Metal’s Romanticism paradox

Isaiah Berlin’s lecture series on the Roots of Romanticism in 1965 reveals an artistic movement with too many parallels to metal for us to simply ignore it. Romanticism arises at the start of industrialisation, two centuries later metal emerges at the point of its collapse in the former European and North American heartlands. Both forms of art project a lawless intensity and passion, yet they are practiced by neurotic individuals obsessed with categories, league tables, and minutiae. Are the odd historical rhymes of these two movements coincidence? Can it tell us anything new about what exactly metal is, what it means, and whether its capable of projecting value beyond the close knit communities that make up its base.

Full article on substack: https://hatemeditations.substack.com/p/metals-romanticism-paradox