Interesting, I wonder what the statistics are on your first point there…

What about Christian metal? I was turned onto the metal scene by groups like Zao, Living Sacrifice and Evergreen Terrace. From a musical standpoint I saw WAY more originality in the Christian metal bands than their satan obsessed counterparts. Even Dimmu who, to me, sucked until there was a healthy dose of talent coming from Ludacris (now Norma Jean) and Living Sacrifice. Even Lamb of God, I feel, wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t first an Evergreen Terrace to discover that sound.

I don’t know know about the validity, but those are just observations that I saw, and not just from a ‘this is the progression of my exposure’ way either. I did a lot of catchup once I discovered metal..but was just kind of let down and that cemented my opinion further.

BUT! point being, I think that bringing in the Great Mother and Typhon might be a stretch. While not in the beginning stages of it’s creation, Christian metal (as well as social metal?) doesn’t have a place in your theory. You touch on it yourself – “Where are the Feminine aspects of the Great Mother?” They’re, I believe, irrelevant because it seems to me that the closer correlate is the evolution of, what Wilbur calls “the Great Chain of Being” (having not read it, I don’t know if this is inclusive of the Typhon/Great Mother references) and what we have talked about before with global or social ILP (i think – the color coded social awareness stuff =P I still haven’t been able to read more about those theories).

The way I see it, the counter culture that spawned Metal is a direct fleeing from the severely repressed “body-consciousness” of uptight Christians. I think the imagery is a very interesting coincidence, but having no other such occurrence in Earth’s symbology (that I’ve ever learned about) I feel that it’s more a ‘skeleton’s in the closet’ kind of irony. These guys were rebelling against the Church. They were rebelling against intolerance. Why *wouldn’t* they pick sex and satan as their main topic?

If there are any other instances in history where, as a culture progresses from one ‘color’ to the next, they turn aggressively and violently against the images and icons of their previous color, I would like to learn about it. The only one that comes to mind is Chairmen Mao, but I don’t count that because it wasn’t about the iconography or religion, it was (sadly) the expungement of dissimilar thought.

Excellent article though. I feel like there are a lot of things that I probably misunderstood, and I’m much better in real time with things like this, but thoroughly awesome =) I really dig Ulver! Kind of reminds me of Vulva, which reminds me of this – http://xkcd.com/671/

Whether or not progressions of metal styles and themes in general are predictable or not is a fascinating question. I don’t know. There might not be anywhere else for metal to go but “up”. Nevertheless, it seems clear by their continuing popularity that metal forms that delve into the disassociated levels of our past evolution are still culturally relevant.