Heavy Metal Music, Texts, and

Nationhood: (Re)sounding Whiteness

1st Edition Catherine Hoad
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/heavy-metal-music-texts-and-nationhood-resounding-
whiteness-1st-edition-catherine-hoad/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Metal on Merseyside : Music Scenes, Community and

Locality 1st Edition Nedim Hassan

https://ebookmass.com/product/metal-on-merseyside-music-scenes-
community-and-locality-1st-edition-nedim-hassan/

Multiculturalism, Whiteness and Otherness in Australia

1st ed. Edition Jon Stratton

https://ebookmass.com/product/multiculturalism-whiteness-and-
otherness-in-australia-1st-ed-edition-jon-stratton/

Heavy Weather Sailing, 8th Edition Martin Thomas

https://ebookmass.com/product/heavy-weather-sailing-8th-edition-
martin-thomas/

Performing Nationhood: The Emotional Roots of Swadeshi

Nationhood in Bengal, 1905-1912 Mimasha Pandit

https://ebookmass.com/product/performing-nationhood-the-
emotional-roots-of-swadeshi-nationhood-in-
bengal-1905-1912-mimasha-pandit/
Metal Oxide-Based Nanofibers and Their Applications
Esposito V.

https://ebookmass.com/product/metal-oxide-based-nanofibers-and-
their-applications-esposito-v/

Mortal Music Ann Parker

https://ebookmass.com/product/mortal-music-ann-parker-2/

Metal Oxide Powder Technologies: Fundamentals,

Processing Methods and Applications (Metal Oxides) 1st
Edition Yarub Al-Douri (Editor)

https://ebookmass.com/product/metal-oxide-powder-technologies-
fundamentals-processing-methods-and-applications-metal-
oxides-1st-edition-yarub-al-douri-editor/

Nigerian Literary Imagination and the Nationhood

Project Toyin Falola

https://ebookmass.com/product/nigerian-literary-imagination-and-
the-nationhood-project-toyin-falola/

Metal-free synthetic organic dyes Kruger

https://ebookmass.com/product/metal-free-synthetic-organic-dyes-
kruger/
LEISURE STUDIES IN A GLOBAL ERA

Heavy Metal Music,

Texts, and Nationhood
(Re)sounding Whiteness

Catherine Hoad
 Leisure Studies in a Global Era

Series Editors
Karl Spracklen, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK
Karen Fox, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
In this book series, we defend leisure as a meaningful, theoretical, framing
concept; and critical studies of leisure as a worthwhile intellectual and
pedagogical activity. This is what makes this book series distinctive: we
want to enhance the discipline of leisure studies and open it up to a
richer range of ideas; and, conversely, we want sociology, cultural geogra-
phies and other social sciences and humanities to open up to engaging
with critical and rigorous arguments from leisure studies. Getting beyond
concerns about the grand project of leisure, we will use the series to
demonstrate that leisure theory is central to understanding wider debates
about identity, postmodernity and globalisation in contemporary soci-
eties across the world. The series combines the search for local, qualita-
tively rich accounts of everyday leisure with the international reach of
debates in politics, leisure and social and cultural theory. In doing this,
we will show that critical studies of leisure can and should continue to
play a central role in understanding society. The scope will be global,
striving to be truly international and truly diverse in the range of authors
and topics.

Editorial Board
John Connell, Professor of Geography, University of Sydney, USA
Yoshitaka Mori, Associate Professor, Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan
Smitha Radhakrishnan, Assistant Professor, Wellesley College, USA
Diane M. Samdahl, Professor of Recreation and Leisure Studies, Univer-
sity of Georgia, USA
Chiung-Tzu Lucetta Tsai, Associate Professor, National Taipei University,
Taiwan
Walter van Beek, Professor of Anthropology and Religion, Tilburg
University, The Netherlands
Sharon D. Welch, Professor of Religion and Society, Meadville Theolog-
ical School, Chicago, USA
Leslie Witz, Professor of History, University of the Western Cape, South
Africa

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14823
 Catherine Hoad

Heavy Metal Music,

Texts,
and Nationhood
(Re)sounding Whiteness
Catherine Hoad
College of Creative Arts
Massey University
Wellington, New Zealand

Leisure Studies in a Global Era

ISBN 978-3-030-67618-6 ISBN 978-3-030-67619-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67619-3

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,
whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting,
reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical
way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software,
or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained
herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with
regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland
AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgements

This book came together in what has probably been the strangest year of
my life. When I returned home to Australia for Christmas in late 2019,
the fires raging through my home state seemed all-encompassing; their
impact too overwhelming to fathom. Now, in September of 2020, the
fires seem a distant memory. Back in Aotearoa, life has been brought to a
standstill by the COVID-19 pandemic in many ways, but global politics
seems to surge on in increasingly troubling forms. Attempting to write a
book under these conditions has been interesting, to say the least.
This research has its roots in my Ph.D. studies, which I completed in
2016. Metal has changed and developed in myriad ways in the period
since I first became interested in how these themes of nationalism, colo-
niality and Whiteness manifest in metal’s texts, practices and discourses.
Nevertheless, scenes worldwide continue to offer complex and engaging
sites for analysis, which has expanded the bounds of my original doctoral
research. I want to thank Rosemary Overell and Pauwke Berkers for their
encouragement to pursue this work beyond my Ph.D. I also wish to
extend my deep gratitude to Dr. Ian Collinson, who was my supervisor
in this time, and who has continued to be a great support and friend in
the years since I completed my studies.

v
vi Acknowledgements

I am enormously grateful to my colleagues and friends at Massey

University, particularly Bridget and Birgit, who have been incred-
ibly supportive over this book-writing adventure, and also wonderfully
patient with me as I waded through the depths of editing misery. I am
hugely thankful to the wonderful editorial team at Palgrave for their
understanding and guidance throughout this process, particularly Balaji
and Sharla, and a special mention to Karl Spracklen, who, like another
bearded theorist named Karl, has been an academic hero of mine since I
first discovered his work.
Finally, I want to thank my mum, dad and brother, from whom I’ve
been separated by virtue of closed borders for the better part of a year.
Thank you for playing Sabbath and Dio on repeat during my formative
years; for never batting an eyelid when I said I wanted to do a Ph.D. in
metal; and for always being there for me. I love you and hope that by the
time this is published, I can deliver a copy to you in person.

