☩ Walking in Light with Christ – Faith, Computing, Diary

I myself used to be a metal head for more about 10 years. During the years the amount of music swallowed varied, howeverthere was a certain tendency that I listen more and more metal. I even had a period in my life where I cannot live without metal.
The metal and alternative music slowly became my second nature. I started listening to Heavy metal and Rock music when I was 14 years old, I started with the bands: Metallica, Iron Maiden, Manowar, Motorhead, AC/DC, DIO then when some time passed I progressed further with Sepultura, Pantera, Kreator, Death etc.
Few years later my primary metal style of choice was Death metal with bands like: Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse, Benediction, Six Feet Under, Bolt Thrower etc. My death metal period in my life lasted for like a year and a half, then I switched to even heavier types of Metal music like Black Metal, Doom Metal etc.. I was into the darkest metal of metals for about 3 or 4 years bands like Dimmu Borgir, Venom, Bathory, Immortal, Satyricon, Darkthrone, Dark Funeral were my idols for this phase of my life.

My last phase of a “development” as a metal head was when I switched my favour metal style of choice to Gothic and Industrial metal & rock music in that times of gothic I was completely after bands like Lacrimosa, London After Midnight, Sopor Aeternus & The Ensembe of Shadows, The Cure, Crematory almost paralelly I slipped into listening to Nine Inch Nails, Front Line Assymbly, Front 242, Ministry etc.
With the years I noticed that I started getting more and more aggressive and more and more negatively pitched towards life in general (which I nowdays relate more or less with my metal background).
Probably as an effect of listening to metal, I started being more sarcastic, I started spending more time thinking of death, even at periods some suicidal thoughts started emerging.
This kind of music make me more or less apathic towards life and at the same time triggered hyper sensuality in me, which if probably analyzed by a psychologist would be ranked as a mental disored.
It was the major part of my life because all my life started turning around the music I started looking for other metal heads I started going to places where other people who are into metal gather (metal pubs, metal bars, metal clubs).
At times almost all my contacts with people were also with individuals from metal backgrounds, I started despising people with other music preferences (judging people), I also started thinking of people which are not into metal most of the time as inferior, I considered non-metal heads like a un-elightened or something.
You can imagine how insane this kind of perception of life is and how much the metal music was involved with this wrong understanding of human genesis.

With the time I realized that listening to metal music consitutes a major “disease” like condition and has a negative influence over my general life, so I decided to limit my relations with people who are into the deep metal underground and started changing my life for good when I substituted my extraordinary passion for metal for a passion for Orthodox Christian Church music and Classical Music – mostly from the Baroque Classics era.
Nowadays I do listen mostly to classical composers like J.S. Bach, Buxtehude, Antonio Vivaldi, Claudio Monteverdi and many many more

My wrong perception for the world and my behaviour alterations, my empathy towards life and people which I think were directly influenced by listening to metal music is almost gone, though the old wrong (mind and spirit) pattern remains are silently sleeping somewhere in me and looking for a ways to feed it up and to rise again.
Another negative consequence of listening to metal music was the increase in my criticism. Here I should note that my by nature I’m a critical person, however listening to metal make me even more critical and judgemental and rebellious.
As metal music in most of it’s conceptual imaginary drawings speaks about rebelion, I think it’s worthy to mention it here as one of metal’s wicked stimulus over the general metal fan.
I have to admit that it was metal music that partly kindled my interest towards religion and laters by God’s mercy led me to find the truth in the Orthodox Christian Church
Metal teaches people to leave the old ways and live a wild life without any constraints it teaches the man to turn it’s back to the old ways and look for a new order of things.
I think metal teaches man to rebel against any set government authorities and life order.
This kind of music preaches complete freedom from any normal habits, it pushes the fan to live on the edge, get the best of life, rarely talking about the consequences on the person who grasps this abnormal ways (ideas).

However like everything listening doesn’t have a 100% percents negative impact, but also has some benefits even though the benefits on the personality are quite less notable than the negative influence.
One of the major benefits of metal on man is it’s charge to sometimes show off people the real sight of things in life, it cuts the veil every now and then and does try to look for a truth, so metal could make you a truth seeker.
Another positive benefit is that many metal bands deal with a deep manners and problems the humanity faces, so listening to metal could stimulate your psyche to be think more deeply.
Last but not least is that metal deals with occult, myths and religion with that in mind, metal could trigger the listener interest into religion or occult.
It is also a music which exposes the human need for spirituality and is a good mirror of todays people corrupted spirituality.
Talking about faith, metal is about faith just like any other religion like christianity, islam or buddhism. So most people who are into metal does believe in it like into an idol that could advance them in a way.
I personally previously believed that listening to metal music, improves my thinking process and makes me smarter in a way (of course this is a delusion).
However according to modern research in certain cases it is possible that certain kind of metal has a positive impact on mind development.
Of course things aren’t so black and white, because talking about the metal genre and it’s influence I should take in mind, the music versatility.
There is a Christian Rock and Christian Metal as well as the so called White Metal which claim they do good since they preach Christianity and the “good news” of the Saviour Jesus Christ who has saved humanity from death and hell
Since the music also incorporates the good old metal riffs, my personal experience shows me that the influence of the so-called Christian Rock and Metal Music is not that beneficial as they claim, but it can easily even spread false ideas related to Christianity and implant false or heretic beliefs in Humans.

It’s an interesting fact that some of my personal experiences with metal and rock and it’s influence on my life and person does co-incide with some Research Results on the topic of metal listening.
For instance there is a quite a research on the topic of mood swings and listening to metal music, the mood swing problem should be a well known problem to many people who have been into gothic metal or alternative like Pearl Jam, Alice in Chans etc.
If you want to see some researches data results from experiments related to the effect of Metal on Human Psyche I kindly urge you to further see the below articles containing research results:
Psychology of Heavy Metal Music: Effects on Mood, Aggression, Suicide, Drug Use and Intelligence
The Effects of Heavy Metal Music on Attitude