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

Wired for Sound is the first anthology to address the role of sound engineering technologies in the shaping of contemporary global music. Wired sound is at the basis of digital audio editing, multi-track recording, and other studio practices that have powerfully impacted the world's music. Distinctions between musicians and engineers increasingly blur, making it possible for people around the globe to imagine new sounds and construct new musical aesthetics. This collection of 11 essays employs primarily ethnographical, but also historical and psychological, approaches to examine a range of new, technology-intensive musics and musical practices such as: fusions of Indian film-song rhythms, heavy metal, and gamelan in Jakarta; urban Nepali pop which juxtaposes heavy metal, Tibetan Buddhist ritual chant, rap, and Himalayan folksongs; collaborations between Australian aboriginals and sound engineers; the production of "heaviness" in heavy metal music; and the production of the "Austin sound." This anthology is must reading for anyone interested in the global character of contemporary music technology.
CONTRIBUTORS: Harris M. Berger, Beverley Diamond, Cornelia Fales, Ingemar Grandin, Louise Meintjes, Frederick J. Moehn, Karl Neunfeldt, Timothy D. Taylor, Jeremy Wallach.