September 2020 Catherine Hoad

 Contents

1 Introduction 1
2 Mapping Representation in Metal Music Studies 17
3 Norwegian Black Metal and Viking Metal 59
4 Afrikaans Metal in Post-Apartheid South Africa 109
5 Normophilia and Banal Nationalism in Australian
Extreme Metal 151
6 (Re)sounding, (re)sealing: Translocal Terrains
of Whiteness across Norway, South Africa
and Australia 197
7 Conclusion 245

Index 257

vii
 1
Introduction

All you white kids out there, let me tell you something that no other
motherfucking band, no other white band, in the world has any guts to
say. I’m just saying right now, when you wake up in the motherfucking
morning, and you look at yourself in the goddamn mirror, hey, have all
the fucking pride in your heart man, have all the fucking pride in the
world man. Because we are the great people and hey, you know what,
maybe, just maybe, tonight is a white thing.
—Philip H. Anselmo, Montreal, March 4th 1995.

This lengthy speech by Pantera’s then-frontman Phil Anselmo occurred

during a break in their set on the Canadian leg of the band’s ‘Far Beyond
Touring’ world tour. Pantera were not a racist band, Anselmo declared,
but he had a ‘problem’ with ‘black culture’, which he believed advo-
cated the killing of white people. On face value, this drunken tirade by
Anselmo—one for which he later apologised, and repeatedly attempted
to distance himself from—was an early example in a longer line of prob-
lematic, if naïve, racial rhetoric from the frontman of one of metal’s
biggest acts.1 Anselmo and Pantera had capitalised upon their own

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
C. Hoad, Heavy Metal Music, Texts, and Nationhood,
Leisure Studies in a Global Era,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67619-3_1
2 C. Hoad

self-crafted image as cowboys from hell, ‘good ol’ Southern boys’ who
espoused heritage, not hate; whose lead guitarist shredded on a custom-
designed guitar bearing the Confederate flag, and whose merchandise
had long born this symbol.2 This five minute monologue, punctuated
throughout by loud cheering from the crowd, was perhaps more notable
for its tacit assumptions than Anselmo’s outright declarations that white
men were victims of discrimination. It was Anselmo’s direct categori-
sation of Pantera as a ‘white band’, his confidence in addressing his
audience as a uniformly white ‘we’. Most significant of all, it was the
statement that tonight, a heavy metal concert in one of the biggest cities
in North America, was ‘a white thing’.
Anselmo’s now 25-year-old characterisation of metal as a ‘white thing’
remains a source of deep interest to me, as it taps in to a broader and
immeasurably complex problem of how whiteness has been discussed
and understood within heavy metal music, both as a site of academic
inquiry and force of cultural significance. The apparent demographic
abundance of young white men within metal is a common feature
of scholarly and popular appraisals of the genre, but the political and
cultural significance of such whiteness has gone largely uninterrogated.
Furthermore, the global circulation of heavy metal has meant that claims
as to the large-scale whiteness of metal’s audience need revaluation, if not
total deconstruction. Metal has nonetheless remained a white-dominated
discourse, and white hegemony is deeply entrenched in the dominant
ways of thinking about and representing heavy metal. Similarly, that
Anselmo’s Montreal speech is still referenced and the video shared by
mainstream metal press such as Loudwire, Blabbermouth and Metal
Hammer more than two decades on, and continues to invoke conver-
sation and debate amongst scene members, suggests a great deal about
the complicity of texts in sustaining such discourses. Following this, in
this book I ask how, when metal bands and fans are present in every
continent, has metal maintained a reputation as a ‘white’ genre? More-
over, how has white metal masculinity been affixed as the ‘norm’, when
women and persons of colour constitute visible and vital presences within
scenes? Metal is a global genre, but its whiteness is continually imbued
with an instrumental significance.
 1 Introduction 3

The goal of this book is twofold: to negotiate scholarly ways of

addressing representations of whiteness in metal that move beyond
discussions of demographics, virtuosity and spectacular racism, and to
critically engage with texts as key carriers of instrumental white hege-
mony within metal scenes. The title here is thus a play on the duality
of (re)sounding: whiteness resounds in metal’s dominant histories, yet
the genre itself constantly renegotiates the musicocultural sounds of such
whiteness, and attempts at re-sounding accordingly. The book argues
that the whiteness and white heteromasculinity of heavy metal emerges
across disparate locales as an expression of a series of distinct, nationally-
situated projects. Such projects are realised, in my analysis, through the
procession of texts which are produced within and shape the histories
of specific heavy metal scenes. Norman Fairclough (1992) pointed out
that texts serve an ideological purpose of naming or wording the social
and natural world, shaping them for particular purposes and in the inter-
ests of certain privileged groups (185–190). As a form of social practice,
the construction and transmission of knowledge through texts is tied
to specific historical and sociocultural contexts, and, as Yongbing Liu
has argued, texts are a core means by which existing social relations are
produced or contested, and different interests are served (Liu, 2008: 59).
In this way, this book draws on a longer tradition in critical
theory which argues that texts are intrinsically tied to the construction
and maintenance of national identity (Anderson, 1991; Hall, 1997).
However, I also draw this relationship into focus through its intersec-
tions with whiteness, where texts are similarly essential to the imagining
and representation of whiteness as a social, cultural and political cate-
gory (Burton, 2009). The objective of my work here is thus to unveil
the (in)visibility of whiteness within heavy metal scenes, and indicate
how such whitenesses are deployed within particular countries, as both
explicit political violence and instrumental hegemony. In particular, I
look to examples from Norway, South Africa and Australia to consider
the ways in which whiteness has emerged and been both negotiated and
contested in the textual practices of specific metallic communities in
these nations.
Through examining texts emergent from these distinct metal scenes,
this book explores three key forms of nationalism—Norway’s monstrous
4 C. Hoad

nationalism, South Africa’s resistant nationalism and Australia’s banal

nationalism—through which processions of whiteness are realised and
articulated. These three forms are not demonstrative or exhaustive of
the metallic discourses in these countries, but they serve as pertinent
examples of the ways in which national, gendered and ethnicised poli-
tics become entangled within scenes, and reproduced and reconstructed
in and through texts. Such constellations of whiteness and nationhood
have enabled both tacit and explicit constructions of exclusionary white-
ness to foster a sense of community formed through collective memory
and territory. These scenes, as I explore, are demonstrative of the ways
in which white inflections inform the texts and practices of heavy metal
scenes, and the specifically local whitenesses manifest within them.
This book is concerned with interrogating the means through which
whiteness gains expression in distinct cultural contexts, the national
specificity with which whiteness is valorised in certain segments of metal
scenes, and how disparate national identities are both tacitly and explic-
itly tied to white heteromasculine identity. In doing so, I emphasise
from the outset that I do not conceive of heavy metal, nor whiteness, as
inherently racist.3 Such an immediate reactionary definition ignores the
political and structural complexities of whiteness in its most tacit mani-
festations. I also do not suggest that scene members in Norway, South
Africa and Australia ought to conceive of their generic and cultural histo-
ries and present as overtly (or even necessarily covertly) racist. Nor does
this research emerge as a call to deny white people, including the bands
and individuals mentioned throughout, an identity either in metal, or at
large. White people are a material reality—however, it is the way they are
thought of as being white that makes the difference (Blaagaard, 2006: 4).
The ways in which metal is ‘thought of as being white’, in both schol-
arly research and popular texts, is hence core to my analysis. In this way
I am indebted to the ongoing interventions provided by Karl Spracklen
(2020), who has done the vital groundwork of showing how metal music
might be seen as a leisure space that resist the norms and values of the
mainstream; but might also serve to re-affirm and construct those norms
and values.
 1 Introduction 5

