Viking metal

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Viking metal is a cross-genre reference usually used to describe the lyrical and thematic elements of bands rather than the music itself. The bands that are associated with Viking metal cover a broad range of musical genres and influences, such as folk metal, thrash metal, death metal, black metal, and power metal.

Blood Fire Death, considered by most to be the first Viking metal album.
Blood Fire Death, considered by most to be the first Viking metal album.

The origin of Viking Metal can be traced to the Swedish metal band Bathory, with the release of their fourth album in 1988, entitled Blood Fire Death. The album blended the aesthetics of black metal, with an atmosphere rich in imagery of war and Norse mythology. Quorthon (The mastermind of Bathory) explains some of the philosophy behind the musical and lyrical changes from black metal to Viking metal in Bathory for the official website [1].

Bathory would continue on to innovate the genre further with their next release in 1990, titled Hammerheart. The album further explored the romantic elements of the previous album, and experimented with Scandinavian folk instruments and musical form. Along with Skyclad’s The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth, Hammerheart helped form the metal subgenre folk metal. The album is regarded by many as an important and influential release in Viking metal’s history.

Contents

While Viking metal cannot technically be categorised as a specific sub-genre with unique musical aspects, it does share similar themes and values. Common among some Viking metal is a reverence for pagan Germanic, or Viking culture, as well as a rejection of contemporary Christianity, and disdain of the Christianisation of Northern Europe in favour of a pre-Christian, Pagan world. Thus, most Viking metal bands are native Scandinavians and Germans, and often associate themselves with pagan and Ásatrú belief. The music is often highly romanticised and epic in composition, reflecting Norse mythology itself, and creates an atmosphere rich both in Germanic heroic and metal music tradition. While some bands sing in English to reach a wider audience, many write lyrics in their own native languages (Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish or Icelandic) or archaic versions thereof.

Many albums have epic, romanticism, norse mythology or fantasy inspired covers.

The cover of Amon Amarth's With Oden on Our Side shows a picture of the Norse god Odin on his horse Sleipnir.
The cover of Amon Amarth's With Oden on Our Side shows a picture of the Norse god Odin on his horse Sleipnir.

Main article: Troll Metal

Some bands, notably Finntroll, have shifted the focus of their music from the heroic humans or Gods of Norse mythology towards the creatures of more recent Scandanavian peasant folklore, most notably trolls. Like Viking Metal, Troll Metal is largely a thematic genre, with most bands being musically either black metal, Folk Metal, or some combination thereof. Like Viking metal, it often contains anti-Christian themes, with the trolls and monsters being a representation of the pre-Christian pagans of Northern Europe[citation needed]. These lyrics are seldom entirely serious, though, as they are as much anti-human as they are anti-Christian, and could even be seen as tongue-in-cheek, parodying the radical anti-Christianity of certain black metal bands.

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