Paper short abstract:

The paper draws on examples of extreme heavy metal bands that articulate messages of environmental degradation, climate change and the potential future impact of the Anthropocene ear. Such music represent distinctive voices that add to the cultural language exploring human-led environmental change.

Paper long abstract:

The paper argues that popular culture in the form extreme heavy metal music can make a significant addition to the language of expression addressing the concept, effects, and future risks of the Anthropocene era, the period (following the Holocene) McKenzie Wark argues 'represents a new phase in the history of the Earth, when natural forces and human forces became intertwined, so that the fate of one determines the fate of the other' (2016: xii). While popular culture, in the form of 'cli-fi' or 'Anthropocene fiction' (Traud, 2018) and cinema has addressed cataclysmic environmental disasters that can function as a channel for climate change warnings (Salmose, 2018), the genre of heavy metal has produced bands that are explicitly and powerfully articulating the impact of climate change, such as Downfall of Gaia, the avowedly Green Metal band Botanist, described as 'apocalyptic environmentalism' (Lucas, 2019), and the US deathgrind band Cattle Decapitation, the latter of which, on recordings such as Death Atlas, and The Anthropocene Extinction, powerfully articulate the impact of an age in which humans are 'becoming, to some extent, geology' (Latour, 2017:113). Heavy metal has long been read as a musical genre that has explored 'alienation, menace, destruction, and nihilism' (Arnett, 1995: 43), but bands such as Botanist and Cattle Decapitation align (in differing ways) to an extreme expression of the form that consistently explores and envisions nature-eroding and self-destructive environmental impacts that reflect the stark message that 'humans are not passive observers of Earth's functioning' (Lewis and Maslin, 2015: 178).