Heathen influences were apparent in forms of black metal from the 1990s, where lyrics and themes often expressed a longing for a pre-Christian Northern past; the mass media typically associated this music genre with Satanism. The Pagan metal genre—which emerged from the fragmentation of the extreme metal scene in Northern Europe during the early 1990s—came to play an important role in the North European Pagan scene. Many musicians involved in Viking metal were also practicing Heathens, with many metal bands embracing the heroic masculinity embodied in Norse mythological figures like Odin and Thor. Heathen themes also appeared in the neofolk genre. From the mid-1990s, the Internet greatly aided the propagation of Heathenry in various parts of the world. That decade also saw the strong growth of racist Heathenry among those incarcerated within the U.S. prison system as a result of outreach programs established by various Heathen groups, a project begun in the 1980s. During this period, many Heathen groups also began to interact increasingly with other ethnic-oriented Pagan groups in Eastern Europe, such as Lithuanian Romuva, and many joined the World Congress of Ethnic Religions upon its formation in 1998.