The objective here is not to refuse white people the right to group
identification and belonging, or to demand that white people eradi-
cate all identity and hereditary connections (Outlaw, 2004: 167–168),
but instead to observe how whiteness and its embedded ideologies have
operated as central structuring frameworks for metal culture, even as the
genre continues to expand. The normalisation, construction and perfor-
mance of narrow imaginings of whiteness, masculinity and nationhood
within heavy metal texts can have profound, pervasive and system-
atic oppressive consequences for non-white people, women and Queer
communities. This research also responds to a long-standing trend
in Metal Music Studies wherein whiteness has been perceived of as
largely unified or hegemonic. The quest in pointing to the fragmen-
tation and multiplicity of whitenesses across three different countries
is to deconstruct this notion of uniformity, and call into question the
strategic political position that emerges in treating whiteness as a uniform
category.

Metal and Critical Whiteness Studies

Tracking the linked dimensions of whiteness that emerge within metal
scenes, texts and scholarship necessitates, in the first instance, a crit-
ical foregrounding of ‘whiteness’ itself. I draw from previous schol-
arly work which situates whiteness as a particular structural location;
as a ‘standpoint’ from which white people look at themselves, at
others and at society; and a set of cultural practices that are usually
unmarked and unnamed (Frankenberg, 1993: 1). Whiteness furthermore
emerges as a multiplicity of identities that are historically-grounded, class
specific, politically manipulated and gendered social locations (Twine &
Gallagher, 2008: 6). Analyses of whiteness must address cultural sites
such as music scenes as ‘popular spaces where collective white identities
are produced and white identities normalised’ (Twine & Gallagher, 2008:
15). Metal Music Studies must reveal not only whiteness, but whitenesses
as they emerge through specific geographic, demographic, cultural and
political discourses.
6 C. Hoad

Much as this book is an interrogation of how metal and white-

ness function in different national contexts, it also serves as a study
of how Metal Music Studies, as an academic field, has been—perhaps
unwittingly—complicit in the continued imagining of metal’s ostensibly
‘inherent’ whiteness. Where Metal Music Studies has gained traction as
an interdisciplinary subject field committed to research and developing
theory surrounding heavy metal music, scenes, communities, cultures
and practices, the field has until recently lacked sustained critiques of
metal’s reputation as a ‘white musical genre’ (Bayer, 2009: 185). More-
over, Metal Music Studies itself is of central importance to understanding
the role of music cultures across the globe. There are over one hundred
thousand heavy metal bands worldwide,4 and fans themselves number
in the millions. Metal fans are the most loyal listeners worldwide (van
Buskirk, 2015) and the centrality of metal to daily cultural life for indi-
viduals and communities across hundreds of nations indicates that it
is a genre of substantial cultural significance and creative force. Metal
has been conspicuous in its ability to mobilise sentiments of national
and ethnic identity. It is thus vital for Metal Music Studies to address
the implications of its own complicity in constructing and representing
heavy metal as a white-dominated, masculine space.
Heavy metal is a discourse dominated by whiteness, and white hege-
mony has long been deeply entrenched in the dominant ways of
representing metal music, cultures and practices. Metal is a site that
both enables a tradition of exclusion and nostalgic (re)production of
purity, yet also defines its whiteness through dominant images of white
musicians, industry workers and racialised marketing tools (Spracklen,
2013a). Such definitions and representations are thus the sites through
which ‘collective white identities are produced and white identities
normalised’, to look again to Twine and Gallagher (2008: 15). Metal’s
whiteness has been affixed with normative value, and hence its mech-
anisms are rendered invisible. The task I want to mount in this book
is then to dismantle the representational hegemony of whiteness within
metal scenes, and map how such textual processions of whiteness are
deployed with national specificity.
This research owes a debt to the critical work which has preceded and
heavily influenced it. I speak particularly of Robert Walser’s declaration
 1 Introduction 7

that the generic cohesion of heavy metal depends upon the ‘desire of
young white male performers and fans to hear and believe in certain
stories about the nature of masculinity’ (1993: 110), and Karl Spracklen’s
mapping of how metal constructs a hegemonic whiteness (2010, 2013a,
2013b, 2015, 2020) that is sustained along classed, raced and gendered
lines which cater to a national imaginary, and maintains an imagined
community (Lucas et al., 2011; Spracklen et al., 2014). Mapping how
metal’s texts offer a canon through which fans are able to ‘hear and
believe’ these stories, and their subsequent role in maintaining an imag-
ined community, is core to the work I want to enact here. Furthermore,
mapping how the nature of these textual dynamics shift across contexts
and national histories is core to this work, where the instrumental white-
ness of heavy metal scenes across disparate locales is yet to be adequately
critiqued or acknowledged in the wider field.
Previous research into the political and cultural significance of white-
ness in popular music has largely focused on the cultural politics of punk
(e.g. Duncombe & Tremblay, 2011), pop (Stras, 2010) and rock (Frith,
[1978] 1987). The understandings of the politics of whiteness in popular
music that have emerged from this research situate whiteness as a cultural
norm against which the musics and musical performances of ‘Others’
have been evaluated. Recent understandings of the functions of white-
ness in leisure have been able to tease out the conscious and unconscious
power structures embedded within both music scenes, industries, jour-
nalism and research itself (Schaap, 2015, 2019; Spracklen, 2013a). While
moves have been made to conceive of music scenes as sites of instru-
mental whiteness (Spracklen, 2013a: 63) where white discourses function
in both overt and tacit ways, these understandings have only recently
started to emerge in studies of metal. Much metal literature positions
heavy metal as a ‘white genre’, though current understandings overlook
the political and cultural implications of this categorisation, and obscure
the structuring mechanisms of white hegemony. Where the sub-field of
‘Global’ Metal Studies has provided a necessary disruption to orthodox
representations of metal audiences as universally white, such approaches
nevertheless continue to saturate whiteness in normative value.
There remains a need to draw attention to the political significance
of metal’s whiteness, and demonstrate its national manifestations. Doing
8 C. Hoad

