Transcending Time (Feels)

Abstract

Over the past fifteen years, much of the music-theoretical scholarship on heavy metal has addressed metric processes (Lucas 2019, Capuzzo 2018, Hannan 2018, Lucas 2018, Lennard 2016, Smialek 2008, Pieslak 2007) and the use of the voice (Smialek 2017, Young 2018). A significant portion of the literature deals with the band Meshuggah, but the music of countless artists sca ered across manifold subgenres remains unexplored. Widening the focus on such a large repertoire not only helps remedy this issue, but serves to inform one recent music-theoretical topic that relies on a broad stylistic understanding: time feels. To date, scholars have mainly limited the discussion of time feels to the kick and snare drums (e.g., de Clercq 2016), and indeed, these instruments ultimately determine a feel. I argue, however, that different uses of guitar, bass, and cymbals can reinforce, clarify, or contradict the feel laid down by the kick and snare. In this article, I describe several categories of guitar and bass riff types and timekeeping cymbals. I then discuss how their associations with certain time-feel contexts inform further analyses. To this end, I draw from postmillennial metal music in various subgenres including black metal, death metal, doom metal, grindcore, metalcore, progressive metal, sludge metal, and thrash metal. Volume 27, Number 1, March 2021 Copyright © 2021 Society for Music Theory [1] The body of music-theoretical scholarship on post-millennial metal music has grown significantly in the past fifteen years. Much of this work addresses metric processes (Lucas 2019, Capuzzo 2018, Hannan 2018, Lucas 2018, Lennard 2016, Smialek 2008, Pieslak 2007) and the use of the voice (Smialek 2017, Young 2018), especially in music by the band Meshuggah. Since heavy metal’s inception in the late 1960s (Walser 1993, 3), however, countless other artists have given life to a dizzying number of subgenres that cater to (or subvert) listener demand. Even after trimming down metal’s decades-long history to works produced since 2000, one faces a substantial body of work. [2] In the years leading up to the new millennium, Converge, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Shai Hulud, and others set the stage for artists who played metalcore, a subgenre that combined elements of hardcore punk and Swedish melodic death metal. The ensuing “New Wave of American Heavy Metal” comprised acts that at times broke into the mainstream (Wiederhorn and Turman 2013, 559; O’Neill 2017, 251), among them Avenged Sevenfold and Grammy-nominated bands Killswitch Engage (Recording Academy 2020) and August Burns Red (Rolli 2017). [3] Back in the underground, newcomers added to the ranks in droves while veterans continued to thrive. Black metal artists Dea eaven, Myrkur, and Watain joined well-established bands Enslaved and Immortal in making music filled with occult imagery and characterized by “raw emotion” (Christe 2003, 109), “shrieking” vocals (Conning 2018, 171), and lo-fi production (Phillips and Cogan 2009, 34). Baroness, Kylesa, and Mastodon contributed their talents to sludge metal, a subgenre cultivated by bands like Melvins and Crowbar that is marked by hardcore aggression and “bluesy” riffs (O’Neill 2017, 191). Progressive metal furthered its mission to find new musical avenues and expand existing ones as Between the Buried and Me, Intronaut, and Periphery stood alongside their predecessors Cynic, Dream Theater, and Opeth. Even the thrash metal sphere dominated by Metallica and the Big Four(1) welcomed fresh faces like Ba lecross, Municipal Waste, and Power Trip, who embraced the speed, virtuosic display, and “transgressive energy” of the subgenre (Pillsbury 2006, 5–6, 9). [4] Death metal arguably experienced the widest expansion of all metal subgenres. With pioneers like Cannibal Corpse still at the helm, the subgenre saw the rise of bands such as Amon Amarth, The Black Dahlia Murder, and Hate Eternal. Technical death metal acts including The Faceless, Origin, and Revocation injected further musical complexity into a subgenre already laden with speed, gu ural vocals, and instrumental proficiency (Rosenberg and Krovatin 2017, 125, 127; Christe 2003, 239). The musicians in Ca le Decapitation mix their signature hyper-fast, politically driven grindcore stylings with death metal and progressive metal elements, while Swallow the Sun blends elements from death metal with the slow tempos of doom metal. The sheer variety of music produced by contemporary metal bands provides a preponderance of sonic material for use in scholarly discussion, beyond the band Meshuggah and beyond the topic of rhythm and meter. [5] Metal notably also serves as fertile ground for a new music-theoretical topic: time feels. In a 2016 article published in this journal, Trevor de Clercq argued for the importance of time feels as factors for determining measure lengths and meter in popular music. Time feels affect the way listeners perceive music metrically by maintaining a tempo while altering the frequency of the kick-snare alternation.