Abbey and Helb have collected essays culled from an international group of authors from various disciplines. The common thread of the volume is aggressive music--broadly construed. The topics of the essays range from punk to hardcore to heavy metal to so-called Krishnacore. The contributors discuss the music in terms of emotional release, an aggressive way of separating groups/races, and a noisy indictment of all things corporate . . . [L]inked by thematically by aggression in music, essays included vary widely. . . .Overall, Abbey, Helb, and the rest of the contributors do a fine job of exposing important, under-appreciated elements of music on the margins of mainstream culture. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers.

Choice Reviews

This collection of 10 chapters is a welcome addition to the increasingly diverse discourse around aggressive popular music. . . .These chapters examine hitherto overlooked artists and scenes using innovative methodologies.

Popular Music

Metalheads tend to distrust academia. We distrust the machine in all of its forms, and since the machine accepts academia, we believe the voice of academia is tainted by interest toward social acceptance. Academia also has a habit of finding ways to cram reality into its theories rather than the other way around. However, some academics make insightful contributions to the study of metal and Hardcore, Punk, and Other Junk: Aggressive Sounds in Contemporary Music provides an example of the best of this process. . . .On the whole, the book shows a new face for academia in looking into metal that is less afraid of certain areas of metal that are alien to what academia customarily writes about and may reject attitudes held by the majority of academics. The insight offered into the mechanics of metal and the associated symbols that it invokes also suggests new areas for academics and thinkers to pry into this interesting genre. Hardcore, Punk, and Other Junk: Aggressive Sounds in Contemporary Music lives up to its title and presents a window into the troubling questions that most would ignore raised by these dissident genres.

Death Metal Underground

This collection of essays, edited by Eric James Abbey and Colin Helb . . . could easily fit into any popular punk or metal magazine’s pages. . . .The historical essays — the history of Throbbing Gristle, as well as that of Krishnacore (and, specifically, Ray Cappo) lend the most complete and erudite examination of the aims and goals of two very different groups of musicians. They’re intriguing essays, and by far . . . appealing reads in the whole of the collection. . . .[A] solid collection of pieces that ably demonstrate aggressive music has more to offer than moshing and breakdowns.

Rock Star Journalist

This is a rich collection of essays that makes an important distinction between aggression, the purpose of which is release, and violence, the purpose of which is damage. I found the sweep of the book in topic and approach to be fascinating. Collecting essays on topics such as Sid Vicious, heavy metal in Puerto Rico, the noise scene, Hare Krishna hardcore punk, and the cult of Hellmouth, the editors are to be congratulated on their contribution to the too scant literature on aggressive music. A large achievement of the book is that it opens up possibilities for further study.

Thomas M. Kitts, professor of English, St. John's University

This collection is a lively and witty but also deeply researched attempt “to find,” in the words of co-editor Eric Abbey, “the similarities in diverse forms of [aggressive] music from noise to metal, punk to hardcore, and many things in-between.” Abbey and his co-editor Colin Helb have gathered ten high-caliber essays that decipher for the uninitiated the aesthetics and sociology of aggressive music being produced in unexpected locations, in unsuspected ways. Readers will be fascinated by the existence of a global “noise scene,” the culture behind Throbbing Gristle’s “extreme music,” the significance of black thrash and metal, the unlikely spectacle of Hare Krishna hardcore (three times a subculture) as explored by co-editor Colin Helb, and, in Abbey’s contribution, the vitality of hardcore punk as embodied by Detroit’s community-building Hellmouth. In this book Abbey and Helb, like the noise music they valorize, show mastery of their subject matter, taste in their selections, and conviction that hardcore, punk, and other junk are life-affirming forms of popular music.

Steven Hamelman, Coastal Carolina University