Intellectualizing black metal

(Necrobutcher, Nergal, Legion)

by Francisc Ormeny

In order to better understand this material, please click on the following youtube links:
1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnMcTr4VlYg for Mayhem
2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96wgneZEZxI&NR=1 for Behemoth
3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kl2Q_d2XqQ for Marduk

        I decided to concern myself with this issue(that of bringing more brains into the black metal phenomenon) after having seen Sam Dunn’s documentary “Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey” (2005). Sam Dunn(now, most probably, around 35 years old) is a Canadian anthropologist and an ardent metal fan ever since the age of 12 who decided to undertake a journey around the world with the aim of unveiling, by means of various interviews and case studies, the hidden ideological and sentimental engines which fire the imaginary of both the artists and their fans involved in the geographical as well as historical metal phenomenon.
        Nowadays, when one speaks about metal and its uncanny psychic and behavioral reverberations he simply cannot avoid controversy. Controversy appears because of the very nature of this uncanny(successfully exploited by Poe in his terrifying prose). The Uncanny (Das Unheimliche), literally, it is to be rendered in the form of “un-home-ly”. It is a Freudian concept denoting an instance where something is familiar, and yet foreign at the same time. Metal can be included in such a Freudian pattern as it arouses primordial hunting instincts and hidden(and long-forgotten) tastes for savagery within humans by means of its extravagant and rebellious excess of brutality(that is why it is so strangely familiar-it addresses some dangerous latencies). But it is also abhorrent as it often goes against the very typology on whose schemes our civilization and social conventions are built. It does so by inducing a pagan life philosophy which does not exclude open manifestations of hatred; of aggressive to the point of diabolical melancholy and of satanic misanthropy - all of these having as ultimate aim the shift of the accent from the community back onto the individual, thus preparing the ground for abyssal introspections…some of them, sadly, being one-way-“trips” only (and that is why it appears strange-as our world is the world of the homo socius and his interminable and over-intricate web of compulsory interrelations…no longer that of the lonely evil wolf[Hobbes’s “homo homini lupus”], as it was the case in the dark and ancient times when the dawn of humanity were sending their first tentacles of life[life-understood as self-awareness] )
        Because this uncanny is familiar and strange at the same time, it often creates what psychology would call “cognitive dissonances”. A “cognitive dissonance” appears within the experiencing subject because of the paradoxical feeling of being attracted to, and yet repulsed by an object/a representation/ a manifestation/ an inner revelation at the same time. Such cognitive dissonance often lead to an outright rejection of the object, as the consumerist society created superficial people who, instinctually, would rather reject than rationalize. Sam Dunn did his, after all meritorious video-research, in order to gather as many pieces (opinions) as possible and to thus try to reassemble the old stereotypical puzzle into a better(in the sense of more up-to-date) and more vivid picture…a picture this time dug up and unleashed into the world from the deepest layers of the human unconsciousness in whose ice[Freud’s iceberg representing the unconsciousness] Mister Dunn insisted stubbornly that one must drill until he/she finds something solid to lean on…a picture this time disinfected of stereotypes by means of reflective judgments targeted at the key/ideal points of intersection of the conflicting points of view. The final result of such an investigative approach should be the gaining of what the contemporary critical theory likes to call a “situated judgment” - namely a judgment built up by means of solid arguments, arguments always drawn from authentic life-facts and placed afterwards in the most appropriate interpretative scheme or context…this is how validity of an opinion is and should be rendered to us. We live in a socially-constructed reality from within which deep-seated pluralities of language games and conceptual schemes draw, with invisible lines and circles, our patterns of evolution. We are all conditioned in our behavior by others; we live in a horizon of influential otherness. Regardless of our choice for a blue-eyed majority or for a scapegoated minority, lessons which appear naturally(but also inevitably) from our interactions with our fans and opponents must be very carefully metabolized if we want to make our lives bearable and thus suitable(in the sense of relaxed enough) to withstand processes of artistic creation.
