Sanity and Metal

by on April 24, 2008

There’s two ways to look at sanity.

If I’m starting a band, and I’m a realist, I see a bleak future. Thanks to technology, life always gets more expensive. You have tools to save time, but they cost more, so you either earn cash or go into the ghetto and work food service for the rest of your life. So if you’re starting a band, it needs to be a career. Make songs many people want to hear. Make money from those songs. Then you can be a musician your whole life.

On the other hand, there’s another kind of sanity. If you’re going to be a musician, you recognize there’s two levels to that: being able to play music, and being able to create — write — music that is evocative and powerful. Of course, the masses want distraction from living in ghettoes, so you’re not going to demean yourself by making that. Instead, you’ll make great art, and feed your soul if not your body. You might even find a way to sell enough of it to live on the fringes of the ghetto.

Both perspectives are valid. However, the first leads to a society chasing its own tail in decline, and the second leads toward building something greater which will continue to get better, and may transcend its meanspiritedness enough to no longer be a ghetto/rich whore division. Metal is fundamentally geared toward the latter because metal is about taking something that is offensive to most people (loud noise, heavy dark topics, bassy violence) and making it into something beautiful, even if most people are blind to that beauty because they fear it. The metal way is nto following the sheep.

Now do you see why there’s such a binary division between true bands and sell outs?

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Why “Christian metal” is an oxymoron

by Brett Stevens on February 8, 2006

Any genre of music can be said to have an ideology, or ideological range. The musicians and fans had to pick the music because it sounded like something they wanted in their lives. With a really dumb genre, that would be distraction or posing like a slacker or a pimp. With more complex genres, the aesthetics and organization of the music suggest ideals people desire. For metal, the aesthetic — finding beauty in dischordant darkness — and organization — a “riff salad” that narrates like a poem — suggests a rejection of the human perspective for a more holistic reality.

It is this style of metal, from its first riffs derived from the modernist-classical-lite melodies of horror movie soundtracks, which, by eschewing fixed “meaning” for a sense of fitting together as a whole and having an architectonic clarity as the songs, shows us a world from the perspective of a movie, or a scientist, or history: the camera pans back and we no longer think of individuals involved as being important in their own right. We think of the story, the situation, and the outcome, but with our knowledge we cannot be limited to an anthropocentric position.

This is how, without even reading the lyrics, we can tell what metal has in the way of values and worldview, which if you believe in them enough to think they’d make a good organization for civilization, you call an “ideology.” The ideology of Britney Spears is “what the hell, who cares”; the ideology of jazz is cosmopolitanism; the ideology of techno is vibrant distraction; the ideology of classical music is a respect for intensity and attention span. All forms of art have some form of ideology, although sometimes it is hard to recognize because it is subtle or, in many cases, non-challenging (see “Britney Spears” some words ago).

The Metal Ideology

With a little more analysis, we can enumerate the metal ideology as follows:

  • Feral naturalism – Horror, predation, violence, and battle are praised for their intensity as experience and their power. Morality is thrown away in favor of this appreciation for the mechanisms of reality.
  • Technofutilism – As in horror films, technology and social institutions are useless for dealing with the problems we face.
  • Realistic individualism – The wisdom of crowds is feared and seen as false, since they pander to each other (poseurs, sell-outs). However, the individualist is realistic and so knows that everyone in a crowd is an individualist, and that’s how a crowd forms.
  • Nihilism – Morality is a human imposition, as are value and purpose. Nature doesn’t care what happens to us, and neither do the gods. We’re in the driver’s seat and whether we sink or swim is 100% up to us.
  • Holism – There is a frustration with the tendency of modern society to break down experiences and concepts by using exclusive logical OR operations in a categorical context; it is either a truth OR an opinion, but can’t be both, and so on. Metal is a genre of logical AND, in that it sees all of our judgments as attributes and reality as the only arbitrer.
  • Ludic, absurdist materialism – In a metal view, we are only fleshy bodies and we can have transcendent thoughts, but we will always be what we are. From that, we can clear aside pretense and enjoy life, which is inherently absurd, gross, terrifying, crass, insane and beautiful, the most rational design ever, rewarding.

Evidence for each of these assertions can be found in metal lyrics, imagery and through a thoughtful perspective on the sounds and structures used in metal songs. You could claim “the past is alive” and “only death is real” as good starting points, but even early Black Sabbath lyrics have the romanticist, naturalistic, holistic and nihilistic tendencies that create the above values system. In this, metal bands are not dissimilar to European Romantic poetry and classical music, which was also post-moral, saw the individual as a means and not an end, nationalistic, and playful.

Christianity, on the other hand, is more complex because it is open to wide interpretations. Narrowing in on what most people believe, we can see it has several basic tenets, originating in its idea of individual equality in the eyes of God. To a metalhead, this interpretation of Christianity seems anti-nature, because we are not equal in ability and any interpretation of equality is a human imposition that does not exist in nature; further, metalheads distrust the creation of alternate realities like God, heaven and hell. Not all interpretations of Christianity have these tenets, and some in fact are closer to what metal believes (the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Johannes Eckhart or Arthur Schopenhauer come to mind). But for the mass religion that conquered much of Europe, these are its beliefs:

  • Dualism – Christianity believes in a second reality that exists outside of this one. This reality, in which there is pure moral “good,” is called Heaven and we are supposed to impose it on earth; Hell exists in this same spirit realm.
  • Morality/peace/benevolence – In Christian lore, the best possible method of living is one that is peaceful, as that way you do not interrupt others. To a metalhead, this is ridiculous because people can be doing things that while not explicitly immoral cause bad consequences, and so of course you interrupt them.
  • Discrete individualism – Christian dogma supports the idea of the individual as absolute in that they are to be granted as much freedom as possible, and can be judged only by God, and should be forgiven when they screw up. This is to a metalhead imposition of the will of the Crowd on the individual and a type of slavery, as it retards those who do have a clue from acting to keep the clueless from dominating via superior numbers.

The common root of these Christian beliefs is humanism, or belief in the predominance of the human form and its incarnations, individuals. The Christian God is shaped like a human; Christian morality rewards never harming or killing humans even if they’re doing insane things; Christian morality emphasizes how we’re all equal. We can see how the elaborate dance of morality and theology supports a much simpler human truth, which is the desire of the ego of each one of us to be independent from forces which can humble it with reality. We want to be free from the consequences of making bad decisions and the social judgment of others, because either can show us to be incorrect or to have a weakness, and that scares us in a social setting and makes us lose social status. The root of Christianity is affirming the ego’s power; the root of metal is affirming the power of nature and by unintentional consequence, decreasing the supremacy of the ego.

Romanticism

Romanticism, the parent belief of metal, originates in a more naturalistic time before beliefs like Christianity separated the self-valuation of the human individual from nature, and gave them an imaginary reality (morality) with which to compensate. Although Christianity means well, the unintended consequence is that it makes people more selfish because instead of just trying to live their lives, they are now trying to prove and justify their worth in a moral context. The resulting drama creates many social problems because it ultimately boils down to a denial of reality in favor of individual withdrawl from reality, and it creates neurosis and ego competition.

For this reason art — which tries to affirm our bonds to reality, or through unitivity remove us from false worlds and the withdrawl into our own perspective — has been at odds with society for at least a millenium, perhaps longer. Where social control, power, law and religion require external affirmation for the individual to justify themselves, art confronts the accepted vision of reality with a fantasy that is metaphorically more accurate than the “scientific” and “objective” beliefs of a dying society. Art reconnects us with cause/effect reasoning by taking us out of a false context, and through a new context, showing us where our values lie.

Both Romanticist art and metal are therefore in conflict with Christianity as 99% of its audience practices it, and they have run into additional conflict through Christian propaganda trying to emulate the original art forms. When a Christian or secular humanist (atheistic version of Christian morality) sees metal, which is a value system that not only denies their own but makes it look like an arbitrary fantasy into which people escape their fear of mortality and failure, they have a tendency to do what any good propagandist would do: make their own version of the art in question, and then point to that new creation which did not emerge from the artistic movement but was imposed upon it, and use its existence to claim that consensus does not exist in the artistic movement.

We call this imposed, false, externalized metal “Christian metal” because its defining factor is that it is Christian. It is not a genre, but can appear in any genre; it is an ideological tag with a parallel in neo-Nazi music in that what matters most is its message, and it uses metal as a conduit for that message, instead of wanting to create metal for metal’s sake and therefore explore the values of metal.

A History of Christian Metal

Metal is a romanticist movement which was inspired by the classical era of European humanity, including as part of its view many Romantic philosophical ideals which are pre-Christian in their derivation and anti-Christian in their values.

  • Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath were originally a blues band who later shifted to metal to reflect an interest in the occult. After three albums in which massive drug use and public outcry over their beliefs battered them down, they created an album which had several pro-Christian songs. This does not necessarily reflect their beliefs, nor is likely to do so, but illustrates the confusion and doubt they encountered at the time and the religion of their youth to whose programming they returned. Further, their songs which had a “warning” about the occult were a product of their having an interest in occultist themes, but not necessarily a propagandistic outlook on it (where in contrast, every single “Christian metal” band that has ever existed has taken a preachy, condescending, demagogic tone toward their audience).
  • Metal – Metal, in Black Sabbath and related bands of that era including King Crimson, Led Zeppelin, and Blue Cheer, reflected a tendency toward darker worldviews which could best be described as Romanticist in the spirit of the literature, art and music of the post-Renaissance in which artists disaffected with the humanism of the time sought a greater meaning than a moralization to existence through art. Poets like Keats, Wordsworth, and Shelley were a revolution against a secular Christian movement in which, despite little talk of afterlife and spirituality, a tendency existed for the first time in European art to preach a secular morality to which one adhered or drifted into the ambiguous, obscure and “evil.” The works of those poets and others from the modern Romanticist movement were invoked by the similar themes of early proto-metal bands, including a fascination with the morbid and with ancient times, a desire for transcendence within the world itself, a ruthless sense of self-discipline and heroic character, and a desire for more significance in life itself more than a concern for post-death salvation.After some years of heavy metal, the movement had solidified much of its artistic technique but had degenerated into hedonism, and fortunately was able to merge with the more dogmatic punk to form the first generation of speed metal. These bands were alarmingly preachy and leftist and as a result quickly self-destructed, prompting the extreme side of metal to go “underground” and dispense entirely with morality and, in the lead of heroes like Bathory and Slayer, who arguably invented the next generation, to preach an imaginative, Romantic “Satanic” outlook which like Black Sabbath was more fascinated with the occult than with preaching its values. The music of Slayer for example uses metaphorical Satanism to describe the errors and horrors of war, disease, violence and crime. Following these bands was a genre made more alienated by the increasing failures of society to recognize its error, and made somewhat bitter by the increasing resentment rising from a society (America at least) that in 80% of its members found an affinity for Judeo-Christian beliefs. Death metal and following it, black metal, as a result were more violent and more dogmatic toward Christ and Judea; part of this was inherited from their “hidden” ancestors in hardcore punk music, who as part of their alienated nihilism recognized religion as the social control mechanism which many of us allege it is.

    From the No Right to Disagree With Us Department:

    The national poll of 1,000 American adults conducted April 26 through May 6, 2002 found that 17% of Americans – or about 35 million adults – hold views about Jews that are “unquestionably anti-Semitic.” source

    With the state of metal now, virtually every formative band in the underground has taken a negative stance on Christianity (and many have attacked Judaism and Islam as well). This is a result of the evolutionary process within the genre detailed above. Times have changed since Black Sabbath, and to a perceptive youth of today the strengthening role of religion and secular moral symbolism derived from religion is not only clear but alarming. Consequently, the most popular metal genre ever, black metal, is unanimous in its destructive impulses toward Christianity and its parent religion, Judaism from the middle east.

  • Why Christian metal is destructive – The Christian — or to a philosopher, humanist, whether secular or ecclesiastical — worldview is the underlying outlook of our society. That means that anything which is not Christian or secular humanist is the rarity, not the other way around. Christians confuse a lack of symbolic agreement with Christianity — saying “I am a Christian” or similar — with a lack of agreement. Essentially, secular humanism and Christianity are the same philosophy and they’re what all but a few people in our society take for granted as “correct.”With this in mind, it makes almost no sense that Christians would attempt to subvert metal for their own dogma, yet they attempt it because symbolically, metal is threatening to the Christian outlook because it endorses a theory in which good and evil are necessary balance, yet does not endorse true “evil” (selfish, deconstructive, callow acts). We should be cynical toward the Christian metal perspective and question it at all times, because it is paradoxical for the following reasons:
    • First, if people should write about what they really believe in, why should they spread the dogma of a religion that they didn’t invent?
    • If they really believe this religion, then metal – as a movement with overwhelming occultist, nihilistic, fascistic overtones – is something they should avoid. Why would they choose to join a genre which contradicts what they believe?
    • Is there no greater “trend” than the 2,000 years in which Judeo-Christian religions have been gaining prominence in the west? What is “un-trendy” about following the same religion that at least 80% of the people in your country follow?
    • Why should metal desire “a lot more of the youth” to be interested in it, if conformity is not our goal? Metal is like many genres self-selecting, and does not aim to be broad. By your logic, we should start making music like Britney Spears (except with a Christian message!) in order to get a wider audience.
    • How can one “truly feel” something which one has to be taught in order to regard it as true? A man raised alone in the forest may invent a religion, but perhaps not the whole dogma of Christ.

    There is obviously more to be said along these lines of questioning, but it’s not necessary here. I’d like to close by mentioning something else: that every single “Christian metal” band that has ever existed has been a poor copy of a “secular” band. Even the most popular, “Believer,” were a ripoff of an Atheist album coming out a year earlier. The separate nature of “Christian metal,” and that the genre itself draws a clear distinction between “secular” and religious music, demonstrates how Christians view “Christian metal”: a tool for preaching acceptable lyrics into a genre that has otherwise on the whole rejected Christ.

In 1990, ninety percent of the adult population identified with one or another religion group. source

In our current time, Judeo-Christianity is not only dominant in social thinking but has become secularized and dominant there as well. Prior to Judeo-Christianity’s arrival, concepts such as “morality” and “equality” and dualism were rejected by the inhabitants of Europe as insane or alien. After years of slowly working its way into that culture, Christianity became the dominant religion through its influence among the poor, the downtrodden, the pathetic, the less-capable and the spiteful. Currently, Judaism and Christianity are the dominant religions in America and most of the Western World. For example, both presidential candidates in the last election spoke extensively of their relationships to “God” and of the “morality” of their ideas, including vice-Presidential candidate Joseph Liebermann who considers himself “the moral voice of the Senate.”

“From these two religions we find at least all of our last ten presidents and their ancestors, and among the believers we find the owners of every major media establishment in the country as well as most of the smaller ones. Virtually every Congressperson has prominently featured in his or her campaign propaganda the Christian or Jewish nature of his or her morality, and most television anchors will make reference to secularized Christian moral concepts or the Judaic “God” in the midst of a supposedly objective broadcast. Before Judeo-Christianity, these concepts did not exist in the Western world; their sole origin is in the religions of Christ and Moses (who were both born Jewish).

This article is not an attempt to smear the people ensnared by these sick ideas; on the contrary, I view them as “victims” also in that their consciousness has had a control mechanism implanted within it. This goes for secular people like yourself, who in good faith sit down and write me a letter like the one quoted above in which you espouse humanist ideals of “individual choice” and “belief.” In the cases of believers however, those ideals do not exist; what does exist is conformity to an ideal of social control, and metal rightly rejects it.

Christians see themselves as very tolerant of people of other faiths, with 81% of Christians saying that Christians in the United States are “very” or “somewhat” tolerant of people of other faiths. People who are not Christians agree with this view for the most part, but not nearly as many of them are fully convinced of Christian tolerance. Only 54% of non-Christians see Christians as being tolerant of people of other faiths. source

Another Form of Humanism: Satanism

Satanism in black metal, death metal, “doom metal,” heavy metal, evil metal, speed metal, thrash and grindcore/metal hybrids arises from the need of metal musicians to understand emptiness in the universe and find a metaphor for its acceptance, a trait in evidence in death metal, black metal, heavy metal and ambient metal to extremes. Much like Romantic poets John Milton or William Blake explored the occult, evil and Satan as metaphor, metal bands find Satan a tempting metaphor for a society against which you can rebel without escaping its psychological trap.

Many of society’s abused denizens, looking at the over-the-top exultation in Satanism, Evil, deviant or degenerate behavior in metal, find themselvs turning back in disgust: “Awk! These kids are just trying to piss me off – contrarians, they only want to invert what is, and to create attention for themselves.”

