Image courtesy Scientific American

Quartz and Scientific American report that researchers from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, published a study that found that “death metal”fans who listened to bands that sing about things like “violently reshaping human facial tissue” reported feeling power, joy and peace.

Titled “Who enjoys listening to violent music and why?” the study shares the findings of researchers who “asked 48 fans and 96 non-fans in their 20s to listen to death metal songs and describe their emotional responses and speculate why they felt that way,” Quartz reports.

“The ubiquitous stereotype of death metal fans…[is] that they are angry people with violent tendencies,” William Thompson, a psychology professor at Macquarie University and one of the study’s authors, told Scientific American. One of the most notable discoveries of the study, Thompson said, was that “[fans are] not enjoying anger when they listen to the music, but they are in fact experiencing a range of positive emotions.”