The internet and the construction of a transnational Christian metal music scene

Abstract

Christian metal music emerged in the late 1970s as a means of evangelism among secular metal music fans. In recent years it has grown significantly and developed into a transnational Christian music-based youth culture. In addition to the music, Christian metal has adopted the metal style, rhetoric and attitude. At the same time, Christian metal is as much about religion as it is about music or style. This paper examines some of the most important ways in which Christian metal artists and fans in a number of countries all over the world have come together with the formation of a largely Internet-based transnational Christian metal music scene. Particular focus is put on the ways in which this Internet-based transnational scene supports the spreading of central discourses about the function and meaning of Christian metal as an alternative form of religious expression and Christian identity.