Hello to everyone, the Bizarre Blog is coming at you again with a new chapter of our musical journey. We had some fun in fantastical lands last time, so this time, I've decided to take a sharper turn into a darker shade of the world. In particular "combat" or "war" music - it's sadly a fact of life and has been for as long as humans have been the dominant species on the planet. Music has been a cornerstone of culture for as long as human society has existed, long before written language could ever record anything. Music has always been a way of understanding the world around us and a way to retell the stories of our history and as war has been ever present in our past and as something that conjures so many strong emotions in us all, war has been and will almost certainly continue to be a recurring theme in music. So that's what I want to talk about this time. Don't worry, I won't be going into gritty detail, just an acknowledgement of what's out there.
For such a topic, trying to delve into the full, detailed history of war-themed music would be a Herculean task as this is something that dates back to the dawn of civilization. To put it briefly though, in a vain that inspired the fantasy bards we talked about last time, as fantasy is at the end of the day an extrapolation of reality and a metaphor for the world around us, music has been used to commemorate historical events and retell heroic tales. Old word-of-mouth tales have existed since time immemorial and with the dawn of classical music, more epic and grandiose compositions have been made to immortalize epic battles.
Let's well and truly begin our journey in the 20th century, with the advent of recorded music. This happened to also be one of the most turbulent centuries in human history. After both world wars had ended and the cold war was in full swing, memories of the difficult past few decades were still fresh in the minds of most and if that wasn't enough, the extreme tensions between the global superpowers weren't making things any better. This tension had even boiled over into further local wars in Vietnam and Korea, where the ideologies would clash in full force. If all that wasn't enough, the danger of mutually assured destruction by the hands of nuclear weapons loomed over all. Young people were understandably feeling very uncertain about their future. This naturally boiled over into pop culture and during the 60s, 70s and 80s, plenty of anti-war music was made, the young generation venting their frustrations and trying to coerce the powers that be to search for peace. The hippie movement and "Summer of Love" during the 60s were a notable aspect of this phenomenon.
As the 70s turned into the 80s, heavy metal had formed into it's own true entity and was making a name for itself on the world stage. With it's love of taboo topics and darker subject matter, a lot of the greatest heavy metal bands have been blessing us with bombastic songs about war and historical battles.
At around the same time, another genre was taking shape, an abrasive counterculture designed to go against the profound prog rock of the 60s, shave off the excess and return rock music to its roots - punk rock. With its fast tempos, aggressive sound and love of socio-political topics, war was a natural fit for punks to sing about, especially given the climate of the time.
In the early 80s, the darkness of heavy metal and aggression of punk rock were beginning to coalesce, form something new that combined both and dawned a whole new era for metal and heavy music as a whole. This was thrash metal. An extremely angry, fast and heavy style with blistering lyrics about powerful and difficult topics, serenaded by amazing musicianship and unstoppable energy. For it's time, thrash was the heaviest music in the world, and even to this day, the energy is unparalleled. And being born from metal and punk, war was one of the favourite topics of thrash bands to scream about. The hectic violence of a battlefield was unfolded before us in musical form like never before, the shredding riffs whizzing by like bullets, the rapid fire drums booming like artillery fire, you really felt like you were in the trenches now!
A special shoutout has to go to German thrash kings Sodom, who have dedicated a large chunk of their discography to warfare specifically. Their blistering speed, brutal riffage and Tom Angelripper's raspy voice make for one of the most brutal and unforgiving depictions of a battlefield ever recorded.
But to this day, thrash metal remains enthralled with the brutal allure of battle. Military gear like camo pants, combat boots and bullet belts have even become staples of thrash fashion (and by extension metal fashion as a whole).
Along that line, thrash metal's brutal descendant death metal serves to take the heaviness and aggression and push them to their absolute limits. Naturally, a lot of lyrical themes remained and war is definitely one of them. Death metal bands sought to depict the brutality of warfare and the unspeakable horrors endured by soldiers in full gruesome detail, nothing spared.
Likewise, the other main branch of extreme metal, black metal, also didn't forget the lessons of thrash. The impenetrable darkness and dense evil atmosphere lends itself well to present a completely new take on the horrors of warfare. Dense with brutality and nihilistic in tone, black metal war songs will definitely convince you how evil war is and why it shouldn't happen. A special shoutouts need to go to the new wave of black metal bands themed around WW1, capturing a fantastic rendition of the war to end all wars. There is even a whole subgenre of black metal called war metal, which is a more aggressive form of the genre that takes elements of death metal too and of course is often themed around war.
Lightening up for a bit, the melodic and soaring power metal also touches on war from time to time. Here the battles are portrayed in a more romanticized light, less focused on the grim violence and instead on the honour of sacrifice and epic glory of battle. And no better example exists than a little band from Falun, Sweden - Sabaton! They have devoted their entire discography to singing about history and a lot of that is war related. They wear camo, they have tanks and anti-air guns on stage and they are one of the best bands ever!
And it isn't just metal of course that deals with war so much. As mentioned before, there's plenty of classical music about historical battles out there, epic symphonies for the glorious moments of yore.
And as I usually do, I just have to shoutout some soundtracks from video games dealing with war. Man, these capture all kinds of atmospheres so well - whether it be glory and honour in heroic combat or horrific bloodshed on the frontlines, these compositions will transport you to some other place. Whether you really want to be there, well, that's for you to decide.
War is sadly something humanity has had to endure for a long time and if there is anything positive to take away from this, it's that these experiences made us stronger people and they served as inspiration for so much quality art. Hopefully sooner rather than later, the world can find peace and like in Star Trek, we can start exploring the universe and ourselves and focusing on bigger, better things. Until then, we can at least explore the breadth of creativity around us. So I hope I inspired you to do this with this blog. As always, all the great battle hymns above are also in the respective playlist and you can use it to explore further. March forth and conquer!
spotify:playlist:44foy4GiBYiXX3n46sJ7ov
