FORMAL DIALECTIC IN HEAVY METAL MUSIC by MICHAEL DEKOVICH A DISSERTATION Presented to the School of Music and Dance and the Division of Graduate Studies of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2022 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Michael Dekovich Title: Formal Dialectic in Heavy Metal Music This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the School of Music and Dance by: Jack Boss Chairperson Ciro Scotto Core Member Zachary Wallmark Core Member Brittany Erickson Institutional Representative and Krista Chronister Vice Provost for Graduate Studies Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Division of Graduate Studies. Degree awarded September 2022. ii © 2022 Michael Dekovich This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives CC BY-NC-ND iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Michael Dekovich Doctor of Philosophy School of Music and Dance September 2022 Title: Formal Dialectic in Heavy Metal Music This dissertation investigates verse-chorus-bridge form in heavy metal music. Spread by the popular music industry and media, verse-chorus-bridge form became the most prominent form in rock music from the 1970s onward (Stephenson 2002). At the same time, heavy metal emerged as an international cosmopolitan subculture, freely adopting and modifying the syntax of popular music while negotiating its consumerist trappings (Weinstein 2001, Hudson 2021). I demonstrate that metal transformations of verse-chorus-bridge form enhance its value by contributing a vocabulary of section types and reorient its teleology to make for more flexible song structures. Drawing on a variety of examples from various metal subgenres, I show that verse-chorus-bridge form—usually appearing as a compound AABA form (Covach 2005)—is used as the template for expanded and truncated formal types (collectively called rotational form with bridge (Hudson 2021)) and that bridge sections are accorded greater importance in heavy metal as compared to other genres of commercial popular music. Bridge sections play a special role in signifying the metal genre and provide a means to diverge from referential models. By creating moments of expectation in bridge sections with instrumental passages and dance sections, metal artists divert the usual chorus teleology of verse-chorus-bridge form. These new methods of organization reinvigorate the possibilities of song form within metal and artists influenced by metal (Osborn iv 2011). Avant-gardism in metal composition therefore functions to produce new technologies within the dialectic of the popular music industry. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Michael Dekovich GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene, OR California State University Northridge, Northridge, CA DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, 2022, University of Oregon, “Formal Dialectic in Heavy Metal Music” Bachelor of Music in Composition, 2013, California State University Northridge AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Music Theory Metal Music Studies Form in Popular Music PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching Fellow, School of Music, University of Oregon, September 2016– June 2021 GRANTS, AWARDS AND HONORS: Outstanding Graduate Scholar in Music Theory, University of Oregon, 2022 Graduate Teaching Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2016–2021 Theodore Front Scholarship, California State University Northridge, 2013 California Federation of Teachers Raoul Teilhet Scholarship, 2011 PUBLICATIONS: Dekovich, Michael. 2020. “Death Metal Dodecaphony: Partition Schemes in Ron Jarzombek’s Twelve-Tone Music.” In Musical Waves: West Coast Perspectives of Pitch, Narrative, and Form. Edited by Andrew Aziz and Jack Boss. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation marks the end of a long journey, along which I have benefitted from the support of innumerable parties. I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge some of them here. I thank Stephen Rodgers for encouraging my early attempts at metal analysis and convincing me to apply for the Music Theory Ph.D. program at the University of Oregon. To my dissertation advisor, Jack Boss, thank you for your thoughtful contributions, incisive observations, and help in organizing the myriad parts of this dissertation at every phase. I would also like to acknowledge my cohort for creating a stimulating intellectual environment and help in shaping the conference papers that would be incorporated into this dissertation. In no particular order: John King, Micheal Sebulsky, Tyler Osborne, Emily Milius, Hayden Harper, and JP Lempke. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my wife for her unwavering support. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... ix LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................ xi INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 1 PART 1: HISTORICAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUND 1. A MATERIALIST HISTORY OF METAL FORM ................................................................... 7 1.2 Song Form ..................................................................................................................................................... 8 1.3 Electrophones and the World-Economy ...................................................................................................... 18 2. HEAVY METAL IN THE CAPITALIST DIALECTIC .......................................................... 28 2.2 Beyond the Cultural Thesis ......................................................................................................................... 28 2.3 Structuralism and Teleological Action ........................................................................................................ 44 PART 2: FORMAL COMPONENTS 3. RIFFS AND REPETITION ....................................................................................................... 65 3.2 Riffs ............................................................................................................................................................. 66 3.3 Repetition .................................................................................................................................................... 75 4. SECTIONAL FORM ................................................................................................................. 81 4.2 Functional Tendencies ................................................................................................................................. 81 4.3 Presentational Sections ................................................................................................................................ 83 4.4 Fluid Sections: Bridge Types ...................................................................................................................... 94 5. SUPERSECTION FUNCTIONS ............................................................................................ 143 5.2 Presentational Supersections ..................................................................................................................... 144 5.3 Fluid Supersections ................................................................................................................................... 168 PART 3: WHOLE-SONG FORMS 6. ROTATIONAL FORM WITH (COMPOUND) BRIDGE ..................................................... 181 6.2 Expansions of Compound AABA Form .................................................................................................... 185 6.3 Type 1 Truncation: Single Presentational Rotation Before Bridge ........................................................... 186 6.4 Type 2 Truncation: Terminal Bridge ......................................................................................................... 191 6.5 Hypersections and Hypercompound Form ................................................................................................ 193 7. ANTI-PRESENTATIONAL TENDENCIES ......................................................................... 198 7.2 Through-Composition ............................................................................................................................... 198 7.3 Free-Standing Bridges ............................................................................................................................... 202 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 205 REFERENCES CITED viii LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1.1. Incidence of verse-chorus-bridge songs (144 total) as a percentage of verse-chorus songs (total 408), by five-year period. ........................................................................................... 14 Table 2.1. Types of Argumentation ............................................................................................... 55 Table 2.2. Aspects of the Rationality of Action ............................................................................ 57 Table 2.3. Rationalization Complexes ........................................................................................... 61 Table 3.1. Formal levels. ............................................................................................................... 65 Table 3.2. Black Sabbath, “Electric Funeral” (Paranoid, 1970), form graph. .............................. 71 Table 4.1. Typology of presentational and fluid sectional functions. ........................................... 82 Table 4.2. Formal functions in the verse-chorus family. ............................................................... 84 Table 4.3. Dio, “Holy Diver” (Holy Diver, 1983) ......................................................................... 88 Table 4.4. Death, “Bite the Pain” (The Sound of Perseverance, 1998) ......................................... 91 Table 4.5. Angel Witch, “Angel Witch” (Angel Witch, 1980) ...................................................... 92 Table 4.6. Simple and compound AABA forms. .......................................................................... 94 Table 4.7. Judas Priest, “Rising from Ruins” (Firepower, 2018) ............................................... 100 Table 4.8. As Blood Runs Black, “Beneath the Surface” (Allegiance, 2006) ............................. 107 Table 4.9. Sad Legend, “한 (Han)” (Sad Legend, 1998) ............................................................. 109 Table 4.10. Razor, “Violent Restitution” (Violent Restitution, 1988) ......................................... 111 Table 4.11. Slayer, “Raining Blood” (Reign in Blood, 1986) ..................................................... 114 Table 4.12. Sodom, “Agent Orange” (Agent Orange, 1989) ...................................................... 117 Table 4.13. Metallica, “Blackened” (…And Justice for All, 1988) ............................................. 118 Table 4.14. Ancient, “The Heritage” (The Halls of Eternity, 1999) ............................................ 122 Table 4.15. Ancient, “The Heritage” (The Halls of Eternity, 1999); coordination between characters, lyrics, and form. ........................................................................................................ 123 Table 4.16. Metallica, “Through the Never” (Metallica, 1991) .................................................. 129 Table 4.17. Death, “Individual Thought Patterns” (Individual Thought Patterns, 1993) ........... 132 Table 4.18. Two temporalities of form in “Individual Thought Patterns” (Individual Thought Patterns, 1993). ........................................................................................................................... 136 Table 4.19. Whispered, “Kappa” (Shogunate Macabre, 2014) ................................................... 137 Table 4.20. Haken, “Streams” (Aquarius, 2010) ......................................................................... 138 Table 5.1. Presentational and fluid characteristic tendencies. ..................................................... 143 Table 5.2. Metallica, “Wherever I May Roam” (Metallica, 1991) ............................................. 145 Table 5.3. Dark Tranquility, “Edenspring” (The Gallery, 1995) ................................................ 