SMT-V: The Society for Music Theory Videocast Journal
SMT-V is the open-access, peer-reviewed video journal of the Society for Music Theory. Founded in 2014, SMT-V publishes video essays that showcase research in music theory in a dynamic, audiovisual format, presented so as to have the potential to engage both specialists within the field as well as interested viewers outside the music theory community. The journal features a supportive and collaborative production process, and publishes several videos each year. Read more about SMT-V here.
Latest Issue: 10.4 (July 2024)
“Simultaneous Distinct Headbanging Patterns in Heavy Metal”
Guy Capuzzo (University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
Heavy metal fans and performers headbang for many reasons, one of which involves entrainment and musical meter. Our impulse to entrain to meter, and to other people’s periodic movements, is so strong that one rarely sees headbangers moving their bodies in different ways at the same time. So how might we make sense of such moments involving performers?
This video-essay studies performances by the bands Meshuggah and Animals as Leaders to gain purchase on this question. In Meshuggah’s “Perpetual Black Second,” the band members choreograph a struggle between freedom and control that is central to the heavy metal aesthetic. In the same band’s “Rational Gaze,” the vocalist’s headbanging pattern, which moves at a different speed than the pattern of the remaining band members, represents the element of power fundamental to the heavy metal value system. Finally, in Animals as Leaders’ “Wave of Babies,” the relation of an asymmetrical guitar riff to an isochronous stream of cymbal attacks encourages one performer to entrain to the onbeat pulses and another performer to the offbeat ones.
Keywords: Heavy Metal headbanging, entrainment, rhythm, meter, Meshuggah, Animals as Leaders, melody