{"id":303,"date":"2011-06-15T20:00:48","date_gmt":"2011-06-15T20:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicurbanism\/?p=303"},"modified":"2012-11-11T04:11:41","modified_gmt":"2012-11-11T04:11:41","slug":"my-guest-blog-on-social-shutter-re-maryland-deathfest-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/2011\/06\/15\/my-guest-blog-on-social-shutter-re-maryland-deathfest-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"my guest blog on Social Shutter Re: Maryland Deathfest 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week the visual urban sociology blog\u00a0Social Shutter<\/a>\u00a0ran my photos and a new essay about Maryland Deathfest.\u00a0 If you didn’t see\u00a0the post<\/a>, I’ve reprinted it below.\u00a0 And do check out Social Shutter, where Georgia State University sociologist\u00a0Deirdre Oakley<\/a>\u00a0and her students offer some compelling and provocative photoessays.<\/p>\n

Deathfest<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Posted by Leonard Nevarez, BALTIMORE, MD — The\u00a0Maryland\u00a0Deathfest (MDF)<\/a>\u00a0is the biggest festival for “extreme heavy metal” in the U.S. \u2013 and, so far as I know, the only urban festival in North America for heavy metal of any kind.\u00a0 Since 2003, the event has drawn performers and fans from metal’s most controversial sub-genres: death metal, grindcore, black metal, doom metal, crust punk, stoner rock, and their various hybrids.\u00a0 These are the sounds that make parents around the world freak out if\u00a0discovered in their kids’ iPods.\u00a0 On the whole, this music is bracing in its volume, speed, and discordance; the bands’ names and lyrical content are intentionally blasphemous or stomach-churning; and vocalists’ guttural growls and raspy screams convey the experience of eternal damnation and the despair at humanity’s inevitable extinction.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Needless to say, none of this music comes within miles of the music charts.\u00a0 This is metal’s deepest underground, historically overlooked by the corporate music industry. Yet it has become a significant industry of independent recording labels, music distributors, merchandise companies, music periodicals and blogs across the world.\u00a0 While few of these bands could play to sizable crowds by themselves, MDF provides them a rare critical mass of consumers and media attention.\u00a0 In turn, bands and listeners alike have lauded MDF for its discerning taste and global scan in selecting the most exciting and obscure bands in extreme metal.\u00a0 This year the 63 bands on the festival schedule came from 17 nations across 4 continents.\u00a0 Predictably, Scandinavia was well represented (Satanic black metal being almost synonymous with Norway), but even Greece and Saudi Arabia yielded excellent groups.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Admittedly, I’d lost touch with heavy metal’s evolution since the 1980s and early 90s, the years when thrash metal (the first extreme sub-genre: Metallica, Slayer, etc.) flourished, and hardcore punk crossed over subculturally into the metal underground.\u00a0 By that time, as cultural critics and sociologists of subculture have observed retrospectively, those musical developments contributed to the consolidation of the peculiarly omnivorous yet ironic cultural sensibility associated with the post-punk “neo-bohemia”, captured so well\u00a0in\u00a0Richard Lloyd’s<\/a>\u00a0Neo Bohemia<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Ryan Moore’s<\/a>\u00a0Sells Like Teen Spirit<\/strong><\/em><\/a>.\u00a0Metal has since fallen largely under the pop-cultural radar, so I was eager for a quick submersion back into its underground.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As an urban sociologist, I was also interested in MDF\u2019s social and geographic insertion into central-city Baltimore. Like so many other American rustbelt cities, Baltimore has continually lost population over the post-WWII era, having shrunk by almost a third since 1950.\u00a0 Yet since 2000, according to the most recent American Community Survey, the 25-34 age group has increased, and now represents 16.7 percent of the city’s total population. Evidence of a thriving bohemian enclave can be found around Baltimore, particularly the neighborhoods surrounding Johns Hopkins University. In these neighborhoods independently-owned coffeeshops flourish, along with renown record and zine stores; fashion boutiques and giftshops that incorporate with a wink the city’s 1960s-era aesthetic (best captured by the films of local hero\u00a0John Waters<\/a>); and a small but celebrated local indie-rock scene (epitomized by\u00a0Beach House<\/a>,\u00a0Dan Deacon<\/a>, and\u00a0Wye Oak<\/a>).\u00a0 Traditionally, heavy metal isn’t associated with urban music scenes so much as state\/national distinctions and the suburban landscapes of adolescent alienation.\u00a0 However, I wondered if the elevated degree of musical\/subcultural connoisseurship illustrated by MDF\u2019s organizers and attendees\u00a0reveals an emerging identification\u00a0with the distressed-brick exteriors and haunted cityscapes favored by so many contemporary urban bohemians.<\/p>\n

Three days in Baltimore at Deathfest provided much food for thought, if only speculative at this stage, as well as ringing ears.\u00a0 Video footage from this year’s MDF can be found all over the internet.\u00a0Decibel Magazine’s videos<\/a>\u00a0are a good place to start but watch the volume.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Leonard Nevarez<\/a>\u00a0is an associate professor of sociology at Vassar College.\u00a0 He is the author of two books,\u00a0Pursuing Quality of Life<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0New Money, Nice Town<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 You can read more about Maryland Deathfest and view the rest of Leonard’s\u00a0photostream<\/a>on his blog\u00a0Musical Urbanism<\/strong><\/a>. He can be contacted at\u00a0lenevarez@vassar.edu<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week the visual urban sociology blog\u00a0Social Shutter\u00a0ran my photos and a new essay about Maryland Deathfest.\u00a0 If you didn’t see\u00a0the post, I’ve reprinted it below.\u00a0 And do check out Social Shutter, where Georgia State University sociologist\u00a0Deirdre Oakley\u00a0and her students offer some compelling and provocative photoessays. Deathfest Posted by Leonard Nevarez, BALTIMORE, MD — The\u00a0Maryland\u00a0Deathfest (MDF)\u00a0is the biggest festival for “extreme heavy metal” in the U.S. \u2013 and, so far as I know, the only urban festival in North America for heavy metal of any kind.\u00a0 Since 2003, the event has drawn performers and fans from metal’s most controversial sub-genres: death metal, grindcore, black metal, doom metal, crust punk, stoner rock, and their various hybrids.\u00a0 These are the sounds that make parents around the world freak out if\u00a0discovered in their kids’ iPods.\u00a0 On the whole, this music is bracing in its volume, speed, and discordance; the bands’ names and lyrical content are intentionally blasphemous or stomach-churning; and vocalists’ guttural growls and raspy screams convey the experience of eternal damnation and the despair at humanity’s inevitable extinction. Needless to say, none of this music comes within miles of the music charts.\u00a0 This is metal’s deepest underground, historically overlooked by the corporate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":308,"featured_media":684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[43779,43644,43776,43658],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-baltimore","tag-festival","tag-heavy-metal","tag-hipster-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/308"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":431,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions\/431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}