        Black metal concerts, as well as a black metal interviews (basically, any kind of social interaction)are experiences in collective authenticity(now matter how misanthropic the band pretends to be) where the exemplariness of a band while performing on stage or while trying to give the best(original, memorable, all-inclusive ) possible answers to the reporter should equal their capacity to bring to expression some dimension of the group of metal-fans that at the same time is unique and is located at the symbolic center of the group’s identity.
        But of course, as always, troubles appear where least expected. Sam Dunn looked for narrow-mindedness among old-fashioned and irreversibly indoctrinated sociologists, sly official(on the record) as well as disguised(off the record) politicians and bovine but very aggressive mothers/”mothers” and found it, unfortunately, in the very heart of the “reactor”(which was supposed to be pure in what concerns its capacity to emanate intellectually-liberating energy) - a true corpse in the closet (the way the English like to put it). Here I’m speaking about a narrow-mindedness undermining the metal edifice from the inside instead of coming from some ardent (but also highly self-concerned) neo-“Puritan” politician(as it usually does). More precisely, in “Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey”, we are presented a very sad (indeed!) interview with the Norwegian band Mayhem during which Necrobutcher and Blasphemer (in fact only Necrobutcher as Blasphemer prefers to display a morose but nevertheless very malicious silence) , instead of having the decency to cooperate and talk if not friendly, then at least with a minimum of politeness to a guy who showed interest in them and in their work and who came to Germany (Wacken Open Air) all the way from Canada in order to capture some unforgettable(maybe in the sense of “nostalgic”) moments with his favorite artists(as any true metal fan would and should do) from various genres, they simply take a piss on everybody, in utter bad taste…in what tried to be a so-called “superior” nihilist and solipsistic manifesto but ended up resembling a cheap teenager-like and painful monkey- like boasting. Necrobutcher says:
        “We are pretty true to ourselves. We never bargain with our stuff, you know…we just release it…People don’t like, FUCK THEM, you now…That’s why we are here, because Germany sucks for us…we are here to make…you know, A STATEMENT!!! To say that yeah, Mayhem, YES, we rule! We are the fucking best metal band out there! If people don’t recognize it, fuck them![here Necrobutcher releases a belching {as caused by his beer}…a belching which almost turns into a sound eructation - in order to show, in this{“complementary”} way too, his deep disgust for those who disagree with him]We never negotiate or come to terms…FUCK YOU, if you know what I mean…” Some seconds later, Dunn tries to make him aware of the fact that there are lots of alternative visions, namely visions utterly opposed to his(as when Necrobutcher says that “We are the fucking best metal band out there!” what is implied in here is that black metal is the supreme genre within the metal family) which say that “Black Metal is declining; it is starting to lose his touch”(what he wanted to say, I guess, is that it reached some point of saturation, as it went all the way up to the teeth with all its clichés of brutality, and that it needs some sort of refreshing innovation…so the question was, most probably, whether they[as an acknowledged authority in this genre] have any ideas whatsoever about new ways or tools by means of which this music could be rejuvenated[so it was a pro-black metal attitude on the part of Sam Dunn]), Necrobutcher replies in a very, very devoid of fair-play manner “Who are they? Which one? Who the fuck are you talking to? Fuck them! you know…” Dunn insists with ”Do you have any comments about that?” and Necrobutcher’s comment is “Fuck that. Yeah, I have a comment: Fuck You!…you know”
