11 ms·

Dissecting the Bloodthirsty Bliss of Death Metal

103 points by chablent 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nickjj 8y ago
I had to stop reading at: > “It’s the paradox of enjoying a negative emotion that I was interested in,” says Thompson, a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. “Why are people interested in music that seems to induce a negative emotion, when in everyday life we tend to avoid situations that will induce a negative emotion?” I've been listening to various forms of metal (heavy metal, (technical / melodic) death metal, metalcore, deathcore, etc.) for over 20 years, and I never once (not even once) even thought to think about associating negative emotions to the music. In fact, it's the exact opposite reaction. I listen to it because it makes me feel positive. I listen to it for the same reasons that other people listen to music types they enjoy, which I think can be left unsaid because anyone who enjoys music knows exactly that feeling.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway8879 8y ago
  An overwhelming majority of metal is super positive. Even songs like Iron Maiden's 'Fear of the Dark' doesn't sound negative although it's literally about fear. Even in extreme metal, say Necrophagist's songs like 'Multilate the Stillborn', it's all goofy and energetic and tongue-in-cheek. I've heard a lot of metal but can't think of any that is negative in a serious way. Perhaps melancholy if you consider sadder stuff by Opeth or something.
  - faltad 8y ago
    You just need to venture in the realms of Black Metal to find negative songs in a serious way. Try any DSBM song, such as Psychonaut4, Lifelover and others. Then all the nationalist black metal which preaches ... well very aggressive ideas sometimes. This is of course a fringe but it exists.
    - Accacin 8y ago
      Yeah, French band called Peste Noire have an album called: 'La Sanie des siècles – Panégyrique de la dégénérescence'. IMO it's some of the most evil black metal I've come across. Guy behind the band has views that I do not agree with at all, but I enjoy his music.
      - YegoBear 8y ago
        That's a fantastic album. I can't really understand the lyrics to most black metal songs, even if they speak English, so I always listen to them as if it were classical music or a video game soundtrack, and just enjoy the highs and lows.
    - throwaway8879 8y ago
      Perhaps you're right. I'd never ventured into black/norwegian metal other than maybe classic Cradle of filth or Dimmu Borgir. But even those felt goody and sort of like an act to me. I'll give those a listen, thanks.
      - vbsteven 8y ago
        I can definitely recommend bands like Lifelover, Psychonaut4, Totalselfhatred, Alcest, Lantlos, Bonjour Tristesse, Drawn into Descent if you want to experience some not-so-happy metal
        r721 8y ago
        And then there's funeral doom metal, stuff like Mordor "Odes" or Worship "Last CD Before Doomsday", which is utterly bleak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzaaCSLUSQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzaaCSLUSQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Leu5jqXGAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Leu5jqXGAo
        mountainplus 8y ago
        Never thought I would see these bands mentioned on HN. Would have even missed a heartbeat to see Thergothon or Skepti but Mordor is an absolute total surprise. Cheers, good fellow!
  - rangibaby 8y ago
    Necrophagist’s first album is fantastic, I was messing around with Apple Music and was listening to music I liked when I was at middle school and it and the album “Peace Sells...” were the only metal that really held up.
    - throwaway8879 8y ago
      That first album is great considering it's just Schumiez playing/producing/recording/singing everything. Fermented Offal Discharge has an amazing neoclassical solo. The second album is even better in my opinion, a really talented drummer and bass player in addition to more complex writing. There's so great non-traditional time signatures on that album too. God I wish they would release a new record. It's been over a decade I think.
  - sosuke 8y ago
    If you get a chance watch the Iron Maiden's documentary video. The people from around the world seems totally happy and excited and seem to get a lot of good from the music.
- GiuseppaAcciaio 8y ago
  It's still worth a read, and as well a summary article/comment written by the author (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324102543_On_the_enjoyment_of_violence_and_aggression_in_music https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324102543_On_the_en... , pdf available). The study is not without its limitations (self-reporting is the major one), however it's an interesting topic: the author's main hypotheses are: a) there's something with the way death metal/violent music fans' brain is wired that makes it react positively, whereas with non-fans it makes them react negatively. b) people who enjoy Death Metal do it by distancing themselves from the actual lyrical content ("it's just a song") and use it as a pressure relief valve of sorts c) people who enjoy Death Metal enjoy the feeling of being in an elite club that's set apart from the faceless conformist masses. It's bloody hard to set up experimental protocols to find reliable data to support or go against the hypothesis, but I'm going to keep an eye on this Thomson guy, and of course I'll keep on enjoying my violent music :)
  - throwaway8879 8y ago
    I am wondering - how much of it is because most fans can't really understand the words or even look up the lyrics? I'm trying to recall the words to my favorite death-metal songs but can't remember any. All the growling just sounds cool. :)
  - kranner 8y ago
    > a) there's something with the way death metal/violent music fans' brain is wired that makes it react positively, whereas with non-fans it makes them react negatively. Isn't this a tautology, given that there is no way to react to anything except via the wiring of one's brain?
    - GiuseppaAcciaio 8y ago
      Let me rephrase and see if I can get my meaning across: the author is asking if there is a pre-existing genetic/morphologic/physiologic/whatever predisposition that makes it so that some people can listen to death metal and suchlike and have a positive reaction where others (anecdotally, the majority of other people) will have a strong, visceral negative reaction. Is there a biological cause? Is it a "learned" like/dislike?
- jjjensen90 8y ago
  Agreed... I've been listening to metal since I could choose the music I listen to, and it has made me feel many things, but never negative emotions. Excitement, wonder, elation, adrenaline rush, relaxation, etc... In fact, especially as a younger person, listening to metal got me through some hard times emotionally, and the friends I made through shared interest helped me as well. I'm not sure where this professor got this idea, but I'd say metal is identical to any genre in the feelings it can give you, except that it is considered "extreme" or "violent" or "negative" by some outside observers. Just watch any interview with someone like George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher and you'll see that even the most grotesque death metal practitioners are disconnected from the subject matter outside of the music.
  - slfnflctd 8y ago
    Okay, this is the 2nd comment I've seen in the thread saying, "never" were negative emotions involved in the listening of this music, and I feel compelled to remind everyone that our experiences are all different. For me (and surely others), the negative emotions, dark imagery, sometimes downright disgusting lyrical content and other such trappings are fundamentally intertwined with many of my feelings about the worse aspects of life. It's totally part of the draw. There are many, many facts about human existence I am deeply sad or angry & horrified about, and art which reflects a shared understanding of these kinds of things offers camaraderie in misery-- sometimes it leads to catharsis, but not always. You can separate the music itself from these things, and there are artists who have done this, yet even then the pure music is has many loud, fast and/or violent-sounding sections, and if you're angry, it can act as a channel for that anger to feel expressed.
  - Applejinx 8y ago
    Counterargument: Mayhem. counter-counter argument: but of course, that's Norwegian Black Metal, very much NOT Death Metal. And you'd be right, and not even all NBM acts welded themselves to the subject matter. But there've been some metal bands who were really passionate about embracing (not 'disconnecting' from) the subject matter, and always a few who sought to become the subject matter, and one or two did actually do that.
- mfukar 8y ago
  Well if you hadn't stopped reading: > “What we are finding is that they are not angry people. They’re not enjoying anger when they listen to the music, but they are in fact experiencing a range of positive emotions.”
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  >I've been listening to various forms of metal (heavy metal, death metal, metalcore, deathcore, etc.) for over 20 years, and I never once (not even once) even thought to think about associating negative emotions to the music. In fact, it's the exact opposite reaction. Agreed, it's energetic music (that I mostly lift to) not "hey man, I wanna go home and kill myself" or "hey man I wanna kill all my neighbors" music.
- crispyambulance 8y ago
  Never got in to the metal thing myself, but I did listen to noise a lot and experienced similar surprises. For example, Merzbow, has been around since the 1980's and his music sounds literally like a train wreck-- no conventional beat, no melody, no vocal, just random-sounding reverb, static, tape loops and sometimes machine noise. Similar stuff from P16D4, Asmus Tietchens, Zoviet France and others. Many folks not familiar with this music would immediately assume it was all about these artists working through some really dark internal conflict, but that's not it at all. Instead, it was a kind of visceral catharsis, searching for a sublime authentic experience, rejecting the artifice of mimic-ing acoustically produced sound through electronics in favor of "native" electronic sounds that aren't bound to any natural reference. I think that metal music fans have a similar kind of experience, except that the visual aesthetics of metal happen to have distinct associations that make it easy for outsiders to get the wrong idea. If you call yourselves "cannibal corpse" or do things like put skeletons, bloody tombstones, pentagrams and devils on your artworks, yeah, it's going to be interpreted (from outsiders) in ways that may have nothing to do with the ultimate intent of the music.
