Heavy Metal Story-Telling
I hope I didn’t give you the impression a couple of weeks ago that I hated all modern music; that would be a tall tale indeed, especially if you read one of my earlier letters about my mixed-up music taste. I was simply lamenting that we’ve ceded musicianship to the experts, along with so many other aspects of our lives. That’ll probably be another newsletter at some point.
Having professional musicians who are simply good at writing and performing music is not a bad thing; in fact, I think it’s rather good, but we should not allow them to dominate the creative sphere. There’s an important place for amateurs. But I digress.
Anyhow, I’ve mentioned before that I greatly enjoy Metal music. One of the reasons I love it is because you can tell some pretty epic stories with Metal that couldn’t be told as effectively in other genres. This is just the nature of Metal, I think.
It probably started back in the late 70s into the 80s with Ronnie James Dio and Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden was a proponent of telling epic tales from history and mythology with their music, while Dio tended to use a lot of Fantasy elements. You can hear that in Sacred Heart, one of my favorite songs.
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One of Dio’s signatures was that he often wrote lyrics that were purposefully vague in order to allow the listener to insert their own interpretation of them. This one I tend to interpret as being about a hero or group of heroes who are on a quest to obtain an object of ultimate value; perhaps it’s knowledge, eternal life, healing, or some other thing of great value. The song includes references to dragons, magic and wizards; fantasy and fairytales are frequent themes in Dio’s work, which is why I love it so much.
Since then, a number of Metal bands have taken up this idea of epic storytelling through music. Blind Guardian, Rhapsody of Fire, Smoulder, Ironflame, Nightwish to name a few. Sometimes they use themes from literature, such as The Silmarillion or Conan the Barbarian, but often they’ll use original work as well.
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They’ve been a big inspiration to my own writing. These songs seem to help me set the tone of my fantasy stories. Their evocative language helps me choose the proper words and sentence structure to make the story seem more “alive” if that makes sense.
So, what about you, fellow writers and creators? Are there any songs or artists that help you create? Who are they? Comment below! Can’t comment? Become a paid subscriber for only $5/month to participate in the conversation and get other perks.
Thanks for reading and have a rad week!