HEVYDEVY FORUMS

Devin if you find this could you answer my that I'm about to ask, please?

For school I'm doing a research project where I have to persuade somebody of a specific idea, this also involves me giving a 5 minute speech in front of my peers (I'm also doing a PowerPoint presentation to go with it). The topic I'm doing is the influence of "aggressive" media on people (specifically children), this is going to include movies, video games, and of course, music. I'm exploring if violent movies and video games, and aggressive/heavy music leave a lasting impact (such as an aggressive/negative personality) on certain minds. I personally think for the most part it doesn't but it depends on the person, I think it depends on how naive or confused a person is. I'd go into more detail but I'm too tired at the moment.

So with the music portion I'm going try to briefly explain to the class how diverse of a genre Metal is and try to wipe the stereotypes of "METAL IS ONLY TALENTLESS NOISE AND SCREAMING" and most importantly "METAL IS ALL ABOUT THE DEVIL, BLOOD AND GUTS, DEATH, ANGER, ETC." out of their minds and very briefly introduce some of the sub-genres. I'm going to be focusing on Progressive metal as the main idea of what Metal can manifest itself as and use it to wipe away those stereotypes, basically I'm going to present it as the sub-genre that makes Metal look good to people who are not entirely familiar with the genre or usually view it as crap or "evil" music.

But as for the question(s): (These can be used for discussion here and for Devin to answer)
Do you think Metal can easily influence a person? Not musically but mentally altogether.
Do you think children should be able listen to Metal?

Specific questions for Devin:
What age will you let your son start listening to your work?
What audience do you believe your music is aimed towards? Is their a specific age group?

Wasn't really sure if I should have put this in General Discussion but since I wanted Devin to answer some questions, thought I was better off putting it here.

So like I said, let's make this a discussion.

And Dev if you answer these I'll greatly appreciate it, I just think it would be cool to get an actual artist's opinion for my project!

I'm more curious how you would fit all that into a 5-minute speech. Anyhoo...

Do you think Metal can easily influence a person? Not musically but mentally altogether.

Probably, but I don't think that's exclusively true for metal, but for all music. If I feel down, stressed, happy, energetic, unfocused, whatever, I can listen to music and change my state of mind (or reassure it). In some cases metal does that, in others it's dance or blues or punk.

Do you think children should be able listen to Metal?

I don't see why not, if they find joy in that. However, it's a fairly inaccessible genre compared to the overmarketed and success-engineered pop hits that flood the media. Complicated vs. simple, if you will, where simple and/or repetitive will almost always be more popular with kids. Additionally, I don't think most kids will actively seek out metal, simply because they won't be aware there is other music out there which isn't spoonfed through tv.

I think how someone is influenced by the media (music/films/games etc) depends entirely on their psyche.

For instance; I used to play pretty brutal (well, for the time) shoot 'em up games from a pretty young age because my dad let me, I don't even remember when I saw my first horror film because I used to sit with my mum on a Sunday afternoon with a bunch of Blockbuster tapes (granted, she did sometimes remember to cover my eyes during the scary bits when I was like, five) and I listen to all sorts of ghastly metal. By all those qualities I should be a fairly disturbed individual (shut up) but I wouldn't even say boo to a goose. So I guess in my situation the films/games/music are a safe outlet for any negative energy with no reprocussions. I've always known that the films arn't real, the games arn't real and the people making the music are probably shy, mild-mannered vegetarians that like cats (although I fail to think of any as an example...)
But it doesn't always work that way. Some people are just born to go bad. Seeing/hearing violence may or may not influence them; there was a case about 5 years ago of a boy who killed his best friend in the same manner of a game he had been playing obsessively (something daft like 10 hours a day), but it begs the question of whether the game made him do it, influenced him, or if he would have done it regardless in a different way if he hadn't played the game. Similar story with the James Bulger murderers watching Child's Play (google that).
Metal (and Hip Hop for that matter) also gets a bad wrap. I don't think there's that many bands out there thinking "Hey guys! Let's write a record that'll make kids shoot their grandparents!", but unfortunately, you can't decide who listens to your music and how they react to it.

I think aggressive media leaves a lasting effect on people in different ways. As a nine year old girl in pigtails watching Candyman whilst eating my cornflakes before school, I looked at the gore effects and thought "PFT. I CAN DO THAT." So I went on to train as an FX model maker. The gore-obsessed child is still alive and well, and someone once told me (in all seriousness) that I should seek help after flicking through my sketchbook and portfolio. Thing is though; all the drawings and models arn't real, they're the safe outlet I mentioned previously. I wouldn't dream of hacking someone's fingers off and stringing them across my office desk like fairylights; but as an artist (blaaagh I hate that word), I can "kinda" do it without doing anything wrong. Same thing with metal music, it's a performance piece that leaves the creator safe in the knowledge that they've just made something without doing anything wrong.

Shit I talk a lot.

mymomlikesdogs wrote:Do you think Metal can easily influence a person? Not musically but mentally altogether.
Do you think children should be able listen to Metal?

First thing is: what is "Metal"? I think that all of the different genres have in common that they have lots of bass, powerful played rhythm-instruments and powerful singing. So all in all it's powerful music in the first place. I think because of that it has a potential to mentally "influence" a person. It's not supposed to be played in the background, it should be played loud and usually needs some attention. But i think in what direction the influence goes, if it makes you calm down or makes you happy or angry or sad or whatever is - like Lettuce said - in the psyche of this person. For example i had an almost physical problem with SYL a few years ago. I couldn't listen to them for more than 20 seconds before i had to put it off, my body felt literally mutilated by it. Now that i'm familiar with that kind of music i really enjoy it and find it (physically) relaxing. The problem i had was all in my psyche, not because "a human should not listen to that" or something.

