Aesthetic Heathenism: Pagan Revival in Extreme Metal Music

Abstract

Neopaganism, briefly defined as the attempt to reconstruct and reinterpret pre-Christian heritage, is not confined to purely religious movements. A romanticized view of ancestral religion particularly expressed through an extensive use of mythological elements adapted to a contemporary context now represents a fundamental part of certain scenes that utilize them to construct a primordialist view of the past. Pagan metal makes use of religion and mythology as a form of cultural capital to suggest cultural distinctiveness in order to create an alternative antimodern, conservative discourse to mainstream culture. Artists attempt to forge and empower a new identity shaped by language, music, style, behavior and values when they, for instance, dwell on old myths which they recontextualize according to their own agenda. Starting from an exploration of American and European pagan revivalist movements, this paper pinpoints the main characteristics of the relationship between Neopaganism and musical expression by evoking and commenting on textual and non-textual evidence in an attempt to offer a paradigm for understanding the intersections between spirituality and popular culture.

Music and Identity: Immortal Rites’ Art as the Narrative of Contemporary Kejawen Identity

“…In its aesthetics, Black Metal mostly heightens a greater sense of evil, hate, horror, darkness, violence, noise, misanthropy, and terror rather than Heavy Metal (Floeckher, 2009;Hoffin, 2018;Kahn-Harris, 2007;Masciandaro & Connole, 2015;Moynihan & Soderlind, 1998;Patterson, 2013;Podoshen et al, 2018;Vrzal, 2017;Williams, 2012). Black Metal became the main and foremost medium for propagating "left-hand" sentiments, such as the discourse of paganism, occultism, satanism, anti-religion, fascism, radical environmentalism, atheism, and even monotheism (Cordero, 2009;Fischer, 2022;Granholm, 2013;Hagen, 2011;Irtenkauf, 2014;Manea, 2020;Moynihan & Soderlind, 1998;Noys, 2010;Wilson, 2010). Even the embraced radical ideology leads to the establishment and physical embodiment of transgressive activities, such as suicide, homicide, churches arson, self-torture, drug, and alcohol abuse, physical violence, etc.…”