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Black Metal: Conservative Revolution in Modern Popular Culture, Part 3
Franz von Stuck, "Der Krieg"
Black Metal and the Return of Völkisch Thought
How did völkisch ideas resurface in popular culture? By the 1960s Christianity had entered a phase of decline in the West, following a long period of growing skepticism as well as hostility from political ideologies from both Right and Left. As has been the pattern in the West since the fourth century,[1] the decline of the dominant religion coincided with a renewed interest in alternative spiritualities, exotic religions, and the occult.
Much of this interest found expression in modern popular culture, especially modern popular music. Perhaps the most striking example of this confluence is the music of Heavy Metal pioneers Led Zeppelin, whose lyrics blended Aleister Crowley, J. R. R. Tolkien, and pagan Norse and Anglo-Saxon folklore. Artists like Black Sabbath, Black Widow, and Coven also incorporated occult themes and went on to influence subsequent waves of more explicitly Satanic Heavy Metal artists, such as King Diamond and Mercyful Fate.
Influenced by Black Sabbath, Motörhead, and punk rock, Bathory emerged within this milieu. We have already seen how the Satanic themes of Bathory’s early albums were replaced by Nordicist and pagan ones. Bathory’s Thomas Forsberg articulated the view that Christianity was a foreign religion, a form of Judaic spiritual conquest that sought to crush and eradicate indigenous European paganism. During the 1990s, this view became widely influential in the Black Metal subculture, especially in Scandinavia.
Anti-Christian views within the Black Metal scene usually fall into two categories: Nietzschean (often mediated through Anton Lavey’s “Satanism”) and neo-pagan. The Nietzscheans denigrate Christianity as an egalitarian religion of weakness, meekness, repentance, confession, and self-denial. The neo-pagans generally agree with the Nietzscheans, but emphasize the foreignness and deracinating influence of Christianity compared to the more authentic European pagan heritage. This outlook is explicitly völkisch, evoking the unity of blood and soil, of race and nation, and of spirituality and the Volk. The Black Metal scene also tends to be anti-Semitic for the same völkisch reasons they are anti-Christian. Some Black Metal musicians were so militantly anti-Christian that during the early-to-mid 1990s, they embarked on a campaign of church arsons.
In the world of Black Metal, genuine spirituality and depth of artistic expression is all about delving fearlessly into the darkness of the human soul. Hence the unremittingly dark songs filled with hate, fear, melancholy, misery, and depression. Black Metal—“true” Black Metal—seeks to put the greatest possible distance between itself and the mainstream of capitalistic mass society, which it perceives as meaningless, banal, materialist, brainless, conformist, uncreative, and hypocritical.
The Black Metal subculture glorifies war and the martial spirit. Scenes of battle are common on Black Metal album covers, and musicians often photograph themselves wielding axes or swords and wearing bandoliers, spiked arm-bands, and, occasionally, coats of mail. Likewise, lyrics celebrate war and battle, often heroic but always bloody. This militarism is often wrapped in mysticism. Typical titles include “Sunwheel on the Helmet of Steel” in Capricornus’ Alone Against All, “Nine Steps to Eternity” in Thor’s Hammer’s Fidelity Shall Triumph, and “Fire and Snow” in Graveland’s Will Stronger than Death.
Black Metal artists also emphasize nature and landscape, but a morbid and mystical sensibility is evident even here. Whether inspired by völkisch thought or mere Satanic occultism, nature is always conceived in spiritual, mystical, and Romantic terms. The Black Metal aesthetic dictactes that night and winter are eternal. Coniferous forests are preferred to tilled fields and manicured gardens. Where the glorification of war merges with nature mysticism, the emphasis remains on the latter. Viking and Folk Metal bands, in contrast, adopt a more obviously völkisch approach to nature, allowing daylight in their landscapes and generally emphasizing the idyllic as opposed to counter-Enlightenment Sturm und Drang.
The Black Metal sensibility does not reject culture in favor of nature, but instead valorizes culture and nature, both conceived organically, over civilization, which is conceived in mechanistic and materialistic terms. In the Black Metal universe, cities were never built, the Industrial Revolution never occurred, and modernity never arrived. For all its belligerence, Black Metal is inherently nostalgic, a comprehensive negation of modernity.
