The Bible and Music

In class on Tuesday, we discussed that many popular songs use the same, simple chords repeatedly. This is why they get stuck in your head so quickly.

While this information was helpful as we prepare our final projects, we mainly focused on Heavy Metal, and Classic Rock music. It surprised me how deeply rooted a heavy metal song can be within the Bible, yet make it seem like a dark story simply because of the composition. We talked at length about the song “Creeping Death”, a song I had  never heard before. Dr. McGrath explained that the song was actually inspired by the film “The 10 Commandments”, and not on the Exodus story. But I think that it is kind of like a game of Telephone; “The 10 Commandments” is based on the Exodus story, and then inspired Metallica to write “Creeping Death”, so indirectly “Creeping Death” is inspired by the Bible. I think that this is a common theme in popular music, because popular culture can take one thing and remake it while not always understanding how the original thing was created. This creates biblical allusions, like in our Scavenger Hunt, that may not be obvious and appear as cliches or common sayings.