Mysticism, Ritual and Religion in Drone Metal 9781350025097, 9781350025103, 9781350025110

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Mysticism, Ritual and Religion in Drone Metal

Bloomsbury Studies in Religion and Popular Music Series editor: Christopher Partridge Religion’s relationship to popular music has ranged from opposition to ‘the Devil’s music’ to an embracing of modern styles and subcultures in order to communicate its ideas and defend its values. Similarly, from jazz to reggae, gospel to heavy metal, and bhangra to qawwali, there are few genres of contemporary popular music that have not dealt with ideas and themes related to religion, spiritual and the paranormal. Whether we think of Satanism or Sufism, the liberal use of drugs or disciplined abstinence, the history of the quest for transcendence within popular music and its subcultures raises important issues for anyone interested in contemporary religion, culture and society. Bloomsbury Studies in Religion and Popular Music is a multi-​disciplinary series that aims to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of these issues and the relationships between religion and popular music. Christian Metal, Marcus Moberg Mortality and Music, Christopher Partridge Religion in Hip Hop, edited by Monica R. Miller, Anthony B. Pinn and Bernard ‘Bun B’ Freeman Sacred and Secular Musics, Virinda Kalra

Mysticism, Ritual and Religion in Drone Metal Owen Coggins

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2018 © Owen Coggins, 2018 Owen Coggins has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-​1-​3500-​2509-​7 ePDF: 978-​1-​3500-​2510-​3 ePub: 978-​1-​3500-​2511-​0 Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Religion and Popular Music Cover image © G.Light/​Shutterstock Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India

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Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Mysticism and Metal Music To Be Experienced, Not Understood: Empirical Mysticisms in Trance, Dub and Drone Beyond Heaviness: Listener Experience in a Translocal and Marginal Genre Pilgrimages to Elsewhere: Languages of Ineffability, Otherness and Ambiguity Amplifier Worship: Materiality and Mysticism in Heavy Sound Methods to Cross the Abyss: Ritual, Violence and Noise Conclusion: Drone Metal Mysticism

Notes References Index

vi vii 1 15 53 83 115 137 171 181 183 205

Figures 1.1 Flyer image used in recruiting research participants, displaying extreme metal visual aesthetic. Photo and design by the author 5.1 Promotional image used by SunnO))) before their 2017 performance at the Barbican Centre, London. Reproduced with kind permission of SunnO))) 5.2 Bismuth bass player Tanya Byrne’s Orange and Matamp amplifier heads. Reproduced with kind permission of Tanya Byrne 5.3 Poster design for 2015 Ommadon & Bismuth UK tour combining amp and monolith by Ross D. McKendrick/​RDM Visuals. Reproduced with kind permission of Ross D. McKendrick 5.4 Examples of characteristic drone metal band logo styles. Reproduced with kind permission of Ommadon, Black Boned Angel, Bong and SunnO)))

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Acknowledgements First, thanks go to all the participants in this research, particularly those who gave their time and personal insights to this project. This includes everyone who completed surveys, whose words I read online, who hung out with me at drone metal shows and music festivals, whose music I enjoyed and endured, and particularly those who agreed to be interviewed. Thank you for sharing with me your experiences and reports of musical experience, which were frequently brilliant, funny, absurd and profound. Much gratitude is due to Paul-​François Tremlett, Byron Dueck and Graham Harvey, whose wise and generous guidance made this project possible, and to all those who have offered their comments on this research as it developed. Finally, thank you to my family, especially my partner Caitlin, who has been endlessly supportive and who I love very much. Her proofreading work was also invaluable. This book is dedicated to my parents, to whom I owe so much.

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Mysticism and Metal Music

Introduction On a Thursday evening at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds, a crowd of around three hundred people fall silent at the heavily amplified sound of a recorded Arabic prayer that is broadcast to Muslim pilgrims as they approach Mecca. Two men in different parts of the crowd join in with the prayer, having learnt each syllable by sound from repeatedly listening to a recording which includes the same prayer. After about a minute, a heavy solo bass guitar line enters, rumbling through a sequence which falls upon an extended note that is emphasized by the downbeat. That same riff cycles three more times, before snare roll and cymbal are added, inviting heads to nod while chests vibrate with the bass. Several minutes in, the first line of lyrics is introduced; the cryptic phrase ‘Walk Melchizedek shrine descender’ is recited and then left to reverberate over further repetitions. Around thirty minutes later, people stand without talking, many with eyes closed and heads bowed, listening to a high-​pitched vocal wail over the top of a recording of a chanted Sanskrit mantra. Another half hour into the drone metal performance, another monotonously repeated bass note holds sonic tension through a period of comparative quiet, until the bass player intones the single word ‘Lazarus’. A final five-​minute explosion of heavily distorted bass riffs and clattering drums then erupts over raised hands, bobbing heads, and bodies absorbed in slow, repetitive, vibrating noise. Before dispersing or getting a final drink while the bar is still open, several attendees crowd round a table at the back of the room to buy vinyl records adorned with artwork displaying angels, a Byzantine icon of John the Baptist and names or phrases such as God Is Good, Pilgrimage and Conference of the Birds (the latter a classical Persian Sufi allegory). Others pick up black T-​shirts, similar to many other black heavy metal band shirts worn by attendees, these ones emblazoned with a single word, the name of the band that has just performed –​ Om.

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In a survey which elicited reflections on this performance, a Muslim attendee reported that hearing the recording of the Arabic prayer at the concert reminded him of his own pilgrimage to Mecca, and that the winding, repetitive bass riffs and chanting vocals of Om’s music evoked the desert landscapes of Islamic countries in which he had spent time (O84, Survey, 2013).1 In a subsequent ethnographic interview, he described a particular connection between Om’s sound and the ruined city of Petra in Jordan. For him they both evoked spiritual thoughts and a sense of mystery and ancientness, which ‘simply is what it is and you can interpret how you want’ (O84, Interview, 2013).2 A Christian attendee at an Om concert on the previous evening in Birmingham was reminded of the atmosphere he had experienced at prayer meetings. He was, however, also careful to distinguish this from his experiences of the Holy Spirit: Seeing Om live you get the same kind of atmosphere as what you get with a church or religious service. [But] really strong experiences that you have that you would say are definitely from God would be qualitatively different. (O69, Interview, 2013)

Another Om listener in Germany who attended a concert on the same tour described how Om’s constant level of sonic intensity was meditative and calming, also mentioning connections with yoga, mantras and Gregorian chant as well as ideas of travel. Intrigued by her own response to the music, and witnessing other people appearing to be entranced at the show, she described herself as not religious but interested in the spirituality in drone metal music. This occasioned recollection of being fascinated as a child at people’s behaviour at a church service (O21, Interview, 2014). As reviewers of Om’s 2012 album Advaitic Songs put it, drone metal can be ‘pan-​global mystical music for the heavy-​metal demographic’ (Powell 2012), ‘interfaith heaviness’ (Dronelove 2012), or ‘as close to a religious experience as anyone will get within the extreme music community’ (Hemy 2012). Drone metal music pushes the limits of heavy metal’s sonic conventions, tests the endurance of listeners and invites descriptions which employ a vocabulary of religious experience, ritual and mysticism. In examining sound, symbols and description in and around musical experience, this book traces the production of this mystical discourse in drone metal culture.

Drone metal’s mystical sound and discourse Drone metal is a marginal and largely underground subgenre of heavy metal music, first emerging in the early 1990s and having developed significantly since



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the end of that decade. This history is discussed in detail in Chapters 2 and 3, in which it is suggested that the combination of extremeness in sound and the scattered marginal translocality of musicians produced a loose and contingent genre formation which emphasized the experiences of listeners. Drone metal music is characterized sonically by extremes of repetition, extension, lowness, slowness, amplification and distortion within but radically pushing the boundaries and conventions of the wider heavy metal tradition. A variety of different sounds, musical structures, instrumentation and thematic elements appear in lyrics, titles, artwork and surrounding imagery, and there is significant diversity in drone metal sound. Listeners hear similarities in dirge-​like repetition, perceived slowness (in tempo or musical development), overwhelming volume, amplification and distortion, and extension radically beyond popular music conventions. Sounds, symbols, images and vocabulary associated with a range of religious, ritual, spiritual and mystical practices and concepts are frequently incorporated into performances and recordings by Om and other drone metal musicians, and are prevalent in listeners’ communication about this music. The musical culture of drone metal incorporates practices, experiences and uses of language understood by diverse audiences to be related to religion, spirituality or mysticism. In this book I present the results of five years of ethnographic research –​from 2012 to 2017 –​exploring the language of mysticism, spirituality and religious experience in drone metal music culture. In existing academic literature, drone metal has been occasionally discussed, sometimes in relation to reception and usually comprising anecdotal reports of concerts by the band SunnO))), where ritual or transcendence are often mentioned (Lucas 2013, Partridge 2014). The extremeness of drone metal music (again, most often regarding SunnO))) specifically) has been noted for its demands on the listener (N. Scott 2014), its relation to contemporary popular culture (Morton 2013, Shvarts 2014) or in connection with certain currents in contemporary abstract art (Ishmael 2014). Even the wider doom metal scene (of which drone metal is a part or an extension) has received little scholarly attention in its own right, despite being one of three (Bogue 2007) or four (Kahn-​Harris 2007) main strands of extreme metal. Important contributions have, however, been made recently regarding drone metal and closely related music by Aliza Shvarts (2014), Laura Wright (2015a, 2015b), and Niall Scott and Tom O’Boyle (2015). Given that drone metal music has so far received very little scholarly attention, this book contributes a comprehensive introduction to an important, influential and unusual form of music at the extreme edges of heavy metal and experimental music cultures. My approach to mysticism as a tradition of productive reception

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of texts (including reviews, sound recordings, performances, discussion and conversation) outlines an empirically and theoretically grounded understanding of mysticism, as will be introduced and tested in Chapter 2 and further developed throughout the book. This analysis thereby also provides an alternative to dominant ways of understanding religious experience in popular culture and asserts the importance of difference and ambiguity in listeners’ treatments of mysticism. Bringing together insights and analysis drawn from different methodological approaches, the book shows how the interrelated material culture, sonic structures, artwork, performance practices, audience responses, communications and textual layers of reception each contribute to the construction and sustenance of mystical discourse, experience and practice in drone metal.

Fieldwork and mixed methods Ethnographic methods have been used in several studies to examine other intersections between religion and metal. Religion is understood as inspiration or foil for lyrics or musicians’ ideologies (Cordero 2009, Baddeley 2010, Granholm 2011), as a normative framework of public morality (Wallach 2008, Hecker 2012) or as a more or less stable social institution within or against which metal music situates itself (Moberg 2009). Less often has religion in metal been addressed as a communicative resource, offering potential vocabularies or ways of speaking for listeners as well as musicians. Studies that have attempted to account for such productive uses of religious symbols have surveyed different positions on metal’s potential influence on religiosity (Hjelm 2015) or used textual Biblical criticism to understand explicitly anti-​Christian bands as engaged in practicing theological exegesis (Naylor Davis 2015). In this book, by preparing an empirically grounded methodology for studying mysticism in popular music culture, I make space for a reading of religious symbols and ideas as used by listeners, ethnographically examining these uses in context within a wider extreme metal milieu. A central aspect of this ethnographic methodology was participant observation fieldwork at concerts and music festivals featuring drone metal and closely related music, such as other kinds of drone, noise and experimental music, or other styles of extreme metal. Between September 2012 and April 2017, I  attended more than a hundred musical events, normally including different sets by several musicians or bands. These included eighteen music festivals



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and a number of special performances. Most were in the United Kingdom, but important events such as the Roadburn Festival and two concerts by the band SunnO))) took place in Netherlands and Belgium. Around half of the events I  attended were in London, and I  travelled to several events in Nottingham, Bristol, Birmingham and Leeds. No drone metal ‘scene’ has developed in any city in the United Kingdom or elsewhere, so attending shows in different cities allowed observation of drone metal events in different contexts and with different audiences, generally on the margins of local extreme and experimental music scenes. Sites for fieldwork ranged from rock and metal venues of various sizes to more formal concert halls such as the Royal Festival Hall and the Barbican Centre in London. Nonstandard music venues included the Hyde Park Picturehouse cinema in Leeds, the crypt of St John the Baptist church in Bristol, the church of St John at Hackney in London and the Modern Art Oxford gallery. Attendance ranged from below ten to more than two thousand audience members. Events ranged from headline concerts of the highest profile drone metal bands, to large metal festivals that featured drone metal performances, to one-​off experimental shows, to small pub gigs with one less well-​known drone metal band on a varied bill with other black metal or doom metal bands. This covered the variety of drone metal events that took place in the United Kingdom and nearby countries during the research period. Where possible for important artists, I attended multiple shows, seeing Bong, Earth, SunnO))), Ommadon, Bismuth, Om, Sleep, Aluk Todolo, Monarch and Gravetemple several times. I also considered as fieldwork my attendance at performances of music related to elements of drone metal. These included experimental music, minimalist orchestral music, Indian classical music, black metal, noise, psychedelic rock and funeral doom metal. This music was performed at the same or similar events as drone metal, had overlapping audiences, or was a stated influence or point of comparison for drone metal listeners and musicians. Music festivals I  attended included Desertfest in London (in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017), Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, Netherlands (in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017), Temples Fest in Bristol (in 2015) as well as several other smaller events. Such attendance was supported by a longer history of participation in these musical cultures. Long-​term commitment to music is particularly valued in metal, and so discursive appeals to this history (talking about concerts attended years ago) and material signifiers of participation (wearing recognizably old music T-​shirts) are ways in which my ordinary appearance, past involvement in music and modes of conversation

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were resources for discussion, and were signifiers of some subcultural capital (see Thornton 1996). Ethnographic participant observation was focused on listeners’ responses to musical sounds and to other people’s behaviour, as well as on my own engagement with sound, with other audience members and with the general context of each event. This included attention to the bodily comportments, movements, facial expressions, conversations with and overheard remarks of individuals. At the same time, I was listening to sound: the music being performed, but also recorded music played over the PA between performances, ambient noise, conversation or interruptions from sound sources external to performances. I  reflected on my own responses and observed connections between audience behaviour and sound. One particularly clear example occurred during a SunnO))) performance:  vocalist Attila Csihar emitted a shriek of cackling laughter, at which point one audience member immediately ran out of the performance space, evidently disturbed by that specific sound. I also observed more gradual responses to lengthy drone sounds, or to particular styles of repetition, timbre or drone. These responses could be observed in individuals or collectively. Certain audience members moved less throughout a performance, their limbs sagging slowly before eventually sitting down, or a crowd gradually thinned out over a three-​hour set. At a Gravetemple performance, rows of seated audience members gradually uncrossed their arms and legs over the course of the set. Writing notes also produced certain kinds of reflection, during performances, between sets or on my journey home. I talked with attendees, conversations often instigated by myself or others after noticing T-​shirts or patches signifying a mutual interest in drone metal bands. Merchandise stalls and the behaviour around them were interesting sites to observe intersections of musical values, material culture, embodied subcultural practice and the exchange of money as a metric of value. Music festivals were particularly rich sites for ethnographic fieldwork. They featured a large range of performances, often including exclusive shows and larger audiences. Festivals provided extensive opportunities for conversation due to longer overall duration (up to four days), and a generally convivial festival atmosphere conducive to spontaneous, good-​natured discussion of music and other topics with fellow attendees. These ‘festive’ aspects bring to mind Bakhtin’s idea of the carnivalesque, where rules and hierarchies are suspended (Bakhtin 1968). Metal’s marginal status, and even doom metal’s somewhat marginal status within metal, were overturned, with visible and performed commitment to doom and drone metal being highly valued and respected within the festival’s



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environs. Separation between musicians and audience, still evident at many concerts, was lessened, as revered musicians hung out in the crowd, with this tendency remarked upon by many Roadburn attendees. This contributed to what Victor Turner has described as liminal communitas, a shared sense of removal from the ordinary world (Turner 1969). Time was also reconfigured around music: asked what time it was, an attendee replied ‘It’s forty minutes to [headline band] Loop’ rather than ‘9.00 pm’. Keen to consider attendees’ responses to live events, I  constructed short online surveys, asking about demographics, ownership of recordings, merchandise purchases and at least one qualitative question leaving room for a full paragraph response: ‘Describe your experience of the [band] performance’. The final question requested contact details, if respondents were happy for me to contact them. For several concerts, I posted links to the online survey on social media pages set up to promote and inform about the events, and I distributed paper flyers at venues. These two methods were congruent with normal ways of sharing information relating to underground music (such as upcoming gigs), especially given

Figure  1.1  Flyer image used in recruiting research participants, displaying extreme metal visual aesthetic. The image incorporates characteristic elements of extreme metal’s visual aesthetic, such as black-​letter text, monochrome high-​contrast design and ambiguous religious symbolism. The hall behind the church pictured is used for concerts at the Roadburn festival in Tilburg, Netherlands. Photo and design by the author.

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that the flyer was designed with the visual aesthetic of extreme metal culture in mind. So, while the research project was unusual, the modes and sites of communication were familiar to participants. The twin purpose of the surveys was to elicit descriptions of drone metal or related performances and to make contact with potential interviewees. I identified the most relevant accessible events from April to December 2013, featuring Gravetemple, Ufomammut, Nazoranai, Dylan Carlson, Bong, Tim Hecker, Om and SunnO))). Due to the unpredictability of events taking place within the research period and the marginality of drone metal, some of these were not drone metal but related music (Ufomammut are a psychedelic doom metal band, Nazoranai might be described as avant-​garde improvisation and Tim Hecker creates heavy electronic ambient drone). In total, I collected 430 responses from nine surveys relating to these eight performances or tours (I created separate surveys for two large SunnO))) performances). Seventy-​four interviews were then conducted with survey respondents who left contact information. Spoken interviews generally lasted between forty and seventy minutes, and were recorded and then transcribed with the permission of the interviewee. Written interviews took place either via ‘live’ online chat via social media or in email exchanges. In-​person interviewees chose the venues, usually cafes or pubs. Interviews were semi-​structured, normally starting with a request for interviewees to describe their experience of an event, and I often prepared questions which would prompt interviewees to elaborate on their prior survey responses. If interviewees mentioned terms connected to ritual, mysticism, religion or spirituality, I would ask for further explanation and elaboration. If, as happened only occasionally, no mention was made of such topics after approximately thirty minutes, I would ask what the interviewee thought about how terms and concepts derived from religion were used by others in relation to drone metal. Due to the translocal nature of drone metal, the internet was an especially important site for participation in the subcultural work of discussing, categorizing and assessing music. I collected online information, such as professional and amateur reviews, as well as promotional materials for concerts and recordings published by artists, PR representatives and record labels. I also read thousands of comments in discussion threads on drone metal music postings on the website YouTube, and viewed forum discussions on metal sites. I normally did not post messages myself, since consent would be difficult to establish (see Hagen 2014), though I did participate as many others do, by reading discussions, following links and perhaps mentioning information or ideas in later conversations. I compiled reviews and other commentary about recordings released and



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concerts occurring during the research period and for older recordings and events acknowledged as canonical or influential. Discursive analysis of these texts about music focused on particular repeated terms such as ‘mystical’, ‘spiritual experience’, ‘transcendent’, ‘meditative’, ‘ritual’ and ‘indescribable’ and their uses. These terms are highly contested within the academic study of religion and are often used ambivalently or vaguely elsewhere, so it was vital to approach such utterances with attention to their linguistic, social and music-​related contexts in order to appreciate particular meanings for the speakers and writers taking part in that discourse. A further element of fieldwork involved contributing music journalism about drone metal and related music to the website Echoes & Dust (echoesanddust. com). Knowing the site from compiling reviews, when they advertised that they were seeking new review writers I  volunteered, echoing in part Keith Kahn-​ Harris’s methodology for his 2007 study of extreme metal, which involved working at the metal magazine Terrorizer. As well as marking another form of participation in drone metal culture, writing for the site provided access to music, to discussion among staff writers and to promotional information sent out by musicians or PR representatives accompanying review copies of recordings. These one-​page texts (‘one-​sheets’) contain details such as track names, titles, personnel and brief but usually enthusiastic praise for the music. One-​ sheets influence public discourse about music, with certain ideas used in reviews traceable back to these promotional texts that most people reading reviews would not have seen. One example of such influence emerged when a musician complained online that reviewers couldn’t get the track titles correct, though these reviewers were actually following the one-​sheet in which the tracks were mislabeled. Another musician in a press interview gently mocked reviewers for describing a recording in highly imaginative terms appealing to sunrise epiphanies and ghosts of legendary musicians. However (and perhaps unbeknown to the musician) these reviews had clearly been influenced by those exact ideas having been distributed on the one-​sheet as a prompt for reviewers. I later produced some of my own one-​sheets as part of my involvement as a trustee with Oaken Palace, a record label focusing on drone rather than drone metal specifically. This, in addition, afforded further possibilities to learn about aspects of music cultures such as the manufacturing of vinyl records and cassettes, promotion and distribution of recordings. Due to the methods of collecting information about drone metal, it is not possible to claim that the sample population of survey respondents and interviewees is demographically representative of a total drone metal listening

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population. There appeared to be a similar overall demographic in terms of age, gender and ethnicity in my interviews as I observed at drone metal and related music concerts in general, but this observation remains anecdotal and is not supported by a systematic approach to demographics and representation. One striking aspect about survey respondents, interviewees and people I  spoke to at fieldwork events was the generally high level of formal academic qualifications. While my experience and expectation was in line with Brown’s observation that metal audiences are increasingly middle class (Brown 2014: 47), the proportion of drone metal listeners I spoke to who had at least several years of postgraduate education, was high. This impression could have been exaggerated because researchers might be more likely to agree to participate in research, with one survey respondent stating this explicitly. In online drone metal discourse, there is little reliable demographic information due to the anonymity of internet users. Considering the translocal and marginal nature of drone metal culture and practice, an overview of drone metal listener demographics would be particularly difficult to ascertain. While this study can make no claim to have surveyed a representative sample of drone metal audiences, it can instead claim some objectivity at the level of discourse, having closely analysed a wide range of communications about drone metal that take place in separate but mutually influential spheres of discourse. Many of the practices, modes of communication and discursive strategies observed in drone metal culture overlap with or are familiar in other extreme music subgenres. Drone metal’s marginal status, even within doom metal, means that many gigs I attended featured one drone band on a bill of four or five other bands, and it was unusual to have a line-​up which featured more than one drone metal band. As previously mentioned, no drone metal scene exists in one city that could compare with, for example, Gothenburg or Tampa Bay, places where death metal scenes due to proximity and access to the same venues and studios produce music with a strongly distinctive sound (Brown 2015a: 269). By contrast, drone metal subsists through occasional events at the edges of a more general extreme metal milieu. The extremity of drone metal’s minimalist but overwhelming expanses of sound creates a challenge for description, yet also can occasion powerful experiences which prompt responses to that challenge. This is evident in my own field notes, reviews, and academic writing, as it is in conversations, commentary and other communications of fellow listeners. This project, rather than seeking to discover or finalize authoritative versions of events, takes its place in a continuous construction of discourse, circulating around and influencing the sonic practices of participants resonating in drone metal.



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Overview of the book Drone metal is a somewhat obscure music genre, situated on the fringes of underground heavy metal music culture and experimental sound. It has so far received little scholarly attention, yet I argue that examining the musical culture of drone metal in depth can offer useful insights about how religion is used, discussed, contested, practised and experienced in contemporary popular music culture. Chapter 2 reviews discussions of religion and mysticism in scholarship on heavy metal and other forms of popular music, identifying shortcomings regarding the coherence and consistency of terminology related to religious experience. Related issues are identified in an assessment of scholarship on mysticism within the study of religions. These involve the overstated separation of text and experience, and the positing of a universal experience behind cultural difference. Drawing on the work of Michel de Certeau in particular, the chapter proposes an alternative understanding of mysticism as a tradition of reception and production of mystical discourse. This approach avoids or resolves some theoretical, epistemological and ethical problems prevalent in other work on mysticism and religion in popular culture. Further, it allows an empirical treatment of mysticism that is observable in the ways that participants make use of symbols and language. I explore examples of how mysticism might be empirically examined in this way by contrasting drone metal with dub reggae and psychedelic trance, two longer-​established forms of music which have each attracted reports and descriptions which relate to religious experience and mysticism. The marginality and translocality of drone metal, I will suggest in Chapter 3, have particular bearing on how subjective responses to or experiences of musical engagement become a constitutive aspect of how genre is understood for this music. This chapter discusses the early history and later development of the genre culture of drone metal from the early formation connections and conventions in relation to heavy metal. Jokes, criticism and comparisons that highlight difference are then considered as important aspects of genre discourse around drone metal. In Chapter 4, I note the descriptions of imaginative spaces, times and states of bodily consciousness evoked by the music. The chapter identifies in communications about drone metal a dialectic of distant otherness and embodied presence in the vibrating body and in shifting, ambiguously structured language choices. This relation, I suggest, allows participants to listen to drone metal as if it is ritual, as if it is religious, as if it is pilgrimage, as if it is mystical. Ambiguous spaces are created in which listeners may explore such concepts and responses without committing to fixed dogma or definition.

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Chapter 5 turns to the importance of amplification and distortion in drone metal, and its connection to a concern with materiality. This ranges from the bodily experience of extremely loud, low and sustained vibration to the tactile and haptic qualities of physical music media and other objects. Distortion occurs when a signal is amplified beyond the capacity of the medium or channel to transmit it, and thus the fuzzy, noisy or sludgy timbres of drone metal are sonic signifiers of excess, where materials and equipment are sounding the limits of their own capabilities of transmission. This presentation of drone metal’s amplified and distorted materiality thereby returns to discussion of mystical discourse, which is characterized by excessive and contorted uses of language. The visual signifiers of drone metal and the language used by listeners to speak about the music are also amplified and distorted in attempts to exceed the limits of what can be said. This extreme music produces extreme effects in the bodies and consciousness of listeners, and in Chapter 6 I explore aspects of such extreme responses, investigating the connections between mysticism, ritual, noise and modalities of violence in cultures of drone metal listening. For private listening, ritual often refers to listeners’ personal development of their own contexts and practices for listening to vinyl records. By contrast, in relation to concerts, ritual often describes elements of performance that listeners attend to and even participate in, but do not fully understand and feel somehow distanced from. Across these contrasting interpretations of ritual in the different spheres of musical culture, I identify a relation between difference and sameness which reproduces the combination of imagined elsewheres and consciousness of here described in Chapter 3. Another feature widely cited in reports about the evocation of ritual and mysticism in drone metal is violence, in shifting conceptions and representations of pain, hurt, hardship, endurance or suffering. This I discuss in relation to theories of noise and sacrifice, observing connections in the relationships of language, body and excess in both mysticism and torture. Much of the power of drone metal appears to emerge from a staged encounter with radical difference. In private listening this is instantiated by performing certain separations and preparations of time, space and the body, and at live performances it is provided by the shock of alterity in volume and the opaque gestures and sounds of the performers. This confrontation with extreme otherness is a source for the emergence of mystical discourse as well as for a sense of ritually constructed power in ambiguity created in violent separation from ordinary life. In a phrase that appeared repeatedly during fieldwork, drone metal is to be experienced and not understood.



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After reflecting on the scope of the study and some potential avenues for future investigation, Chapter 7 concludes the book with a review of how these themes together present a comprehensive analysis of the participatory sonic, symbolic and discursive tradition of drone metal mysticism. Mystical discourse is practised by listeners in the comparison and contrast with other forms of popular music often understood in relation to religious experience and mysticism. It appears in the marginal and translocal formulation of genre discourse which draws in listeners’ own strange and powerful subjective engagements, and their uses of language which attempts to exceed itself, and it provides a site for the traversal of imaginative elsewhere, where ambiguous space is made and maintained for the exploration of religiosity in otherness. Mysticism and ritual are explored in the intense focus on amplification and distortion that forms a meditation on the materiality of sound and symbol, as well as in the relations between violence and noise that are evoked in drone metal’s staging of engagement with radical otherness. In these operations on metal music’s codes and conventions, in the distortions of language surrounding the music, in this empirical approach to the construction of discourse around musical practices, drone metal resonates as a mystical tradition.

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To Be Experienced, Not Understood: Empirical Mysticisms in Trance, Dub and Drone

Introduction This chapter examines how religion, specifically religious experience and mysticism, have been understood in relation to popular music cultures. Scholarly approaches to religiosity will be considered in three areas of popular music, each of which have attracted attention for their connection with or discourses around religion, religious experience and mysticism. These are dub reggae, psychedelic trance and heavy metal, the latter including various subgenres but with a specific focus on drone metal. I will first set out frameworks that have been employed in attempting to understand religion and popular music. These commonly have included sociological conceptions of the sacred, functionalist views concerned with ritual, thematic responses which trace ideas such as apocalypse, and institutional perspectives which consider popular music in the context of existing religious structures and agendas such as, for example, evangelization strategies and youth outreach. I suggest that interpretations of religion and popular music cultures have tended to conflate mysticism with ‘religious experience’. When participants in music cultures use vocabulary related to religion, religious experience and mysticism, and when some traditional religious institutions are conspicuously rejected by participants in the musical cultures under discussion, this kind of approach may be understandable. However, theories of mysticism based on religious experience often lack explanatory power and are epistemologically and ethically problematic. In several examples of popular music scholarship, reports of apparent ‘religious experiences’ are gathered from participants at raves or gigs, then compared with classical reports designated as authentically mystical

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or religious by influential scholars such as William James (1982) and Aldous Huxley (1945, 1956). Similarities are noted, and the case is closed:  popular music can occasion religious experiences. However, as I  discuss, more recent work on mysticism has identified serious ethical and epistemological issues in the conceptualization of religious experience in twentieth-​century religious studies scholarship. Problems arise from the uncritical acceptance of a conception of experience that is based on implicit assumptions about apparently universal and essential qualities of subjectivity. These ideas about experience are, however, through those very assumptions, exclusionary and partial, favouring a particular hegemonic construction of subjectivity based on a Western episteme. I outline some challenges to these assumptions about religious experience that have been made by scholars of religion. In response, I detail how the work of Michel de Certeau and others can assist in forming a critical perspective with which to empirically examine and understand mysticism in religion and in popular music cultures. This approach no longer relies upon the problematic positing of universal unitive experience before language and culture. Instead, I  argue, mysticism is better understood when analysis turns to the ongoing social and embodied uses of, creations of, responses to and communications about texts. These activities themselves constitute an ongoing reflexive tradition of inextricable texts and experiences. This chapter, then, attempts not only to highlight shortcomings in treatments of mysticism, but also to construct a plausible theoretical and empirical methodology for studying mysticism in popular music culture. Mysticism is considered not as inaccessible experience but instead as reflexive, critical and participatory ways of communicating. In Certeau’s terms, mysticism is practised in manners of speaking, in ways of operating on symbolic codes, in transformative readings of an inherited tradition. Theorists of mysticism often appeal to music as analogy or metaphor for the powerful effects of mystical language. I  suggest that in fact popular music cultures provide excellent examples of mystical traditions in this sense. Popular music mysticism can be heard in ongoing, creative chains of communication, interpretation and response to an existing tradition of intertextual practice and performance. Dissolving a traditional and unhelpful dichotomy in scholarly approaches to mysticism, musical sounds can be heard as simultaneously ‘text’ and ‘experience’. This chapter summarizes key developments in scholarship in mysticism in the study of religion since the beginning of the twentieth century, outlining the problems as well as a response, via Certeau’s work, which provides a more productive empirical framework for understanding mysticism. Then, the broad



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tendency in studies of religion and popular music to focus centrally on ‘religious experience’ is identified, with the same problems emerging from this emphasis. The following two sections give more detailed examples of popular music cultures which have engaged with religiosity in a sustained way, pointing out how shortcomings in the literature on trance music and dub can be related to ideas about religious experience. It is demonstrated in each section how a conception of mysticism as intertextual practice would provide a more empirically, epistemologically and ethically grounded alternative. A detailed examination then follows of how scholarship has treated mysticism and religion in the broad metal music genre culture, and this survey will further emphasize the benefits of the theoretical and methodological approach I propose.

Mysticism in religious studies In understanding mysticism, religious experience, spirituality and ritual in popular music cultures, it will be necessary to turn to the tradition of scholarship on mysticism within the study of religion. I  will outline the history of relevant approaches to mysticism and religious experience through the twentieth century, highlighting shortcomings in how this subject has been understood before going on to address their appearance in studies of religion and popular music. Significant problematic issues in studying mysticism, which I  hope to avoid, include an implicit and essentialist universalism, an overreliance on the category of ‘experience’, and a conceptual division between text and experience. William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (1982), first published in 1902, is among the most influential texts in the academic study of mysticism. James sets out his theory of religion as springing from individual but universal psychological states of consciousness or experiences, around which texts, laws, practices, rituals and modes of religious and social organization later crystallize. According to James, these accretions are bound by the specificity of language and culture, thus straying further from the foundation of unmediated experience and becoming institutionalized and debased as a result (W. James 1982:  31). In her book Mysticism:  A  Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness, originally published in 1911, Evelyn Underhill retained a similar focus on the ‘essential religious experience of man’ as the centre of Christianity and of religion itself (Underhill 1930: vii), even while critical of James at times (Underhill 1930:  81). Also from a predominantly Christian perspective and influenced by the psychological focus on experience was Rudolf

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Otto’s book The Idea of the Holy (1958), first published in German in 1917. Like James, Otto argued that ‘numinous’ experience, by definition beyond rationality and language, should be considered as the fount of all religion. While mentioning other traditions and sources, each writer drew predominantly on Christian sources and paradigms in framing religious concepts. Several decades later, Aldous Huxley was particularly influential in extending and popularizing the theory that religion is founded in individual mystical experience, with a more explicit emphasis on the universality of this concept amid the plurality of religious traditions (perhaps since he was less personally invested in Christian faith). Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy (1945) gave the name ‘perennialism’ to this approach, drawing together a vast array of fragmentary quotations from diverse sources. Shankara, John of the Cross, St Bernard, Eckhart, Lao Tzu, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Upanishads and Dionysius the Areopagite can all be found in one fourteen-​page chapter which also includes references to Descartes, Sufis and research into psychokinesis (Huxley 1945:  21–​35). This kind of generalizing citation was further disseminated in later anthologies and treasuries of mystical knowledge or wisdom (Victor Gollancz’s 1950 A Year of Grace being an early example), which dispensed with the erudite but dense exegeses favoured by Huxley, leaving the quoted fragments to imply universal essentialism simply by their collected juxtaposition. Huxley later suggested that the supposedly perennial religious experience could be accessed through psychoactive substances such as mescaline and the newly synthesized LSD (1954). He went on to posit a psycho-​pharmacological basis for such experiences in the religious use of ascetic practices and psychoactive substances, careful to suggest that these conditions may occasion rather than cause religious experience (1956). These still provocative claims instigated a response from Robert Charles Zaehner, who attempted to ridicule Huxley’s claims by taking mescaline himself in order to not have a religious experience, and seeking to create (or reinstate) a hierarchy of mysticism with ‘nature mysticism’ downgraded and his own Roman Catholicism placed at the apex (1957). Despite their disagreements, both authors (and many others) attempted to fit diverse traditions, contexts and practices into their own universalizing epistemic frameworks, whether Catholic or more broadly pantheist, and they equally unquestioningly retained essentialist assumptions about psychological experience and subjectivity. While discussions continued about hierarchies and types of mysticism, a general consensus emerged around a number of characteristics common to these experiences which were apparently (or axiomatically) common to all forms of



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religion. James introduced ‘four marks’ of mystical experience: ineffability (or indescribability), noetic quality (providing knowledge), transiency and passivity (W. James 1982: 380). Later scholars agreed that mystical experience was inexpressible, treating mystical texts as attempts, all doomed to failure, to describe the indescribable essence common to all of these experiences. A link was subtly made between mystical experience beyond the framework of language and religion beyond the frameworks of rationality (and, by extension, beyond criticism based in that rationality). This strategy can be traced at least as far back as Friedrich Schleiermacher’s 1799 defence of religion against its ‘cultured despisers’ (Schleiermacher 1996; see also Proudfoot 2012: 120–​1). A combination of the second and third of James’s marks was also generally supported, with transient mystical experience judged truly religious if it led to knowledge or other kinds of lasting transformation (this is attested in W. James 1982: 371–​4, Underhill 1930: 413, Huxley 1945: 297, Zaehner 1957: 106, for example). A number of problematic issues arise in studies of mysticism, many of which can be traced to assumptions about experience. Unmoored from the specifics of a religious tradition, place and language, ahistorical positionings of mysticism may drift towards apologies for the supremacy of one or other position over ‘inferior rivals’ (King 1999: 97), such as Catholicism for Zaehner, or a conception of modern rationality itself for Huxley. Lack of attention to local specificity also tends to reinforce gendered discrimination which ignores women’s struggles for recognition of their expression and authority over their own bodies (Hollywood 2001, Jantzen 1989, 1994). On this note, rock critics’ ideas of transcendence in popular music have been similarly criticized for a tendency to ‘ignore how music is understood differently at different moments in history and by people of different races, genders, classes, and generations (among others)’ (Kruse 2002:137). According to several scholars working in the later decades of the twentieth century, many of the problematic epistemological, ethical and political issues surrounding mysticism relate to the conception of experience upon which much scholarship has relied. The specific qualities of this posited mystical experience have been debated, notably in collections of essays edited by Steven T. Katz (1978b, 1983, 1992). Katz, explicitly opposing perennialism, argued for greater contextualization of mystical reports, holding that cultural and linguistic backgrounds were not merely accidental constraints on a mystical writer’s expression but played an active role in constituting any experience (Katz 1978a: 22). Bernard McGinn and Grace Jantzen, both working on Christian mysticism, have noted their own misgivings about the focus on experience, observing that many works regarded as canonically mystical do

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not appear to be at all concerned with experience, instead emphasizing prayer or praxis (McGinn 1994:  180, Jantzen 1995:  6). As Robert Sharf has noted, while the opponents in constructivist–​perennialist debates (including Katz) differ over the extent to which they consider experience to be conditioned by culture, both sides rely unquestioningly on the same view of experience (Sharf 1995: 229). In a critique of the concept of experience, Joan Scott suggests that the term’s use may be too ingrained to abandon, instead calling for usage with greater awareness of the potential problems inherent in implying universal notions of subjectivity that remove the possibility of any politicized contextualization (J. Scott 1991: 797). When experience is taken as the origin of knowledge, the vision of the individual subject (the person who had the experience or the historian who recounts it) becomes the bedrock of evidence on which explanation is built. Questions about the constructed nature of experience, about how subjects are constituted as different in the first place, about how one’s vision is structured –​about language (or discourse) and history –​are left aside. The evidence of experience then becomes evidence for the fact of difference, rather than a way of exploring how difference is established, how it operates, how and in what ways it constitutes subjects who see and act in the world. (J. Scott 1991: 777)

Not only does Scott address the potential for marginalization of particular constructions and expressions of subjectivity, she also points to the strange dead end of analysis in such views. ‘Evidence for the fact of difference’ as she puts it, in studies of mysticism (including in popular music) often lead to simple assertions of the presence of religious experience in or behind a particular text, discourse, practice or culture. Such reports are then treated as an end of analysis rather than a departure point for exploring the discursive, participatory constitution and maintenance of conceptions of mystical practice and subjectivity. Experience in this context has also been criticized within the study of religion. Stephen Crites in 1971 observed the ‘narrative quality of experience’ as a counterpoint to the supposedly independent or pure instants of consciousness imagined by other scholars in the study of religion (Crites 1971). Michel de Certeau cites this idea in his development of a theory of mysticism based not on experience (though not denying experience) but instead on modes and practices of communication (Certeau 1992a: 180). Certeau strongly challenges perennialist ideas, cautioning that his own project is not chasing ‘any particular “experience” ’ (Certeau 1995:  445)  nor ready-​made definition (Certeau 1986: 82). Certeau suggests, in a characteristically provocative question rather



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than a definite statement, more radical understandings of the relation of text, experience, mysticism and subjectivity: ‘One may legitimately ask whether the psychological person, far from expressing itself in the personal pronoun, is not rather “an effect of utterance” ’ (Certeau 1986: 96). Certeau avoids assumptions of universal subjectivity and associated problematic connotations through portraying experience and text as interrelated and inextricable. This approach allows empirical study of the intricacies of how texts and practices are enacted and understood, while also addressing how they are embedded in and might affect social and political realities for participants. Approaches based on assumptions about universal experience can also tend towards orientalism and exoticism, where the ‘mystic East’ is imagined to hide an apparent pre-​rational, sensual experience lost to ‘the West’ but available for rediscovery by the Western scholar of mysticism (Said 1994, King 1999). Similar assumptions may even support nationalist, neo-​colonialist, racist or fascist political and cultural projects. If essential truth is posited to be found in experience, this allows it to be claimed as the province of certain individuals or groups who thereby claim privileged access to the purest version of this truth and consequently consider themselves empowered and even obliged to impose this ‘truth’ upon others. Association with fascism is a criticism which has been levelled at scholars involved in the study of mysticism, such as Mircea Eliade in light of his support for right-​wing nationalist groups in Romania (Wasserstrom 1999: 129, 184), and, more overtly, Julius Evola, who explicitly and aggressively asserted connections between mysticism and an apocalyptic fascism (Evola 1995, see also Goodricke-​Clarke 2001:  4, 80). Richard King usefully summarizes the extent to which universalizing essentialism and unexamined over-​reliance on ‘experience’ can lead in extremely problematic directions: Mysticism at once becomes decontextualized (and thus amenable to simplistic comparative analysis), elitist (since only certain people can experience it), antisocial (since it is inaccessible to the public realm –​to the rest of society), otherworldly (since it is about cultivating private experiences and not engaging with the world), and domesticated (since it is concerned primarily with the cultivation of inner states of tranquillity and the alleviation of anxiety). (King 1999: 26)

If it is to avoid reproducing such difficulties, an approach to mysticism in popular music culture must be founded neither on under-​theorized conceptions of experience nor on appeals to an unfounded universality. This has epistemological implications, since this universal essence is not available to empirical study,

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and ethical implications since this approach allows an exoticist view of difference to serve epistemic elitism.

A theoretical framework for popular music mysticism In forming a way of approaching mysticism in drone metal (and in other popular music cultures) which might avoid the shortcomings of the essentialism described, the relation between experience and texts should not be treated as a relation between pure knowledge and failure to accurately report it. Instead, this relation should be treated as a practice of engagement, where mysticism involves intertextual experience of texts, where ‘experience’ and ‘text’ are considered not as two incommensurable categories but as inextricable aspects of mysticism as practice. Useful in constructing such an approach is the profoundly ethical and rigorously historiographical, practical and epistemological work of Michel de Certeau, which considers both the creative uses of popular culture texts by audiences, and the symbolic practices of mystical discourse. Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) problematizes strict divisions between the production and consumption of popular culture, and between reading and writing. The book has often been regarded as a secular work, concerned with everyday topics and ordinary people and therefore separate from Certeau’s other work on religious history. This division, however, is artificial, with all of Certeau’s work presenting an ethical treatment of method and sources, a focus on wandering and marginal figures, and deep engagement with reading and writing as interdependent practices relating to faith and spirituality. The Practice of Everyday Life itself contains passages unequivocally concerned with religiosity:  one of the book’s five sections, for instance, is titled ‘Ways of Believing’, concerning both political and religious faith (Certeau 1984: 177–​99). A key project of The Practice of Everyday Life is to highlight that ‘one cannot maintain the division separating the readable text (a book, image, etc.) from the act of reading’ (Certeau 1984:  170). Certeau wishes to focus on ‘another production, called “consumption” ’ (1984: xiii). The emphasis is on ‘another’, since reading is a kind of production that is practised differently to the institutional placement, claims to authority and strategies of citation that constitute writing as production. Preferred readings, which are more about preferred readers and preferred places from which to write or read than about privileged access to truth or reality, are rejected as ideology (Certeau 1997b: 144; see also Certeau 1984: 171).



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For Certeau, each reader in encountering texts ‘combines their fragments and creates something un-​known in the space organized by their capacity for allowing an indefinite plurality of meanings’ (Certeau 1984: 169). Readers in different contexts use the imposed language of texts in their own ways and for their own purposes (Certeau, 1997a: 84). This description of reading as poaching has been one of Certeau’s more influential ideas, though it is not without controversy. Ben Highmore and Ian Buchanan both report that the idea has led to a certain unquestioning valorization of, for example, shopping malls and wearing jeans as subversive practices in some areas of cultural studies (Highmore 2006:  12, Buchanan 2000: 99). It is likely that they are referring to John Fiske’s analysis in Understanding Popular Culture (1989b) and Reading the Popular (1989a), which do render such practices somewhat idealistically as resistant (Fiske 1989a:  8, 213), though Fiske does at least attempt to treat Certeau’s ideas with some degree of complexity (1989a: 135–​6). More than a detachable and applicable concept of reading as poaching, of great potential use in this study of popular culture texts and their uses is Certeau’s destabilizing of the relation between reading and writing, or consumption and production. This undermining of divisions can be discerned in mystical texts and scholarship about mysticism (including Certeau’s own writing), and in the creative work of ‘another production, called consumption’ (Certeau 1984: xii) that is done by popular music listeners with the received texts of their tradition. With this work on reading, writing and popular culture in mind, we can turn to Certeau’s contribution to the study of mysticism. Throughout his career, in writings on everyday language, culture and history as well as religion, Certeau returns to operations performed on language that he calls ‘manners of speaking’, which turn language, push it to its limits, and make it show what it cannot say (Certeau 1986: 80–​100, 1992a: 113, 2000b: 181). His most extended treatment is in the two volumes of The Mystic Fable (1992a, 2015), which analyse the modes of language used in mystical texts and of the historical development of the term mystique in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Certeau investigates the ways of using language in the writings he studies, tracing the itineraries of their transcription, dissemination and reception in subsequent writings. He examines how the linguistic operations within the texts function in terms of the mystics’ relations to social and religious institutions in the context of wider epistemological shifts and, in addition, notes how a number of these processes and practices of language recur in some modern practices, particularly psychoanalysis but also painting and poetry. According to Certeau, mystic writers are always caught between institutional authority and an inherited language. For the medieval Christian mystics,

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these are the church and theology, both of which bear on the production of a mystic’s expressions. They are, however, marked as unsatisfactory or corrupted in their promise of foundational meaning (a context-​based relation which resonates with the purported relationship in mystical scholarship between pure experience and inadequate text). Thus the mystics write from a place ‘different but not distant’ (Certeau 1992a: 8) from their tradition, deliberately aligning themselves with already corrupt orders in order to bear witness to a decay in the authority of scriptural language. The reflexively contradictory uses of language by mystics perform a breakage in that language in order to demonstrate its limits and failures. The smallest units of this mystically treated, paradoxical language are oxymoronic phrases such as ‘silent music’ and ‘cruel repose’ (Certeau 1992a: 143–​4). These means of communicative expression, in spite of signification, incorporate a language of the body (Certeau 1995: 445) as well as a focus on the body of language itself, in the physical materiality of both written and spoken signs. These mystically turned signs no longer point towards signified referents but instead bear witness to their own opaque physicality. The mystical use of language, for Certeau, constitutes a ‘beautiful but illegible handwriting’ (Certeau 1992a: 70) that draws attention to its own failure to signify, and in so doing, ‘says’ something despite itself about its own symbolic code, foundation and limits. The hermeneutic impulse to decipher such hidden meanings is, according to Certeau, provoked but also evaded by the mystics’ idiosyncratic and paradoxical employments of diverse fragments of language. For Certeau, mystic texts, such as Hieronymous Bosch’s c.  1500 painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, promise an esoteric meaning through their strange signs, yet the only secret is their fragmentary strangeness, a brokenness which productively fails to designate a unified, stable meaning. This esotericism attracts accusations of heresy from those who try to discern what is being signified (1992a:  92). Tied to a specific and fundamentally shifting social situation, these mystics marked a ‘sunset’ of an epistemological order founded in the church and the Word, their texts a ‘historical figure of a loss’ (1992a: 13–​14). Mystics for Certeau were therefore no sages of an eternal, essential, perennial transcendental reality but were witnesses instead of changing social, political and religious conditions, marking their response in their unconventional uses of the tradition and language in which they were unstably situated. The procedures and manners of speaking through which the mystics marked this change, however, return in other contexts, and Certeau traces this re-​ emergence in other places. In twentieth-​century poetry and psychoanalysis,



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Certeau observes a related turn to opaque signs, a language of the body, and a straining of symbols to the point of excess where they are forced, in their failure, to show what they cannot tell. Mystical manners of speaking resurface elsewhere. Other scholars of mysticism, many drawing on Certeau, have also attempted to work on mysticism in a way that attends to the textual operations through which mysticism is constructed and conveyed. Even Huxley, primarily associated with a perennialist view reliant on psychological understandings of experience, makes room for a mysticism rooted in engagement with texts: At its most magical, the purified language of literature can evoke experiences comparable to the pre-​mystical or fully mystical apocalypses of pure receptivity on the non-​verbal level. (Huxley 1963: 34)

Don Cupitt too has suggested locating mystical experience in the experience of writing, rather than assuming separation between the moments of experience and of writing. For Cupitt, ‘mysticism is a kind of writing’ (1998: 10), and there is ‘no such thing as “experience” outside of and prior to language’ (1998: 74). However, Cupitt does not describe exactly what kinds of writing are mystical, and lapses into reliance upon ideas about authorial intention in trying to discern which writers are apparently ‘in it for real’ (1998: 79). Approaching mysticism with an attention to how subjectivities are constituted in reading as well as writing, Michael Sells does engage with the specific linguistic forms used in mystical texts:  paradoxes, impossible questions, performative contradictions, metaphors stretched to breaking point, and the ‘saying away’ of apophatic negative language. These performative uses of language contribute to a ‘meaning event’, which for Sells is ‘a secret or mystery that the reader continually uncovers in the act of reading’ (1994: 216), and which ‘keeps the mind in incessant activity, never allowing it a fixed referent’ (1994: 30). Jeffrey Kripal similarly notes the uses of myth, rhetoric, apologetic, and polemic in mystical writing, in contrast to uses of language which ostensibly transmit information more straightforwardly. Kripal also places his own writing about mysticism within a mystical tradition, stating that ‘I no longer want to study mystical literature. I now want to write it’ (2007: 15). In a later book drawing links between Kabbalah and fantastic tales of superheroes in marginal popular literature, Kripal adds that reality ‘comes to be in the space between the properly trained reader and the revealed texts. Reading is mysticism’ (Kripal 2011: 9, italics in original). Following Certeau and this current in mystical scholarship, then, we can approach religiosity in popular music through a theory and method which

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recognizes mysticism in intertwined reading and writing, listening and speaking (in musical as well as verbal senses). Music, in fact, as a temporally shifting bodily encounter with patterns of sound, provides an excellent counterexample to the conceptual divisions between text and experience that obtain in much writing on mysticism. Significantly, music has often been used as a rhetorical trope to indicate elements of language which exceed or escape signification or rational communication. The perennially influential William James, for instance, uses the twin metaphors of musical listener and lover in order to explain the incompetence of language in communicating mystical feeling (W. James 1982: 380). Evelyn Underhill relates ‘suggestive and allusive’ uses of language to music (Underhill 1980: 408), and Sigmund Freud used music as a figure for the impenetrability of mysticism (Freud quoted in Certeau 1992b: 12). Certeau too links musicality to ineffability (1992a: 17, 70), to a subversion of the ‘the triumphs of reason’ (1988: 183), and to mystical secrets within and beyond language (1986:  99). In these instances, where music sporadically surfaces in religious scholarship as an ambivalent marker for mysticism in language, is suggested a way of studying mysticism in popular music as a tradition of practicing and engaging with texts. Rather than retreating into circular suppositions about experiences inaccessible to communication, and instead of ‘positing, behind the documents, the presence of a what-​ever, an ineffability that could be twisted to any end’ (Certeau 1986: 82), a theory of mysticism based on practices of language instead invites empirical investigation into participants’ engagements with drone metal and their productions of discourse in the music culture. These practices of language respond to and in turn frame engagements with sound. This methodological approach, attending carefully to symbolic practices and their contexts, can connect how certain forms of popular music are heard as mystical traditions about, within and at the margins of their respective traditions, and which display mystical modes of operating on symbolic traditions of musical sound and talking about musical sound. In the remainder of this chapter, I will examine the ways in which religiosity, spirituality and mysticism have been understood in metal, and describe a methodology which takes into account the challenges outlined in studying mysticism. In preparation for this, I will demonstrate a general tendency for studies of religiosity in popular music cultures to reproduce the ‘religious experience’ paradigm with its deficiencies intact, before presenting two examples in detail. Using the examples of dub reggae and psychedelic trance, I will show how mysticism can be better approached empirically as traditions of intertextual practice in these two popular music cultures.