        Well, maybe this last “fuck you” as targeted against Dunn was, after all a generic “fuck you”, as it is followed by that ”you know…” and a generic “fuck you” is a “fuck you” relating to or descriptive of an entire group or class (general)…so, a “fuck you” targeted against all those who don’t recognize the heavy role played by black metal in the overall architecture of social spectrum of metal fans - and not(at least not necessarily) a direct offence aimed at provoking Dunn. I have reasons to believe that this is the correct interpretation of the general idea behind Necrobutcher’s words, as previously in his “discourse” he released another “fuck you” followed by its compulsory pair “you know”(“ We never negotiate or come to terms…FUCK YOU, if you know what I mean…” and this “fuck you” was uttered in a moment when Dunn said nothing [not yet] that could have upset him in any way-so it couldn’t have been an attack on Dunn), and the role of this “you know” as placed after “fuck you” is precisely to neutralize this “fuck you”; to invest it with an attribute of generality and to avoid hurting the collocutor. Thus, it is to be read as “you know that I’m not speaking about you when I say FUCK YOU but still, I can’t avoid using this FUCK YOU as I need it badly in order to emphasize my idea, which is one of utter loath and hatred for all those who don’t share our values, values which we consider to be the best and the most motivating ones”(some may find this attitude of digging in all details of a person’s word’s a useless insanity worthy of Hans Christian Andersen’s “Emperor’s new clothes”[namely that of trying by all possible and impossible means to see something which is not really there, and has never been…] but I find discourse analysis a must whenever one tries to truly and faithfully understand what the other is saying…thus, a must for a fair alterity). So, in this new light, Necobutcher’s words are no longer as impolite as they first seemed to be, but this does not make them less narrow-minded or less hostile to his praiseworthy hosts(let us not forget that he dares to say “Germany sucks!” at Wacken, on German ground ), to the overall approach aimed at emancipating black metal - an approach so beautifully carried out by Dunn(with his Habermasian invitation at dialogue and communication ), and last but not least, to himself as his attitude is an unchallenged proof that the uncanny exists within black metal as well, with the only difference that here it functions the other way around - the cognitive dissonance lead to a similar outright rejection of the object(this rejection having as engine the same superficiality which, instinctually, would rather reject than rationalize) but here the rejection is carried out not by virtue of an overprotective attitude against social discomfort(as it was the case of politicians and media whores who attacked metal in the public arena) but, on the contrary, by virtue of an attitude which attacks the masses and which overtly embraces diabolism(“diabolism” understood in psychoanalytical terms - Lacan’s notion of the “satanic” says that “the satanic is the on which does not communicate at all; the real which cannot be tamed and turned into reality by means of communication”…the Total Evil in Lacan’s view is the mute Evil, the entity with which one simply cannot enter into absolutely no human contact whatsoever) in order to prevent the self from making any kind of compromise and thus(because of hat compromise) being assimilated into the masses or “silent majorities” (different lines of evolution but a similar mechanism is involved). It is an attitude which Necrobutcher uses against himself because his use of the uncanny is perhaps the most Freudian one: by overtly embracing an over aggressive attitude, an attitude with which you risk to destroy not only your opponents but your supporters as well(he surely lost Dunn as a fan), you create within your inner forum a masochistic self(because how else could it be called a self which goes against his overall healthiness[by destroying his own supporters] for the sake of only a few moments of intense selfhood) and masochism is an explicit form of perversion. Necrobutcher should have known(or at least imagined) that nowadays, because of mindless overuse, the “fuck you”-s are worn-out metaphors which lost their powers to evoke rebellion…as they were “abused” in the sense that they were exposed to the wear and tear of shared symbolism sooooo very much that they became simply unable to bring any kind of image whatsoever into the mind when uttered. They(the “fuck you”-s) are so obsolete, unexpressive and blunt…so much a part of the normal fabric of social life that they resemble a sluggish and dull shapeless stone on the side of some dusty and seldom circulated country road(total incapacity to set free any kind of imagination). Using them in order to be expressive, original or in order to emphasize something is, in my opinion, what may be called a “professional” mistake.
