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