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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I think in the context of Heavy Metal, it's important to make the (usually unimportant) distinction between atheistic and nihilistic. I'm willing to make the generalization that most US/UK dedicated metalheads were drawn to the music because of a sense of frustration, anger, and general outsider-ness, and because metal directly helped assuage those feelings. Metal doesn't wallow in those feelings (unless it does, see below) but provides a sense of "yes, you're weird and different, that's ok, lean into it and go out and accomplish something." This is seen in some of the biggest names in metal being really accomplished at other things - Bruce Dickinson was a World Cup Fencer, for instance. To me this is also one of the big dividing lines between metal and punk. Punk tends to spend a lot of time dancing in circles with unfocused rage and weird fatalism. In the UK punk scene this had/had a lot to do with the suffocating class structures of British society. In the US punk scene, I think it's weaker and mostly lends itself to substance abuse or just slacking (NoFX's song The Separation of Church and Skate has a maybe-maybe-not self-aware line about this "The kids who used to live for beer and speed / now want their fries and coke")
What about when metal is nihilistic? I'd say you get the two BEST examples of the world's worst metal. So much so that many, many metalheads don't even consider them to be part of the overall genre; Norwegian Black Metal and Nu Metal. Original, old-school Norwegian Black Metal (Burzum, Mayhem, Darkthrone and close associates) have lyrical content that is almost completely misanthropic and nihilistic. Hell, Dead killed himself because ... he wasn't really doing anything else at the time. These bands and this genre of the early to mid 1990s is also fucking goofy as hell. Pure Cringe, as the kids say. If the church burnings and murder of Euronymous didn't happen, I don't think anyone cares about this subgenre whatsoever. For anyone who wants to make the argument that they had important anti-Christian, pro-Scandinavian folk religion messages, I think you find better examples if later "blackend death" or certainly Viking Metal like Amon Amarth.
American Nu Metal - AKA the shitty dirt weed that we picked up in 8th grade before we knew what we were doing. Yes, it's responsible for a huge portion of Millenial metalheads, but we don't hold on to the Slipknot and Mushroomhead CDs even for kitchy keepsakes. This music sucks because a lot of the central lyric content is "I feel feelings, don't know what to do about it, but here's some screaming." Cathartic as it may be, it leads nowhere. And, like Norwegian Black Metal, everyone hates it because of its cringeyness as well. My point is that they're fundamentally the same - they offer no solution to what are normal feelings of atomization, isolation, etc. What's worse, their lack of solution-offering is done in some of the goofiest and cringiest ways possible. Sure, the dudes in Slipknot have masks that are kind of neat and remind us of 1970s slasher flicks, but there's an ocean of difference between wearing those on stage at Ozfest and being the kid in oversized UFO pants who knows the album-by-album lore behind each set of masks. Contrast this to an old HS buddy who was really into the highly technical death metal stuff, learned how to shred on a 7-string guitar, started lifting, ended HS by dating the Pretty Girl and now works on Wall Street (I might not necessarily call that last part an accomplishment, but that's personal bias. If nothing else, those banks do select for relentless adherence to a standardized system of "performance.").
Music is one of the more pure-emotional types of art out there. Well, certainly professionally produced post-WW2 music. Classical, I think, could make an argument it's more cerebral or intellectual but I don't really know because I don't ever listen to it. The themes in top 40 Pop music, rightfully maligned, are still mostly positive (you'll find love one day, you feel good right now, literally "don't worry, be happy", JUST DANCE!). More introspective and flat-out sand songs can still have the same healing and development properties of a novel or depressed film. What you can't have is a purposelessness set to a tune.
More options
Context Copy link
Many of the metal musicians in my hometown came to know each other through playing together at church, oddly enough. That doesn't make them not atheist, of course, but just a fun tidbit I felt like sharing.
More options
Context Copy link
If you're looking for data to back up your hypothesis, a possible source might be Encyclopedia Metallum. It shouldn't be hard to scrape a list of every band listed on the website and compare the incidence of band names which are explicitly pro-religious in character vs. anti-religious in character. Then repeat with album titles, song titles, band member pseudonyms etc.
My gut feeling matches your intuition that most metal bands are atheistic, actively opposed to the Abrahamic faiths, or both, but if that trend exists, it might be confined to the subgenres I listen to most often (or used to, at any rate) such as black metal, and may not generalise across the genre as a whole.
More options
Context Copy link
I think that this sort of question is best answered at the individual level. As other people have noted, heavy metal music and musicians are far too hetereogenous for this level of analysis.
The one statistical trend I know is that heavy metal listeners tend to be high in openness to experience and interested in ideas, and seem to resemble classical music fans in many ways. This makes sense: since its early days, much of heavy metal music has been full of imaginative themes, just like Romantic and post-Romantic classical music. That's why you find metal bands making concept albums about the Ring cycle and why it's easy to do a lot of the best metal using an orchestra.
There is obviously a lot of explicitly anti-Christian metal, but if we focus on the most famous bands that had religious themes (Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden etc.) Christianity was part of their most famous songs in the same way that Greek mythology, horror films, history etc. were: as a familiar cultural reference point for exploring imaginative themes. So, for example, Iron Maiden became infamous for their song The Number of the Beast, but the song uses Satanists as one might use Dracula or the Mummy, in order to create a horror movie-style setting.
That's a good characterization of The Number of the Beast. When I saw them on their "Seventh Son" tour, there was a Christian group that managed to get into the front rows, and they were throwing bibles onto the stage. Dickinson picked up one of the books, and said something like, "Good book, this. I did a lot of research for this album from it."
