Originally what happened was that I made a post to my blog which commented on the use of Viking and Samurai motifs in Metal

http://metalmelt.wordpress.com/2010/11/ ... -of-metal/


and the first commenter brought in the topic of whether these motifs exist as a means to learn from the past.


What do you guys think?

(If you'd like to comment at the original page, please do!)

I take it no one wants to offer their own thoughts on whether the warrior concept presents something to be learned from the past or not..?

If i've understood you correctly your asking why are ancient nordic/oriental motifs and aesthetics so prelevent and other historical cultures arguably less so. I think Vikings and Samurai engender themselves to the genre, like how 'unspoken' themes like the occult, murder, sexual perversion, etc do. Both warrior types have been subject to large amounts of romanticism and metal is at its heart a fantastical style of music.

I for one would love to see other cultures explored in metal as opposed to the usual Viking fare. Come to think of it there are quite a number that do. Nile explores ancient egyptian ritual and mythology, The Meads Of Asphodel take a more medieval approach and tend to comment the crusades between the christian and islamic worlds, Hacavitz have a unique brans of Central American themed black metal, and there plenty of bands that do similiar things with a huge variety of time periods and nationalities.

I think it's cool if people do actually learn anything about history and culture from listening to metal, but it will probably always be a small minority who are interested - I remember when I was younger I read Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner because of the Iron Maiden song (kind of sad I know) but most of my friends couldn't give a crap - they liked the song, but that was enough.

A different point is thatlearning from it depends on the band actually knowing about a subject themselves. I think there are a lot of bands these days with an interest in Norse or Anglo Saxon mythology/history etc - but there are also a lot of bands to whom it's just a cool metal subject that makes for aggressive & powerful songs, in the same way as Satan or Jeffrey Dahmer. And there's nothing wrong with that really, it is entertainment after all...

Street Fighter/Tekken Black Metal plz