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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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.
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