For modern Pagans – especially practitioners of Ásatrú and Heathenry – the options for heavy music that somehow connects to their spiritual worldview has often tended towards black metal, death metal, Pagan metal, and Viking metal.
For the old heads who grew up on heavy metal when it was still heavy, much of that twenty-first century metal music seems less heavy than it does extreme, fast, and intense. This is not to say that I didn’t spend many years obsessing over bands like Amon Amarth, Ensiferum, Heidevolk, and Týr. It’s just that, after a while, I started to miss heaviness in the traditional manner of Black Sabbath.
In addition, I had my doubts about newer bands on, for example, the wider black metal scene who overtly use Pagan imagery as a marketing tool. Too often, there’s a whiff of völkisch and/or other right-wing ideologies bubbling under the surface.
Then, one day, I fell into modern doom, psych, stoner, sludge, and related subgenres. The heavens opened, and – lo! – things were heavy.
As it should, it was the sound of the music that first got me. Only later did I realize how many of today’s doomy bands have Pagan elements in their lyrics.
When the beat is of the heavy kind and the lyrics speak to my Heathen heart, does it matter whether the band members themselves practice some form of Paganism? In my interviews with Amon Amarth and the other bands mentioned above, it was clear that they were more interested in mythology than practice.
Then again, so much of what we embrace as key to our Pagan experience comes to us from non-Pagans. The Eddas and sagas were composed and/or transcribed by Christians long after Iceland’s conversion. Saxo Grammaticus, Adam of Bremen, and other medieval writers who recorded myth and described ritual were openly hostile to the Old Way. Modern writers beloved by today’s practitioners, from Jacob Grimm to Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson, were absolutely not practitioners themselves. Ditto for performers like Sequentia, who have recorded the Old Norse poems in musical recreations.
In the end, what matters is how we receive, process, understand, and celebrate the material.
I asked five of my favorite doomy bands about their relationships to Pagan religion. Their answers varied widely. I highly recommend each of the albums below, all of which I’ve played over and over since they were released in 2019 and 2020. In each case, I recommend a specific track for newbies.
Album titles are hyperlinked to their Bandcamp pages, and a playlist of all the individual tracks discussed can be found in the new featured playlist on The Norse Mythology YouTube Channel.
I hope that those who love heavy music will check out and support these wonderful young bands, all but one of which feature women as lyricists, instrumentalists, and vocalists.
Ealdor Bealu
Spirit of the Lonely Places (2019)
Self-released
The band’s name is Old English for “life’s evil, death,” a term that occurs in Beowulf line 1676 in the phrase “aldorbealu eorlum,” translated by J.R.R. Tolkien as “the bane of good men’s lives.” The band describes itself as “a progressive heavy-psych quartet from the high desert of Boise.”
Vocalist and guitarist Travis Abbott had a lot to say when I asked him about any connections to Paganism.
I tend to draw inspiration from more nature-based ideologies that center the natural world and our relationship to it, such as Norse/Celtic mythology and Taoism. Along with this, such ideologies also seem to fully acknowledge the duality and complexity of humanity more than other common religious practices, which is a constant theme in our music.
Everything that we do is in some way related to our (humanity’s) relationship to nature and the fact that most humans are morally grey, which is something that I feel Norse mythology does an excellent job of exploring.
In Idaho, it’s been weird, since this is such a white-supremacist dominant state. It makes it hard to fully embrace Norse Paganism when most people here associate symbols like Mjölnir with such hateful ideologies. So my spirituality is more based on being out in nature, and that’s where I tend to embrace it more.
As someone who practices both Ásatrú and kung fu while being fully opposed to white nationalist evil, I’m definitely on-board with what Travis has to say.
To this white-bearded rocker, the gloriously ethereal “Sink Like Stone” is reminiscent of old Hawkwind at its Space Ritual peak. Hypnotically swirling guitar chords and Travis’ chantlike vocals set a melancholy and meditative mood with introspective lyrics.
Close your eyes to see within
Fall behind to begin again
An over sharpened knife’s blade dulls
And where the highway goes no one can know
When bassist Rylie Collingwood adds her soaring vocal harmonies above, the setting sun bursts through the lowering storm clouds. So good.
Häxan
Aradia (2020)
Fuzzed and Buzzed Records
This most excellent band from Toronto calls its music “heavy proto-metal psych sounds,” and they’re not lying. Not to be confused with the UK band named with the same Swedish word for “the witch,” this Canadian group definitely gets into some heaviness.
Vocalist Kayley explained some things to me.