One could not be more wrong. Contrarians wish to behave “badly” to grab the attention that comes from swimming the wrong way up the stream, but to get that attention, they depend on a cousin of pity: the belief that those who choose a different path are lost and looking for the others to bring them back in to a hearth of comfort and goodness. In short, a contrarian affirms the belief system she is rejecting.

Satanism, as practiced by death metal and black metal bands, does not involve an inversion but a surpassing of moral norms and social custom. To understand this, one must first understand the nihilism of metal bands: they do not believe there is “good” or “evil,” but see events as disconnected from any form of absolute other than their inherent function – that is to say, metal bands believe that events do not have a face value and instead view existence with a scientific eye that traces a complexity of causes, reactions, and similarities but does not attempt to ascribe any of it to absolute forces except logical tendencies.

Where Satanism exists for metal bands it functions as metaphor in following the footsteps of the Master: in each mythology where he touches, the Satan-figure is the youthful and ambiguous rebel who rejects what has come before in favor of his own path, and despite his consequent exile from society, finds truth in what he has created and found. The cry from Milton of Satan’s independence – “I will not serve!” – echoes in a genre that insists on finding out its own answers, and creating its own paths, on an individual basis. Unfortunately, that leads to the ego-basis of Christianity and secular humanism, and shortly afterwards, the sickening morals that constrain begin again.

Resistance

You can strengthen the genre of metal by resisting this form of social control in form of boycotts, public awareness of its true intention, and a refusal to accept it as metal. If it is played on the radio, call in to speak the truth about its agenda. If a friend plays it on a stereo, speak out against the controlling mindset of the music. If someone tells you that it’s “open-minded” to accept music that attempts to destroy the philosophies of the genre to which it theoretically belongs, tell them that art does not reprogram human souls toward giving in to a fear of death, and that true metal will liberate them from their fear of existence.

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History of the band Mayhem

by Brett Stevens on August 13, 2005

Like a dark breath of forbidden fantasy, black metal came into a world of orderly containers and sprayed them with foaming blood, black bile, and most of all a poisonous uncertainty about the safely egalitarian but boring lifestyle of the first world. In this genre, Mayhem were the band that by sheer persistence evolved into being one of the founders of the new black metal style, but only after years of thrashing in the dark and confusion of the fatalistic tendencies that eventually brought the band to artistic collapse.

Formed in the early 1980s by Oystein Aarseth, or Euronymous, the band released two demos which built upon what Bathory and Celtic Frost had achieved by making it more minimal, less coherent, and less friendly to the ears; in truth, the first anti-social music. The latter of these, “Pure Fucking Armageddon,” had attributes of extreme crustcore infused into its fractured heavy metal stylings, bringing criticism from a metal world which was then just beginning to accept Morbid Angel, Kreator, Destruction and others as a new form of “music.”

As time went on, two important things happened: first, Mayhem released “Deathcrush,” their first release and the best snapshot of the musical style they were attempting to produce, and second, the vocalist “Dead” [Per Yngwe Ohlin] from the Swedish band Morbid joined Mayhem to replace previous vocalist Maniac. The underground was slow at first to embrace the newer music, but soon there was a firm niche carved out for Mayhem: those who rejected the desire for logicality, in the modernist style, that death metal represented. As Euronymous said, “Black Metal is so extreme that not anyone can get into it. This isn’t any funny hobby which stupid kids shall have after they comes home from school.”

With the introduction of Dead, the conceptual impetus behind the band changed, and soon the blocky and deliberately awkward music of “Deathcrush” was metamorphosizing into a sleeker, melodic variant with more dynamic change in the songs, producing different “settings” to tell a tale, somewhat like a micro-opera in harsh guitars and howling vocals. Similarly, the appearance of the band went from t-shirts and jeans to black clothing, black boots and facepaint – corpsepaint – in black and white. In concert, Dead cut himself onstage, surrounded by the carcasses and heads of slaughtered animals. A full rejection of the positivity, pity and focus on individual lives of democratic humanism, the new appearance and music of Mayhem emphasized the bold, terrifying, morally ambiguous and deathlike in life itself. To understand it, one had to realize that the passion given to the music was an affirmation of life, but a different form of life, than that endorsed by the nominally Christian Nordic countries.

With this change, the following of Mayhem increased, especially as their recognizably different image placed them ahead of other musical efforts in the world of metal as less socialized and thus more extreme. Mayhem played a series of concerts across Europe, but recording and songwriting were sporadic, thus little material emerged from this period. At the end of it, Dead, in a moment of nihilism and darkness in 1991, slashed both his wrists and blew out his brains with a shotgun, leaving only a note: “Please excuse all the blood.” Euronymous, upon returning to the band’s shared dwellingspace to discover the cold corpse, took pieces of the brain and integrated them in a stew of ham and vegetables for the pleasure of eating human flesh; the band’s drummer, Hellhammer, took pieces of the shattered skullcap and made them into a necklace. As if a primitive ritual, the members of Mayhem paid their respects in death as in life: with coldness, feral opportunism, and a denial of any “sanctity” or “feelings” toward life, even that of a friend and collaborator. As Euronymous said later, about his form of “evil,” “It is basically hate to humankind. I have no friends, just the guys I’m allied with. If my girlfriend dies I won’t cry, I will missuse the corpse.”

During this time, Euronymous and his band were instrumental in the forming of a new black metal social group, or “scene,” centered around his record store in Oslo called Helvete [Hell]; the downstairs was a necrotic and bleak excuse for a commercial establishment in which the hatred and disassociation from commercial process was as much a barrier to purchase as anything else, but the upstairs was a practice room where Nazi flags and weapons hung over instruments decorated with inverted crosses. During the daytime, the store was a gathering place for musicians and fans of an anti-social nature; at night, Euronymous indoctrinated those who might be useful to the scene by inviting them to wild parties in which orgiastic appetites for alcohol fueled self-mutilation and eventually, rampant church and graveyard desecration [in Europe and many older American towns, the graveyard surrounds the church – a strangely forthright admission of the role of religion in society!]. Euronymous also started the first record label of the modern black metal movement, Deathlike Silence Productions. While these events stood against everything that Norwegian society of the time valued, authorities were permissive and did not “connect the dots” until far later.

It was at this time that many of extremist views, such as the skinhead-turned-rocker Kristian Vikernes – also performing in Burzum, joined the circle – and joined Mayhem on bass. Vikernes was an interesting counterpoint to those in the association so far; he was a hater of life but, like Dead, had an uncanny passion for life through art, and seemed to value his time in nature, away from people and their imaginary rules. His intent could be summarized in his most clarion statement, “I see Burzum as a dream without holds in reality. It is to stimulate the fantasy of mortals, to make them dream” – a replacement of morality with the über-Romanticist ethos of adventure and heroic classicism. Between the Gothic neoclassicism of Dead and the postmodern Romanticism of Vikernes, black metal became more than a style of music, but an ideological and social tool for change away from a highly regimented, moralistic society. Vikernes again: “We want to create the most possible fear, chaos and agony so that the idiotic and friendly Christian society can break down. We are overall not interested in that the truth comes through. When we spread lies we cause confusion and confusion leads to chaos and at last breakdown. People shall be oppressed and we support everything that oppresses man and takes from him his feelings as free individuals.”

It was part of this denial of the supremacy of the lives of individuals over ideas, emotions and even real-world activities that helped what happened next to occur. Two polar opposites existed in black metal, the fatalism and negativity of Euronymous versus the political and violent doctrine of Vikernes, and these were brought into conflict through the personalities. Vikernes claims Euronymous delayed the release of Burzum albums [on Deathlike Silence] by spending the money instead on degenerate pursuits; Euronymous presumably did not care and was more interested in the upcoming Mayhem release, which was moving slowly because of the personality conflicts in the band. Eventually, reality followed imaginary projections: on the night of August 10, 1993, Euronymous was stabbed to death by Vikernes; of 26 knife wounds, 2 were to the head, five to the neck and 19 to the back. Thus began the projection of Mayhem into legend, since it provided black metal in the modern sense with not only its first model of technique and imagery, but also its first martyrs. Dead was eulogized in a 1992 release, “Live in Leipzig,” which recorded an excessively bloody and violent Mayhem concert in East Germany. Teaming up with Attila Csihar of Tormentor, the remaining members of Mayhem put out “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas,” one of the most impassioned black metal albums released, yet one with its feet firmly grounded in old-school Venom/Bathory heavy metal styles. Their nihilism was so great they left Vikernes’ bass tracks on the album next to the guitar work of the man he killed, claiming in the press to have removed them so not to attract unwelcome attention from his family.

While the lives of its members had mostly run their course, and its most epic work had been produced, at least in conceptual form, before these deaths, afterwards the social and political importance of Mayhem was fully recognized. First, it gave many a central point with which to identify the new movement, and generated a wave of publicity especially in unison with the news of 22 churches burned in Norway, mostly by black metal “Satanists.” Even more importantly, Euronymous himself became a central figure, and his ideas [and those of Dead and Vikernes, who heavily influenced him] became dissected and discussed across the globe. Not only was this influential in the fanbase, but labels and bands worldwide began to see the importance of the new black metal movement: unlike anything from popular music since the 1960s, this was shocking; the people in black metal lived on the edge and fought to the death, something metal bands had always sung about but never acted out, much to the derision of punkers and other underground fans. The image of Helvete – the church of the anti-life – became predominant in the minds of many when conceptualizing new forms of social expression to the anti-oversocialization impetus that black metal and heavy metal share. In the years following the death of Euronymous, the focus he brought to the scene brought it to a dramatic rise and sudden death, as in late 1997 the genre became swamped with commercial bands in the mainstream style.

Mayhem itself continued on in the form of two major works, “Wolf’s Lair Abyss” in 1997 and “A Grand Declaration of War” in 2000, interspersed with numerous live albums and re-releases. where “De Mysteriis…” continues to be their most popular work, “Wolf’s Lair Abyss” is regarded by many as a highly proficient black metal album in the style of Satyricon mixed with old Mayhem, producing something with the same rhythmic thrust as “De Mysteriis” but with less of the operatic lack of total consistency in songs. “A Grand Declaration of War” is more problematic, taking a divergence into math-metal and pseudo-progressive stylings, which creates an album which sounds more like soundtrack than foreground listening, with Marilyn Manson influences in both songwriting and image. Because of this, and other factors such as the vast commercialization of black metal during the last six years, Mayhem is effectively dead in the underground and a small player with a devoted fanbase in the mainstream metal scene at this time. However, for every person who gets into black metal, the chorus of voices suggesting “De Mysteriis…” has an effect, for people continue to buy it at a great rate and praise it as immortal metal music and unmatched spirit in a genre filled mostly with angry people of little imagination.

Regardless of the current tedium of record sales and popularity contests, Mayhem contributed an indelible influence on not only metal, but music of resistance to socialization as a whole. Their ideology – part blank-faced fatalism, part fascism and part feral atavism – was carried upwards by the voices of many who were similarly frustrated with the pity-oriented egalitarian society of the first world, which preached that avoiding death was more important than achieving heroic or passionate things. Against this belief system black metal, and Mayhem most visibly, agitated. “True satanists are superhumans,” stated Euronymous in a now-infamous interview. A few years later, Vikernes gave a clearer view: “Strife is evolution, peace is degeneration.” This did not sit well with not only Christians and Jews, but also many people who had become dependent upon society and its pity toward those who are less-able as a whole, thus raising a cry against black metal as music of “hate” or “intolerance.” While those would clearly like to file black metal into a wholly political category, the raw artistry and imagination of bands like Mayhem make that appear a one-dimensional look at the story. As Ihsahn from fellow Nordic rockers Emperor said, “You’ll never understand me because you sit in the audience at a horror movie. I’m up on the screen.” There is no place in the current society for bands like Mayhem; they are beyond its rules and mental conditioning, and always will be. And for this, wherever anguish at social predominance grinds, there will be new fans of the fundamental works of Mayhem, which not only outlive their creators but will forever be a mythos larger than life itself.

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Permafrost, Gates of Enoch, Vex and Averse Sefira in Austin, Texas

by Joe on April 9, 2005

Averse Sefira, Vex, Gates of Enoch and Permafrost
April 9, 2005
Live at the Backroom
Austin, Texas

What is it that makes people become headbangers? After all, it can’t be the material reward. Every person at this show who was identifiably a metal person (for lack of better term) had given up something: jobs that longhairs can’t have, tattoos that scare off landlords, preferences for the loud that keep away friends and potential mates. It can’t be as easy as it seems, even for the high schoolers, who are different from adults mainly in that they don’t have to constantly pacify the system of money and image that drives this sad excuse for a society. They’re probably sick of hearing it from their peers.

Most academics who study metal make a big deal of the concert “ritual,” but this is generally a product of academia itself, which builds upon established ideas and finds it difficult to take new directions, and since academia started its study of rock music with the notion that concerts are a cathartic ritual, they extend it to metal as well. They’re not entirely wrong, but I think they miss most of the metal experience, which begins before the concert. After all, the fans choose which concert they wish to attend, and which bands they pick says a lot about what they’re thinking. This is why metalheads wear tshirts: your taste in bands reflects what you can comprehend, and thus is a good basic guide to the person beneath the shirt.

Before the show, these people decided to become headbangers. The vast majority of metal fans are sluggish minds moving sheeplike toward something that promises what they couldn’t otherwise have, whether it is a spotlight in a local community or a steady pot connection. The few who think tend to be selective about what they hear; it has to have, more than a certain sound, a certain spirit, and these discerning fans eschew that which falls short of their goals. Terms like “sellout” and “trendy” are used as pejoratives to dismiss those that fail. Much as metalheads pay a price for being metalheads, these selective fans pay a price for being choosy within the metal community. But to the concert they come anyway.

It would be hard to give an assessment of metal as a whole, then, but let’s focus on the interesting fans: those who look for something and give a damn. Those are the ones who willingly make sacrifices to their subculture, knowing they will never fit into the mass no matter what they do. They like the bold bands, the ones that step away from repeating the tired cliches and create a world of their own imaginations – a world that possibly looks in some ways enough like this one to be a comment on it. They like the loud, and vigorously assert their intention to deny the foolish and temporary illusions that people drift into. They affirm imagination, but as a basis for it, they also demand reality.

Forget the amateurs posing as “evil.” Look past the posturing people who lack self-confidence and compensate with beer, drugs, or obnoxiousness. In any crowd, there are a few who for reasons inarticulable, know what’s going on. These are the ones you look toward. They show us that there’s a reality to being a Hessian, a reason to stand proud and independent, to cast aside all reality except a few slices of idea expressed in music and to say, this is closest to my ideals. As televisions and politicians alike babble on incoherently, the few who think take their stand, and often do it by picking of the thousands of metal bands the smart ones to support.

This could be seen at tonight’s show, both in positive impression and its inverse. The ones who were there for the music and the spirit were focused on the music, and maybe it approached the ritual described by academes – not a cathartic one, but a ritual of bonding to a certain vision of reality, of affirming it and vowing to live by it. In the photonegative, there were the clueless ones, drifting lost in a haze of beer and awkward, socially retarded actions that are pathetic only to those who know the contrast. When bands took the stage, it was revealing to see toward which audience they played.

Permafrost

In truth, this reviewer did not make it to the venue in time for Permafrost, but can relate secondhand what occurred: this young band were happy for a chance to prove themselves, and showed their passion by working past adversity to get that difficult first big show over with. While the name is terrible, and the music has a ways to go, Permafrost made up for that to some degree with a lack of rockstar attitude and genuine caring about the music. It made the experienced fans glad at least to see that recognition of the reality of metal: adversity is your friend, as in struggling against it, you get better. Those who care about the music value getting better, while others are simply there to look like they’re important. It’s a crucial distinction.

Gates of Enoch

Although this band showed energy and technical poise, there was something missing in the complex puzzle of black metallic art that unites thought and emotion, structure and substance. While clearly they are fine instrumentalists, and can execute complex rhythms and passages with ease, Gates of Enoch linearize the concept of black metal into a rigid and numerical exercise. As a result, their songs have power as parts, but not as a whole, and the sum of the parts is less than the whole as each element leads the whole in a contradictory direction. It makes sense to define art, “objectively,” as a process of communication between artist and listener, and if that is the case, Gates of Enoch communicate disorganization and lack of purpose, without the intent to use that as an artistic statement.

For that reason, the band was able to punch out a competent set that meant nothing to those listening except a few cool riffs. Like most metal music past 1996, the experience was therefore one that was not bad, but was not memorable either, and thus left one feeling an appreciation for the skill of the band but not their vision. Instrumentalism was competent but unsubtle, and this was not demonstrated more effectively than in their choice of covers, a song from later Dissection and “I am the Black Wizards” by Emperor. The Dissection cover, being like Iron Maiden a slightly more informed type of rock music hybridized with metal, went off well and benefitted from their dispassionate regularity in playing; on the other hand, the Emperor cover was a disaster.

