Did Rock & Metal Engineer Societal Destruction?

by Brock Dorsey on June 10, 2018

What do Jonathan Davis, Corey Taylor, and Scott Weiland have in common?  Answering the question “90 Hard Rock singers” would not be incorrect, but there’s something darker beneath the surface – all three men are rape victims.  Davis even documents the experience in graphic detail in a platinum selling album from his band, and many of Taylors lyrics are riddled with sexual abuse.

Why were the executives of the murder industry so keen on pushing rape victims as the new face of rock n’ roll?  Furthermore, why were the most popular genres of rock and metal so lyrically obsessed with self destruction?  From Grunge “morality is useless and life is hopeless” to Nu Metal “I’m a freak and everyone hates me” to Emo and Screamo “I’m lonely and will never be loved” to indie (soy) metal and rock “We failed to be what we should have been” the message of mainstream rock and metal music has constantly be one of self destruction.  This trend is mirrored by a 25% increase in American suicides in American suicides since the 1990s:

Suicide rates increased by 25% across the United States over nearly two decades ending in 2016, according to research published Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Twenty-five states experienced a rise in suicides by more than 30%, the government report finds.

More than half of those who died by suicide had not been diagnosed with a mental health condition, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC.

“These findings are disturbing. Suicide is one of the top 10 causes of death in the US right now, and it’s one of three causes that is actually increasing recently, so we do consider it a public health problem — and something that is all around us,” Schuchat said. The other two top 10 causes of death that are on the rise are Alzheimer’s disease and drug overdoses, she noted.

With statistics like this, it’s absolutely time to panic: our society is being marred by growing influences- intentional or not – to destroy ourselves.  Let’s examine music’s relationship to this now obvious horror and see if we can determine why this is happening.

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BASED VARG CAN’T BE BOUGHT

by Brock Dorsey on March 21, 2018

Varg Vikernes is one of the rare musicians in death/black metal that won’t sell his soul for the dollar.  In a new video posted to his Thulean Perspective YouTube channel, Varg has revealed that some scumbag promoter has at one point offered over £ 300,000 for him to do a live Burzum show in London.  While many in black metal swore never to play live, almost everyone ranging from Darkthrone to Graveland has given in at some point.  But with the most notorious metal musician in the genre’s history, blood is thicker than water and that’s never been more prevalent than now.

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VIKING BLOOD

by Staff on March 17, 2018

Heritage, ethnicity, race, and culture is important because there is much you can learn about yourself from your blood ancestors.  For years I never understood why, as an Irishman, I was always fascinated with Scandanavian history and culture until a distant relative traced my family’s heritage all the way back to the 10th century.  It was upon learning of my distant relationship to Tomrair mac Ailchi, the viking king of Dublin, that I learned the truth of my savage tendencies- I was the decadent of vikings.  And perhaps it explains how, thousands of years later, I would serve as an editor of the most brutal metal website on the internet…
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INDIVIDUALISM KILLS CHILDREN (NOT GUNS)

by Brock Dorsey on February 21, 2018

Welp, another school shooting is in the books, and this means we begin the cycle of another nationwide emotional meltdown of reactionary liberals over a founding pillar of our “evil” American culture.  Since metal heads and metal journalists everywhere are weighing in on this, and since most (all?) of them are too dumb to say anything logical or researched, it once again has fallen on the staff of DMU to be the sole voice of high-IQ reason in the metal world.  For despite guns being legal in America for over 200 years (with over 200 being free of school shootings), despite automatics/machine guns being loose on the streets since at least the 1920s (with 70 of those years being free of school shootings), and despite gun ownership being in steep decline the last few decades (despite school shootings being on the rise), liberals everywhere continue to fall for the totalitarian “give up the gun” scam and blame our second amendment for the mass murder of innocent children.  While stats clearly prove otherwise, many miss the true root of this tragedy: the individualism our society has been embracing since the cultural revolution of the 1960s.

