Metal Jew

The greatest book ever published

Yesterday I received in the post a copy of All Known Metal Bands, a book that purports to list the name (and no other details) of every metal band. Ever. That's over 51,000 band names.

This is a self-consciously arty book. The gourgeous packaging is what we have come to expect from hipster publishers McSweeneys. The 'author' is an artist called Dan Nelson who, brilliantly, has the same name as the latest vocalist of Anthrax.

The short closing essay states:

For each name that is used by more than one group, that name is listed once for each distinct group. Should one presume that each of these bands had an average of four members, and multiply that by the quantity of bands, one might calculate that at least a quarter of a million humans have undertaken this quest - to unearth, embody, aim, and deliver power itself - and have brough that quest into the harsh light of the public world.

This estimate is almost certainly way off as so many bands share personnel with other bands. Ubiquitous figures like Stephen O'Malley and Hellhammer could fill a books of their own (well, small pamphlets) with the number of projects they've played in.

Nevertheless, 51,000 is a hell of a lot. I don't know what the criterion for listing is but I suspect it must be something like having released at least a demo and played a couple of gigs.

The book confirmed my suspicion that most of the good metal band names are already taken. A quick flick through reveals 9 Salems, 18 Nemeses, nearly an entire page of Eternal - , Funeral - and Necro - bands. Nelson has picked up some weirdly named, tantalising obscurities. Anyone heard of Bao Tap? Czernoknizhnik? Fuzzybearoth? Xaotiko Teloz?

I've been trying hard to find omissions, but Nelson's done his research. He even picked up Israeli bands like Arafel and Substance For God, although he misses some really obscure Israeli acts like Servant's Glory. So far the only surprising omission I have found is Anal Cunt side project Impaled Northern Moon Forest .

Train-spotter fun aside, this is a great book. There is a weird beauty to be found in purusing this extraordinary list. It is a monument to the obsessiveness of metal in mining a few themes beyond the point of their exhaustion. Indeed, it is precisely the glorious redundancy of most metal that is the source of its power (cf Bataille).

Learning-disabled Punk

Boing Boing has a preview and write-up of a documentary film called Heavy Load: A Film About Happiness which profiles the eponymous band. Heavy Load has members who are learning disabled - the drummer appears to have Downs Syndrome. They also campaign for the rights of learning disabled adults to go out and stay out late. Looks like inspiring stuff...

It's been too long...

...since I last posted. Life is hectic as ever. Anyway, here's four miscellaneous items:

• I had an article published in the Jerusalem Post entitled 'Is Britain Good for the Jews'  (my answer: yes with some reservations). The comments on my article on the website are hysterical.
• I 'DJed' last night at a Jewdas event. It wasn't quite as successful as last time I did so - I was in a back room, I was on too early and there weren't enough people. Still, I had a blast and played some weird and wonderful stuff.
• I'm pretty ambivalent about next Sunday's Salute To Israel Parade - I really dislike the public triumphalism aspect of it. However, I have to admit that the organisers have avoided the usual musical dross that permeates these kinds of events and book Israeli pop punk band Useless ID to play. Okay, they are hardly Earth Crisis but it beats Dudu Fisher.
• In a fit of time-wasting I checked Wikipedia's lists of every UK number one single . I remember every one from about 1978 to about half way through 1995, thereafter I become old and out of touch. I used to scan the charts religiously...

Toodle pip.

Metal conference announcement

This has been out there for a few weeks but somehow I forgot to blog it:  The first ever international academic conference on metal is going to be held in Salzburg in November. I'm going to be there. Deadline for the call for papers is 13 June but I understand from the organisers that this is flexible.

The conference is called Heavy Fundamentalism: Music, Metal and Politics. Hopefully it'll be a success.

Chris Needham Interview

I blogged a while back about the immortal Chris Needham, start of early 90s video diary In Bed With Chris Needham about a 17 year old aspiring metal musician from Loughborough.  The internet has grown the cult of Chris Needham and the video diary can be viewed on youtube. Now a guy called Al Needham (no relation apparently) has alerted me to a great interview with the present-date Chris Needham. It goes into great detail about the diary and his life then and now. He seems a decent guy - self-deprecating and passionate about metal. Read it here.

