Page - 73 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/02

Heavy Metal Bricolage | 73www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/2, 65–85 certain style of music, yet tendencies are emerging that clearly differentiate certain styles from others.33 The same motifs can appear in different combi- nations and with different functions at the level of meaning in several metal styles. Black metal shares a basic aesthetic structure with death metal, from which it emerged, although satanic content and iconography are considered identity markers of black metal. In both, desaturated colours and black-and- white images are dominant. In both, misty forests and ruins can be found repeatedly, be they urban ruins or archaic castle ruins, abandoned chapels or cemeteries. At the Gates’s Kingdom Gone,34 Therion’s Pandemonium Outbreak35 and Morgoth’s Sold Baptism36 are all examples of a differentiated bricolage in contemporary black metal. These examples have the aforementioned el- ements but apart from general references to death, they do not have any religious motifs. Elements of (various) religious contexts may belong “to the fixed repertoire of the representation of black metal bands”, but this intensive preoccupation with religious material is in contrast to the rejection of reli- gious traditions, especially monotheism and religion in its institutionalized forms.37 The nature motif presents an opportunity for the romantic landscape to embody not only loneliness, but also the human–nature relationship. Far away from civilization, images of masculinity which recur to the types of the archaic warrior and the hermit are constructed through the context of nature.38 In black metal especially, nature serves as a staging space for loneliness and archaism. Contemporary metal bands, which follow in a certain black metal genealogy, from blackgaze to doom metal, often use nature in their music videos. This nature may be spiritually enhanced (the archaic space then serves as a ritual space), and references to transcen- dentality may be created through an overwhelming landscape. Good con- 33 In addition, in the extreme metal subgenres of death metal or black metal, innovation is also valued as a sign of authenticity. The tendency to follow tradition always clashes with the need to differentiate. 34 Kingdom Gone (At the Gates, unknown, 1994). 35 Pandemonium Outbreak (Therion, unknown, 1992). 36 Sold Baptism (Morgoth, unknown, 1991). 37 Höpflinger 2010, 217. 38 Leichsenring 2011; Richard/Grünwald 2011, 45–47. They refer here in particular to Immor- tal’s Blashyrkh (Mighty Ravendark) (1994) as the foundation of further depictions of nature in this respect in black metal.