Symposium at Liverpool John Moores University, Friday 3rd October 9.30 am to 5 pm
Extreme metal music has been characterized as something that explores transgression, whether this is in relation to sound, its discourses and imagery, or embodied practices such as moshing and stagediving (Kahn-Harris, 2007). However, the extent to which it is deemed transgressive is inevitably coloured by a range of contextual factors, including socio-cultural and historical change. Often, the examination of such phenomena can yield striking insights into our understandings of what is considered ‘extreme’, how these understandings can shift, and how they are informed by complex intersections of place, space and time.
In October 2025, Black Label Productions, the music company behind influential Malaysian extreme metal band, Black Fire, and the Kuala Lumpur based festivals KL Metal Mayhem and Darkness Conspiracy, will return to Liverpool to sponsor a UK version of their KL Metal Mayhem festival. The exclusive choice of Liverpool as the city to host the festival is a significant one. The Liverpool city region has seen the emergence of metal music artists that have transgressed boundaries and been considered ‘extreme’. Whether this is the highly influential pioneers of grindcore and death metal, Carcass, or gothic doom metal innovators, Anathema, the region has seen the rise of bands that have experimented at the edges of extremity (see Hassan, 2021). Yet, despite its legacy of producing metal artists that push boundaries, Liverpool’s metal scene has often been overshadowed by the region’s heritage-based narratives that have mythologized other scenes such as Merseybeat and the dance scene of the 1990s (Cohen, 2007). In a ‘music city’ overdetermined by dominant music narratives, Liverpool’s metal scene has a somewhat liminal status that has been compounded by its proximity to nearby Manchester, a larger city that for several decades has typically played host to major rock and metal touring acts at the expense of Liverpool. Working against this backdrop, in recent years a range of stakeholders have laboured to establish a live metal music scene that has been understood by some as more congenial to extreme metal (Hassan, 2021)
To complement the KL Metal Mayhem festival, this one-day symposium at Liverpool John Moores University will feature papers, panel discussions and workshops that foster opportunities to reflect on the different border crossings involved when approaching extreme metal music and scenes. Proposals for 20-minute paper presentations that broadly relate to this theme are invited from academics, musicians and industry stakeholders. Topics can be wide ranging but may include:
- What happens when localized metal scenes transcend their geographical boundaries?
- What cross-cultural interactions occur when a regional metal festival like KL Metal Mayhem is repackaged for a UK audience?
- The crossing of boundaries and thresholds within metal music culture.
- The meanings and limits of extremity within metal music.
- Relationships between extreme metal, heritage and tourism
- Centres and peripheries
Participation in the symposium is free of charge and lunch and refreshments will be provided. All participants will also have an opportunity to attend the KL Metal Mayhem festival in Liverpool on the evening of Saturday 4th October at EBGBS in Liverpool city centre.
Please submit proposals of no more than 250 words via email to N.A.Hassan@ljmu.ac.uk by 5pm on Monday September 1st 2025
Please include a paper title and short (100 word) biography