They Call Us Metalheads

I've previously mentioned my thesis about fans of metal music, which I completed in January this year, graded "pass with distinction", and finally I've managed to make it available for the public - i. e. you!

Its abstract (sort of scientifical rundown) is right here for you to behold. Please find a link to the whole thing in PDF-format further below.

Social groups primarily coherent of deviant taste in music and deviant lifestyles, thus riddled with mythopoeia, are a colourful and common contribution to (post)modern society and have long been subject for research in the Culture Sociology field. Although, some are more investigated than others. Studies on metalheads, i. e. fans of heavy metal music, are moderately few and the greater part focusing on an American audience, taking off in the moralpanic-stricken media debate during the 80’s.

In its English translation, “They Call Us Metalheads: a Culture Sociology Mapping of the Swedish Metal Public”, is most likely the first one on the Swedish metal audience. The study thoroughly makes concern of the values, ideals and lifestyles rooted among fans of heavy metal music, relating their cultural spot and aesthetics to the society in whole.

Through an extensive Internet-based questionnaire survey in the fall of 2006 – ranging from issues concerning social background and aesthetic taste to politics, religion as well as everyday practices and alcohol and drug consumption – the study’s quantitative foundation is built. This aiming to map out the group’s socio-structural composition, cultural preferences and practices, and to fulfill its main purpose: to make research into the up-to-here underexamined Swedish heavy metal public.

The collected data are overhauled empirical as well as theoretical analysis. The latter one using theories of Pierre Bourdieu, Göran Bolin and Sarah Thornton, amongst others, to outline the group’s internal and external relations in terms of identity, cultural ideals and social power structures.

Like similar subcultural elements in the society of today, the Swedish metalheads consist of white, moderately young and blue-collar males. Imbued with deviant and underground-ish aesthetic ideals the group rejects culture that is considered as commercial and legitimate, the prime reason being their need to rise against mainstream hegemony from a low position in the social hierarchy. In terms of aesthetics the group may therefore be referred to as anti-culture.

Through consumption of underground music and related culture products and practices the fans create their own aesthetic avantgarde, helping to maintain and legitimate their deviant ideals and developing both an individual and a collective identity. This may offer the group’s members intimacy as well as solid ideals and beliefs and ways to deal with weariness, resignation and spleen from confusion upon the complex postmodernity. Social hierachies within the group and its subgroups are based on the individuals’ degree of commitment to lifestyles reversed to the overall mainstream society, given the group’s anti-cultural status.

The thesis in its entirety is to be found here (only in Swedish, sorry!):

http://home.vxu.se/ajpfr02/dom_kallar_oss_hardrockare.pdf

Enjoy!

On Taxes

For those of you not too familiar with the insanely complex German tax system I’d like to shed some light on this matter. What the above (click the pic!) basically means is that in Bavaria, and Germany in general, you pay taxes to separated and sometimes private institutions, unlike at home where a lot of it is still centralized. I. e. the social insurance; in Sweden it’s state-run, more or less equal to everyone and included in your total %. In Germany, you get to choose between different private-run social insurance companies and between their different products respectively in order to find what suits your own special needs best.

All in all, I pay like 35 % of my income in taxes, which might not be a big difference to home. But once you’ve managed to decode the cryptic abbreviations and ciphers above you begin to realize that you pay shitload of money for nothing if you’re unmarried and childless.

I honestly think this is pretty goddamn ridiculous.

Of course, there’s some background to it; Bavaria and it’s capital, Munich, are the most prosperous parts of Germany and they are anxious to stay rich, so they also want you to stay right where you are. It’s like this: if you have less bonds to the region, like (well, quite) young and lost people like us, you’re more likely to move to search your luck elsewhere – you are taxed higher. If you instead choose to settle down and form a family and all that shit – you are taxed lower. And as the true God fans they are here, they marry.

To me, that’s not all fair play. Why through unjust means force youth, newly graduated students, international labour, etc, to more or less permanently give themselves to this place? Why not welcome them with somewhat reduced taxes? They obviously need it.

I hold nothing against taxes in general – I hail them; our taxes are the foundation for our welfare. Just look at the parts of the world where the taxes are the highest: the Nordic countries and western Europe, Canada and (at least a few states in) the US and other territories where society is built on similar welfare state-models. In terms of materialistic wealth and health most of us here lead good lives.

After all I didn’t come to Bavaria neither make money nor work my ass off so maybe I shouldn't be bitching too much, but still I can’t help to think of the greed of the city of Munich like a nail in the eye.

Predigested Piss Poem

urine of false truth
we drink

predigested piss
just shove it down my throat

in a squeaking squirrel wheel
we run and we run and we run

forcefed futile cycles

chewless and aimlessly
we run like mad

New Noise

Coldworker, Hate Eternal, Cryptopsy, Cult of Luna, Thorium, Havok, Malum, Belphegor, Deicide, Unleashed, Sideblast, Kataklysm, The Rotted, Meshuggah, Tiamat, Corporation 187, Demiurg, Aborted, Testament, Abysmal Dawn, Nasum live.........

God, there's so much cool shit coming these days!! Where the hell am I supposed to find time for all this!?

I still haven't had enough of the devastating last Rotten Sound.

"Making a less-consuming working class in the West will not help us at all when the South doubles the effects"
- Keijo Niinimaa

Letter to Mankind

(Please note: today I’m in a good mood)


Dear mankind,

have you ever heard of the butterfly effect?

Basically it means that everything and everyone is linked together, everything I do will affect someone and something else. Nothing new, of course, but still of frighteningly present interest. Just think of the below as yet another reminder.

The consequences of your actions doesn’t pay no attention whatsoever to territorial, organizational and personal borders. What goes around on earth, if not the universe, also comes around. What you do here affects someone else there. What you get for free someone else has to pay for. The responsibility is not his or hers, ours or theirs, it lies on all of us, every single man walking the earth. So, there’s no way out but to cooperate, all and everyone, otherwise we’ll go down alone.

And it’s so obvious! Even though you’re duped in a capitalistic, secular christian system, forcefed fucked up values and ideals, and your biggest passion is to senselessly consume everything that makes you not having to use your brain I know you know it. And I know you don’t wanna know it. I mean, just lift your gaze for once, will you?! This time no one but you can save yourself.

Your indolence will kill you. Thinking you driving your car, wasting energy and buying stuff shipped three rounds around the world “doesn’t matter, someone else will do it anyway” is but the most stupid thing ever. It fucking does matter. You can’t honestly tell me you actually believe it yourself. I mean, would you rob the bank, beat down the old lady, rape the neighbour’s daughter just because “sooner or later someone else will do it anyway”!? Don’t think so.

Outsourcing the earth works exactly the same. Your mother doesn’t belong to you, you belong to your mother. You fuck with her, she fucks with you.

So, dear mankind, fuck you for being so vain and so ignorant, for slowly killing yourself without understanding shit. That’s exactly where all your fears and your foolishness come from and where the root to all your abominations lies: your ignorance, your vanity, your pettiness and your indolence. See, you’re not cool, you’re not smart, you’re not sexy, you’re not strong, you’re not young, you’re not beautiful and for sure you’ve got no style. You’re just embarrasingly silly and no one likes you.

Always remember: just because you’re born into this world doesn’t mean you deserve your place in it.

Love,

Muffinstomach Johansson