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Religion and popular music: Tending towards religious experience Academic studies of religiosity in popular music cultures related to rock and metal music have been prominently concerned with ‘cults,’ New Religious Movements and Satanism, whether addressed in the modes of reactionary moral panic, celebrations of resistance or sociological treatments of youth, fashion and culture. A commonly taken approach to religion and popular music has been to thematically analyse broad religious themes in popular music productions. These include, for example, apocalyptic themes in popular music, as treated in books or collections such as Apocalypse Jukebox:  The End of the World in American Popular Music (Janssen and Whitelock 2009), Anthems of Apocalypse (Partridge 2012)  and the idiosyncratic, experimental Drone and Apocalypse (Demers 2015). Another frequent emphasis is on how particular kinds of ‘religious’ popular music relate to religious institutions, often focusing on contestations surrounding Christian popular music (e.g. Moberg 2015, Abraham 2015, Howard 1996). Alternatively, studies taking a more sociological perspective have attended to the formation and maintenance of a constructed Durkheimian sacred (Partridge 2014, see also Durkheim 1995). In studies of popular music cultures that are centred outside Europe and North America, or that are not predominantly derived from rock music, religiosity has more often been understood in relation to how individual, social and political identities are formed and sustained (as in, for example, Diehl 2002 and Kalra 2015). Underlying many approaches to religion in popular music are conceptions of religious experience in the tradition of William James (1982). Such studies (e.g. Sylvan 2002, Till 2010, 2012) understand religion as emerging from individual psychological experiences. Apparent reports of such experiences are easily discovered in popular music cultures often constructed in opposition to religious institutions. When, in turn, quasi-​religious institutions and practices are identified in popular music cultures, they are offered as proof for the theories of essential religious experience as the foundation of religion. Such analyses then claim to have accounted for these apparently religious forms, practices and institutions in popular music cultures. They also support the unexamined assumptions that, firstly, religious experience is the foundation of religion, and consequently, that religious experience is a legitimate yet inaccessible category on which scholarship in the study of religion may rest. An example can be found in Simon Reynolds’s description of the noisy 1980s indie rock music of bands

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such as My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus and Mary Chain, whose extreme use of noisy distortion remain an influence in drone metal. Reynolds equates moments of pagan mysticism with the listening experiences of rock fans, and relates the development of doctrinal religions to the institutions of rock criticism (1990: 12–​13). While recognizing the appeal and power of the language of religious experience for music listeners, Reynolds accepts assumptions about how organized religion develops from individual mystical experience. The analogy does, however, present interesting suggestions about the ongoing work done by critics and listeners, of constructing frameworks for musical experience while at the same time placing in tension the institutionalizing tendencies of discourse (constructing lists and canons, for example) and revelatory listening (where bliss and noise are transcendent ruptures in symbolic codes). Several studies of religion and popular music have also been concerned with showing that aspects of participation in music cultures can properly be described as religious according to established definitions and frameworks. These, again, frequently rely on William James’s definition of mystical experience through four ‘marks’, and his claim that religious institutions, practices and rituals all emerge from individual experiences (W. James, 1982: 380). Rupert Till, for example, collects reports from Electronic Dance Music adherents, summarizing their compelling statements with a brief and seemingly definitive statement that ‘these are mystical experiences of transcendence and rapture’ (Till 2010: 144). Similarly, Robin Sylvan opens his book on popular music and religion with descriptions from different genres which ‘read like classic descriptions of religious experiences of a profound, life-​changing nature’ (Sylvan 2002: 1–​2). Keen to identify a truly religious essence which can then be discovered in popular musical traditions (Sylvan 2002: 216), this kind of approach risks missing important details which differentiate specific engagements with religiosity in particular contexts. For example, Sylvan discusses instances of listening that ‘even metalheads have identified as religious’ (2002: 166). However, the quote which he uses to prove this claim in fact seems to convey a more interesting ambiguity:  ‘It is like a religious experience, I  imagine it’s just like some people say that they’re finding God’ (Metal listener quoted in Sylvan 2002: 166). Rather than take this as proof of connection to a generalized religious experience, I suggest an approach which instead reads carefully the language and imagery listeners use. In cases such as those presented by Sylvan, for example, I would wish to acknowledge the importance of ambivalent distancing relations (‘It is like . . .’), uncertainty and speculation (‘I imagine it’s just like . . .’), and the intersecting social understandings and expectations about the



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participatory construction of ideas about religion (‘some people say . . .’). An approach which begins rather than ends with reports which refer to mysticism, religiosity and spirituality, I argue, is a more methodologically and epistemologically responsible as well as a more interesting and rewarding approach to investigating mystical discourse in popular music. Beyond these approaches which suggest that new religious formations are founded on experiences simply understood as ‘religious’, the terminology of religious experience and mysticism is used in extremely varied ways. This vagueness is often compounded by apparent assumptions that the words ‘mysticism’, ‘mystical’ and ‘mystic’ have common sense meanings which are widely understood, despite the notorious ambiguity in how such terms are used (McGinn 1991: 11). The countercultural music of the 1960s in the United Kingdom and United States, for example, is frequently described in terms of mysticism by scholars seemingly associated with a search for transcendence in music, intoxication, sexual liberation and exotic spirituality (Helb 2014: 146, Pillsbury 2006: 116). Where the terminology of mysticism is used to identify and critique appeals to orientalist exoticism in popular music, the same ambiguous gesturing can creep in through imprecision. Writing more broadly about the use of ‘elements of Indian music’ in 1960s Western pop music, Gerry Farrell similarly notes that such appropriations employed ‘a reified romantic evocation of the mysterious East, a mystical appendage to mass consumerism’ (1999:  78). Later on, however, he appears to reproduce exactly that kind of essentialism in describing, for example, a photograph of Rabindranath Tagore showing ‘the piercing eyes of a mystic’ (Farrell 1999: 156), and reporting that for Indian musicians practice and perfection were ‘elevated to almost mystical proportions’ (Farrell 1999:  190). Even critics who identify the problematic issues of orientalism and reification, then, may lapse into unreflexive or inadequately theorized uses of terminology relating to mysticism. A more empirically and epistemologically sound means of approaching ideas about mysticism in popular music must therefore be employed in order to avoid reducing diverse and complex reports, practices and modes of communication to simplistic, essentialist, ahistorical yet outdated tropes. The vague and untheorized uses of terms relating to mysticism, and the tendency to treat religious experience as an essential, universal foundation for comparison, are directly or indirectly rooted in studies of mysticism which have since been subject to serious criticism in relation to exactly these issues. In the following section, I examine literature on dub and psytrance, indicating both the inadequacies of approaches which rest upon problematic conceptions of religious experience,

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and the advantages of the proposed methodology for understanding mysticism in intertextual practice. Dub and trance have both existed for more than a decade longer than drone metal; they emerge from different social, historical and cultural contexts and they each involve different sounds and associated practices. Nevertheless, they share with each other and with drone metal certain tendencies, interests, themes and characteristics, manifested in different ways. Each of these music cultures involves ecstatic intoxication, uses of religious sound and symbolism, evocations of translocal exoticism and even orientalism, interest in amplification and intense bodily experience of sound and participant discourses which relate to mysticism and ritual. Dub and psytrance have both attracted academic attention in relation to ideas about religious experience and mysticism, though in general scholars have taken different approaches in dealing with the two subgenres. I will describe the relevant features of each genre culture, assess how studies have accounted for and understood mysticism and religious experience in each, and show how the approach outlined earlier in this chapter can provide an effective framework with which to empirically examine mysticism in popular music.

Empirical mysticisms I: Trance Psychedelic trance, or psytrance, is a form of electronic dance music developed in Goa, India, since the 1980s, which has spread worldwide. Musically, psytrance generally consists of synthesized melodies progressing through uplifting chord structures over repetitive 4/​4 beats, and frequently features live or, more commonly, sampled vocals and short, repeated spoken word clips from sources such as films or counterculture texts. Trance DJs skilfully mix recordings into one another, creating long, shifting but seamless sets with a continual beat which keeps dancers moving through raves commonly lasting all night. There is a pronounced emphasis on a psychedelic religious imaginary, evident in the names of performers, albums, tracks and rave events, in the sampled sounds and vocal clips, in the décor of event spaces and promotional materials such as flyers, and in participants’ communication about the genre culture. Communal dancing and altered consciousness are overtly ritualized, influenced by ideas about modern (or futuristic) forms of archaic, orientalist, or ‘tribal’ spirituality. The origin of psychedelic trance music culture among Western hippies in southern India accounts for a strong emphasis on idealized uses of Hindu/​



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Buddhist imagery, though elements from other religious traditions (especially those understood as pagan or ‘shamanic’) are also drawn into the bricolage of spiritual references. Together, these uses of symbols, sounds and snippets of texts together help to express and codify the ritualized meanings, practices and functions of participation in the psytrance rave. In Robin Sylvan’s words, psytrance raves ‘draw from a variety of different religious influences, from Hindu to Native American, Mayan to shamanic, neopagan to Christian, and combine them all together in a hodgepodge hybrid’ (2005: 12). Rupert Till notes a related range of terms from Reiki, healing and massage in conversations at such events, ‘often surrounded with spiritual imagery and paraphernalia referencing Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu or vaguely “Eastern” spirituality, mixed up in a New Age melting pot’ (2011: 146). Found throughout the psytrance culture, these uses are, as Graham St John notes, consistently ‘expressive of a religiosity that is at variance to or complicates institutional religion’ (2006: 3). Broad tendencies in research on psytrance have been to consider religion in primarily functional, discursive or institutional ways (see St John 2006 for a useful overview of studies up to that date), and this literature has frequently focused on constructions of religious, spiritual or ritual experiences. This kind of experience is configured in scholarly work as a kind of transreligious religiosity, as can be observed in Victoria Bizzell’s consideration of psytrance pioneer Goa Gil’s perspectives: When asked to describe his concept of the ritual party experience, Gil explicitly places it within a continuum of ancient tribal practices and primeval communities: imagined communities that share a global connectivity but not a defined sense of place and historicity, acting as they must as nebulous transnational models for a consciously created global neo-​tribal identity. The initiated become members of a tribe, not a spiritual sect. (Bizzell 2008: 286)

Timothy Taylor observed the rhetoric of spirituality where musical events and productions ‘invoke semireligious language’ such as ascension, pilgrimage and ritual (Taylor 2001: 176–​7). In his early study, Taylor noted a lack of adequate theorization of religion in academic accounts of psytrance (2001: 178). However, while subsequent studies have engaged with the study of religion, they have often used outdated ideas about universal experience, a unity underpinning all religions and a return to imagined ‘tribal’ ways as response to disenchantment. These concepts have been adopted directly, sometimes without any critical analysis, from the descriptions and self-​understandings of participants in psytrance.

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Across different writings, Sylvan’s research ‘focuses squarely on the powerful experiential states’ (2002: 80) of psytrance participants. This emphasis not only reduces differences in religion to arbitrary fluctuations in how experience is contextualized, but is expanded to cover all culture: The human encounter with the numinous, the religious experience, forms the basis for subsequent developments that lead to the organized external forms that we call religion. Implicit in this perspective is the notion that religion, in a broader and more fundamental sense, is the underlying substratum for all cultural activity and serves as the foundation for culture in general. (Sylvan 2005: 11–​12)

Meanwhile, Graham St John (2012) consistently and uncritically reproduces language used within the psytrance scene about quests for religious experience, without interrogating the concept or its implications. As outlined earlier, there are clear epistemological and ethical challenges in this kind of approach: it imagines an underlying sameness in a category of undifferentiated ‘experience’ underlying all cultural differences and erasing differing constructions of subjectivity. Further, assumptions about mystical or religious experience inherited from earlier essentialist studies seem to mark an end to further inquiry, treating participants’ appeals to religious language not as a point of departure for investigating discourse, context, interpretation and practice, but as a final explanation. Till, for example, swiftly opens and then closes his investigation at the same point: The most conclusive pieces of evidence of spirituality and religion within EDMC [electronic dance music cultures] are the innumerable accounts of transcendent experiences described by clubbers themselves . . . They recount, again and again, individual mystical experiences of transcendence and rapture. (Till 2011: 151)

Sylvan goes little further, reflecting on tendencies within psytrance discourse to denigrate institutional religion, but suggesting that this is due to the lack of availability of the universal ‘experience’ in such religious contexts (2005: 12–​13), appearing to reproduce without critical assessment the claims of participants. Arun Saldanha’s attention to politics of ethnicity and the exclusion of Indians by white ravers at psytrance locations in Goa is a welcome corrective to some scholars’ overenthusiastic endorsement of the utopian discourse within the scene. Saldanha, however, also extends assumptions about religious experience drawn from James, Huxley and Eliade which have been shown to be problematic (Saldanha 2007: 79).



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The majority of the contributors to an edited volume titled Rave Culture and Religion (St John 2004a) explicitly state their understanding of religion as based in experience (St John 2004b: 2, Rietveld 2004: 47, Gauthier 2004: 65, Olaveson 2004:  85; Tramacchi 2004:  125, Fatone 2004:  203, D’Andrea 2004:  246). This focus on experience endures through frequent appeals in the collection to the work of Victor Turner and Emile Durkheim, whose respective anthropological theories of ritual and sociological theories of collective effervescence each specifically contrast with what people ‘in their solitude’ consider to be religious (Durkheim 1995:  1–​44). The inadequacies of a focus on experience can be avoided by instead understanding mysticism in ways of using, practising and operating on texts and symbolic traditions. Psytrance attaches mystical, ritual or spiritual value to a sense of liminality and marginality, a discourse of challenging or renewing certain forms of religiosity, bodily engagement with sounds in community, evocations of elsewhere and wandering traversal, and the reshaping of textual experiences of recorded music. But rather than purporting to imagine and categorize the interior states of consciousness of psytrance ravers, these elements can be better understood through empirically examining people’s practices and communications, as contributions and responses to a collectively created and sustained tradition of mysticism in a popular music culture. In their ethnographic study of ‘conscious partying’ at Synergy psytrance events in London, Giles Beck and Gordon Lynch observe different activities and practices relating to religion (2009). Discussing the emphasis on ‘experience’ in the work of Sylvan and others, they acknowledge that special kinds of physiological experience seem to be afforded by a complex of dancing, music, intoxication and other aspects of social ritual. In their concluding remarks, Beck and Lynch suggest that further research might ask what precise combinations and interrelations of factors might occasion or heighten such engagements, while assessing the relation of discourse to experience. Hinting at a starting point for the kind of methodology I propose, they speculate that discourses of oneness, energy, and immediatism within the conscious partying scene provide an interpretative framework that enables people to narrate and make sense of these kinds of physiological experiences. (Beck and Lynch 2009: 353)

For François Gauthier, ‘rave brews up mythologies of an “elsewhere” ’ (2004:  71), an aspect Anthony D’Andrea calls the ‘nomadic spirituality’ of psytrance (2006: 72), Till understands in terms of a homeless self (2011: 155), and for St John it is ‘an initiation without telos, an experience of being-​in-​transit’

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(2015: 253). Rather than merely identifying this continual wandering character as simply part of an ‘experience’ which is the end of analysis, it is possible instead to investigate further how mysticism and religious experience are constructed in the uses of sound recordings, symbols, fragments of other texts, references to other spiritual, religious and mystical practices and so on. In Eva-​Maria Alexandra van Straaten’s view, the psychedelic quality of the music and the musical culture which is linked to ecstatic intoxication emerges from ‘sounds that are recognized as originating in the “not here” ’ (Van Straaten 2012: 71). The thoughtful analysis of Botond Vitos considers the construction of psytrance events and the dance floor practices of participants, identifying them as attempts at experiencing the immensity of Otherness out “there”, without transferring it “here” (without integrating it into the Self, thus dissolving or understanding it). Therefore its very goal is being as ambiguous and “spaced out” as possible. (Vitos 2009: 138)

Mysticism can be investigated in the ways that bodies engage transformatively with texts and symbolic systems, understood broadly to include such things as sound recordings, musical structures and conventions, socially encoded ways of moving, and communications about music. In the previous two quotes, an important element in the symbolic, musical and interpretative discourse of psytrance is identified: an ambivalent, shifting yet sustained relationship between ‘elsewheres’ and ‘here.’ In approaches founded on ‘experience’ as an explanation, this can simply be defined as the standing outside oneself of ecstasy: ‘Dancing is the primary activity that opens the doorway to these powerful experiential states’ (Sylvan 2005: 79), where individual rituals may facilitate these experiences, but experiential states are treated as a final explanation of religiosity in psytrance (Sylvan 2005: 76). Gauthier recognizes the importance of rupture and excess, understanding these concepts as affording religious experience (Gauthier 2004:  80). However, if we instead inquire into the practices, sources and choices involved in sampling, the individual and social modes of movement on and around the dance floor and different ways of using, engaging with and interpreting texts or symbolic codes, it is possible to further identify how these intersecting practices each play roles in the construction of mysticism. Graham St John states that ‘Psytrance productions are stamped all over with a library of sound-​bytes [sic] citing cultural outlaws, freak folk-​heroes and cognitive libertarians’ (2012: 441). It is not only important that psytrance culture



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references such marginal and transgressive figures, but also that they are cited in fragmentary, repeated sound clips which are themselves redeployed and reused elements of other narratives. This is a construction of a musical and textual tradition of mysticism which may include reports of religious experience as well as operations on a symbolic code. In this line, Morgan Gerard’s chapter is a rare study which attends to the specific ways in which DJs respond to crowds responding to the music. DJs perform manipulations on the existing texts of dance music records, with the specific operations on the recordings (filtering, looping, equalizing and mixing) used to construct and sustain the audience’s ongoing engagement with the patterned sound that is a central part of the ritual context in which spiritual experience is discussed (Gerard 2004: 175). This mystical manner of working on, altering or playing with the codes of dance music and its surrounding practices is also well described by Botond Vitos. As the following quotes attest, here mysticism can be found in participation in a collectively constructed practice where DJs (themselves participants and listeners, audiences of texts) transform existing texts of a tradition for a specific purpose. Dancing listeners transform their reception of such transformed musical texts into further intertextual, communally experienced texts of their bodily movements and, later, in conversation and interpretation. This interactive play between text and experience occurs primarily in the music, which undergoes constant transformations during the performance, influenced by the interaction between DJ and audience. At many parties, tracks are significantly altered by special effects and mixing techniques, and subordinated to the flow of the mix, which is not predetermined but reliant upon the public’s responses. The public in this way is indeed incorporated into the music . . . primarily through a flux of interactions within the environment of the party. (Vitos 2015: 134) Quality darkpsy music [a specific kind of psytrance] involves the organic evolution and breakdown of distorted and interwoven sound layers of high complexity . . . The main preoccupation of this genre seems to be the continuous transgression of its own perverted boundaries, both musically and semantically: the distortion, reversal, speeding up and destruction of rhythms and layers, the use of both menacing and nonsensical sound patterns, the continuous oscillation between horror and humor creates its characteristically demented atmosphere. (Vitos 2009: 137)

Discussing the related music and contexts of Acid House, Antonio Melechi summarizes how, in apprehension, transformation and creation within the dancing

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body, the experienced texts or textual experiences of an inherited tradition are received and made new: Acid House music is based on the absence of an originary subject, the ‘soul’ of pop music, as the presence of a founding voice is sacrificed into a digitally complex wall of reconstituted sound . . . the collapse of the traditional field of spectacle and expression in pop, where the ‘user’ sought self-​expression through dance. Acid house celebrates the death of this scene of dance [based on spectacle and performance], for it is now the materiality of the musical signifier which forms the new space of oblivion, as the dancer implodes and disappears into a technological dreamscape of sound. (Melechi 1993: 34)

In a similar way, psytrance continually explores the transgression of boundaries within a musical textual culture. Operations on texts within that code involve the repetitive deployment and meditative exploration of fragments from other traditions which evoke related bodily engagements. Speed, rhythm, layering, reversal and distortion are experimented with, in feedback combination of listening bodies and creative work with musical texts. These practices together construct a site for a continuous inquiry into the production, not only of experiential states reported to be mystical, but also of a tradition which can be empirically understood as mystical according to a treatment of its operations.

Empirical mysticisms II: Dub This method for enquiry into religious experience can also be shown to be valuable in relation to another form of popular music which is often associated with mysticism. Dub is a form of Jamaican popular music intimately connected to reggae, literally a deconstructive and experimental flipside to more traditionally structured and narratively based roots reggae songs. Dub versions, on B-​sides of popular songs released on seven-​inch, 45rpm singles were rearranged, altered treatments of hit songs, a tradition which was to become incredibly influential across global popular music. Dub first emerged after a crowd at a sound system dance in 1967 responded unexpectedly enthusiastically to a DJ playing a copy of the new Paragons track ‘On the Beach’, which had been mistakenly pressed before the vocals had been added. Developing from this serendipitous beginning, dub emphasized bass and rhythm. Vocals were often totally removed, or snippets of words and phrases retained and subjected to disorienting echo and reverb effects, sometimes



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with other odd sounds also added. The effect of this combination of practices, applied in different ways to create many different versions of any track, were spacious, trippy, heavy and open-​ended iterations bearing an ambivalent, ghostly relation to the ‘original’. Understood as simultaneously a process and a genre (Sullivan 2014:  2), dub appears as a tradition concurrent with, mutually influenced by and influencing, but also somehow set apart from reggae music and its transitions from rocksteady, to roots reggae, to dancehall and beyond. As part of a ‘sound clash’ culture of open air dances featuring various creative and participatory uses of recorded music in a live social setting, musicians and singers remain important. Producers such as King Tubby and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry also became prominent in the musical culture of dub, using their studio equipment to refashion the materials of existing songs and produce new sounds for the dance parties. Most studies of dub pay close attention to the historical, cultural and political background and implications of dub and reggae as postcolonial musics of what Paul Gilroy has called the Black Atlantic (1993). These ways of telling the history of dub emphasize history in dates, key protagonists and landmark recordings, perhaps as a result of the massive influence of dub on popular music of the twentieth century as well as the underappreciation of that legacy. This overall approach, which treats audiences more historically than ethnographically, rarely mentions religious experience. There are, however, frequent observations that dub is mystical. Mystical is the second word in Paul Sullivan’s book on dub, where the music is introduced as ‘ethereal, mystical, conceptual, fluid, avant-​garde, raw, unstable . . .’ (2014: 7). Mystical is the term used in contrast to evangelical religion by Kwame Dawes to account for unease in US audiences about reggae, suggesting that mysticism is linked to ‘the foreign and strange’ (Dawes 2002: 61), while also an undefined characteristic of reggae’s entire aesthetic (Dawes 1999). For Michael Veal, dub has ‘partial roots in the mystical aspects of Rastafari’ (2007: 241), with this mysticism even transmitted to other forms of music. Jaz Coleman of UK postpunk band Killing Joke, speaking of dub’s influence on postpunk, says ‘that’s where the mystical began’ (Coleman quoted in Sullivan 2014: 76). Unsurprisingly, given the context of the vast and varied ways in which ‘mysticism’ has been portrayed and understood, this term is rarely defined or explained. The religious spirituality of Rastafari is mentioned, often as a reference point for understanding the politics of diasporic cultural memory, again without a great deal of attention to the religiosity of the tradition’s fascinating ritual and

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textual practices or how they relate to musical sound. Christopher Partridge, by contrast, has connected the echo, reverb, sonic space, bass and the physical impact of sound in dub to mysticism and the concept of dread (Partridge 2014: 234). Partridge identifies the relational quality of mysticism as a current within yet apart from a broader tradition: ‘If much roots reggae is fundamentally religious music, dub should perhaps be understood as its mystical counterpart’ (Partridge 2010:  88). This description of dub (situated ambiguously between analogy and identification) in relation to the religion in/​of reggae is echoed by other authors. For Sullivan, dub is reggae’s ‘significant other’ (2014: 13), while for Louis Chude-​Sokei it is the ‘dark side of reggae’ (2011: 76). This marginal yet influential positioning within a wider tradition can, as Partridge suggests, be usefully understood in terms of mysticism. As with psytrance, this mysticism can be investigated in the ways that texts are transformed, practised and reinterpreted. Mysticism in dub, then, can be conceived as an ongoing discursive sonic meditation on the fundamental rhythm and bass elements of the reggae tradition and its postcolonial, translocal, cultural and religious implications. Dub, like liberation theology within Roman Catholicism (Partridge 2010: 31), is marginal to its tradition precisely because it closely and intensely investigates the foundations of that tradition, therefore simultaneously appearing as ultra-​ orthodox and heretical (Certeau 1992a: 12–​26). This ambivalent relation to both foundations and outer limits is powerfully expressed in dub’s association with ghosts. The most famous example of this is Burning Spear’s classic roots album titled Marcus Garvey (1975), about the prophetic Jamaican Africanist, and the dub version of the album which is titled Garvey’s Ghost (1976). Many scholars have noted the connection with the nearhomonym ‘duppy’, a term for ghost in Jamaican parlance (Partridge 2010: 76, Veal 2007: 212, Sullivan 2014: 7). Some have even extended this to identify dub as a conceptual attempt to communicate between the realms of living and dead in a context of violence both historical (Tracy 2005: 36) and ongoing (Chude-​ Sokei 2011: 76). Also of note, connecting sound and wider cultural resonances are the implications of ‘dub’ as double (Sullivan 2014: 7), and the echo as ghostly (Chude-​Sokei 2011: 76). James Tracy notes each of these evocations, reading dub as a mystical tradition which includes a representation of the relation (with sustained ambiguity) between bodies, memories and the spiritual, made possible in the tentative and materially grounded conditions of mediation: Dub’s aesthetic rearticulates and inscribes the utterances of the dead, its aural structure representative of an invocation of forms from the spiritual realm that,



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like a radio receiver’s reception of a distant and tentative signal, is forever intermittent and fleeting. (Tracy 2005: 36)

The particular relation between sound, echo and suffering bodies in cultural memory is a reverberation that extends back through four hundred years of the transatlantic slave trade and its postcolonial repercussions. Repetition, bass and echo are profoundly important ways of memorializing and reframing the impacts of this history on bodies, and providing resources for enduring its ongoing legacy. Echo in dub ‘can be used as a tool to transport listeners to the past’ (Sullivan 2014: 9), while the temporal distinction between the 1970s and the centuries of slavery is collapsed in cyclical repetition and identification with cultural memory (Dawes 2002: 66). For Philip Maysles, this memory and knowledge are embodied and expressively channelled in movement in response to musical encodings: The sound of dub evinces the pain felt by the “sufferah,” invigorating the listener and inspiring physical movements and postures that exude a knowledge of self, a self guided by a “spiritual” force that “oversees” the dominant symbolic order, a physicality resonant with the music’s threatening presence and internal dynamics. (Maysles 2002: 92)

One way in which this ghostliness is invoked is through the unfinished, spacious, open-​endedness of dub tracks. Dub is a ‘labyrinth, where there are false signposts and “mercurial” trails that can lead to the future, the past . . . or to nowhere at all’ (Sullivan 2014: 7), and dub implies incompletion (Hegarty 2007: 69). This incompletion, though, prompts ongoing participation, ‘an unfinished musical product, waiting to become the support of an interpretation –​for a record or in the dance hall’ (Vendryes 2015: 17). In this view, dub is completed by the crowd responding by supplying the vocals (Sullivan 2014:  28)  or with their dancing bodies (Maysles 2002: 96). As with psytrance, there are live, layered circuits of interconnected musical and social feedback. For example, the deejay ‘toasting’ or ‘chatting’ on the microphone transmits their response to or commentary on both the recording and the crowd’s response (Sullivan 2014: 28). While dub may evoke ghosts and collective memory, then, it remains a tradition that exists in deeply embodied, practised, participatory transmission. And while most studies have treated a history of producers and studios rather than in collective audience responses as key individuals and sites for the production of dub experience, they do often note the importance of feedback from crowds. Anecdotes of powerful experiences are reported, expressed in a bodily reaction and in terms related to

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religion. This example is from Kevin Martin, a dub musician who, interestingly, has also been associated with drone metal, in supporting the band Om at concerts with King Midas Sound, and collaborating with Dylan Carlson of Earth (The Bug vs Earth 2014, 2017): I feel scarred for life by my first experience with sound systems [where there was] no stage show, no audience participation other than almost a complete homage or faith in the sound, and a total absorption in the frequencies. (Kevin Martin quoted in Sullivan 2014: 145–​6)

Dub, as we have seen, is frequently and ambiguously described as mystical. The term may simply point to Rastafari as a religion considered to be nontraditional or unconventional, or it may be implied to have a common sense meaning that is itself mysterious or unstated, or, more usefully, it is employed to indicate a particular kind of relation to a wider tradition. As with psytrance, mysticism can instead be understood as ways of working with and manipulating a tradition of texts and experiences, inextricably bound in social relationships. It then becomes possible to identify and empirically examine the interlinked sonic practices and audience responses that constitute mysticism in popular music. The playing of physical recordings is, for Sullivan, a vital aspect of dub’s power (2014: 9–​10), while amplification technology and its effects are prioritized and highly valued (Sullivan 2014:  62). This intense concern with mediation can be seen in the visual iconography of dub, where record sleeves frequently display recording equipment, the dub engineer at the controls and reels of tape that are manipulated in dub creation (Veal 2007: 260). Mysticism can be identified and studied in the strategies which make up dub’s intertextual experimentation, at the foundations and in the margins of reggae music’s culture and tradition. The key characteristic processes of dub are listed by Michael Veal: a creative and unconventional use of equipment, strategies of fragmentation and rupture, a focus on the sound of emotions rather than meaning in lyrical narratives, juxtapositions and multiplications of generations of texts, practices of collage which unpredictably refer to other elements of the tradition, a talkover style which can be understood as idiosyncratic exegesis on particular phrases and creative and unconventional operations on instruments and studio equipment (Veal 2007:  64–​76). If, for Certeau, the characteristic practices of mystical writers were an emphasis on paradox, rupture, repetition, a language of the body, a turning of the materials of communication to focus on bodily engagement with signs, then dub’s practices too can be read and heard as a tradition of mystical operations, meditating on the foundations of reggae sound.



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Religion and metal music I will outline this theoretical and empirical approach to mysticism in more detail as it relates to drone metal mysticism, though first it will be relevant to examine how religiosity in metal has hitherto been understood. Religious themes have always been present in heavy metal music culture, from its mythical origin point in Black Sabbath’s song ‘Black Sabbath’, the opening track to the album Black Sabbath (1970). Featuring in the first minute a thunderstorm, a church bell, a metallic industrial guitar noise, then a downtuned guitar riff, the track concisely portrays the historical stages of what R. Murray Schafer describes as the sacred noise, the loudest sound in an environment rendering power audible: ‘Thus thunder, the original vox dei and Sacred Noise, migrated first to the cathedral, then to the factory and the rock band’ (Schafer 1977: 179). Satan is evoked in Tony Iommi’s tritone guitar riff, in Ozzy Osbourne’s shrieked lyrics about encountering the Devil, and in the inverted crucifix design of the inner gatefold sleeve of many editions of the LP. Themes of ritual, religious experience and spiritual practices can be traced through the music that influenced heavy metal, from the amplified and distorted music of the 1960s counterculture which displayed a preoccupation with transcendent, esoteric and exotic spirituality, further back to African American blues and its sonic dialectic of sacred and profane. Academic literature has examined metal music’s engagement with religion in a number of ways. Arguably the most prominent intersection of metal and religion is a contested and at times hostile relationship with Christianity. Contradictory expressions of this relationship have featured in metal since (again) Black Sabbath, whose lyrics often express a conservative, even Roman Catholic morality (such as in ‘After Forever’, from Master of Reality, 1971), even while the band were seen as satanic by an inflammatory tabloid media. Representatives of conservative forms of Christianity have provided pretexts for moral panics and other forms of censure around metal. This has been explored in the United States where conversion to born-​again Christianity has in some cases become a mark of reassimilation for previously controversial metal stars (Klypchak 2011: 45, 48), and in France, where a metal festival was opposed on moral and religious grounds by Catholic organizations (Guibert and Sklower 2011). Christianity within metal music culture has often been understood in terms of a straightforward opposition between anti-​Christian and Christian metal, two sides which nevertheless share styles, symbols and

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to an extent, audiences. Studies which have taken this approach have examined the possibilities for evangelization through metal in worship services using metal music (Glanzer 2003), or have compared the symbolic and lyrical practices of ‘secular’ and Christian bands to show how religious bands can express their faith within metal conventions (Luhr 2005, Jousmäki 2011). Christine James has provided a variation on this kind of analysis, juxtaposing the extreme and gory imagery of Cannibal Corpse and Gwar concerts with Christian fundamentalist ‘Hell House’ performances designed to strengthen conservative religious convictions. James finds, however, that similarities in style have contrasting effects: the metal shows generally forward an inclusive ethic while the Hell House performance is designed to differentiate the faithful from society (C. A. James 2010). This literature is useful in understanding what Marcus Moberg has called the ‘double controversy’ of Christian metal, which causes consternation in both Christian and mainstream metal circles (Moberg 2011). Such studies have, however, tended to imply that ‘Christian’ and ‘non-​Christian’ (or even ‘secular’) metal are entirely discrete categories. Some musicians and audience members may understand the distinction as such, but reproducing this division in scholarship does limit the potential for understanding how other metal fans might conceive of religion and spirituality in less polarized and more personally constructed ways. Studies focusing on Christian metal have sometimes too simplistically implied that metal that is not Christian is monolithically atheist, secular and anti-​Christian, when in fact a wide range of positions on religion and spirituality are represented in wider metal culture. In addition, though it is clear that Christian metal provides a fascinating site in which to investigate religious ideas, practices and negotiations in metal, Christian metal is over-​represented in metal studies relative to its global impact in metal music. Marcus Moberg has studied Christian metal in extensive detail, his research including ethnographic work, interviews with musicians and analysis of materials relating to the production of Christian metal in Finnish (2009, 2015), transnational (2010) and online contexts (2008). Moberg’s approach is more a study of Christian Evangelicalism in popular culture than it is research about popular music, but his work provides a thorough overview, particularly with regard to conflicting ideologies within such circles about how metal music can be Christian. In the 2105 book Christian Metal, which summarizes and extends previous work, Moberg traces how the conservative Christian right and its fellow moral panic enthusiasts spread the idea that metal music was in itself dangerous, threatening and antithetical to Christianity. This idea prompted



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contestation by proponents of Christian metal, who instead held that metal (and any musical genre or sound) were spiritually neutral. Christian metal could therefore be created by Christians simply by adding Christian lyrics and ‘intention’ to metal sounds (Moberg 2015). As in other work dealing with Christianity and metal, however, the book tends to construct ‘secular’ metal as a monolithic other to Christian metal, which may obstruct understandings of how metal musicians and listeners who are not Christian use and interpret the Biblical and eschatological Christian imagery that is found abundantly in metal. Christian bands may well use biblical references on album sleeves ‘in order to underline that their lyrics strive to convey a “Christian” message’ (Moberg 2012b: 66). However, non-​Christian bands also use such imagery, as is recognized by Moberg (2015: 14). Charlotte Naylor Davis has shown how, for example, a militantly anti-​Christian and blasphemous band Marduk named their album Rom 5:12 (2008) after the Bible verse in Romans, and are engaged in critical biblical exegesis (Naylor Davis 2015). Clearly then, the specific contexts for and differences between these uses needs further investigation, beyond circular assumptions that Christian bands use Christian symbols in a Christian fashion, while non-​Christian bands use similar materials in non-​Christian ways. Much work on Christian metal also neglects to consider the effects of musical sound, and this unreflexively reproduces an ideology present in much Christian contemporary music:  that lyrical content and the intentions of the musicians are what matters in determining and defining religiosity in music. Moberg, for example, quickly dispenses with sound in the early stages of the first chapter of his book: ‘The musical dimension of Christian metal is identical to that of secular metal and will thus not be explored any further here’ (Moberg 2015: 41). This unfortunately removes the possibility of analysing how sounds are used, practised or interpreted in much more complex ways than merely as vehicles for verbal statements, as Robert Walser and others have recommended (Walser 1993: 26). As has been shown in relation to Christianity in the United States and in France (Klypchak 2011, Guibert and Sklower 2011), religion has been understood as a normative moral and political background against which metal musicians and fans struggle as they construct communities and identities. This has been the predominant approach to investigating metal and Islam in Tunisia (Barone 2015), Turkey (Hecker 2010, 2012), Syria (Magout 2010) and across North Africa and the Middle East (LeVine 2009). There is very little work that has investigated intersections of metal and Islam in countries without Muslim majorities, or uses in metal of materials associated with Islam. Stefano Barone

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does, though, discuss Tunisian bands’ negotiation of orientalist tropes as clichés which may nevertheless help them market their music abroad (Barone 2015:  189–​90). By contrast, Judaism has more often been discussed in terms of identity than sociopolitical or moral norms, for example in Kahn-​Harris’s discussion of the treatment of Jewishness in metal scenes, especially in black metal where fringes of anti-​Semitism are present (Kahn-​Harris 2011). Metal in a predominantly Hindu context has been mentioned by Greene in Nepal, where anti-​Hindu lyrics and symbols have taken the place of anti-​Christian tropes prominent in Western metal, for example in the upturned trident of Shiva taking the place of an inverted crucifix (Greene 2011: 116, 125). In Darianathan’s work on the ‘Vedic metal’ of the band Rudra, Hinduism is a cultural and religious background for third-​generation South Indian musicians in Singapore (Darianathan 2011:  174), who see themselves ‘as part of a tradition of musicians who embrace early forms of spirituality’ akin to Led Zeppelin’s interest in pre-​Christian paganism (Darianathan 2011: 176). Treatments of metal in relation to Islam, Judaism and Hinduism, then, have tended to understand questions of religion as pertaining to large-​scale, internally consistent traditions that are widely recognized and understood, whether as resources or repressive frameworks with or against which metal identities and values are contested or constructed. Other scholars have examined the nuances of various interpretations of Satanism (Dyrendal 2008, Baddeley 2010), esotericism and occultism (Granholm 2015) and their subsequent development towards paganism, especially in black metal (Hagen 2011, Granholm 2011). Some continue the simplistic dualism between anti-​Christian and Christian proponents, as in James Cordero’s focus on the ‘anti-​Christian aesthetic within the black metal and impious death metal scenes’ (Cordero 2009:  i). Though Cordero does make some steps towards understanding the varieties of Satanism, these are all subsumed into what he calls ‘popular Satanism’, constructed largely in opposition to mainstream Christianity (Cordero 2009: ii). More nuanced and pluralist views of Satanism appear in a book by Gavin Baddeley, himself a member of the Church of Satan (Baddeley 2010), while Asbjørn Dyrendal notes the diversity in perspectives and the low levels of institutional affiliation and doctrinal orthodoxy among professed Satanists (Dyrendal 2008:  72). Dyrendal (2008), Granholm (2011) and Hagen (2011) all view the circulation of satanic, esoteric and pagan meanings in metal as part of a broader cultic milieu or occulture, after Colin Campbell’s (2002) and Christopher Partridge’s (2005) work on those respective concepts. Rather than representing total world views to be adopted or proselytized as



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coherent wholes, religious ideas relating to paganism, Satanism, non-​Western spiritualities and to esoteric areas of Christianity including apocalyptic imagery (Till 2012) are all used, employed and understood in varied and individualistic configurations, with differing levels of engagement. While some authors have attempted to ‘rescue’ metal from Satanism by declaring it anti-​Christian but not satanic after all (Weinstein 2000:  262, Walser 1993:  143, Faulkner 2009), the aforementioned literature has established the diversity and complexity of understandings of Satanism and esotericism that inform much use of religious iconography in metal. This literature has generally followed the tradition in studies of popular music, of attempting to understand the meanings of music by focusing on musical texts (generally in the form of songs, tracks, recordings or even just lyrics), with musicians as sole creators of this meaning, rather than exploring the social contexts, uses, audiences, responses, participatory discourses and cultures of religiosity in the reception of popular music.

Mysticism and religious experience in metal In addressing mysticism, academic literature on metal has tended to follow similar lines to the problematically essentialist, untheoretical or vague uses of the term in studies of other popular music forms and in earlier religious studies scholarship. The notoriously contested term is often implied to have a straightforward, common sense meaning, as in Walser’s chapter subtitled ‘Mysticism, Horror and Postmodern Politics’ (1993:  137). Walser fails to explain what he means by the term, beyond vague references to ‘the occult’ in ambiguous quotation marks (1993: 151), while his description of Iron Maiden as mystical seems to be due to their lyrical references to mythology and the devil (1993:  151–​8). If, as Donna Gaines states, ‘satan, the occult, and pop mysticism have been a part of rock and roll from the beginning’ (1998: 187), then it is also true that poorly delineated definitions of mysticism and conflation with various other aspects of religiosity have been a feature of scholarship on metal and other popular music cultures for just as long. Implicit or vague conceptions of mysticism also feature in studies that engage with metal audiences. In Natalie Purcell’s surveys, death metal fans were invited to tick boxes as to whether they ‘agreed with’ metaphysical concepts including ‘mysticism, deism, rationalism or Cartesianism, existentialism, skepticism, and chaos theory’ (Purcell 2003: 122), in an otherwise excellent study which does not discuss what it might mean to ‘agree with’ mysticism. In Susan Fast’s survey, Led

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Zeppelin fans used the term in describing what appealed to them, with Fast then implying synonymy with mythology or mystery (Fast 2001: 50–​2), again with little attempt to contextualize uses of the term. For other writers, the mystical is associated with sources of empowerment in metal (Christe 2003: 290, Moore 2009: 148, Olson 2011: 146), while Christopher Partridge describes a drone metal performance by SunnO))) as ‘mystical’, employing scare quotes to underline the controversial nature of the word (2014: 69). Mystical experience, specifically, appears infrequently in scholarship on metal, though it has been discussed in relation to black metal, with an implicitly universalist conception of ‘experience’ (Olson 2008: 37). Some considerations of mysticism, in relation to black metal specifically, avoid focusing on special kinds of experience, and instead attend to particular ways of engaging with texts and symbolic structures such as language and music. In Steven Shakespeare’s phrase, mysticism is understood as ‘the ruin and fulfilment of language’ (Shakespeare 2012: 10). Discussions of mysticism in writings from ‘Black Metal Theory’ symposia and articles tend towards an impenetrable and self-​consciously mystical style, as can be seen in the collections Hideous Gnosis and Mors Mystica (Masciandro 2010, Connole and Masciandaro 2015a), and a book, Bergmetal, on mountains, mysticism and metal by the pseudonymous Saheb and Abaris (2014). In the latter book, drone metal by Sleep, Earth, SunnO))) and Om is discussed in relation to mysticism (Saheb and Abaris 2014:  33–​5), via an idiosyncratic development of an idea of drone metal as ‘mountain of silence’ as suggested in an earlier article by this author (Coggins 2013). The writings included in the Mors Mystica collection (Connole and Masciandaro 2015a) make oblique references to Aldous Huxley, William James and Georges Bataille (e.g. C.  Blake 2015:  159, Harris 2015: 81, Connole and Masciandaro 2015b: 8–​11, respectively), but do not provide coherent frameworks for understanding mysticism. Instead, the dense and esoteric exegeses of particular black metal recordings (and often lyrics rather than sound) can be read as examples of self-​consciously mystically influenced writings on metal. Underscoring the potential problems with mysticism as conceptualized in experience, and indicating the level of caution necessary when dealing with mysticism in cultural contexts, some connections do exist at the fringes of extreme metal between mysticism and fascism. While the usage of both terms may be characteristically vague, it is not accidental that ‘mysticism’ appears most frequently in academic descriptions of those fringe elements of extreme metal cultures in which white supremacy, misogyny and homophobia circulate. Extreme



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metal can produce and disseminate an ‘ideological and sometimes even mystical bricolage’ of concepts relating to fascism (Lebourg and Sistach 2012: 28), particularly the ‘mystically powerful music’ of black metal (Christe 2003: 290). The Polish black metal scene is apparently noted for a ‘proliferation of National Socialist ideologies’ amid a ‘grimmer, more mystical take’ on the genre (Birk 2012: 26). Black metal sometimes ‘combines hyper-​transgression with mystical religious ideas that offer participants a method for transcending the mundane, escaping modernity and the creation of highly empowering identities’, some of which may tend towards fascism (Olson 2011:  146), while a ‘natural, neotraditional, and mystical rhetoric’ can ‘allow neo-​Nazi elements to be cloaked’ (Hagen 2011: 195). Scholars have unearthed potential associations between fascist ideology and the use of religious symbols in black metal, either in ideas and aesthetics (Hagen 2011, Olson 2011), or through the ways that esoteric fascism is disseminated (Goodricke-​Clarke 2001: 205, Gardell 2003: 285–​307). It is perhaps the case that far-​right metal is as over-​represented in scholarship as Christian metal in contrast to its influence in global metal scenes, but it is undoubtedly important to address these marginal strands of the wider metal culture in which mysticism and extremity are again entwined. As suggested earlier, implicit assumptions about experience as an implied universal and transcultural category can provide grounding for ideas about privileged access to such states, potentially legitimating prejudice against and assumed supremacy over others. In order to avoid such associations and implications, it is necessary to employ a theoretical framework which attends closely to the particular contexts, practices and utterances that surround the use of signs, symbols and sounds associated with religious traditions and mysticism. Overall then, studies on religion in popular music cultures including metal display some shortcomings in their treatments of mysticism and religious experience. The terms mystical, mystic and mysticism are used without theoretical grounding, and notions of religious experience are uncritically essentialist and reliant on outdated scholarship on religions. Assumptions about religion and religiosity are often limited to monolithic understandings of ‘world religions’ or Christianity, and perspectives about religious and/​or musical meaning are limited by assuming that they are carried solely in lyrics or simply determined by authorial intent. An account of drone metal mysticism should, by contrast, be grounded in empirical investigation of the ways that participants in drone metal culture practise particular kinds of operations on the codes of heavy metal, and in an exploration of the specific thematic and rhetorical paths taken in discourse surrounding religiosity, ritual and spirituality around the music.

