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.
The ISMMS Board
Dr Bryan Bardine (Chair)
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 is due 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)
Owen has a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Brunel University London, investigating 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 Music, Implicit Religion, Metal 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)
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 a forthcoming volume.
Dr. Steven Gamble (Webmaster)
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 Popular Music and Society, the Journal on the Art of Record Production, and Metal Music Studies. He is also webmaster for the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Music Studies network.
Dr. Tore Tvarnø Lind (Communications Officer)
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.
Douglas Mattsson
Douglas is a PhD student at the department of Religious Studies at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden. He has held senior scholarships from the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul and the Orient Institute in Istanbul, for his research on the Turkish black metal scene. His most recent publications include “Spreading VX-Gas over Kaaba: Islamic semiotics in Turkish black metal” in the forthcoming anthology Culture and Politics in New Turkey (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) and he co-authored “The Enemy Within: Conceptualizing Turkish Metalheads as the Ideological ’Other’” (Intellect Press, 2021) and “I am Satan! black metal, Islam, and blasphemy in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.” (Contemporary Islam, 2018). He is currently working on his dissertation which is an ethnographic study of the Turkish black metal scene.
Dr. Reinhard Kopanski
Reinhard is a research associate at the University of Siegen (Germany) at the Professorial Chair of Popular Music and Gender Studies. His research interests include music and politics, music and technology, and music and religion. He completed his Ph.D. in musicology in 2019; his thesis will be published in Winter 2020/21 as Bezugnahmen auf den Nationalsozialismus in der populären Musik. Lesarten zu Laibach, Death In June, Feindflug, Rammstein und Marduk. (References to National Socialism in Popular Music. Readings on Laibach, Death In June, Feindflug, Rammstein and Marduk). He has contributed articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Metal Music Studies, Journal for Religion, Film and Media and Samples, as well as for the online version of the German academic music encyclopaedia Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG). His professional experience includes pedagogical work as a lecturer in Bonn and Cologne and freelance work in the field of audio production.
Pasqualina Eckerström
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 will be 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.