149 Table 5.4. Summary of riff types and associated time feels. ....................................................... 154 ix Table 5.5. Death Angel, “Voracious Souls” (The Ultra-Violence, 1987): form graph. .............. 155 Table 5.6. Running Wild, “Siberian Winter” (The Brotherhood, 2002) ..................................... 158 Table 5.7. Adagio, “Seven Lands of Sin” (Sanctus Ignis, 2001) ................................................ 162 Table 5.8. Between the Buried and Me, “Telos” (The Parallax II: Future Sequence, 2012) ..... 164 Table 5.9. Death, “Zero Tolerance” (Symbolic, 1995); comparison to demo. ............................ 170 Table 5.10. The Human Abstract, “Antebellum” (Digital Veil, 2011); interpreted as Type-3 sonata form. ................................................................................................................................. 171 Table 5.11 Rush, “The Trees” (Hemispheres, 1978) ................................................................... 175 Table 5.12. Diamond Head, “The Prince” (Lightning to the Nations, 1980) .............................. 176 Table 5.13. Anthrax, “Caught in a Mosh” (Among the Living, 1987): form graph. .................... 177 Table 5.14. Death Angel, “Kill as One” (The Ultra-Violence, 1987) ......................................... 179 Table 6.1. Twisted Sister, “Under the Blade” (Under the Blade, 1982) ..................................... 182 Table 6.2. Cannibal Corpse, “Hammer Smashed Face” (Tomb of the Mutilated, 1992) ............ 183 Table 6.3. Accept, “Fast as a Shark” (Restless and Wild, 1982) ................................................. 184 Table 6.4. Slayer, “War Ensemble” (Seasons in the Abyss, 1990), formal diagram ................... 185 Table 6.5. Anacrusis, “What You Became” (Manic Impressions, 1991) .................................... 186 Table 6.6. Iron Maiden, “Aces High” (Powerslave, 1984) ......................................................... 187 Table 6.7. Death, “Spiritual Healing” (Spiritual Healing, 1990) ................................................ 190 Table 6.8. Periphery, “MK Ultra” (Juggernaut: Alpha, 2015) ................................................... 190 Table 6.9. Pantera, “Domination” (Cowboys from Hell, 1990) ................................................... 191 Table 6.10. Metallica, “Creeping Death” (Ride the Lightning, 1984), ....................................... 192 Table 6.11. Mercyful Fate, “Black Funeral” (Melissa, 1984) ..................................................... 193 Table 6.12. Death, “Flesh and the Power It Holds” (The Sound of Perseverance, 1998) ........... 194 Table 6.13. Death, “Flesh and the Power It Holds” (The Sound of Perseverance, 1998). Initial and retrospective interpretation, showcasing hypercompound ABA form. ................................ 195 Table 7.1. Death, “Cosmic Sea” (Human, 1991) ........................................................................ 199 Table 7.2. Death, “Voice of the Soul” (The Sound of Perseverance, 1998) ............................... 200 Table 7.3. Obscura, “The Origin of Primal Expression” (Akróasis, 2016) ................................. 201 Table 7.4. Zonata, “Zonata” (Tunes of Steel, 1999) .................................................................... 201 Table 7.5. Blind Guardian, “Beyond the Ice” (Follow the Blind, 1989) ..................................... 203 Table 7.6. Revocation, “Spastic” (Revocation, 2013) ................................................................. 203 Table 7.7. Elegy, “All Systems Go” (Labyrinth of Dreams, 1992) ............................................. 204 x LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 0.1. Drum set legend. ........................................................................................................... 5 Figure 1.1. Concentration Ratios and Entropy Index: Music Recording Industry, 1955–1987 .... 18 Figure 2.1. Pokolgép, “Éjféli Harang” (Pokoli színjáték, 1987); guitar solo (2:53). .................... 34 Figure 2.2. Pokolgép, “Éjféli Harang” (Pokoli színjáték, 1987); introduction. ............................. 35 Figure 2.3. W.A.S.P., “Wild Child” (The Last Command, 1985); introduction. .......................... 36 Figure 2.4. Pokolgép, “Éjféli Harang” (Pokoli színjáték, 1987); verse (0:29). ............................. 37 Figure 2.5. Dokken, “Unchain the Night” (Under Lock and Key, 1985); prechorus (1:05). ........ 37 Figure 3.1. Black Sabbath, “Electric Funeral” (Paranoid, 1970), first verse. ............................... 68 Figure 3.2. Black Sabbath, “Electric Funeral” (Paranoid, 1970); Riffs in supersection A. ......... 69 Figure 3.3. Black Sabbath, “Electric Funeral” (Paranoid, 1970); Riffs in transition and supersection B. .............................................................................................................................. 70 Figure 3.4. Black Sabbath, “Electric Funeral” (Paranoid, 1970). Riffs in supersection C ........... 70 Figure 3.5. Kreator, “Material World Paranoia” (Coma of Souls, 1990). Chorus riff ................... 72 Figure 3.6. George Thorogood and the Destroyers, “Bad to the Bone” (Bad to the Bone, 1982), guitar riff. ....................................................................................................................................... 73 Figure 3.7. Metallica, “Seek and Destroy,” (Kill ’Em All, 1983); verse riff and vocal line. ......... 77 Figure 3.8. Iron Maiden, “Aces High” (Powerslave, 1984); introduction riff with changing bass ....................................................................................................................................................... 78 Figure 3.9. Henry Mancini, “Peter Gunn” (1958) ......................................................................... 78 Figure 3.10. Henry Mancini, “Peter Gunn” (1958); guitar riff. .................................................... 79 Figure 3.11. Diamond Head, “Am I Evil” (Lightning to the Nations, 1980) ................................ 79 Figure 3.12. Clarence “Pine Top” Smith, “Pine Top's Boogie Woogie” (Pine Top Blues/Pine Top's Boogie Woogie, 1929). ......................................................................................................... 80 Figure 4.1. Dio, “Holy Diver” (Holy Diver, 1983); final prechorus to main riff (4:31). .............. 89 Figure 4.2. The Beatles, “Something” (Abbey Road, 1969); opening tattoo. ................................ 91 Figure 4.3. Cream, “White Room” (Wheels of Fire, 1968); opening tattoo. ................................. 91 Figure 4.4. Death, “Bite the Pain” (The Sound of Perseverance, 1998); tattoo (1:26). ................ 92 Figure 4.5. Angel Witch, “Angel Witch” (Angel Witch, 1980); tattoo (0:12). .............................. 92 Figure 4.6. The evolution of common song forms through the 1970s. ......................................... 95 Figure 4.7. Judas Priest, “Rising from Ruins” (Firepower, 2018). Introduction a’ (0:11) guitar lead. ............................................................................................................................................. 100 Figure 4.8. Judas Priest, “Rising from Ruins” (Firepower, 2018). Bridge c (3:07) guitar solo. . 101 Figure 4.9. Judas Priest, “Rising from Ruins” (Firepower, 2018). Bridge d (3:28) guitar solo. 102 xi Figure 4.10. Judas Priest, “Rising from Ruins” (Firepower, 2018). Bridge e (3:39) guitar leads. ..................................................................................................................................................... 104 Figure 4.11. Time feels as a function of the backbeat rhythm. ................................................... 107 Figure 4.12. As Blood Runs Black, “Beneath the Surface” (Allegiance, 2006); breakdown in quarter time (1:31). ...................................................................................................................... 108 Figure 4.13. As Blood Runs Black, “Beneath the Surface” (Allegiance, 2006); breakdown in eighth time (1:48). ....................................................................................................................... 108 Figure 4.14. Sad Legend, “한 (Han)” (Sad Legend, 1998); breakdown (2:56). .......................... 110 Figure 4.15. Razor, “Violent Restitution” (Violent Restitution, 1988); breakdown in half time (1:27). .......................................................................................................................................... 112 Figure 4.16. Razor, “Violent Restitution” (Violent Restitution, 1988); breakdown in normal time (1:53). .......................................................................................................................................... 113 Figure 4.17. Razor, “Violent Restitution” (Violent Restitution, 1988); bridge b (2:05). ............ 113 Figure 4.18. Slayer, “Raining Blood” (Reign in Blood, 1986); buildup (2:00). .......................... 115 Figure 4.19. Slayer, “Raining Blood” (Reign in Blood, 1986); breakdown (2:11). .................... 116 Figure 4.20. Metallica, “Blackened” (…And Justice for All, 1988); bridge b (3:08). ................. 119 Figure 4.21. Ancient, “The Heritage” (The Halls of Eternity, 1999); time-feel progression in supersection B. ............................................................................................................................ 124 Figure 4.22. Ancient, “The Heritage” (The Halls of Eternity, 1999); bridge i (bridge verse) (6:49). .......................................................................................................................................... 125 Figure 4.23. Ancient, “The Heritage” (The Halls of Eternity, 1999); main theme recapitulation (7:29). .......................................................................................................................................... 126 Figure 4.24. Metallica, “Through the Never” (Metallica, 1991); chorus (1:05). ........................ 130 Figure 4.25. Metallica, “Through the Never” (Metallica, 1991); bridge e’, hyperchorus (3:13). ..................................................................................................................................................... 131 Figure 4.26. Death, “Individual Thought Patterns” (Individual Thought Patterns, 1993); chorus (1:01). .......................................................................................................................................... 133 Figure 4.27. Death, “Individual Thought Patterns” (Individual Thought Patterns, 1993); decoy chorus (1:29). ............................................................................................................................... 135 Figure 4.28. Whispered, “Kappa” (Shogunate Macabre, 2014), jazz tenor saxophone solo in topic bridge (3:11). Concert pitch. .............................................................................................. 137 Figure 4.29. Haken, “Streams” (Aquarius, 2010); bridge c. ....................................................... 139 Figure 5.1. Metallica, “Wherever I May Roam” (Metallica, 1991); voice-leading graph of verse- chorus cycle (1:22). ..................................................................................................................... 145 Figure 5.2. Metallica, “Wherever I May Roam” (Metallica, 1991); beginning of verse (1:24). 147 Figure 5.3. Black Sabbath, “Black Sabbath” (Black Sabbath, 1970); main riff. ......................... 148 Figure 5.4. Dark Tranquility, “Edenspring” (The Gallery, 1995); verse (0:49). ......................... 149 xii Figure 5.5. Dark Tranquility, “Edenspring” (The Gallery, 1995); break (1:03). ........................ 150 Figure 5.6. Dark Tranquility, “Edenspring” (The Gallery, 1995); prechorus (1:10). ................. 151 Figure 5.7. Dark Tranquility, “Edenspring” (The Gallery, 1995); chorus (1:24). ....................... 152 Figure 5.8. Dark Tranquility, “Edenspring” (The Gallery, 1995); truncated verse to prechorus (3:48). .......................................................................................................................................... 153 Figure 5.9. Death Angel, “Voracious Souls” (The Ultra-Violence, 1987): verse and chorus (riff 1). ................................................................................................................................................. 