Metal Disorder, Metal Disturbance
In: Can I Play with Madness? Metal, Dissonance, Madness and AlienationSearch for other papers by Niall Scott in
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In this chapter I assess Heavy Metal culture in terms of the concept of disorder. Heavy metal as a spectrum disorder is content with its own condition in a manner that holds up a critique against the individualisation of mental health under the banner of the mental as and merely related to categories of perception, volition, cognition and emotion. System of A Down in the song Toxicity question whether you can own a disorder, a question that goes to the heart of the control and maintenance of mental health as a concern of an individual’s condition. The therapeutic expression of the heavy metal scene plays with the paradox of individualism and community, challenging the possibility of the ownership and containment of mental health. The heavy metal scene provides an example of performative engagement that oscillates between the individual and the group, a therapeutic mirroring of speech acts that move from the theatre of narrative to dialogue. As Newman and Holzman, critical of the individuation of mental health, state, ‘our emotional states of mind in late capitalist culture are alienated, individuated and truth referential commodification’. In the metal scene the alienated are de-alienated, content in embracing abnormality and disturbance, diagnosing its opposite.