The connection I have personally with paganism is rooted in an anti-oppression, anti-racist, all-around direct action way of going through life. While writing the full-length album, I was inspired by the Italian book Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. The story is pure destruction of oppression.
Take the lyrics (taken directly from the text) “And thou shall make them die in their palaces. And thou shall bind your oppressor’s soul with power.” Aradia was born of Satan and Diana with the specific goal of empowering the slave class. These are the ideals that resonate with me and guide me in my work as a harm reduction worker and in my personal experience.
The album track that I’ve most obsessed over is the giddily heavy “Nicodemus.” Kayley’s powerhouse voice soars over supremely heavy riffing and celebratory drumming that embraces the Sabbath spirit and takes it to a new place of inspirational womanly power. Her soulful might is truly inspirational.
SpellBook
Magick & Mischief (2020)
Cruz Del Sur Music
If you worship at the altar of Motörhead, Thin Lizzy, and Judas Priest and wondered what the love child of their heavy metal threesome would sound like, here’s your answer. Speed beats, harmony dual lead guitars, and fist-in-the-air vocals meld into a serious mix in this brilliant album from the Pennsylvania rockers.
Singer Nate Tyson told me that he spent his early teenage years immersed in black metal and its “anti-Christian beliefs.” These days, he doesn’t consider himself a practitioner in any one religion, but shares “a lot of the same beliefs” from Paganism and “certain forms of witchcraft.”
“Wands to the Sky,” the opening track of this modern classic album, explodes out of the speakers with words of power.
In this time of threats and violence, from whom control the night
We must be carefulWe must harness the powers, that been bestowed to us
Time is criticalDark spells align, for those who’ve lost the way!
Wands to the sky, for those who have betrayed!A cult of death magicians are storming through the night
Evil, it tags alongTrust now within our elders, their wisdom and might
Our faith must be strong
Sometimes, it takes several listens for me to really get into a new album from a new band. Spell Book had me hooked in the first few seconds. Check ’em out!
Rough Spells
Ruins at Midday (2019)
Fuzzed and Buzzed Records
Another great band from Toronto, Rough Spells couples charging grooves with wild vocal harmonies, cryptically mystical lyrics, and Pagan-ish track titles including “Ocean Mother” and “Children of the Moon.” I asked the quartet of three women and one man about their connection to modern Pagan religions.
We’re def queer, so there’s always a conscious and unconscious queering of our spirituality. But nothing is so formalized in our identity or practice.
Some of our source texts are Wiccan spells that we draw from for inspiration. This bleeds into developing original incantations. We use ritual objects in our practice, specifically crystals, candles, and oils to promote our creative energy.
We sometimes reflect on mainstream Judeo-Christian concepts and memory and subvert them. Another massive inspiration is setting intentions based on the lunar calendar.
The track “Chance Magic” rolls along with a classic Deep Purple type of feel that somehow shades into 1990s riot grrrl and incorporates a ritualistic feeling reflecting the mystery of the lyrics.
My suit is full of diamonds
Can’t fail she reminds us
Her law, her law is threefold
A win pours down a shiny rain of goldMany of you think it’s a sin
And judge my inclination
There’s nothing to fear, it comes from within
No bad intention, no bad intention
This album has a lot to dig into.
Scorched Oak
Withering Earth (2020)
Self-released
This young trio from Dortmund, Germany describes their music as “Stonerrock influenced by Heavyrock, Blues and Doom.” The album features gorgeous front and back cover art by Maciej Kamuda that illustrates the five environmental track titles: “Mountain,” “Swamp,” “Forest,” “Tide,” and “Desert.”
Although I expected to hear about some form of earth-centered spirituality, the trio of Linda, Ben, and Freed was the most reticent of the bands I asked about Paganism.
Unfortunately, I think we ain’t got much to tell on this topic. None of us is really into spiritual or religious stuff.
So it goes.
The music is as massive as the subject matter of the lyrics. On “Mountain,” epically enormous riffs in the mode of early albums by The Sword surround haunting sections of spoken readings from Jon Krakauer’s 1997 book Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster and introspective vocals from Linda that soar above a quietly intense marching snare drum before the sledgehammer riffage comes pounding back.
Pagan or not, this is powerful music.
As someone who supports new heavy music and believes that its creators should be celebrated and compensated, I hope that you’ll consider purchasing some or all of these fantastic albums in whatever medium you prefer.
You can follow the album title links to their Bandcamp pages and check out the featured tracks in the featured playlist at The Norse Mythology YouTube Channel.
Long live rock!
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