Critical Review: Excerpts From Walser's "Running With The Devil"

In Robert Walser’s Introduction and Chapter 1, he outlines the history of Metal music and some of the misconceptions, stereotypes, and intricacies associated with it. He first compares metal musicians to classical musicians studying in a conservatory. Metal, however, has had the largest backlash of any musical genre, marking it as “an important site of cultural contestation.” Many of the sociological studies conducted about Metal have failed, in Walser’s opinion, because they do not take into account the feelings of identity and community involved in the scene. Instead, when conducting his study, he tried to integrate musical analysis, ethnography, and cultural criticism, as well as studying the genre from all aspects. He tried, in particular, to pay attention to the music itself in order to examine it as a “social signifying system rather than an autonomous set of stylistic traits.” The chapters in his book, Running With the Devil, focus on the similarities between heavy metal and classical music, issues of gender in heavy metal and the ways in which it has recently become more gender balanced, and the aura of violence and mysticism associated with heavy metal. Walser focused on metal in the 1980s because that’s when the genre was at its most popular and evolved the most.

He begins Chapter 1 by offering up definitions for the term “Heavy Metal” itself, and provides a short history of its uses. The term was adopted to describe the music by which it is know today because of its association with power, as “the loudness and intensity of heavy metal music visibly empower fans.” Even the band names and the phrase “power chord” evoke an image of power. Walser next discusses the commercialization of metal. Although fan magazines try to apply the term “heavy metal” to a broad number of bands, fans are often pickier with their specific tastes. While one fan may consider a particular band to be the epitome of the genre, another may not consider them to be metal at all. Even musicians considered to be heavy metal by their fans may not refer to themselves as heavy metal.

Walser then discusses the history of heavy metal (both the musical genre and when the term came to describe the genre). Usually, the start of heavy metal is attributed to British musicians who copied urban blues styles, thus defining the heavy drum, virtuosic and distorted guitar, and growly vocal style that came to be associated with metal music. In 1970, the release of albums by Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple created the true sound of heavy metal, a sound that espoused speed, power, dissonance, and mysterious tones (both with organ and vocals). The second generation of heavy metal (which included Kiss and AC/DC) toured, building the metal audience of the 1970s. Though metal’s popularity slumped in the late 70s, it rose again in the 1980s with the new wave of British heavy metal, which featured shorter and catchier songs with higher technical standards. Metal’s popularity only increased, especially because of its support by Billboard and MTV. As a result, metal’s fanbase expanded. This also led to its fragmentation, as some metal fans considered the new metal to be poser music, and instead turned to Thrash metal, a more violent subgenre. By the end of the 1980s, metal’s influence could be heard everywhere, from Michael Jackson albums to jingle ads for the US Army.

Walser, like Weinstein, discusses the fanbase of metal. He describes them as active, white, blue collar and upscale, and more balanced in gender than Weinstein’s account described. According to his research, metal music is central to many fans’ social lives. Lyrics also seem to be comprehended by fans. To these audiences, the attraction to metal is mainly the “intensity and power of the music, its impressive guitar solos, the relevance of its lyrics, and its truth value.” Walser believes heavy metal has rarely been taken seriously in the scholastic world, and sociologists such as Weinstein lack the objectivity and concern with the music itself that is necessary to truly understand a genre and its scene.

Discussion Question: Walser describes Thrash Metal as both a subgenre adopted by people who attempted to maintain a marginal status separate from the “Lite Metal” promoted by MTV, and as a subgenre that successfully challenged the mainstream and redefined it. Trash bands even began to headline arena concerts and appear on MTV. Does this not seem hypocritical? If Metal fans turned to Thrash to escape the commercial rise of Metal, how did they deal with the rise of “their” music in the mainstream?