A non-Hessian friend once pointed out to me that metal music is essentially avoidance. With its nihilistic outlook it seemed to him to be just shuffling meaning around, never really reaching a conclusion or be able to produce a complete artwork.
Faustian? Pah! It may enjoy details of the world’s harsh realities, the death and gore and decay, but only because the transient nature of death allows for constant change, consequently avoiding all meaning. Which means we may contently pull back in some basement, still fearing reality as a whole. That’s what you get with bands obsessed with death.
Classical? Pfft! How could it be? Metal is too sensuous, delving in creepy subjects and gritty riffs without any sense of spirit or abstract idea.
Unsurprisingly, I think this is writing it off too quickly.
Metal is certainly content with the world, but does that make it materialistic? It does not like society perhaps; metal loathes its stale “bourgeois” mentality, yelling “Fake! Fake!”, and it loves the hedonistic.
But metal nevertheless hungers for the epic, a “heavy” greatness and seems to enjoy the game that nature is playing. Metal found that society was materially flourishing, but also found decay in the souls of the bored everyday man, echoing the troubled mind of Fenriz of Darkthrone who loves art that comes from “the exhaustion of easy life”.
To awaken us, metal explored natural decay. But not as a materialist act: needless to say, with their obscure imagery, dark riffs and haunting vocals, metal bands created a mysterious world that seemed more honest, more real than the life in any Western metropolis. Lauren Wise writes:
Heavy metal seemed just like classical music to me: It was ritualistic, accepting of death and change, questioned authority and normalcy, and satisfied that need for an overture or reconsideration. It was as if classical and metal both quenched my need to understand the positive strength and ultimately horrific nature of the world. Metal may be less refined, but it still seeks to express that philosophical assumption about life.
Metal found life in death – initially as a warning, later as full-on Romanticist nature worship – and that beautiful paradox sums up my answer to my friend: Metal seeks essence, it does not avoid it – but it takes no prisoners.
Around and around again the argument goes. Some people advocate for Christian “metal,” and others like myself find something wrong with it. It’s like school-approved metal or eat-your-vegetables metal.
It just feels wrong. We need one genre devoted to doing something other than what the herd does. The herd, it seems, is cool with anything as long as it enforces the principle that we need them.
That need is based on the guarantee that each person is important. If everyone agrees, see, then we’re all protected and can do whatever we want. But the price is that you have to tolerate the delusions of others.
However, metal seems built on the opposite principle. In the world of metal, epic wars sweep away all these bright and promising individuals. Truth is more important than what people think. The present tense is lesser than the past.
And so the drama goes around again. All the brave individualists say that Christian “metal” is OK and should be accepted; the rest of us wrinkle lips and think there’s just something not right with that.
One Christian writer advances a reason why the distinction might not be so important, but by approaching the question from the other angle — is any metal not Christian?
Even the most banal, goat-sacrificing, wannabe Satanic metal participates in the Christian reality by stringing three notes together and calling it a melody. Their songs contain order, and order is the province of God. Their songs contain harmony — however overdriven — and thus amount to pitiful attempts at Beauty, and Beauty is God. Sure, these bands intentionally miss the mark, miss the point, preach vice, fall short of writing anything good enough to last, and waste time indulging the petty, Dionysian emotions, but even their failure is Christian. Failure to be Good, True and Beautiful, can only exist in reference to the Good, True and Beautiful. If their music is bad, it is bad because it fails to be good, and thus in its very badness it gives testimony to that-which-it-fails-to-be, namely Good, who is God. Purely evil music would not be music, because evil is Nothing. If Satanic musicians really wanted to defy God, they’d let their amps exude white noise for an hour and call it a concert. – “5 Reasons to Kill Christian Music,” by Marc Barnes, Patheos
Barnes writes eloquently for reasons to not have Christian music at all, namely that it reduces Christianity to a flavor of the same mainstream junk everyone else is listening to.
He makes a point, since this is probably the same reason metal does not want to be Christian, but from the other direction. Metal needs to be metal. It should not be “flavored” by anything else.
It’s also pathetic to pander to special interest groups. What’s next, homeschooler metal? Vegan metal? BBQ metal? Swinger metal? Please leave your freaky needs at the door and just be metal.
