Instead of leaving them feeling hostile, the music helps fans to discharge or distract from their own negative feelings, increase energy levels, and generate powerful, visceral emotional states.

Fans, it seems, can selectively attend to particular acoustic and lyrical attributes of violent music in a way that promotes psychosocial goals. It left them feeling tense, afraid and angry.īut the music had the opposite effects for its fans, giving rise to positive experiences such as power, joy and peace. For non-fans, listening to music with violent themes resulted in uniformly negative experiences. Our results revealed striking differences in the emotional responses of fans and non-fans of death metal. We also assessed their motivations for listening to music, and asked them to list any other feelings or attitudes towards it. They then rated their emotional experiences, using a range of psychological scales, and described why they believed the music elicited such responses. We asked 48 fans and 97 non-fans to listen to music from bands such as Cannibal Corpse. Our recent research, soon to be published in the American Psychological Association’s journal, Psychology of Popular Media Culture, addressed this gap by comparing the experiences and motivations of fans and non-fans of death metal music. Why are millions of music lovers around the world so powerfully attracted to aggressive music? Should we be concerned? There is evidence that exposure to music with violent themes can leave people feeling hostile, but most of this research has not considered the experiences and motivations of its fans. The sale of Cannibal Corpse recordings was even banned in Australia from 1996-2006. The music is aggressive, the lyrics are often violent and misogynistic, and it has been blamed for inciting violent crimes such as rape and murder.Ĭannibal Corpse, one of the most successful death metal bands, has sold over 2 million units worldwide and sings about topics such as murder, rape, torture, infanticide, decapitation and necrophilia. Death metal is a baffling genre to many people.

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