Look, science journalism, it’s time for us to have a chat. I read you every day, but when you write about metal, I wince even before I read the article.

Here’s why: check out this article in which it summarizes research findings that ‘An analysis of 551 college students found “significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression among listeners of heavy metal/hard rock music, as compared with non-listeners.”’

While this is a reasonable assessment of the original study, keep in mind that science is a world in which we find out relationships between things before we find cause. Thus, there’s a few problems with this article:

1. 551 people from community colleges around San Diego is not exactly a representative sample;
2. The term “heavy metal” means a lot of things to a lot of people, but that doesn’t make them all right;
3. We’re not sure whether this anxiety pre-dated the heavy metal or not;
4. We’re not sure whether this anxiety is a result from honest and realistic fears about the future of society, whether brought on by minds opened by metal or not.

You can forgive us for being a little twitchy here in the metal world. Every time someone shoots up a school, there’s someone in the media or Congress looking to blame heavy metal. Heck, they almost banned us back in the 1980s with the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). But when studies come out, and then you give them a headline that makes it sound like heavy metal “causes” these problems, you’re giving ammunition to the bad guys.

Even more, this article has a huge picture of Rage Against the Machine on top. Who ever considered them to be metal? They don’t even like metal. They’d hate being called heavy metal. That’s like calling Nirvana metal, while Kurt Cobain was talking about how heavy metal was out of ideas and offended him politically.

Now let’s look at the good news:

Among those who listen to heavy metal, there were no significant differences in anger, anxiety, or depression among frequent as opposed to occasional listeners. The key factor seems to be the inclination to be drawn to this music, rather than the amount of time spent listening to it.

Translation: there’s something in fans before they hear heavy metal that makes them prone to being anxious about the future of our world. It’s unclear whether they’d be anxious in a different society, or even a more stable one.

Naturally, this pushes back against the idea that pure, perfect children turn into drug-abusing, crime-committing, sheep-raping suicidal maniacs the instant you let them listen to heavy metal. It also suggests that trying to slam that barn door extra hard after the horses are gone, and shutting off your kid’s music, won’t do any good.

Fortunately, it also points out that metalheads aren’t prone to anger or depression. In fact, as other research points out, it may be the smarter kids who are drifting toward heavy metal. This suggests that anxiety may be a side-effect of intelligence and awareness of what’s going on in the world, not “heavy metal poisoning.”

The pace of recognition for metal studies in academia accelerates with an article in the Wall Street Journal. This article covers The Heavy Metal and Popular Culture International Conference which occurred at Bowling Green State University.

In academic circles the movement to grant recognition to heavy metal and to study it has gained momentum recently with the launch of a heavy metal journal, the International Society for Metal Music Studies forming, classical musicians reaching out to metal ones, political recognition of heavy metal as a subculture, and at least one highly talented professor using heavy metal to teach literature. The article points out that from 2000-2011, 224 academic papers were written on metal, with 63 scholarly articles written last year.

“You have to keep that 16-year-old mentality,” said Todd Evans, a former member of GWAR and participant in the Bowling Green State University conference. At the same time, these academics or “metallectuals” as the article dubs them, are attempting to discern more of the meaning behind this intense and powerful subgenre. We who have advocated Hessian Studies for almost two decades are glad to see this welcome development and hope there’s more to come.

Photo Credit: Keith Kahn-Harris, by Eva Roca for the Wall Street Journal.

As reported by The Telegraph and other news sources of quality, “intelligent teenagers often listen to heavy metal music to cope with the pressures associated with being talented,” according to new research.

The original research from the University of Warwick surveyed 1,067 students for their attitudes about family, school, leisure time and media. They found that students who ranked metal above other genres tended to have “lower self-esteem and ideas about themselves.”

Following up on that, the researchers interviewed gifted students to find their attitudes about heavy metal. These gifted students identified heavy metal as a source of catharsis and the release of pressures associated with school. More than a third of the top 5% of students in the UK rated heavy metal as their favorite type of music.

The study suggests that people listen to heavy metal because they are under pressure from what they perceive of daily life. As the researcher in charge of the study stated, “Perhaps the pressures associated with being gifted and talented can be temporarily forgotten with the aid of music. As one student suggests, perhaps gifted people may experience more pressure than their peers and they use the music to purge this negativity.”

This contradicts the notion that heavy metal causes the anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and other behaviors with which it is associated. Furthermore, it implies these behaviors may be the result of higher intelligence people attempting to integrate with our modern world and its declining social standards. Most likely, the research suggests, these are not problems but rational responses to the world around, and are the product of not a lower mindset but a higher one.

As another article pointed out, heavy metal is “a favoured music of 11-19 year olds with lower self-esteem than their peers” but that the “youngsters said they could connect with metal’s ‘politics’.” In other words, this is in response to the world itself and not the internal makeup of these people.

It could just be that if you notice enough of reality, heavy metal is the only music and corresponding sociocultural identity which can make sense out of what a smarter child can perceive.

As further indication of academia embracing heavy metal, The Toledo Free Press reports that Bowling Green State University’s Department of Popular Culture is hosting a 4 day long conference on the subject. Dubbed “The Heavy Metal and Popular Culture International Conference”, it will feature lectures, discussions, and demonstrations on a wide range of subjects, ultimately relating back to heavy metal.

“The focus [of the conference] is on heavy metal, music and culture and it’s completely scholarly,” [organizer Brian] Hickam said.

The topics covered range from “Metal as a Cultural Practice” (Hessians?), “Heavy Metal as Resistance”, to “Landscape and Mythology as Heavy Metal Fashion”, and “Reactions to Crossover/Thrash Metal in Punk and Metal Scenes”, among others.

Of particular note is the lecture: “Metal After Metal Studies: What Comes Next?”, which recognizes the fact that metal has become relatively stagnant in recent years, even though its media popularity has never been greater.

“What we’re seeing is that while innovation is still possible of metal, we’re not seeing much in the way of historical progress,” [the author] said. “It’s quite possible heavy metal will simply exhaust itself.”

The symposium will be held April 4-7. Prospective participants can visit the department’s website for more information.

With its first issue due in 2015, the realization of Metal Music Studies represents a long and difficult path from the origins of metal study in the 1980s but shows how far metal has come.

Other than a handful of academics, few have chosen to explore the subcultures and values of metal music, preferring to group it into the broader cloud of popular music. The past few years have seen a convergence of academia and the more literate of popular metal journalism, with academic symposiums and publications intermingling with popular books on metal and its history.

Metal Music Studies promises a bridge between these two worlds. “To publish high-quality, world-class research, theory and shorter, timely debates that serve as a bridge between the Academy and the wider genre of metal music writing,” it states as part of its goal.

It further notes a desire to be a hub for for the International Society of Metal Music Studies (ISMMS), and “vehicle to promote the development of metal music studies as an interdisciplinary, international subject field.” This academe-speak means roughly what you might expect, which is that since metal music studies does not fit neatly into any particular field, it must bridge multiple fields, including ethics, musicology and philosophy.

The journal states its purpose to “be the focus for research and theory in metal music studies – a multidisciplinary (and increasingly interdisciplinary) subject field that engages with a range of parent disciplines, including (but not limited to) sociology, musicology, humanities, cultural studies, geography, philosophy, psychology, history, natural sciences.”

For those of us who have labored for years under a desire to see metal music given more serious study, and who have believed that this art form has more to communicate that adolescent rebellion and profitability, it is gratifying to see this journal getting ready to launch.