Toward a Systematic Understanding of “Heaviness” in Metal Music Production (original) (raw)

Heaviness: A Key Concept of Metal Music Through the Lens of Deleuzian Philosophy

Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis | Studia de Cultura

This work focuses on the concept of heaviness and its use in the context of metal music. It first examines the concept in the works of other academics interested in metal music and then seeks to find a common point of convergence between the various definitions of heaviness through Deleuzian and Deleuze-Guattarian philosophy. In doing so, this thesis brings together both a cultural approach to the study of music and an ecological approach, creating a cognitive-semiotic conception of heaviness as a perplexity of the physical-spatial properties of sound and the listener’s musical experience.

Metal Music Studies 5.3 'Metal and Musicology' Editorial

Metal Music Studies, 2019

Given its short history as a self-conscious academic field, metal studies' interdisciplinarity is impressive. Metal studies actively draws upon and engages sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, gender studies, history, geography and, of course, musicology. This special issue of Metal Music Studies, 'Metal and Musicology', is primarily concerned with the latter discipline and its interaction with metal studies. This is the editorial for the 'Metal and Musicology' special issue of Metal Music Studies journal, co-edited by Lewis F. Kennedy and M. Selim Yavuz (2019). The rest of the issue can be found here: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/mms/2019/00000005/00000003\. Members of the International Society for Metal Music Studies have access to the entire back catalogue of Metal Music Studies journal. Join the society here: https://www.metalstudies.org/membership

The DAW, Electronic Music Aesthetics, and Genre Transgression in Music Production: The Case of Heavy Metal Music

Producing Music (Perspectives on Music Production), 2019

This chapter continues my ongoing research into the DAW and its role in reconfiguring popular music practice (see , with particular reference to genre characteristics in heavy metal music. My focus is on the manner in which those "rules" that determine the "compositive" elements of the metal genre (see are "transgressed" as a result of their interaction with new technological forms. These ideas are applied specifically in relation to DAW-based practices, highlighting the manner in which this medium might be regarded as an agent of genre deconstruction and destabilization. Key to my argument is the hypothesis that the DAW is essentially a genre-specific medium in the sense that it foregrounds specific notions of creative practice associated with the aesthetics of electronic music. To illustrate this, I trace the route by which the DAW and its inherent electronic music aesthetics have become gradually integrated into metal music practice, from metal musicians' uses of the DAW during the mid-1990s through to the activities of DAW-based metal practitioners during the mid-to late 2000s and the hybridized forms of "electronic" metal that emerged at this time, including djent, djent-step, and cyber-grind. The concluding part of the chapter discusses situations in which older metal bands have attempted to incorporate, from outside their idiom, the traits of DAW-derived genres, with a particular focus on the dubstep collaborations on Korn's 2012 album, The Path of Totality. The chapter's key assertion is that metal artists who have gravitated toward either the DAW, or DAW-based practitioners, are all engaging to some degree with the aesthetics of electronic music and, while this has enabled the domain of metal music

Metal music studies at the intersection of theory and practice

Metal Music Studies, 2021

Welcome to this special issue arising from the conference Crosstown Traffic: Popular Music Theory and Practice held at the University of Huddersfield (United Kingdom) in September 2018. As a joint conference arranged by four popular music studies research organizations, 1 including the International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS), it aimed to integrate different disciplines and professions, promoting interdisciplinarity and collaborative work. A total of 272 speakers from 26 countries presented 131 papers over five days, thirteen of which were directly related to metal. The central requirement for acceptance was that a presentation had to engage with topics relevant to more than one organization, namely popular music studies, metal music studies, electronic dance music and record production. Although this requirement was a political decision of the conference committee, it encourages reflection on the development of metal music studies in general. There is a broad consensus that while research on metal music

The Ever-Evolving Maze – The Analysis of Metal Genres

Rocznik Komparatystyczny, 2020

The analysis of Metal genres Most scholars define metal music as a genre of rock music that separated from the mother genre in the early 1970s (Weinstein: 11). In the book Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Subculture, Deena Weinstein also states that both rock and roll and rock are "far too broad to be considered genres themselves […] Neither rock and roll nor rock have a standard definition. Each is a bricolage that can only be defined or totalized from one of its aspects" (Weinstein: 11). Therefore heavy metal is a genre within a greater musical current, not a subgenre of rock music. However, this kind of music turned out to be particularly prolific and gave birth to numerous genres, subgenres, and fusion genres on its own. Therefore, modern metal music may be treated as a meta-genre since it encompasses many distinct genres that evolved from a common stem-heavy metal of the 1970s. In this article, I intend to explore and describe metal music and its internal subdivision to demonstrate that despite its harsh façade it is, in fact, an intricate, eclectic, and ever-evolving genre. But first, it is necessary to define the key features of metal.

(No?) Adventures in Recording Land: Engineering Conventions in Metal Music

Rock Music Studies, 2022

Inspired by claims that metal music production has become standardized, this article draws on interviews with eight internationally recognized producers examining whether a uniform methodology in recording metal exists and where creative freedom remains. The findings suggest that although recordists must abide by electroacoustic laws and metal music’s pursuit of ever-heavier music, which entails some best practices, decades-long careers build on creative experimentation and sustained curiosity. The individuality of bands, songs, arrangements, and recording conditions requires individual production approaches, and most successful producers experiment to develop professionally and stay at the forefront of contemporary metal music production practice.

