ABSTRACT
The chapter offers a thick description of the Tunisian metal scene, revolving around the scene’s crisis after the revolution. It begins by retracing the history of the scene, its rise in popularity during the 2000s, and the structural factors that restrained its expansion: economic scarcity, the limited availability of specific infrastructures (such as instruments, recording studios, venues), and a climate of cultural hostility toward metal, perceived to be blasphemous and defiant. The chapter shows how these limitations condemned the reproduction of the scene, so that metalheads tended to quit the scene without a real turnover bringing in any new members. In the second section, another factor for this situation is presented: metal’s sceneness was modelled by a conflict between different factions (in particular the scene “elders” and “youngsters”), fighting over metal authenticity and modelling conflictual histories of the very Tunisian metal scene. In particular, scene elders depicted the scene as being progressively vulgarised by the newcomers, and this pushed many of them to quit the scene itself. At the same time, elders and youngsters embodied different conceptions of metal and thus fashioned different forms of sceneness, whose interplay tore the scene apart.
