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the audience, no matter the resignation that the message may convey. How- ever, critical dystopia, as analysed in this article, goes a step further by empha- sising the need for active rebellion and faith in a better future (salvation). An additional hypothesis of this article is that critical dystopia in popular music may have taken over from protest song, a genre that had decayed considerably after the countercultural era. The educational slant of dystopian songs must be em- phasised, intended to alert their audience and make people “learn” what they should think and how they should act, including even who to vote for. They form pedagogical narrations shrouded by the attractive language of popular music. Dystopian rock is neither a religion nor the result of a formal theological sys- tem. It lacks a corpus of unified dogmas and objectives. The apocalypse in rock is the fear of a nuclear war (or comparable environmental disaster), but not of a fatal destiny executed by God. However, from a religious perspective, rock mu- sic plays a key sociological function in this contemporary dialectic, re-enchant- ing and de-secularising the world by means of the semiological recreation of Apocalypse and other fantastic realms. In this interpretive context devastation acts as a metaphor for punishment for social sins, generating a cultural desti- ny. Apocalypse also involves revelation-as-salvation, the final struggle between good and evil, the end of history, and the last rite of passage of humanity. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ania, Gillian, 2007, Apocalypse and Dystopia in Contemporary Italian Writing, in: Gillian, Ania / Cae- sar, Ann H. (eds.), Trends in Contemporary Italian Narrative, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 155–181. Attias, Bernardo A., 2016, Authenticity and Artifice in Rock and Roll: “And I Guess that I Just Don’t Care”, Rock Music Studies 3, 2, 131–147. Bacon, Hannah / Dossett, Wendy / Knowles, Steve (eds.), 2015a, Alternative Salvations. Engaging the Sacred and the Secular, London / New York: Bloomsbury. Bacon, Hannah / Dossett, Wendy / Knowles, Steve, 2015b, Introduction, in: Bacon, Hannah / Dossett, Wendy / Knowles, Steve (eds.), 2015a, Alternative Salvations. Engaging the Sacred and the Sec- ular, London / New York: Bloomsbury, 1–7. Bendle, Mervyn F., 2005, The Apocalyptic Imagination and Popular Culture, The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 11, 1. Berger, James, 2000, Introduction. Twentieth-Century Apocalypse: Forecasts and Aftermaths, Twentieth Century Literature 46, 4, 387–95. Buckland, Peter D., 2016, When All Is Lost: Thrash Metal, Dystopia, and Ecopedagogy, International Journal of Ethics Education 1, 2, 145–154. Burns, Gary, 2014, Trouble Comin’ Every Day, Rock Music Studies 1, 1, 1–2. Calhoun, Scott (ed.), 2018, U2 and the Religious Impulse. Take Me Higher, London: Bloomsbury Academic. Campos, Javier, 2016, New Gods, New Shrines. Identity and De-secularization Processes in Young Followers of Celtic Music, in: Kärjä, Antti-Ville / Kärki, Kimi (eds.), Holy Crap! Selected Essays on the Intersections of the Popular and the Sacred in Youth Cultures, Turku: International Institute for Popular Culture, 15–24. Apocalypse as Critical Dystopia in Modern Popular Music | 91www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 69–94