My Thoughts on Nazism and Racism in Black Metal

In April, the black metal duo Inquisition came under fire due to some damning evidence of their supposed neo-Nazi past which includes posing with a Nazi flag and the existence of many racist forum posts allegedly made by the band’s frontman Jason “Dagon” Weirbach. Perhaps most troubling (for me at least) was the fact the Weirbach was involved with a side-band called 88MM which released a track titled “14 Showerheads, 1 Gas Tight Door” released on a compilation with the delightful title Declaration of Anti-Semitic Terror, not to mention the fact that “88” is often used by neo-Nazis as an abbreviation for “Heil Hitler” since H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. None of this was remotely helped by the very lukewarm apology made by Weirbach amidst these accusations. The band is playing this year’s Knotfest metal festival and the inclusion of such a band with this kind of controversy surrounding them could be a messy situation and could be bad publicity for the festival and its promoters, as this Metalsucks article explains. 

When I was in middle school and high school I was sometimes accused of being a racist because I was a metal fan. Where did this come from? Does the fact that most young metal kids in our schools happen to be white cause people to believe that the metal subculture excludes and is against blacks? This is a possibility, but I don't think there's any good reason to label heavy metal fans as racist because of a lack of African Americans in the American metal scene, as I believe that the low number of AfAm metalheads in this country is mainly due to personal choice in music more than anything else. But the rather alarming frequency of racist and neo-Nazi ideologies in black metal specifically is very troubling to me, especially since black metal is my favorite subgenre of metal. Black metal musicians like Rob Darken and Varg Vikernes (and many others) express opinions that surpass mere disagreement for me, but ideas I find totally reprehensible and intolerable, not to mention idiotic due to their Nazi beliefs being entirely based on white nationalism, heterosexism, racial separatism, and anti-Semitism. I have never once held any of these neo-Nazi sympathies in my life and I can say that with complete honesty.

Some of you might be thinking, “Well, Anthony, it’s obvious why your old school mates assumed you were racist for being a metal fan. It’s because of all this far-right racism within the black metal you love so much which you just admitted was within the scene with ‘alarming frequency.’” I’d have to completely disagree with that. I’m 100% certain that all the people who ever accused me of being racist based on the fact that I listen to metal have never heard of black metal in their lives, let alone know any of these band’s names or their ideologies. The people accusing me of racism were almost always young men and women who mainly listen to hip-hop and r&b and who’ve probably never heard a legitimate metal song in their lives, their only exposure to “metal” being something like Linkin Park or whatever else is played on the radio, as well as various snippets of screamo (which isn’t metal) and metalcore songs they overhear being played on their “rocker” classmate’s iPhones. If any of these people explained to me that they’ve actually heard all about Varg Vikernes and/or the eastern-European National Socialist Black Metal movement and that’s why they suspect me of being a racist then I would understand where they were coming from and I would correct them. But that’s never happened once, not even close. The accusations of racism that have been lobbed against me over the years have always come from positions of utter and complete ignorance, never a position of knowledge and understanding of the metal subculture. So no, the presence of racism in a genre of metal that none of my accusers have ever heard of is not the reason why I have ever been accused of racism, nor have any overtly racist actions I have ever done been the cause either since I’ve never been guilty of such actions. It’s completely unfair to generalize the entire worldwide heavy metal community based on a relatively small percentage of black metal and less than 1% of all metal that has ever existed.

With that out of the way, why would I even tolerate music that is about or made by people who support Nazism? Is it morally alright to do so? Is the listener in active support of Nazism when they listen to, say, a Graveland record? It’s all about making a kind of separation between your enjoyment of the art and its content. An album, in my view, is a piece of art and a work of artistic expression and should be judged as such. The content of the art could depict things that can be loving or hateful, pleasant or disgusting, good or evil. But it’s a piece of art and it’s about experiencing the artist’s point of view, the artist's views and how they particularly align with your personal views are irrelevant. If anyone’s ideal is to only expose themselves to media (books, music, movies, etc) that’s only about everything they already believe in then that is a very unfortunate ideal to strive for. Exposing yourself to other views, no matter how much you disagree with them, is how individuals increase their understanding of the world they live in, and coming to an understanding of the bad is just as important as taking in pleasure from the good. Because of the valuable perspective and understanding gained from various artistic expressions, taking in the full spectrum of expressions is crucial to becoming a more informed and enlightened member of society while coming to a better understanding of your fellow man.

