Some metal bands go beyond retelling a classical myth in their lyrics. In the third song on the 2015 album Shards of Silver Fade, the Australian atmospheric black metal project Midnight Odyssey adapts a specific classical author’s version of that myth. This song recounts the tale of Phaethon, the son of the sun god Phoebus […]
Classical reception in metal extends beyond lyrical topics or imagery drawn from Greco-Roman history and culture. It can also mean using the classical languages of ancient Greek or Latin as modes of expression, even if the subject is not directly related to classical civilization. Take the Sicilian symphonic black metal band Nazgûl, who in 2002 […]
This post draws from the discussions between myself and my Greek Civilization students about a month ago. After a lecture and a set of readings about Alexander of Macedon, we listened to the song and analyzed the lyrics. Iron Maiden were among the first to rewrite history from all eras and places as metal lyrics, […]
Most ancient Greeks and Romans knew little of the lands and peoples that lay beyond the fringes of their empires, and the further away a “barbarous” people dwelt, the more fantastic and downright bestial they became in the imaginations of those claiming to be the most properly human and civilized. This includes the notion that […]
Antagonism toward Christianity, and religion in general, is one of the most pervasive elements of metal’s more extreme genres (thrash, death, black, etc.). Such a spirit can easily color a band’s approach to ancient history. In 1987 one of the seminal German thrash bands, Kreator, was perhaps the first to set to metal music the Roman […]
Common to many epic poems and other tales of heroes’ journeys in Greco-Roman and other mythologies is the katabasis, i.e. a descent into the Underworld where the hero receives special knowledge and/or undergoes a form of rebirth necessary to fulfill their quest. In the Roman epic poem by Vergil, the ‘Aeneid’, the Trojan prince Aeneas […]
Perseus’ slaying of the gorgon Medusa is one of the most iconic acts of heroism from Greek mythology, popularized in part by the claymation magic of the original “Clash of the Titans.” In the modern popular imagination, it is in the same vein as a knight slaying an evil dragon. But if you dig deeper, […]
Heavy Metal Classicist 