Theme: Black Metal

I'll be honest. I don't know that much about black metal except that the imagery is over the top Satanic, which, let's be honest, is incredibly easy to make fun of (and give some props to, as Metalcolypse does do well). That said, of course, corpsepaint has moved away from being a symbol of black metal, and instead is a symbol for anyone who recently went into Hot Topic, but that's a story for another day.


But, for some people, it's more than a fun theme and the pleasure of playing heavy music, it's a bit more, and some would argue, that's where it goes too far. Take the church burnings inspired by black metal bands, (around fifty in Northern Europe.) these would later, be distanced from by groups calling themselves Satanic death metal rather than black metal. Indeed, there's a certain amount of irony here, which cannot be understated. In some more black humor, this was during the "Dark War" between Finland and Norway's black metal scenes, which like all great culture wars, was started with some prank calls late at night.

Wikipedia, from which I am cribbing most, if not all of this, notes that the majority of black metal is for the most part anti-racist nationalism; they are proud of their culture/nation, but do not deny the right of other people of other nations to be proud of theirs.

This is, ultimately, reassuring, since hearing that the response from black metal dudes when their lead singer commits suicide is not to call the police or hover over the body weeping sadly, but to go to a convienece store to get a disposable camera to use it as album art is downright frightening. That was your friend who'se head is now all over the god damn floor in tiny, tiny pieces, and you're grabbing a camera as your first action realizing your singer is dead?

Words defy me.


This, as you may have guessed, does not happen often. Usually, I'll at least stammer out a fuck, or a goddamn what the fuck, or a vulgarity, if nothing else comes to mind.

But when I read that, I just sat looking at the screen, telling myself it wasn't true. Now, and this is something I forgot, wikipedia is not always accurate, but this is a black metal band, and presumably, the people who keep up black metal entries on wikipedia, know their stuff.

Then again, it's this kind of thing that impresses upon me the need to tell my parents, whom I love dearly, that if I ever do start a band, I will never, ever go get a camera if I find my friend dead, and her/his skull fragments on the floor, I will sob uncontrollably and have horrible, horrible PTSD for the rest of my life.

It is at this point that my inner revulsion was so powerful that I turned to the Ergs, whom (I am seeing in about 12 hours!!) are a wonderful punk rock group in the vein of the Descendents, the Ramones or Screeching Weasel, in that they play fast, melodic punk rock songs about girls, to save my mood.

Ultimately, no matter how many times I listened to Kind of Like Smitten or Trouble In River City, I couldn't get that image of a friend running to a convience store out of my head, and to a greater extent, the skull fragments out. But, when I listened to a black metal track, I also couldn't get the music out of my head either.

Ultimately, that's what music is supposed to do. Here's to that.

P.S. This is absurdly late. Hopefully, this won't happen again.