This negation is apparent even in the Black Metal sound, which would of course be impossible without the techno-industrial society Black Metal rejects. Thus the technological source of the Black Metal sound—that which links it to modernity—is concealed to the same degree that it is flaunted in Techno music: “raw” Black Metal bands favor a heavily under-produced, “necro” sound that deliberately avoids high-fidelity or otherwise seeks to emulate low-fidelity recording media—in contrast to other genres that favor a primitive, under-produced sound, the desired effect is not “street cred” (as in with Punk) but a sense of quasi-occult obscurity; more instrumentally sophisticated bands use layers of synthesizers to generate a volatilized mystical atmosphere that obscures the act of performance, while bands with a vehemently pagan orientation (e.g., Nokturnal Mortum) add traditional folk instruments into their mix musically to evoke an earthy sense of Volkstum.
The desired effect is always for the listener to lose himself in the sound, to go into a semi-trance, raised above the tedium of mundanity; Black Metal music aspires to hypnosis and, in the case of specifically pagan Black Metal, it seeks to create the spiritual union—with the landscape, with the collective unconsciousness, with the lost pagan soul, with the lost heroic spirit of the distant past—that was longed for by völkisch authors a century ago.
The rejection of modernity goes hand in hand with the rejection of progressivism. Like völkisch thinkers, Black Metalers, whether pagan, Satanic, or merely suicidal, are cultural pessimists. Their pessimism is often allied with the explicit adoption of the Indo-European Traditional cyclical view of history, in which history begins with a Golden Age then declines through Silver and Bronze ages to the present Iron or Dark Age (Kali Yuga), which is doomed to perish of its own corruptions or through a cataclysmic final battle, whereupon a new Golden Age will dawn.
References to such culture pessimists as Nietzsche and Spengler and to more mystically inclined authors like Julius Evola, Savitri Devi, Miguel Serrano, and H. P. Lovecraft, are common in Black Metal. Hence titles like “Decline of the West (Europe Will Rise)” in Pantheon’s Aryan Rebirth, “Eve of the Kali Yuga” in Arkthos’ Knights of the Eternal Sun, “The Gathering of the Elite to Destroy both the Modern World and Demiurge” in Beyond the North Winds’ Aryan Cult of A-Mor, “Desecration of Our Fatherland” in Darkthule’s Awakening of the Ancient Past, “Melancholy of the Inaccomplished Vengeance” in Sons of North’s Death of the White Race, “Among the Ruins” in SIG:AR:TYR’s Beyond the North Winds, “Son of the Fatherland” in Hordak’s The Last European Wolves, “A Golden Age Turns to Rust” in Drowning the Light’s The Fallen Years, and “Exiles of the Golden Age” in Weltenfeind, a three-way split with Absurd, Grand Belial’s Key, and Sigrblot.
Explicit references to völkisch thought are rare, but they occasionally surface: there is a Finnish band called Armanenschaft; Hate Forest’s Blood and Fire EP contains the song “Aryosophia”; Vril released a demo entitled “Once and Again Thule”; Werewolf’s track “Vrilmacht” appears in their Fidelity of Ideology split EP with Semper Fidelis; there is Apriaxia’s Blood and Soil EP; and Adalruna’s Wer ist der Starke von Oben shows a photograph of Guido von List standing by the Heltentor with members of the Guido-von-List-Gesellschaft in 1911.
References to specifically Nazi mysticism and esotericism are also not infrequent: there is Bilskirnir’s EPs Ahnenerbe and Hyperborea, and the song “Reconquering the Atlantean Supremacy” in the album Wotansvolk, Hakenkreuzzug’s Centurions of Thule EP, the song “Jewel of Atlanteans” in Graveland’s Memory and Destiny, and the song “Hyperborean Ascention” in Contra Ignem Fatuum’s Detritus, among others.
