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Frog  1yr ago (text post)   1974 thread views

Why I think most Heavy Metal bands are atheistic:

Note: I could not find any studies that estimate how many heavy metal bands are atheistic, so "most" is nothing more than a personal observation.

Chances are good that if you go to church, you sing. Most churches around the world; be it Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant; have singing as a part of worship. Every Sunday they meet, greet, sing, preach, share personal stories, and some then sing some more. Why?

The first time that I sang was in college in voice class. It was the single most enjoyable and fulfilling experience that I have ever had. I was awful, but there was this intense sense of unity, this sense of belonging that I had never experienced before. There we were, a group of just 20 or so students, and together we all made a work of art for the sake of of making art. It was beautiful. I had never felt so connected to people that I did not know before then, and ever since I stopped going to that college I have not felt that sense of connection to others so intensely. I do not go to church. I have not gone since I was a little kid. Yet, almost every day I am consciously envious of the people who can believe in God because of how beautiful that singing, that sense of community, was.

I believe the reason why so many churches have singing is because of this sense of community. Singing is a readily accessible and simple way to bring people together. Churches that don't sing don't build a sense of unity with singing, and people will go to the closest church that they feel the most belonging in. If churches that don't sing don't have other ways to supplement this sense of unity, then Darwinism happens: Churches that are less able to create a community are less fit to survive.

What if you don't believe in God? What if you're a kid, a teenager, and it's Sunday and your friends are out playing and having fun and going to the arcade or playing football and your parents instead make you go to church? The Sabbath takes your day of rest and turns it into a day of work. Instead of getting to relax you get to be angry. Angry at your parents for keeping you from your friends and for not loving you if they were to ever find out that you do not see the world the same way they do. Angry at the church and the people within it for hating the nonbelievers and gays and anyone who just doesn't belong. Angry at God for being a convenient weapon for this community, that you do not feel a part of, to use against you. And you sing.

You get good at singing, as you sing every Sunday and have every Sunday for as long as you can remember. Your puberty goes by filled with stress, as all puberties do, and yours gets to be filled with an extra dose of anger and alienation. And you sing some more. But what do you actually want to sing about? What emotion do you have that has gone unexpressed that you want people to hear? How do you want to be heard?

And you get mad.

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1 A Swedish Black Metal band studied Catholicism so intensely for more efficient blasphemy that they wound up converting to Catholicism

https://old.reddit.com/r/BlackMetal/comments/9vidjk/a_swedish_black_metal_band_studied_catholicism_so/

2 I've been Catholic my whole life, I do tend to sing a fair bit, but I actively avoid the Masses with singing because my parish picks such lame, terrible music. "On Eagles' Wings" is worth waking up two hours earlier to avoid. Don't get me started on the Children's Choir!

One of the best power metal albums ever is a power metal record made by one man:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=iP7Ikvm014c

Oh lord, yes, Catholics don't sing. At least the old Latin hymns were better, but the problem there was nobody understood the words. Then we got post-Vatican II and in my convent school ended up singing secular songs that were vaguely spiritual-ish sounding ("Morning has broken", anyone?) and one memorable time, the theme tune to the TV show "Grizzly Adams" (in the nuns' defence, it was our class that sang it as a representative type of song to our teacher, and it got incorporated into a class Mass since it was one song we all sang spontaneously together) 😁

I can't carry a tune in a bucket, but I can belt out the Tantum Ergo and not be too disgraceful. Yes, I've suffered with the "Eagles Wings" songs (did you have to do the hand motions as a kid/teen to "His banner over me is love", too?)

Morning has broken

Do you mean the song with the verses:

Sweet the rains new fall, sunlit from Heaven

Like the first dewfall on the first grass

Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden

Sprung in completeness where His feet pass

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning

Born of the one light, Eden saw play

Praise with elation, praise every morning

God's recreation of the new day

That sounds to me more like a Christian song with a few secular themes, not the other way around.

I accept the correction, I looked up who wrote the original lyrics and it was meant as a hymn, it was because hearing it played on the radio as pop music made me think it secular:

"Morning Has Broken" is a Christian hymn first published in 1931. It has words by English author Eleanor Farjeon and was inspired by the village of Alfriston in East Sussex, then set to a traditional Scottish Gaelic tune, "Bunessan". It is often sung in children's services and in funeral services.

English pop musician and folk singer Cat Stevens included a version on his album Teaser and the Firecat (1971). The song became identified with Stevens due to the popularity of this recording. It reached number six on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, number one on the U.S. easy listening chart in 1972, and number four on the Canadian RPM magazine charts.

I submit, though, that to a kid whose notion of hymns were the like of Soul of My Saviour (English translation of the Anima Christi ) with lyrics about "blood of my Saviour, bathe me in Thy tide", then a song warbling about a stroll in a garden didn't sound very 'hymn' like 😁

Personally, I didn't like that hymn growing up: not as upbeat as the happy-clappy songs, but also not as profound as the more "serious" traditional songs.

It also rhymes "morning" with "morning", which appropriately to this thread is some Spinal Tap (or Black Sabbath) level lyricism. (Sabbath once rhymed "masses" with "masses", albeit with different meanings, and thus a step up in sophistication over Morning is Broken.)

From my admittedly unique position (still fairly fundamentalist) it seems like worship of the creation rather than the creator.

Even that wouldn't make it secular, and it's explicitly saying to praise God's creation, not worship it.

Are you comfortable with praying through saints, Mary etc.?

Definitely not, we're quite Protestant in our fundamentalism. Sola scriptura and all it entails.

Praise was reserved for only one entity, praising the creation isn't secular; it's idolatry. If fundamentalism is plus 1, and secularism is 0, idolatry is -1.

Sorry, I meant "creation" as a verb, not as a noun. Although I see how the song could be read in the other way, and I also see how, from a Protestant perspective, even praising the act of creation could be objectionable.

Gotta say bro, this sounds pretty absurd to me. Isn't calling fundamentalism better than idolatry itself praising fundamentalism?

God himself considers his creation good in one of the first scriptures in the Bible. He's not an idolatrist.

Me? Listen, my family has St. Anthony (of Padua, not St. Anthony of Egypt, Abbot) on speed dial to find the stuff we're always misplacing 😁

If it's @atelier, they said they're "still fairly fundamentalist" so I imagine a different position there.

Ah, I got confused by their gatecrashing the conversation.

I should have noted the use of "fundamentalist" rather than "Traditionalist", but this is very far from my world.

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