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Black Metal: Conservative Revolution in Modern Popular Culture, Part 1
From the viewpoint of racial nationalism, the musical genre known as Black Metal is one of the most significant popular culture phenomena of the last two decades. Yet it has been seldom discussed by politically congenial scholars and commentators. This is surprising, since Black Metal runs counter to the post-World War II trends toward the progressive marginalization, condemnation, and psychopathologization of overt racial consciousness among whites. It is even more surprising when one considers that Black Metal is inspired by and sustains the same cultural and literary traditions that inform modern racial nationalism. Moreover, Black Metal, by means of its highly stylized, frankly European aesthetics, offers an effective weapon operating at the all-important pre-rational level with which to counter the assault on white identity.
I have written before about the need to create a parallel universe outside contemporary mainstream culture, and this involves not only choosing our own topics of scholarship, but anticipating their being defined through appropriation by the establishment’s own conformist scholars.[See Alex Kurtagic, “Mastery of Style Trumps Superiority of Argument,” TOQ Online, May 4, 2009, http://www.toqonline.com/2009/05/mastery-of-style/ and Alex Kurtagic, “I am not racist, but . . . ,” The Occidental Observer, June 7, 2009, http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Kurtagic-NotRacist.html.] I write, therefore, in hopes of introducing Black Metal as a topic of scholarly analysis within the anti-egalitarian tradition.
Black Metal has not been entirely ignored by mainstream scholars. It is discussed, for example, in Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge
While Moynihan and Søderlind rely on Jungian archetypes for what is otherwise a sensationalist and journalistic analysis of Black Metal, the other texts rely on analytical frameworks derived from the Freudo-Marxist scholastic tradition, which includes Marxist theorists like Louis Pierre Althusser, postmodernists like Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, critical theorists like Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, and so on. It is not difficult to see that interpretations of culture from these quarters, while containing many astute insights, are necessarily limited and distorted by the theorists’ unquestioning belief in equality as a good in itself, by their rejection of evolutionist insights as nefarious and ideological, and by their alienated—when not merely alien—attitudes towards traditional Western culture.
The limitations and distortions built into this body of theory are exacerbated by its status in Western academia as the institutional orthodoxy, a closed universe of theory where alternative—e.g., inegalitarian, evolutionist—perspectives are rejected in advance as discredited, outmoded, prejudiced, or lacking in scholarly rigor. When the subject of study is a cultural phenomenon that explicitly rejects the first principles upon which such a body of theory is predicated, there is always the danger of analysis degenerating into moralizing incomprehension.
Black Metal, Folk Metal, and Viking Metal album covers
Dissidence as a Style
What is Black Metal? Black Metal is a radical outgrowth of Heavy Metal. During the 1980s bands playing commercialized forms of Heavy Metal entered the mainstream, attaining lofty positions in the music charts and selling millions of albums. This prompted “fundamentalist” elements within the Heavy Metal scene to reclaim it as an underground praxis by developing extreme variants of the Heavy Metal sound, perceived to be more in tune with the genre’s original anti-commercial and countercultural values.[See Deena Weinstein, Heavy Metal: The Music And Its Culture
Black Metal does not sound like Heavy Metal. Both musical forms rely on the same core sonic components (guitar, bass, drums, and vocals); both are characterized by sonic intensity, extreme vocal performances, and the use of heavily amplified, distorted guitars. Heavy Metal musicians, however, tend to favor predictable song structures (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, verse, chorus), as well as sung/screamed, melodic vocals. In addition, Heavy Metal guitarists, although often incorporating influences from classical music in their style, play in a manner that still evinces Heavy Metal’s roots in Rhythm and Blues. Heavy Metal lyrics tend to deal with relatively superficial matters associated with youth: love, growing up, sex, rebellion, fun, drinking, etc.
Black metal, on the other hand, is much darker and much more extreme, favoring a rawer, noisier, and much harsher guitar sound; unpredictable song structures; classically-influenced melodies that suggest grimness, mysticism, sorrow, and misanthropic hatred; and inhuman, demonic screeches for vocals, unintelligible and heavily reverberated. In addition, Black Metal lyrics tend to be serious and arcane, dealing with the occult, pre-Christian mythology, pagan pride, war, misanthropy, genocide, and hatred of Christianity.
