During the past three decades, heavy metal music has gone global, becoming a potent source of meaning and identity for devoted fans around the world. In "Metal Rules the Globe," ethnographers and some of the foremost authorities in the burgeoning field of metal studies analyze this dramatic expansion of heavy metal music and culture. They take readers inside metal scenes in Brazil, Canada, Easter Island, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Malta, Nepal, Norway, Singapore, Slovenia, and the United States, describing how the sounds of heavy metal and the meanings that metalheads attribute to them vary from culture to culture. The contributors explore heavy metal fandom in relation to masculinity, race, ethnicity, class, and the music industry, and as a means for disenfranchised youth to negotiate modernity and social change. Their essays reveal metal fans as likely to criticize the consumerism, class divisiveness, and uneven development of globalization as they are to reject traditional norms of behavior. Crucially, the contributors never lose sight of the sense of community and sonic pleasure to be experienced in the distorted, pounding, amplified sounds of local metal scenes.

"Contributors." Idelber Avelar, Albert Bell, Dan Bendrups, Harris M. Berger, Paul D. Greene, Ross Hagen, Sharon Hochhauser, Shuhei Hosokawa, Keith Kahn-Harris, Kei Kawano, Rajko Mursič, Steve Waksman, Jeremy Wallach, Robert Walser, Deena Weinstein, Cynthia P. Wong

The notion of "everyday life" is ubiquitous in the contemporary intellectual scene. While scholars frequently use this concept to signal a romantic return to the "common people," Berger and Del Negro are among the first to subject the term to theoretical scrutiny. This book explores how everyday life has been used in three intellectual traditions (American folklore, British cultural studies and French everyday life theory) and suggests a program for revitalizing anti-elitist approaches to culture.
The book draws on studies of performance from around the globe, including the authors' work on heavy metal in the U.S. and the Italian passeggiata (ritual promenade), to explore the term "identity." Moving beyond truisms that depict performance as a medium for the loss of self or folklore as means of expressing identity, the authors explore the interplay of culture and agency in performance to illuminate the complex dynamics of reflexivity, identity and self. This book will speak to anyone interested in power and aesthetics in performance.

This vivid ethnography of the musical lives of heavy metal, rock, and jazz musicians in Cleveland and Akron, Ohio shows how musicians engage with the world of sound to forge meaningful experiences of music. Unlike most popular music studies, which only provide a scholar's view, this book is based on intensive fieldwork and hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews. Rich descriptions of the musical life of metal bars and jazz clubs get readers close to the people who make and listen to the music.
Of special interest are Harris M. Berger's interviews with Timmy "The Ripper" Owens, now famous as lead singer for the pioneering heavy metal band, Judas Priest. Owens and other performers share their own experiences of the music, thereby challenging traditional notions of harmony and musical structure. Using ideas from practice theory and phenomenology, Berger shows that musical perception is a kind of practice, both creatively achieved by the listener and profoundly informed by social context.