The emergence of explicitly National Socialist Black Metal should not surprise, for the original völkisch current was the incubator of Conservative Revolutionary tendencies, including National Socialism, and by the mid 1990s Black Metal had re-created the same cultural logic that led to National Socialism 80 years earlier. But the readiness with which Black Metal came to embrace an outlook and sensibility so thoroughly stigmatized following the Allied victory in 1945 still needs to be explained.
The answer lies in the nature of Heavy Metal’s genesis following the collapse of the popular music subculture of the 1960s. Deena Weinstein identifies two strands within this genesis, an idealist one and a conservative one, which were fused at the point of Heavy Metal’s inception.[2]
Heavy Metal emerged at a time when its original core demographic—white working-class males—were experiencing a growing social, cultural, economic, political, and demographic displacement, thanks to the rising tide of radical feminism; belligerent black activism; discriminatory legislation in housing, education, and employment favoring minorities; non-white immigration from the Third World; and a serious economic downturn that drove the most marginalized whites to the wall. These developments aided the formation of an implicit white community that was strongly ethnocentric, and which, in a world where whiteness was increasingly de-centered, came to make a badge of honor of its negative marginality: Heavy Metal fans are what Weinstein calls “proud pariahs.”
The Heavy Metal culture was defined by its working class roots, and working class culture is by nature conservative, with well-defined male and female roles, a readiness to express strong emotions, and a distrust of government and corporations. It is a culture that is decidedly out of step with modern mainstream liberalism. Not surprisingly, then, Heavy Metal tended to resist radical changes in its form, celebrated heroic masculinity, and was predicated on an ethos of integrity and authenticity that deplored its own commercialization. Indeed, “[f]or fans, perhaps the worst thing that can be said about a heavy metal band is that it has ‘gone commercial.’”[3] Nevertheless, Heavy Metal gained many fans from the lower middle class, and subsequent offshoots have followed this pattern. The lower middle class is the same demographic that Mosse identified as formulating the völkisch critiques of modernity a century earlier, and indeed the key features of Heavy Metal culture are highly compatible with those critiques.[4]
Even in its rawest forms, Black Metal tends to appeal to a more elitist and culturally sophisticated sensibility than its parent genre, but it has not radically changed the basic anti-modern, anti-liberal, anti-commercial, anti-cosmopolitan outlook it inherited from Heavy Metal. It only made it more serious: deepened it ideologically, elaborated it artistically, and radicalized it metapolitically. From the beginning Black Metalers were proud pariahs in the modern world, and, as such, were receptive to anti-establishment ideologies that were compatible with Black Metal’s own constitution.
In sum, a good portion of Black Metal’s intellectual and aesthetic features are völkisch. Crowley, Satanism, and Tolkien also boil in the Black Metal cauldron, to be sure, but these too have been appropriated to the extent that they are consistent with the völkisch worldview. Therefore, one can plausibly characterize Black Metal as a revival of the Conservative Revolution, profoundly transformed in the context of a modern musical subculture, but recognizable nonetheless.
Lessons
My characterization of Black Metal will inevitably lead radical elements within the white nationalist movement to ask, “How do we use Black Metal to start the revolution?” Those asking this question will likely be thinking of how rock music in the 1960s helped to disseminate and popularize among the young the “progressive,” liberal, and anti-Western ideas that had been festering in the catacombs of the academia since the 1930s and even earlier.
I am not convinced that Black Metal has an application in that political sense. The music of the 1960s enjoyed broad appeal, whereas Black Metal seeks and revels in its own marginality and obscurity. Student engagement in radical politics during the late 1960s is only mirrored by the modern Left, and enjoyed, as it does today to a much greater degree, media and institutional support. Fans of Black Metal, on the other hand, detest politics even more than the Conservative Revolutionaries: theirs is a strategy of negation and of escape from mundanity.
The Anti-Geldof Compilation that I sponsored and released through my record label remains to date the sole extant example of engagement with current affairs and everyday politics in the Black Metal scene—and even in this case it was largely an emotional response on the part of the participating artists against the pious hypocrisy of self-indulgent rock stars. This is significant when one considers that the Encyclopedia Metallum currently lists over 17,000 Black Metal bands.[5] Then, again, most of the participating artists were associated with the NSBM scene, and, as we know, one aspect that distinguished the National Socialists from the Conservative Revolutionaries in Germany was their willingness to engage in mass politics.
