The International Society for Metal Music Studies

The mission of ISMMS is to encourage and facilitate interdisciplinary and international academic research regarding processes and phenomena related to heavy metal music and culture and to support the recognition of such research as a significant contribution to academic communities. Sub-genres of heavy metal and related genres, e.g., hardcore punk, are included. ISMMS exists as a focal organization to establish metal music studies as a relevant and respected academic discipline and contribute to the growth of knowledge within the academic and music communities. These aims shall be accomplished through the development, organization and promotion of state of the art collaborations, publications, activities and events that demonstrate high standards and principles of academic excellence and the important purpose of this research around the world.

Statement of Antidiscrimination

Racism and intersecting forms of discrimination (e.g. sexism, homophobia, ableism) are major social problems that are also present in heavy metal culture. To remain silent in the face of structural racism and other bigotries is not an apolitical or neutral stance, but a form of complicity. Metal has never been apolitical and neither are the researchers who deal with it. It is up to each and every one of us to continually address existing inequalities as well as to commit to ongoing questioning of ourselves and reflection upon our actions. The ISMMS Executive Board is committed to supporting all kinds of antidiscrimination in both metal scenes and academic communities.

Read the full statement here.

The ISMMS Board

Dr Bryan Bardine (Chair 2018–)

Bryan is a Professor in the Dept. of English at the University of Dayton. He holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction and Literacy from Kent State University. Both his M.A. and B.A.are in English from the University of Dayton. Bryan’s first book, Heavy Metal Music and Popular Culture, co-edited with three other scholars, was released in March 2016. His article, “Metal and Gothic Literature: Examining the Darker Side of Life (and Death),” appeared in the conference proceedings for the Modern Heavy Metal Conference, and his article “From Sabbath to Slayer: Using Metal in the Writing Classroom,” appeared in his co-edited book Cultural Connections on Metal: Unity in Disparity (2016). His next book, a co-edited collection with Jerome Stueart, Living Metal: Metal Scenes around the World came out in November, 2021. He was the Coordinator of the Metal and Cultural Impact Conference (2014) and the Metal in Strange Places Conference (2016). Bryan predominantly teaches courses in composition, pedagogy, American Literature and Gothic Literature as well as his Metal as Cultural Experience course.

Dr Owen Coggins (Secretary 2020–)

Owen is a Lecturer in Sociology at Brunel University London. His recent Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship investigated ambiguity, ideology and marginal religiosity in black metal music culture. He previously worked as a Researcher at music therapy charity Nordoff Robbins, and before that completed a PhD in Religious Studies and Music at the Open University. Owen’s interdisciplinary research concerns how religion, particularly in marginal or oppositional forms, is imagined, practiced, discussed and represented in popular music cultures. Ambiguity and ambivalence are often important issues in this research, especially when exploring music which features noise, distortion or other extreme sounds. A monograph, Mysticism, Ritual and Religion in Drone Metal, was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2018, and was awarded the International Association for the Study of Popular Music’s 2019 Book Prize. Other publications have appeared in Popular MusicImplicit ReligionMetal Music Studies and elsewhere, addressing questions of reception, ambivalence and ideology in noise, industrial, extreme metal and other popular music genres.

Dr Lewis Kennedy (Treasurer & Membership Officer 2019–)

Lewis is a musicologist who works as Curriculum Manager on the BA (Hons) Music (Popular) programme at Leeds Conservatoire. His work on metal includes a PhD on conceptualising genre in metal and hardcore music (University of Hull, 2018) and co-editing the ‘Metal and Musicology’ special issue of Metal Music Studies with M. Selim Yavuz (2019). Lewis has published on the lyrics of Babymetal (2021), NWOAHM and notions of heritage-making in metal/hardcore historiography (2021), and has a chapter on the Hull metal/hardcore scene in Living Metal: Metal Scenes around the World (2021).

Dr Steven Gamble (Webmaster 2021–)

Stim is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Music at the University of Bristol and the author of the monograph How Music Empowers: Listening to Modern Rap and Metal (2021). Following study at the Universities of Surrey, Oxford, and Kingston (London), he taught and established an academic skills department at BIMM Institute, Brighton and undertook a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellowship at University College Cork. He is an active member of European popular music studies communities, having published work in Metal Music Studies, First Monday, Ethnomusicology, Popular Music and Society, and the Journal on the Art of Record Production. He founded the Music and Online Cultures Research Network and is also webmaster for the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Music Studies network.

