Dissecting the Bloodthirsty Bliss of Death Metal

[Judi Lynn]

By David Noonan, Scientific American Contributor | October 31, 2018 08:22am ET

Brutality now becomes my appetite
Violence is now a way of life
The sledge my tool to torture
As it pounds down on your forehead

Shakespeare it's not. Those lyrics, from "Hammer Smashed Face" by the band Cannibal Corpse, are typical of death metal — a subgenre of heavy metal music that features images of extreme violence and the sonic equivalent of, well, a sledgehammer to the forehead.

The appeal of this marginal musical form, which clearly seems bent on assaulting the senses and violating even the lowest standards of taste, is mystifying to non-fans — which is one reason music psychologist William Forde Thompson was drawn to it. Thompson and his colleagues have published three papers about death metal and its fans this year, and several more are in the works.

"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?" A number of studies have explored the emotional appeal of sad music, Thompson notes. But relatively little research has examined the emotional effects of listening to music that is downright violent.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/63969-bloodthirsty-bliss-of-death-metal.html