Transgression and mundanity : the global extreme metal music scene

Extreme Metal musical genres have challenged conventional notions of 'music' by developing an impenetrable sound that verges on formless noise. Extreme Metal music is produced, disseminated and consumed by musicians and fans who shun publicity within a set of obscure institutions that ensure the music's global 'underground' circulation. Within the confines of obscurity, musicians and fans explore in a highly 'transgressive' manner such themes as death, war and the occult, sometimes flirting with neo-fascist and racist discourses. This thesis develops the concept of 'scene' as a method of investigating Extreme Metal music and practice. The concept is theorised through an engagement with a wide variety of literatures, notably subcultural theory, theories of community and critical theories of space. The concept is developed so as to provide an 'holistic' method of drawing on a wide variety of incommensurate literatures and conceptual frameworks. Through the concept of scene, this thesis examines how the Extreme Metal scene is 'experienced' by its members. Detailed ethnographic, interview and other data are presented from case studies in Israel, Sweden and the United Kingdom. It is argued that scene members explore transgressive experiences that constantly threaten to exceed the confines of the scene. Yet the scene is also a 'safe' space, within which members experience the communal pleasures of 'mundanity'. Members orient their practices so as to experience the pleasures of both transgression and mundanity. They manage the resulting tensions by the practice of 'reflexive anti-reflexivity' - the wilful refusal by members to explore the contradictory consequences of their practices. Reflexive anti-reflexivity also ensures that scene members never attend to power relations within the scene, leading to the marginalisation of women and those from certain ethnic backgrounds. The thesis concludes with some reflections about the problematic role of the Extreme Metal and other music scenes in providing means of experiential 'survival' within a fraught modernity