World's first heavy metal conference hits Salzburg
The quaint alpine city of Salzburg is used to two kinds of musical visitors: fans of Mozart or the Sound of Music. It is, after all, the birthplace of both.
Next week, however, musical devotees of an altogether different sort will assemble under its baroque towers - and they'll be sporting ponytails, leather jackets, boots and black t-shirts emblazoned with images of skulls and gore.
Salzburg will be host to the world's first scholarly conference on heavy metal, the brainchild of UK academic Dr Niall Scott.
Headbangers from universities in Britain, Turkey, Canada and Indonesia will present research papers on heavy metal aesthetics, sub-cultures and politics.
Their studies will include "comparative empirical studies" on bands such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Metallica.
Research papers include Suicide, Booze and Loud Guitars: The Ethical Problem of Heavy Metal; Controlled Anger and the Expression of Intensity and Authenticity in Post-modern Heavy Metal; and Heavy Metal in a Muslim Context: The Rise of the Turkish Metal Underground.
Scott, a senior lecturer in ethics at the University of Central Lancashire and a proud metalhead, said it was time to "recognise heavy metal's contribution to western society".
He said the metal scene was not the "teenage activity" worthy of ridicule some see it as, but instead a "barometer of what is happening at the extreme edges of political and youth cultures".
"It's a movement that maintains extremism in art and culture for its subversion, controversies and silliness," Scott said.
At least 120 scholars around the world now research heavy metal culture and music - once dubbed the "sensory equivalent of war". It has been growing as an academic discipline since the early 90s.
Scott said some of the generation who grew up in the late 1970s with the new wave of British heavy metal - a movement which reacted against the artifice of contemporary pop - were now scholars.
Keith Kahn-Harris, a research associate at the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths, University of London, will be presenting a paper on Jewish metalheads.
He said the growth in the study of popular music had helped make people aware of heavy metal's contribution to culture and counter its "bad reputation". Headbangers are often associated with nationalism, violence, sexism and machismo.
"It is a very interesting way of looking at globalisation and esoteric ideas of death and destruction," he said.
Some 40 academics will attend the Heavy Fundametalisms conference, almost all of whom will present papers. Almost double that number applied
