Abstract
This paper takes a look at why people enjoy listening to dreadful and frightening music. The experience of listening to Black Metal is reconstructed with Immanuel Kant’s notion of the Sublime and in contrast to classical music. The paper states that the feeling of Sublimity afforded by Black Metal differs from that of classical music by the first’s lack of the feeling of security. It concludes that Black Metal thus allows us profound experiences of the world not to found elsewhere in art.
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Notes
- 1.
Kant thinks that beauty can teach us something about nature, especially in regards to its functionality and the laws governing it [1, §28]. While this is mirrored in the approach that some physicists have toward mathematically developing models about the universe, this has not been without criticism. See e.g. [2].
- 2.
I will add here, that there exists music, which on first glance appears to be dance music, but was never intended to be danced to, like Chopin’s waltzes.
- 3.
E.g. the last words oft he album Fas – ite malediciti in ignem aeternam: Deus, Judica Me | … et Factus est sudor eius sicut guttae sanguinis decurrentis in Terram… | Domine, in pulverem mortis deduxisti me | PERINDE AC CADAVER! “God, judge me | … and his sweat became like the drops of blood which are running on the ground … | Lord, you have lead me into the dust of death | LIKE A CORPSE”. The fact that these latin quotes are derived out of context from latin catholic tradition is of no importance for this topic.
- 4.
Especially in the song “My Death” on the album “Chimera” which ends with the grimly determined chants: odium humani generis “hatred of human kind”.
- 5.
See e.g. the album “VII: född förlorare” with songs “Människa o’ avskyvärda människa” “Man o abominable man” or “FFF” with lines like: “Jag säger nej till livet, nej till mig själv och alla guds perverterade skapelser…” “I say no to life, no to myself and all of gods perverted creations…”.
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Hasenknopf, H., Hajinejad, N., Pieper, L., Fischer, R. (2020). Why Do You Listen to This? Experiencing Black Metal. In: Spohrer, J., Leitner, C. (eds) Advances in the Human Side of Service Engineering. AHFE 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1208. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51057-2_6
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