Metal Music Studies - Volume 5, Issue 3, 2019

In academic studies about heavy metal, vocals have rarely been addressed from the poïetic point of view. By pointing out possible misconceptions about the production of vocals in heavy metal studies, this article suggests the adoption of existing and ongoing scientific research on voice science; the latter includes different clinical fields such as vocology, phoniatrics, otorhinolaryngology and logopaedics, in addition to the subfield of vocal pedagogy.

In this article, I introduce the breakdown as a formal structure identified in certain styles of modern metal, especially metalcore. Breakdowns are widely considered to be distinct sections of a song, much like a verse or chorus: this observation provides the basis for defining breakdowns structurally using music analysis. Responding to the nascent field of research on popular music fandom, I next discuss curatorial practices focusing upon breakdowns, where online fan communities collect their favourites, rate them and compare how they are employed in metal music. Moving beyond their use as extracts of recorded tracks, I investigate some possible uses and accompaniments for breakdowns in live settings. In particular, metal performance scenarios can emphasize breakdowns as opportunities for moshing and other forms of collective motion. Finally, I consider potential listening experiences of breakdowns (and their accessibility), from catharsis and emotional release to communal belonging.

This article explores harmonic function, modality and guitar distortion in so-called classic heavy metal. I suggest a dual framework for analysing heavy metal, including such mirror-symmetries as ‘major’/‘minor’, ‘sharp’/‘flat’, ‘bright’/‘dark’, ‘dominant’/‘subdominant’ and ‘authentic’/‘plagal’. My central aim is to demonstrate that heavy metal harmony tends towards plagal systems and darker modes, and yet has constant major elements added from the distorted power chords.

Black metal is often considered as being one of the most transgressive subgenres of extreme metal music, especially because of its thematic (e.g. Satanism, nationalism, national socialism). In Québec (Canada), the black metal scene – and more specifically the métal noir québécois (MNQ) community – uses themes linked with nationalism, which are transmitted through French lyrics and folk music. Thus, I argue that MNQ members, through their music and discourses, are building a phonographic narrative and an identity-based narrative, which takes its root in Québec’s history and black metal ideology. In order to identify the phonographic narrative of MNQ, I will analyse a song from MNQ repertoire, ‘Ancien folklore québécois’ (Neige et Noirceur 2010), by focusing on the textual narrative elements, while linking them with the musicological parameters of popular music. Finally, I will focus on the concept of identity-based narrative by using the discourses of the community’s members gathered through ethnographic interviews.

In the underground subgenre of depressive suicidal black metal (DSBM), extremes of violence against the self are presented in combination with a restrictive version of black metal. Album covers feature explicit photographs of self-cutting or drawings of suicide by hanging; vocals are tortured screams expressing extreme suffering, and guitar sounds are so distorted that they begin to approach an ambient atmospheric blur. Given the history of concern about metal and its health implications, I investigate DSBM as a case in which representation of harm in music is overt, explicit and extreme, yet the health impact of the music is undetermined. I discuss how different modalities of distortion and restriction may connect the sound of DSBM to themes of violence against the self, presenting a theoretical framework for approaching DSBM as music which negotiates a complex economy of the staging and control of violence with respect to the self.