Twilight of the Gods: The Death of Metal?

For the past two or three years, whenever my thoughts drift towards metal, a singular gloom tends to wriggle its way into the center of my consciousness; metal is in deep shit. Why? I hear you ask. To answer that question, a bit of a historical digression is in order.

The Christianization of Europe was neither an immediate nor a steady and sustained process. Rather, it occurred in fits and starts over the course of many centuries. Regardless, by the 14th Century the old pagan traditions had been at least superficially stamped out; Christ was proclaimed as the one true god from the Atlantic to the Urals. However, the nominal triumph of Christianity was far from complete; a pagan ethos continued to pervade European culture for centuries. Structural reasons for this seeming paradox exist. While it is fairly well known that social mobility was almost entirely non-existent in Europe until really the late 19th Century (and in many areas, well into the 20th Century), it has often been less well understood that geographic mobility was also extremely limited. Not only did people remain in essentially the same social roles that their ancestors had held for centuries (or even millennia), they held them in the same place that their ancestors had. Considering how closely tied to place most pagan traditions are, it is hardly surprising that strong pagan elements remained a strong part of the identity of peoples across Europe long after their supposed demise.

The musical upshot of all of this is that as Europe's signature musical art form, classical music, developed, it developed with an underlying pagan ethos, despite its often Christian sacred character. At the core of the classical tradition lies an epic dichotomy, the juxtaposition of heroic triumphalism with imminent and inevitable mortality, a juxtaposition inherited from the pagan tradition, and resonating with the remnants of that tradition which lay at the heart of the European identity. This dichotomy was to remain at the heart of Western music for centuries.

In the 20th Century, two world wars and the rise of American political and cultural hegemony seemingly pulled the plug on the classical ethos. The United States had of course developed very differently from Europe, as a nation of immigrants, and one where social and geographic mobility were the rule rather than the exception. America the great Melting Pot, a land of dislocated peoples with dislocated identities. America, the nation whose mythology was perversely de-mythologized, whose hero was the "common man." America, the industrious, built on the Protestant Work Ethic, divorced from the past and looking always to the future. A nation unable to accept the classical tradition, for the epic leaves no room for the "common man" and to speak of death was to incite her most mortal fear. American music suited a people with no sense of place or identity born of tradition, in place of the epic, it substituted a neurotic introspection, instead of an unflinching embrace of mortality, it substituted smarmy sentiment and materialist consumerism in the guise of "rebellion". These attitudes became codified within the American popular imagination, first through mainstream jazz and the big bands, and, finally, rock.

Two world wars left Europe open to American cultural colonization. Not only had the wars completed the dislocation of the European populace begun by the industrial revolution, they also left Europeans wary of heroic imagery (especially after the ghastly failure of National Socialism) and weary of death. Europe too embraced American art forms, especially rock. As the years, rock, now firmly ensconced on both sides of the pond, descended into greater and greater depths of populist excess (not surprisingly, this coincided with rock's most commercially successful era). In 1969, metal emerged (in the form of Black Sabbath) as a reaction against the degeneracy of hippie rock. Sabbath resurrected the epic classical tradition, merging it with a violent, postmodern nihilism to lay the foundations for the genre we all love.

But now, when I look at the supposed "leaders" of metal, I wonder what happened that resurrected classical spirit on which the greatness of metal rests. Many of the biggest names in metal (Iced Earth, Krisiun, Hate Eternal etc.) seem content with rehashing the formulas of the past, relishing their roles as the engineers behind an artistically irrelevant recycling program. And what about the bands which were supposed to lead metal into the new millennium? It seems that they've decided instead to lead metal back to the same degeneracy that metal emerged as a revolt against. Instead of the epic, we get smarmy sentimentality and neurotic introspection (later Death, later Emperor, pretty much the entire Gothenburg scene) and shock for shock's sake materialist consumerism in the guise of "rebellion" (Dani Filth, I'm looking at you, yeah, you too Shagrath, and don't think you're going to sneak out of here, Corpsegrinder). Of course, the co-option of metal aesthetics into mainstream value structures is nothing new, but what's so disheartening about it this time is that the majority of metal fans are standing there and cheering it on, where they roundly rejected the cock rock of the 1980's and the mallcore of the 90's. This time, the bands are not alone in undermining the very foundations of metal.

The only question that remains is whether the situation will be reversed. Will new artists step up to return the classical ethos to metal and reverse the downward spiral, or are we watching the twilight of the gods?

Retro Picks of the Week:

Miasma- Changes
Cathedral- Forest of Equilibrium
Immolation- Dawn of Possession
Anacrusis- Reason
Master- On the Seventh Day, God Created…Master