My daughter Jess loved metalcore. I’m not a fan — my tastes are Verdi, Blind Boys of Alabama, Johnny Cash, progressive rock, Dave Brubeck — but I listened to it with her anyway. fatherI still listen to her CDs from time to time. Her CDs are a kind of bridge, a reconciliation and comfort. In those moments, our bond continues. Jess passed away in 2015, but through music she is able to ease her grief a little. absence Somehow.
The jump from classical to metal is shorter than we might think.
Whatever our personal preferences, metalcore has a connotation that is undeniable. As I resist my daughter’s affection for the genre, I recall her patiently engrossed in my opera CDs, singing along with Pavarotti as we drove through the crowded streets of Columbia, South Carolina. “Turn up the volume,” Jess squealed with delight. “Luciano Woo!” We exhausted ourselves, trying (and failing) to tune into the tenor’s thrilling high Cs. Pavarotti died on September 6, 2007. Jess called me the moment she read the news. “Dad, I’m so sorry.”
The leap from classical to metal is shorter than we might think. Metalcore has a surprising place among evangelical Christians. In Finland, for example, hundreds of metal masses have been celebrated in Lutheran churches since 2006. In each mass, the traditional liturgy, including the Eucharist, is performed by a heavy metal band rather than a cantor on an organ. Robert Walser of Case Western Reserve University argues that the power cords in metal music, in parallel with the volume and power produced by the pipe organ, are intended to “show off and demonstrate overwhelming power, which in that context is usually to enhance the glory of God.”
I still prefer Bach, but I’m not sure Pavarotti would agree. “Some people say that ‘pop’ is a derogatory term meaning ‘unimportant,’ but I don’t think so,” the tenor said. “If ‘classical’ means ‘boring,’ then I don’t think so. There is good music and bad music.”
Recently, I discovered the famous German metalcore band Maroon. In 2009, the group’s lead singer André Moravec used one of Friedrich Rückert’s most beloved laments in the lyrics of his song “Shadows” (Schatten). Rückert wrote this poem in 1834 after his two youngest children died of scarlet fever. His poem is honest, tender, and full of desperate sadness.
You are a shadow in the daytime
At night the lights come on.
You live in my sorrow,
You will never die in my heart.Pitch your tent here,
Here you are with me.
You are my shadow in the daytime
And my light at night.Here I ask about you,
Here I found you
You live in my sorrow,
You will never die in my heart.You are a shadow in the daytime,
But at night the lights are on.
You live in my sorrow,
You will never die in my heart.
“‘Shadows’ is probably the darkest, most seductive and most emotional song on the album. orderMaroon’s record label described the group’s final release as “the climax to the most ambitious and intense album of the band’s career.” Moravec’s interpretation of Rückert is, in the words of one metal fan, “loud, dark, intense, meditative and powerful.” For fans of the genre, Maroon’s choice of “Shadows” makes perfect sense.
Metal lovers have a strong interest in the “lineage” of their favourite genre, and this is certainly true of Jess: influences range from religion, mythology and literature to horror films and graphic novels, but most listeners are keen to discover the myriad musical references from groups of the past (Iron Butterfly is popular across the globe).
As in the case of my daughter, the personalities and backgrounds of die-hard fans may surprise us. Ethnographers have found that most metal fans are in their mid-30s, educated, employed, white, middle-class, and well-adjusted — in the words of one researcher, “bourgeoisified.” Most die-hard female fans are neither subservient nor groupies.
Germany is home to roughly one-tenth of the world’s metal bands, so it’s no surprise in this environment that Maroon, one of the most popular bands in metalcore, would tap into German history for songs that fans would recognize and appreciate.
Moravec traced the long lineage of composers who have set Rückert’s works to music over the past 150 years. Some 500 of the poet’s works have been set to music in more than 2,000 compositions, including music by Schubert, Brahms, Mahler, Strauss, Robert and Clara Schumann, Bartók, and many others. The famous poem “From the Days of Youth,” for example, has at least 60 different musical interpretations by as many composers. Rückert’s “I Love You” has also produced another 60 compositions.
A pre-existing text, such as “Shadows,” often serves as a spur of inspiration for a composer. The result is an art song, or I liedit is as much a literary work as a musical structure. Mark Sandys of Durham University comments on its appeal: “Romantic poetry depicting grief serves as a defence and counterpoint to the final silence of death, which challenges poetry’s eloquent semantic capacity.”
