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Music Science

Death Metal Music Inspires Joy Not Violence, Study Finds (bbc.com) 170

Posted by BeauHD from the contrary-to-popular-belief dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: I've had one desire since I was born; to see my body ripped and torn. The lyrics of death metal band Bloodbath's cannibalism-themed track, Eaten, do not leave much to the imagination. But neither this song -- nor the gruesome lyrics of others of the genre -- inspire violence. That is the conclusion of Macquarie University's music lab, which used the track in a psychological test. It revealed that death metal fans are not "desensitized" to violent imagery. The findings are published in the Royal Society journal Open Science. How do scientists test people's sensitivity to violence? With a classic psychological experiment that probes people's subconscious responses; and by recruiting death metal fans to take part. The test involved asking 32 fans and 48 non-fans listen to death metal or to pop whilst looking at some pretty unpleasant images.

Lead researcher Yanan Sun explained that the aim of the experiment was to measure how much participants' brains noticed violent scenes, and to compare how their sensitivity was affected by the musical accompaniment. To test the impact of different types of music, they also used a track they deemed to be the opposite of Eaten. "We used 'Happy' by Pharrell Williams as a [comparison]," said Dr Sun. Each participant was played Happy or Eaten through headphones, while they were shown a pair of images -- one to each eye. One image showed a violent scene, such as someone being attacked in a street. The other showed something innocuous -- a group of people walking down that same street, for example. "If fans of violent music were desensitized to violence, which is what a lot of parent groups, religious groups and censorship boards are worried about, then they wouldn't show this same bias. "But the fans showed the very same bias towards processing these violent images as those who were not fans of this music."
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Death Metal Music Inspires Joy Not Violence, Study Finds More

Death Metal Music Inspires Joy Not Violence, Study Finds

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  • when asked like their music?

  • Yes... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Darkling-MHCN ( 222524 ) on Thursday March 14, 2019 @12:33AM (#58270848)

    The joy of violence!

    • This would explain why the torturers at Guantanamo Bay found that using the track F*** Your God by death metal band Deicide did not work as well as I Love You by Barney the Purple Dinosaur

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Everyone who ever exercised to music could tell you that.

        If you want to push through the pain you go for metal.

  • Yes Humans Love Violence (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wolfheart111 ( 2496796 ) on Thursday March 14, 2019 @12:47AM (#58270888)
    Its in our Nature, We are all natural born killers in some respect.
  • Singing death metal karaoke helps Retsuko to keep her sanity in her struggle with daily office life....
  • I'm not sure how playing the music DURING the test is an indicator of anything whatsoever. "Desensitizing," to the extent that has occurred in anyone who is desensitize-able in this way, happens over time. Not on the spot, because of what music is playing. That said, having to listen to Pharrell Williams's "Happy" would indeed bring out in me a joyous lust for violence. Not sure how that would weigh on the stats.

    • Higher pitch sounds can cause tension. Happy is awfully high I imagine the extra tension may skew the results. Also the decibel level needs to be considered as well, low pitch high decibel sound can cause drowsiness.

  • Being forced to listen to Pharrell Williams would enrage me too.

  • Who knew that science could be so sophisticated? Here, just look at the title of the study: "Implicit violent imagery processing among fans and non-fans of music with violent themes", isn't that impressive? And here's a snippet of the data analysis: "...ratings of arousal to the song Eaten (XÂ=4.03, s.e. = 0.33) than to the song Happy (XÂ=3.34, s.e. = 0.27; F1,31 = 4.15, p = 0.050, ÎG2=0.046; figure 3b)." [Of course Slashdot cannot reproduce this text correctly, but please trust me, it looks

  • Since death metal inspires joy, can we start a little thread of our favorite death metal songs?

    I'm not a regular death metal listener, but I have to admit that when I hear it I get unreasonably giddy. Here's Cannibal Corpse, who I like because they remind me of a real live version of Deathklok.

    https://youtu.be/482tDopNzoc [youtu.be]

    I listen to this shit and I'm ready to go put my head through some drywall. In next life, I want to come back as a death metal bass player, but hopefully not Murderface.

    • Zero the Hero [youtube.com] - not technically a Cannibal Corpse song, but a Black Sabbath cover found on the Hammer Smashed Face [youtube.com] EP. ( Ace Ventura cameo [youtube.com])

      I haven't really kept up. Sirius/XM has a more-or-less death metal channel that I sometimes flip to when there is a commercial on another channel. I occasionally hear something I like, but rarely. Even more rare is hearing classic death metal that I'm already familiar with.

      P.S. Evisceration Plague sounds, to my ears, a lot like old Deicide.

      • Deicide was good. I had a kid in class some years back and he was a metal head and made me a CD mix of some stuff and Deicide was on it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by PCM2 ( 4486 )

          Unfortunately, Deicide's most consistent trait is mediocrity. While they have put out some really good stuff, probably more of their output is pretty lacking, at this point. Lineup changes and uninspired songwriting have taken their toll over the years.