156 Figure 5.10. Death Angel, “Voracious Souls” (The Ultra-Violence, 1987): chorus (riff 2) and main riff. ...................................................................................................................................... 157 Figure 5.11. Running Wild, “Siberian Winter” (The Brotherhood, 2002); supersection A riffs.159 Figure 5.12. Running Wild, “Siberian Winter” (The Brotherhood, 2002); introduction b (1:30). ..................................................................................................................................................... 160 Figure 5.13. Running Wild, “Siberian Winter” (The Brotherhood, 2002); supersection B riffs. 160 Figure 5.14. Running Wild, “Siberian Winter” (The Brotherhood, 2002); codetta (2:32). ........ 160 Figure 5.15. Adagio, “Seven Lands of Sin” (Sanctus Ignis, 2001); verse a and chorus. ............ 163 Figure 5.16. Adagio, “Seven Lands of Sin” (Sanctus Ignis, 2001); verse b. .............................. 163 Figure 5.17. Between the Buried and Me, “Telos” (The Parallax II: Future Sequence, 2012); verse a and chorus a. .................................................................................................................... 165 Figure 5.18. Between the Buried and Me, “Telos” (The Parallax II: Future Sequence, 2012); verse b (7:02). .............................................................................................................................. 165 Figure 5.19. Between the Buried and Me, “Telos” (The Parallax II: Future Sequence, 2012); chorus b (7:20). ............................................................................................................................ 166 Figure 5.20. Between the Buried and Me, “Telos” (The Parallax II: Future Sequence, 2012); verse c and chorus c. .................................................................................................................... 167 Figure 5.21. Between the Buried and Me, “Telos” (The Parallax II: Future Sequence, 2012); verse d and chorus d. ................................................................................................................... 168 Figure 5.22. The Human Abstract, “Holographic Sight” (Digital Veil, 2011); whole-tone scale riff (0:33). .................................................................................................................................... 173 Figure 5.23. Death Angel, “Kill as One” (The Ultra-Violence, 1987); main riff (0:00). ............ 178 Figure 5.24. Death Angel, “Kill as One” (The Ultra-Violence, 1987); break (0:29). ................. 179 Figure 6.1. Iron Maiden, “Aces High” (Powerslave, 1984); chorus. .......................................... 188 Figure 6.2. Summary of formal schemes by album in seventy-four songs spanning Chuck Schuldiner’s career. ..................................................................................................................... 189 Figure 6.3. Death, “Flesh and the Power It Holds” (The Sound of Perseverance, 1998); bridges a and b ............................................................................................................................................ 196 Figure 6.4. Death, “Flesh and the Power It Holds” (The Sound of Perseverance, 1998); bridge c. ..................................................................................................................................................... 197 xiii INTRODUCTION This dissertation explores the ways musical form manifests in heavy metal songs and connections between compositional practice and capitalist political economy. The notion that culture gains meaning from its sociopolitical contexts is not a new one. According to a common refrain, such mechanisms in metal music are prominently displayed as subjects of critique as a product of the structural contradictions that undergird industrial capitalism.1 While acknowledging this thesis, I examine the role of form in the wider dialectic of cultural production and the music industry. From its beginnings in the late 1960s, heavy metal has been one of the most influential styles of rock music. With a generally oppositional attitude and a penchant for transgression, the genre has inspired both a fiercely loyal fanbase and periodic moral panics. The endurance and intrigue of metal subculture has made it a subject of numerous sociological studies,2 but theoretical treatment of metal music has had a slow start. The history of academic analysis of metal music now stretches three decades. The earliest musicological monograph dedicated to metal, Robert Walser’s Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music, appeared in 1993, and the first presentation on metal analysis at the national meeting of the Society for Music Theory, “Conflict Between Pitch Class and Timbre Functions in Metallica's ‘Devil's Dance’ and ‘Enter Sandman’,” was given by Ciro Scotto in 1999 (following the establishment of the Popular Music Interest Group in 1998). Analytical scholarship was otherwise sparse during this initial decade, operating under the wider umbrella of popular music analysis—a situation similar to the shared spaces of jazz and popular music in the early days of the SMT.3 Limited mentions of 1 Robert Walser. Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1993), xvi. 2 See: Arnett 1996, Weinstein 2000, Purcell 2003, Kahn-Harris 2007, Vasan 2010 and 2011, Hecker 2012, Clifford- Napoleone 2015, Hill 2016. 3 For example, the Jazz and Popular Music panel discussion in the 1978 SMT meeting in Minneapolis. 1 metal can be found scattered throughout the literature on rock analysis, but usually in passing in the course of discussing other phenomena.4 Recently, metal analysts have sought more distinct venues for their research, tacitly arguing that their object of study deserves unique attention, a view supported by the aforementioned welter of sociological literature. In the initial volley, music theorists focused on analysis of specific artists and pieces. Such case studies, understandably, favored popular bands like Metallica (Pillsbury 2006, Van Valkenburg 2010) and Dream Theater (McCandless 2013). The idiosyncratic rhythmic and metric techniques of one band alone, the Swedish progressive death metal group called Meshuggah, have received disproportionate attention in academic journals given metal music’s relative depth and diversity (Pieslak 2007, Capuzzo 2018, Hannan 2018, Lucas 2018 and 2021). In a move from the particular to the general, some studies address broad stylistic elements, including harmony (Lilja 2004 and 2009, Biamonte 2012, Scotto 2019), timbre (Scotto 2016, Wallmark 2018), rhythm and meter (Garza 2017 and 2021) and form (Elflein 2010, Vanek 2018, Hannan 2019, Hudson 2021). This dissertation contributes to the understanding of formal experimentalism by way of sociological theory and musical analysis. Namely, while metal songs share the formal components of their mainstream rock counterparts, their organization and scale can differ considerably. Some examples are especially difficult to place; nevertheless, my methodology attempts to explain these as continuous with principles that appear throughout metal repertoire. I observe that metal song structure did not develop independently but has roots in prototypes from rock songs. Musical form is a potent topic for investigation, as form in metal songs is often in direct or indirect dialogue with models emerging from mediated commercial culture. The historical development of popular song 4 See: Moore 2012 and 2017, Stephenson 2002, Everett 2004 and 2009, Doll 2009, Nobile 2020. 2 forms has been a subject of interest, for example, in Ken Stephenson’s (2002) evolutionary model of common song forms and Jay Summach’s survey of sentential modules in Top-40 songs (2009), and the idea of a creative dialogue pushing stylistic development is the basis of a significant branch of modern discourse on eighteenth-century European classical music (Hepokoski and Darcy 2006). However, these explanations provide little insight into what impels the dialogue and development of form outside of a detached musical sphere where the primary catalysts are artistic influence and structural concerns such as teleology, formal balance, or performance considerations. To connect music to its historical contingencies, I shift the focus away from artworks to artistic production (Born 2010), factoring economic history and theories of rationalization into musical analysis (Habermas 1984). Marxist theory posits that political and cultural institutions emerge from and reinforce a society’s given economic mode of production—the resources, technologies and social relations that maintain humans’ relationship to the physical world.5 Modes of production organize people’s productive activity—that is, their labor—and therefore structure their time and relationship to one another. As an example, the development of opera in the seventeenth century was structurally linked to the system of mercantile capitalism: the social division of labor reflected not only in the court orchestras and opera companies of Florence and Mantua, but also in the routing of profits and taxes from serfs, slaves and contract labor to shareholders and noble patrons. Without a system for the accumulation and distribution of capital, there would have been neither professional musicians nor patrons to hire them.6 The context for rock and metal music is the postwar American 5 Karl Marx. “Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Selected Works, Volume 1 (Moscow: Progress, 1976), 503–504. 6 Manfred F. Bukofzer. Music in the Baroque Era: From Monteverdi to Bach (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1947), 395–400. 3 and European music industry, which was instrumental in providing the material means to create rock music and codifying modern song forms.7,8 Although there are many diverse subgenres of metal music, sometimes with wildly divergent features, I have chosen not to minimize the nuanced discussion of styles, preferring instead to identify the general impulses and features that carry across subgenres, recognizing the inevitability of exceptions and acknowledging style-specific concepts where necessary. All musical examples and formal tables are formatted [Artist, “Track Title” (Album Title, Year)], so the song “Battery” by Metallica from the 1986 album Master of Puppets will be listed in the caption as Metallica, “Battery” (Master of Puppets, 1986). Measure numbers in musical figures appear only for analytic purposes, as no authoritative transcription exists for most songs. This means that what is marked as m.1 in an example might come from the middle of the song. Wherever possible, I have attempted to render examples in tablature to make them accessible to musicians familiar with that notation system and demonstrate the guitar fretboard as a physical space. Tablature transcriptions may or may not reflect the artist’s fingerings but should be sufficient to realize a possible interpretation. Unless otherwise specified, tablature examples are in E standard tuning (from lowest to highest, Guitar: E–A–D–G–B–E; Bass: E–A–D–G). As the number and arrangement of instruments can vary on a drum kit, there is no uniform notation. I use the drum legend shown in Figure 0.1. for all examples. Hi-hat articulations apply to all notes after the articulation. The “closed” articulation (+) is only used to cancel an “open” articulation (○); otherwise, the hi-hat is presumed closed by default. 7 Peter Manuel, “Formal Structure as a Reflection of Socio-Economic Change,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Volume 16, no. 2 (1985), 166–167. 8 Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), 177–178. 