Heavy Metal and Postmodern Shamanism with David Burke

The Technosocial Institute

David Burke is a writer and critic.
In this conversation, we explore: heavy metal as a critical response to late capitalism and industrial society; the idea of the original metalheads as dark hippies, and what metalheads have evolved into; shamanism, esotericism and occultism; lyrical explorations of death, mortality and hedonism; black metal, terrorism, fascism and the aesthetics of death and occult iconography that often inform these movements; whether metal has a coherent political or theoretical project within it; heavy metal fashion and its roots in 60s, working class and gay culture; the self-mythologisation of metal as a reaction to postmodernity and the loss of cultural meaning; the sacred and the profane; a comparison between heavy metal and hip hop and their connections to class; the fluidity of performers and audiences within underground genres; metal concerts as postmodern shamanic circles; the Deleuzian notion of intensity as difference, and how this is reflected in metal; how heavy metal as an aesthetic of late industrialism and machinery is transposed into digital and the internet age; and how "heaviness" has become culturally canonized, and overflows into other genres and objects.

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Find David's writings here
https://soton.academia.edu/DavidBurke
https://astralnoizeuk.com/