Black Metal logos
Black Metal also significantly differs from Heavy Metal aesthetically. Black Metal favors black above any color. Black Metal logos tend to be tortuous and elaborate, almost always unreadable, and laden with occult and/or pagan symbols, such as runes, swastikas, inverted crosses, pentagrams, and mjölnirs. Tortuous “blacklettering” (gothic letters) are nearly ubiquitous. Musicians use esoteric mythological stage names and obscure their faces with corpse-like black and white face paint. They appear on their albums in nocturnal, wooded, mediaeval, and/or wintry settings, clad in studded black leather and laden with bandoliers. It is not uncommon for the most extreme and misanthropic Black Metal bands to engage in self-mutilation (usually with hunting knives, around the arms and torso) and to have themselves photographed covered in blood after having performed such acts. The object is always to create images likely to inspire fear and horror among observers in the cultural mainstream—although this is merely “preaching to the choir,” of course, an effort to distinguish themselves as radically as possible from the despised “mainstream,” for otherwise Black Metal is nearly invisible outside its subcultural milieu.
Origins of Black Metal
Early Black Metal bands were Bathory, from Sweden, and Venom, from England. Venom are credited with inventing the term “Black Metal,” which first appeared as the title of their 1981 album. Bathory, however, proved far more influential. Although Bathory’s early works were dominated by Satanic themes and aesthetics, these were gradually displaced by the infusion of elements from classical music (particularly the Romantic period) and a growing fascination with pre-Christian Scandinavian mythology and history. Albums like Blood Fire Death (1989), Hammerheart (1991), and Twilight of the Gods (1992) eventually inspired the development of an entire new genre, now known as Viking Metal.
Similarly influential was the Swiss trio, Hellhammer, and its subsequent incarnation, Celtic Frost. Hellhammer was a prototype of such 1980s outgrowths of Heavy Metal as Thrash Metal, Death Metal, and Black Metal, but cannot be categorized as any one of them. Through their highly poetic and esoteric lyrics and increasingly elaborate musical compositions (peaking in 1987’s Into the Pandemonium), Hellhammer/Celtic Frost pioneered the transformation of Metal music into a sophisticated popular art form.
At a time when Heavy Metal seemed preoccupied mostly with base, low-brow, hedonistic excess (beer, girls, partying), Celtic Frost’s albums dealt with gods and ancient civilizations, and Bathory’s with Asatru, Vikings, and World War II. The British Thrash Metal band, Skyclad, was also significant, instigating the development of Folk Metal, a genre which incorporates traditional Folk music into a Black Metal framework, and whose musicians have links to the Black Metal and Viking Metal scenes.
Modern Black Metal has long ceased to be characterized purely by Satanism. Indeed, since the late 1980s, some Black Metal musicians have self-consciously refused to be defined by a foreign (i.e., non-European) monotheistic tradition. There is no Satan, however, without Christianity. By defining itself against Christianity, Satanism merely inverts Christian values instead of rejecting them altogether and embracing an authentically European worldview.
Many Black Metal musicians have, as a result, recognized the superficiality and ultimate futility of continuing “the war against (Judeo-) Christianity” which was central to Black Metal scene during the early and mid 1990s. Moreover, and at least partly in consequence, Black Metal has long since splintered into a variety of vehemently pagan subgenres, such as the abovementioned Viking Metal and Folk Metal, and—the most radical of all—National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM).
Part 1 of 3
Alex Kurtagic
Alex Kurtagic was born in 1970. He is the author of Mister (Iron Sky Publishing, 2009) and the founder and director of Supernal Music.
I’m afraid you are just one more grave digger of our great Christian European culture. Why don’t you buy yourself a spot of Mozart instead of blowing your eardrums with this crap?
Black Metal is yet another sure sign of the West’s decrepitude. That this “musical style” (musical, ha!) is even entertained as some sort of salubrious route towards redemption is beyond absurd.
