Beatrice, red your post with much interest. Although I’ve not autism myself, I am both through personal life and profession very familair with the spectrum. I can understand what you’re saying, though for me it’s nearly the opposite. I do not have the knowledge to understand songs on a deep level, for me it’s almost all ‘bout the emotion in the track. The more that emotion is regocnizable, the more I love it.
And emotion can come in so many ways, due to the energy (Honor Thy Father), the rytm (Glass Prison), the riff, the melody (Barstool Warrior) or the lyrics (Shattered Fortress).
I try to soak in theory knowledge because I think it's the easiest way I can understand or replicate feelings or ideas, or explore them. I think I'm very "visual" with music, and lots of aspects can make or ruin a song for me; for example, drums orchestration (or just the placement of hits); I have seen comparisons of The Alien teaser to Hypersonic by LTE, and while I understand the comparison (fast shred-y intro bla bla bla), I heavily disagree, the drums in The Alien blow my mind, every hit feels like carefully placed, very colourful brush strokes (cheesy metaphor, haha), and I find it a really interesting and entertaining experience, even in, like, 30 seconds. Nothing of that I can say for the whole LTE album (and I tried liking it).
It's all about the imagery, wether it's a DT song, a Miles Davis piece or a Hans Zimmer soundtrack, they're all different visual experiences. Theory helps me to find names for the stuff I love, or dislike. And if it is one of my heroes talking about his approach to music, that's just a huge bonus, ha. I'm not an emotionless robot either, some songs/bands can make me cry or feel euphoria or more, but the cases aren't many (and it's still related to the visual stuff I mentioned
)