Pagan Metal
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Pagan metal fuses extreme-metal aggression with pre-Christian European heathen themes and folk instrumentation, sitting at the crossroads of black metal's tremolo riffing and folk metal's acoustic colour. Tempos swing from mid-paced marching grooves to blasting double-kick, draped in fiddle, tin whistle, flute, accordion, jaw harp and hand drums over distorted guitars. Vocals alternate raspy black-metal snarls and barked gang chants with stately clean baritones and choral group singing. The mood is earthy, defiant and ritualistic, evoking forests, mead-halls and ancestral rites; signature touches include folk-melody-doubling guitars, chant-along refrains and stomping war-dance rhythms.
History
Pagan metal grew from two roots in the early 1990s: England's Skyclad, whose 1991 debut 'The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth' welded thrash to fiddle-driven folk under ex-Sabbat vocalist Martin Walkyier, and the Scandinavian second-wave black-metal bands who swapped Satanism for native heathen identity. Bathory's Quorthon charted the Norse template, while Ireland's Cruachan and Primordial and Norway's Storm and Enslaved pushed pre-Christian lyrical themes into the extreme underground. Through the late 1990s the style spread across Europe, with Germany's Falkenbach and Russia's Arkona, then exploded in the 2000s as a festival staple via Paganfest tours, Napalm and Metal Blade rosters, and bands like Primordial, Moonsorrow and Týr carrying heathen metal to international stages.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Metallum (Metal Archives): Skyclad, Primordial, Falkenbach band pages
- Wikipedia: Pagan metal
- Folk metal
- Terrorizer / Metal Hammer features on the Paganfest scene