Politics aside, this “music” is a cacophanous attack on the aesthetic sensibilities of Civilized Man. We should be extolling the music of the past: Gregorian chant up to Rachmaninoff. That the majority of our “enlightened ones” do not swoon to Western Music around the clock, but to this vile filth and other forms of anti-Music, shows how unsalvagable the situation is.
You are indulging some fantasy here that your taste for Black Metal music is some sort of philosophical and cultural “revolt” against modernity. It’s unmelodic, discordant, loud crap with retards as performers. Mostly it’s just juvenile.
Alex,
It seems the commentators above are entirely too domesticated to be able to tolerate, much less thrive on the raw, unrestrained force that is Black Metal. Most likely they are Christians. The vitality present in this genre is too much for pale, lifeless forms to endure.
Blessed are the weary ones, for they shall fall away soon.
Perhaps, Ali, you are right when you refer to this genre as “music,” but this does not equate it with “anti-music.” When soundscapes of certain modern genres exceed the limits of what could be thought of as “pleasurable listening,” it is an indicator of a “post-musical” stage of production. Such production deliberately exceeds the bounds of technique and purpose of conventional music. Here there is exploration of and submersion in more than just music; it could be said that the purpose of modern fringe “music” is to take one beyond music itself, at the risk of producing something that just sounds like crap to some.
In considering these subcultures, one is tempted to neutralize them by the charge that they are nothing more than another avenue of escapism — for those endowed with surplus energies, both producers and followers. Whether the black metal scene can be considered escapist even though it pays direct attention to pertinent sociocultural issues is open for discussion.
You linked to Amazon’s Lords of Chaos entry, and it’s worth reflecting on a statement made there, that black metal aficionados don’t get Ozzie Osbourne’s joke. I got the joke when Ozzie said: “The closest Black Sabbath got to black magic was a box of chocolates.”
Fact is, nobody worships Satan. Anton LaVey didn’t, Aleister Crowley didn’t. No one worships, whatever that means, the archetypal figure of evil presented by Christianity. The inversion of Christianity suffices to demonstrate a rejection of Christianity, not an embrace of its polar opposite, which is as much a confection of make-believe and frustrated longing as the central tenets of Christianity itself.
If I know anything about musicians, it’s that they’re mostly dumb. You have to be pretty smart to be a practicing magician, like Karl Germer, Jack Parsons, or Israel Regardie. Musicians can’t cut it. Read an interview, any interview, with these leather-clad morons: they can barely sting a coherent sentence together.
I am a big metal fan. But for some reason i was never able to identify with this fringe genre of heavy music. To be blunt, I can’t get past the silly costumes and horrible singing(if one can even call it singing). IMO, there are better bands, with better musicianship/songwriting, and a more uplifting message, then the ones you mentioned. “Grimness” and “misanthropic hatred” are not exactly the type of qualities i look for in a record . I want to be inspired and energized, not depressed, confused and alienated.
For anyone who is interested, check out Symphony X, Nightwish, Virgin Steele (just to name a few).
There is much beauty to be found in BM – it’s thoroughly clear that neither of you have ever listened to it in any real detail, or you have listened perhaps only to the most “brutal” and “bestial” examples as made popular by many journalists and reporter types. Typing “black metal” into youtube.com and looking at the first few videos is not the proper way to go about investigating this deep genre if you wish to participate in any kind of meaningful discussion on the topic.
But perhaps that’s the point – this music is for the few – those who dig extremely deep, down and far beyond what’s immediately available. I have a general respect for people who seek things beyond what’s in their immediate field of view. And to be sure “black metal” is just a blanket term for what probably amounts to something approximating 30 sub-genres, all unique in various ways.
Clearly there can be no real discussion on the matter until you have a full and proper direct understanding of this music. Although… there will be many kvlt BM types reading your posts taking great satisfaction in your admission that BM is a “cacophonous attack”! What a marvelous description of BM indeed…
And a little interesting tid bit – I myself own probably just as many classical records as I do black metal records, I grew up in a family of concert pianists and probably attend as many classical gigs and operas as i do black metal gigs.
