In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Death Metal and Music Criticism: Analysis at the Limits by Michelle Phillipov
  • Robert Upton
Death Metal and Music Criticism: Analysis at the Limits. By Michelle Phillipov. pp. xx + 158. (Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, 2012. £49.95. ISBN 978-0-7391-6461-7)

In this welcome new volume, Michelle Phillipov challenges the tendency of popular music studies to focus on questions of a political nature. The first half of the book is a thorough critique of ‘The Rise of Political Criticism’ in popular music studies with three individual chapters dedicated to case studies of punk, hip-hop, and electronic dance music (EDM). Although she does not completely reject the importance of politics in certain musical styles, she proposes that musicological inquiry that concentrates on a narrow range of popular music styles correlates with the emergence of ‘fan scholars’ who have influenced the trend to political discourse. This debate corresponds with previous work by Joanna Zylinska (The Ethics of Cultural Studies (London: Continuum, 2005)): both have suggested that scholars have acted unethically by overemphasizing the political aspects of popular music, or even by emphasizing their own politics in their investigations. Phillipov invites us to change the coordinates of criticism by bringing questions of pleasure to the fore. Some popular music styles have been excluded from the newly configured popular music canon owing to the ‘overriding assumption that music should in some way address and resist social inequality . . . [or] be readily connected to progressive politics’ (p. 68). By demonstrating how a politics-based musicological framework limits our comprehension of death metal, Phillipov poses a more compelling question: what else has popular musicology (dis)missed?

Although the presence of ‘death metal’ in the title of the book may deter some non-specialists, Part I of the book is an insightful and focused critique of popular musicology. Contesting scholarly claims that heavy metal music is Neanderthal, reactionary, and misogynist, Phillipov offers a perceptive assessment of previous scholarship that places musical pleasure below political or social enjoyment, and points to the underlying political ideology of such studies as Robert Walser’s Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Middletown, Conn.,1993).

Her critique of hip-hop musicology (a term confused with ‘rap’ throughout the book) intensifies the argument: if politically charged lyrical content is the principal reason why people listen to hip-hop, how does this explain the racial, political, and social breadth of hip-hop fans? By dismissing the sizable white and/or middle-class audience for hip-hop (for whom ‘cultural-tourism’ is the primary appeal), scholars have engaged with hip-hop in a onesided way. The misconception that the political views expressed through music are reflected in the minds of fans is also questioned throughout the chapter on electronic dance music. Phillipov develops Luis-Manuel Garcia’s discussion of jouissance and repetition as an example of how a re-orientation of listening for what we class as valuable in music can lead us to understand different types of musical pleasure (‘On and On: Repetition as Process and Pleasure in Electronic Dance Music’, Music Theory Online, 11/4 (Oct. 2005), <http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.05.11.4/mto.05.11.4.garcia.html>.

Throughout the volume, Phillipov emphasizes that an ideological focus on politics has led previous scholars to overlook the complexity and nuances of death metal, and to view it instead as ‘bad music’. Chastising metal for a lack of political activism tells us nothing, she claims, about the musical pleasure that motivates audiences the world over. To demonstrate the weakness of previous approaches, she places them in a simple binary of ‘reactionary’ and ‘progressive’ views. This seems reasonable, given that many prior accounts of death metal have treated it as a social rather than musical phenomenon and have applied conventional moral judgements to it. But in that case, should the arguments be considered moral, rather than political?

The conclusions formulated in the literature review of the first part of the book shape the methodology of the analyses that make up the second part. The investigations are easy to follow: Phillipov’s love of the genre is evident in her use of language, and...

pdf

Share