  - soundwave106 8y ago
    Merzbow frequently utilizes fetish and BDSM imagery / concepts and from the article perspective (although about death metal, it is similarly seen as "extreme music") I find that part of the article's conclusions interesting, in that for some there may be an endorphin release postulated sounds similar to what might be happening in the BDSM concept known as "sub space" (or occurring in other ways for other people, for example, "runner's high" is from what I understand a similar endorphin release). As far as the top level comment goes though... maybe I'm misinterpreting the comment because this is summary level material, but yeah, that's an odd assertion to me. Death metal is a niche genre in a style of music that has some significant semi-mainstream elements (metal as a whole). Death metal is similar to other sort-of-tangentially related concepts like say horror media (there is a nice semi-mainstream side and also a lot of fringe horror movie / media styles that have fewer but sometimes more dedicated fans). Many horror movies for instance are flat out iconic at this point (ranging from the original Universal monsters to some of the films of Hitchcock to certain films like, say, Halloween, Jaws, or the Shining). On rare occasions, they are both quite popular and they even win an Academy Award (eg The Silence of the Lambs). In music, the main thing I will say is that there are metal bands with often violent lyrics and imagery that are more popular (Slayer comes to mind), and non-metal bands with violent imagery that also are popular. Certainly if that violent imagery is slightly modified to a bit more theatrical, the band might even become mainstream (I'm thinking Alice Cooper as an example). The "sonic assault" of death metal in some ways wasn't new -- hardcore punk was an influence for the speed (although hardcore punk is quite a bit less technical) and there's certainly a couple relatively well known bands there in that genre that dabbled in (usually more theatrical but still macabre) horror. (The Damned and The Misfits are two fairly big names in the genre, not "mainstream" but big enough that some people will know of them, and there's plenty of other lesser known "horror punks" around...). So to me that statement ("why are people interested in xyz that seems to induce a negative emotion when in everyday life we tend to avoid situations that will induce a negative emotion") is weird in this context, because this is not a niche question whatsoever overall. The answer to the above question is probably not best answered by looking at the psychology of an obscure genre and more best answered to ask why (in the Silence of the Lambs example) a movie that pushes "negative emotions" of this sort is (at present) #23 on IMDB's top movies of all time.
- VLM 8y ago
  "when in everyday life we tend to avoid situations that will induce a negative emotion" One of the problems with the pyramidal nature of academia is professors are likely to be very disconnected from normal experiences of life. Extremes of privilege, wealth, gated community standard of living on campus, high status levels. If only we were all lucky enough to experience negative situations as rarely as an extremely privileged professor. Given that it seems obvious that a rando consumer would have trouble relating to a professor, it seems self evident that a subpopulation of consumers will have essentially no common ground to discuss philosophical outlooks with a prof. Its kind of like the CEO of walmart not being cultural bro with a randomly selected entry level unskilled employee. Its unlikely either could have anything useful to say about the other.
throwaway8879 8y ago
>is that long-term, persistent exposure to violent media may lead to subtle changes in one’s personality, desensitizing fans to violence and reinforcing negative social attitudes. I'm not sure I agree. I can listen to all the "violent music" I want, but can't stomach through a contemporary or even classic horror film. I was really weirded out and had to stop halfway through while watching a documentary on the Austrian guy who kept his daughter in his basement for many years. Also, not to be a cliched metalhead, but I'm disappointed by the lack of good death metal in this article.
- AllegedAlec 8y ago
  > >is that long-term, persistent exposure to violent media may lead to subtle changes in one’s personality, desensitizing fans to violence and reinforcing negative social attitudes. It's the same old stupid argument that has been becoming popular again about games recently, and frankly, it's such a huge load of bullshit.
  - rangibaby 8y ago
    playing games where your only goal is to kill (oops, eliminate) people from the other team for hundreds of hours must have some kind of effect on you, even if it is fun. I loved games like San Andreas but couldn’t really get into GTA:V because it felt too real to me.
    - AllegedAlec 8y ago
      > playing games where your only goal is to kill (oops, eliminate) people from the other team for hundreds of hours must have some kind of effect on you, even if it is fun. Why would it? Furthermore, does this mean we also believe that people who do stuff like karate or Judo are more desensitized to violence?
    - 0xfeba 8y ago
      > playing games where your only goal is to kill (oops, eliminate) people from the other team for hundreds of hours must have some kind of effect on you. People really tie "kills" in games to murder in real life way too casually. When I play a game it's about strategy, team work, and winning. A lot like Football (Soccer). It has little to do with the terms or animations used in the game -- those are just for entertainment. I don't play a game because of how violent it is, I play it if my friends have it and/or it has good/fun game mechanics.
mynegation 8y ago
Anecdata ahead. There are different sub genres even within such niche genre as death metal. I love melodic death methal bands such as Dark Tranquility (those in the know would recognize it just by looking at my username), In Flames, and Insomnium. Their lyrics in general are not about extreme forms of aggression as article suggests, but revolves mostly around feelings of loneliness, apathy, acceptance and imminence of death, despair etc. First and foremost I listen to it because it is a very good music by talented musicians, just in their choice of genre. There is definitely an element of appeal in it in its “death” aspect though and I thought about it a lot over the years. Contrary to its general tone and lyric content melodic death metal does make me feel relaxed or energized, but generally brings positive emotions. I came to the conclusion that it is about unearthing all the fears and negative emotions that this music brings up in lyrics, acknowledging them and making peace with them instead of suppressing them.
- auiya 8y ago
  Winter's Gate by Insomnium is probably one of the best albums I've heard in three decades. In any genre.
  - benrjackson 8y ago
    Winter's Gate is brilliant. I've found previous Insomnium albums to be a bit pedestrian (albeit very competent vanilla melodeath). With Winter's Gate Insomnium introduced some prog & black elements without abandoning their core melodeath sound. IMO there were two other outstanding albums released the same year that accomplished a similar feat - Be'lakor's 'Vessals' end Wilderun's 'Sleep at the edge of the earth'. Wilderun tend to get pigeon holed as a folk metal band but I don't think that accurately reflects their sound. I would recommend both albums to anybody that enjoyed Winter's gate
overthemoon 8y ago
John Darnielle, on why he listens to metal: "I mean, it’s music that I enjoy. I enjoy the playing, I enjoy the compositional approaches to musical expression. It’s weird, nobody ever asks. ‘What does listening to this type of music do for you?’ about any other kind of music, but with metal there seems to be this ‘justify your connection to it’ vibe out there. It’s a unique mode of musical expression that challenges the listener and transports me to different realms. I’d say the same of the rap I listen to, or the classical music, or the ambient music—but I guess I find a lot of different headspace to explore in metal, a lot of different moods to enjoy and ways to enjoy them." https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/06/19/big-ups-the-mountain-goats-john-darnielle/ https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/06/19/big-ups-the-mountain-g...
- saturdaysaint 8y ago
  And yet isn't listening to something that's repellent to your parents and the preppy kids at high school a strong part of the allure? It's counter-cultural expression - by design, it's supposed to be feared and misunderstood.
  - overthemoon 8y ago
    Oh, for sure, there's a rebellious side to it, a way for a person to found an identity against something they don't like about their parents, about the preps, about authority, it's exclusive by its nature. However, I think often it's a genuine expression of whatever it is metal expresses, too, I think these two aspects are inextricable. The anger, the catharsis, the violence, the dark themes, these are by their nature alienating, fearful, and misunderstood, but it's also appealing for that to a particular kind of person.
- jzymbaluk 8y ago