    • I'm about to dump some serious metal knowledge on you. Metalocalypse, as you know, is primarily a comedic show. But the show's creator Brendon Smalls is a seriously talented metal musician (all the show's music is written and recorded by him by the way) and so it's also a palpable tribute to the history of metal and it's many genres. Thus the members of Dethklok are based on actual metal(/rock) musicians: It might please you to know that the vocalist of Cannibal Corpse, George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher is the

      • Considering myself a multi-pronged metal fan, I have listened to so much metal of all types that lines between genres are now very blurred to me. I can recognize pure black metal from pure death metal, for example, but none of the "technical melodic death metal" or "epic viking black metal" definitions make sense to me.
        I enjoy "MONO, Inc." and "Agathocles", "Out Of Norm" and "Anal Cunt", "In The Woods" and "Six Feet Under" and don't think of one genre or subgenre as better than another. The whole metal scen

        • I think the wonderful thing about metal is that it's generally far more risky and experimental than most other genres. That's what makes it so damn hard to categorize. Unlike you, I can't and don't care to try to parse death metal from black metal. I really have stopped trying to categorize, especially with bands who put more than one album of styles out, or who shift between styles within an album or even a song. It's either good or it's not. If it's good, it goes on rotation.

          And I find what makes me smile

      • I always assumed that Nathan Explosion was based on Johan Hegg of Amon Amarth.

        My favorite metal bands:

        Ensiferum (one-stop-shop for workout music)
        Opeth
        Ayreon
        Star One
        Therion
        Amon Amarth
        In Flames
        Pantera
        Megadeth
        Disturbed

      • Man, this thread is great! I need to revisit Soilwork. I listened to the hell out of them up through Natural Born Chaos. I wasn't as much of a fan of Living Infinite, but I'm realizing now that I've missed like a half dozen albums on either side of that one. What should I absolutely pick up?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lorinc ( 2470890 )

      Well, no death metal without Death [youtube.com]!

    • Always been more of a goth/doom fan. So Type O Negative, particularly Xero Tolerance, if we're going violent.

      • I haven't listened to Type O Negative in years. I really should go back and jam to that a bit. Such a great band. Wish they could have gone on forever.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fazig ( 2909523 )
      Are we playing Myspace now?
      Alright, I used to listen to Death Metal in the past, today not so much any more. But there are still songs I could listen to on occasions. I always found the concept of a favourite song a bit weird. At least for me these things are very temporary.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] - Opeth
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] - Meshuggah

      Listening to that kind of music certainly desensitized me a bit to electronic distortion and the whole Loudness War. While some of my friends hat
    • Bolt Thrower's Realm of Chaos is the platonic ideal of the death metal album. There is none before it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by imidan ( 559239 )
      I'd just like to say, I appreciate your starting of the thread that is probably the most productive and interesting of all the threads in the comments, even if it's not really the purpose of the article. (And despite the fact that I'm not a big metal fan.)

      • I personally think that everyone likes metal, and if they don't they just haven't found the right band yet. Metal spans everything from screaming thrash metal to melodic bands with opera singers as the lead to bands with piano playing and multi-part minor-key harmonies.

        What do you like and what don't you like? I bet someone can recommend a metal band that might tickle your fancy.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by imidan ( 559239 )
          There is some of it that I like, but I'm afraid I don't know many band names. I had a roommate who was a big metal fan, and I came to know that often when I said I liked something, he would call it 'progressive metal' which I think means it's... more... orchestral, maybe? Anyway, I like it more when it's less screamy and more instrumental and classically influenced.

          • You would like Ayreon

          • That describes a lot of northern European metal. Off the top of my head Nightwish (especially their older stuff), Leaves Eyes, and Opeth (although they can get really heavy, they tend to break it up with a capella minor harmonies, a trickle of piano, etc.).

            For a real trip try Mago de Oz. They're Spanish Jethro Tull meets metal. Accordions, flutes, upbeat folk music done with a metal undertone.

    • Since death metal inspires joy, can we start a little thread of our favorite death metal songs?

      I'm not a regular death metal listener, but I have to admit that when I hear it I get unreasonably giddy. Here's Cannibal Corpse, who I like because they remind me of a real live version of Deathklok.

      https://youtu.be/482tDopNzoc [youtu.be]

      I listen to this shit and I'm ready to go put my head through some drywall. In next life, I want to come back as a death metal bass player, but hopefully not Murderface.

      A couple of years ago I was driving to work, and was in a particularly foul mood (don't remember why exactly). I was flipping through the SiriusXM stations and when I reached Liquid Metal they were playing Cannibal Corpse's "Kill or Become". It was so cathartic, it just pulled that dark mood right out of me.

    • Subsanity [reverbnation.com] are my goto for death/speed/grindcore metal.

    • Linzey Rae's Metal Kitchen never fails to make me smile:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      There's only a handful, but it's taking death metal songs, and changing the lyrics to cooking lessons.

      I'm more of a heavy metal / thrash metal person, though ... Ministry, Gwar, and Prong are typically the closest to death metal that I regularly listen to. (although I *do* have Napalm Death's Utopia Banished in my library)

  • It makes me want to kill, not the fans.

