It is said that music makes the world go round. It transcends across countries, continents, cultures, and language barriers and cuts right to the heart and soul of people. No matter what genre of music someone connects to, the fact is that there is that connection. As a musician yourself, you understand just how incredible it is to play in front of a live audience, feel their reaction, make that connection, and affect people.
Listenings
The Strange Connection Between Politics and Extreme Metal
Extreme metal’s relation to extreme politics provides a variety of examples. From Slayer’s ‘Angel of Death’ in the 1980’s to the Norwegian black metal scene in the 1990’s to the current strain of National Socialist Black Metal on extreme politics have played a role in extreme metal either aesthetically or ideologically.
Black Metal takes Norway’s Everyday Racisms to the Extreme
Norwegian black metal represents an intersection between locality and genre: its locality figures the scene as a national expression within a global metal underground, its genre as a particular set of stylistic and ideological practices within the broader category of metal music.
Conceiving Death Metal While Confronting the Human Animal
In 1995, Chuck Schuldiner, an animal-lover with a habit of wearing a shirt decorated with kittens during interviews, lamented that he had never really intended to create the genre known as Death Metal (in Morton, 2010).
Black Metal Traditional Connection with LaVeyan Satanism
The relationship between black metal and Satanism is complex. From LaVey’s side, Norwegian black metal artists often appeared “as essentially Christian,” at least in the sense that they were “defining Satanism by Christian standards” (in Moynihan & Søderlind 1998: 234).
Extreme Death Metal as Purveyors of Modern Escapism
If only for the benefit of those who have never had the pleasure/displeasure of being subjected to the aural assaults that Black Metal and Death Metal music constitute, it will be helpful to begin by attempting to delineate audible definitions of, and distinctions between, both Black Metal and Death Metal.
Demons, Devils and Witches: The Occult in Heavy Metal Music
Eugene Martone, his Fender Telecaster slung around his shoulder, walks tentatively onto the stage. He is here to play for the soul of his friend, bluesman Willie Brown, a harmonica player who in his youth made a deal with the Devil in return for musical virtuosity.
Corpsepaint Towards the Re-Occultation of Black Metal Blood
What forces are at work when blood runs black? From Beherit’s ‘Oath of Black Blood’ to Mütilation’s ‘Black Imperial Blood’ to Behexen’s ‘My Stigmas Bleeding Black’ to Xasthur, for whom “shadows of human suffering have found a home, watered with blackened blood”, black metal hotwires the historical poetics of early modern humoral theory, summoning the sanguine urge of celebration, and the choleric rage of the berserker, only to pollute these Hippocratic streams of blood and bile with the cold and dry essence of black bile.
Heavy Metal, and Cultural Markers for the End of the Century
The term heavy metal was first used in the mid-seventies as a disdainful label of an extreme musical genre known as hard rock.
History of Traditional Folk Metal and the Circle of Influence
In this article, I explore the history of folk metal, looking at the beginning of heavy metal, its successive sub-genres and the influences from traditional and folk music and how it seduced the heavy metal genre.
Masking and Sonic Abjection in Norwegian Black Metal
In the late 1980s, the Second Wave of black metal was founded in Norway by the band Mayhem. This heavy metal scene was populated by bands such as Emperor, Darkthrone, Burzum, Gorgoroth, and Satyricon.
The Defilement and Profaned Symbols in Extreme Metal
Ricoeur’s interpretation of symbols allows us to analyse symbols as structuring elements in the expression of our worlds of meaning. Defilement is an exemplary expression of this nature of symbols since it is through the demythologisation of symbols and understandings of fault that allows an aesthetic resonance to develop within the genre. Therefore, people are able to employ certain symbols within the genre in myriad ways precisely because these symbols are (always) already profaned.
Edmonton and the Canadian Underground Metal Scene
Since a large measure of my fieldwork has been in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, I will spend some time here talking about the Edmonton underground metal scene. Edmonton has an interesting, unique and vibrant underground extreme metal scene with some obscure yet pivotal acts.
A Brief Introduction to Death in Depressive Suicidal Black Metal
Death plays a fundamental and defining role in human life, and there have been many theories about how this inevitability affects human thought, and social life. According to anthropological studies (Bloch & Parry 1982), death and death-related phenomena, including rituals, music, the meaning of death are shaped by the cultural context in question.