At best, we can see Black Metal as proof that it is possible for a cultural space to exist, even today, where anti-egalitarian thought can find honest artistic expression and forge an alternative positive identity among whites through the praxis of style. Our task is to understand the mechanisms that enabled significant parts of the Black Metal scene to exist as an explicit white community in the first place. Our task is also to create other such cultural spaces, to expand the constellation of stylized activities, so that we may eventually build a parallel cultural universe wherefrom they can be afforded institutional support and thus gain momentum and consolidate, once the liberal establishment collapses by the weight of its own corruption and ideological bankruptcy.
This is an important task, because inasmuch as Black Metal artists have developed and inspired an evocative style or aesthetic that (implicitly or explicitly) is uniquely white and European and/or celebrates whiteness in all its diversity of history and heritage, Black Metal is a genuine object of study in the context of a cultural war where the opposing faction seeks to suppress, defame, and eradicate whiteness. Humans are sentimental and emotional animals, more readily persuaded by an appealing style than by a rational argument, so winning the cultural war will require more than hard facts and superior logic. It requires that we successfully appeal to sentiment and emotion by becoming masters of style. Black Metal contains important lessons in this respect.
Discography:
Adalruna. Wer ist der Starke von Oben. 2008.
Apraxia. Blood and Soil. Othal Productions. OLP008. 2001.
Arkthos. Knights of the Eternal Sun. Supernal Music. Ferly048CD. 2006.
Bathory. Blood Fire Death. Black Mark Productions. BMCD666-1. 1989.
Bathory. Hammerheart. Black Mark Productions. BMCD666-1. 1991.
Bathory. Twilight of the Gods. Black Mark Productions. BMCD666-1. 1992.
Beyond the North Winds’ Aryan Cult of A-Mor. 2004.
Bilskirnir. Ahnenerbe. Nykta Productions. NYKTA06. 2004.
Bilskirnir. Hyperborea. Solistitium Records. SOL052. 2005.
Bilskirnir. Wotansvolk. Wotanstahl Kangschmiende. WKG006. 2007
Capricornus. Alone Against All. Supernal Music. Ferly011CD. 2004.
Celtic Frost. Into the Pandemonium. Noise Records. N-0067. 1987.
Contra Ignem Fatuum. Detritus. Supernal Music. Ferly036MCD. 2005.
Darkthule. Awakening of the Ancient Past. Battlefield Records. 2004.
Graveland. Memory and Destiny. No Colours Records. NC057. 2002.
Graveland. Will Stronger than Death. No Colours Records. NC0118. 2007.
Hakenkreuzzug. Centurions of Thule. Battlefield Records. 2004
Hate Forest. Blood and Fire. Sombre Records. 2001.
Hellhammer. Apocalyptic Raids. Noise Records. N-0008. 1984.
Hordak. The Last European Wolves. Griffin Music. GRIFFIN008CD. 2006.
Pantheon. Aryan Rebirth. Strong Survive Records. SSR025. 2005.
Thor’s Hammer. Fidelity Shall Triumph. Darker Than Black Records. DTB001. 1998.
Semper Fidelis/Werewolf. Fidelity of Ideology. Eastside Records/ Hammerbolt. 2008.
Skyforger. Semigall’s Warchant. FR034. 2004.
SIG:AR:TYR. Beyond the North Winds. Morbid Winter Records. MWR012. 2008.
Various Artists. Anti-Geldof Compilation. Supernal Music. Ferly035CD. 2007.
[1] Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism, 2nd ed. (London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2004).
[2] Weinstein, Heavy Metal.
[3] Weinstein, Heavy Metal, 115.
[4] Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, 7.
[5] http://www.metal-archives.com/.
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.
Brilliant article!