  • Death Metal and Disco are the same.

    • Death Metal and Disco are the same.

      "Death Disco!"

      I could get behind that.

      • Dig up Andy Rehfeldt. His specialty is dubbing over music videos with very-well-done incorrect styles. If you can find his Taylor Swift Signs Polka Metal, it's fucking legendary. Swift's lawyers have been on a crusade to crush it, despite it being clearly parody. If you get desperate, give him $1 on his patreon account, and dig through there for it. Mary Poppins sings Death Metal is likewise amazing, and still on his youtube channel last I knew.

        I don't know if he's done Death Disco, but if anyone would, it

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by havana9 ( 101033 )
      A four/on/the floor bass drum and a hi hats on 16ths, with a looping bass could work with death metal and absoluley are working with rock / Ask Rod Stewart, Kiss, Queen or Pink Floyd...

  • Not for me. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Death metal produces headaches. Find a good singer you talentless hacks.

    Even Dave Mustaine's vocals would be an improvement to all these bands.

  • Slayer and Megadeth!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by turp182 ( 1020263 ) on Thursday March 14, 2019 @06:44AM (#58271560) Journal

    I've been listening to 1990s Slayer and Megadeth lately, and it not only takes me back to another time but it's really good music. Dave Mustain is awesome on guitar and Slayer's drummer is a freak of nature (I can hardly tap multiple fingers to some of his rolls). The lyrics are funny as well ("growing madness as my mind dissolves").

    Good stuff. I don't like their more recent stuff though. Biased due to original listening period.

    On and on south of heaven!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Bah! If you want some good music, listen to some Beethoven [wordpress.com]

      • Good movie, but I prefer Motzart (mostly to fall asleep to since I'm listing to Medadeth otherwise...).

    • Lombardo really is amazing. The first time I saw Slayer live was when he was out of the band, and I was like "yeah, not bad, but not the best".

      Then, the next year, Lombardo was back. And I saw them again.

      And you had to wipe me off the floor with a rag.

      Seriously, that man is a God among drummers. Listening to Slayer with him on drums was just a different, life altering experience. He really hammers out Slayer's place in the history of metal.

      Mustaine is a whole other chapter. There is so much to say there. He

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Those are thrash bands, not death.

      To be fair though, they did inspire death.

      I think Slayer's album God Hates Us All rates up there with Reign In Blood. Probably why they've been opening shows with Disciple for years. I may be middle-aged now, but god damn it's a thrill to be in the pit when Araya starts screaming "God hates us all!".

      Slayer is calling it quits and are wrapping up their farewell tour. They just haven't been the same since Jeff Hanneman died, since he wrote all their good material.

    • the moment I read that verse my mind played "merely secret in my dreams." I don't even know if that's the correct lyrics.

  • If this experiment were proposed by my master's student, I wouldn't allow them to proceed to perform it based upon the lack of control of the uncountably various factors unaccounted for in the methods. Based upon the limited nature of the experiment, the results are utterly ungeneralizable, and there's no suggestion that they're even repeatable. If sitting on a thesis committee hearing a defense of this paper, I would vote against the student based upon not only their failure to address these issues, but al

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by imidan ( 559239 )
      Also, to reply to myself, an interesting point about this journal is that it makes public the reviewers' notes preceding publication. Here they are: https://royalsocietypublishing... [royalsocie...ishing.org] You'll see that an anonymous reviewer raised significant doubts about the scientific veracity of the paper as well as its general utility. After a revision, the reviewer made a grudging acceptance of the paper with the comment, "I remain sceptical about the usefulness of this approach... Perhaps it will start a further debate!"
  • This research looks like it was custom made to go for an Ig Nobel.

  • only a (small?) portion of the population sees in 3 dimensions because one eye dominates. If you're showing two different images to the eyes, won't the dominant eye see whatever is in front of it while the brain tends to ignore the image seen by the other eye?

  • that people listen to music that makes them happy?
  • Moscow has a new submission !

  • Den-tist, jugga-jigga-wugga!

    Deli-Style jugga-jigga-wugga!

    Dela-Soul jugga-jigga-wugga!

  • Steven Wilson mentions, in association with the "In absentia" record, that he is attracted to, and uplifted by dark, sad music, and I feel the same way... Music seems to be mind and mood altering, and very subtle in its shades of action. I can feel one kind of joy listening to an upbeat song, and be also moved by the stark melancholy of another which is another facet of joy, and neither negates the validity of the other. The idea that violent thoughts can be initiated by engaging in music listening, movie

  • It inspires me to want to poke my eardrums out with a pencil.

  • It reminds me of how my mother hated the music I listened to until she saw me play on stage back in '94. She had the best way of describing us and the crowd: "That gives a whole new meaning to 'flipping your wig!'"

    One of the secrets of extreme metal (be it death, black, thrash, or anything requiring high energy and stamina) is most of us are nerds showing off how far they can push their limits on their instruments. One of my sources of joy is trying my "Sub-Bass" out on other bassists. Once they get past th

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