Interviewer John MacGregor and guest Robert Fingolfin have over eighty years between them of being fans of heavy metal and hard rock dating back to the mid-1970s. John has extensive experience as a serious guitar player, music theorist, and maintains a vast archival collection of music (numbering in the thousands of CDs). Robert functioned as a radio broadcast disc jockey for The Total Rock Hour program which used to air on an East Texas radio station and tried out for the lead vocalist position of a heavy metal band near Tyler, TX (and failed spectacularly).
Are hard rock and heavy metal a good or bad influence? They answer strongly for the former but give details on the bad aspects of that genre as well. In addition, pop/chart music gets examined, too.
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Glad to see Tribal Theocrat is back and I look forward to listening to this episode! It covers a topic that I’ve gone back and forth on myself.
I’ve followed your work for a while now, Clement, and ambivalence regarding heavy metal is not at all a stance I’d expect from you. In my opinion, having been someone who listened to heavy metal, various other forms of rock, electronica, and hip-hop in the past, it is pretty much all garbage. Some of it is highly destructive. It isn’t just about the message, but the intent and the form as well.
“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
I think that would suggest that if there is any music at all that is acceptable to God, the range of forms would be extremely limited. Right now, I’m even questioning the value of much “classical” music.