Description
Despite a 36-year, ongoing career and influential role within metal history (Mudrian 2004), relatively little research has focused on Cannibal Corpse. Aside from Eric Smialek’s analysis of the band’s instrumental music (2015, 165–73), nearly all scholarship on the band focuses on their lyrical violence. The single song Keith Kahn-Harris analyzed in 2003, and in his influential book (2007, 36), has become “an oft-quoted example” of “particularly vicious and explicit portrayals of violence within extreme subgenres” according to Hill et al (2023). Some studies attempt a broader overview such as Kieran James’ Marcusean and Freudian analysis (2009), Catherine Hoad’s broadly qualitative analysis of gore and pleasure (2013), and Dejan Pavlović’s recent analysis of grammatical syntax (2022). From this literature emerges a common concern to assess the significance of gendered violence within this enduringly popular death metal band.I tackle this challenge from the vantage point as lifelong fan and musicologist, familiar with the band’s entire output, including musical syntax and style. My goal is to develop index tools, comparable to the Bechdel test, that scholars who are unfamiliar with Cannibal Corpse or who find them triggering can use to roughly gauge their lyrics across their career. Combining misogyny indexes from social psychology (Maloney 2022) and narrative approaches from literary theory (Burns 2010), I investigate the gendered identities of murderers and victims as well as how factors like sexuality affect the scenarios. I examine character roles interpretable in multiple contexts to parse how contexts may hold different valid meanings to different listeners. I seek insights into what can be problematic and can even be therapeutically beneficial about lyrical themes in death metal (Quinn 2019) in a way that accounts for more varied contexts than the field of metal studies has yet achieved.
| Period | 28 Sep 2024 |
|---|---|
| Event title | IASPM Canada Conference 2024: Building Collective Futures: Communities Thriving Through Music |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Regina, Canada, SaskatchewanShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | National |