Where the point of the original was to have guitars detach themselves in diaphanous fronds of frothy sound from the animalistic battering of drums, and to then develop the song with subtlety, Gates of Enoch slash and bash a rigid and unyieldingly obvious version that while still beautiful misses the gently interwoven emotions of the original delivery. It sounded like a deathgrind band covering Emperor. A similar critique could be applied to their songs: the drummer rode his snare too hard at the end of each phrase, and composition tends to follow a two-step pattern of melodic decoration crashing into percussive anchor riff. Guitarists play like they’re reading tab, but with plenty of energy, which is gratifying. The vocalist clearly listens to a lot of Gorgoroth.

In reality, there are only two types of music reviews: “it’s good” or “needs work,” no matter what permutations we invent to euphemize those extremes. This reviewer is not crafty enough to disguise the truth as I see it and too experienced to lie: Gates of Enoch needs work. I do not say this to discourage them, however; depending on where they are in their development, it is possible they have far better things ahead. My advice to them is to stop studying their black metal favorites as technique, and begin studying them as effects on the listener, working backward to diagnose in that context the function of technique.

Vex

Hybridized from death metal, power metal and black metal, Vex is a band with a great name and plenty of promise, but remains disconnected from producing great art because the focus seems divided between the music and secondary elements. For their age group, these musicians are impressive, having mastered not only playing the notes but a range of techniques to add tension, emphasis and texture to each phrase. However, there’s a lack of artistic consensus, which shows not only in how they perform, but how they compose.

Live, Vex sounds most like a death metal band with black metal elements, although a diverse lineage of metal can be discerned from among their winding riffs. It shows an impressive knowledge of metal, but ties together poorly, being reliant on a duality of elements that unite in chorus and then potentially shift through a series of “unexpected” riff changes to convey to the audience — well, what? Mostly what comes across is the contribution of individuals in the band, or so it seems, as sweet riffs get piled onto one another without regard for the sound as a whole, or any concept of organization to the piece in question.

The vocalist needs to change his sense of rhythm and vocal texture, as currently he sounds like an emo or metalcore vocalist, and the effect is one to offset the already busy rhythmic background with a cadence more appropriate to an Iraq war protest than a metal concert – and for those of you who are thinking about open-mindedness, it also fails to lift or augment the music. Guitar playing is fabulous, as is bass and drums, but their integration is one of mathematical timing and little else. Their stage presence however is energetic and appealing.

Ultimately, Vex is another “needs work.” Rhythmically the band integrates its work fairly well, and thus to most listeners, these disadvantages are not apparent, but over repeated listens, they’ll become apparent. This is not an attempt to discourage, because the impression one gets is that this band is perfectly capable and if they could all agree on what each song they’re writing hopes to express, the raw tools they have at hand are overabundant for the purpose. It reeks like a collision of personalities. This may not come in the form of disagreement, but perhaps too much tolerance for cramming in admittedly excellent pieces, soup style, into what eventually emerges as a formless and indistinct mass of sound.

Averse Sefira

Taking to the stage with customary elan, Averse Sefira stepped out of the blackness and proceded to abrade their audience with slicing aural intensity delivered in a disciplined and natural style. In perhaps one of the fastest black metal sets on record, they performed the entirety of their new work, “Tetragrammatical Astygmata,” followed by an encore of three of their most popular songs from previous albums. Although there were two pauses in the rendering of the new album, and one lengthy break before encore, the songs themselves were ripped out in a martial style at high speed with only a few seconds separating them.

A smooth continuation of previous works, the newest songs from Averse Sefira are, like those on the previous album, “Battle’s Clarion,” a hybrid between the fast melodic work of Immortal and the relentless aggression of maniacal bands like Demoncy, resulting in a type of black metal that uses the foreboding and oppressive speed of death metal in the context of songs which interleave moods through streams of notes changing color like a singing human voice. An addition from the last album is the use of simpler riffs at times, giving the music a primitive and unsettled feel, and the circuitous redirection of song structures to replace repetition with a cycle of gained intensity. It is both highly listenable and challenging in its mystical architecture of symbols, tones, and textures.

Drummer The Carcass has upgraded his technique to use a lighter touch on the drums without dropping precision or helicopter blade cadence, extending his stamina and allowing drums to sound at a volume which integrates more cleanly with guitars. The result is a style less like an execution and more like a battle, allowing the organic ambiguity of rhythmic inflection to smoothly reinforce guitars. Bass playing has reached beyond doubling the riff and now counterpoints it with internal rhythms and explosive underscores, sometimes surging along calmly before degrading into pure noise from which it returns with a mechnical plunge to take up the motif of the riff.

For a band with one guitarist, Averse Sefira create a wall of sound that leaves no doubt as to its allegiance to Apollo and worship of Dionysos, constructed rigidly with plenty of chaos in the naturalistic, erratic rhythms of strumming and the use of Burzum-style sweeps of harmonizing notes, like an underwater arpeggio heard through the resonance of metal and water. Guitarist Sanguine A. Nocturne pauses strategically and then not so much plays but leaps into the guitar, causing it to splinter from silence and rise in dopplerizing melodies which shudder downward like collapsing escarpments. The guitar is both creator of abstraction and death hiding in an open but twilight-shrouded landscape.

The result of this battering ensemble of morbidity and passion was not lost on the audience, most of whom appeared to be motivated specifically to see the headlining band. While there was action and violence in the pit, most eyes were on the instruments and the personae who played them. The band rounded out the show with “Ad Infinitum,” “Battle’s Clarion” and “Fallen Beneath the Earth,” at faster speeds than on the albums, and at that point, an exhausted audience was grateful for their abrupt exit and the fading of the lights.

Bands:
Permafrost
Gates of Enoch
Vex
Averse Sefira

Promotors:
Extreme Texas Metal
Morbid Thoughts
The Backroom

The organization of this show was professional; the club did an adequate job. Thanks to the staff at Extreme Texas Metal, Rigor Mortis Records, and Morbid Thoughts for their work.

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Quantity versus Quality in metal

by Brett Stevens on March 11, 2005

We measure our lives by either quality or quantity. If it was a great steak, we say so and leave it at that; if it was mediocre, we say that sixteen ounces of it for thirty dollars was a “good deal.” The quantitative view is most popular because it is accessible to everyone, since only those who are endowed by nature with the sense to know a good steak from a crappy one can tell you its qualitative value. Since most people are not so fortunate, we talk about what a “great deal” it is that you can get something that legally qualifies as steak in prodigious amounts at a low price per pound. This is the essence of democratic liberal free enterprise society, in that it eschews all things which require a higher kind of person and replace them with the kind of assessments even a moron can follow (and congratulate himself for the “good deal” he’s getting).

But how does the qualitative work in a society? After all, say the “wise” pundits, wouldn’t it be hard to organize a society around qualitative value, since only a few can assess it? This column offers an example in the small. Peer-to-peer file sharing can take many forms, but one of the most common is that of a hub; this is a small community where people exchange files. Normally, to get on a hub, you must have some quantity of files to be shared, and without that, you can be excluded “fairly” because, of course, everyone can see that you need to have a minimum amount of stuff to get on. Like cheap steak, it might be stuff that would only appeal to morons, but it shows you’ve done the effort and therefore deserve to be on the hub – that’s “fair,” sensu liberal democracy.

The hub toward which A.N.U.S. contributes, the neoclassical hub, does not operate this way. There is no minimum share size to get on, and there is no reward for having more stuff; instead of quantity, the hub focuses on quality, because unlike liberal democracies it recognizes that unlimited moronic music is not “equal” to a small amount of quality music, no matter how much the average voter can’t tell the difference. You can get on the hub right now and start participating, but the admins who periodically peruse shares will eventually check out what you have and — Slipknot? Cradle of Filth? Pantera? — those who have moronic music get booted. I frequently get mail from these people, objecting that their ejection was not “fair,” and these mails invariably contain the line, “But I had (amount) of share!” These people are used to a quantitative, passive society, where no matter what the quality, as long as you get enough there to put a number in the blank on the form, you’re considered part of the club.

Not to say that a hub is a club, of course – a hub is a tool for sharing files, and a social space, as well. But what it is more than anything else is a reflection of the values of those who meet there. People who want to listen to crowd-pleasing music go to the bigger hubs and hang out with other people who like Britney, or cool jazz, or light rock, or even indiscriminate metal and grindcore – what the crowd wants is acceptance for mere quantitative participation, such as the number one (1) – if there is an (1) individual, then it should be equal, and admitted to the club, because – look – it exists, after all. This is what the crowd always desires, which is the paradoxical concept of group participation through pseudo-individuality. You can’t tell them their taste in music sucks, because then they’ll wail about how they’ve been wronged and it’s not “fair.”

For those who have made their way out of the biggest slice of groupthink, it’s healthier to find an enclave, or a smaller place where their views are protected from the majority view, which is the quantitative. If you have unending time and nothing better to do, it might appeal to you to listen to all 100,000 death metal, grindcore, black metal and heavy metal bands yet created. More likely, unless you’re a retarded invalid, you’ve got other things to do and so depend on finding the quality stuff through socialization and information resources. Naturally, the crowd will oppose you wherever you try to do this, as they like to believe either (a) that all music is equal or (b) that the most popular music is the best, and therefore you don’t need to actually look – just see what they’re playing on the radio now; “trust us.” The enclave ideal is naturally opposed to that of open to the public group participation.

Any social unit based on this notion of qualitative logic, and eschewing unnecessary quantitative logic, would naturally be a better place to live. Quantitative logic gets you the lowest common denominator, but if you return assessment to that of degree of quality, you instead get only the better efforts. Select the better people to be part of this community; that’s inherent to its nature. Let them pick the better art, learning, science and products, and then you’ve got less garbage (inferior products break frequently, and can rarely be repaired). When they make rules, they don’t have to worry about everyone – oh no, fat people in wheelchairs cannot fit into our new library – but those who actually make a difference. To people concerned about quality, the opinions of the mass are not important, and thus they don’t have to worry about offending people and can actually tell it like they see it – something you cannot do in our liberal democracy, or you’ll be blacklisted and investigated and eventually forced to take a job as a janitor somewhere.

A qualitative society is by nature structured toward building consensus. If you have something of quality, you hold it up as a shining example, and what is agree on is not that we should all have a similar quantity of thing, but that we should all work toward having a similar quality of character, strength, intelligence in ourselves. Since your society only admits people of quality, you don’t have to assume that every other person on the street is a moron, and thus can have compassion for random people in society – and have the option to socialize more, since you don’t have to first apply a filter to screen out the idiots. This is how society used to be, but it was lost in the populist revolt that demanded we all be equal and have an equal right to quantities of money; see what you’ve given up, in order to please the crowd? Well – at least on this hub, there’s a sliver of what once was, and what, if we work toward it, will be again.

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Interview: Camazotz and Paraplethon (Spear of Longinus)

by Joe on May 20, 2003

Black metal drew to its camp many who experimented in extreme metal and punk but found themselves alienated by the ideas of the mainstream. Like fellow hybridizers Absurd, the intelligent Spear of Longinus found they wanted to borrow bits from many genres of extreme social rejection, and hoped to unify them around an ideology which explained both solid reasons for disliking society and suggested something positive in its stead. A roving ANUS.COM representative in Australia was able to catch up with these gents and exchange a few words.

In a time when it is popular to be ultra-black-metal in the modern sense, your music seems to have older inspirations. What bands and eras inspire your creation?

Camazotz: nowdays I listn to all kinds of stuff, though my ‘heyday’ was that fine time during the 80’s when the metal scene was at it’s best, say 82-89 or so. Sure there have been great releases at other times but the highest concentration was around these times especially as I like a lot of the punk/hardcore gear that was getting about at the time too. For example Discharge, The Exploited, etc etc. 80’s metal would of course be the likes of Destruction, Bathory, Frost, Possessed. Etc so in light of that , musik in this stlye must be alive with energy to get my enthusiasm. Modern proponents that have done this would be stuff like, Darkthrone, Burzum and earlier Emperor releases.

I feel that good metal should be more punk than metal to be good metal, if you can follow.

You see most modern metal feels lifeless to me, it has no particular focus apart from just being metal, whatever the hell that just exactly is …

Of course stuff like Wagner and trancendental compositions greatly inspire us now. For example Tibetan vocals, Indian sitar etc.The different ‘tribal’ styles that we still have which are in fact relics of occult teknikues/principles put into practice.

Paraplethon: Inspiring music would be that with a passion, a driving urge… honesty and integrity, that has something to say – either of a temporal or numinous nature, and has the ability to… affect and effect. THAT is inspiring, something of the like worth emulating. Metal, generally, hardly ever has any one of such worthwhile traits, let alone all of them, so at most it’s vaguely interesting but rarely inspiring…

The ‘outer reflects the inner’, the ‘muse-ik’ being one of the records of who, what and where we are – nothing more, nothing less.

What inspires the creation of individual songs: real world events, or thoughts and emotions?

Camazotz: ahhhhhh now that’s a profound question comerade, quite bluntly this stuff is a direct result of the dualastik clash between maya/atman, matter/antimatter.
what the Gnostiks call dualism.

What to us is ‘real’? is a chair real? Or, is the impression we receive of the chair , the chair(real)? If so, then what is the ‘origional’ chair, actually?

It is a result of the luciferian urge to regain the trancendental ‘throne’. The path of fools.

This material world is the ‘result’ of other ‘events’, the point being to get back to the ‘real’.

RISE.

Break down ALL barriers, in fact, to die is best!

DIE

DIE

DIE, MY DARLING, die within oneself.

LIBERATION. The return to PLEROMA.

Paraplethon: Define ‘real’.

It seems you have attempted to blend the spiritual and the political into a single entity; to many of us, these seem inseparable in the first place. How did you come to the realization that this was the path for you?

Camazotz: the path told us so… obviously!

Yes these things are inseperable, just as matter is spirit. Energy, in a different format. BUT, they are of course something totally different to each other at the same time. That’s where things get tricky and humans fall apart, they loose unity/focus and ability to progress. This is the inbuilt striving to attain the “overman”.

The clash of the Titans!

This is touched upon briefly and enigmatikly in our track ” the lay of spartazen “, which will be included on the upcoming release “…And the swastikalotus”.

Paraplethon: Inseparable is the word. The recognition dawned with the realization that ‘All and Everything’ is inseparable. Vague allusions to begin with, experiencing it first-hand is… makes it so much more of a certainty… a most profound experience.

In this respect, it is not enough to say that we are dealing with a purely material and economic conquest. That view seems very superficial, for two reasons. In the first place, a land that is conquered on the material level also experiences, in the long run, influences of a higher kind corresponding to the cultural type of its conqueror. We can state, in fact, that European conquest almost everywhere sows the seeds of “Europeanization,” i.e., the “modern” rationalist, tradition-hostile, individualistic way of thinking. Secondly, the traditional conception of culture and the state is hierarchical, not dualistic. Its bearers could never subscribe, without severe reservations, to the principles of “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” and “My kingdom is not of this world.” For us, “Tradition” is the victorious and creative presence in the world of that which is “not of this world,” i.e., of the Spirit, understood as a power that is mightier than any merely human or material one.

This is a basic idea of the authentically traditional view of life, which does not permit us to speak with contempt of merely material conquests. On the contrary, the material conquest is the sign, if not of a spiritual victory, at least of a spiritual weakness or a kind of spiritual “retreat” in the cultures that are conquered and lose their independence. Everywhere that the Spirit, regarded as the stronger power, was truly present, it never lacked for means – visible or otherwise – to enable all the opponent’s technical and material superiority to be resisted. But this has not happened. It must be concluded, then, that degeneracy was lurking behind the traditional facade of every people that the “modern” world has been able to conquer. The West must then have been the culture in which a crisis that was already universal assumed its acutest form. There the degeneration amounted, so to speak, to a knockout blow, and as it took effect, it brought down with more or less ease other peoples in whom the involution had certainly not “progressed” as far, but whose tradition had already lost its original power, so that these peoples were no longer able to protect themselves from an outside assault.

– Baron Julius Evola, On the Secret of Degeneration

What experience or realizations do you hope to communicate through your music?

Camazotz: more light.

Buddhism, in the summarization of Herr Nietzsche, is a self-denying religion, where it seems that most of the western tradition is self-affirming, although not perhaps in the ultra-limited-focus of self-based religions (Judaism, Christianity). In your view, how do Buddhism and National Socialism spring from the same origin?

Camazotz: everything springs from the same source.

All good and evil, is in fact, evil and good.

But we can play with words all day, frederika and bhuddhism say the same things, they’ve used the same kinds of terms though with different definitions attached. Like we said before, this is where the humans cease to function appropriately.

For example the term ‘ego” some use this to denote the highest qualities , while some use it to denote the lowest infrastructures.

