Death Metal: Grotesquery, fetish and misogyny

This is likely the most difficult article on metal I have written. Let me declare from the start that my position is definitely not impartial. I love the full spectrum of death metal aesthetics, musical, visual and thematic. From a young age, possibly due to the influence of intimate experience with the terror of mental illness in my family and in the broader community, I felt an affinity for the macabre. Horror stories, movies, album artwork had me in their thrall. I still cannot claim to fully understand this resonance although I do know that it helps me conceptualise and live with death as an integral part of living. On the other hand, there are certain trends within death metal, particularly a lingering misogyny which disturb me. To be completely rational, misogyny is certainly not confined to extreme metal, yet amid the violent, horrifying imagery, when it occurs, its effects are amplified.

What I mean by “amplification” is that misogynist violence occurring in death metal is both hyperreal and too real.

The former to me is where the thematic content exceeds itself, where it is so obviously extreme that the consciousness/reflexivity of its creation cannot be denied. In other words, it is a conceptual lexicon specifically designed to shock and disturb popular morals and raise ethical questions. In this way it becomes possible to argue that misogyny in death metal functions as a full realisation of misogyny as it is embedded, latent and executed in “normal” social and cultural communities. It says what cannot be said in polite company, it goes to the cognitive and emotional conclusions that can only be found in the darkest, unkempt depths of the mind and libido (as if the two are separate anyway).

When misogyny in death metal is evaluated out of context it can be considered too real. To victims of sexual violence and sexual abuse, there can be no doubt that implicit/explicit misogynist themes are traumatic and terrorise the viewer/listener in unintended and unpleasant ways. It functions as an echo of their experience, a repetition of trauma freely available as a result of freedom of artistic expression.

What I want to do in this article (indeed, it may well become a series, oh, is that my hibernating PhD being reconfigured as it hibernates?) is touch on the ways in which the disturbing sex(uality) practices of death metal can be unpacked as a visceral yet constructive force in confronting the intimate shitstorm that is sex, sexuality, power and violence. Before doing so, some clarification regarding death metal.

What is death metal about?

I have in the past discussed musicological elements and genre conventions of death metal. Now, however, I want to turn my attention to theme and concept.

There is no counter-argument, death metal is about the body. This statement, on reflection, is potentially redundant. After all, what music is not about the body? Music must be played and it must be heard for it to exist as such. Thus without bodies and without cognitive precedent there is no music. Meanwhile, death metal, arising as it does out of rock is a deliberate extension of the corporeal viscera initiated by the blues and later jazz. Though it has diverged somewhat from this lineage musicologically, thematically, it is as concerned with the body, pleasure and pain as its forebears ever were.

Take the lyrics of Skip James’ 1931 recording, “22-20” (later made famous as “32-20” by Robert Johnson):

If I send for my baby and she don't come
If I send for my baby and she don't come
All the doctors in Wisconsin, they won't help her none

And if she gets unruly and gets so she don't wanna do
My baby gets unruly and she don't wanna do
I'll take my .32-20, I'll cut her half in two

You're talkin' about your .44-40, buddy, it'll do very well
Talkin' about your .44-40, it'll do very well
But my .22-20, Lord, it's a burnin' hell

I had a .38 Special, buddy, it's most too light
Aw, that .38 Special, buddy, it's most too light
But my .22-20 make the caps alright

Entwined within these traditional blues refrains is a narrative of power, potency and sex. Disobedience is to be punished and death be that punishment. You got something to say? You think you’re a man? Then I’ll shoot you down too.