Pasqualina Eckerström (Events Officer 2022–)

Pasqualina is doctoral researcher in Religious Studies at the University of Helsinki. She focuses on dynamics of transgression in religious authoritarian countries. Her dissertation investigates how extreme metal musicians in Iran and Saudi Arabia use and produce music to express their subversive identities and promote their right to self-actualisation. She has also researched how various waves of moral panic have impacted the metal communities in the Middle East. The results of this research was published in Defiant Sounds: Heavy Metal Music in the Global South (2022), Lexington Books. Pasqualina has presented her work at numerous conferences, such as ARTHRIC-2021: Art and Human Rights International Conference; SIEF2021 15th Congress: Theme: Breaking the rules? Power, participation, transgression; Modern Heavy Metal Conference – Special theme: Cultural; Inferno Music Conference: The International Metal Music Networking Conference and The Annual Sociological Conference of the Westermarck Society. She is currently doing an internship at Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), where she concentrates on music as a tool for advocacy and the concept of women’s shelters in Islamic countries. Pasqualina also hosts a metal music podcast called MetalBreak. Having had a long career as a music journalist, her work led to an incredible and brave generation of artists resisting censorship in Muslim authoritarian systems. Therefore, she decided to bring this topic to the academic realm.

Dr Tore Tvarnø Lind (Communications Officer 2023–)

Tore is associate professor in musicology at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH), Denmark. Working primarily within the anthropology of music, Tore is currently doing fieldwork in the black metal undergrounds in Denmark focusing on the fragmented scene, the oceanic, bereavement, and sadness. So far, this research is presented in English in two contributions to the edited volumes Living Metal: Metal Scenes around the World (2021) and Multilingual Metal Music: Sociological, Linguistic and Literary Perspectives on Heavy Metal Lyrics (2020). His forthcoming project on Greek metal music deals with the political and the private in crises (financial, climate, migration, and democracy crises), and how these foster musical expression and activism. Tore holds a PhD in revitalization of the Greek Orthodox Chant tradition at Mount Athos, and his research interests include silence, blasphemy, music as healing, and music torture. Tore has studied at the University of Copenhagen; The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece; and the University of Chicago, USA.

Prof. Gérôme Guibert (2024–)

Gérôme is a Professor in sociology and head of the Communication and Media Dpt (ICM) at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris. He has coedited Made In France. Studies in Popular Music (Routledge, 2018) with a chapter about Trust and the birth of French heavy metal and also published several popular music studies books in French including the first international reader in this language, Penser les musiques populaires (Editions de la Philharmonie, 2022). His research fields are live music and local music scenes, and he studies heavy metal music since the beginning of the century. Gerome has especially directed two issues of Volume!, the French popular music studies journal, in 2006 (« Metal scenes » with Fabien Hein) and in 2018 (« Paradoxal metal »). He has also published many papers in English, most of them about Hellfest (one in Popular Music History’s « heavy metal controversies and counterculture » special issue (2011), another in the Global metal music and culture (Routledge, 2016) and in Living Metal. Metal scenes around the world (Intellect, 2022). He was the convenor of the “French Heavy metal and sciences sociales conference” (2014) and also the convenor of the 4th ISMMS international conference in Nantes, 2019.

A. Rose Johnson (2024–)

Rose Johnson is a PhD student at Falmouth University with a research focus on Ghost and online metal fandom. Other research interests and publications explore queer applications of monster theory, horror, and occulture. She received her Master’s and Bachelor’s degree, both in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, from the University at Albany. She is an instructional designer at Antioch University. Her persistent garbage habit shows signs of payoff.


Former Board Members

Douglas Mattsson (Ordinary Member 2020–2023)

Dr. Reinhard Kopanski (Ordinary Member 2020–2023)

Manuela Belén Calvo (Ordinary Member 2022)

Prof. Nelson Varas-Díaz (Events/Conference Liaison 2018–2022)

Dr. Gabby Riches (Ordinary Member 2018–2021)

Dr. Ross Hagen (Ordinary Member 2018–2021)

Dr. Amber Clifford-Napoleone

Dr. M. Selim Yavuz

Prof. Toni-Matti Karjalainen

Prof. Karl Spracklen

Marco Ferrarese

Dr. Imke von Helden

Brian Hickam (Membership Officer)

Dr. Claudia Azevedo

Dr. Niall Scott