Medievalism and Metal Music Studies

Throwing Down the Gauntlet

Ruth Barratt-Peacock, Ross Hagen

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781787563971
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Musik

Metal music has long nurtured an obsession with visions of the Middle Ages, with countless album covers and lyric sheets populated by Vikings, knights, wizards, and castles. Medievalism and Metal Music Studies: Throwing down the Gauntlet addresses this fascination with all things medieval, exploring how metal musicians and fans find inspiration both in authentically medieval materials and neomedievalist depictions of the period in literature, cinema, and other media. Within metal music, the medieval takes on multiple, and even contradictory meanings, becoming at once a cipher of difference and grotesque alterity while simultaneously being imagined as a simpler, more authentic time, as opposed to the complexities and stresses of modernity. In this fashion, the medieval period becomes both a source for artistic creativity and a vector for countercultural social and political critique.
The contributors in this book hail from a wide range of fields including medieval history, music performance, musicology, media studies, and literature, and computer linguistics, bringing a variety of critical perspectives to bear on the topic. Engaging in analyses of cover art, liner notes, lyrics, and musical style, the contributors investigate issues of research methodologies, crucial concerns over identity and nationalism, and the recontextualisation of historical materials, all aimed at critically examining how and why medievalism has permeated heavy metal music and culture. Hearken to our tales!

Part I

Metal’s Medieval Frames

Chapter 1

The Trans-medial Fight for Glory

Johannes Hellrich, Christoph Rzymski, and Vitus Vestergaard

Abstract

This chapter explores metal albums as media, and their relationship to medieval media, as well as secondary media as a resource for reception studies. Examination of metal music as media reveals broader trends in modern media representations of the medieval in respect to race, gender, and cultural identity. Albums are composite object, using different media and secondary media products. The methodology used to approach these media and which elements of an album are examined in combination have a significant effect on the results. This chapter brings together three authors to discuss and compare methodologies and make the case for a combination of contextual analogue and quantitative digital approaches.

Keywords: Digital humanities; computational analysis; media; lyrics; cover art; methodology; qualitative analysis

Introduction

The metal genre demonstrates a well-known paradox quite clearly, namely that music is more than music. A typical metal album contains numerous media components such as written lyrics, cover art, booklets full of text, and photographs. Furthermore, songs and albums are often related to secondary media products such as posters, stickers, and clothing, not to mention various digital material online. In fan interactions with metal, it is possible to single out certain aspects of a work, such as listening to a song, reading album lyrics or wearing a band shirt, and this can affect how the music is perceived. Likewise, scholars often do the same, typically isolating lyrics or specific musical elements such as tonality, song structure or rhythm for analysis. This, in turn, can have a significant effect on the direction of enquiry followed in studies, and the resulting conclusions.

To make these aspects of metal, which are not as immediately present as the music and lyrics might be, more visible, we have focussed on the parts of the metal work that are not in a strict sense music, such as cover art and written lyrics. Regardless of size (albums, entire oeuvres or genre groupings), metal is to be viewed as being made up of composite objects containing several different components that can be analysed in isolation or in combination. It is within these components that we have been searching for traces of the medieval in different ways. This raises important questions regarding what constitutes ‘medieval’ elements in metal, their function, how they are integrated into the work, and not least, how to identify them.

These methodological questions are not easily resolved. Regarding identification, some parts of what could be considered medieval might be possible to detect computationally, while others might only be identified through a nuanced contextual understanding of the references and the culture related to a metal work. In this chapter, we review the different methodological approaches and try to show how they can benefit each other and lead to a more nuanced understanding of the metal works. Through computational lyrics analysis one medievalist topic stood out clearly, the ‘fight for glory’. In this chapter, we discuss whether this lyrical topic can also be identified in the medievalist elements on album covers, and how this enhances or changes the overall meaning.

Methodological Questions

If we accept the proposition that the medieval metal work is, to put it simply, a mixed medium, the first question should be whether to analyse the different parts individually or the work in its entirety. A metal music video is obviously a combination of moving images and music, and an album at the very least consists of a physical album cover in addition to the music. It might be argued that promotional materials such as posters or shirts are also part of the metal work in a modern Gesamtkunstwerk that cannot be reduced to its audio. Isolating lyrics, for instance, or woodcut cover art is useful when the primary focus is on distinct medievalist phenomena across bands and albums. Case studies of one album offer an alternative to this. A single album approached as a composite object offers the possibility to examine how all the different parts – audio, text, and images – interact and give meaning to one another in the specific case.

