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: "Réak is the Bandung subregional variant of the “horse trance dances”: a popular group of animist performances present throughout and outside Indonesia. During theevent, a trance master coordinates a series of spirit possessions with themusical accompaniment of a percussions and shawm ensemble. Like other artforms, including metal, réak is described as ramé(tangled/interesting/noisy) and kasar (coarse) due to its chaotic social ambiance and distorted, fast-paced music.
Indeed,due to geographical proximity and the genre’s local relevance, réak is experiencing the influence ofextreme metal. Although most participants avoid hybridity, a conversation istaking place among participants, debating the aesthetic affinities between thegenres, generating a commentary stressing similarity and genealogy. Moreover, while metal bands invite réak troupes to open concerts, réak practitioners, often familiar with the metal community, appropriate the genre’s stylistic elements such as distorted electric guitars and “Metal Distortion” pedals.
Despite réak’s and metal’s resistance to assimilation, stylistic musical and extra-musical cross-fertilisation generated a non-synthetic hybridisation that safeguards genre boundaries. The discussion will be useful in laying the foundation to problematise concepts of hybridity that classic analyses of genre do not grasp."
(SOURCE: https://briefencounters-journal.co.uk/article/id/3/)