Abstract: << Peripheral Linguistic Brutality is a sociolinguistic investigation into the production of “metalness” through language in the Asia Pacific. Focusing on the ways local music scenes adopt, reject, and modify linguistic ideologies, Jess Kruk and Wesley Robertson (hosts of the podcast Lingua Brutallica) examine how translocal participation in metal settings shapes how and why specific language forms are used to construct “metal language.”
Although much research has been done on language flows and use in global subcultures, their volume intervenes in two key ways. First, most prior work has focused on hip-hop, which unlike metal has an established “origin” dialect, namely AAVE (African American Vernacular English), linked to concepts of authenticity in the scene. Secondly, writing on global language flows has centered around what happens when a language, mainly English, enters a new space or context—not on how individuals employ imported forms and reimagine already extant linguistic resources as indexes, or markers, of new identities. Through interviews with practicing metal lyricists from Australia, Indonesia, Japan, and Taiwan, Peripheral Linguistic Brutality therefore fills gaps in the knowledge of language’s role in translocal subcultures.
Specifically, it sheds new light on how global subcultures spawn new local beliefs about the meaning and purpose of language forms, the sociolinguistic conflicts that can arise and influence language use when a scene enters a new locale, and metal itself as a global practice. >> Source: https://uhpress.hawaii.edu

Abstract: This thesis will demonstrate how Black Metal music became established in Japan, how it evolved, and how musicians situate themselves in a globalized form of community. It is a study of how Japanese Black Metal functions in the tensions between globalization and localization, a term called “glocalization” (Victor Roudometof 10). Japanese Black Metal is globalized around a set of rules and ideas, a term Deena Weinstein uses to describe Heavy Metal music called “codes” (Heavy Metal the Music 100). Additionally, as this music is localized, it reveals how many Japanese musicians express uniquely cynical viewpoints of religion and established authority using these globalized codes. Due to its anti-Christian and brutal history in other countries, Black Metal is seen as transgressive against mainstream society. Through electronic ethnographic research with Japanese Black Metal artists, this thesis finally examines how Black Metal is at once desirable yet also transgressive in Japanese society, a country with a comparatively low population of Christians.