Lingüa Brütallica - Episode 62: Doug Moore (New York, USA)

In this episode, we talk to Doug Moore who is the lyricist for not one but five “weird” metal projects including Seputus, Glorious Depravity, Weeping Sores, Scarcity and Pyrrhon that integrate an “interdisciplinary” approach to the genre. Doug is also the writer of an article entitled “Death Metal English” for Invisible Oranges which we have frequently cited in our own academic work. Doug explains that through this work, he developed a greater appreciation for death metal English, developing a “death metal lexicon” from which he can selectively draw for lyric writing. To wit, in some of his work, Doug reproduces many of the tropes he describes, including use of -ation words, passive voice, “of the” prepositional phrases and medical jargon, while in others Doug adopts a more colloquial even conversational style rife with contractions and shortenings rarely observed in archetypal death metal English. Doug then takes us through how he deploys these different styles in different contexts, with the former approach appearing more frequently in songs depicting body horror, unpacking the fear of the body turning against you, and the latter approach appearing in lyrics critiquing social issues like the cost of living (a literal name of a song), racism, poverty, social greed, and the environmental damage we leave to our children.

To explore the gamut of Doug Moore’s work go to: https://linktr.ee/avantdumb