4 Score 4 quadruple time ã 4 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 4 double time ã 4 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 4 normal time ã 4 œ œ œ œ 4 half time ã 4 œ œŒ Œ œ œŒ Œ 4 quarter time œ œŒ Ó Œ Ó œ œŒ Ó Œ Óã 4 ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ã Figure 0.1. Drum set legend. Kick Snare Highœ tom Mid tom Low tom Floor tom œ œ œ œ œã Hi-hat foot Hi–haxt closed Hi–haxt open Craxsh 1 Craxsh 2 Chxina Rxide Ridex bell+ o O ã x ∑ ã © 5 PART 1: HISTORICAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUND 6 1. A MATERIALIST HISTORY OF METAL FORM This dissertation contextualizes metal music’s formal experimentalism within the music industry and capitalist political economy. In this chapter, I demonstrate that metal form is contingent on historical developments of capitalism through the application of historical materialist analysis. According to the historical materialist thesis, economic systems organize human social activity and relations, and therefore determine culture. Consequently, the shape cultural forms take reflects their economic-social function and reinforces the system of economic production.9 Metal compositional strategies then are not arbitrary but prefigured by the historical state of capitalist political economy. The main point of departure, verse-chorus form, was developed to commodify popular music and take advantage of advertising methods that began in the 1880s and which would transmute into their current form in the 1930s. The stripped-down instrumentation of rock bands that preceded metal and their means of sound production were promoted by the American music industry to maximize its own share of capital accumulation by cutting out large, unionized orchestras. Commercial recordings, which would become the principal means for disseminating compositions and promoting bands, both increased the commodification of songs and undercut unions’ ability to participate in organized labor actions. Heavy metal music’s relationship with broader popular culture is complicated. On the one hand, the materials and strategies of metal songwriting overlap significantly with those of mainstream rock and pop music. On the other hand, metalheads imagine their community in opposition to the consumerism of the popular mainstream.10 This distinction is made musically through aesthetics and compositional technique. Verse-chorus form, being a mainstay of popular 9 Frederick Engels, “Letter to J. Bloch in Königsberg, September 21[-22], 1890,” in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Selected Works, Volume 3 (Moscow: Progress, 1976), 487. 10 Karen Bettez Halnon, “Heavy Metal Carnival and Dis-alienation: The Politics of Grotesque Realism,” Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 29, no. 1 (2006), 34–35. 7 music, becomes a symbol of commercialism and a source of predictability (favorably or not). Elements valued in pop music are not necessarily shared in metal: “choruses make anthems, but any metalhead would pick riffs over choruses.”11 Andrew Cope argues that heavy metal, in comparison to rock, “re-centred the function of the music from the vocals to instrumental timbre and textures,” focusing on episodic multi-sectional forms based on guitar riffs “and judicious omission of blues and rock conventions.” 12 But as a practical concern, recognizable song structures are still important for a song’s commercial success. Speaking of the 2003 album, Anatomy is Destiny, by the American death metal band, Exhumed, guitarist-vocalist Matt Harvey remarks that choruses could be missed: The real problem with the album from my point of view was the lack of really memorable choruses. At the time, I was writing really involved lyrics that had layers of meaning and tons of puns / plays on words that kind of got in the way of the directness of the songs, making even the best ones musically (“Death Walks Behind You”, “Consuming Impulse”, “Waxwork”) not nearly as catchy as some of the stuff from the first two albums.13 The tension between reified pop structures and the more spontaneous, phenomenological ones engendered by riff-based writing has produced in metal repertoire a range of forms extending from and consciously negating verse-chorus form. 1.2 Song Form The effect of economic systems can be felt in song form by how technology and commerce constrain composition. Whereas “traditional non-Western musics [and] pre-Renaissance Western music” contain strophic form, additive structures and ostinati, Peter Manuel observes that “very 11 Cosmo Lee, “Arch Enemy – Wages of Sin,” Invisible Oranges, December 8, 2006, https://www.invisibleoranges.com/arch-enemy-wages-of-sin/. 12 Andrew L. Cope, Black Sabbath and the Rise of Heavy Metal Music in Britain (Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), 66–70. 13 Matt Harvey, “Interview With Matt Harvey of EXHUMED.,” MetalManiacs, August 23, 2010, https://web.archive.org/web/20160630064028/http://www.metalmaniacs.com/2010/interview-with-matt- harvey-of-exhumed/. 8 little [of these features] are identified with song form per se.”14 Song form and other types of sectional form in Western music reflect the mediatization of music by capitalism: the marking off, commodification and management of discrete units of abstract time (in contrast to cyclical “concrete” time).15 The logic of commodity exchange has, over the modern period, produced neatly packaged compositions featuring a limited number of section repetitions, clear teleology, and strategic dramatic contrasts endemic to presentational performance.16 An oft-repeated piece of advice in songwriting manuals is to keep songs “to the point,” a parallel to the economy of time and motion that characterizes industrial management techniques.17 Charles K. Harris, a songwriter and publisher who was instrumental in the creation Tin Pan Alley in the 1880s, underlines the features of a song that contribute to its memorability and salability: concision, clarity of purpose, and of course good design. “Tell your tale tersely, make it as strong as possible, and let it almost sing itself as you write it.”18 These axioms limit sectional repetition, in contrast with the free and constant iteration of traditional strophic and variative forms. Marshall McLuhan’s aphorism, “the medium is the message,”19 finds explicit purchase in another piece of advice offered by Harris, who cautions against writing more than two distinct verses lest the public singers who advertise songs omit them: 14 Peter Manuel, “Modernity and Musical Structure: Neo-Marxist Perspectives on Song Form and its Successors” in Music and Marx: Ideas, Practice, Politics, edited by Regula Qureshi (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 47. 15 “Concrete time is characterized less by its direction than the fact that it is a dependent variable. In the traditional Jewish and Christian notions of history, for example, the events mentioned do not occur within time, but structure and determine it. … Abstract time is an independent variable; it constitutes an independent framework within which motion, events, and action occur. Such time is divisible into equal, constant, nonqualitative units.” Moishe Postone, Time, Labor and Social Domination (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 201–202. 16 Thomas Turino. Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 37. 17 Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998), 60. 18 Charles K. Harris, How to Write a Popular Song (New York, Chicago and London: Charles K. Harris, 1906), 13. 19 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 1994). 9 In most song lyrics … two verses are ample. One argument in favor of this is, that the public singer of your songs, who is, of course, its best advertisement, rarely cares to use more than two verses. If three are written, and the third verse contains, as it naturally would, the climax, or moral of your story, the public seldom hears it sung, and accordingly entertains a totally wrong impression as to the merits of your composition, which to them appears unfinished, and, therefore, uninteresting. Thus, a handicap is attached to the song at the outset.20 Although more than a century has passed since Harris’ publication and public singers have been rendered historical artifacts by audio recordings and radio, television and internet advertising, the mode of production has stayed basically the same, so the commodification of time remains a material determinant on song form. For instance, John Braheny, a career A&R (artists and repertoire) screener and songwriting coach, recommends that the aspiring songwriter keep the standardized format of radio time slots and the general public’s psychology in mind: In writing lyrics for radio songs, we need to remember that, in a quick three to four minutes, the listener doesn't have time, as in poetry, to wonder what the words really mean.21 While it's true that holding someone's attention on the radio is accomplished by a combination of song, artist, and production, you need to start with a song that lends itself well to radio.22 There are obviously no hard-and-fast rules about this, but the general principle is that every word should perform a valuable function for the song. If a word does nothing to enhance the rhythm, meaning, or sound of the lyric, it shouldn't be there.23 You want listeners to learn your song quickly and easily. If they hear the same chorus three times during the song, they can go away singing it.24 Although it may be tempting to attribute audiences’ reception of catchiness and memorability to psychological phenomena or other transhistorical forces, Harris remarks that 20 Harris 1906, 13. 21 John Braheny, The Craft and Business of Songwriting: A Pracitcal Guide to Creating and Marketing Artistically and Commercially Successful Songs (Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, 2002), 39. 22 Ibid, 40. 23 Ibid, 100. 24 Ibid, 79. 10 songs structures focused on memorable choruses were not always popular but only became so during the tenure of song publishers like himself: Not so many years ago, refrains to songs were not considered so important, but now the chorus is looked upon as the kernel of the whole song. In ninety-nine cases out of every hundred it is the words of the refrain and the melody that the public sings, whistles and hums, and so it becomes known as “the popular hit.”25 Psychology may determine how a song could be memorable, but the premium placed on memorability is a function of media technologies and capital’s requirement to recapture wages from workers. Other factors contribute to modern song form, and the history of popular song is not necessarily that of popular music. Arguably, the single most impactful event in the history of the American music industry was its turn from promoting live dance bands to promoting recording vocalists. Prior to the 1940s, the biggest share of the recording market was classical and jazz music (though classical recordings would recede into the background). Classical and jazz musicians were heavily unionized under the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). During the Great Depression (1929–1939), record company profits plummeted to 10% of their 1920s numbers, since consumers couldn’t afford such luxuries for one, but also because of alternate mediums of entertainment like sound film and especially radio, which allowed listeners to hear music for free.26 Radio broadcasts at the time featured live musicians, but recordings (pejoratively referred to as “canned music”) threatened to displace musicians’ jobs at radio stations, theaters, and other live venues. James C. Petrillo was elected president of the AFM in 1940 on a platform to ensure the employment of live union musicians, including efforts to prevent broadcasters from playing 25 Harris 1906, 14. 26 Pekka Gronow, “The Record Industry: The Growth of a Mass Medium,” Popular Music 3 (1983), 63–65. 11 records which resulted in two recording bans (in 1942–1943 and 1948). During the first ban, record companies, unable to hire unionized instrumentalists, began shifting toward vocal music, releasing records with a cappella groups and solo singers. Vocalists were represented by the American Federation of Radio Artists (AFRA), which did not participate in the AFM ban, and were less unionized than instrumentalists to begin with.27,28 Anticipating another walkout in response to the 1948 Lea Act (which reversed the union’s gains from the first ban, including the royalties that paid out-of-work musicians to play free public performances through the Music Performance Trust Fund), record companies built a stockpile of albums.29 When a second recording ban was declared, the AFM was in a weaker position due to an anti-labor political environment and the record labels’ strategic preparation. The AFM was fighting an uphill battle and lost. Moving forward, record companies favored smaller bands—like those of the blues, country and, eventually, rock—so that they would not have to pay as many musicians and would be less vulnerable to collective worker action. Vocalists in big bands in the 1930s were just part of the band but came to be marketed as the main attraction after the first recording ban.30 In short, to break the AFM, the record industry displaced instrumental dance music with vocal music and promoted the popular genres that would come to dominate the postwar musical landscape. Although record companies could cut out the militant AFM by changing ensembles, a cappella groups and smaller performing forces were hardly a drop-in replacement for jazz orchestras and the change exposed problems in musical form. Harold Adamson and Jimmy McHugh’s “I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night” (1943), an AAB tune with a single verse of lyrics, 27 Jonathan Zvi Sard Pollack, Strike Up the Band: The American Federation of Musicians’ Recording Bans, 1942– 1948, Master’s thesis (University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1992), 34–35. 