This is music for the few, and Alex is clearly one of the few. You will probably not be surprised that we do take enormous pride in being able to genuinely call ourselves “outsiders.”
Great article, Alex. Looking forward to parts 2 and 3.
Personally, I don’t care for black metal. I have a certain appreciation for the little Neo-Folk that Alex and others have championed, though I’d prefer to take the “neo” out of it and just listen to the traditional stuff.
However, I do see the utility of black metal in raising racial awareness among younger people like myself. It is an extreme reaction to the race-suicide memes that youth are bombarded with from everywhere, even the so-called Christian churches. As distasteful as the black metal scene is, I guess it’s similar to shock therapy.
I don’t see black metal as a goal, just a method. Look at how successful the debauchery and Marxism of the 60s counterculture were in creating the subservient and brainwashed Baby Boomer generation. Perhaps an equally extreme counterculture can do the opposite for this generation.
“We should be extolling the music of the past: Gregorian chant up to Rachmaninoff. That the majority of our “enlightened ones” do not swoon to Western Music around the clock, but to this vile filth and other forms of anti-Music, shows how unsalvagable the situation is.”
Black Metal DOES extol music of the past. If you look at the top 5% of extreme metal you will find people rediscovering the classical tradition in a modern aesthetic. A good deal of black metal is shit, but the bands that “get it” have created true masterpieces. Examples:
Emperor, In the Night-side Eclipse: This album is what can be reffed to as symphonic black metal. With long compositions, containing the narrative structure of a symphony, Emperor created a masterwork of romanticist beauty. Layers of guitars create melody and counter-melody while keyboards hint at motifs . Should be studied by anyone who think black metal is anti-music.
Burzum, Hyis Lyset Tar Oss: On his finest album, Varg Vikerness melded the established black metal aesthetic with an ambient structure, with slow but clear, and powerful development. Small fragments of melody overlap hinting at carefully encoded themes.
People doubting the validity of metal should see below:
http://www.anus.com/metal/about/philosophy/
This ain’t the worst. There’s grindcore! You have to see it, not just hear it on the record player. It’s incredibly entertaining to see once in a while. You can’t take anything too seriously after watching Pig Destroyer.
It is true that “metal” attracts/attracted exclusively the rebellious white youth, only that this is a dead end. It’s a security valve to relieve some rebellion, make the youth look stupid and dangerous, divert the most energetic and independent young men to a destructive state of mind marked by sorrow, misanthropy, hatred without a motive, heavy drinking, and sometimes ridiculous outfits.
Still, “metal” is not a huge problem. Around twenty, people generally lose their interest, regarding it as a stupid thing that stole away their most beautiful years.
Also, It is not a mean to raise the “revolutionary consciousness,” so to speak. Beethoven or Wagner are real revolutionists. Almost all the romantic composers were nationalists and revolutionists, something that can not be said about “metal” composers.
It is only a signal that white youth needs its own identity, apart from the models provided by the entertainment industry.
If Mozart is too difficult, too orderly, too great, too everything, this shouldn’t be a problem. There are literally yottabytes of good European music where the youth should take inspiration and joy.
Since the French Revolution, politics really has been defined by 4 concepts in the West. These concepts are liberty (capitalism and libertinism), equality (socialism and Marxism), fraternity (nationalism), and [representing the old order] tradition (primarily Christianity now). I bring this up with this article because of the comments received. One of the problems that white nationalism has suffered is reactionary traditionalists often attack anything outside of their outlook. I am a white nationalist, but I am no more for Christian Western traditionalism then I am for Marxism or crony capitalism.
The Christian traditionalist element, including intellectuals like Michael Hoffman, seem to think that a return to pre-modern values would be ideal for white racial survival and totally blame our abandonment of such on Jewry. However, to be honest I think the situation is more complex. I think Jewry, in an exaggerated and dangerously extreme form, took us in the direction we were slightly headed in anyways. Antibiotics and new technologies were changing our values anyways. Maybe without Jewry we could have changed our morals and tastes in secular ways without having a nihilistic societal meltdown.