The “self” in the purest occult definition is a separate atom, free from its contaminated restricted material existence. ( Karma.)

The “self” is the purified/liberated “being” , free and purified of the gross material contamination. The actual “self” cannot be restricted to the tri-dimensional realm, that we are currently chained to.

This is alchemy, all of egypt.

Primal christianity eg. Gnosis, is probably the mediator needed here to make sense of these issues.

The goal of national socialism , the result that is intended to be achieved , is the superman.

The superman is the overman, the man that has overcome his limitations and regrown to a super (from our present involuted state) level of being.

A bhudda, or, bohdisatva depending on the level achieved.

Angel or Archangel, if you’d like to use these terms.

Some resonate with the uber and untermenschen terminologies, its all the same .

I would at this point encourage humans to find a nice rock under a tree on a mountain by a stream amd meditate your brains out on these issues.

Paraplethon: It is perhaps self-denying in order to be truly self-affirming; the movie ‘Fight Club’ deals with these concepts pretty well.

The terminology may differ between Buddhism and NS, or between NS and any other traditional philosophy, though ‘terminology’ is just that – an outer husk whose only use is an attempt to describe, or in some instances plainly label, the ‘inner guts’ – the unseen thing within that is the whole value and point to the philosophy. And further than that, NS being a modern re-formulation, in such a dire time and circumstances, was and is bound to be different.

Where they are similar, one and the same even, is their concern with the development of a greater wo/man; the advancement of wo/man, and the means by which to get there aren’t really all that far removed either.

The foundation of every true State is the transcendence of its own principle, namely the principle of sovereignty, authority, and legitimacy. This essential truth has been variously expressed in the course of history; if this truth was not recognized, the meaning of everything that belongs to political reality would be misunderstood, or at least distorted. Through the multifaceted variety of these forms we always find as a “constant” the notion of the State as the intrusion and the manifestation of a higher order, which is then actualized in a power. Therefore, every true political unity appears as the embodiment of an idea and a power, thus distinguishing itself from every form of naturalistic association or “natural right,” and also from every societal aggregation determined by mere social, economic, biological, utilitarian or eudemonistic factors.

In previous eras it was possible to speak of the sacred character of the principle of sovereignty and power, namely of the State. For instance, the ancient Roman notion of imperium essentially belonged to the domain of the sacred. This notion, in its specific meaning, even before expressing a system of territorial, supernatural hegemony, designated the pure power of command, the almost mystical power and auctoritas inherent in the one who had the function and quality of Leader: a leader in the religious and warrior order as well as in the order of the patrician family, the gens, and, eminently, of the State, the res publica. In the Roman world, which was intensely realistic (or, I should say, precisely because it was intensely realistic), the notion of this power, which is simultaneously auctoritas, always retained its intrinsic character of bright force from above and of sacred power, beyond the various and often spurious techniques that conditioned its access in different periods.

– Baron Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins

Do you see the individual as existing outside of a political and social context, or necessarily as part of one, even when attempting to avoid the issue?

Camazotz: the individual is in fact multidualastik.

The idea is to be a part of this world, but not of it.

Be separate and observe, but also be productive and interactive.

This is the key. You need both polarites to proceed. Balance.

The individual or ‘self’ not to be confused with the human organism, should be somewhat “above” the mechanical systems, overseeing, if you will. Guiding.

You will after some time of practicing these tekniques be conscious of the seperation/observation, then you can really get to work.

Politiks and social environment are unavoidable, they are necessary for the revolution.

At the base end of the scale, they are the extent of most peoples ‘realities’. They are therefore necessary tools to be utilised. Fortunately those who ‘know’ can work towards something numinous.

Paraplethon: The very term ‘individual’ presupposes such. Though, probably more-so nowadays than in the past a person is wholly defined by their interaction with certain groups of people – socializing, and by their working/financial position, both of which, generally speaking, are accepted as going on to form the basis of a person’s ‘political persuasion’ – the ideas and concepts concerning the nature of society, the person and the environment they hold to be true, ‘the best’ and seemingly self-evident, there is more to it than base temporal factors.

There is in each person a unique and most vital element to their being, this is the essential spark that travels from incarnation to incarnation, the immortal animator of our being. It is variously referred to as ‘the Ego’, by Gurdjieff and many others; ‘the Essence’, Yeats called it the ‘Anti-Self’, and in Alchemical circles its one of the things going be the name of ‘sulphur’. With the recognition of the essence, the awakening process, and the nurturing of it – bringing it forth into full flower – that’s when the doors of perception really start to open, when we discover our extra senses and so forth.

This process, that we just as might call ‘individuation’, is however barred; the path is blocked by our accretion, whilst physically incarnate, of shallow, hollow, most ephemeral notions of our identity – such as was mentioned in the ‘socializing’ and ‘social strata’ circles – the region of the cult of the personality. These ‘psychological aggregates’ are rooted in our all too willing reckless identification solely with the material plane when we find ourselves physically incarnate. So in order to uncover the real, hidden essence that is our being, where the realm of UNDERSTANDING is to be found, rather than just “knowledge of this, that or the other”, the false impression of what we believe to be our identity must be sloughed off to allow our being to breathe. It was in this area, the ‘Golden Dawn’ had a test wherein the candidates had to converse without using any first personal pro-nouns; i, my etc, etc…

So, yes, people CAN be individuals if they choose to put the effort in, otherwise yes, we can be defined by a social and political context. As for ‘avoiding the issue’, the making of petty excuses or whatever to not deal with the situation as it stands; ‘because’ has fallen; “now is the time of the Fall of Because.”

What is your feeling regarding democracy as a system of government?

Camazotz: seemed like a good idea at the time …..

as with any other failing, generally speaking it is the human factor that fucks it. the untermensch ‘ego’ . most systems have something to offer , at least in theory. but if there is a fault, the human scun will exploit it.

Paraplethon: It does appear to be a good idea in theory. Perhaps it works only on the small scale in practice; medieval Iceland for example.

The most valuable insights are arrived at last; but the most valuable insights are methods.

All the methods, all the presuppositions of our contemporary science were for millennia regarded with the profoundest contempt; on their account one was excluded from the society of respectable people — one was considered as an “enemy of God,” as a reviler of the highest ideal, as “possessed.”

We have had the whole pathos of mankind against us — our conception of what “truth” should be, what service of truth should be, our objectivity, our method, our silent, cautious, mistrustful ways were considered perfectly contemptible —

At bottom, it has been an aesthetic taste that has hindered mankind most: it believed in the picturesque effect of truth, it demanded of the man of knowledge that he should produce a powerful effect on the imagination.

This looks as if an antithesis has been achieved, a leap made; in reality, the schooling through moral hyperbole prepared the way step by step for that milder of pathos that became incarnate in the scientific character —

The conscientiousness in small things, the self-control of the religious man were a preparatory school for the scientific character: above all, the disposition that takes problems seriously, regardless of the personal consequences —

– F.W. Nietzsche, The Will To Power

Which ancient societies do you respect most, and why?

Camazotz: atlantean and lemurian.

These are the ones which I have the most vivid recollections of. They were superior to our present era as humans involute instead of evolute, as opposed to what the corrupt ones would have us believe.

These were what we would call ‘high’ cultures as they were organicly minded, of course the atlantean degenerated to a material teknology based system which set the mood for our current situation of disaray .

Organik civilisation is spiritual civilisation.

Blood and soil.

This level of being had a totally different outlook to the present. In those times the human was the teknology to be perfected, not , an outside material construct for humans to dump their shortcomings on to create even more limitations to the acheivement of human potentials.

Less is more.

You see energy is matter and matter is spirit. Therefore energy is spirit. So why would one externalise spirit instead of working internally/esotericly? Why would one waste their ‘quota’ of immediate potential on external materialism??????? This is why the great civilisations of old look so backwards to the uninitiated, the advance is hidden to them.

Stone,timber etc these natural materials are infinately more powerful to work with and beneficial as they are still the living energy of the elements/elementals which reside therein. Blood and honour.

Paraplethon: None more-so than others. There is something to be learned/gained from ALL quarters; it si a very general statement though we had something in times pat that we’ve definitely gone and lost in the 20th Cent. However, it doesn’t do to dwell on ‘what once was’ and forget to live; the present is the only time worth our energies.

Machiavelli says it is better to be loved than hated, but much harder to be loved by the fickle nature of populations. Do you see this as being a sentiment of the original “fascist” ethos?

Camazotz: naturally ’tis better to be loved than hated.

Hate will destroy you. This is not to be confused with a healthy adversity, which promotes growth and strength.

Naturally fascism recognises the way populations behave, I think everyone would know this wouldn’t you? The trick is to achieve FOR the people, especially if they do not at the time recognise what is best for them. Fascism does this.

Paraplethon: Not particularly… it sounds more like something out of ‘the successful propagandists handbook’ or something. The sort of thing anyone remotely concerned with having good PR would take note of… hardly a ‘fascist ethos’ as such.

The everlasting qualities of Varna and family traditions of those who destroy their family are ruined by the sinful act of illegitimacy.

– The Bhagvad-Gita

The fascia, from which fascism derives its name, is a bundle of reeds with an axe head attached at their center; the symbolism is in theory that while sticks break individually, together they are strong. Is there any unity toward a common goal in modern governments?

Camazotz: of course! It is a new world order after all!

We could go into all kinds of discussions regarding parties , wings and all manner of political doctrine, and really I think most of them do at least have something positive to offer.

But they fail because of the human element.

Humans are not perfect, we must perfect the humanoid psychologicly/spiritually, to reflect that in the social environment.

This is what the movement should be working at.

This is what okkult NS and Fascism is all about.

This what all religions are about.

This is the heresy we embrace.

This is the REVOLUTION we instigate.

This is what we practice.

This is what we preach.

Paraplethon: Yep, ‘strength through unity’, ‘united we stand, divided we fall’ etc…

The ‘common goal’ they’re intent on scoring is the complete enslavement of humanity as an identity-less, racially indistinguishable mass of automatons.

As dire as the current situation is, that we are here talking openly about their nefarious aims is proof enough we’re not yet living through our darkest hour, though it is very dim, very grim.

However, what we are witness to isn’t a particularly united/common front; there are those in varying amounts of agreement, from the rabidness of the US, Israel and Australia to the more wary French and Russians to those who remain definitely outside the fold; Iraq and Libya for instance. It must be pointed out though it isn’t only those countries labelled ‘evil’ by the worlds punch-drunk bully – the US, that remain on the outer; there is a semi-autonomous region of Siberia, perhaps the last place on the planet since the fall of Tibet, where governmental decisions are guided by spiritual elders, in this case shamans, whose aims are more along the lines of freeing the mind and spirit rather than enslaving and controlling them. And as for the recent US actions designed to stamp out any opposition to its aims as mentioned above, well Nelson Mandela makes it clear where he stands; “They think they’re the only power in the world. They’re not and they’re following a dangerous policy. One country wants to bully the world… If you look at these matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the USA is a threat to world peace.” Newsweek, 10th Sept. 2002.

It’s the Kali-Yuga, revel in the dischord and strife…

Have you had any problems with labels, fans, clubs or others because of your political views?

Camazotz: yes,

we have had some interest from a bike club due to us using “their” image.

We have had trouble with certain skin movements.

We have had trouble with the media.

We have trouble with %98 of the musik community finding it next to impossible to get gigs, advertising, label interest etc. and that is including the ‘pagan’ metal heretiks!

Also certain magikle societys in all their illumination, don’t get it.

Herr Nietzsche referred to Christianity as a great evil that, were it not to exist, would have to be invented. He also said “that which does not kill me, makes me stronger” in regards to experience — in your view, what is the experience — both personal and cultural — of overcoming christianity, and what strength does it create?

Camazotz: sorry this question was lost somehow.

Paraplethon: Firstly, ‘christianity’ is a VERY loaded word, so you would have to begin by narrowing your scope and define exactly what sort of christianity here is to be overcome. An example of how much variance/difference there is in the christian experience is Origen of Alexandria, a church elder of the 2nd or 3rd cent., who at his death was officially deemed a saint. However, some time later – a few hundred years or so, Origens position was re-evaluated, it was determined his Neo-Platonism didn’t sit well with what the church had become and so his writings were banned, or burned, his sainthood was revoked and he was declared a heretic. The rather drastic change in the opinion of Origen mirrors the devolution of mass christianity as a whole, culminating with the final purge of the esoteric aspect of the religion in the 15th cent. or thereabouts, whereafter the ‘Church of Rome'(and its offshoots…) were more or less just the outer husks/the misunderstood whispers, not much more than some meaningless moral code.

Esoteric Christianity, the real ‘inner guts’ of the movement – that which gives real meaning and value to all the rituals, practices and moralizing of that outer husk – the Roman Church, was forced underground.

So what aspect of christianity is to be overcome? The outer, exoteric branch everyone is familiar with? Fine, if you were to do so, you’d be taking the first tentative steps towards realizing that old maxim ‘Know Thyself’.

At its core, Esoteric Christianity IS a method, a philosophy of overcoming, of overcoming oneself – sounds somewhat similar to Nietzsche doesn’t it? Of course the terminology is different, but who cares for the terminology, it’s merely an attempt to describe the heart of the matter, there’s bound to be differing terminology as every ones experience os going to be unique to themselves.

However, the heart of the matter IS the same.

Europe is about to outlaw “hate speech” online through a program named Princip, after the assassin who started World War I. Of what do you believe this is a portent, and how do you think it will be circumnavigation?

Camazotz: I knew this was on the drawing board, but had no idea it was to be implemented at this point. Surely people can see that this is unbalanced?
anything can be circumvented. That’s how the whole internet thing came about in the first place. I feel the ‘left’ in all their glory should be assissted in their efforts to save the free speech that is still available. By that I mean whatever factions are still opposing these actions. In fact there should be more work with the ‘left’ alltogether.

This is ignorance in full flight.

This we must fight.

Lest we face the great night.(again &again&again.)

Ignorance can only breed ignorance, fear , restriction etc.

There must be dialogue/interaction with all factions and cults to make any progress in this world.

Together we are strong.

A good lesson in the cosmik principle of recurrence here don’t you think? Nothing should be repressed, this is the tao, more light.

Just what constitutes hate speech etc? The talk of fools.

It’s like this race question.

Those who want to be separate should be separate, those who want to mix should mix. Quite simple really.

A good analogy would be the olympik games, and the drug testing/bans etc.

I think there should be separate events where the competitors can shoot up absolutely any shit into their organisms they want. Hell they can even get nuclear powered bioniks in these events for all I care, go for it. We will see where that leads.

But there must be room for purity too.

I would recommend keeping records though, I don’t fancy getting lined up with a sheilagh that has had some kinda ape genetiks crossed so she can win a gold medal at gymnastiks or something.

Paraplethon: A portent? Orwells ‘1984’, Huxleys ‘Brave New World’ – that’s what a constriction on open dialogue and criticism is a portent of.

Do you have any interest in encryption? Or religious cryptograms?

Camazotz: encryption is a tool to be utilised like any other at the correct time and place. Aside from the allegory and symbols of regular occultism/ alchemy etc I’ve not really looked at encryption etc.

I take it you mean stuff like ‘the bible code’ etc?

I have read some on the ‘real’ jesus and such nationalist type things if you mean these?

Of course all secret societys have their encrypted ‘codes’ too.

Sometimes you will find things in our releases if you were to be vigilant.

Of course you can take that to another level in that this world is illusion , so through using the tekniques of the esoterik warrior one would be working in this fashion , ja?

“That’s all she wrote,” the Finn said. “Didn’t finish it. Just a kid then. This thing’s a ceremonial terminal, sort of. I need Molly in here with the right word at the right time. That’s the catch. Doesn’t mean shit, how deep you and the Flatline ride that Chinese virus, if this thing doesn’t hear the magic word.”

“So what’s the word?”

“I don’t know. You might say what I am is basically defined by the fact that I don’t know, because I can’t know. I am that which knoweth not the word. If you knew, man, and told me, I couldn’t know. It’s hardwired in. Someone else has to learn it and bring it here, just when you and the Flatline punch through that ice and scramble the cores.”

“What happens then?”

“I don’t exist, after that. I cease.”

“Okay by me,” Case said.

“Sure. But you watch your ass, Case. My, ah, other lobe is on to us, it looks like. One burning bush looks pretty much like another.”

– William Gibson, Neuromancer

Are there any similarities in your view between the Qabbalah (pre-Judaic) and the tree of life in Nordic religions?

Camazotz: you need ask? Of course.

Paraplethon: They are differing cultural descriptions of the same phenomena; physical worlds coming into being and the polarity to such.

Buddhism and National Socialism both emphasize discipline and a rational, non-superstitious, non-dogmatic approach to decoding philosophy, nature and the sciences. Is this congruent with the beliefs of the west at this time, or has a contravening force taken over?

