Milton Goes (Progressive-Power) Metal: Symphony X and Milton’s Paradise Lost (Critique and Textual Analysis)

The purpose of this paper is twofold: that Heavy Metal is a genre of popular music is simply a given, so the author begins by exploring some of the aporia should one attempt to research such a form of music in an academic context. Making the claim that popular music (and this includes heavy metal) involves multiple aspects that are outside the aesthetics of music, yet conceding that the genre of Heavy Metal (following Deena Weinstein) follows a ‘code’ which includes much which informs some of the more submerged facets of the self and the wider culture, the author has decided to explore how Symphony X has incorporated John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ for the purposes of their album of the same name. The author proposes that although Symphony X’s album is an expression of the ‘Dionysian’ side of Heavy Metal, the band has incorporated those aspects which are most likely to attract the common reader and does not attempt an engagement with Milton’s wider concerns.