  Andrew WK on why he listens to death metal: > This was something I'd heard in other music, but only in small spurts—the screeching wail of James Brown, the frantic drum solo before a song's big finale. Usually, with other bands or artists, they would build up to a moment of intensity, like the crest of a wave, and it would hit hard, but be short-lived, fleeting. But it became clear to me as I listened to these death metal CDs, that this entire genre was based on extending that explosive feeling for an entire song, an entire album, an entire career—not just a quick crescendo or a peak that served to counter the bulk of more subdued music. In death metal, that high mark was starting point. It used the furthest extreme of other rock music genres as its base line, its foundation, and pushed forward from there. It's specifically designed to exceed excess. I was spinning in ecstasy. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gvvb34/andrew-wk-on-death-metal https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gvvb34/andrew-wk-on-death...
midhir 8y ago
Maybe they'd be better off looking at black metal, especially early Norwegian stuff when members of Mayhem were killing themselves/each other. Or maybe My Dying Bride, Mourning Beloveth etc. The rest of it is a blast.
lukev 8y ago
As an avid death metal fan, I think that overall this article isn't wrong, but there's much more to be learned from the subjective experience of violent music. Which is to say: just ask a fan, and they'll tell you. Using "negative" emotions to evoke a positive response is way, way older than metal. It's a technique as old as humanity itself, and is present the oldest stories we have (e.g, Homer, Gilgamesh and Beowulf.) Storytelling and emotions are not straightforward things and the emotional response we get is not linearly tied to the subject matter. To suggest that a metalhead must be negative and violent because they listen to Cannibal Corpse is tantamount to saying that someone must be suicidal because they enjoy a good performance of Hamlet.
- Insanity 8y ago
  I like that last sentence especially. That's a good way of putting it. What makes people who don't listen to the music associate it with 'negativity' is not just the music itself though. It's the way some fans dress as well. Or the mosh pits / wall of death etc they might hear about. People are quick to judge, and the way you look will factor into that. But it's a generalisation people make. It happens that people whom I've known for some time react surprised when they find out my favourite genre of music is metal because I don't fit their 'picture' of what someone should look like who likes that kind of music. :) (At least, if they haven't seen me at home with band shirts on)
  - fhood 8y ago
    I was pretty irritated by the articles supposition that certain personality types may prefer "violent" music while others do not. Sure everybody has their preferences, but the violence of the lyrical content has nothing to do with why I like metal. And actually the people in the mosh pit at Gojira showed a great deal more empathy and kindness than the screaming masses at the last The Weeknd concert I was dragged to.
    - Insanity 8y ago
      I agree, usually the pits are not as bad as it looks from the outside.
baxtr 8y ago
A friend of mine once said: “There is a reason why Death Metal is very popular in the Nordics and Reggae in the Carribean” I thought that was insightful. PS: I really like Death Metal, Unleashed in particular
- tomcooks 8y ago
  She has never been to Sweden nor Mexico has she /s
devonkim 8y ago
For me it’s all about the dissonance and I almost never listen to lyrics in any form of music and find it an annoyance. If there was a death or black metal musical, I wouldn’t like it probably, for example. The voice to me is another instrument that is no better or worse than other instruments but unique in that voices are obviously much more varied than an instrument is. But I think it’s worth getting a survey of some sort from folks into metal seriously. We’ve already shown that metal fans are among the most dedicated listeners of a genre, for example, according to Spotify’s stats. The Metal Maniacs BB more than a decade ago did an informal survey among the members and found that at least in that crew most metal fans are pretty darn introverted, which is a finding that most people not into the music and cliques would be surprised by. That board may be up on the Wayback machine but maybe it’s be of some value to researchers. The self-report aspects of a study are handy enough for the purpose of identifying further research if you have no clue what to investigate next at least.
- 3131s 8y ago
  I personally never liked the vocals despite an almost twenty year infatuation with extreme death metal. But I am very captivated by the music of bands like Infester, Wormed, Autopsy, Pustulated, Flourishing, Pyrrhon, Stargazer, Defeated Sanity, Miasma, Timeghoul, Pyaemia, Wicked Innocence, Malignancy, Disembowelment, Sintury, Human Remains, Orchidectomy, Gorguts, etc. A few bands nowadays do release instrumental versions of their albums, this is one of my favorites: https://nuclearwarnowproductions.bandcamp.com/album/a-merging-to-the-boundless-void-of-voyce https://nuclearwarnowproductions.bandcamp.com/album/a-mergin...
  - devonkim 8y ago
    Ah, you’re definitely on the prog / technical death side of the spectrum then, which is what the article completely ignores unfortunately. All those bands are among the more technically proficient that the genre has to offer. I can only get into them to the extent I can get into someone playing a bunch of etudes and suites as a demonstration of raw ability. Granted, there’s some pieces that are real tough to stay together in classical (every other Stravinsky piece comes to mind) but metal will always be like jazz in that it’s all about a representative of each instrument or part rather than the raw power of many as a tour de force. I just tune out the vocals and unless you have some really awful vocals or something seriously crazy like from the likes of Regurgitate it doesn’t really register in my memory. This isn’t to say that doing extreme vocals doesn’t take any form of talent but trained singers in opera have been putting their vocal cords to the limits in other ways that are impressive, just more conventionally recognized.
thedancollins 8y ago
I would think the positive feelings are mostly what I've heard called "Opponent Process Theory". I mean, if you subject yourself to the violence, lyrics, melody, rhythms, of death metal it is like an assault. There is usually nothing soothing about it. Your body has to defend itself. It would be analogous to marathoners and the high they experience when running long distances. #throwupthehornsfordio
brobdingnagians 8y ago
I realize I'm being counter cultural here in saying this, but these are my musings: I wonder if our society is making a mistake. Little things carve channels in our minds over time that we aren't always aware of. In good times and easy times it may be easy to ignore the violence, glorification of sex and money and "live the good times", but in our times of trouble and stress, will our thoughts turn to those things we fed our minds on a constant diet? During social upheaval, would we have the discipline to sacrifice and love when the first thing that comes to mind are violent lyrics? The same thing probably goes for pop music; if the first thing that comes to mind when we speak of love or relationships are the lyrics from a Justin Bieber or Beyonce, or the thousands of songs about failed relationships, selfishness, and angst-- we might be missing out on some depth, feeling, and principles from earlier eras, like "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Believe_Me%2C_if_All_Those_Endearing_Young_Charms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Believe_Me%2C_if_All_Those_End...] In previous societies, music was written for other purposes like Handel saying, "My Lord, I should be sorry if I only entertained them; I wished to make them better." If every little influence in our life, including music, helped us to educate our emotions, feelings, and thoughts, perhaps our society would feel more cohesive, less isolated, more kind, and less bellicose. Moore's song was written as consolation and a declaration of faithfulness to his wife-- and it was wildly popular-- what have we lost in the centuries?
VLM 8y ago
Self therapy? From an external point of view, something like CBT or desensitization therapy for maybe claustrophobia or fear of guns looks very disturbing, but I'd like to hear an opinion on the participants. I'm not terrified of heights but I'm very nervous of them. After I get up there and the adrenaline dump is over and I'm just doing my task, I get quite a spectacular high at having overcome my fear. So its not paradoxical to me given experience, that I could both be scared of heights yet get addicted to parachute jumping. In a like way I could see people who are not terribly enthused about having to live in an area of urban hand of high rates of hand to hand combat and rape might find getting thru a metal song about the topic, extremely motivating and enjoyable. Corporate mainstream stuff is highly formulaic and self similar and its no surprise it won't speak to all people, making it surprising if something like metal or a zillion other counter cultural things (alt-right, horror movies, etc) didn't exist.
jzymbaluk 8y ago
Every think piece on the subject of death metal waxes about the violent lyrics, but I really challenge you to decypher the lyrics in the song selected to open the article[1] without reading them in advance. If you can interpret the lyrics in this song, you're better at this than I am, and I've been listening to this type of music for over a decade. Also, as of right now, this article sits at 41 points and 43 comments. Classic metalheads ratio'ing discussions. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNhN6lT-y5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNhN6lT-y5U
stochastic_monk 8y ago
I think that Halloween is the perfect time of the year to try to convey the aesthetic. Do you like scary movies? Thrillers? Surreal comedy? Elements and concepts from all of these feature heavily. Essentially, I celebrate Halloween all year round, and it's just a blast. As a classically trained musician, I've tended to lean toward more aggressive and technical metal. The other people I know who have gravitated toward death, black, and/or power metal are by overwhelming majority trained musicians. In a deeper way, there's also the role of catharsis, of someone else sharing your pain. Sometimes when one is in distress and hurting, it's so helpful to have someone else expressing something you can't quite convey in words.
