I'm a bit confused about most death metal, are they trying to appear (as the cockney's say) "hard men" in the way that gangsta rappers are trying to portray street-level gangs?
- narrators of horror stories, talking about gore and violence
In both cases, the singer rarely sings about themselves as a person. If they say « I » it’s usually impersonating a character (a murderer, a god, a sorcerer…), not literally them
Death metal is indeed very silly. What I'm not sure of is whether its fans don't realise it's silly, embrace the silliness, or have simply moved beyond such pathetic human dichotomies as serious and silly.
Most fans are very aware of the silliness. There's kind of an arms-race nature to the genre to see who can come up with the most over-the-top lyrics and ambience. Perhaps the one non-silly element to it is the cathartic feeling of aggression and rage it tries to get across. Few styles of music are as tapped into that dark portion of the human psyche that revels in violence, forbidden feelings, and raw aggression. It's actually a very cathartic genre to listen to; most fans and bands are very relaxed and calm people otherwise.
I’d say most of us do realize it. The whole trveness is IME more a blackmetal thing. Now the question if we embrace it or have moved beyond is more personal ;)
A fantastic example of a man / band that is embracing the silliness is Rainbowdragoneyes. He mixes death metal with chiptune and trash pop voice modulators but still produces very intricate and well designed albums, that tell engaging stories, like this one: https://rainbowdragoneyes.bandcamp.com/album/the-secret-mirr...
He'd fit in well at the Bangface Weekender I go to religiously, they've had both plenty of chiptunes artists and Napalm Death play there in the past :) https://www.bangface.com/
It's a line of progression from old metal stuff, which always had social transgression and horror elements as key themes. Because the genre is more extreme musically, the lyrics are adjusted to be more extreme, too. "Death Metal English" is actually not that common.
Serial murderers have always been a lyrical topic, for example, and you can see the progression directly if you look for songs about them. From Judas Priest and Iron Maiden writing about them existing, to 80s bands like Slayer writing about them more individually, to death metal bands in the later 80s and 90s very graphically describing their acts.
I'd say it's mostly not serious, in the same [kayfabe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe) tone as "professional wrestling" where it's known to those that are in the know that it's all a show.
The website linked in this post (invisibleoranges) is a reference to a hand gesture a lot of metal artists and audiences make when performing/listening that appears to look as though they're holding invisible oranges, tongue firmly in cheek.
Maybe a bit back in the 90s. But most of the bands are clearly 'LARPing' and putting on a persona. Off stage they're almost all very chill and aware of the absurdity of the characters they play.
Also death metal has been around long enough that it's starting to get self referential. Many 'modern' bands sound, look and act the way they do mainly because that's how the bands loved growing up sounded/looked/acted.
Nah, it has nothing to do with aggression, violence or crime. That's a misconception of outsiders who hear the loud music and growled vocals and assume they are an attempt at intimidation. In truth it's just a very strict art form, and I know it's hard to see it as an art form but that's what it is. It has a certain range of emotions that it chooses to express but it doesn't really have a message, like, go out and eat some babies alive.
There's going to be exceptions to the rule of course, but the majority of kids who dig this stuff are nerds. They finish school and go into a STEM field in science or work in the industry as coders. Like, my best friend in high school was into Cannibal Corpse and splatter gore bands like that, and now he's a doctor. And, hey, I was all into Black Metal and now I got a PhD in computer science. Yeah?
In fact, for me and my friends at least, being into this stuff was also a way to draw a clean line between us and the kids who wanted to grow up and be rich bimbos like their moms and dads, that sort of thing. Not that my friend who's a doctor is poor, but in my school at least we had lots of the kind of kid who comes in with expensive new clothes and brags about her dad's car or where the family is going skiing this Christmas, and it was fun to flip them the bird every day by coming into school with a Kreator t-shirt with a severed head sinking into blood (albeit very stylised; and Kreator aren't death metal). So for some kids at least there was a bit of that. Nerd solidarity, like.
A lot of the themed metal is knowingly over the top in all regards. It's a show, and most fans to everyone knows it's a show. And if you get into the front rows, you get to be part of the show, whatever mess that entails with some bands. Recently we had people fencing with the frontman dressed as a pirate with blowup swords.
Some really tried hard, with actual murder, arson of 1000 yo church in Norway and rehearsing (not live show) surrounded by sheep heads on spikes while throwing up because of the smell.
Ah, that's black metal, which is deeply earnest. When I explain to people about my theory of earnestness in music death vs. black metal is a great way to show "not earnest" against "earnest". Can you tell me the story of the band and the sheep heads though please? I've heard a lot of stories from the black metal scene but not that one!
Yup. While metal nerds can argue about the exact musical difference between death metal and black metal, from a sub-cultural point of view they come from very different places.
