Death and The Metal

Metal Oda and the Classical Music Clinic met once again on Clubhouse, exploring the subject of “Death” in heavy metal and in classical music.  The subject of death is a popular one in music and literature and as the two best music clubs in their specific genres, we have come up with rich and deep content from different composers and metal bands.

The title of the show is after Schubert String Quartet No.14  “Death and The Maiden”. The Classical Music Clinic was hosted by my friend Maxwell Krem as usual and our joint show was made of the following three sections and we have alternated the genres of heavy metal and classical while listening:

1) Death and The Musician

Pieces dealing with the subject of Death:

-Schubert String Quartet No. 14 ‘Death and the Maiden’

-Schubert: ‘Der Erlkönig’

-Saint-Saëns : ‘Danse Macabre’

-Berlioz: scherzo (movt 4) from Symphonie Fantastique

-Bruckner, Symphony 9, movt 3 excerpt, “farewell to life”

Franz Schubert  (1797-1828) composed the String Quartet No. 14 “Death and the Maiden”  in 1824 after a very serious illness which almost killed him. The quartet is named after a poem by Matthias Claudius in which Death invites a young girl into the comfort of his arms.  The Erlkönig, a Lied by the same composer, is after Goethe’s poem “Erlking” or “The Alder-King”.  The Elf-king is a sinister elf in European folklore who haunts and kills children in the woods. The poem tells the tale of a father travelling with his sick boy on a horse looking for a cure. The Erlkönig however haunts the boy, appears to him in his hallucinations and finally takes his life. The composition is a triumphant musical painting. The musical tone and structure of Schubert’s compositions are parallel with their stories.

(The Erlkönig by painter Julius Von Lever)

The tone poem of ‘Danse Macabre’ by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) is based on an old French superstition. Danse Macabre in art is explained further in this article. Legend says that Death appears at midnight every year on Halloween and calls the dead from their graves to dance for him. Dressing as skeletons and wearing masks on Halloween has its roots in All Hallow’s Eve, that is the Halloween. The purpose of wearing masks is to hide the face of the living from Death.

Listening to Bruckner Symphony 9 movt3 “farewell to life”, we have learned that Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) was a little fellow obsessed with Death and that he would take pleasure from attending funerals.

The fourth movement of Symphony Fantastique by Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) is the ‘March to the Scaffold’, and describes the chopping of the heads via music!

 

2) Requiem music

-Mozart: “Dies Irae”  and “Lacrimosa”

-Verdi Requiem: “Libera me “

A requiem or a mass for  the dead is a Mass of the Catholic Church offered for the repose of the soul of the deceased person. Its finest examples were given by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901). One of my favorite requiems is the one by Benjamin Britten, the War Requiem (1961-1962) commissioned to Britten to mark the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, the original structure of which was destroyed in a WW II bombing raid.

We have listened to Dies Irae (Judgement Day) and Lacrimosa (Teardrops-weeping) sections from Mozart’s famous Requiem and Libera Me (Free Me) from Verdi’s.

 3) Dark music:

-Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)  Cello Sonata Op. 25, No. 3

-Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881): Pictures at an Exhibition; The Old Castle by Andres Segovia

-Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) The  Swan of Tuonela.  The music paints a transcendental image of a mystical black swan floating through the Tuonela, the realm of the dead in Finnish Mythology. This tone poem by Sibelius is one of the finest examples written for the cor anglais, which is the voice of the swan. The Kalevala epic and  the subject of Tuonela were covered in detail in the article by Metal Oda: Tuonela, from Amorphis to Sibelius.

Fun remark: All composers of classical music genre are dead.

A few words on Death to start: Death in art is more than a morbid fascination; it serves the purpose of harnessing death, a shocking reality we do not understand and are afraid to face. Writing about death, singing songs about death like the death metal bands do, normalizes and sort of mocks it. This mockery makes us accept this inevitable end awaiting all of us. We are fascinated by darkness and violence: remember all the people who gather to see a car accident for example or the rating reality shows make. Brutality is written in our DNA: remember people who gathered in the arenas to watch the incredibly violent battle of the gladiators. These battles usually ending with the death of one party and severed limbs. Remember the TV series such as The Vikings, Spartacus and the Game of Thrones: all the violent scenes about death (i.e The Red Wedding). Or how the violent death of the evil characters such as Ramsay Bolton and Joffrey Baratheaon left us smiling and with satisfaction.