Update on goth hate crime

I blogged a while back on hate crimes against youth cultures. One of the things I talked about was the horrific case of Sophie Lancaster, the goth killed by a gang in Northern England. Now Vice Magazine has an intriguing interview with Sophie Lancaster's boyfriend, who was also seriously assaulted. The article seems to cast doubt on whether the couple were assaulted for being goths. In fact, it may have been something even more senseless - a killing just for being someone the perpetrators had taken a vague disliking too.

It's one of these impossible questions: would you rather be killed for something than nothing?

Article on Eurovision

I just had an article published on Guardian Comment is Free about this week's Eurovision Song Contest.

Hiding in metal?

I just heard about a book called 'Hiding in Hip Hop' by Terrance Dean that tells of the author's experience as a gay man in the hip hop world and about the secret gay underground within it. It sounds fascinating. I'd love someone to write something similar regarding metal. However, my suspicion (and I may be totally wrong) is that there is barely any gay underground in metal. Not that there's no gay men and women in metal - far from it - but they are mostly isolated from each other. I also suspect that the mainstream gay community is pretty negative about metal and that doesn't help matters...

The betrayal of the legacy of John Peel

John Peel is one of my all-time heroes. Through his show I discovered artists as various as Napalm Death, The Bhundu Boys, The Wedding Present and Grandmaster Flash. Since his death a couple of years ago I have become increasingly annoyed at how his memory and legacy is represented.

The variety of the music he championed was extraordinary, but the 'guardians' of his memory are too often much more conservative. Take the 2007 John Peel day which was celebrated by a host of gigs by new and unsigned bands across the country. Nothing wrong with that, but where was the grindcore, the hip-hop, the reggae, the African music. Glastonbury now has a John Peel stage dedicated to upcoming bands. Again, nothing wrong with that, but the acts are mostly quirky indie bands.

It's becoming increasingly clear that the memory of John Peel is out of step with today's 'narrowcast' culture. Instead of being celebrated for his commitment to heterogeneity and difference, he is celebrated only for his commitment to novelty in one section of the musical world.

My Guardian article

On Tuesday I had an article published in the Guardian newspaper on my experiences and thoughts on having ME/CFS for the last 15 years. Read it here.

The last word on Norwegian black metal?

In three stunning posts, here, here and here, the ever-wonderful Documents  blog muses on Euronymous, the Norwegian black metal scene, transgression, the artist and repression. The conclusion of the second post:

The artist as a creator who desires a society that denies his right to exist, is a paradoxical symbol. An artist embodying the left-handed side of this paradox was murdered by a fellow artist who embodies the right-handed side of the paradox: the drama which unfolded in the Dream Time of Norwegian Black Metal certainly had a "...strange processual inevitability overriding questions of interest, expediency, or even morality" (Turner). The murder of Mayhem's Aarseth by Burzum's Vikernes was not only a tragedy in the Classical sense of the word. It was and is more than that: it is the frozen image of a configuration pregnant with tensions between opposing but interdependent socio-cultural forces, a configuration that was shocked into crystallization into a monad, not by the thought of the dialectical critic (Benjamin), but by the violence of the act.

The conclusion to the third part:

By interpreting the murder as the result of a dramatic or narrative process model, I have hoped to deny Vikernes the authorship of the killing. One might counter that the "author is dead", that there is no need to "kill" him as an author of a murder. But Vikernes as an author still reigns on the internet, in interviews, magazines, in "Lords of Chaos", as in the very consciousness of metalheads. Vikernes still has authority over the murder: in this sense he is an undead author. These three posts then are an attempt to drive a stake through his fascist heart.

These posts are probably the smartest thing anyone has ever written on the early 90s Norwegian black metal scene.

The Documents blog shames me a bit. I'm an academic who has written on metal and transgression, yet my blogging is mostly light-hearted. I simply don't have the time and energy to direct my creativity too far into this blog. I'm glad that there are people around, like the author of Documents, to do so in my absence.

New publication

For all my many Russian-speaking fans, I have just had a chapter published in a Russian publication. Here's the full reference:

‘Sozdanie evreiskogo repa: parodija, pastish, sinkretizm’ ['Creating Jewish Rap: Parody, Pastiche and Syncretism’] in A. Smirnitskaya (ed) Muzyika Idishkaita [Music of Yiddishkite]. Vol. 4.Moscow: MAKS Press, 2008, pp 128-150.

