Feeling down? Turn up the death metal

It may sound counter-intuitive, but according to science, the best music to listen to when you need a perk-up may be death metal.

A psychological study was recently done by Macquarie University that looked at participants emotional response to the music.

The scientists showed a group of death metal fans two images, one in each eye.

Sometimes they were listening to death metal and sometimes they were listening to “Happy” by Pharrell Williams -  an upbeat, pop song.

Meanwhile, one image would be violent while the second image would be normal and nonthreatening.

"The brain will try to take it in - presumably there's a biological reason for that, because it's a threat," Prof Bill Thompson, from the Australian university, explained.

"If fans of violent music were desensitized to violence, which is what a lot of parent groups, religious groups and censorship boards are worried about, then they wouldn't show this same bias,” Prof Bill Thompson went on, “But the fans showed the very same bias towards processing these violent images as those who were not fans of this music."

In fact, researchers found that the dominant response to this music was joy and empowerment.

"Many people enjoy sad music, and that's a bit of a paradox - why would we want to make ourselves sad?" the Professor asked. "The same can be said of music with aggressive or violent themes. For us, it's a psychological paradox - so [as scientists] we're curious, and at the same time we recognize that violence in the media is a socially significant issue."