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Metal Vocals are Obstructive.  Remove them.

by Brock Dorsey on December 24, 2017

There are many well cultured intellectuals who, when presented with metal music, will immediately be tuned out by the vocals.  This results in much of the metal collective being comprised of hold-my-beer normies and most of the world’s high IQ population never grasping a music genre that has both the depth and the complexity they yearn for.  Moreover, vocals in metal have not progressed AT ALL since the 1990s and therefore vocalists have been rendered indistinguishable from one another.  Through this understanding comes the ultimate revelation:  metal vocals, more than any other factor, are hindering the next great wave of metal. 

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Metal and Cultural Impact: Metal’s Role in the 21st Century conference in Dayton, OH on November 6-8

by Brett Stevens on September 10, 2014

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The Metal and Cultural Impact (MACI) conference launches its inaugural meeting on the topic of “Metal’s Role in the 21st Century” in Dayton, OH from November 6-8, 2014. This conference features a number of metal academics of note discussing the effect metal has on the society around it through culture.

Described by its organizers as aimed to “examine Metal culture’s role in 21st century society throughout the world,” the conference consists of presentations by academics such as Amber Clifford-Napoleone, Nelson Varas-Diaz, , Vivek Venkatesh, Ross Hagen and Brian Hickam. In addition, after-conference events include a screening of March of the Gods which explores the metal scene in the African nation of Bostwana through the story the band Wrust and an art exhibit on the nature of masks in metal hosted by Brian Hickam.

The University of Dayton Department of English, the Graul Chair in Arts and Languages, and the International Society of Metal Music Studies are the primary sponsors of the conference. It winds up with an evening concert featuring local bands chosen by Alex Skolnick (Testament, Savatage), who also presents a panel on “Louder Education” at the conference. Ticket proceeds benefit two charities, the Ronnie James Dio Stand Up and Shout Cancer Fund and Project READ.

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Bolivian metal band mixes native instruments, modern technique

by Brett Stevens on January 1, 2014

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Photo: New York Times.

One of the better developments during the past decade is that it’s now acceptable to talk about heavy metal in the mainstream press as something other than entertainment. It might even have, you know, artistic or cultural value and stuff.

A recent attempt looks at the heavy metal of Bolivia, which combines native instruments with modern underground metal technique:

The band members wore black. The lead singer screamed into his microphone and whipped his long, black hair around. The guitarists clawed at their instruments. The drummer pounded with fury. And then the panpipe player took his solo, and the fans packed into the mosh pit went into a frenzy…those songs, characterized by the use of the panpipe, known as the zampoña, and a wooden flute called a quena, have a special impact among fans.

The article makes the point that the hybrid style is more accepted among many of the people there, and that it directly references Incan cultural ideas including the ancient moral code that still lives on today in Bolivia.

Our question is: if it’s art, culture and morality there, why isn’t it art, culture and morality here?

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Heavy metal religion

by Brett Stevens on October 22, 2011

Interesting source:

Industrialization and modernization have had a drastic effect on the Western world. The combined effects of urbanization, commercial consumerism, modern science, and a host of other factors have “left us cold, alone and naked in an uncaring universe. It has stripped us of our ability to commune with the transpersonal, robbed us of our freedom to choose, and forbidden us to look inside our own minds for any kind of release (Schroll 2005:60).” Compartmentalization of the aspects of one’s life in modern society furthers a sense of incongruity and separateness. Professional life is often separate from family life; social life is often separate from religious or community activities. The multicultural and ever globalizing nature of the modern world creates its own difficulties. And strong sense of culture and community are rarely based on geographic location, but more often around a sense of one’s history and the beliefs, ideas, habits, morals, and aesthetics it affords. Thus, to find a sense of commonality one must often leave the neighborhood in order to gather with like-minded people. – Dave’s Metal Blog

He goes on to explain how heavy metal forms an ad hoc culture/religion/values system in the above vacuum. Good stuff.

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