Violence and Brutality in Music

   

              Modern heavy metal and death metal genres of music attempt to convey glorified images of violence.  Like in Shakespeare’s plays, The Tragedy of Coriolanus and Titus Andronicus, an appearance of violence, while not wholly new to Shakespeare’s day, might have not been as glorified as violence is today by bands of these genres.  In both those Shakespeare plays, which are tragedies, someone is victimized: Lavinia who was taken advantage of by the Goths, Demetrius and Chiron; and Coriolanus who is apparently murdered, but who also engaged many Volscians in battle and he was also viewed as a war hero whom many aspired to be like.   Instances of violence to Shakespeare’s audience was always a tragedy, which is what makes his plays so particularly re-sensitizing and humanizing.  This is in contrast, however, to modern heavy metal and death metal music genres of which the listener often gleans away violent imagery often at the expense of one’s own sensitivity to humanity.

Death metal/heavy metal genres of music and plays are not totally unrelated, however; the conjoining of the two philosophies produce opera and the separation of the two are merely two different modes of communication attempting to get the same thing across.  In death metal lyrics from the likes of the band Eagles of Death Metal , the motif of the devil seems to make up a large part of the whole encoded message.  In Kiss the Devil, a song by them, the singer sings “I'll love the devil!...  I'll kiss his tongue!...”  The devil and all that it stands for, which is evil and suffering, or that which Lavinia goes through, can be thought of as what influenced the events which led up to her violation.  Heretical acts against the church, such as using tri-tones and by all means, “kissing the devil,” all seem to be highly rebellious.  Also, the use of a tritone has historically been associated with the devil. 

In modern heavy metal lyrics like, “kill off the tourist and we'll all sleep sound / cash-in their fillings & blow it in town / we'll blow it on rifles, we'll blow it on drinks,” these lyrics might seem innocent, but there is a deep connection to a history of violence that Shakespeare might have been a critic of that the band, Drive Like Jehu, may or may not have been aware of in their song. 

While honor was a high virtue for the Roman foreigners of whom the actors pretended to be in Titus Andronicus and The Tragedy of Coriolanus, the idea of complete victory over an enemy in battle was also an idea deeply imbedded into the history of England at the time.  Two such texts that do remind us of this are a few epic poems such as Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In both of those stories, the main heroes have to attempt to pass huge obstacles in strength and tests of character.  Likewise in death metal and heavy metal rock bands make it sound as though killing and murdering people is moral, of course, under the right pretenses we, the audience, presumes.