PERMANENT WAVES

Wheels within wheels, a spiral array A pattern so grand and complex

— Ruh's "Natural Science"

It starts with a primal thud. A universal heartbeat.

Seconds later, a wall of sound explodes.

Through the mist, arms outstretched, a figure emerges. Guttural grunts and growls give way to the most haunting of melodies. The music builds majestically, spellbinding in its intensity, a complex soundscape underpinned by a deep emotional charge. The crowd becomes a choir, voices resonant with those onstage ...

There's nothing quite like the sense-bludgeoning experience of a heavy metal gig. The all-enveloping power of the music, the theatrics, the histrionics ... and the physics. Yes, the physics. Believe it or not, the links between heavy metal and quantum physics are especially deep and simply have not received anything like the attention they deserve. Quantum physics — also known as "quantum mechanics" or simply "quantum theory," because why have one name for something when you could have three, right? — is the physics of the invisible, the science of particles that are smaller than small. It's also in essence a theory of waves, and therefore the connections with the physics of music are already strong. But the stylings of heavy metal take these connections to another level entirely: chugging guitars, choked cymbals, artificial harmonics, and mosh pits each have their own parallels within the physics of the ultrasmall.

I think it's safe to say that quantum physics has a reputation for being conceptually challenging. On the other hand, heavy metal — and its myriad thrash-power-sludge-stoner-hair-glam-death-progressive -djentindustrial-[complete according to taste] subgenres and subcultures — is not, it has to be said, generally considered to be the most cerebral of musical forms. Unfairly stereotyped as music for Neanderthals, frequently seen as the root of all evil (and, as such, a convenient scapegoat for societal problems whose origins are a great deal more complex than the lyrics of the latest Judas Priest album), metal is nonetheless often harmonically rich, lyrically challenging, and rhythmically complex.

... and, yes, I have to grudgingly admit, just as often it's not. But for every KISS, Motley Crue, or Whitesnake the metal critic will cite to make their case, I'll counter with Opeth, Meshuggah, and Dream Theater. Then I'll raise the stakes with Mastodon, TesseracT, Queensryche, and Tool. And to clinch the deal, I'll close with Rush. Each of these bands composes intelligent, intricate, and thoughtful music, their orchestrations frequently designed with what can only be called mathematical precision. (Indeed, there's an entire genre of metal known as math metal that prides itself on complex time signatures and "out there" arrangements.)

Although quite a number of bands have used scientific and/or mathematical themes as inspiration for their music — the super-talented and innovative Devin Townsend even titled one of his albums Physicist — that's not what this book is about. (I'll certainly be making more than passing reference to tracks and albums with strong lyrical/narrative links to science, however.) Nor am I preaching only to the converted. I love metal. And I love physics. And I know from the logos that adorn the T-shirts of many physics students and researchers that I'm certainly not alone in this. But while this book has, of course, been written with those metal-loving physicists (or physics-loving metalheads, if you prefer) very much in mind, it's not just my "tribe" I'm hoping to connect with. My key motivation in writing this is to bring the beauty of quantum physics to a wider audience via the medium of metal. As we'll see, metal music is perfectly placed when it comes to crossing that age-old (and very silly) divide between the arts/humanities and the sciences. Each time your favorite band launches into that riff or that rhythm or that drum pattern, they're exploiting the very same principles of physics and mathematics that underpin how atoms, molecules, and quantum particles behave.

You'll notice that I slipped "mathematics" into the preceding sentence. I make absolutely no apologies in telling you that we're not going to go out of our way to avoid maths as we explore all of those fascinating quantum-metal parallels. Some editors might claim that this statement alone would be enough to reduce a book's readership by 50 percent (or some similarly alarming figure no doubt plucked from thin air). However, I have a great deal of confidence in the intellect and tenacity of the average metal fan (and the average reader in general). Anyway, in all conscience, I can't drop the maths — it's the language of physics.

So: there will be maths. But contrary to popular belief in some quarters — I'm looking at some of you unreconstructed theorists here — physics is not just mathematics. And while to a mathematician, equations and functions have an elegance and a beauty all their own, for physicists it's the "unreasonable effectiveness" of mathematics in describing the world around us that never fails to impress. The fact that so much of the behavior and structure of our universe can be captured by maths is truly remarkable. And that's exactly what we're going to see time and again in this book: the uncanny, staggeringly "unreasonable effectiveness" with which mathematics explains everything from the crunchiest of riffs and heaviest of rhythms to the far-beyond-driven vibrations of atoms and molecules.

A number of years back, I worked with a very talented musician called Dave Brown (aka the YouTuber Boyinaband) on a metal song whose riffs, rhythms, and, um, rlyrics ((C) D. Brown) were derived from the fundamental constant known as the golden ratio. We uploaded a YouTube video for this math-metal mash-up and, foolishly ignoring the wise counsel of friends and colleagues regarding the quality of online critique, took a look at the comments. I was absolutely delighted to read the following:

Thank you, Christina! The ethos behind When the Uncertainty Principle Goes to 11 is exactly this.

Now before we can start to really get our heads around the maths and physics underpinning metal, we need to address a deep and fundamental question. A question that cuts to the core of everything in this book: Just what is sound? Or, if you prefer: What is noise? And just how is it that we — to quote Anthrax quoting Public Enemy — bring the noise?

Surveying the Soundscape

What's happening at the most fundamental level when we hear...