Pedal to the metal – heavy metal music, nature and environmental activism
Anthem of the Anthropocene, was the title of an article aiming to demonstrate heavy metal as the flagbearer of the environment movements. The thought of heavy metal music and environmental activism piqued me while I was reading Amitav Ghosh dissect how literary fiction has failed to accept climate change into its fold, and I was surprised to find quite a lot of casual and some peer reviewed work in this direction as I searched online.?
Like quite a few of my brethren, the induction into heavy metal began as a pure fad, entering the cacophonic alleys of thrash and death before moving on to the hallowed portals of goth and black. There are as many genres of metal now as petals in a peony, but that feeling of an overpowering auditory onslaught underscores all of them.
‘Tis is an interesting attempt to find a central position for these guttural vocals and piercing screams in the climate movement , but I feel there is no real need for it, as heavy metal music by its very nature abhors such leadership roles, and tends to revel in and educate more on the fringes. But more on this 'nature’ later.
While we exult mother earth for all her melodies, whistling pines, pitter-patter of raindrops, a burbling stream or rustling leaves, there’s a lot of heavy metal there too… the rumble of the thunder, howling winds of a storm, a rockfall or a tsunami or an avalanche, all harsh sounds that are as metal as flailing humans in a mosh pit. So in a way, the fallacy lies in a convenient ignorance of these sounds vis-à-vis their melodious counterparts.
Interestingly, if we delve into the analogy further, like heavy metal songs, these natural events are relatively short-lived in duration, an avalanche would last a few seconds or minutes, a tsunami would rage for a day or two, but all these relent sooner than later, giving way to better times, and or, or, climes, that one can safely say last much longer than any natural disaster (though one wonders how long can this status quo remain), akin to the longer track lengths of more ‘melodious’ (read agreeable maybe?) sounds.
And these extreme natural events actually tend to shape the landscape more than the (relatively) gradual forces. A landslide can do within seconds what centuries of erosion would otherwise do, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions can alter the earth's topography in a matter of minutes. In a similar manner, a two-minute dose of double kicks can equal an hours’ long tabla recitals in impact.
Moving beyond the music, the lyrics are perhaps the more controversial aspect, be it the heretic proclamations of black metal bands or the downright gruesome imageries of Cannibal Corpse, many genres of heavy metal rely equally on the shock value delivered by their lyrics as much as the technical prowess of their musicians.
Yet if one looks closely at the biodiversity around us, there’s enough gore there to make anyone gasp, females devouring males after mating, offspring killing the parent for territory, incest and orgies, there’s actually a lot of ‘socially unacceptable’ behaviours quite rampant in the animal kingdom. During one fine summer evening I once spent a good fifteen minutes photographing a praying mantis eating a lychee shield bug while it was still alive, with small flies swarming around the mantis to pick up any loose flesh off its mouth, and later pondered over the thin margins between beauty and horror. Point being, these seemingly shocking lyrics that we cringe upon are in a way nothing but a mirror held to the world around us; if not nature, then the human (and societal) barbarities that we turn a blind eye to.
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Heavy metal has always carried the ethos of being anti-establishment, right from the persona it projects to the music itself. It has adopted an approach of being brutally honest about the issues plaguing us by glorifying the issue itself, a rather novel tongue-in-cheek approach. Which is why it unsettles those in power or those choosing to feign ignorance, although this also gives them the ammunition to malign the genre, from banning albums to labelling musicians as destructive psychopaths.
Religion, politics, capitalism, foreign policy, the issues that heavy metal bands talk about are surprisingly mainstream and relevant to their times, which is why they are well positioned to talk about climate action. From Amazonian rainforests to the meat industry, bands are increasingly nit-picking various aspects of our unsustainable relationship with the environment and biodiversity.
Which is something that bothers me. Despite all its directness, even in heavy metal music, the message is better delivered with a level of subtlety. While artists might have a viewpoint they want to put forth, the primary prerogative must still remain music for the sake of it. Recreation first, truth to power later. One can very well envision the climate crisis through imageries of a Christian apocalypse without the need to be growled to specifically about droughts or floods or veganism. Leave that to the listener to interpret.
Then there is this hullaballoo about heavy metal leading the charge. Other genres of music have been delving into environmental activism since the 60s, from Pete Seeger to Michael Jackson to Greta Thunberg opening The 1975’s latest release. I feel it’s best to let these artists drive the climate movement, delivering the message in a format that is palatable to a larger mass. Heavy metal can do what it does best, and expose the gruesome underbelly that is the impact our biodiversity is already facing. It’s not a nice picture, the rotting entrails of a fish because of an oil spill, but someone has to paint it.
To use a journalism analogy, heavy metal bands are best suited to be investigative or crime reporters, exposing what we try our best to mask, while the more popular genres can keep up their role of feature or assignment reporters.
After all these years, heavy metal still retains its own distinct space in my musical palate, for there is hardly any other genre of music I’ve experienced that can beat the (any amount of) negativity out a person into pulp with sheer aggression, raising the anger and exasperation to the point where one can be nothing else but pacified afterwards, and all of that in two minutes flat. Like a perfect dram, its initial bitterness is followed by the sweetest of aftertastes.
And one hopes that these discomforting symphonies succeed in getting the message across to the deaf ears.
P.S. – Usually half an hour or so is where I max out while listening to metal, but forced myself into extended listening sessions to scribble this. Discovered some new music and revisited some old favourites as a result. Turned out to be a pretty eclectic playlist in the end.