# Literary influences on metal



## Batrider (Jun 11, 2009)

I know the subject has been discussed before on this board, but a quick browse of older topics didn't bring up any threads specifically dedicated to it. Metalheads read a lot of the same stuff. Here are two writers that should be obvious:

* J.R.R. Tolkien
* H.P. Lovecraft

The former's influence can be seen in band names like Gorgoroth, Uruk-Hai, Ohtar, and Isengard while lyrically and thematically, he has influenced bands like Summoning and Burzum (also a somewhat indirect name reference). The latter has influenced artists like Morbid Angel, Therion, and Samael, as well as even the most mainstream of all, Metallica; there are also tons of bands out there with names like "Cthulhu" and "Shoggoth."

I've noticed that Tolkien gets a warm reception from both power metal and black metal while Lovecraft seems to be beloved mainly by death metal. Tolkien's stories are the closest thing the West has to a modern mythology and I think power metal bands use them for cheesy heroic effect while black metal bands (usually) use them for their emphasis on a pre-industrial (and fundamentally anti-liberal) world. Lovecraft, on the other hand, was the master of indescribable horror removed from morality; entities and concepts outside of humanity's normal frame of reference are right at home with death metal.
Who are some other fiction writers that have had a direct and perceivable influence on the development of metal and why?


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## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

Everybody who contributed to the Bible have immeasurably influenced metal, if not sewn the seeds of it's creation.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Argus said:


> Everybody who contributed to the Bible have immeasurably influenced metal, if not sewn the seeds of it's creation.


I guess that makes Moses the first metal-head.


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## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

Lukecash12 said:


> I guess that makes Moses the first metal-head.


I was thinking more the people who made up the stories and compiled them into that big book over the years. Inverted crosses, the Devil, 666, fallen angels, four horsemen etc all comprise a lot of the imagery and lyrical content associated with metal. I haven't read the Bible all the way through so I'm not sure if goats heads and pentagrams are featured in it's pages.

Think of anything in the Bible and there is probably a band or album with that name. Leviathan, Behemoth, Judas Iscariot and so on. Then there's book inspired by the Bible. Paradise Lost, Dante's Inferno or whatever.

And if the OP cites Tolkien, then naturally the historic Nordic and Saxon sagas that Tolkien used as a basis for lots of his work must have filtered into metal.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

You haven't read all of it?..... Them's fighting words  But I can assure you there are no pentagrams and goat heads thrust into in the paper.


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## James clerk (Jan 28, 2010)

Anyone who wrote about dragons, fire, gods, dragons of fire, dragon of gods or fire of gods influenced them because all the ****ing lyrics talk about that.


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