Pagan metal
| Pagan metal | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | Early 1990s, Northern Europe |
| Typical instruments | |
| Other topics | |
Pagan metal is an umbrella term for heavy metal music which fuses extreme metal with "the pre-Christian traditions of a specific culture or region" through thematic concept, rustic melodies, unusual instruments or archaic languages", usually referring to folk metal or black metal. The Norwegian band In the Woods... was one of the first bands commonly viewed as pagan metal.Metal Hammer author Marc Halupczok wrote that Primordial's song "To Enter Pagan" from the band's demo "Dark Romanticism" contributed to defining the genre.
Pagan metal is "more of an idea than a genre" and consequently bands tend to be "wildly different" from one another. Bassist Jarkko Aaltonen of the band Korpiklaani notes that bands singing about "Vikings or other ancient tribes of people are all labelled as pagan", regardless of whether they use folk instruments. Heri Joensen expressed a similar description of pagan metal as bands that sing about "pre-Christian, European traditions, be they historical or mythological" and notes that it is "musically extremely diverse because it is more about the lyrics than the music". Some bands are known to be "sprightly and spirited" while others are "bleak and doomy". Vocal styles range from "melodic chanting to unearthly growling" and while some acts sing in their native language, others sing in English.
Pagan metal bands are often associated with Viking metal and folk metal. Bands such as Moonsorrow and Kampfar have been identified as fitting within all three of those genres.
Led Zeppelin and Manowar had already explored pagan themes in the 1970s and 1980s though pagan metal bands share few if any similarities, preferring instead to credit the influence of bands such as Bathory, Enslaved, Amorphis, and Skyclad. Bathory and Enslaved are also known as Viking metal bands while Amorphis and Skyclad are also known as folk metal bands.
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