‘As soon as that track starts, I feel …’ Unravelling Attachments to Extreme Metal Music with ‘Music Elicitation’

Abstract

Music is significant in many people’s lives, providing a source of pleasure, escapism and identification. Music offers the listener an encounter with the body (which responds to rhythm and timbre), an encounter with the self (experiencing self-feelings and responding to familiar taste or unfamiliar ‘noise’) and in the case of live music, an encounter with the crowd. It may be of little wonder, therefore, that some people form their identities around music and identify collectively in their tastes. In undertaking research with Extreme Metal music fans, I aimed to reveal something of the everyday practices of the Extreme Metal fan and the distinct investments and attachments fans had to Extreme Metal as both a music genre and a music subculture. Such a focus demanded a qualitative method that aided the disclosure of Extreme Metal fans’ experiences of listening to Extreme Metal music. I decided to integrate Extreme Metal music into research interviews in order to draw out descriptive accounts of experiences of, and attachments to, music and provoke in-depth discussion.