        Necrobutcher’s lack of fair-play is to be read in his unfair and deliberately distorted denial of the very existence of his opponents (when asked by Dunn what is his opinion about those who regard black metal as having a downward trajectory of evolution he replies “Who are they? Which one? Who the fuck are you talking to? Fuck them! you know…” ) which to be me sounds like a clear instance of what Rudolf Carnap called ILLICIT SUBSTANTIVIZATION(to use [an adjective, verb, etc.] as a substantive; to convert something into a substantive in order to invest it with even more substantiality ). Carnap provides us with an example where the phrase “There is nothing outside”, by means of ILLICIT SUBSTANTIVIZATION is, perfidiously turned into “Outside, there is the Nothingness itself.” And what Necrobutcher implies with his “Who are they? Which one? Who the fuck are you talking to?” is clear-enough the fact that he considers those people to be but a bunch of nobodies (“nobodies” understood as nobodies and as opposed to Mayhem fans, who are, most probably [Necrobutcher would say] a bunch of yesbodies - to quote Peter Sloterdijk), of entities who, like the nothingness itself, do not posses an existence of their own…who are the nothingness incarnated or the very incarnation of nothingness. Here is to be found Necrobutcher’s instance of ILLICIT SUBSTANTIVIZATION together with my warning signal for all those who let themselves seduced by his over-aggressive but empty deep inside (with only an attractive surface perfidiously constructed and aimed at luring superficial people) pleading for an always true to itself and authentic(in the sense of full of healthy virility) selfhood.
        So, Necrobutcher’s way of approaching the so-called correct image of a black metal callous(“uncompromising”-as he says) artist is definitely not the desirable way(at least not for intelligent people, and most certainly not for progressionists). In postmodernity, the “my way or the highway”- attitude on the side of the artist, inevitably paves the way to becoming a Kafkian “Hunger Artist”. In the short story written by Kafka the main protagonist dies as a direct consequence of his refusal to eat. He chooses to no longer eat anything at all, as all tastes of this world appear to him as utterly tasteless…Just like Necrobutcher, he makes no compromise and, as long as he finds nothing appetizing-enough, he prefers to simply no longer eat at all and slowly die because of starvation. I strongly believe that “A Hunger Artist” by Kafka is meant to be read ironically, as a sad and painful case of maladjustment. It is, in fact, Kafka’s ironic comment on artistic pretensions. Nowadays, “to be is to be fashionable” and “to be fashionable”, far from being a subliminal(something below the threshold of conscious perception which can be used of stimuli…inadequate to produce conscious awareness but able to evoke a response) propaganda carried out by the media with the purpose of urging/encouraging you to commercialize yourself and your work, it means to be able to adapt yourself and your artistic manifesto to a shape-shifting audience…to be able to actually form a continuum with your fans as well as with your would-be fans(this is also what the “publish or perish” slogan tries to convey…). But for this, you as an artist have to respect them at least as much as they respect your work.
        As counterexamples for Necrobutcher’s behavior, two characters come to my mind in this moment: Adam “Nergal” Darski from Behemoth and Erik “Legion” Hagstedt from Devian(ex-Marduk). They are two guys constantly open to dialogue and to enlarging the black metal forum by trying to explain to other social categories the nature of their artwork - let us recall Nergal’s appearance in Kuba Wojewódzki Show in June 2006 where he explains to Kuba how important it is to keep alive and to also cultivate as much as possible the critical spirit among teenagers(the habit of questioning yourself about the real nature as well as hidden purpose which are working from behind the representations with which society assaults us every day…attitude described in the postmodern critical theory voiced by Linda Hutcheon as “problematization” - and to make something problematic is to challenge the obscure and hidden politics behind that something to reveal themselves together with the constellation of interests which they serve…this is, after all, what keeps democracy alive!-the critical spirit and the fight against any form of taken-for-granted); or Legion’s interview in Portugal in 1999 where he states that “I feel like a normal guy but what is normal to me might be extreme to someone else”, after which he delivers a (in my opinion) highly romanticized vision about Satan, describing him in the veins of Edgar Allan Poe, Maurice Rollinat or John Milton -“I look upon it like a great unimaginable force which is so powerful and majestic that out tiny minds are too microscopic to even understand a bit of it, really[…]I look upon it as strength and beauty and healthiness, not evil.”(All the time he is extremely polite, voluntary and sincere in his desire to open and reveal the best and the most accessible of his inner self and the revelations within it to the girl who interviewed him…personally I had the unique occasion of meeting him face to face in Cluj-Romania[2008] and we were all shocked at that Devian[this time] concert by his willingness to meet us all after the show, to get to know us better, to take as many pictures as possible with us, to exchange some maybe nostalgic glimpses with us-glimpses which, as transitory as they were, still they possessed the unique capacity to fill in the void of the futile months which usually pass until the next show in that town. Empathy, sympathy, open-heartedness…there is always time for such things, no matter how busy one might be. )
        In matters al alterity, should one compare Legion’s “I feel like a normal guy but what is normal to me might be extreme to someone else” to Necrobutcher’s “Who are they? Which one? Who the fuck are you talking to? Fuck them! you know…”, he/she simply can’t fail to get the main point of my analysis.
