Caring for the Environment is Metal

The genre of Environmental Metal shows a very pessimistic view of climate change, global warming and the end of the world because of it. This portfolio is going to focus on specific songs by three different bands and also tell you a bit about each band and how their activism goes further than their songs.

Cattle Decapitation is an American metal band. An over arching theme in there music is the consumption of animals and the human impact of the environment. This continues over to their personal lives with originally the entire band being vegan but with no original members, only 2 members hold a strict vegetarian diet.

The song Manufactured Extinct by Cattle Decapitation describes what has happened to Earth and that there is a human cause. With lines like “Entire species erased/ Million acres defaced” it does not make you read in between the lines to find the meaning. The line “we used it up, we wore it out, we made it do what we would have done without”. This explains that human greed is the cause. This sentiment is also shown in the album art with a factory looming in the background. The visuals of the video are just as too the point as the lyrics with pictures of plastic spilling out of dead human bodies. In an extension to the song, which mainly is about the natural world, it shows that humanity is also effected by these actions.

This specific song I chose to showcase is based on the book Silent Spring by Rachael Carson, which exposed the hazards of DDT, which was the most powerful pesticide at the time. With the idea that the pesticide accumulated in the fat of animals and ultimately hurt the entire food chain, this would eventually harm humans. Because of her writing DDT was banned.

Godeater is a Scottish metal band, all members are either vegetarian or vegan. This song, Silent Spring, references a battle between Earth or nature and humanity. With the lyric “When we bend nature/ The world will bend back”. This line makes it seem that no matter what harm is caused the world will right itself again and possibly not with humanity left to see it. It also references that normal people are also “victims of industry”, both normal people and Earth are pawns to industrial movements.

Gojira is a French metal band. They work closely the Sea Shepherd Conservation society, which focuses on marine conservation, by raising money for the organization and allowing them to sell merchandise at their concerts. In hopes of spreading the message of the impacts that humanity has on the environment.

The whole album “From Mars to Sirius” by Gojira is about the destruction of the planet and possible options of escaping. It is told from someone more hopeful about the future and believes that the planet will survive. In this specific song, Global Warming, he feels he is the only one who feels this way, this is shown in the lyrics “And I feel all alone/ ‘Cause everybody’s wrong”. Throughout the song he is in a fight with himself about whether the planet is worth saving, “The world is down and none can rebuild it”. At the end he has hope that the future generations will solve the problem.

Themes

The two themes that are present in these three songs are humanity is at fault and a hope for the future. Humanity being at fault does not reference to the whole of humanity but the very few, specifically focusing on the greed of industry. Everything is about profits, in order to make money they have to take and take until there is nothing left. Both the environment and lives of the average person are negatively effected by it. All the songs make reference to the future and if there is hope for it or not. If we have pushed earth to the point of no return. They all end on a pessimistic view on this, that the answer to the earlier statement is yes. Even though they believe in the possibility that Earth is to far gone they still chose take action to help prevent that from happening.

Application

Environmental metal is important to understanding environmental problems because it shows a non-conventional, more radical look at it that goes further than just saying what is happening is bad. They all are able to state a cause to the problems and connect it to other radical, left-leaning sentiments, such as anti-capitalism. With the bands themselves taking in part activism in one way or another, listeners are going be inspired and follow in there footsteps. They are showing that it is not just words that prove you believe in a cause but also the actions you take.