Every second of Portal’s most recent outing, Vexovoid, is haunting, dark, and unabashed in its worship of the old gods. However, the form by which this is felt is quite different from earlier eras of metal, and although there are certainly bands that still draw their lyrics and concepts from his work, most of the truly Lovecraftian metal comes from a band’s sound and the environment they create. In the present day, a listener can still feel a distinct Lovecraftian presence in metal, hovering over the genre’s existence like, well, some ancient deity of Lovecraft’s creation. In today’s age of modern metal, some bands aren’t just adorning pieces of music with some Lovecraftian pixie-dust: they’re letting it completely drive the direction of the songwriting process itself. Yet somewhere during all of these lyrical inspirations, some bands even saw it fit to take their worship of these pieces of writing even further. The stoner/doom community at the time also embraced Lovecraft’s wildly imaginative and slow-paced storytelling as well, and saw some huge recognition from bands like Electric Wizard on their two most celebrated albums, Dopethrone and …Come My Fanatics. The atmospherics and frigid nature of black metal saw bits and pieces of Lovecraft popping up in bands like Absu from Texas (fun fact: they were previously named Azathoth), a few scattered lyrical tidbits from Norway’s Immortal over the years, and the oft-mocked Cradle of Filth with their 2000 release, Midian. Whether it has been due to his lofty concepts, completely innovative and disturbingly dark take on horror and science fiction, or just the fact that he invented Cthulhu, Lovecraft has gone on to not just influence writers of science fiction and horror, but an entire cross-section of heavy metal.ĭeath metal certainly wasn’t the only subgenre of extreme metal to be influenced by this cosmic world of ancient terror, though. Lovecraft, has always been one of extreme music’s recurring source for inspiration. Just look at a band like Iron Maiden how many songs of theirs have been directly inspired by classic literature and historical fiction? Even Maiden was subtly showing their love for Lovecraft when they included “That is not dead which can eternal lie/and with strange aeons even death may die” on the tombstone that adorns the cover of 1985’s Live after Death! Now that the genre is reaching its half-century mark, one of the horror genre’s most respected and referenced figures, H.P. The subject matter has always been a logical pairing with the intense atmosphere that metal inherently creates.

Bassist/lyricist Geezer Butler’s fascination with black magic and campy horror flicks in the early years of the band could certainly be looked upon as the genesis from which the Lovecraft obsession in metal truly began. With the title of the album’s third track, “Behind the Wall of Sleep,” Black Sabbath not only revolutionized heavy music from a sonic standpoint, but lyrically as well. The almost-unanimous pick for the genre’s first album, Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut, instantly separated themselves from other bands at the time with their lyrics about unintelligible and dark figures in the night, wizardry, and possibly rock’s first true tip of the hat to the genius author H.P.

Since its inception, metal has been deeply entwined in the world of both fantasy and horror.

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