Come Out of Babylon: Heavy Metal Music and the Book of Revelation

“A significant part of metal mythology revolves around the more apocalyptic strain of Christianity, especially the Book of Revelation.”

—Deena Weinstein, Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture

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I’d like to begin with some of the best heavy metal lyrics of all time. They go like this:

The second angel poured his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse, and every living thing in the sea died. The third angel poured his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood. The fourth angel poured his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a violent earthquake, such as had not occurred since people were upon the earth. The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found; and huge hailstones, each weighing about a hundred pounds, dropped from heaven on people, until they cursed God for the plague of the hail.

Those of course are not heavy metal lyrics, but sections from the Book of Revelation chapter 16. But they sound like metal lyrics. As I was going through seminary and reading more of the Bible in depth, I started to recognize that many images from the Book of Revelation were found in the lyrics of heavy metal music. Songs like ‘The Four Horseman’ by Metallica and ‘Number of the Beast’ by Iron Maiden were obvious ones, but as I researched this link further I discovered that this connection was much more developed than I had imagined. The defining moment came when I discovered a thread on the website Reddit. The original poster of the thread asked if anyone knew of heavy metal songs with themes from the Book of Revelation. By the end there must have been seventy examples given. It blew my mind. What a treasure trove for the researcher this thread was. And as I read the lyrics of the songs posted there, I saw that there was a much deeper connection between the ancient text and this contemporary art form than I had first realized.

Heavy metal has been a much maligned and persecuted music over the past few decades. Many have viewed it as deviant and dangerous. The Christian right in the United States has been a particularly persistent critic and foe. But the more deeply I’ve looked into heavy metal music and its use of imagery from the Book of Revelation, the more I discovered a very remarkable thing—that heavy metal music is doing the Book of Revelation. Heavy metal is not just drawing off of the Book of Revelation because there’s cool imagery that makes for good album covers and t-shirts. Heavy metal music is doing a faithful reenactment of the Book of Revelation. In its style, in its values, in its ethos, heavy metal is doing the Book of Revelation in musical form. That’s what I’ll try and make a brief case for here.

To get us started, let’s hear what Harry Maier, in his book Apocalypse Recalled, says the Book of Revelation is doing. He writes, “[The author] John challenged the original audience of his Book of Revelation to think critically about their political culture. In particular, he exhorted his audience to look carefully at the economic order of the Roman Empire and the human and ecological misery it unleashed on the world as antithetical to the intentions of God for humankind and creation.”¹Harry Maier. Apocalypse Recalled: The Book of Revelation After Christendom. Augsburg Fortress, 2002. p. xi. Heavy metal also challenges its listeners to think critically about the current global world order, with its rampant injustice, inequality, and ecological destruction.

“Allusions to injustice abound in heavy metal music.”²Deena Weinstein. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. Da Capo Press, 2000. p. 40. We can think of a song like Metallica’s And Justice for All, with it’s lyrics “Nothing can save you / Justice is lost / Justice is raped / Justice is gone.” Heavy metal lyrics “engage socio-political issues like civil repression, economic inequality and exploitation, environmental degradation, euthanasia, execution, nuclear warfare, political corruption, religious corruption, surveillance, uncontrolled technological innovation, and war.”³Peter Buckland. ‘When all is lost: thrash metal, dystopia, ecopedagogy.’ International Journal of Ethics Education. March, 2016. Listen to some of the themes in these band names—Anthrax, Nuclear Assault, Celtic Frost, Sodom, Death Angel, Artillery, Destruction, Megadeth. These names are not celebrating these themes, but are screaming out against a world full of destruction and war. There are many songs about war in heavy metal music, but you would be hard pressed to find one that promotes or glorifies it—most of the songs are about the madness of war, and how average people suffer from its evils.

The author of Revelation uses the literary form of the apocalypse to “drive home the urgency” of his message to his readers that they need to think critically about their political situation.⁴“I am assuming a broad consensus of academic biblical scholarship that John self-consciously chose the literary medium of an apocalypse to drive home the urgency of his exhortations and admonitions to his listeners.” Harry Maier. Apocalypse Recalled: The Book of Revelation After Christendom. Augsburg Fortress, 2002. p. xii. He often uses “vivid and terrifying symbols” to jolt his readers into waking up to the true reality of their situation. Heavy metal does the same.⁵“Whoever he was, though, whenever exactly he wrote, and what exactly he meant, John of Patmos thought and wrote in vivid, sometimes terrifying symbols, which is no doubt one of the reasons why visual artists have been so attracted to the work.” Natasha O’ Hear & Anthony O’Hear. Picturing the Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation in the Arts over Two Millennia. Oxford University Press, 2015. p. 3. In fact, the Book of Revelation and heavy metal share many characteristics when it comes to genre and style. Both are ornate and complex. Both are not afraid to use the imagery of death, horror, destruction and violence. Both intentionally invoke extreme experiences in their reader and listener.⁶“This fascination [of heavy metal] with evoking extreme experiences for the listener has clear similarities with both Revelation itself and with many of the artists who have attempted to evoke this text. Thus it is no surprise that the band Metallica have in their catalogue a song called ‘The Four Horsemen’ (1983) and ‘My Apocalypse’ (2008).” Ibid., p. 239. Both are big, bold, vivid, and designed to shock. Both are powerful, larger than life, and sometimes terrifying. In an article titled ‘Black Sabbath’s Horror Apocalypse,’ Brian Froese writes that, “Black Sabbath was writing music and poetry with the force of apocalyptic literary style.”⁷Brian Froese. ‘Is It the End, My Friend? Black Sabbath’s Apocalypse of Horror.’ Black Sabbath and Philosophy: Mastering Reality. John Wiley and Sons Inc, 2013. p. 23.

