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  • Christian Metal: History, Ideology, Scene by Marcus Moberg
  • David Feltmate
Moberg, Marcus. Christian Metal: History, Ideology, Scene. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. xii + 188 pp. $29.95US (paper). ISBN 978-1472579836.

Marcus Moberg’s Christian Metal is a useful book for scholars of religion and popular culture in general and specialists in religion and popular music in particular. The book consists of seven chapters that cover the topics of Christian heavy metal music and fandom’s origins, aesthetics, and experiential and sensory dimensions; the contemporary transnational scene; and its main ideological and discursive traits. Christian Metal is partially successful in meeting its stated goal of exploring “the ways in which the contemporary Christian metal scene provides its members with resources for the shaping of a consciously and pronounced alternative way of expressing and ‘doing’ religion” (2). Much of the work was previously published in various articles. As such, the book is a useful collection of Moberg’s work on Christian heavy metal music and its cultural contexts, but it bears a stylistic relationship to the articles which were these ideas’ original homes. At times the book comes across as uneven, but it gives us a useful map for thinking about transnational popular music scenes. With this in mind, the book’s following strengths and weaknesses are well worth reflecting on for scholars in the larger field of popular music studies.

Christian Metal’s strengths lie in Moberg’s abilities to map the global tensions shaping Christian metal music’s cultural discourses. People unfamiliar with Christian heavy metal’s history will find a useful overview in chapter two. Chapters three and four, on Christian metal’s verbal, aesthetic, and bodily dimensions, provide a sound overview of these important stylistic characteristics of the Christian metal scene. Indeed, one of Christian Metal’s strengths is its emphasis on how this musical scene navigates between secular heavy metal and a transnational evangelicalism that is heavily influenced by American evangelicalism. This tension comes out most clearly in chapter six, in which Moberg analyzes the discursive dimensions shaping Christian metal. Christian metal fans and musicians navigate a love of the musical and cultural styles that characterize Christian heavy metal culture, while defining their identity against secular metal fans who think that Christian metal is inauthentic and Christians who think that heavy metal music is demonic. This struggle could have been more fruitfully developed throughout the book because the issue of forging an identity across multiple discursive spaces shapes all the previous chapters. Moberg’s use of discourse theory in chapter six, however, is well developed and useful for other scholars who are studying the ways that religious and popular culture scenes are melded in different contexts.

Christian Metal’s weakness derives from what Moberg hints at but does not provide. As a Finnish scholar who did work with the Finnish Christian metal scene (there are pictures from his fieldwork throughout the book), that scene remains remarkably “thin” in its presentation throughout Christian Metal. This is a shame since Moberg’s personal knowledge of the scene could have brought it to an English-speaking audience who are rarely encouraged to think about Finland. As such, questions of locality in the global scene are undermined throughout the book in favour of Web sites and fan magazines that circulate in English. Christian Metal needs more voices from Christian metal fans and bands, and it especially needs more detailed descriptions of Christian metal concerts in Finland. Withholding this information portrays the Christian metal scene, as Moberg maps it, as something that seems [End Page 250] to exist in Internet forums and fanzines, even though he openly acknowledges that there are places in which people gather in person to experience the music in communion. The way that both the virtual and immanent spaces shape the scene and Christian heavy metal fans’ identities is a missing component of this research. Moberg leaves enough hints throughout the text that he could address this omission, and I hope he does in future work. It would give greater depth to the idea that Christian metal is a place of deep fan engagement and not just a few Web sites, fanzines, and CDs made by...

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