        And, to make things even more clear, I’ll turn a little bit to Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas states that there are four possible types of action: a teleological action(which he describes as “strategic”, as a mainly aim-oriented action - which may sometimes lead to a skillful orchestration of action and of reason itself, as in a political campaign ); a normative action(comprising rules and regulations which function as patterns within which groups move and generate their values); a dramaturgical action(related to the theatrical aspect of communication; to the ways of investing yourself with an aura while making your point in front of an audience[in our case, we have the black metal bands making use{and sometimes abuse} of theatrical elements such as vampire-like styles of make-up] ) and the Communicative Action(seen as the very apotheosis all the previous three types of action-an action capable of combining all the other actions and of directing them on the most humane possible path). Within the teleological action the stress falls on truth; within the normative action - on correctness; within dramaturgical action - on authenticity and sincerity; BUT ONLY THE COMMUNICATIVE ACTION is able include all these traits(truth, correctness, authenticity/sincerity) AND TO EVEN COME UP WITH A NEW AND REVOLUTIONARY ELEMENT - INTELLIGIBILITY. Habermas states that there is no art in the absence of intelligibility and that there is no intelligibility in the absence of a real-time inter-subjectivity able and, most of all, willing to subordinates truth, correctness and authenticity to the desideratum (not the constraint!!!-the only constraint in Habermas’s philosophy is that of “the best argument”- an argument understood as “what is good an convenient for everybody”; as something able to transcend or at least to resist all forms of selfishness and immoral personal interests[immoral - that is “contrary to established moral principles”…more precisely, contrary to the normative action and rationality] ) of intelligibility. The final result of all these, according to Habermas should be what he calls a “Communicative Rationality” - a sort of emancipation from the old Weberian paradigm of functionality which places the accent on the functional aspects and thus, on the teleological action and rationality…with all their subsequent utilitarian aspects. Habermas, on the contrary, states that the utilitarian element appears naturally as the discourses progresses(“in the making”, so to say) and as the concord approaches…it does not and cannot appear a priori (as it did in Weber’s philosophy) and thus be a sort of a so-called “foundation”(guiding idea) for all the following lines of discourse.
        Habermas spoke a lot about the constitutive role of communication. Most probably, he values the communicative competence as much as he does, because he sees in it the very source for the following building blocks of public reason and self consciousness:
- the ability of setting the mental power into a motion, more specifically into a play of all (or at least as many as possible) our mental faculties (aesthetic ideas and innovative actions often being fascinating results of this play) which is self-maintaining.
- it(communication) is a sort of accelerator of selfhood, able to provide motivation and combat apathy and discouragement and thus rejuvenate an refresh the spirit.
- it is the only catalyst able to give us, as a community(of metal fans, in our case), the capacity to generate and keep alive a tangible instantiation of a concept and get into the possession of a long sought-for unity of purpose(which, in our case, is that of elevating the metal phenomenon as much as possible).
