investigating ambiguity, controversy and marginal religiosity in black metal music. Previous research has explored configurations of noise and religion in extreme music, particularly in relation to audience discourses and practices. Owen's book, Mysticism, Ritual and Religion in Drone Metal (Bloomsbury Academic 2018) was awarded the IASPM Book Prize, and he co-runs Oaken Palace, a record label and registered charity that raises money for endangered species through releasing drone music.

researches violence, ambiguity and mysticism in popular music, particularly in relation to extreme music and noise. His monograph, Mysticism, Ritual and Religion in Drone Metal was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2018, and, in addition to contributing several articles to Metal Music Studies his work has appeared in

This article examines questions of genre in the translocal and marginal music culture of drone metal, a radically slow and extended form of metal founded on extremes of amplification, distortion and repetition. I examine the tentative formation of genre in connections forged between musicians and between recordings, establishing sonic and symbolic conventions. I note the deliberate associations with bands (notably Black Sabbath) which situated this music as metal. I then turn to the role of listener discourse in constituting genre, attending to listeners' experience of and communication about the key terms 'drone' and 'metal'. After noting the importance of vagueness and ambiguity in genre designations, particularly in drone metal's translocal marginality, I show that relevant genre characteristics for listeners include not just musical sounds, but also affective, experiential, embodied and conscious subjective states. Finally, I suggest that treating genre as a constellation of points, viewed in different but related ways from different standpoints, is particularly useful in understanding drone metal as a loosely constituted genre with fragmented, disparate and intermittently connected audiences.

This is the first extensive scholarly study of drone metal music and its religious associations, drawing on five years of ethnographic participant observation from more than 300 performances and 74 interviews, plus surveys, analyses of sound recordings, artwork and extensive online discourse about music. Owen Coggins shows that while many drone metal listeners identify as non-religious, their ways of engaging with and talking about drone metal are richly informed by mysticism, ritual and religion. He explores why language relating to mysticism and spiritual experience is so prevalent in drone metal culture and in discussion of musical experiences and practices of the genre. The author develops the work of Michel de Certeau to provide an empirically grounded theory of mysticism in popular culture. He argues that the marginality of the genre culture, together with the extremely abstract sound produces a focus on the listeners’ engagement with sound, and that this in turn creates a space for the open-ended exploration of religiosity in extreme states of bodily consciousness.

Themes involving witches and witchcraft have fascinated metal musicians and audiences throughout the history of the genre, perhaps especially so in the broad and long-running subgenre of doom metal. In particular, the idea of witchfinders has occupied the imagination of successive generations of doom musicians. I investigate the enduring appeal in doom metal of this marginal historical figure, showing how representations of witches and wizards complement the construction of the witchfinder. Though witchfinders may represent violent male control over female sexual power, and though cursory analysis of patterns of narrative closure in lyrics may suggest the dominance of this male control, I suggest that the ambiguous power of witchcraft is by no means domesticated, neutralized or resolved in doom metal. I examine four cases of witchfinder songs, from four different decades of the doom metal tradition: Coven’s ‘Coven in Charing Cross’ (1969); Witchfinder General’s self-titled song (1982); Cathedral’s ‘Hopkins, Witchfinder General’ (1995a); and Electric Wizard’s ‘I, the Witchfinder’ (2000). I discuss how identities and categories are disrupted in doom metal’s evocation of witchfinders and witchcraft, through destabilization of subject positions in song narratives, through the shifting relations between voice and sound, and through the consistent undermining of linear narrative through noise, rupture and cyclical returns. While the witchfinder is frequently evoked as a figure of control over witches, I show that witchcraft may yet subvert subjective identity, destabilize narrative, and escape control through its ambiguous relation with power.