Death doom metal or death/doom emerges as a distinct style in early 1990s mostly focused in northern England. This style or, tentatively, sub-genre of doom may be argued to be a leisure space for participants in this culture. Dark leisure theory attempts to describe non-mainstream leisure activity, and even though it started in criminological and…[Read more]

In the post-modern era, the domination of repetition in aesthetics allows for deeper meaning to be conveyed with limited musical material. The repetition, within Sigmund Freud’s interpretation in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), becomes a ‘repetition-compulsion’ that resonates beyond the aural recurrences. Obsession inherent in depre…[Read more]

Doom (metal) has been seen as the ‘slower’ -in more than one sense- sibling in metal music in general. The slowness can be argued to be true for some cases within doom and this slowness, prominently in musical terms but alongside other angles, can be the defining factor of a portion of doom music. For example, while funeral doom may be argued to…[Read more]

Doom metal music and culture have been under the influence of 1970s hippie ideologies from the beginning with the music of Black Sabbath. Tony Iommi in an interview from 2011 suggests that Black Sabbath has been using the label ‘doom’ since its early days. While during early stages of doom music, this influence or interaction took both tra…[Read more]

Melancholy, death, and the darker thought spectrum should not be considered separate from black metal at any point through its history. In contrast however, depressive suicidal black metal (DSBM) took these themes further in terms of their crudity, and more importantly it fixated on the ideas of death and suicide. The birth pangs of this style are…[Read more]

Death plays an important role in human life, and there have been many theories about how this inevitability affects human thought, and social life. According to anthropological studies, death and death-related phenomena, including rituals, music, the meaning of death, are based on the originating cultures. This makes depressive suicidal black…[Read more]

Vocal accent in musical performance may carry more information than what is apparent at a first look. This idea becomes more significant in a popular music realm, where globalization is pronounced, thus making the dichotomy of individuality and belonging desires obscured compared to a realm where locality dominates the form of expression. This…[Read more]

After the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, Hong Kong music in general lingered in the middle of influences from the English heritage, Mainland China, and local traditions. This is observed best in popular music made, and performed in Hong Kong’s local scenes. As a result of globalisation of 1990s and 2000s, Hong Kong’s local popular mus…[Read more]

Death/doom metal music, a style of extreme metal, emerged around the beginning of 1990s with a genius loci in West Yorkshire. While this style dispersed around the globe during this decade and later decades, the pioneers of this style -namely Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, and Anathema- quickly moved on from the style which they are credited to…[Read more]

After the extreme turn of late 1980s and early 1990s of metal music, three northern England-based bands –My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost from Bradford, and Anathema from Liverpool, commonly referred to as ‘the Peaceville Three’ because of their record label based is Dewsbury, West Yorkshire- went on to pioneer the musical style which came to be…[Read more]

Doom metal music is comprised of richly varied styles. These styles sound significantly different from time to time, yet they still are referred under a doom umbrella. One compelling trait emerges among these seemingly disparate styles. Especially when compared to other heavy and extreme metal music styles, these doom styles always stay on the…[Read more]

Death/doom emerged as a subgenre in extreme metal music during 1990s mostly based in Yorkshire. Interestingly, these Yorkshire-based bands changed their style significantly to what is generally accepted as gothic/doom. This change also illustrates two different approaches to death in the music. While the early repertoire engages with the idea of…[Read more]

Oral history provides important sources of information when looking at the development of a particular genre of music. This idea becomes more pronounced when the genre of music in question may be tentatively considered a popular music. While one has to be careful in labelling a genre of music ‘popular’, in this case labelling extreme metal and mor…[Read more]

One goal of this essay is to offer an exploratory, historiographical analysis of the conquest account in the book of Joshua, an analysis that focuses upon the sociocultural milieu of ancient Judah. I propose to show how this narrative of conquest might have contributed to discourse(s) among the literate Judean community that perpetuated the text,…[Read more]

In a recent ZAW article, Michael Chan argues that II Reg 25,27-30 alludes to Gen 40-41, and that this allusion provides a hermeneutical key for understanding the purpose of II Reg 25,27-30 in an Enneateuchal context: it points to an imminent exodus, a return from exile and a gathering of diaspora in the promised land. This article picks up where…[Read more]

Sound and space—however one defines these terms—are phenomenologically and ontologically intertwined.

The Muslim-dominated “Swahili Coast”has always served as a conceptual as well as physical periphery for post-colonial Kenya. This article takes Kenyan youth music under the influence of global hip-hop as an ethnographic entry into the dynamics of identity and citizenship in this region. Kenyan youth music borrows from global hip-hop culture the…[Read more]

The Muslim-dominated “Swahili Coast”has always served as a conceptual as well as physical periphery for post-colonial Kenya. This article takes Kenyan youth music under the influence of global hip-hop as an ethnographic entry into the dynamics of identity and citizenship in this region. Kenyan youth music borrows from global hip-hop culture the…[Read more]