Not everyone likes metal (especially thrash metal). That's understandable, since metal isn't for everyone. Yet, the hallmark of metal is that it refuses to die. Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Kreator, et al. started making records in the 80's. Guess what? They're still around, they're still selling records, and they're still touching the hearts, minds, and souls of their fans...both the ones they had in the 80's, and the newer fans (like myself) that they've gained more recently.
YouTube - Megadeth - Back in the Day song
Isn't that something? I am 20 years old. I was born in 1988, the year that
...And Justice For All (Metallica) was released. In fact, I was born within like a month of its release.
Kill Em All (Metallica) was released in 1983...about 5 years before I was born. Yet, I listen to them now, and so do many, many people my own age. How many artists can say that about their fans? 20, 30, or even more years from now, will Brittany Spears be able to say "I have 20 year olds worldwide listening to 'Oops I Did It Again'"? It's unlikely.
But metal's still around, and Metallica's still producing records. Why does Metal strike such a chord with people in between the ages of 18 and 30? Why does
Metallica enflame our hearts and minds so much? Why does it have such staying power? Well, on the one hand, metal is, next to classical music, the supreme musical genre. Metal composition tends to be much more complicated than other music genres. Metallica performed with the San Fransisco symphony, and both Slayer and Metallica songs have been covered by the neo-classical cello group Apocalyptica.
YouTube - Metallica: S & M With The San Fransisco Symphony - No Leaf Clover
Just as importantly, though, are the lyrics. Imagine, my readers, that you are white male in your late teens, early 20s, in either the lower, or the lower middle class. Because of your age and inexperience, you are at close to the bottom rung of the social latter. You have little or no job security, and if you have a job, it's likely not well paying. Your economic status is uncertain and poor. You are politically disenfranchized. Because you are white, you have no real culture to which to cling for an example of how to live. You don't yet have a family of your own.
In fine...? You have a world to face, and the way in which you are to face it is completely unclear. To whom or to what do you turn for answers? How are you going to understand the world and your role in it? For this reason, my readers, I have chosen to put this thread in the Existentialism thread. Whereas metal musicians are not existential philosophers, and though the method, arguments, and views I am going to employ and express are not, strictly speaking, existential...well...the real thrust, so to speak, of it all is on the individual, how the individual is to understand himself, and how the individual is to understand the world...and isn't that, at its core, existential? If existentialism is, at its core, the philosophy of the individual in the concrete, then truly, metal is existential, and the mods will not move this thread to the music sub-forum.
As either Kerry King or Tom Araya said (I forget) in a certain interview, to appreciate their music (and metal...minus hair metal, I guess), you have to have problems. If you're from the upper class, are happily married with beautiful children, are entirely shielded from political pressures, are perfectly sane, have very good health...and overall, have no problems whatsoever...well...you won't be able to connect to metal lyrics.
On the other hand, if you feel disenfranchized and lost in an ultimately cosmopolitan world, if you have financial problems, if you have emotional/psychological problems, if you've experienced grief and sorrow in your life, if you've ever experienced feelings of alienation from other people, if you've ever come to develop a real distaste for life...metal lyrics are for you. I know they are for me. I don't know what I'd do without Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Kreator, et al. in my life.
The gods of metal are much like the Greco-Roman cynics...y'know, every day Joes who weren't up to anything high-falutin,' but rather just people trying to figure their lives out. There was a certain Cynic, I forget the name of the Cynic, when he had an interlocutor, dropped trou' and started masturbating. Upon completion of the act, when his interlocutor showed disgust, he said "if only I could ease the pangs in my stomach by rubbing it." Metal's a lot like that. It's in your face. It's brunt. It doesn't put on airs, and
neither do metal fans.
Metal isn't pretty. It's outright ugly. Quoting Metallica, the music is "beautifully ugly." Then again, isn't life like that? In any case, Metallica and the other metal bands aren't philosophers. They're artists. Yet, they are excellent artists, and what is art? It's the revelation of the human condition. Where the artists leaves off, the philosopher often begins. Thus, for the rest of the thread, I will attempt to try to draw out a coherent philosophical system from heavy metal, particularly from
Metallica:
Epistemology:
The senses are unreliable. The treatment of the senses is basically Cartesian. Metallica's treatment of the relability of the senses can be found in "One" and in "Sanitarium."
YouTube - One Metallica
YouTube - Metallica- Welcome home (Sanitarium) music video
By "knowledge" we understand "cannot be doubted." It seems wierd to say "I know P, but I am able to doubt P."
