Virtual Lecture – Ta Megala Theria: Heavy Metal Music’s Reception of Mythological Adversaries
Virtual Lecture – Ta Megala Theria: Heavy Metal Music’s Reception of Mythological Adversaries
Transgressive and oppositional figures have always exercised fascination and admiration in heavy metal music, from Ozzy the Prince of Darkness to the Devil himself. While the genre has traditionally signaled its rebellious ethos within a Christian paradigm through satanic themes and imagery, more and more bands have embraced analogous elements from pre-Christian mythologies of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. Primordial, chaotic, and chthonic antagonists such as Apophis, Tiamat, and Typhon resonate as embodiments of the metal underground and its antipathy to the latter-day sky gods, i.e. the established institutions of order, conformity, and control. Heavy metal not merely retells their myths, but even creates new versions where they ultimately triumph.
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Jeremy Swist is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Romance & Classical Studies at Michigan State University, having earned his PhD in Classics from the University of Iowa. He has published research on pagan prose authors under the later Roman Empire, including the emperor Julian in his new book Julian Augustus: Platonism, Myth, and the Refounding of Rome with Oxford University Press. He also studies, organizes conferences, and now teaches college courses on the prolific reception of ancient Greece, Rome, and Byzantium in heavy metal music.
Image Caption: Typhon (detail). Bronze applique; Etruria, Italy; Archaic period, ca. 500-480 BCE. Tampa Museum of Art, Joseph Veach Noble Collection, Purchased in part with funds donated by the Moody Group, Inc., 1986.127