Section Two: Underground Scenes, Alternative Music and Transformation

The second section addresses three distinct, yet overlapping, music scenes or communities existing more or less on the margins of popular rock music culture. The subcultural music examined in this section is framed by autoethnography, personal narratives and storytelling. They investigate how black metal, punk and Canadian alternative music serve as a catalyst for grieving (all three essays describe how the authors grapple with the loss of their respective mothers); for processing complex memories; and for providing a cultural roadmap or direction for existing, being, and evolving in the wake of death.

When juxtaposed together, these three works intersect and foster an interdisciplinary dialogue on underground/alternative music scenes, communities of support, remembrance and complicated memories of death. There is also the discovery of vital, life-affirming meanings and practices through the transformative power of metal, punk and alternative music.