28 Robert A. Gorman, “The Recording Musician and Union Power: A Case Study of the American Federation of Musicians,” SMU Law Review 37, no. 4 (1984), 707. 29 Pollack 1992, 54. 30 Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 847. 12 was recorded several times. In a 1944 live recording from the Raymond Scott Show with Dorothy Collins, (MGM Records – X1137) there are five choruses in total, with only the third featuring the vocalist and the fifth with a tenor saxophone solo. By comparison, a cappella recordings from the same year (Dinah Shore on Victor – 20-1562, and Frank Sinatra on Columbia – 36687) are necessarily more repetitive, with both the solo vocalist and the a cappella chorus singing the single line of verse many times. Other big band recordings (Jimmy Cash on the Burns and Allen show in 1943, Barry Wood on Something for the Girls with Al Goodman’s orchestra in 1944) strike a middle ground, playing two choruses with the singer on the first, then the band for the first half of the second chorus with the singer returning in the second half. Big bands could stretch a single verse lyric farther by alternating the band and singer and use various compositional techniques (including soli sections, shout choruses and improvised solos) to create variety within the arrangement. However, the narrative thrust of vocal music would require new devices, leading to innovations that turned recorded songs into “set items”31 with specially arranged formal elements to highlight the composition. When the broadcasting industry completed its transition from live music to recorded programming, recording formats placed limitations on musical form. For instance, the 78-rpm shellac record standard could only hold three minutes of music per side. RCA Victor sold 33⅓ “long-playing” (LP) records that could hold approximately 44 minutes of music (22 minutes per side) as early as 1931, but they were used mainly for classical recordings and did not see as many sales as the earlier 78s due to a decrease in aggregate spending during the Great Depression.32 At this time, the radio was a more affordable option for music consumption. Syndicated radio broadcasters settled on the 78-rpm transcription discs for distribution in 1929, generating the 31 Turino 2008, 58–59. 32 Ibid, 203–204. 13 format of the three-minute radio pop song.33,34 Not only did radio songs have a time limit, but recording artists were apparently compelled to use it. David Temperley’s corpus analysis of the Rolling Stone “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list shows an average song length of 3:43 between the years 1949 and 1965, and then 4:26 from 1966 onward. Songs during the earlier period tended toward simple verse-chorus and AABA design, with verse-chorus form being strophic repetitions of the verse and chorus and AABA usually being an expanded version of the form such as AABABA. Temperley states, “If an AABA song (with, say, a 12-measure repeating section) was nothing but AABA, its duration might be well under two minutes; further material would be needed to bring it up to acceptable length.”35 By the late 1950s, verse-chorus-bridge form had begun to emerge from verse-chorus and AABA form, fusing the catchy verse-chorus schema Charles K. Harris wrote about at the beginning of the century with the dramatic bridge section from AABA form. Bridge sections became more prominent with each decade since the 1960s. Jason Summach’s survey of Billboard Annual Top-20 songs, 1955–1989, demonstrates that as strophic and AABA songs declined in incidence, verse-chorus-bridge songs became more prominent.36,37 Table 1.1. Incidence of verse-chorus-bridge songs (144 total) as a percentage of verse-chorus songs (total 408), by five-year period.38 1955–9 1960–4 1965–9 1970–4 1975–9 1980–4 1985–9 16% 10% 29% 29% 29% 38% 54% Not only did bridge sections appear with greater frequency in verse-chorus songs, but in AABA songs as well. Summach notes that in 1975, there was a sharp increase of AABA songs with multiple bridges. The inclusion of multiple bridges in the had the double effect of “creating 33 Katz 2005, 2–3. 34 Kyle Barnett, Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2020), 168–169. 35 David Temperley, The Musical Language of Rock (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 155. 36 Jay Summach, Form in Top-20 Rock Music, 1955–89, Ph.D. diss. (Yale University, 2012), 168. 37 Ibid, 188. 38 Reproduced from Example 5.38 in Summach 2012, 250. 14 particular teleological effects” such as building momentum and anticipation, underscoring lyrical themes, and increasing compositions’ expressive range and increasing song length (by a median of 30 to 40 seconds in Summach’s corpus).39 Being limited to broadcast charts for hit singles, these figures (and those of other charts- based corpus studies) present a particular view of musical practice filtered through the music industry’s promotion and advertising efforts. Charts are, after all, compiled by the music industry from the music industry’s own mediatization venues, with significant financial barriers (in the form of copyrights, broadcasting licenses, manufacturing technology, and the like) preventing the entry of competition. Thierry Rayna and Ludmila Striukova characterize the music industry as a monometapoly, a combination of a monopoly (the sole seller of a commodity, e.g., musical recordings or sheet music) and a monopsony (the sole buyer of a commodity, e.g., musicians’ labor). Through vertical integration and connections with other media companies, the music industry was able to influence advertising, maintaining a monopoly not only over the production of songs but their distribution as well. The expense of production technology was an initial barrier to entry for competitors, but as these options became cheaper and more widely available, record companies could rely on copyrights and a back catalogue of hits as a permanent “war chest” to give a competitive advantage over new labels.40 During the Great Depression, the music industry became concentrated into a small number of firms through mergers and acquisitions. During the period of 1948 to 1955 (following the defeat of AFM’s recording bans), between 8–14 firms and 9–16 record labels controlled all the market shares in the Weekly Top Ten of the popular music single record market. However, Richard 39 Ibid, 88–92. 40 Thierry Rayna and Ludmila Striukova, “Monometapoly or the Economics of the Music Industry,” Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation 27, no. 3 (2009), 212–216. 15 Peterson and David Berger argue that the 1948–1955 oligopoly resulted in relatively homogeneous products, and consequently “unsated demand.” They give as evidence of this unsated demand the emerging market of “communal music—that is not merchandised through the mass media but is disseminated primarily through live performance” such as jazz, R&B, country & western gospel, trade union songs, and urban folk revival. Independent labels that came into being in the period following 1948 catered to these communal musics. The emergence of (mostly non-unionized, untrained) rock-n-roll bands in 1955 displaced (unionized, trained) woodwind dance bands, and, along with the availability of cheap transistor radios, led to a diversity of products. Advertisement for these innovative styles took the form of radio stations dedicated to addressing each discrete taste group.41 A specialist class of music professional, the disc jockey, curated the radio programs that were essential to the profusion of new genres. Aware of the power of this influence, independent record companies illegally paid radio stations to play their music without disclosing the paid advertisement, a practice called payola. Payola prevents the entry of competitors and distorts consumer demand. So, while rock-n-roll was seen as rebellious and new, this posture must be contextualized by the class interests of record company shareholders to become the successors of the pre-war recording industry. As part of the paradigm shift in the rock era, the ideology of rock rebellion was weaponized in a dispute between the AFM and rock record labels, first over a congressional hearing on payola in 1958, and then a conflict over international touring (which the union argued would violate their contracts) when the Beatles and other British rock bands began to play in the United States—the so-called British Invasion. Concerns about labor practices (as in the earlier recording bans) were transmuted into generational cultural conflict, putting the newly 41 Richard A. Peterson and David G. Berger, “Cycles in Symbol Production: The Case of Popular Music,” American Sociological Review 40, no. 2 (1975), 160–165. 16 formed youth culture into service of capital.42 (That said, the AFM did themselves no favors by refusing to accept rock musicians into their ranks, as they had done previously with jazz. This lesson should have been learned during the 1942 recording ban, when the AFM was forced to reconsider its attitude toward players of the harmonica, ocarina, and other non-orchestral instruments. In retrospect, the union’s stubborn aesthetic opposition to rock-n-roll was a strategic blunder.)43 Peter Alexander corroborates Peterson and Berger’s claim coordinating market homogeneity with oligopolistic collusion, but also observes homogeneity in periods of low market concentration. Alexander surveys sheet music transcriptions of Top 40 songs from 1955 to 1988, assigning qualitative values to meter, form, accent, harmonic structure, and melodic range. Although I have questions about the music-analytical method (for example, whether a melody’s range is within or exceeds an octave is a reliable measure of product diversity), the variable for form essentially measures whether a song is in verse-chorus-bridge form or not (Figure 1.1). Alexander contradicts the claim that the market was more diverse in the second half of the 1950s but finds greater diversity during the period of rock’s hegemony when market concentration was lower, 1967–1977. Homogeneity increased, along with market concentration, from 1978– 1988. Overall, Alexander’s entropy index demonstrates that the relationship between compositional diversity and market concentration is nonlinear: periods of very low and very high market concentration are both relatively homogenous, and periods of moderate concentration are relatively diverse.44 42 Michael Roberts, “A Working-Class Hero is Something to Be: The American Musicians’ Union’s Attempt to Ban the Beatles, 1964,” Popular Music 29, no. 1 (2010), 5–7. 43 Michael Roberts, “You Say You Want a (Counter) Revolution? Attempts by the Musicians’ Union to Jam Up Rock and Roll,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 4, no. 4 (2017), 34–35. 44 Alexander 1996, 171–174. 17 172 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW Figure 1.1. Concentration Ratios and Entropy Index: Music Recording Industry, 1955–198745 100 More concentrated Less diver-s1e75 0~o~_,~79~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~-Fr ConcnRtratitoio i O C -1F 9 ConcentrationRo Firm o Nt L 40 (0 -1955 199 16 97 17 95 17 93 18 0 -2.3 . 