In fact, this is part of what makes metal great. It is a devotional experience of its own. You go to shows, join in a great swirling pit, be united by intense music, affirm reality, and then go home where your parents, friends, neighbors and coworkers can yell at you for not using the blue covers on your TPS reports.
For metal to be what it is, or in Barnes’ words to be an affirmation of “the good, the beautiful and the true,” it needs to be its lawless, amoral and occult self. That’s what metal should be, and without it, metal fails to live up to its role in the drama.
Much like John Milton wrote lovingly of Satan in Paradise Lost, or Romantic poets praised the Pagan gods, or even William Blake revealed a demonology beneath everyday life, writing about the darkness is essential for both darkness and light to know themselves.
And as the ancient Greeks would say, “gnōthi seauton” or “know thyself” is the root of all knowledge. Including that which wears bullet belts, hails Satan and raises the (inverted) cross in blasphemy.
This world is composed of snares that waste your time. Their job is to reach out, grab you, and destroy your chances of doing anything more impressive with those moments. One snare is nostalgia. It’s Pavlovian. A scent, a sound or a shape reaches out to your senses and before you know it, a chain has formed in your mind. You’ve linked this new thing to a happy older memory and by sheer impulse, since memory is more idealized and thus sweeter than present tense, you just leap into enjoying it. It’s only later that you realize it’s empty.
Obliteration – Nekropsalms
Borrowing the aesthetic of nocturnal death and grind from Carbonized through Cadaver, Obliteration make a type of doom-death with heavy metal underpinnings that is very easy to listen to. Indeed, hours can pass while you listen. It may in fact be like being dead. There’s nothing wrong with this sort of pleasant withdrawal from active participation in life. However, although it doesn’t have any negatives, it also doesn’t add any positives. This is basically riff practice shaped by tempo into songs, sort of like those “modern art” sculptures made from whatever the artist had at hand. “So then I welded the dildo the engine block, wrapped the condoms around it, dumped paint on it and put a doll’s head on top.” Songs catchy and you’ll have a few favorite parts. Over time you will start hearing the lifts from Slayer, Deicide, Mayhem and others. Eventually this will leave you feeling empty. You will realize that these are riffs and nostalgia and nothing more. Total time elapsed: two weeks.
Sarcofagus – Cycle of Life
As I go through life, it amazes me how many people know so much and yet can do nothing with it. They are able to memorize the outward details and even excel at that, but their understanding of the structure beneath is lacking so what they produce sounds like an imitation. This band, who are painfully awful and remind me of everything that makes metal loathsome, are an Angel Witch clone who through in more of the moddish blues and rock influences of the late 1960s and early 1970s to try to differentiate themselves. I don’t mean to be cruel; this is just painfully bad. It is not cliches, but rather slight modifications of known riff archetypes jazzed up with a little bit of well-studied technique, thrown together randomly. These aren’t songs; they sound like songs. They are imitation from the outward in, a student emulating the masters without grasping what motivated them. Turn it off… this is cringeworthy.
Chtheilist – Amechthntaasmrriachth
Gosh, we all remember the day we first heard Demilich like we remember the day we first “got it” with many iconic metal bands. That day is gone and will never be back. If you try to bring that day back, it’s like believing that a gold-plated aluminum idol is a god. You can’t restore that day by imitating it. Just like it wasn’t the beer, the temperature, the cycle of the moon, etc. that defined the day you remember as “the best day of my life,” it isn’t the outward characteristics that make Demilich. It was a vision in the minds and souls of its creator that was became the freaky music you know because that ecclectic combination was the only means to express what needed to be said. Imagine “It’s Raining Men” sung by heterosexuals; it just doesn’t deliver. Demilich isn’t its own style. Demilich is whatever motivated those artists to see the world a certain way and then express it. That being said, this Ctheilist album is an attempt to imitate Demilich and Timeghoul but because it’s outward-in emulation, it ends up being all technique. Underneath this is a very basic death metal album that uses relatively normal chromatic and minor key progressions, riffs and stylings. It resembles a collision between Nocturnus and Broken Hope. It’s quite good for that zone, but it’s not Demilich and while the tribute is touching, it doesn’t make this relatively ordinary music any more interesting.