- devonkim 8y ago
  I’m also classically trained but played some jazz and while it’s anecdata I’ve seen far more classically trained musicians in the metal scene than jazz players. While hip hop is basically pop today, I haven’t found any jazz musicians in, say, the extreme rap music scenes. But you’ll find them more in experimental music in general for sure (there’s rather little experimentation in extreme metal with folks like Deathspell Omega maybe being an exception). Unsure if it’s more a correlation of socioeconomic factors than musical / artistic ones. Metal is closer to a recreational drug for me than escapism / nesting with all the aesthetics of other senses like a holiday or vacation. That droning wall of sound is pretty awesome wherever it comes from. Bolt Thrower, Tsjuder, Demoncy, Emperor, etc. do it for me in ways that melodic metal of any sub genre doesn’t. Similar for why Gost (not the much more popular Ghost) works for me much more than Daft Punk despite many musical similarities.
  - stochastic_monk 8y ago
    You might enjoy the experimental hip hop group Death Grips, the drummer of which has collaborated with the Dillinger Escape Plan (who is about as experimental as you can find in hardcore).
mariusmg 8y ago
Melodic death metal FTW :))
rademacher 8y ago
As a fan of technical death metal and a guitarist it is one of the few genres that has the depth and complexity to keep me interested. This is also why I enjoy music from Sibelius and other classical greats. In contrast, most pop music is so stock that I can guess the next notes in a sequence and it just becomes dull to listen to. Also, as someone often described as stoic, metal has a enough energy to actually get me excited and feeling. When I listen to it, I get more of a response than say listening to DMB. I wonder if this is related to being an introvert, a lot of metal heads seem like they like to listen to music alone and get energized from solitude, where as a pop music fan may enjoy listening with friends.
- fhood 8y ago
  > a lot of metal heads seem like they like to listen to music alone and get energized from solitude, where as a pop music fan may enjoy listening with friends I'm not sure that this is true. Back in highschool, most of my close friends also happened to be into metal, so we listened to it together a lot. These days, fellow metal heads are so few and far between, that it is hard to find fellow enthusiasts and metal is so polarizing, that unless they are into it, they probably don't want to hear it.
auiya 8y ago
As a fan, I feel like they focus too much on the lyrical content and intelligibility when the genre clearly downplays both of these aspects moreso than any other genre. Death metal vocals aren't intended to add any sort of intellectual meaning or melody. They're meant to add an additional percussive effect, to add punctuation to various song measures and refrains. And in the case of those with truly monstrous voices, to add a powerful meta-human element. Some of the best tracks out there aren't even in English for instance, and yet English audiences eat them right up.
- ravenstine 8y ago
  A lot of death metal is straight up satirical. I don't think any of the members of Cannibal Corpse are advocating for the things described in their lyrics. It's just meant to be extreme sounding to the point of absurdity, which some people really enjoy. For the most part, fans like the music and the aesthetic.
tinmandespot 8y ago
A lot of what is said in the article is true. However the condescension and limited viewpoint are jarring. Extreme metal is much more than ‘plain old’ death metal bands like CC. There is black, thrash, grindcore, doom, post-metal, industrial and hybrids therof. Just like with any other music (think Leonard Cohen vs U2), there is vast difference in subtlety and sophistication of lyrics in metal. And just because the lyrics are a certain way it doesn’t mean the folks who wrote them aren’t smart - it is hard to ponder the meaning of life while headbanging to the blast beat of a Cannibal Corpse song!
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  Most music genres are kind of fractal - I usually tell non-fans that there is as much variation within metal as there is in music in general.
jly 8y ago
This article focuses excessively on 'violent lyrics', which are only a feature of some small sub-genres in the greater landscape of modern extreme metal. While no one is going to confuse the lyrical content of most metal as being upbeat or positive, there is enormous diversity of musical styling and lyrical subjects across the genre, just like any other. Most lyrics and most extreme metal bands don't focus on subjects like the article discusses (CC in particular). Death Metal (and it's sub-genres) is today more associated with musical and vocal style rather than violent lyrical imagery.
larrik 8y ago
I see a lot of good points here I otherwise would have made but: 1) "Death metal" is surprisingly regional. This article is very American-centric, as European death metal generally isn't not inspired by violence in the same way. 2) Almost all "good" art in human history is about sadness and death, especially poetry (which are probably the closest analog to modern lyrics). 3) Many of these bands tend to be intentionally over-the-top and not serious about their themes. They are usually very much going to for a classic B-movie goofiness vibe. (Cannibal Corpse, from the article, is definitely in this group)
- SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
  > 2) Almost all "good" art in human history is about sadness and death As they say, Great Art is concerned with the noble themes of Love and Death, whereas pulp fiction is nothing but sex and violence.
beat 8y ago
It's not about the violence. It's about what is considered socially acceptable. I mean, violent lyrics, seriously? Have they ever listened to blues, or folk music? My staff has murdered giants, my bag a long knife carries / For to cut mince pies from children's thighs, with which to feed the fairies. - Mad Tom of Bedlam (traditional folk song) And of course, there are movies, and even tv, which often have imagery more violent than any metal song (and visual, not lyrical). So what's going on here? Why is metal "violent", and the rest of this stuff is "normal"? My answer is mutual contempt. The stylistic cues of metal - both the music and the clothing - is to say "I reject social norms". Society of norms responds in kind, saying metal is worse than, say, the latest Avengers movie or the plot of a Shakespeare tragedy - that metal is "violent", and this other stuff is "normal".
lostgame 8y ago
I really like something that Marshall Mathers (Eminem) said at one point, something along the lines of people's inability to distinguish the fiction in his lyrics from the fiction of, for example, horror movies. He'd actually said something neat, that he feels there must be something more sacred about music for people to freak out to that extent. There's something ineffably interesting about that.
iamben 8y ago
A lot of the people I know that listen to death or black metal are very scientific - physicists, mathematicians, etc. I've always figured people are attracted to the music for two reasons - Firstly because they tend to be social outliers. As kids, smart and a little awkward. Much like the music. It's not for everyone and it gives you a sense identity and a group to belong to. Secondly because it's challenging to listen to. Like, but somewhat moreso than most genres, you have to spend time figuring the music out. As my mother would say "every song sounds the same" - except it doesn't. There's super complicated time signatures and riffs and everything else. And even if it's not (as) musically complicated, it's just not easy compared to pop tunes on the radio. It's another challenge to work out and make it accessible. And when you do, it's like understanding a world that most others don't (perhaps like coding, or maths, or science). Anecdotally, metal crowds seem to be far more lovely and polite than most. The Cannibal Corpse show I went to a few years back was remarkably so compared to a lot of the punkrock or hiphop shows I attend...
- aplc0r 8y ago
  I've never though of your second point, but I've found myself doing exactly that. There is some metal that takes multiple listens for me to appreciate, and requires concentration. Trying to do anything while listening to tech death for example, would annoy me. However, if I just sit down and listen to it, over time I appreciate it more and more.
  - iamben 8y ago
    Indeed. And much like coding (I suppose the most personal example I can use), you have to concentrate (hard!) those first few times - maybe even be in the mood to begin to understand it, and then it becomes kind of second nature. You know what's coming. That time change at 56 seconds makes you grin - everything flows.
sevensor 8y ago
In an open-source crossover, I once heard Jono Bacon (sometime commenter on HN, former Canonical community guy), explain that there are two genres of music in his collection. Death Metal, and Brutal Death Metal. I believe he's been in a band of his own as well.
exabrial 8y ago
Not all lyrics are like the ones mentioned in the article... I just like style. Makes good "wallpaper" music when you're doing something else.
onemoresoop 8y ago
Never got into the metal scene myself but never seen it as more than an indulgence in some form of silliness, some kind of fooling around with something that is not real but something that gets together kids who would otherwise feel lonely
ereyes01 8y ago
Death metal and fast aggressive music is an avenue of release for me. I listen to it when working out, and when trying to get in focus when coding under pressure. It's easily one of the most fun things I do all day. I don't watch music videos or dwell on the lyrics (or understand them most of the time), so I don't really see much of the gory side, and also most of the bands I like do not have much of a gory persona anyways. It's all just fast, high energy, quite complex and stimulating music to me to get my heart rate up, and I love it! Now, back to Amon Amarth... :-)
neonate 8y ago
http://archive.is/34G8Z http://archive.is/34G8Z