(2) As a result, feels make the music seem faster or slower while not actually affecting the speed of the beat.(3) In some cases, time feels have become stylistic markers of specific genres, as with double time in bebop (DeVeaux 2015, 211; Taruskin 2009, 99) and punk rock (Osborn 2010, 123–124), and half time in hardcore punk breakdowns (Easley 2011, 145). Postmillennial metal bands often freely jump from feel to feel in a single song, rather than choosing a feel and maintaining it. [6] When examining existing scholarship on time feels, a major problem arises, namely that discussion centers on the role of the kick and snare drums (see, again, de Clercq 2016). Moore, Tamlyn, and Biamonte have partially addressed this issue by suggesting connections between other instruments and time feels. Moore states that the normal-time pa ern arose from its timbral similarity to the use of lowand high-register instruments in early jazz. Specifically, he compares low notes with the kick and high notes with the snare (2012, 52). Tamlyn cites “antipodal” musical gestures (Schuller 1968, 25) that resemble kick and snare timbres in even earlier music, with examples by Brahms and Go schalk (Tamlyn 1998, 157–58). Biamonte also states that antipodal gestures occur in late-eighteenthand nineteenth-century art music as well as ragtime, “typically in the form of a bass note followed by a mid-range chord” (2014, 6.3). Easley proposes a set of hardcore punk riff schemes that are distinguished in part by gestures on the drum set, but not by feels (2015, 1.2). Pearson, also analyzing early hardcore punk, makes some statements regarding how certain types of riffs are appropriate for certain drum pa erns (2019, 28, 40). Kennedy similarly associates “two-step riffs” with an emphasis on beats 2 and 4 and breakdown riffs with half time (2017, 75, footnote 80; 89). Pearson and Kennedy in particular provide useful insights into the potential relationships between riffs and feels. What remains to be done, then, is a study that makes those relationships explicit. [7] In this article, I argue that while the alternation between kick and snare ultimately determines a time feel in post-millennial metal, the interactions between the drums and the guitar, bass, and non-kick, non-snare percussion instruments can reinforce, clarify, or contradict a feel. In the first two sections of this paper, I describe categories of riff types and timekeeping cymbals, whose associations with particular time-feel contexts inform further analyses. In the last section, I demonstrate how riff types and timekeeping cymbals affect analysis by either clarifying or contradicting feels established by the kick-snare alternation. [8] While addressing subgenre-specific stylistic practices, this article also contributes to existing scholarship on transcription in three significant ways. First, it posits an alternative mode of producing preferred metrical interpretations shaped by the interaction between various musical factors. In this respect, I notably deviate from de Clercq’s approach, which prioritizes the “ideal” two-second measure length (2016, [1.7]). Second, it allows for transcriptions that match a style’s typical properties, rather than applying a universal standard. As I illustrate in the last section, this allows for musical features “outlawed” by previous music-theoretical literature. A = 220 metronome marking, for instance, lies near the extreme end of fast tempo possibilities, following London (2012, 28). A measure at that tempo falls significantly below the two-second mark at 1.09 seconds. However, various authors writing about metal music explicitly cite fast tempos in certain subgenres such as grindcore (Conning 2018, 188), death metal (Bowar 2017b; Phillips and Cogan 2009, 62), and thrash metal (Brown 2013, 166). Finally, the transcriptions thus produced serve the theorist whose formal analyses hinge on a preferred interpretation of bar lengths, an application that de Clercq also cites as support for his approach (2016 [1.5]–[1.6]). [9] I present analyses using excerpts from post-millennial black metal, death metal, doom metal, grindcore, metalcore, progressive metal, sludge metal, and thrash metal, in doing so demonstrating how my approaches apply to a wide variety of current music and represent common practices. To facilitate reading my musical examples, I provide a drum set notation key in Example 1. The transcriptions shown are mine unless otherwise noted.