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Conclusion: Trance, dub and drone metal mysticisms The methodological framework outlined in this chapter cautions against the erasure of differences between the specific contextual groundings of forms of culture that can be understood as mystical. It does, nevertheless, allow comparative analysis of past and contemporary mystical traditions. Such comparisons may examine how such reportedly mystical forms relate to the wider traditions in which they are situated and to which they critically respond. Studies can trace the ways that mystical forms use and remake the symbolic codes and systems which they inherit, inhabit and transform. They can investigate how diverse but collected audiences respond in turn to those operations on and within the tradition. In the concluding part of this chapter, I will compare the three musical cultures of psytrance, dub and drone metal in relation to the themes of the chapters to follow: first, translocality and marginality in the constitution of genre, then ineffability, pilgrimage and ‘elsewheres’, then amplification and sonic materiality and finally ritual, violence and noise. I suggest not only that the three forms of music and their surrounding cultures share a concern with these themes, but also that such themes can be understood as constituent elements in how these popular music cultures may be understood as mystical. The texts and experiences of each respective tradition are considered, interpreted and worked upon in an ongoing discursive practice that excavates its own history while skirting the margins of what can be said and understood through such practice, working on its own limits and thereby gesturing beyond them. Dub, trance and drone metal are all marginal and ambiguously bounded forms of popular music within respective broader traditions or overarching genres, and each emerges from and is profoundly concerned with translocality. The twin tradition of reggae and dub articulates a complex history of musical influence which parallels social, political, physical and imagined movements. This translocality traces connections between Jamaica and Africa (often interchangeably referenced as Ethiopia) in the nyabinghi drums of Rastafarian groundation ceremonies, and to which an imagined spiritual return is sought. Also expressed is a movement between Jamaica and the United Kingdom, where black Caribbean communities made their home and brought with them Jamaican sounds, with the popularity of reggae in the United Kingdom then providing resources that fuelled development of the music on both sides of the Atlantic. Another translocal connection that fed reggae and dub was between Jamaica and the United States, at first in the 1960s with servicemen and overseas workers aiding the circulation of



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soul and rhythm and blues seven-​inch records, feeding the sound system culture until a disruption of this flow prompted much greater reliance on home-​grown musicians who developed their own style. Later, Jamaican musical practices such as the retreatment of recordings and creative MCing styles influenced hip-​hop in the United States. While each of these relationships of translocality influence the sound, themes and characteristic practices of both reggae and dub, it is the concept of Ethiopia which most overtly influences the spiritual or religious aspects of the dub reggae imaginary. It is also the most distant relationship in terms of concrete movements of music and people in the twentieth century. As Michael Veal suggests, though, the decades when dub emerged were a key moment for interconnectivity in Black Atlantic culture, as news, images and representations of Africa could be more freely received in Jamaica in the 1960s and 1970s than at any point in the previous four centuries (2007: 199). In a different way, psytrance is also defined by translocality, with the alternative genre name ‘Goa trance’ expressing a relation with a place of ‘otherness’. The white Western hippies who began the musical tradition were self-​consciously ‘elsewhere’ when they were in southern India, and when ‘psytrance’ is consumed in other locations, this otherness is doubled by subtly referring back to Goa and then in turn elsewhere from there. This translocal relation evokes aspects of the spiritual discourse and symbolism in psytrance, with a heavy emphasis on Buddhist and Hindu imagery that is foreign and exotic to white Western audiences. The marginal translocality of psytrance, dub and drone metal cultures influence the ways in which spirituality and mysticism are portrayed, enacted and understood, as in different ways a foundational spirituality of bodily musical engagement evokes an encounter between self and otherness. In dub this is played out in identification with but dislocation from African heritage, in sound that evokes the ghosts of cultural memory, and in active readings of the Bible that seek to distinguish between Afrocentric religious truth and elements considered to be colonial insertions. In psytrance there is a claiming of spiritual otherness as reconnection with archaic or exotic forms of ritual and religious life, imagined as more authentic than an inherited institutional Christianity. In drone metal, as will be further explored in Chapter 4, shifting rhetorics of pilgrimage through distant times, places and cultures are instantiated in the impact of extreme sound on the body. An imaginal traversal of ‘elsewheres’ is founded in the intimate ‘here’ of bodily response to the excesses of overwhelming noise. As Joanna Demers notes, In drones, dub techno, and noise, the use of stasis and noise runs counter to habitual expectations for how elements of musical syntax interact with one

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Mysticism, Ritual and Religion in Drone Metal another. These elements last too long and are too loud, and they disrupt the sense that music functions as a language, by calling attention to the physical aspects that music usually asks us to ignore. (Demers 2010: 91)

This dialectic or staging of encounter between self and other, with its focus on margins, journeying and traversal of landscapes of alterity, relates to statements of ineffability about music, where exile or escape from language is emphasized. Experience is described is indescribable, marking the especially uncertain status of language in relation to powerful musical bodily conscious engagement. In a way, a suspicion of language can stand for a wider unease about and perceived distance from structures of rational organization, hierarchy and institutional meaning, including those of religion. Similarly, here the practice, and perhaps more importantly the rhetoric, of ecstatic intoxication is a mode for expressing a state of ‘standing outside’ oneself or outside ‘normal’ structures of the everyday. Here there is another combination of the near and far, the embodied and the ecstatic. In musical experience grounded in the body, a distance from language and other aspects of the everyday is expressed or reported, with a vocabulary of spirituality or mysticism often attached to this status. Each of the three musical cultures is rooted in the mediation of powerful sounds in the vibrating body, and in events which emphasize the materiality of sonic mediation itself. Though amplification is important in all rock music and many other areas of popular music, drone metal is the first form of rock or metal, or perhaps of any kind of popular music, in which amplifiers are the primary instrument, more important than the electric guitar. In both psytrance and dub, where DJs play recordings in a ‘live’ setting, speakers are at the centre of sonic, musical and symbolic attention, as shown in album covers and visual imagery for both cultures. The imagery of amplification speaks not of musical meanings, lyrics, or sonic structures so much as of bodily experience of heavy bass sound that can both penetrate, envelope and even extend the listening body, producing or affording responses in that body which are reformed into further practices of communication. In both the dub sound system and the trance rave, records, considered individually or in a collection, are instruments manipulated by a DJ or ‘selector’ in response to the sonic social body of a dancefloor crowd, with those recordings altered, mixed, matched and joined up in a trance set, or interrupted and restarted, toasted and chanted over by the DJ in dub. In drone metal, the mediation of sound text experience appears instead in the fascination with amplification as amplification. This emphasis on amplification, mediation and materiality of sound in each mystical tradition of



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popular music also extends to considerations of ritual. This is most explicit in the discourses of psytrance ravers, many of whom report consciously organized attempts to create a ritual structure and feeling. While ritual is mentioned less often in the context of dub, frequent additions to dub sound are the traditional nyabinghi drums, used in and thereby signifying Rastafarian rituals. In drone metal too, attending concerts and listening to vinyl records in different ways attract terminology of ritual. These three vastly different forms of popular music present and evoke translocal marginality, elsewhere–​here relations, pilgrimage and traversal, amplification of amplification and ritual. These empirically observable elements of popular music cultures make it possible to read or hear them as mystical modes of practice in which the foundations of each tradition are examined and interrogated by participants testing their parameters and limits in manipulating the material of their codes. The following chapters will examine in more extended ethnographic detail the construction of drone metal’s mystical tradition.

3

Beyond Heaviness: Listener Experience in a Translocal and Marginal Genre

Introduction Genre is always a matter of ongoing contestation and negotiation of boundaries, a drawing of lines which include and exclude, among networks of values and connections to other discourses (Frith 1996: 88). The boundary markers and borderlines of genre are perhaps particularly contested in metal (Weinstein 2000: 14, Walser 1993: 6–​7), often related to questions of origin (Brown 2015b). As Keith Kahn-​Harris has noted, ‘genre is both a set of musical events and the social processes and communities that constitute those events’ (Kahn-​Harris 2007:  12). Such processes include journalism and criticism (Thornton 1996: 160) and consumer decisions (Demers 2010: 136), in what Keith Negus calls ‘genre cultures’ (Negus 1999: 29). Fabian Holt, describing genre cultures as ‘the overall identity of the cultural formations in which genre is constituted’ (2007: 29), suggests that scholars have tended to overly favour structure and object over practice and experience in examining popular music genres (2007: 9). In this chapter I will introduce and examine the genre culture of drone metal, exploring the early history of drone metal recordings (or rather, recordings that would later come to be known as the earliest drone metal recordings), and the development into a loosely constituted genre, one that came to especially value live concerts. In treating how drone metal is discursively constructed as a name for a kind of music, I note the connections and conventions established by musicians, recordings and listeners’ reception and communications about those musicians and recordings. The chapter also identifies other important sites and modes of communication in which ideas about genre are shaped, such as in jokes and memes, in comparison with other metal styles, and in self-​consciously excessive, hyperbolic uses of language. In approaching how questions of genre and mysticism intersect, I present

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examples of how the term ‘drone’ and its variants are used. In these, I note how musical, social and scenic characteristics relate to the foregrounding in drone metal’s genre discourse of subjective qualities of response, often understood as ‘listener experience’. Finally, I explore how the extremity of sound together with the translocal and marginal basis of the genre culture leads to drone metal listening being conceptualized as indescribable in language, and suggest how this connects with a discourse of religiosity, mysticism, ritual and transcendence. Drone metal is a marginal, translocal and extreme form of popular music, and these three characteristics are mutually reinforcing and co-​constitutive. This is despite the dispersed but internationally connected milieu fulfilling many conditions and generalizations for scene formation that Wallach and Levine have identified (2011). These include the existence of sites from which to access nonlocal artefacts (in drone metal’s case, mostly online), institutions such as labels and festivals, amateurs who spend time and energy on scenic practices, a concern with the limits and boundaries of the scene, multigenerational participation, and important relations with other metal scenes (Wallach and Levine 2011, see also Varas-​Díaz et al. 2015). Drone metal has never had a local scene. Many extreme metal subgenres that have been widely, even globally distributed and consumed, and have subsequently been practised and produced in diverse locations, were formed and developed in particular cities or regions and retain symbolic associations with that geographical locale: glam metal in Los Angeles; and then (partly in response) thrash metal in the San Francisco Bay Area; death metal scenes in Gothenburg and around Tampa Bay, Florida; black metal in Norway and later in Brittany and the Pacific Northwest. These local scenes have all generated multiple bands, each with close stylistic and interpersonal connections, and even generating names (however contested) for their scenes, often based on geographical terms. Through communal activities dependent on proximity, such as regularly playing live together, watching live shows, or congregating at important sites such as record shops or bars, participants in a local scene can work collectively to determine styles and values surrounding music and its production. These connections and conventions are influenced by particular conditions in that location (structures of financial support for artists, available venues and technology for performance, practise and recording, channels of distribution and promotion, a local audience, even weather) together with the actions of those creating a scene (musicians and listeners reacting to other scenes and styles with perceived good and bad qualities, driving musical innovation and creative use of available resources). Drone metal, by contrast, was at first connected by recordings made by geographically disparate bands



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rather than live performances. In contrast to other scenes which began to attract wider attention after local development, drone metal was from the beginning a primarily translocal form of extreme metal. While many of the influential bands that will be discussed in this chapter are from the United States –​Earth, Sleep, Om, SunnO))) –​at no stage did this constitute a local scene. This translocality is both an effect and cause of drone metal’s marginality, as can be seen in the scenic institutions pertaining to drone metal. There are important, influential and successful drone metal record labels, music stores, websites, venues and music festivals. Most of these, however, including the largest and most internationally recognized, do not survive on promoting, selling, presenting, distributing or discussing solely drone metal, instead dealing in a wider range of underground heavy or experimental music. There are some small record labels, websites and blogs primarily oriented to drone metal and very closely related music (for example, dark ambient or extreme doom metal). Any of the scenic institutions that are important to drone metal and are large enough to be well known and internationally successful, also include other forms of music that are less marginal. All institutions that are exclusively concerned with drone metal are themselves marginal in relation to wider extreme metal scenes. By contrast, scenic institutions pertaining to other extreme metal genres are able to sustain themselves through association with a particular subgenre, such as doom (Rise Above records, the Doom over London festival, for example) or black metal (such as, record labels Northern Silence, Drakkar Productions, Eisenton distribution). Even for many keen drone metal listeners, drone metal forms only a fringe or occasional part of their listening habits and concert attendance due to the scarcity of events and the specific and sometimes extraordinary nature of drone metal listening experiences. Marginality and extremity are expressions of a perceived distance from other forms of music, and therefore distance from the language that can appropriately be used to describe those other music. The abstract, extended and overwhelming character of the music is not only considered to be outside the bounds of language that is normally applied to musical experience, but it is reported also to produce strange, unusual and extraordinary states of mind and body. In this way, listener experience becomes emphasized in the discourse of genre which might otherwise be more focused on more objective sonic features. Following Holt’s reflection that listener experience has been neglected in theorizing popular music genre (2007:  9), I  present drone metal as a genre in which experience is foregrounded. The term ‘metal’ is a site for constant negotiation about each recording or concert’s relation with the wider historical umbrella

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genre. Meanwhile, I show that listeners use the term ‘drone’ not only as a technical sonic descriptor, but also in discussing a wider group of specific musical features, as well as to indicate a particular kind of unusual bodily engagement with sound. I examine how the word ‘drone’ is used to describe a range of qualities of music which emphasize the sonic and also the experiential. Then, I establish that the insistence on ineffability and indescribability prompts the development of a pool of shared symbolic resources that listeners recognize and draw upon to describe their listening practices, and that many of these terms and references are ambivalently related to religion. Such terminology tends to be used in ways which are separated from established institutional meanings and practices, instead pointing at ideas of religiosity in which mysterious ambiguity is determinedly retained.

Beginnings of genre Musicians (in many musical worlds beyond metal) seek to avoid what they see as reductive categorization of their artistic expression. Dylan Carlson, for example, displays wariness of genres: ‘By the time there’s a genre tag attached, I’m long gone. I’m doing something else’ (Carlson in Within the Drone, 2006). Genre labels are often associated with the perceived taint of marketing structures, for noise music (Novak 2013: 121) and for black metal (Stosuy 2012: 49), to cite two styles that have influenced drone metal. Many listeners, too, state their rejection of genre terms, which are conceived as restrictive labels and discrete boxes that limit the creativity of musicians and, by extension, their own music taste. More established forms of extreme metal become recognizable subgenres through coalescence of identifying characteristics, and yet still may feature extended contestations over genre naming, with the attribution of the term ‘black metal’, for example, appearing especially to provoke disagreements. In drone metal, the uncertainty over genre terms is exacerbated by its marginality. Jonathan Piper categorizes Earth, Sleep and SunnO))) as drone doom bands (Piper 2013: 67), and thus a subset of doom metal; SunnO))) have conversely been aligned with the harsh noise of Merzbow (Thacker 2014:  192), or have been implicitly situated as black metal (Ishmael 2014:  140). While such categorizations may be frequently put into question, genre nevertheless remains a widespread and functional part of discourse about music. Even if preliminary and imprecise, however, genre terms are important coordinates in initially orienting discourse on the reception of music. Any popular music genre will have antecedent influences (Lou Reed’s 1975 Metal Machine Music, La Monte Young and Eliane Radigue’s compositional



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experiments with longform drones, for example), and beginnings or origins are retrospectively chosen and debated rather than objectively observed. The scattering of extreme bands that later became known as performing drone metal coalesced around a number of influential recordings made in the 1990s, which were situated by their sound and surrounding symbolic practices in relation to an older metal tradition. Connections and conventions between recordings set a loose but distinctive template, enabling later bands to be understood as continuing in the same tradition. At first, due to their marginal underground status, before any tenuous subgenre identity had developed, recordings were more important than live performances (Carlson in Within the Drone, 2006). The band Earth’s 1993 album 2: Special Low Frequency Version (commonly known as Earth 2) is widely cited by listeners and musicians as the first and most influential drone metal album. Earth were formed in 1989, and the band had released a similar-​ sounding EP in 1991 titled Extra-​Capsular Extraction, but Earth 2 is considered the originary landmark. The album contains three extended tracks of layered, distorted guitars and very slow riff cycles, involving little else but multitracked, downtuned distortion. The cover art features a photograph of a landscape dominated by a vast blue sky and a tiny line of grass, a tent and a horse, visually expressing an expansive, minimalist but overwhelming atmosphere, matching similar qualities in the sound. The back cover displays a number of quotes, as if from reviews but without indication of sources. The quite formal enthusiasm and the oddly medical language of these unattributed quotes suggest that they were intended satirically, perhaps referencing the dental textbook imagery used in the packaging of the earlier EP. The quotes do, however, foreshadow a range of influential themes in drone metal discourse, and are therefore worth reproducing in full (with original punctuation and capitalization retained): . . . found it difficult to think of the things that disturb me . . . Afterwards, everything seemed right with the world. A new, yet seemingly ancient kind of experience . . . very unusual!! . . . A PHYSICAL PRESENCE IN THE ROOM . . . I CAN ALMOST TOUCH THE SOUNDS. When I got up, I could swear I was a few inches off the ground! Forget drugs and alcohol . . . I am now very, very mellow! I feel alert yet very calm . . . Wonderful after a hard day. MY TENSION HEADACHES HAVE DISAPPEARED! Always had trouble relaxing . . . after auditioning Earth 2, had an incredibly deep sleep. (Earth 1993)

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Two 1996 albums each featuring a single massive track of monotonous feedback, repetition and guitar noise extended Earth’s template. Californian band Sleep had previously made previous doom metal albums extremely close in style to Black Sabbath, most notably Sleep’s Holy Mountain (1992a). They radically extended this scope in producing an epic hour-​long hymn to marijuana in gradually evolving slow riffs and lyrics about pilgrimage. Due to record company difficulties, this recording emerged in several versions titled either Jerusalem (1996, 1998a, 1998b) or Dopesmoker (2003, 2012). Meanwhile Boris, from Tokyo, released the album Absolutego (1996), which opens with more than ten minutes of building feedback, amplifier fuzz and slow bass rumble, then trudges through slow, noisy and repetitive riffs for the majority of its sixty-​five-​minute length before dissolving back into noisy, sludgy distortion. These uncompromising recordings contrasted starkly with trends in heavy music at that time. While initially seen as an energetic reaction against the perceived bloated narcissism of 1980s glam metal, the punk style and attitude of grunge was gradually diluted in the wake of massive commercial success. ‘New metal’ or ‘nu metal’ in the mid-​ 1990s turned towards rhythmic and vocal influences from hip-​hop, and was perceived by many as a less complex and inferior form of metal (Mehling 2015). From the mid-​1980s to late 1980s onwards, extreme metal forms such as thrash and death metal were marked by a steady acceleration, Slayer’s 1986 record Reign in Blood setting a lasting benchmark in extreme speed and aggression. Second-​ wave black metal, especially in Norway, saw the growing influence of frenetic, lo-​fi sound and misanthropic imagery. Death metal and black metal dominated extreme metal in the later 1990s, though it remained an underground phenomena, sustained by networks of dedicated fans (Christe 2003: 239–​47, 270–​3). Black Sabbath had already showcased many songs with low, slow grooves, especially on Master of Reality (1971), as guitarist Tony Iommi had developed the style by ‘downtuning’ his guitar, loosening the strings to make them easier to play after a factory accident had injured the tips of his fingers. He found that the lower tuning gave an ominous, doomy sound that fitted well with their gloomy lyrics. The faster speeds of most other extreme subgenres in the 1980s meant that a new subgenre name, ‘doom metal’, came to describe bands that continued to play in this style, such as Witchfinder General and Pentagram. Bands such as St Vitus, Cathedral, Trouble and Candlemass continued to play doom metal with clean vocals, though towards the mid-​1990s this style became known as classic doom, as new forms of slow and downtuned metal emerged. Skepticism, Funeral, Thergothon and others further dragged tempi and added yet more sludgy distortion and much lower growling vocals, prompting the emergence



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of the subgenre label ‘funeral doom’ (connected to the band called Funeral, as well as suggesting a general association with sombre atmospheres). British band Electric Wizard were among the most enduringly successful of the later doom bands in employing sludgy distortion and downtuned grooves, in combination with a lurid aesthetic of drugs, horror films and occult atmospheres. Amid these developments in heavy music, early drone metal bands Earth, Sleep and Boris remained marginal throughout most of the 1990s. Earth were based in Seattle during the explosion in the popularity of grunge from that area, and founder member Dylan Carlson was close friends with Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, who even sang on an early Earth track, ‘Divine and Bright’, recorded in 1990 (Earth 2010). Yet despite this connection with one of the most famous rock musicians in the world at the time, and Earth signing to the Sub Pop label which was strongly associated with the vastly popular grunge scene, Earth were not considered part of that genre. Carlson notes that Sub Pop didn’t know how to label them (Carlson in Within the Drone, 2006). Sleep similarly found that their drone doom metal record Dopesmoker/​Jerusalem was met with incredulity from their record label, in part because the label felt they could not market it according to existing genre expectations. Boris’s debut album, released on their own label, was similarly far removed in sound from the hardcore scene with which the band members had been associated. Since the late 1990s, many more drone metal bands have emerged, influenced by the early recordings of Earth, Sleep and Boris. Among the most notable of these are Om, a band initially emerging from Sleep’s demise, and SunnO))), who have become by far the best-​known and most commercially successful drone metal band, also spawning various other projects featuring overlapping personnel (Gravetemple, Burial Chamber Trio, Penntemple, and Nazoranai to name just a few). Other bands have used drone structures, tones and timbres while drawing on other sonic influences related more or less distantly to heavy metal such as progressive rock, noise music, jazz, and the kosmische music of the German underground (otherwise known as krautrock).

Forging connections and conventions, situating drone as metal While extreme, unusual and marking significant departures from existing metal and hard rock genres, early drone metal recordings acknowledged their influences from the history of metal, and from Black Sabbath in particular. At the

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same time, bands also drew deliberate links to similar-​sounding contemporary musicians and thus began to develop the sonic, formal and symbolic conventions of an emerging subgenre. Sleep had already highlighted their adherence to Black Sabbath’s style in covering their songs ‘Lord of this World’ (Sleep 1991) and ‘Snowblind’ (Sleep 1992b), and copying the title and sleeve design of Sabbath’s Volume 4 (1972) with their Volume 2 (1991). Their album Sleep’s Holy Mountain (1992a) was a close study of Sabbath’s sound. Julian Cope added an imagined and exaggerated religious slant to this homage, describing the band’s Dopesmoker as inhabiting a world in which the first four Black Sabbath LPs –​BLACK SABBATH, PARANOID, MASTER OF REALITY and VOLUME 4 –​had become sacred testaments on which to base their entire belief system. (Cope 2004)

Earth are so called because that was the original name used by Black Sabbath, as well as for a sense of weighty foundations (Carlson in Richardson 2008). In a photograph on the back cover of Earth 2, Dylan Carlson wears a shirt displaying the logo of death metal band Morbid Angel, identifying him as a metal fan and further asserting a visual association with extreme metal. This he later described as an important as a signal to metal fans that they might be interested in the album’s contents, given the potential for expectations to be misleading given that it was released on a label known for grunge (Carlson in Bächer 2017). By including a cover of ‘Peace in Mississippi’ by Jimi Hendrix (1975) on later album Pentastar: In the Style of Demons (1996), Earth also paid tribute to the influential pioneer of amplified distortion and feedback. Original Earth bassist Joe Preston later joined the Melvins, who also experimented with a slower, sludgier sound, especially on Lysol (1992). Boris, in turn, were named after a slow, repetitive Melvins track (Melvins 1991), and on their own first album Absolutego (1996) also featured the same subtitle ‘Special Low Frequency Version’ that Earth had used on Earth 2. Dylan Carlson reportedly responded to Absolutego by describing it approvingly as ‘the sound of slugs fucking’, a phrase since taken up and repeated elsewhere by drone metal listeners (e.g. DroneMuzak, 2013). Later, SunnO))) named themselves after their preferred amplifier manufacturer (Sunn Amps from Portland, Oregon) as well as making an association between ‘sun’ and the band Earth. They also recorded a song named ‘Dylan Carlson’ after the Earth guitarist (on Grimmrobe Demos 2000a), collaborated with Boris (SunnO))) & Boris 2006), and recorded highly abstract cover versions of heavy tracks by Melvins, Metallica and black metal band Immortal on the albums ØØVoid (2000b), 3: Flight of the Behemoth (2002) and Black One (2005). A later one-​off



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recording was made by musicians from SunnO))) and doom bands Cathedral and Electric Wizard, who named their short-​lived group Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine (2002) after a song from Earth 2. The involvement in many projects of individuals such as producer Randall Dunn (who has worked with SunnO))), Boris and Earth among others) and Stuart Dahlquist (who formed drone metal group ASVA and has also played in SunnO))) and Burning Witch) meant that further connections between groups were made through personnel. Om, SunnO))), Boris, Earth and others collaborated or performed together, cementing links between the bands and suggesting an emergent genre grouping. As well as sharing similar sound profiles, these symbolic, associative and personal links between each group helped to establish codes constituting drone metal as a subgenre. The use of images, titles and sounds associated with Black Sabbath and other metal groups meanwhile situated them within heavy metal. Throughout the evolution of the drone metal subgenre, sonic, verbal and visual references have frequently been made to mystical traditions, esoteric religious language and spiritual practices, forming another generic convention that ties together bands and recordings and talk about them. These range from Earth’s repeated mentions of angels in song and album titles, to Om’s recitations of religious texts and sounds amid bass-​heavy sonic cycles, to SunnO)))’s ritualized live shows shrouded in smoke and robes, to Bong’s intonations of the names of fictional deities.

Listeners in constructing genre Listeners also participate in the construction of genre. Repeating, reapplying and reinforcing symbolic markers of genre all continue the work of drawing and strengthening connections between different musicians, recordings and listening experiences. For example, this occurs when listeners repeat phrases identified with particular bands or recordings, sing along with recordings or live shows, performatively embody iconic or significant phrases or gestures, or type out such lines in comment threads on metal articles or YouTube postings. Through this kind of practice, listeners perform their recognition of the appropriateness or ‘fit’ of a particular musical experience with a pre-​existing understanding of a genre, itself constituted in the practices and discourse of listeners and musicians. Just as musicians repeating phrases such as ‘Special Low Frequency Version’ formed links between bands at the level of production, listeners also make connections across the genre, by quoting lines from or

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making reference to one band, album track or performance, while discussing another. Thus the phrase ‘Maximum Volume Yields Maximum Results’, printed in SunnO))) record sleeves and thereby closely associated with that band, is used in survey responses, interviews and online discourse to talk not only about SunnO))) but also about other bands. The practice in online communications of using repeated brackets, especially after ‘o’ characters, to connote heavy amplification and drone metal sound, is also widely used beyond references to the band SunnO))) or the amplifier manufacturer Sunn (the source of the logo). Examples include the username DRO)))NE on an online forum (ForeverDoomed 2015), and the typing of O)))))M in comments attached to a YouTube clip of an Om track (Om  –​Advaitic Songs Full Album 2012). In interviews and other conversations, listeners drew comparisons between and categorizations around musicians, recordings or particular performances that were similar; groupings according to similarity are the foundations of genre categories, along with adjudication about appropriate levels of similarity and therefore differentiation and the drawing of boundaries. In addition to sonic, aesthetic and performative similarities, listeners discussed their assessment of music according to feelings, emotional and physical responses, and internal states. These elements of musical experience were widely considered to be legitimate and reasonable ways to group music together, although often such groupings were understood to be valid for a particular listener and not necessarily for others.

Jokes in genre discourse The discursive work of constructing genre continues in the use of hyperbolic language, jokes and memes. Telling jokes and sharing satirical images and phrases can serve as important practices in which the recognition, reinforcement or redrawing of boundaries takes place. Understanding jokes relies on familiarity with conventions that are in the joke being subverted or exaggerated, and can thus mark differences between insiders and outsiders. The success or failure of jokes may also be a measure of limits, marking how far a particular trope, sound or practice can be extended before it ceases to be considered authentic and becomes subject to ridicule. It should, however, be noted that is characteristic of metal culture that music that is taken very seriously can without contradiction be simultaneously considered with a humorous sense of the ridiculous. Whether shared by mocking outsiders, or more commonly, by self-​deprecating insiders poking fun at their own listening habits as well as at musicians and other



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listeners, such jokes encode important elements of genre conventions. Humour can reveal, in exaggerated form, the elements crucial to a particular culture or milieu or mode of cultural production. Among the most common jokes about drone metal relate to time and slowness, amplifiers or household appliances, especially fridges. One which I have heard and told in different situations is ‘I was fifteen minutes late for a drone metal show, but luckily I only missed the first note’, a variation of an older joke about the extremely fast and abrupt subgenre of grindcore, where the latecomer misses the first three bands. The joke highlights the slowness of musical development, and subtly emphasizes a distinction between drone metal notes which are to be experienced in slowly unfolding affective vibrations, and notes in other forms of music which are to be comprehended in relation to other notes together constituting musical structures. The Twitter account ‘Between Sunn Chords’ purports to reveal ‘what [SunnO))) guitarist] Stephen O’Malley does between playing chords’, including playing board games, taking his robe to the dry cleaners and moving to Arkansas (Btwnsunnchords 2015). This kind of humour highlights the extreme slowness that tellers and hearers of such jokes will recognize from their experience of the music. The suggestion that SunnO))) sound like household appliances, especially refrigerators, is common, shared in conversation and online memes such as the words ‘SunnO))) jukebox’ scribbled onto the front of an ordinary fridge. Similar humour is used by a YouTube user who uploaded a ‘fan’ cover version of a SunnO))) track, which is a video and sound recording of an electric fan (Orthodox Caveman (SunnO))) Cover) 2010). These comments might perhaps signal ridicule through incomprehension of the musical style or, more likely, affectionate understanding of the strange and, to others, incomprehensible conventions of the genre (since people who dislike drone metal would be unlikely to invest significant effort into this kind of creative play on the genre’s conventions). Specifically pertaining to the labelling of genre, jokes are sometimes made using ‘tagging’ functions on online music sites such as Bandcamp.com and Last. fm, which host a large amount of music and user-​generated information about music. At these sites, listeners attach genre ‘tags’ to particular musicians, with tags weighted to frequency of tags. On Last.fm in 2012, for the band SunnO))) ‘drone’, ‘doom’, ‘metal’, ‘experimental’, ‘ambient’ and ‘avant-​garde’ are frequently tagged, and the same terms are combined in other tags (such as ‘drone doom metal’) showing that these are widely understood as ways of describing that band’s music. Other tags seem to be used as jokes:  ‘fridgecore’, ‘fridge’, and ‘refrigeratorcore’ are three variations on the joke that SunnO)))’s monotonous

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noise sounds like amplified refrigerators. While these and others may be meant satirically or humorously, in practice they function like any other tag. Clicking on the ‘fridgecore’ tag leads to a page collecting other artists so tagged, such as Earth and Boris, who are in turn also tagged ‘drone’, ‘drone doom’, ‘drone metal’ and so on. Joke tags poking fun at genre (whether used affectionately or deprecatingly by avid listeners, or scornfully by detractors) therefore still contribute to the constitution of genre in marking commonalities and grouping music and musicians together.

Questioning metal status as genre work Despite the overt references made by musicians and listeners to Black Sabbath and other metal bands, the metal status of drone metal is sometimes questioned by listeners and reviewers. The experimental group Melvins were a strong influence on drone metal, and were themselves difficult to categorize but had strong links to hardcore in a context where hardcore was often defined as punk and not metal despite sonically incorporating aspects of both (Waksman 2009: 12–​14). Some bands have made quite stark stylistic changes, with leading drone metal bands Om and Earth each having recorded several albums with far less distortion than customarily is used in metal. Boris have gradually left behind the vast expanses of distortion on their earliest recordings to experiment with and often subvert rock conventions in other ways. Earth, starting with 2005’s Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method, for several years explored an emphasis on reverb rather than distortion, though with the sonic structures and playing style otherwise similar to their earlier, more distorted recordings. The question of whether these bands are metal, or whether drone music can be metal, has continued to a point where this ambiguity is a characteristic element of discourse around the music. Album reviewers, for example, wonder whether to include the band Om in their understanding of metal, but with a sense of paradoxical affirmation and denial of genre categories: It’s hard to look at Om as a ‘metal’ band at all, at least not in the simplest sense, although their approach seems to be pursuing the Sabbathian ethos much more intricately and determinedly than most of their contemporaries. (Burnett 2012) Om cannot be classified into just one group. are they doom? are they stoner? are they metal? are they melodic death metal? are they folk metal? I will answer yes to all of the above, while at the same time saying no. (Bruner 2013)



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Similar productive contradictions appear in uses of other terms crucial to discussions of metal, as in the following quotes from reviews of Om and Bong recordings. The appropriateness of the word ‘riff ’ in each case is placed under question while simultaneously and paradoxically affirmed: Gentle noodling rides atop endless fuzzed riffs (if you can call one chord a riff). Imperceptible shifts in tone arrive –​the riff gets heavier. (McGibbon 2014) Bass, drums and Al Cisneros’ intonated vocals now blend with hypnotic cello, glossolalic tabla and Vedic chant to make something it feels almost blasphemic to describe simply as ‘riffs’. These tracks are fragmentary facets of the true ur-​ music. (Zero Tolerance quoted in CircuitSweet 2013)

A lengthy discussion ensued on a YouTube posting (Om  –​Advaitic Songs (Full Album) 2012) of Om’s 2012 album Advaitic Songs, after one commenter complained that there was not one ‘moment of metal’ in the whole recording. The commenter then went on to link this apparent problem to other aspects they clearly saw as a kind of infiltration of metal by ‘hipsters’ and ‘Christians’. Most of those who responded took issue with this comment, though for different reasons. Some attempted to correct the poster, by assessing Om as belonging to particular metal subgenres such as sludge, doom or drone metal, or by awarding them metal status due to association with the (apparently unambiguously metal) band Sleep. One commenter argued that the band used to be metal but were not now, while another said they were still metal but might not be if they continued their current trajectory. Others argued that metal was broad enough to encompass this recording, and some others challenged the need for genre categories at all. Still others argued for retaining genre categories as a starting point for musical exploration, in which case labelling Om as metal was appropriate to encourage potential metal listeners who may like it, regardless of whether it ‘was’ in fact metal. This range of often strongly expressed opinions suggests that the question of metal is an important one for listeners, through which they can claim and perform their adherence to values and related identities. Final adjudications on metal status are in my opinion not possible, desirable or particularly interesting. Instead, I consider the complexity, articulacy and strength of feeling that are displayed in such conversations as evidence which in fact positions drone metal as a metal subgenre, but one that is marginal. While listeners often retain ambiguity or ambivalence when discussing metal, comparisons with other more established categories of music were more consistent. Several listeners strongly distanced drone metal from ‘New

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Age’ music, despite both styles sharing some sonic qualities such as lengthy ambient passages, unmetered sections, continuous sound, slow development, use of field recordings and, not least, use of various sound sources understood as sacred, such as chanting or Indian instrumentation (Zrzavy 1990). An online article noting these connections starts by discussing Om’s Advaitic Songs, and suggests that New Age music and doom metal share aims of transcendence in contrast to the focus on the self in punk, rock, pop and hip-​hop. The uncertainty with which this comparison might be received by metal audiences is, however, acknowledged in the title, describing similarity with New Age music as doom metal’s ‘dirty soothing secret’ (Berlatsky 2012). Conversely, drone metal musicians and listeners more favourably associate their music with minimalist composers such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Steve Reich who, again, combine drones with evocations of spiritual alterity (Schwartz 1996). This may be due to a higher level of perceived cultural value attributed to a genre understood as ‘classical’ music, reprising in a different era the kinds of legitimating links which 1980s metal guitarists and their listeners sought to make with composers such as Bach, Beethoven and Vivaldi (Walser 1993: 57–​107).

Comparing drone metal with Slayer Another example of a contestation of metal status, which nevertheless suggests drone relates to metal in an important and extreme way, is the repeated comparison that listeners make between drone metal and Slayer. A  YouTube user posted a sound clip with a famous Slayer track drastically slowed down, together with an image that added the ‘O)))’ design associated with SunnO))), and by extension drone metal, to Slayer’s jagged name logo (Slayer –​Angel of Death –​ 800% Slower!!! 2010). Commenters referenced SunnO))) and drone metal, while also suggesting that it sounded like hell or the voice of Satan. Radical differences in speed between SunnO))) and Slayer are noted, but at the same time a commonality in metal timbres is recognized. By talking about how drone bands are completely different from Slayer’s fast-​paced aggressive thrash, both are placed implicitly within a paradigm of comparing forms of extreme metal. The thrash band is mentioned surprisingly frequently in discussing drone metal and what drone metal is not. The contrast between Slayer and drone metal is introduced not only to contrast fast extreme metal and slow extreme metal, however, but also to draw a distinction between extreme metal for which there is an adequate



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language, and extreme metal for which description is difficult or even reportedly impossible. Instead of attacking you like Slayer does with a very fast-​paced drumbeat, [Bong’s music] slows you down and it makes your head wander off. . . . Because you can describe Slayer . . . But then it comes to [Bong’s] music and it’s getting hard to describe, because the innate feeling is about feeling it and listening to that boringness. (B25, Interview, 2013) In comparison to Slayer, that’s very straightforward in a way, I mean if you’ve heard one song you kind of know what it’s all about, whilst this [Om’s music] is more . . . it’s mystical in a way, and different in a way if you maybe think about what metal people listen to otherwise, um, and then . . . I don’t know, just . . . I don’t know. I can’t really put into words what I’m thinking! [laughs]. (O15, Interview, 2014)

Regarding the question of metal, responses to a survey about an electronic drone musician were revealing. Attendees of a Tim Hecker concert were asked if they listened to heavy metal, and several responded with statements like ‘Not much beyond bands like Sleep, SunnO))), Boris and Earth, really’ (H1, Survey, 2013). In such responses, drone metal was positioned in ambivalent relation to metal, with some Tim Hecker listeners engaged with drone metal but uninterested in other forms of heavy metal. Similarities were drawn between musicians across broader genre lines, such as ‘Sunn O))) are to metal what Tim Hecker is to electronica’ (H22, Survey, 2013), placing the musicians both within and apart from their respective genres, while also drawing a link between them that was and was not an aspect of genre. Electronic dub musician Kevin Martin, who recently collaborated with Dylan Carlson as The Bug vs Earth (2014, 2017) was invited by a website to pick his favourite heavy music, and the list, featuring Earth, Om, Boris and SunnO))), was titled ‘Metal, Not Metal’ (VinylFactory 2014). For Olivia Lucas, drone metal is ‘metal about metal’ (2013), and Aliza Shvarts notes a related assessment of SunnO)))’s status among metal listeners: Among some of the longer haired people I know, a question circulates that is both endless and imperative: is it metal? . . . At what could either be construed as the esoteric fringes or innovative core of the genre, this question constitutes metal’s very substance, posed by the music itself. (2014: 203)

Again, without wishing to pronounce final judgement or forward any supposedly fixed definitions of metal, the longevity and intensity of debates on whether bands or recordings ‘are’ metal indicates the presence and ongoing importance

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of boundary work about the parameters of metal. In addition, the paradoxical and contradictory forms presented in discussions of metal in drone metal indicate the extremity of the music, echoing aspects of mystical discourse testing the edges of language, as well as locating drone metal’s sonic explorations simultaneously at both the margins and foundations.

Ineffability and estrangement from language These issues surrounding genre in drone metal relating to marginality, extremity and comparison are closely connected to difficulties with language. In discussing the music, participants often avoid, subvert or overtly disavow genre terms. Interviewees often did this by naming a tentative genre, then immediately retreating from it, insisting on ambiguity or difference: ‘This meditation type of music, or whatever you call it’ in one interview discussion of Bong (B25, Interview, 2013). In other cases, the specific naming of genre was avoided by talking about ‘this kind of music’ or ‘bands in this genre’ without actually saying the name of a genre: I listen to a lot of stuff in the same kind of loose genre . . . I listen to a lot of bands that are the same kind (E14, Interview, 2014). These ways of talking appeal to the social nature and usage of genre terminology. Phrases like ‘or whatever you call it’ recognize and call attention to the dialogic negotiations of what names ‘we’ give to ‘it’. Talking about ‘this kind of music’ is a statement which places both interlocutors in the same frame of reference and assumes discursive competence, again showing recognition that construction of categories takes place in communication between people who are interested or invested in the music. Similarly, listeners posit a kind of transgeneric genre, drawing together music which for them shares a certain quality or feel, but which they perceive has been assigned different genres, presumably by other audiences such as critics: A lot of music that I listen to comes from supposedly different genres [but] still shares this element, that takes its time, that allows the good parts to repeat for a while. (O34, Interview, 2013)

These claims implicitly recognize the communicative usefulness of grouping music together, but reflect or suggest an estrangement from application of genre by others. It is implied that those who define music into ‘supposedly different genres’ do not recognize or value the same things that the listener hears or feels as similar and important. These statements are also markers of translocal



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marginality, where listeners feel distant from perceived mainstream audiences and their understandings of genre terms. The challenge of how to name and draw boundaries around a group of sounds that is loosely connected and whose audience is fragmented and dispersed is closely related to the challenge of reported indescribability, of how to name sounds which are unusual or difficult to talk about in language that works for other music. The two problems of sound defying both description and genre affiliation sometimes appear side by side: [Drone metal musician Horseback] incorporates Drone into some sort of Doom Metal/​Sludge whatever you want to call it with a black metal voice (I can’t describe it, but that really give an idea of the vocals), you really have to check this record. (Edgar 2011)

Difficulties with genre terminology are a specific instance of the issue of ineffability reported by listeners about drone metal. An emphasis on listener experience is accompanied by an apparently profound (and, in certain respects, paradoxical) ambivalence about language in description: ‘We can’t describe this experience: it is loud, dark, violent, meditative, powerful’ (SK9, Survey, 2013). Reports about listening to drone metal, whether or not elicited by the researcher, frequently begin with such denials of the possibility of description. In fact, the use of the colon to punctuate the quoted sentence even implies, paradoxically, that the latter clause explains the first, that it is indescribable precisely because it warrants the following descriptive adjectives. Accepting only the first part of the phrase would lapse into dividing text and experience as in the problematic approaches to mysticism discussed in Chapter 2. Equally, ignoring the first part and taking the second as straightforwardly descriptive misses the important fact that these adjectives have been problematized and undermined in advance. Analysis needs to take seriously the whole phrase, and others like it, in which the description and the statement about the status of description are both joined and separated. In response to survey or interview questions, and in fieldwork conversations, it was extremely common for drone metal listeners to state that it was hard or impossible to communicate about the experience in words. Struggles with language are not unique to drone metal, but it is significant that these disclaimers were forcefully and frequently made about drone metal and were not regarded as so important when talking about other kinds of music or other aspects of everyday life. As David Burrows writes,

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Mysticism, Ritual and Religion in Drone Metal The point isn’t simply that music slips through the net of language –​for what, after all, does not, to one degree or another? –​but there can be few gaps between an experience and its representation wider than the one between music and its analyses and descriptions. (Burrows 1990: 92)

Drone metal listeners frequently extended this idea to suggest that the gap between experience and representation in language was for drone metal wider than for any other form of music they had encountered. Drone metal as music to be experienced rather than understood is often implicitly set against other music that may be perceived as more structurally complex yet less affectively profound. Listeners hold that classical music or thrash metal can be approached and understood through musical narratives, semantics and sequences, and therefore can be more easily related to and explicated in language. Drone metal, by contrast, in its relentless repetition and noise, resists musical structuring and, by extension, resists language as an analogue of that structure. The same ineffability disclaimers occur in writing on drone metal, where reviewers make special efforts to mark drone metal as ineffable. In theory, all music reviews might legitimately begin with such waivers, though this is uncommon. By their very existence, drone metal reviews perform the paradox of ineffability by continuing to describe drone metal after stating the impossibility of that task. The opening lines from three different reviews of Bong’s 2014 Roadburn performance begin with such questioning of language: Oh, how to explain Bong? (Von Der Ohlsen 2014) How shall I describe the transcendent experience Bong is? (Keefy 2014) It is really hard to describe what it is about BONG that I  really love. (Scott D. 2014)

A review of Bong’s album Mana-​Yood-​Sushai (2012) begins with a more detailed statement associating language with thinking and expressing the absence of both: Writing about drone in many ways defeats the object, it undermines the genre’s primary purpose which is to send the listener into a trance-​like state, devoid of thought. (McKibbin 2012)

In written interviews, listeners use available punctuation or ‘scare quotes’ in order to undermine or cordon off aspects of their own language use, offering intriguingly layered responses. After receiving the survey response ‘We can’t describe this experience:  it is loud, dark, violent, meditative, powerful’ (SK9, Survey, 2013) about a SunnO))) concert, I asked the same respondent in a written interview why the experience could not be described. He replied:



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Because, it is more deepfull than another style. I can’t say ‘the sound is beautiful’ (well, it is but not in a common definition) or ‘I wanted to shake my head’. (SK9, Interview, 2014)

Another survey respondent similarly undermined their own language use: Words can’t describe. Words shouldn’t be able to describe. ‘Full on third eye massage’? (N29, Survey, 2013)

In this description, the possibility of description is not only denied, but is even placed under another prohibition. But a description is nevertheless tentatively put forward, with the double precaution of being quarantined by a question mark and quotation marks. So why is drone metal apparently so indescribable, and why is it then described? As Spivak writes of the sign under erasure ‘(Since the word is inaccurate, it is crossed out. Since it is necessary, it remains legible)’ (Spivak 1997: xiv). Description is always inaccurate for something that is so extraordinary and so important for certain listeners, but description is felt to be necessary precisely because of that extraordinariness and importance. Listeners feel compelled to discuss interpretations of their experience with others whose own descriptions may chime with their own in finding this kind of music and experience extraordinary and profound. The social communication that is implicitly mobilized in a discussion of ineffability is shown by the frequency with which people discuss indescribability by reporting other people’s difficulties in describing drone metal, or in describing how hard they have found the task of describing drone metal to others. Even though I  really love doom metal and all of its sub-​genres, reviewing an album in this genre is always pretty hard for me, and especially in the more specific sub-​genres of doom. But Boris’ first full-​length album [Absolutego] was just too good to leave it there without reviewing it. . . . This droning doom/​noise type of music is really hard to describe, so I’ll try as best as I can. (KayTeeBee 2005) Now let me just say this, I will do my best to describe their set. I feel that it is literally humanly impossible to describe what [a Sleep concert] was like. I  told a co-​worker about the show and all I could say was, ‘It was like meeting God . . . and everything you’ve ever wanted coming true.’ Now that may seem like an exaggeration, but just ask anyone who’s witnessed this band . . . Anyway, back to the show. (Doom 2011)

In these reviews, description in spite of ineffability is undertaken as part of a social praxis, as describing for others because of the importance and value of the

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music. The difficulty of describing an extraordinary listening experience, and at the same time the social impulse to share such responses, show the balance of tensions which produce ongoing genre discourse.

Hyperbole and self-​conscious excess Another way in which the stability of language is placed into question is in self-​ consciously hyperbolic, overly superlative, cryptic, humorous, or otherwise excessive description. Exaggerated imagery, strange and confusing phrases are all used to signal the uncertain status of language. Yet it is important not to dismiss the particular words used in a certain utterance just because it is obviously exaggerated or humorous, remembering to ask, with Foucault, ‘How is it that one particular statement appeared rather than another?’ (2002: 27). Surveys in particular gave rise to short, cryptic statements of description: Like rusty needles of time would be taken from my eyes. (B48, Survey, 2013) Like travelling through middle ages wearing capes. (O117, Survey, 2013) IT WAS SIMILAR TO DEATH. (G26, Survey, 2013) Listening to Mana-​Yood-​Sushai makes me wish I was a tree. (B13, Survey, 2013)

The first two apparent comparisons stretch the format of their own statements, since the experiences with which they are comparing drone metal performances are impossible. Not only are they impossible, but they introduce strange slippages, both involving time. ‘Needles of time’ is incomprehensible but provocative given the widely reported importance of changed time perception in drone metal experience, and the phrase is further complicated by the removal image as well as an odd grammatical tense. ‘Travelling through Medieval times’ suggests both spatial and temporal movement, with a further entertaining absurdity about capes. Another impossible comparison, death, is made in self-​consciously portentous capitals, and a listener wishing they were a tree also employs an image which is deliberately difficult to imagine. Comparisons to both being dead and being a tree, though, have subtle implications of radically transformed experiences of time and the listening body. As deliberately impossible or hard-​to-​understand comparisons, these statements communicate about the difficulty of conventional description, as well as make obscure hints about the actual qualities of experience in terms of time and extremeness.