so necessitates moving metallic whiteness beyond discussions of white-

ness as purely demographic, or whiteness as a normative site against
which ‘global’ metal can be evaluated. Tracking the textual narrations
and formations of white patriarchal nationhood as they are expressed
in disparate metal contexts can therefore offer a new line of enquiry to
Metal Music Studies, and contribute to the uses of textual analysis as
a methodological tool within Whiteness Studies. Doing so provides an
alternate perspective to claims that the cultural significance of metal’s
whiteness is ‘less an affirmation of whiteness than it is an absence—an
obtrusive absence—of blacks’ (Weinstein, 2000: 111), and that metal’s
whiteness is overstated or that studies have centred ‘primarily [on]
whiteness’ (Phillipov, 2012: 65).
This book engages with the following questions as a means of combat-
ting these challenges. I ask how textual representations of whiteness
create a ‘normal’ scenic centre which correlates heavy metal with white,
Western, heteromasculinity. Moreover, I ask how his normative whiteness
naturalises the dominance of young white men within representations of
heavy metal, to the exclusion and marginalisation of Others, with specific
national implications. These questions also outline broader possibilities
for the field of Metal Music Studies. How do we speak about whiteness
in metal in ways that move beyond current discussions of demographics,
virtuosity and explicit racism? How can research undertaken in Metal
Music Studies reveal and renegotiate hidden mechanisms of whiteness,
and point to its multiplicity and meanings across global metal scenes,
practices and cultures?

Objectives and Methodology

Much of this research emerged from with my own personal engage-
ment with and experiences of metal. I am situated within this research
in my capacity as a longtime metal fan and regular participant in
Australia’s thrash, grindcore and death metal scenes, and later in those
of Aotearoa/New Zealand; I am also a fan of many of the bands and
works discussed here. In acknowledging my position within both the
metal scene and academia, while I have often experienced Othering by
 1 Introduction 9

virtue of being a metal fan who is also a woman within various contexts,
my whiteness has conferred upon me certain forms of capital. This
project at large has necessitated my own awareness of my privilege as
a white woman working within an academic environment, and further-
more, forced my own critical reckoning with how I, as a fan, navigate
material and discourses within metal which may emerge as contrary to
my own anti-racist politics. My goal is not to further entrench the posi-
tion of white heterosexual masculinity within metal by devoting another
academic book to this topic, but rather precisely to destabilise this posi-
tion by pointing to the contextually-specific mechanisms and discourses
that enable its centrality across seemingly disparate locations.
Textual analysis is a key method within this research, wherein texts
generated by heavy metal scenes—individual songs, lyrics, album art and
promotional material—provide tangible artefacts for mapping symbolic
discourses of power, nationhood and their narration and representation.
I am also interested in texts as they exist in the discourses and oral tradi-
tions produced and reproduced by fans. Such material can seemingly join
text with reception, and potentially blur the traditionally parasocial rela-
tions between producers, performers and audiences. Fans consume texts,
but they also generate their own which contribute to a wider reposi-
tory of discourses, symbols and meanings; fans both shape and generate
narratives and practices of heavy metal. Fan texts also offer sources of
meaning which operate beyond the institutional frameworks of ‘official’
texts—commercially released albums, promotional material, autobiogra-
phies and so on—a DIY context which further reveals the possibilities
and applications of textual analysis as a tool for engaging with the inter-
pretation of social and cultural meaning. In utilising textual and critical
discourse analysis, I am interested in not only the materiality of texts, as
tangible scenic products of heavy metal, but also how discourse regulates
sentiments of scenic identity and belonging. Analysis of live concerts, fan
magazines, underground zines, interviews, podcasts and online discus-
sion spaces such as forums and social media sites—as Kahn-Harris has
observed, ‘one can be an active member of the scene from one’s own
home’ (2007: 74)—further reveals how texts are centrally implicated in
in the dominant ways of speaking about and conceiving of the identity
of national scenes, and the wider national contexts they exist within.
10 C. Hoad

Structure of the Book

This book consists of five chapters. The first examines the history of
metal’s discursive formations in academic and popular texts, exploring
the growth of Metal Music Studies as a consolidated field, and its repre-
sentations and legacies. In Chapter 3, I undertake a critical analysis of
how whiteness has been represented and performed within Norwegian
black and Viking metal scenes, mapping how this is embedded within
the wider national imperative of maintaining ‘Norwegianness’, and the
tensions this entails. Chapter 4 explores the role of heavy metal within
the texts of the ‘cultural heritage industry’ of post-Apartheid South
Africa, with a specific focus on the Afrikaans heavy metal scene as a
response to the ‘loss’ of Afrikaner identity. Chapter 5, the final national
case study, investigates the ways in which the mutually supportive oper-
ations of masculinity and whiteness have shored up Australian identity
within the spaces of Australia’s extreme (thrash, black and death) metal
scenes.
Chapters 6 and 7 offers a critical comparison and synthesis of the
three previous national case studies, and a reflection upon and further
critique of the ways in which metal can be understood within the theo-
retical frameworks of nationalism and Whiteness studies. In this chapter,
I question how metal’s mythologised rhetoric of rebellion may be crit-
ically engaged in analysing how nationalist and racialised orthodoxies
can be reinforced through metal texts. I nevertheless also consider how
metal scenes themselves have taken critical tools beyond the academy. By
engaging with the critical anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-homophobic
work that metal scenes perform, I consider how making visible the frag-
mentary nature of whiteness in heavy metal can act as a mechanism
within this anti-racist project. In this way, I hope that expanding the
theoretical tools of Metal Music Studies can assist in destabilising the
greater systemic and structural inequalities which permeate and circle
through scenes.
 1 Introduction 11

Conclusion
Through the following discussions of textual processions of whiteness
in metal scenes across Norway, South Africa and Australia, this books
makes a case for Metal Music Studies to make metallic whiteness not
only more visible, but more aware of its representations, mediations
and constructions. In destabilising the normative position of white
masculinity within metal texts and practices, and pointing to its realisa-
tions across seemingly disparate geographical locations, metal scholarship
may cast the same academic gaze inwards and make visible the mech-
anisms of whitenesses as they manifest in heavy metal scenes, cultures
and practices, and the way academics themselves document and theo-
rise metal. Ultimately the objective of this book is not to renounce
or abolish whitenesses in metal, but rather to consider how white-
nesses have emerged as dominant markers around which identities are
formed and maintained, often in exclusory formations. Metal has been
a rich site of identity work for scene members and communities inter-
sected across multiple axes. Drawing into focus the textually-mediated
discourses which have structured metal’s dominant images and practices
can then enable us to map where metal has and continues to grow, as the
genre enters its seventh decade.