In "One," we find something that corresponds roughly to Descartes' Dream Argument:
"I can't remember anything;
Can't tell if this is true or dream.
Deep down inside I feel the scream.
This terrible silence stops me.
Now that the war is through with me
I'm waking up; I can not see
That there's not much left of me.
Nothing is real but pain now."
In
Johnny Got His Gun, we find a young soldier who enlists into the US army and is sent off to fight in World War I. He is hit by an artillery shell (in the book, he steps on a land mine), and is blown all but to pieces.
"Landmine has taken my sight,
Taken my speech,
Taken my hearing,
Taken my arms,
Taken my legs,
Taken my soul,
Left me with life in hell!"
The young soldier is all but trapped in his own mind. He lives in a world of complete and utter darkness and silence. For him, the world has a population of one: himself.
"Hold my breath as I wish for death.
Oh please God, wake me!
Now the world is gone; Im just one.
Oh God, help me! Hold my breath as I wish for death.
Oh please God help me!"
In this population of one, nothing seems to him save himself. And in this dark, silent prison that is his own mind and body, he drifts in and out of consciousness, and cannot tell dream from reality. A rat climbs onto the table upon which he lies. It's on his chest. Almost his face...he can't move to swat it off, because he has no limbs! He panics...and then...it's not there any more. Was he asleep and dreaming? He drifts back into sleep, and he's having a discussion with an army buddy (who's obviously supposed to be Jesus) about how to tell the difference between dream and reality in this case.
"If you were awake, you would have swatted it away! It must have been a dream."
"Yeah...wait...no...I don't have any arms."
"You don't have any arms, huh...?"
Eventually, he realizes that he has positively no way of telling whether he was asleep or awake, and whether or not it was a dream. Thus, here is the first argument against the senses, basically Descartes' Dream Argument:
1. Knowledge subsists in certainty.
2. The data of sense perception is conveyed to us by the senses.
3. Were I asleep and dreaming, the data of sense perception would not correspond to an actual state of affairs, but rather the dream.
4. Were I asleep, I would be unable to know that I am asleep, but rather would think that I am awake.
5. I cannot therefore be certain that I am awake and not asleep and dreaming.
6. I therefore cannot be certain that the data of sense perception corresponds to the actual state of affairs.
7. Therefore, the senses do not convey knowledge to me. The data of sense perception is uncertain.
"Sanitarium" hints at the argument Descartes gives about insanity.
In "Sanitarium," the entire song is about insanity.
"Sleep my friend and you will see
That dream is my reality.
They keep me locked up in this cage.
Can't they see it's why my brain says rage?"
It is often the case that the insane think that they are sane. We get a taste of this in Plautus'
Menaechmi. When Epidamnesian Menaechmus is apprehended by his wife, father-in-law, and his father's-in-law servants (because they think that Menaechmus has gone crazy), he thinks that all of
them are crazy, and he is the only sane man around. Of course, none of them are crazy. His twin, Syracusian Menaechmus, had acted insane in order to scare them all away, and Epidamnesian Menaechmus has come into the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet, is it not true that often, the insane think that their delusions are real, and they are the only sane people in an island of people who don't "get it"? Here is the argument, then:
1. The data of sense perception is conveyed to me by the senses.
2. Were I insane and having delusions, the data of sense perception would not correspond to the actual state of affairs.
3. Were I insane and having delusions, I very well might think that I am sane and that I am not, in fact, having delusions.
4. I therefore cannot know that I am not insane and having delusions.
5. I cannot therefore know that the data of sense perception conveyed to me by the senses corresponds to an actual state of affairs. They might be delusions.
6. Therefore, the senses do not convey knowledge to me. The data of sense perception is uncertain.
Mind/Body Problem:
This is most evidently addressed in "One," and the position is clearly one of dualism.
This is clearly suggested in the following lyrics:
"Darkness imprisoning me,
All that I see,
Absolute horror,
I cannot live.
I cannot die.
Trapped in myself,
Body my holding cell."
Here is the argument, then:
1. The object of the senses are corporeal objects.
2. In the "One" scenario, Johnny loses all senses except that of touch.
3. Even though Johnny almost entirely loses the data of sense experience, Johnny is still aware of his own existence.
4. Therefore, the faculty whereby he understands that he exists is something other than the senses, and he is something other a corporeal thing.
God:
The songs which most obviously deal with God are "One" and "The God that Failed."
YouTube - Metallica - The God That Failed (Studio Version) + Lyrics
God's existence is treated existentially in "One." The relevent lyrics are these:
"Hold my breath as I wish for death.
Oh please God, wake me!
Now the world is gone; Im just one.