I think everyone should watch the video for the Bathory song, “One Rode to Asa Bay”, so awesome. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDpc-831GPs
Sure Quorthon couldn’t really sing, his growls on the other hand were great, but his performance on the song “Hammerheart” is just so genuine it is moving. Quorthon knew his music, most others would have picked something from Wagner; he used Holst. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K-4RawW8CU&feature=related
Though, I have to say my favourite Bathory song is off Nordland I , “Mother Earth Father Thunder”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTEi_PlFEWU&feature=related
How you can connect Germany’s Voelkische Bewegung with your barbarous muzak is beyond me. They were into beautiful folksongs, or the great classical composers. As someone said already: BM is for the few, and thank God for that. As for your general construct, I think it’s too abstruse altogether. You should look deeper into the matter and fan out more widely.
Where’s the audience for this music?
That’s what I want to know.
I just don’t think these things (“Aryan” mysticism and club-swinging Odinism) appeal to very many people.
The masses are by their very nature weak-minded and effeminate (Christianity suits them well).
I’m sorry, Alex, but dressing them up in black leather and putting a little paint on their faces is not going to change that.
This is a fascinating topic. I remember being into thrash metal in the late eighties, followed by death metal. Then black metal showed up in the early nineties, and I thought it seemed like the logical next step to make music more extreme. What could be more extreme than growling death metal? High pitched screaming black metal apparently could.
I also remember that the earlier bands were all satanic, but I thought in their attempt to go more extreme, they started embracing the ultimate evil, white nationalism and Nazism. I thought at the time they were just trying to “out-evil” one another. It seems like satanism isn’t much of a concern to modern day opinion makers now that Western media has been captured by the left, but white nationalism is the ultimate evil. I always thought that’s why black metallers chose that topic, for its appalling shock value. I remember purchasing a compilation called ‘The Night and the Fog’ and ordering a cassette tape from a band called Absurd. I corresponded with one of the members by email a few times after reading about their exploits in a book about black metal and violent crime. I have no idea about how it’s changed today but the US had a decent underground black metal scene back then. I honestly never thought at the time how bands like Graveland and Judas Iscariot (from DeKalb, Illinois, ha!) fit into the bigger picture involving defending traditional western values. I do remember there being a big anti-Jewish theme in metal chat rooms. The best black metal was regarded as “true” while lame, false metal was “Jewish.” I was only into music at the time and had no clue about topics covered at TOQ or Vdare or wherever.
Thanks, Alex, for this informative article.
Interesting set of articles.
While I agree that the aesthetics of “Viking metal,” and Germanic paganism more generally, have tremendous appeal and could form the basis for a viable pro-White youth culture… the fact remains that most of this black metal stuff just isn’t very good from a musical standpoint. I’ve honestly tried to get into it on several occasions, and while I’m open to the possibility that maybe I just haven’t found “the good stuff” yet, what I’ve heard so far is just not enjoyable to listen to. The growly screaming and the mediocre guitar work . . . the entire genre appears to be little more than a refuge for people who lack any real musical talent yet want to be rock stars, sort of like “indie rock” and “punk rock” for the most part. Since they can’t compete with one another on the basis of songwriting and musicianship, they instead compete on the basis of who is more authentically representing their tiny sub-genre. They are optimizing for style and not substance. You can call it “elitism,” but nobody outside of the black metal subculture perceives you as an elite group. It’s a sort of delusional, wannabe elitism.
So as it sits, a small fringe of people listening to crappy black metal is not a phenomenon of much value. However, a strong potential I can see is for black metal to “sell out” and “go mainstream”: i.e., get people who can actually sing and play guitar to produce quality music, but retain the veneer of Germanic paganism. Movies like Lord of the Rings and bands like Led Zeppelin prove that Germanic themes can be successfully marketed to a mass audience. Led is probably the biggest band of all time, in part because they incorporated many Northern European cultural elements into their music but also because Jimmy Page was an incredible guitarist and songwriter and Robert Plant’s vocals were amazing (at least in the early years).
So, there is some potential here. It’s significant in that it offers a way to possibly make White racialism cool, which is what it desperately needs to be. The 1960s counterculture was successful in large part because it was just cool. I wasn’t around at that time, but I’m sure it was fun to be a part of that. The same is true of the movies and music used to promote multiculturalism and diversity. MTV was cool. I still enjoy tons of music that is not exactly “pro-White.” I can’t help myself.