Ofermod – Tiamtu
It’s hard to dislike this band aesthetically because it imitates the best era of Mayhem, the De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas year(s). Makes you want to kick back, open a beer and a light up a church, right? However, all things that are aesthetic without soul are pointless. Soul means a principle of organization that the artists want to express and communicate. It may be a feeling, a shape or a memory. But it is being expressed, or rather described, as the song takes you from a place of ignorance to a place of doubt to knowledge of the whole thing. When bands have no soul, it is because they are imitating the aesthetic of something. They are like OJ Simpson’s defense lawyers. However, there is no highest principle of organization because it is a checklist of things that imitate the past with no core, no center, no idea behind them. This album sounds like Mayhem’s Wolves Lair Abyss done in the style of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, since it cycles like circus music and goes nowhere. Beware nostalgia, it is a death grip on your soul.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgghSkLkviM
Entrails – Tails from the Morgue
Swedish death metal is the sleeper hit of the last 21 summers. Even babies and dolphins love Swedish death metal. Combine the crunchiest distortion possible with simple melodies and aggressive tempo changes, not to mention the characteristic use of textured strumming to give each piece an internal rhythm, and you have pure win as far as metal style goes. It’s like the phrase “do it for the children” in a political speech. But what made the greats great as opposed to footnotes like everyone to follow is more nuanced. At the end of the day, it’s two things: songwriting, and having something to write about. The best Swedish bands had about three good albums in them while they unleashed their perceptions as shaped charges of emotion mated to careful realism. The result was a shuddering cascade of layered sensations of total alienation that conveyed how intelligent people saw the yawning abyss of post-1980s modern society. And then there are those who imitate this, and like a costume ball or a carnival, it must be “fun” because it has no content. The immaculate production on this record is like a doctor’s rubber mallet tapping the knee, because the reflex jerks… and that’s about it. The lack of any further depth and the insistence on using the antiquated hard rock cliches of the 1980s makes this dubious, but the real absence is anything to tie these songs together and make them anything but jam-room projects. Might as well write “NOT Left Hand Path” on the cover to warn people.
Sargeist – Let the Devil In
Post-1996 black metal is out of ideas. For example, how many times can you imitate “Bergtrollets Hevn” and “Måneskyggens Slave” (Gorgoroth) before you truly admit you’re using Silly Putty to life an image from a newspaper, then pretending it’s the real thing? The vocals on this album surge so consistently that it sounds like someone riding a merry-go-round while screaming at the top of his lungs. Despite an obviously intensive and thorough study of older black metal (probably with note cards and those little colored tab things in a binder) Sargeist has none of what makes the songs good. Like Ancient, it tends to like to use melodic minor scale patterns and then drift into more cheerful whole intervals, creating a sense of lifting out of darkness. Unlike Ancient, this band has no idea how to structure songs; these don’t go anywhere, but cycle around until you’ve heard all the good parts, and then evaporate. It’s tempting to want to like this because it’s catchy, sounds like old black metal from a distance, and isn’t all wimpified like more recent black metal. But it’s missing that core, the substance and the unique beauty that black metal found in darkness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7DMl_wsKPo
Remember, nostalgia is a way of thinking that says your best days are behind you. You might as well write VICTIM on your forehead (remember to do it backwards if you use a mirror). The best days are ahead. They may not look like the old days, but that’s what life is all about: structure, not appearances. Celebrate the best of the past, and redouble your efforts toward a better future. There’s no reason you can’t do it at any age; Milton wrote Paradise Lost in his 80s, Raymond Chandler got published in his 50s for the first time, and Brahms was in his mid-40s before his first symphonies saw a performance. Take heart! Charge forward! Take no prisoners (and if you do, sodomize them)! Kill! Fight! Win!
Professor Jacobsen uses heavy metal music to introduce students to literature in a class that he says is “50/50” lecture and listening to music. Among other topics, he tackles the history of metal, the reason the first songs on metal albums are important, the artistic superiority of …And Justice for All among Metallica albums, and the progression of first generation black metal.
Apparently this class arose from a sentence diagramming exercise in another class. How did you realize that this could be a class of its own?