The old Christian ways do not satisfy a modern population with modern technologies, medicines, and lack of faith. If white racialists had some degree of power this might not even be threatening our birth rates and collective survival contrary to those obsessed with Christian religiosity. National Socialist Germany and other fascist countries were not in keeping with Western Christian traditionalism yet had high birth rates. I could openly envision a society that is secular and morally lax but controlled by a government that indoctrinates people successfully to reproduce. I think the traditionalists dread the thought because that means their values are not the only way for us to survive.
That there is no raving about a Haydn piano sonata, a Johann Stamitz symphony, or a polyphonic motet, but this caterwauling instead, is, excuse the redundancy, a sign of a de-cultured individual. That musical vitality is thought to be represented by screaming, culture-distorting, sophomoric freaks shows to what a nadir we have sunk.
White youth must return to its roots: the Western canon, excusing the pun.
Music is perhaps the greatest signpost of one’s “soul.”
And White youth “ain’t got it.”
Black metal has no ‘utility’ for people like you. Black metal is a sonic attempt to obliterate this so called ‘civilization’ full of idiotic cattle, what use could this possibly be to ‘radical traditionalists’? What use is this phrase anyways? It used to hold some worth to me but I’ve come to realize that for the most part it is just a label racialistic Christian Conservatives, particularly Catholics, like to apply to themselves. Maybe it makes your rebellion more meaningful for you than it really is.
Black metal sees Christianity as a weed from the jewish root, like spiritual Bolshevism. It is totally corrupt and perceived by youth as worthless, a spiritual disease that has poisoned Europeans for far too long. Black metal is really not ‘anti-spiritual’ or ‘anti-music’, it is more like a cleansing fire to eradicate the spiritual rot and decay we are constantly exposed to in this cattle farm society. The best black metal is like a ‘shamanic experience’, to heal the soul by purging the rotten and worthless. In the internet age black metal is actually very popular among disaffected youth who yearn for truth and meaning outside of our rotten, spiritually dead culture (and that INCLUDES CHRISTIANITY). More than anything else black metal is a worldview conveyed by music. We do not care about what cattle think about this music. The only regretful thing about black metal is that it is under siege by commercialism by virtue of its burgeoning popularity. Of course when I speak praise of black metal, I am only referring to the worthy bands, not the imitators and sleazeball sellouts, of which there are many.
If you are a ‘radical traditionalist’ Christian and the idea of black metal offends you, then a question for you is this; where is the authentic Christian rebellion against modern civilization? How could it even exist? In this world full of mega-churches and football prayers, sobbing millionaire televangelists who buy methamphetamines from gay prostitutes, pedophile priests! Who have you got? Crappy commercial Christian rock, country music and new-age pablum. I have heard a few good underground Christian music artists but by and large they just co-opt genre aesthetics of non-Christian genres.
How can you claim a religious tradition is worth saving when it has come to THIS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa0EtdtPi8w&feature=related
I know I am being abrasive here, but I also know that my opinions reflect those of many, many other youths. Christian culture has absolutely no credibility for non-religious youth, and it never will. It has been slowly dying for centuries and this process will only continue. I respect the artistic creations of many, many Christians from centuries past, but this is 2010! You cannot just roll back the clock hundreds of years out of nostalgia the days when men like Mozart walked the earth. Black metal is the most widespread authentic spiritual rebellion against modernity among whites of today, whether you like it or not, and it shows no signs of losing momentum after 2 decades.
First things first, I’ve been looking forward to this article for months, glad to be reading it now!
Secondly Alex, I don’t understand why you always talk down Heavy/Trad Metal as childish escapism. That may be true of its early years (though not always the case, we can’t forget Maiden’s epics like Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Alexander the Great), but many bands playing in that style, as well as Prog, Power and Doom, are implicitly/explicitly Eurocentric with their lyrical subject matter, and neo-classical musical elements. I’ll echo Dee in saying people should check out Virgin Steele and Symphony X. Virgin Steele have two albums, The House of Atreus Act I and The House of Atreus Act II, I think that should be introduction enough, the cultured amongst us will know what those albums are about. Symphony X’s 24 minute epic “The Odyssey” is a remarkable piece of music, once again it should be plain to everyone what the song is about. Let’s not forget Jag Panzer’s album Thane to the Throne, with the brilliant closing track The Tragedy of McBeth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtkdJspdAmw
Blind Guardian’s Nightfall in Middle Earth will please all the Tolkien buffs. There are countless other bands and albums I’d love to list here, but I’ll be here all day!
