Brutal truth: modern(ist) aesthetics and death metal

ABSTRACT

Here, I explore a modernist aesthetics of death metal. First, I briefly describe a few themes that characterize some modern art, without any claim that they are necessary, sufficient, or exhaustive. The goal is to obtain a set of themes that might be set against similar themes characteristic of death metal. This is the task in the second half of the paper. In particular, I argue that (some) modernist art and death metal share themes centered on transgressively breaking with the past, pursue their conception of the truth, eliminate elements in their art form to purify them, and attack the art/non-art or music/non-music distinction. I contend that centering on death metal vocals reflects these themes. Death metal growls, like some modernist art, transgresses on past vocal traditions, tells us important truths, eliminates traditional concepts/techniques of signing, and undermines the singing/noise distinction.

Keywords:

• Death Metal
• modernist Art
• transgression

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Kevin DeLapp, Darren Hick, and J. Aaron Simmons as well as two anonymous references of this journal for discussions and thoughts which have helped the paper immensely.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Gordon Graham (2005, 184–7) certainly sees the “break with tradition” as the hallmark of modernist art.

2. See, e.g. Peter Childs: More generally, “modern” has been frequently used to refer to the avant-garde […] It is this sense of the avant-garde, radical, progressive or even revolutionary side to the modern which was the catalyst for the coinage “Modernism” … (Childs 2000, 12).

3. We can find the same idea in Graham: “the Theatre of the Absurd abandoned plot and dialogue in favour of meaningless repetition and pointless action with the intention of making the shapeless, non-narrative nature of actual lives apparent on stage. It would thereby expose (its proponents imagined) the extent to which traditional theatre misleads by imposing narrative form on the necessarily formless, and turning lives into ‘life stories’” (Graham 2005, 186).

4. See Wladyslaw Tartarkiewicz’s characterization of the traditional conception of art as “production of beauty” (Tatarkiewicz 1971, 137).

5. I don’t intend my discussion to imply that Fenner’s answer is false. On Fenner’s account, the answer “may be that the tradition of showing beauty to be a highly or purely subjective phenomenon renders beauty apparently less valuable than if it were objective in character, and so we have, in the twentieth century, a move away from the production in art of beauty to that which is simply ‘artistic’ or ‘artistically important’”; which can explain the production of “ugly” rather than beautiful art (Fenner 2005, 13). It’s quite possible (and, in my view, plausible) that the move to make “ugly” art has more than one explanation, so that the question will have multiple consistent, interlocking answers.

6. Perhaps, in such cases, there is a parallel to the much-discussed paradoxes of tragedy (see Raphael 1960) and horror (see Carroll 1990, Chapter 4).

7. My thanks to anonymous referee for both pressing this point and the reference.

8. For a few (biased) examples of growling in death metal, see (hear?): Cannibal Corpse’s “Hammer Smashed Face”; Suffocation’s “Effigy of the Forgotten”; Mortician’s “Necrocannibal”; Psycroptic’s “The Colour of Sleep”; and Cerebral Bore’s “Open Casket Priapism”.

9. See, e.g. the following comments from death metal musicians: “I would say in the beginning of death metal, it was the unpronounced growling vocals” Paul Ryan (Origin); “To me, it was always the vocals. If it has the vocals and the aggressive music there to some extent, it’s definitely metal” Jason Netherton (Misery Index, Dying Fetus); “ … the telltale sign of death metal is the vocals” Bill Zebub (The Grimoire) (all quoted in Purcell 2003, 11).

10. “The death growl sounds as if the singer is about to tear his larynx but is actually a precisely controlled vocal technique that requires training and practice” (Wallmark 2018, 77).

11. See, e.g. Obituary’s “Immoral Visions”.

12. See, e.g. Demilich’s “When the Sun Drank the Weight of Water”.

13. Deathcore bands like Job for a Cowboy and Despised Icon are good touchstones for examples of “pig squeal” vocals. See, e.g. Job for a Cowboy’s “Knee Deep”; Despised Icon’s “Furtive Monologue”; and (especially the last thirty seconds of) Lorna Shore’s “To the Hellfire”.

14. See, e.g. “Pecked Up for Barbeque”.

15. See, e.g. “Pigeon Wing”.

16. See, e.g. “No Dogs, No Masters”.

17. See, e.g. “Milk Bone of Christ”.

18. See, e.g. “Cold Mountains of Peru”.

19. “Boar Metal”.

20. See, e.g. “Maxwells House of Horrors” off Grinder’s The Black EP.

21. See those mentioned above—the pig vocals of Lorna Shore’s Will Ramos “broke the internet”, so to speak, when “To the Hellfire” came out in 2021. Herbst and Mynett (2023) describe Ramos’ vocals between 05:44—05:50 as “inhuman-sounding guttural noise” (199; emphases added).

22. I thank an anonymous referee for this reference.

23. Thanks anonymous referee for suggesting these three paths that the project I’ve started here might be extended or continued.