What is it about?
This chapter investigates the complex and shifting relationships between heavy metal music and social class, both globally and within academic discourse. Eric Smialek outlines how metal’s association with working-class culture has historically been emphasized, especially in relation to deindustrialized regions like Birmingham and the U.S. Midwest. However, through geographic, discursive, and musical analysis, he shows that this narrative oversimplifies the diverse class dynamics found in metal scenes around the world. Drawing on case studies from regions like Latin America, Africa, and Asia, as well as musical examples from metal inspired by the numbers Pi and Phi, the chapter demonstrates how class intersects with race, education, access, and aesthetic choices in multifaceted ways. These distinctions are further mapped onto academic fields, where object-oriented disciplines like music theory often reflect white, male, and privileged demographics.
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Why is it important?
This chapter helpfully digests a large amount of literature on metal and social class. Smialek's work challenges the conventional framing of metal as inherently blue-collar and reveals how such narratives can obscure the global and local class-based complexities of the genre. The chapter illustrates how metal's aesthetics, especially in subgenres that emphasize technical complexity, align with white-collar sensibilities often shaped by institutional privilege. By contrasting activist-driven approaches in metal studies with more abstract or “apolitical” ones in music theory, the chapter calls for critical reflection on how academic and cultural institutions reinforce or resist social inequities. KEY TAKEAWAY: Metal’s relationship to class is not fixed or monolithic but is shaped by dynamic global conditions, academic paradigms, and aesthetic values that reveal deep entanglements between music, privilege, and power.
Perspectives
Writing the conclusion felt confessional. In it, I admit some surprise when metal studies prioritize human beings and seek to empower them. As a music analyst, I often think of music the same way I think of mathematics or astrophysics: as textual objects and processes first and traces of humanity second. While not shared by everyone, I think this does reflect a general difference between opposites explored in the chapter like prog/punk, white-collar/blue-collar, privileged/marginalized, and music theory/sociology.
Dr Eric Smialek
University of Huddersfield
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Mapping Social-Class Divisions within Metal: Global Material Conditions, Disciplinary Priorities, Subgeneric Trends, and Stylistic Analyses, January 2024, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-56506-9_7.
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