Alex York is absolutely correct. Black Metal is for the few. Great BM for the fewer still. I’m more than certain that everyone here, that goes for you too Greg, will enjoy the French band Alcest, they’re equal parts BM and post-rock. Very soothing. The debut album is titled Souvenirs D’un Autre Monde, that basically sums up the feeling of the work; nostalgia. Now we shall explore the very depths of Black Metal, for the true master, I am of course talking of The Ruins of Beverast. A one man band, Alexander von Meilenwald is his name, he was the drummer for the now defunct German BM band Nagelfar [not to be confused for the wussy Swedish BM band Naglfar], Nagelfar is worth checking out, my fellow BM few, though I’m sure I’m preaching to the converted. The Ruins of Bevarast is truly for the few of the few. Most kvlt BM kids can’t stomach Meilenwald for he’s not ripping off early Darkthrone. Though, one must admire the reactionary conservative ethos of kvlt BM, even though it is ultimately self-defeating as the true master of the genre, those that transcend the genre to something that is more than BM, are no longer still “paying homage” to early Bathory.
What I can’t stomach myself are those Christians proclaiming the literal Truth of Christianity is what will save us. “The traditional religion of the West!” they proclaim will fix all our problems. The West is dead. As much as it pains me, either the white race will survive or Western Zivilisation will continue. Both are not possible. I feel sorry for these types, they cannot live happy lives in the present, nor can they fathom what needs to be done for the future; they’re in limbo. I will always support sincere Rightist Christians [preferably Catholic!], but why cannot they ever reciprocate the support?
I’m not a fan of Black Metal at all…I just don’t enjoy it…that being said, I laughed my ass off at all of the typical tired OLD PEOPLE once again whining about how loud, fast, noisy the music of young people hurts their poor little ears, and how they don’t understand it…Your grandparents whined about your dad’s music, your dad whined about YOUR music, and now, in stereotypical fashion, you whine about your kids’ music…I’m gettin’ on in years now, too and understand your aches and pains and deteriorating teeth, but why pick on these kids? Your generation raised them to be what they are? Black metal might suck, but at least they aren’t listening to rap and emulating those subhumans, right? WESTERN MUSIC DIED WITH MOZART and with him any furthering of Form within the West. Get over it…
Heres my two cents. In my town there is an active black metal scene. It is full of racially aware white kids, skinheads, metalheads, etc. Black metal is what has united us, and because of that, we formed a large crew. All of us are talented and intelligent people. You all shouldnt be so quick to judge music that you know nothing about. The reason why the world is going downhill is because of the pariah that is Christianity. There is nothing WHITE about that religion. All that “love thy neighbor” crap is for weak liberals.
Black metal. The phrase invokes a sinister method toward an ominous outcome.
Many white nationalist / racially aware writers and activists draw similar parallels to black metal’s presentation as I see it; the main criticism being too much negativity. However, by exposing the ruthless power of our enemies; forecasting our racial and cultural demise if something isn’t done, tends to anger and motivate a chosen few into action. Black metal and white nationalism share this trait.
Black metal has thankfully thrown off the Satanic nonsense and is addressing implicitly ethnic subjects in the corporeal world and the philosophical realm– visible tangible issues that are tackled by white advocacy writers but on a different level.
Both black metal AND white nationalism invoke sinister outcomes AND troubling aesthetics to the weak, the insolently judgmental — those who are more concerned with a ‘digestible’ presentation of issues.
While I appreciate powerful music and certainly melodious metal that remind me of, say, Grieg, I usually find this type of “music” an affront to the soul. Sorry.