There are some videos on the internet with children calming down to metal (like in the movie "Shoot em up", where SYL's "Zen" is played in a TV and a baby stops crying), one example is here (there's an ad before the actual video): http://www.gmx.net/themen/lifestyle/leben/727fios
I think why the baby is calming down is because it knows that his father has very positive feelings about it (or because it's shocked, we don't know for sure ). So i think: If you don't force a children to listen to metal, it shouldn't be a problem. Because what counts is if the child is happy and feels good with it. If it feels frightened of course it should not listen to it, i think. Because Metal is so powerful it can be frightening and potentially "dangerous" to children - i don't think Pop or Folk can do that easily. So if you play Metal or other powerful music (Strawinsky, some organ-music, some movie scores or whatever...) to children you should be careful about their feelings. If you are a happy metalhead and if children know that type of music since her mother's belly the chance should be high that it will not cause bad feelings.

I remember Devin telling us that he played Addicted to his son and he liked it. But i would be interested too, how he feels about playing "Shitstorm" or "Rape Song" to kids. Because even if maybe most of the effect of music might be in the listeners psyche, there is still the element that you are interpreting in some ways the emotions of the artist. So i think it's another thing to ask if it's good to play extremely "emotional" music to children or to play "powerful" music to them. I don't know... I think most metal music isn't nearly as emotionally intense as some of Devin's stuff, but i don't know how children would think about it.

PS: Another example (and there are some others):
[youtube]6pYtxD92SpY[/youtube]
You can see that the kid is responding directly to the power of the music. I'm not sure what to think about that. I don't like it that the parents in both videos seem to manipulate their children because they know that the powerful music causes a specific reaction from the child.

Lolliklauer wrote:

mymomlikesdogs wrote:Do you think Metal can easily influence a person? Not musically but mentally altogether.
Do you think children should be able listen to Metal?

First thing is: what is "Metal"?

This is what immediately came to my mind. I'm guessing that your questions refer to the kind of music that can be 'blamed' for school shootings etc. I don't think that that particular kind of metal accounts for a very large proportion of metal as a whole. Look at power metal - dragons and quests can't really be detrimental to someone's mental health, can it?

Personally, I will let my children listen to and watch whatever they express a genuine interest in. I would see it as a responsibility not to censor the things my child is exposed to, but make sure they are taught what these things are, why they exist and why people watch or listen to them.

swervedriver wrote:I'm more curious how you would fit all that into a 5-minute speech.

That's a question I'm asking myself.....



Thanks for some of the replies guys, very interesting stuff.
Hopefully once Dev is off his vacation he'll see this...

mymomlikesdogs wrote:Do you think children should be able listen to Metal?

Of course!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjJNPSdvjp0

And no, this is really not meant as a joke! I think it is not really about the heaviness of music, it is rather the feeling that goes with it. You should not try to make your own child a death metal fan, but introducing it to the genre metal in a subtle way would not do any harm, I guess. Of course, it is never a good thing to really force someone to like something. Since it is easy to influence children, it seems best to offer all different kinds of music, so that the child can make a choice for itself!

Anyway, the main point is that metal does not automatically imply agression!

Ah, found the scene from "Shoot em up"!

[youtube]H8N3IQUzxVA[/youtube]

I don't see any problem with raising kids with metal. If I ever get a kid (god forbid), I will not go on a 10+ year metal fasting.
I honestly wish I was brought up with metal. Growing up in a pretty music-less house, I was quite biased against any heavy music, until I was 13. Obviously, it's not right to push your own taste in music down children's throats, but just... letting them know that there are all kinds of music out there, including metal... I just don't see the harm in that at all. On the contrary.

Babies should be forced to listen to every genre of music that exists. Breakcore, drone, prog, Katy Perry, Tuvan throat singing, all of it.

We also have:

[youtube]x01j3M3PrGk[/youtube]

I've been working on a film with my prothetics tutor from uni (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2087361/ if you need to cite), and we had a discussion about this subject. For a guy who gets an unnatural amount of enjoyment making gore gags; I thought it would be good to bring it up. I asked what his opinion was on the topic of violent media influencing violent people (again, Dan's a happy go lucky vegetarian who likes cats), and he said it was a pile of horseshite; there are bad people in the world who have no excuse for being bad so they, their parents or the press blame it on whatever they listened to/watched. People don't feel their can take responsability for their actions so they try and palm it off onto someone else easy to blame. That's the general consensus in our industry anyways! Hope it's helpful!

*gets hit in the shoulder with a blood pump rigged axe*

Yup, that works...

I would quite like to see our lovely Dev's opinion on the matter if he fancies it :3 Yooohooo! *waves packet of crisps*

I bet Osama didn't listen to metal.

Lolliklauer wrote:Ah, found the scene from "Shoot em up"!

[youtube]H8N3IQUzxVA[/youtube]

Ah yes! I love that movie!
.......Maybe I should use that scene in my Powerpoint....

I want to bump this but I'm not too sure, I'm afraid I'll get scolded for doing so, I don't know............
...............Oh would you look at that?

BUMP