Dissonance in metal music: Musical and sociocultural reasons for metal’s appreciation of dissonance

Abstract

This article explores reasons for the proliferation of dissonance in metal music. It asks why metal musicians compose dissonant songs and what sociocultural functions dissonance may have for metal as a community. The findings suggest that exploring ways to further utilize dissonance is crucial to the genre’s development and continued transgression, especially in progressive and extreme subgenres, and that fans derive pleasure and meaning from dissonance in the music. Dissonance is not only present in many metal compositions, but its prominence suggests that dissonance is one of the genre’s central aesthetic features, at least in its more extreme subgenres. This is a subversion of the typical values in mainstream popular music, where dissonant features are fleeting points of tension. The article argues that dissonance is valued for its congruence with an aesthetic that transcends the genre through its overall transgressive traits. Such an aesthetic is appealing because it facilitates the exploration of negative emotions and ideas in safety, both individually and communally.

Harmonic structures in twenty-first-century metal music: A harmonic analysis of five major metal genres

“…This study drew on the existing literature surrounding harmony within heavy metal music (e.g., Walser 1993;Berger 1999;Capuzzo 2004;Lilja 2009Lilja , 2019Smialek 2015;Heritage 2016;Kazdan 2017;Swallow & Herbst 2022). Its findings suggest that some of the analysed subgenres have tropes that set them apart from the others.…”

“…Compared to the rhythmical, metrical and structural features of metal music (Berger 1999;Elflein 2016;Pieslak 2007;Smialek 2015;Hannan 2018;Lucas 2018;Mynett 2019), relatively little has been written about the harmonic conventions in metal genres in the 21 st century (e.g., Kazdan 2017;Hannan 2021;Hillier 2018Hillier , 2020Swallow & Herbst 2022). Three of the most prevalent texts on metal harmony are Esa Lilja's Theory and Harmony of Classic Heavy Metal (2009), Robert Walser's Running with the Devil (1993) and Harris M. Berger's (1999) Metal, Rock, and Jazz.…”