Channelling the darkness: Group flow and environmental expression in the music of Black Sabbath and Joy Division

Although they superficially belong to different genres of music, Black Sabbath and Joy Division share a fundamental commonality in that their music was shaped by – and powerfully depicted – bleak urban industrial environments. This article highlights a number of specific ways in which both bands’ music depicted (and was influenced by) this environment, including an unusually bass-heavy sound, the repetitive and continuous quality of their music, an austerity of sound, the rigid structure of songs and performances and lyrical content. Both bands attained such a high – or pure – degree of environmental expression because they were examples of the phenomenon of ‘group flow’. I examine the aspects of group flow identified by psychologists and show how both bands exhibited these, including a highly cooperative creative process, a lack of conscious deliberation and a prolific and spontaneous output. It was their group flow that enabled the two bands to ‘channel’ their environment directly and powerfully.