Oh God, help me! Hold my breath as I wish for death.
Oh please God help me!"
Even though Johnny is slmost entirely stripped away of sense perception, even though his entire world has a population of one, even though he is entirely isolated from all of humanity, he nonetheless remains a social creature. Our inherint desire for social interaction even when none is possible hints at the existence of a Personal God towards which we ought to orient ourselves.
Yet, it is obvious that those religious systems which promise that this God will be some sort of "Cosmic Sugar Daddy," that is, that He will heal us of all our sicknesses whenever we ask Him to, that He will give us money, and all sorts of other goodies...it is obvious that whenever these religious systems make these sorts of empirical claims that God will prevent or end our suffering, they are
wrong.
If you believe (as do Christian Scientists and others) in that kind of a God, then you believe in a "God that failed."
"I see faith in your eyes.
Never you hear the discouraging lies.
I hear faith in your cries.
Broken is the promise, betrayal;
the healing hand held back by deepened nail.
Follow the God that failed!"
In fine, if God did not prevent His own suffering on the Cross, what makes anyone think that God will prevent
ours?
Death:
Others may disagree with me here, but I think that Metallica's best treatment of death is in
Death Magnetic. Don't get me wrong. In Metallica's other works, there's plenty of stuff about
dying. Only
Death Magnetic really embraces death full on, though. The most relevent songs, I think, are
That Was Just Your Life,
End of the Line, and My Apocalypse.
YouTube - Metallica - That Was Just Your Life (Live Oct 21, 2008)
YouTube - Metallica The End of the Line at the BBC
YouTube - Metallica - My Apocalypse
Metallica's treatment of death is almost Heideggerian. Death individuates the individual from others in one of the greatest senses possible: nobody can face my death for me. Every man faces death alone. In this way, death is unique to every individual. For this reason, the words of "My Apocalypse" are so vivid and touching for us. Death really is an apocalypse for each one of us:
"So we cross that line
Into the crypt; total eclypse.
Suffer unto my apocalypse"
It is precisely this individuation, then, that provides the ground for the metal view of life. Since death is the individuating principle for individual men, it is only when we come to grips with our own mortality that we are able to live passionately as true subjects (in the existential sense of the word).
We must inwardize into the deepest reaches of our subjectivity that we are going to die. One day, we are all going to reach "The End of the Line."
"Dead hourglass of time
Sand we will not ever find
We gather here today
Say goodbye
Cause you've reached the end of the line"
Death is inevitable. Death is immanent. We don't know when it's coming, but it's coming, and it's coming for each of us. Our lives are going to end.
"Almost like your life.
Almost like your endless fight.
Curse the day is long.
Realize you dont belong.
Disconnect somehow.
Never stop the bleeding now.
Almost like your fight.
And there it went,
Almost like your life.
That was just your life" (That Was Just Your Life).
War:
Metallica's war songs are "No Remose," "Fight Fire with Fire," "Disposable Heroes," "One," "Don't Tread on Me," and, to an extent, "My Apocalypse." For us, though, the most relevent ones are "Fight Fire with Fire," "Disposable Heroes," and "One."
YouTube - Metallica - Fight Fire with Fire
YouTube - Metallica - Disposable Heroes
Every man loves his own life. It is self-apparent, then, that war is a moral evil, since it runs contrary to the value that we must place both on our lives and on the lives of others. In "Fight Fire with Fire" this is best exemplified:
"Do unto others as they've done to you,
But what the heck (censored) is this world coming to?
Blow the universe into nothingness.
Nuclear warfare shall lay us to rest."
It seems contradictory to say that I should lose my life out of love for my life, and just as contradictory to say that I should bring about the deaths of the many in order to achieve the greater good.
Furthermore, war is even more a moral evil insofar as it sacrifices the the individual for the collective. It turns the individual into an object to be used and sacrificed, and not as someone to be appraised at an infinite moral worth. This is clear both in "One" and in "Disposable Heroes."
Young men in war are treated not as individuals, but as tools, as gear, as objects. They become
expendable. For this reason, the name "Disposable Heroes" is a fitting title for the song:
"Solider boy, made of clay,
now an empty shell.
twenty one, only son,
but he served us well,
bred to kill, not to care.
do just as we say.
finished here, greetings death;
he's yours to take away!"
And this becomes even more apparent in "One." Politicians can talk about whatever greater good that they want. Politicians can talk about how this or that war is "necessary." Politicians can spew whatever crap out of their mouths that they want. At the end of the day, though, what does it matter to
this soldier, who has been left mangled or dead?
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace