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UK churches keen to host heavy metal bands after duet with organist is a hit (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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It was a “bonkers gig”, pairing heavy metal with a pipe organ – a musical curiosity that the bands thought would surely seldom be repeated, if ever.

But Pantheïst and Arð, the doom metals bands who performed the concert at Huddersfield town hall last year, have been inundated with requests to repeat the performance – with churches leading the way.

“We thought that churches would look at it as slightly heretical, – having a metal band playing in church – but that wasn’t the case at all,” said Mark Mynett, a senior lecturer in music production at Huddersfield University. “They really embraced this bold new world – some of them talked about bringing a new audience into church.”

The experiment last August saw Pantheïst and Arð accompanied by David Pipe, the cathedral organist at the Diocese of Leeds, playing Huddersfield town hall’s 1860 “Father” Willis organ.

Mynett said that after the Observer covered the event, it was featured on Radio 4’s Sunday Worship, prompting dozens of churches, among others, to get in touch with him and Pipe.

Now the new genre has its own name – “organic metal” – and a series of similar concerts is planned, starting with gigs this week at the deconsecrated St Paul’s church in Huddersfield.

It will feature Mynett’s band, Plague of Angels, alongside Pipe on the organ and Anabelle Iratni, a classically trained vocalist, who will sing an aria by Handel – as well as delivering death metal growls.

edit: Pantheïst's full set (they have more bits on their YouTube channel)

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[–] abysmalpoptart 14 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not from England, but i do pay a lot of attention to music and, broadly speaking, religion, and I'm not entirely sure this is a fair take. Places of worship are not traditionally meant to be exclusively worship zones; they can and should be places to engage the community. An example is that old (medieval) german churches traditionally gave free beer to their patrons as an incentive to attend mass. One major criticism of modern religion is their inability to adapt to modern youth, and this seems like a creative way to engage the community.

Additionally, a lot of "heavy metal" (which is separate from Rock) is basically classical scales but sped up and using distortion. For me personally, there's a subgenre of metal that incorporates operatic vocalists that i find surprisingly fitting for such a sitting.

[+] [email protected] -10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

But people who are coming to concerts aren't going to typically stay for Jesus.

The main reason churches are losing youth/young adults is due to a failure of keeping a community of them. Churches creating young adult fellowships and youth fellowships are important. There is definitely an audience there, as non-denominational churches know this and know to keep a Christian centre, hence the youth go there.

Free beer as an incentive to attend mass is a bad example as well, you should attend mass because you want to go to mass.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Maybe the reason we don't go to church anymore is the lot of you are more interested in our musical tastes than the pedophiles hiding within your ranks.

[–] abysmalpoptart 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Not sure I'm following your points here. You suggest that the church needs to keep and maintain a community, but doing things that attracts such potential members is inappropriate? I'm not really understanding what the idea to get new members is. Outreach and knowing your audience are important factors in growing a community.

One way to attract members is to showcase that the things that matter or are interesting (within reason) to potential members matters to the current members. People tend to be attracted to people that at least appear to understand them. Highlighting that everyone around you is wrong and doesn't get it kind of pinpoints a major underlying issue with the church today.

Unfortunately, the reality is that every group needs a way to attract members and increase attendance. I'm providing one from 1400s Germany, and some areas in Germany are, to this day, prolifically religious (bavaria, for example). Maybe it turns out it was a good idea to do what you can to keep members?

[–] [email protected] -5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

But you'd want an audience that is actually religious- not coming for the free beer.

[–] abysmalpoptart 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That's the part I'm not understanding. So how do you recruit new members if you exclusively advertise to people that already agree with you? Your audience is explicitly people who already are part of your group, and that number continues to decline.

There are two groups to try to entice - current members who are losing interest, and non members who are currently non believers. If you only create events that are catering to current and active members, you alienate the others and won't grow

[–] [email protected] -4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Are they preaching the Gospel at this metal concert?

[–] abysmalpoptart 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

That isn't the point though, it's to first better engage the community, then preach later. there's an art to proper outreach. Convince the community that you're part of it, then they express interest in your organization. That's when you go for it. If it's all preaching all day, that simply won't attract new members. And overly preachy metal music would probably chase almost everyone away. And who would want to hang out somewhere that's just non-stop preaching? That sounds horrible

Not everything is completely black and white. In fact, that kind of exclusive thinking is what drives people away. The point here is to improve the image, encourage the community to get more engaged, and just be there. Potential new members will come along.

Honestly, the mindset of "why bother if you aren't preaching" sounds very similar to a business caring only about its stocks. What about research? Quality control? Community outreach? Those things are important for a good company to thrive, as opposed to one looking only at short term profits. Look at what's happening with Boeing. They're focused on stocks only, the same way some churches only care about preaching. and their image is tanking, and everyone is wondering what happened.

If your goal is to acquire more members, then you need to find a way to reach other people in a way that makes sense to them, not you. Imagine trying to teach English to non English speakers. You don't just do it randomly in the town square, spouting off the virtues of English speaking. you need to entice people to even want to not only learn English in the first place, but from you.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

There's more tasteful things to do than a blasphemous band which is literally called "Pantheist".

Appealing to people who'll never have any taste or want for God isn't going to be helpful. People need to know the good news.

[–] abysmalpoptart 3 points 8 months ago

Now you're making assumptions, and have already missed the point entirely. This would be the engage the community portion, not the get new members portion. It's a long process. You can't just proselytize at every moment, it simply doesn't work that way anymore.