Notes
1. Further to these remarks made in 1995, critics of Anselmo also point to
anti-Semetic and Islamophobic lyrics in the 2003 track ‘Stealing a Page or
Two from Armed and Radical Pagans’ by his side project Superjoint Ritual
(c.f. Rosenberg, 2016) and a 2016 incident in which a video filmed by
a fan and posted to YouTube showed Anselmo offering a Nazi salute and
shouting white pride slogans (Brannigan, 2016). In reponse to the latter,
Anselmo commented on the video via his label Housecore Records, claiming
the salute was an ‘inside joke’ (Chris/Youtube, 2016). While Anselmo has
long denied charges of racism, including a 2019 interview with Kerrang! In
which he claimed that while he was ‘reckless and …absurd on purpose’,
he did not ‘have a racist bone in [his] body’ (Law, 2019), these incidents
12 C. Hoad

resulted in New Zealand venues cancelling Anselmo’s booked shows in 2019

following the Christchurch massacre (Reid, 2019).
2. In 2015, Anselmo addressed his own changing relationship to the Confed-
erate flag, stating ‘These days, I wouldn’t want anything to fucking do
with it because truthfully…I wouldn’t…The way I feel and the group of
people I’ve had to work with my whole life, you see a Confederate flag
out there that says ‘Heritage, not hate.’ I’m not so sure I’m buying into
that’ (Grow, 2015). While Anselmo displayed a changed attitude toward
the flag, and much of this merchandise was pulled by Pantera’s webstore, his
former bandmate Vinny Paul referred to it as a ‘knee jerk reaction’ (Sticks
for Stones, 2015).
3. Responses to actions by Phil Anselmo in 2016, wherein he appeared to offer
a white pride salute during a show (Hollywood, January 2, 2016), indicate
that anti-racism is a sentiment strongly held among many scene members,
and that racism and white pride remain a central site of conflict within
metal scenes (c.f. Rosenberg, 2016).
4. Wallach et al. note that in mid-2007 the online Encyclopaedia Metallum
contained listings for 47,626 metal bands from 129 countries (2011: 5)—as
of September 2020, it lists 139,135 bands from 151 countries.

References
Anselmo, P. H. (1995, March 4). Pantera. Far Beyond Touring, Auditorium de
Verdun, Montreal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxQk3DC3gL0.
Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities. Verso.
Bayer, G. (2009). Rocking the nation: One global audience, one flag? In G.
Bayer (Ed.), Heavy metal music in Britain (pp. 181–194). Ashgate.
Blaagaard, B. B. (2006). Relocating whiteness in Nordic media discourse.
Rethinking Nordic colonialism: A postcolonial exhibition project in five acts.
NIFCE, Nordic Institute for contemporary art, Helsinki. http://www.rethin
king-nordic-colonialism.org/files/pdf/ACT5/ESSAYS/Blaagaard.pdf.
Brannigan, P. (2016, January 29). Why Phil Anselmo’s ‘White Power’ outburst
shouldn’t be ignored. Metal Hammer/LouderSound . https://www.louder
sound.com/features/why-phil-anselmo-s-white-power-outburst-shouldn-t-
be-ignored.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Radio mates
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Radio mates

Author: Benjamin Witwer

Illustrator: Frank R. Paul

Release date: December 11, 2023 [eBook #72380]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: E. P. Co., Inc, 1927

Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RADIO

MATES ***
 Radio Mates

“Think of it! A twist of a switch and the living, breathing piglet slowly
dissolved before my eyes and vanished along a pair of wires to my
aerial, whence it was transferred as a set of waves in the ether to the
receiving apparatus—there to reincarnate into the living organism
 once more, alive and breathing, unharmed by its extraordinary
journey!”

RADIO MATES
by Benjamin Witwer

From the telegraph to the telephone was but a step. From the telephone to
radio constituted but another such step, and we are now enjoying radio
broadcast from stations thousands of miles away. Every time you have an
X-ray photograph taken you are bombarded, not by rays, but by actual
particles that go right through the walls of the tube, which particles are just
as real as if they were bullets or bricks, the only difference being that they
are smaller. Thus our scientists lead up to the way of sending solids
through space. While impossible of achievement, as yet, it may be
possible, years hence, to send living beings through space, to be received
at distant points. At any rate, the author of this story weaves a fascinating
romance around this idea. It makes excellent reading, and the plot is as
unusual as is its entire treatment.

It was a large brown envelope, of the size commonly used for

mailing pamphlets or catalogues. Yet it was registered, and had
come by special messenger that afternoon, my landlady informed
me. Probably it was a strain of that detective instinct which is present
in most of us that delayed my opening the missive until I had
carefully scrutinized the handwriting of the superscription. There was
something vaguely familiar in its slanting exactitude, yet when I
deciphered the postmark,—“Eastport, N. Y.,”—I was still in the dark,
for I could not remember ever having heard of the place before. As I
turned the packet over, however, my pleasant tingle of anticipation
was rudely chilled. Along the flap was a sinister row of black sealing
wax blobs, which seemed to stare at me with a malignant fore-
knowledge. On closer examination, I noticed that each seal retained
the impression of a coat-of-arms, also elusively familiar.
With a strange sense of foreboding I dropped the missive on the
table. Queer what ominous significance a few drops of wax can
impart to an ordinary envelope. Deliberately I changed into smoking
jacket and slippers, poked the well laid fire and lit a pipe before
finally tearing open the seals.
There were many typewritten sheets, commencing in letter form:

