Brutal belonging in Melbourne's grindcore scene

Abstract

I suggest sociality depends on affective encounters between individuals in particular spaces. Through an ethnography of Melbourne's grindcore death-metal scene, I examine how belonging in a music scene is constituted by scene members’ affective encounters. In particular, I suggest that a “brutal” disposition is necessary for cultivating the affective intensities necessary for experiencing belonging in the scene. Using scene members’ own understandings of “brutal” I shift from iconic representations of “brutality,” common in other metal scenes, toward a brutal affect. Here, brutality is experienced as a set of embodied intensities, difficult to articulate, but crucial to understanding how scene members cultivate belonging – in the grindcore scene, and in scenic spaces.