The Psychology of Metal Music, Culture, and Dis/Ability

Abstract

This chapter explores the psychological functions that metal culture helps provide for community members with dis/abilities. Explanations are provided for how individuals with dis/abilities are able use metal culture as a potential source for mood and symptom maintenance, representation, social relatedness, a sense of belonging, and as an outlet for sharing their experiences. The underlining cultural and historical contextualization of dis/ability in rock, punk, and metal cultures is discussed, including depictions that could be considered exploitative, exaggerative, or inaccurate in order to understand the extent to which metal culture is inclusive towards people with dis/abilities. It is proposed that the embracing of societally taboo topics like dis/ability in heavy metal music and culture can serve a destigmatizing role towards the dis/abled, and when combined with an overlapping ‘outsider’ identity, it fosters a welcoming environment in metal culture for people with dis/abilities. This theoretical framework is applied through qualitative interviews with metal community members that have firsthand experience with dis/ability in metal.

Disabled Drone: Trans-Feminist Noisecraft

“…A lot of heavy metal music is perceived as violent and aggressive, and is consistent with auditory threat signals (Ollivier et al 2019), so there has been a continual association between heavy metal and immoral or violent behavior, but that connection is largely unfounded. Rather, it has been found that heavy metal, including with violent themes, consistently has positive emotional, cognitive, and social consequences for fans (Messick 2020;Olsen et al 2020;Sharman and Dingle 2015;Leisuk 2010;McFerran et al 2015). It has also been shown that heavy metal music is used by people with some dis/abilities and mental health disorders to help manage their mood and symptoms (Messick, Aranda, and Day 2020;Gebhardt, Kunkel, and Goergi 2016;Gebhardt and von Georgi 2007).…”