103 points by chablent 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

I had to stop reading at: > “It’s the paradox of enjoying a negative emotion that I was interested in,” says Thompson, a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. “Why are people interested in music that seems to induce a negative emotion, when in everyday life we tend to avoid situations that will induce a negative emotion?” I've been listening to various forms of metal (heavy metal, (technical / melodic) death metal, metalcore, deathcore, etc.) for over 20 years, and I never once (not even once) even thought to think about associating negative emotions to the music. In fact, it's the exact opposite reaction. I listen to it because it makes me feel positive. I listen to it for the same reasons that other people listen to music types they enjoy, which I think can be left unsaid because anyone who enjoys music knows exactly that feeling.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
throwaway8879 8y ago
An overwhelming majority of metal is super positive. Even songs like Iron Maiden's 'Fear of the Dark' doesn't sound negative although it's literally about fear. Even in extreme metal, say Necrophagist's songs like 'Multilate the Stillborn', it's all goofy and energetic and tongue-in-cheek. I've heard a lot of metal but can't think of any that is negative in a serious way. Perhaps melancholy if you consider sadder stuff by Opeth or something.
- faltad 8y ago
  You just need to venture in the realms of Black Metal to find negative songs in a serious way. Try any DSBM song, such as Psychonaut4, Lifelover and others. Then all the nationalist black metal which preaches ... well very aggressive ideas sometimes. This is of course a fringe but it exists.
  - Accacin 8y ago
    Yeah, French band called Peste Noire have an album called: 'La Sanie des siècles – Panégyrique de la dégénérescence'. IMO it's some of the most evil black metal I've come across. Guy behind the band has views that I do not agree with at all, but I enjoy his music.
    - YegoBear 8y ago
      That's a fantastic album. I can't really understand the lyrics to most black metal songs, even if they speak English, so I always listen to them as if it were classical music or a video game soundtrack, and just enjoy the highs and lows.
  - throwaway8879 8y ago
    Perhaps you're right. I'd never ventured into black/norwegian metal other than maybe classic Cradle of filth or Dimmu Borgir. But even those felt goody and sort of like an act to me. I'll give those a listen, thanks.
    - vbsteven 8y ago
      I can definitely recommend bands like Lifelover, Psychonaut4, Totalselfhatred, Alcest, Lantlos, Bonjour Tristesse, Drawn into Descent if you want to experience some not-so-happy metal
      - r721 8y ago
        And then there's funeral doom metal, stuff like Mordor "Odes" or Worship "Last CD Before Doomsday", which is utterly bleak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzaaCSLUSQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzaaCSLUSQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Leu5jqXGAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Leu5jqXGAo
        mountainplus 8y ago
        Never thought I would see these bands mentioned on HN. Would have even missed a heartbeat to see Thergothon or Skepti but Mordor is an absolute total surprise. Cheers, good fellow!
- rangibaby 8y ago
  Necrophagist’s first album is fantastic, I was messing around with Apple Music and was listening to music I liked when I was at middle school and it and the album “Peace Sells...” were the only metal that really held up.
  - throwaway8879 8y ago
    That first album is great considering it's just Schumiez playing/producing/recording/singing everything. Fermented Offal Discharge has an amazing neoclassical solo. The second album is even better in my opinion, a really talented drummer and bass player in addition to more complex writing. There's so great non-traditional time signatures on that album too. God I wish they would release a new record. It's been over a decade I think.
- sosuke 8y ago
  If you get a chance watch the Iron Maiden's documentary video. The people from around the world seems totally happy and excited and seem to get a lot of good from the music.
GiuseppaAcciaio 8y ago
It's still worth a read, and as well a summary article/comment written by the author (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324102543_On_the_enjoyment_of_violence_and_aggression_in_music https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324102543_On_the_en... , pdf available). The study is not without its limitations (self-reporting is the major one), however it's an interesting topic: the author's main hypotheses are: a) there's something with the way death metal/violent music fans' brain is wired that makes it react positively, whereas with non-fans it makes them react negatively. b) people who enjoy Death Metal do it by distancing themselves from the actual lyrical content ("it's just a song") and use it as a pressure relief valve of sorts c) people who enjoy Death Metal enjoy the feeling of being in an elite club that's set apart from the faceless conformist masses. It's bloody hard to set up experimental protocols to find reliable data to support or go against the hypothesis, but I'm going to keep an eye on this Thomson guy, and of course I'll keep on enjoying my violent music :)
- throwaway8879 8y ago
  I am wondering - how much of it is because most fans can't really understand the words or even look up the lyrics? I'm trying to recall the words to my favorite death-metal songs but can't remember any. All the growling just sounds cool. :)
- kranner 8y ago
  > a) there's something with the way death metal/violent music fans' brain is wired that makes it react positively, whereas with non-fans it makes them react negatively. Isn't this a tautology, given that there is no way to react to anything except via the wiring of one's brain?
  - GiuseppaAcciaio 8y ago
    Let me rephrase and see if I can get my meaning across: the author is asking if there is a pre-existing genetic/morphologic/physiologic/whatever predisposition that makes it so that some people can listen to death metal and suchlike and have a positive reaction where others (anecdotally, the majority of other people) will have a strong, visceral negative reaction. Is there a biological cause? Is it a "learned" like/dislike?
jjjensen90 8y ago
Agreed... I've been listening to metal since I could choose the music I listen to, and it has made me feel many things, but never negative emotions. Excitement, wonder, elation, adrenaline rush, relaxation, etc... In fact, especially as a younger person, listening to metal got me through some hard times emotionally, and the friends I made through shared interest helped me as well. I'm not sure where this professor got this idea, but I'd say metal is identical to any genre in the feelings it can give you, except that it is considered "extreme" or "violent" or "negative" by some outside observers. Just watch any interview with someone like George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher and you'll see that even the most grotesque death metal practitioners are disconnected from the subject matter outside of the music.
- slfnflctd 8y ago
  Okay, this is the 2nd comment I've seen in the thread saying, "never" were negative emotions involved in the listening of this music, and I feel compelled to remind everyone that our experiences are all different. For me (and surely others), the negative emotions, dark imagery, sometimes downright disgusting lyrical content and other such trappings are fundamentally intertwined with many of my feelings about the worse aspects of life. It's totally part of the draw. There are many, many facts about human existence I am deeply sad or angry & horrified about, and art which reflects a shared understanding of these kinds of things offers camaraderie in misery-- sometimes it leads to catharsis, but not always. You can separate the music itself from these things, and there are artists who have done this, yet even then the pure music is has many loud, fast and/or violent-sounding sections, and if you're angry, it can act as a channel for that anger to feel expressed.
- Applejinx 8y ago
  Counterargument: Mayhem. counter-counter argument: but of course, that's Norwegian Black Metal, very much NOT Death Metal. And you'd be right, and not even all NBM acts welded themselves to the subject matter. But there've been some metal bands who were really passionate about embracing (not 'disconnecting' from) the subject matter, and always a few who sought to become the subject matter, and one or two did actually do that.
mfukar 8y ago
Well if you hadn't stopped reading: > “What we are finding is that they are not angry people. They’re not enjoying anger when they listen to the music, but they are in fact experiencing a range of positive emotions.”
ryanmercer 8y ago
>I've been listening to various forms of metal (heavy metal, death metal, metalcore, deathcore, etc.) for over 20 years, and I never once (not even once) even thought to think about associating negative emotions to the music. In fact, it's the exact opposite reaction. Agreed, it's energetic music (that I mostly lift to) not "hey man, I wanna go home and kill myself" or "hey man I wanna kill all my neighbors" music.
crispyambulance 8y ago
Never got in to the metal thing myself, but I did listen to noise a lot and experienced similar surprises. For example, Merzbow, has been around since the 1980's and his music sounds literally like a train wreck-- no conventional beat, no melody, no vocal, just random-sounding reverb, static, tape loops and sometimes machine noise. Similar stuff from P16D4, Asmus Tietchens, Zoviet France and others. Many folks not familiar with this music would immediately assume it was all about these artists working through some really dark internal conflict, but that's not it at all. Instead, it was a kind of visceral catharsis, searching for a sublime authentic experience, rejecting the artifice of mimic-ing acoustically produced sound through electronics in favor of "native" electronic sounds that aren't bound to any natural reference. I think that metal music fans have a similar kind of experience, except that the visual aesthetics of metal happen to have distinct associations that make it easy for outsiders to get the wrong idea. If you call yourselves "cannibal corpse" or do things like put skeletons, bloody tombstones, pentagrams and devils on your artworks, yeah, it's going to be interpreted (from outsiders) in ways that may have nothing to do with the ultimate intent of the music.
- soundwave106 8y ago
  Merzbow frequently utilizes fetish and BDSM imagery / concepts and from the article perspective (although about death metal, it is similarly seen as "extreme music") I find that part of the article's conclusions interesting, in that for some there may be an endorphin release postulated sounds similar to what might be happening in the BDSM concept known as "sub space" (or occurring in other ways for other people, for example, "runner's high" is from what I understand a similar endorphin release). As far as the top level comment goes though... maybe I'm misinterpreting the comment because this is summary level material, but yeah, that's an odd assertion to me. Death metal is a niche genre in a style of music that has some significant semi-mainstream elements (metal as a whole). Death metal is similar to other sort-of-tangentially related concepts like say horror media (there is a nice semi-mainstream side and also a lot of fringe horror movie / media styles that have fewer but sometimes more dedicated fans). Many horror movies for instance are flat out iconic at this point (ranging from the original Universal monsters to some of the films of Hitchcock to certain films like, say, Halloween, Jaws, or the Shining). On rare occasions, they are both quite popular and they even win an Academy Award (eg The Silence of the Lambs). In music, the main thing I will say is that there are metal bands with often violent lyrics and imagery that are more popular (Slayer comes to mind), and non-metal bands with violent imagery that also are popular. Certainly if that violent imagery is slightly modified to a bit more theatrical, the band might even become mainstream (I'm thinking Alice Cooper as an example). The "sonic assault" of death metal in some ways wasn't new -- hardcore punk was an influence for the speed (although hardcore punk is quite a bit less technical) and there's certainly a couple relatively well known bands there in that genre that dabbled in (usually more theatrical but still macabre) horror. (The Damned and The Misfits are two fairly big names in the genre, not "mainstream" but big enough that some people will know of them, and there's plenty of other lesser known "horror punks" around...). So to me that statement ("why are people interested in xyz that seems to induce a negative emotion when in everyday life we tend to avoid situations that will induce a negative emotion") is weird in this context, because this is not a niche question whatsoever overall. The answer to the above question is probably not best answered by looking at the psychology of an obscure genre and more best answered to ask why (in the Silence of the Lambs example) a movie that pushes "negative emotions" of this sort is (at present) #23 on IMDB's top movies of all time.
VLM 8y ago
"when in everyday life we tend to avoid situations that will induce a negative emotion" One of the problems with the pyramidal nature of academia is professors are likely to be very disconnected from normal experiences of life. Extremes of privilege, wealth, gated community standard of living on campus, high status levels. If only we were all lucky enough to experience negative situations as rarely as an extremely privileged professor. Given that it seems obvious that a rando consumer would have trouble relating to a professor, it seems self evident that a subpopulation of consumers will have essentially no common ground to discuss philosophical outlooks with a prof. Its kind of like the CEO of walmart not being cultural bro with a randomly selected entry level unskilled employee. Its unlikely either could have anything useful to say about the other.