Camazotz: the west has tapped into and let loose many principles/powers that have taken on their own momentum/agenda. Some of these do indeed work against the agenda of liberation but it’s all part and parcel of the package deal we bought off god at that clearance sale a few years back … it is all encrypted on that nordik tree of life you were alluding too b4 ha ha.

Be alert as the sentry in war.

Continue with the process and you will get the result.

What do you expect when we live so far from galatik centre? When it is within ones ability to upgrade to a double sun, you will still know the answer to yesterday, though not today.

The further you climb, the further you can fall.

Paraplethon: Rational? Non-superstitious? What form of NS are you referring to???

The very world we live in today is the consequence of 200-300 years of rationalism, denigration of superstition, and NS stood in direct opposition to this degenerate society; NS was a civilization unto itself.

Though what is ‘superstition’, being that most people have some sort of preconception. Superstition; tradition, myth, legend, perhaps a ‘cultural base’. Let’s go out on a limb and say perhaps all myth, legend, tradition(‘superstition’) is but a system existant to give us the means to negotiate our multi-dimensional reality at our will. THAT seems quite rational…

To attempt an interpretation of ‘superstition/myth’ purely from the physical/temporal point of view is quite ‘irrational’, though to do so would result in the conclusion that ‘superstition/myth’ IS itself quite ‘irrational’… whatever…

When you write lyrics, which is more important: exact meaning or the sense and sound of language?

Camazotz: that’s a funny question . As you will find that the ‘vibe’ or sense and sound as you put it. IS the exact meaning. Words can never give the truth, only a close approximation. That’s why letters have a kabbalistik corespondence, to get closer to what the real deal is. Also that’s why we need to utilise the layering of sounds with the words and such, to get as close as possible to the particular atomik rotational condensation as we can. Somewhere within the yin and yang polarities of that atomik field we will find the exact mathematical fraction hinted at.

You must do some travelling.

Do you read any philosophers or social theorists and if so, what doctrines do you find relevant to the current time and its discontent?

Camazotz: I rarely read at all these days. It just dosen’t hold my attention at all anymore. Now we work more practically with the meditations and such. The intellect rarely serves its master satisfactorally.

Simple observation and reflections will give you any informations that these types of pushers try to get thou addicted to. Only it will be pure and internally relevant to YOU and you’re peculiar frequency/orbit.

In addition to that, the big draw back is that people just go around adding all this information to their little brains, without actually utilising any of it or DOING anything. A bit of a waste of time really.

If I read anything now it is scientifik/okkult. Which is first applied on an intellectual level then passed on to the dan tien, then hopefully we can really do some work psychologikly. Which itself begins at the ritual level, then moves deeper.

Paraplethon: Chomsky, Hakim Bey, Alexander Dugin, Qadhafi… David Icke appears to be more daring and goes a bit further than the others.

In your view, is history a linear process with a clear end-point at which a triumph of development can be proclaimed?

Camazotz: if one followed this point of view , it could only be the triumph of death/dekay/involution. History is cyclik in both its ups and downs, every point is only a decimal on the way to another point . My answer to your question is , no.

Paraplethon: Think ‘cyclic’, in terms of ‘aeonics’, development, triumph, degeneration, decay, multiplicity, unity etc…

Saying that though, you’d have to have rocks in your head to still have faith in the ‘cult of progress’.

It seems in light of recent events, previously demonized political worldviews are gaining some ground in the mainstream, albeit in pieces separated from the whole, much as Christianity was absorbed. Do you think these beliefs will synthesize with current “popular knowledge” or will a splinter society be created?

Camazotz: a splinter society? Not for some time I’m afraid ( not in a positive way anyhow ), unless you want to count people such as Islam, Iraq and North Korea etc. we must promote the invisible empire, to be within the ‘system’ but not of it. To not be restricted by it, that is. Utilise it, be the master.

You must see that that is in fact the problem, society is too splintered. The sleepwalker cannot even see the line , neveralone know which side to stand on. Anything that has been assimilated has really been the grosser aspects of doctrines, with no depth to really make a positive difference. And who will lead this splinter society?

Paraplethon: Any ground gained is more likely the carrot dangled in front of us, so watch out for the big stick. They don’t seem like people willing to give up their power, or even share it around a little…

I’m sure people have asked this to death, but what do you think was achieved by the Al-Qaeda bombing in Bali in which 180 people, mostly Australians, were killed?

Camazotz: I guess they got rid of a few round eyes from their country. we got what NWO wanted.

Paraplethon: Al-Qaeda? Really???

About the only thing that was achieved was for 2-3 weeks sports wasn’t the most important thing in the lives of average Australians.

Of which work of the band are you proudest? Do you see an evolution in the process of your works?

Camazotz: we try not to stagnate. But then again a change is not necessarily a good thing, hopefully we can rebel in a positive fashion. I think the standard answer is that what ever is most recently released, is the best, ja!

Actually I try not to be attached to anything that’s been done, or will be done.

Paraplethon: The best thing about SOL is the concious attempt to influence others.

At least here in Texas, it seems to be hard to come by Spear of Longinus merchandise or recordings. Will this change at some point, and will you re-release older material?

Camazotz: older stuffs will be re-released as time goes by hopefully in ‘revamped’ formats. Just as soon as THEY let go, our stuff will be easier to get a hold of. Then we will also be featured on “top of the pops” wont that be grand ………. then the prism of perspective can take us away to the light cone.

What inspired the choice of band name?

Camazotz: hadit.

Has metal grown from the black metal experience, or are we in a lull between developments of metal and thus bands are turning to traditional, proven formulas for aesthetics?

Camazotz: metal has grown but it is also in a lull.

You will find that the traditional motifs will eternally recur, hopefully in ever flourishing octaves.

The humans are doing the best that they can…. Poor creatures

Paraplethon: Don’t have much to do with ‘metal’ anymore, listen to it now and then, that’s about it… ditched it when that whole ‘retro’ thing took off…

Camazotz: hear hear, fuck retro.

It seems many American Christians support Israel because in the Christian view, an “end times” is coming and one of the signs of its arrival is Jewish repossession of their homeland. Could this be one of those prophecies that is ultimately self-fulfilling and nothing more?

Camazotz: the material realm is not always a faithful reflection of the superior. In fact my kitty kat is black.

The most unfortunate thing is that humans do not understand the symbolism employed.

They mix up the metaphysical internal with the terrene external. Ignorance doom flux.

Join a kult and make it prosper.

Paraplethon: The ‘end-times’ aren’t peculiar to just christians, there’s quite alot that culminates in the period 1960-2040, or even prior if you want to count Crowley’s proclamation of the ‘Aeon of Horus’ in 1904 or whenever it was. Just what do the ‘end-times’ signify though, that’s the more interesting question.

To answer your question though, on the face of it, it would appear to be somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the various other evidence pointing towards an ‘end-times’ however, it is safe to say there is something in the air.

In your personal lives, do you watch television, movies, play video games, or use any drugs?

Camazotz: no drugs

no video games

no tv.

Occasional movies.

All you have is your training, you must be what you are independent of external influences.

Paraplethon: Movies… especially the ones with the esoteric undertones…

Why waste time with that other junk – “all we have to do is decide to do with the time given us”, what will you do?

Please insert anything here i’ve missed or which has been only covered obliquely.

Camazotz: thanx for the time and space mate.

Metal is dead, long live metal.

Sorry we didn’t put enough energy into this mate, but hopefully people can get an idea about it all from this. Be a practical particle, be sincere, and HE will come.666.

Von sol
Doomcrust.

Paraplethon: Nah, that’ll do… Thanks.

Spear of Longinus Homepage
spearoflonginus@yahoo.com

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Interview: Mr Blaash (Where’s My Skin? Zine)

by Joe on October 6, 2002

Those on the prowl for interesting literature about the metal movement may be familiar with Mr. Blaash of Where’s My Skin? zine. His misanthropic commentaries on metal, death, life, self-mutilation and guns are gratifying to those of us who have experienced enough alienation to hate any form of sociability. Blaash kindly granted an interview between reloads on his MP5 during a streetfight in Houston.

How did you get into black metal: was there metal before it that you liked, did it alone appeal to you, or did you find it through a non-metal genre?

Hm. When I was a little blaash, back in the 80s, I found early bands like SLAYER, early METALLICA with Cliff (no remorse, no regrets, we don’t care, what it meant), early MEGADETH (its black Friday!), a little POSSESSED(7 churches), early SABBAT (a history of a time to come – from the UK before they turned UltraGay), and a fucking healthy LOUD dosage of RIGOR MORTIS ( DEMONS).. from there I instinctively turned to the glory of death metal, with DEMIGOD, XYSMA, FUNEBRE, PHLEGM, IMPETIGO, BOLT THROWER, CARCASS and so on.. mainly by listening to a radio show at like midnight by Wes Weaver (now of INFERNAL DOMINION) called Sweet Nightmares… around the time of my first issue oh, lets say 92 or so, I was introduced to the TAOG EHT FO HTAO demo from IMPALED NAZARENE.. I immediately made contact with the man and from henceward I followed with IMMORTAL’s “Fullmoon..”, MARDUK’s “dark endless” and COF’s “principle”.. it culminated with the first slicing as I heard the EMPEROR split with ENSLAVED.. truly an honour to have heard such albums before they have long since “progressed” or some such thing.. it is a shame that the younger generations (rightfully perhaps) spit upon these bands because they were introduced to the LATTER releases, instead of realizing that back in 93 or so that these were skullfucking releases at the time..

Describe what black metal sounds like to you.

As it should – Extreme, in at least some sense of the word.

Describe what black metal communicates to you.

Ah – An aura of violence followed by an intrinsic self destructive honour; that it is still within our grasp to end our own existence or that of another… feelings of no self worth, but with the knowledge that one does not need to have any.. perhaps this is sounding a bit confused; but for me it fuels the fire of negativism in my person; of continuing a fight with the knowledge that in the end I will lose; but that is not the point; the point is the struggle itself, and how many I plague, harass, molest, spread the seed of propaganda onto (heh or into)and/or horrify/depress or encourage others to do so….

What “is” black metal?

As with any form of medium; propaganda – a weapon to encourage negativity in the extreme to others…

How did you get into writing, and why did you choose to do Where’s My Skin?

When I was a young maggot I always had the penchant to write.. I used to write cynical opinions about world events.. I especially liked the LA riots (the darkies were outraged about something, so they destroyed THEIR OWN neighborhood.. shouldn’t they have at least destroyed somebody elses) and also Maggie Thatcher, and CNN (I really think they start the wars, just to have something on TV)…As I delved further into the scene, I ran into some killer zines like billy nocera’s COVEN zine and others.. however, I also ran into shittily written pieces of fucking nonsensical crap – I could not tolerate the extremely poor grammar and just outright usage of the same ‘its brutal man’ reviews. Fuck I couldn’t fucking stand it. Theres nothing wrong with a shitty looking zine – hell look at mine; but at the very least compose it competently.. a good current example would be HELLISH MASSACRE from Sweden.. also TALES FROM THE EIBON (france), tho needs A LOT OF WORK… seems to be showing improvement..

Do you believe as did Georges Bataille that human life in part consists of looking for a good method of expenditure, meaning a means of expression that culminates in the depletion of the life itself?

I believe this is simply a metaphor for ‘finding a goal’ in life. To find ‘meaning’ – be it rape, serial killing or an accounting position at KPMG.. as one attempts to reach these goals, he is confounded (and/or arrested or shot, depending on what goals one pursues)… and eventually dies. Bataille was quite a healthy pervert and an esoteric/violent thinker, from what little I know of him. Would probably great to trade stories with over whiskey.

Let us consider in particular how concepts are formed; each word immediately becomes a concept, not by virtue of the fact that it is inteded to serve as a memory (say) of the unique, utterly individualized, primary experience to which it owes its existence, but because at the same time it must fit countless other, more or less similar cases, i.e. cases which strictly speaking are never equivalent, and thus nothing other than non-equivalent cases. Just as it is certain that no leaf is ever exactly the same as any other leaf, it is equally certain that the concept ‘leaf’ is formed by dropping these individual differences arbitrarily, by forgetting those features which differentiate one thing from another, so that the concept then gives rise to the notion that something other than leaves exists in nature, something which would be ‘leaf,’ a primal form, say, from which all leaves were woven, drawn, delineated, dyed, curled, painted — but by a clumsy pair of hands, so that no single example turned out to be a faithful, correct, and reliable copy of the primal form. We call a man honest; we ask, ‘Why did he act so honestly today?’ Our answer is usually: ‘Because of his honesty.’ Honesty! — yet again, this means that the leaf is the cause of the leaves.

– F.W. Nietzsche, On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense

Is there any division between love and hate for you?

Well. They’re spelled differently. Hows that?Hm. Both are strong emotions…. I myself am trying to move to that cold, negative feeling that one gets when listening to the ANTAEUS interludes from CYAWS.. of simply Not caring. Par example “No I don’t hate that person, because that would mean I care about them – I just want them dead”… I realize in our pseudo nihilistic coalition it is necessary to have those with passion (and strong emotion like hate); those who enjoy their work – these men (women?) will be the brutal, sadistic serial killers that truly define us.. while we just sit back and guffaw when we read about the newest missing daughter’s breasticle found in her mothers shoe…

Most art in this postmodern time outside of black metal seems to focus on finding a convenient way to express the idea that human life is valuable. Why is it artistically, politically and socially valuable for you to think otherwise?

The morals of the current American society have attempted to teach this; however, I believe it is having the opposite effect.. the morally deviant can obviously see the hollowness of this deluge; hell, even the supposed xtians are doing the opposite these days..I have always been wary of society and socially accepted principles – I see nothing but mediocrity and hypocrisy .. that is one reason I have embraced the path of self destruction and disdain for the majority of society…

Do you think armed political uprising is in the American future?

No. Big Brother has too much of a stranglehold.. if we in turn manage some decent domestic terrorism, it will only serve as a carte blanche for the government to act in silencing us further.. still. It would be interesting to bring down the wrath of oppression – as it nominally, at the least, brings forth rebellion and then violent repression.. so.

What is your preferred method of killing humans?

Havent killed any, so unfortunately I cant give a first hand account and/or description and high points/low points of such an activity. However, I am very, very prone to projectile weapons.Again, those with the passion to properly enjoy this activity should be on our payroll; but me, hell, I just want to get the job done; I have a bar I have to go to afterwards anyway.

You live in one of the most ethnically- and culturally-diverse cities on earth, Houston. What do you like about Houston, and what do you dislike?

I can see you giggling as you write that statement. What the fuck .. we have a dangerous VietCong Mafia, 4thWard NigsAplenty, the BlackHand Messican mafia, and more Nigerian cabbies then I can shake my willy at.. there is NOTHING to like.. fuck. The only interesting thing is that there are Europeans (women) that come here, due to Houston being a port city. It is a nice break from the fucking Huge FuckinG MOO-Cows we have runnin’ around here that pass for women. Shit.

Isn’t it fucking hot as hell there?

Prozak – I’m gonna kick you in the groin for that one when/if I see you at the SatanTonio Fest in December. Fuck yeah its like breathing in a nuclear cloud – I don’t fucking care if its sunny in all of the south, we’re in a fucking sewer in Houston – the humidity makes it feel like youre in a sauna – to boot, it rains a lot, and then its SUNNY at the same time – great for blinding you and making you sweat your ass off. I guaranFuckinGtee satan thinks that even Houston might be a good training ground for some of his potential executives.

What do you like and dislike about Texas?

Likes –
Waco – hehe. Killed us some ATF agents we did. In the name of god too. Hehe
Guns. Lots of em.
Not too many Yankees – The northern aggressors
Space – nice, open non populated, flat space.
Cheap consumer goods – food, clothes, cocaine, whiskey, porn etc

Dislikes –
COPS – there are four fucking kind of cops in Houston alone that can shoot me – the Department of public safety (they have cowboy hats and BIG guns), Houston police, Houston Constables, County Sheriffs, METRO police.. shit
THE WEATHER – see above
The sports teams – they all choke/suck and I still watch them
THE WEATHER
The women – MOO.. they have trained the men to like them and think its okay theyre fat, overweight and whiney. The men feel They Have To Like Them because that’s ALL that’s around here. Shit they showed some pics of dallas women lookin’ all hot and slutty like – I bet they weren’t from dallas.. I’m exagerattin’ a bit I suppose – but its especially horrible in Houston.. when you can get a .99 cent hamburger and a .79 64oz coke and NOT do any exercise.. shit. You get an inflated heifer

Of course.. I ll plug them here I suppose

Are there any local bands you find excellent?