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These kinds of strange descriptions are also often mentioned in terms of social discourse. The following example not only contains an unusual description of an unusual experience at a Nazoranai concert, but also a report of having previously described it this way: Extraordinary! I  described it to a non-​attending friend as being like being trapped inside a beautiful, angry jet engine for 80 minutes. (N39, Survey, 2013)

There is a sense of humour in many such descriptions too, a self-​awareness which acknowledges that a sentence might be ridiculous yet still be a legitimate attempt at expression in the language available. Humour here is another marker of excess in relation to language, and thus should not be misunderstood as flippancy or lack of sincerity. The interpretation and reception of Sleep’s Jerusalem/​Dopesmoker (1996, 2003) is serious and reverential, while simultaneously jocular, almost derisive. As one interviewee put it, ‘it takes its not being serious very seriously’ (B25, Interview, 2013). The lyrical theme of a caravan of stoner priests in hybrid Star Wars/​Old Testament landscapes and language is described as silly, though the same recording is described by the same listeners as the holy grail of drone metal and as a sacred text. One review explains that ‘while the storyline may be a little hokey to some, it’s delivered in such an epic and doom metal laden way, that it’s undeniably enjoyable’ (Mahalins 2009). Another suggests that, despite the ‘silly lyrics’, after listening ‘you aren’t laughing at the words and the story they tell, but getting ready to rid yourself of all worldly possessions to join the procession of “weedians” on their long journey to Nazareth’ (Spacekase 2008). This sense of simultaneous ridiculousness and seriousness (where neither is compromised or mediated by the acknowledgement of the other) is at the root of much humour in wider metal circles, and is likely a contributing factor to the widespread misunderstandings of metal and metal humour (as noted in Johnson and Cloonan 2008: 136, Kahn-​Harris 2007: 147–​50, Moberg: 2015: 18). It is not insignificant that this humour/​seriousness relation occurs in combination with drug use and religion in Sleep’s Dopesmoker/​Jerusalem (1996, 2003). Stereotypical aspects of experiencing marijuana and other stronger psychedelic drugs include laughter and/​or reports of spiritually significant profundity. A  link between laughter and spirituality, both in drug experiences and drone metal reception, could be suggested. If such experiences elicit the language of profound spirituality because they are felt to be more real than everyday normality, then laughter is another possible response to this gap, a result of finding social conventions and common assumptions humorous or ridiculous in

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the light of transformed consciousness and perception. In drone metal, too, humour emerges from differences in expectations and conventions, understood as otherness and excess which is nevertheless real and valid for participants. At a SunnO))) concert, as the very first amplified bass notes resonated through the audience, I heard some loud and spontaneous laughter from other members of the audience. I  recognized in the laughter something of my own incredulous response at the excessive noise, especially since the concert was taking place at the Royal Festival Hall in London, a venue more commonly associated with orchestral performances. The tone of the laughter also reminded me of a listener who had compared drone metal concerts to being on a rollercoaster, since my own reaction when on rollercoasters tends to be to laugh constantly throughout –​not because I find rollercoasters funny, but because physical laughter (like the rhetoric of intoxication) is a bodily response to excess. An ever-​more extreme lexicon of metaphors and similes for heaviness is employed across extreme metal genres but particularly in drone metal, where the scale of the musical structures is comparatively vast. According to one review, Sleep’s Dopesmoker (2003) is ‘heavy like a brontosaurus drowning in a tar pit’ (Dropd24 2008). Another describes it as ‘the sound of 1,000 suns exploding, recorded at the center of the earth. It is BEYOND all previous knowledge of the word HEAVY’ (R. Scott 2004). Meanwhile Bong’s ‘explorations carry weight beyond common measurement’ according to one album preview (The Obelisk 2015), and Ommadon’s 2014 album V is described as ‘sounding heavier than a dying planet’ (Whelan 2015). These elaborate descriptions of superlative heaviness function in a similar way to the descriptions of metal and riffs that will be discussed in Chapter 4. They mark the music with a descriptor (metal, riff, heavy) but then make statements which set the ‘real’ status of what is being described as being so far beyond that descriptor as to disqualify or distort it. This is an implicit version of the more explicit ineffability disclaimer where drone metal is described as indescribable, which functions by operating on the conventional terminology of the discourse. A further way to highlight the boundaries of language is through unconventional uses of punctuation, such as the symbol O))) as used in different contexts to signal drone sound. The following examples are titles given to two reviews of Sleep’s Dopesmoker (2003): !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?!!!?!?!!?!?!!!!11?!?!!?!111?!?! (Caspian 2008) .................................................. (Vicar 2005)

Excessive ellipses, exclamations and unconventional uses of punctuation perform incredulity towards language itself as well as towards the subject matter.



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A listener concisely cites a common response to Om’s lyrics, and the ‘meaning’ of drone metal sound in general: I have no idea what they’re talking about but it sounds incredible. D. (Comment on YouTube video, Om –​Advaitic Songs (Full Album) 2012)

Just as drone metal is described as sound to be experienced rather than understood, many of the different modes of discourse which surround it are placeholders or signals about language and its status more than messages or descriptions conveyed straightforwardly through language.

Drone, droning, droney, droned Just as there is some contestation about appropriate uses of the term ‘metal,’ the word ‘drone’ is also used in differing ways. On a blog about drone music, the following comment was posted, evidently in response to what the commenter perceived to be a misunderstanding of genre and terminology: What people think drone metal is: -​take progression -​hold the chords and only play each one on the first beat -​slow it down a bit -​drop tuning What drone metal actually is: -​metal with fucking drones in it. (DroneMuzak 2014)

However, instead of setting out with a technical definition and then measuring examples against that framework, I have tried to understand what listeners and musicians mean when they use the term ‘drone’, by analysing closely the contexts in which the word is used across different areas of discourse. Usage and context of the term ‘drone’ during interviews or in online communications showed the kinds of sounds and the kinds of sonic experiences that are understood by listeners as related to the concept of drone. Sometimes the word drone came up quickly: OC: Why did you decide to go to the Gravetemple show at Roadburn [2013]? G23: . . . the Sunn O))) gig in 2011 was an earth-​crushing experience. The whole 013(venue) building was jiggled by the massive drone sound of Sunn O))) . . . After 60 min. my girlfriend leaved the show with these words: ‘I

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Mysticism, Ritual and Religion in Drone Metal have to go out, otherwise my skull is droned away!’ For this reason I had to attend this Gravetemple show. I want this experience again. OC: What were your expectations of the Gravetemple performance? G23: My expectations of the Gravetemple performance were to see a loud, heavy drone show that reduces your bones into the right spot. (G23, Interview, 2013)

As well as the particular band being designated as a drone band, other qualities are associated with the term: loud, heavy, mass and intense physical experience. In interviews, I would often ask for further explanation of some terms which arose in listeners’ descriptions, which sometimes then prompted talk about genre and musical experience. Here are two examples in which claims arose relating to drone and genre: OC: You said it [the Nazoranai concert] was kind of cathartic. What made it cathartic? N36: I like listening to different types of music, but with drone form of music, I really love the length of the music. It allows you, it gives you that possibility to get lost in the song. And it kind of creates the perfect environment for a trance, in a way, and yeah, really . . . [you can get] sort of lost in those very long sounds. (N36, Interview, 2013) OC: You said that it was sort of taking the listener on a sonic journey. Can you explain a bit more what you mean by that? N17: I always found droning quality music takes me on a journey, anyway. It’s because it’s that uninterrupted aspect of it. They’re not like segmented songs, they might start off quite mellow and slow, and just build up and really take their time building up. (N17, Interview, 2013)

Using a similar strategy, I might pick up on a phrase that an interviewee had used to describe an important experiential aspect of music, and ask whether that feeling could be found elsewhere: OC: [You mentioned] ‘being engulfed by the music . . .’ Is that something that happens with other kinds of music, or other concerts that you’ve been to? O34: . . . A lot of the music I listen to has these drone elements, if we were to define it as . . . this repetition, slow repetition of certain parts. And I’d say that that’s sort of where I really become engulfed, where the music has time, time to . . . basically has time to allow me to be engulfed by it. I mean, when the musical experience isn’t like stressed out, when it’s allowed to take its own time, basically. (O34, Interview, 2013)



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Asking people about how they got into ‘this kind of music’ often elicited statements about drone and associated characteristics, as well as showing how technologies of mediation and exploration shape the constitution of generic categories: OC: After you’d listened to [2009 SunnO))) album] Monoliths & Dimensions and you’d suddenly ‘got it’, did that open the door to listening to other kinds of music? G30: Yeah, yeah. After I listened to that, I started googling what drone is, and that kinda stuff, so automatically you go back in the discography, and you listen to all the records. Another interesting thing is I play the didjeridoo, and I played the didjeridoo from ninth grade until I finished high school, and I’ve never thought of it but I was into drone before I knew drone or what drone was. Because that continuing, reverberating tone, of didjeridoo or bass or guitar, or whatever it may be, was something that really attracted me. (G30, Interview, 2013)

In this way, without dictating or asking for definitions, I  was able to compile a network of terms, concepts and comparisons frequently mentioned in relation to drone. The meaning of drone for listeners includes drones in the technical sense of sustained notes at a constant pitch, but also signifies various other sonic aspects such as slowness in tempo or development, repetition, loudness, limited tonal range or monotony, downtuning, lowness, bass, distortion, unsegmented continuity, extension and length. Closely focusing on how listeners used the term, and how they valued musical experiences revealed that ‘drone’ was used to describe subjective experience as well as sound. For example, drone and derivative terms appeared to signify intense physical experience, catharsis, transcendence, mysticism, ritual, therapy, journeys and pilgrimages. These terms were used in exactly the same ways as the descriptors that were apparently more objectively sound-​related, suggesting that for listeners, it was neither easy nor desirable to separate the sonic and experiential qualities of drone metal.

Listener experience in genre discourse As a way of inquiring about how listeners understood relations between musicians, without addressing directly the sometimes vexed question of genre, I asked listeners what they considered to be similar to the specific concert or musician

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initially discussed. I  received a large number of reports that Earth concerts were similar to Om concerts, and Bong recordings produced similar responses to SunnO))) recordings and so on. This confirmed my own understanding of these groups as involved in the same kind of music, and listeners less frequently suggested other musicians or specific recordings. Some people responded with carefully explained similarities to other types of music, such as Bitches Brew by Miles Davis (1970) or Pink Floyd albums, mentioning either long tracks such as ‘Echoes’ in the album Meddle (1971), or the segued continuity of recordings like Dark Side of the Moon (1973). In interviews, comparisons were sometimes drawn between drone metal, other kinds of music with droning repetition and beyond music to encounters with sound not normally considered to be musical: E10: I suppose it’s only recently, sort of in the past three or four years that I’ve discovered the genre that’s called maybe drone metal, or drone, as it were. Although there are some who’d argue that drone is the musical technique, it’s not a genre. But maybe it’s something that resonates with things I’ve heard before. Like, you know, the blues singer and guitarist Fred McDowell, who plays bottleneck style. He just has that steady drone on the bass string, that he would keep going, you know, even if it doesn’t follow the harmonic pattern of the song, so, it was sometimes, that deep drone there. And I don’t know, perhaps something like Terry Riley, [or] Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band, [they] just sound like things are being repeated. OC: It’s always interesting, you can hear references or similarities popping up in the most unexpected of places sometimes. E10: Yeah, that’s right. Or even maybe sometimes when I’m on the train, or I find myself drifting off and listening to the air conditioning, or things like that. (E10, Interview, 2013)

In the following excerpt from a different interview, a listener linked the experience of a SunnO))) concert to a seemingly disconcerting feeling which had powerful and unusual effects: SK13: I felt like I reached the absence of consciousness I expected from the show. OC: Can you describe a bit more what you mean by ‘absence of consciousness’ and also how that happened? SK13: I guess it’s what people who do drugs are looking for too, it’s just the ultimate relaxing experience, shutting down your brain, trying to think about nothing to reach pure bliss.



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OC: Did you get this experience anywhere else (other music, other experiences)? SK13: [after describing two musical performances] I used to work in a supermarket that had a very noisy ventilation system. By noisy I mean it was big ventilators that produced loud low frequencies and the music was always at a very low volume so when very few people were around, I always used to feel a bit numb. OC: That’s interesting about the ventilator, still relating to low droning sounds. How did it affect what you were doing? SK13: My job was to fill up the racks in the store. In this particular ‘sonic case’, it used to take me a whole afternoon to do things that would have taken me no more than a couple of hours with loud supermarket music and lots of people buzzing around. OC: That’s really strange! Did anyone else notice that effect? SK13: No, it was just affecting me. (SK13, Interview, 2013)

In the survey question about what was similar to the performance under discussion, I deliberately avoided specifying that I was asking what music was similar. While many responses named other bands or other kinds of music, I received a number of striking responses that situated drone metal in relation to non-​ musical experiences: OC: What other experiences (musical or other) are comparable or similar in any way? SK20: Sauna. Very good marihuana:). (SK20, Survey, 2013) SX7: Sex, rollercoaster, horror movie. Haha I don’t know. (SX7, Survey, 2013) O12: Meditating, contemplating, drifting away, taking psychedelics, smoking weed, sleeping. (O12, Survey, 2013) SK34: A big fat chili with lots of red peppers and hot sauce. (SK34, Survey, 2013) SX9: I guess extreme forces of nature. (SX9, Survey, 2013)

These reports underscore three aspects of drone metal in relation to language. First, that part of the rhetoric of discussing drone metal situates it as unusual. Second, that listeners are casting around quite widely for appropriate comparisons in language and experience. And third, that listening experience (alongside more specifically sonic qualities) contributes strongly to audience understandings of similarity and therefore genre. In the concluding section of this chapter, I demonstrate how these factors in combination invite particular uses of religious language into drone metal’s genre discourse.

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Conclusion: Experience, ineffability and religion in drone metal’s genre discourse Translocality, marginality, extremity and abstraction in drone metal’s sound and genre culture prompt a tendency towards greater inclusion of listener experience in the discursive construction, negotiation and maintenance of genre. Humour, outlandish hyperbole, disclaimers about ineffability and a rhetoric of intoxication all mark responses to music which exceeds what is considered to be ordinary description. The language of transcendence, meditation, trance, spirituality, mysticism, ritual and religion also appears in combination with these tropes. Amid this range of ambivalently employed terminology derived from religion, it is the orientation towards experience that foregrounds ideas about mysticism, resonating with the emphasis on experience in scholarly discourses concerning mysticism, discourses which in turn have influenced popular understandings of mysticism. Questions and paradoxes surrounding ineffability, experience, and the role of language in mysticism will be familiar from the history of studies on mysticism discussed in the previous chapter, especially regarding the positing of inaccessible individual psychological states from which essentialist claims are often extrapolated. Scholars of mysticism have long discussed a further paradox of ineffability, where even describing something as indescribable is already a description (see, for example, W.  James 1984:  380, Katz 1978a, Sells 1994, Harmless 2007: 244). I understand such disclaimers as prefatory metalinguistic statements about the language that is about to be used. Disclaimers of ineffability ask for readers to be aware that the writer has questioned or undermined in advance, but not cancelled out, the language they are about to employ. As Certeau writes, ‘ “the ineffable” is therefore not so much an object of discourse as a marker of the status of language’ (Certeau 1995: 443). Ineffability also produces discourse, in that language is in a way provoked by that which reportedly lies outside it. The key issue is that the reporting of something apparently beyond the scope of language takes place in language. Ineffability is therefore at issue not outside language, but at its boundaries. Experience that is so important that it eludes easy categorization in words urges listeners to attempt description, and language is in a way freed by being marked as faulty from the outset. In another way, discourse is not only instigated but also perpetuated by this movement. As Sells writes of apophatic language (negative statements that approach mystical description through a series of denials),



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Any saying (even a negative saying) demands a correcting proposition, an unsaying. But that correcting proposition which unsays the previous proposition is in itself a ‘saying’ that must be ‘unsaid’ in turn. It is in the tension between the two propositions that the discourse becomes meaningful. That tension is momentary. It must be continually re-​earned by ever new linguistic acts of unsaying. (Sells 1994: 3)

Thus ineffability disclaimers, while putting into question any language that follows them, also encourage language to follow them, evoking and eliciting further descriptions, also already undermined before their emergence. In drone metal genre discourse then, ineffability is linked to mystical discourse. The radical and extraordinary character of the music means that, for many listeners, conventional language does not apply. Extraordinary ways of using language are sought, and these uses often connote religion, whether in explicitly appealing to concepts or practices associated with religion, or in using ways of speaking that have been historically associated with marginal traditions of mysticism in religion. Instability of naming and difficulty in description are often juxtaposed with language of the mystical and transcendent: Doom, Sludge, Stoner, Drone, whatever you want to call it, is meditation music, a form of chant or kirtan as powerful as any mantra. (Wood 2013) It’s hard to explain, because it’s such a mystical, whatever you want to call it, experience. (G30, Interview, 2013)

This is one way to understand the prevalent religious vocabulary surrounding drone metal, as appears in this irreverent YouTube exchange about Om and genre: What genre is this? Hindu ancient hardcore. Christ metal? Hinducore. Islamodrone. No, I think it’s Buddhastoner. (Comments by different users, Om –​ Advaitic Songs (Full Album) 2012)

Kennet Granholm suggests that some ways of discussing genre might include religious or spiritual ideology, in suggesting both that occultism might serve as a bridge between genres, and in suggesting that the term ‘black metal’ be understood ‘as the identifier for an authentic inner occult core and conviction

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rather than a purely musical genre’ (Granholm 2015: 27–​8). Similarly, Christian metal has been posited as a genre term (Wang 2015: 220) or, by contrast, not as a genre term but as a descriptor applicable across genres (Moberg 2015: 40). While contested (as genre terms will always tend to be), religious connotations in these cases and in drone metal are used to articulate and assert a commonality in listening experiences and practices, forming the basis for genre labels. Listeners often recognize similarity between music that prompts similar experiences for them, and with language used by other listeners that resonates with their own experiences. In this language, used in strange and ambiguous ways to speak of strangeness and ambiguity, listeners frequently trace references to the subject matter and characteristic practices of mysticism between text and experience.

4

Pilgrimages to Elsewhere: Languages of Ineffability, Otherness and Ambiguity

Introduction Looking at the ways people talk about drone and doom metal, it’s really interesting how often listeners refer to strange other places, foreign countries, distant eras, holy mountains, inner landscapes, lost deserts, the far future, outer space . . . But at Roadburn people don’t talk so much about anywhere else, because elsewhere is here. (Review of Roadburn Festival, Coggins 2015b) They [the mystic authors] are like statues erected to mark the boundaries of an ‘elsewhere’ that is not remote, a place they both produce and guard. (Certeau 1992a: 2) Drone metal is often reported to simultaneously evoke an imaginative ‘elsewhere’ while enhancing bodily consciousness of ‘here’. This aspect of drone metal discourse is the theme of this chapter, as is suggested in quoted paragraph above, the concluding sentences of a review of the Roadburn Festival that I wrote for the music website Echoes & Dust. This part of the review clearly resonated with others, as the organizer of the festival quoted this section in full when reposting the review on social media, and a research participant who had attended previous editions of the festival, but was not able to attend in 2015, commented that he was moved to tears. This chapter builds on the earlier description of drone metal’s marginal translocality in examining prevalent ways in which participants talk about their responses to the music; on the discussion of ‘ineffability disclaimers’ introduced in the previous chapter in which I interpreted claims about the ineffability of drone metal to be rhetorical markers which place the status of language into question. This prefatory undermining of the reliability of language makes space for strange, unusual, creative and even bizarre uses of language that nevertheless

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function practically in the discourses of reception. A  listener’s particular and distinctive employment of language, for example, may not be considered to perfectly and finally describe drone metal, but it may resonate with other listeners’ experiences of drone metal, and also with their own experiences of struggling with description. Similar reports of indescribability have been understood as a characteristic, even defining, feature of mystical discourse in religious traditions (W. James 1982: 380, see also Sells 1994). Closely connected to the reported characteristic of ineffability is the tendency to describe drone metal in terms of ‘elsewheres’. Listening to drone metal’s immersive, monotonous, overwhelming and sometimes arduous sound evokes reports of other places, times or states of bodily consciousness marked by extraordinariness and alterity. Descriptions travel to holy mountains, vast and empty deserts, pilgrimages, ancient temples and archaic ways of life, the distant past, the distant future, distant lands or distant galaxies, intoxicated states of bodily consciousness, and even sleep and sickness. These appeals to varied forms of otherness become connected through the expression and circulation of theories (with varying levels of sophistication and supporting information) about drone music and its relation to archaic forms of social organization and shamanic, ritual or healing practices. These ideas extend even to associating the music with creation myths, where drone is theorized as anterior and fundamental to all music. Drone imagined as eternal music allows another kind of alteration in the perception of time, where listening to drone metal affords a kind of access to and participation in an imagined prehistoric and ancient but also contemporary and future mode of being. Drone metal listening is frequently presented not only as evoking other places, times or states, but also specifically as involving traversal or movement across imaginative landscapes. I  explore the relation between drone metal’s rhetoric, which is perpetually departing somewhere else, and the reports of a profound physical consciousness in heavy vibrations. Despite being reportedly resistant to understanding or description, this embodied state of awareness is described in terms of ‘here and now’ and a heightened sense of/​in one’s body. Discussing home listening, concerts and festivals as sites in which drone metal’s imaginary ‘elsewheres’ and heightened awareness of ‘heres’ overlap, I  point to common instances where this significant aspect of drone metal discourse is phrased in vocabulary relating to religious practice. A religious inflection to themes of traversal, experience and alterity combine in the heavily emphasized trope of pilgrimage, represented in artworks, titles, reviews and conversations. A sense of ambiguity is retained regarding any religious purpose or framework attached to



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such imaginative evocations of pilgrimage, though this vagueness does not dissipate the association with religiosity. Descriptions continually wander across different figurations of otherness, rather than settling or residing in any fixed, particular imagined realm. Deserts are crossed and holy mountains are scaled in speaking of drone metal. But also, in the space of short paragraphs, deserts become mountains, mountains become ancient temples, ruins become distant planets and so on. A kind of pilgrimage is embarked upon between, as well as within, elsewheres. I examine communication around drone metal in order to demonstrate how related departures are also performed at the level of grammatical choices by listeners communicating about drone metal. Just as listeners describe moving between imaginary elsewheres, so too their language shifts across different modes, registers and ways of talking about elsewheres. For example, in a short album review, the grammatical form in which the relation is described might shift between discussing drone metal listening as pilgrimage, as like a pilgrimage, as music for imagined pilgrims, or as the soundtrack to a pilgrimage. Given the parallel movements between imagined spaces of otherness at the levels of both conceptual content and rhetorical choice, I consider the idea of ‘listening as if ’ religious, where conceptual ambiguity is sustained. This ‘listening as if ’ religious allows listeners the freedom to explore ideas and experiences related to religiosity while escaping commitment to any dogma or institutions, or even to stable and definitive statements or propositions about the music. Hyperbole and humour also place the status of language into question, as words are deliberately exaggerated beyond ‘normal’ uses. Imaginary, comparative, metaphorical and iconic modes of discourse lapse into one another, with the shifting rhetorical modes mirroring the shifting elsewheres of content and imagination. Rhetoric is also often disassociated from practice. For example, religious language is used (often positively) by some avowedly nonreligious listeners, and a vocabulary connected to drugs is sometimes used by listeners who have never taken drugs. From these ways of talking, I suggest that in the ‘listening-​as-​if ’ mode, an ambiguous separation is posited between description and referent. Concerts can be interpreted ‘as if ’ they were rituals, urban noise can be heard ‘as if ’ it is drone metal, and drone metal can be experienced ‘as if ’ it were religious. In each relation, a connection is maintained while the specific nature of that connection is kept ambiguous, providing an open-​ended space for contemplative exploration. In different ways, in all these prevalent features of drone metal discourse, I note a tendency to question the foundations of language (or other modes of signification such as sound and image), to purposely distort, stretch or undermine

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‘ordinary’ or common sense usage. These ways of speaking are gestures and shifts towards elsewheres at the level of utterance or linguistic performance. Yet, rather than secret codes which offer a path towards hidden messages, I suggest that these operations on language hide nothing but the fact that they hide nothing, except what they present in plain sight. They are phrases formed in distorted language that, by failing to describe drone metal, communicate something about the status of language in relation to the experience of sound. As Michel de Certeau writes of the famous Hieronymous Bosch painting, the secret of The Garden [of Earthly Delights] is to make you believe that it possesses some sayable secret –​or rather to promise one secret (meanings hidden from the understanding) in place of another (the enjoyment given to the eye). (Certeau 1992a: 52, italics in original)

In drone metal, estrangement from language produces a place which is vague and indeterminate, in part due to that self-​perceived or attempted exile from the structures of language. Ambiguity here is both recognition of power and source of power, as a space where profound effects or experiences are possible. The mystical power of ambiguity resists reduction to language, tests its edges, and offers productive possibilities in that escape while remaining an undeniable fact of bodily vibration. Echoing Certeau’s description of Bosch, one interviewee described drone metal as ‘a sound that just is. There’s no dynamics, there’s no . . . hidden messages. It’s not phenomenological, it just is. It just is’ (SX2, Interview, 2014).

Other times Talk about listening frequently depicts ancientness, as if drone metal transported the listener to imagined ancient cultures or prehistoric eras. Versions of this archaism appear in imagery that suggests lengthy passages of time, such as ruined temples or the movement of tectonic plates. Less common, but still in evidence, are phrases about the far future, again with emphasis on estrangement from the present. Changed perceptions of time frequently arise in descriptions of drone metal. Listeners report experiencing expanded timescales, time stopping, disappearing or being destroyed, or combinations of these modes: The whole thing [a SunnO))) concert] sounded like it was one or two or three songs maximum, but like, stretched out over the time of a century. (SK22, Interview, 2014)



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[In listening to Sleep’s Jerusalem] Time evaporates. Time is to the listener what colour is to the man who has been blind from birth. It is not a fact; there is no instance of it in his experience. (Blindaz 2012)

Setting descriptions of listening in distant past epochs allow listeners to assert difference from a perceived normative ordinariness in their everyday working and social lives, as well as from ‘ordinary’ kinds of music and popular culture: OC: What is it about the sound that makes it sound ‘ancient’ [as you described]? B25: . . . I think that if the core business of this music is the meditation, the dreaming off, you know getting to another state of things with sound, then Bong has a specific flavour. (B25, Interview, 2013)

For this listener, ancientness has religious connotations related to meditation and dreaming, which are in turn also alterations of consciousness, understood explicitly as access to a sense of otherness. Changes in perception of scale, time and space, are nevertheless related to changes in perception of the everyday. In a press interview, Tanya Byrne of the band Bismuth discusses the relation between altered conceptions of time and everyday concerns: There are two main themes that seem to creep into our lyrics. One is of a more personal nature, a way of dealing with what happens in life. The other is about the vastness of the universe, how our existence is really nothing measured on the scale of space time. I  study planetary science and the scale and scope of geological time is breath-​taking. It makes my worries seem insignificant. . . . For years it [the element Bismuth] was thought to be stable but it’s actually now known to be radioactive, with a half-​life a billion times the age of the universe. We thought that fact suited our sound, as we play so slowly. (Byrne in Merchants of Air 2015)

These various differences in time all share a sense of drastic remoteness from other aspects of experiencing life. The scales and evocations of distant time can also shift between different modes, further enhancing the sense of alterity and dislocation from the ordinary: Their ceremonial aspect seems very primal and matches in that way with the sound they produce. The whole thing looks and sounds like a universal growl, lasting for billions of years. (SK22, Survey, 2013)

The descriptors ‘ceremonial’ and ‘primal’ suggest a connection to past times and cultures, while the hyperbolic description of ‘billions of years’ describes (in

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present tense) an excessive experience of time as well as a connection to distant eras. Later, the same interviewee appealed to primal essences and returning to previous times connected with ‘aboriginals’ and ‘tribal shamans’, drugs, and bodily techniques of trance: OC: What was important about [the concert] being so exhausting? SK22: Well because if I look at the SunnO))) thing they have a very primal essence to their music. And I think they like to return to a time when there were shamans and all that, and experimented with mind-​expanding substances and all that. Trying to recreate those experiences by using certain techniques with their own bodies. And I think, most likely, one of those experiences was, like, exhaustion. The aboriginals did it and I’m certain a lot of other tribal shamans did it as well. And I think this is a recreation of those experiences by utterly exhausting the mind, and just, clearing, clearing all obstacles in the mind, to come to a one-​pointed trance. Then use that trance to work towards a certain goal. (SK22, Interview, 2014)

A significant feature in this and other ambiguous evocations of premodern social groups is that musicians are understood as involved in a revival or extension of practices that are not only ancient, but also implicitly universal across different cultures. These archaic techniques are imagined as currently hidden or lost to the modern world but, via drone metal and perhaps other routes, are still available for rediscovery and contemporary reuse: Drone is, kind of, like eternal music. In the way that it stops time. It tends to stop time because of all the repetitive aspects of it. . . . It’s such a wall of sound that you’re forced to abandon notions of space and time, and I guess that’s meditative in and of itself. (SX2, Interview, 2014)

A connection with ancientness, other cultures and altered consciousness is felt through drone metal, and therefore the experience evoked is understood as unrestricted to distant times and cultures but as eternal, universal and transtemporal.

Other spaces As discussed in Chapter 3, many music scenes, including metal subgenres, draw important values and resources from translocal connections. However, in these ways of ‘gesturing elsewhere’ (Baulch 2003: 205), the communal focus of participants tends to be on particular elsewheres such as forested, mountainous Nordic



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landscapes for black metal produced around the world, even when such connections are more imaginary than material. The evocations of alterity in drone metal’s scattered translocal discursive community could also be described as gesturing elsewhere. But rather than appealing to a specific other place, elsewheres in drone metal discourse are generalized, imagined as anywhere that is ‘other’, without definite connection to a specific place or time. Listeners are ‘transported to another place, another time; an archaic time among the sandy dunes and the incense fumes, in which all humanity began’ (Heka 2012). One Earth track title (which itself is taken from Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 novel Blood Meridian (2011), a tale of endless journeying) suggests that drone metal transports listeners to a ‘Land of Some Other Order’ (a track title from Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method, Earth 2005). There is little distinction between imaginative portrayals of global otherness and appeals to more self-​ consciously fictional and mythical narratives. Actual places are fictionalized, and fictional narratives are treated as serious representations or analogies for experience (even when described in humorous terms). Other fantastic journeys in literary universes are invoked, both as imaginary universes understood as congruent with the experience of drone metal, and as texts which are considered to be especially appropriate for reading while listening to drone metal. Frank Herbert’s novel Dune (1981), which incorporates deserts, space and substances with narcotic/​spiritual significance, fits well with many conspicuous themes in drone metal discourse and was mentioned by several listeners. H. P. Lovecraft’s weird ancient gods breaking through the boundaries of the world (Lovecraft 2000a, 2000b, 2000c) appear in all heavy metal subgenres, and occur frequently in drone metal albums and reviews, including in discussion of music which makes no explicit reference to those fictional worlds. One survey respondent stated about Om: ‘I’ve often used their music while studying the Bible and other texts and it can sometimes really fit into the whole frame of mind of devotional study’ (O94, Survey, 2013). The choice of verb ‘use’ rather than listen is significant in expressing a function and effect of drone metal listening in relation to an active engagement with religious texts or other texts which evoke imagined alterity. In each connection, whether religious or fantastical, the crucial element is radical strangeness. As one reviewer notes without naming any particular location, drone metal is ‘music from another country’ (Fantano in Om –​ Advaitic Songs Album Review 2012). The kinds of landscapes that emerge can be understood in terms of their distance from the urban or suburban: mountains, deserts, oceans and forests are all conceptually and often geographically distant from the environments

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in which most people listen to drone metal. The important common element is a perceived distance from an ostensibly ‘normal’, modern, urban context. India, Africa (and Ethiopia and Egypt, if particular African countries are named), Tibet, ‘Arabia’ and the Middle East (described with these phrases, rather than particular country names) are most often mentioned, places which for many listeners imply ancientness, particularly in a Western European, orientalist, postcolonial imagination. That these are imaginative fictions rather than historical comparisons is emphasized by the prevalence of visions, hallucinations and dreams in descriptions of places. Frequently, the exotic nature of these locations is stressed, occasionally approaching somewhat racist stereotyping: Opener [of Om’s album Advaitic Songs] ‘Addis’ cites Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital and the primitive, sparse instrumentation give you a better impression of the city than any po-​faced, two-​dimensional guide book ever could. As bongo drums and a drawn out, mournful cello weave among a sultry female vocal in an unidentifiable language, one can almost feel the searing African heat, the slow grind of daily life and the splendid isolation our imaginary wanderer must feel. (Viney 2012)

Here, the lone figure representing ‘us’ (‘our imaginary wanderer’) is reminiscent of anthropological narratives of contact with exotic peoples and their apparently intriguing but dangerous practices. As with the signalling of ancient time through traces in the present, the other spaces and peoples are sometimes described with a narrative of encounter, with drone metal transporting listeners from ‘here’ to ‘there’, or from ‘us’ to ‘them’ (see Coggins 2014: 38–​9 for an analysis of this example specifically). Meeting with cultural alterity in the music is another way that drone metal offers access to imagined ancientness, if fleetingly and with a sense of mystery and opacity retained. Reviews of drone metal concerts and recordings often feature references to such practices as Tibetan chanting, African drumming, trance music rituals, ‘Aboriginal music’, and numerous mentions of generically described tribes, primitives, and indigenous or ancient peoples. These kinds of references evoke a spatio-​temporal otherness, constructed as premodern and representing access to certain ways of life or practices. Often assumed to be connected to religiosity, ritual or spirituality, these imagined traditional ways of life are presumed to offer an enchantment which is lacking in urban modernity, but which may be suggested or potentially restored in drone metal. While Bong and Om use instruments developed in or associated with India, these are frequently



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arbitrarily attributed to other geographical origins linked by an apparent indiscriminate exoticism. Languages are misidentified or, as in the quote above, implied to be categorically unidentifiable. Any monotonous, low vocals are interchangeably equated with religious chanting by Tibetan, Gregorian, Hindu or Byzantine monks, or by druids and shamans from unspecified locations and eras. The names of India, Africa and Tibet are often used as mere indexes of exotic otherness rather than as historically informed references to particular sonic or spiritual traditions. Descriptors shift easily from specific to generalized otherness:  in one review ‘the Indian instrumentation used by Bong is otherworldly in texture and depth’ (Cherylprime 2012), for example, while a survey respondent suggested of Om that: Maybe they’re just playing with the stereotypical mysteriousness of ‘other’ religions. (O93, Survey, 2013)

The interchangeability of exotic others demonstrates that assumptions of transcultural, essential and universal foundation lie behind such descriptions and influence listeners’ perception and experience of drone metal. Some listeners did have more extensive personal experience of the places which they connected to the drone metal imaginary. One listener spoke of the ‘desertscapes’ common in reviews of Om’s Advaitic Songs (2012) reminding him of actual experiences in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. He described the ruins at Petra as being particularly resonant with drone metal experience, as ‘a scene, that’s been there for thousands of years or hundreds of years, and will exist for thousands or hundreds of years once you’re gone’ (O84, Interview, 2013). In the evocation of elsewheres, even when connected to individuals’ own experiences, then, a further sense of distance, mystery and otherness is asserted in drawing comparison with drone metal. One survey respondent, unimpressed by an Om concert in Istanbul, pinpointed the ironies of the presentation and reception of appropriated exoticisms: To me, as someone from the lands that they’d taken the theme from, it just doesn’t look interesting at all. (O126, Survey, 2014)

Among the general elsewheres, similar kinds of locations or landscapes are frequently mentioned. Deserts, mountains, oceans and also other planets (which are often in turn described in terms of deserts, mountains and oceans) feature strongly, again united by their distance from urban settings in which the majority of drone metal listening usually takes place. A  lack of human inhabitation is the norm for artwork and imagined themes, with

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landscapes often completely empty or featuring a solitary individual in vast space. Earth’s Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method (2005) sleeve features images of Monument Valley’s vast rocky outcrops in the United States, and the album cover of Primitive & Deadly (2014) is an altered photograph of a rocky landscape with luminous colours and three moons evident in the sky, situating it as another world while perhaps also referencing Arik Roper’s design for Dopesmoker (2012), which also features multiple moons above a desertscape. These albums are described by listeners with reference to these imagined landscapes, and so are other albums which make no such visual or verbal references. Rather than merely reproducing visual tropes from album covers, the connections between sound and description in terms of landscapes of otherness is a mutually influencing feedback loop. Sounds which evoke vast open spaces are then accompanied by artwork which seems fitting because it reflects such scenes, in turn reinforcing the connections for listeners between those kinds of sounds and those kinds of imagined places. References such as these make sense to their audiences, resonating with their own experiences, and so are more likely to gain a certain currency or communicative validity, such that they will become accepted and understood conventions of discourse surrounding the music, thus further informing future reception and interpretation. Ommadon’s 2014 album V features track titles ‘I’ and ‘II,’ and a black-​on-​black cover displaying just the title and band name. Despite this minimalist presentation, however, the record still attracts descriptions and reviews which relate spatial/​planetary metaphors to altered states of consciousness: [In Ommadon’s album V] everything gets celestial, feeling as if it’s floating off and into orbit, and the music becomes sleep inducing in the best possible way. That doesn’t mean it dulls you. Rather, it intoxicates, sort of like how your mind feels after a few strong beers. (Krasman 2014)

References to mountains and geological processes are connected to sonic aspects of Earth’s music: ‘a glacially slow pace’ (Schalek 2014), ‘seismic drumming’ (Oliver 2014), ‘a tempo equivalent to that of a recently set adrift iceberg’ (Lord 2014), ‘seismic tonal terror’ and ‘jagged and tectonic riffs’ (Dick 2014), and: [Dylan Carlson’s guitar sound is] not only big but also topographically rich; you could study the curves and crags of his sound as if you were reading a three-​ dimensional map of the Cascade Range. (Currin 2014) [Om drummer Emil Amos’s] ride cymbal peals like church bells and his toms roll like the mountain ridges of East Jerusalem. (Graham 2012)



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Drone metal evokes other spaces defined by their otherness, and it evokes spaciousness and scales of apprehending space that are understood as beyond the normal, just as it conjures other times as well as other ways of comprehending time.

Other states Spatial and temporal elsewheres are often combined or complemented with other modes of alterity, as will already be clear from many examples so far in this chapter. These other states of bodily consciousness include sleep, visions, dreams, sickness, hallucinations and drugs, as well as imaginatively excessive narratives relating to the body. Literary fiction and other imaginative and fantastic arts are also important avenues to elsewhere. These references to self-​ consciously invented worlds of otherness also reprise the same kinds of themes that have already been discussed such as mysterious and powerful deities and journeys across mythical deserts or mountains. Some reports are doubly othered, such as descriptions of hallucinatory visions that are themselves located in fictional literature. The phrase ‘altered states of consciousness’ is not always ideal, since it may imply an overly stable, fixed and normative conception of ‘ordinary’ consciousness. I  retain the phrase here, however, because it usefully groups together a number of states which are discussed in talking about drone metal, which listeners specifically mark as extraordinary in opposition to perceived ordinariness. In this context, sickness and sleep may be understood as extraordinary, even though not at all uncommon, due to their sometimes strange effects on body and consciousness, while hallucinations and drug experiences may have similar results. In a state of semi-​consciousness, its [Om album Advaitic Songs] sacred cadence causing spiritual arousal, its silken refrain moaning in my ears, the smell of illusory incense lapping at my nose as I lie writhing in bed, resenting the meditative rhythms for being loud enough to keep me from sleep yet hypnotic enough to prevent my awakening. (Graham 2012)

Description of sleep often leads on to other kinds of dreams and visions, through which the imaginative elsewheres previously described (mountains, deserts, ancient times, etc.) can be visited. Trance and meditation are often mentioned in this respect too, sometimes by experienced practitioners, though more often by those who draw upon a vocabulary of meditation despite little familiarity with

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such practices themselves. This consciousness of the body reveals something of a contrast between, on the one hand, the language of description which constantly gestures elsewhere and, on the other, reports of a heightened consciousness of a bodily here and now, vibrating in one particular place. At several concerts, and occasionally listening to recordings (if not otherwise engaged with writing or other tasks), I  found that I  would sometimes inadvertently begin to visualize landscapes consonant with the conventions of drone metal elsewheres described here (often in large scale, featuring mountainous landscapes and ruins). This seemed a particularly strong feature of drone metal and other drone concerts, as long, extended and fairly constant pieces without jarring changes allowed this kind of mental activity to slowly develop. In addition, the volume and darkness of live performances precluded many forms of verbal and visual communication or other distractions. In fact, during some performances which featured images projected onto a screen behind the performers, I found it slightly disappointing because the provided images felt imposed and an obstacle to more spontaneous or personal mental imagery. Several other listeners, in conversations, interviews and in published reviews, have stated a similar preference for darkness and imaginary visuals over screens, photographs, animation or film. At times, such changing internal visions would relate to particular artworks associated with the musician I  was watching as a departure point. In other cases I  would remember listeners’ descriptions of experience in similar visionary terminology, and related imagery might appear. While playing a lengthy Ommadon track during a seminar, I was reminded of the striking phrase from a survey about Bong: ‘Listening to [album] Mana-​Yood-​ Sushai makes me want to be a tree’ (B13, Survey, 2013), as the room overlooked a park with several large trees just outside the window. Listening in this public yet introspective setting, the appearance of trees and the memory of the survey respondent’s strange description prompted me to imagine being a tree (or to try and imagine what imagining being a tree would be like) within the experience of the music. This was a way of attempting to understand that listener’s response, but also an experiment in my own listening which was led by unexpectedly connecting aspects of the listening situation with a remembered comment from talk about drone metal. A related influence through body language was also evident at concerts, where seeing other audience members make movements or gestures along with the music enhanced the intensity of my own bodily and conscious engagement with the sound, in some cases inciting myself or others to move similarly. Other participants mentioned instances where their experiences of music were influenced by visible signs of others’ reception. An attendee



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at a Bong concert was intrigued by another listener breathing in time with the music, mentioning that this observation had added to his own experience, drawing him into the music and making him conscious of his own breathing and its relation to the sound. This influence could conversely work to disengage listeners from sound too, and concert attendees expressed irritation when inattentive audiences disrupted their own absorption in music. While this is common in many forms of music, it was again stated to me by several listeners that other people’s conversations were particularly distracting when they were wishing to concentrate on drone metal shows. This integration of musical experience with a consciousness of others’ reception demonstrates the extent to which the language and gestures of response form a social and communicative context in which listening experience is produced. Illness can give rise to altered consciousness in listening as well as being used as a metaphorical figure to describe the experience produced in drone metal listening. Occasionally, sickness is spoken of as somehow contributing to the experience of live performances, or as analogous to it in some way. Concert attendees who happened to be affected by illness while at gigs or festivals described a heightened sensitivity to the extreme sound, and while this was not always described as enjoyable, neither is drone metal experience in general. The first ten minutes or so [of the Gravetemple performance] I was still standing, when everything started to give up. I’ve smoked way worse things and done way more terrible things to my body, so when I realized my legs were shaking and I felt like I was about to piss my pants. Mad at myself, because I didn’t feel I was that fucked up yet, I sat down and started to feel nauseous. So I did my thing, respiration and meditation, and didn’t throw up. . . . The whole thing was brutal and terrible and the most resonant (harhar) experience I’ve had at Roadburn. It took forever to finish . . . I had been taking pain medication for days (nothing strong, but taxing), couldn’t sleep (tooth aches, travel preparation), and spent many hours of cumbersome travel. I was at my lowest and had no expectations. (G13, Survey, 2013)

Somewhat similar was my own experience of seeing Sleep perform at the very end of the 2015 Desertfest in London, as I had been feeling feverish and unwell for the three days of the festival. Knowing that it was my first and possibly only chance to see Sleep perform live, I struggled through the day and even fell asleep during the prior (very loud) band Ufomammut. Sickness for me added a sense of urgency to the anticipation of the performance (wanting to see the band, but also wanting to have seen the band so I could go home). Though far from ideal or pleasant, the heat of the crowd in addition to the fever produced a strange

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sense of simultaneous intensity and detachment, particularly when the band opened their set with twenty-​five minutes of Dopesmoker (2003) and the densely packed crowd started energetically flailing and pushing. Extending the theme of sickness, drone metal listening produces descriptions of extreme bodily effects. Actual or imaginatively exaggerated damage to the body is reported in concert reviews, and elaborately hyperbolic tales are told of listening to recordings causing physical pain and bodily destruction. From the context and the prevalence of these enthusiastic and lurid descriptions of metaphorical violence against the listening self, readers are expected to understand the convention that extremity of response is coded as approval, indicating the power of the music: If you ever, genuinely, wanted to be drowned in sound a SunnO))) gig would do it. You could feel your lungs fill with waves. Feel the aqueous humor form into ripples. Feel the blood ripple. Feel your body liquefy. (Doran 2009) WARNING –​WILL INDUCE BOWEL EVACUATION I decide to give this [Sleep album Dopesmoker] a try and it absolutely DESTROYED MY BOWELS. I shat myself in its heaviness and awesomeness. (Gothus 2009) Her skull was droned away! (G23, Interview, 2013)

Occasionally these imagined extreme bodily effects are extended to a sexualized register: It was an hour long full body orgasm; the vibrations made my bones feel fuzzy (O18, Survey, 2013) It’s hard to describe exactly how I felt when the clean break, well, broke and an absolutely massive, MASSIVE beast of a riff just came along and slapped me around with its epic cock. (Caspian 2008)

A few listeners related drone metal experience to sex, in surveys or written interviews. Concerts were compared to sex (SX7, Survey, 2013), described as a ‘primal, almost religious . . . almost sexual experience!’ (N65, Survey, 2013), as ‘ecstatic, orgasmic’ (N26, Interview, 2013). In interviews, descriptions of extreme bodily effects were more likely to be reports of actual unusual corporeal effects noticed at concerts. These included having difficulty breathing, noticing different areas of the body vibrating differently, or being unable to move or swallow. In one case, a SunnO))) concert attendee experienced sonic pressure in his chest, and discovered the following



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day that his lung had collapsed. SunnO))) in particular are noted for tales of live sound inducing ‘vomit and other bodily evacuation’ (Necci 2012). At the band’s performances I observed extreme responses, including people appearing transfixed, collapsing or running away. After the band’s set on the Saturday night of the 2015 Temples festival, stories circulated among the crowd about listeners with nosebleeds, people losing consciousness, and dead pigeons falling into the crowd, having been dislodged from the roof of the warehouse venue by the vibrations. Volume levels reportedly reached 220 decibels, way above potentially injurious limits (Bowes 2015: 45). While some stories of this kind are probably apocryphal or exaggerated, some are certainly true. In any case, it is significant that they are so readily and enthusiastically retold, again showing the importance of physical impact in the rhetoric of drone metal discourse. Drugs and the language of drug experience feature in evocations of drone metal elsewheres. Listeners talk about drone metal in a variety of ways that refer to drug experiences, with some bands or recordings particularly associated with certain intoxicating substances. Extremely influential in drone metal is Sleep’s Dopesmoker (2003). The lyrics make unmistakable and repeated references to marijuana consumption and the packaging for one version includes a picture of a coconut ‘chalice’ or pipe used for smoking (Sleep 1998a). Al Cisneros, bassist for Om and Sleep, rarely speaks to concert audiences between songs except for occasionally exhorting the crowd to smoke weed. Though there are no explicit mentions in their recordings, the band Bong are also associated with the drug due to their name (which is also somewhat onomatopoeic). SunnO))) are noted for their habit of drinking red wine on stage, directly from a bottle passed between the musicians and accompanied with stylized gestures. Several interviewees mentioned that they understood this to be somehow sacramental, related somehow to the consumption of Christian communion wine and/​or to blood. Earth’s recordings up to 1996 are held by many listeners to have been influenced by Dylan Carlson’s heroin use, with the effects perceived to have contributed to slow musical structures and long periods of distortion. Following a hiatus of nearly a decade, Earth’s album Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method (2005) introduced a new style, similarly slow but characterized by reverb rather than distortion, which would continue for the next four albums. Journalists (e.g. Beta 2008) and drone metal listeners (G15, Interview, 2013)  attributed the change to Carlson ceasing to use heroin, linking sound to speculation about intoxication. Listeners also sometimes relate their own drug experiences to drone metal listening, though there are a range of practices and viewpoints. Several review

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writers assume that particular drone metal recordings are intended for those who use marijuana, report that their own use enhances listening, or recommend the use of marijuana in conjunction with the music. Live the experience [of the Bong performance] (combined with my intoxication) hypnotised me completely. My chin sunk into my chest and the room became distant. At no point did I wish for the drone to cease. (B29, Survey, 2013) Even though it [Dopesmoker] is a long song, it will keep you interested IF YOU ARE IN THE RIGHT STATE OF MIND (e.g. either stoned or extremely mellowed out) because it is what I call a ‘musical trip’, it will take you to many different places within your own mind. (Anus 2007) It would be wise to roll a joint whilst listening to Dopesmoker, because while high, every time this riff chugs on, it’s more amazing than the last. (Vargtorna 2009)

Other drugs are occasionally mentioned. Alcohol featured in some listeners’ descriptions of ideal listening contexts or reports of concerts. In the pubs, bars and concert venues where fieldwork was conducted, though, alcohol is an ordinary, expected and unremarkable aspect of social interaction and concert attendance, and as such was not often mentioned despite its ubiquity. The most sustained interview description of alcohol use in private listening was about absinthe, an unusual and not widely consumed form of alcohol, which can have hallucinatory effects (G15, Interview, 2013). Thus alcohol only tended to be mentioned in cases where it was extraordinary, such as with the interviewee’s own absinthe consumption, or with the observations of SunnO)))’s sharing of red wine on stage. In each of these cases, connections were made with ritual and religion. Several listeners used language related to drugs when discussing listening experiences where drugs were not consumed. Drone metal is described as like drug experiences by people who take those drugs, by people who used to take those drugs, and by people who have never taken those drugs: Overheard . . . ‘have you heard them before? Ah they’re amazing, make you feel toasted even if you’re not . . . really like transcendental feel’. (Fieldnotes, Bong performance, 14 July 2013) I have never smoked weed in my life and I think this record [Dopesmoker] rules. (Collins 2006) I haven’t had a bowl of ganja in just about thirty years, but I remember the general haze and buzz quite well. . . . I would suspect a little herbal enhancement wouldn’t hurt, but I  like it as the straight sober fifty-​one-​year-​old nerd I  am. (Hedegard 2012)



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Well, I started the album [Dopesmoker] off sober and ended blazed. Sixty-​three-​ minute out-​of-​body experience. I got high off the notes. (Dave 2006)

The appearance of drug-​related language in the reports of people who no longer take drugs, or have never taken drugs, shows that the rhetoric of drug experience has significance beyond the actual practice of drug-​taking in drone metal. This has been observed in other musical contexts, including psytrance (Sylvan 2002: 165) and in metal moshpits, where extreme music accompanied by vigorous bodily participation music is described as offering a physical high analogous to narcotic intoxication (Riches 2015: 270). Drugs provide another vocabulary in which to discuss sensations of otherness. Parallels between descriptions of drug-​ induced states and the ways of describing drone metal experience discussed in this chapter can be seen clearly in colloquial terminology for taking drugs. Examples such as ‘tripping’, being ‘out of it’ or ‘off your head’ refer to exoticism and journeying, while getting ‘wasted’ or ‘ruined’ are metaphors which echo the rhetoric of bodily damage used to speak about drone metal. Further, mentions of drug states were also frequently connected with the language of ritual, spirituality and mysticism. Literary and other artistic references made in reviews and in musical products also visit the same kinds of drone metal elsewheres. Bong in particular make repeated trips to the fantasy worlds of Lord Dunsany and H. P. Lovecraft, and it is significant that they choose stories, fragments and titles from tales in which characters are involved in dreamlike quests, or where boundaries between vision and reality are unclear, even within the fictional framework. Bong’s album Idle Days on the Yann (2013a) is named after a Dunsany story of the same name telling of a trip along a river visiting fantastic cities. The track ‘Polaris’ from the album Stoner Rock (2014) takes its title and a recited quote during the song from Lovecraft’s story, also called ‘Polaris’ (2000b), which tells of a dreamer not knowing which world is real. The story, reprinted in full in an album cover insert which also features a strange landscape painting by artist Zdzisław Beksiński (1981), traverses similar thematic elsewheres of time, landscapes and stars. The fragment selected for inclusion in the track itself ends with a line combining visions, dreams, strange locations and vast temporal scale: I have failed in my duties, and betrayed the marble city of Olathoe. I have proven false to Atos, my friend and commander. They say there is no land of Lomar, save in my nocturnal imaginings, that in these realms where the Pole Star shines high, and red Aldebaran crawls low around the horizon, there has been naught

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save ice and snow for thousands of years. (Lovecraft 2000a, as recited in Bong track ‘Polaris’ [2014] and quoted in album sleeve)

Using art which has a connection to imaginary elsewheres also emphasizes a kind of fictional as well as imaginary distancing. On the cover of Bong’s Mana-​ Yood-​Sushai (2012) is a picture of Kanchenjunga, a mountain considered sacred by some. The image is a cropped section of a painting of the mountain by Nicholas Roerich,1 an artist whose work often involved visions of the Himalayas inhabited by otherworldly religious figures. There is a further intertextual link to H. P. Lovecraft, particularly given the mountain context, since Lovecraft repeatedly mentions Roerich’s artworks in describing the fantastic landscape of his story ‘At the Mountains of Madness’, with which we can assume Bong are also familiar (Lovecraft 2000a: 16, 25, 44, 57, 59, 136). Listeners spoke of other album covers and aesthetic choices as starting points for imaginary travels: The cover [of Bong album Stoner Rock, 2014, artwork by Beksiński, 1981] has a mysterious Mayan temple on it which seems to be accessible only by walking through an elephant’s graveyard . . . The second of the two songs echoes the woooming of the first, continuing to document the death rattle of each of the elephants from the front cover. A single chord runs on and on and on and on and on and on and on . . . the bleak stillness of the black beaches from the end of Get Carter is being interrupted only by that machine endlessly conveying slag out to sea in the depths of a northern winter. (Fidanza 2014) It sets you on more of an associative journey. Because the first time I  looked at that Beyond Ancient Space record, and I was just, completely gathered in, by those few lines of text [from a fantastic Lord Dunsany short story], and I could paint images in my mind right from the start. (B25, Interview, 2013)

Both literary references and artwork become starting points for similar dreamlike explorations while listening and while describing listening, whether or not listeners are familiar with the original sources. So while each reference may not be traced to original sources or intentions, they provide resources or prompts for listeners’ own explorations of elsewhere.