Although a world away from the extremely graphic lyrics that can be found on Cannibal Corpse’s Tomb of the Mutilated (and for that matter, most of their albums) such as in “Entrails ripped from a virgin’s cunt” the similarities are clear:

A relapse of my body
Sends my mind into multiple seizures
Psychologically a new human being
One that has never been

Cursed by the shamen
his voodoo spell has my soul
My limbs
go numb
I can't control my own thought
Are his now
his evil consuming me
ever telling me
begin the clit carving

Slowly turning me, into a flesh eating zombie
Knowing this spell can only be broken
by the vaginal skins of young women
I proceed to find the meat
their bleeding cunts will set me free
I can't control my own thought
I can't control my own thoughts
Warmth seeping from this
Body
Rotted
After I sucked the blood from her ass

I feel more alive
more alive than I've ever been
Even though now I'm dead within

My mouth drools
As I slice your perinium
My body smeared
With the guts I've extracted
through her hole, came swollen organs
cunnilingus with the mutilated

My spirit returned from the dead
Released by the priest
but I felt more real
when I was dead

The curse is broken
I have a dependence on vaginal skin
It's become my sexual addiction
I must slit, the twitching clit
Rotted cavity hold the juice

Between the legs, I love to carve
My cock is dripping with her blood

The knowingness of two sexually potent male protagonists revelling in damnation and taking pleasure in sexually deconstructing bodies even while separated by more than half a decade and a culture of sensationalised serial killers is the same. The vocabulary may differ according to era but the root is the same: sex and violence (or love and blood if your disposition is mild). In saying this, I am not attempting to normalise the extreme violence of the kind of sexual imaginary found in death metal. Rather, I am explicitly connecting it with a consistent and enduring theme throughout popular music of the late twentieth and early twentieth century popular musics.

It is important to remember, however, that death metal, in spite of any primitiveness attributed to it by those outside of the metal context, is not static. Certainly, there are a large number of bands who have taken the misogynist imagery of early Autopsy and Cannibal Corpse and continue to repeat it, almost verbatim. What is most interesting about this phenomenon is that many of these bands are made up of teenagers still coming to terms with the physicality of sexualities and the intertwined and inescapable power relations tied to gender and identity as they transition to adulthood. Cannibal Corpse, as genre leaders meanwhile, have largely moved on from overt misogyny. Indeed, their compositions (From Vile, through to this year’s Torture) after the departure of original vocalist Chris Barnes, feature lyrics in which explicitly female identified victims are almost completely absent. When female characters do appear in these later narratives they are as frequently protagonists capable of sexual and violent depravity as they are of being victims. This suggests that in spite of repeated assertions otherwise, death metal is not simply knuckle-dragging throwback music for bullies, and criminal psychopaths. Thematic evolution is far from universal, however, and questionable conceptual choices ranging from the misogyny identified above to homophobia still occur. What I wonder though is there a different way of viewing these conceptual events that goes beyond opposition through a politics of revulsion/disgust and moves instead toward creating a fuller more nuanced appreciation of the whole spectrum of human sexuality, power and death.

So, avenues for future exploration and discussion?

*Politics of disgust, perversion and revulsion

*Masculinity and non-hetero sexual representation

*Quantitative and qualitative review of female representation

*Extremity and excess

*Sex, power, violence(s)

Any readers out there with more ideas? Let me know in the comments.

Chuck Schuldiner: Ten Years Gone

Go there. Go now. 1990s Florida, extravagance, waste, sunshine, suntans, age, oil, alligators and death metal. What was in the water, the air? Why did the revolution happen there? Why did Long Island, New York guitarist Chuck Schuldiner transform from a pivotal death metal guitarist into a crucial founding father of expanding death metal’s harmonic and melodic palette?

Schuldiner’s contribution to death metal and metal generally cannot be understated. As an individual he was enthusiastic, forward thinking, opinionated and I believe to some extent troubled by his own sexuality. Indeed in this regard both Schuldiner and his family were adamant in ascribing the illness which led to his death as a brain tumour in the face of accusations of AIDS. Now like many Death fans out there, I am saddened to recall his passing. That said one of the burning issues I have had with metal for a long time is sex, gender and sexuality. But since I do not know anything new, is there anything new to say on this matter? Read on.

