CLARA Review: K. F. B. Fletcher & Osman Umurhan (eds), 2020: Classical Antiquity in Heavy Metal Music.

The concepts ‘classical antiquity’ and ‘heavy metal music’ may appear to be worlds apart. Not only are they separated chronologically but each belongs to an entirely different habitus. While the classical is associated with tradition, good taste and harmony, heavy metal is, at least by some, associated with the very opposite: the breaking of tradition, bad taste and disharmony. And yet, as the present book shows, a very large number of heavy metal bands reference antiquity in various ways, including exponents of Thrash Metal, characterised by speed and aggressiveness; Death Metal, characterised by macabre subject matter and growling vocals; Black Metal with related subject matter but less polished style, and other subgenres. Bands from countries ranging from Greece and Italy to Scandinavia incorporate classical quotations in their lyrics or rewrite ancient texts and myths. Some sing in Greek or Latin, others in Italian or English. The titles of songs, such as Hymn to Apollo, Hymn to Zeus, Medusa and so on, further show the classical inspiration.

Why Florida?

Around 1990, Florida was rapidly put on the international musical map by an obscure phenomenon. Bands like Death, Deicide, Obituary or Morbid Angel established a regional music scene starting in the suburbs of Tampa Bay and Orlando that around 1992 was finally labelled “Florida death metal.” Although this upcoming scene has been much discussed due to its musical and praxeological characteristics or its occasionally strong use of satanic imagery, and to this day includes some of the best-selling extreme metal bands, its history nevertheless has been less of an issue in popular music studies or metal music studies. On these grounds, this article addresses itself to the historization of the “Florida death metal” scene from its beginnings around 1984 to the peak of its fame around 1993/94. With the aid of different concepts of scene and using fanzine/magazine interviews and newspaper articles, it suggests a modified approach of categories to contextualize the scene’s development as a mixture of structural, social, cultural and experience-based evolutions. Beyond that, the article shortly investigates another neglected issue by arguing that the scene was not as exclusive and obscure as widely believed. Instead, the death metal scene obtained a disregarded media coverage in regional newspapers that—together with other progressions—launched a slow rethinking, which epitomizes some important links concerning the shift to postmodernism.

Metal Medallo: el estertor como estética de la violencia en Medellín de los años ochenta

Uno de los problemas clásicos de la investigación musical estriba en vincular de algún modo las estructuras sonoras de una época, con su correlato social, económico político y cultural. No obstante, esta correlación se hace más obvia en épocas de crisis, como ocurrió con la eclosión del Metal Medallo, y la guerra entre el narcotráfico y el estado colombiano en la Medellín de la década de los ochenta. En ese contexto surge Alex Oquendo —figura icónica del death metal— que al día de hoy continúa siendo un referente insoslayable del canto gutural o growl. A pesar de la evidente relación entre la agresividad de su voz, y la violencia extrema desatada en el país, hasta ahora no se habían publicado estudios sobre el particular. A partir de ideas como vocalidad y embodiment, trataremos de explicar cómo y por qué la escena del Metal Medallo no es sólo efecto sino premonición de la violencia desatada en esa época, y el estertor —la “voz de la muerte”— su más conspicuo reflejo. Además, haremos un breve ejercicio de comparación de una canción emblemática del heavy metal de esa época —“Todo hombre es una historia”— cantada por Elkin Ramírez líder de la reconocida agrupación Kraken, con la versión que hace Oquendo en voz gutural acompañado por la misma banda.

Appropriating the extreme: Interculturality and the decolonization of the image in extreme metal in México and Colombia

In this short article, I engage in a musical iconographic analysis of album covers from extreme metal bands, specifically those belonging to the subgenres of death metal and grindcore, in both México and Colombia. Both countries have gone through socio-historical processes marked by violence, which, by extension, have resulted in the popularization of consumer media products based on said violence (e.g. war against drug traffickers). My analysis rests on a transhistorical outline of the constant forms of domination that both countries have suffered since the conquest of the American continent and the ways in which Latin American extreme metal represents these experiences through the artwork of their albums, thus engaging in a process of decolonization of the imaginary through the reappropriation of imagery traditionally used in extreme metal.

