Genesis.

I’ve been meaning to start this blog for months. My journey from metalhead to Orthodox Christian has probably seemed much easier to the outside world than it actually has been, and I need to write what is actually going on in my head. Just to prove to myself that I’m not some religious freak who gets bored easily.

Just a year ago, I was one of the biggest fans of “true” Norwegian black metal around. Anyone remember Mayhem? That band notorious for their satanism, murder and burning of stave churches? Yeah, their album “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas” was high on my list of favorites, and I wore my Mayhem t-shirt like a badge. My black metal collection beyond that was extensive, and whenever I was sad, mad, whatever, I listened to it. It made me forget about the conclusion that I had come to about life: that in the end, it was completely meaningless.

Not until my soon-to-be father-in-law nearly died last February did I wake up from my flirtations with insanity. I grew up Catholic, flirted with evangelicalism in high school, and ended up abandoning it all in favor of heavy metal in late high school and early college — but with his illness, I began to pray again, soon realizing that the metal lifestyle had to go. After briefly flirting with traditional Roman Catholicism, I found myself looking into Holy Orthodoxy — because of a Roman Catholic book, incidentally.

Now I’m an Orthodox catechumen. And the contrast between what I was a year ago and what I am now is stark, I know. My metal collection is mostly gone, replaced mostly by Byzantine and Russian chanting. My metal posters have been replaced by icons. My time on weekends is now spent at church instead of running the local heavy metal radio show.

I’m still haunted by old passions. For all of my apparent piety, I wonder how much I’ve really changed. I want to document it with this blog. To you who might be reading this, though I will remain anonymous, pray to God for me, a miserable sinner.