20 More diverse Less concentrated 1955 1959 1963 1967 1971 1975 1979 1983 1987 Year FigurCe o1r. rCeloantcienngt raAtiloenx Ranadtieosr ’asn dm Eenatsruopreys I nodfe xm: Maruksiect Rceoconrcdeinngtr Iantdiounst ray,g 1a9in55s-t1 9S8u8m mach’s more Note: Low (more negative) scores on Entropyi ndicate greaterp roductd iversity. granular assessment of formal trends, it can be seen that as the market consolidated from 1977 to that this technique is largely inadequate, and In each decomposition, a qualitative met- 198i7s ,p vreorbsaeb-clyh oa rmusis-bleraidgineg f moremas duorue bofle pdr iond ufrcetq ureincc (y0., 1) was used. If the time and meter was diversity because the hit charts can have 4/4 (or 2/2), that variable was assigned a manTy shoen bgass oicf afo srimm ihlaarv pinrogd buecetn ty epset,a obrli csohne-d , tevcahluneo olof g0i;c aaln dye ovtehleorp tmimeen tasn rde lmateetde rt ow raesc aosr-d ings’ versely, they may have a small number of signed a value of 1. If the traditional, popu- runmore disparate pgtirmeaet earn pdr pordoudcut c r dtii ooduvenr st cetcsh (ni.ieq.,u efesw aellro hwitesd b mutu siclaity). wia rn AsB gAreCaBte fro rramn gweas used, the form variable as assigned a 0; foofr e axlpl reosthsieorn f. oArms as, rethsue lt, the I propose that more robust measures for variable was assigned a value of 1. If the ac- maienv aulnuiat toinf gp opproudlaurc mt duivsiecr spirtoy daurcet fieoans isbhlief taendd f romce nsitn fgellle so nto t haleb fuirmsts a, nandd th tihred c boematps,o tshitei ovnarail- s cope that an entropy index is one such measure. able was assigned a value of 0; if the accent of rEocnktr roepcyo irsd si ninticmreaatseelyd coonnnseidcteerda btloy tdhuerrimngo -t hef 1el9l6 o0ns tahned s 1e9co7n0ds, aansd w foilul rbteh dbiesactuss, sthede ivna rCi-h apter dynamics, statistical mechanics, and infor- able was assigned a value of 1. If the har- 5. mation theory. Entropy can be thought of as monic structure followed the "classical" measuring the degree of randomness or Western framework delineated by Rameau chaos within a closed system. In the present (1722), the variable was assigned a value of context, entropy measures the degree of uni- All 1.3 Electrophones and the World-Economy 0. other harmonic structures were as- formity in the characteristics of products of signed a value of 1. Finally, if the melody the popular music recording industry.1 My was confined to one octave, the variable was measIun raed disi tiboans etdo corne atthineg a an anleywsi sk ionfd sohfe ceot nsuamssiegrn, emdu as ivcaallu ge eonf r0e;s i af ltshoe rmeqeuloidreyd e ax tneenwde kdi nd of music (from the Top 40 in each year), which over more than one octave, the variable was musisic iiann :e sosnenec ae ttean dbalunetp troin tth eo f tetchhen roelcoogryd eadn d taescshignniqedu eas voaflu el oecf t1ro. nic sound production. The product. Sheet music can be decomposed This framework provided a set of n-char- inveinnttoio dni socfr egteen craet ieng oproiepsu;l athr em cuasteicg ocrrieeast Ie de xa- maarckteetr ifsotric ssp (teicmiael aisntd e mqueitperm, feonrtm p,a arcticceunlta, rh taor -g iven plore are time and meter, form, accent, har- monic structure,a nd melody) measured in m- monic structure,a nd melody.2 dimensions (O or 1). The (random) probabil- I ity that any product-type or variety exists is One simple measure of entropy is given by 45 Reproduced from Alexander 1996, Figur equal to I/ml, or in the present case, -jj pilnpij. That is, entropy (roughel y1,. Ltohwe d(ne-e gative) scores on Entropy indicate greater produ 1ct/ (d2i)v5e rsity. gree of sameness) is the sum of the product of the or 1/32. probabilities and the natural logarithm of the 18 Each piece of sheet music in the sample of probabilities that a product type exists. 30 annual observations encompassing the 2 Ph.D. musicologists helped develop this years from 1955 to 1988 was decomposed framework. into its constituent elements (e.g., time and This content downloaded from 128.233.210.97 on Fri, 12 Feb 2016 02:36:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions styles.46 In metal, the demand for “heaviness” was met with a slew of new technologies. Heaviness is often articulated in terms of timbre, but also includes production and compositional elements such as harmony and speed. While gritty but pitched vocals may have been heavy in the 1970s and in some quarters in the early 1980s, those immersed in nonharmonic vocal techniques emerging from the triad of extreme metal—black, thrash and especially death metal—generally do not consider the older styles to be (as) heavy by modern standards. Heavy guitars are invariably distorted, and bass guitars “are heavy when they give the aural impression of great size.”47 Both depend on amplification technology and, in the studio, recording and production technologies and techniques. Distortion in an amplifier circuit is a product of the gain exceeding the voltage capacity of the preamplifier. The earliest guitar amplifiers, meant for “Hawaiian” lap steel guitars, went into production in 1932.48 When the volume was turned up, these low-wattage combo amplifiers would distort. Players at the time found the distortion undesirable for stylistic reasons, but for mechanical ones too: hollow body “Spanish” electric guitars would become microphonic if the gain was too high, causing feedback. For this reason, the first dedicated guitar amplifiers, starting with the Gibson EH-150 (1936), featured higher output and larger speaker cones to give the player more volume before the signal started “breaking up.” To combat the problem of feedback, the solid body Spanish electric guitar was developed independently through the 1940s by Les Paul, Orba Wallace Appleton, Paul Bigsby, and Leo Fender, with Fender introducing two production models in 1950 (the single-pickup Esquire and the dual-pickup Broadcaster, later renamed the Telecaster).49 46 Jan-Peter Herbst and Jonas Menze, Gear Acquisition Syndrome: Consumption of Instruments and Technology in Popular Music (Queensgate: University of Huddersfield Press, 2021), 60. 47 Harris M. Berger, Metal, Rock, and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience (Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1999), 58. 48 Richard R. Smith, The History of Rickenbacker Guitars (Fullerton: Centerstream Publishing, 1987), 28. 49 Paul Atkinson, Amplified: A Design History of the Electric Guitar (Reaktion, 2020), 74. 19 Throughout the 1950s, blues guitarists experimented with distortion, Hubert Sumlin and Auburn “Pat” Hare being early examples.50 (Junior Barnard played with overdriven amplifier distortion, as well as rudimentary humbucking pickups, in the 1940s, but with an electrified hollow body Epiphone Emperor.)51 Some guitarists—including Willie Kizzart, Link Wray, and, later, Dave Davies—produced a distorted effect with damaged speakers. In 1955, Seth Lover invented a double coil “humbucker” pickup to be used in Gibson’s electric guitars, reducing hum from the circuit. (Humbucking designs go back to Al Kahn’s 1934 design for Electro-Voice V-1 Velocity microphone, however.)52 The basic design on the electric guitar has remained stable since the 1950s, but developments of amplification and effects pedals (also called stompboxes) in the 1960s increased the sonic capabilities of the electric guitar.53 Leo Fender’s 1960 design for the 6G6 Bassman—which had a separate amplifier head (containing the preamp and power amp circuits) and speaker cabinet—was modified by Jim Marshall’s technicians to make an amplifier that could be compete more easily with drums, producing the Marshall JTM45 in 1963. In 1972, Randall Smith modified Fender amplifiers with an extra gain stage in the preamp, producing the Mesa Boogie Mark I, the first high gain amp. While technologies continue to develop, metal still showcases advancements made in tube amplification during the 60s and 70s. Merely enumerating the names and technological achievements is to give but one side of the story. From the point of view of political economy, mass-produced electronic consumer goods 50 Robert Gordon, “Cotton, James,” in Encyclopedia of the Blues, Vol. 1, edited by Edward Komara (New York: Routledge, 2006), 229. 51 Charles McGovern, “The Music: The Electric Guitar in the American Century” in The Electric Guitar: A History of an American Icon, edited by André Millard (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 2004), 31. 52 Keith Clark, “A Historical Look at Electro-Voice,” Pro Audio Encyclopedia, January 15, 2015, http://proaudioencyclopedia.com/a-historical-look-at-electro-voice/. 53 Roy C. Brewer, “Guitars” in Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Vol. 2: Performance and Production (London and New York: Continuum, 2003), 286–287. 20 are synonymous with American and European economies following the great European wars of the twentieth century. The animating force behind these conflicts was a battle for political and economic hegemony between the United States and Germany for succession to the empire of Great Britain, which itself was the successor to the European world-economy following the French Revolution of 1799. The United States, of course, was the victor in these wars. Immanuel Wallerstein defines a singular capitalist world-economy “whose temporal boundaries go from the long sixteenth century to the present,” which encompassed Europe and Iberian America at first but has since come to dominate the entire globe, becoming the global capitalist world-system.54 During this time, three hegemonies—which simultaneously control “agro-industrial production, commerce, and finance” across the world-economy—have come into being: the United Provinces of the Netherlands in the mid-seventeenth century (from which came the Dutch East India Company and Dutch West India Company), the United Kingdom in the mid-nineteenth century, and the United States of America in the mid-twentieth century. Each hegemony formed after long wars that restructured the world-system: the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) where Dutch interests triumphed over the Hapsburgs, the Napoleonic wars (1792–1815) where British interests triumphed over France, and World Wars I and II (1914–1945) where U.S. interests triumphed over Germany.55 The changeover from one hegemony to another is a function of capitalism’s normal operation. The hegemonic power must stratify the world-system into an imperial core and an exploited periphery, with some intermediate states called the semi-periphery. Core states provide the bulk of the world’s intellectual production, patents, technologies and finished goods. Periphery 54 Immanuel Wallerstein, The Politics of the World-Economy: The States, the Movements, and the Civilizations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 37. 55 Ibid, 39–42. Note: Wallerstein calls these World War Alpha, Beta and Gamma respectively. 