54 Westervelt Ave.,
Eastport, New York,
February 15th.
Dear Cousin George:
Now that you have identified me by referring to my signature on
the last page (which I had just done) you will no doubt wonder at the
occasion for this rather effusive letter from one so long silent as I
have been. The fact of the matter is that you are the only male
relative with whom I can communicate at this time. My nephew,
Ralph, is first officer of a freighter somewhere in the Caribbean, and
Alfred Hutton, your mother’s first cousin, has not been heard from
since he embarked on that colonizing scheme in New Guinea, nearly
a year ago.
I must do all in my power to prevent the bungling metropolitan
police from implicating Howard Marsden in my disappearance. It
would take no great stretch of the imagination to do just that, and
were the State to require Marsden’s life as forfeit for my own, then
my carefully planned revenge would be utterly frustrated. I have
been cultivating the village postmaster for some weeks, ever since
this plan began to shape definitely in my mind. I am mailing this letter
at three o’clock this afternoon, for I have noticed that at that hour the
postal section of the store is generally deserted. I shall ask him if his
clock is correct, thus fixing the time in his mind. Please remember
these points. Then I shall register this letter, taking care to exhibit the
unusual collection of seals on the back. I shall manage to inform him
also that I stamped the seals with my ring and will show him the
coat-of-arms, explaining its meaning in detail. These villagers are a
curiosity-ridden lot. Upon returning home, I shall drop this same ring
into the inkwell which stands upon my desk. Finally I shall proffer my
friend the postmaster a fifty-dollar bill in paying for my registry. The
registry slip itself will be found within the hatband of my brown hat,
which I shall place in the wall safe of my study.
 You are becoming more amazed as you proceed, no doubt asking
yourself if this letter is the product of a madman or a faker. Before
you have finished you will probably be assured that both
assumptions are correct. It matters little, for I will at least have firmly
established the fact that this letter was mailed by no one else but
me. As for the rest, Howard Marsden will corroborate what follows.
To begin at the beginning. As you know, or perhaps you do not
know, for I forget that our correspondence has been negligible of
late, five years ago I accompanied the Rodgers expedition into
Afghanistan. We were officially booked as a geological mission, but
were actually in search of radium, among other things. When I left, I
was practically engaged to Venice Potter, a distant relation of the
Long Island Potters, of whom you have perhaps heard. I say
“practically” engaged because the outcome of this expedition was to
furnish me with the standing and position necessary for a formal
demand for her hand. As I said, that was nearly five years ago.
Four months after my departure her letters ceased coming and
mine were returned to me unopened. Two months later I received an
announcement of her betrothal to Howard Marsden. Received it out
there in Afghanistan, when I had returned to the coast for supplies.
We’ll skip that next year, during which I stuck with the expedition. We
were successful. I returned.
Then I found out where the Marsdens were living, here in
Eastport. I’d met Marsden once or twice in the old days, but paid him
little attention at the time. He seemed but another of the moneyed
idlers; had a comfortable income from his father’s estate and was
interested in “gentleman farming,”—blooded stock and the rest. I
decided that it was useless to dig into dead ashes for the time being,
at least until I could determine the lay of the land, so to speak.
Meanwhile I had my researches to make, a theory I had evolved as a
sort of backfire to fill that awful void of Venice’s loss,—out there on
the edge of the world. Countless sleepless nights I had spent in a
feverish attempt to lose myself in scientific speculation. At last I
believed I had struck a clue to conclusions until now entirely
overlooked by eager searchers. I decided to establish my laboratory
here in Eastport, perhaps devoting any leisure hours to an
unravelling of that mystery of my sudden jilting. With a two-year-old
beard and sunbaked complexion there were few who would have
recognized me under my real name, and none in my assumed role of
“Professor Walters.”

Thus it was that I leased an old house not half a mile from Marsden’s
pretentious “farm.” I converted the entire ground floor into a
laboratory, living in solitary state upon the upper floor. I was used to
caring for myself, and the nature of my experiment being of such
potentialities, I felt that I wanted no prying servants about me.
Indeed, it has turned out to be of such international importance that I
feel no compunction whatever in utilizing it for my own selfish ends.
It could be a boon to humanity, yet its possibilities for evil in the
hands of any individual or group is so great as to render it most
dangerous to the happiness of the human kind on this small globe.
One day, some three months after I had taken up my residence in
Eastport, I had a visitor. It was Marsden. He had been attracted by
the sight of my novel aerial, just completed. By his own admission he
was an ardent “radio fan,” as they are popularly termed, I believe,
and he spent the better part of an afternoon bragging of stations he
had “logged” with his latest model radio set. Aside from my vague
suspicions of his complicity in the alienation of my beloved Venice, I
must admit that even then I felt an indefinable repulsion towards him.
There was something intangibly unwholesome about him, a
narrowness between the eyes which repelled me. Yet, although at
that time I had no plan in mind, nevertheless I encouraged him in my
most hospitable manner, for even thus early I felt, that at some time
not far distant, I might be called upon to utilize this acquaintanceship
to my own advantage.
This first visit was followed by others, and we discussed radio in
all its phases, for the man had more than a smattering of technical
knowledge on the subject and was eager to learn more. At last, one
day, I yielded to his insistence that I inspect his set and agreed to
dine at his house the following evening. By now I felt secure in my
disguise, and although I dreaded the moment when I should actually
confront my lost love once more, yet I longed for the sweet pain of it
with an intensity which a hard-shelled bachelor like you will never
understand. Enough. I arrived at the Marsden’s the next evening and
was duly presented to my hostess as “Thomas Walters.” In spite of
my private rehearsals I felt a wave of giddiness sweep over me as I
clasped that small white hand in my own after the lapse of almost
five years, for she was, if possible, lovelier than ever. I noted when
my vision cleared that her eyes had widened as they met mine. I
realized that my perturbation had been more apparent than I
imagined and managed to mutter something about my alleged “weak
heart,” a grimmer jest by far than I intended. Frantically I fortified
myself with remembrances of those barren days in Afghanistan,
where I stayed on and on, impotent to raise a hand in the salvage of
my heart’s wreckage.
We chatted politely all through that interminable meal, no morsel
of which aroused the faintest appreciation on my dry tongue. Finally
the chairs were pushed back and my host excused himself to bring
down some pieces of apparatus he had recently purchased,
concerning which he professed to desire my invaluable opinion.
No sooner had he left the room than the polite smile dropped from
Venice’s face like a discarded mask.
“Dick,” she cried, “what are you doing here?”
It was my first inkling that she suspected my true identity. I rallied
quickly, however, and allowed my self-encouraged bitterness its
outlet.
“Had I believed you would recognize me, Mrs. Marsden, I should
not have inflicted my unwelcome presence upon you, I can assure
you.”
She bit her lips and her head raised with a jerk. Then her mouth
softened again as her great eyes searched mine.
“Yes, but why—” she broke off at the sound of approaching
footsteps. Suddenly she leaned forward. “Meet me in the pine grove
to-morrow afternoon—four o’clock,” she breathed. Then her husband
entered.
The remainder of the evening I was forced to listen to Marsden’s
eager dissertation on the alleged “static eliminator” which had been
foisted upon him on his last trip to the city. Mechanically I answered
or grunted in simulated appreciation when a pause in his endless
monologue warned me that some reply was expected of me; but my
pulses were leaping in exultation because of the fleeting hope which
those few words from my lost Venice had kindled. I could not
imagine why the offer to bridge the breach of years should come
from her so voluntarily, yet it was enough for me that she
remembered and wished to see me. I cared not why.
I arrived nearly an hour early that next afternoon, for I had been
unable either to sleep or work during the interim. I shall not bore you
with the particulars of that meeting, even were I free to reveal such
sacred details. Suffice to say that after the preliminaries of doubt and
misunderstanding had been brushed away—and it was not the
simple process this synopsis would seem to infer, I can assure you—
I stood revealed as the victim of a most ingenious and thoroughly
knavish plot. Boiled down, it resembles one of those early movie
scenarios.
You remember I spoke of Venice as related to the Long Island
Potters, a branch of the family highly rated in the Social Register?
You will also remember that before I undertook that expedition I was
never particularly certain whence my next year’s expenses were to
be derived, nor to what extent, if you understand what I mean. At
about the time I was preparing for this expedition which I hoped
would make me financially and scientifically independent, this
wealthy branch of the family seriously “took up” my darling Venice,
inviting her to live with them that summer. I remember now all too
late, that even during that confusion of mind caused by the agony of
leaving my loved one, coupled with the feverish preparations for
departure, chill clouds of censure came from the aloof Potters. They
made no effort to mask their disapproval of my humble self and
prospects, yet in my blindness I had never connected them
intimately with what followed.
It was, in short, the old story of the ingenious man-on-the-ground,
the “good match,” aided and abetted by the patronesses of the “poor
relation.” The discriminating Marsden naturally fell in love with
Venice, and to his great surprise and chagrin, was decisively
repulsed by her. Never before having been refused anything he
really wanted in his comfortably arranged life, he became
passionately desirous of possessing her. Accordingly, my darling
was shown a letter, forged with such diabolical cleverness as to be
almost indistinguishable from my own hand. It purported to intrigue
me with a very ordinary female at a period coincident with the time I
had been so fervently courting my dear one.
She refused to credit the document and dispatched me a
voluminous explanation of the whole occurrence. Attributing my
silence to the exigencies of distance, she continued to write me for
over a month. When no answer arrived after nearly three long
months, she at length delivered a hastily planned ultimatum, to which
she was later persuaded to adhere through the combined pressure
of Marsden and her family, beating against the razed defences of her
broken heart. Then it was that I received the betrothal
announcement, the only communication her watchful family had
permitted to escape their net of espionage.

