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What Does It Mean for Metal to Be Transgressive in the Twenty-First Century?
from Part III - Metal and Identity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2023
This chapter interrogates what it means for heavy metal to identify as ‘outsider’ music in the 2020s and beyond. Resistance, transgression and rebellion have long been central to metal’s generic identity, where metal has long traded on a reputation as ‘outsider’ music, a genre populated by proud pariahs who exist on the edge of acceptability. However, such rebellion has been troubled by metal’s commercial success, geolocal diversification and generational shifts amongst fans, where ‘resistance’ takes on different trajectories as metal manifests within multiple political zeitgeists and contexts. This chapter then explores how metal’s politics of transgression have played out in varied ways as metal communities worldwide negotiate shifting ideological contexts and markets, calling into focus questions of performative transgression and commodified dissent. This chapter thus leads with a central provocation: Is it still possible for metal to be rebellious in the twenty-first century? And has it ever really been?
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