Spirituality and Religion in Metal

(This was originally posted on boilercamp.us on 4/28/10)

One counterargument I frequently get against metal music is that it is all "devil music." I would hope that by now we had learned to not generalize things into one statement, but alas, here is my rebuttal.

With anything, there are going to be statistical outliers. Are there some metal bands exclusively about Satan or devil worshiping? Yes, there are, I don't deny that. I think you'd also be surprised to find that for every Satanic band out there, you would find a band that worships whichever God they choose to worship. One such band is The Devil Wears Prada. The song linked there is called "Dogs Can Grow Beards All Over" (they are a band whose song titles have nothing to do with the material of the song), and, believe it or not, there are a couple of particular lines in there I'd like to point out:

Don't be ashamed of your faith

And

Dear Lord - deliver me from hypocrisy and surcease

But, both Satanic bands and deity-worshiping bands (I don't want to use the term Christian, because that would exclude other religions) are special cases. They are a very small sliver of metal. I'd say they only make up 5% of the metal scene.

More often, you will find that bands that do address religion and spirituality promote self-thinking, rather than blindly accepting what is written in various books of faith. I am not here to preach religion or anything like that, but I feel the world would be a better place if people thought for themselves rather than accepting what the Bible, Old Testament, Qur'an, or any other religious text has to say without thinking about the message that is being conveyed and making a decision for themselves.