        In this arena of communication, reflective judgment will be understood as judgment in the service of the fulfillment of an identity and, to be valid will mean to be as inclusive as possible in order to be able to reach an as-ideal-as-possible point of intersection across contexts.
With a torrent of “fuck you”-s and with morose dismissals of the type “you don’t like my music -         I piss on your criticism, so fuck off before I piss on you as well!” one will surely build no building blocks, or set any kind of mental powers into any kind of useful motion. On the contrary, it will create spiteful tensions which, in their turn, can’t but undermine and eventually deaden all unities.
        Public reason, beyond all its, artistic [or at best philosophical] after all, extravagant episodes of misanthropy, must not be deprived of its essentially inter-subjective nature. And to be inter-subjective means to be wise enough(here I’m invoking the so called enlightened selfishness) to care not only for the loyal fans(who, anyway, are a hard nucleus which loves you unconditionally…like a love-machine ) but also for the would-be fans(that is to accept the challenge of a philosophically diversified society…and in what other way, if not by dialogue, could you establish such new bridges?!)
        But once again, what does it mean(FOR AN ARTIST) to make the most of a communicative situation? What does it mean to best bring horizons(each of them infused with various and apparently irreconcilable personal interests) to a fusion?
        Humboldt had here maybe the most interesting and seductive theory (though nowadays Habermas seems more adequate for our purposes as, for Humboldt the individual always lives alone with his received ideas[after he receives it, he goes and digests it alone] while for Habermas the individual and his ideas can’t exist but in constant common horizon with the other members of his environment ). He proposed that the communicative action be seen as a sexual act: when two people communicate, they leave in each other spiritual womb a GERMINATIVE content which will further develop into a real “fetus”. As in the case of a real anatomical fetus in a woman’s womb, this spiritual fetus will evolve into a true theory(or other type of innovative idea or vision) without altering the initial the personality of the receiver. That is to say, when the lady gives birth, the newly born entity will have a life of its own and the mother will have a life of her own as well - in our case, when the philosopher/artist “gives birth”(comes up with a vision or a theory), the newly born theory will have its umbilical cord cut off so that the deliverer may still have a life of his/her own outside the tyrannical borders of that theory/vision. No deliverer of theories or visions must be fully and down to the bitter end(last consequences) absorbed by his creation(and with this I hope I also managed to answer the absurd requests of some metal fans according to which, “he who sings black metal must be a sort of batman[living in total evil isolation in his castle, on top of the sharpest cliff ] who never goes shopping, never has a wife or kids to walk in the park on Sundays” ). Both the artist and his/her public live in the horizon generated by the work of art in question - but both of them must leave a room for themselves as well, no matter how lovely the “fetus” may be. This is a necessary (and even holy I would say) border if we want to communicate safely-away from the danger of indoctrination. This room also assures place for contradictions in the form of criticism and, the stronger your critic, the more persuasive you are forced to become.
        At this point, Necrobutcher could come and defend himself by saying that his kind of attitude is the right one…one which only true (and not simulated) characters are predestined to possess, as it is the only kind of attitude able to permit and even bring about an optimal congruency of an identity with itself; that one simply cannot have an authentic relation to his inner self if he chooses to constantly live in the horizon of the others(his fans and critics) and to spend less and less time in his own horizon. He may say that he is there to represent the non-negotiable normative core of a collective identity, the symbolic locus where commitments are enshrined with such a severe mystical force that they cannot be “encroached” upon without an ensuing perception, on the part of the members of the collectivity, that their collective identity is being betrayed, their integrity as a collectivity is thrown into question…that they are in the process of ceasing being who they are and are becoming another.