throwaway8879 8y ago

>is that long-term, persistent exposure to violent media may lead to subtle changes in one’s personality, desensitizing fans to violence and reinforcing negative social attitudes. I'm not sure I agree. I can listen to all the "violent music" I want, but can't stomach through a contemporary or even classic horror film. I was really weirded out and had to stop halfway through while watching a documentary on the Austrian guy who kept his daughter in his basement for many years. Also, not to be a cliched metalhead, but I'm disappointed by the lack of good death metal in this article.

AllegedAlec 8y ago
> >is that long-term, persistent exposure to violent media may lead to subtle changes in one’s personality, desensitizing fans to violence and reinforcing negative social attitudes. It's the same old stupid argument that has been becoming popular again about games recently, and frankly, it's such a huge load of bullshit.
- rangibaby 8y ago
  playing games where your only goal is to kill (oops, eliminate) people from the other team for hundreds of hours must have some kind of effect on you, even if it is fun. I loved games like San Andreas but couldn’t really get into GTA:V because it felt too real to me.
  - AllegedAlec 8y ago
    > playing games where your only goal is to kill (oops, eliminate) people from the other team for hundreds of hours must have some kind of effect on you, even if it is fun. Why would it? Furthermore, does this mean we also believe that people who do stuff like karate or Judo are more desensitized to violence?
  - 0xfeba 8y ago
    > playing games where your only goal is to kill (oops, eliminate) people from the other team for hundreds of hours must have some kind of effect on you. People really tie "kills" in games to murder in real life way too casually. When I play a game it's about strategy, team work, and winning. A lot like Football (Soccer). It has little to do with the terms or animations used in the game -- those are just for entertainment. I don't play a game because of how violent it is, I play it if my friends have it and/or it has good/fun game mechanics.

mynegation 8y ago

Anecdata ahead. There are different sub genres even within such niche genre as death metal. I love melodic death methal bands such as Dark Tranquility (those in the know would recognize it just by looking at my username), In Flames, and Insomnium. Their lyrics in general are not about extreme forms of aggression as article suggests, but revolves mostly around feelings of loneliness, apathy, acceptance and imminence of death, despair etc. First and foremost I listen to it because it is a very good music by talented musicians, just in their choice of genre. There is definitely an element of appeal in it in its “death” aspect though and I thought about it a lot over the years. Contrary to its general tone and lyric content melodic death metal does make me feel relaxed or energized, but generally brings positive emotions. I came to the conclusion that it is about unearthing all the fears and negative emotions that this music brings up in lyrics, acknowledging them and making peace with them instead of suppressing them.

auiya 8y ago
Winter's Gate by Insomnium is probably one of the best albums I've heard in three decades. In any genre.
- benrjackson 8y ago
  Winter's Gate is brilliant. I've found previous Insomnium albums to be a bit pedestrian (albeit very competent vanilla melodeath). With Winter's Gate Insomnium introduced some prog & black elements without abandoning their core melodeath sound. IMO there were two other outstanding albums released the same year that accomplished a similar feat - Be'lakor's 'Vessals' end Wilderun's 'Sleep at the edge of the earth'. Wilderun tend to get pigeon holed as a folk metal band but I don't think that accurately reflects their sound. I would recommend both albums to anybody that enjoyed Winter's gate

overthemoon 8y ago

John Darnielle, on why he listens to metal: "I mean, it’s music that I enjoy. I enjoy the playing, I enjoy the compositional approaches to musical expression. It’s weird, nobody ever asks. ‘What does listening to this type of music do for you?’ about any other kind of music, but with metal there seems to be this ‘justify your connection to it’ vibe out there. It’s a unique mode of musical expression that challenges the listener and transports me to different realms. I’d say the same of the rap I listen to, or the classical music, or the ambient music—but I guess I find a lot of different headspace to explore in metal, a lot of different moods to enjoy and ways to enjoy them." https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/06/19/big-ups-the-mountain-goats-john-darnielle/ https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/06/19/big-ups-the-mountain-g...

saturdaysaint 8y ago
And yet isn't listening to something that's repellent to your parents and the preppy kids at high school a strong part of the allure? It's counter-cultural expression - by design, it's supposed to be feared and misunderstood.
- overthemoon 8y ago
  Oh, for sure, there's a rebellious side to it, a way for a person to found an identity against something they don't like about their parents, about the preps, about authority, it's exclusive by its nature. However, I think often it's a genuine expression of whatever it is metal expresses, too, I think these two aspects are inextricable. The anger, the catharsis, the violence, the dark themes, these are by their nature alienating, fearful, and misunderstood, but it's also appealing for that to a particular kind of person.
jzymbaluk 8y ago
Andrew WK on why he listens to death metal: > This was something I'd heard in other music, but only in small spurts—the screeching wail of James Brown, the frantic drum solo before a song's big finale. Usually, with other bands or artists, they would build up to a moment of intensity, like the crest of a wave, and it would hit hard, but be short-lived, fleeting. But it became clear to me as I listened to these death metal CDs, that this entire genre was based on extending that explosive feeling for an entire song, an entire album, an entire career—not just a quick crescendo or a peak that served to counter the bulk of more subdued music. In death metal, that high mark was starting point. It used the furthest extreme of other rock music genres as its base line, its foundation, and pushed forward from there. It's specifically designed to exceed excess. I was spinning in ecstasy. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gvvb34/andrew-wk-on-death-metal https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gvvb34/andrew-wk-on-death...

midhir 8y ago

Maybe they'd be better off looking at black metal, especially early Norwegian stuff when members of Mayhem were killing themselves/each other. Or maybe My Dying Bride, Mourning Beloveth etc. The rest of it is a blast.

lukev 8y ago

As an avid death metal fan, I think that overall this article isn't wrong, but there's much more to be learned from the subjective experience of violent music. Which is to say: just ask a fan, and they'll tell you. Using "negative" emotions to evoke a positive response is way, way older than metal. It's a technique as old as humanity itself, and is present the oldest stories we have (e.g, Homer, Gilgamesh and Beowulf.) Storytelling and emotions are not straightforward things and the emotional response we get is not linearly tied to the subject matter. To suggest that a metalhead must be negative and violent because they listen to Cannibal Corpse is tantamount to saying that someone must be suicidal because they enjoy a good performance of Hamlet.