Death metal and its subgenres such as death- doom deal with this sort of extreme music: therefore this extreme music needs extreme lyrics.  According to the notorious Marilyn Manson whose name is composed of two contrasting figures, Marilyn Monroe representing absolute beauty  and Charles Manson, representing pure evil, responsable for the murder of one pregnant Sharon Tate in 1969, beautiful actress and then, wife of Roman Polanski. Marilyn Manson who is one of the most controversial figures in rock and metal (and whom I believe is a victim) thinks that in our fascination by death and by accidents there is an erotic element: we enjoy danger, extreme sports, motorcycles, speed and we take pleasure from danger. The bands and artists in heavy metal, especially in black and death metal are very often blamed with Satanism: corpse paint, the violent music and lyrics add to this image. But it is very surprising to know that most artists in the field have faith and that they are religious. So if your children enjoy metal, let them. It is not a bad influence and remember that even certain songs of  The Beatles and of Elvis were considered as immoral or a bad influence. Let me add that metal bands who take inspiration from cannibalism, extreme violence and racism are beyond the scope of Metal Oda: I never give credit to them in any Metal Oda social media account nor play their music in my shows.

Here are my selections from the sad and deep music  of death metal bands, death-doom being  my fave subgenre with its slow tempo, pessimistic mood (funeral doom – gothic metal) and dark ambient aspects, which I believe bears lots of similarities to classical music.

1) Rioghan – Breath (Gothic and progressive Finnish project).

The lyrics are about death and the last breath:

Breathe towards the end

The heartbeat stops

We’re done by now

Waiting all my life for this conclusion

Waiting all my life for it to end

Don’t we always live with the sensation of waiting for something to happen?

2) Mors Principium Est – Apprentice of Death (Finnish Melodic Death)

Mors Principium Est in Latin means “Death is the beginning.” Lyrics from the Apprentice of Death go like:

This is the road to doom

Black wings of death surround me

It is our time to die

We will all finally realize
Our destiny is to fade into extinction

These lyrics are the summary of the philosophy of death metal.

3) Opeth- Death Whispered a Lullaby (Progressive death metal)

The wonderful song is from their album Damnation bearing the mark of Steven Wilson. This is a relatively short Opeth song and I like how they paint a landscape with their lyrics:

Out on the road there are fireflies circling
Deep in the woods, where the lost souls hide
Over the hill there are men returning
Trying to find some peace of mind

Sleep my child

Under the fog there are shadows moving
Don’t be afraid, hold my hand
Into the dark there are eyelids closing
Buried alive in the shifting sands

All of your life all your memories
Go to your dreams, forget it all

Sleep my child

Keys usually in minor, eery and sometimes creepy sounding unusual chords, sad but beautiful music.

4) Aether Realm – Death  (American Melodic Death Metal).

Before diving into the music let’s explain briefly the Tarot Cards. I made an entire show on AR’s Tarot last year, dealing with the 12 Tarot Cards. The tracks bear the names of Tarot Cards like The Fool, The Tower, The Devil, The Magician and Death. In total there are 78 cards in the Tarot deck. Tarot was used in the occult and for divination and it still is. Taraux is a Freanch word with roots in Tarh in Arabic  meaning to leave or to extract)

22  cards are known as The Major Arcana (great mysteries) and 56 cards are The Minor Arcana which is the ancestor of our today’s playing cards with wands, cups, swords and pentacles.

