The Philosophy of Heavy Metal (excerpt)
The Philosophy of Heavy Metal During an unusual time, in which a large number of bigger historical trends reached one of those periodistic points of brutal evidence, metal music punched through the pleasant facade of mainstream music and brought to bear upon a slumbering populace remnants of the ancient Indo-European spirit of vir. It did so through a Romanticist, Faustian form of music-culture which to this day remains controversial, despite the attempts of commercial bands to turn it into a predictable, fatalistic, impotent version of itself. However, for now it has run its course, so it makes sense to look over the past and from that, divine what might exist of it in the future. The fundamental questions of any artistic movement are "What did it believe that others did not?" and "To what did it appeal?" In metal, there are two interpretations: first, what the musicians who contributed something sizable to the genre intended - I'm not talking about popular but artistically meaningless efforts like Cannibal Corpse or Cradle of Filth - and second, what those outside the genre would like it to mean; generally, since it threatens their worldview, they want it to mean nothing
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last update: 20.10.2009