The most extreme black metal

Chapters one and two of Extreme Metal introduce the fundamentals of extreme metal. This term can be interchanged with black metal, death metal, or thrash metal. This type of music uses the "tritone," or the devils music. For hundreds of years, the catholic church banned the use of the tritone in any type of music. This is reason why we feel like this sound is so dark, because they were deemed inappropriate for so long. One of the things that I found so interesting was the fact that the majority of extreme metal's audience is predominately white, suburban youth. I think that this makes perfect sense. At this age, teens are trying to find an identity. They are confused going through adolescence and trying to figure out who they are. On top of this, they are living in a dull, boring place. They aren't living in the hustling city, they are just living in the mundane suburbs. Because of this, they develop some anger and rage which comes out in their music and style of music they listen to.

Another topic presented in the readings was the idea of transgression and globalization. I think these two topics go hand in hand. Metal is a very transgressive musical style to begin with. "Transgression, like extremity, implies a sense of testing and crossing boundaries and limits" (Harris 29). Metal has always tried to cross boundaries and limits starting with the early stage metal bands. Starting with Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple, bands tried to take the heavy sound one step further. After progressing this heavy sound for decades, extreme metal was finally born. That is the nature of the music. Once a band cannot make a new sound, they usually just die out.

Another thing I thought was so interesting was the relationship between the "musical side" and the "commercial side." "The scene has a 'musical side' and a 'commercial side' but the relationship between the two is confused" (Harris 14). I think that the the commercial side can overstep the boundary of the musical side. A lot of times when bands get signed to a major label, they loose sight of their musical focus and they start making music just to make money. This happens more often an not and usually bands start making terrible music because of it. I am not sure if this happens very much with extreme metal because many of these bands have not had major commercial success. But I would assume that many dark metal bands sounds have changed due to different record labels.