KATHONIK – most underrated band of houston – the front man for this band has been around for 10 fucking years, 4 demos, an unreleased (never will be) older album and a newer cd (that still needs proper releasement) – killllller razor in your face black with a touch of doom.. http://kathonik.cjb.net
ADUMUS – hehe. I know you don’t like the keyboards, but heh.http://come.to/adumus
BRUTALLY MUTILATED – old style IMPETIGO worship
BLACK BONED ANGEL – satanic celtic frost Johnny cash
TO SCALE THE THRONE – basic straight forward mid paced black..www.geocities.com/toscalethethrone
INFERNAL DOMINION – ex IMPRECATION .. fast as fuck brutal satanic death
THE DRUNKS – VIOLENT WHISKEY ROCKNROLL – excellent live shows.. good cover of witching hour..
UNCHRIST – newer band – good demo release – kathonik members
HIDEOUSLY DEFLESHED Uhm.. I liked their vocals – that is what saved me from just walking away from the stage in boredom…http://www.hdsproductions.cc/
I’m sure I forgot someone.. I suppose I’ll just get thocked for it.

What do you think distinguishes Texas as a locality from other areas, aside from climactic and geographical concerns?

We have a lot of satanic Hispanics? I don’t know. For some reason, I’ve noticed, even when in other countries, that I state I am a Texan first… I guess its because I’ve personally become enamored with the right of Texans to shoot and kill anybody attempting to steal property at night. Or the “trespassers will be SHOT” signs I see on open roadside (where I’m sure some redneck with a sniper rifle is just waiting for a city boy to try to piss on it)… just the fact that we up and stole this land fair n square from the Mexicans two centuries ago and that we joined the yankee coalition of states as a Favour to them. We have our oil, NASA (for space defense) and our own ground/air forces, so I don’t see a problem with becoming the United Texan Front or something…

Do you think there will be another truly great band from Texas?

You mean besides RIGOR MORTIS and ABSU .. and NECROVORE (I ‘m unfamiliar with this band however, but it is greatly appreciated it seems)…I think so. The climate and road construction leads to so much rage I figure it will manifest itself in another project. Who this might be.. I don’t know.

What are your feelings on Texas seceding from the Union?

See above.

do you think metal music is a form of rock-n-roll?

I am not a metal geetarist per se- but many I know seem have all started out with the older bands of rocknroll and such… and many still admire the technical proficiency of said artists.. I would like to say we’ve defined our own sub genre that cannot be categorized with simple rock bands; however though that argument may hold true for younger dragoons within the metal ranks, it might not hold much veracity with the elders of this genre – mainly with more experience there usually comes further education into other forms of music etc..

What is most important in a metal band, composition, production or attitude? Can these be separated?

1st Attitude – what is the goal with the propaganda – to just make racket and keep mum and dad awake at night. too much jerkin’ off so may as well try the geetar? Play in a rock band to get chix? Which is it?

2nd Okay – youre an evil motherfucker trying to seduce young jedis to the darkside, now what? Can’t play an instrument to save your life eh? Well fucking learn the basics before composing the propaganda – badly formulated propaganda encourages Ridicule..

3rd Production – low production means youre heavy – bad production means youre raw and kult – good production means you did it ABYSS studios and sold out.

When you hear something for the first time, how do you analyze it? For what do you listen?

Drums … I like blasting violence THEN.. vocals – horribly painful vocals like FUNERAL MIST, BETHLEHEM or ANTAEUS (live or rehearsal) can easily encourage Violence and Suicide.Lastly, geetars.. I can’t stand solos.. so unless its horrible I judge these last.

Do you believe the values and beliefs of artists shape the music they produce?

I would like to think so – ive noticed a change as of late.. in the early days of WMSitude, I used to ask bands the equivalent question of their beliefs and the reflection into music… most early bands (death, grind) simply liked playing aggressive music.. with the advent of black metal, it seems that it is Very Important that life imitates the music they produce.. and that is what I prefer.. THOUGH, there were some early satanic death and VIOLENT porn/rape/gore bands that were totally fucking into mass murder and of course endless sodomy of young pigtailed little catholic school girl anuses… so…

Does this explain “Christian metal”?

I have no logical explanation for xtian metal. IF this is to exist, I want more like David Koresh – he played that thar geetar, fucked everybody’s wives, and then done and shot and kilt some Federales…

In your opinion, what is the symbolic value of “Satan” to a modern society and those who wish to reprogram it?

It is an easy symbol to recognize as negativism… easiest put – the baphomet, the upsidedown cross, etc, represent to normal society something “bad”. It is then those who are wearing it that bicker/personalize what it means to them..

Do you believe “terrorism” is a valid way to describe the tactics of America’s current “enemies”?

Yep. Good for them. Fucking smartfucking towel heads. I comment on this greatly in upcoming issue h8te, which will be out in November.

What zines do you read?

I just got FINAL SOLUTION from spain – good interviews in that one; correct mindset for writing.. I naturally have a liking towards the JenOside33 issue#1.. heh. I like older DESCENT mags and also NORDIC VISION (its pretty)… HELLISH MASSACRE is number one on my list right now.. its gonna take a lot to get me away from that one.. IMPAIRED (mKm’s zine) was huge.. I would like to get hold of 666 zine from france…

Do you think black metal ever had a clear direction, or is that something we assume looking back into the past?

The latter. Too many of the so-called visionaries of the black metal elite got themselves stabbed or put in jail. The propaganda machine splintered into different factions, and thus we stand where we are now.. a re emergence of nihilism and flesh mutilation… not a bad thing. But it does seem to be circular…

Do you believe history “exists,” or that each age invents an interpretation of previous events to justify its position?

Heh, I believe those who Won The War Write The History. If you got fucked, well, history will put you as getting fucked, even if you put up a helluva fight. Yes, we do manufacture history as we need to, but not like the good ole days in 1930s germany. Man did they come up with some good shit. And also W.A.R here in the US has some need ideas on history, and its placement of the Zionist Occupational Government and the Gubment Cheese Getters (darkie)

Is there any “hope” for the human species?

Hope for what? I’ve read some of the manifestos at http://www.anus.com/anus/ideology/index.html …very interesting and I can admire the thought put into rationalizing Stupid Human Tendencies… But honestly, it doesn’t concern me… Shit will continue in one form or another after I’m gone, and you’re gone. So why do I care for the future?

These idiots who failed at that bank robbery in Norfolk, NE – how did they manage to do such impressive shooting yet utterly flail when it came to taking the till?

HEHE. I was happy to finally seem some people killed in a bank robbery.. but again. I would prefer if it were authorities. No, nobody is innocent, but if youre going to go on a shooting spree, go on a SHOOTING SPREE. If you’re gonna rob a bank, GET THE CASH. I heard there were like 4 or 5 head shots.. so I guess they just panicked, and started putting bullets in peoples heads. First way to get on the bad side of the law.

Are there any historical figures who have impressed you?

Ho chi minh – gotta like anybody who fucked the French right? (sneak and surround French man drinking wine in valley called dien bein phu)Joseph Goebbels – Nazi Minister of Propaganda.

What was the last book you read that made a lasting impression?

I live off the horrible gore of this man alone – Edward Lee. If you don’t know him – you must – fuck all other horror out there – this is The Shit.The last book I read was Sex Drugs and PowerTools – fuckin’ Christ. Check out whatsaheader.com for more info also heheh movie rights were given to them…http://www.necropublications.com/titles/sexdrug.htmI rarely indulge in the reading of any of the nihilistic writers.. though I suppose I should since I consider myself mostly nihilist.. ennui once again stunts my growth…

Awaiting the intention is neither a reflection upon the “goal” nor an expectation of the imminent completion of the work to be produced. It does not have the nature of a thematic grasping at all. Nor does retaining what is relevant mean holding fast to it thematically. Handling things is no more related merely to what it handles than to what it uses in relevance. Rather, being relevant constitutes itself in the unity of awaiting and retaining in such a way that the making present arising from this makes the characteristic absorption in taking care in the world of its useful things possible. When one is “really” busy with… and totally immersed in it, one is neither only together with the work nor with the tools nor with both “together.” Being in relevance, which is grounde din temporality, has already founded hte unity of the relations in which taking care of things “moves” circumspectly.

A specific kind of forgetting is essential for the temporality that constitutes being in relevance. In ordre to be able to “really” get to work “lost” in the world of tools and to handle them, the self must forget itself.
– Martin Heidegger, Being and Time

Black metal was born right as the internet began being popularized in American and European homes. How has black metal been changed by the net, and vice versa?

Well now I can find anything out it seems by just typing it in the google search engine. That’s both good and bad.. now I have the information, but I cant hoard it and feel self important when I name drop.On the other hand, every bob, akhmed and zimboobma can make a cDr and put it on their webpage so now we have Afrikkkaner Black SpearChucking Metal.. sheesh. It allows for ridiculous crap that would have been stifled because it would not have been cost effective. The internet allows stupidity to be free of the righteous pain it should attain; after all, stupid should Hurt…

Is there human consciousness outside of the brain? In another phrasing: is the brain where the body, mind and soul exist, or is there another world in which these functions exist?

I am of the notion that there is something after my brain receives too many 9mm hollopoint bullets fired from a SWAT team members mp-5. I think it will equally suck.

Why do you think people go hogwild for religion? What do you suggest instead of religion to take care of the same need?

Sigh. Nothing. Too many persons are weak and need a crutch, or are hypocrites who have learned that just coz you say youre xtian, hell that means you can fuck your daughter and the dog in a 69 position and sell it on the internet as long as you ask forgiveness on Sunday. .. and give the minister a copy of course…It is convenience – religion is already set up; humanity as a whole is lazy, and is predisposed to go with what is at hand. Me, I’m gonna go jerk off. That’s what I feel about religion.

Where does one buy CDs and related stuff in Houston?

Sound exchange. http://www.soundexchangehouston.com/ Used to be a KILLER place called SOUND PLUS.. but sadly, it died a couple years ago.. that’s where I was first able to get Osmose releases (first and second IMMORTAL etc) WITHOUT paying Osmose prices (though it was still 20 bux for imports..)…

What do you think of the art of suicide bombing?

Good fucking Job. Good idea. Hell. We need some of those kids. Why the hell don’t we have our own suicide bombers. Damnit. Somebody get the Procurement Department on that one.Man. Tho.. I would at least want a good ole fashioned 12 hour orgy of catholic school girls BEFORE I go meet allah….

What lies next for your zine?

Issue H8TE young Prozak, Issue H8te. Finally to be released with a 12 page (I think) diatribe dedicated to hatred… examples taken from the school yard, from work and from terrorterrorterror… yessirrree bob. I guarantee you this will be just as shitty as before, with the same fucking horrible humour and tasteless porn and violence and bloodletting. Bands also.. confirmed KRIEG, WATAIN, MALICIOUS SECRETS, URGEHAL, HORNA, ARKHON INFAUSTUS, DAWN OF AZAZEL, NECROPLASMA, ARMAGEDDA.Who am I waiting on: AZAGHAL, HELL MILITIA and TEMPLE OF BAAL..And theres always issue 9…

I’ve always been impressed by the mix of metal, mutilation and machine guns. How did you come across this combination?

Death metal to me should have been simple – propaganda encouraging death. Most accessible are sharp knives and guns. Thus, logically, I should incorporate the instruments of death with the metal of death neh? Black metal brings to mind suicide and violence, with a little perversion to boot. Thus, some black metal causes blood to drip from my flesh. That goes in the issue, as it relates to black metal. You forgot porn too. I am one of the most perverted motherfuckers out there – and I guarantee you, if youre into metal, youre into porn – the two just go hand in hand.. so you see, its all a marketing strategy (heh)Yeah right. That’s why ive sold I think less issues then well.. not a lot of em. That’s fine. My goal is not to have many copies floating around.. I assume that those who want to read this shit, will find it.

Do you think there’s been a demographic shift in the black metal movement during the past few years (since 1998) to a younger audience?

Yes. See way, way above. Younger persons in the extreme scene have the benefit now of being able to pick and choose, and also ignore the first monuments that came out in the early 90s. Not a problem really.. but now also with all this CDR trading replacing tape trading and these high tech doodads that allow music to be taken from sites.. it leads to a proliferation of short term shit – what I mean is, yes, of course, there are those who will take this propaganda to heart; but there are those who will take it for a short while, and then find yet another form to entertain them; what I mean is that they leave their crap around for us to step in; before hand, in the days of Paper, one had to write and send tapes and such – it cost money ; nowadays, one can put ones fecal matter on a webpage and spread their e-coli music as such.

If you have any hopes for the future of metal as both a musical movement and a political/social one, please detail them here along with anything else I forgot.

It’s all in issue h8te son. You do us a service, mr. Prozak – I gather both a smirk of approval to an all out heil prozak with the material you have written and continue to produce – a true architect of propaganda you are, and should be bestowed the mandatory schoolgirls for slavery and sodomatic rites.

Mr. Blaash
http://wheresmyskin.cjb.net/

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Interview: Quorthon (Bathory)

by Joe on August 6, 2002

Black metal and death metal legend Quorthon of Bathory took some time to answer our questions while he was busy recording the Nordland series of albums. Among all the interviews we’ve done, this may be the most focused and articulate, with one of the most passionately intelligent figures black metal has ever produced.

The dominant influences on the earlier Bathory work appear to be Venom and Slayer. Were you listening to other music at the time, including hardcore punk like Discharge?

I think it is very easy for people to be making that kind of connotation, simply because those two acts in particular are perhaps among the first ones that comes to mind when the roots of extreme metal is being discussed. But actually, I have never owned a Venom or Slayer album. And I don’t give a fuck if people believe that or not.

I know some people believe the change of style for BATHORY, in terms of the music and lyrics around 1988-1990, happened because we must have got turned on from Manowar. That’s another total misconception. I have never owned a Manowar record. And I don’t give a fuck if people believe that either. Not that it matters though.

I have of course heard Slayer (an act, which by the way does have all my respect for being original and for sticking to their roots in much of what they do). And I have heard a handful of tracks by Venom.

In 1986-1988, BATHORY had a drummer who was heavily influenced by Manowar. He didn’t enjoy any other type of metal, but he was somehow sold on Manowar. It wasn’t like we decided to copy what they were doing. However, the typical heavy Manowar beat seemed to perfectly suit my new ideas for lyrics at the time. The way it came about was this; in an effort to get away from the whole “are they true satanists or not”-discussions that went on in the media at the time (sort of drawing the attention away from what was truly important, the music), I felt I wanted to replace the whole demonic & satanic bag with something that was pure from christian and satanic bullshit.

The pre-christian Scandinavian Viking and vendel era seemed perfect for lyrics and arrangements. Had BATHORY been a japanese act, we might as well have picked up the Samurai culture. Had we been an Italian act, it could easily have been the Roman empire era. Now, we happened to be a Swedish act and the Viking and Vendel era seemed exciting in terms of writing music and lyrics. The heavy Manowar beat that this one-time BATHORY drummer came up with one day in the rehearsal place, is a Manowar contribution. But I wonder if that’s enough to be called a source of inspiration or influence.

My personal reason for forming BATHORY was I wanted to create a mix of the atmosphere of early Black Sabbath, the energy of early Motörhead and the pace of early GBH. We were just three shit kids coming out of school at the time, with absolutely no knowledge at all about any other acts. Remember, Metallica released their first album around the time we entered the studio for the first time. Slayer too released their first album at the same time. We were totally in the dark about any underground movement in Europe. It wasn’t until way after we had already released our first album that we learned about tons of others acts in Europe and elsewhere playing basically the same type of primitive and dark extreme metal that we were making.

Around the time I formed BATHORY, I was listening a lot to an album by early GBH I believe was called “City baby in attack of the rats”. We based half of BATHORY’s initial sound and style on that GBH album. I may have listened to some Discharge, but I don’t remember any of their songs or any of their titles anymore. The “Ace of Spades” and “Iron Fist” Motörhead albums also meant very much when we formed BATHORY. So did the first handful of Black Sabbath albums.

Bathory has always stood above other bands by having a melody connected firmly to a rhythm in the anthemic style of most great metal bands. How did you learn to play guitar, and what methods do you have for conceptualizing the songwriting process?

I don’t think I worry too much about whether to include a melody line or not in a song. That will come along in a natural fashion. I have always said that a song and a lyric writes itself. I really don’t think too much about the actual writing, the arrangements or even the playing. It’s second nature by now.

I don’t know if having a melody line in a song would place BATHORY “above” other bands, but sure it does add something special to a song. Extreme noise and brutalities are always fun to do. But if you’re trying to tell the audience a story, which we do a lot in BATHORY, I think a melody line will add atmosphere and personality to the story.

I don’t see myself as a guitar player. I just use the guitar for writing songs. I may use the bass or a piano when writing other times.