As the story unfolded, my heart pounded with alternate waves of

exaltation and red rage at the treacherous Marsden. Because of
selfish duplicity, he had robbed us both of five years’ happiness, for I
had forced my darling’s admission that she had never loved him, and
now despised him as a common thief. My brief moment of delirious
joy was sharply curtailed, however, when I came to press her to
separate from this selfish swine. After some demur she confided that
he was a drug addict. She said that he had been fighting desperately
to break this habit ever since their marriage, for his jealous love of
her was the only remaining weapon with which to combat his deep
rooted vice. Deprived of his one motive, my darling earnestly
assured me that it would be a matter of but a few short years before
the white powders wrote Finis to yet another life. I could see but a
balancing of an already overdrawn account in such an event, and
said so in no uncertain terms. She did not chide me, merely patiently
explained with sweet, sad resignation that she held herself
responsible for his very life for the present. That although she could
not love and honor him as she had promised, yet she was bound to
cleave to him during this, his “worse” hour. And so we left it for the
time, our future clouded, yet with no locked door to bar the present
from us.
We met almost daily, unless Marsden’s activities interfered. At
those times I was like a raging beast, unable to work, consumed with
a livid hatred for the cunning thief who had stolen my love while my
back was turned. I could not shake her resolution to terminate this
loveless match, even though she now loathed the mate she had
once tolerated. But in spite of the formlessness of our future, my
work progressed as never before. Now my days were more than a
mere procession of dates, for each was crowned with the glow of
those few stolen moments with my darling Venice.
Came the day of my first complete success. Some weeks
previously I had finally succeeded in transmitting a small wooden ball
by radio. Perhaps I should say that I had “dissolved” it into its
vibrations, for it was not until this later day that I had been able to
materialize or “receive” it after it had been “sent.” I see you start and
re-read this last sentence. I mean just what I say, and Marsden will
bear me out, for as you shall see, he has witnessed this and other
such experiments here in my laboratory. I have explained to him as
much as I wanted him to know of the process, in fact, just enough so
that he believes that a little intensive research and experimentation
on his part will make him master of my secret. But he is entirely
ignorant of the most important element, as well as of the manner of
its employment.
Yes, after years of study and interrupted experimental research I
was enabled finally to disintegrate, without the aid of heat, a solid
object into its fundamental vibrations, transmit these vibrations into
the ether in the form of so-called “radio waves” which I then attracted
and condensed in my “receiving” apparatus, slowly damping their
short kinked vibration-rate until finally there was deposited the
homogeneous whole, identical in outline and displacement,—entirely
unharmed from its etheric transmigration!
My success in this, my life’s dream, was directly the result of our
discoveries on that bitter expedition into Afghanistan. All my life I had
been interested in the study of vibrations, but had achieved no
startling successes or keen expectations thereof until we stumbled
upon that strange mineral deposit on what was an otherwise ill-fated
trip for me. It was then that I realized that radioactive niton might
solve my hitherto insurmountable difficulty in the transmission of
material vibrations into electronic waves. My experiments thereafter,
while successful to the degree that I discovered several entirely new
principles of resonic harmonics, as well as an absolute refutation of
the quantum theory of radiation, fell far short of my hoped-for goal.
At that time I was including both helium and uranium in my improved
cathode projectors, and it was not until I had effected a more
sympathetic combination with thorium that I began to receive
encouraging results. My final success came with the substitution of
actinium for the uranium and the addition of polonium, plus a finer
adjustment which I was able to make in the vortices of my three
modified Tesla coils, whose limitations I had at first underrated. I was
then enabled to filter my resonance waves into pitch with my
“electronic radiate rays,” as I called them, with the success I shall
soon describe.
Of course, all this is no clearer than a page of Sanskrit to you, nor
do I intend that it shall be otherwise. As I have said, such a secret is
far too potent to be unloosed upon a world of such delicately poised
nations, whose jaws are still reddened from their recent ravening. It
needs no explanation of mine to envision the terrible possibilities for
evil in the application of this great discovery. It shall go with me—to
return at some future, more enlightened time after another equally
single-minded investigator shall have stumbled upon it. It is this latter
thought which has caused me to drop the hints that I have. My
earnest hope is that you will permit the misguided Marsden to read
the preceding paragraph. In it he will note a reference to an element
which I have not mentioned to him before, and will enable him to
obtain certain encouraging results,—encouraging but to further
efforts, to more frantic attempts. But I digress.
With my success on inanimate objects, I plunged the more
enthusiastically into my work. I should have lost all track of time but
for my daily tryst with Venice. Her belief in me was the tonic which
spurred me on to further efforts after each series of meticulously
conducted experiments had crumbled into failure. It was the
knowledge that she awaited me which alone upheld me in those dark
moments of depression, which every searcher into the realms of the
unknown must encounter.
Then came the night of November 28th, the Great Night. After
countless failures, I finally succeeded in transmitting a live guinea pig
through the atmosphere and “received” it, alive and well, in the
corner of my laboratory. Think of it! A twist of a switch and the living,
breathing piglet slowly dissolved before my eyes and vanished along
a pair of wires to my aerial, whence it was transferred as a set of
waves in the ether to the receiving apparatus,—there to reincarnate
into the living organism once more, alive and breathing, unharmed
by its extraordinary journey! That night I strode out into the open and
walked until dawn suddenly impressed the gray world upon my
oblivious exaltation, for I was King of the Universe, a Weaver of
Miracles.
Then it was that my great plan began to take shape. With
renewed energy I began the construction of a mammoth transmitter.
At intervals I “transmitted” stray cats and dogs of every description,
filling several books with notes wherein I recorded minutely the
varying conditions of my subjects before transmission. Invariably
their condition upon being “cohered” in the receiving tube, was
excellent. In some cases, indeed, minor ailments had entirely
disappeared during their short passage through the ether. What a
study for the medical profession!
I had, of course, told Venice the object of my researches long ago,
but had never brought her to my laboratory for reasons of discretion.
One afternoon, however, I slipped her in under cover of the heavy
downpour. After I had warmed her with a cup of tea, before her
astonished eyes I transmitted an old she-cat which was afflicted with
some sort of rheumatism or paralysis of its hind legs. When its form
began to reappear in the transparent receiving tube, my darling
gasped in awed wonder. She was rendered utterly speechless,
however, when I switched off the current and released the animal
from its crystal prison. And no wonder, for it gambolled about like a
young kitten, all trace of its former malady having entirely
disappeared! The impression upon Venice was all that I had hoped
for, and when I at length escorted her out into the dusk, I felt her
quick, awed glances flickering over me like the reverence of a shy
neophyte for the high priest.