Here we have chosen to focus on the ways in which metal lyrics or metal album covers draw upon medieval material or present themselves as something medieval. In our endeavour to analyse how medievalist material finds its way into the metal work we have used both computational and hermeneutical approaches. It seems that both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses. The computational methods applied by Hellrich and Rzymski in this book give a presentation of metal lyrics that might be seen as objective. However, it also brings with it its own limitations.

There are aspects of the metal work that would be virtually impossible to detect computationally. As described in Vestergaard’s chapter ‘Medieval Media Transformations and Metal Album Covers’, the album cover can be understood in terms of media transformation where one medium is transformed into another through various transformation processes. For example, some album covers illustrate a medieval poem, and it seems unlikely that such a reference after crossing the media borders could reliably be traced computationally. Instead, analysis of such material might require knowledge of both medieval art and the metal genre as well as traditions and history. While it is sometimes possible to detect irony in written language computationally (see Van Hee, Lefever, & Hoste, 2016), visual irony, satire, or complex intertextuality usually requires human analysis. One of the advantages of a human analyst lies within the flexibility to draw new elements into the analysis as needed. In the analysis of the written lyrics of a song, the human analyst may look at the album cover, listen to the rhythmic patterns and even go to external sources, for instance interviews with the band, to get a fuller sense of the meaning.

For instance, an album element such as a title, a cover image or a logotype will sometimes serve to anchor a certain meaning (Barthes, 1964). Metal lyrics and album covers, not to mention the musical compositions themselves, can be ambiguous in their meaning and in such cases, other parts of the work will often focus the meaning. This underscores the need for a contextual approach even when only one element, for example, a cover image, is analysed. One example of elements interacting is the use of Blackletter on many album covers. In some cases, such as most of Endstille’s albums, Blackletter anchors a meaning that is focussed on World War II Germany, while in other cases, such as Geisterfels’ La névrose de la pierre (2017), Blackletter anchors a meaning focussed on the Middle Ages.

In addition to enabling this kind of contextualisation, a combination of methods helps overcome the limitations which face each method when applied in isolation. By combining methods, for instance, it is possible to trace a change with a band’s style as well as shifting trends in topics. The strengths of each respective approach can be used to check the validity of the analysis and the conclusions drawn. The topic of a ‘fight for glory’, which we briefly examine here reoccurs in many power metal lyrics. Because it is highly reductionist, it is well suited to being used as a plausibility check for hermeneutical theories.

‘The Fight for Glory’ in Words and Images

The ‘fight for glory’ was automatically identified as a recurring topic in a large metal lyrics corpus using a clustering approach known as topic modelling (Blei, Ng, & Jordan, 2003). It unfolds in different contexts ranging from history to fantasy; however, computational analysis was able to reveal that metal music concerned with Vikings as a medieval reference had a particularly strong connection with the ‘fight for glory’.

The connection identified in this way is largely borne out in visual analysis of media elements. An album such as Thronar’s For Death and Glory (2005), which is a clear representative of the ‘fight for glory’ lyrical topic, is also clearly focussed on a corresponding topic visually. On the front cover, in addition to the band logo shaped like the head of an axe, the topic finds expression in the drawing of an armoured commander riding through a group of warriors standing ready for battle. The warriors look like roman soldiers to some extent, but the depiction seems to be ahistorical, simply illustrating the neomedieval idea of the proud moments before going to battle. On the back cover, the medieval is evoked through a drawing of a scroll as background for the track list.

There are, however, also many examples of metal albums, merchandise and other visual artefacts where the ‘fight for glory’ topic primarily occurs outside the lyrics. Viking metal and power metal is abundant with artwork depicting warriors engaged in glorious battle. In some cases, the artwork draws upon specific media products, either medieval sources such as the Beowulf and Eddur poems or medievalist fantasy such as the books by J. R. R. Tolkien. In other cases, the artwork reflects a more general idea of the ‘fight for glory’, such as seen on the cover of Manowar’s Into Glory Ride (1983) where the band members, dressed in leather and fur, are posing with swords and a flail.

Bands such as Amon Amarth, Ensiferum, Bathory and Einherjer all have the ‘fight for glory’ topic in both lyrics and visuals. However, albums which can be argued to only display the topic visually, such as Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, do not invalidate the usefulness of lyrics analysis; lyrics can provide an alternative frame of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Musical Examples
• List of Contributors
• Foreword: Good Music ‖ Bad History
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Metal’s Medieval Frames
• Part II: Nationalism and Identity in Metal Medievalism
• Part III: Historical Source Materials in Metal Musics
• Index