It also must be stated that an album is mainly a form of entertainment despite whatever messages are contained within the lyrics. If morality is what you’re after, pick up a copy of Plato or Aristotle. If you’re looking for a profound message then listen to a speech by Martin Luther King or the Dali Lama, but if you want entertainment, pick up an album. While there’s a vast array of music that has a defined message – sometimes a bad message in the case of neo-Nazi black metal – music can be pleasing to the ear no matter how much you disagree with its lyrical content. Music is so much more than what its lyrics are about; musical value comes from instrumentation, musicianship, structure, songwriting prowess, production values, etc. So while Nokturnal Mortum’s album Goat Horns expresses some white nationalist sentiments in its lyrics, the album’s 16 bit video game music combined with melodic black metal is so pleasing to my ears that I can’t help but label it as one of my favorite black metal records of all time.

As much as I find neo-Nazi ideology to be horrible and filled with hate, I don’t believe it is morally wrong to enjoy black metal that expresses these beliefs and it is completely wrong to label the heavy metal community as a racist subculture because of these bands. Whether we like it or not, Nazism is part of world history and the beliefs that stem from it are still alive and well. The worst way to deal with an ugly past is to deny that it ever happened, and when it comes to these neo-Nazi black metal albums, I do not believe that an effective strategy in fighting these deplorable beliefs is to pretend that these recordings don't exist. While the dust around the Inquisition controversy is still settling it still shows that even 20 years after the National Socialist Black Metal movement started these ignorant views are still being held by members of the black metal scene. As much as a few of these albums are enjoyable to my ears the lyrical content should not be condoned on a personal level, but it’s a piece of art nonetheless and appreciating art for its aesthetic or sonic appeal is not the same as agreeing with its message.

More about the Inquisition Controversy

Nachtmystium: The World We Left Behind ALBUM REVIEW

When not shamelessly ripping off fans and bandmates with impunity (according to former collaborator Neill Jameson and many disgruntled fans) by selling merchandise that didn’t exist or selling the rights to albums he didn’t own to make money to buy drugs, Blake Judd was more commonly known to be the “mastermind” behind Chicago black metal squad Nachtmystium. Whether he was truly the mastermind behind the long-running project has been brought into question (Jameson alluded in a lengthy article written about Blake that the majority of his music was written by others, not him.) no one can deny that the end results of many of the band’s recording endeavors have been stellar, even milestones of the black metal genre. The experimentation that started with Instinct: Decay and continued with the groundbreaking “Black Meddle” series show that someone, Blake or not, was thinking about what could be achieved within the black metal genre on a higher level. And although their previous album Silencing Machine did not expand upon the experimentation of the two Black Meddle installments, it was still a satisfyingly grim and aggressive record that had just enough electronic flourishes to distinguish itself from straight-ahead black metal. Hyped as the final Nachtmystium album, The World We Left Behind should have been a farewell as equally ambitious and exciting as anything else in their recent output. But when presented with the final product, that sadly doesn’t describe it.

Black Metal Will Never Not Be Funny

Black Metal Makes Everything Funnier

Triptykon-Melana Chasmata: ALBUM REVIEW

Can we possibly describe Triptykon’s debut album, Eparistera Daimones, without eventually resorting to ridiculous and redundant superlatives? Calling it a worthy follow-up to Celtic Frost’s Monotheist would be selling it sadly short; it surpassed its predecessor in every possible way from its minimalistic, yet monstrous riffs, its sludgy and gurgling vocals, all the way to its (slightly) less compressed production, Daimones was an outstanding achievement for Mr. Tom G. Warrior after Frost’s unfortunate and sudden demise. A long and tedious four-year wait would ensue before the metal masses would hear new Triptykon music, conceivably scratching restlessly at the imaginary worms crawling under their skin whilst nibbling on saltine crackers and pop tarts with their eyes glued to their computer screens waiting for any faint signs that a new Triptykon album was on its way. Their waiting has thankfully come to a blissful end now that Malana Chasmata, Triptykon’s latest, has been released.

New Triptykon!

At the bottom of this page are two new Triptykon songs. They rule. In fact, you can just skip my two cents and listen to the songs right now, leave a nasty comment chastising me for my neglecting of this blog, and never visit this page again, and that would be fine with me. Why? Because all that's important is that you hear new Triptykon music, end of story.

I'll be honest here; I initially dismissed this project when it was announced. I didn't care whatsoever. Then one day I heard "Goetia". After thoroughly punishing myself for my ignorance of the awesomeness that was Triptykon, I went out and bought a physical copy of the album, Eparistera Daimones (people still do that.) and it became what was easily my favorite album of that year. In fact, it's minimalistic and simple approach (no "shreddy" technical guitar wizardry to be found) became a huge influence on me as a guitarist. It showed me that you don't need to be Joe Satriani or Steve Vai to make good hard rock or metal, and in this case, Tom G. Warrior surpassed those artists in terms of depth and emotional content. I realize that comparing the music of Triptykon to Satriani and Vai isn't that great of a comparison, but let's move along.

