Category: Viking Metal

Viking metal is a subgenre of black metal characterized by its chaotic and noisy sound, slow pace, use of keyboards, dark and violent imagery, and lyrical themes of Norse mythology, Norse paganism, and the Viking Age. It was developed in the 1980s through the mid-1990s as a rejection of Satanism and the occult, and instead embracing the Vikings and paganism as the leaders of opposition to Christianity. Influenced by Nordic folk music, it is considered a category of folk metal, but it is a separate branch of that style, as there are notable differences between Viking metal and folk metal. Another characteristic of the style is that nearly all bands claim to have Viking ancestry.
Viking metal is “noisy, chaotic, and often augmented by sorrowful keyboard melodies.” Described by writer Johannes Jonsson as “slow black metal with influences from Nordic folk music”, it has been considered a category of folk metal. Like folk metal bands, Viking metal acts “generally utilize some acoustic and…