Introduction

Metal music has had a long fascination with the Middle Ages, and many metal songs and genres play upon the images of the medieval in the modern imagination. Listening to metal is often an act of medievalism: feet planted firmly in the demonic abyss of the Christian cosmos, Vikings to the right, knights to the left, a shimmer of the Holy Grail just out of reach, all delivered through modern instrumental and recording technology. The medieval in metal is so ubiquitous that a book which brings together medieval studies and metal music studies is long overdue. In this collection, we have brought together scholars from very different academic and cultural backgrounds to try and get behind the complexities of metal and medievalism.