By contrast, old fogey “radical traditionalism” and “paleoconservatism” are completely lame-ass. Nobody wants to be a part of these movements. They’re dead, boring, and lifeless. Bring on the youthful vigor of the Vikings!
Interesting essays by Kurtagic on what amounts to a marginal variety of Nordic-youth “protest” music. Still, I think I’ll stick to Rachmaninoff, Sibelius, Wagner, Mascagni, Schmitt, Bax, and others of this ilk: all tradition-exalting European nationalists, and all thoroughly detested by the acidic, trans-national, cosmopolitan Jewish and Jewized critical establishment. This coherent sound-world, not post-adolescent screeching and bellowing, is the music that will help rebuild the morale of a shattered white civilization.
‘As someone said already: BM is for the few, and thank God for that. As for your general construct, I think it’s too abstruse altogether.’
It might be useful to consider that “Resistance Records” was quite a successful business venture. However, it is also worthwhile to consider that a prominent propagandist in that venture has embraced blacks and Jews.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novacosm
Here is a claim, which I think is true, but might be false: “Pagan heavy metal is a useful instrument of pro-white propaganda, largely because pagan religious sentiment is more difficult to suppress than specific political agendas. Irrational religion may unify whites where rational politics does not.”
In my opinion there is some potential in metal music regarding White Nationalism. However I don’t think Black Metal is good way to go — that music basically has no artistic value. There are some exceptions for example Drudkh (Ukrainian NSBM band) but usually it is pure noise.
I wish there were bands who play heavy/power metal mixed with folk music — something like Folkearth for example but with more explicit racialist message. They don’t have to necessarily sing about hatred toward Jews or Blacks (some of the may of course) — they can sing about Alexander, Charles Martel, Crusaders, wars against Islam, Vikings, King Arthur, Roman legions and praise look of White man — pale skin, blond/red/brown hair etc. You know what I mean: positive messages.
I remember that for example Iron Maiden had songs about Alexander the Great, Daedalus and Icarus etc. It is very distant from what you can see on TV nowadays. It is the right path. It should just be more radical.
Regarding extreme music for White Nationalists, I think MARTIAL INDUSTRIAL is excellent. I love bands such as Arditi or Triarii, and in my opinion such music better expresses Aryan spirit and has more artistic value than BM. No offence for fans of BM.
I think also that hostility between Christians and Pagans shouldn’t continue (both sides are guilty in my opinion). Jews are happy because of such divisions between Whites. I understand points of both sides, however.
I respect all White heroes who fought for White Race, be they Crusaders, Spartans, or Davey Crockett.
While there is a tangible NSBM movement within Black Metal now, this strain of the genre on a musical level largely fails by being the right-wing equivalent of protest music as said, much like the imitators of Skrewdriver Punk music that throw together a bunch of cliches that have been associated with aspects of that ideology. However, following the history of Black Metal would lead one to understand that all ethno-nationalist ideas which have arisen within this scene have proceeded so from a wider conception, related to a more theological (albeit a morbid and nihilistic) one, so I would hesitate to tie the Norwegian and original Polish scene, for example, so closely to the current state of NSBM, purely because there was more of a philosophical (or perhaps anti-philosophical) construct behind this music, thus not as one-dimensional, thus not ‘National Socialist’, ‘Viking’ or ‘Racialist’ Black Metal. As history also proves, Black Metal thrives under certain conditions, none of them having anything in common with a mass movement. This does limit the appeal of Black Metal, especially to those of less distortion-friendly ears, but it does not limit the musical potential of the genre, manifested to levels of high art on several occassions. I suggest that you previous commentators do your refined tastes on Classical and other European music forms a favour and not just treat Black Metal like a dribbling Rock music journalist would and actually pay attention to the composition of the music rather than isolating yourself from it on the basis of its presentation. Yes, it is post-modern, but it is also post-post-modern, and what will come after this modern age? Hopefully, as Indo-European cycles of history dictate, the re-institution of the Eternal. Coming to terms with this aesthetic on the holistic understanding of the music that all true art (in the Schopenhauerian definition of the term) demands will reveal not just a refined form of Metal, but the precise way in which Black Metal conjures visions of the manifest unmanifest within popular music, echoing the compositional styles or the phrasal dynamics of the great Classicists and the sacred and folk music upon which a lot of it was based. This studied, academic approach as it may sound and may seem alien to the spirit of Black Metal, is probably necessary for ‘outsiders’, even the most ‘open-minded’, from my experience.
