Far from its sites of origin in the Global North, metal music thrives in the hands of musicians, fans, and scholars throughout other geographies of the world. Metal in the Global South, the latter defined as a geographical and symbolic space marked by the colonial dynamics of modernity, shines through in Defiant Sounds: Heavy Metal Music in the Global South. The volume brings together authors working from and/or with the Global South to reflect on the roles of metal music throughout their respective regions. With contributions spanning Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Oceania, and Indigenous Nations, the essays position metal music at the epicenter of region-specific experiences of oppression marked by colonialism, ethnic extermination, political persecution, and war. More importantly, the authors stress how metal music is used throughout the Global South to face these oppressive experiences, foster hope, and promote an agenda that seeks to build a better world. It may be that metal's greatest contribution to human emancipation will be in the years to come, in places its originators never imagined. This volume offers evidence of that contribution already taking place in the geographical and symbolic space that we respectfully and emphatically call the Distorted South.

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