From the Shire to the Pit: Tolkien’s Lasting Grip on Metal Scene

Earlier this year, I found myself in the middle of a sweaty, howling crowd at Pagan Fest 2025 in Paris. Elvenking, whose name is, by the way, inspired by Tolkien’s elven character Thranduil, had just launched into “Elvenlegions”, and somewhere between the riffs, the blast beats, and the crowd headbanding, it hit me: Tolkien is everywhere in the scene.

Not in a cliché way. Not just in lyrics about elves or dwarves. But in the atmosphere, the myth. The feeling that what we’re hearing is more than music : it’s a lore.

Tolkien has been part of metal’s DNA for decades. The seeds were there with Led Zeppelin (see Ramble On), sure, but it really started growing in the 90s with bands like Blind Guardian, who turned The Silmarillion into an entire concept album (Nightfall in Middle-Earth), complete with narration, battles, and emotional weight.

Since then, Tolkien’s legendarium has seeped into nearly every corner of metal, especially in black, folk, death and power metal. Bands like Summoning have based their entire sound on the cold vastness of Middle-earth. Others, like Wind Rose, lean into the dwarven side of things with hammering riffs, while bands such as Battlelore build their entire identity around Tolkien’s epic tales, weaving stories from across Middle-earth into their music.

And sometimes, the influence is right there in the name. Gorgoroth, Isengard, Burzum, Cirith Ungol, Amon Amarth, all names pulled straight from Tolkien’s Legendarium. Whether it’s the dark speech of Mordor or the peaks of Mount Doom, these names are impactful. They’re symbols of extremity, myth, and power : exactly what metal thrives on.

Elvenking performing at Pagan Fest 2025, Paris.

Swedish melodic death metal band Amon Amarth ( “Mount Doom” in Sindarin, one of Tolkien’s invented languages), whose name is directly inspired by Tolkien’s lore

Obviously, Tolkien himself was also inspired by older mythological traditions. His work draws heavily on Norse mythology, Anglo-Saxon myths and also on Finnish folklore, particularly through the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic. That connection felt even more vivid when Ensiferum took the stage later that night, a Finnish band whose sound and imagery is inspired by the same ancient references that shaped Tolkien’s imagination. The link felt natural, almost circular: metal inspired by Tolkien, who was inspired by the very myths that metal never stopped loving.

At Pagan Fest, the influence was everywhere. Not always direct (not every band sang about the fall of Númenor) but the vibe was there: a shared love of mythology, of ancient myths, of fate and doom and bravery. Bands like Tyr, Elvenking, Heidevolk, and Ensiferum embodied these themes throughout their sets, reminding the crowd of the epic themes that Tolkien so masterfully wrote about.

And it’s not just nostalgia. Tolkien’s legacy is still inspiring metal in 2025. Scottish band Anomos recently released “Oathbreakers”, a track from their new album Triumvirate, which tells the story of the Paths of the Dead from The Lord of the Rings. With brooding atmospheres, haunting riffs and lyrics echoing ancient oaths and cursed kings, the song dives deep into one of the darker corners of Tolkien’s lore. Even as the scene evolves, this fascination endures.

Why ? Maybe because Tolkien’s universe deals with the same raw material as metal: death, darkness, glory, resistance. There's a certain heaviness in Tolkien’s themes that resonates with what metal has always done best: transforming emotion into sheer force.

On my way out of the Pagan Fest venue, my jacket caught the eye of another metalhead. “I love the patch,” he said. I looked down. It was one of the new ones I’d added that week; Tolkien’s rune, right next to the white tree of Gondor. A quiet nod to the stories that shaped so much of this music and to the battle jackets that metal enthusiasts carry with them all the time. 

After all, what’s more metal than Tolkien ?

by. CYB3R GREEN