Death
My boyfriend loves to listen to death metal. I'm more of an 80s rock
kind of guy, although I certainly listen to more recent rock as well
as some pop. But, I have never strayed into the death metal camp
until quite recently. I decided to give it a try. My results follow.
At first, I wanted to skip to the next track on every track. After
about half an album, I not only tolerated it, I seemed drawn into it.
The religious fundamentalists in the crowd may be apt to suggest that
the "devil's music" will do that do you, and that I was just showing
signs of demonic suggestion. I'm not going to poo-poo that idea, but
rather remain open to all possibilities. I've certainly been accused
of being demonically possessed in the past, and so I will somewhat
entertain the possibility that it could happen via death metal music.
After reading the book "Music, The Brain, and Ecstasy" (highly
recommended, by the way), I think what began to happen as I listened
to more and more death metal can be described as occurring in at
least two places. First, I was listening at rather high volumes (I
think it would defeat the purpose to play death metal at anything
less than eleven on the Spinal Tap scale), and our ear mechanisms
tend to have something akin to an automatic gain control, where the
bone that normally rests on the tympanic membrane can pull away a
little. I think that this happened almost immediately (which is
good), but happened again after just over a half hour.
Second, I think that our brain reacts mostly to "deltas" or changes
in stimulus. When a stimulus occurs over and over for a certain
period of time, the brain starts to block it out so that it can pay
better attention to the new changes. And this started to happen at
about the same time, roughly a half hour into the first album.
At about ten minutes into the second album, I decided that the albums
would be better served as one complete work of art rather than as
individual tracks. I started mixing the tracks together, removing
tracks that were to quiet, and creating 50-minute (approx.)
individual tracks that represented each album. At this stage I was
beginning to differentiate between tracks much better.
After the third or fourth group, I was able to differentiate between
performing bands. This is normally an easy task for me, but it seemed
a bit more difficult with most death metal. Now, I was able to
discern the finer differences, the little things that would change
between artist.
Before the day was out, I could also discern roughly when in a band's
career they had recorded an album, by both recording quality and
musical cohesiveness.
I am several weeks into this experiment now, and I believe my brain
has been trained to enjoy death metal. Oddly, I find it almost
relaxing at times, which is not something I would have expected
before. I am a convert, even a death metal enthusiast. It's exciting
for me to find a new genre, because now I have a new world to explore.
If you have any band suggestions for death metal, please don't
hesitate to drop me a line:
[email protected]. Thanks!