I don't actually speak Russian - it's a translation of an article on Jewish rap that I haven't had time to find a publisher for in the English-speaking world

Jesus metal

Metal Inquisition has a fun overview of Christian metal. Given the generally sarcastic tone of the blog (which by the way I love), the overview is surprisingly fair-minded, giving due props to Believer and admitting that SOME Mortification and Tourniquet is okay. It doesn't mention the pretty credible pseudo-black metal Antestor (for whom Hellhammer apparently guested on drums one time!); bizarre joke 'unblack metal' band Horde; or my favourite (which isn't saying a lot) Christian hardcore outfit Living Sacrifice.

I've always been fascinated with Christian metal. I love it when it's awful and confirms every awful stereotype you had about anemic Christian rip-offs of secular culture. But I also love it on the rare occasions it's great because it subverts conventional metal culture so completely. Basically, I win either way!

What does annoy me though, as I've mentioned before on this blog, is when people become 'born again' they generally choose the most reactionary form of Christianity. What would be cool would be a non-fundamentalist/liberation theology Christian metal band. That would pretty much piss everybody off and create unity between Christian and Satanist....

Deciblog goes Metal Jew

The Deciblog surprisingly goes all Metal Jew on your ass in a post entitled 'Don't Bogart the Charoset':

Let me tell you about my friend Dan. He’s a semi-observant Jew, but he also worships at the altar of Cliff Burton. Dan listens to Ride the Lightning every day while he’s in the shower, driving in his car, reading the newspaper and cooking dinner. He listens to it at work, too (as a part of an extended playlist with Kill ‘Em All and Master of Puppets) — he just turns the volume down on his speakers to avoid annoying his co-workers. Dan eats, drinks and sleeps Ride the Lighting every single day of the year except for the first night of Passover when, in accordance to some tradition he probably made up when he was 11, he only listens to “Creeping Death.” Like, a bunch of times during the day and then once more right before the start of the seder, at full blast, because “Elijah is the original headbanger.”

Read the rest here (actually just 3 youtube videos of covers of Creeping Death, but hey it's all good).

Don't you just love how goddamn tenuous my blog is????

More metallers claiming they are not Nazis

Blabbermouth reports:

Finnish folk/pagan metal band MOONSORROW and Faroe Islands metallers T�R, who are currently touring European together under the Paganfest Europe banner (alongside ENSIFERUM, KORPIKLAANI, and ELUVEITIE) have released a joint videotaped statement rejecting rumors that they are Nazi sympathizers in the wake of reports that their April 17 concert in Berlin may be cancelled (as a result of pressure from a local anti-fascist organization).

See the rest of the post for more info and a video of the statement.

I don't have any special knowledge here but I am 99% sure that this is yet another case of volkische, nineteenth century-style imagery being confused with Nazism. In Germany particularly, the connotations of volk metal may touch on peoples' sensitivities, but for the most part this kind of metal is simply too silly (usually in a good way) to be taken seriously.

Global metal movie

Global Metal, the sequel to Metal: A Headbanger's Journey (in which I have a bink-and-you've-missed-it appearance) will be out soon. By the looks of the trailer, it will look at metal in the Middle East (including Israel), Japan and China at least.  Looks interesting.

Israeli metal - 10 years on

Ten years ago, as part of my PhD research, I spent a memorable month doing research on the Israeli metal scene. What I found was a scene that was not only highly marginal in the country's musical community, but also marginal in the global metal scene. Scene members were acutely aware of their location in Israel and many of them thoroughly resented their perceived marginality. At the same time, the scene still had a certain vibrancy. There were some good bands, most obviously Salem and Orphaned Land, but also long-dead groups like Betrayer and Dalmerot's Kingdom. Heller productions (now metamorphosed into Raven Music) put on gigs, club nights and ran a good distro. 

I met some great people during my period during research and had some great experiences. Most memorably, the band Melechesh (then unsigned, now on Nuclear Blast and living in Holland) took me into the west bank to see the desert scenery that inspired them. I also watched them and Arallu (then just getting going as a one-man project) rehearse in a converted air-raid shelter in Jerusalem's Independence Park.

I've tried to keep in touch with the Israeli scene ever since, including during my year living in Jerusalem and on several subsequent trips.  I'm not as connected as I once was but one thing is clear to me - the scene has come a long way in the last 10 years. Salem and Orphaned Land go from strength to strength, both on respected labels, both playing out of Israel (which no Israeli band had done 10 years ago). Betzefer had a shot with glory on Roadrunner. My favorite Israeli band of all time Rabies Caste (now sadly no more) were signed to Earache for a time and toured the UK a number of times. My sparring partner (ie she doesn't like me very much) Aviva at Metal Israel does great work promoting the scene. Most impressively, Israel is going to have its first metal festival this summer, featuring Dark Tranquility, Opeth and Within Temptation.