The most  fearsome card of the Tarot deck is Death but it is does not signify death, only change. You  might be surprised to learn that it is the most positive card of the Tarot deck. This powerful card shows that an episode in life ends yielding to the start of a new one. In order to open a new door, we have to shut the previous one, leaving  the past behind  to embrace the future, the change and the transformation. To create a new self, one must kill the old one embacing the change even when afraid to do so. The card emphasizes that one shouldn’t resist changing situations.  On the tarot card we see Death in full armor, mounted on a beautiful white horse. The armor makes him invincible and the white horse signifies the purification coming with death.   Under the horse’s hoof are dead people from every level of the social order: a king, a fool, a peasant reminding us that death will take us all without any distinction between the rich and the poor, race, gender or status.

He feels numb lost in time
Hears whispers of a world in an endless night
But he won’t miss the life he had
If this is really death then it’s not so bad (embrace the change!!)

Fed to the crows, they picked my bones
And left my body to decay at the whipping post
I can still see the blood running through my hands
And if I had another chance to live I think I’d rather be dead

 5) Katatonia – Dead Letters  (Swedish progressive doom metal)

One my fave bands in the genre, let’s look closer at the lyrics of Dead Letters by Katatonia with its pitch black lyrics like a cold and rainy autumn day.

Vexation
Internal void
My dreams are getting darker and darker

This life before me
Its blood runs so still
The call of the bird
The song that makes the hours go

6) Metallica – Creeping Death

I made an entire show on the greatest American thrash metal band celebrating 38 years of Ride the Lightning album. The show is available as a podcast on Clubhouse Metal Oda. Creeping Death is from this wonderful album dating from 1984: a detailed review about the art and literature on Ride the Lightning is available for reading at metaloda.com.  This  show would be incomplete without mentioning  Creeping Death.

Creeping Death is the Angel of Death sent over Ancient Egypt by God to end the suffering of the Sons of Israel. It is one of the ten plagues: water turning into blood, frog infestation, lice infestation, flies infestation, pestilence of live stock, boils, hail, locust infestation, darkness of 3 days and finally death of the firstborn by the hand of the angel of death.Israelites are told to mark their doors with lamb’s blood to keep the angel of death from entering their houses. From the slaves to the Pharoah, every firstborn son will die including the animals, that is to punish The Pharoah torturing the hebrews. The Exodus of the Israeli people follow, with their leader Moses, they will journey to Mount Sinai crossing the Red Sea (sea of reeds) where Moses is going to receive the Ten Commandments. Devoted listeners of Clubhouse Metal Oda would remember my show on Exodus by Shokran, dealing with the same subject.

Slaves hebrew  born to serve, to the pharaoh live in fear
So let it be written
So let it be done
I’m sent here by the chosen one
To kill the first born pharaoh son
I’m creeping death

And the famous Die By My Hand!!

7) Draconian- Death Come Near Me (Swedish Gothic/Doom Metal)

Not much to tell the lyrics speak for themselves.

By day I sleep, at night I weep!

O Death, come near me!
Be the one for me, be the one who stays.
In sadness I’m veiled, to the cross I am nailed,
O Death, come near me,
save me from this empty, cold world!
I this world of pain I am better of dead!
Give me love, or give me… death!

O Death, come near me!
I have summoned you!

 

8) Swallow The Sun – The Void  (Finnish Death/Doom)  

“Moonflowers” by Swallow The Sun was the best metal album according  to Metal Oda in 2021, with is full classical version. A very detailed review of Moonflowers is available for reading here at metaloda.com. SS are going to be here in İstanbul on October the 23rd.

The void
Sinks into my heart
The void
Anchors to my arms
The voice
Echoes through the stars
The voice
Cries out through the scars

Gabriel, lay your eyes on me
Lay me down
To the hallowed ground

 9) Devin Townsend- The Funeral (Art Rock to Progressive Metal)

Devin’s Funeral is written after an incident which shocked him as a teenager. His schoolmate Jesse was brutally killed (stabbed) by a group of kids in 1992. The Funeral is about the funeral of Jesse and it was the first experience of death by Devin. A detailed review on Townsend’s latest single Moonpeople is here on metaloda.com.