P.S. While I enjoy some Martial Industrial music, to say it’s artistically superior to the best that Black Metal has to offer shows really transparently that you’re less concerned with structure and more hollow aesthetic appreciation. This is the opposite to artistic superiority.
I have read this article with great interest as I listen to several bands from this musical genre. I think the problem here is that for such an extreme form of music to be brought to a wider audience is irresponsible, giving the nature and conduct of this music and of course the political issues it raises. I don’t follow the underground movement and I do not know how much of a following this music has. Suffice to say that it has become popular amongst younger audiences, which in itself could be harmful to an impressionable youth. I have listened to this music since I was 18, but always was careful on the influence it had.
These musicians are serious and put across some serious issues and points of view. Now I am no racist nor do I support any extreme movement or party, but the views expressed by these musicians are intriguing in their own right. I am fascinated by history and study philosophy, and to an extent, mythology, Aleister Crowley, Nietzsche, I have read both Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto, but I think it is also prudent to take care in how much you believe because, after all, these these are views of people from a darker part of history and to try and resurrect these beliefs would be both damaging to society and to ourselves ultimately.
As far as the music itself is concerned, like any genre of music, there are talented artists and not so talented ones. Music of course, primarily, is for enjoyment and the artists I listen to are the ones who have immense talent for example Emperor’s Prometheus, which is perfect in sound and production and is one of the most talented albums I have ever heard (and I love The Beatles White Album) or the latter albums of Absurd (Der Funfzehnyahrige Krieg is amazing).
I listen to several styles of music and I don’t limit myself to one particular form or view in either politics or religion. I love Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven for example and 80′s Rock, anything from David Bowie to Amy MacDonald. Music for me has no boundaries and I am not so weak minded to care if a certain artist is extreme Right whilst another is Extreme Left or if someone is confused in the middle, the main point is that the music is good and Black Metal has some fantastic musicians, if of course you like very heavy music. To name a few that are worth checking out is Burzum, Darkthrone, Celtic Frost, Behemoth, Absurd, Immortal, Emperor, Dissection, Satyricon, Marduk, Gorgoroth, Mayhem, Enslaved, Borknagar, Vintersorg, Winds, Ulver all are producing some fantastic work.
I don’t think any devout church goer or politically minded person need panic. There is no great army of painted chaps with swords about to try and take over the world, it really isn’t that big. For me this is a very obscure genre of music, which has some absolutely fantastic musicians and some of the most interesting people who are very passionate about some of the beliefs in the above article. Everyone has a right to be themselves, creatively or diversely, and music is a good way to do it.
In a diverse world I think it is beautiful to have a style of music that sings (shouts) about ancient cultures and darker aspects of life as how can one know what is truly good unless one knows what is truly evil or to quote William Blake; ‘You will never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough’.
An it harm none, do what ye wilt, so to speak.
Guten abend!
A very interesting and considered article – many thanks.
Although I don’t necessarily agree with the premise of NS ideology within black metal being a result of traceable Germanic ‘Voelkische Bewegung’, (it’s interesting to read the contemporary statements of the first wave of Black Metallers and their reasons for adopting the stances they did), I think it somewhat pointless to comment on the validity of the essay in terms of musical taste. Black Metal in all its extremity, simply appeals to those it appeals to – whether one likes it or not or struggles to understand any possible audience, BM clearly has one.