I always write the music first. The lyrics will be added at a very late stage. The mood of the music will determine what the lyrics are to be about. Very seldom will I change anything in a song just because the lyrics might have turned a certain way. In the end it all works out somehow. It puzzles me as much as anybody else.

On Blood, Fire, Death an epic sound is present through the use of longer songs with greater symbolic significance to their movements and motifs. What inspired this change from the dark, heavy and primitively simple music of Under the Sign of the Black Mark?

Probably from reading biographies on masters like Wagner and Beethoven and their works. I began to listen to classical music shortly after forming BATHORY, and from 1985-1986 it was all I would listen to. I had been playing various types of rock in various constellations since 1975, so picking up Wagner, Beethoven, Haydn and others really broadened my musical awareness extensively. The motif signature naturally comes from the world of opera.

Around 1986, I realised we were actually just writing albums full of religious hocus-pocus, satanic rubbish and demonic crap. I was not a Satanist and knew absolutely nothing about occultism or demonic affairs, so I asked myself why should I really be writing about that shit. I mean, we actually got to make albums, so why not try something different. That’s when the idea to bring the whole pre-christian Swedish Viking era into BATHORY came about. Not that I knew any more about that period in time, but it was at least a fresh source to draw stories from.

When people ask me today, if I am ever ashamed of the early albums and the lyrics they contained, my answer is “no”. We’re not ashamed of anything, we all go through stages in life when one thing may be cool for a period of time, and then something else comes along that inspires you in a different way.

Originally, we picked the whole demonic bag up because we didn’t feel we could write the same sort of lyrics that the big boys would write. We didn’t know shit about riding down the highway on a Harley, drinking whisky out of the bottle while fondling all these loose women. We knew nothing about that life, so we picked up influences from the horror comics we had been reading while growing up, magazines like Vampirella and Shock, as well as all the horror movies we had watched as kids. It was all very innocent. I wouldn’t have known the devil even if he jumped up to bite my ass.

Thus if being-toward-death is not meant as an “actualization” of death, neither can it mean to dwell near the end in its possibility. This kind of behavior would amount to “thinking about death,” thinking about this possibility, how and when it might be actualized. Brooding over death does not completely take away from it its character of possibility. It is always brooded over as something coming, but we weaken it by calculating how to have it at our disposal. As something possible, death is supposed to show as little as possible of its possibility. On the contrary, if being-toward-death has to disclose understandingly the possibility which we have characterized as such, then in such being-toward-death, this possibility must not be weakened, it must be understood as possibility, cultivated as possibility, and endured as possibility in our relation to it.

– M. Heidegger, Being and Time

Do you think later Bathory was aiming more toward being a progressive or epic heavy metal band, where early Bathory had a good deal more punk/venom-style metal influence on it?

We didn’t have any ambitions at all to be any of that. About being progressive or epic, we weren’t thinking in those terms. It was just a natural evolution, it wasn’t planned or calculated. It just happened. It is so very easy for people in the year 2002 to sit back and name certain periods and labelling people and bands. When you have history and all facts at hand, people tend to file and classify past in a way we never did 20 or 15 years back in time. My recommendation to anybody who has problems getting a good view of all the styles and sounds out there is “- Don’t bother – just enjoy. It’s just fucking metal.”

How have your tastes changed across the years of making music?

Probably in much the same way we all change as people. We develop as we widen our perspectives. This is true for music as well. I’ll listen to everything from Glenn Miller to The Beatles, from Wagner to Sex Pistols, from Nick Drake to Beethoven. I hardly ever listen to metal. The only metal I will listen to, is vinyl that I bought 20 or 30 years ago like Mountain, early Kiss, early Saxon, early Motörhead or early Black Sabbath. I haven’t bought a metal CD in ten years. The last metal CD must have been Motörhead’s “Overkill”. The last CD I bought of any kind was last summer, George Harrison’s “All things must pass (1971).

Do you think that ideology changes the worldview of an artist, and that this is reflected in their music?

I have personally never allowed for any personal ideologies to influence my music or lyrics. For some years German metal media would say BATHORY was glorifying war and the holocaust in the lyrics. This is not true. We were writing about war and the holocaust in the very same way we were writing about all the other things we have written about; incest, the nuclear arms race, the world wars, the environmental issue, female BATHORY fans, serial killers, religion and fuck knows what else. In other words, as facts, not glorifying. I am not religious and have no political ideals, so for myself personally, writing lyrics is just painting with words and creating a scene.

Black metal today has gone through a shaping process of which Bathory was part. What do you think are Bathory’s contributions to the methodology of metal making?

I have absolutely no idea about what’s going on out there. I am not going to shows, I do not read the metal media and I do not buy or listen to any modern metal albums of any kind. If you’d play me ten tracks by ten different top extreme metal acts I couldn’t tell you what you’re playing. I wouldn’t be able to tell you where even one out of a hundred extreme metal bands comes from. People seem to believe that I have great knowledge and full view of the scene. I tell you, I know nothing. Nothing. Period.

The funny thing is, a lot of people insist that BATHORY’s so called Viking period had a greater impact on today’s Black Metal scene, than pure Black Metal of the early 80’s. The good thing about evolution is that what’s called Black Metal today, may not remind too much of what Black Metal was 20 years ago. Black Metal, Death Metal and all types of extreme metal, will develop further. The ones who get the most out of a diverse scene and constant evolution, is the audience.

As far as BATHORY’s contribution is concerned, back in 1986-1991 we used acoustic guitars, harmony backing vocals, intros and outros as well as sound effects to create that specific BATHORY atmosphere. Many bands have been copying that so thoroughly in the past 10-15 years, I believe this special atmosphere itself could perhaps be our greatest contribution.

From what I heard of your solo work (band named “Quorthon”) it seemed you were moving into a genre where you could use the broad style of rock music to fit in a number of melodic but hookish pop songs. Is this a return to your influences, or a changing of taste?

It’s funny that some people actually believe that the solo records is what I really want to do and that I only kept on working with BATHORY because it would sell like crazy. This is not true. I have written everything from extreme brutal metal to string quartets, and neither of the solo albums I did gives a more true image of what my inner music is like than anything else I have written.

Everything on the first solo album was accidental. I had absolutely no ambitions or plans. What happened was, I said I wanted to take a year off from music. Then the record company told me that I perhaps should think about a solo record, just to keep myself active. Now, that’s a very interesting situation. Not too many guys get to make a solo record. Myself, I had no idea what it would sound like. The offer to make a solo album was a challenge too exciting to ignore. So I wrote some pure guitar based crunchy metal rock material and went down a small studio for a week and a half. I brought with me a guitar, a bass and a drum machine with only one intention and that was to make a record that wasn’t going to be anything like BATHORY. Not that I didn’t like working with BATHORY, I just thought it was a good opportunity to “kill” the very erroneous image of “Quorthon” which had developed in fanzines and within the metal scene in general. People thought I was a neo-nazi satanic Viking who drank blood and ate infants, who lived in a bats cave in the north of Sweden and tons of other stupid things. I figured, if I produced a solo album that was miles from BATHORY, incorporating a little rock, blues and even punk, perhaps the most fanatic nut cases would be scared off.

The second solo album came about because people wrote me and said they were now very interested to see what I would come up with on a second solo record. So I wrote a lot of material, mixing The Beatles, Sex Pistols and Mountain plus punk. I have no plans for a third solo record, but having said that, I might just as well record a third solo album in future if I feel like it.

When you see bands today making black metal in the style of the nordic generation after 1987 (inspired by your Blood, Fire, Death and Sarcofago’s INRI in my supposition) what do you see as the possible future directions for that style of music?

Like I said previously, I do not think in terms of “genuine” or “true” metal versus “not-so-genuine” or “untrue” metal. My philosophy is; the more versatile and innovative a scene is, the more the audience will get out of it. It would be a very poor testimony if a scene were to contain only one style of music played exactly the same way, with the very same type of lyrics and image and so on. I think it’s more “posing” to be copying a certain style of clothing, wear make-up and use the exact same production as tons of other acts simply because it is the flavour of the day.

As far as the future of extreme metal is concerned, I do not worry at all. I know there will be tons of great bands in the future as well. The scene will be forever. There will be new names, new styles and new topics. The dark, evil and demonic will always be a part of the scene. The mythological themes will be there as well. I agree it would be interesting to see what else will happen as far as topics are concerned.

Do you think the world is on the edge of great change? If so what will change, and what is forcing it to change (what needs to change)?

I really don’t bother about the world or society at all. I’ll be dead in 30-40 years and neither people, politics, religion or society interests me at all.

Is the metal underground an effective way of distributing niche music according to its artistic integrity, or a justification for the kind of independent distribution needed to move relatively small numbers of CDs?

There’s more than one way to look at the underground distribution; firstly it will allow for acts to target the very type of audience they’re targeting specifically. Secondly, people interested in a specific type of music will be able to easily get a hold of very special CD’s and vinyl through underground distribution network.

Let’s face it, some extreme metal productions will never reach sales figures around 10 000-20 000 copies. A lot of acts will be happy to sell 5 000 or even 3 000 copies. With such a small quantity of CD’s sold, few record companies, even pure metal companies will even touch certain bands. The underground will be able to distribute albums made during less expensive circumstances, albums that still will have a lot to offer in terms of interesting arrangements etc. So in that respect, I think that the underground is doing a pretty tremendous job.

But the underground is also exploited by pirates, assholes, haemorrhoids and parasites. There are more illegal BATHORY CD’s circulating in the underground than genuine official BATHORY albums released. There’s fake “BATHORY live albums” out there, I have heard of “Quorthon rehearsal” cassettes and “lost recordings” on CD, and this absurd list just goes on and on. I will occasionally email these mailorder companies and underground metal shops, and tell them that they are distributing BATHORY fakes and illegal crap. Also, I will tell them that not only are they violating international laws of copyright and publishing rights, they allow the bootlegging pirates and haemorrhoids to use their network for criminal purposes. That’s not underground, that’s theft and breach of trademark laws etc.

I have heard of some really awful quality bootleg BATHORY CD’s and feel sorry for the fans that buy them for 15-25 dollars. All they get is crap quality copies of tracks released on our Jubileum volumes. The fans could easily just get the genuine thing from us directly. I came from the underground and I hurt like hell when I hear how young fans are being exploited this way. Any underground shop or mailorder dealer who will help in distributing bootleg crap is killing the underground.

Do you have any spiritual beliefs, or strong ideological concerns?

Nope, not a glimpse of spirit in me at all.

It seems to me that most metal musicians start their lives more antagonistic to society as a whole, and eventually as they age begin to acknowledge the need for a society but a dissatisfaction with its design. Do you have any comments here as general observations?

I am sure a lot of people will mature with age and realise down the road the need for a functioning society. But that probably has less to do with social awareness or a philanthropic pathos. It will have a lot more to do with the fact they’re beginning to pay taxes and want to see some results for their money paid.

How do you compose a song and, how integral are the lyrics?

I will just strike a guitar riff and continue from there. If it sounds good enough to work on further, I’ll write a song in an hour or so. A day, a week or a month later I may listen back to it and just taste a few words and see what comes out of it all. I rarely plan before writing a song what it should be about. All that will come along the process. I’ll say it again, I think the music and lyrics writes itself. I’m just a tool used by the demons of music.

Is Twilight of the Gods a rock opera in the style of the who, progressive bands from the 70s, etc?

I don’t know where that rock opera thing came from. I guess people had no idea what to call that kind of heavy bombastic arrangements 10 years ago. It wasn’t Black or Death Metal, so some people felt compelled to come up with some label for it. But to call it a rock opera is laughable. “Twilight” is no mot a theme album in any way, no track two off “Twilight of the Gods” has got anything to do with eachother, they are all individual tracks with totally different stories.

“Requeim” is more a theme album than “Twilight”, because it contains with the subject of death in all forms may it be suicide, murder, culture death, genocide or death in war or by cult.

How do you unwind/relax, or, what do you do for recreational purposes? (what do you enjoy besides music)

I’ll read a book or stride my Harley-Davidson motorcycles and go for a ride. I used to build a lot of plastic models, paint a lot or collect war memorabilia in the past but not as much these days.

Is it possible to return to metal with a different style after one has become one of the founding names of a certain style?

Depends what you mean by “return to metal”. I am the same metal underground shit kid today that I was 20 years ago. I’m still playing as brutal a guitar as I have been for 20 years. So it can’t be that I’ve been all of a sudden sliding back into a metal slot for some reason. It’s not like I have been travelling the world with a can-can orchestra since last time around.

I can’t see what a “return to metal” should point to. If there’s no BATHORY album out for a period of 5 years (as was the case between “Blood on Ice” and “Destroyer of Worlds”), some will call that a comeback. That’s absurd. Just because you’re not in people’s face all the time, it’s not a come back to have a new album out even if it’s more than a year between it and the last release.

People are so stuck with labelling acts and individuals, calling things and circumstances by so many names and whats more just to make life easier for themselves to live, it makes me sick.

The Odin mythos present in Blood on Ice, Blood, Fire, Death, and Twilight of the Gods seems to derive inspiration from the Nietzschean/Jungian view of the human psyche and the culmination of some of its historical inabilities. Do you think these ideas are gaining prevalence at this time, or becoming more obscure as society degenerates?

“Blood on Ice” was a saga based loosely on the Siegfried legend and an original story by Robert E Howard. The “Blood Fire Death” album really has nothing to do with Vikings at all except for the title of the track “Oden’s ride over Nordland”. But that’s not really the issue. It’s not important if an album or a track is or is not about this or that shit. The important thing is if it gives you the kick inside.

I think people see and hear more things then I really meant to put on them albums. The “Blood Fire Death”, “Hammerheart” and “Twilight” albums has been linked together as the “viking-albums”, the same way the first three albums “Bathory”, The Return” and “Under the Sign” has been tied into a trio. I gave up years ago trying to talk people out of all that crap. It’s just atmospheric metal, I don’t really bother much about the depth or context etc.

I really don’t remember why I picked some stuff up from Nietzche 10 years ago, I wasn’t reading much by him. It may have been through Wagner. I think cults, theories and views of all sorts will exist in much the same way for as long as there are people around.

Please insert any commentary on the questions, issues addressed, things missed in the interview, or general concluding remarks you may have.

We’re just right now finishing a 14-15 track new album to be released in September/October this year. Look forward to it and take care.
Hail the hordes !

Quorthon

In a sequence of words, i.e. by a chain of symbols, something new and greater is to be represented: rhythm, dynamics and harmony again become necessary on this level of expression. This higher sphere now governs the more limited sphere of the individual word; it becomes necessary to select words, to put them in a new order; poetry begins. The spoken melody of a sentence is not just the sequence of the sounds of the words; for a word has only a quite relative sound, because its character, the content presented by the symbol, varies according to its position. In other words: the individual symbol of the word is constantly being re-defined by the higher unity of the sentence and the character this symbolizes. A chain of concepts is a thought; in other words, this is the higher unity of the accompanying representations. The essence of the thing is inacessible to thought; the fact that it has an effect on us as a motive, as a stimulant of the will, can be explained by the fact that the thought has already become a remembered symbol for a manifestation of the will, for a movement and a phenomenon of the will in one. But when it is spoken, i.e. with the symbolism of sound, its effect is incomparably more powerful and direct. When it is sung, when melody is the intelligible symbol of its will, it reaches the summit of its effect; if this is not the case, it is the sequence of sounds which affects us, and the sequence of words, the thought, remains something distant and indifferent.

– F.W. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

Thanks to Black Mark Records.

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Drug use in heavy metal

by Brett Stevens on April 2, 1997

This article is the screed on drugs in heavy metal which I wish someone had handed to me when I was less experienced. Specifically, it is not what I did get handed, which was propaganda from either side. The conservative side, namely all those who believed society still had a culture and values in common, said “don’t do drugs” but couldn’t explain why, resorting to shock tactics that made you think the instant you puffed a joint you’d die; when that didn’t happen, the whole house of cards fell apart and all their propaganda actually inverted in value. The leftist side, comprised of all Hollywood and entertainment figures and most of my teachers, said that drugs wouldn’t hurt you and it was a lifestyle choice, do it if you want.

Neither gave what was needed: an accurate depiction of how drugs are used, and the effects both long-term and short-term. Metal emerged from popular music, borrowing the instrumentation and roles of rock music, which is commercial society’s way of inducting teenagers into adult consumerist life: define yourself by buying things. As a result, it inherits the ego-mania and external focus of rock music, which includes people rebelling by taking drugs. There are also some who take some drugs for the “mind liberation” capabilities ascribed to those substances. However, most are just trying to grow up, and for them partying, sex, and learning to be a consumer are vital nodal points in that process.

