The Earthly Hell on the origins of Heavy Metal.

Abstract

Heavy Metal, as a movement of art and social commitment was born as an expression of counterculture in its denial to be part of a society plagued by ethical and moral incongruities, establishing Existentialism as its dominant philosophical foundation.
In the decadent religious context that characterized the twentieth century, the french philosopher Jean- Paul Sartre begets two plays, No Exit (1944) and The Devil and the Good Lord (1951), that will come to lay the foundations of one of the most transcendent hells for contemporary thought: otherness.
In his music, Black Sabbath, as a pioneering group of this musical genre, contains in his lyrics the Sartrean concept of The Otherness as earthly hell. From the symbolic deconstruction of the myth of heaven and hell from the Western Christian tradition, Black Sabbath re-signifies hell to propose a rational explanation of the problems of his time and to make it the metaphor for the disillusionment and nihilism of a modern Europe, in which mythical icons are being replaced by representations of concrete reality.