The students realized it. I just mentioned it would be cool to have a class on heavy metal, and the response was crazy. Word spread and people started asking me about it. The boss was in favor of it, and we had already been offering some classes off the beaten path. So, I proposed it.
Approximately how many of your students do you think are heavy metal fans?
That’s a hard question. It’s fair to say most of my students aren’t. I teach a lot of elementary education majors, and most of them are not metal fans. But the English majors are. And among them, it seems to cut across genders and ages and other factors. You’re probably right that Romantic literature and metal have much in common, and the questioning mindset of a humanities major surely brings them in line with heavy metal.
“Introduction to Literature: Heavy Metal as a Literary Genre” teaches English using metal from over its forty-year history. What generations of metal do you consider, and can you give us some examples of each?
It’s pretty even across decade: 1970-Classic Metal; 1980-NWOBHM; 1990-Mainstream Metal; Nu Metal-2000. These are centers rather than inceptions, and I mean to suggest that this is when they reach a type of critical mass (i.e. albums Paranoid, British Steel, Metallica, etc). The early 1980s are when all the genres became established really — especially black, death, and thrash metal. All of them persist into the present. Prog metal is surely an outgrowth of RUSH, but there seems to be a lot more of it since the 1990s.
Do you think heavy metal artists are actually reading and influenced by literature?
Yes, some of them are. Or the news. Or some other source of ideas. Geezer Butler and Ronnie James Dio have talked openly about their reading. Clearly Steve Harris and Bruce Dickinson are very familiar with literature. Rush and Dream Theater in prog metal use literary themes and models (like Ayn Rand’s ideas in 2112 or the Hamlet motif in DT’s “Pull Me Under” or the Metropolis suite). Movies play a huge role too, and metal artists seem to see books and movies rather equally. Iron Maiden seems especially prone to use imagery from movies, though literature and history are also clearly sources for them.
Of all the literary movements throughout history, which one do you think is the closest in form and content to heavy metal? Is heavy metal an artistic “movement”?
That’s a very interesting question. I think it follows them in some ways. Much of it is similar in nature to Romanticism. Surely Death metal and Black Metal have postmodern elements. It is a movement, I think, and what’s interesting to me is how it has so many sub-genres within it. We can really analyze metal as a literature of it’s own making. While it’s interesting that metal artists use so much from literature, it’s even more interesting that they have enough depth and innovation to create an independent ethos.
Do the literary qualities of metal change between generations of metal, for example between NWOBHM and black metal?
That’s a good question. Some of the newer stuff seeks to be shocking for the sake of being shocking. That ruins it a little bit, I think. But even at that, one of the things metal does is put every question on the table. That’s what art does. It’s like cubism in painting or baroque in classical music. Take the norm and skew it and then re-present it to the world so they can think about it. I think new groups can ask the questions more explicitly, but I’m not sure the questions have changed. Death, pair, fear, war, pessimism, metal stability–all of these recur again and again. And they are questions that need asking. If heavy metal serves the world, it does so by interrogating notions every other approach seems afraid to interrogate. There are a lot of scary ideas in this world. And some people think that metal is one of them, I suppose. But any real metal fan will know that the real point is to talk about these things openly. Maybe that’s why we’re so loud. We talk about things no one else dares to engage. We have to speak up to be heard.
How have the students responded so far? Do you see more engagement with this as the subject matter, versus literature at large?
Way more. But, many of the students are in the class precisely because they are metalheads. Other literature classes at this level are seen as ‘have to’ humanities classes. I usually teach classical literature when I teach these classes. I get pretty good responses in those classes, but nothing like this. The students called the secretary the other day because we had a blizzard here and they wanted to make sure class was meeting. They didn’t want to miss it. Usually, a blizzard is a day off for most students, especially for a core class. This class draws people who want to be there. It’s not a fair comparison in many ways.
Thank you, Professor Jacobsen and students for taking the time to answer our questions and send over classroom materials. We hope this class becomes a regular at your college — and others!
After years of people wondering about the connections between metal and literature, a thoughtful university professor listened to his students and as a result, has created a college literature course that uses metal lyrics to teach sentence structure and literary technique.
