Metal Jew

New publications

Although neither of these publications have much to do with my metal side, I am quite proud of them:

Jews talking about talking about Israel - article in Haaretz

Communities in conversation: Jewish involvment in inter faith activities in the UK - report published by the Board of Deputies

Investigating 'The Shield'

I'm a huge fan of the US TV show The Shield, which sadly came to an end recently. When I accidentally discovered that Five USA, the channel that shows The Shield in the UK, had mucked about with the season episode, it was an opportunity to dip my toe into the world of journalism. It's hardly Woodward and  Bernstein stuff but it made for a fun story - read it here.

Metal Cartogram

I blogged recently about the extraordinary History of Metal  project. Now here's another strangely beautiful attempt to map the metal world - the Metal Cartogram

I should have blogged this sooner...

...but I didn't. The call for papers for the follow up to last November's excellent metal conference in Salzburg is now up.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it's great that there's another metal conference. On the other, the metal and  gender conference in Cologne (which i will be going to) is only a month before. There are only so many metal scholars so it's probably that one or the other conference may suffer attendance-wise. Still, metal people are a committed lot, so a fair few will probably go to both (probably not me alas).

The history of metal - all of it, every little bit

I blogged a while back here and here about the book 'All Known Metal Bands'. Now thanks to Brian Hickam (who doesn't have a blog so I can't link to him), I've found out about another, even more ambitious metal art project - the boringly titled The History of Metal:

The History of Metal (T.H.O.M.) is a large scale visual art project detailing the origins, growth, and breadth of heavy metal music. I will attempt to identify every heavy metal band that ever existed, identify different subgenres within metal and their relationships to one another, and create a collection of artworks that represents metal’s place in history, the world, and in popular culture.

I've been a fan of heavy metal music since I was a teenager, but until now I haven't taken the time to delve into the history and genealogy of this unique music genre. I took on this project largely to educate myself and others about heavy metal, as well as to bring attention to what I consider to be one of the most complex and enduring facets of musical culture.

When I originally came up with the idea for T.H.O.M., it was to be a single drawing - a giant timeline that contained every heavy metal band from the 1970's to present day, organized by subgenre. It has since evolved and expanded to include several "peripheral" pieces that investigate heavy metal's cultural presence. The project as a whole currently consists of four pieces - three drawings and a interactive Flash presentation:

• The Timeline Study: A snapshot, if you will, of how the timeline drawing is being constructed. This drawing is the first of many tests to determine the ideal configuration of bands on a timeline.
• The Metal Map: The Metal Map is a hand drawn and painted representation of the concentration of metal bands in countries throughout the world. Each country has been assigned a color based on how many heavy metal bands have originated there throughout history, with amounts ranging from 0 - 9,396. The map reveals correlations between the popularity of heavy metal and political, racial, and economic climates throughout the world.
• Subgenre Interactive: An interactive Flash presentation that allows users to explore the different subgenres within heavy metal, and listen to samples from bands that represent those subgenres.
• Metal Subgenre Popularity Index: A large drawing showing the growth and popularity of each of the 14 main heavy metal subgenres from 1970 to 2008.

It's well worth checking out. I love the idea of trying to identify and nail down the entirity of a genre in a piece of visual art. On the one hand it's as futile as trying to nail jelly to a wall. On the other, it's a suitably mythic monument to a scene that is obsessed with making its own mythology. It'll be interesting to see how the project develops.