A Grove of Ashes and Aspens

Now Playing: The Wolves Will Be Howling Your Name by Elvenking

So I’m a Germanic polytheist and, in more recent times, a Lokean. This means that I follow a (loosely) reconstructed version of the religion from northern Europe, and that I specifically work with the deity Loki.

On the surface, this has little to do with music and the arts directly, and to an extent, this is true. There isn’t really a surface level link between religion and the mechanical aspects of sound. But there is still a link between spirituality and the act of creation, especially in the realm of the arts.

Many who are both religious and artistically inclined tend to forge some sort of link between their spirituality and their art. Now, this art can be anything: painting, sculpting, poetry, music, woodworking, and so on. Each person will have their own approach to it, and that includes what form that art takes.

I have discussed this before on here (see this post), but I feel it’s time to revisit the topic. More specifically, how a person’s practice can connect into their spirituality and the intentional inclusion of their faith in their art can change it, especially in the realm of heavy metal.

Music as a whole is an easy example to reach for in the realm of connecting spirituality in the arts. (As is the realm of visual arts, but that’s a matter for someone who has more experience in that realm.) Looking at much of Western classical music, especially choral music, there is a lot of Christian music. This is for a few reasons,

I am a fan of Elvenking, a fact of which I make no secret, and they are my personal favourite band to point to as an example for pagan metal, and pagan metal done well. (I discuss this topic more in this post.) Their material is, for much of their discography, lyrically influenced by pagan themes, especially with their Reader of the Runes trilogy of albums. (The third of these comes out in April and I am so excited.) These pagan themes in their music are, obviously, intentional on the part of the writers, with the singer saying in his personal words on the latest album (Reader of the Runes – Rapture, at the time of writing): “I offer this work to the Forces that give me the strength to walk my own path and to what is not of this Earth.” This dedication is, at least in how I read it, a very clear statement to not only why he writes what he does with the band, but also a deeper part of who he is, which will, in turn, influence what he writes.

On top of this, Elvenking’s music has inspired me personally to turn more towards metal as a method of connecting to my own spirituality. I still do a the more typical classical composing, but I have been writing music (and lyrics on occasion) that more fit in the realm of metal as well. Metal as a genre is very malleable, contrary to what some elitists may say, and there is plenty of room for musicians to play around within the genre and have it still fit. Now, while metal as a genre may not seem able to mesh with paganism on a surface level, I need only refer back to Elvenking as an example of why that is incorrect, but there is a bit more depth to it than just that one band. After all, they’re not the only band that have pagan themes or touch on mythology in their music, let alone the only band to do it in the folk/power metal way they do. Falconer do (or did, depending on how you view music from a band still existing after said band splits up) something similar with themes of human behaviour and history. Wind Rose also do something similar, but with dwarf metal instead of pagan themes. Brothers of Metal are a more similar example, though through a more distinctly power metal lens and with a focus on the more epic stories of going on quests and feasting with the gods and all that.

But where does my own desire to make pagan metal fall in all of this? Well, it’s as I said back in the post I made about Elvenking as a band. There is very little focus on the individual experience within pagan metal, and I want to work at changing that. I want to tell my story in an individual, though fictionalised manner. I want to bring forward and highlight the intimacy of hearing and knowing someone’s story and the intimacy of telling a tale that may not get a light any other way.