Lack of Comprehension: death metal and the x chromosome

I frequently sift through the history of metal, looking for the inauspicious beginnings of today’s big fucking deal. This is often exciting, but sometimes it means accepting things I do not like. I will speak plainly and candidly in saying that I am both a feminist and a metal fan, and sometimes these roles come into conflict. Ground zero for that internal struggle is death metal; a genre that exists to make us uncomfortable.

I could make a solid argument that misogyny is endemic to metal, though it’s often a casual misogyny. Bands such as Black Sabbath and Crimson Glory portray women as either victims to be pitied or villains to be thwarted. That’s when they even bother to acknowledge women. The arrival of death metal heralded a more unsettling theme: portrayals of violence against women, often with sexual overtones.

None of which makes these narratives inherently degrading. We look upon films such as “Psycho” and “Silence of the Lambs” as brilliant works of cinema, giving us morally challenging portraits of complex characters. To steal a quip from Daren “Rap Critic” Jackson I’m convinced you can write about anything, it’s all in how you do it. Macabre may be trolls, but they also challenge us while releasing album after album about deplorable murders and sex crimes. At its best, their music verges on a satire of the American obsession with violence, and with serial killers in particular. You can already hear this on their 1987 debut EP, as they scream about Ed Gein:

“I'm a fiend, I'm so morbid

That I sleep with your organs at night

And have sex with decaying bodies

To me it's such a delight”

A short two years later we plumb to murkier depths with Autopsy. I must confess that Autopsy is one of my favorite old school death metal bands. I’ve seen them live, I own a couple of their albums, and I’ve listened to them ad nauseum. I absolutely love the way that they write riffs and compositions, and I also avoided reading their lyrics for several years. I did that in part because of songs like Dirty Gore Whore and Disembowel:

“I just couldn't take anymore shit

So with a swing of my knife her stomach was split

Putrid bile and guts all over the floor

Couldn't help but laugh at this vision of gore”

The narration shifts our empathy from the victim to the perpetrator, but this decision does not constitute an endorsement. You can put the listener in the shoes of a psychopath without portraying them as a sympathetic character. Instead, Autopsy give us a narrator devoid of subtlety, decency, compassion, nuance, or charisma. The song is not so much commentary as it is tautology, representing the tired view that monogamy and domesticity are inherently feminine and thus the nullification of masculinity. She has taken away his manhood, and the punishment must be death.

But in killing a woman he is also committing an amoral act. This positions our narrator as an outgrowth of counter-culture’s oldest and most treasured pastime: offending the squares. He represents the basis of transgressive art, and the building blocks of inverted populism.

Subverting social mores does not equate to liberation. Like a multi-billion dollar corporation selling images of rebellion, anti-establishment narratives are beloved by reactionaries. It’s not hard to find white supremacists, misogynists, or social Darwinists who believe themselves to be plucky outsiders. Their punitive and authoritarian worldview is cast as a heroic struggle against the tyranny of the inferior masses, even when it promises to free them. Art that seeks to shock and disgust has a valid role, but the legitimacy of its critique depends upon the targets that it picks and the ways in which it unsettles our pieties.

Cannibal Corpse exist exclusively to offend, and apparently even they found Ciris Barnes’ relentless hatred of women to be repellant beyond the pale. It’s one thing if you want someone to drop dead because they’ve legitimately wronged you, but to despise an entire gender because they don’t want to fuck you? Actually being a man means maturity, including the understanding that no amount of sexual congress can assuage your masculine insecurity.

Ms. Anthropia spelled out the effects of this in agonizing detail at Feminist Headbanger, pouring over the Grave song Sexual Mutilation. Already in 1989 we had death metal regurgitating the idiotic blathering that women need to be punished for agency and sexuality. A woman who either enjoys sex, controls her body and destiny, or uses sex for money must be dealt with in the harshest possible manner. For a genre so contemptuous of religion, this view bears a striking resemblance to the most ignorant and base of tribal superstitions. Once again, Grave is telling us nothing new.

Or at least not so far as I can tell. They’ve never released the lyrics for this song, and their 2010 re-recording is listed on Metal Archives as an “instrumental.” It’s a designation that should fool no one over the age of five.

I am often split between admiration and revulsion for extreme metal. I love the wholehearted dedication riffs and composition and arrangement, but I cannot financially support people who are stumping for genocide. I don’t like being affiliated with folks who see me as a race traitor, or my friends and family as subhuman parasites in need of extermination. These people seek the destruction of all that I hold dear.

Upon reflection, I owe misogynists the same contempt. Artists or not, they see women as less than human and unworthy to make decisions about their own lives and bodies. Similarly, they damn me with emasculation when I point this out. If whiteness can be revoked for acts of betrayal, so can masculinity. The cult of the backlash must remain pure, even as it speaks the language of persecution.