UK churches keen to host heavy metal bands after duet with organist is a hit
UK churches keen to host heavy metal bands after duet with organist is a hit
After ‘bonkers gig’ at Huddersfield town hall paired doom metal bands with pipe organist, churches are keen to get in on the act
It was a “bonkers gig”, pairing heavy metal with a pipe organ – a musical curiosity that the bands thought would surely seldom be repeated, if ever.
But Pantheïst and Arð, the doom metals bands who performed the concert at Huddersfield town hall last year, have been inundated with requests to repeat the performance – with churches leading the way.
“We thought that churches would look at it as slightly heretical, – having a metal band playing in church – but that wasn’t the case at all,” said Mark Mynett, a senior lecturer in music production at Huddersfield University. “They really embraced this bold new world – some of them talked about bringing a new audience into church.”
The experiment last August saw Pantheïst and Arð accompanied by David Pipe, the cathedral organist at the Diocese of Leeds, playing Huddersfield town hall’s 1860 “Father” Willis organ.
Mynett said that after the Observer covered the event, it was featured on Radio 4’s Sunday Worship, prompting dozens of churches, among others, to get in touch with him and Pipe.
Now the new genre has its own name – “organic metal” – and a series of similar concerts is planned, starting with gigs this week at the deconsecrated St Paul’s church in Huddersfield.
It will feature Mynett’s band, Plague of Angels, alongside Pipe on the organ and Anabelle Iratni, a classically trained vocalist, who will sing an aria by Handel – as well as delivering death metal growls.
edit: Pantheïst's full set (they have more bits on their YouTube channel)
Any metal, including doom metal, is infinitely better than contemporary Christian music.
I don't know about that. You can't pass the time by counting the unintended references to man on man anal sex in the lyrics of metal music the way you can Christian music.
Fucken watch me milksop!
The experiment last August saw Pantheïst and Arð accompanied by David Pipe, the cathedral organist at the Diocese of Leeds,
This dude took his last name and ran with it. David Pipe, Master of the Pipe Organ.
I see they still havent met nordic church burning metal
Talk about nominative determinism
Great somewhat topical album
This isn't appropriate. Churches are places of worship, not rock concert venues. Or anything for that matter which isn't somehow or in some way worshipping God.
We thought that churches would look at it as slightly heretical, – having a metal band playing in church – but that wasn’t the case at all
The thing is, a lot of C of E "Churches" are just ran by "modernists" who are basically just closeted agnostics at this point who only do stuff for money, unfortunately.
I'm not from England, but i do pay a lot of attention to music and, broadly speaking, religion, and I'm not entirely sure this is a fair take. Places of worship are not traditionally meant to be exclusively worship zones; they can and should be places to engage the community. An example is that old (medieval) german churches traditionally gave free beer to their patrons as an incentive to attend mass. One major criticism of modern religion is their inability to adapt to modern youth, and this seems like a creative way to engage the community.
Additionally, a lot of "heavy metal" (which is separate from Rock) is basically classical scales but sped up and using distortion. For me personally, there's a subgenre of metal that incorporates operatic vocalists that i find surprisingly fitting for such a sitting.
But people who are coming to concerts aren't going to typically stay for Jesus.
The main reason churches are losing youth/young adults is due to a failure of keeping a community of them. Churches creating young adult fellowships and youth fellowships are important. There is definitely an audience there, as non-denominational churches know this and know to keep a Christian centre, hence the youth go there.
Free beer as an incentive to attend mass is a bad example as well, you should attend mass because you want to go to mass.
Churches are places of worship, not rock concert venues. Or anything for that matter which isn’t somehow or in some way worshipping God.
Why? Says who? This seems like an incredibly outdated view of things. If the church wants to stay relevant then they need to seek ways to have a role in the community and bring people into the church. The church is just a building, there's nothing really special about it, what's important are the people within it.
They used to live, eat, make music, theatre, dance, hold guild meetings, banquets and fairs with stalls selling trinkets in churches for longer than they didn't (200AD - 1642AD)
lol
LOL this one not willing to admit that the bible is way more "metal" than most of these metal bands will EVER be! LOL bible be full of insest rape, guests at your home rape! Dashing babies to death on rocks! Drown the whole damn world and EVERYONE in it, every man, woman, child, babies all drowning to fricken death! The coutryside would have been strewn with the skeletons of millions of deceased once the flood waters receded! They wanted to bury Jesus before the sabbath so they asked for permission to BREAK HIS LEGS to speed along the whole death process! The J man was already dead so they just broke everyone elses legs! This was so they couldn't stand up and breath leading to suffication! And all this brutality simply because you couldn't work on the Sabbath which was the next day?!! I could go on and ON for days on this shit! Kill your son Abraham. Okay boss, whatever you say! LOL just jokes dude, murder this ram instead! Frick you were gonna do that bro?! Kill your own son?! Lambs blood on the doors to ward off the angel of death and prevent said angel from unenlivening every single first born son of every single family!! Rivers turning to blood! The whole Nile! That's a significant amount of blood! Like a LOT!! Holy shit! Metal bands be like an old womens knitting club compared to this shit! Pretending to drink Jesus's blood & eat his flesh! They nailed him to the cross through his feet and hands!? Do you have any idea how hard it must be to nail someones FEET to something?! Maybe it's not that hard?! I wouldn't know! But it's BRUTAL!! So much BLOOD in the Bible! Metal music be like a soothing meditation after reading the bible!
😎
This'll make a good copypasta