Christian death metal or life metal is a subgenre that blends death metal music with Christian metal. It is defined by death metal’s musical style combined with Christian-themed lyrics, performed by bands whose members identify as Christians. Musically, it remains indistinguishable from traditional death metal, characterized by heavy guitar riffs, blast beats, and guttural vocals. However, the lyrics set it apart, often focusing on Christian concepts such as demons, sin, self and self-denial, divine judgment, and apocalypse. The imagery in Christian death metal frequently mirrors or contrasts with that found in secular death metal, which often deals with violent, gory, or anti-Christian themes. Because of this, some critics view Christian death metal as an oxymoron or a surprising juxtaposition, and it has faced resistance from both secular death metal fans and some within the Christian community.
Christian death metal proper formed in the late-1980s to the mid-1990s through the outputs of Mortification, Vomitorial Corpulence, and Paramaecium in Australia, Opprobrium, Living Sacrifice, and Crimson Thorn in the United States, Sympathy in Canada, and the early work of Antestor in Norway. In the same period, the Christian thrash metal bands Vengeance Rising, Sacrament, and Believer, all from the United States, also included elements of death metal. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Norway's Extol, Finland's Immortal Souls and Deuteronomium, Sweden's Pantokrator, Germany's Sacrificium, Ukraine's Holy Blood, the United States' Embodyment, Feast Eternal, Possession, Aletheian, Becoming the Archetype, and Tortured Conscience, and Brazil's Antidemon emerged to further develop the genre. In the 2000s, the metalcore bands Underoath, As I Lay Dying, Norma Jean, and Demon Hunter all received labels of Christian death metal, and were some of the leading bands in the general hard rock market. In the latter half of the 2000s, Impending Doom (from the United States) and Blood Covenant (from India) have joined the forefront of Christian death metal.
Background
Death metal
Characteristics Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music that features fast, distorted, down-tuned, and sometimes palm-muted guitar instrumentation, growled and screamed vocals, and hyper-fast, blast beat drumming. Death metal lyrics typically feature graphic, sometimes pornographic and misogynistic, themes of violence, gore, disease, and death;; ; ; Satanic, blasphemous, and anti-Christian content;; or, to a lesser extent, war, apocalypse, social and philosophical concerns,; and esotericism and spiritualism. The growled vocal style has been identified for contributing to death metal's relative lack of popularity as a music style.
History Death metal emerged as a genre during the mid 1980s, primarily out of thrash metal. In the early to mid 1980s, the European bands Venom, Bathory, Celtic Frost (and its predecessor Hellhammer), Sodom, Destruction, and Kreator performed a more intense style of heavy metal music that set sonic and lyrical templates for the thrash, black, and death metal genres.; ; ; ; The American band Slayer also influenced the rise of death metal, featuring graphic lyrics dealing with death, dismemberment, war, and the horrors of hell.; ; However, the California band Possessed, which formed in 1983, is considered to have released first true death metal recording, Seven Churches, in 1985.; Contemporary with Possessed, the band Death was formed in 1983 in Florida by Chuck Schuldiner, Kam Lee, and Rick Rozz. Inspired by the Floridian act Nasty Savage, they took the sound of Nasty Savage and deepened it. It was called "the first true death metal record" by the San Francisco Chronicle. Schuldiner is widely recognized as the "Father of Death Metal". Along with Possessed and Death, other pioneers of death metal include Obituary, Malevolent Creation, Monstrosity, Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, and Post Mortem.
Christian metal
Characteristics Christian metal is not a solitary style of music, but rather an ideological umbrella term that comprises every subgenre of heavy metal music, from hard rock to black metal. A unique factor is that Christian metal bands typically base their lyrics on Judeo-Christian traditions. AllMusic writes that Christian metal is "gospel music's hard rock". While not as hard as most heavy metal, "it still has many of its trademarks, particularly loud guitars, bombastic riffs, long solos, and pseudo-operatic vocals." According to the website, most bands fall somewhere between arena rock and pop metal, with the exception of some heavier bands. Author Michael Heatley notes, however, that Christian metal exists within most of the subgenres of metal. Jussi Lahtonen of the Finnish punk and metal zine Sue similarly states that Christian metal encompasses every metal subgenre.
The lyrics can be explicitly Christian theological topics, or else approaching other social or cultural issues from a Christian perspective. Some emphasize the positive aspects of faith matters while others iterate the teachings of Christ. Some bands keep their message hidden in metaphors. A minority take an aggressive attitude towards those who speak against Christianity, preaching "fire and brimstone" and "Old Testament Wrath of God" back at extreme Satanists. References to eschatology and apocalyptic themes, particularly the ongoing spiritual warfare between good and evil, as well as the Last Judgment and fall from grace are typical. For many Christian metal artists, evangelism and proselytizing are major goals, alongside creating a space for alternative expressions of the Christian faith.