Elsewheres traversed: Drone metal pilgrimage A frequent and significant characteristic of these thematic modes of alterity in drone metal discourse is that elsewheres are not merely imagined but traversed, journeyed through, or travelled beyond. Through their descriptions of other times,



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other places, other states of consciousness, other ways of inhabiting their bodies, other imaginary worlds in literary fiction, art and intoxicated excess, listeners respond to drone metal in ways that suggest profound journeys of the imaginary. These journeys are often inflected with ideas about mysticism and ritual, and are therefore often rendered as pilgrimage. This is a feature of many excerpts from interviews, conversations, reviews and surveys already quoted in this chapter, where listeners report ‘dreaming off, getting to another state of things’ (B25, Interview, 2013), spanning centuries, returning to ancient times, being transported to exotic places, departing on associative journeys and moving through interchangeable and shifting literary, artistic and imagined worlds in sound. Here I will discuss pilgrimage, first in terms of how the theme is introduced and used in recordings, and then how it is pictured in the language of listeners responding to changed experiences of time, space and the body. The vocabulary of sacred journeying is selected as an appropriate (if not perfect) manner of expression from linguistic resources available to listeners, resources constituted by previous ways of talking about similar sonic experience and the imagery and language associated with recordings. The imagery of pilgrimage appears in drone metal albums from early in the subgenre’s development. Sleep’s Jerusalem/​Dopesmoker (1996/​2003) was in 1996 already drawing lyrical links between Old Testament–​style desert caravans, outer space, marijuana experience and heavy metal (‘follow the smoke toward the riff-​filled land’). The lyrics even include a subtle reference to Rastafari by mentioning ‘groundation’, a ritual meeting in that tradition. The use of alternate titles Jerusalem and Dopesmoker for the same piece of music (later used interchangeably by listeners discussing the music) also suggests a conflation of pilgrimage destination with drug intoxication. The album covers of the four versions suggested various kinds of elsewheres. The first displayed a mountain and desert with a hovering cross image (1998b). The second showed a turbaned figure bowing down to a fire (1998a), or as one reviewer described it, ‘an old-​style religious picture of an old man grasping for his bong’ (Sam-​O))) 2012). The third portrayed a swordsman riding a four-​headed horse, understood in one review as a Lovecraftian image of ‘Cthulhu on a horse with a snake sword’ (Darkwülf 2012). Finally, the fourth version reprised a similar scene to the first, with a desert pilgrimage scene also suggesting Frank Herbert’s Dune world (especially the cover of the 1981 edition). In addition to the lyrical themes, artistic depictions and musical evocations of pilgrimage, the existence of (at least) four versions of the long song provoke shifts in reference when speaking of each or all. Neologisms in the chanted lyrics make further conflations, with ‘hasheeshian’ suggesting a connection between religion and hashish, while ‘marijuanaut’

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conflates space travel with intoxication. The latter connection is further emphasized with a sense of traversal directly connected to listening at the start of recent performances. When performing in London in 2015, 2016 and 2017, before the band took to the stage a ‘mission control’ style recording was played over the PA system, suggesting that the audience were waiting not only for a live drone metal performance but to be propelled on some interplanetary journey. Om continued these kinds of references with their albums Pilgrimage (2007) and Conference of the Birds (2006), the latter named after a Persian Sufi allegory of birds journeying towards God. Track titles ‘Gebel Barkal’ (Gebel Barkal, Om 2008), ‘Sinai’ (Advaitic Songs, Om 2012) and ‘Annapurna’ (Variations on a Theme, Om 2005) all refer to specific holy mountains, with ‘On the Mountain at Dawn’ (Variations on a Theme, Om 2005)  evoking a more general image. Meanwhile sacred places from different traditions are referenced, ranging from the garden in which Christ prayed before crucifixion in ‘Gethsemane’ (Advaitic Songs, Om 2012), to places in ancient Egypt in ‘At Giza’ (Conference of the Birds, Om 2006) and ‘Thebes’ (God Is Good, Om 2009), to sites where funerary rites are performed beside rivers on ‘Cremation Ghat I & II’ (God Is Good, Om 2009). The unusual style of Om’s lyrics feature cryptic statements characterized by ambiguously shifting syntax, in a kind of eternal present tense, using many verbs relating to departure and movement: The flight to freedom gradient raise the called ascendant. And reach supreme the coalesced eye into surrender. Centripetal core of soul sojourn the field vibrates to absolution. I climb toward the sun to breathe the universal. (Om 2005)

This lyrical style was highlighted by one listener in an interview as overtly and deliberately ambiguous: Om lyrics are very very strange to say the least. . . . You don’t always seem to be able to make out who the subjects to the verbs are, sentences seem incomplete, etc. It’s as if they are trying to stage ‘fragmentarity’ linguistically. (O40, Interview, 2013)

Promotional images of the band SunnO))) further this aesthetic of ambiguous pilgrimage. One, included as a poster in the 2009 album Monoliths & Dimensions, features four robed and hooded musicians atop the Temple of the Sun at Teotihuacán in Mexico, possibly a play on the words sun/​sunn as suggested by one survey respondent (SK28, Survey, 2013). Another image shows two similarly attired figures walking in profile with guitars over their shoulders,



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and a third displays the band’s amplifiers set up in place of the altar for a performance in Bergen Cathedral. Each image suggests sacred journeys, destinations, dress and practice. Earth have included similar suggestions of journeys, such as in the photograph of a vast sky above Mongolian plains on Earth 2 (1993), and in the cars that feature on albums Phase 3: Thrones and Dominions (1995a) and Pentastar: In the Style of Demons (1996). Most notably, the album Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method (2005) features imagery of barns, horses, Monument Valley and other scenes of the American West, and draws many of its track titles from Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian (2011), which itself narrates incessant travels through wild landscapes.2 Bong based the album Idle Days on the Yann on a visionary river journey (Bong 2013), while the cover of Bismuth’s split release with Undersmile (2013) features a solitary wanderer in front of a gargantuan forest. The band Journey to Ixtlan are named after the Castañeda book which details a New Age spiritual quest while blurring the boundaries between the study of tradition and ritual practice itself, and between fiction and research (1974). Another band name, Across Tundras, also evokes wilderness travels, and the guitarist of the band, T. G. Olson, recorded another drone metal album based on the same McCarthy novel that inspired Earth. This was titled Blood Meridian for Electric Drone Guitar (2012), stretched across four CDs and constituted an ‘epic sound recording [which] follows every massive landscape and every bit of dirt and grime and every senseless murderous act in the name of Westward expansion that is found in the actual pages’ (Across Tundras 2013). Examples of journeys abound in drone metal productions. Themes relating to journeys often appear in conversation about listening to drone metal, combining ideas about moving between other places, other relationships with time and other states of consciousness. Often this traversal is described with conscious religious overtones as pilgrimage, and in other ways imaginary journeys are given weighty significance, even if destinations or religious purposes are unclear: I always find it [drone metal] does take me on a journey more, because you get that, the slow long build-​up, and then a sort of tumultuous climax to the middle and end, and then a drift off. So, rather than just segmented songs, you get this . . . well, I feel like it’s a journey, to me. I mean, as an example, SunnO))), who I’ve seen before many times, I can be taken on a journey with them. It’s quite static on stage, so you’re just letting the volume, the sheer volume of the music take you on a journey. I’ve found myself before now, many times at their concerts, with eyes closed, just feeling that blast all around me. (N17, Interview, 2013)

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The song’s cyclical riffing and recurring intonations invoke the divine search for transcendent horizons . . . For sixty-​three minutes, Dopesmoker explores vast, mesmeric landscapes. As with any monumental trek, the experience of that expedition is entirely different for every single participant. (Hayes 2012) [Om’s] expansive, audible journeys functioned through cyclical bass rhythm and a voluminous clangor of percussion, maintaining a meditative drone of instrumentation that seemed isolated as in prayer or internalized reflection. (Caldwell 2012) I felt like I connected in a spiritual way at the [Om] show due to me wanting to just close my eyes through most of it and imagine being in another world –​like an astral journey as opposed to a physical body journey. (O59, Survey, 2013)

The effects of sound produce descriptions of journeys connected with spirituality. In some cases, listeners drew connection with their own experience of physical pilgrimage within established religion: The samples of chanting in the opening track [of the Om performance] are taken from Muslim pilgrims arriving at Mecca for Hajj/​Ummrah; this reminded me strongly of my own visit to Mecca for Ummrah, which was a powerful experience, so I was reminded of these feelings during that section. (O84, Survey, 2013)

The arduousness of listening contributes to a sense of trial and traversal of obstacles with potential spiritual benefit. This can occur in completing the audition of a lengthy and monotonous recording, or in withstanding an abrasively textured and excessively loud live performance. The difficulty of listening is sometimes described as a kind of responsibility or necessary commitment, and listeners may report disappointment at giving up, or not being able to listen to a full album or performance. This often forms part of a retrospective narrative which has led to later successful endurance of a whole track or performance, with accompanying satisfaction or benefits gained. Less often, the lack of ability of others to withstand the noise is contrasted with one’s own, in a similar manner, to reinforce the importance and gains of lasting through a whole concert. These kinds of statements take place within the wider circulation of stories of extreme bodily responses. The sense of achievement is linked to time, in the sense of having endured for the period dictated by the length of a whole song that is far longer than most metal or popular music tracks, with a sense that the piece must be listened to in its entirety: When I put an album on, if I lose concentration halfway through I can switch to another album. But Bong are one of the very few bands where I have to finish the album if I started it. . . . I’m not sure what it is, it’s a case of I always want to get to the conclusion, I feel like I’ve achieved something. I don’t really want to say



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that because it makes it seem like I’m not enjoying the music, but, it feels like I’ve achieved something when I get to the end. (G17, Interview, 2013)

In the following example, commitment in time is indexed in two ways. The extended length of the particular track is commented upon as requiring commitment, as is the length of time (in years, the interviewee later clarified) it takes to become trained in appreciating what can be gained from this kind of listening. OC: Why did it take a long time to like Nadja? G12: Just listening to it. [2010 Nadja album] Thaumogenesis, it’s sixty-​four minutes long, so it needs a lot of effort. It took a long time to be open to it, and you need to when it’s long. The length is important for the effort required. (G12, Interview, 2013)

This sense of arduous trial is understood by listeners as part of the way in which drone metal listening affords benefits analogous to or indexical with pilgrimage. This kind of difficulty, which is even described as violence, is also described in relation to ritual, a feature of discourse that will be more fully explored in Chapter  6. Ritual and pilgrimage both involve separations from this-​worldly concerns, in the preparations listeners make to set aside time and space for listening, within the confines of a live performance, and also in the evocations of other places, times and states that are accessed and traversed. In one interviewee’s terms, ‘the repeating or the slow change of the drone sound leads to this ‘journey’ called experience’ (G23, Interview, 2013). Regarding otherness as an element of religious experience, Otto’s formulation of the numinous as something ‘wholly other’ (Otto 1958) may have been criticized in the study of religion (e.g. Smart 1978: 16), but the connection between mysticism or religion, and experiences of otherness and elsewheres is an idea that implicitly makes sense to many drone metal listeners: Played at tectonic plate-​moving volumes this [Bong, Stoner Rock] could well open your third eye, but will completely alienate others. (Mike (i) 2014) It’s a testament to Om’s ever-​increasing scope that their live shows can elicit such varied physical responses from an audience. Often, it’s appropriate to stand still, eyes closed, offering oneself unconditionally to the meditative experience. (McGeady 2013)

In the sustained and repeated references to pilgrimage, traversal of otherness is emphasized, and a ritual, mystical or spiritual element is evoked in connection with the oft-​stated estrangement of drone metal experience from language.

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These combinations retain a sense of strangeness, ambiguity and indeterminacy, for example in what the imagined pilgrimages are for or where they are headed. This vagueness heightens rather than diminishes the power of drone metal experience, and is an important aspect of listeners’ use of a vocabulary of mysticism, ritual and pilgrimage.

Shifting and interchangeable registers Rhetorical appeals to different forms of otherness become interchangeable, with vocabularies of narcotic, spiritual and musical intoxication, for example, substituted for each other in turn. The language of psychoactive chemicals is used to describe music or religion, musical vocabulary is used to talk about spirituality or narcotics, and phrases derived from religion are used in discussions of sound and drugs. Talking about music always slides into talking about another form of affect, and then another, never stabilizing into fixed allegory or comparison but drifting into evocations of a different mode of experience in another alternative vocabulary. Terminologies relating to the sonic, narcotic and spiritual are shuffled. In the following review description of Om, in the first part of the sentence the band’s music is understood as spiritual, closely connecting sound and religion yet still associated with drugs. In the second part, this is subtly shifted so that drugs and sound are more closely intertwined (‘stoner’ metal as an identifying genre category), yet still connected to Buddhism. [Om] employ the warped spirituality and connected-​to-​the-​divine feelings associated with an especially thick haze of potsmoke, and shackle their ‘stoner’ metal to a solid Buddhist tilt. (ThyCrossAwaits 2012)

The unstable interchangeability and continuous deferral of these ways of talking shows an unwillingness on the part of listeners to allow drone metal experience to be reduced to a particular domain of language and interpretation. The point here is not that drone metal experience is inadequately expressible in terms of sound or drugs or spirituality or travel, but rather that descriptions of drone metal in one idiom always drift towards other ways of talking, thus again placing the initial trope in question. Between rhetorical tropes, too, drone metal is always elsewhere. Just as description switches between the language of pilgrimage, intoxication and music, so too does the spoken or written representation of the relation between sonic experience and religious concepts. For example, statements like



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‘drone metal is about pilgrimage’, shift to become ‘drone metal is like a pilgrimage’, then to ‘drone metal is a pilgrimage’, never settling finally on one established relation in the form of language employed. Frequently the effects of drugs and drone metal are conflated as well as combined. Not only are albums described as being good accompaniments or substitutes for smoking marijuana, but also as being narcotics themselves, such as the reviewer quoted earlier who ‘got high off the notes’ (Dave 2006). A similar shift occurs in this review: It [Om album Advaitic Songs] is a pan-​global pilgrimage in forty-​four minutes; it’s a pilgrimage well worth your time. There are certain songs like ‘Sinai’ which sound very much like the kind of music pilgrims would listen to in a Hindu temple. (Mateeva 2013)

First Om’s album is a pilgrimage, emphasized by repetition, but then one of the songs in particular is identified as being like something pilgrims would listen to, presumably at the end of a pilgrimage if in a religious building. Rhetorically, then, Advaitic Songs (2012) is pilgrimage and is music for pilgrims, while thematically the album is a journey and the end of a journey. Themes of pilgrimage, drugs or religion in general are each employed in turn as topic, simile, metaphor and identification. These slippages and shifts suggest that, just as each trope is interchangeable and unstable, so too is each rhetorical mode. Metaphor, simile, analogy and comparison are not only employed for various emphases, but run into each other, obfuscating clear definition of the relation between language and supposed referent. A  productive ambiguity is retained, an indeterminate quality evoked by listeners which is often (of course vaguely) ascribed spiritual or mystical features as a way of expressing drone metal’s strange and profound effects. One significant aspect of these kinds of language is the persistence of sentences which describe drone metal as (rather than like, or similar to) religious or hallucinatory experience, ritual, or pilgrimage. This frequent use of metaphor (drone metal is X) over the less frequently used simile (is like X) is, I suggest, not only a slightly more audacious and emphatic figure of speech, but also an indication that description here is not merely metaphorical but iconic. Drone metal is spoken of in terms of holy mountains, pilgrimages and drugs, because the experience of drone metal’s musical structures actually shares certain formal properties with the experience of arduous spiritual journeys and altered states of consciousness. Listeners, for example, report that listening to Om is like meditating. They take you on a journey –​the monotonous bassline presenting the pace [of] your footsteps. (O23, Survey, 2013)

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There is not merely a comparison between footsteps and bassline, but they are actually experienced as similar. Likewise, when drone metal is described as a sacred mountain, it is because the experience shares physical similarities, and even related spiritual rewards, with arduous climbing that has a religious focus. This is not to say that the language develops teleologically towards the iconic, or that describing drone metal listening as pilgrimage, for example, is a better or truer representation of what listeners really mean than describing drone metal listening as like or similar to pilgrimage. These shifts take place unpredictably and quickly, and there are no grounds for suggesting that sentences in the iconic mode are more stable or final than those constructed as simile, metaphor, analogy or other comparison. The most sustained certainty in drone metal discourse is endless wandering traversal of instability. While several participants did discuss listening to drone metal in combination with certain of their own religious practices (listening while reading the Bible and other Christian books, listening while doing Buddhist meditation, listening while doing yoga understood as religious practice), listening was more often compared with recognizable religious elements or practices. Performances were described as similar in some ways to remembered Orthodox, Catholic or unspecified religious services, as similar to prayer meetings, similar to meditation or as like a listener’s own Chaos Magick ritual practice. Just as people who had never taken drugs described drone metal as similar to what they imagined drug intoxication would be like, avowedly nonreligious people spoke about experiencing drone metal as similar to what they imagined religious experience might be like. One listener described drone metal as ‘religious music for nonreligious people’, and this was a common sentiment in reviews, where a metal audience was assumed to be nonreligious, or at least non-​Christian or non-​monotheistically religious.3 This is not to suggest that there is always such a gap between rhetoric and practice, nor to imply that somehow this gap makes descriptions somehow dishonest or incomplete, but merely to highlight another conscious dislocation within drone metal discourse which works to sustain a potentially powerful ambiguity.

Uniting elsewhere and here An important aspect of listening experiences, particularly the most affecting, profound and valued occasions for listeners, is that they are marked by reports of an unusually heightened consciousness of the body (or perhaps consciousness



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in the body). Moments where listeners feel a lucid awareness of the extension, density and emplacement of their heavily vibrating bodies are later described as instances of clarity of perception and experience of ‘here and now’. While this here-​and-​now consciousness of and in the body may initially appear to be in tension with the imaginary gestures towards other places, the most important drone metal experiences tend to be described in terms of alterity and, at the same time, profound consciousness or awareness that is felt to be more real, valid, compelling or significant than other aspects of life. Ideas similar to this have precedent, for example in drug experiences that are understood by participants to be ‘altered states’ that allow access to modes of sensory experience that are felt to be unparalleled in their ‘realness’ or significance. This view was influentially expounded in Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception (1954), which drew on Henri Bergson’s suggestion that individuals could potentially perceive far more information from the world than in normal states, perception being limited so as to allow human organisms to fulfil basic life functions (Bergson 1911). Hence drug experiences, and drone metal experiences described in relation to drugs, could be understood as relating to ‘elsewheres’ in their alteration, and ‘here’ in their expanded perception and embodied reality. Huxley connected the ideas and experiences about drugs described in The Doors of Perception (1954) with theories about religion, ritual and mysticism. These and other ideas about access to religious experience through drugs are widely prevalent in drone metal discourse, forming important discursive resources which are used by some drone metal listeners to understand and explain their responses to listening. To account for the simultaneous elsewheres and heres of drone metal language, then, I suggest that the most profoundly engaging drone metal experiences afford for listeners a kind of ‘elsewhere here’. While this might initially appear as something of a contradiction, this need not be the case when the elsewheres are understood by listeners to be more important and valued experiences than other aspects of ordinary life. This profound valuing or sense of otherwise unavailable awareness also accounts for the prevalence of religious language surrounding such experience: You can’t ignore your body when it hurts. I’m not saying that Sunn O)))’s shows are painful but they definitely make yourself mind your body. You can’t feel more alive than when you’re feeling your body shaking and your blood pumping through your veins. (SK13, Interview, 2014) With all of those vibrations, with all of the low resonating things through the vibrations, through their body, it probably just awakens things, so I  think it’s very useful in many ways. (SK22, Interview, 2014)

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While these listeners all made reference to imaginative elsewheres, there are also suggestions about how drone metal listening allowed a degree of embodied reflection or awareness otherwise unavailable to them. In each extract, a favourable contrast with an implied ordinary life experience or with other music is emphasized. A  metaphor of awakening is used in the second, while the first includes a statement about the superlative experience of feeling alive when SunnO)))’s sound makes you ‘mind your body’. Loud vibrations making one conscious of one’s breathing has been compared by several listeners to the directing of attention to breathing in meditation practices. My own experience hearing SunnO))) live for the first time involved a heightened consciousness of my body in heavily vibrating space. I  had the strong impression that while standing in the loud, low droning noise I  had a more accurate perception of the extension, limits and density of my body in comparison to my own everyday projections of self and body. The thematic elsewheres described here immediately made sense to me as a way to describe the feeling, and it also seemed that I  was experiencing a consciousness of bodily reality that was not common in ordinary life but in an important way felt more real. A related comment connects this to an ambiguous perception of the body as a source for sound under such conditions: At these kinds of concerts, especially the ones that are really guitar feedback driven, slow, low notes, and high volume, a big part of it is definitely the physical aspect of the sound, the way that I can feel the music vibrating within my ribcage or within my body. And it seems like, it feels like there’s some sort of threshold where, once it gets loud enough and low enough it actually feels as though the music is coming from within me rather than me hearing it from the speakers. (O34, Interview, 2014)

Drone metal listening facilitates states understood as beneficial, that simultaneously afford access to a valued realm of alterity while enhancing consciousness of here and now grounded in the physical body.

Listening as if OC: How do you respond to the ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ sounds, images, and texts in Om’s music? O20: Ambiguously. (O20, Survey, 2013)



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Drawing on the complex deferrals and disavowals of these modes of discourse, I discuss the subtle but important feature of listener discourse that I will call ‘listening as if ’. As shown in several examples already presented, listening to drone metal and smoking marijuana are believed by many to be complementary, yet just as many say that listening to drone metal for them transports them similarly without any intake of such intoxicants. Drone metal is reported to be a substitute or surrogate for marijuana smoking, or is considered to be an alternative route to a similar state. The shifting of language described earlier naturally includes this kind of ambiguity, and drone metal experience being reported ‘as if ’ it were intoxication via drugs is a significant trend in discourse which retains this indeterminacy. Similarly, the slippages in language relating to religion and mysticism include description of drone metal as ritual, as if ritual, and as if similar to ritual. The many ways that listeners use language to juxtapose or draw together religion and drone metal, and the indeterminate and kaleidoscopic rotation of themes and linguistic forms, demonstrates a sustained ambiguity in the relation of religion and drone metal. Here I wish to suggest the idea of ‘listening as if ’ in exploring these shifting descriptions of drone metal as if, as like, as similar to, as related to or as religious experience. To be clear, describing drone metal as if it is religious is simply one among many rhetorical strategies in drone metal reception and communication. The idea of ‘listening as if ’ considers the various and ever-​shifting ways of describing the ambiguous relation between listening and religiosity. The concept may also refer to relations beyond religiosity, such as drone metal listened to as if it were a mind-​altering chemical, or droning noise in the urban soundscape listened to as if it were drone metal. Listeners continuously avoid defining drone metal as unequivocally religious. This allows them greater discursive freedom and creativity, while also reproducing the evasions of discursively gesturing elsewhere. Listening as if religious allows a simultaneous distancing and embrace of religiosity, ritual and mysticism, which neither asserts nor denies that drone metal ‘is’ religious: The melodies sound like and the image of the band looks like religious but I’m not taking them so seriously as ‘religious’. (O117, Survey, 2013)

Avoiding such fraught questions of identity, listening to drone metal as if religious relates to the suspension of disbelief in reading novels or watching drama. This explains the close fit with literary fantasy, for example with Bong’s references to Lovecraft or Dunsany. When Bong invokes Lord Dunsany’s literary

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deity of deities Mana-​Yood-​Sushai (Dunsany 2000), it is heard and understood in much the same way as Om’s esoteric calling upon the gods of Abrahamic monotheism. These gods are neither fictional nor real but participated in as if real for the purposes of listening. Michael Saler has outlined a theory of ‘as if ’ thinking beyond the suspension of disbelief (Saler 2012). Saler suggests that the literary fantasy worlds inhabited by readers of Lovecraft and Tolkien (both major influences on a collective heavy metal imaginary) are a constructed attempt to re-​enchant modernity through joining fantastic imagination with rationality. This rationalizing imagination, for Saler, is shown in careful attention to detail in such worlds, involving such supporting elements as convincing and consistent maps, appendixes, histories, languages and genealogies (more evident in Tolkien than Lovecraft, the latter repeatedly asserting the importance of describing his monstrous ancient gods as indescribable). My use of the ‘as if ’ relation shares with Saler’s an appeal to elsewheres and an imaginative and creative element. However, Saler’s argument rests upon the extension of systems of rationality into these imagined worlds, while for drone metal listeners this is far less applicable. Drone metal listeners are neither concerned with rationality in their imagined worlds of listening practice, nor is it clear what this would mean. In some cases, drone metal listening is explicitly valued for offering an escape from rational thought, or from any thought at all. The kind of map-​making and development of internal consistency described by Saler would be counter to the impulses to drifting transformations and traversals in the drone metal imaginary. For drone metal, listening as if may relate to enchantment, but ambiguity and pilgrimage beyond reason are more centrally important characteristics than consistency within imagined worlds. Listening as if religious is not based on narrative, but on a broader and looser set of connotations about what the music does and is for. Thus, listening as if religious allows a Christian listener, uncomfortable with the close association between the feeling of the Holy Spirit and the feeling at a drone metal concert, to separate the two but acknowledge this similarity (O94, Interview, 2013). Conversely, an atheist listening as if religious at a concert in a church can ‘have [their] cake and eat it’ by appreciating the evocative, atmospheric and aesthetic trappings of religiosity and ritual without having to directly engage with a religion he distrusts (H12, Interview, 2013). Those with less certainty about their own stance on religion can listen to drone metal as if religious, immersed in ritualized listening and excessive sound without needing to commit to definitions or a particular position. The reflexivity of this concept is again shown in the



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fact that several listeners observed a changed relation to other sounds in their environments. While drone metal can be listened to as if it is religious (or as if it is a pilgrimage, or as if it is narcotic intoxication, or as if it is bodily sickness), so too can machinery or the noises of vehicles be listened to as if they are drone metal. One listener moved from describing his listening to forms of music with drones to ‘maybe sometimes when I’m on the train, or I find myself drifting off and listening to the air conditioning, or things like that’ (E13, Interview, 2013). Some listeners reported a certain sense of liberation and curiosity, as if they had uncovered value in listening to urban soundscapes, in sound that was normally utterly ignored or treated as mere nuisance. The extremity of drone metal music allows the development of a listening-​as-​if relation, which can extend ambiguity about listening to sound beyond drone metal, which can afford encounters with strangeness in the everyday.

Conclusion: Drone metal discourse as mystic speech Instead of extrapolating from these linguistic disavowals and refractions a ‘pure’ contentless experience onto which all kinds of theories might be overlaid, I attempt to draw together analysis of this complex of syntactical, rhetorical and performative methods of operating on and subverting the language used to describe drone metal. This language is, at the level of content and at the level of the construction of utterances, a form of mystic speech as described by Certeau. I quote Certeau at length here, from a text discussing mystic speech in a dispersed and fragmented Christian community. Certeau relates this speech to utopian writing, ‘which has as explicit premise an absence of referent, a non-​site’ (Certeau 2000a: 221). In Certeau’s description of Christian mystical utterances, I hear resonances of the utterances of drone metal participants as presented in this chapter, evoking and traversing elsewheres: Taken to its limit, this utterance severs any statement from its meaning; never posited here or there, this utterance ceaselessly refers to ‘something else’. . . . A  rhetoric corresponds to it:  it multiplies statements in order to mask them, through negation, with the act of saying themselves; it cultivates confession, autobiography, or testimony; it multiplies figures of style (paradox, oxymoron, etc.) which aim to ruin discourse from within and thus make it own up to the ineffability of the subject saying itself. The community exhausts the signs which it initially gave itself; it devours its own formulations one after the other. The voracity of utterance: before it no statement holds. (Certeau 2000a: 222)

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Multiplication of statements, claims about ineffability, continuous references to elsewhere, and a language that shifts evasively in paradoxes, hyperbole and other self-​consciously overstressed language. These are markers of mystic speech, and of the language of drone metal experience. Fractures, resonances and wandering departures are portrayed in the content of description, and are also practised and manifested in the particular sentence structures and rhetorical modes in which listeners find themselves discussing drone metal. Certeau describes this mystical manner of speaking as presenting ‘unstable metaphors for the inaccessible’ (1992a: 77). For drone metal listeners, language is set wandering between a vast range of imagined spatial, temporal and bodily conscious elsewheres. The continually shifting ambiguity of this relation between language and listening is a space of powerful and profound engagement for listeners. Drone metal listeners mark this importance in repeated, amplified, distorted appeals to a mystical language of ritual, spirituality and pilgrimage.

5

Amplifier Worship: Materiality and Mysticism in Heavy Sound

Introduction This chapter describes the importance of amplification and distortion in drone metal sound, discourse and practice. In drone metal, the central instrument is not the electric guitar but the amplifier. This focus on amplification goes beyond other rock and metal scenes and styles, where the amplifier may represent power but is always symbolically subordinated to the guitar. The primacy of amplification and distortion in drone metal turns away from musical content, notes, chords, structures and virtuosic skill, and instead towards the experience of timbre and physical vibration of listener’s bodies. The concern of drone metal is distorted amplification, rather than what is being amplified and distorted. The importance of an amplified materiality can also be observed in the overwhelming preference among listeners for vinyl as a music medium, which emphasizes materiality. In drone metal merchandise and musical products, and in modes of signification such as typography and logo design, signs are repeated, amplified and distorted. This symbolic materiality refers back to the primary focus of drone metal, the intensely physical experience of very loud, very low frequency sounds. Similar interests appear in forms of music closely related to drone metal. In noise music, materiality can offer a way to disrupt meaning and create conceptual as well as sonic noise (Toth 2009: 32–​3). Similarly in avant-​garde electronica, sonic materiality is investigated and valued (Hegarty 2007: 181), and in industrial music, distortion is also crucial: This music forces open the body, exceeding the capacity of flesh to contain itself. This is also the musical impact of distortion, in which a sound’s amplitude exceeds its medium’s capacity to contain it. (A. Reed 2013: 291)

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In psytrance and dub too, the verbal narratives often assumed to be a focus of meaning in popular music are downplayed and fractured in favour of a focus on bodily experience of sound. Dub turns to an absorbing emphasis on the materiality of sound (Henriques 2011: 54), while in electronic dance music the scarcity of lyrics and textual messages is compensated for by an obsession with the raw material of the sound and the application of special effects for triggering bodily responses. (Vitos 2015: 131)

In drone metal, the central position of the amplifier over any other musical equipment, and the extraordinarily physical experience of sound in which ‘air becomes solid’ (SK11, Survey, 2013), suggest that an especially extreme focus on materiality of sound is characteristic of drone metal. This concern with materiality is certainly to some extent a response to a transitional period in the wider industry and culture where music is becoming increasingly digital, intangible and even interchangeable. A ‘crisis of abundance’ has been posited in metal, in part due to these trends (Kahn-​Harris 2013), prompting attempts in black metal (Hagen 2014:  230)  and in noise music (Novak 2013:  222–​3) to safeguard exclusivity and authenticity through engagement with physical sound media. The emphasis on the material and physical aspects of listening also emerges in the religious language used by listeners who ritualize physical spaces and musical objects, and who understand the bodily consciousness of drone metal vibration in terms of mysticism. This link between amplified materiality and spirituality has been observed in other popular music cultures that make extensive use of the symbols and rhetoric of ritual and religious experience: Because of the high amplification and pounding insistence of house music beats, which are felt in the body as much as heard by the ears, the groove is often compelling to the point of trance induction for the dancers, carrying them beyond their normal consciousness into a powerful ecstatic state. (Sylvan 2005: 20)

Sheila Whiteley discusses the psychedelic atmosphere of ‘Purple Haze’ by Jimi Hendrix (Hendrix 1967, Whiteley 2000), attributing altered time perception and a ‘drowning of personal consciousness’ (reported characteristics of mystical as well as psychedelic states) specifically to the manipulation of repetition, amplification and distortion (Whiteley 2000: 243–​5). Hendrix’s explorations of extreme distortion, feedback and experimentation with the physical limits of amplifiers and guitars are a clear influence on drone metal, as shown most explicitly in



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Earth’s cover of a Jimi Hendrix track ‘Peace in Mississippi’ (Hendrix 1975) on the album Pentastar: In the Style of Demons (Earth 1996). Whiteley explains the creation of distortion through amplification: The input signal from the guitar is greatly amplified to push the signal level above the supply voltage. As this is not possible, the signal becomes saturated at the supply voltage level. (Whiteley 2000: 260)

A connection with mystical uses of language can be heard, therefore, in the sound of distortion. The capacity of a particular mode of communication is exceeded, the boundaries of what can be said are shown, and the limits of a channel of communication are sounded and heard. From another perspective, the construction of sacred space has also been understood in terms of sonic experience and practice, again understood through the concept of amplification. Sacred sites are ‘amplifiers of consciousness’ (Hale 2007: xii), while cathedrals are sought out for their ability to precipitate bodily sonic vibrations through sound-​amplifying architecture (Bull 2007: 2). Scholarly treatments of drone metal also frequently mention material or physical aspects of musical experience as notable characteristics of the music which produce extreme experience. For Olivia Lucas, ‘feeling Sunn O)))’s music is not a metaphor  –​it is an inescapable physical reality’ (2013). The same band’s performances are described as ‘a deep pressure-​filled amplifier massage penetrating your entire body’ (Ishmael 2014:  138), and, in a slight echo of paradoxical mystical phrases, as having a ‘simultaneously pared down and amplified’ structure (Shvarts 2014:  206). This connection between the desired intense materiality of sonic experience, and the reports and rhetoric of mysticism, I understand via Certeau’s observations about the opacification of mystic signs. According to Certeau, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, medieval Christian mystics turned towards the bodily apprehension of the materiality of mystic signs, in an era where an institutional framework was being undermined and was losing its authority. Parallels might be drawn with digital media causing a paradigm shift in music media and global communications at the time of the emergence of drone metal. This turn towards the physical embodiment of signs over semantics amid a crisis of signification produces distinctive mystical styles, modes and tropes. What is of fundamental importance is indistinguishable from the insignificant, writes Certeau, and so ‘mystic discourse transforms the detail into myth; it catches hold of it, blows it out of proportion, multiplies it, divinizes it’ (Certeau 1992a: 10). In another

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age, drone metal’s sonic and symbolic discourse practises this mystical amplification and distortion.

Amps in rock and heavy metal Amplification has always been crucial to the sound of rock music (Waksman 1999:  14). Electrically amplified solid body guitars first became popular in the 1930s, and musicians were quick to experiment with the sonic qualities of feedback and distortion, side-​effects of the amplification initially introduced in order to play for larger audiences in larger spaces (Doyle 2015: 539). Later, rhythm and blues musicians in the early 1950s played louder than their amplifiers were designed to be played, used old amplifiers with ripped speaker cones, and then began to deliberately slash the cones once the timbres of distorted sound became a desirable stylistic area for exploration. In each case, equipment was pushed ‘past its limits’ (Waksman 1999: 138), players and audiences seeking the noise of excess. From the late 1960s, amplifiers became a metonym for musical power, albeit generally subordinated to what Steve Waksman has called the ‘technophallus’ of the electric guitar (Waksman 1999: 188–​9). The association of amplification with power is particularly strong in in heavy metal, which has consistently explored sonic power (Walser 1993). Describing the basic necessities for metal, Deena Weinstein lists first amps, then guitars, bass and drums (Weinstein in Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey 2005). Although distortion effects began to be controlled more by effects pedals than overdriven amps, amplifiers have still long been valued and fetishized, sometimes in connection with ideas of masculinity. See, for example, Manowar’s 1984 single ‘All Men Play on Ten’, the number implying amplifiers turned up to the maximum volume, and with the sleeve featuring an amplifier-​case design which folded out to reveal a poster image of a Marshall stack amp. The symbolic value of the amplifier, over its purely technical function, is displayed at large arena concerts for more mainstream kinds of metal and rock, where the number of amplifiers in use is exaggerated with empty amp cabinets on stage: ‘As well as functional audio necessity, amplification in rock became hyper-​spectacle’ (Doyle 2015: 543). Audiences might sometimes challenge this as fakery in the stadium show context, but it would be completely rejected at the small club shows in which most doom and drone metal takes place: proximity would reveal any such trickery, and in any case space on stage at such venues is too limited to waste with props that add nothing to the sound.



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Amplification and distortion in drone metal Doom metal in particular seems to involve a particular concern with amplification, perhaps since the slowness of the music directs more attention to distorted timbres and the nuances of amplified sound. Drone metal can be seen as a yet more extreme subset of doom, extending beyond any other form of metal in its extreme focus on amplification. Only in drone metal do amplifiers become the primary instrument, more important than guitar pedals, effects and even the electric guitar itself. The shift from the primacy of guitars to amplifiers is signalled in Earth’s early live album Sunn Amps and Smashed Guitars (1995b). The title draws on the iconoclastic destruction of guitars, a feature of excessive rock performance since the late 1960s. The Who, Jimi Hendrix and The Clash were all noted for smashing guitars, with Hendrix famously setting fire to his guitar at the 1967 Monterey festival. Imagery of guitar destruction was used to signal the wild energy and chaotic excitement of performances, particularly in album covers such as the Clash’s London Calling (1979) and also Hendrix’s Jimi Plays Monterey (1986). But in the Earth album title, the smashed guitars are literally and figuratively secondary to the amps. Though the title references amplifiers manufactured by Sunn, the back cover of the CD shows the guitarists kneeling in front of Marshall stacks, another fetishized brand of amps. This posture is familiar in the performance of drone metal, noise and some forms of extreme metal and was employed earlier by Jimi Hendrix. A guitarist facing an amplifier can, with small movements, manipulate sound produced in the feedback from the amplifier vibrations moving the strings of the guitar, producing more amplification, in turn producing more amplification. But a kneeling position also has an iconic association, often interpreted as implying supplication, therefore placing the amplifier in a position of authority or reverence. Extending this, kneeling has associations with religious, ritual or devotional activities. This connects with the positioning of amplifiers in the place of altars at some concerts taking place in churches, as well as the Boris album title Amplifier Worship (1998), situating amplifiers as material objects of ritual and religious power. As with other phrases introduced by particular bands, the phrase ‘amplifier worship’ has taken on wider significance for listeners who use it widely to describe drone metal and their relationship to it. The amplifier thus takes practical and symbolic place as a centre of religious comportment and attention, as well as in the listening imaginary. Even more symbolically committed to amps are SunnO))). The band named themselves after the now defunct manufacturer Sunn, but went even further

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Figure 5.1  Promotional image used by SunnO))) before their 2017 performance at the Barbican Centre, London. The stage set showcases the particular kinds, combination and placement of amplifiers to be used. Note that instruments (guitar, bass, etc.) are indicated only in words, while amps have detailed information and visual depiction. Reproduced with kind permission of SunnO))).



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by adding O))) from the company logo. The brackets are often interpreted as connoting thick and heavy waves of vibration, and so the band name can be interpreted as an amplification of a sign signifying amplification. The backline of amplifiers that SunnO))) use at concerts often features in promotional materials, tour posters and shirts. The band have on occasion even performed without guitars, such as the ‘Moog Ceremony’ (named after the synthesizer manufacturer) at the 2006 Domino Festival in Brussels. Some areas of black metal and doom metal have developed ways of using acoustic instruments and timbres associated with traditional musics such as neo-​folk bands like Blood of the Black Owl. Groups like Wardruna and Phurpa have gone further, creating new music based on traditional ritual forms, but appearing to be influenced by extreme metal and certainly sharing overlapping audiences. Drone metal shows have taken place without guitars, but a drone metal show without amplifiers is inconceivable. Certain manufacturers are revered, such as Sunn, Marshall and Orange. For their album Amplifier Worship (1998), Boris used bright orange-​ coloured promotional images of band members with their Orange amplifiers. Sleep placed a note in the sleeve of their album Sleep’s Holy Mountain (1992a), ‘If you have Orange amplification for sale contact Sleep through Earache Records’, and are widely reported to have spent their entire advance from major label London Records on amps and marijuana, relying on both to create the landmark Jerusalem/​Dopesmoker (1996/​2003). Sleep were famous for playing customized special edition ‘Green’ amps made by the Orange company. In a ‘FAQ’ list posted on social media, current drummer Jason Roeder noted that the band are still asked about these amps often, despite having sold them many years ago (Roeder 2015). Amplifiers are customized or decorated in distinctive ways, with Bismuth’s Matamp head personalized with the phrase ‘NOM O)))’. The amp was made by Matamp, but other manufacturers and by extension the cult of amplification in general, is also referenced. The use of the sign O))) has come to signify heavily amplified drone in general, as well as connoting both the band SunnO))) and the amplifier manufacturer Sunn. Much pre-​gig conversation surrounds amplifiers, which are often already set up on stage. Valve amps are thought to give a particularly warm, full tone to the low end sound, and with several other attendees, I spent most of a set by the band Pombagira watching the tubes inside a Sunn head amp glowing hotter as the riffs became louder. At SunnO))) shows, the amplifiers (and everything else) are shrouded in thick smoke, meaning at times that the only things visible are the blinking lights on the amps. Often set up in a semicircle, the collection of amps on stage were described in surveys as Stonehenge (SK24, Survey,

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Figure 5.2  Bismuth bass player Tanya Byrne’s Orange and Matamp amplifier heads. Note the hand-​painted font in NOM O))), which reproduces the script used in the Orange brand logo. Reproduced with kind permission of Tanya Byrne.

2013), as a ‘heksenkring’ or ring of wild mushrooms associated with witches in Germanic folklore (SK15, Survey, 2013), and as a vision of hell (SX1, Survey, 2013). Expressing similar sentiment to Boris’s album title, UK drone metal group Urthona describe one of their recordings as ‘elemental amp worship’ (Urthona 2015). In a poster for a tour by Ommadon and Bismuth (a somewhat rare event, in featuring two drone metal bands), artist Ross McKendrick made similar links between drone metal, monuments and extraordinary experience in the image and an accompanying description of the design. The poster featured a subtle conflation of monoliths and amplifiers in the depiction of an ancient-​looking, weathered obelisk marked with two circular patches reminiscent of the speaker



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cones in amps. Heaviness and materiality of sound connote the heavy materiality of monuments, which in turn signify access to ancient time with mysterious ritual associations. Of course nothing less than the destruction of ancient monoliths and the complete negation of space-​time would be able to amply convey just how crushing these shows will be. (McKendrick 2015)

Connections between drone metal, stone circles and mysticism are also made explicit in an online preview piece about the tour. [Bismuth]’ve been described in the past as ‘like Stonehenge, but music’, which should tell you all you need to know, but if you’re unfamiliar with Wiltshire’s most recognizable group of stones, then you should expect something enormous, vaguely mystical, largely inexplicable, and inconceivably heavy. (Whelan 2015)

At a Stephen O’Malley solo performance, the SunnO))) guitarist stood far to the side of the stage, as if the amps were the central performers on centre stage. Support band Kogumaza had set up their own amps and drum kit and played on the floor, meaning that space on stage was already dominated by the (at that time silent) amplifiers. The end of a drone metal show too, can sometimes feature a kind of performed subordination to amplifiers. The closing of a set by Horse Latitudes at the Roadburn festival is described in my fieldnotes as entirely focused on amplification: Last few minutes, a final section with both bassplayers in front of their amps, Vellu with bass unslung, held neck downwards, Heidi with close hold on back of bass, exposing strings and pivoting to control feedback. Air thick with vibration, humming soupy noise which is not heard so much as becomes the solid, thick atmosphere of the room, in which everyone is trapped in a fluid stasis. (Author’s Fieldnotes, Horse Latitudes at Roadburn Festival, April 2014)

The two bass guitarists stood facing their amplifiers, which emitted powerful feedback vibrations. The sound could be felt as if it was a physical presence in the room with its own dimensions, a band of thick air eight inches deep and hovering at chest level through the bodies of everyone in the room. For me, at least, a strong and even unavoidable feeling of communality was produced in knowing that each person present was subjected to the same almost tangible vibration. In this way, communality is moved from the more easily observable social realm to an imagined sociality in mutually felt resonance made possible through heavy amplification. Julian Henriques has described a similar effect of

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Figure 5.3  Poster design for 2015 Ommadon & Bismuth UK tour combining amp and monolith by Ross D. McKendrick/​RDM Visuals. Reproduced with kind permission of Ross D. McKendrick.



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the dub reggae sound system, where heavy bass sound can feel as if it is not only invading but also extending our bodies, connecting us with the collective vibrating body of the crowd (2011: xvi). Echoing the mystical ineffability disclaimers and elsewhere–​here relations described in Chapter 4, for Henriques this can dissolve binary modes of thinking and feel simultaneously ‘as disembodying as it is embodying’ (2003: 460–​1). Other aspects of live drone metal supplement this focus on amplifiers with other ways of amplifying experience. Bong perform in as much darkness as venues will allow, and some listeners mentioned that they also listened to recordings in the dark to maximize focus on the sound. SunnO))) are notorious for filling venues with dry ice smoke, sometimes starting up the smoke machines several hours before going on stage. These practices are at once overtly theatrical and austere. By de-​emphasizing vision, these practices can make the visual experience of drone metal unusual, along with redirecting attention to sound. Of the smoke at a SunnO))) gig, one listener remarked that it ‘sets the mood for something ritual and spiritual’. Developed in discussion with another audience member before a SunnO))) show, an interpretation of the smoke at a SunnO))) concert demonstrates drone metal’s preoccupation with amplification. Smoke transforms the effect of stage lighting, so that instead of seeing the light sources around the stage and the brightly lit performers, the audience instead see clouds of nebulous and shifting greyness, redness or yellowness. The smoke, then, in a sense amplifies and distorts the stage lights so it seems as if you are not seeing things lit with coloured lights but instead seeing colour and light in themselves. This parallels what happens in sound, where the emphasis is not on the particular sounds played on the instruments on stage but on what sound itself feels like, in the amplified and distorted vibration of the venue, the air and the bodies of audience members. This is sound not as a medium for articulating structures and relations that move through time but as an overwhelming physical experience which holds bodily consciousness in heavy amplified resonance. The importance of amplification can also be discerned in drone metal’s jokes, satire and memes. As discussed in Chapter 3, humour can reveal, in exaggerated form, the elements crucial to a particular culture or milieu or mode of cultural production. The now legendary amplifier scene from the widely known and well-​loved spoof documentary This Is Spinal Tap (1984) is celebrated in metal culture, and is a common reference point for drone metal. In the film, fictional metal guitarist Nigel Tufnell boasts of having amplifiers custom made to go up to eleven rather than ten. This trope of amps set to eleven is often acknowledged in humorous glorifications of loudness. An image of an amplifier volume knob

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turned to the maximum was used as a social media profile photo by Ommadon guitarist David Tobin, prompting a chorus of approving comments of ‘eleven!’ At the same time, a still from the Spinal Tap scene showing an amp dial set to eleven dominated the front page of SunnO))) guitarist Stephen O’Malley’s website. Elsewhere, a YouTube user uploaded the famous oversized amplifier scene from the film Back to the Future (1985), with a new soundtrack made from two SunnO))) recordings. The new juxtaposition implied that Michael J. Fox’s character Marty McFly is blown across a room into a bookcase by playing a drone metal riff through the enormous amp (Back To))) The Future 2014). In conversation at concerts, and in subsequent interviews, listeners talk about the importance of amplifiers to the power of the live experience. Amplifiers and speakers for home stereos are often mentioned in describing listening to recordings, especially with reference to turning up volume (or not being able to as much as one would wish). The most significant difference between concert and home listening is reported to be the difference in amplification, because home equipment and context do not allow the same physically felt level of volume. As one listener put it, referencing the slogan associated with SunnO))), ‘MAXIMUM VOLUME LEADS TO MAXIMUM RESULTS and the neighbours don’t agree’ (SX2, Survey, 2013). Amplifiers also appear in a sort of sonic imaginary: When I listen to SunnO))) or any of the bands like that, Earth, especially the early recordings, I always just have this image of myself, stood in front of this amplifier, with just the wind of noise, great big noise, just blasting me backwards. (N17, Interview, 2013)

As mediator of amplified sound, and as the symbolic source of volume and distortion, amplifiers become the primary object in drone metal culture with priority over guitars. In the same way that mystical texts problematize signification in unusual manners of speaking that push language to excess, the repetition, amplification and distortion in drone metal turn to the materiality of the mystic sign.

