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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)
Why? Says who? This seems like an incredibly outdated view of things. If the church wants to stay relevant then they need to seek ways to have a role in the community and bring people into the church. The church is just a building, there’s nothing really special about it, what’s important are the people within it.
The best way to bring people to church is evangelism.
And how’s that working out? Congregation numbers have declining for a long time. There’s no rules to say that there’s only one way to bring more people into the church.
Because Christianity is declining as a whole in the UK
A lot of churches die when they stop preaching the Gospel and start preaching lukewarm wishy-washy stuff. Unfortunately the Church of England does that A LOT these days. It would be best for the C of E to draw in crowds from the small congregations dotted around various shop units, that meet in schools, other buildings, etc. I’ve seen C of I parishes do that to quite a big success.
“how’s that working out” Evangelism is declining and so are churches. That’s why we need better evangelism
Your conclusions are flawed. You don’t need better evangelism, you need better Christians.
Exactly! We need both. I think I heard a good saying, it went like this:
Charity is a really good and effective outreach. I think welcoming immigrants as well into spaces in Church is also effective, eg, lunches for international students, english lessons, etc. More of that and less of this.
It would be lazier to let a musical band come and desecrate your premises to raise money than it would be to suck it up and begin an outreach.
Don’t say “we.” I am not a Christian.
That lowflying attack still somehow flew right over your head. Christianity is fucked because Christians are fuckers.
Having grown up as and around Christians, I have yet to meet one that could convince me to come back. Fuck you.
Then why are you concerned over how churches are used…?
Churches are being used to convince people to take away my rights.
Churches are being used to justify Genocide.
Churches have been used to justify murder.
Churches have been used to justify torture.
Fuck you again.