Genre and Expression in Extreme Metal Music, ca. 1990–2015

Extreme metal music, a conglomeration of metal subgenres unified by a common interest in transgressive sounds and imagery, is now a global phenomenon with thriving scenes in every inhabited continent. Its individual subgenres represent a range of diverse aesthetics, some with histories spanning over thirty years. Scholarship on extreme metal now boasts a similar diversity as well as its own history spanning nearly two decades. With the rise of metal studies as an emerging field of scholarship, the scholarly literature on extreme metal has increased exponentially within the past seven years supported by annual conferences, the establishment of the International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS), and a specialized journal (Metal Music Studies). Despite this growth, the field is still characterized by what sociologist Keith Kahn-Harris has called “undoubtedly the most critical weakness in metal studies as it stands: the relative paucity of detailed musicological analyses on metal” (Kahn-Harris 2011, 252). This blind spot in the literature is so pervasive that Sheila Whiteley began her preface to Andrew Cope’s Black Sabbath and the Rise of Heavy Metal Music with the exclamation, “At last! A book about heavy metal as music” (Cope 2010, xi). As the first book-length musicological study of extreme metal, this dissertation responds to this critical gap by outlining, in previously unattempted detail, a wide range of genre conventions and semiotic codes that form the basis of aesthetic expression in extreme metal. Using an interdisciplinary mixture of literary genre theory, semiotics, music theory and analysis, acoustics, and linguistics, this dissertation presents a broad overview of extreme metal’s musical, verbal, and visual-symbolic systems of meaning. Part I: Interconnected Contexts and Paratexts begins with a critical survey of genre taxonomies, showing how their implicit logic masks value judgments and overlooks aspects of genre that are counterintuitive. This leads to an investigation of boundary discourses that reveals how fans define extreme metal negatively according to those subgenres and categories of identity that they treat as abject Others: nu metal, screamo, and deathcore as well as their associations with blackness, femininity, and adolescence. Part I concludes with a thick description of death metal and black metal that shows how its lyrics, album reviews, album artwork, band logos, and font styles collectively provide messages about the semantics of genre, most notably by drawing upon archetypes of the sublime and, in the case of raw black metal, the dystopian imagery of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century woodcut engravings. Part II: Analyzing Musical Texts synthesizes large corpus studies of musical recordings with close readings of individual songs. This section begins with a demonstration of how technical death metal bands Cannibal Corpse, Demilich, and Spawn of Possession play with listener expectations towards meter, syntax, and musical complexity to create pleasurable forms of disorientation that reward active and repeated listenings. It proceeds to investigate musical accessibility and formal salience in melodic death metal, showing through examples by In Flames and Soilwork how the notion of melody pervades this music and contributes to its sense of rhetoric. Part II concludes with a study of musical expression in extreme metal vocals. Using discussions and recordings from a vocalist participant, a corpus study of eighty-five songs that begin with wordless screams, and close readings of excerpts by Morbid Angel, Zimmers Hole, and At the Gates, I demonstrate that the acoustical features of vowel formants are central to vocal expression in extreme metal, enabling vocalists to mimic large beasts in a way that fans find convincing and powerful.

Dissonance in metal music: Musical and sociocultural reasons for metal's appreciation of dissonance

Metal Music Studies, 2022

This article explores reasons for the proliferation of dissonance in metal music. It asks why metal musicians compose dissonant songs and what sociocultural functions dissonance may have for metal as a community. The findings suggest that exploring ways to further utilise dissonance is crucial to the genre's development and continued transgression, especially in progressive and extreme subgenres, and that fans derive pleasure and meaning from dissonance in the music. Dissonance is not only present in many metal compositions, but its prominence suggests that dissonance is one of the genre's central aesthetic features, at least in its more extreme subgenres. This is a subversion of the typical values in mainstream popular music, where dissonant features are fleeting points of tension. The article argues that dissonance is valued for its congruence with an aesthetic that transcends the genre through its overall transgressive traits. Such an aesthetic is appealing because it facilitates the exploration of negative emotions and ideas in safety, both individually and communally.

Harmonic structures in 21st-century metal music: A harmonic analysis of five major metal genres

Metal Music Studies, 2023

This article investigates whether and how five of the major metal subgenres differ in their harmonic practices in the 21 st century. One hundred metal tracks-twenty from each of the five subgenres of power metal, black metal, metalcore, melodic death metal and progressive metal-released since 2000 were analysed, capturing their chord progressions and modulation techniques. Tonal analysis indicated that although each subgenre seems to adopt the techniques used by the early heavy metal bands of the 1970s and 1980s, individual signature styles contribute to the desired sonic aesthetic. The study found pronounced harmonic practices in most subgenres, yet the most distinctive in power metal and black metal. While black metal focused on non-diatonic minor chords for a dark atmosphere and dissonant aesthetic, power metal emphasised the brighter Dorian mode and employed baroque and classically influenced secondary dominants and diminished seventh chords to add colour to progressions and brighten the sound.