It’s important to remember what these stylistic characteristics were in service of. The Book of Revelation is a literary form of resistance against imperialism, empire, domination, and exploitation.⁸Greg Carey. ‘The Book of Revelation as Counter-Imperial Script.’ In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance. John Knox Press, 2008. Its core symbols of the Dragon, the Beast from the Sea, the Beast from the Earth, and the Whore of Babylon, are designed to “unveil” and “reveal the true face of empire as monstrous, rapacious, violent and deceitful.” ⁹Anathea Portier-Young. ‘Jewish Apocalyptic Literature as Resistance Literature.’ The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature. Oxford University Press, May 2014. p. 153. Heavy metal music seeks to do the same for our own current world order. Its lyrics and album covers hold up a mirror to the hideous face of a world threatened by nuclear war and climate change, and stricken by greed, inequality, ongoing warfare, and ecological devastation. To portray both the depravity and gravity of this situation, heavy metal frequently uses images of evil from the Book of Revelation. The Beast, Satan, the antichrist and so on, “serve as a shorthand” for the kinds of forces that are currently destroying our world.¹⁰Deena Weinstein. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. Da Capo Press, 2000. p. 41. Heavy metal music and the Book of Revelation both speak in terms of a battle between good and evil when describing the current state of the world.

There’s a deep cry of pain that lives beneath the surface of heavy metal’s sonic power, and heavy metal artists seem to find solace in apocalyptic imagery that tells of the current world order being one day swept away. I offer four examples now of lyrics that explicitly use apocalyptic imagery in this way, although there are many possibilities to choose from. Here’s the band Lamb of God from their song ‘Reclamation’:

Humanity’s a failed experiment
Walking the path to extinction

Only after the last tree’s cut
And the last river poisoned
Only after the last fish is caught
Will you find that money cannot be eaten

As the sky tears open
Fire rains down,
the fourth world comes to an end
Push the button light the match
feel the fault lines detach.

And the band Avatar, with their song ‘Hail the Apocalypse’:

There’s a storm heading our way
All that’s been will be gone
All your cities will sink into the ocean

Hail the apocalypse

The band Manowar, with the song ‘Revelation (Death’s Angel)’:

Above the wreckage of your mortal world I stand
Judgment passed delivered by his hand

What was written foretold in dreams,
In visions apocalypse now seen.
And all self-righteous fools who lived and blasphemed
Drink the wine of his anger
Die with the beast

Earth be cleansed in a blaze
Armageddon, the first trumpet blows.

And lastly, The Black Label Society with the song ‘Doomsday Jesus’:

Horseman roll, tomorrow’s fading fast
Make damn sure nothing’s going to last

Doomsday Jesus
We need you now.

Although many of those lyrics sound dark and dystopic, heavy metal does share a sense of apocalyptic hope with the Book of Revelation. That hope in Revelation comes at the end of the text with its famous vision of a new heaven and a new earth, and a new Jerusalem descending down to earth from heaven (Rev. 21:1-8). There’s little in heavy metal music that displays such an openly utopic sensibility, but most commentators agree that heavy metal’s use of apocalyptic imagery does include apocalyptic hope. Juliet Forshaw writes that, “The depiction of dystopia [in heavy metal] is useful in that it may motivate people to change what they don’t like about the world. Within the overall narrative of nihilism, there are counter-messages of defiance and hope.”¹¹Juliet Forshaw. ‘Metal in Three Modes of Enmity: Political, Musical, Comic.’ Current Musicology. No. 91 (Spring 2011). p. 144. And Laura Wiebe Taylor argues that “Within metal’s images of destruction and despair often lie the seeds of utopian possibility, particularly when such narratives locate the blame for oppressive and apocalyptic outcomes in human society, and leave room for the chance of averting such disaster.”¹²Laura Wiebe Taylor. ‘Images of Human-Wrought Despair and Destruction: Social Critique in British Apocalyptic and Dystopian Metal.’ Heavy Metal Music in Britain. Farnham, 2013. p. 89–110.

