from all sides. Loud guitars and forceful drums drove back the all-out assault on one’s humanity, on dignity, on the right to have a good time. Aggressive music in all its stripes, from the most hedonistic heavy metal to the most politically strident grindcore to the most orthodox punk, is what Lester Bangs called “unarguable affirmation.” It exhorts its listeners to claim their essential humanity in the face of the dehumanizing forces— deindustrialization, dictatorship, deindividuation, whatever—that threaten to overwhelm them on a daily basis. We can add the searing pain of imperialism, racism, sexism, and homophobia to that list, for as improbable as it may seem to those who adhere to stereotypical notions of rock as the exclusive domain of straight white, Western males, the weight of the empirical evidence collected by the authors of the following essays as well as a whole host of other ethnog- raphers, sociologists, and other qualitative researchers over the last decade is undeniable. This is a party to which everyone is invited. All over the world, the musics aggression gave kids a way to say to them- selves: we’ve got a right to be angry, we’ve been lied to, it’s not us, it’s them. The list of thems is extensive and, as my co-editors and I found out in our global metal study, varies considerably across time and place. It ranges from the time- less—lousy, booze-addled parents—to the timely—the latest corrupt, hypocriti- cal politician or cleric to scapegoat young people for social ills created and per- petrated by adults. If all the music did was help people survive adolescence, that would be no mean feat, but in certain times and places it did much more. Ag- gressive music has played a role in some of the most dramatic social uprisings of the last quarter century, from the 1990s democratic revolutions in the former Soviet bloc to the Indonesian overthrow of the Soeharto regime in 1998 to the 2011–13 Arab Spring. Aggressive music was not supposed to change the world, ix
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