During recent decades, popular culture has developed into an increaringly important source of inspiration for the construction of alternative forms of religious expression and practice. This study concentrates on the phenomenon of Christian metal music in a contemporary Finnish context as an ecample of a case which Christianity and a distinct form of popular music and its culture have met and merged. It account for the historical development and defining characteristics of Christian metal music on a transnational level and ecplores the structure and discursive contstruction of today's transnational Christian metal music scene.

The ways in which Christian metal music is constructed discursively and invested with certain, both cultural and religious, functions and meanings are explored with particular reference to the contemporapy Finnish national scene. In relaton to current debates on religious scange and transformation in the West, it is argued that the Christian metal music scene provides its core members with important resources for the shaping of an alternative and complementary form of religious expression and practice and an alternative Christian identity.