The Old Ones Are With Us: Exploring Romantic Pagan Theologies in Contemporary American Black Metal

Black metal – an inaccessible underground subgenre of heavy metal music – has a controversial relationship to mainline religion and theology. This paper interrogates the theological meanings in the lyrics, compositions, and aesthetics of a variety of contemporary American black metal bands to show that the musical scene is actively engaged in the work of constructive theology. These theologies employ a variety of wisdom traditions including Romantic philosophy, pre-Christian polytheism, occultism, Gnostic theology, pantheism, and surrealism. I argue that the contemporary black metal scene in America is currently describing a complex, participatory, pagan theology, inspired by pre-Christian religion as well as the Romantic movement in Europe and America. Finally, I will suggest, through specifics examples in the music, that this Romantic paganism proposes important ecological and ethical perspectives that are relevant in our era of extractivist ecocide.