Insanity 8y ago
I like that last sentence especially. That's a good way of putting it. What makes people who don't listen to the music associate it with 'negativity' is not just the music itself though. It's the way some fans dress as well. Or the mosh pits / wall of death etc they might hear about. People are quick to judge, and the way you look will factor into that. But it's a generalisation people make. It happens that people whom I've known for some time react surprised when they find out my favourite genre of music is metal because I don't fit their 'picture' of what someone should look like who likes that kind of music. :) (At least, if they haven't seen me at home with band shirts on)
- fhood 8y ago
  I was pretty irritated by the articles supposition that certain personality types may prefer "violent" music while others do not. Sure everybody has their preferences, but the violence of the lyrical content has nothing to do with why I like metal. And actually the people in the mosh pit at Gojira showed a great deal more empathy and kindness than the screaming masses at the last The Weeknd concert I was dragged to.
  - Insanity 8y ago
    I agree, usually the pits are not as bad as it looks from the outside.

baxtr 8y ago

A friend of mine once said: “There is a reason why Death Metal is very popular in the Nordics and Reggae in the Carribean” I thought that was insightful. PS: I really like Death Metal, Unleashed in particular

tomcooks 8y ago
She has never been to Sweden nor Mexico has she /s

devonkim 8y ago

For me it’s all about the dissonance and I almost never listen to lyrics in any form of music and find it an annoyance. If there was a death or black metal musical, I wouldn’t like it probably, for example. The voice to me is another instrument that is no better or worse than other instruments but unique in that voices are obviously much more varied than an instrument is. But I think it’s worth getting a survey of some sort from folks into metal seriously. We’ve already shown that metal fans are among the most dedicated listeners of a genre, for example, according to Spotify’s stats. The Metal Maniacs BB more than a decade ago did an informal survey among the members and found that at least in that crew most metal fans are pretty darn introverted, which is a finding that most people not into the music and cliques would be surprised by. That board may be up on the Wayback machine but maybe it’s be of some value to researchers. The self-report aspects of a study are handy enough for the purpose of identifying further research if you have no clue what to investigate next at least.

3131s 8y ago
I personally never liked the vocals despite an almost twenty year infatuation with extreme death metal. But I am very captivated by the music of bands like Infester, Wormed, Autopsy, Pustulated, Flourishing, Pyrrhon, Stargazer, Defeated Sanity, Miasma, Timeghoul, Pyaemia, Wicked Innocence, Malignancy, Disembowelment, Sintury, Human Remains, Orchidectomy, Gorguts, etc. A few bands nowadays do release instrumental versions of their albums, this is one of my favorites: https://nuclearwarnowproductions.bandcamp.com/album/a-merging-to-the-boundless-void-of-voyce https://nuclearwarnowproductions.bandcamp.com/album/a-mergin...
- devonkim 8y ago
  Ah, you’re definitely on the prog / technical death side of the spectrum then, which is what the article completely ignores unfortunately. All those bands are among the more technically proficient that the genre has to offer. I can only get into them to the extent I can get into someone playing a bunch of etudes and suites as a demonstration of raw ability. Granted, there’s some pieces that are real tough to stay together in classical (every other Stravinsky piece comes to mind) but metal will always be like jazz in that it’s all about a representative of each instrument or part rather than the raw power of many as a tour de force. I just tune out the vocals and unless you have some really awful vocals or something seriously crazy like from the likes of Regurgitate it doesn’t really register in my memory. This isn’t to say that doing extreme vocals doesn’t take any form of talent but trained singers in opera have been putting their vocal cords to the limits in other ways that are impressive, just more conventionally recognized.

thedancollins 8y ago

I would think the positive feelings are mostly what I've heard called "Opponent Process Theory". I mean, if you subject yourself to the violence, lyrics, melody, rhythms, of death metal it is like an assault. There is usually nothing soothing about it. Your body has to defend itself. It would be analogous to marathoners and the high they experience when running long distances. #throwupthehornsfordio

brobdingnagians 8y ago

I realize I'm being counter cultural here in saying this, but these are my musings: I wonder if our society is making a mistake. Little things carve channels in our minds over time that we aren't always aware of. In good times and easy times it may be easy to ignore the violence, glorification of sex and money and "live the good times", but in our times of trouble and stress, will our thoughts turn to those things we fed our minds on a constant diet? During social upheaval, would we have the discipline to sacrifice and love when the first thing that comes to mind are violent lyrics? The same thing probably goes for pop music; if the first thing that comes to mind when we speak of love or relationships are the lyrics from a Justin Bieber or Beyonce, or the thousands of songs about failed relationships, selfishness, and angst-- we might be missing out on some depth, feeling, and principles from earlier eras, like "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Believe_Me%2C_if_All_Those_Endearing_Young_Charms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Believe_Me%2C_if_All_Those_End...] In previous societies, music was written for other purposes like Handel saying, "My Lord, I should be sorry if I only entertained them; I wished to make them better." If every little influence in our life, including music, helped us to educate our emotions, feelings, and thoughts, perhaps our society would feel more cohesive, less isolated, more kind, and less bellicose. Moore's song was written as consolation and a declaration of faithfulness to his wife-- and it was wildly popular-- what have we lost in the centuries?

VLM 8y ago

Self therapy? From an external point of view, something like CBT or desensitization therapy for maybe claustrophobia or fear of guns looks very disturbing, but I'd like to hear an opinion on the participants. I'm not terrified of heights but I'm very nervous of them. After I get up there and the adrenaline dump is over and I'm just doing my task, I get quite a spectacular high at having overcome my fear. So its not paradoxical to me given experience, that I could both be scared of heights yet get addicted to parachute jumping. In a like way I could see people who are not terribly enthused about having to live in an area of urban hand of high rates of hand to hand combat and rape might find getting thru a metal song about the topic, extremely motivating and enjoyable. Corporate mainstream stuff is highly formulaic and self similar and its no surprise it won't speak to all people, making it surprising if something like metal or a zillion other counter cultural things (alt-right, horror movies, etc) didn't exist.

jzymbaluk 8y ago

Every think piece on the subject of death metal waxes about the violent lyrics, but I really challenge you to decypher the lyrics in the song selected to open the article[1] without reading them in advance. If you can interpret the lyrics in this song, you're better at this than I am, and I've been listening to this type of music for over a decade. Also, as of right now, this article sits at 41 points and 43 comments. Classic metalheads ratio'ing discussions. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNhN6lT-y5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNhN6lT-y5U

stochastic_monk 8y ago

I think that Halloween is the perfect time of the year to try to convey the aesthetic. Do you like scary movies? Thrillers? Surreal comedy? Elements and concepts from all of these feature heavily. Essentially, I celebrate Halloween all year round, and it's just a blast. As a classically trained musician, I've tended to lean toward more aggressive and technical metal. The other people I know who have gravitated toward death, black, and/or power metal are by overwhelming majority trained musicians. In a deeper way, there's also the role of catharsis, of someone else sharing your pain. Sometimes when one is in distress and hurting, it's so helpful to have someone else expressing something you can't quite convey in words.

