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Death Metal and Music Criticism
Analysis at the Limits
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2012
Summary
Death metal is one of popular music's most extreme variants, and is typically viewed as almost monolithically nihilistic, misogynistic, and reactionary. Studies tend to view the music as a reflection of these listeners' social conditions and are concerned with metal's pleasures so long as these can be seen within that context: as responses to cultural and economic circumstances.
Michelle Phillipov's Death Metal and Music Criticism: Analysis at the Limits, in contract, offers an account of listening pleasure on its own terms. Through an analysis of death metal's sonic and lyrical extremity, Phillipov shows how violence and aggression can be configured as sites for pleasure and play in death metal music, with little relation to the 'real' lives of listeners. In some cases, gruesome lyrical themes and fractured song forms invite listeners to imagine new experiences of the body and of the self. In others, the speed and complexity of the music foster a 'technical' or distanced appreciation akin to the viewing experiences of graphic horror film fans. These aspects of death metal listening are often neglected by scholarly accounts concerned with evaluating music as either 'progressive' or 'reactionary.'
By contextualizing the discussion of death metal via substantial overviews of popular music studies as a field, Phillipov's Death Metal and Music Criticism highlights how the premium placed on political engagement in popular music studies not only circumscribes our understanding of the complexity and specificity of death metal, but of other musical styles as well. Exploring death metal at the limits of conventional music criticism helps not only to develop a more nuanced account of death metal listening—it also offers some important starting points for a rethinking of popular music scholarship as a whole.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2012
ISBN-Print
978-0-7391-6459-4
ISBN-Online
978-0-7391-6461-7
Publisher
Lexington, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
158
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Table of Contents No access
Acknowledgments No access
Introduction No access
Chapter One: The Rise of Political Criticism No access
Chapter Two: The Politics of Popular Music Studies No access
Chapter Three: The Search for the “New Punk” No access
Chapter Four: A “Promise Unfulfilled” No access
Chapter Five: Death Metal and the Reorientation of Listening No access
Chapter Six: The Pleasures of Horror No access
Chapter Seven: “Becoming Death” No access
Chapter Eight: “Bodies Prepared for Slaughter” No access
Conclusion No access Pages 133 - 136
Select Discography No access Pages 137 - 138
References No access Pages 139 - 152
Index No access Pages 153 - 158
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