[GiuseppaAcciaio]

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_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 :)

[darrenf]

> c) people who enjoy Death Metal enjoy the feeling of being in an elite club that's set apart from the faceless conformist masses.

I want the bands I love to be popular... but unpopular... but popular. It's aggravatingly paradoxical. Like, if I see a great band in front of 6 people including the bar staff I'm angry that there isn't a bigger audience; same band in a 1,000-strong venue (say) and I'm disappointed at the loss of intimacy; headlining Bloodstock and I'll be "FINALLY ten thousand people agree with me, about time".

[rolandog]

I like your observation on loss of intimacy.

I don't know if this properly translates to English, but in the Mexican metal scene (I don't know if this would generalize to other Spanish speaking regions) I've heard the term "comercial" used to describe when a band has gone mainstream, or "sold out"... It sometimes carries a similar connotation of being too popular.

[darrenf]

Yeah, I get the sold out/mainstream/commercial thing but that phrasing has always to me felt like a criticism of the band, when actually I'm resenting the presence of an increased number of fans - about which I should be feeling vindicated and smug.

[JackFr]

"I like their early stuff, before, you know, they sold out."

[scns]

For Death Metal with intelligent lyrics you won't have to distance yourself from i recommend Chuck Schuldiners band "Death":

Individual Thought Patterns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjLIwidBubg

Human: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzvtfbqJeIY

Symbolic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbp60IX_jFQ&list=PL2l9mciyQ-...

[zhengyi13]

By way of a similar recommendation, there's Atheist's work, particularly "Elements". It's an early 90s Florida-scene death metal theme album lyrically about, well, the elements and Nature... which breaks into samba on the third track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHHkxUqqnQ4&list=PLArAJlC1y5...

[consultanturnot]

He refined his music, lyrics, and voice over the years with maturity. RIP Chuck. I liked the instrumentals the most, and the drums were usually very well done, especially by Gene Hoglan on ITP, Symbolic, etc.

[Ocerge]

I can't recommend Death enough. They are my universal choice for introducing somebody to heavy music. RIP chuck.

[nickjj]

I fully agree music taste is based on how your brain is wired, but that goes for anything (movies, etc.), but I completely disagree with all of his hypotheses.

Point A is rigged. This is like having you or I listen to a form of music that we don't like and give our opinions on it. I don't want to put anyone down for liking what they like, but for me personally, I don't like country music. I'd probably answer A with "yeah, this music is assaulting my eardrums, please turn it off" and if you hooked me up to a heart monitor you'd probably notice my blood pressure and heart rate elevate because even listening to it makes me internally cringe off the charts.

Point B, truthfully for a lot of bands I don't even listen to the lyrics. I don't distant myself with "it's just a song" -- they are completely out of the picture. I listen to a lot of these songs because the riffs and growls sound good to me. For example, some of Infant Annihilator's songs are awesome but if you ever looked at their lyrics or song titles you would either start uncontrollably laughing or try to get the band locked up for life.

Point C seems strange. I also never had these feelings, but I think if you did a similar study with any music genre you would draw the same conclusion. A text book example of that would be English speaking people who listen to K-Pop, but it really applies to any genre.

As an aside, the K-Pop case is interesting because I think it proves that people are able to enjoy music without understanding the lyrics (which also applies to some death metal bands who sing in English too).

It is hard to make sense of why people like what they like. I think the moral of the story here is, human brains are hard to reverse engineer.

[GiuseppaAcciaio]

eh, the guy is trying to do science so it's not a question of agreeing or disagreeing with a hypothesis, just whether representative data can be collected to validate (to a certain degree) or disprove the hypothesis.

[nickjj]

In that case, there is a lack of data to validate any of his hypotheses.

He needs to repeat the same study on every genre of music and then examine the results in aggregate to look for patterns.

[kranner]

> 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]

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?

[dagw]

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.

Couldn't you find exactly the same thing about lots of genres of music? Opera and some genres of jazz for example can cause extremely different reactions in people, at least as strong as that of death metal.

I wonder how much of it is simply due to unfamiliarity and baseline expectations of what music 'should' sound like. We've all heard old stories of people reacting to Rolling Stones the same way people who grew up listening to Rolling Stones might react to Dimmu Borgir.

I know my perception of jazz changed a lot after I spent time with huge jazz fan who taught me about the genre and explained the different aspects of the music and how to approach it. I bet if someone sits down and honestly tries to learn about and understand the different aspects and genres of death metal then their negative reaction will, if not go away, then at least greatly diminish.

[jacobush]

> Couldn't you find exactly the same thing about lots of genres of music?

Also interesting, I look forward to more studies! :-)

[FranzFerdiNaN]

Personally, it's been a process of learning. At first I even found something like Nirvana too much, but I could appreciate classic rock and metal like Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath. From there it was a journey of discovery that ended with death/doom metal and black metal. Most death metal is just not really my taste but I can totally see what people like about it.

[lukev]

All three of those points are somewhat obvious, though.

a) We like violent music because our brains like it. Ok, how else would that work?

b) We distance ourselves from the lyrical content. Well, duh. Otherwise we'd all be serial killers. You'd have to be a psychopath not to.

c) Yep, that's sort of the point of being counter-culture.

[13years]

> b) We distance ourselves from the lyrical content. Well, duh. Otherwise we'd all be serial killers. You'd have to be a psychopath not to.

Not everyone distances themselves from the lyrics; however, the perspective is that it is fantasy music. Kinda like immersing yourself in Quake and killing a bunch of people, but you don't take that out of the context of the game into real life.

[throwaway8879]

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. :)