The Israeli scene is still small in global terms, but it has a well-established infrastructure and produces bands every bit the equal of those anywhere else in the world.  I have to confess though to a certain nostalgia about the  time I spent discovering the scene ten years. It felt underground and counter-cultural and the anger and resentment felt by many scene members was thrilling to witness at times. I'm not in touch enough to know how veteran scene members feel now, whether they too are nostalgic for the old days. Certainly, when I was around 10 years ago, many scene members looked back fondly to the early 90s scene.

There's an excitement that comes from obscurity. But when all is said and done, but I would guess that most Israeli scene members prefer things to be easier. In a country where things are often tough, I can't say I blame them.

A very metal Purim

So tomorrow is Purim, which for those who don't known, celebrates the survival of the Jews from an attempted massacre in Persia, with drunkenness, dressing-up, skits and general revelry. In honour of the festival, here's some Jewish and some metal silliness. First up, an Israeli animation in which the likes of Ahmedinajad and Bin Laden celebrate the festival (hat tip, as ever, Teruah):

On the metal side of things, enjoy Caninus, whose vocalist is a dog, Hatebeak, whose vocalist is a parrot (neither of them are exactly joke bands and they actually sound pretty good), and revel in the wit and wisdom of Fenriz.

Finally, if I haven't done so before, big shout going out to the splendidly sarcastic Metal Inquisition - my favourite blog at the moment.

Chag Sameach

YOU'RE NOT FUNNY

The otherwise mildly amusing Cheesy Metal site yesterday posted this drivel. I guess it's supposed to be funny and to annoy po-faced feminists (if not, then the guy is even more of a jerk).  But the moron who wrote this crap doesn't understand that just insulting someone isn't necessarily clever or funny. If you're going all out to be offensive, learn from Anal Cunt.

Hate crimes against goths and emos

Here in the UK, the trial is currently taking place of a gang of teenagers who [are accused of] savagely attacked a goth couple, leading to the woman dying and the man suffering brain damage.  The attack appears to have been motivated by nothing more than the desire to have fun attacking people who looked different. It's nothing more than racism in another form.

Then I see a report on Blabbermouth that:

According to La Crónica de Hoy, several hundred Mexican heavy metal, "skate punk" and alternative rock fans joined forces last Friday (March 7) in the in the center of Querétaro, Mexico to confront a group of "emos" (followers of the "emo" subculture, which is short for "emotional") who regularly use the city center as a gathering place. Four people were injured and 28 persons were arrested (22 of them minors) when more than a thousand youths clashed in the area of Jardín Guerrero, Plaza de Armas

Equally disturbing is that:

An Internet campaign is reportedly being waged to launch attacks against "emos" in other parts of the country, with various web postings portraying emos as "homosexuals" who give a "bad image" to tourists who visit their towns.

Now I'm with a large section of the metal world in that emo leaves me cold, but I really feel on the wrong side of the battle here. This is the side of the metal world that makes me sick. The side that, for example, made Kurt Cobain despise the metallers amongst his fans as they reminded him of the bullies and jocks in school.

Metallers didn't attack the goth couple. In fact there are sections of the metal world that, to outsiders, probably look similar to goth. Still, when anyone is attacked for being a member of a youth/music culture the metal world should be on the victim's side.

More on 'Black' Metal

Following my post on metal in Botswana, I was contacted by a woman from Kenya and we've been corresponding on rock, metal and punk in that country. Here's what she has to say (with permission):

Well kenya has more of a rock scene than a metal scene, since bands are just beginning to arise. metalheads know each other through exchange of music or online like the facebook group kenya metalheads. it's usually hard to convince a dj in a club to play a metal song. there are still many misconceptions about the music, but most consider it noise or satanic. these are the ignorant ones. as for bands there's a mixed category, but mostly indie and alternative. none that sound like the Botswana bands, or really metal. there are mainly two dominant yahoo groups that people get info on about gigs and stuff.

http://www.groups.yahoo/kenyapunk

http://www.groups.yahoo/kenyarocks

Check out the article on this site, it has a review of a recent show.
http://www.the-booth.com/index.html

The first gig i ever went to was largely a white crowd, the blacks were countable, but that was because there was no awareness among the black fans that there was a local rock scene, but now there's more black fans and band members than white, with just one band which has all white members and im afraid they're gonna phase out coz of being the minority which shouldn't be right. the problem then becomes how can we intergrate the white fans back into the scene. other wise right now it's a black rock scene, as for the metal scene, its mainly male, i've just met two females who listen to metal, and when the guys realize that, it amazes them, at which point i wonder why. hope that answers the question somehow.

