Emma Talks Nerdy About: Listening To Extreme Music

If there's a question I get asked a lot alongside "did you eat all of that by yourself?" and "what's that episode of Doctor Who where >blank< happened?" it's "how in the name of everything sacred do you listen to that unholy din masquerading as music?"

I grew up listening to my Mum's pop music and my Dad's progressive rock, as a result as I began to explore my own musical tastes and was earning money with which to buy a dozen albums a month I was listening to anything going, pop punk, gangsta rap, 70's prog rock, nu metal and 80's electro. Gradually I realised that my heart truly belonged to heavy metal. I still listen to a bit of everything, variety is the spice of life after all, on my way home from a Cannibal Corpse gig I was bopping to Blondie but metal runs in my veins. I started out like most my age listening to nu metal but I started yearning for something more.

So say you're like me 15 years ago and you want some more bite in your music or you're just curious here are my 6 top tips for getting your ear bent by Death Metal.

• Move beyond the vocals

I'm not going to lie, even I find some vocals difficult to listen to and a lot of people find it an instant turn off but death metal is so much more than someone screaming like they've being fed feet first into a wood chipper. Put the music on with the best headphones available to you and let it flow through you, resist the instinct to turn it off straight away and focus on the intricacies of the melodies (yes they are there!) and the complex drum patterns. You'll see that it's not just demented noise after all.

• Get the lyric book out, but don''t take it seriously

Now you're used to the sounds it's time to get used to the vocals, much like hardcore rap can sound like an auction metal vocals can sound like incoherent screaming. The best way I've discovered to get around this is to follow the lyrics along with the music. Once you've done that for a while you'll start to pick out words by yourself and the whole thing will flow smoothly into your ear holes. Now some of the lyrical content is extreme, murder, mutilation, necrophilia, dark ritual are just some of the topics you'll hear songs about but don't take it seriously. It's there to challenge, to shock, to express anger but not to suggest that you nail next doors dog to their front door, and not all death metal is about murder and mayhem. You'll be surprised by the range and complexity of death metal lyrics, I was listening to The Black Dahlia Murder when I suddenly realised that the song was a take on Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven".

• YouTube is your friend

Get along to YouTube and just watch the guys and girls play, metal has a reputation of being for dumb idiots who can just about thrash out three cords on a guitar when really that couldn't be further from the truth. These bands write their own songs, play their own instruments (to an insane degree of skill) and make their own videos. Watch those "making the album" behind the scenes videos and listen to the passion and dedication the bands display in making their music. These are attributes that are becoming vanishingly rare in the music industry as a whole, death metal is increasingly becoming the final frontier in music innovation and skill. 

• Read up!

A good way I've found to discover new bands and musical sub genres is to get along to Wikipedia or similar online resources, pop the names of some bands in then check out the section that will usually be there on "influences" and give those bands a try. Give those sub-genre tabs a click and discover a whole new empire of sounds. 

• It's OK not to like it

There will come a point in your exploration where try as you might you just can't get on with the music and that is absolutely fine. Some fans of extreme music will claim that you're not a "real fan" if you don't enjoy 90's Norwegian Black Metal ignoring that fact that some 90's Norwegian Black Metal sounds like it was recorded in a biscuit tin at the bottom of the Marianas Trench while someone throttles a cat. Don''t worry about it, give something else a try and then come back to it. I've found that you have to train yourself to like some extreme music genres so sometimes coming back to an album after 6 months of listening to a different flavour of metal can do the trick. 

• Find a metal head

Most metal listeners will talk the hind legs off a donkey about their favourite bands and want everyone else in the world to hear the albums they love so get down to the nearest record and tape exchange in your town, find the person who specalises in metal and open your mind to the possibilities!

So that's my 6 easy steps to start listening to extreme music, head down to the comments and let me know if you've found this helpful and what bands you're listening to!