21 states mainly produce agricultural products and raw materials, and semi-periphery states exhibit a mixture of core-like and periphery-like production. This global division of labor is therefore asymmetric, in favor of the core states and collaborators in the ruling classes within the periphery and semi-periphery. It follows that, if proletarianized workers in periphery states were able to work for their own improvement rather than that of the core, they would be able to develop themselves more efficiently. The reason for periphery states’ lack of prosperity is that they are actively prevented from developing by policies and interventions from the core states and their own local ruling classes. This arrangement gives capitalists in the core access to cheap labor in the periphery and semi-periphery and controls the international flow of commodities so the core can accumulate capital at the expense of the rest of the world. Particularly important to the capitalist hegemony is 1) regular development of new technologies and commodities in the core, 2) the availability of cheap labor and resources to produce commodities, 3) a relatively high marginal propensity to consume in the core, created by relatively high wages, and 4) protectionist policies and other forms of state intervention (including military) to artificially maintain monopolies on the core’s intellectual products and to secure new labor and consumer markets. However, firms can only maintain a monopoly on their goods for so long before competitors figure out ways to squeeze more profit out of a product by lowering production costs. One tried and true method is to outsource the labor to places where the standard of living—and therefore the average wage—is lower. But this also makes it more difficult to maintain profits with current production techniques. Outsourcing involves drawing new populations into the wage pool while unemployment builds in the core. As the demand for goods or the supply of cheap labor dries up, stagnation and recession follow, putting pressure on capitalists to create new technologies and production techniques again. But competing firms can only go so many places to find cheaper labor, so eventually the core’s 22 economy will cease to turn sufficient profits and it will stagnate, resulting in a recession. At the same time, it becomes necessary to share technological expertise to run factories abroad, so over time the core is less capable of maintaining hegemony over commerce.56 The American colonies were once on the periphery of the British empire, but through expansionism grew in influence as Great Britain’s hegemony faded. The United States became a major center for technological innovations and new methods of production. American manufacturing came to define industrial production at the turn of the twentieth century, with a management technique called Taylorism, named after Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylorism analyzes and atomizes the motions of labor to eliminate inefficiencies and control a labor force. Although it is now periodized and declared outmoded, Harry Braverman observed that Taylorism contains “the explicit verbalization of the capitalist mode of production” and that “its fundamental teachings have become the bedrock of all work design.”57 By precisely specifying the activities of shop labor, management could exercise a high degree of control over every degree of the performance of labor, demanding a degree of output that pushed workers to their limits. Another early turn-of-the-century development was American electrical infrastructure, which made power available for industrial applications. After 1945, American business interests were able to exercise global distribution of labor and collect tariffs from international trade through developmentalist policy, creating a unipolar global capitalist world-system. Like in all other world-systems, production in periphery states contributed to the economic growth of the core. This global system was administrated under the template of the 1944 Bretton Woods agreements, which required the adoption of the gold-backed 56 Ibid, 44–45. 57 Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998), 60. 23 U.S. dollar as a global reserve currency and created a system for international economic cooperation around the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). Loans made through these institutions gave states the means to build local industries but stipulated their usage in such a way that “they would do the bidding of their imperial power with which they are in alliance, but as a junior partner.”58 Popular music is implicated in the world-economy by its relations of production. A decisive development came with the mass production of electrophones. Fender was founded in California in 1946. They made several innovations to the productive process, including bolt-on neck construction, which cuts down both on manufacture and repair costs by separating the guitar into two large parts. 59 Lower production costs made Fender competitive for a while. But during the 1970s, semi-peripheral Japanese firms produced unlicensed copies of Fender designs. Because of the difference in labor costs, Fender was not able to enter the Japanese market, so Fender negotiated with the Japanese factories to use their brand name. Satisfied with this arrangement, Fender wanted a way to make cheaper guitars closer to home, so in 1987 they contracted some of the Japanese FujiGen team to outfit a factory in Mexico, another semi-periphery state. According to Fender CEO Bill Mendello, FujiGen brought their machinery with them, plus five or six people. We opened up our Mexican operation, and FujiGen trained the people, using their techniques. So the manufacture of guitars in Mexico was more Japanese-like than it was US-like. We had a few people from the USA help them, but for the most part the training, the techniques, the painting, were all Japanese.60 58 Andre Gunder Frank, “Debunk Mythology, Reorient Reality” in Theory and Methodology of World Development: The Writings of Andre Gunder Frank, edited by Sing C. Chew and Pat Lauderdale (New York: Palgrave- MacMillan, 2010) 249–250. 59 Paul Atkinson, Amplified: A Design History of the Electric Guitar (London: Reaktion Books, 2021) 70–72. 60 Tony Bacon, “35 years of Fender Mexico: a timeline,” Guitar World (July 18, 2022), https://www.guitarworld.com/features/35-years-fender-mexico. 24 Dan Smith, leader of Fender’s electric guitar team, confirmed, “The original plan was for Mexico to make products for export to the USA and other parts of the world, plus a lower-priced line of product for the Japanese market. This was Fujigen’s plan for combating the production being lost by Japan to Korea.”61 Other manufacturers would follow Fender’s scheme for dividing their production lines into instruments produced within the core and without. Another technology would factor into metal’s production and distribution: magnetic tape. After World War II, tape recorders from Germany entered the United States and began to be used in professional music settings. 62 However, it wasn’t until consumer electronics had been sufficiently developed—initially in the 1960s but especially after the introduction of Dolby type B noise reduction and increased magnetization from chromium dioxide tape in the 1970s—that the technology became tenable as a commercial medium for music. 63 An especially impactful development was the Sony corporation’s Walkman portable compact cassette player in 1979. The individualized listening experience the Walkman afforded consumers allowed for ever-more particularized lifestyle marketing and the cultivation of (sub)cultural identities under the totality of neoliberal commodification64 Increased access to affordable recording and playback technology allowed amateur musicians to harness both the means of producing and distributing their music. Bands could advertise their demos in fanzines published by other members of the metal community. Unlike capitalist marketing, the zine would not generate profit through the sale of advertising space for these demos. However, as a tradeoff, zines had no contractual obligation to represent demos positively. As an example, in issue 7 of the German zine, Metal Warriors, staff 61 Ibid. 62 Albin Zak, The Poetics of Rock: Cutting Tracks, Making Records (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2001), 10. 63 Eric D. Daniel, C. Denis Mee and Mark H. Clark, Magnetic Recording: The First 100 Years (Piscataway: IEEE Press, 1999), 105–106. 64 Timothy Taylor, Music and Capitalism: A History of the Present (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 47 25 writer Michael Voss makes no effort whatsoever to butter up the sole demo tape produced by the short-lived German band Gorronhoea (sic), “Fuck AIDS – Join Gorronhoea.” Shitmetal at its best…absolute beginners try to jump on the Thrash bandwagon. But they didn’t met (sic) the bandwagon, they fell into the garbage-can!!!!! Yeah, it’s TRASH! If you think you’ve too much money, buy this bad four-track recording for 10 DM (!!!) at: C. Halder, Leimäcker str. 14, 7996 Meckenbeuren, West Germany.65 However, zines still needed to raise money to fund their printing and would sell ad space to businesses. In the same issue, editor Rüdiger Schmitz confides the financial realities of publishing a zine but makes it clear that the publication is still oriented around the community. Hi friends! First of all I want to say sorry for the extreme day (sic). The reason for the delay is quickly told: we had serious problems to get all the bills for #6 paid…this is also the reason why we don’t use glossy paper again because it was just too expensive and we don’t like to raise the price of our mag. I mean we could have used glossy paper again, but with less pagas (sic), but that’s bullshit!!! The most important things are the stuff that’s featured and not what it is printed on. As you can see we added some more pages but this may change with the next issues as we want try (sic) releasing METAL WARRIORS more often, like three times a year. Another problem is that many record labels don’t give ads to Fanzines anymore, which makes the whole thing even harder for us. But we will keep on doing METAL WARRIORS as long as you like to read what we think about the LP’s, Demos, and the scene in general. And right now it’s fun being involved into (sic) the scene cause there are so many great bands coming up these days and they deserve your and our support. Keep on buying Demos, Fanzines, underground records etc., the scene needs your help. Okay, I think I’ve bored you enough, so have fun and TAKE CARE! -Rüdiger-66 Despite financial necessities, metal fans were able to operate in parallel to mass media through tape trading. Not bearing the obligation to generate profits for studios and alienate themselves from the products of their labor, the self-organizing underground metal scene was able 65 Rüdiger Schmitz, Metal Warriors 7 (Neuss, 1990), 62. 66 Ibid, 3. 26 to be more reflexive and produce its own modes of expression.67 Although “Metal history is most often summed up by metalheads as a progressive quest for ever-heavier music,”68 the parallel existence of tape-trading networks to mainstream media offers a slightly different narrative. As thrash metal became more mainstream, fans sought underground sources to sate their demand for more extreme music. 69 Thus, developments in metal aesthetics and technologies from one perspective could appear quite different from another, and not always in a linear manner. For example, Benjamin Hiller demonstrates that melodic death metal bands would “eschew riffs in favour of chord progressions” when the opposite sequence was predominant in other death metal subgenres.70 However, it would not suffice to say that no progression had been made. Rather, developments in metal would conform to the contours of a popular music market through an intensive, dialectical relationship. 67 Minka Stoyanova and Ariel Huang remark upon similar counter-hegemonic production in hip hop and Jamaican dub (Stoyanova and Huang 2016). 68 Berger 1999b, 58. 69 Jason Netherton, “Extremity Reframed: Exhuming Death Metal’s Analog Origins” in Modern Heavy Metal: Markets, Practices and Cultures (Helsinki: Aalto University, 2015), 312. 70 Benjamin Philip Hiller, Principles of Harmony, Voice Leading and Aesthetics in Early Melodic Death Metal, Master’s thesis (University of New South Wales, 2017), 61–62. 27 2. HEAVY METAL IN THE CAPITALIST DIALECTIC Although frequently imagined as a subversive artform, metal music fits neatly within the historical process of capitalism in terms of innovation, commodity production and mediatization. Along with every other American cultural form, metal has even served imperialist expansion through soft power influence. This analysis demonstrates that metal music is not unlike other cultural products. I conclude with a Habermasian communication model to demonstrate an alternative to countercultural explanations for fundamentalism and experimentalism in metal music in preparation for my own contribution to the theory of form. 2.2 Beyond the Cultural Thesis In his 1993 monograph, Robert Walser introduces an idealist dialectical framework to link social reality with musical style. Walser looks to the international metal scene for clues and recounts his experience listening to a band from the Hungarian Socialist Republic, Pokolgép. He describes their music as “oppressive, lacking … the heavy metal dialectic” between freedom and control. 71 This dialectic counterposes different dimensions of the ensemble or rhythmic organization: the band’s rhythm section (bass, drums and rhythm guitar) representing control, the solo voice or lead guitar offering transcendent freedom; and, by extension, the regular beat of the ensemble versus the arhythmic or syncopated accents of the soloist. 72 In his evaluation of Pokolgép, Walser observes that …the guitar solos, which are fewer than is normal in U.S. and British metal, offer no escape, no transcendence. The guitars don't contribute transgressive fills (harmonics, bent notes, etc.), and the mood is very controlled and mechanical. No harmonic momentum is ever built up; progressions are heavily grounded by dominant chords, which are rare in Western metal. The lyrics, which my friend translated for me, are poignant and desperate, speaking eloquently of a state of 71 Robert Walser. Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1993), 33. 72 Ibid, 53–54. 28 alienation where there is no future, no past, no freedom, no security, and also no hope, no fantastic transcendence, no dreams of anything better. The lyrics recount youthful and historical pain but, along with the music, suggest no youthful exuberance, no energetic defiance. I don’t know the context well enough to assert that the implications of this reading are correct; what seems clear is that the international conventions of heavy metal have been strongly inflected by the particular ideological needs of a local community.73 It is unclear whether Walser means that the “ideological needs of the local community” might include rejection of the potentially transcendental elements he identifies (in which case, the “heavy metal dialectic” is extricable from the genre), or if the music’s semiotic content is merely reflective of its political environment. This passage is the only time music from the Eastern Bloc is mentioned. It must be said that the sample size—a single album from one band—is negligible. Given the narrow channels of circulation in the West for Eastern European metal bands at the time, it is understandable that Walser can only offer a limited analysis. Nevertheless, he makes testable claims. The simplest assertion to resolve is that metal lyrics embody “youthful exuberance” and “energetic defiance” by default. While such examples are easy to find in Western metal, dismal lyrics are not in short supply either. For instance, Judas Priest’s anthem to the alienation, “Breaking the Law” (1980):74 There I was completely wasting, out of work and down All inside it’s so frustrating as I drift from town to town Feel as though nobody cares if I live or die So I might as well begin to put some action in my life Breaking the law, breaking the law Breaking the law, breaking the law Breaking the law, breaking the law Breaking the law, breaking the law 73 Ibid, 33–34. 74 “Breaking the Law” potentially supports Walser’s theory, as the song does not contain a solo. The group is otherwise known for the superlative lead guitar capabilities of K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton, to say nothing of Rob Halford’s effortlessly virtuosic mixed-voice vocal performances. 29 So much for the golden future I can’t even start I’ve had every promise broken, there is anger in my heart You don't know what it's like, you don’t have a clue If you did, you’d find yourself doing the same thing too The protagonist’s frustration stems from unemployment (“out of work and down”), but they do not recognize themself as a victim of class struggle. With no other options apparently remaining, they resort to criminal activity (“breaking the law”). Giving Walser the benefit of the doubt, one could argue that this criminal resolution can be read as defiance. While crime and obstinacy are sometimes regarded (positively or negatively) as rebellious and anti-systemic, an unstable and precarious working class—divided into an active army and a reserve army of labor—is a structural element of capital.75 Neoclassical economists also acknowledge that discharging the labor force is a cyclical feature of capitalist economies: workers are not fully reabsorbed into industries after recessions, when new technologies eliminate the need for certain skills and workers must retrain for new skillsets, creating a “ratchet effect” on employment.76 However, it is not machines that make the decision to hire or fire workers but employers. “The point at which the worker is cheaper than the machinery which replaces him or her is determined by more than a mere technical relationship,” Harry Braverman clarifies: “it depends as well upon the level of wages, which in turn is affected by the supply of labor [N.B. the unemployed, who will accept lower wages] as measured against the demand.” 77 Although the protagonist in “Breaking the Law” may be transgressing cultural taboos against vagrancy and criminal behavior, they know that this too offers no transcendence from their miserable situation and their decisions (“So I might as well begin to 75 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1 (New York: Penguins Books, 1982), 790. 76 A summary of these arguments, as well as a Marxist response, is provided in Hans Despain, “Secular Stagnation: Mainstream Versus Marxian Traditions,” Monthly Review 67, no. 4 (2015), 39–55. 77 Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998), 163. 30 get some action in my life”) terminate short of resolving either their individual unemployment or its underlying social contradictions. Slayer’s “Expendable Youth” (1990) captures another of capitalism’s antinomies, American inner-city gang violence: Injured soul on the hard ground Head blown off, face down Lying in a pool of blood An accidental death, homicide Expendable youth fighting for possession Having control, our principal obsession Rivalry and retribution Death the only solution Struggling to survive The drug induced warfare Having control our principal obsession Expendable youth fighting for possession Violence is only a friend During the 1980s and 90s, drugs and violence were prominent themes in public and political discourse. Some parties, notably the journalist Gary Webb, alleged that weapons and drugs flowed into the United States as a consequence of the CIA’s anti-communist activities in Nicaragua, fueling gang violence.78 The CIA denied the allegation, but a Senate subcommittee found that U.S. agencies looked the other way while the CIA-supported Contras collaborated with drug and weapon traffickers who smuggled narcotics into the United States. Starting in 1983, planes landed on Contra-friendly airfields in Costa Rica with guns from Panama. Then, “The pilots unloaded the weapons, refueled, and headed north toward the U.S. with drugs.” 79 The subsequent crack “epidemic” was sensationalized by U.S. media and seized upon as justification for exorbitant law 78 Gary Webb, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998). 79 U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, 100th Cong., 2nd sess., 1988, 41. 31 enforcement budgets, leading to the militarization of police departments. 80 In “Expendable Youth,” Slayer presents the issue as basically transhistorical and immutable: the gangsters fight for turf because they are compelled to, (mal)adapting to an environment of drugs, perpetual violence, and senseless death, and society accepts them as “expendable.” The song portrays the fatalistic motions of individuals caught in the trap, as well as its tragedies. Again, the allegory’s Sisyphean characters cannot escape their circumstances and are forced to reproduce them or die anyway. However, the hopeless situation does not prevent Slayer from including a guitar solo, though whether the solo can be said to transcend the violence is debatable. Walser’s comments on the heavy metal dialectic then seem to only describe a particular subset of metal music in the West. Walser’s claims regarding the musical components of Hungarian metal also distort the relationship of geopolitics that brought metal into Hungary in the first place, as well as the historical agency of its actors. Pokolgép’s second studio release, Pokoli színjáték (1987), is listed in Walser’s selected discography, so I assume that Walser’s impression of the band is based upon that album. Contrary to Walser’s attribution of bleak Easternness (and perhaps confirming the fears of socialist censors), a contemporary reviewer for the Hungarian magazine Metallica Hungarica, described the tour accompanying Pokoli színjáték as “the first truly Western concert in the history of Hungarian heavy metal,” replete with pyrotechnics, stage pieces, and other spectacles.81 The reviewer also describes Pokolgép’s sound as “unique and evolving,” praising especially the development of the composition and performance since the group’s 1986 debut album, Totális Metál—an opinion at odds with the portrayal of the group as 80 Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano, The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2018), 158–164. 81 Péter Cselőtei, “Pokolgép, Attila, Beast of Prey: Pokoli színjáték show, 87. aug. 21. Petőfi Csarnok,” Metallica Hungarica 4, 1987, 10. A full translation of the review is included in Appendix A. 32 without past, future, or freedom.82 Nor are guitar solos “fewer” than in Western metal. Except for the crowd chant number, “Az a szép…” every track on Pokoli színjáték contains at least one guitar solo or lead.83 On “Tökfej,” “Vallomás,” “Pokoli Színjáték” and “Újra Születnék,” guitarists Gábor Kukovecz and László Nagyfi trade off solos and harmonize virtuosic lead lines, suggesting virtuosic ease, accomplishment, savviness, and braggadocio. Furthermore, Walser’s claims about the lack of “transgressive” elements in Pokolgép’s music (“harmonics, bent notes, etc.”) can be dispelled through analysis. The solo from “Éjféli Harang” (Figure 2.1) is standard fare for the style at the time. The techniques used include slides (mm.1, 5, 6), tapping and pull-offs (m.7), and using the Floyd Rose tremolo system to articulate secondary attacks (mm.4, 12) and a “divebomb” (mm.21–23). Amplifier feedback appears in mm. 18–20 and has the same aural effect as a natural harmonic. The accusation that Pokolgép’s guitars don’t contribute bent notes is false, as this example contains single bends (mm.8–10, 13–15), oblique bends (mm.16–17), and a more complex figure (m.8) involving bending, tapping with the picking hand, and then releasing the bend while still holding the tap. 82 Ibid. 83 I discuss the distinction between solos and leads in Chapter 4. 33 Figure 2.1. Pokolgép, “Éjféli 1& # 44 œ . œ œ œ œ j J œ Haranœg” (Pœokœoli œszínœjáœtéœk, 1987); guitar solo (2:53). œ œ œ œ œ œ j œ flick tremolo barœ œ ¿j œ ¿j œ ¿j œ ¿j ˙ 3 flick tremolo bar T 5 7 8 10 12 12 13 12 10 12 10 0 8 7 7 5 A 7 5 7 9 ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ B # œ œ j œ œ œ j œ œ j œ 5& œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj œ~~.~ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ3# œ n œ œ Tœ œ œj # œ J ~~~ 1/2 full T 5 5 7 5 5 7 5 5 7 full 17 5 7 5 7 5 7 8 7 8 7 8 7 8 7 10 7 8 7 8 7 8 7 A 7 9 9 0 7 0 5 0 4 0 4 0 2 2 2 2 9 9 2 8 B œ # œ œ j œ œ œ œj œ œ~~~~~~~œ œ œ œ œj œ . hold bend | œ œ œJ œ œ œ9 œ œ œ . fljicœk t¿ .remro¿ œlo baœr r œ& ¿ ¿ j ˙ ë full full ~~~~~~~ full flick tremolo bar 19 (T 17 ) 17 19 (17) 17 19 12 14 15 15 15 14 15 14 12 10 12 10 13 ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ë A B 13 # œ œ œ& œ # œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ j œ . œ œ œ œ œ j œ œ œ œ œ œ # œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ r œ œ œœ œ œ œ full full full T 17 19 17 151213 1213 1112111212 13 1213 15 1213 12 13 12 10 10 8 8 10 5 15 17 A 12 12 12 14 14 14 1412 14 14 B 12 13 14 hold bend | ·̇amp feedback · · ë 17& # œj jJœ œœ œœ .. ˙˙ ˙ ( ) (w) (w)ë full T 121517 15 A B 21& # slow tremolo dive ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~w ¿ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ˙ ~~~~~~~~~~w~~~~~~~~~~~~~ T A B 0 0 dive down | raise tremolo | 34 Still more problems abound. Walser’s observation that “progressions are heavily grounded by dominant chords, which are rare in Western metal,” depicts Pokolgép as out of alignment with Western metal bands. It is not clear whether Walser means dominant seventh quality chords or harmonies built upon the fifth scale degree as no example is cited, and I have not been able to locate its source. The question of whether Pokolgép is in-step with their European and American contemporaries is decided, however, seeing that they make clear reference to well-known songs from just two years prior to Pokoli színjáték’s release date. Returning to “Éjféli Harang,” the introduction (Figure 2.2) bears a striking resemblance to that of W.A.S.P.’s “Wild Child” (Figure 2.3): in both examples, the lead guitar plays a two-bar syncopated riff involving the scale-degree pairs 1–5 and b7–5 while the rhythm guitar sounds long power chords outlining a i–bVI–iv–i progression. Figure 2.2. Pokolgép, “Éjféli Harang” (Pokoli színjáték, 1987); introduction. i