Heavy Metal and Masculinity

'Brothers of metal

We are fighting with power and steel

Fighting for metal that's all that's real

Brothers of metal will always be there

Standing together with hands in the air'

Manowar, Brothers of metal pt.1, (1996)

Picture an 8 year old boy who, for the first time in his life, has just heard heavy metal music in the form of Metallica's 1991 hit Enter Sandman. It was a life changing experience. Be sure to know that the boy listened to that album religiously ever since.

I was that boy and that first experience with heavy metal was one of the biggest defining moments of my life. The song scared me to death but I was hooked. I'd never heard anything like it: it changed me. I was then introduced to the likes of Megadeth, Pantera and Sepultura. I was the only child in primary school on non-uniform days wearing my step-father's old Iron Maiden t-shirts. Most of my friends discovered and began liking heavy metal in their teens but for me it was much sooner. Now, 14 years later, the exact same disk sits in my CD rack amongst a horde of heavy metal albums. Heavy metal has been with me all these years at my side almost like a companion.

Heavy metal music is a strange phenomenon. It is often described as a lifestyle not just a genre of music, which, from personal experience, I can agree with 100%. Over the past few years heavy metal has been evolving for me personally. When I was younger, being one of the only people I knew who liked heavy metal, it was a lonely experience but as I've grown older and befriended more 'metalheads' it has become more about brotherhood. About union between heavy metal brothers.

My first heavy metal concert experience was Avenged Sevenfold in 2005 and I noticed a strange relationship between the 6000 or so strangers in the crowd. There was a sort of familiarity and friendship. It was a common love for heavy metal that brought everyone together. When one imagines the environment of a heavy metal concert, one cannot help but imagine a harsh, hostile place but that it is not. Even in mosh pits and circle pits if someone gets knocked to the floor, more often than not someone else will pick them back up. Yes, these activities are very violent but they are completely voluntary and seen as fun.

Never in my life have I experienced a feeling like the one I get when everyone in a concert crowd sings along with the band. The pinnacle of my gigging experience came in 2007 when I saw my heroes and favourite band, Metallica, at Wembley stadium. The show was a spectacle like non other with pyrotechnics galore. I felt connected to the 30,000 people in attendance as if we were witnessing something divine.

Heavy metal since its conception in the 70s has been a male dominated world and even though with todays ever growing female population within the heavy metal community, it is still predominantly male orientated. The reason for this has always been a mystery to me but as my musical knowledge of metal expends i realise that the bands are mostly men, they sing about stereotypically manly things. Basically, it's music by men, for men.

Has this effected me? Of course it has, I dress differently, I have learnt and have a keen interest in the electric guitar and I go out of my way to see my favourite bands. Admittedly these aren't characteristics only inherent in heavy metal but they are characteristics that have effected me.

“Metal is probably the last bastion of real rebellion, real masculinity, real, real men basically getting together and beating their chest. It’s perfectly alright for guys to go to a metal show, take their shirts off, and swing them above their heads, and go completely insane, instead of trying to be these like sensitive morons or whatever. Yeah, I love women and I’m, I’m totally respectful to them, but at the same time, I’m a guy, alright? I like hanging out with guys and doing dumb ****. It’s just that simple. I think metal is one of the few places where you can actually embrace that.”

Corey Taylor of Slipknot, an excerpt from Metal: A Headbanger's Journey (2005)

I believe that, to an extent, I agree with what Corey Taylor has said in this quote. Metal is one of the few bastions of masculinity in a primal sense. Men go to shows and let loose, they drink, binge and purge. I see it as aggression that has no real negative consequence. Metal has never had a negative effect on me in all of my 14 years of being a 'metalhead'.

Heavy metal will be with me forever and I will forever embrace it and everything that comes with it.

Here is a list of heavy metal songs that i find inspiring:

Metallica - entire back catalogue!

Manowar - Metal Warriors, Die for Metal, Brothers of Metal pt1, Heavy Metal, The Gods Made Heavy Metal

Megadeth - A Tout le Monde, Peace Sells, Sweating Bullets

Pantera - Hollow, Cemetary Gates, F**king Hostile

Nevermore - Heart Collector

Collaboration w/ Matthew Last

Matthew Last and I have been close friends for the past 3 years and have realised that we both work on similar veins. There are similar themes and elements in our work, resulting in the both of us deciding to do a collaborative project. Neither of us had any preconception of what it was that we wanted to achieve with this project. We started with a clean slate.
At the time of contemplating what it was we both wanted to do, we both wanted too include some sort of 'substance' to the work. Possibly inspired by Matthew Barney's use of Vaseline we wanted to work physically with these substances. Without discussion Matthew had decided that he wanted to use lard, for various reasons. I had decided that i wanted to use coal because of its strong connotations towards welsh heritage and the Valleys.
I decided that with my masculinity i should explore the history of my country and possible links towards masculinity i.e. mining, famous welshmen etc.

We decided to work in a room in the Sculpture department of our campus that has been dedicated to our area (Media Arts and Performance) Matthew has been working with this room for the best part of this year, this i felt created an already present relationship between us and the space. His previous work with the room involved the notion of 'claiming space'. That is what we'd continued to do with this room, we booked it out for full weeks so that no one else could use it. This gave us the freedom to do as we please with the room and come back the next morning with the room the way we left it.