According to the course syllabus, the class will “examine the forty-year history of heavy metal, interrogate major themes and how they persist and/or change with(in) the principal metal movements and sub-genres, and speculate as to the potential literary future of heavy metal.” Jacobsen has created a private Facebook group for the page and the class will use an etext for the text book.
Back in the hazy 00’s, psychologist Philip Zimbardo released his book ‘The Lucifer Effect‘, which its title derives from the metaphorical transformation of Lucifer into Satan. It was a study about how good people can do bad deeds, and its substance was mainly on his findings about how prison guards turn to abusing inmates. The ultimate point Zimbardo was trying to make was that there is no good or evil person, since each person can be seduced to “good” or “bad” undertakings.
However, torture can be a very sufficient way to throw your enemy into turmoil. With the outright contradiction that is Christian “Metal“, it can catapult the listener into a world of confusion, thus becoming a very suitable device for torment.
According to Esquire Magazine, a gaggle of Navy SEALs were using the music of Metallica to torture Iraqi militants. Once Metallica received notice that their music was actually resulting in something proactive, they issued a press statement requesting them to cease. “Part of me is proud they chose Metallica, and then part of me is bummed about it. We’ve got nothing to do with this and we’re trying to be apolitical as possible – I think politics and music, at least for us, don’t mix,” said James Hetfield.
Saddened by Metallica‘s decision, the Navy SEALs embarked onward to take things into their own hands and forged the most psychologically destructive torture device known to man: Christian “Metal“. They enlisted the imagery and audio idiocy of Demon Hunter to show the militants true patriotic strength.
“Demon Hunter said, ‘We’re all about promoting what you do.’ They sent us CDs and patches. I wore my Demon Hunter patch on every mission – I wore it when I blasted Bin Laden,” one Navy SEAL stated.
One could assume that lunatic Osama Bin Laden took the easy route out. Death before Christian “Metal“.
A couple of years ago, a venture capitalist and a former investment banker realized that to succeed in business, a startup needs “a fantastic story and a vision, mastery of its craft and must ‘trigger basic human instincts'”.
Now, what is sensuous and epic enough to promote such a strategy? Heavy Metal of course! Using metal as metaphor for business, Pär-Jörgen Pärson and Hans-Olov Öberg have written Heavy Metal Management, in which they argue that successful companies appeal to our emotions and that metal music and culture serves as perfect inspiration for young entrepreneurs to make their dreams come true.
The metaphor works quite well according to The Guardian, “epitomising the archetypal work hard/play hard ethos, the personal commitment, the experimentation and a kind of tribal recognition and respect”. Metal’s concept of creative destruction seems well-suited even to industrial paradigm shifts (like offline industry to online industry, and online to mobile).
Heavy Metal Management will be released in the UK in late March.
Forbidden Records has slashed their prices for the time being on CDs in their distro.
Most CDs are listed as $5 (and an additional 10% discount for today only). With Valentines day around the corner, why not relish in the devil’s intonation and offer your significant other a soundtrack or few to fuel their metal lust?
Recently we published an account of how a Christian “black metal” band was attacked by fans who resented the encroachment of propaganda against evil into the devil’s music.
As many acknowledge, metal is very much the devil’s music. It is obsessed with social rejection, the occult, the power of nature, warfare, death, killing, disease, horror and ancient ways.
When you pick up your average heavy metal record, it is the exact opposite of the message of good, which is that we can make a perfect society where raw power doesn’t rule and where everyone is accepted.
In the world of metal, all the best laid plans of mice and men go awry in the worst possible ways. There is no perfection to society, or humankind. It is warfare and predation, red in tooth and claw, fighting it out to the end.
For this reason, metal has exhibited a fascination with Satan since its earliest days. Where the blues showed a belief in Satan’s power to help individuals, metal went elsewhere and portrayed Satan as an active metaphysical force affecting us all. As time went on, that viewpoint went from fearful (“War Pigs”) to an outright endorsement.