Building communitas through symbolic performances: Mexican metal and the case of Cemican

The Latin American metal collective represents a big portion of the metal artists and fandom in the American continent. México has a powerful metal scene and an equally strong devotee population. There is one particular band that represents a collective voice capable of depicting the nation in the present moment. Cemican is a band that fits into the genre called Aztec folk metal. Their albums have shown an affinity for Aztec and Mayan mythology, and their sound is a flux between the sordid loudness of thrash and death metal riffs and the vibrations of pre-Hispanic instruments. Their performances present re-enactments of rituals reminiscent of the capture of enemy warriors and the heart extractions performed on these. Local audiences get drawn in by the sound of metal but also by the recognition of themselves through the Mexican elements. Mexican audiences reach a certain level of community at the moment of witnessing their performance; this sense of community extends to aspects including feelings of exploration and belonging. Today, México stands as a fertile land for metal music, where elements from two colliding cultures and belief systems can be integrated, and the resulting artefact achieves an indomitable sound. Traditions like the Día de los Muertos (or ‘Day of the Dead’) and its closeness to the idea of death as comical, as well as the merging of polytheism and Christianity have given metal music in México its own communal identity. The search for authenticity in identity is also a fact that is present in Mexican metal music through symbolic practices and representations. The paradigm and dynamic change as the conglomeration of European-influenced sounds clash with the religious syncretism of the actual Mexican people.

Transcending Time (Feels)

Over the past fifteen years, much of the music-theoretical scholarship on heavy metal has addressed metric processes (Lucas 2019, Capuzzo 2018, Hannan 2018, Lucas 2018, Lennard 2016, Smialek 2008, Pieslak 2007) and the use of the voice (Smialek 2017, Young 2018). A significant portion of the literature deals with the band Meshuggah, but the music of countless artists scattered across manifold subgenres remains unexplored. Widening the focus on such a large repertoire not only helps remedy this issue, but serves to inform one recent music-theoretical topic that relies on a broad stylistic understanding: time feels. To date, scholars have mainly limited the discussion of time feels to the kick and snare drums (e.g., de Clercq 2016), and indeed, these instruments ultimately determine a feel. I argue, however, that different uses of guitar, bass, and cymbals can reinforce, clarify, or contradict the feel laid down by the kick and snare. In this article, I describe several categories of guitar and bass riff types and timekeeping cymbals. I then discuss how their associations with certain time-feel contexts inform further analyses. To this end, I draw from post-millennial metal music in various subgenres including black metal, death metal, doom metal, grindcore, metalcore, progressive metal, sludge metal, and thrash metal.

Um grito de revolta: Notas sobre o discurso midiático afro-pessimista e a narrativa do filme Death Metal Angola

O artigo procura abordar como produtos audiovisuais sobre cenas do metal em territórios africanos ao mesmo tempo em que se propõem a divulgar um outro olhar sobre as culturas africanas, também parecem reproduzir os discursos ocidentais construídos historicamente sobre suas sociedades e suas culturas locais. Para tanto, realizaremos uma análise fílmica do documentário Death Metal Angola (Jeremy Xido, 2012), a qual apresentou mundialmente a existência de uma rede musical angolana dedicada ao subgênero death metal. Refletiremos até que ponto as economias, as sociedades e as culturas africanas, cujas histórias têm sido retratadas constantemente de forma pessimista pela mídia internacional, estão sendo reimaginadas pelo cenário global-local através desse produto fílmico.

Prosody

Prosody, the pacing and flow of delivery, comprises five constituent components—phrasing, metric placement, motility, embellishment, and consonantal articulation. The synthesis of these components works on at least three different levels of specificity: at the broadest level, distinctive prosodic profiles may align with larger genre or style categories; at a middle level, prosodic profiles may distinguish an artist’s general prosodic style of delivery; and at a local level, prosodic profiles may be associated with an artist’s singing style specific to a single recording or passage within a song. The chapter examines each prosodic component in analyses of four versions of Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River”: Timberlake’s original studio recording (2002), Glen Hansard’s acoustic folk-rock cover (2003), Ten Masked Men’s death metal cover (2003), and the Cliks’ indie rock cover (2006). The chapter also considers the ranging dimensionality among prosodic elements.

A Blaze of Light in Every Word

A Blaze of Light in Every Word presents a conceptual model for analyzing vocal delivery in popular song recordings focused on three overlapping areas of inquiry: pitch, prosody, and quality. The domain of pitch, which refers to listeners’ perceptions of frequency, considers range, tessitura, intonation, and registration. Prosody, the pacing and flow of delivery, comprises phrasing, metric placement, motility, embellishment, and consonantal articulation. Qualitative elements include timbre, phonation, onset, resonance, clarity, paralinguistic effects, and loudness. Intersecting all three domains is the area of technological mediation, which considers how external technologies, such as layering, overdubbing, pitch modification, recording transmission, compression, reverb, spatial placement, delay, and other electronic effects, impact voice in recorded music. Though the book focuses primarily on the sonic and material aspects of vocal delivery, it situates these aspects among broader cultural, philosophical, and anthropological approaches to voice with the goal to better understand the relationship between sonic content and its signification. Drawing upon transcription and spectrographic analysis as the primary means of representation, as well as modes of analysis, this book features in-depth analyses of a wide array of popular song recordings spanning genres from indie rock to hip-hop to death metal, develops analytical tools for understanding how individual dimensions make singing voices both complex and unique, and synthesizes how multiple aspects interact to better understand the multidimensionality of singing voices.