Metal Jew

Jewish Metalheads on Facebook

Facebook now has a Jewish Metalheads group.

Latest articles

Latest articles by me:

Liberal Conspiracy:  'Let's Have More Honesty In Politics'

Guardian Comment Is Free: 'How To Be Left'

Gevolt Intervew

Metal Israel has a short interview with Yiddish Metallers Gevolt

My gift to Simon Frith

Professor Simon Frith is one of the main reasons I got into academic popular music studies. He was very supportive to me at an early stage of my career and, later on, he contributed an afterword to After Subculture, the book I edited with Andrew Bennett.

Frith has also been the chair of the judges for the Mercury Music Prize since it began in the early 90s. Over the last few years I've become increasingly vexed at the total absence of Metal (and hardcore, industrial, goth and other genres) from the annual prize shortlist. I hate special pleading for particular genres but I simply cannot accept the implied jidgement that absolutely nothing has happened in UK Metal that is worthy of note since the early 90s.

So with his permission, I compiled a burned a couple of CDs with UK Metal albums that I thought Frith should hear. They aren't all necessarily my favourites. The only thing I wanted to do was to show that UK Metal was interesting and diverse. I deliberately left mainstream Metal (ie Iron Maiden) off the list in favour of stuff he probably wouldn't have heard of and that leans to the more 'arty' side of Metal.  The earliest (Carcass) is from 1993 - the year after the Mercury Prize started. Here's the list:

• Akerkocke 'Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone'
• Anaal Nathrakh 'Domine Non Es Dignus'
• Anathema 'Alternative 4'
• Capricorns 'Ruder Forms Survive'
• Carcass 'Heartwork'
• Electric Wizard 'Dopethrone'
• Godflesh 'Selfless'
• Iron Monkey 'Our Problem'
• Jesu 'Conqueror'
• Mithras 'Words Beyond The Veil'
• My Dying Bride 'Like Gods Of The Sun'
• The Axis of Perdition 'Depeted Scenes From The Transition Hospital'
• The Meads of Asphodel 'Damascus Steel'
• Thine 'A Town Like This'

Whether or not this list is the best UK Metal has to offer, I do think it shows that UK Metal is at least worth a second glance from people who are not otherwise interested in it.

Metalish = not much cop

In a fit of enthusiasm following my recent discovery of Hassidic band Metalish, I went and ordered their most recent album 'Lo L'Fached' online. It came today and I have to say that it is massively disaapointing. Not very Metal at all - just Hassidic pop with a few guitar solos and an 80s AOR feel. Ah well, that's $15 I won't get back...

Having said all that, one thing I do respect about Hassidic pop is that, unlike other fundamentalist pop scenes such as Contemporary Christian Music, they do have a love of music for itself. They don't simply plaster jewish lyrics over bland pop styles (although they do that too), they also revel in dance and melody. The tradition of the niggun honours songs without words and that can only be a good thing for music.

Jewish music in print

Two of the best current Jewish journals, Zeek and Guilt and Pleasure currently have special music issues out. 

Guilt and Pleasure's 'Sound Issue' has interesting features on the Jewish involvment in 50s and 60s Hispanic-American music , Jonathan Richman and a revealing interview with MC Serch. These and and the rest of the issue are available online.

Zeek's Fall/Winter 2007 edition is only available in print but has 2 fascinating pieces on Jewish punk, including one from Steven Lee Beeber on Jews and Hardcore. There's also a free CD.

Hassidic Metal

My new Facebook buddy Mordechai Frizis alterted me to a Hassidic Metal band called Metalish. Someone told me about them ages ago but googling them turned up nothing (perhaps due to Haredi prohibitions on internet use?). Anyway, Mordechai told me to go to this Jewish music site that stocks 3 Metalish albums. They give free snippets of the songs that suggests that Metalish perform vocal-less rousing Hassidic dance music in an 80s Metal style.

