What do black and death metal fans appreciate about their music? How do they find access to it and to the corresponding scenes? To what extent are the followers actively involved in the musical practice of black and death metal? And do they share other similarities beyond their musical preferences, such as their social background, their age, their level of education or their party-political orientation?

This dissertation provides answers to questions like these by analysing and comprehensively documenting black metal and death metal as two complex contemporary musical and cultural phenomena. With a variety of qualitative and quantitative results, the study provides a snapshot of the scenes in Germany and in this way contributes to a foundation of the current (academic, educational, social) discourse on extreme forms of metal.

published as a book on 03 August 2014 (ISBN: 9783943774320)