Relations between digital and physical media A turn towards materiality can also be observed elsewhere in drone metal. Another manifestation is listeners’ overwhelming preference for vinyl as a music medium. This tendency is notable in other forms of popular music recently, but is particularly pronounced in drone metal. Vinyl is often stated as the best or ideal way to listen to drone metal, in some cases described as the way the music



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is intended or meant to be heard, even for albums released on up to four different formats (B7, Interview, 2013; G12, Interview, 2013). The perceived appropriateness of vinyl for drone metal is emphasized by rhetorically positioning it as normative rather than as a personal preference. Setting aside long-​running arguments about perception of fidelity, recording and mastering techniques, and the mythical ‘warmth’ of analogue sound reproduction (though see Thornton 1996: 64, Hegarty 2007: 183), an important component of vinyl’s value to listeners is the mere fact of its emphasized materiality in a digital era in which music is increasingly intangible. As Jonathan Sterne has pointed out, digital information (including sound) is no less based in the physical world than other media (in silicon chips, LCD screens and so on). This materiality is, however, often obscured by the tiny scale and by the ‘black boxes’ of technological artefacts whose functioning is poorly understood and not engaged with directly by most users (Sterne 2012: 7). Digitally stored music can of course be played just as loudly as from an analogue medium and, conversely, many of these representations of analogue materiality are exchanged, viewed and communicated about digitally online. However, if vinyl is widely understood as the way something is meant to be heard, what is important here is not the fact of materiality but the ideological function of materiality as a representation of value: I never buy download only if I can get a physical media (vinyl, CD or cassette). On the other hand listening on vinyl is a ritual in itself: taking the vinyl from the sleeve, setting the stylus in the groove, admiring the cover art. That makes me really concentrate in what I’m doing and what I’m hearing. I’ll have to say vinyl. Vinyl + download code is the best thing ever! (G23, Interview, 2013)

Digital music is mentioned at the beginning and end of the paragraph, though not discussed further, showing that while vinyl may attract enthusiastic discussions of ritual and privileged listening contexts, downloads and digital music are still important in how drone metal is used. Tactility, weight and material presence are all emphasized in packaging and promotional descriptions of packaging. The sleeve for the vinyl issue of Menace Ruine’s album Venus Armata (2015) for instance is described in detail by their record label as ‘Housed in custom printed Stumptown jackets on heavyweight kraft stock, with 2 color inserts’ (SIGE Records 2015). Records are often advertised as pressed on 140 or 180 gram vinyl, rather than the industry standard of 115 to 120 gram. According to the manager of one vinyl pressing plant, this extra heaviness has no effect on the sound quality and is merely a bit more resistant

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to warping. Crucially, however, it foregrounds weightiness as an important idea in relation to sound. Non-​playing sides of records by Nadja (2008a, 2008b), by Nadja and Black Boned Angel (2009) and by Earth (2011, 2012) have designs etched into the surface, a feature highlighted in promotional materials. The album Advaitic Songs (2012) was released by Om on two 45rpm twelve-​inch records, though the full album would have fitted on a single LP. The faster spinning of a 45rpm compared to a 33rpm record means that there is in a sense more material in the sound, as the needle covers more vinyl ‘ground’ per second of music when the record spins at the faster rate, thereby improving the sound quality. Multiple layers of packaging are customary for SunnO))) records, especially their 2009 release Monoliths & Dimensions, the title of which already implies heaviness and extension. The album featured printed inner sleeves, a fold-​out poster featuring an image of the robed band members at the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico, and a translucent dust-​jacket style covering around the gatefold vinyl. The cover also displayed a reproduction of a thickly black-​painted artwork by Richard Serra (1999), an artist whose work approaches a sort of sublime post-​industrial heaviness. A listener described playing an unspecified SunnO))) record as ‘open[ing] up the double gatefold tome, and put[ting] this monolithic heavy black SunnO)) vinyl on your platter’ (G15, Interview, 2013), and vinyl was frequently praised for adding a sense of ritual to the process of listening. As with other forms of underground extreme metal, cassette tapes are sometimes used for drone metal releases, particularly by bands with smaller profiles and audiences. The release of a retrospective wooden box set of Ommadon’s first four albums on cassette (Ommadon 2015) indicated the cultivation of materiality as value, as the record label Tartarus promoted the release on social media by posting daily photographs for more than two weeks, each featuring an image of tools and materials used in the manufacturing process for the packaging, from dowels, planes and sawdust-​covered planks to a bucket of glue. The music contained in this elaborate package had already for some time been available to download free of charge from the band themselves, suggesting that the elaborate materiality (and expense) of this special edition physical release was expected to appeal to audiences. The weight and size of vinyl records has been perceived by some as a disadvantage, though this materiality is conversely highly valued by most drone metal listeners. Similarly, the deteriorating sound quality of cassettes is occasionally reported as part of the charm of music on tape, since this is impact on sound is a direct result and index of materiality. Another example of the co-​constitutive relation between digitality and materiality is in concert poster images. Digital versions of the images on social media,



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music and event listings websites and band homepages are more likely to be seen by potential listeners than the limited reach of printed posters around the venue. This is particularly true where, as is common, the translocality of scenes means that some listeners may travel considerable distances for concerts. It is rare for physical posters or flyers for any drone metal event to appear anywhere other than the gig venue itself, or at most in other nearby music venues or local music shops. In some cases, physical copies of the posters are displayed for the first time on the day of the concert, with a few A4 printouts directing attendees to venues down alleyways (as for the Chameleon venue in Nottingham) or to rooms underneath pubs (as for the Northumberland Arms in Newcastle). For larger gigs, screen-​printed or otherwise artfully created posters are sometimes available for purchase at the merchandise table alongside records, CDs and shirts. Many attendees will have seen digital versions of these images in online promotion, for example on social media or metal blogs, and so the already familiar images in a sense ‘become’ material at the point they arrive at the concert, the privileged site for drone metal listening. Listeners might purchase prints at the merch table, or untack posters from walls when leaving a venue. Both are crystallizations of materiality around drone metal, valued as tokens of participation in the live concert site which are then often installed in spaces used for home listening. Reissues of now canonical drone metal albums tend to emphasize materiality, associating heavy packaging and materials with the weightiness of their music and their now secured place in its received history. Sleep’s Dopesmoker (2012) album has been reissued by Southern Lord in at least twenty differently coloured vinyl or picture disc editions, with various different packaging materials and extras such as T-​shirts. Earth 2 (1993) was originally released on a CD or single LP but rereleased on double vinyl (despite this splitting up one song into two sides), while the rereleased record The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull (2008) features a very thick faux leather cover and gatefold sleeve. Inside the record, Dylan Carlson is noted as playing ‘guitars and amplifiers’, and the elaborate and ornate fonts provide another more abstract representation of amplified and distorted music-​related signs.

Amplification, repetition and distortion in visual aesthetics Just as amplification and distortion is the primary focus of drone metal sound, so too the written signifiers of drone metal are often amplified and distorted

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in ornate, elaborate ways which heighten visual experience of the sign at the expense of legibility. The broad class of letterform styles known variously (and haphazardly) as fraktur, blackletter, gothic or ‘Old English’ are used widely elsewhere in popular music, especially in hip-​hop. Metal, though, is among the forms of music most notorious for its obsession with the visual image of the word in blackletter style. The first Black Sabbath album featured an elaborate font (1970), and each subsequent album displayed the name of the band and sometimes the album title in a new and distinctive typographic design. The band’s fifth album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973) used two different fraktur style fonts for the album title and band name, and for the lettering on the back cover, and by 1978, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Kiss and AC/​DC had all used fraktur font styles on album covers. Since then, all subgenres of heavy metal have become known for using different versions of these styles of letters, for which naming and categorization are debated (Vestergaard 2016: 106–​7). The distinctive wavy purple-​and-​black text from the cover of Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality (1971), and the white, orange and black lettering on Vol. 4 (1972) have been widely copied, particularly by doom metal bands. In their album or T-​shirt designs, doom bands make a double signification, signalling their own band but making obvious insider reference to (or repetition of) Black Sabbath from a particular era. Here I use the terms ‘blackletter’ and ‘fraktur’ interchangeably to refer to all forms of the thick, heavy, pointed letterforms derived from medieval manuscript handwriting, and used across Europe in the first centuries of printing. Extreme metal bands from the 1980s sought to represent their extreme sound by using ever more extreme scripts, to the point where indecipherable vocal techniques and distorted timbres in extreme metal are visually matched with completely illegible logos. This development Daniel Van der Velden traces to Mayhem, one of the most influential black metal bands (2007: 1). Fraktur (literally meaning ‘fractured’) and blackletter typefaces (so named because of the heavy inky visual effect of the letters on the page) slow down reading for the uninitiated and are renowned for causing difficulties for legibility as a result of their emphasis on thick lines and ornamentation over linear clarity (Schalansky 2008: 11). Cristina Paoli describes blackletter as expressing an ‘impossible integration’ of power and dynamic movement in the heaviness of strokes and their perfect balance on sharp points (Paoli 2006: 17). This is the kind of balance between power and control that Robert Walser identified as fundamental to metal music (1993: 2). Paoli also suggests that the appeal of blackletter in heavy music is due to its ‘mystic and obscure connotations’, to its marginality as a letterform and to its suggestions of irrationality and violence (2006:  14), all of which are relevant



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to drone metal’s symbolic practice and discourse. In addition, the uniformity between vertical strokes in each letter gives a repetitive quality that is important in the sound of metal’s riffs, even described in terms of rhythm by some typographers (Noordzij 2005: 41). The widespread adoption of these font styles in metal, combined with a sonic preference for amplification and distortion, suggests a broad concern for the materiality of signs across the whole genre. In addition, a transgressive association with Nazi Germany may be suggested. This is despite the lengthy controversy between Latin and fraktur font styles in Germany predating the Nazi era by several decades, and despite the fact that in January 1941 the party (on blackletter headed notepaper) denounced fraktur and blackletter styles (Willberg 1998: 48). Nevertheless, for some, the association between blackletter and Nazism persists (Paoli 2006: 14), with the ambiguity of what blackletter might signify perhaps providing another way of obscuring clarity and legibility. As well as being an abstract representation of extremity which matches and suggests extreme sound, the cryptic sigils of illegible logos also function effectively as boundary markers between insiders who know and can ‘read’ by recognition, and outsiders who are unable to decipher them. Drone metal band logo design sometimes implies a consideration of abstract representations of materiality. Bands often use blackletter styles that are easy enough to read while still foregrounding materiality according to metal conventions. Other uses are more idiosyncratic, even if they remain within the broad stylistic character of fraktur’s combination of solid thickness, embellishment and often monochrome setting. One of the more difficult band logos to instantly decipher is that of Bong, a design which continues the angular convention of extreme metal in turning a word into an image. The logo hints at the trope of the holy mountain, particularly since it was first introduced on the cover of Mana-​ Yood-​Sushai (2012) above a painting of sacred mountain Kanchenjunga. One listener conversely likened the logo on that specific album cover to a UFO hovering over the mountain, providing an interpretation of alterity in another register. In each of these cases, while drawing on metal conventions established over decades, drone metal bands continue a tradition of emphasizing the materiality of written signs even to the exclusion of legibility, while also visually representing the distortion and amplification of their sounds. By contrast, several drone metal band logos feature much cleaner curves and plain text. After some variations, the most common typographical logo used by Sleep is a version of the rounded, easily readable font from Black Sabbath’s Vol. 4 (1972). The orange text from that album is replaced with green, repeating the shift in their famous Orange amplifiers custom made in green. The font used on

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foundational drone metal album Earth 2 (1993) is plain, lower case and widely spaced, though later albums and visual materials tend to use fraktur styles. The letters in SunnO)))’s reproduction of the amplifier logo are uniform blocks, and Om albums have always displayed the band name and title in austere script, though T-​shirt logos and other designs have often used blackletter. Some of the most influential drone metal bands and recordings, then, have used clear and plain typographic design. However, here there are other ways that materiality of signifiers is highlighted. Monosyllabic band names like Earth, Bong, Om, Sunn and Sleep all verbally foreground a certain weighty foundation. In addition to its basic monumentalism, the name Earth was chosen because it was the first band name used by Black Sabbath, thereby claiming association with the earliest origins of the foundational metal band, as well as a form of repetition in naming. Sleep similarly have repeated aspects of Black Sabbath’s aesthetic, including album covers, font design, performing cover versions, and arguably in Sleep’s Holy Mountain (1992a), straightforwardly repeating Sabbath’s musical style. In addition to the repeating of the amplifier manufacturer logo, the band name SunnO))) implies a connection with Earth, both connoting celestial bodies of vast gravity. Om and Bong both onomatopoeically suggest the musical sounds made by the bands, thereby hinting at mystical uses of language which foreground material engagement with the sound of the sign over semantic meaning. The two names further collapse the signifying relation between language, sound and experience, while also evoking particular interests of the band, Eastern spirituality and marijuana respectively. Repeated brackets have been adopted by listeners, particularly in online discourse, to refer to a powerful drone-​like experience, including but not limited to SunnO)))’s own music. In one wry but knowledgeable review of a Nazoranai album, these brackets are humorously described as ‘the ancient symbol for drone music’ (Robin 2014). Neither punctuation nor words, these uses further investigate the materials of communication in unusual ways. As with drone metal’s repeated riffs, ‘the letters’ (or sounds) ‘representing a meaning can be considered in their materiality; in that case, they cause the meaning to be forgotten or to disappear’ (Certeau 1992a: 144), leaving mystical contemplation of physical objects whose function as signs has been fractured. Merchandise and album covers extend this mystical destabilization or obscuring of language. Some versions of the Earth album discussed above display the album title The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull (2008) in Arik Roper’s ink drawing of a skull and honeycomb rather than spelled out in words. On album covers, the band Aluk Todolo, named after an indigenous Indonesian religion,



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Figure 5.4  Examples of characteristic drone metal band logo styles. From top: Ommadon logo, in classic blackletter style, a customary amplification and distortion of lettering found across heavy metal subgenres since the late 1970s. Black Boned Angel logo, using more jagged, distorted design departing from standard typography. Bong logo, an impressionistic distortion of letters, suggesting the form of a holy mountain, or for one person I spoke to at a gig, a UFO. SunnO))), in clear sans serif font, unusual for metal bands but constituting a repetition of the logo for the Sunn amplification company. Reproduced with kind permission of Ommadon, Black Boned Angel, Bong and SunnO))).

inscribe their name with each letter rotated but, on much of their merchandise, dispense with the name altogether, featuring only an angled cross symbol (Aluk Todolo 2007, 2012). Similarly, Horse Latitudes use symbols rather than words on their record artwork and T-​shirts. One Roadburn attendee said he preferred this kind of ‘secret’ metal shirt to lurid and gory death metal shirts, as he could wear them to work without anyone noticing or registering that they referred to his metal listening, unless they too were aware of the underground bands

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to whom his clothing esoterically referred. As in other metal genres, T-​shirts are a valued mode of communicative behaviour through which fandom, commitment and knowledge can be performed (Brown 2007). Intricate networks of meaning are encoded in T-​shirts, for example, based on the age of the shirt, the design connoting a particular album, any tour dates printed on the back and the relative obscurity of the band displayed. Shirt designs often start conversations between strangers at metal venues and elsewhere, and tour dates in particular display participation in a kind of imagined community of those who attended any show on that same tour. In addition to these signifying functions, in drone metal and elsewhere, wearing an image performs and instantiates a material connection between a symbol associated with music and the listeners body. Tattoos display further commitment to musical cultures, as well as literally manifesting a deepened connection between metal’s symbolic language and the listener’s body. It is significant that again fraktur fonts are particularly common styles in which to ink words upon bodies. Tattoos are more permanent and more visible versions of the already profound interaction between the incorporation of heavy metal vibrations into the body while listening to and feeling heavily amplified noise.

The materiality of the mystic sign The vocabulary of religion, ritual and mysticism in discourse surrounding drone metal is often accompanied by this emphasis on the materiality of sound. BASS BASS BASS and BASS. It was loud as fuck, with amps cranked up to 11 on a scale from 0–​10. With the bass going through your body it felt like I was going to get in a trance. (SK31, Survey, 2013) I think spiritual/​mystical and ceremonial are words to describe the ‘zone’ in which you’re being transported due to the waves being sent at you, messes with the mind. (SX4, Survey, 2013)

The slogan included on each SunnO))) record  –​‘Maximum Volume Yields Maximum Results’ –​is, like the use of repeated brackets, often used in relation to drone metal beyond SunnO))), testifying to the importance of sheer physically felt amplified volume. Another phrase, used by Black Boned Angel, also in an album sleeve, goes further in making the connection with mystical language:  ‘Transcendence Can Only Be Reached at Maximum Volume’ (printed inside the sleeve of the album Bliss and Void Inseparable 2006).



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Heavy metal has always used language, artwork and lettering associated with occult religion. Drone metal’s amplifier worship extends this engagement, and can be understood as a manner of mystic speech. The fascination with amplification and distortion in drone metal, like mystical writing, transforms detail into myth, writes on the body with sounds that are to be experienced rather than understood and pushes a mode of signification to excess. Drone metal is described as indescribable, but the reception, contemplation and literal embodiment of these material, opaque signs are described, haltingly, in the language of trance, spirituality and mystical experience. It’s like a little room, he [SunnO))) guitarist Stephen O’Malley] performed in a room this big, and he had five amps, and six or seven boxes, 4x12s. And then, I was telling all my friends, I’ve been to metal concerts before, I know what volume is, blah blah blah. And at the moment he touched, just touched the string, it . . . it’s like . . . you can see . . . you can feel the fret movements because of the volume. You could . . . you could . . . He has this effect where he has three levels, you have a high, mid and a low, and you can actually hear all three of them. And when he does the high tones it fucking hurts. I couldn’t hear for like three days after that, but it was the best experience. Ever. It was just crazy. Your brain just releases stuff that you’ve never felt, and you just trance out. (G30, Interview, 2013)

Through amplification of small gestures in live performance, and in the amplification of a needle’s path through tiny grooves on a record, detail is transformed into myth. Heavy vibrations write on the bodies of listeners in unreadable, indescribable but powerfully experienced messages. In an extreme metal context where signs are already designed to function as opaque passwords or barriers, they are further turned against signification. Sometimes frustrating, even decried as pretention or posturing, this misdirection is an esoteric way of hiding secrets in plain sight. While they may appear to indicate occult secrets, the name Om simply means the sound ‘om’, Bong sounds like ‘bong’, and drone metal tracks are obsessive interrogations of what could otherwise be insignificant fragments, magnified into mythic scale. At concerts, amplification and material engagement with sound converge at a point where listeners speak of the sound no longer emanating from a separate source, but feeling as though it is coming from within their own bodies. In home listening, conditions are set to diminish any distraction or interruption from the outside world, compensating for the impossibility of reaching the same physical level of volume as at live shows with the tactility, smell and weight of vinyl and its packaging. This intense connection

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with sound is described in terms of detachment, journeying, pilgrimage, ritual, ecstatic intoxication and imaginary travel, yet this escapist, fantastical imagery is also allied to reports of a profound consciousness and inhabiting of the body. Keir Keightley describes something akin to this in his analysis of hi-​fi equipment advertisements of the 1950s, where marketing of technology offered a means of realising one’s repressed, true self, of momentarily abandoning the sham, pretense and rationality of a compromised age, in favour of authentic emotions and unbridled experience. (Keightley 1996: 158)

The fetishization of certain amplifier manufacturers and particular ways of reproducing recorded sound are extensions of this ideological promise, amplified and distorted into further extremes of sonic excess. Drone metal practice can become a way of listening that can be recognized elsewhere in everyday experience of contemporary life. An ambivalent response to a shift into a world of perceived digital immateriality in musical cultures which is often viewed as a crisis, physical engagement with sound in drone metal is a turn towards the repetitive, amplified, distorted materiality of mystic signs, an opacification which highlights a bodily engagement with sound, symbols and signs pushed to excess.

6

Methods to Cross the Abyss: Ritual, Violence and Noise

Introduction This extreme music produces extreme effects in the bodily consciousness of listeners. In this chapter, I explore aspects of such extreme responses and the language of ritual they prompt from listeners. I present examples of drone metal discussed in terms of ritual, noting similarities in terminology and differences in conceptions of ritual regarding different kinds of listening. For private listening, the term ‘ritual’ is often used by listeners to refer to their own development of special personal contexts and practices for heightening the power and effects of listening to vinyl records. By contrast, when used in reviews and public discourse, ritual is more commonly attached to particular sonic aspects, those understood within the genre culture as related to ‘drone’, itself a discursively constructed term with a range of connected meanings. When the word ritual appears in promotional materials, it is often in implications that a musical release is a recording of a ritual, or was recorded in circumstances described as ritualized. In talking about concerts, ritual tends to be used by listeners to describe elements of performance that they witness and even participate in, but feel distanced from and may not fully understand. Yet even with this sense of estrangement, such apparently ritualistic elements are held by many listeners to be profoundly important aspects of the performance experience. Across these contrasting interpretations or applications of the term ritual in the different spheres of musical culture, I identify a relation between difference and sameness which reproduces the combination of imagined elsewheres described in Chapter 4. The aspects of drone metal that seem to occasion profound responses from listeners seem to be those which stage an encounter with unknowable strangeness and mystery. In private listening, this is instantiated by

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performing certain separations and preparations of time, space and the body, such as ensuring no distractions, setting light levels, arranging furniture comfortably and imbibing substances from cups of tea to absinthe. At live performances, extreme volume and extension produces otherness and radical estrangement from ordinary life, language and even thought in drone metal designed and expected to be experienced and also, specifically, not to be understood. These aspects give rise to understandings of drone metal performance as ritual, made particularly meaningful as a result of its mystery and strangeness, its resistance to categorization within established structures for understanding and description. In the communications of participants, the terminology of ritual indicates a powerful otherness which, despite or even because of its vagueness in definition, is an important marker of value as witnessed and proclaimed by listeners. Seemingly crucial in separating such experience from the ordinary, while also grounding it in the body, is a sense of violence. Listeners repeatedly emphasize the importance of hurt, pain, violence, aggression or endurance in encounters with drone metal sound, which is in turn regarded as mystical, ritualistic, transcendental or spiritual. Drawing on theories of sacrifice and ritual from anthropology and the philosophy of noise which help account for this connection, I suggest that drone metal is ritually powerful for listeners because of the ambivalent way in which sound and music can both represent violence in abstraction and also physically enact violence on human bodies. Sound and music used as torture produce reports strikingly similar to descriptions of drone metal in describing desubjectivication, disintegration of the self and ineffable experience beyond language. Finally, I note scholarly suggestions about the concurrent emergence of mysticism, torture and ritual at periods of social and epistemological crisis.

Vinyl rituals Listening to drone metal recordings is often described as ritual. The following three excerpts are from interviews where I asked listeners to elaborate on their stated preference for listening to drone metal on vinyl records over CDs or digital files. It’s the whole ritual, you know, that you can’t skip tracks, you put the needle on the record, you need to not fall asleep so you can keep listening to the record. It’s big, it’s physical [mimes dimensions with hands], like you get something, you know. (G30, Interview, 2013)



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It’s very ritualistic. It goes well with glasses of absinthe, it goes well with meditation. You know, a CD is nice, it’s still a ritual, you know, you get the CD out [of] the case, you know, light some candles . . . But of course vinyl, you constantly have to get up and open up the double gatefold tome [mimes opening record sleeve] and put this monolithic heavy black SunnO)) vinyl on your platter. There’s a much more focused, ritualistic feeling to it for me. (G15, Interview, 2013) The records . . . it’s just my way. It’s like a ritual, you hold it in your hands [mimes holding, weighing the record sleeve]. It appeals to so many senses, you know, you have the smell of the vinyl, different coloured records and the big covers, it’s heavy in your hands and you put it on. Also you don’t skip tracks, you put on the whole side, because you can’t be bothered to stand up to skip a track so you listen to the whole side. It already gives you a different experience. (G12, Interview, 2013)

Several features of these excerpts are strikingly similar, with the same elements also mentioned in many other interviews and in conversations during fieldwork. Each starts with immediate statements about ritual, in different forms (it is a ritual, it’s ritualistic, it’s like a ritual). Further explanations are then given, which then return to a final emphasis on the special experience or feeling that vinyl allows for these listeners (getting something, having a more focused feeling, a different experience). Drone metal listeners mentioned material characteristics of vinyl, with emphasis on the physicality, dimensions and heaviness of LP records. Larger album artwork than CDs, tactile qualities and smell have been mentioned as part of the appeal of vinyl recordings (Fonarow 2006: 46–​8). Significantly, each of the three interviewees quoted above accompanied their words by physically miming different actions associated with vinyl records (holding a record, weighing it, opening a gatefold sleeve, placing a stylus on record), emphasizing the specific bodily engagements that were part of the listening ritual. Aspects of vinyl playback were also mentioned in terms of physical constraints or comportments, including not falling asleep and having to get up to turn the record over. In other conversations, listeners mentioned taking care not to damage easily scratched records, arranging the body comfortably, and even setting aside the physical space needed to store records and a turntable. Contrasting with indie listeners, who valued the seven-​inch single more highly due to a different ideologies of economy in music (Fonarow 2006:  47), drone metal listeners often regarded seven-​inch records somewhat disdainfully for featuring shorter tracks which therefore do not reward the investment of effort with experience of sufficiently significant duration.

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Listeners spoke of various kinds of deliberate actions around listening that I  understand as preparations and separations through which rituality is constructed. Ways of setting up time, space and the listener’s body for listening were designed to maximize what was described as intensity, focus or other desired qualities of experience. The aim of listening was very rarely described as enjoyment or pleasure, perhaps as a way of distinguishing the specialness of drone metal listening and separating it from other forms of music. Listeners frequently discussed the need for sufficient time to properly attend to listening, and described taking steps before listening to ensure that, for example, daily tasks had been completed and interruptions could be avoided. Listening sessions were commonly measured in terms of vinyl ‘sides’ (generally up to twenty-​ two minutes for a 33rpm record), showing the role of the music medium in defining the parameters of experience. Determining listening time in ‘sides’ of varying length also reinforces a sense of separation by entering another way of experiencing time which is determined by the course of the music rather than by clock time. Many drone metal tracks last for longer than one side, including landmark and influential tracks that extend beyond an hour in duration, such as Boris’s Absolutego (1996), Nadja’s Thaumogenesis (2010), and Sleep’s Dopesmoker (2012), all of which are spread across three sides of vinyl. Stoner Rock (2014) by Bong and V (2014) by Ommadon are also double vinyl albums, both featuring just two tracks which each take up two sides of a record. This leads to a certain tension between the desired length of tracks extending as much as possible, and the limitations of the media. The dilemma for drone metal listeners is outlined by Julian Cope in a review of Dopesmoker (2003), which also colloquially alludes to preparations for listening involving intoxication: Although the double vinyl artwork is huge, gatefold, magnificent, the CD version of Dopesmoker is the best option overall because you can get utterly narnered [sic] once you’ve put it on and not have to get up for almost an hour and ten. (Cope 2004)

Other physical and spatial preparations and separations were reported in home listening. Listeners mentioned moving furniture, clearing space and setting up a room in other ways for optimum comfort and concentration. The physical size of hi-​fi equipment and record collections roots vinyl listening in particular places of the home, and in this way makes the listener arrange themselves, their time and space around the fixed aspects of vinyl listening in contrast to the portability and flexibility of digital music listening. Some listeners preferred using headphones, citing a more immersive response as well as the



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need to avoid disturbing neighbours or family members, while others preferred to play over speakers because it was important to them that the music reverberated in space and in their bodies, despite the much lower volumes than could be experienced at concerts. Low lighting levels were often important, with complete darkness or candlelight often mentioned, and incense used by some to create a further sensory engagement. Tobacco, ale, wine, tea, marijuana and even absinthe were mentioned as being prepared and consumed by different listeners, further accentuating the prepared specialness by stimulating or transforming bodily consciousness. All these reported practices are developed by individuals who recognize and respond to what has worked for them in ritually marking out the listening occasion as time and space removed from the ordinary. Sometimes listeners described set patterns of behaviour for listening, such as not talking at all during listening, closing one’s eyes, and holding, touching, looking at or displaying the album sleeve and artwork (often propped up near the record player). These preparations again contribute to a practical and ideological separation for some listeners who distinguish strictly between ritual listening for drone metal and other ordinary practices of listening that are appropriate for other kinds of music. The preparations for drone metal listening are linked to the descriptive elsewheres outlined in earlier chapters. Listeners attend to and alter aspects of time, space and consciousness of the body in order to listen to music which is then talked about in terms of altered time, space and bodily consciousness.

Other ways of listening None of the drone metal listeners I spoke to throughout this research listened only to drone metal to the exclusion of other types of music. However, many listeners emphasized that vinyl listening as described above was the best way to listen to music, and the best music to listen to in such circumstances was drone metal. It is important to note that not all listeners reported engaging in this kind of specially framed listening. In addition, descriptions of ideal listening situations may have been achieved only rarely and could have been influenced by ideas such as that mentioned earlier about ‘the way the music is meant to be heard’. Some listeners said they found drone metal useful for certain tasks, especially long tasks requiring consistent focus, whether this was writing, reading, programming, editing or other work. Several office-​based listeners who worked on computers mentioned that playing drone metal on headphones was useful for blocking distraction and aiding concentration, thus effecting another kind of

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separation in consciousness. Several listeners who were students or academics appreciated this aspect of drone metal, particularly noting the consistently slow development of musical structures as helping them minimize distraction and focus for long periods. Listeners commented that the absence of, or low emphasis on, vocals and lyrics in drone metal meant that it did not disrupt reading or writing as would music with more prominent lyrics. While occasionally listening myself without doing anything else (described by some as ‘active listening’), I shared other listeners’ wishes of having more time to do this. More often, I listened to drone metal while working, and also found it to be functionally useful for the same reasons other listeners cited. Drone metal was also discussed as an accompaniment to travelling, particularly while commuting and during other work travel, either driving, walking or on public transport. Resonating with the traversals of imaginative elsewheres and pilgrimages, drone metal listening was used to reclaim or enhance time during commuting journeys that was otherwise considered to be boring, wasted or unusable. Sometimes, by contrast, special travelling occasions such as holidays were described as having been augmented by particularly chosen recordings. My own listening followed both of these tendencies, as I selected tracks which lasted for most of a commuting journey, as well as planning which music would accompany long road trips. These included playing Sleep’s Dopesmoker (2012) through the forested highways of New Brunswick in Canada, or listening to Bong while driving around strange volcanic landscapes in Iceland, both sparsely populated and remote areas which seemed to fit the conventions of ‘elsewheres’ in drone metal description. Several listeners said that working while listening to drone metal was absolutely impossible for them, but that other music could be used. Some also extended this separation of drone metal to listening while travelling, with several listeners suggesting that listening to drone metal on headphones while walking around in public might even be dangerous due to its immersive qualities and intense atmosphere. Differences were also reported in drone metal listening practices for live and recorded music. Some listeners only listened to drone metal recordings and did not attend concerts, while some only listened to live drone metal and were not interested in listening to recordings as they felt that listening at much lower volume would completely negate the music’s effect. Many who listened to both records and concerts agreed that the gap between live and recorded musical experiences was wider for drone metal than for any other music they listened to. For listeners in all of these groups, these practices of listening set drone metal apart from other music. The term ritual was used to describe practices



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surrounding listening that were designed to facilitate particular kinds of listening, which in turn evoked language related to religion. I interviewed a survey respondent who had mentioned reading the Bible in conjunction with listening to Om. Identifying as a Christian, he explained: Sometimes, if you’re reading something that’s quite affecting you emotionally, and then you have something playing in the background which fits that atmosphere, whatever that might be, it can I suppose heighten the experience. I suppose it’s a case of me manipulating or trying to manipulate my own . . . like again, when you go to see them live, you can have those moments when you do feel that God is, is quite, in the music almost, you know, quite close and drawing you to himself with the music and through the reading. I suppose that’s music’s way of being able to bring us into different emotional states. (O94, Interview, 2013)

While reading the Bible was not often mentioned by drone metal listeners, the terminology of heightened experience connected to religiosity (however ambiguously) was widespread. Another interviewee, with a completely different religious identification (or lack thereof), reported the ritual construction of drone metal listening experience in a similar way. He noted difference and separation from other music, and a changed relation to body, time and consciousness: Um . . . It’s . . . this is going to sound like bullshit, but . . . It’s more than music, it’s . . . You know, I’m not religious on any level, but it’s . . . you can relax, when you listen to it, and . . . It’s not like listening to other stuff. It’s a ritual that you . . . It takes you out of your body, and you think of stuff that you never think of, and you understand stuff that you never thought of before this. Because you have that time. (G30, Interview, 2013)

Special, ritualized private listening practices are part of a feedback process. The power of certain kinds of listening is recognized and so steps are taken by listeners to facilitate those kinds of listening, preparations which further enhance or optimize the experience. This is not to remove music and sound from the equation, nor to suggest that these ritualized preparatory actions entirely produce altered perception, but merely to highlight that both the ritual practices and the reports of alterity are articulations of recognized features of listening experience which are heard as specific to drone metal, with ritual preparations and separations then consciously performed by listeners in order to best facilitate those valued effects. These practices and resulting engagements are often understood and described as ambivalently religious, spiritual, sacred or mystical.

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Ritual in online discourse The descriptions and reports concerning ritual in interviews, surveys, fieldwork and reviews are produced in an already existing extreme metal discourse with its own conventions, expectations and genres of talking about music. This discourse is partly constituted by use of language and imagery in musical productions such as album sleeve notes, titles, poster images, lyrics, programme notes at concerts and promotional materials produced by musicians, record labels, event promoters or other representatives. While the broad milieu of these uses clearly influences listeners’ discourse, it is important to note that these uses by ‘producers’ of musical products are also influenced by listeners’ earlier responses, which themselves emerge into an existing discourse, which has in turn been partly constituted by listeners’ responses and communications about music and sound. Using the term ritual to describe an upcoming concert has become particularly prevalent in extreme metal, with bands that play different varieties of metal each describing live shows as rituals, whether in promotional materials, poster images, interviews or on-​stage welcomes. For example, Canadian doom band Blood Ceremony shouted ‘Thank you for coming to our ritual tonight!’ between songs at concerts I attended in Toronto and in Manchester; British extreme metal band Crypt Lurker describe their shows as ‘benighted rituals’ and flyers and advertisements for the Dutch experimental black metal duo Urfaust promote their concerts as ‘Rituals of Intoxication’. Scenic institutions also participate in this usage, sometimes even in their own names, such as Ritual Productions, a record label representing drone metal band Bong and other bands with drone or doom elements. The label’s website features menus titled ‘Rites’ for recordings and ‘Rituals’ listing upcoming live performances. A drone metal recording by Wraiths features on the label in the centre of the record the claim that All sounds on Oriflamme were created –​live and under ritual conditions –​from re-​structured equipment, location acoustics and human vocals. We pray for the salvation of those unwitting souls who have helped us on our pilgrimage. Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do. (Wraiths 2008)

In a theatrically sinister tone characteristic of extreme metal discourses, the note implies unspecified ritual practices and pilgrimage, and is accompanied by a paraphrase of a biblical verse. This example, while exaggeratedly mysterious in tone, nevertheless shows the connection between sound and special



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preparations, deliberately unspecified and ambivalent terminology, and the language of ritual, pilgrimage and mysticism.

Ritual in drone metal reviews: Influences on listening and writing The ubiquity of the term ritual in extreme metal is noted by one reviewer, who offers a critical perspective on its use: What’s the most overused word in metal these last five years? There can be no doubt: ‘ritual’. Now granted this is usually with regard to live performances. Yet it’s crept in, over and over, to the descriptions of metal generally. We know why. It’s to give a frisson of otherness to the very ordinary. Listening to drone kings Bong’s new two part hypnogasm Stoner Rock though, ‘ritual’ is the first and most persistent description that comes to mind. (Grey 2014)

Despite the reviewer being critical of overuse, the term ritual is nevertheless retained (and therefore emphasized as truly appropriate) for Bong’s drone metal. ‘Otherness’ in the writer’s view is clearly something to be valued, signalled precisely in their concern about inappropriate devaluing of the term. Later in the review, examples of elsewheres and modes of otherness such as altered time and altered consciousness are described, making a clear connection between ritual, the construction of special listening in practical and conceptual separations and the evocation of elsewheres. Drones (here meaning the assemblage of sonic and affective qualities described as droney or drone-​like by drone metal listeners, as outlined in Chapter 3) are mentioned by participants as producing a sense of ritual. In the press release for Bong’s album Stoner Rock (2014), ritual was evoked in specific connection with drones: Sonically speaking, Stoner Rock ventures further into the abyss, Bong are gravitating toward an endless void and with the magnitude of their ritualistic, mesmeric drones, we have no choice but to follow. (Ritual Productions 2014)

The function of the press release is clearly to influence reviewers to write positively, and this sentence was quoted verbatim in at least one review (Rose 2014). Similar ideas appear in many reviews, such as one which described Bong as ‘stoner-​doom ritualists’, with the album featuring ‘a dramatic voice like some kind of ritual incantation’ (Mike (ii) 2014). The same kind of mutual influence between listener’s practices and the presentation of musical products is

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shown in the promotion of Om’s Advaitic Songs (2012). Record label Drag City posted a sound clip from the album on the YouTube streaming site, accompanied by a photograph of the album cover placed in front of a burning incense stick and a devotional-​style candle in a tall glass jar (OM Advaitic Songs 7.24.12 2012). Demonstrating mutually influencing feedback between production and reception, the image references the kind of ritual listening described by listeners, while also producing the idea that this is an album that could or should be treated as such. The subtitle of one review of Sleep’s Jerusalem (1998a) suggests ritual as practice which facilitates experience: ‘Powerful Stoner Doom Metal Initiates Listeners in a Ritual Aiming at a Higher, Richer Plane of Existence’ (Nausika 2012). The following extract from the review finds aspects of rituality in recorded drone metal sound, linking drone metal to several religious concepts, together with a sense of ambivalent distancing. Although listeners might find this part of the track monotonous, they should consider the intent behind the repetition: the track simulates a religious ritual with transcendence as its aim and that’s why it cuts out the way it does –​the musicians have been ‘raptured’ into another higher, richer plane of existence –​ and the rest of us can only watch on and envy them. The monotony also serves to immerse and absorb listeners’ attention so through total immersion we can also join Sleep on their journey mentally if not physically and experience transcendence in our heads. (Nausika 2012)

In simulating rather than performing or conducting a religious ritual, the specific relationship to ritual by musicians and listeners is somewhat ambivalent, despite apparent ‘intent’, as with the sustained ambiguity observed in the evocation of elsewhere in listener discourse. A distance is described between listeners and musicians, since listeners witness the transcendence of the musicians. Later, though, in a shift that is characteristic of drone metal discourse, transcendence is described as apparently also available to listeners. Reviews of recordings discuss specific recordings as works by musicians which are also commodities to be assessed for their inherent value. In reviews, the idea of ritual is generally employed more in connection with describing sound than for reporting listening habits and practices. In these texts, it tends to be drone metal sounds rather than practices which are described as ritualistic. The sounds that are identified as ritualistic closely match the sounds discursively constructed as ‘drone’. These sonic qualities (extended tones, slow repetition of riffs, monotonous rhythms, exotic or distorted timbres, among others) are described in relation to elsewheres



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of time, place and bodily consciousness, which in turn are connected by reviewers to religious or spiritual themes and terminology.

Ritual events: Religion, intimacy and strangeness Concerts or aspects of performances were described as ritualistic, as rituals or as like rituals, though in starkly contrasting ways to ritual as understood in private listening or reviews. At live concerts, ritual usually denoted more spectacular or extraordinary events or responses. Ritual was not founded in repeated individual practices, as in private listening, but in the unique spectacle of musicians, sound, audience and setting combined. The [Gravetemple] performance was like a ritual, with the chanting, the building up of tension. (G12, Interview, 2013) This whole [Gravetemple] gig was like a dark ceremony. I mean Attila Csihar was standing behind an altar of noise mixing tools and doing his low, weird, dark voice ‘experiments’ like a high priest. In an addition the drone sound of Stephan O’Malley and Oren Ambarchi, which were very loud and slow, captured the listener to a slow journey. (G23, Interview, 2013) OC: What exactly made it [the SunnO))) performance] feel like a ritual? SK20: It’s probably just a matter of association. A snare roll might remind you of the military; an Eastern woodwind might evoke the image of a snake charmer; drones might remind you of a ritual. Those stereotypical ideas are embedded in our culture, I believe. Of course, the black robes and satanic vocals really completed the image. (SK20, Interview, 2014)

The word ritual as used here clearly implies connection with sacredness rather than, for example, connotations of rote or repeated behaviour. In these comments, evocation of ritual emerges in sound (chanting, tension, noise, a low weird dark voice, drone sound, loud and slow sound) and is connected to other signifiers of religion (an altar, high priest and journeys, given the widespread trope of pilgrimage). Elements of performance practice, gesture and setting were also mentioned when I asked listeners to elaborate on the terminology they used to describe performances. There were many things on stage [at the Gravetemple performance] which I connect with religion or spirituality . . . a thing which looked like a beehive [a revolving Leslie speaker], reminded me of Japanese Zen Buddhism. And of course the gong, as symbols of religion. (G12, Interview, 2013)

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OC: Can you explain what parts of the [SunnO)))] concert made you think of ritual, occult, and trance? SK15: The ritual –​occult aspect: there are the more obvious elements as sharing the wine, the circle setting, the clothing. (SK15, Interview, 2014)

The sharing of red wine by band members was noted as fitting ideas of ritual, perhaps influenced too by the exaggerated gestures with which the bottle is passed around, and the connotation of Christian communion ritual and the further association with blood. Sharing the wine as a symbol used in Catholic liturgy, the blood of Christ. I think it’s rather uncommon for ‘rock artists’ to drink wine when they are performing, and definitely when they focus that much on it. So you have the feeling it’s symbolic, and the blood of Christ is then the first thing that comes to mind. (SK15, Interview, 2014)

Difference is asserted from other forms of popular culture, popular music, rock music or metal music, contributing to a ritual atmosphere. The following interviewee differentiated SunnO)))’s ritualistic aspects from other drone. One of the aspects that sets SunnO))) apart from a lot of other drone acts, that’s the ritualistic aspect. For example, how the guys are dressed, and the gestures and the way the amps are set out on stage. It all sets a mood of, a séance, or ritualistic session of sorts. Or the worship of drone, or guitars. And even their motto, ‘Maximum Volume Yields Maximum Results’. Well, what can those results be, then? It all brings about an idea of a ritual for me I  guess. (SX2, Interview, 2014)

The solo drone metal guitarist Ashtoreth begins performances by burning sage, patiently wafting it over his guitar and pedals while the smoke and strong smell expand into the performance space. Practices such as these, as well as having lights switched off, wearing robes or following seemingly prescribed bodily movements, are understood by many listeners to downplay the individual identities of the musicians in favour of collective experience. OC: It was pretty much completely dark. Do you think that fitted in with the sound and the experience? B7: Oh yeah, most definitely. I think, I don’t think Bong are a visual band, they don’t kind of rely on, I don’t know, what other bands do! But I think it does help, to kind of focus on the sound a lot more than, you know, what’s going on around in the venue. (B7, Interview, 2013)



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A function beyond aesthetics in such practices is implied. It is significant for listeners that there appears to be a ritual purpose, even if or especially when the purpose is not clear to listeners. Connected with the productive ambiguity of listening ‘as if ’ the music or the setting were religious, it seems that having a sense that there is ritual going on is more important than identifying as a participant in the ritual, or even having any idea about any meaning, purpose or context for the apparent ritual. Often listeners assert a ritual quality, assuming that the musicians understand the ritual and are acting meaningfully according to set ideas and practices to which the listener does not have access. In these cases, ritual, even if understood as inaccessible by the listener, is still held to add importance to the musical experience. Even the previously quoted mention of established Christian symbolism in the red wine is vague and unspecified (‘you have the feeling it’s symbolic’). In this way, a sense or atmosphere of ritual can be experienced without necessary commitment to particular rituals or meanings. Even while listeners may not feel as if they are participants in ‘the ritual itself ’, they can participate in a feeling of ritualness, precisely through distance and ambiguity. SK34: The performance felt ritualistic in the way that all four musicians were dressed as monks in front of a monolithic dozen of amplifiers and acting like it was an actual ritual. OC: What’s the difference with an actual ritual? (If there is one!) SK34: It’s hard to describe it in English for me but it felt like the two guitarists were invoking something with feedback, doing large moves when strumming the guitars. The vocals also felt like an invocation. Never saw an ‘actual ritual’ and still have to watch the Häxan film but this is as close as I can imagine an invocation ritual. (SK34, Interview, 2014)

It is significant that this drone metal listener appeals to Häxan, a 1922 Swedish–​ Danish film about witchcraft and paganism, presented as a documentary while also using dramatized scenes. This ambivalently fictionalized film is a popular culture resource which, for this listener, is implied to in some way represent actual rituals, with reference to what he imagines the film to contain. The point here is not to suggest that this person somehow has mistaken ideas about ritual, but to underscore the importance of different levels of ambiguity in producing imaginative power in ideas about ritual. Ambiguity is widespread and important in understanding the deliberately indeterminate staging of ritual in drone metal. Another listener described the

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gestures of performers in an equivocating way that avoided pinning down the purpose, meaning or direction of the ritual. Sometimes they [SunnO)))] strike a chord, and then stand with their head backwards, upwards, and wearing the robes, it all gets an idea, at least, with the drone resonating, it all gets an idea of something . . . higher? Not necessarily saying a higher power, but something out there, above their heads. Feeling a sort of connection with . . . Well, maybe only the vibration between the amplifiers, but . . . All those kinds of gestures are not like ‘ok we’re playing a drone here’, it’s like meant to be something bigger. At least it points in that direction. (SX2, Interview, 2014)

The vagueness in this listener’s description is not due to their lack of information about the purpose of the ritual that might be available to other more knowledgeable participants. In fact, such reports of ambiguity and distancing mystery also came from the most committed and longstanding drone metal listeners. After having experienced ten or more SunnO))) concerts, some listeners maintained that, first, there was a sense of the band conducting ritual of some sort, and second, that it was somehow secret or hidden from them, the listener. Rather, uncertainty and ambivalence are fundamental aspects of drone metal discourse concerning ritual and religion. The imagined and rhetorical elsewheres described in Chapter  4 preserved a sense of otherness through evasive shifts between modes and sites of alterity. Here, similarly, drone metal rituals are rituals about the mysterious otherness of ritual and religion in contrast to ordinary experience. For one listener, ‘this is something so abnormal compared to everyday life that it becomes a ritual of some sort’ (SX10, Survey, 2013). The following description was part of an approving report about a SunnO))) concert, which nevertheless included a sense of being distanced from the meaning if not the experience of ritual: I had the feeling that the band was giving meaning to their music (symbolic aspect), but that I  wasn’t part of their cult (that I  couldn’t fully understand what they were doing, as an outsider). I didn’t share the rituals/​symbols. (SK15, Interview, 2014)

Later on, the same interviewee mentioned that he responded positively to the band’s use of ritualistic and religious symbolism. In combination with the ‘outsider’ feeling, this suggests that in the consumption of religious trappings in drone metal, value is found precisely in religiosity that is distanced from understanding:  ‘Being an atheist I  do enjoy the richness of religious symbols



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(traditional human culture), but in a non-​religious context’ (SK15, Survey, 2013). The insertion of a clarifying definition of religious symbols as ‘traditional human culture’ in a context where SunnO)))’s imagery includes pictures of Aztec temples, medieval cathedrals and robes, suggests that the kind of religion that prompts enjoyment or interest is religion connected with spatial and temporal elsewheres. A conceptual distancing from contemporary urban society and its epistemological structures is therefore implied. Religion in drone metal, like the music itself, is to be experienced rather than understood. The majority of listeners I spoke to described themselves as non-​religious or atheist, but many who did so also discussed being intrigued by aspects of religion. What tended to interest listeners in religion were elements that they didn’t fully understand or that were not based on understanding. These aspects of religion mentioned by listeners, as attendance at church services, meditation, pilgrimage or ritualized practices were not based on doctrines, beliefs or understanding but instead on participation, attendance or other practical engagements. For listeners who did state commitment to particular religions, aspects of drone metal described as ritual and even spiritual or mystical were generally compared with, but sharply differentiated from, those listeners’ own religious practice. Among self-​described atheist or non-​religious listeners, on several occasions discussion of drone metal elicited mention of attending church services as a child, with the narrated memories featuring elements of incomprehension, awe and recognition of the strange effects of religion. This is expressed in the following extract from an interview, quoted at length for its clear demonstration of how drone metal is understood to evoke a comparably mysterious but powerful religiosity. OC: You said that you’re not religious, but the spirituality [in drone metal] attracts you somehow. Can you talk about what you mean by the religion and spirituality, and what attracts you about those kind of things? O21: Well, I have to say I grew up in East Germany, and we were a communist country. So religion didn’t play a role, in communism, you know. But for example my grandma, she’s religious, and she took me to church once. And I remember, like, being a small kid. And I don’t really know what’s happening at church, I have to say, because I never really, I’m just, I grew up in a communist country! It’s a bit embarrassing to say that, but I don’t know why they [do this], and when they pray . . . I don’t know! OC: It’s all just mysterious? O21: Well yeah. And I remember they were on their knees, my grandma, and she was praying, and I was just standing there, I was just a little kid, and I asked her something, and she didn’t respond, you know! And my grandma

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would always respond, you know, usually. So for me it was like a situation, where something was so strong, like some other force was so strong that she didn’t talk to me in this situation. And this was weird for me, as a kid, and you were a bit afraid of your own grandmother, and what is she doing there? She’s on her knees, and she’s saying stuff! I just wanted to talk to her, you know, I didn’t know what’s happening. And I remember that this was a weird experience for me. And it was like an old church, you know, and a bit mystical . . . What’s attractive for me is when people start to focus on something that has so much influence that they start acting differently, like my grandmother, you know. She was just different in this situation, and I asked myself ‘What can be so strong? That she’s not responding?’ Because she was just focusing on something else, some other force. And for me it’s just interesting that people can be influenced in such a strong way by something, and I was trying to look into all the religions just like a bit and to see what people, what they get attached to in a way. It’s just what attracts me is, like religion or spirituality can have such a strong force for people. OC: So do you think this contributes to the whole atmosphere around the Om music, that kind of . . .? O21: Yeah, it’s similar. The people at the Om concert were in a way, my grandmother back at church, you know, they, they were not listening any more, they were in this mood, they were moving, in a weird way, and just getting into this, whatever happened there, you know. And yeah . . . I think it’s that, you know. (O21, Interview, 2014)

In juxtaposing a drone metal concert with a childhood encounter with the strangeness of religion, there is both a sense of intimate personal connection (with childhood, a close family member, a personal experience) and alienating distance (in confusion, distance from normal experience and the recognition of mysterious power). The simultaneous intimacy and distancing in descriptions of ritual are echoed by other interviewees, who described the evocation of otherness at drone metal concerts specifically in terms of actual rituals which they had witnessed in person but from which they were in some way distanced. It made me think of the Greek Orthodox ritual I once experienced . . . the same darkish tediousness. (SK30, Survey, 2013) I was in Jamaica a while, and I  stayed with a community of Rastafarians and there is a moment in which they all reach trance through music, and drumming. And I  think in a way, the repetition of the music, and the very loud sounds, and the very deep kind of like bodily experience fits into the ritualistic side of religion in a way, it does put you in the right space to feel that sort of communal



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trance . . . It is a way for people to share experience and share a moment, and in a different way to what is implied by religion. Because it feeds into certain needs that are elsewhere or otherwise filled in by religion, but [for] people who are not religious it gives that sort of space or environment. I don’t know. (N36, Interview, 2013) OC: Would you describe concerts like SunnO))) in that kind of language, of mantras and transcendence and meditation? Is that something that you relate to? E14: I can relate to the experience. I wouldn’t want to necessarily say ‘it is a spiritual experience’ because for everyone, the idea of a spiritual experience is different. But . . . yeah, it is a very strange thing. A few years ago, up in the Dopo region on the Tibet border, I ended up in basically the oldest Bon Buddhist monastery that’s still in existence. And we were invited by the lama who was living there, and he was about to go and do his daily mantra, would we like to sit and listen. And just as an observer, I was able to sit there, without really knowing what’s going on, an hour and a half ’s time had passed. I think, that is quite similar in terms of experience, if you can get your head into it, as to going into a SunnO))) gig. Definitely for SunnO))) I think, yeah, a lot of people will have that kind of experience. (E14, Interview, 2014)

These four encounters with religion that were compared with drone metal concerts (the church service remembered from childhood, the Greek Orthodox service, the Rastafarian ritual attended as an outsider and the visit to the Tibetan monastery) were apprehended without comprehension, and this was a source of their power. Estrangement or distance from meaning is by no means an obstacle to a powerful engagement with ritual. Drone metal is described as being beyond language, and this is understood as a marker of its specialness. The sense of ritual is created in private listening by deliberately making space set apart from ordinary life, and it is most powerfully encountered in live settings when a radical strangeness is evoked in performance and heavy sound, beyond accessible meaning but bearing directly on the body.

