Reconstruction 9.2 (2009)
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Keith Harris-Kahn. Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge (Oxford: Berg, 2007). Pp. x + 194. Illustrations 25. $32.95 paper. ISBN 1-84520-399-2.
<1> Since the appearance in the early 1990s of Deena Weinstein’s Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology and Robert Walser’s Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music, there has been a relative dearth of serious, book length inquiries into this often maligned musical form. Keith Harris-Kahn’s Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge
offers not only to rectify this situation but more specifically to
perform a cultural analysis of those much more aesthetically radical
and socially marginalized metal subgenres—death, doom, and black metal
as well as grind and metalcore—that have emerged since the PMRC induced
“moral panic” of the late 1980s briefly drew mainstream metal bands
like Judas Priest and Twisted Sister to the attention of media pundits,
politicians, and academics.
<2> Consistent with his academic background, Kahn-Harris explicitly locates his investigation of extreme metal in the ideas and methodologies of contemporary sociology, with his reliance on the late French theorist Pierre Bourdieu remaining especially pronounced. For instance, central to Kahn-Harris’ approach is his decision to define extreme metal less as a particular set of generic or stylistic features—though he remains aware of the importance of aesthetics and form— than as a discursive space in which not only certain musical but also extra-musical practices and exchanges occur. He also makes use of Bourdieu’s well known notions of cultural capital and habitus as a means of examining the ways in which extreme metal institutions (as relatively autonomous fields of production) refract, circulate, and reproduce various modes of power. Yet Kahn-Harris also does not hesitate to introduce his own critical models. Particularly useful, for example, is his representation of extreme metal as a site of both transgression and mundanity, a conceptualization he uses to demonstrate the ways in which the extreme metal scene allows its practitioners to navigate the perils and pitfalls of modernity, not only at the local but also at the global level.
<3> While the thoroughness and rigour with which Kahn-Harris sets about articulating and applying various theoretical frames of reference indicates that Extreme Metal would most likely find the most appreciation among students and scholars of either cultural studies or sociology, there still remains much of interest in the book for both the casual and the die-hard extreme metal fan. For, as a self-confessed fan himself, Kahn-Harris remains well aware of the enjoyment that derives from talking to others about the events that comprise the everyday experience of particular subcultures. With this in mind, moments in the book that might otherwise seem out of place in a strictly academic treatise—such as the referral to Max Cavalera’s leaving Sepultura or the discussion of extreme metal rehearsal room “culture”—merely add to the comprehensiveness with which Kahn-Harris approacs his subject. What is more, by refusing to “tone down” the level of analysis for a non-academic audience, Kahn-Harris proves that he assumes extreme metal fans to be as intelligent as they are sometimes fanatical—a fact borne out by the library copy I am using to write this review, which contains copious marginalia from an obviously enthused and well-educated extreme “metalhead.”
<4> All of which is not to suggest that Kahn-Harris remains an uncritical supporter of the extreme metal scene. To the contrary, we learn in the early pages of the book that much of what motivates his desire to produce a critical study of extreme metal is his own troubled relationship with the scene—not so much with the music per se as with the racism, misogyny, and violence that often inform extreme metal lyrics and iconography. It is this ambivalence, it turn, that leads Kahn-Harris to develop his idea of extreme metal as a site in which members practice a self-defensive type of “reflexive anti-reflexivity”—a cognitive strategy that rejects the “political” in order to allow practitioners to appropriate transgressive material like Satanism and Nazism without necessarily becoming proponents of such beliefs.
<5> While Kahn-Harris’ criticism of the extreme metal scene remains both constructive and warranted, there are moments at which he becomes guilty of succumbing to the same liberal anxieties that dominate much of the sociology of heavy metal. For instance, he dedicates a number of pages to a discussion of the position drugs and alcohol occupy within extreme metal while failing to produce sufficient evidence that fans or bands abuse such substances any more than any other social or cultural group. At times his discussion of bigotry and sexism within the scene likewise tends to duplicate the ways in which subcultures like extreme metal typically function as an abject cultural body or “other” upon which bourgeois social forms attempt to project their own racist and anti-feminist predications. Another of the book’s blind spots emerges from Kahn-Harris’ failure to dedicate equal space to prominent socialist, anarchist, or otherwise politically “progressive” bands, an exclusion which does much to create the false impression of extreme metal as little more than a haven for transgressive, anti-social practices and attitudes.
<6> Yet, despite the occasional oversight or oversimplification, Extreme Metal largely succeeds as a groundbreaking investigation of what for many remains an incomprehensible and at times frightening musical practice. Moreover, the overall impression the reader takes away from the book is of the potential extreme metal maintains as a site of not only artistic but also social innovation. For Kahn-Harris, what ultimately prevents extreme metal from fully realizing its capacity as a powerful source of aesthetic and political intervention is the insularity it maintains from other avant-garde scenes. In addressing his study to both academics and fans, then, Kahn-Harris not only describes the processes that attend extreme metal’s marginalization, but he also takes an important step towards initiating productive dialogue between hitherto culturally remote social groups.
Scott Inniss
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