 Jesus, here lies my brother
Tortured and blown
Stretch for the heavens and go
…I watch him go
Here it comes

And this one’s for the life
This one’s for the funeral in the rain
And if only for tonight
This one’s for the funeral in the rain

 10) Antimatter – Epitaph  (UK Dark Rock-Gothic Rock) 

The title speaks for itself. Antimatter ‘s music is so dark, if you listen to much you might wish for death. King Crimson’s classic  Epitaph on the other hand is about  the fear the future brings.

11) Moribund Oblivion – Soil  (Black Metal)

“Soil” from the Black Metal band Moribund Oblivion from my land is about the soil we shall return to when we are dead. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Meaning that from ashes we rise and will turn to dust.  It is about the lifecycle and a reminder of our mortality.  Memento Mori (remember that you have to die)  in art is about the ineavitability of death: the common motif used is the skull.

A scientist friend of mine once said that our most stable as a living organism in the universe is when dead. Interesting to know that when we die, we are completely recycled. This incredible living organism, the human body decomposes perfecly and all the steps of the decomposition are already encoded in our DNA.  We thus turn into the essential elements exist in our universe. As cosmologist and astrophysicist  Carl Sagan once said  the nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff. Ashes to ashes dust to dust. The details of the decomposition process are nasty and the course decomposition and decay process is different when on land or in water: this reminded me of a wonderful song by the postblack metal band Harakiri For the Sky, “Lungs full of water”.,

12) Sakis Tollis – Among The Fires of Hell (Black Metal)

I believe Sakis’s album is one of the best works of 2022.  Sakis Tollis is one of the founders of the Greek black metal band Rotting Christ:  the name Rotting Christ draws the attention to the fact that all religions are rotting because they cannot conform to the life and necessities of the modern man. Even the Pope himself admitted the fact that heaven and hell do not exist. In the song, the description of hell is reminiscent of hell from the movie Constantine by Keanu Reeves.

13) Poets of the Fall- Requiem for the Harlequin   Finnish Symphonic and alternative rock

This is a requiem for the harlequin

Here’s to the fall of man

Fame to dust, fortune to sand

Speaking of the Requiems by famous composers such as Mozart, Verdi, Berlioz, Britten, let’s add that a Requiem is a mass for the dead, requies meaning “to rest” in latin. “Dona eis requiem aeternam” means grant them eternal rest, peace and quiet. A Requiem ends with the “Amen” section, like the Stabat Mater works from various composers.

The dark and morbid names of the bands in the genre are very meaningful. Good examples are Death, The Haunted, Dead Congregation, Dark Funeral, Rotting Christ, Swallow the Sun, The Lurking Fear, Blind Guardian, Funeral, November’s Doom, Obituary and Anubis Gate. Anubis for example is a powerful symbol of death: Anubis is the god of death, mummification, embalming, the afterlife, cemeteries, tombs, and the Underworld (Duat), in ancient Egyptian religion, usually depicted as a canine (jackal) or a man with a canine head. He is not evil. Anubis was depicted in black, a color that symbolized regeneration, life, the soil of the Nile River, and the discoloration of the corpse after embalming.  Anubis is the weigher of the heart: he decides whether a soul would be allowed to enter the realm of the dead.

And finally a little word about Danse Macabre: the artform of Danse Macabre or the Dance of Death is the outcome of the Plague pandemic  or  The Black Death, which traumatised humanity in the Late Middle Ages. (Macabre as a word has the meaning of sinister and concerned with death). The “Danse Macabre” is the dead dancing along the grave, with all representatives of the social order such as kings or peasants. It is terrifying and was produced as Memento Mori, to remind men of the fragility of their lives. A good example in classical music is “Danse Macabre” by Camille Saint –Saëns and as for heavy metal, “Dance of Death” by Iron Maiden and “Dance Macabre” by Ghost.

Of course these selections are not the only ones dealing with the subject of Death, but considering the limited time of our show, Maxwell and I tried to select the best examples of these two different music genres. I enjoyed very much preparing this joint show with the Classical Music Clinic, and remember that the whole show is available as a podcast on Clubhouse Metal Oda.

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