Dante's Inferno, Burnt Offerings

Last week I wrote about the heavy metal band Sepultura and their Divine Comedy inspired album Dante XXI.   This week I bring you another musical rendering of Dante, this time from the heavy metal band Iced Earth.  Iced Earth created not an album, but a song interpretation of the first book of the comedy, Inferno. The song is fittingly titled "Dante's Inferno" off the album Burnt Offerings.  I find it interesting in that looking for musical interpretations of Dante so far I have found two heavy metal bands who take inspiration from him.  I don't think this is mere coincidence that both the bands are from a similar genre of music.  Heavy metal music is often identified, though not always correctly, with dark imagery and Satanic lyrics.  Though I disagree with this generalized stereotype, dark imagery is an important part of heavy metal culture.  As I said previously, I find it fitting that the heavy metal world, which at times deals with themes of violence, politics, and fearful symbols would take on renderings of Dante's poem.  I would find it really interesting if another genre did a Dante song, just for comparison sake, but as of yet, I have not found one.

Link to the Wikipedia page for the song: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante's_Inferno_(song)
The song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY5WEJ-tiC8
The lyrics:http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Dante's-Inferno-lyrics-Iced-Earth/015D4889BCCF656648256BFB0009A5FA

For the sake of time, I will not get into a full lyrical analysis as with the previous song, because Iced Earth's "Dante's Inferno" is a 16+ minute song with 500+ words in the lyrics.  Instead, I will do my best to give a lighter interpretation of the song especially in comparison to Sepultura's "Dark Wood of Error".

For starters, unlike "Dark Wood of Error" which interprets the pilgrim's travel through the Dark Woods and the meeting of the three beasts and Virgil, "Dante's Inferno" covers the entire epic journey of the pilgrim and Virgil through Hell.  The song is a diluted retelling of the major events that Dante and Virgil encounter throughout Inferno.  Also unlike Sepultura whose interpretation is more metaphoric, Iced Earth takes more of their lyrics directly from the literature.  For example in the first few lines, Iced Earth introduces Virgil as the "guide and master".  This is comparable to "You are my master and my author" (1:85).

Another example of Iced Earth's direct connection to the poem is there lyrical interpretation of the speaking gate.

Compare the song:
"Abandon all hope who enter here
For this is where all things are left behind
Every doubt and every cowardice must die"

to Dante's speaking gate: "Abandon every hope, you who enter here" (3:9) and to Virgil in his explanation of the words "Here one must abandon every suspicion, every cowardice must die here" (3:13-15).

Iced Earth uses almost the exact wording as Dante with only minor changes.  Even with these slight difference, they capture the main essence of the lines with the words that they do copy: abandon, hope, who enter here, cowardice must die.

Another example of this:

Compare the song:
" Awake at the third circle, the cold and filthy rain
Punished for their gluttony, languid for all time
The earth it stinks of corpses, damned for all time
The vicious beast Cerberus, three heads, blooded eyes
Tears his talons through the air, all the sinner cry"

to Dante at the beginning of Canto 6 "When consciousness returned" (6:1) and "I am in the third circle, with the eternal, cursed, cold, and heavy rain...filthy water...the earth stinks that receives them" (6:7-12).  Also the description of Cerberus "with three throats...his eyes are red...and his hands have talons; he claws the spirits, flays and quarters them." (6:13-18).

Again we see that Iced Earth takes key words from the Canto: third circle, the earth stinks, filthy, talons.  In times when they do not use the exact words, often direct connections can me made such as "awake" and "consciousness returned"; "for all time" and "eternal"; and "blooded eyes" and "his eyes are red".   This direct pulling of words and quotes from the text can be seen throughout the song.  In a way, Iced Earth creates a musical journey of  Dante's own journey by using bits and pieces of his original text along with their own words.

Thus, unlike Sepultura who use Dante as a starting point and reference to speak about and refer to more modern issues like the global institutions of the UK, UN and human "beasts"  Iced Earth does a more direct interpretation of the poem, maintaining the meaning and metaphor that Dante originally used.  This is an important distinction because it shows at least two ways that we can look at and use Dante in the modern world.  On one hand, we can take the spirit of what Dante is trying to say in his Divine Comedy and think of how it can be related to problems and issues in our own times.  This is exactly what Sepultura does and similarly what Sando Birk did in his film Dante's Inferno.  On the other hand, we can take Dante's text for what it literally means and look at it as a way to study the life and historical times of Dante and his mythical journey through Hell.  This is what Iced Earth does and, I would argue, largely what we do in class. I believe that both are valuable ways to interpret Dante and keep his work meaningful even after all these years.