Meaning and lack of meaning in listeners’ encounter with ritual Some listeners reflected further on the uses of the term ritual, developing theories about religion, drone metal sound and contemporary culture.

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Sometimes theorists such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Rosa Braidotti, Barbara Ehrenreich, Gilbert Rouget and the works of Aleister Crowley were named, while at other times conceptions of ritual were more spontaneously articulated. Many of the previously discussed tropes and themes identified as characteristic of drone metal discourse were expressed through ideas about ritual: a sense of otherness, a separation from other realms of life, an ambiguous distancing from religious commitment while displaying a fascination for religion, a sense of traversal at the level of language, a conceptual opposition between experience and understanding and a mutually reinforcing alteration of time, space and bodily consciousness in preparation for drone metal listening. One interviewee described himself as a practicing occultist and described in detail his ritual practices which used ideas from Chaos Magick and incorporated recording and replaying sound (SK22, Interview, 2014). He described noticing in SunnO)))’s performance definite indicators that they were conducting an invocation ritual, though he didn’t know what or whom they were invoking. The occultist assumed that there were goals and functions to the ritual, and that something in particular that was being evoked, though he did not know what these were. Responding to his description of ritual practice involving sound, intoxication and sleep deprivation, I asked about his own purposes in conducting invocation rituals: SK22: It’s getting past the psychic censor, if you will. Like, you have this barrier and you have to get through it with certain methods to cross the abyss, like they say [laughs]. OC: So, why is that an important thing to do? SK22: Well, I think that’s the reason why people do these things, to find out in a certain way why they’re doing it. And of course to achieve certain goals, which might be in most cases trance, transcendence, very spiritual [things] and all that. But everyone has different approaches to all that. You have very modern forms of occultism and magic, and you have also the very wiccan traditions and even shamanistic traditions that keep on going. So there’s a lot of variations in those things. And I think SunnO))) kind of, still kind of recreates the most primal form of all of those exercises. When man came to be, that’s how it felt I think! [laughs]. (SK22, Interview, 2014)

These ideas are placed by the listener within an assumed universal framework, with SunnO)))’s drone metal connected to ‘the most primal form’ of practices identified with ancient traditions.



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While awaiting a Gravetemple performance at Roadburn Festival, I  talked to a fellow attendee about metal clichés and hyperbole. This listener considered that stereotypical tropes concerning magic, the supernatural, witchcraft were used in metal culture as a kind of ritual repetition. In his view, the superficial use of such iconography and language was not designed for in-​depth analysis by audiences, but instead was a kind of deferral of thinking which he considered to be ritualistic in itself. The idea of ritual in drone metal is often used to connote the disruption of thinking or an escape from rationality, as ‘music to be experienced not understood’, with understanding actively subverted or obstructed. This interpretation fits with the impression that a sense of ritual is strongly felt in the absence of knowledge or understanding. Another interviewee was less convinced about the ritual aspects of SunnO)))’s performance, criticizing the theatricality of the performance. In particular, they were unimpressed by a section without guitars, where the focus was more on singer Attila Csihar’s experimental vocals: OC: You said [in the survey] that you didn’t enjoy the voice part [of the SunnO))) performance] so much? Did you mean the part when the guitars left and the vocalist was just doing . . . SK24: Ah, yeah, that’s true! That’s where it became really really theatrical for me, and a bit over-​the-​top. Almost getting to like cabaret or something like that. Too much trying to do a ritual, or whatever. OC: And that didn’t work for you? SK24: Yeah, totally not. Then it becomes a bit ridiculous for me, it becomes too . . . I don’t know how to express it, man. You know like they have this heavy metal thing, to the back of it. And heavy metal, they tend to enjoy this overdressing and overdoing and a lot of symbolics and a lot of gestures, and da da da . . . And then it just doesn’t work for me. It’s like . . . yeah, you’re a priest, but I’m not in your church, man! [laughs]. (SK24, Interview, 2014)

Even this critique of ritual, however, acknowledges the prevalent understanding of how drone metal is connected to religious traditions of otherness, where ritual is something experienced at a distance from one’s own practice and understanding. Later, discussing ritual and connotations of religion in drone metal, the same interviewee expressed scepticism about the overtly mysterious presentation of ritual by SunnO))), mentioning that rituals like baptism and marriage, if familiar and within one’s own community, can be very boring and ordinary. By contrast, he felt that the interest in evoking rituals from elsewhere marked a lack of connection with ordinary ritual and spirituality.

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SK24: Things can become very present, you know, when they are absent. So, I  think, I  noticed in my surroundings, a lot of people suddenly gaining interest in rituals, in this kind of stuff, a lot of New Age . . . There’s a lot of New Age stuff going back nowadays. But, it to me shows more that these people have a lack of spirituality, and they’re looking for it. But people that I know, that are completely not really into that kind of thing, they seem to be much more balanced, and they seem to have that need fulfilled in their life, somehow. . . . And I think if you will go to a native tribe, it can be very weird systems. The way they look at the world, and they classify the world, in totemology, all this kind of shit, it can look really weird. If we take the position of anthropologist, then we of course see, like, we see some magic Indian performing some kind of ritual. And it’s magic and it’s new, and it’s . . . You don’t understand it so you think it’s fascinating. But if you manage to take the position of the Indian it makes perfect sense, there is nothing weird happening, it’s not so special. So yeah, there’s a nostalgia, or a charm, or, I don’t know, I guess a need for this magical charm. (SK24, Interview, 2014)

In discussing the use of low lighting and smoke machines by drone metal performers, one listener highlighted mystery and a representation of indeterminacy. It’s very kind of ephemeric [sic], and it kind of moves, and can make a different shape every second. You can represent pretty much anything and kind of represent maybe a kind of archetypal, ritualistic aspect to it. (H12, Interview, 2013)

As Mary Douglas notes, ‘ambiguous symbols can be used in ritual for the same ends as they are used in poetry and mythology, to enrich meaning or to call attention to other levels of existence’ (Douglas 1966: 40). Ambiguous and ambivalent symbols are used in drone metal, not least in the use of noise (analogous to dirt, as sound rather than matter out of place). Ambivalence extends to the ways in which such symbols are described and imagined, even to the point where the status, meaning and purpose of the ritual itself is ambiguous yet still powerful. Each utterance employing religious vocabulary draws on the particular sense and context of that individual’s understanding of those words. Given the translocality and marginality of drone metal as a genre, there is an absence of institutional frameworks common to all drone metal listeners, through which the meanings of religious terminology and practices could be comparatively stabilized. Therefore the meaning of terms such as ritual or mysticism cannot be assumed to be equivalent, it being clear that sometimes listeners use such words in very different ways. However, there remains a definite commonality in the mere fact that the same words (ritual, mysticism, transcendence) are used and understood by many



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listeners in the same ways of talking in the discourse surrounding the music. Across this participatory discourse, each way of using the term ritual is generally understood to contribute to the heightening of experience of drone metal, a goal which is often considered to be separate from issues of cognition, rationality and understanding. In assessing the place of ritual and the symbols and language of religion in drone metal, sound is again the starting point for theorizing religiosity. Many listeners think about ritual and mysticism in drone metal as emerging from the reception of certain sonic qualities. While each understanding of ritual is different, the terminology is used in the same broad and shared discourse which informs how listeners approach and engage with the music. Ideas about ritual in the function and symbolism of drone metal converge somewhat in this genre culture, in connection with an imagined ancient, archaic, even universal religiosity which can be accessed or evoked by drone metal listening.

The imagined ‘universal drone ritual’ Ritual in drone metal is commonly described in relation to societies and groups from the distant past and exoticized places –​in short, imaginary tribes from ‘elsewhere’. These themes are discussed as an implicit foundation for universal theories about drone and ritual, evoked in claims about the value of drone metal listening amid the perceived shortcomings of the modern world. Listening to drone metal is held to provide privileged access to experience understood in terms of a kind of universal elsewhere, which is deeply important to listeners, even if they are not able to articulate exactly how or why. Among the most prevalent ways in which explanations are tentatively put forward, are versions of what I will call theories about a ‘universal drone ritual’. Various evoked elsewheres are imagined as connected with drone sound as part of an ancient and universal community of drone ritual practice, which the contemporary individual can access through drone metal. The [Gravetemple] performance was like a ritual, with the chanting, the building up of tension. Like you would imagine an occult ritual where people get into like a trance, like with African tribes, possession rituals. (G12, Interview, 2013) To listeners first encountering the band, this repetitive delivery may come across as boring, but (as usual) Bong somehow make it work towards channeling a sort of ancient, ancestral type of vibe. In the more tribal-​based eras of times bygone, when you had shamans and other spiritual leaders guiding their villages towards higher consciousness, music would typically accompany their rituals, at a steady, monotonous rhythm that, in some way or another, helped them plunge

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into their zones. Bong seem to exemplify this idea, and the music of Stoner Rock certainly ‘takes you places’. (Apothecary 2014) From African tamtam rituals to pop music festivals nowadays, the common characteristics of these things is that people collectively experience some kind of ecstatic or transcendental, cathartic experience. And people equate that, because I think they’re all alike. I think that most concerts that people really like are mystical, to them, because it’s a ritual. (B25, Interview, 2013)

Listeners connected drone metal listening to ideas about imagined rituals or to real rituals which they had witnessed without fully understanding, with connections made to a supposed universal quality underlying all rituals. This implied universalism clearly echoes the perennialism discussed in Chapter  2 in religious studies scholarship, and these ideas have certainly influenced popular discourse on religious experience and mysticism in music cultures and elsewhere. A contrast, however, appears in the emphasis on mystery and not knowing in the reports of drone metal experience, contrasted with the sometimes epistemic elitism that perennialism tends towards. A sense of ritual was an important element in the experience of a significant or powerful drone metal event, but this ritual sense included, perhaps even required, a distancing opaque strangeness which frustrated or withheld meaning and understanding.

The violence of drone metal ritual In creating these ritualistic conditions for unusual or extraordinary experience and access to the imagined ancient drone tradition, a crucial aspect of drone metal according to listeners is a kind of violence in noise. Drone metal sound is described as violent, as torturous, as noise which silences thoughts, as undirected or abstract aggression, as prompting pain or suffering and as a physical and mental attack on the subject which forcibly removes them from ordinary experience. Yet this sound described as like violence, or as if violent, or as violence, is held to occasion rare and profound responses, make listeners feel more in touch with reality and grounded in their emotions and self-​perceptions and more connected with others in a listening community. These powerful effects are, for many listeners, inextricable from ambivalent conceptions of violence in drone metal sound. The music resonates with the bodies creating disturbing vibrations that both terrorize and paralyze the audience. But it’s not a negative feeling at all, in my



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opinion, it may push your body to certain limits but it ultimately helps you feel more alive. (SK34, Survey, 2013) SK11: It was really, it was testing, it was really . . . near . . . something like hurt. It was very hard to leave. I think it was very very . . . long [laughs]. Too long, too long. But I’m sure it’s part of the experience. It need to be too hurt, I think. Not a huge hurt but something difficult to experience. Yes, I think these difficulties are part of . . . give birth to something like a community, you know? You can feel that all the people who are experiencing that thing, are part of the same community because something happen to you and all of us. So I think you become something like ‘us’ when you experience this kind of concert. The sound is very [laughs] too much, too loud. You almost can’t breathe, you can’t drink at all. I remember I had a drink, and I can’t drink because the sound and vibration of the sound make you unable at all to drink, to swallow. OC: So if it’s a violent test, that hurts, it’s difficult, it’s too long . . . why do people want this experience? SK11: It’s a question for me, because I did it twice! So, the first time I experience all that, but then I go another time! And really, I don’t know. I have absolutely no idea. Maybe . . . maybe because it’s an experience. It’s fascinating, and it’s . . . very intense. It’s something you don’t feel or experience somewhere else. You only live this and experience this at this concert. (SK11, Interview, 2014)

For several listeners, drone metal is something to return to again and again even when it has caused physical damage to their bodies. In one remarkable case, a SunnO))) concert attendee described how his lung collapsed at a gig because of the pressure, but that it made it an intense experience and he would definitely seek out shows by that band again. At the Temples festival in 2015, in the crowd just before SunnO))) were due to perform, a couple described to me how excited they were to see the band for the second time. In describing the first time they had seen the band, one enthusiastically reminisced that within three seconds of the performance starting she had immediately vomited because of the pressure of the sound. Her partner then described how they ‘had to’ then go and get tattoos soon after the performance, showing an O))) design inked on his arm. The physical response of vomiting, conventionally an indication of sickness, was in this case valued as proof of a powerful experience, and the immediate transition to talking about tattoos suggested that the decision for these was motivated by a wish to commemorate the immense physical impact of the noise at that concert by getting signs permanently marked on their bodies.

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The violence of noise is mentioned in communications about recordings as well as in discussing concerts. Physical pain and violence against the body is an important part of the rhetoric in which extraordinary experience is registered. A  review of Sleep’s Dopesmoker (2003), for example, suggests various ways in which drone metal sound inflicts pain or violence: [The guitar solos] just crush you into a bloody pulp and then the riffs afterwards will continue to beat you senseless. You’ll decapitate yourself headbanging to this. It is indeed quite hypnotic, but at times it’ll just grab you and destroy you. (Gothus 2009)

A posting by cassette label Tartarus Records, functioning in part as promotion for an upcoming release, reported: ‘I’m listening to the new Bismuth album and believe this recording could actually fucking kill you’ (Tartarus 2015). Here violence is rhetorical or metaphorical, rather than describing actual physical damage to the body. There are, though, connections between the potential damage inflicted by extreme volumes at concerts with the more figurative, abstract violence in language used to describe extreme sounds in terms of extension, slowness and other ‘drone’ qualities. Ideas about the painful, violent physical impact of sound are an important aspect of how the value of live and recorded drone metal is measured, asserted and communicated. Drone metal sound can also be an expression or expulsion of violence, where listeners describe feelings of catharsis, healing and relief from forms of violence and stress they undergo in contemporary urban life. The following lengthy extract from a written interview is included as it evocatively communicates different aspects of violence and physical engagement with drone metal that were mentioned by other listeners, while also connecting with other tropes such as journeys and extremes of language that have been explored in other chapters. OC: Describe your experience of the SunnO))) performance. SK20: The concert was long and difficult to sit through, but absolutely worth it. The music was extremely loud and heavy (even louder than I expected) and you could feel your entire body shake. It wasn’t that hard on the ears, though. Low bass tones seem to be easier on the ear than higher pitched, squeaking sounds. By the time the concert was over, I was drained. I was tired and wanted to get out of there as soon as possible –​like coming home from journey (a spiritual one in this case): the trip was great, but finally coming home feels just as good. OC: Can you explain more what you mean about a spiritual journey/​trip?



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SK20: Most music these days sounds extremely chaotic to my ears. Every word or beat yanks you out of your thoughts, so there isn’t any room to think. When you’re at a Sunn O))) concert, the constant loudness drowns out every distracting factor there could possibly be. The venue is almost pitch black, so visual distractions aren’t there either. This allows you to ‘wander into’ your mind without having to start over with every sensory impulse. When, for example, certain sounds trigger a memory, you can relive that memory in its entirety instead of having to get your thoughts back to your work or the traffic or an exam or . . . When I showed a video of the gig at De Kreun to my mother, she said she couldn’t listen to the music for long because it ‘reminded her of everything she had ever done wrong’. So I think the space it creates for your thoughts to drift into can be very confronting too. . . . If I had to compare it with something, It’d be watching a really disturbing, violent, sickening film or piece of art. OC: Was the concert disturbing? How was it similar to disturbing/​sickening film or art? SK20: When I watch a violent film, I often feel uncomfortable and even afraid. Those are not pleasant feelings at all, but I still think they are important. I find that one should never forget how much sickening, terrible things are happening in the world every single day. Of course, I stopped constantly worrying about how depressing the world is a long time ago, and I recommend everyone to do the same. I have noticed a lot of really energetic and carefree people don’t want to hear music like Sunn O))) at all. They all say it’s scary and depressing and so on. So I guess it is disturbing. Especially to people who like to hide everything unpleasant away somewhere. (Think of my mother a few questions up). (SK20, Interview, 2014, emphasis in original written response)

Here the violence of drone metal may be understood as a representation of violence, as violence made audible and perceptually available, and therefore in part made more manageable and understandable. This is understood in the listener’s own words as connected to the spiritual journey evoked by drone metal. Across drone metal culture and discourse, violent noise is closely linked by listeners to extraordinary experience, described as indescribable or beyond language, of vibrations which feel like they are coming from inside listeners’ own bodies. Such extreme experiences even suggest dissolution of consciousness or a disintegration of subjectivity. This language of catharsis, violent confrontation and endurance is closely related in the listener’s speech with healing, meditation and transcendence, as well as with pilgrimage, ritual and mysticism.

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Ritualized bodies The terminology of ritual has been used to understand rock and metal concerts (Weinstein 2000:  225, Glanzer 2003:  9–​10, Fonarow 2006, Riches 2011:  326, Lucas 2013), and, less frequently, listening to vinyl records (Eisenberg 1987: 43–​ 4, Partridge 2014: 158–​9). Frameworks for understanding ritual often emphasize the creation of liminal communitas or collective sociality in public concert settings, and this resonates with the uses of ritual terminology in descriptions of live drone metal concerts. That approach does not, however, account for the prevalence of religious symbols and language in drone metal in comparison to live performances of other related popular music forms, nor for the importance of violence in sound that listeners report in connection with ritual and mysticism. Victor Turner’s development of Arnold van Gennep’s tripartite structure is among the most influential contributions to the theory of ritual. This three-​stage model describes three stages for participants: first leaving a social group, then undergoing a transformative and sometimes arduous transition in a liminal phase, and finally re-​entering the group having accrued status, experience or knowledge (Van Gennep 1960, Turner 1969). This process can be applied to different kinds of concerts and especially music festivals. A temporary community is formed based on the fact of attendance, a collective experience is undergone and finally attendees return to society, with status or (sub)cultural capital as well as personally important experiences gained. At drone metal events, audience members have spoken specifically about being conscious that the loud sound vibrating through their own body is doing the same to others, instantiating a temporary but physically manifested vibrating communitas across all bodies in a particular performance space, even when no other communication is taking place between attendees shrouded in smoke or darkness. As Mikhail Bakhtin puts it, in discussing his concept of the carnivalesque, ‘the people become aware of their sensual, material bodily unity and community’ (Bakhtin 1968: 255). An important aspect of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque is play with bodily grotesquerie (Bakhtin 1968: 317). It has been widely noted that extreme music genres express a fascination with the grotesque and abject body, with this obsession manifested in album cover art, lyrics and performance practices in different ways specific to the subgenres of death metal (Phillipov 2012: 138–​41), grindcore (Dee 2009: 62–​3), industrial music (A. Reed 2013: 177), and doom metal (Piper 2013:  37, Shvarts, 2014:  214). In drone metal, however, there is little



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mention of vomit, faeces, blood or bodily injury in artwork or lyrics. Instead, the bodily grotesque emerges in responses to drone metal sound, whether in gleeful sharing of legendary tales of defecation, nosebleeds, vomiting and collapsed lungs at concerts, or in exaggerated rhetoric about the effects of recordings, such as being decapitated by a Sleep record or killed by a Bismuth album. As was discussed in Chapter 3 regarding genre, aspects which define drone metal move from the ‘content’ of music, lyrics and album covers to include aspects of subjective response. As well as evoking the abject body in language, listeners experience sound as if it is coming from inside their bodies. Rather than witnessing the carnivalesque body in the content of musical products, then, audiences participate in the experience and discursive construction of a grotesque response to sound, which marks drone metal’s power to produce a liminal elsewhere within a listener’s body. Bakhtinian readings of extreme music genres have shown that this ritualized sense of carnivalesque liminality can offer a therapeutic, if temporary, resistance to alienation, for example in queercore music (DeChaine 1997: 28) and in a ‘cathartic outlet for everyday aggression, and a medium for experiencing the exhilaration of wide-​awake and focused life’ provided by nu-​ metal (Halnon 2006: 36). The Bakhtinian carnivalesque in popular culture can serve to channel as well as resist violence in different registers (Lipsitz 1990: 235–​ 46). In ‘those violent, dark revolts of being’ (Kristeva 1982: 1) expressed in grotesque bodily responses to drone metal, and in stories shared about them, ‘the abject is edged with the sublime’ (Kristeva 1982: 11). The extreme, carnivalesque abjection of the listening body can combine with mystical ways of responding to an estrangement from language in the impossibility of description. The terminology of ritual, catharsis, mysticism and weird religion is introduced in its powerful ambiguity to signal this strange resonance of drone metal.

Theorizing violence, noise and ritual Listener portrayals of drone metal include an implicit conception of violence, in the testing and transgressing of boundaries in order to produce ritual space, and in their celebration of intense, potentially damaging physical vibrations. These ideas about violence are connected to deliberately imprecise and distanced ideas about ritual, religion and experience, demonstrating that concepts of violence, ambiguity and noise are central issues in understanding drone metal’s discourses of ritual and mysticism. No doubt partly influenced by decades of moral panic

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and media overreaction about metal and violence, in discussing violence listeners are nevertheless forthright in accepting and discussing the potentially destructive or damaging force of drone metal concerts on their own hearing. Recognition of violence also appears in anecdotes about extreme physical responses to drone metal, in discussing the arduousness and difficulty of listening to recordings as well as to live performances, and in acknowledgement of the adverse reactions to drone metal from those with whom they share space. Here I understand violence broadly to include physical damage, fear of physical damage, pain, hurt, torture, aversion, aggression as well as responses to sounds understood as disturbing, sick and dark, or which may even be described as attacking the listener in some way. These ways of talking move from the definitively physical (empirically observable temporary or permanent damage to bodies) to the more abstract (sound feeling disturbing or threatening, for example). It may therefore be asked where exactly actual violence becomes metaphorical violence: whether, for example, a rhetoric of being attacked by sound, within a discourse where hyperbolic exaggeration is conventional, is actually indicative of real violence. However, as I will show, these shifting unstable relations and movements between conceptual registers are inextricable from the idea of violence in noise. This connection between violence, noise and religiosity I understand in relation to the theories about noise and political economy of Jacques Attali (1985), who extended work on sacrifice by René Girard (1977) and on conceptual noise by Michel Serres (1975; see also Serres 2007). According to Girard, sacrifice is the paradigmatic form of ritual, on which all other rituals are based. Sacrifice is an inevitable part of human societies, which are themselves fundamentally violent due to the necessary suppression of competitive desires for the same objects and resources (Girard 1977; see also Hobbes [1651] 1994, Freud 1961, Bloch 1992:  4). Girardian sacrifice operates according to a scapegoat mechanism, a release for the aggression and tension inherent in every social organization. Rather than allowing this potential violence to erupt into endless conflict which would destroy society, it must instead be channelled. The focus of this violence is directed onto a symbolic scapegoat figure, which is then subjected to banishment or death. Violence is channelled away from damaging the community. The scapegoat victim, once departed or dead, becomes a figure of veneration, having figuratively saved the community from the inherent and unstable violence. Two senses of the sacred are combined here: something worshipped or considered special, and something set apart and potentially dangerous. Violence is a general condition of anti-​or pre-​social chaos, but there is also violence in



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the threat of antisocial chaos erupting. Further, there is a specific act of violence done to the scapegoat in order to hold at bay the general violence. The concept of violence appears in a number of different places in this relation, and thus a powerful ambiguity is fundamental to this mechanism. Michel Serres’s consideration of noise in The Parasite (2007) describes a related conceptual multivalence. Noise is the interruption of a message or signal, whether this is noise in the sense of informational disruption or noise as unwanted sound. At a higher level of abstraction, then, noise is new information about the status of a signal. Noise, in obstructing a signal is also a signal in another register. Serres further describes noise as the channel through which information passes. This assertion is supported by information theory, since, despite being commonly understood as an interruption or obstacle, a certain level of noise is inescapable and even necessary for the transmission of a signal (Bateson 1972: 375–​86). While predominantly considering noise as an abstract concept relating to information, Serres does use sonic metaphors and examples, such as the knock at the door which interrupts conversation but provides new information outside the limits of that communication. Jacques Attali, building on the work of Girard and Serres, draws together the multiple conceptions of both noise and violence in his speculative political economy of music (1985). Attali, along Girardian lines, suggests that music (as opposed to noise) is an analogue of social organization (as opposed to violent chaos). Music, via this analogy, can make modes of social organization audible to listeners. Therefore music, for Attali, can be both an abstract representation of social structures and an instrumental tool in political economy. This relation between music and noise parallels the relation between chaos and society, and thus involves a figuration of violence. Just as in Girard’s theory, violence occupies multiple shifting positions. General chaotic violence is heard as antisocial, anti-​musical noise, yet music emerges from the channelling violence that is done to noise in order to constrain chaos into social structure. Similar to Serres’s conceptions of noise creating or heralding new information, Attali suggests that what is heard as noise (against music, which models existing social structure) contains threatening new possibilities for new modes of social organization. Similar points are made in relation to different senses of noise by Mary Douglas, dealing with dirt and impurity, and Gregory Bateson, in relation to information theory. Disorder by implication is unlimited, no pattern has been realised in it, but its potential for patterning is indefinite. This is why, though we seek to create order,

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we do not simply condemn disorder. We recognise that it is destructive to existing patterns; also that it has potentiality. It symbolises both danger and power. (Douglas 1966: 94) All that is not information, not redundancy, not form and not restraints  –​is noise, the only possible source of new patterns. (Bateson 1972: 386, emphasis in original)

Thus the irruption of noise threatens to do violence to the social order in music, while the social order in music exists as a result of a ritually violent shaping of noise. Noise and violence thus occupy multiple places in a shifting logic joining society, ritual and the sacred. In many contemporary popular music discourses, the term ‘noise’ is valued for its associations with confrontation and rebellion. It is often deployed in an oppositional way, a marker for what Keith Kahn-​Harris calls transgressive subcultural capital (Kahn-​Harris 2007: 128). This is true in various forms of rock music with connotations of a rebellious attitude, as well as in the contested genre known as noise or noise music (as suggested in the title of Paul Hegarty’s 2007 study Noise/​Music). The difficulty in categorizing noise as a genre is discussed by several commentators (Hegarty 2007: 133–​5, Novak 2013: 118–​9). In Attalian terms, the reason for this is clear: for noise to be noise, it must represent the chaotic and dangerous outside of the current social structures, but if it is consumed and formulated in generic terms it must become domesticated and defanged. Noise music, and the noise of extreme forms of popular music such as metal, are also often described in terms of ritualistic, sublime experiences outside language. They emerge from a chaotic, excessive richness containing all possible sounds, eluding or even destroying rational categorization and interpretation. These ways of evoking and talking about sonic experience are similar to many of the elements of drone metal discourse discussed in the previous chapters. The ritual of drone metal listening requires some form of violence in order to forcibly separate the listener from the everyday and remove them to the imaginative ‘elsewheres’ that drone metal discourse promises. This elsewhere is accessed through an overloading of ordinary thinking and a silencing of rational thought through loud, low, distorted and amplified noise. The overwhelming consciousness of sound vibrating the body can afford insights, catharsis or peace of mind when reintegrated into a listener’s ordinary life. Violence can shift places in how it is represented to or by listeners: the sound may feel violent, while at the same time feeling like a release from another kind of violence. It may violently silence and alienate listeners, while appearing to



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them to manifest an honest abstract representation of the alienation and constraint that they feel in contemporary life. The ritual noise of drone metal may therefore be understood at once as violence, representation of violence and deliverance from violence.

Noise and torture at the extremes of music Suzanne Cusick’s important work on forms of sonic torture used in the ‘War on Terror’ raises relevant issues about noise, music and violence. Reports that Cusick has collected from tortured detainees describe alien and imposed sounds feeling as if they came from inside the body, a sense of their own subjectivity disintegrating, and traumatic experience beyond language (Cusick and Joseph 2011: 12, Cusick 2013: 279). Though with very different values attached, these features of description are strikingly similar to descriptions of the most extreme and powerful responses to drone metal. It is important to stress that listening to music one does not care for is not the same as the gratuitous and horrific violence inflicted upon torture victims. As Cusick and Joseph note, it is exactly this joking conflation which serves to legitimize or deproblematize torture in the ordinary discourse of those in whose name this torture is perpetrated, but who would disavow ‘unjust’ or ‘unjustified’ uses of violence (Cusick 2006, Cusick and Joseph 2011: 18). Jokes made about knowing what torture is like, based on having to listen to a teenage relative’s music choices for example, drastically downplay the seriousness of torture violence. They allow a subtle comparison to emerge: I can stand listening to noise and metal (even if I find it unpleasant), while these others cannot; therefore I am superior, and this is not really torture or torture is not really a problem. Nevertheless, it is significant that the language of torture is used in relation to drone metal, in particular by listeners who were not listening by their own choice. A drone metal listener described torturing herself with disturbing music. My partner, attending with me a Barn Owl concert in London observed that she would ‘confess to all kinds of crimes to turn that off . . . it was a fishbowl of pain’. A listener who attended a Nazoranai performance by mistake (holding a ticket for a different concert at the same venue on a different night) used a metaphor of torture to describe her confusion and disorientation. As outlined earlier, the language of violence is frequently employed by drone metal listeners in interpreting and discussing the music and their own responses. The language used by victims of torture bears specific similarities to these uses. Music, especially

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metal (Cusick 2006), ceases to be music and becomes unrelenting sound (Cusick 2008b:  4), just ‘sheer sound’ (Cusick 2008a:  3), and a physical force (Cusick 2013: 288). This noise disrupts thought, damages hearing, alters listeners’ sense of temporality and attacks the body (Cusick 2008a:  4). Victims are unable to describe their response in language (Cusick 2013: 279), which relates to the feeling of being desubjectified (Cusick 2013: 290). Each of these features is prevalent in drone metal discourse. Torture victims are even told ‘You are in a place that is out of this world’, a phrase which Cusick uses as the title of one article (2008b), and which is reminiscent of drone metal’s evocation of elsewheres. Industrial music and noise music, genres which are related to and influential on drone metal, have been interpreted in connection with the experience and imagery of torture (Kroker, 1993: 110, Novak 2013: 90). It has been argued that the effects of extreme sound such as this, when chosen by the participant and encoded in ritual contexts, can have spiritual and healing benefits (Glucklich 2001: 151, Favazza 2011: 200), and reports of such intensely embodied practices bear close similarities with the tropes of mystical literature (Certeau 1986: 40). In describing musical torture in relation to a Western ideal of the musical sublime, Cusick suggests that if we are involuntarily forced to vibrate with such patterns, then we are forced, at least temporarily, to become creatures of a culture we did not choose. That, I think, is profoundly violating. (Cusick and Joseph 2011: 13)

In drone metal, by contrast, listeners are voluntarily forced (because, while participants choose and even pay to attend, there is still a sense of imposition in sound entering the body) to vibrate with patterns of extreme sound, and thereby become ‘creatures of a culture’ that they did choose, but which evokes for them a radical otherness, at once intimate, strange and potentially mystically cathartic and healing.

Conclusion: Speculations on mysticism, violence and crisis In concluding this chapter, I wish to more speculatively note some suggestions made in a number of different but related areas of scholarship about the connections between ritual, torture, mysticism and crises. The decisions to perform certain rituals can be markers of crises (Bakhtin 1968:  104), or responses to social crises (Turner 1969: 10). Alternatively, rituals may be performed in specific ways at times of crisis (Bloch 1992: 85–​98). Torture, similarly, appears at



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particular moments of crisis. It is in times of instability and precariousness that political regimes seek to obscure the insecurity of their foundations by inflicting the certainty of physical pain on dissenting bodies (Scarry 1985: 27). Certeau draws initial parallels between mysticism and torture due to their appearance at periods of social upheaval (1986: 40), comprehensively outlining how sixteenth-​ and seventeenth-​century mysticism emerged at a period of transition in sociopolitical, religious and (consequently) epistemological authority (Certeau 1996, 2000b). Talal Asad has observed the links between ‘judicial torture’ and ‘religious pain’ in discourses of truth and power (Asad 1993: 83), and Scarry, writing of torture, locates the reason for this pattern in the undeniable nature of pain: At particular moments when there is within society a crisis of belief . . . the sheer material factualness of the human body will be borrowed to lend that cultural construct the aura of ‘realness’ and ‘certainty’. (Scarry 1985: 14)

Certeau observes that mystic writers, faced with similar crises of belief, also turn to a language of the body (1992a: 15, 1996: 29, 2000b: 44). They employ an experimental language, a meditation in physiological terms that is occupied with the material opacity of signs that refuse the transparency of signified meanings. Girard’s own theory of ritual (1977) hinges upon the threat and attempted aversion or channelling of chaotic, violent crises, and this is extended by Attali to include the violence of noise heralding or responding to social transformation and danger (1985). Music can be implicated in rituals which witness or even precipitate social upheaval (Tolbert 2007: 156). With the importance of ritual, violence, noise and mysticism in drone metal having been demonstrated, these observations prompt the question of whether drone metal manifests a similar response to crisis. Any speculation on this must necessarily be tentative and partial due to the disparate and fragmented nature of drone metal’s audience and the varied divergence of listeners’ reports about how ritual, violence and mysticism are for them connected in musical experience. But it is significant that there is, at the level of discourse, at least a kind of consensus that these themes are important aspects of drone metal and are constant constituent factors in its social meaning. There has, in addition, certainly been a crisis in the music industry in response to the developing digital economy, and many aspects of drone metal’s culture and practices must be understood in close relation to this. Attali suggests that changes taking place in music and the economies surrounding music can be a herald of shifts in more concrete forms of organization, due to the ability of sound, noise and music to experimentally represent structures in abstraction (1985). According to this theory, any

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upheaval in music and music industries presages wider social crises. A thread of social criticism, or at least dissatisfaction with alienation, can be found in many reports of drone metal experience which rely on exactly these ideas of ritual, violence, mysticism and noise. Drone metal is an extraordinary and extreme form of sound that offers both critique of and escape from modern society, despite being situated firmly within urban late capitalism. Drone metal is violence, it is a representation of violence, and it is the ritual channelling of violence. In elusive and evasive rhetorical shifts between imaginary elsewheres of arduous pilgrimage, in reports of physically manifested vibrations in the amplified and distorted sonic body, in rituals of intimate strangeness, listeners seek catharsis and escape from the violence of society in submitting to the extraordinary noise of drone metal mysticism.

7

Conclusion: Drone Metal Mysticism

Contribution, limitations and further possibilities The aim of this book has been to comprehensively analyse and account for the array of references to mysticism, ritual and religion in the discourse, practice and music of drone metal, while addressing issues arising in the theorization of such concepts as mysticism and experience in the study of religion and popular music. It provides the first extended ethnographic study of drone metal, a subject which had previously only been analysed in a handful of articles (Coggins 2013, 2014, 2015a, 2015c, 2016, Shvarts 2014, Wright 2015b, Scott and O’Boyle 2015). Conducting a more sustained mixed-​methods approach than in these previous studies enabled a detailed focus on the contexts in which listeners experience and communicate about drone metal music. Further, the study contributes a more theoretically coherent understanding of mysticism than the inconsistent usages and implicit assumptions in much of the study of popular culture and religion. This approach to mysticism as a tradition of intertextual experience also, in contrast to many treatments of religious experience, presents a methodology grounded in empirical investigation of intersecting and mutually influencing facets of discourse and practice. Close analysis of the content, modes and contexts of listeners’ descriptions also allows for exploration of the importance of ambiguity in drone metal’s treatment of religiosity. Rather than understanding uncertainty as merely an area of culture, practice and experience yet to be colonized by reason, this study instead allows vagueness to be understood as an important, productive and sustaining resource through which listeners claim and defend freedom to explore religiosity in spaces of ambiguity. Regarding the scope of the study, it was neither possible to make any claims that the sample of research participants with whom I communicated was demographically representative of the total population of listeners and participants, nor

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that the events I attended were definitively characteristic of an abstract essence of drone metal culture. This was due in part to the translocal and marginal nature of drone metal events and partly due to the unpredictable sampling methods. However, the range and diversity of concerts and festivals attended, the numbers of surveys and interviews conducted, and the large amount of online material collected and analysed allowed each statement to be situated within a wider culture of discourse surrounding the music, albeit a culture which is dispersed, diverse and loosely connected. Reponses from survey and interview participants, together with observation of audiences at many events, suggest that drone metal audiences are generally similar to other extreme metal audiences in terms of age, ethnicity and gender. That is, with young white men making up a major proportion but not nearly as dominant a proportion as is commonly assumed. Future research could examine more closely such demographic factors in relation to drone metal listening and the use of religious language, particularly given the fascinating suggestions made by Shvarts (2014) and Wright (2015a, 2015b) about the unusual and extraordinary effects that drone metal and similar extreme sounds may have on the experience of gendered bodies. There were other areas of drone metal culture but it was not possible to fully explore them due to time and other practical constraints. One such area was the issue mentioned in several interviews (and which I noticed in myself) of how listening to drone metal and other extreme forms of experimental music featuring long ambient passages or drones could alter a person’s listening to surrounding noise such as machinery or transport. Jokes about how SunnO))) sound like refrigerators hinted at transformed listening to the urban soundscape, and by extension producing a changed consciousness and relation with that environment. Given the decidedly non-​urban, non-​modern character of the elsewheres that appear in talking about listening, this changed attention to urban drones suggests a possible transformation of the boring background noise of city life into potentially strange, enriching and even ritualized sonic engagements. Another potential area for future investigation that emerged during the project is the overlapping discourses of religiosity and therapy, catharsis, healing and well-​being, a particularly interesting conjunction given the emphasis on ambivalent but potentially positive conceptions of violence in music explored in Chapter 6. Also considered in that chapter were ideas and theories put forward by listeners about the relationship between drone and ritual in human cultures across different historical eras and geographical areas; while beyond the scope of the present book, and posing methodological challenges, an investigation of drone and ritual in cross-​cultural comparison could be a valuable avenue of research to pursue. Widely understood as originating in 1993, drone metal has gained more

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consistent attention only in the last fifteen years, and has only recently attained markers of status such as sold out concerts at prestigious venues more commonly associated with classical music, such as the Barbican Centre and Royal Festival Hall in London. As a relatively new yet significantly extreme and still fragmented and marginal form of popular music, it will be interesting to trace future developments in production, reception and discourses of drone metal especially with respect to elements of mysticism, ritual and religion in practice and in communication. While it has uncovered possible questions for further research, the book has, I hope, comprehensively investigated mystical discourse as a constitutive element of drone metal’s sound and culture.

Drone metal mysticism The preceding chapters have described how drone metal can be heard as a mystical tradition constituted in experience, text, communication, conversation, listening, discussion, performance, recording and embodied physical vibration with sound. The music is a repetitive, extended meditation on the experience of sound, as well as of specifically heavy metal sound, amplified and distorted until it is about nothing but amplification and distortion. It is an intense examination in metal music sound of what metal music sound is and what it can do to conscious bodies. For these conscious bodies, across a disparate and dislocated genre culture that exists at the fringes of extreme metal and experimental music scenes, drone metal is a space in which ritually constructed, mystically described elsewheres can be explored within the vibrations imposed upon and coming from within one’s own body. In interpreting and expressing their engagement with the embodied sound of drone metal, participants draw on a range of resources and conventions. Other places, times and states are traversed, amid wandering deferrals of shifting rhetorics and registers of pilgrimage, intoxication, ritual. Drone metal as intertextual and experiential practice is an intense interrogation of the tradition of heavy metal in the light of the fragmented resonances of a history of texts about mysticism and spiritual experience. Complementing the repeated ecstatic movements towards and beyond otherness in drone metal discourse is a mystical turn towards bodily engagement with the opaque materiality of signs. Sounds and language are repeated, extended, transposed, distorted and amplified, obscuring or de-​emphasizing musical structures and semantic meanings. Aural, visual and haptic engagements with the materials of embodied communication are foregrounded even while the ostensible content of such

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communications is undermined. Drone metal pushes metal sounds, physical experience and language to excess in amplification, repetition, endurance, distortion, monotony, hyperbole, exaggeration, humour and paradox. In these operations at the margins, the limits of these codes are made audible and in this way, by implication, transcended. The repeated references to religious language, spiritual practices and mystical discourse are markers of recognition and acknowledgement that a symbolic traversal of elsewheres, a devotional attention to the material opacity of mystic signifiers, and a radical treatment of violence in ritual practice can be read also in older mystical traditions as well as in drone metal culture. This endless wandering in an always unsatisfactory language around embodied sonic excess is drone metal’s mystical discourse. Like dub, drone metal explores the sonic foundations of its own musical tradition, from which it is completely inextricable yet at the same time a marginal, shadow presence. And like dub and also psytrance, drone metal features a performance of operations on musical sound which interrogates own limits and possibilities. In dub, this is a process of removal, cutting and fracturing of melody and lyrics, and an emphasis on delay, echo and altered spaciousness through rhythm and bass. In psytrance, it is a seamless weaving of dance tracks (themselves featuring repeated snippets of voices often speaking of mysticism and ritual) into sets which draw in dancing bodies. In each, the music is oriented towards bodily engagement with sound. For drone metal, sonic practice turns towards an exploration of how distorted metal riffs can be amplified to extremes in every sense, pushing the limits of tempo, perceived speed, bass power, and bodily and mental endurance. This extremeness invites listeners to self-​consciously test language in description, using excessive, paradoxical, absurd, exotic or ridiculous language to meet the challenge of speaking about experiences which they maintain are indescribable. Listeners match the music’s mystical operations in their own discursive amplifications and distortions of terminology and tradition. In mystical scholarship, studies of religious experience often reproduce the tropes and types they identify in the writings they study, thereby undermining the division between ‘mystical texts’ and scholarship about mysticism. Similarly in drone metal, mystical operations can be heard in the music itself and in the discursive and interpretive culture around it: drone metal sound and drone metal culture together constitute a mystical tradition which speaks about unspeakability, excess and the material basis of our codes of communication, in textual operations on and between language and music. The loosely structured translocal and marginal genre of drone metal is constituted and developed in the discourses and practices of an audience that is

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equally translocal and marginal. Drone metal differs from many other locally based scenes, in that it lacks particular places which serve as geographical, conceptual and mythical centres strongly associated with historical, musical and discursive developments. Instead, drone metal exists at the margins of wider extreme metal and experimental music scenes. In other more locally rooted scenes, genre rules and boundaries can be created and affirmed through intense and repeated social interaction in venues, bars and record shops. By contrast, without any such centres foundationally and consistently associated with the genre, drone metal’s genre connections and conventions are constructed in fragmented and disparate ways, opening up space for genre to be discursively and communally constituted in part by subjective descriptions of the music’s effect on the bodily consciousness of listeners. This allows listener experience to take a more influential place in determining genre, in the extremity of the music, its reported distance from other kinds of extreme metal and the descriptions of indescribability; aspects which clearly set conditions which invite the terminology of ritual, transcendence and mysticism. The idea of similarity that is the foundation of genre emerges from individuals having a similar affective, emotional even spiritual response to a recording or performance, rather than from a highly socialized public assessment and valuation of particular kinds of sounds. If drone metal is created at the margins, then the language used to describe it is similarly concerned with margins, boundaries, extremes, excess and transgression. If drone metal is determinedly translocal, the rhetoric of listeners also traverses different imagined spaces of otherness. Ways of talking about states of consciousness in intense and overwhelming experiences of sounds become important sites for discussion of genre and for communication between listeners. These kinds of experience are described as indescribable, unusual, extraordinary and highly individual. Listeners draw on communally available and communally developed areas of vocabulary, which include the ambivalently inherited and ambiguously employed language of religion, transcendence, spirituality, ritual and mysticism. Genres which emerge from particular geographically based scenes continue to be aesthetically associated with those areas even when they spread beyond those locations. By contrast, the fragmentation of drone metal’s genre culture, its continued marginality and its turn towards experience produce a context in which listening is described with a rhetoric of imaginary ‘elsewheres’. Drone metal listeners evoke imagined deserts, oceans, forests, mountains, and extraterrestrial worlds, exotic and orientalist depictions especially of Africa, the Middle East and India, suggestions of ancient societies, remote tribes of the distant

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past or cultures of the far future. These elsewheres in their diversity are united primarily by their emphasis on distance from the contemporary urban modern settings in which drone metal is most often consumed, and by the sense that these interchanging elsewheres are to be travelled through rather than settled in. The traversal of alterity in drone metal experience is represented as a reenchanted, transcendental or otherwise sacred movement best understood through the repeated trope of pilgrimage. This movement between and across spiritually inflected elsewheres is enacted in speech and writing as well as in the informational content of communication. Listeners describe journeys through interior landscapes of sacred otherness, and the language in which these wandering movements are articulated also drifts between rhetorical tropes and across modalities of expression, never rooted in fixed relations between sonic experience, imagery and concept. As well as avoiding settling on any definite metaphors, other forms of linguistic instability and excess serve to confer and communicate this sense of dynamic displacement at the level of linguistic or symbolic utterance, in hyperbolic exaggeration, bizarre humour, or consciously paradoxical and incomprehensible phrases. When terminology connoting religion is used, within each review, comment or discussion, there are similar shifts in metaphorical framing. Listening is a pilgrimage, is like a pilgrimage, is about a pilgrimage, or evokes an imaginary pilgrimage. Expressions never settle on one particular mode of description. This tendency maintains ambiguity about the precise nature of the relation between drone metal listening and the religious terminology or concepts evoked by the listener. That there is a connection between drone metal and religiosity, mysticism or ritual is repeatedly affirmed. The nature of that relation, however, is evasive, elusive and always evolving, a constant but ambivalent conjunction. Amid the unstable and evasive vectors of such descriptions, the most powerful instances of drone metal listening, whether in recorded or live contexts, are described as a kind of hyper-​consciousness of or grounding in an embodied here and now. While perhaps initially appearing contradictory, this ‘elsewhere here’ expresses a response to listening in terms of a removal from a mundane world and a (new or remade) connection with a physical, corporeal reality considered to be more profound or real, again often communicated in terminology derived from religion. This kind of mystical elsewhere here expressed in listener discourse is also manifested in the relation between drone metal’s translocality and the intense focus on the physical impact of sound on listeners’ bodies, as well as in embodied engagement with the material culture of musical products. Drone metal sound comes from and evokes somewhere else, an ambiguous distance represented in the shifting relation of

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listening as if religious, as if ritualistic, as if mystical. At the same time, the effects of drone metal on listeners, and the practices through which listeners engage with the music are grounded in personal embodiment, a mystical turn towards the body and a wandering traversal of margins. This transformation of bodily consciousness is matched by a mystical turn towards the materiality of the metal sign, in amplification, distortion, repetition, extension and meditative slowness. This is a particularly significant emphasis within a contemporary context of an accelerated digitalization of music, information, culture and economy, especially when materiality in musical products is valued in explicit contrast to digital versions. The importance of materiality in sound for drone metal practitioners appears throughout the practices, discourse and aesthetics of the subgenre. The amplification of electric guitars has always been a crucial part of rock music, but, of all varieties of rock and metal music, only in drone metal has the amplifier eclipsed the guitar as the fundamentally important musical instrument technology. Amplification and distortion are celebrated in the prominence of amplifiers in concert promotion, social media communication, reviews and conversations. Listeners discussing anticipated concerts talk about the amplifiers that will be used, and the symbolic importance of amplifiers in the sonic imagination attracts religious language: amps are henges, monoliths, heksenkring, markers of hell or sacred objects of ritual worship. It is amplifiers, rather than guitars or even musicians that are credited with producing the extraordinary distance from normal life and thereby constituting ritual practice and experience. The concern with amplification of materiality extends to analogue music media, with vinyl particularly valued since it necessitates physical interaction. By extension, the importance of materiality can be felt in the importance of purchasing physical products at live concerts, as material tokens of participation in a special, even sacred event. For attendees at concerts, posters and other artefacts previously only seen as images online become materialized. The importance of distortion and amplification can even be seen in the typographical practices in drone metal and other extreme metal subgenres, where band logos and album titles are amplified and distorted in blackletter and fraktur font styles and cryptic, opaque word-​sigils. Or in examples where clarity in typography is observed, instead a kind of devotional repetition, whether by Earth and Sleep paying tribute to Black Sabbath by using either their original name or the fonts they introduced on classic albums, or by SunnO))) venerating a kind of amplifier by identifying with it. These kinds of symbolic practice foreground sensorial engagement with the materiality of the signifier rather than the intellectual concept signified. The powerful impact of listening to drone metal

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for many listeners arises more from the impact of the physical vibrations of continuous sound than in the apprehension of musical structures. By playing with absurdity and excess, the language used to discuss drone metal draws attention to its own limits and capabilities. In sonic and figurative amplifications, repetitions, extensions and distortions, consciousness is directed towards the material substance and effect of sound itself, rather than any structures of signification that might be conveyed through it. The importance of bodily engagement with drone metal texts is further signalled in the treatment and description of private listening and public events as rituals. For home listening, the materiality of vinyl records, their packaging and the reproduction devices needed to play them are valourized in explicit opposition to the ubiquity, accessibility and portability of digital music. Ritual preparations and separations of time, space and the body for drone metal listening indicate acknowledgement of particularly intense engagements with sound, and are designed to facilitate and refine such powerful responses. They create a sacralized context in which the ‘elsewhere here’ of drone metal listening can best be accessed. In reviews and online discussion, ritual is connected to particular sounds or sonic features, especially continuous drones, repetitions and monotonous rhythms, which are often in turn associated with the kinds of imagined other places, times and bodies described above. Here again, ritual refers to the construction of a particular kind of engagement with drone metal that is understood as mystical, even if via the distancing movements and shifting ambiguous rhetoric of appeals to exotic otherness. Live performances are also described as rituals, though often with a similar ambivalence. Audience members may be deeply affected by experiences and speak of them as personally meaningful, yet still relate a sense of distance, a lack of understanding or an intuition that meaning is obscured. The ritual in these cases is attended and participated in but not identified with or understood, perhaps reminding listeners of religious practices with which they have come into contact but found to be incomprehensible or strange. A childhood visit to church, a type of religious service that relatives engage in, a ritual from another culture experienced as an outsider: practices perhaps with some familiar elements, but with unfamiliar or opaque symbols and goals. Once more, in another register, this ritual resonance of drone metal is expressed as a profound experience, and it is exactly the opacity and mystery that is considered as fundamental to its power and that invites the language of mysticism and ritual. Such engagements are communicated in language drawn from religious traditions, reflecting a combination of the evocation of elsewhere and a deepened consciousness of here. The translocality and marginality of drone metal’s production and reception and the radical extremity

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of the sounds prompt a turn towards listening subjectivity in constituting genre. In communicating about their bodily consciousness in drone metal, listeners traverse religiously illuminated landscapes of alterity, responding to the repetitive, amplified and distorted meditation on metal sound in their own repetitions, amplifications and distortions of language. They recognize and construct rituals of mystery and strangeness, incorporating noise which represents and channels ambiguous, shifting violence as a source of power. In these expressions, continuing a tradition which wanders the margins of language in seeking to describe reportedly indescribable extremes, listeners participate in the production of drone metal mysticism.

