Doom metal and ways of remembering in popular music

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 more in particular doom metal music popular music proves to be beneficial rather than detrimental, and the discussion of this label is beyond the scope of the current essay, thus it will not be discussed. Considering doom metal music a popular music then helps to see the ways in which the history of this genre of music is constructed through different media, and observing the methodology of these oral histories gives insights to how these oral histories question and shape a narrative that becomes part of the larger narrative of extreme metal music, metal music, and popular music of Europe tradition. This inspection also showcases how a bottom-up strategy works in the bottom level of a specific kind of public history. This essay provides different theories about constructing oral histories, memories, and remembering that already exist in academic literature, and also looks for examples of these ways of remembering and the creation of a popular music genre history in the case of doom metal