Did these two new songs hit me in the same way that "Goetia" did four years ago? Not at all, however, they get me very excited about the future release of the album that will follow up Eparistera Daimones (titled Melana Chasmata) which had such a huge impression on me. Listen for yourselves, and are you guys as excited as I am?

100th Post!: Behemoth - The Satanist ALBUM REVIEW

Little needs to be said at this point about Behemoth frontman Adam “Nergal” Darski’s struggles with leukemia which led to such a lengthy delay between 2009’s Evangelion and 2014’s The Satanist. All that’s necessary to say is, “Nergal, welcome back.” Everything is just as you left it; not a single pentagram left without a severed goat’s head attached, nor a cross not properly inverted. And with the return of such a notorious, controversial, and brutally heavy band, we’re offered a noticeable stylistic shift from previous releases. This time, Behemoth roll back on the death metal and add in some old, fermented black metal ingredients into their metallic recipe for heavy, savory sonic satisfaction.

New Wolves in the Throne Room Album Details

Wolves in the Throne room (and no, I don't believe they're a hipster band) are easily one of my favorites in modern metal, at least, when they WERE making metal, which has just come to a temporary end. According to the band regarding their upcoming album Celestite:

Celestite arises with a whole new, ethereal approach. There are no drums and no vocals. Rather, deep, heavy crystalline synthesizer journeying, Eno-inspired analog processing and arcane acoustic instrumentation expand upon dimensions folded within the universe of Celestial Lineage.

So, not only is it a companion piece to their last album (many songs are based on backing tracks of Celestial Lineage) but it will not be a metal album whatsoever. I'm a tad disappointed about this, because WITTR has been a go-to band whenever I wanted to listen to some black metal in the past, and I was looking forward to some more of that style from them on their new album, however, this is exciting as well because of the ambient "Brian Eno" influenced music that will come out on Celestite.I do wish that some vocals would show up on this thing, though. Some distant black metal shrieking would turn this into a nice black ambient record, meaning that not all black metal influence would be lost but, alas, this isn't to be.

So, this album might be a fresh, nicely executed idea. This album could potentially blow me away. Or, this new album could potentially be a pile of "meh". I'll hold my judgement until the album is released in the first quarter of this year.

New Reviews!

Hi guys. I've been lazy lately, so I've been forgetting to post my sputnik reviews on my blog. So instead of copying and pasting each one here, I'll continue to be lazy and just give you links to all of them. So here they are!

Oathbreaker-Eros|Anteros ALBUM REVIEW

Metal and hardcore have been successful and productive allies ever since the first half of the ‘80s when bands like Metallica and Slayer began injecting punk-like speed and ferocity into their signature brand of heavy rock. The “crossover” of metal and hardcore has since bared many delicious fruits including D.R.I., Cro-Mags, The Accused, and more recently the violently aggressive Converge and the very popular Hatebreed. And while some metal fans want there to be a considerable distance between metal and hardcore (a “like one and hate the other” mentality) it cannot be denied how tightly intertwined the genres have become, especially since the oft-maligned metalcore subgenre has become so accepted and widespread over the last decade or so. However, if the decidedly whiny clean vocals and copious breakdowns of metalcore aren’t your style, then you have some more-than-decent options at your disposal, and the Belgian black metal/hardcore crossover band Oathbreaker and their latest album Eros|Anteros is well worth taking a look at.

Straying from the path and why it's good

The picture above is of the band Deafheaven (whose album Sunbather I reviewed here) and they have recently been convicted of a major crime, a crime punishable by a lifetime of ridicule and being mocked relentlessly. What did they do wrong? What kind of heinous crime was committed on their part to justify punishing them with such a sentence?

They fused black metal with post-hardcore.

CLASSICS: Nachtmystium-Addicts: Black Meddle Part II ALBUM REVIEW

Up until fairly recently, American black metal was rarely ever taken too seriously and was seen as a novelty by some, especially those who fall under the “black metal elitist” category who won’t accept anything that comes from anywhere else but Scandinavia. American bands that donned corpsepaint and leather armor and imitated Norwegian low-fi production styles were seen more as unfunny parodies of black metal and not as groups of earnest musicians, and by looking at silly photos of Leviathan, Xasthur, and Absu that ape early Darkthrone album covers, it’s not hard to understand why. It finally took some bands that were brave enough to opt out of that decade-old image and take black metal into new stylistic territories for critics and fans to start paying attention to what the Americans were doing with great interest. By no means has this pleased everybody; the stigmatized “hipster” tag gets placed on many of these bands, and even veterans of American black metal like Wrest of Leviathan have derided them for not being “satanic” (“Don’t call it black metal then.” He said about Wolves in the Throne Room and Liturgy in an interview with Decibel.) But the development of black metal since the Americans have taken over has been an exciting evolution of sorts, and who knows where the genre will end up next.