devonkim 8y ago
I’m also classically trained but played some jazz and while it’s anecdata I’ve seen far more classically trained musicians in the metal scene than jazz players. While hip hop is basically pop today, I haven’t found any jazz musicians in, say, the extreme rap music scenes. But you’ll find them more in experimental music in general for sure (there’s rather little experimentation in extreme metal with folks like Deathspell Omega maybe being an exception). Unsure if it’s more a correlation of socioeconomic factors than musical / artistic ones. Metal is closer to a recreational drug for me than escapism / nesting with all the aesthetics of other senses like a holiday or vacation. That droning wall of sound is pretty awesome wherever it comes from. Bolt Thrower, Tsjuder, Demoncy, Emperor, etc. do it for me in ways that melodic metal of any sub genre doesn’t. Similar for why Gost (not the much more popular Ghost) works for me much more than Daft Punk despite many musical similarities.
- stochastic_monk 8y ago
  You might enjoy the experimental hip hop group Death Grips, the drummer of which has collaborated with the Dillinger Escape Plan (who is about as experimental as you can find in hardcore).

mariusmg 8y ago

Melodic death metal FTW :))

rademacher 8y ago

As a fan of technical death metal and a guitarist it is one of the few genres that has the depth and complexity to keep me interested. This is also why I enjoy music from Sibelius and other classical greats. In contrast, most pop music is so stock that I can guess the next notes in a sequence and it just becomes dull to listen to. Also, as someone often described as stoic, metal has a enough energy to actually get me excited and feeling. When I listen to it, I get more of a response than say listening to DMB. I wonder if this is related to being an introvert, a lot of metal heads seem like they like to listen to music alone and get energized from solitude, where as a pop music fan may enjoy listening with friends.

fhood 8y ago
> a lot of metal heads seem like they like to listen to music alone and get energized from solitude, where as a pop music fan may enjoy listening with friends I'm not sure that this is true. Back in highschool, most of my close friends also happened to be into metal, so we listened to it together a lot. These days, fellow metal heads are so few and far between, that it is hard to find fellow enthusiasts and metal is so polarizing, that unless they are into it, they probably don't want to hear it.

auiya 8y ago

As a fan, I feel like they focus too much on the lyrical content and intelligibility when the genre clearly downplays both of these aspects moreso than any other genre. Death metal vocals aren't intended to add any sort of intellectual meaning or melody. They're meant to add an additional percussive effect, to add punctuation to various song measures and refrains. And in the case of those with truly monstrous voices, to add a powerful meta-human element. Some of the best tracks out there aren't even in English for instance, and yet English audiences eat them right up.

ravenstine 8y ago
A lot of death metal is straight up satirical. I don't think any of the members of Cannibal Corpse are advocating for the things described in their lyrics. It's just meant to be extreme sounding to the point of absurdity, which some people really enjoy. For the most part, fans like the music and the aesthetic.

tinmandespot 8y ago

A lot of what is said in the article is true. However the condescension and limited viewpoint are jarring. Extreme metal is much more than ‘plain old’ death metal bands like CC. There is black, thrash, grindcore, doom, post-metal, industrial and hybrids therof. Just like with any other music (think Leonard Cohen vs U2), there is vast difference in subtlety and sophistication of lyrics in metal. And just because the lyrics are a certain way it doesn’t mean the folks who wrote them aren’t smart - it is hard to ponder the meaning of life while headbanging to the blast beat of a Cannibal Corpse song!

pavel_lishin 8y ago
Most music genres are kind of fractal - I usually tell non-fans that there is as much variation within metal as there is in music in general.

jly 8y ago

This article focuses excessively on 'violent lyrics', which are only a feature of some small sub-genres in the greater landscape of modern extreme metal. While no one is going to confuse the lyrical content of most metal as being upbeat or positive, there is enormous diversity of musical styling and lyrical subjects across the genre, just like any other. Most lyrics and most extreme metal bands don't focus on subjects like the article discusses (CC in particular). Death Metal (and it's sub-genres) is today more associated with musical and vocal style rather than violent lyrical imagery.

larrik 8y ago

I see a lot of good points here I otherwise would have made but: 1) "Death metal" is surprisingly regional. This article is very American-centric, as European death metal generally isn't not inspired by violence in the same way. 2) Almost all "good" art in human history is about sadness and death, especially poetry (which are probably the closest analog to modern lyrics). 3) Many of these bands tend to be intentionally over-the-top and not serious about their themes. They are usually very much going to for a classic B-movie goofiness vibe. (Cannibal Corpse, from the article, is definitely in this group)

SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
> 2) Almost all "good" art in human history is about sadness and death As they say, Great Art is concerned with the noble themes of Love and Death, whereas pulp fiction is nothing but sex and violence.

beat 8y ago

It's not about the violence. It's about what is considered socially acceptable. I mean, violent lyrics, seriously? Have they ever listened to blues, or folk music? My staff has murdered giants, my bag a long knife carries / For to cut mince pies from children's thighs, with which to feed the fairies. - Mad Tom of Bedlam (traditional folk song) And of course, there are movies, and even tv, which often have imagery more violent than any metal song (and visual, not lyrical). So what's going on here? Why is metal "violent", and the rest of this stuff is "normal"? My answer is mutual contempt. The stylistic cues of metal - both the music and the clothing - is to say "I reject social norms". Society of norms responds in kind, saying metal is worse than, say, the latest Avengers movie or the plot of a Shakespeare tragedy - that metal is "violent", and this other stuff is "normal".

lostgame 8y ago

I really like something that Marshall Mathers (Eminem) said at one point, something along the lines of people's inability to distinguish the fiction in his lyrics from the fiction of, for example, horror movies. He'd actually said something neat, that he feels there must be something more sacred about music for people to freak out to that extent. There's something ineffably interesting about that.

iamben 8y ago

A lot of the people I know that listen to death or black metal are very scientific - physicists, mathematicians, etc. I've always figured people are attracted to the music for two reasons - Firstly because they tend to be social outliers. As kids, smart and a little awkward. Much like the music. It's not for everyone and it gives you a sense identity and a group to belong to. Secondly because it's challenging to listen to. Like, but somewhat moreso than most genres, you have to spend time figuring the music out. As my mother would say "every song sounds the same" - except it doesn't. There's super complicated time signatures and riffs and everything else. And even if it's not (as) musically complicated, it's just not easy compared to pop tunes on the radio. It's another challenge to work out and make it accessible. And when you do, it's like understanding a world that most others don't (perhaps like coding, or maths, or science). Anecdotally, metal crowds seem to be far more lovely and polite than most. The Cannibal Corpse show I went to a few years back was remarkably so compared to a lot of the punkrock or hiphop shows I attend...

aplc0r 8y ago
I've never though of your second point, but I've found myself doing exactly that. There is some metal that takes multiple listens for me to appreciate, and requires concentration. Trying to do anything while listening to tech death for example, would annoy me. However, if I just sit down and listen to it, over time I appreciate it more and more.
- iamben 8y ago
  Indeed. And much like coding (I suppose the most personal example I can use), you have to concentrate (hard!) those first few times - maybe even be in the mood to begin to understand it, and then it becomes kind of second nature. You know what's coming. That time change at 56 seconds makes you grin - everything flows.

sevensor 8y ago

In an open-source crossover, I once heard Jono Bacon (sometime commenter on HN, former Canonical community guy), explain that there are two genres of music in his collection. Death Metal, and Brutal Death Metal. I believe he's been in a band of his own as well.

exabrial 8y ago

Not all lyrics are like the ones mentioned in the article... I just like style. Makes good "wallpaper" music when you're doing something else.

onemoresoop 8y ago

Never got into the metal scene myself but never seen it as more than an indulgence in some form of silliness, some kind of fooling around with something that is not real but something that gets together kids who would otherwise feel lonely

ereyes01 8y ago

Death metal and fast aggressive music is an avenue of release for me. I listen to it when working out, and when trying to get in focus when coding under pressure. It's easily one of the most fun things I do all day. I don't watch music videos or dwell on the lyrics (or understand them most of the time), so I don't really see much of the gory side, and also most of the bands I like do not have much of a gory persona anyways. It's all just fast, high energy, quite complex and stimulating music to me to get my heart rate up, and I love it! Now, back to Amon Amarth... :-)

neonate 8y ago

http://archive.is/34G8Z http://archive.is/34G8Z