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I listen to a lot of metal music; probably the majority (edit: certainly majority of metal music I have heard, and I suspect the majority that is made) isn't actually angry or expressing anger. Take Nightwish's second to last album, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, which is about evolution and features guest performances by Richard Dawkins, but is actually about the marvel of evolution, wondering at its complexity, etc. There's nothing angry or even particularly harsh--the title sums it up pretty well.
I think, to the extent the claim is true, it's because metal attracts nerds. I don't know why that's the case, but I think there's just a common cause of nerd -> atheist and nerd -> metal. For example, there's a huge overlap between both the people and the aesthetics from metal, and from Ren faires/fantasy/sci fi and gaming cons/kink/etc.
More options
Context Copy link
I have an interesting metal journey. As a brown hindu kid who found his metal on MTV, I started off listening to 'Christian metal' without realizing that's what it was. I had "As I lay dying^[2]" and "August burns red^[1]" albums on repeat.
So there you had a (young) atheist, reading lyrics that sounded atheistic from bands that were very clearly marketed as Christian metal.
Curiously, when you don't know the context behind their lyrical under/overtones, you simply view it all as a pursuit in spirituality and philosophy. IMO, metal lends itself a little too well to internal journeys. The entire genre is constructed around intense buildups and climatic releases of negative emotions. After you get out all of your teenage angst in your first album, you will inevitably find yourself needing to a address new questions of similar intensity, all while also needing to resolve them at the song's climax.
Because of that, all of these religion-interfacing metal bands seems to yo-yo between the 2 inevitable conundrums.
Religion as a shelter from all the pain and sorrow of the real world irrespective of divinity (ABR started here)
Religion as the cause and shackles that lead to a lot of pain and sorrow (Tool started here)
Like any good gem that allows itself to be polished, they usually end up somewhere in the middle: Making peace with spirituality, but not allowing themselves to be strongly pulled by any religious authority. ABR and AILD have moved away from the Christian metal moniker and not-so subtlety have disavowed the more political & judgmental side of American Christianity. On the other hand, Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden - the faces of pop-satanism are now comfortable in their identity as Christians. Hell, even Maynard of Tool has mellowed out.
Eventually, I find that late in a metal bands career, they echo the same emotion from 2 views - making peace with the inevitable, but in 2 different ways.
They end up writing songs about mortality & contentment, such as Empire in the Clouds, Invincible, mama I'm coming home, wither, sound of perseverence and Tears of a clown. They don't reach any real conclusion. It is a tacit acknowledgement of human hubris and being at peace with no knowing what comes after. Just, that it will end and that's okay.
Alternatively, the same emotion leads some to Doomerism. Take Black Crown Initiate which similarly never gives us a release/answer. Just eternal pain and inevitable doom. They first few albums were angsty, but their latest 2 albums are peak-Doomer. (I love it)
So why all the rambling ? IMO, metal composers are philosophers first. They seek answers and allow themselves to feel discomfort in a manner that feels like a permanent mid-life crisis. The one thing they complain about the most, is shackles and limitations on what what ideas they're allowed to explore. Until the recent past, that meant the limitations imposed by the church. Since then, we've transitioned into an era of soft-atheism in the west and are more-so slaves of our endless consumerism. Their same quest for answers now leads them down a path of virtuosity that comes across as religious. A huge number of contemporary metal artists are straight-edge vegan environmentalists. On paper, much better Christians than most self-professed ones.
If you want to understand all of metal's journey in a song or an album. Listen to 10,000 days part 2 or Odyssey to the west. 10,000 days clearly sees Maynard launch a tirade towards god, all while also wishing for the existence of heaven so his mother can truly find peace as he grieves her death. It addresses the conundrum neatly. On the other hand, Odyssey to the west very literally tracks a journey similar to a pilgrim's progress. He starts a nonbeliever and turns into a pilgrim, then fundamentalist turn fool who eventually accepts his own hubris & mortality. [3]
tl;dr : They aren't atheists. They simply care too much about the nature of existence and keep continuously questioning it. It sounds agnostic, but many end up mellowed-out Christians by the end of it.
[1] Maybe an entire Christmas album should've clued me in. But Carol of the Bells was such a banger.
[2] The front man did try to hire a hitman to kill his wife after a custody battle, but the hitman was an undercover officer and no one was hurt. Seems to have served his time in prison silently and doesn't seem as evil in hindsight. Still kind of up there for bad-things-to-do. Kinda stopped listening to them after that. Could be worse. Could be Lost Prophets.
[3] Btw I highly recommend all the albums mentioned here. Here are links to my favorite songs on them 1 2 3
P.S: I have had a similar mellowing out, but I like that Hinduism is a lot more comfortable with athesism/agnosticism than Abrahmic religions, so I let myself be a 'shrug emoji' when it comes to my religion.
P.P.S: haven't listened to metal core in half-a-decade, so Idk if it has changed. My tastes are very different today, so don't crucify me if my comment isn't up to date with the times.
More options
Context Copy link
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
More options
Context Copy link
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?)
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:
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.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
More options
Context Copy link
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I wonder if it is simply that heavy metal aesthetically is non-mainstream and therefore you are more likely to draw from the non-mainstream. Out and proud atheism is non-mainstream. Therefore, odds are you’ll find per capita more out and proud atheists in heavy metal?
More options
Context Copy link