Metal Music and Fantasy Fiction: unlikely bedfellows?

I am a huge fan of metal music. While I do enjoy the growly kind from time to time, my favorites are the epic, symphonic, power, or melodic kind. There’s something about metal sung by operatic females with male vocals in there providing extra musical goodness that I can’t get enough of.

When I first started listening to metal in college, I was blown away. This genre of music had existed my entire life under my radar! I had been a huge fan of fantasy books for years, and some of this medieval-sounding metal seemed like it had just leapt face-first out of the pages of the latest epic adventure book I was reading. There were orchestra swells, bagpipes, etherial voices, lyrics that told stories… it was all there. When I looked up certain bands, I saw that they even dressed like they were about to go on an epic quest straight out of a fantasy novel.

There’s something so intense and purposeful about liking either fantasy or metal. It’s a stand, if you will. It’s all or nothing. By its very nature, you either like it or you hate it. You can’t be wishy-washy about it. There are some genres of both fiction and music that you can enjoy certain pieces of without actually being a fan of the whole genre. Fantasy and metal are not among them. You either like the otherworldliness, the magic, and the intensity of it or you don’t. It’s a passion. There is no in-between, which is why I think both metal fans and fantasy fans make instant connections when they find others who enjoy their chosen genre.

They make those connections because liking it says something about the person’s character. It says that you aren’t satisfied with the everyday. It says your dreams are filled with wizards and your road trips are accompanied by music that would suit an epic quest on the back of a dragon. It says that living life to the fullest simply isn’t enough: your brain and spirit want even more than that. They want adventure, but they also want that touch of romantic mystery that comes with a time when people thought you really could turn lead into gold. It was a world of possibility, where anything could happen. (My character Cemagna thinks like that; if she lived in our world, she would probably be a metalhead!)

The intensity. The possibility and promise. The power of escape into another world. All of this is why I proudly remain both a fantasy lover (both in reading it and writing it) and a metalhead.

Yours,

Stephanie Void