Who Listens to “Metal for Girls”? Metal, Orchestra and Female Voices: Measuring the Reception of Symphonic Metal in France, Between Middle Class and Gender

First thought as an occidental, white, “blue-collar” and masculine “core”, the subcultural link between heavy metal and social class then appears to be variable, especially challenged by home country and subgenre. In Egypt, for example, heavy metal is mostly preferred by upper-class people, as “the rise of the subgenres […] [cannot directly] fit the same class profile of that ‘80s mainstream metal music”. This statement is also applicable to France: if metal seems to be liked by a majority of middle-class and qualified young adults, the relevance of this link may not be this evident while compared to the favorite subgenre: if the social class seems to explain the taste for doom (preferred by highly qualified people) and grind (preferred by non-qualified), it appears to be irrelevant in the case of black metal, mostly preferred by both, which can widen the variables of understanding metal beyond social class only. Gender is one of these variables. It appears to be the main articulation of a specific metal subgenre: symphonic metal. Born in Europe in the middle of the 1990s, it was crystallized as a genre and a scene in the middle of the 2000s, especially by its singers, female, more plentiful than in other metal subgenres. Supposed to mix orchestra and metal music, symphonic metal is sometimes linked to upper class but more significantly to “legions of female fans”, whose “gendered habitus” would predispose them to prefer this supposedly less extreme metal subgenre. But these statements are rarely checked by a proper study. Here, a questionnaire survey was submitted to symphonic metal listeners to compare variables and constant features among symphonic metal fans and haters. This survey first pictures symphonic metal listeners’ social morphology: as much men as women, these adults are mostly middle class, with university degrees. Then it shows that the subcultural unity of symphonic metal lies beyond its fans and its slight gendered variations, since some cultural values that are specific to this subgenre are significantly consistent regarding the representation of symphonic metal according to its fans as much as its haters. Orchestral music and the particular attention given to the voices are these persistent values that are especially more significant than the age, social class, gender or specific tastes of the respondents.