Notes Chapter 1 1 Interview and survey participants are referenced with a letter, number and date, based on the performance or tour for which they completed a survey and the date of survey or interview: G stands for those who completed a survey disseminated at concerts of the band Gravetemple; B for Bong, N for Nazoranai, H for Tim Hecker, U for Ufomammut, E for Dylan Carlson/​Earth, O for Om, SK for a SunnO))) performance in Kortrijk, SX for a SunnO))) performance at the State-​X festival in The Hague. Citations include an individual number, source (survey or interview), and year. A fuller account of the methodology, including for surveys and interviews, is outlined in this chapter. 2 Several quoted sources use nonstandard English, due to English being used as a nonnative language or because of different linguistic conventions in online discourse. Given the significance of translocal communication in drone metal, and the close readings undertaken on some texts, in the majority of cases I have not altered spelling, grammar and punctuation. Occasionally I have introduced minor edits to aid clarity.

Chapter 4 1 In reviews and press interviews with the band, it has been stated that the painting used is Mount of Five Treasures (Roerich 1933), though it is in fact taken from the similar painting Himalayas. Blue Mountains (Roerich 1939). Both depict Kanchenjunga, also known as Mount of Five Treasures, as do several other of Roerich’s artworks. 2 Track titles from the album Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method (2005) can be found in Blood Meridian (McCarthy 2011). Track one, ‘Mirage’, from page 58; track two, ‘Land of Some Other Order’, page 49; track six, ‘An Inquest Concerning Teeth’, page 175; track seven, subtitle ‘the Felon Wind’, page 86; track eight, ‘The Dry Lake’, page 58; track nine, ‘Tethered to the Polestar’, page 49. The album subtitle is a quotation from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (2001: 120), taken from the same illuminated page as the famous lines ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite’, which gave the title to

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Huxley’s Doors of Perception (1954), and, in turn, to the rock band The Doors. Some track titles from Earth’s subsequent album The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull (2008) are also quotations or paraphrases from Blood Meridian: track one, ‘The Driver’, from page 71; track four, ‘Engine of Ruin’, page 111; track six, ‘Hung From the Moon’, from page 117. That album title is from a biblical verse, the answer to a riddle: ‘Behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion’ (Judges 14:8). 3 However, a proportion of a general metal audience could be expected to profess Odinist or other pagan beliefs, or nontheistic versions of Satanism. An ideological division is often maintained between these valorized ‘spiritual’ practices in contrast to negatively perceived ‘religion’.

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Discography Aluk Todolo (2007), Descension [LP], UK, Riot Season. Aluk Todolo (2012), Occult Rock [LP], France, Norma Evangelium Diaboli/​The Ajna Offensive. Black Boned Angel (2006), Bliss and Void Inseparable [CD], Clayton, 20 Buck Spin. Black Sabbath (1970), Black Sabbath [LP], UK, Vertigo. Black Sabbath (1971), Master of Reality [LP], UK, Vertigo. Black Sabbath (1972), Vol. 4 [LP], UK, Vertigo. Black Sabbath (1973), Sabbath Bloody Sabbath [LP], UK, WWA Records. Bismuth/​Undersmile (2013), Split [Cassette], Netherlands, Tartarus. Bong (2012), Mana-​Yood-​Sushai [LP], UK, Ritual Productions. Bong (2013), Idle Days on the Yann [LP], UK, Ritual Productions. Bong (2014), Stoner Rock [LP], UK, Ritual Productions. Boris (1996), Absolutego [CD], Japan, Fangs Anal Satan. Boris (1998), Amplifier Worship [CD], Japan, Mangrove. The Bug vs Earth (2014), Boa/​Cold [12”], UK, Ninja Tune. The Bug vs Earth (2017), Concrete Desert [LP], UK, Ninja Tune. Burning Spear (1975), Marcus Garvey [LP], UK, Island. Burning Spear (1976), Garvey’s Ghost [LP], UK, Island. The Clash (1979), London Calling [LP], UK, CBS. Miles Davis (1970), Bitches Brew [LP], US, Columbia. Earth (1991), Extra-​Capsular Extraction [CD], US, Sub Pop. Earth (1993), 2: Special Low Frequency Version [LP], US, Sub Pop. Earth (1995a), Phase 3: Thrones and Dominions [CD], US, Sub Pop. Earth (1995b), Sunn Amps and Smashed Guitars Live [CD], UK, Blast First. Earth (1996), Pentastar: In the Style of Demons [LP], US, Sub Pop. Earth (2005), Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method [LP], US, Southern Lord. Earth (2008), The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull [LP], US, Southern Lord. Earth (2010), A Bureaucratic Desire for Extra-​Capsular Extraction [LP], US, Southern Lord. Earth (2011), Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I [LP], US, Southern Lord. Earth (2012), Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II [LP], US, Southern Lord. Earth (2014), Primitive & Deadly [LP], US, Southern Lord. Jimi Hendrix (1967), ‘Purple Haze’, Are You Experienced? [LP], US, Reprise. Jimi Hendrix (1975), ‘Peace in Mississippi’, Crash Landing [LP], UK, Polydor. Jimi Hendrix (1986), Jimi Plays Monterrey [LP], US, Reprise.

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203

Manowar (1984), All Men Play on Ten [12”], UK, 10 Records. Marduk (2008), Rom 5:12 [CD], Sweden, Blooddawn Productions. Melvins (1991), ‘Boris’, Bullhead [CD], US, Boner Records. Melvins (1992), Lysol [LP], US, Boner Records/​Tupelo Recording Company. Menace Ruine (2015), Venus Armata [LP], US, SIGE Records. Nadja (2008a), Radiance of Shadows [LP], Belgium, Conspiracy Records. Nadja (2008b), Truth Becomes Death [LP], Belgium, Conspiracy Records. Nadja (2010), Thaumogenesis [LP], US, Important Records. Nadja and Black Boned Angel (2009), Christ Send Light [LP], UK, Sound Destruction Records. Olson, T. G. (2012), Blood Meridian for Electric Drone Guitar [CDr], US, Tanner Olson. Om (2005), Variations on a Theme [LP], US, Holy Mountain. Om (2006), Conference of the Birds [LP], US, Holy Mountain. Om (2007), Pilgrimage [LP], US, Southern Lord. Om (2008), Gebel Barkal [7”], US, Sub Pop. Om (2009), God is Good [LP], US, Drag City. Om (2012), Advaitic Songs [LP], US, Drag City. Ommadon (2014), V [LP], UK, Dry Cough. Ommadon (2015), I–​V Discography [MC], Netherlands, Tartarus Records and Witches on Fire Records. The Paragons (1967), On the Beach/​Sweet and Gentle [7”], Jamaica, Treasure Isle. Pink Floyd (1971), Meddle [LP], UK, Harvest Records. Pink Floyd (1973), The Dark Side of the Moon [LP], UK, Harvest Records. Lou Reed (1975), Metal Machine Music [LP], US, RCA Victor. Slayer (1986), Reign in Blood [LP], US, Def Jam. Sleep (1991), Vol. 2 [7”], Switzerland, Off the Disk Records. Sleep (1992a), Sleep’s Holy Mountain [LP], UK, Earache. Sleep (1992b), ‘Snowblind’ in Various Artists, Masters of Misery –​an Earache Tribute to Black Sabbath [CD], Japan, Toy’s Factory. Sleep (1996), Jerusalem [MC], UK, London Records. Sleep (1998a), Jerusalem [CD] UK, Rise Above. Sleep (1998b), Jerusalem [CD], US, Not on Label. Sleep (2003), Dopesmoker [LP], US, Tee Pee Records. Sleep (2012), Dopesmoker [LP], US, Southern Lord. SunnO))) (2000a), The Grimmrobe Demos [CD], US, Hydra Head Records. SunnO))) (2000b), ØØ Void [CD], US, Hydra Head Records. SunnO))) (2002), 3: Flight of the Behemoth [CD], US, Southern Lord. SunnO))) (2005), Black One [LP], US, Southern Lord. SunnO))) (2009), Monoliths & Dimensions [LP], US, Southern Lord. SunnO))) and Boris (2006), Altar [LP], US, Southern Lord. Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine (2002), Rampton [CD], UK, Rise Above. Wraiths (2008), Oriflamme [LP], UK, Aurora Borealis.

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Filmography Back to the Future (1985), [Film] Dir. R. Zemeckis, USA, Universal Pictures. Häxan (1922), [Film] Dir. B. Christensen, Sweden, A. B. Skandias Filmbyrå. Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (2005), [Film] Dir. S. Dunn. Canada, Seville Pictures. This Is Spinal Tap (1984), [Film] Dir. R. Reiner. USA, Embassy Pictures. Within the Drone (2006), [Film] Dir. S. Hunt. USA, Southern Lord.

Artworks Beksiński, Z. (1981), Untitled/​DG-​2236 [Oil on hardboard][Online], n.d. Available online: www.beksinski.dmochowskigallery.net/​galeria_​karta. php?artist=52&picture=2236 (accessed 24 September 2015). Bosch, H. (c. 1500), The Garden of Earthly Delights [Oil on oak panels], Madrid, Museo del Prado. Roerich, N. (1933), Mount of Five Treasures (Two Worlds), [Tempera], New York, Nicholas Roerich Museum, n.d. Available online: www.wikiart.org/​en/​ nicholas-​roerich/​mount-​of-​five-​treasures-​two-​worlds-​1933#close (accessed 24 September 2015). Roerich, N. (1939), Himalayas. Blue Mountains [Tempera], St Petersburg, Russian Museum, n.d. Available online: www.wikiart.org/​en/​nicholas-​roerich/​mount-​of-​ five-​treasures-​two-​worlds-​1933#supersized-​artistPaintings-​225831 (accessed 24 September 2015). Serra, R. (1999), Out-​of-​Round X [Paintstick on paper], New York, Museum of Modern Art, n.d. Available online: www.moma.org/​collection/​works/​177488?locale=en (accessed 24 September 2015).

Index Abraham, Ibrahim 27 absinthe see alcohol AC/​DC (band) 130 acid house music 35 Across Tundras (band) 103 Africa 43, 48–​9 90–​1, 157–​8, 175 albums see recordings alcohol 57, 98 absinthe 98, 138–​9, 141 beer 92, 141 wine 97, 141, 148–​9 alienation 163–​7, 170 altered states of consciousness 57, 93–​100, 107–​9, 116, 141–​5, 174 see also drugs Aluk Todolo (band) 5, 132–​4 ambiguity of blackletter 131 defining mysticism 29 in dub 38, 40 evocation of elsewhere 83–​114 in genre boundaries 48, 68–​70, 82 interpreting religious symbols 4, 7, 56, 108, 110, 143, 176 of metal status 64–​8 noise 163–​5 power of 12–​13, 86, 171, 179 in psytrance 34 ritual 149–​57, 178 as space for exploration 111–​14, 146, 149–​57, 171 amplifiers central to drone metal 3, 12–​13, 50–​1, 119–​26, 178 in dub 40, 125 jokes about 63–​4, 125–​6 monuments 122–​5, 149, 177 and mysticism 50–​1, 117–​18, 125, 135–​6 rock and metal 41, 115–​18, 177 stage set 103, 120, 125, 148–​50 in visual culture 120, 122 anti-​Christian metal see Christianity apocalypse 21, 25, 27

art see also recordings for cover art contemporary 3, 128 medieval 24, 86 Asad, Talal 169 Ashtoreth (musician) 148 atheism 42, 112, 150–​2 Attali, Jacques 164–​70 audiences see listeners Back to the Future (film) 126 Baddeley, Gavin 4, 44–​5 Bakhtin, Mikhail 6, 162–​3, 168–​9 Bandcamp.com 63 Barbican Centre 5, 120, 173 Barn Owl (band) 167 Barone, Stefano 43 bars 2, 54–​5, 98, 129, 175 bass guitar 1, 118, 123 bass sound effect on body 1, 12, 50, 74, 79, 109–​10, 123–​5, 134–​5 importance in drone metal 3, 77, 104 in dub 36–​9, 174 and pilgrimage 108 on recordings 58 Bataille, Georges 46 Bateson, Gregory 165–​6 Baulch, Emma 88 Beck, Giles 33 Beksiński, Zladisław (artist) 99–​100 Belgium 5 Bergson, Henri 109 The Bible Black Sabbath albums described as 60 in metal 4, 43 Old Testament 73, 101 quotes 144, 182 n.2 in Rastafari 49 reading while listening 49, 89, 108, 143 Birk, Nathan T. 47 Birmingham 2, 5 Bismuth (band)

206 album artwork 103 album could kill you 160, 163 amps 121–​5 fieldwork 5 lyrical themes 87 Bizzell, Victoria, 31 Black Boned Angel (band) 128, 133, 134 black metal genre contested 56, 81–​2, 116 fascism and 44, 46–​7 logos 130 mysticism 46–​7, 81–​2 nature aesthetic 88 Norway 54, 58 occultism 81–​2 paganism 44 relation to drone metal 5, 56, 60, 121 scenic institutions 55 vocal style 69 Black Metal Theory 46 Black Sabbath (band)  downtuning, doom sound 58–​9 influence on drone metal 58–​61, 64 lettering 130–​2, 177 origins of metal 41 blackletter see typography Blake, Charlie 46 Blake, William 181 n.2 Bloch, Maurice 164, 168–​9 Blood Ceremony (band) 144 Blood Meridian (novel) 89, 103, 181–​2 n.2 Blood of the Black Owl (band) 121 blues music 41, 49, 78, 118 bodily consciousness abject body 96–​7, 159, 162–​3 altered states 83–​6, 93–​9, 104, 110, 141 descriptions of 11, 50, 72 dub 30, 39, 116 live performance 6, 12, 50, 74, 115 music coming from the body 110 mysticism and 26, 40, 49–​50, 117, 125, 136 psytrance 33, 35–​6 religious experience and 49, 108–​9, 143 shamanism 88 transformation of 72, 75–​6, 84, 88, 93–​100, 176–​7 Bogue, Ronald 3 Bong (band) 5, 65

Index altered perception of time 87 association with marijuana 97 contrast with Slayer 67 fantastic literature 61, 99–​100, 111–​12 fieldwork 5, 8 indescribability 67, 70, 74 instrumentation 90–​1 logo 131, 133 long tracks 140 onomatopoeia 132, 135 performance practices 125 ritual 145 Boris (band) Absolutego 58, 71, 140 Amplifier Worship 119, 121–​2 change in style 64 early drone metal 59–​61 Bosch, Hieronymous see Garden of Earthly Delights Braidotti, Rosa 154 Brown, Andy R. 10, 53, 134 Brudenell Social Club (venue) 1–​2 Buchanan, Ian Buddhism psytrance 30–​1, 49 drone metal 81, 106, 147 monastery 153 practice 108 The Bug (musician) 40, 67 Bull, Michael 117 Burning Spear (band) 38 Burrows, David 69–​70 Byrne, Tanya (musician) 87 Campbell, Colin 44–​5 Canada 142, 144 Candlemass (band) 58 cannabis see drugs Cannibal Corpse (band) 42 Carlson, Dylan (musician) collaboration with The Bug 40, 67 fieldwork 8 genre 56, 59–​60 guitar sound 92 cassette tapes 9, 40, 127, 128, 160 Castañeda, Carlos 103 catharsis 76–​7, 158, 160–​3, 166–​70, 172 Cathedral (band) 58, 61 Certeau, Michel de

Index criticism of experience 20–​1 ineffability 80, 86 language of the body 25, 117–​18, 168–​9 musicality 26 mysticism and crisis 117–​18, 168–​70 mysticism as manner of speaking 11, 16, 22–​5, 40, 113–​14 opaque signs 24–​5, 117–​18, 132, 136 popular culture 16, 22–​3 productive reading 22–​3 reception of 23 torture 168–​70 The Chameleon (venue) 129 Chaos Magick 108, 154 Christe, Ian 46–​7, 58 Christianity anti-​Christian metal 4, 41–​5 Catholicism 18–​19, 38–​41, 108, 148 Christian drone metal listeners 2, 108, 112, 143 Christian metal 41–​3, 47, 82 Christian popular music 27 evangelicalism 15, 37, 42 Greek Orthodox 152–​3 as moral/​political framework 43 in metal music 41–​2 in psytrance 31 symbolism 97, 148–​9 Chude-​Sokei, Louis 38 church imagery 7, 117, 151 memories from childhood 151–​2, 178 performances in 5, 7, 103, 112, 119 Cisneros, Al (musician) 65, 97 The Clash (band) 119 classical music 5, 66, 70, 173 Cloonan, Martin 73 Cobain, Kurt (musician) 59 communism 151–​2 compact discs 103, 119, 127, 129, 138–​40 Connole, Edia 46 constructivist theory of mysticism 19–​20 Cope, Julian 60, 140 Cordero, James 4, 44–​5 crisis 116, 117, 136–​8, 168–​70 Crites, Steven 20 Crowley, Aleister 154 crypt, concert in 5 Crypt Lurker (band) 144

207

Csihar, Atilla (musician) 6, 147, 155 cults 27 Cupitt, Don 25 Cusick, Suzanne G. 167–​9 dancing 1, 30–​6, 39–​40, 50, 55, 116, 174 D’Andrea, Anthony 33–​4 Darianathan, Eugene 44 dark ambient music 55 darkpsy music 35 Davis, Miles (musician) 78 Dawes, Kwame 37–​40 death 72, 100, 164 death metal 10, 44–​5, 54, 58, 64, 162 DeChaine, D. Robert 163 Dee, Liam 162 Demers, Joanna 27, 49–​40, 53 demographics 7, 9–​10, 171 desert 2, 83–​5, 89–​92, 101 Desertfest (music festival) 5, 95 the devil see Satan Diehl, Keila 27 digital media 116–​17, 126–​9, 136, 177–​8 distortion bands moving away from 64, 97 importance in drone metal 3, 12, 28, 119, 174 industrial music 115–​16 and mysticism 12–​13, 74, 85–​6, 114, 116–​17, 126, 136, 146–​7, 173 psychedelic rock 41, 116–​18 rock and metal 118 sound 1, 57–​60, 77 typography 129, 133–​6, 177 distribution, distros 54–​5 DJs, DJing 30–​6, 39–​40, 50–​1, 62 doom metal abject body 162–​3 amplification 119 development 58–​9, 121 genre discussion 56, 63–​5 overlapping scene with drone metal 5, 8, 10, 55–​6 scenic institutions 55, 118 spirituality 66, 81 visual culture 130 Douglas, Mary 156, 165–​6 Doyle, Paul 118 Drag City (record label) 146

208

Index

dreams 36, 90, 93, 99–​100 Dronemuzak (blog) 60, 75 drone sound discursive construction of 75–​7 domestic appliances 63–​4 urban soundscape 78–​9, 85, 113 ritual 145 drone metal compared with dub and psytrance 48–​51 description and language 72–​5 differentiated from other kinds of listening 141–​3 genre 4–​10, 53–​82 history of 2–​3, 172–​3 ineffability 68–​72, 81–​5 media 126–​30 other places, times, states 86–​100 pilgrimage 100–​10 ritual 138–​57 violence 158–​70 visual culture 130–​3 drugs see also alcohol compared to listening 78 heroin 97 LSD 18 lyrical theme 58, 59 marijuana 58, 73, 78–​9, 97–​8, 101, 107, 111, 121, 132, 141 mescaline 18 and mysticism 18, 73–​4 rhetoric separate from practice 85, 108 drums African 90 drone metal 1, 65, 92 Rastafarian nyabinghi 48, 52, 152 thrash metal 67 dub bass 36–​9, 125, 174 and drone metal 11, 48–​51, 174 ghosts 38 history 30, 36–​8 mysticism 26, 37, 40 postcoloniality 39 practices 39–​40 Dune (novel) 88, 101 Dunn, Randall (record producer) 60 Dunsany, Lord 99–​100, 111–​12 Durkheim, Émile 27, 33 Dyrendal, Asbjørn 44–​5

Earth (band) artwork 57, 92, 103–​32 changing sound 64 drone metal originators 57–​64 fieldwork 5 journey themes 89 mentioned in scholarship 46, 56 metal status 67 name 132, 177 2: Special Low Frequency Version 57, 59–​ 61, 103, 129, 132 echo 36, 38–​9 Echoes & Dust (website) 9, 83 Egypt 90–​1, 102 Ehrenreich, Barbara 154 Eisenberg, Even 162 Electric Wizard (band) 59, 61 electronic music 8, 28, 67, 115–​16 Eliade, Mircea 21, 32 elsewhere 11, 34, 49–​50, 83–​113, 168, 172 ‘elsewhere-​here’ 83, 108–​10, 178 enchantment 31, 90, 112, 176 essentialism 16–​32, 45–​7, 80, 91 Ethiopia 48, 90–​1 ethnography 3–​6, 33, 37, 42, 51, 171 Evola, Julius 21 exaggeration see hyperbole exoticism 21–​2, 29–​30, 41, 90–​1, 99–​101, 157, 175 see also orientalism experience see also religious experience concept in studies of mysticism 15–​30 criticism of 17, 19–​22, 33 in genre discourse 3, 53–​62, 77–​82 extreme metal drone metal within 67–​8, 119 milieu 2, 4, 10, 46, 121, 172–​3 scenes 54–​6 scholarship 4, 9–​10, 46 subgenres 46, 58–​9, 63, 144 extremity of drone metal 3, 10, 54, 68, 113 effects on body 12, 49, 95–​7, 104, 137–​8, 161–​4, 167–​70 imagery 42 language 72–​4, 144, 160 sound 3, 54, 136 fantastic literature imagination 93, 99–​100, 111–​12

Index journeys in 89, 93 and mysticism 25, 89 Farrell, Gerry 29 fascism 21, 46–​7, 131 Fast, Susan 45–​6 Faulkner, Frank 45 Favazza, Armando 168 feedback imagination and aesthetics 92 in private listening rituals 143, 146 social 36, 39 sonic 58, 60, 110, 116, 118–​19, 123, 149 Fiske, John 23 flyers 7, 144 Fonarow, Wendy 139, 162 food 78 forests 75, 88–​93, 103, 142 Foucault, Michel 72 fraktur see typography Freud, Sigmund, 26, 164 Frith, Simon 53 Funeral (band) 58–​9 Gaines, Donna 45 Gardell, Mattias 46 The Garden of Earthly Delights (artwork) 24, 86 Gauthier, François, 33–​6 gender 10, 19, 90, 118, 172 genre disavowal 56, 68–​72 formation 3, 11, 56–​61 jokes 62–​4 local scenes 54–​5, 175 questioning status 53, 64–​68 social construction 68–​82, 174–​5 subjective response 11–​12, 53–​62, 77–​82, 163 tags, online 63 Germany 2, 151–​2 ghosts 38–​9, 49 gigs see performances Gilroy, Paul 37, 49 Girard, René 164–​6, 169–​70 glam metal 54, 58 Glanzer, Perry 162 Glucklich, Ariel 168 Goa Gil (psytrance DJ), 31 God, gods 2, 28, 71, 89, 102, 112, 143

209

Goodrick-​Clarke, Nicholas 21, 47 Granholm, Kennet 4, 44–​5, 81–​2 Gravetemple (band) fieldwork 5, 8, 75–​6 performance 5 6, 75–​6, 147–​8, 155 ritual 147, 155, 157 Greene, Paul D. 44 grindcore, 63, 162–​3 grunge 58–​9, 60 Guibert, Gérôme 41, 43 guitar downtuning 41, 57–​9, 77 droning style 78, 92, 110 subordinate to amplifier 50, 115, 119–​21, 126, 129, 177 Gwar (band) 42 Hagen, Ross 8, 44–​5, 47, 116 Hale, Susan E 117 hallucination 90, 93, 98, 107 Halnon, Karen Bettez 163 Harmless, William 80 Harris, James 46 Häxan (film) 149 healing 31, 84, 160–​1, 168, 161, 172 heaviness 74–​5, 96, 123, 127–​8 heavy metal see metal music Hecker, Pierre 4, 43 Hecker, Tim (musician) 8, 66–​7 Hegarty, Paul 39, 115, 127, 166 Helb, Colin 29 Hendrix, Jimi (musician) 60, 116–​17, 119 Henriques, Julian 116, 123–​5 Herbert, Frank see Dune (novel) heroin see drugs Highmore, Ben 23 Hinduism listener imagination 81, 91, 107 and metal 44 in psytrance 30–​1, 49 hip-​hop 49, 58, 66, 130 Hjelm, Titus 4 Hobbes, Thomas 164 Holt, Fabian 53, 55 horror films 59, 78, 149 Horse Latitudes (band) 123–​5, 133 Horseback (musician) 69 Howard, Jay R. 27 Huxley, Aldous 16–​19, 25, 32, 46, 109

210 hyperbole conventional in metal 155, 164 mysticism and excess 72–​5, 87–​8, 114, 176 relation to jokes 62, 85 Iceland 142 incense 89, 93, 141, 146, 148 India imagined by listeners 90–​1, 175 Indian classical music 5 instrumentation 65, 66, 90–​1 and psytrance 30–​1, 32, 49 indie, indie rock music 27–​8, 139 industrial music, 115, 162–​3, 168 ineffability 19, 26, 48, 68–​72, 80–​3, 135, 174 injury 58, 96–​7, 158–​60, 163 Iron Maiden (band) 45, 130 Ishmael, Amelia 3, 56, 117 Islam Arabic language prayer 1–​2 Hajj pilgrimage 1–​2, 103 landscapes 2, 91 listener imagination 81 and metal 43–​4 moral and political authorities 43–​4 Muslim listeners 2, 104 Janssen, David 27 Jamaica 36–​8, 48–​9, 152 James, Christine A. 42 James, William ineffability 80, 84 influence in study of popular music 16, 27–​8, 32, 46 influence in study of religion 16–​19, 26 four marks of religious experience, 18, 28 Jantzen, Grace 19–​20 Jesus and Mary Chain (band) 27–​8 Johnson, Bruce 73 jokes 53, 62–​4, 72–​4, 85 125–​6, 167, 172 Joseph, Brandon 167 journeys see pilgrimage Jousmäki, Henna 42 Judaism 25, 44, 85 Judas Priest (band) 130

Index Kabbalah 25 Kahn-​Harris, Keith 3, 9, 44, 46, 53, 73, 166 Kalra, Virinder S. 27 Katz, Steven T. 19–​20, 80 Keightley, Keir 136 Killing Joke (band) 37 King, Richard 19, 21 King Tubby (dub producer) 37 Kiss (band) 130 Klypchak, Brad 41, 43 Kripal, Jeffrey 25 Kristeva, Julia 163 Kroker, Arthur 168 Kruse, Holly 19 language see also hyperbole fragmented 113–​14 ineffability 19, 26, 48, 68–​72, 80–​3, 135, 174 mystical 11, 16, 22–​5, 40, 113–​14 opaque signs 24–​5, 117–​18, 132, 136 paradoxes and oxymorons 24, 65 pushed to limits 12, 53, 62 shifting modes 111–​13 use of punctuation 74–​5 Lebourg, Nicolas 47 Led Zeppelin (band) 44, 45–​6 Leeds 1, 5 LeVine, Mark 43, 54 Lipsitz, George 163 ‘listening-​as-​if ’ 11, 85–​6, 110–​14, 149, 158, 176–​7 logos see typography London 5, 33, 55, 74, 95, 102, 120, 167, 173 Lovecraft, Howard Philips 89, 99–​101, 111–​12 Lucas, O. 3, 67, 117, 162 Luhr, Eileen, 42 Lynch, Gordon 33 lyrics Christian 41, 43–​5, 47 cryptic 1, 75, 101 geological themes 87 low emphasis on 142, 163, 174 religious references 4, 41, 58, 75 McCarthy, Cormac see Blood Meridian McDowell, Fred (musician) 78 McGinn, Bernard 19–​20, 29

Index McKendrick, Ross D. (artist) 122–​5 magic 108, 122, 150, 154–​5, 156 Magout, Mohammed 43 Manchester 144 Manowar (band) 118 mantras 1–​2, 81, 153 Marduk (band) 43 marginality of blackletter 130 of drone metal 10–​13, 47, 54–​6, 68–​9, 156, 174–​9 in dub 38, 40 language of 68–​9 and mysticism 22, 25–​6, 48–​51, 68, 80–​1, 174–​9 in psytrance 33, 35 marijuana see drugs Marshall amplifiers 118, 119, 121 see also amplifiers Martin, Kevin see The Bug Masciandro, Nicola 46 masculinity see gender Matamp amplifiers 121, 122 see also amplifiers materiality of music media 126–​9 in packaging 128–​30 of signs 24, 36, 115, 134–​6 of sound 12, 49–​50, 115–​16, 126 Mayan religion 31, 100 Mayhem (band) 130 Maysles, Philip 39 meditation compared with listening 79, 93, 105, 107, 151 in listener description 29, 68, 70, 80, 81, 87–​8, 93, 104 while listening 93, 95, 108, 139 Melechi, Antonio, 35–​6 Melvins (band) 60, 64 memes 53, 62–​3, 125 see also jokes Menace Ruine (band) 127–​8 Merzbow (musician) 56 Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey 118, 204 metal music drone metal in relation to 56–​61, 64–​5 history and culture of 11, 41, 116, 118–​ 19, 129–​32, 134 and mysticism 45–​7 and religion 4, 28–​9, 41–​7

211

subgenres and scenes 10, 54–​6, 58–​9, 66–​8 Middle East 43, 90, 175 Minimalist music 5, 66 Moberg, Marcus 27, 42–​3, 73, 82 Monarch (band) 5 monuments 121–​5, 177 Moore, Ryan 46 moral panic 27, 41–​3, 163–​4 Morbid Angel (band) 60 Morton, Timothy 3 mountains holy 83–​5, 100, 102 images 92–​3, 100–​1, 131, 133 imagined sound of 92, 106 listener descriptions 88–​91, 107–​8, 175 mysticism and 46 Om tracks about 101–​2 visualising when listening 93–​4 music festivals fieldwork 4–​8, 83, 97, 172 ritual spaces 95, 158, 162–​3, 168–​9 scenic institutions 41, 54, 55, 84 My Bloody Valentine (band) 27–​8 mysticism see also Certeau, Michel de criticism of experience 19–​27, 33, 113–​14 drone metal as 13, 113–​14, 134–​6, 171–​9 in dub 36–​40, 49–​51 and gender 19 intertextual practice 11, 22–​6, 34–​6, 40, 48–​51, 117–​18, 126, 132, 171 in metal 45–​51 mystical scholarship as mysticism 25 in popular music studies 27–​40, 45–​5 in psytrance 29–​36, 49–​51 references to by listeners 3, 8–​9, 61, 67, 81, 123, 152, 158 symptom of social crisis 117–​18 20th Century study of 11, 15–​26 unclear use of term 9, 29, 37, 40, 45–​7 and violence 139, 162, 163–​70 Nadja (band) 105, 128, 140 Native American religion 31 Naylor Davis, Charlotte 4, 43 Nazis 47, 131 Nazoranai (band) 8, 59, 73, 76, 132, 167 Negus, Keith 53

212

Index

Netherlands 5, 7 New Age music 65–​6 New Age spirituality 31, 103, 156 New Religious Movements 27 Newcastle 129 Nietzsche, Friedrich 154 Nirvana (band) 59 noise in drone metal sound 1, 58, 70, 110, 123, 126 indescribability 71 in metal 41 overwhelming, excess 47, 74, 104, 118, 179 and religion 41 as rupture 28 theoretical understandings of 28, 138, 156, 163–​7 urban soundscape 85, 111–​13, 172 and violence 12–​13, 48, 158–​61, 160–​70 noise music 4, 5, 56 115–​16, 119, 166, 168 Noordzij, Gerrit 131 Northumberland Arms (venue) 129 Nottingham 5, 129 Novak, David 56, 116, 166, 168 nu metal 58 Oaken Palace (record label) 9 O’Boyle, Tom 3, 171 occultism 44–​5, 59, 81–​2, 148, 154, 157 Olaveson, Tim 33 Olson, Benjamin Hedge 46–​7 Olson, T. G. (musician) 103 Om (band) change in style 64 fieldwork 8 listening while reading the Bible 89 metal status 64–​6 mountains 101 onomatopoeia 135 performances 1–​2, 5, 40 religious iconography 1–​2, 132, 135 O’Malley, Stephen (musician) 63, 123, 126, 135 see also SunnO))), Gravetemple, Nazoranai Ommadon (band) 74, 92, 122–​8, 133, 140 Orange amplifiers 121, 122, 131 see also amplifiers orientalism 21–​2, 29–​30, 44, 90, 175

otherness, sense of 11–​13, 34, 74, 84–​99, 105, 138, 145, 176 Otto, Rudolf 17–​18, 105 paganism 28, 31, 44–​5, 149, 182 n.3 pain 12, 39, 95–​6, 109, 138, 158–​67 Paoli, Cristina 130–​1 paradoxes see language The Paragons (band) 36 Partridge, Christopher 3, 27, 38, 44–​5, 46, 162 Pentagram (band) 58 perennialism 18–​25, 158 performances becomes important in genre construction 54 compared to religion 108, 151–​3 darkness, smoke 84, 125, 156 difference from recordings 70 festival 5, 6, 70, 76, 95, 159 fieldwork 1–​8 performance practices 102, 147–​50 ritual 12, 144, 147–​57, 178 Perry, Lee ‘Scratch’ (musician) 37 Phillipov, Michelle 162 Phurpa (band) 121 pilgrimage language use as figure for 84–​5 listening described as 2, 31, 50, 84–​5, 100–​6, 176 in lyrics 58, 73 represented in shifting language 108–​13 Pillsbury, Glenn T. 29 Pink Floyd (band) 78 Piper, Jonathan 56, 162–​3 Pombagira (band) 121 Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band (band) 78 posters 65, 102, 118, 121–​4, 128–​9, 144, 177 postpunk 37, 58 prayer 1–​2, 20, 102, 104, 108, 144, 151 Proudfoot, Wayne 19 psytrance 11, 29–​36, 116, 174 punk 37, 58, 64, 66 Purcell, Natalie 45 racism 21, 32, 46, 90 Radigue, Eliane (musician) 56–​7

Index Rastafari 37, 40, 48–​51, 101,  152–​3 raves 30–​6, 49–​51 record labels 8–​9, 54, 59, 121, 127–​8, 144–​6, 160 recordings artwork 1, 40, 41, 50, 57, 91–​3, 99–​103, 119, 139–​41 causing injury 96, 160, 163 cover versions 60, 63 difference from performances 70 difficulty in listening 104–​5, 164 formats 115, 126–​9, 139–​41, 178 and genre formation 37, 48–​9, 53–​4, 57–​61 as intoxicants 98–​9, 107 length 58–​9, 92, 103, 104 manipulation of 30–​7, 39–​40, 50–​1 packaging 127, 128 purchasing 1, 45, 175 ritual 12, 137–​43 samples, sampling 1–​2, 34 sleeve notes 43, 57, 62, 134, 144 uses of 30, 89, 142–​3 Reed, Alexander 115, 162 Reed, Lou (musician) 56 Reich, Steve (musician) 66 reggae 11, 36–​40, 48–​51, 125 religious experience criticism of concept 18–​22, 32 in popular music studies 30–​6, 45–​8 in study of mysticism 15–​30 religious institutions distancing from 32, 85, 151–​7 emerging from religious experience 17–​18, 27–​8 rejection of 15, 31 repetition absorption in 76–​7 discussed by listeners 68, 76, 78, 88, 105, 146, 152, 157 drone sound 77–​8 dub 39–​40 genre conventions 61–​2, 68 lyrics 97 mystical language 36 psytrance 30–​5 sound 3, 39, 58, 70, 174

213

terms and phrases 9, 12, 60–​2, 107, 133–​4, 155 visual 129–​36, 177 reverb 36, 38–​9, 64, 97 Reynolds, Simon 27–​8 rhythm 35–​8, 58, 67, 93, 118, 131, 146, 157–​8, 174 Riches, Gabby 99, 162 Rietveld, Hillegonda C. 33 Riley, Terry (musician) 66, 78 Rise Above (record label) 55 ritual ambiguity 149–​57, 178 descriptions 8, 12, 77 drone metal 138–​57 drone sound 145 music festivals 95, 158, 162–​3, 168–​9 ordinariness 155–​6 performances 12, 144, 147–​57, 178 psytrance 30, 31 recordings 12, 137–​42 ‘universal drone ritual’ 157–​8 Ritual Productions (record label) 144, 145 Roadburn (music festival) 5, 7, 70, 75, 83, 95, 123–​5, 133–​4, 155 Roeder, Jason (musician) 121 Roerich, Nicolas (artist) 100 rollercoasters 74, 79 Roper, Arik (artist) 92, 132 Rouget, Gilbert 154 Royal Festival Hall (venue) 5, 74, 173 ruins 2, 46, 85, 86, 91, 94, 99, 121–​4 sacrifice 12, 36, 138, 164–​6 Saheb, N. and D. X. Abaris 46 Said, Edward 21 St John, Graham 31–​6 St Vitus (band) 58 Saldanha, Arun 32 Saler, Michael 112 Sanskrit 1 Satan 41, 45, 66 Satanism 27, 41, 44–​5, 147 sauna 78 scapegoat mechanism 164–​6 Scarry, Elaine 168–​70 scene and genre 54–​5 lack of local scene in drone metal 9–​10, 54–​6

214 scenic institutions 55 scepticism 45 Schafer, R. Murray 41 Schalansky, Judith 130 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 19 Schwartz, K. Robert 66 science fiction see fantastic literature Scott, Joan W. 20 Scott, Niall 3, 171 Sells, Michael 25, 80–​1, 84 Serra, Richard (artist) 128 Serres, Michel, 164–​6 sex 29, 78, 96 Shakespeare, Steven 46 shamans, shamanism 31, 84, 88, 91, 154, 157 Sharf, Robert 20 Shvarts, Aliza 3, 67, 117, 162, 171–​2 sickness 95, 159 SIGE (record label) silliness 73 singing see vocals singing along 1–​2, 39, 61 Sistach, Dominique 47 Skepticism (band) 58 Sklower, Jedediah 43 Slayer (band) 58, 66–​8 Sleep (band) 55 amplifiers 121 and Black Sabbath 60, 132, 177 descriptions of performances 70–​1 in genre formation 55, 58–​9, 97 logo 131 mentioned in scholarship 46, 56 metal status 65 recordings 58–​9, 73, 140 recording as religious text 73 response to recordings 74, 96–​7, 160, 163 sleep altered state 93 compared to listening 57, 79, 84, 94 falling asleep 95, 138–​9 lack of 95, 154 sleeve notes see recordings slowness body movement 6, 147 geological associations 86, 87–​92 jokes about 62–​4 mental effects of 67, 94, 119

Index musical development 3, 58, 63, 66, 76–​7, 97, 103, 142, 174 reading blackletter 130 recordings slowed down 66–​7 repetition and 76, 146–​7 riffs 57–​8, 75 tempo 1, 3, 77, 92 Smart, Ninian 1–​5 smoke 61, 101, 106, 121–​3, 125, 148, 156, 162 sound system in reggae culture 37–​40, 50 Southern Lord (record label) 129 space travel 84–​8, 89, 91–​2, 101–​2 Spivak, Gayatri Chakraborty 71 Sterne, Jonathan 127 Stosuy, Brandon 56 Sub Pop (record label) 59 subcultural capital 5, 6, 8, 166 Sullivan, Paul 37–​40 Sunn amplifiers 60, 62 119, 121 see also amplifiers SunnO))) (band) amplifiers 60, 62, 119–​21, 126, 132, 177 bracket symbol 62, 66, 74, 121, 132 collaborations 60–​1 descriptions in terms of mysticism, ritual 46, 88, 134, 147–​51, 153–​9 discussion of performances 5, 70, 75–​6, 78, 86, 96–​7 extreme reactions to 6, 74, 96–​7, 109–​10, 158–​60 jokes 63, 172 logo 60–​2, 132, 133 mentioned in scholarship 3, 46, 56, 117 metal status 67 performance practices 97–​8, 121–​3, 125, 148 recordings 60, 62, 77, 102, 128, 138–​9 robes 61, 148, 150 Sylvan, Robin 27–​8, 31–​6, 99, 116 tags see genre Taoism 31 tapes see cassette tapes Tartarus (record label) 128 tattoos 134, 159 Taylor, Timothy D. 31 Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine (band) 60–​1 temples 84, 85, 86, 151 Temples (music festival) 5, 97, 151

Index tempo see slowness Thacker, Eugene 56 Thergothon (band) 58 This Is Spinal Tap (film) 125, 126 Thornton, Sarah 6, 53, 217 thrash metal 54, 58, 66, 70 see also Slayer Tibet 18, 90–​1, 153 Till, Rupert, 27, 28, 31–​3, 45 timbre 6, 12, 59, 66, 115, 118–​21, 130, 146 see also distortion time perception alteration of 143 access to ancient time 57, 84, 86–​8, 156–​8, 177 measured by vinyl sides 139 reconfiguration at music festivals 7 Tolbert, Elizabeth 169 Tolkien, J. R. R. 112 torture 12, 138, 158–​61, 164, 167–​70 Toth, Csaba 115 Tracy, James F. 38–​9 Tramacchi, Des 33 transgression 35–​6, 47, 131, 163, 166, 175 translocality of drone metal 10–​13, 47, 54–​6, 68–​9, 156, 174–​9 in dub 38, 40 in psytrance 33, 35 ‘tribal’ culture 30–​6, 88, 90, 156–​8, 175 Trouble (band) 58 t-​shirts 1, 5–​6, 60, 121, 129, 130, 133–​4 Turner, Victor 7, 33, 162, 168 typography blackletter, fraktur 115, 129–​36, 177 logos 60, 62, 66, 115, 121–​2 Ufomammut (band) 8, 95 Underhill, Evelyn 17–​19, 26 Undersmile (band) 103 ‘universal drone ritual’ 157–​8 universalism 17, 21 Urfaust (band) 144 Urthona (band) 122 Van der Velden, Daniel 130 Van Gennep, Arnold 162 Van Straaten, Eva-​Maria Alexandra 34 Varas-​Díaz, Nelson, et al. 54 Veal, Michael E. 37–​40, 49

215

Vendryes, Thomas, 39 Vestergaard, Vitus 130 vinyl materiality of 115, 126–​9, 138–​41, 177–​8 preferred format 12, 115, 177 ritual 138–​41 violence association with blackletter 130 in descriptions 12, 96–​7, 158–​61, 164–​70, 178 in dub 38–​40 and mysticism 12–​13, 169–​71 and ritual 158–​68 Vitos, Botond, 34–​5, 116 vocals alterations in dub 36–​7 black metal style 69 chanting 1–​2, 50, 65–​6, 81, 90–​1, 101, 104, 147, 157 clean or growled 58–​9 low emphasis in drone metal 142 religious associations 1–​2, 66, 145, 147–​9, 155 sampled 1–​2, 30, 174 volume 77, 96–​7, 105, 110, 135 Waksman, Steve 64, 118 Wallach, Jeremy 4, 54 Walser, Robert, 43, 45, 47, 53, 66, 118, 130 Wang, Yuan 82 Wardruna (band) 119 Weinstein, Deena 45, 53, 118, 162 Whiteley, Sheila 116–​17 Whitelock, James 27 The Who (band) 119 Willberg, Hans P. 131 witchcraft 122, 149, 155 Witchfinder General (band) 58 Wraiths (band) 144 Wright, Laura M. 3, 171–​2 yoga 2, 108 Young, La Monte (musician) 56, 66 YouTube.com 8, 61–​5, 66, 75, 81, 126, 146 Zaehner, Robert Charles 18–​19 Zrzavy, Helfried. C. 66