I co-edited with Titus Hjelm and Mar LeVine a special issue of the journal Popular Music History entitled 'Heavy Metal: Controversies and Countercultures' (Vol 6: 1/2, April/August 2012). It's a great collection of articles. It may be hard for those who don't have access to an academic e-library to access, but I've thrown caution to the wind and posted a pdf of the introductory article here:
There's a documentary in the making on death metal in Angola. It looks fascinating:
They are crowd-funding the completion of the documentary here.
A user on reddit has produced an interesting map showing the number of metal bands per capita. It's based on the vast database of bands at metal-archives.com , correlated with population figures from the CIA world factbook. Metal archives is pretty comprehensive but, to add a note of caution, metal bands may not be reported with the same frequency from all countries. In fact, what 'counts' as a metal band anyway? What may in a country where making metal is easy, just a group of friends jamming, may in other places be a fully-fledged band striving to overcome adversity. That caveat aside, the map is interesting, although there are few surprises. While non-metal people may be surprised that the density isn't higher in US and UK, those of us involved in the scene know that the Anglo world isn't as metal as is often assumed.
I have a short piece in Souciant commenting on some suggestive photos of Burzum grafitti taken in Milan. Here's an extract:
But there’s also a rich irony involved in using Burzum as grafitti. Burzum stands for rural purity and isolation against the mongrelised city. To scrawl the name on an Italian city wall is at once to engage in an essential urban form of transgression, albeit an urbanism against itself, perhaps. Burzum grafitti cannot but be implicated in everything Burzum stands against. Then there are the connotations of blackness.
Yes the infernal lord of vegan cooking is Jewish - like all the best Satanists. See this news report:
I've been a fan for a while of London-based, Israeli-born, unclassifiable multi-instrumentalist genius Koby Israelite. Now he's surpassed himself with a brilliant song and video 'Boycott Israelite' which plays cheekily with youtube self-publicity and boycotts of Israel. Enjoy:
I am interested in unexpected intersections. That's one of the reasons why I blog about Jews and metal. It's how the whole best water skiewr in Luxembourg thing came about.
In an idle moment recently I wondered how far these intersections could go. Is there a crossover between metal, Jews, water skiing and Luxembourg (other than me?). Google suggests not. Heavy metal water skiing perhaps? This is more likely - I'm sure some people are into both, although I can find no direct evidence of this. Jews and water skiing? Again, I'm sure plenty of Jews water ski and there appears to be water skiing in Israel. Jews, water skiing and Luxembourg? Two of the top water skiers in Luxembourg in the 60s, whom I interviewed for my book, married Jews who also water ski.
But I guess these intersections aren't really at the top of anyone's cultural imagination. I did find this semi-amusing cartoon online though:
