Medieval Metal: An Introduction

While I wait to have a good idea for a new Music 101 post--and remember, ask me your questions about music and I'll answer them!--it seems a good time to start getting into some of the preliminary research I'm doing for my dissertation. I'm in the proposal stage, so what I'm doing now is reviewing literature and following up on hunches so that I can lay out a good plan for doing the real work. Most recently, I've been listening to a lot of metal, trying to figure out a focal point for medieval subject matter in metal. Because, man, there is a LOT of it. Let me give you a brief survey of some of it.

I should warn you, I am sick with a fever writing this.  Maybe that's appropriate. (Even if it isn't cat scratch fever.) 

actual photo of me

I CAN DO ANYTHING. 

Instead of embedding all of the songs/videos, I'm just linking to most, because there are a lot. Make sure you click on them. Music lessons are pointless without music.

If you mention medieval stuff in metal to anyone who has even the vaguest passing familiarity with any metal, they'll nod and mention Led Zeppelin. Everyone knows Led Zeppelin's references to Lord of the Rings (like when Gollum steals Plant's girlfriend in "Ramble On"). That this is the first frame of reference for many people, when they think of medievalisms in metal, is itself fascinating to me, because strictly speaking, Plant isn't referencing anything medieval. He's referencing a mid-century fantasy novel. Likewise, references to tarot (the Hermit figure in the album art for IV) and astrology seem to lend credence to fans' perception of Zeppelin having a medieval aesthetic--even though tarot, as we know it, is not medieval, and astrology perhaps has dubious importance in the Middle Ages. (Both astrology and early forms of tarot are far more significant in the Early Modern period, when alchemy came into being, the masons were born, and there was a renaissance of grimoire writing. These are all products of the humanist era, not the so-called superstition-riddled Dark Ages.)

But returning to Lord of the Rings, of course it was written by a medievalist who was certainly emulating medieval genres in his work. Consequently, since the mid-20th century, we continually conflate fantasy and the medieval. (Well, I can't completely blame Tolkien. The 19th century did its fair share, and there are elements of the fantastic in a lot of medieval literature. Most often it's Christian magic, but one can find dwarves in the Poetic Edda, or werewolves in the lais of Marie de France.)

So, this question of the relationship between the medieval and the fantastic is interesting to me. And there's more than enough to work with, in metal. Fantasy elements occur across many genres of metal, but it's most often associated with power metal. In particular, the band Rainbow gets a lot of credit for founding the style and working fantasy into its DNA. Zeppelin started writing about Mordor in 1969. Fresh out of Deep Purple in 1975, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow came out with songs such as the very Zeppelin IVesque "Temple of the King" and the anthemic "Man on the Silver Mountain;" then on later albums came songs such as "Lady of the Lake" and "Kill the King," which sometimes gets credit as the first power metal song.

But none of these songs sound medieval, do they? "Temple of the King" has an ethereal, folky quality, and that is important to a medieval aesthetic, as you'll later see. But musically, it doesn't have much in common with medieval music, whether "real" medieval music or popular imaginings of it. Rainbow just uses fantasy imagery to create otherworldly feelings.

It's only a hop, skip,and a jump from Rainbow to Dragonforce and videos like Scythia's "Bear Claw Tavern": 

On the other side of things, you get metal bands--mostly from the New Wave onwards--using medieval images just because they seem brutal, and that makes a good metaphor when you're playing hard, fast, and loud. Slayer, one of the pioneers of satanic speed metal, isn't one of the first bands to come to mind for me, when imagining medieval metal. But look at their debut album cover (1983): 

You've got a logo made of swords and a sword-wielding demon in barbarian-ish garb. So, yeah, one can see the influence. Slayer's lyrics generally have little to do with elves, wizards, or the Middle Ages, but on this album you find "Die by the Sword" and "Fight Till Death," where armored Christian and Infernal forces clash with swords. These images of satanic crusaders appear throughout the album. The song "Metal Storm" makes any metaphor apparent: just as the weak succumb to the sharpened steel of axes and swords, metal music is "a force too strong to fight." Hmm, clearly I need to rethink my evaluation of how important medieval topics are to Slayer!

