Eric James Abbey - Hardcore, Punk, and Other Junk: Aggressive Sounds in Contemporary Music

Eric Abbey is a professor of English and Literature at Oakland Community College in Michigan. He is the author of Garage Rock and Its Roots: Musical Rebels and the Drive for Individuality (McFarland, 2006). Eric also plays keyboards and sings with Michigan-based dub reggae band 1592.

Sean Ahern is a graduate student in the American Studies program at The University at Buffalo in New York. Seans research interests include music scenes, punk studies, sports fandom, and geek culture. A graduate of the Communication Studies program at Colby-Sawyer College and the Popular Culture Studies graduate program at Bowling Green State University, Aherns masters thesis looked at mass-media images within the music of The Clash. Sean has presented his work at the National Communication Association Annual Convention, the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference, and the National University of Ireland at Galway. Seans work on geek culture and the Scott Pilgrim series has been published online by O13Media (Oltremedia) at Roma Tre University. Sean serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Fandom Studies.

Brian Cogan, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communications at Molloy College in Long Island, New York. He is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of numerous books, articles, and anthologies on popular culture, music, and the media. His specific areas of research interest are media studies, music, fandom, punk rock, popular culture, comic books, graphic novels, and the intersection of politics and popular culture. He is best known as the author of The Encyclopedia of Punk (Sterling 2008). He is currently co-writing the autobiography of legendary punk drummer Marky Ramone.

Mika Elovaara, PhD is an author, teacher, coach, a former professional athlete, and a lifelong fan of punk and metal. He has presented numerous articles on punk and metal at regional, national and international conferences; written a variety of publications from encyclopedia articles for The Encyclopedia of American Music and Culture to ESL textbooks and research monographs, and is currently working on an extensive book on the meaning of metal, based on his five years of empirical research. Dr. Elovaaras courses include The Political Voice of Punk, (Mis)Understanding Music: Hip-Hop, Punk and Metal, and Cultural Studies in Music: The Legacy of Legends for graduate students. Mika is also a board member and reviewer for the Journal of American Culture.

Marcus Erbe, PhD is a Research Associate (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) for Contemporary Music Studies at the University of Cologne, Germany. His PhD dissertation on the problem of transcribing electroacoustic music was awarded the 2011 prize by the Offermann-Hergarten Foundation. Dr. Erbes research includes metal culture, contemporary music history, as well as media and art theory. He also writes for Ox Fanzine. A recent article titled This Isnt Over Till I Say Its Over: Narratives of Male Frustration in Deathcore and Beyond is available online.

Kevin Fellezs, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Music at Columbia University, where he shares a joint appointment in the Institute for Research in African-American Studies. He is the author of Birds of Fire: Jazz, Rock, Funk and the Creation of Fusion (Duke University Press), a study of fusion (jazz-rock-funk) music of the 1970s. Fellezs has published articles in Jazz Perspectives, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Popular Music History, and the Institute for Studies in American Music Newsletter. He has also published essays in a number of edited anthologies including Heavy Metal: Controversies and Countercultures (Equinox).

Ross Hagen, PhD is a lecturer in Music History at Utah Valley University in Orem, UT. He received his B.A. in Music at Davidson College, N.C. in 2001, and his masters (2005) and PhD (2010) degrees in Musicology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Hagens research deals primarily with music fandom and intersections between popular music and the artistic avant-garde. Publications include a chapter in the book Metal Rules the Globe (Duke University Press, 2012) and entries in the Grove Encyclopedia of American Music and the Encyclopedia of American Music and Culture. Hagen has also presented papers at national conferences for the Society for Ethnomusicology, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, and the Popular Culture Society. In addition to his academic work, Hagen has composed music and sound cues for several UVU theatrical productions and has released around a dozen albums on various independent record labels. Hagen is a decent bassist, an okay guitarist, and a recovering oboist.

Colin Helb, PhD is an assistant professor of communications at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. His research focuses on issues of identity and culture in semiprofessional and localized music scenes. Colin runs the net.label Cornslaw Industries and records and performs under a variety of names.

Eliut R. Rivera-Segarra is a clinical psychology student at the Ponce School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Puerto Rico. His research interests include stigma theory, religion and heavy metal studies. Rivera-Segarra has presented his work on heavy metal studies at the Convention of the Puerto Rican Psychological Association and the EMP Pop Conference.

Nelson Varas-Daz, PhD is a social psychologist and an Associate Professor at the University of Puerto Rico. Varas-Dazs work on social stigma and communal identities has appeared in the Interamerican Journal of Psychology, Qualitative Health Research, American Journal of Community Psychology, AIDS Education & Prevention, Qualitative Report, and Global Public Health. He has engaged his previous research experience in the field of heavy metal studies and published a chapter on the contributions of progressive metal of social stigma theory in Can I Play with Madness? Metal, Dissonance, Madness and Alienation, edited by Colin A. McKinnon, Niall Scott and Kristen Sollee. Dr. Varas-Daz is currently the principal investigator for the first systematic study of the heavy metal subculture in the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico.

Jeremy Wallach, PhD is an ethnomusicologist and anthropologist specializing in popular music, Dr. Wallach is Associate Professor in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University, author of Modern Noise, Fluid Genres: Popular Music in Indonesia, 19972001 (Wisconsin, 2008) and coeditor of Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal around the World (Duke, 2011). His research interests include music and technology, Southeast Asia, world beat, punk, hardcore, and metal.

Evan Ware is a composer, music theorist, and doctoral candidate in the Music Theory and Composition program at University of Michigan working with Bright Sheng, Kristin Kuster, Karen Fournier, Walter Everett, and Joseph Lam. Evan is currently working on a dissertation about how the various covers of My Way shed light on the ways in which meaning arises in the creation, performance, and reception of music. In addition to his academic studies, he devotes his time to studying Zen through meditation and kendo.

Eric Abbey would like to first and foremost thank Ann, Owen and Brendan for being a part of everything that I do and for the space to write. This collection would not have been possible without my co-editor Colin Helb and his dedicated work. To Tom Kitts for mentorship and being a great friend, thank you. To everyone involved with the PCA/ACA organizations around the world, thank you as well for continuing to inspire people to research and write on topics that they love. For the contributors to this collection, it was great to work with so many different and exciting viewpoints from around the world. Thank you for your work and for putting up with us throughout the process. To Emily Natsios, Eric Wrona, and everyone at Lexington Books for seeing the potential in this collection and seeing it through to completion, thank you as well. Thank you to Maggie Lin for her extremely hard work on indexing and finishing up the book. Lastly, to everyone that loves aggressive music and the feeling they get from being in a pit, enjoy.