While musical styles have changed in this century, the cathartic feeling the music provides remains the same. “Metal saved my life,” the anonymous Naktekse wrote in an academic paper published by Emerald Press. “When I was 21, my mother died and I was alone. Without metal, the grieving process may have ended my life.”
Nakse says she bought her first guitar after her mother died at age 45. Through metal, she dealt with domestic violence, suicidal thoughts and her own trauma. Journey through the depths“Metal,” she says. “I still carry the grief, the loss, the pain,” she acknowledges. “But I also carry the metal.” Naktekse maintains that not all followers are thugs, nor does metal necessarily incite anger. Instead, she cites research showing that metal provides a sense of release. “Extreme music matches my anger and helps me process it,” she writes. “It matched my pain sonically, texturally, musically, and aesthetically.”
We may find the knowledge that our children are alive a ray of comfort, but the shadow of sadness cast daily by their absence never entirely disappears.
The Maroons’ lead singer might agree. “Shadow” is one of Rückert’s most popular laments, as it strikes a chord with mourners. Respected poet and translator Karl Krolow praises its simplicity; he considers it “the most delicate piece” of Rückert’s lieder and “the most artistic” German poetry of the 19th century. Literary studies specialist Ralph Georg Czapla has particularly noted the song’s repetitions and refrains. “The poet’s wish that his children live on in the poem,” Czapla says, “is expressed in the striking use of language.”
I’ve listened to the Maroons’ interpretation of “Shadows” many times. Their cover doesn’t resonate with me, as do the music of other metal bands that Jess loves. But to focus on that fact would be to miss the point. While she was alive, we traded her favorite discs. That tradition still comforts me. “If there are a lot of people who like that kind of music, you can be sure it means something to them. It may not be your type of music, but if you really stop and analyze it, really listen, you’ll understand,” said Ray Charles.
The choice of Maroon makes sense both in terms of its lineage and in terms of its revelation. At first, the theme sounds like a typical comfort poem: “In the light”, “Don’t die”, etc. But here Rückert surprises us: we expect his comforting light of night to continue into the day. Instead, we find shadow. This has caused some debate.
Biographer Annemarie Schimmel says the song progresses from lamentation to memorialization. “This simple poem seems naive, but the impression is misleading,” she writes. She suggests that the song begins on a plaintive note, which quickly changes to trust. A shadow in the daytime appears at first, unwanted, and seems like a shadow of sadness, or darkness. As the poem progresses, Rückert realizes that the shadow is his own, that it is connected to him in the hot sun, a tent that protects him from the heat. Light becomes a guide at night. “If the last stanza seems to repeat the first, then there has been a change of tone,” Schimmel concludes. “Lamentation has turned to consolation.”
Sacha Monhof, another Rückert scholar, points out that the poem breaks free from the traditional comfort of using light to represent God as an image of hope. “The fact that ‘you’ are only referred to as ‘shadow’ and ‘light’ emphasizes all the more clearly the absence, or rather the non-existence, of a living body,” Monhof writes. “There is no body here to cast a ‘shadow’; no body ever emits a ‘light’.” Discussing Rückert’s religious beliefs, Monhof points out the parallels between this work and the Book of Exodus, where the disembodied but visible presence of God corresponds to the primordial, shadowy memories of children in the poet’s mind. “Rückert’s poem is interesting because it ultimately subverts the superficial metaphysical references,” Monhof concludes.
My interpretation of Rückert’s lament takes a straightforward approach that mirrors the raw emotion that Maroon evokes: we may feel a ray of comfort that our children are alive, but the shadow of sadness cast daily by their absence never fully disappears.
I take to heart what I learned from Pavarotti and the Nahatex. As I write these words, I am listening to the Maroons’ShadowMetalcore is more taxing on the voice than opera, but I persevere. “You live in my sorrow,” Morawek snarls. “In my heart you cannot die,” he repeats the last line in a lower, slower, rougher, raspier voice. I won’t die…in my heart.
The unexpected happened. During Maroon’s long prog rock guitar riffs, my emotions were uncontrollable. I cried and laughed to metalcore. For Jess, for the Rueckert kids, and for myself. Ray Charles was right. I truly heard.
I may never fully understand my daughter’s love of metal, but today, in music, I feel Jess close to me, our love triumphs over absence, we defy separation, and death is no longer absolute.
