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: Heavy Metal in El Salvador has been a driving force of the underground culture since the Civil War in the 1980s. Over time, it has grown into a large movement that encompasses musicians, producers, promoters, media outlets and the international exchange of music, ideas and live shows. As a music based around discontent with society at large, Heavy Metal attempts to question the status quo through an intellectual exploration of taboo subjects and the presentation of controversial live shows. As an international discourse, Heavy Metal speaks to ideas of both socio-political and individual power based around a Philosophy of Life that exalts personal freedoms and personal responsibility to oneself and their society. As a community, it represents a ‘rage’ group, as defined by Peter Sloterdijk, that questions Western epistemologies and the doctrines of Christian Philosophy. This is done in different ways, by different genres, but at the heart is the changing of macro- (international) discourses into micro- (local) discourses that focus on those issues important to the geographic specificity of the region.
In the case of Black Metal, born in Norway, it is interpreted in El Salvador through the similarities between the doctrines of Hitler and those of the most famous dictator in the country’s history – General Maximiliano Hernandez – and then applied, ironically, to the local phenomena of the Salvadoran Street Gangs (MS-13 and 18s) and their desired extermination. It is also done through the re-interpreting of folk metal in the local phenomenon of tribal metal that reinterprets the indigenous through the lens of modern society and heavy metal’s ideas of power. Finally, the Salvadoran metalhead adapts the genre’s vulgarity and dark humor to fuel their own systems of dealing with harsh repression and existing within a society that seems to have no place for them. At the bottom though, much more than a community, Heavy Metal in El Salvador is a source of fraternalismo that utilizes the Philosophy of Life to bind its members together and to provide them a means by which to express their personal freedoms within a society that would happily see them limited.

Abstract: Rock and roll music was a national youth obsession for more than ten years before the first rock critics began writing seriously about the form. Rock was dismissed by adult cultural authorities as empty, degraded, and even dangerous. However, to its fans, rock was an important form of personal expression, a source of group identity, and a mode of political discourse. Rock critics understood its cultural and political power. In their work, they explained its importance to the American public.
In 1966, the first rock critic, Richard Goldstein, began writing about rock and roll in a weekly column in the Village Voice called “Pop Eye.” In it, he asserted that rock and roll was an art that deserved the same recognition and protections afforded to other art forms. By 1967, The New Yorker hired Ellen Willis to write about rock in a regular column called “Rock, Etc.” She brought an intellectual sophistication to the genre that would resound long after her career as a rock critic ended. Later in 1967, Rolling Stone debuted; it would become the most visible and influential source of rock criticism for the next fifty years. Editor Jann Wenner’s tastes and approach would affect the way rock was perceived in his own time and for decades after. Finally, in 1968, Lester Bangs debuted onto the scene, writing artful reviews for publications like Creem and Rolling Stone, explaining the changes that were taking place as rock music splintered into subgenres like punk and heavy metal.
The quality of these rock critics’ thought and the influence of their writing makes rock criticism an important and under-studied branch of Sixties literature. Each of the rock critics addressed in this dissertation explained to the public what rock music meant and why it mattered. By placing rock in its social, political, and cultural context, they demonstrated that it was far from the empty form cultural authorities thought it was. Their work permanently changed perceptions of popular music, proving that it was substantial enough to stand up to the same kind of critical treatment as other art forms.