The Sound of Madness

One of the reasons heavy metal therapy exists is that metal music tends to have more depictions of mental health and extreme states then many other music genres.  There’s some evidence that mental health is described differently in metal as well, so possibly ‘re-framed’ as a more positive thing or even celebrated (and if you want a nerd off about if that’s a good or bad thing you should look at the work of Kyle Messick, see the metal university for more details).

This most recent request was for a playlist of songs that reference and possibly reframe ideas of ‘madness’, ‘insanity’, ‘psychosis’ and such, including references to stigma.  As always we take requests as ultimately the playlists are built by and belong to you all.  This one didn’t turn out quite as I expected, I had imagined mainly overt references to mental health would feature.  There’s some of that, but we also got stuff that is more nuanced and complex, with lots of different interpretations of the ‘brief’. This reminds me of how amazing you lot are, as its a very interesting set of songs – quite a grunge vibe in this one.  As with many of our playlists, there are some references to extreme states, self-harm and suicidal thoughts so please take care of yourselves around if this is something you feel okay with engaging with.

We will be thinking and writing more about how metal culture describes mental health so watch this space.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvZmNdpAph2dWExs4HwF7ak2EIgxRdySE

https://music.apple.com/gb/playlist/heavy-metal-therapy-the-sound-of-madness/pl.u-b3b8RKDtkejGL3

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/70v2Cwv7rDnSuFz0qeGGTi?si=g5S8BMbaTtOWr6oBW6Yw7w