All was set for the final act. I literally hurled myself into the
completion of my improved set. The large quantities of certain
minerals required caused me an unexpected delay. This I filled with
demonstrations in the presence of Marsden, whom I was
encouraging as a fellow radio enthusiast,—with considerable
unexpected histrionic ability on my part. It was so hard to keep my
fingers off his throat! I pretended to explain to him the important
factors of my great secret, and drilled him in the mechanical
operation of the sets. I had divulged to him also that my greatest
desire was to demonstrate my principle on a human being, and like
all great scientific explorers, proposed to offer myself as the subject.
Venice had strenuously opposed the proposal until the
demonstration on the diseased cat, and even now viewed the entire
proposition with alarm. Yet I insisted that unless applied to human
beings my entire work went for naught, and I finally succeeded in
quieting her fears to a great extent.
At last I am ready. I have told my darling how it is impossible to
transmit anything metallic by the very nature of the conflicting rays
encountered. I have bemoaned the fact that, due to the softness of
my teeth since boyhood, my mouth is one mass of metallic fillings
and crowns, rendering it impossible for me to test the efficiency of
my life’s work. As I had hoped, she has volunteered herself as the
subject for the great experiment, for her white teeth are as yet
innocent of fillings. I have demurred and refused to listen to the idea,
permitting myself to be won over only after days of earnest argument
on her part. We are not to tell Marsden, for there is no doubt that his
fanatical love for her would refuse to tolerate the mere suggestion.
Tonight it shall be accomplished. There is no other way, for that
accursed husband of hers seems to progress in neither direction. He
will be nothing but a mud-buried anchor until the end of her days,
while I—I love her. What other excuse need be offered?
But to the facts. At eight o’clock that drug-soaked love pirate
comes to officiate at my transmission through space. I shall meet
him with a chloroformed soaked rag. Later he will awake to find
himself effectively gagged, with his hands and feet firmly shackled to
the wall of a dark corner of my laboratory. These shackles consist of
armatures across the poles of large electro-magnets which I have
embedded in the walls. At 10:30, a time switch will cut off the
current, releasing the wretch, for, above all things, he must live. I
debated sending a message for his chauffeur to call for him here at
the designated hour. I have decided rather to trust to mechanical
certitude than lay my plan open to frustration because of some
human vagary.
At nine o’clock Venice comes for the great experiment. Marsden
has told her that he will remain in the city over night, at my
suggestion, so that in case I fail to materialize after being “sent” he
cannot be held in connection with my disappearance. She does not
know that I have had my teeth extracted and have been using India
rubber plates for nearly a month. By the time she has arrived, the
effects of the chloroform will have entirely worn off from my would-be
assistant, and I shall have had plenty of time to introduce myself
properly to him and explain the evening’s program which has been
so carefully arranged for his benefit.
Then he will have the excruciating pleasure of watching his
beloved wife dissolve into—nothingness! Soon thereafter he will
witness the same process repeated upon myself, for I have so
adapted the apparatus that I need no outside assistance other than a
time-clock to actuate the mechanism! Then, at the appointed hour,
the current will be shut off and the frenzied wretch will rush to the
distant switch controlling the receiving apparatus. As he throws the
metal bars into their split receptacles there will come a blinding flash,
and behold—the apparatus will have disappeared in a puff of
crystalline particles! The secret has returned whence it came!
Then will come that personally prepared hell for my mean spirited
forger. As I told you, he believes that he is in possession of enough
of the details of my secret to reconstruct the apparatus and duplicate
my success. The added details of this letter will assure him into an
idiotic confidence which will lead him on and on through partially
successful attempts. I know that no matter whether you sympathize
with my actions or not (and I am sure that you do not, for you never
have), your sense of justice will force you to show this letter to the
proper authorities in order to prevent a fatal bungling.
Meanwhile that miserable sneak will be frenzied with the
knowledge that at last, the lover he so long cheated of his loved one
is now with her, alone,—where he, her lawful husband, can never
follow. And we shall be together, unchanged, awaiting the day when
some other enlightened mortal solves Nature’s riddle, when we shall
once more assume our earthly forms, unhindered by other selfish
manbeasts.

Farewell,
Bromley Cranston.

Needless to say, I hurried to Eastport. But my trip was unnecessary. I

found Harold Marsden in a “private sanitarium” for the hopelessly
insane. There all day, and as far into the night as the opiates would
permit him, he is to be found seated before a radio set, the
earphones clamped to his head—listening. His statements,
methodically filed away by the head of the place, corresponded
wildly with the prophecies of my strange letter. Now he was listening
to fragmentary messages from those two he had seen precipitated
into space, he maintained. Listening.
And they had disappeared, utterly. I found the large seal ring in
the inkwell on the desk. Also the slip in the hatband of the hat which
had been placed in the wall safe, unlocked. The postmaster
remembered the seals on the letter my cousin had mailed, and the
approximate time he had received it. I felt my own reason wavering.
That is why, fantastic as is the whole affair, I cannot yet bear the
sound of one of those radio loud speakers. It is when that inarticulate
sound they call “static” occurs, when fragments of words and
sentences seem to be painfully attempting to pierce a hostile
medium,—that I picture that hunched up figure with its spidery
earphones,—listening. Listening. For what?
The End

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the July 1927 issue of

Amazing Stories Magazine.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RADIO MATES
***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.

copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in
these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it
in the United States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of
this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept
and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and
may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the
terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of
the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as
creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research.
Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given
away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with
eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject
to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE