Abstract
Unger offers a brief history of extreme metal music through its major themes and figures, followed by a narrative based on his participant observation fieldwork of the genreās different techniques, sounds and themes. Unger argues that music and sound contribute to, reflect, constrain, and produce symbolically social discourses of identity, difference, and transgression. In the first section of this chapter, Unger describes common technical characteristics and innovations that typically characterize the extreme metal sound. He then examines the history, major figures, bands, and academic interpretations of the genre.
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Notes
- 1.
Rock-in-China Wiki describes this band as, āBeijing-based Experimental/Black/Industrial/Folk/Nu Metal.ā
- 2.
Melissa Cross discusses āFryā in her training video, āZen and the art of Screaming,ā to describe the manner in which the false vocal chords pinch the vocalizations such that a rougher tone emerges from the throat. The significance of this style for Cross is that it produces overtones that can reference melodic and tonal structures (Cross 2005).
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Unger, M.P. (2016). A Genre of Paradoxes and Dichotomies. In: Sound, Symbol, Sociality. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47835-1_2
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