This recently-published survey, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7598549.stm, purports to demonstrate that those of us who like Heavy Metal music are, contrary to popular misconception, sweet-natured, insecure and creative types. Soddit - sussed !
Actually, the supposed statistics raise a whole load of interesting questions, most of which are pretty obvious. What about if you listen to a range of different musical genres - what personality traits predominate ? How did the researchers define their categories, both of musical and personality types ? What safeguards were used to ensure that subjects were using the same categories in the same way (a) as each other, and (b) as the researchers ? And which came first, the personality test or the musical questionnaire ? In other words, are we trying to establish a causal link here ?
Since the exercise was conducted by a reputable academic establishment, we can assume that some standard techniques were used, but whenever someone makes bald statements like 'Fans of musical genre M are X, Y and Z' I suspect a gross oversimplification and dilution both of the experimental intentions and research data. I also wonder, of course, what possible use such a set of findings could be put to.
Purely anecdotally, of course, I have known Metal fans with all kinds of different personalities. I'm sure the same goes for other genres. And there's also the question of how you define 'Metal.' I notice that in the info published on the BBC News website, it's lumped in with 'Rock' in general, which makes for a very broad church indeed.
Dr Johnson's dictionary famously defined a horse as 'a neighing quadruped,' a description which, though beautifully succinct, would satisfy very few these days, least of all anyone who works with, studies, rides, or otherwise cares for horses. The same can be said for what goes roughly under the name 'Metal' in musical terms. One of the most durable of all forms of rocknroll, it has undoubtedly branched into the most varied in the 40 years since the early days of Black Sabbath. The uninitiated will probably be familiar with the subgenres of Thrash (25 years old), Death (about 22 y.o.), possibly even Black (15+ y.o.) But contemporary Metal is such a diverse scene that it's really only held together by the presence somewhere in its arrangements of guitar powerchords and loud, repetitive riffing - and even then, not always.
An example. In the 24 hours since I started thinking about this post, I've been listening to Deep Purple (old-school blues-based early-70s metal), Eluveitie (Gaulish-language Celtic folk-metal), Tyr (Faroese Viking-metal), The Berzerker (industrial/techno drum-based metal)and Midnattsol (Norwegian prog-folk metal.) How anyone can even begin to try and homogenise this sprawling, multicoloured, variform musical culture into a simple set of triggers for a generalised set of behaviours I can't begin to understand.
As well as being methodologically suspect, then, this exercise strikes me as completely without use or purpose. It reminds me of the discredited pseudoscience of phrenology, whose advocates claimed they could demonstrate people's personalities and likely behaviour from the shape of their heads. The principal difference being, of course, that head shape is largely genetically determined, while aesthetics are predominantly a matter of environment and socialisation. Attempting to view either as deterministic of individual character says more about a general human attachment to determinism itself than it does about the likely accuracy of a single deterministic theory.
These people need to get out more. Listen to some music. Rock'n'roll !
