Research on the process of European integration is usually restricted to the political
economic and legal aspects of Europeanisation. Still we do not know enough about practiced
Europeanisation in terms of everyday life and popular culture. Here Peter Pichler explores a
new area of research. He links the latest insights into the cultural history of the European
Union with interdisciplinary research on heavy metal as a subculture throughout Europe. He
presents the first historiographic exploration of European integration in this subculture since
1970. In general subcultural Europeanisation predates even political Europeanisation as
evidenced by networks of the metal scene breaking through the Iron Curtain in the beginning of
the 1980s. The European metal scene constituted a borderless space. Today the shared knowledge
of rituals codes clothes history and values of metal are present across the continent.
Pichler interprets this from a cultural-historical perspective against the background of
Europeanisation after 1945.