Black Metal is an anthropological curiosity like saidi or rekuhkara, and rather than any type of precursor to vast social change is simply yet another refuge for lazy, unfocused whites. Joining bands rather than studying. Growling songs about Vikings rather than having families. Ugh. 17,000 Black Metal bands? There are probably ten times more Hindus than that studying medicine in the U.S. alone. Does anyone know of a single guy who wields the slightest bit of power in this world who wears corpse paint? The level of immaturity among this tribe is astounding.
Comparing 17,000+ Black Metal bands to Hindus studying medicine in the US is a perverse and meaningless gesture. If there are more than 17,000 black metal bands, and if bands average 4 members, that means that there are 70,000 plus individuals performing this kind of music, even if you deduct some because of double counting (the same people break up and form new bands) and the usual casualties of the rock star lifestyle.
Now to the fans. Let’s just be conservative and estimate that there are 10 listeners for every musician in the Black Metal scene. That is 700,000, plus 70,000 performers. We are approaching 800,000, based on conservative estimates.
Not everyone in the Black Metal scene is racially aware, but racial awareness and pride is the dominant attitude in the scene.
Now for the relevant comparisons: what else in White Nationalism world-wide can compare to the Black Metal scene in terms of numbers, energy, and relative youth? Even if you can argue that these resources are being wasted, that is pretty much the norm for all White Nationalism, isn’t it?
Their pessimism is often allied with the explicit adoption of the Indo-European
Traditional cyclical view of history, in which history begins with a Golden Age then
declines through Silver and Bronze ages to the present Iron or Dark Age (Kali Yuga), which is doomed to perish of its own corruptions or through a cataclysmic final battle, whereupon a new Golden Age will dawn.
For some reason this reminds me of playing with action figures.
In the world of Black Metal, genuine spirituality and depth of artistic expression is all about delving fearlessly into the darkness of the human soul. Hence the unremittingly dark songs filled with hate, fear, melancholy, misery, and depression.
You have it backward, sport — the medium comes before and defines the message, not reverse; you are idealizing a mass-cultural product. Reread your Adorno. Try as you might to convince, no one is buying your banner of Black Metal Revolution, because there is none. Tag-lines (I mean song titles) aren’t political slogans. You’re philosophizing fashion.
17 000 bands – 70 000 musicians – 700 000 listeners argument
It looks pretty anarchic to me. How anti-system and how effective are they? As Stalin once said: “it doesn’t worth to shut down a newspaper with less than ten thousands readers.” And he was the supreme authority in this field.
And the metal music scene is indeed anarchic. Some are pagans, other are national-socialists, just anti-Christians, other are anarchists, Bolsheviks, satanists (contrary to the author’s belief they constitute a group too). Also, nobody will be able to convince me that the antifas are listening a entirely different tune – only the lyrics are different.
The energy is wasted indeed. And what a simple device is this to drain these young energies.
What is common along this large spectrum? The sadness and despair. Not much to build upon.
Yet, they are, to their credit, the most anti-hypocritical group. And yes, this is something to build upon.
The good thing is that no matter how stupid an individual might be, you can not make him to believe that everything is great when in reality everything is wrong and going from worse to worse.
If you want to buy real estate, you will have to get the personal loans. Furthermore, my brother usually takes a term loan, which seems to be the most fast.
I’ve been visiting your blog for a while now and I always find a gem in your new posts. Thanks for sharing.
This article is about 10 years too late. The whole NSBM thing is very very very marginal in the modern black metal scene. That doesn’t mean that black metal isn’t full of dodgy politics, but most of these folks are more interested in obscure, etlitist occult stuff, which by its very nature eschews mass movement. Even the bands that focus on Germanic and Scandinavian mythology are, by and large, not political. The whole “Viking metal” thing, though, is rather dated now. Its bands like Deathspell Omega (who had some very dodgy politics in the past, but are now pretty much obscurantist “orthodox” satanists who are more likely to perplex interviewers with references to Bataille and inverted Catholic theology) that are gaining the most attention in the wider heavy metal world (and with good reason, because they make some mindblowing music).
While the internet is full of black metal cormudgeons, my experience, at least here in America, is that many metalheads, including black metal fans, are rather apolitical. Plenty of them listen to Burzum, and even some NSBM bands (the majority of which suck anyway), but still think those people are assholes.