So there we have it. I'm keen to hear from anyone else who has information on metal in majority 'black' countries.

Mini documentary on Middle East metal

Last week CNN aired a mini-documentary on metal in the Middle East (viewable online). It contains interviews and footage of Jordanian and Saudi Arabian bands. What comes through really strongly is how far the internet is providing a boost to these metal scenes. Fascinating stuff. [via Blabbermouth]

Against Copyright Term Extension

The following is from an e-mail from the Open Rights Group. It should be pretty self-explanatory:

Thanks for signing our Release The Music petition in 2006. You helped us win the battle against copyright term extension in the UK. Now we need your help again. The European Commission are discussing a proposal for term extension.
This is truly urgent because the UK government will be reassessing their 'no' to the term extension lobby in light of the new proposal. So if you oppose copyright term extension for sound recordings then sign our new, Europe-wide petition, now.

Please also be sure to tell your communities about the petition, whether via your blog, podcast, mailing lists or just down the pub. In particular, if you are in touch with digital rights activists in Europe then please push the petition link in their direction and ask that they sign up too. The website is available in English, French and German.

If you've still got some energy left after that, please write to your MP about the issue. A Private Member's bill for copyright term extension will have its 2nd reading in the House of Commons on 7 March. We need more informed opponents of the Bill in Parliament so please tell your MP just how you feel on this issue. For advice on how to write to your MP and suggestions for the kind of arguments that work in this context, please read our blogpost.

Finally, if you're not already, please consider becoming a supporter of the Open Rights Group. Your regular financial contributions enable us to raise awareness of digital rights issues by staging events across the country, lobbying the British and EU Parliaments, and monitoring and engaging with the national and international press. When politicians talk to ORG, they know they're talking to a group that is funded by their voters, and they listen and act accordingly. So please, support the Open Rights Group!

More Botswanan Metal

Following up from my recent post, I've unearthed (thanks to the help of Wrust) a couple more Botswanan metal bands: Crackdust and Stane.  Crackdust play a competent version of brutal death metal; I didn't hear any samples on the Stane site. 

From the look at the Stane tours page it looks like there is quite a healthy scene with a fair few metal shows in Botswana, albeit shows in which the same small group of bands play. I still wonder whether Botswana is unique in having an 'African' (i.e. 'black') metal scene. If it was going to be anywhere it makes sense that it would be Botswana. In my very limited knowledge of the country, it is one of Africa's most stable and prosperous states. It may also be influenced by 'white' musical cultures in  South Africa and Namibia but within the context of a majority 'black' society (where metal isn't perhaps  associated  with a white ruling class). However, THIS IS ALL SPECULATION!

As I said in my earlier post, any further info would be very welcome.

Metal in Capitals

Okay this is spooky: I had planned to write a post this week announcing to the world that hereby I would cease writing Metal in capitals. I don't know why I've always capitalised metal genre names. When I published my book my editor told me not to use capitals but I still carried on using them on the blog. Anyway, a great post on exactly this topic appeared today on the Invisible Oranges blog. Here's an excerpt:

I'm trying to understand why people use such capitalization. Other genres don't do this. One doesn't see Techno or Jazz, or subgenrewise, Minimal or Bebop. Even in metal, one doesn't see Grindcore or Thrash Metal. Why are black metal, death metal, and heavy metal special? Is capitalization insufferably pompous?

Perhaps I can understand the reverence. I don't subscribe to it, though. I have problems capitalizing deities that supposedly created the universe. Western music forms that arose in the last few decades hardly constitute religions to me.

He's probably correct that pomposity is part of the reason for the frequent capitalisation of metal genres - Manowar-style invocations of the power of metal seem to beg not just capitals but immortalisation in stone. In my defense I don't think it was reverence that led me to capitalize for so long, just simple ignorance of basic rules of good writing.

Henceforce I declare Metal Jew to be a non-capitalization zone (to be pedantic, excepting when I'm writing the name of the blog or at the start of sentences).