Psalm 150 – A Call for Catholic Metal

Ah, my first blog entry at Catholic Metal.  You know you should print this out – because it will be either the first of many or the very last.  At very least I have something that I wanted to share with you all.

First, let me introduce myself.  My name is Sean Bailey and I am the curator of Last Rites.  Ok, that’s enough of an introduction.

What I wanted to share with you all is what I would call the “pocket reference” for Faith-based metal.  It is none other than Psalm 150.  Let’s read it together, shall we:

Let All Things Praise the LORD 

¹Praise the LORD!
Praise God in His sanctuary;
Praise Him in His mighty firmament!
²Praise Him for His mighty acts;
Praise Him according to His excellent greatness!
³Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet;
Praise Him with the lute and harp!
⁴Praise Him with the timbrel and dance;
Praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes!
⁵Praise Him with loud cymbals;
Praise Him with clashing cymbals!
⁶Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.
Praise the LORD!

The psalmist is imploring us to praise the Lord.  He wants us to praise the Lord in all places.  But how does the psalmist call for us to praise the Lord?  With the sound of the trumpet, the harp, the lute, and with flutes.  Ok, that’s nice…but what about this:  LOUD cymbals and CLASHING cymbals.  Sounds like the psalmist wants to praise the Lord with some noise!  And isn’t that just what we do with Catholic Metal?

Well, if you are like me, you may be somewhat shy about the loud noise that we make to the Lord, especially if you go to parishes around me.  The most rambunctious music that I hear coming from the churches around me is 60’s/70’s folk music.  If I told someone that I made Catholic metal, they would look at me as if I had three (or more) heads.  More likely look at me as if I had two horns!  For some reason or another, people do not see metal as a suitable offering to our Lord.

We are fighting two fronts here, and I feel that the Lord is on our side on both.  The first is that metal is demonized and characterized as being from the devil.  Therefore, it would not be “proper” to use such music to praise the Lord.  The second is that we in the Church have a preconceived notion of what “praise” music should be like.

The first fight is with the devil and the notion that metal is of the devil.  We can look at this in a couple of different ways.  Obviously, when metal first came about, it didn’t have the holiest of intentions.  But what exactly is metal?  I think that it is energy, it is power; it is unrelenting and uncompromising.  I feel that metal has a lot of aspects like our own Faith.  Sounds to me that metal would be a great evangelizing tool!  In fact, I have heard of many people coming to Christ through Christian metal.  It happens!  You know a tree by its fruits, and it looks like metal can produce good fruit.

Also, just because the devil is fluent with a facet of our world, doesn’t mean that we can’t use it against him.  Take for instance St. Benedict of Nursia.  In his day there were still many temples to the Greek gods and many people still followed the old religion.  St. Benedict, inspired by holy zeal, actually went into a temple of Apollo and tore it down to build an altar to St. John the Baptist.  Now, this is not exactly taking the devil’s weapon to use against him, but we do go and take strongholds against the true Faith and use it to our advantage.  We take the music and change the lyrics to proclaim Christ and the truths of our Faith.  St. Benedict took the spot of the temple to Apollo and made an altar to the forerunner of Christ.

The second front is within our own ranks: the members of the Church.  This is somewhat like thinking that metal is from the devil, but subtly different.  We have a preconceived notion on how praise music should be.  Now, before I go on, I KNOW that some of you are going to think that I am advocating metal at mass.  And I am going to tell you point blank, that I don’t.  At least it should not yet and definitely not in many of the styles that we have today.  This genre is not widely appreciated within most congregations; only a few would find that they can praise God with metal.  Also, metal music often brings much attention to itself rather than to the Holy Eucharist.  I prefer silence and the Eucharist than to any nice sounding noise that detracts from the Eucharist.

Outside of Mass we all praise God in our own way.  This is awesome!  We need to be appreciative of the efforts of other Catholic musicians and what other people prefer.  However, what we do with Catholic Metal is no different than what more popular Catholic musicians do.  The intention is the same!  And look at Psalm 150.  The psalmist did not put a decibel limit on the music that we make to praise the Lord.  Loud Cymbals….Clashing Cymbals!  However, we still have the upward battle of gaining respect for Catholic Metal.

Now, we can’t go demanding respect for Catholic Metal from the Church as a whole.  We need to earn it!  So, how do we do that?  This is the tough spot that we as Catholic metal heads are in.  In order to earn respect from the Church as a whole, we need to show our faithfulness to the Catholic faith in all that we do in metal.  We have to show that we are not here to change the message of our Faith, but to give it a new voice.  It is tough with metal because, unlike rock, our secular counterparts are often negative and oftentimes outright satanic.  The imagery is often brutal and gory.  The sound can be downright warlike.  It is not the easiest genre to tailor to the Catholic Faith.

Instead of being brutal and gory and making music for battle just for the sake of being “metal”, we can take this imagery and sonorities to talk about uncomfortable topics such as abortion, Jesus’ Passion and death, spiritual warfare, and even exorcisms.  These topics are not talked about much in modern times (except for abortion), but are nonetheless part of our Catholic Faith.  I have a hard time with Christian metal bands who mindlessly show blood and gore without purpose.  Everything that we do should have a single purpose: to point toward Christ.  May all that we do in Catholic Metal be for the greater glory of God and focus on our Faith.

I want to encourage you all to not be shy but rather bold in praising the Lord with metal.  Even if you aren’t the best musician, know that any music that you make for the Lord is a glorious sound!  We should take this craft and be bold and proclaim the Lord’s greatness in song to the ends of the earth!

God bless you all,

Sean