Page - 81 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/02

Heavy Metal Bricolage | 81www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/2, 65–85 (art-as-religion), just as there are no urban landscapes in most black metal sensibilities. In some cases, the critical reception of American Romanticists, Transcendentalists, leads bands to frame their modern ecological concerns with matching visual conceptions of nature and spirituality:60 nature is emp- ty and vast, and infinity or divinity are located within this finite nature.61 Both music videos utilize the iconography of empty nature and both com- municate religious images through “archetypal” images, in this instance less through religious iconography and more by way of “religionized” imagery. But the staging of a familiar austere nature is nevertheless varied, with the human figures of the band put in relation to this nature differently (fig. 5 and 6). Venom Prison stand out against the horizon line, above the camera view; Uada, masked and depersonalized, blur into the landscape. Their silhouettes and the mountainous skyline merge. When we put these shots next to each other (see fig. 1–2; 5–6), we see the differing camera angles. The low angle in Asura’s Dream raises the verticality of its nature shots, while the high angle in Cult of a Dying Sun keeps the viewer dis- tanced. Isolation and mythification are mediated through nature in Asura’s Realm, but nature itself is not an entity, unlike in Cult of a Dying Sun. In the case of Venom Prison’s allegorical motif of sacrifice, the embedding in nature is a consequence of the preceding notion of ritual. Ritual as a motif seems incompatible with any form of modernity or urbanity, and nature is therefore the required backdrop. Here we find two different scene traditions, fed by two different outlooks, one inward-facing, philosophical and misanthropic, and the other political and focused on interpersonal dynamics. The incorporation of nature reflects these differing propositions. Conclusion The religious content of an image or bricolage can be manufactured through culturally learned aesthetic choices. The modus of transgression mostly re- jects non-blasphemous repetition of hegemonic religions and their symbols. Heavy metal and, as we have seen, extreme metal have developed a visual language which reuses religious images according to its own tradition. This 60 Pöhlmann 2012, 269. 61 Schleiermacher 1878.