Not only does heavy metal share this apocalyptic hope with the Book of Revelation, it shares Revelation’s call to resist and reject the dominant culture and its imperial empire. The Book of Revelation demands that its readers “reassess [their] political and economic allegiances,”¹³Harry Maier. Apocalypse Recalled: The Book of Revelation After Christendom. Augsburg Fortress, 2002. p. xi. and exhorts them to “Come out” of Babylon (Rev. 18:4),“ Babylon being shorthand for empire. A great deal of Revelation’s script involves avoidance, refusal to participate, refusal to bow down before the Great Beast (Rev. 13:7-10; 14:9-11).”¹⁴Greg Carey. ‘The Book of Revelation as Counter-Imperial Script.’ In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance. John Knox Press, 2008. p. 170-171. Greg Carey writes that, “John’s counter-imperial script called Jesus loyalists to an extremely rigorous level of resistance.”¹⁵Ibid., p. 172. Heavy metal urges its listeners to do the same. There’s a defiant “you will not defeat us” attitude toward the forces of death in heavy metal music. There’s a sense of determination and an ethos of standing up for who you are and what you believe in. Fans of heavy metal music and its commentators both agree that the musical form is empowering. It’s been described as a “musical will to power,”¹⁶‘Let Us Bow Our Heads and Rock—An Examination of the Relationship Between Heavy Metal and Religion.’ http://heavymetalandreligion.weebly.com and the sheer volume and high energy of the music offers inspiration and vitality to those who listen to it.¹⁷“Heavy metal’s loudness…is empowering.” Deena Weinstein. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. Da Capo Press, 2000. p. 41. // “Across these cultural contexts we find disaffected young people who find individual and collective catharsis, identity, and rituals of resistance and empowerment in a musically practiced subculture that emphasizes dystopia.” Peter Buckland. ‘When all is lost: thrash metal, dystopia, ecopedagogy.’ International Journal of Ethics Education. March, 2016. // “Other metal bands have songs with very similar themes, for example Dio’s “Holy Diver” and Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper” call for people fight for what they believe in and oppose the establishment’s unjust rules. These songs and many more empower the youth in a much stronger way than religion. How do they do this? By presenting the messages in high-energy situations and through high-energy music. Christian churches do not do this, so young adults gravitate towards heavy metal because it provides them with an instantaneous feeling of empowerment and a sense of control over their lives.” ‘Let Us Bow Our Heads and Rock: An Examination of the Relationship Between Heavy Metal and Religion.’ http://heavymetalandreligion.weebly.com Many songs talk about the warrior who stands up to the current dystopic order and rejects it. The song ‘Children of the Grave’ by Black Sabbath says:

So you children of the world,
listen to what I say
If you want a better place to live in
spread the words today
Show the world that love is still alive
you must be brave
Or you children of today are
Children of the Grave, Yeah!

Judas Priest’s song ‘Blood Red Skies’ proclaims:

As the end is drawing near
Standing proud, I won’t give in to fear

I will stand, I will fight
You’ll never take me alive
I’ll stand my ground
I won’t go down

You won’t break me
You won’t make me
You won’t take me,
Under blood red skies

And the song ‘Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ by the band Saracen echoes this:

Wake up, our freedom is calling, fight for the right and you might set us free
Wake up, wake up, wake up and a hero you’ll be

Stand up, creatures of mercy, reach for the Bible and march with the Lord
Stand up, stand up, stand up and the saints will applaud

The Book of Revelation also urges its audience to not give in to the ways of the Beast, and to persist even under situations of violence and persecution. It’s the most openly political book of the Bible, and its use of vivid and extreme language attempts to jolt those reading it into choosing their allegiance to the Lamb of God, no matter what obstacles they face. It’s this sense of a warrior ethos, this empowering of people to face empire and resist, that I think makes the Book of Revelation and heavy metal music both important today.

We live in a time of plutocracy and tyranny, where big money has captured the ruling apparatuses of many states. A tiny minority of people continue to accumulate obscene wealth, while the social welfare state is cynically dismantled and millions are left to fend for themselves. This is all against the backdrop of climate change and widespread ecocide. Heavy metal music has been unmasking this reality for more than three decades, and as our modern civilization moves dangerously towards a terminal state, we need to be empowered now more than ever with the type of vigor that heavy metal’s intense sounds and imagery can offer us. And if we’re part of the progressive church, or even if we’re not, the Book of Revelation can inspire us to take up its robust call to persist in the face of tyrannical forces. If we’re to one day make it out of Babylon, we’ll need both heavy metal and the Book of Revelation on our side.

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“Come Out of Babylon” – a?playlist