Several months ago I was chasing leads down rabbit holes and found that when viewed from a distance, this elaborate warren cohered around a number of key points: That Paul Masvidal of Cynic was not only a visionary musician and composer but had spent significant time performing volunteer work with AIDS patients in San Francisco. The implications of these findings point to certain conclusions. When viewing photos of Masvidal, I noticed that not only is he rather handsome but that he dresses well and is not overweight or boorish as is common among metal musicians post-twenties. Finally, I came across an interview in which it was implied but never declared that Masvidal and Cynic drummer Sean Reinert were in all likelihood a couple. On following up some of these leads and examining the lyrics of Masvidal’s other well known project, the indie-rock sounding Aeon Spoke, I came across multiple examples of references to objects of love using the male personal pronoun. As Masvidal is Buddhist and not Christian I am fairly confident that he is not referring to Jesus.

Then there is the tie that binds: Masvidal and Reinert both played on Death’s breakout album, Human. What is interesting here is that Schuldiner had previously sung about mutilating a “faggot” on Death’s debut Scream Bloody Gore and now he was playing with “faggots”. In 1987 Schuldiner was twenty years old and composing music in a hyper-masculine, frequently misogynist and homophobic context. To me in this pre-PC age the use of the term “faggot” is neither particularly surprising or shocking. After all the zeitgeist was about shock value, obscenity and offense. A “faggot” was a widely disliked, foreign and quite probably terrifying identity in metal during the 80s. It was a way of distancing extreme metal genres from hair metal popular at the time. This is not to justify Schuldiner’s homophobia, rather it is to contextualise it. As a youth “faggot” and “gay” were terms of derision that I did not fully understand even as I used them. It was not until much later that I learned of their true potential to cause, spread and maintain harm.

Over time Death came to be less about terror and more about examining and rejecting social concepts and conventions. Schuldiner has even expressed embarrassment over the conceptual and musical superficiality of pre-Human Death. No doubt like the rest of us, as Schuldiner aged he came to reflect on his statements made as a younger man in an age which when compared to our own at present was information poor. Whether or not Schuldiner died from AIDS related complications and/or was homosexual is an internet meme that may well never be proved in the affirmative or negative. The fact is that his collaboration with Masvidal and Reinert (who had been recording Cynic demos in the period 87-91) on Human helped bring about personal and musical changes which led to a four album string of creative, engaging and original death metal quite different to what he made as a younger man.

Truth and myth will live on as we choose to inhabit them, whatever secrets were or were not in Schuldiner’s life may well never be known but at the very least Schuldiner dared to question himself and his worldview in public and transferred this to his music. In this regard, in the face of whatever and any other faults that he bore as a man he had the courage to change. Right on.

Death – Sound of Perseverance (Review)

I came quite late to the progressive death metal of the 1990s. In fact, were it not for the internet I may have come later still. The early to mid-90s gave birth to some wonderfully new re-imaginings of death metal. Incorporating the recklessness of thrash, the rhythmic complexity of jazz and demonstrating a penchant to experiment melodically and harmony, progressive metal of this time has been as much maligned and ignored as it has been praised. Atheist stormed onto the metal stage in 1989 with twisted rhythms, harmonized leads and swinging bass. Cynic changed all the rules in 1993 as they emphasized fluid, tribal rhythms, burbling fretless bass, alien sounding vocoded vocals and lead work that gave more than a nod to traditional jazz guitar filtered through a death metal aesthetic.

Death meanwhile, started out in the vein of early thrash flavoured death metal and grew to into something else entirely. Schuldiner’s leads and riffs became increasingly melodic and his solos adventurous. On the savage yet melancholy Sound of Perseverance, it is possible to hear Schuldiner’s frustration with the limits of metal as he explores new ideas. Indeed on first listen Perseverance’s compositions seem a bit jerky and incohesive. Multiple listens, however, reveal the purpose of these stop-start tendencies. What makes repeat listens enjoyable is that these fragments are held together by an unfailing commitment to melody and narrative. Songs twist, turn and surprise, as was no doubt, Schuldiner’s purpose. Equally challenging and enjoyable, the Sound of Perseverance was the perfect swan song for Death. Who knows where Schuldiner would have gone next? What would he have made of groups such as Dysrhythmia and Obscura who have taken his explorations to new heights.

Perseverance is reasonably widely available on vinyl (unlike Symbolic…).