I bought a number of bags of 'smokeless' coal from a local petrol station and Matthew had bought a dozen blocks of lard. Matthew had preconceptions of what it was that he wanted to do with his lard. He planned to melt the lard down block by block and toss the molten lard against a wall. We experimented for a few days in the room before we came to a conclusion what i wanted to do with my coal. I tried a number of different things, moving the coal around, braking it down, experimenting with it in relation to my body, trying to create a physical relationship with the substance.

Matthew and I discussed our substances and both realised that the relationship between them is that they are both burned for energy. Thus I realised what it was that i wanted to do with my coal, I wanted to burn it.

All of our work climaxed in a durational performance where I was located outside of the room that we had been working in, there I had a coal fire burning. As the coals reached a high temperature and begun to glow orange I, with a coal shovel, moved them into the sculpture installation room and placed them on a short platform for Matthew to use. On the platform was a constantly growing pile of hot coals where Matthew could heat up his blocks of lard. This created a very interesting process of wasting and recycling as I was wasting energy by burning coal to melt Matthew's lard which didn't serve it's normal purpose, but at the same time Matthew was recycling his lard by leaving it to dry then scraping it up and beginning the process over again.

Whilst working together we constantly considered the direction this project might go. The idea of tools was something that Matthew was particularly interested in, and I was interested in the imagery of fire. This led us to considering forging/smithing. We arranged inductions with the Sculpture department's technicians and began our discovery of blacksmithing.

For more information on Matthew Last visit his blog;

matthew-last.blogspot.com

Wales and the Welsh

Whilst reading a book called A to Z of Wales and the Welsh i discovered tones of interesting facts about Wales that i had never known.

Here is a list of a few that i picked out:

• The 3rd president of America, Thomas Jefferson was a welshman.
• 11 of America's presidents have come from welsh descent.
• Yale (university) derives from Ial, the village of Llanarmon yn Ial, near Wrexham in Clwyd. The Yales had a house here and David Yale was one of the pilgrim fathers who sailed to America.
• Bryn Mawr, the leading female college in the USA, is of welsh origins and Brown University, Rhode Island, was founded by a welshman, Morgan Edwards of Pontypool who died in Delaware in 1795.
• In the early 1800's, the Daniels family from Cardigan, with another welsh family, the Molows and started production of the Jack Daniels brind in Lynchburg, Tennessee.
• Hall of Fame country star (often appearing on Family Guy) Conway Twitty, was born Harold Lloyd Jenkins.
• Swansea Jack was a dog in the 1930s that famously saved the lives of people and other dogs in Swansea docks.
• Off the coast of Harlech in 1964 the oldest surviving life form in the world was found, the organism Kakabekia Barghoorn Iana, which has been in existence for 2000 million years.
• In 1536 the Act of Union stated that welsh cold no longer be used for legal or official purposes, so surnames had to be Anglicanised;
• Ap Robert - Probert
• Ap Hywel - Powell
• Ap Siencyn - Jenkins
• Ap Rhys - Price, Preece
• Ap Harry - Parry
• Ap Huw - Puw, Pugh
• Ap Henri - Penri
• Ap Evan - Bevan
• Ap Owen - Bowen
• Ioan - Jones
• The longbow was developed in Gwent.

The topic of how welsh names were anglicanised interested me which led me to find a list of a few welsh names;

Brangwyn, Cadwallader, Cadwaladr, Caradoc, Craddock, Cecil, Cethin - Gethin, Charles,

Clwyd, David, Davids, Davis, Davies, Dafydd, Dee, Dyfed, Edward, Edwards, Emyr, Evans,

Evan - Bevan, Eynon, Einion - Beynon, Gough, Gooch, Griffith, Griffiths, Gwynne, Wynn,

Gwynedd, Harry - Parri, Barry, Herbert, Henri - Penri, Hopkins, Howel, Howells,

Hywel - Powell, Hughes, Huw - Pugh, Puw, Iestyn, James, Jenkin, Jenkins, Jones, John,

Johns, Llywelyn, Lewelyn, Lewis, Lloyd, Loyd from llwyd 'grey', Madoc, Maddocks, Map,

Mapp - 'son', Mathew, Matthew, Medwyn, Medwin, Meredith, Meurig, Merrick, Morgan,

Morgans, Morris, Morus, Nash, Owen, Owens - Bowen, Phillips, Philip, Powys,

Rhydderch - Pritchard, Robert, Roberts - Probert, Rosser - Prosser, Rowlands, Samuel,

Samuels, Thomas, Tomos, Traherne, Tudor, Vaughan, Vivian, Watkins, Williams, Yale,

Ial, Yorath.

I feel that researching information about my welsh heritage is very important to my work, although the information i have gathered here is not directly related to my work.

Working Class Man

I have recently discovered a song by an Australian singer called Jimmy Barnes.
I found this song inspiring and quite relevant to my study and research. Topics such as the Vietnam War are subjects the i touched upon in my dissertation on masculinity and masculism within contemporary art.

