Another scandal! Yes folks, for the fourth time in the past two or three weeks, hipster journalists and fake metal fans are shocked and appalled that a black metal musician has done something immoral. Despite black metal being a music genre for 30 years, smelly neckbeard losers and dreadlocked trust fund crusties are figuratively (though literally in some cases) throwing their own feces every time they catch a mid-tier black metal musician doing something not socially acceptable. This time, the horrific act came from Marduk, whose purchasing of German World War II merchandise from a sketchy online retailer made them too evil for a fest called Stockholm Slaughter (who apparently think slaughter is cool, but just not when it pertains to 1940s Europe).
Because millennials are too dumb to learn any history that doesn’t involve student loans, let’s quickly look back and see if any criminal or immoral things were done by the original black metal bands. Maybe there’s something that we can learn from that fateful 1990s Norwegian scene:
Band Criminal/Immoral Act
Burzum Murder, violating parole with a shitload of explosives, arson, Nazism, white supremacy
Dimmu Borgir Using the N word in an interview/proclaiming the desire to genocide Africans
Emperor Hate crime murder of a homosexual, arson
Gorgoroth Rape, battery and torture, violation of Poland’s animal rights laws, homosexuality
Immortal Arson
Mayhem Murder, 2nd degree murder, arson, public mutilation, trashing hotels
Satyricon Rape, arson, rape
Thorns 2nd degree murder
I’m sorry to break this to everyone living in a liberal bubble, but a painfully obvious truth exists: black metal musicians are bad men.
Honestly, you were a pussy if you played black metal in 1990’s Norway DIDN’T go to jail. Even prissy rich art boy Snorre “Blackthorn” Ruch did 8 years of hard time in those days. Yet hipsters want to forget about this and have a watered down, safe space version of the historically most dangerous music. They want extreme music and extreme lyrics played by really nice guys with mustaches that are really polite and ultimately they don’t want to face the reality of what a lawless, no holds barred music scene will incorporate. They want to go to black metal shows at indie rock venues and write about them being scary in blogs with cat logos and not take any of it in beyond the surface level.
This contradicts the entire purpose of the original schism that separated black metal and death metal. Black metal began as a collective of sick-minded upper class kids with extreme ideology (on both sides of the political spectrum) who believed that dark music shouldn’t be played by the groovy surfer kids in high tops that made up a mostly working class death metal scene of that age. They therefore rejected death metal as something fake and trendy and created a new movement in extreme metal that involved being as horrible and fucked up as your music and lyrics. This is what made black metal black metal before it became a distinct musical derivative of thrash and death metal. The initial intent of black metal was to be a rejection of things like big money tours, female fans, or worldwide exposure. But after all of these bands and musicians were exploited beyond belief by media and infamy, most of them gave into the big money the record labels started throwing at them (and in fairness, some wanted to grow and evolve as musicians). Thus black metal lost it’s identity and became a near exact replica of death metal, outside of a few defining aesthetic features.
On an even deeper level, it’s an uncomfortable but undeniable truth that EVERYONE playing black metal has issues of some kind. If you’re not an outright criminal, you’ve got some serious mental health problems to be devoting insane amounts of time to creating music that glorifies the most horrendous sides of humanity. You don’t chose black metal as your calling if you don’t have some sort of soul crushing deep seated discontent with modern life or some sort of psychological or emotional trauma.
But while it’s some really useless human waste that’s forcing shutdowns of Taake, Marduk, and Inquisition shows, the whole thing is actually benefiting the genre in the long run. There’s no need for a black metal band to be touring one of the world’s largest countries or to be headlining some douchey festival. Live black metal is somewhat of a self parody at every moment- you have these goofy clowns dressing up in ridiculous costumes to show that they’re evil when they’re eventually going to ask the promoter for a paycheck and wash their hands after using the venue’s broken toilet. In all honesty, it shouldn’t be Antifa and feminists shutting down black metal shows, it should be black metal’s own fans shutting these shows down to save the public embarrassment that happens whenever this music is played live.
Hipsterdom is a disease that may not see a cure for many years. By incorporating black metal along with every other sub/counter culture of recent civilization, hipsterism got some unexpected baggage along with the thrift-store friendly vinyls: extreme ideology. Thus, it will try to purge this and create and Urban Outfitters version of black metal that will struggle to be dark and evil without hurting anyone’s feelings. But let it be done, for black metal belongs in the deepest trenches of the underground and away from an emasculated modern pop culture.
And in response to this state of affairs, I predict that we will eventually see a new breed of extreme metalhead at shows: The Templar. With loser permavirgins banning everyone immoral from playing metal, and dorky neckbeard occultists sitting on their hands while their scene is overrun by feminists and soyboys, the Templar would be the perfect response to take back metal: morally righteous individuals who can survive in everyday society but won’t hesitate to force their women into submission and beat the piss out of degenerate SJW wastes of life. We would hopefully see something similar to the concertgoers of the 80’s Boston hardcore punk scene: insanely violent alpha males that would be the living shit out of you if you smoked cigarettes or did drugs at their shows. Eventually, true Hessians and lifelong black/death metal fans will get over the Christianity stigma once they realize that Christian fans have been the most tolerant to extreme music and lyrics. Because in the end, the Hessian/Templar alliance is inevitable as a shared enemy, the progressive liberal social justice warrior, continues to wreck stupidity on music and modernity. Deus fucking Vult.
So in conclusion, I will invite everyone to join me in laughing at all of the wanna be rockstar black metal bands and musicians that are being blockaded one by one by the “Hail Satan Not Heil Hitler” types that their pathetic music has helped to create. By playing in a genre where you’re supposed to be the most horrible human being possible, they have failed miserably in their attempts to use it to become career musicians who tour the world in search of human attention. They deserve this day of reckoning and to be mocked and shamed for not committing suicide as a rejection of this world they so desperately want to prove that they hate. In the meantime, extreme metal will learn a lesson from this grandiose implosion of “extreme music of extreme people” and evolve in a way where musicians won’t need to constantly self parody.