Medieval chant, heavy metal, and the cynical tradition in Europe.  by Kevin Patrick Fitzgerald.  Mnoty Press, 26 October 2026.

A sketch of resistance

The idea for this paper has been rattling around in my mind for years. My basic argument is that heavy metal culture embraces a cynical attitude regarding the moral path of humanity, and that this attitude has antecedents in medieval liturgical musical practice.

It might sound kind of complex, but it's fairly simple and straight-forward. Cynicism holds that we are on the wrong path. Who 'we' is in this definition is important. Cynicism looks inwardly on a social scale, and calls attention to what we are doing wrong. If we can't do this, the basic approach goes, we can't improve.

When I view the landscape of online discourse, and when I see people's addictions to phones and social media, I get that feeling that we are on a wrong path. Well, I've had that feeling for decades, and the wrongness of our path, and our entrenchment within that path, seems to have intensified.

What is happening today is not all that different from what's happened in the past. After all, it's people all the way down. We have our issues, and sometimes those issues get messy with sandbox fights of one sort or another, and we have to grow and love and suffer and grow some more in order to recognize what is going on inside us, and then be able to share something uplifting with those around us in order to gradually right our path.

The spirit of this cynical approach is largely what fuels metal. The recognition that we are on the wrong path, the willingness to face the truth of suffering associated with that path, and the growth that comes from rituals working through suffering together facilitates the development of a more loving and gracious attitude.

The thing is, most metal fans I've known are really kind and down to earth. Of course there are outliers, and alienation has a strong voice within the metal community, but my point is that it's not really about anger so much as it's about truth.

During the re-unification of Germany in 1989, a thrash metal band called Kreator played a concert in East Berlin. While Europe was embracing the fall of communism and looking forward to the freedom the 'winds of change' would bring, Kreator opened their televised set with the statement from the song 'Some Pain Will Last':

'intense devastation of nature
creating a future for man
the world, sold dirt cheap
for promises no-one could ever keep
there's no hope, just decay
creation leads only to chaos
the seas full of tears they've created
a new kind of pain that lasts forever'

This contrasted to the optimism of the time, and it seems Kreator was largely right. Bringing Eastern Europe into the capitalist economy hasn't been all good. There is room to argue that it's better than it was under the Soviet yoke, but capitalism has it's problems, too. And among those problems are environmental destruction and the suffering of the people who are exploited by the ruling classes.

Medieval monasticism in Europe had a similar bent. Generally, historians focus on European monasticism as very much entrenched within the political-economic system of the day. Families competed for control over territory, and establishing a monastic community on a piece of land helped prevent its seizure by a rival family. Donating children to monastic institutions gave the family leverage within the church structure.

Monasticism was not, in itself, cynical. It was institutionally aligned with the feudal system. It did, however, provide a venue from which cynical voices could be and were heard, and it created a structure of publication whereby those voices could be amplified.

Hildegard of Bingen was a German speaking nun from the Rhineland, and she was a publishing powerhouse. She stood with the Church and against the Holy Roman Empire, and showed a lot of courage while doing so.

While authors such as Otto of Freising were writing and publishing about how great the Empire was, and how righteous its role in the conquest of Jerusalem, and how the emperor was a demonstration of God's will on earth, Hildegard picked up a different literary tradition and wielded it against imperial greed.

One of her key concepts was 'contemptus mundi', which is generally translated as 'contempt for the world', although I prefer Barbara Newman's translation as 'scorn for the world'. Maybe that's just the metal fan in me, but I think Newman's translation speaks to the cynicism of Hildegard and her community with regard to the imperialism with which they were surrounded, and with which they were expected to conform.

Hildegard wrote a bunch of chants, and one called O Ignee Spiritus associates the emperor with Satan.

'Quando autem malum
ad te gladium suum educit,
tu illud in cor illius refringis
sicut in primo perdito angelo fecisti,
ubi turrim superbie illius
in infernum deidcisti'

'And when the Evil One brandishes
his sword against you,
you break it in his own
heart. For so you did
to the first lost angel,
tumbling the tower of his
arrogance to hell.' (Barbara Newman's translation)

First of all, yes, let's straight up say it. These are some very metal lyrics. They would also have been very clearly understood by both the singers and any audience they had.

Hildegard and her monastic sisters mostly did not sing for a human audience, in a sense, but they did sing for and to each other. Sometimes they would participate in a liturgical ceremony of some sort, and they would welcome guests who would get to participate in their services, and sometimes a bishop would stop by, but they mostly sand together.

They sang and they built a spiritual community through singing, and that community worked together to publish a variety of pragmatic books that resisted the contours of the feudal empire.

With the rise of Thomas Aquinas and the new theological conformity that was required of the Church members, Hildegard's work was largely pushed aside. I suspect this is because she was so deeply critical of the imperial influence over chruchly affairs, and that her work contradicted the crusading ideology that later generations refined into colonial ideology.

Still, some people preserved her work, and the work of her colleagues, and this allowed for a revival of appreciation and scholarship on Hildegardian practical wisdom.

Cynicism, in a medieval monastic setting and a post-Cold War heavy metal festival, allows for a vocal shared celebration of a rejection of tyranny and hypocrisy. They both bring the moral impulse to the center of the ritual, and they use music to charge that moral impulse with spiritual substance.

It's important that we preserve and reflect upon such voices. It's important that we do not blindly follow what we've been taught. It's important that we look within and ask how we can do better.

Thank you for reading. I hope you are full of love and joy, in good health, and able to have some kind of special treat, like chocolate covered almonds. Mmm.

Thanks again.

Power to the People

Freedom of the Soul.