Here is the song in full (not official music video)



...and here are the lyrics, enjoy.

working hard to make a living
bringing shelter from the rain
a fathers son left to carry on
blue denim in his vein
oh oh oh he's a working class man

well he's a steel town disciple
he's a legend of his kind
he's running like a cyclone
across the wild mid western sky
oh oh oh he's a working class man

he believes in god and Elvis
he gets out when he can
he did his time in Vietnam
still mad at uncle Sam
he's a simple man
with a heart of gold
in a complicated land
oh he's a working class man

well he loves a little woman
someday he'll make his wife
saving all the overtime
for the one love of his life
he ain't worried about tomorrow
cause he just made up his mind
life's too short for burning bridges
take it one day at a time
oh oh oh he's a working class man
oh oh oh he's a working class man
oh yeah
yes he is
well he's a working class man
oh
ma ma . . . . . . . i tell you he's a working class man

In The Beginning...Part 2.

After acknowledging the elements that have had a profound effect on my art practice in previous years, it had occurred to me that it is relative to personal experiences; growing up in a single-parent, working class environment. With the absence of a strong father figure my perception of masculinity had no solid foundation on which to build. My idea of masculinity was dependant on strangers and friends.
Realising this my work focused on the men in my family i had the most interaction with in my life, my uncles. These men i have always considered 'real men'. Most of them are 'Grafters', in that they have full time manual labour jobs. Manual labour jobs have traditionally been male dominated professions therefore creating perfect breeding ground for a masculine personality.
My intentions were, for that term, to experience this work and discover if it had any effect on my perception of masculinity.
I had arranged weekly visits with my uncle in Merthyr Tydfil to talk to him about his work. Being a man of all trades and having recently become unable to work, he was more than enthusiastic about our talks. He shared with me his stories of hard times and loving his work. One of the first things he said to me on my first visit were these words:
"Build it once, build it right"
I was duly inspired by these visits and decided to embark on building and bricklaying work. Having no previous experience with these trades it was a difficult indeed to grasp the techniques and skills required to do well.
One of the main aspects of the work ,to begin with, was that in these performances i was to undergo i would ask fellow men to aid me in the construction work. This was to exercise male bonding and learn first hand how men interacted in these situations. In a few experimental performances i built small brick constructions with the assistance of any men that happened to come to view the piece. These i felt were slightly compromised due to the fact that the only men who viewed the work were Friends of mine.

After these experiments I realised that I had to focus my attention to creating something constructive, something that actually had a purpose. I went through several ideas and at time of assessment had settled on the idea of building a barbecue from bricks. The building would be followed by a get together of sorts where i was to cook for my fellow students and staff members. The actual performance lasted 2 days. the first day to build the structure and the second to light and cook on the barbecue.

This piece, I feel was a good finale to that area of my work. I feel about the brick laying that I had a good go at it and found out that i was not that good. I realised that this was not the way that I wanted to continue my exploration of my masculinity.

I wanted to try and return to a more traditional, formal kind of performance.

In The Beginning...Part 1.

My masculinity, for as long as I can remember has been an area of much concern for me. Ever since I was young, seeing other men around me, I can remember thinking "Wow, i'll never me as manly as that guy".

For me being a 'real' man meant:

• Having facial hair
• Being exceptionally strong
• Having a muscular body
• Drinking Lager
• Driving a car
• Looking intimidating
  

All throughout my youth I feel that I have not, and even will not, fulfill these criteria. So if I cannot find my masculinity in what I would see as typical masculine traits, then am I not a masculine man?

I suppose it is my background that has had a vast influence on my perception of typical masculinity. Growing up in a working class, Rough area like Merthyr Tydfil skews your view of how people should and should not behave. For me Merthyr Tydfil is the type of place where being intimidating, driving a fast, loud car, consuming ridiculous amounts of alcohol and having a manual labour job are all elements that make you a respected (and often feared) figure of a man. This, I know is a narrow-minded view that seems to paint everyone of Merthyr Tydfil with the same brush, but from my personal experience of growing up there and living there for 20+ years, this is a very accurate description of the male population, no malice intended.
These influences have had a profound effect on my art practice. Since starting my BA (hons) degree in Fine Art there has been similar themes running throughout my performance work. There has always been some sort of aggression and the need to assert my presence within the space.

My first ever experince with performance is a prime example, where within a confined space I stood silently wearing a gas mask and overalls, waiting for the space to fill with on lookers. As the space began to fill I removed a small smoke grenade from one of my pockets and ignited it. Filling the confined area with pungent smoke while i stood there calmly amongst the gases.







Using this to assert my presence and masculinity was something that was unintended by my initial concepts. My work continued in various shapes and forms but all seemed to contain similar elements to each other; the use of tools/hardware, aggressive behaviour and assertion of my presence.

In a second year venue specific show, I concluded a series of performances that I had called 'Shut up Pig!'. In which i had a frozen pig's head on a table accompanied by an amplified wood saw. These performances took me through the area of shock and crass, aggressive imagery that, at the time, I thought the work was about. But in hind sight the work still contained the elements that have been the foundation to my work for the past 3 years.