As one writer noted:
He asked me if I worshipped “the Devil,” looking at my iPod’s screen, where the gloriously disgusting cover of Cannibal Corpse’s The Wretched Spawn was displayed…
After shooting him a sideways glance that I hoped would be conveyed as Satanic, I thoughtfully sipped my Jack Daniels. Then I leaned in closely, asked if my black nail polish gave me away, and added that, duh, everyone who listens to metal — especially chicks –practice secret Satanic rituals that work best with the blood of an unsuspecting male. – “Is Heavy Metal Really The Devil’s Music?” by Lauren Wise, Phoenix New Times, July 23, 2012
The article goes on to have a balanced view of the metal equation, in which some newer material that is pro-Jesus gets some airplay. However, the lingering question remains… isn’t the majority of metal evil? Doesn’t the exception prove the rule?
To that end, we present the most blasphemous metal we can assemble so that you, too, might enjoy the blessings of evil:
Slayer – Altar of Sacrifice
Back in the 1980s, when Tipper Gore and her big-hair people ruled the censorship committees, this song seemed designed to fit into their worst fantasies. Its lyrics read like a Satanic ritual and its sound dwarfed anything else on the record store shelf.
Beherit – Lord of Shadows and Goldenwood
This album opens with a recited text from the Church of Satan, and then launches into some of the most primitive and evil-sounding metal ever created. This particular song hails the dark lord in a manner that by being mystical and metaphorical is almost more threatening than direct assaults.
Hellhammer – Satanic Rites
Three proto-black metal bands founded the genre: Bathory, Sodom and Hellhammer. Slayer gets some credit for technique as well, bypassing Venom who were fundamentally a heavy metal band and not really black metal in any distinctive way. Of these, Hellhammer came up with the best tribute to Satan ever invented. Obey the ritual!
Darkthrone – In the Shadow of the Horns
No list would be complete without the band who inscribed “As Wolves Among Sheep We Have Wandered” and “Darkthrone is for all the evil in man” on their early albums and claimed to be the most hated band in the world. One of the best bands in the world, if you ask me, and filled with delicious hatred for goodness.
Demoncy – Impure Blessings
If you are curious as to what it will sound like when Satan takes possession of earth, this song should tell you. Occult lyrics combine with a sound like an ineffable mechanical devourment of earth itself by forces opposed to all goodness and beauty.
Deicide – (Discography)
We could write several articles about which Deicide albums or songs are the most blasphemous, but it really is splitting hairs. From their eponymous debut to their last great album, Once Upon the Cross, this band blasted Jesus with hatred and mocked God, proclaiming Satan’s order on earth. The only reason they might not be qualified as evil is that they probably drove hordes of people to church in horror.
Blasphemy – Ritual
The Satanic Skinheads from Ross Bay brought us this disturbed homage to Satan and evil ritual. You can imagine a cemetery desecration and the broken wings of angels scattered across a dystopian wasteland, while elegant fragments of music from a more orderly time fade out on the toxic wind.
Mayhem – Life Eternal
This song smashes the idea of a pleasant afterlife with its image of eternal death. Although it does not mention God, Jesus, angels, etc. by name, it does refute the theories of these notions with a darker and more unforgiving concept.
Von – Satanic Blood
Apocalyptic evil emerges in this song that sounds like an air raid alarm being played over the chants of those who would destroy this world for Satan. Possibly one of the most minimalistic black metal bands ever, Von influenced others with its droning call to blasphemy.
Hypocrisy – God is a Lie
Threatening to choke the life out of God with their own hands, Sweden’s Hypocrisy launched into a tirade of righteous anger that has few comparisons in the world of music. This is the wrath of anti-god and it affirms that metal truly is the devil’s music.
Samael – Into the Pentagram
Named after a demon whose name is supposedly the key that unlocks the death of God, Swiss evil metal slingers Samael unleashed a torrent of occult and mystical works that refute the Bible and the best wishes of its minions. This particular track seemed custom-cut to delight those who relish apostasy.
Unleashed – For They Shall be Slain
No list of blasphemies in metal would be complete without this Viking explanation of how the Christian invaders must be destroyed and cut down where they stand. This is blasphemous, but more importantly, it’s a call to war that many heeded and still more are appreciating.
Burzum – Lost Wisdom
No assault on God would be complete without a litany of the sins of the Christians and the philosophical crisis brought on by dualistic monotheism. In this short hymn, murderer and fervent anarcho-nationalist Varg Vikernes encourages us to remember how Christianity displaced knowledge into symbols and cut out actual experience of life. It’s less rage and more an unsettling sense of deep opposition.
