I’ve never really been into Heavy Metal but with the upcoming(I hope) release of Brutal Legend and having recently become a metalocolypse fan, I’ve gotten the impression that heavy metal and vikings tends to be rather intertwined.
Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about metal to know where this association comes from, let alone specific music videos(album covers) that establish this. Could someone enlighten me on this? Or point me in the right direction?
I wasn’t aware that it is much more than violence is a theme in both cultures and that there are a lot of metal bands from Scandinavia.
They’re associated with one another because they’re both badass. That might sound silly but it’s basically the answer.
I wouldn’t say they’re all that intertwined. Maybe some Swedish or Norwegian bands. Manowar was a big influence on a lot of these bands, which tells you how serious Viking metal is. Lots of black metal has pagan themes, not strictly Viking themes.
Probably Led Zep’s “Immigrant Song” established the template for Vikings=Hard Rockers. That, and the hairy-chested eschatology of Norse myth could have been pretty much made with album covers in mind. Ahhhhh-ahh-ahhh!
I think it goes back to Led Zeppelin 3, with one of the most arresting openings in all rock music. Led Zep had already explored mixing elements of Fantasy fiction into their lyrics (‘Ramble On’ from Led Zep 2, “'Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor/I met a girl so fair/but Gollum and the Evil One/crept up and stole away with her”), but I think the ‘Immigrant Song’ first brought the idea of Viking warriors to heavy metal.
ETA - I’m proud to be in the company of brilliant thinkers like Scissorjack!!!
I think Led Zeppelin’s influence is much broader than Viking metal.
Didn’t Led Zeppelin write Rio?
The first viking metal bands in the modern sense came out of Scandinavia. It seems likely that the cultural and historical influences there significantly outweigh the influences of any bands from Britain. Quorthon wasn’t thinking of Manowar or Led Zeppelin when he wrote Blood Fire Death.
ETA: None of the early or influential Scandinavian bands ever covered “Immigrant Song”, which suggests that it was not something that had a major effect on their work.
Yeah, as ultrafilter beat me to pointing out, the viking metal genre and the proliferation of Scandinavian bands are surely where the viking references come from. Metalocalypse makes a lot of references that only metal fans will get. I loved how the supermarket in the first episode was called “FINNTROLLS”
best answer ever.
Led Zep may have had a solid basis in the blues, but the rhythem sections of most of your louder metal bands are sadly deficient when it comes to funkiness. Now, seeing as the vikings were just about the whitest people in history…
okay so this is kind of a bit off topic but it does have to do with metal so not entirely. anyway, i went to SXSW and saw the greatest movie ever, Anvil: The Story of Anvil. if Spinal Tap were real, this would be it, i’m pretty sure. check out the trailer. it comes out april 10! i’m definitely going to go see it again in theaters.
Exactly what I came in to post. (Except I was going to say awesome, but badass is better.)
Granted, other groups of people are awesome too, but just not in the same way.
Put on Call of Cthulhu, crank the volume up and forward to 1:25. Now picture the following images and consider how well they fit:
A ninja, walking silently on tip toes.
A samurai, sitting in a hut eating a bowl of rice.
A TOTALLY BADASS VIKING WITH A BRAIDED BEARD AND A HELMET WITH GODDAM HORNS ON IT SLASHING A HUGE BATTLE-AXE
As a child I listened to just your basic pop radio stuff but my mom had a boyfriend who had a few Molly Hatchet records in his collection. Those were awesome. I believe most of them were Frazetta paintings. I was just listening to Flirting with Disaster the other day and I realize that it’s far from metal, but for a kid who was used to Madonna, Cindy Lauper, Culture Club and the like, it seemed like pretty hard stuff. So, probably not the broad answer to your question, but for me, that was my first association of warriors and “heavy music”.
Yngwie Malmsteen’s contribution on the topic (lyrics qualify as “badass Viking imagery”): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOyM2zRS1m8
On second glance, this is pretty cool too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlRPwZjZAjA
There’s an Iron Maiden song called “Invaders” which is about the Vikings attacking the Saxons. It’s on the album Number of the Beast.
That’s a good tune. Now I’m all weepy with nostalgia for my stoned alone teenage time in my room with headphones on chanting “SIX! SIX-SIX! The Number Of The Beast! Hell, and fire, was born to be released!”
Mommy, what’s a Funkadelic?[sup]*[/sup]
[sup]*YouTube link. A very good one, at that.[/sup]
Huh. Should come out on April 11.