History Christian metal has its origins in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the Jesus movement, a hippie movement with Christian ideology consisting of hippies who converted to Christianity. The Christian hippies within this movement, known as "Jesus People", developed a musical movement called Jesus music. It primarily began in southern California when hippie street musicians converted to Christianity. These musicians continued playing the same styles of music they had played before converting, among them heavy metal music, though they infused their lyrics with a Christian message. The first Christian hard rock group was possibly the California-based band Agape, formed in the late 1960s. Known for their psychedelic rock and blues influences, the band released two albums in the early 1970s. In the 1970s, Resurrection Band and Barnabas, from the United States, Daniel Band, from Canada, and the Swedish group Jerusalem emerged as Christian metal hard rock groups. Kris Klingensmith of Barnabas explained that "since Christian musicians have always copied the trends and styles initiated by their secular counterparts, 'Christian metal' was unavoidable. If you want to know what Christian music will be doing tomorrow, all you need to do is see what the secular guys are doing today." In 2002, Barry Alfonso attributed the emergence of a Christian music industry that stylistically parallels mainstream secular music – including styles such as lounge, hardcore punk, and death metal – to a combination of how Christian fundamentalism interacts with society and an envy of mass media's ability to reach large audiences. He also attributed it to Christian creatives appreciating mainstream music, TV, and pop music, but desiring more substantial Christian content in those mediums.
In the 1980s, Christian metal bands closely followed the trends of mainstream heavy metal bands. The American band Stryper, formed in 1983, was the first band to identify as Christian metal and gained attention for throwing Bibles to the audience at their concerts. In the beginning, it was mostly Christians who went to Stryper's concerts. Soon, they attracted a mainstream, non-Christian audience. Their third studio album, To Hell with the Devil, was a landmark of the mainstream glam metal movement. It reached No. 32 on the Billboard 200 and was certified Platinum by the RIAA for reaching 1 million copies, eventually breaking into the 2 million mark. The band's music videos were on regular rotation on MTV throughout the decade. Stryper was popular on tour, reaching millions of fans in the secular market. By 1987, there were more than a hundred Christian metal bands, and their records were sold at both Christian bookstores and non-Christian retails. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Christian metal reached its peak in popularity. In a 2016 retrospective, Classic Rock wrote that "For almost every sub-genre of heavy music there's an inferior Christian version playing the church circuit... ...That's Stryper's fault, basically."
In the early 1990s, the rising musical styles, especially grunge, began to take their places as major styles in the mainstream. This resulted in much of heavy metal, particularly glam metal, losing popularity and going underground for a decade.; Many Christian metal musicians began to play extreme metal, and soon death metal replaced thrash metal in popularity. Audiences in many underground metal scenes began favoring more extreme sounds while disparaging the popular styles.; As with other glam metal acts of the time, Stryper lost popularity and split up in 1993.
Characteristics
Peculiarity Given the typical subject matter and musical style of death metal, Christian death metal has been considered an incongruous combination, being labeled a "bizarre beast", an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, and the least likely musical development at the close of the 20th century. Author Larry Eskridge remarked that the existence of "a Christian version of so-called death metal" is in-and-of-itself surprising. Alexander Kiryushkin of Ultimate Guitar similarly stated regarding the goregrind act Vomitorial Corpulence: "Christian. Gore-grind. It is not supposed to go together and yet it does." Sabatino DiBernardo writes that when "Christian death metal" became just another subgenre of metal, two seemingly contrary spheres ironically co-mingle: a previously "demonic" noise becomes "transubstantiated miraculously into salvific Christian music." In the early 1990s as Mortification were releasing death metal albums, some Christians felt that death metal was not appropriate for Christians. In response, some fans of the scene started calling the music "life metal". Crimson Thorn also disliked it being labeled death metal or grindcore, preferring instead the label of "gruntcore". Likewise, Sacrificium have labeled their music "White Death Metal" to highlight the Christian lyrical content.
Conversely, the bands themselves and their fans do not see any contradiction between the chaotic subject matter and Christianity. As an online fan expressed, "there are a lot of dark elements in the Bible, and in the world." Seth Metoyer, the owner of the independent record label Broken Curfew Records, as well as a film composer and a member of the bands Mangled Carpenter, Pulpit Vomit, and Brain Matter, argues that brutal death metal music and the accompanying violent or gory imagery can evangelistically reach people who would never enter a church. He contends that this is part of the "becoming all things to all people" described in , also that, per , Christians should not be passing judgement on each other. Some Christian metalheads even use the humorous term "Gorship" – coined by the band Impending Doom – to refer to the melding of death metal and grindcore with Christian lyrics. Scholar Tom Cardwell notes that heavy metal imagery, even when antagonistic to Christianity, draws heavily from Christian imagery and iconography.