Much as defining ourselves through external adornments is a problem for metal, as it encourages dishonest promotion of crap music, defining ourselves by drug use is also an error. If you approach the drug question, do so from a clarity of mind. It will not make you cool or uncool. It will not reveal the secrets of the universe, but will also not obscure them. It will not clarify your philosophical positions, but also will not muddy them. It is like anything else, a detail that without corresponding architectonic details, remains without context and with minor influence on your life, excepting biological impact.

First, we should look at drug use as character definition, and next consider the biological factors.

Most people who approach the drug issue will try to convince you that it’s like religious people versus atheism, or conservatives versus liberals. You either believe the world has an objective purpose, and so you’re against drugs, or you’re with the chaos, freedom, individualism, irony and rebellion program, and you believe life has no purpose except whatever you decide to make of it. While most people fit into these categories, we must remember that categories are imposed, and that they describe one trait of multiples rather than a single, objectively-defining trait. So you’ve got NSBM fans smoking pot and liberal straight-edgers. Drug use does not define your political identity.

Furthermore, it only marginally influences your social prestige. I’d estimate that most drug users at college are secretly insecure and socially-awkward people who see drug use, like politics or flagrant sexuality, as a way to gain more social power. You start smoking dope and you have an instant social group. But a social group of confused people in transition is probably not going to last, nor will you get over your fears of your social abilities. Further, some of the most popular people at colleges neither take drugs nor drink. They merely socialize. More power to them for taking the direct route to the answer they needed.

Finally, it will not create character for you. If you romanticize the derangement of the senses, remember that drugs cannot teach you what you need to know to appreciate derangement of the senses, and uneducated intoxication is basically just being wasted. It will not make you into William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Jim Morrison or Paul Ledney. You do not automatically embark on a Journey to the End of the Night because you laid hands on some drugs. That’s a reversed logic consumerist mentality, where purchasing the tool makes you a user of it. You wouldn’t expect to become Andres Segovia just by buying an expensive guitar, would you? Neither should you expect drugs to make your character for you.

But mostly, when thinking of the external effects of drugs, think like a metalhead. Other than biological factors, it’s not going to do anything of substance (no pun intended) for you or against you. It’s going to be another experience. Do you want this experience? If you have doubts, I urge you to cherish your innocence. Stay in a world where hallucinations only occur when you have a fever, and where your most urgent need is food or a bathroom. Innocence keeps cynicism about life itself at bay and helps you see the potential in the wholesome, simple and ever-present joys of life, like family and having some career, hobby or calling that fulfills you. Losing innocence and gaining cynicism distances you from that potential, or at least delays it by what looks to me (anecdotally) as a decade at a minimum. If you have innocence, and like your life, and have a decent grasp of philosophy, there is nothing drugs will teach you except to lose a little bit of that innocence.

Biologically, drugs are a mixed bag. Injecting clean heroin with a clean needle and doing a good job of it will cause you zero health problems, literally. Marijuana leaves more resin in your lungs but that resin departs more easily than the gluey tobacco resin that can helpfully bond cancers into your tissues. Cocaine makes your heart race and you might forget to eat, but unless you go hog-wild, you’re probably going to be OK. LSD may fry brain cells; it appears to vary between individuals. MDMA/Ecstasy and methamphetamine clearly do fry brain cells in everyone.

Many anti-drug pamphlets talk about the secondary problems of drugs, like you deciding to peddle your genitals/ass in order to buy more, or committing crimes, or arrest, or the people you’re going to hang around with. These are biological consequences as well, and while we can be witty moderns and divorce our consideration of these from consideration of drugs, I think that’s illusory. Drugs become part of a lifestyle. If you take something regularly, you have to be able to afford it and to find someone to sell it to you, so it’s at the very least like taking on a hobby. It will take time to do correctly. You may go to jail and be sodomized. If you are very susceptible to addictive substances, recognize that the instant you go into debt and can’t stop taking the substance, you are either going to become a drug dealer or prostitute. It happens every day and while some escape, they’re never the same again. More than denting their innocence, they’ve fractured it. You see a lot of people who end up alone, in their 40s and 50s, stringy and somewhat blown out, because of their hard-partying lifestyles. Are you ready to commit to that future? If you’re still thinking maybe you’d like to have something other than a drug or lifestyle choice be what fulfills you, be wary.

Many musicians will note this fact: drugs have destroyed more careers than they’ve enhanced. For every pothead Kurt Cobain or Jimi Hendrix, there are 4,096 guys who can play guitar really well but between working at Wal-Mart, affording drugs and staying out of jail, they never managed to launch that career. Oh well — drugs will teach you quickly that life doesn’t give a damn if you blow your brains out or go invent a cure for cancer. You are the only one in the driver’s seat, much like humanity is the only master of its fate, and you are the only one who can make that choice for good or ill. Life is like an open field. You will walk through and feel just fine, even if your next step is coming down on a mine or you’re about to have the time of your life. Fun things can be destructive. Miserable things can be rewarding. And vice versa. There are no simple rules here except pay attention to the obvious: drugs will take time, effort, and will make social and biological changes to your life. If your goal is to be a musician, you probably want to spend that time practicing instead.

All of that being said, what is the role of drugs in metal? This is unclear and like the debate over atheism/agnosticism, can never be proven. Some of metal’s most powerful people, like Suffocation and Morbid Angel, launched their careers in a haze of drugs — but they also worked very hard to get where they are. Others, like Dave Mustaine, got kicked out of better bands (Metallica) for violent alcoholism and then spent the next ten years doing insane amounts of dangerous drugs, to the detriment of their careers and personal lives. Metal people have lost girlfriends, wives, band members and friends because their drug habits were more important than other aspects of their lives. They have also made great art when their music was more important than their drug habits and other aspects of their lives.

In the 1980s, many metalheads and metal bands were enamored of methamphetamine (crystal meth, speed). Twenty years later, we can see the negative consequences clearly. Any time you run into someone missing front teeth — speedy drugs, like a huge dose of caffeine, make your mind “speed up” and so reality goes more quickly and seems more easy to master, leading to enhanced ego and loss of fear; however, a consequence is that you grind your teeth — who has trouble sleeping through a night and possibly has very tough, almost bleached skin, you’ve run into one of these meth experiments. Meth fries brain cells and specifically roasts serotonin receptors, making it difficult to maintain energy or a state of rest. After seeing early casualties, many metalheads switched to cocaine, which is safer but can make you behave like a personal injury lawyer. Of note is that each generation has to re-learn this knowledge. In the 1960s, speed casualties were well-known, but the only people who talked about drugs were either cops or those who kept taking drugs. The cops were ignored because they became propagandists, and those who kept taking drugs were hard-pressed to say bad things about drugs as a genre. Your generation, whenever it is, will also suffer for a lack of information because your peers will be too lazy to look up and parse any actual information and will prefer propaganda, because it fits what they want to hear.

The stereotype of metalheads since the black metal days has been of people who do not take drugs, or if they do, limit themselves to smoking marijuana and drinking beer. From a biological perspective, this is not a big strain on your body. Alcohol is probably the more dangerous of the two. While marijuana can disrupt your ability to have a regular appetite, mess with your hormones a bit, and possibly make you a bit lazy, it’s also unlikely to do anything more than that. Cognitive slowdowns reverse when use is discontinued, and your lungs clean up rapidly. Whether for these reasons or for the wide variation in use, from a simple buzz to a complex hallucination, marijuana seems preferred by hessians. Anecdotally, the best hallucinations I have experienced have been from high doses of marijuana in a clear mind, usually bolstered by caffeine and a small amount of tobacco in the bong. LSD hallucinations are more mechanical and while psilocybin produces the most intense hallucinations, they are often incoherent, like watching a television channel tuned to the neurotic chaos of someone caught between worlds. Marijuana could be considered two different drugs, from the different strains (“races”) of marijuana: the more body-intensive sativa, and the more mind-intensive indica. Everywhere I have been where there have been hessians, marijuana consumption has been occurring.

Yet on the flip side, a good many metalheads will have nothing to do with any drugs, including alcohol and cigarettes. It’s harder to find examples here because people who don’t need drugs rarely shout out loud about it. However, if bands like Immolation and Burzum appeal to you, you know of powerful metal acts that avoided drugs entirely. If you think clearly from cause to effect, you will realize that to achieve transcendent states of mind or be good at your instruments, you must go through certain thought processes. Even if drugs aid these, the fact is that they must happen in your mind, and since your mind exists without drugs, you can make them happen without drugs — and you don’t incur the slowdowns of hangovers, buying drugs, dodging cops, getting anally violated in jail, etc. If you think backward, you see someone else taking drugs and then succeeding, and as a result assume that the drugs caused the success, when there’s only a marginal correlation, since five hundred of his buddies are still living in dingy apartments, high as lords but no further along in what would really fulfill them in life, such as having a band of artistic prominence even if unnoticed by most people.

The question of drugs for a new metalhead is complicated in the USA and Europe by the near-complete breakdown of the family. If you’re lucky enough to have two parents consistently, they’re busy working — and when they’re home, they launch into escapism like TV, mass religion, buying stuff, and the kind of useless but well-meaning projects that only dying wealthy nations can invent. With role models like that, drugs appear to be an alternate form of this escapism, and so seem palatable not only because they’re rebellious but also because they are a parentally-sanctioned behavior.

As mentioned above, you get either a pro-drug message or an anti-drug message, because the messager wants the problem — the question of whether drugs are good, whether they’re controlling you, whether you’ll give a damn — to just go away, and so they concoct some statement that because it seems simple, appears to a be a highest level abstraction of the question, but is in fact just a partial truth. Highest level abstractions are things like “the universe re-organizes energy and matter to produce information, allowing it to become more efficient and thus grow” but partial truths are things like “don’t masturbate because it’ll put hair on your palms.”

Parents in this day and age, beset by doubt and swarmed with bad data from careers and politics and a dysfunctional culture, want to tell you something simple and get the problem off their desks. It’s our shame as a culture that when kids ask — or indirectly ask, by probing, which allows an adolescent to preserve aloofness while getting answers — for vital information on drugs, sex, etc. that parents in lieu of analyzing the issue give them some pithy half-truth that’s the epistemological equivalent of FUCK OFF.

And sometimes, drugs are the answer. Anyone who tells you that marijuana is not a blast is probably on the cheap drugs. Clearly mushrooms are more shamanistic than fun. In the right context, either drug can be a conduit to some useful revelations. On the other hand, that conduit isn’t needed. Music can sound awesome under the influence of marijuana; on the converse, bad music can sound a lot more awesome than it is. Many of us have in the past loved our drugs, but as time went on, we observed how many people around us lost momentum to their lives because they were focused on the method of feeling good, instead of building the structure to their lives that made them feel good. Method of feeling good = jogging or taking drugs; building the structure to life that makes goodfeel = accomplishment, family, learning, discipline, spirituality, eternal things that change how you choose to spend your time and the results of it. Feelgood methods are palliative care, or addressing symptoms without finding a way to hit the cause. Re-structuring life can change some of the cause (you can’t change the fact you live in a dying time when idiots rule). It’s the same mistake parents, teachers and cops make when they assume kids take drugs and become possessed by evil, when the more complex and less popular truth is that kids get bored and ape their parents’ own detachment from reality, but use drugs, and that’s the possession of evil. First comes alienation with life, then comes compensation (a form of cognitive dissonance not unlike morality): if I can’t enjoy life, I can make my brain happy with drugs, and maybe that will “be enough.”

There’s a parallel to life here. If we make our primary goal to avoid conflict as someone might get hurt, we have to compromise ideals to include everyone’s divergent opinion, so we don’t initiate conflict with them. This means we always get the lowest common denominator in every situation. If we make our primary goal into our primary goal, which is the achievement of some act or another, we will come into conflict with others but will get a fuller, more complete vision of whatever it is we’re trying to accomplish. Drugs are in a way like conflict avoidance: instead of facing life warts and all, we lubricate it with alcohol or drugs or cigarettes, and make it more palatable. But in turn, this obscures from us what we really find fascinating and troubling in life, and so like kids on antidepressants, we miss the lows and then later find out we missed the highs. Much later, as Paul Di’Anno of Iron Maiden found out after he left the band due to drug problems and only a decade later got his head on straight to find his career had passed him by.

As far as metal culture: does it endorse drug use? Metal culture endorses realism. That’s the point, not some pithy partial truth to make you feel better.

Christian Holocaust Dope Brownies

Ingredients

1 egg
1 cup milk
1.5 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 sticks butter
7/8 ounce Cannabis Sativa (about $120 for quality)
1/8 ounce Cannabis Indica (about $60 for quality)
1/2 tsp baking soda

Ghee

Put butter in medium saucepan and heat until thoroughly melted. Stir, remove from heat, and let sit for a half hour (use this time to prepare marijuana). There will be sticky, gummy stuff on the top, silty gunk on the bottom, and clean oil in the middle. Skim off the gunk, pour the oil into a clean container, and dump the silt over the balcony. Clean saucepan and pour oil into it, then heat to medium. De-seed and de-stem the Sativa and grind or food process it into the smallest bits imaginable. Generally, dry Indica (portions of older bags: ask roommates) is best; remove stems and reduce to powder. Put Indica and Sativa in heated oil and keep it on low medium, stirring regularly but not frequently, for another half-hour. Your oil will now be green. Some like to remove the vegetable material of the weed at this point, but it is not necessary.

Batter

Dump sugar into the heated pot-ghee. Stir in carefully until melted. Remove from heat and stir in cocoa powder, then when mixture is cool, blend in the egg. Add flour and milk, stir, then add baking soda. Stir thoroughly, as distributing this baking soda is how you get fluffy brownies that don’t have pockets of bitter taste. When mixture is uniform, place in 9×12 inch pan greased with butter.

Cook

Pre-heat oven to 350 (generally, a light goes on when heating, and the first time it goes off after you’ve heated the oven means it’s ready). Slide in the pan on the middle rail, so to enable convection, and cook for twenty to twenty-five minutes. You will have to estimate here, as some batches in some ovens take longer or shorter. When a knife inserted into the brownies comes out clean (no sticky black gunk on it) you know the brownies are thoroughly cooked. Remove and serve (a dozen is optimal dosage).

It is advisable to have nothing planned for the rest of the day. The experience is like a very subtle version of a half-hit of acid or half-ounce of quality psilocybin mushrooms.

How to take a bong hit

Rips are a Jamaican invention that combines the European fondness for smoking dope with tobacco for the hippie fondness of using a bong. They originated, ironically, in the rave community where people sought a greater high. California college students revolutionized the bong by using it not for slow inhalation but for a tightly-packed wad of smoke taken quickly, which maximizes the impact of the high by making it come on more quickly. Jamaican slow-smoking, when adapted to this practice, equals a rip.

Requirements

2 ft glass bong
.3g Cannabis Indica (do not use street Sativa)
.1g quality tobacco (from British not American cigarettes)

Pulverize your indica and mix the tobacco in the smallest shreds possible with it. For beginners, “blonde” or light-colored tobacco is recommended. Pack all of this in the bowl. If bong does not have fresh water, use fresh cool but not cold water. To ignite this, you’re going to need something that produces a large powerful flame, preferrably burning wood. If you use a match, use kitchen matches and burn them off while rotating them for about two seconds to make sure you get none of the sulfur in your hit.

Stages of a Rip

  1. FillingMove the burning match over the bowl in a circular motion while inhaling slowly and steadily. You want to use as little of your lung capacity as possible. You are drawing a slow draft of air, slow like doom metal, through the weed to get it ablaze and to fill the tube of the bong with densely compacted smoke.
  2. RippingTake a deep breath on top of whatever smoke you’ve already taken, then exhale completely. Remove the bowl or onstop the carb and inhale that compacted tower of smoke in a single breath, under a second in length (you should not pause more than three seconds between filling the tube and ripping it; the smoke gets stale and harsh). With any remaining lung capacity, take in fresh air, and then hold the hit for a full three seconds. Exhale completely. Watch clocks melt and fish fly, etc.

Preparing Yourself

If you are not a weekend partier but a psychedelic warrior, try this: get caught up on your sleep, and sleep at least eight hours. Get up early on a sunny day. Pour yourself a large glass (1 liter) of water, and down it. Have a healthy breakfast (actually, fortified cereal is the best: large amounts of B-series vitamins), and then munching down some candied ginger. Then drink 2-4 cups of the stiffest coffee you can stand. Next, knuckle shot (quickly drink) a pony of hard liquor, preferrably vodka. Finally, drink another large tumbler of water and run around the block. Your blood will be thin and moving quickly, your brain will be bolstered by caffeine and alcohol, and your general health will support you as you venture on this journey. To cap it off, retreat to a safe, comfortable, familiar place, munch 1 mushroom cap if you have it, and then take 5-10 rips in rapid succession as described above. During the most formative years of my life, I often began days this way.

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