Motorhead got their start in 1975 and they were early pioneers of speed metal (no pun intended; their name is American slang for someone who does a lot of speed, which their singer, Lemmy, did). They released around 250 original songs, and every single one of those songs is about drugs, sex, and rock n roll (or generally about being an outlaw/outcast). You won't find any medieval looking album covers or treks through Mordor. But even they weren't immune to medieval imagery as a metaphor for metal. "Deaf Forever," from their 1986 album Orgasmatron, paints a picture of a Viking battle. Its chorus goes, "Sword and shield, bone and steel, rictus grin/Deaf forever to the battle's din." One can read the song broadly as a metaphor for living life hard and fast without regard for death or an afterlife (a common subject for Motorhead), but the title "deaf forever" surely makes most fans think of loud music. Being deaf from playing loud music (or even just going to shows) is a badge of honor, a sacrifice you make for your lifestyle--just as the ultimate honor for a viking is to give one's life in battle. Throughout their entire career, Motorhead had a reputation for being one of the loudest bands around. If they were "deaf forever to the battle's din," then you might read this as being too busy rocking to care about mortality. 

But of course, there will be those who are content to enjoy the song at face value, as being about pagan hordes and brutality and death. Because that's pretty metal.

There are dozens of superficial references to medieval subject matter just as a means of invoking brutal lives, the ultimate masculinity of being a warrior, and so forth. Consider that "axe" is slang for guitar. The band Saxon, which was an early and influential part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, is a good example of this. Apart from their debut album cover, which features a warrior with a medieval-looking font where notched ax blades forming the curves of the S, their first few albums have little in the way of medieval subject matter.

But then comes the 1984 album Crusader, a title that the band says they picked just because they thought the word sounded cool. 

From there, they wrote the title song, which has an intro of trumpet fanfares with horses running into battle. The lyrics are an ode to Crusaders, beginning:

"Crusader, crusader, please take me with you

The battle lies far to the east
Crusader, crusader, don't leave me alone
I want to ride out on your quest."

Anyone who goes looking for depth of meaning in Saxon is going to be disappointed. I think this song is just supposed to sound cool because it's about medieval warriors fighting. Sometimes that's enough, for metal.

But if it's medieval machismo you want, you'll never do better than Manowar. 

Manowar! Bask in the glow of their oiled chests while you let that name soak in. MANOWAR. Everyone's favorite metal whipping post. There has never been a Worst Album Covers list that didn't have at least one Manowar album on it. Bless their little fur-lined hearts.

As you can see, Manowar is pure, Conan the Barbarian masculine fantasy. "All Men Play on 10" because, you know, most amps don't go to 11. The title track from their first album, "Battle Hymn," is one of their enduring anthems. 

But when it comes to medieval stuff, it's not all power metal. There's plenty in death metal, especially if you're looking for Norse topics, given the incredible rise of black and death metal in Norway. 

Amon Amarth is one popular death metal band that has leaned hard into the Viking niche. (Notice that their name is a Lord of the Rings reference?) Everything. they. do. is. about. Vikings. As a bonus, they're actually really good. I'm running out of steam here, between the fever and the cold medicine, so thoughtful commentary is going to be a bit sparse from here on out. Suffice it to say, bands like Amon Amarth seem to love Viking subject matter for its brutality. (Of course, there are those who are sincerely pagan.) One of the songs linked above is called "Raise your Horns," which is a cute double entendre for Viking drinking horns, raised in toast, and throwing horns at a metal show. So that about tells you what you need to know.

Lastly, there's a whole genre of neo-medieval metal! It arose in Germany in the 90s, with bands like Subway to Sally, who started using real medieval instruments. Acoustic instruments are typically antithetical to metal, a genre that is all about power, and power is generated by amplification. Yet folk metal is a thing. Here's one recent band, Apocalypse Orchestra (associating the Middle Ages with End Times is a common trope), performing a song named after the famous Bosch painting of religious and folk tale weirdness:

It may also be worth noting that the alt-right names folk metal as one of the genres that's important to them. I don't have time or energy to go into depth with that right now. It deserves its own post. But the gist of it is, medieval topics are often invoked to appeal to a sense of national character or origins, and sometimes, a sense of national purity. For some, this purity is the purity of a land before the industrial revolution; for others, the purity is a genetic one, an imagined time before immigration. (And to be sure, this time is wholly imaginary, because there were always immigrants. Does no one remember the Roman empire? They got around.) For some reason, it's folk artists in particular that really go for the ethnic nationalist angle, and now, they're a part of metal, too. (Not that the Norwegian metal scene was lacking in Nazis before the hurdy-gurdies arrived.) A lot of them are also pagan, which again is part of the reclamation of an indigenous past (see: the völkisch movement), but some white supremacists are so extra that they reject Christianity on the basis that Jesus was a Jew. It's Odin or bust for those assholes.

It would take like 3 books to cover all of this, and I might write them after I finish my dissertation. But for now, enjoy my literally feverish rambling!