Havohej – Weeping in Heaven
Sounding like rebel angels who picked up instruments casually scattered around Hell in order to wax lyrical about the joys of evil, Havohej oppose all that religion and good bring with it. I vomit on God’s child!
…and last but not least…
Bathory – The Return of Darkness and Evil
Not many people understand the profundity of this song’s undoing of the Revolution that brought us goodness and light. It posits a world outside the well-intentioned order of the church and its humanist allies in which predation, war and violence rule the day instead of morality. After a millennium of trying for Utopia and creating dystopia, Bathory argues, we should return to the primitive ways before consciousness of morality, as those had better results. Unsettling.
What to take away from this all?
First, metal is the devil’s music. Even if you were Christian, like Slayer’s Tom Araya, you would want to make music that sounded evil and opposed the do-gooder notion of a moral order. Metal is not protest music, but it is discontent music, and discontent of a type that affirms all the fears humans have of life outside our social and moral order.
Next, Satan has some killer tunes.
Finally, it makes sense to look at metal in a historical context. See if the following description makes any sense to you:
Romantic poets cultivated individualism, reverence for the natural world, idealism, physical and emotional passion, and an interest in the mystic and supernatural. Romantics set themselves in opposition to the order and rationality of classical and neoclassical artistic precepts to embrace freedom and revolution in their art and politics. – “A Brief Guide to Romanticism” by the Academy of American Poets
Many of the themes that rock throughout metal would be at home in Coleridge, Blake, Milton, Goethe and Wordsworth. Like Romantic poets, metal struggles with the new world order that came about in the 1700s based on the Enlightenment. In this order, the morality of the herd was at its full power and it used the Church as its shield and justification.
And like metal, they rebelled against it then, much as blasphemy echoes the halls of rock now when metalheads compose their micro-symphonies to Satan and hymns of praise for evil.
This legendary band existed before Amorphis and plays a grittier style of the bold, warlike and heavy yet melodic music that graced Amorphis’ first album, The Karelian Isthmus. These Abhorrence tracks show the band that would later write that album as they emerge from early grind/death stylings and gradually work more melody into their work. This is metal’s holy grail: how to be both epic and amoral in the nihilistic sense of worshipping power, darkness and nature, but also use melody and harmony to give the works some staying power. As this collection of re-released demos progresses, the fusion of the two gets more confident and deft, leading us up to the point where the greatness of the first Amorphis album was inevitable.
With the translation:
Este grupo legendario existió antes de Amorphis, y practicaba una versión menos refinada de la música audaz, belicosa y pesada, y sin embargo también melódica, de que hizo gala Amorphis en su primer álbum, The Karelian Isthmus. Estos temas de Abhorrence muestran al grupo que más adelante compondría aquel disco a medida que emergía de un estilo grind/death primitivo para ir introduciendo gradualmente más melodía en su obra. Aquí radica el Santo Grial del metal: cómo resultar a la vez épico y amoral en el sentido nihilista de la glorificación del poder, la oscuridad y la naturaleza, sin dejar de utilizar también la melodía y la armonía para conferir a las grabaciones cierto poder perenne. Según avanza esta recopilación de maquetas reeditadas, la fusión de ambos factores se vuelve más segura y hábil, llevándonos hasta el punto en que la grandeza del primer disco de Amorphis resultaba inevitable.
Looks like a good in-depth analysis and translation. Thanks to El Negro Metal for this addition to the world of metal en Español!
A non-Hessian friend once pointed out to me that metal music is essentially avoidance. With its nihilistic outlook it seemed to him to be just shuffling meaning around, never really reaching a conclusion or be able to produce a complete artwork.
Obliteration – Nekropsalms
Sarcofagus – Cycle of Life
Chtheilist – Amechthntaasmrriachth
Ofermod – Tiamtu
Entrails – Tails from the Morgue
Sargeist – Let the Devil In
After years of people wondering about the connections between metal and literature, a thoughtful university professor listened to his students and as a result, 
A couple of years ago, a venture capitalist and a former investment banker realized that to succeed in business, a startup needs “a fantastic story and a vision, mastery of its craft and must ‘trigger basic human instincts'”.
Recently we published an account of how 