The search for Jewish Metal continues!!

New articles

I've just had a couple of articles published:

The Politics of Assimilation on The Guardian's Comment is Free site

Dialogue, Debate and Political Commitment on Liberal Conspiracy

Gore Metal vs Girl Band Pop

Last week I blogged about the clash between Feminist Extreme Metal and Glam Rock on BBC3's Singing With The Enemy.  This week's show featured an even more impossible sounding clash between two uterrly different groups with the aim of writing, recording and performing a song together in a week. Amputated are Gore Metal of the sickest, most misogynist kind, whereas Fallen Angelz are girl band/r 'n' b of the girliest kind.

Predictably the boys played up to the camera mercilessly in the first few days. Taunting the girls by playing porn DVDs, leaving knives on their door and taking relish in their horror at their lyrical themes. I have to say that Amputated turned me off as well at first. Although their music is grind-tastically good, their attitudes were repulsive, particularly those of Mark the singer. Most  Gore Bands (such as their heroes Cannibal Corpse) tend to  emphasise that their lyrics are just fantasies or  treat them as jokes, Mark in particular was keen to emphasise his  real-life hatred of women. That said, I did enjoy the horror the girls expressed when they were first exposed to Amputated's music and when they were taken to see Vader live. Let's face it, there's a perverse pleasure in loving music that scares people.

Once again, in true reality show fashioin, things progressed over the week. The girls worked hard to build relationships with the boys as individuals. They realised that much of the sick machismo fell away when the boys were alone and that they were in the main reasonable blokes. The boys also worked hard to tone down their sound just enough to make collaboration possible. The hold out was singer Mark who, it later transpired, was scared of sounding ridiculous if he toned his vocal style down.

What is absolutely remarkable is the track they came up with 'Slave' is genuinely brilliant.  It's still Death Metal, albeit with sickest Gore Metal edges smoothed off. Fallen Anglez's harmonies merge really well with the riffs, including - extraordinarily - with the blast beat section.

Of course this is further proof, if that were needed, of the ability of Metal to combine with disparate genres. We always new that with Folk Metal, we learned it in the late 90s with Black Metal, and now we know it with r'n'b.

The track can be heard here.

A passing observation

Quite a few Metal people have added me as Facebook friends over the last few weeks. It's been really nice as I've been out of the Metal scene for a while now. Anyway, one interesting thing I've noticed from Facebook Metal profiles is just how literary everyone seems to be. I don't think this is just a function of the nature of my Facebook Metal friends (many of whom write for Terrorizer). Rather, Metal is imbued with literary allusions and with a love of books. Counter-intutive? Perhaps; certainly there's no doubt that there are plenty of Metalheads who don't read a word. But consider the importance of fantasy fiction in Metal - Lovecraft, Howard et al - not to mention the use of complex historical sources. I once met a Swedish Metaller who was writing a concept album based on Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus'.  So, Metal is bookish, just not bookish in the Morrisey sense...

A light at the end of the tunnel for the West Memphis Three?

It looks like there may be light at the end of the tunnel for the West Memphis Three - three teenagerswho were convicted of a brutal child murder on the flimsiest of 'Satanic Panic' evidence. On the other hand, it's hard to put much hope in the American justice system (or more accurately in the Arkansa justice system) on the basis of its past track record.

Jews and Emo

The ever reliable Teruah posted an interesting discussion about Jews and Emo, linking to a couple of excellent posts here  and here by Arye Dworkin the music editor of Heeb.

Dworkin's thesis is that whilst Emo is kind of uber-Jewish in its geekdom, Jews are largely absent from the scene because it's so 'unambitious'.

Chanukah gig

New UK Jewish social networking site Jeneration is organising a 'Chanukah Live Music Event'

The acts aren't interesting to me, but it's interesting that it's happening. When I was a teenager/young adult I always dreamed that this sort of thing would happen in the Uk Jewish community.