Influence of Rock, Hard Rock, Metal, Punk and
Alternative on the human mood (my personal experience in it)
I myself used to be a metal head for more about 10 years. During
the years the amount of music swallowed varied, however there was a
certain tendency that I listen more and more metal. I even had a
period in my life where I cannot live without metal.
The metal and alternative music slowly became my second nature. I
started listening to Heavy metal and Rock music when I was 14 years
old, I started with the bands:
Metallica, Iron Maiden, Manowar,
Motorhead, AC/DC, DIO then when some time passed I progressed
further with
Sepultura, Pantera, Kreator, Death etc.
Few years later my primary metal style of choice was Death metal
with bands like:
Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse, Benediction, Six
Feet Under, Bolt Thrower etc. My death metal period in my life
lasted for like a year and a half, then I switched to even heavier
types of Metal music like
Black Metal, Doom Metal etc.. I
was into the darkest metal of metals for about 3 or 4 years bands
like
Dimmu Borgir, Venom, Bathory, Immortal, Satyricon,
Darkthrone, Dark Funeral were my idols for this phase of my
life.
My last phase of a
"development" as a metal head was when I
switched my favour metal style of choice to
Gothic and
Industrial metal & rock music in that times of gothic I was
completely after bands like
Lacrimosa, London After Midnight,
Sopor Aeternus & The Ensembe of Shadows, The Cure,
Crematory almost paralelly I slipped into listening to
Nine
Inch Nails, Front Line Assymbly, Front 242, Ministry etc.
With the years I noticed that I started getting more and more
aggressive and more and more negatively pitched towards life in
general (which I nowdays relate more or less with my metal
background).
Probably as an effect of listening to metal, I started being more
sarcastic, I started spending more time thinking of death, even at
periods some suicidal thoughts started emerging.
This kind of music make me more or less apathic towards life and at
the same time triggered hyper sensuality in me, which if probably
analyzed by a psychologist would be ranked as a mental
disored.
It was the major part of my life because all my life started
turning around the music I started looking for other metal heads I
started going to places where other people who are into metal
gather (metal pubs, metal bars, metal clubs).
At times almost all my contacts with people were also with
individuals from metal backgrounds, I started despising people with
other music preferences (judging people), I also started thinking
of people which are not into metal most of the time as inferior, I
considered non-metal heads like a
un-elightened or
something.
You can imagine how insane this kind of perception of life is and
how much the metal music was involved with this wrong understanding
of human genesis.
With the time I realized that listening to metal music consitutes a
major
"disease" like condition and has a negative influence
over my general life, so I decided to limit my relations with
people who are into the deep
metal underground and started
changing my life for good when I substituted my extraordinary
passion for metal for a passion for
Orthodox Christian
Church music and
Classical Music - mostly from the
Baroque Classics era.
Nowadays I do listen mostly to classical composers like
J.S.
Bach, Buxtehude, Antonio Vivaldi, Claudio Monteverdi and many
many more
My wrong perception for the world and my behaviour alterations, my
empathy towards life and people which I think were directly
influenced by listening to metal music is almost gone, though the
old wrong (mind and spirit) pattern remains are silently sleeping
somewhere in me and looking for a ways to feed it up and to rise
again.
Another negative consequence of listening to metal music was the
increase in my criticism. Here I should note that my by nature I'm
a critical person, however listening to metal make me even more
critical and judgemental and rebellious.
As metal music in most of it's conceptual imaginary drawings speaks
about rebelion, I think it's worthy to mention it here as one of
metal's wicked stimulus over the general metal fan.
I have to admit that it was metal music that partly kindled my
interest towards religion and laters by God's mercy led me to find
the truth in the
Orthodox Christian Church
Metal teaches people to leave the old ways and live a wild life
without any constraints it teaches the man to turn it's back to the
old ways and look for a new order of things.
I think metal teaches man to
rebel against any set
government authorities and life order.
This kind of music preaches complete freedom from any normal
habits, it pushes the fan to live on the edge, get the best of
life, rarely talking about the consequences on the person who
grasps this abnormal ways (ideas).
However like everything listening doesn't have a 100% percents
negative impact, but also has some benefits even though the
benefits on the personality are quite less notable than the
negative influence.
One of the major benefits of metal on man is it's charge to
sometimes show off people the real sight of things in life, it cuts
the veil every now and then and does try to look for a truth, so
metal could make you a truth seeker.
Another positive benefit is that many metal bands deal with a deep
manners and problems the humanity faces, so listening to metal
could stimulate your psyche to be think more deeply.
Last but not least is that metal deals with occult, myths and
religion with that in mind, metal could trigger the listener
interest into religion or occult.
It is also a music which exposes the human need for spirituality
and is a good mirror of todays people corrupted spirituality.
Talking about faith, metal is about faith just like any other
religion like christianity, islam or buddhism. So most people who
are into metal does believe in it like into an idol that could
advance them in a way.
I personally previously believed that listening to metal music,
improves my thinking process and makes me smarter in a way (of
course this is a delusion).
However according to modern research in certain cases it is
possible that certain kind of metal has a positive impact on mind
development.
Of course things aren't so black and white, because talking about
the metal genre and it's influence I should take in mind, the music
versatility.
There is a Christian Rock and Christian Metal as well as the so
called
White Metal which claim they do good since they
preach Christianity and the
"good news" of the Saviour Jesus
Christ who has saved humanity from death and hell
Since the music also incorporates the good old metal riffs, my
personal experience shows me that the influence of the so-called
Christian Rock and Metal Music is not that beneficial as
they claim, but it can easily even spread false ideas related to
Christianity and implant false or heretic beliefs in Humans.
It's an interesting fact that some of my personal experiences with
metal and rock and it's influence on my life and person does
co-incide with some Research Results on the topic of metal
listening.
For instance there is a quite a research on the topic of mood
swings and listening to metal music, the mood swing problem should
be a well known problem to many people who have been into gothic
metal or alternative like
Pearl Jam, Alice in Chans
etc.
If you want to see some researches data results from experiments
related to the effect of Metal on Human Psyche I kindly urge you to
further see the below articles containing research results:
Psychology of Heavy Metal Music: Effects on Mood, Aggression,
Suicide, Drug Use and Intelligence
The Effects of Heavy Metal Music on Attitude