        He may even come and “recite” for us Arendt’s approving quote of Socrates’s saying: “It would be better for me that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself and contradict me”(Hannah Arendt The Life Of the Mind) The best deconstruction of this(“the more you respect the other and treat him with the due attention, the more you get dissolved into that other and lose yourself to his advantage”), after all, seductive enough call for solipsism is given in Alessandro Ferrara’s The Force of Example(Explorations in the Paradigm of Judgment) [Columbia University Press, New York, 2008], at page 60: “Congruency, however, cannot be reduced to mere consistency. Rather, we should understand it as including those more specific dimensions[…such as]: coherence(i.e., the possibility of summing up the modifications undergone by an identity during its lifetime in the form of a narrative), vitality(i.e., the experience of joyful empowerment resulting from the fulfillment of one’s central needs), depth(i.e., a person’s capacity for self-reflection and moral autonomy), and maturity(i.e., the ability and willingness to negotiate the facticity of the natural and social world, as well as of the internal world, without thereby becoming another).”
        Now let us see…what should we understand from this, when applying it to Necrobutcher’s general attitude? That he is not coherent?(Definitely no!… and he tries to compensate and fill in the gaps in his coherence with an avalanche of “fuck you”-s…but let us blame the beer for all these…) That he is suffering(now I’m joking) from too much vitality and moral autonomy?(Definitely yes! And here one should take notice that excess is always there, primarily in order to compensate for something which is missing, or to hide elements which must not be seen.)That he is immature and unwilling to negotiate any kind of facticity for fear he might lose himself and become another? Definitely, this is the most important yes in his case. In most of the hypostases, people who refuse empathy - they do it in order to protect their very fragile self, a self which cannot withstand the slightest(sincere) contact with another self without disintegrating or, at least, not without fissuring itself. Truly strong individuals don’t need to hide or attack the others in order to “play the first fiddle”. Aggression (or, at least, in those cases when it is overactive and unmotivated) is the first and most painfully obvious sign of weakness.
        In matters of brutality in metal, I think it is always desirable to create an example rather than to apply an example. You, as an artist have to simply create an example and, afterwards, let everybody apply it in his own way. It is never (really) necessary to play the tough guy outside the stage(the way Necrobutcher does)…at least never-ever in a friendly talk!!! In other words, the brutal messages within black metal must be interpreted metaphorically and never literally.
        Having defined maturity as “the ability and willingness to negotiate the facticity of the natural and social world, as well as of the internal world”, we could say that an artist has to always bargain - and this is what concerts are all about…they are complex questions and subsequent answers of the kind “How many people come at my show tonight? How much feed-back were they able or willing to give me? Well, this means the intelligibility and seductiveness of my music is getting better/worse.”
        No more art for art’s sake, no more ivory tower poets. We live in a mass-mediated world where media channels broadcast black-metal only because, in their mercantile interests, they answer a consumerist demand on the side of their audience(the long despised and disapproved “masses”). Yet, no black metal band can be said to be able to exist not even a second outside the ATMOSPHERE created by the media channels(you tube, MTV, Wacken Open Air etc) as vulgar and stupid as those masses may be…still, what remains true is that art is created solely for spectators and to deny them is a bad joke as it amounts to mortally deconstruct yourself(as an artist).
        We live in a shape shifting world of preferences and everything has to be constantly negotiated; borders have to be constantly negotiated because art’s assimilation is heavily dependent on shifting moods and favorable disposition both on the side of the artist as well as on the side of his/her public. In this context of shape-shifting attitudes, to draw a final (attitudinal )line of demarcation and to say “this is my public, fuck all the rest”, it is pure suicide on the part of that artist. In a realm where nothing is ever sure, arrogance is the most stupid of all sins.
        The communicability of an artistic work is a much more complex phenomenon than Necrobutcher thinks. It amounts to more than the capacity of the artist to come up with an intelligent, interesting and seductive creation and, respectively, the existence of a wise-enough audience able to decipher to its own personalized advantage the obvious but most of all the hidden possibilities that that creation has to offer. It also(if not even primarily)amounts to the artist’s capacity to become likable and full of charisma in the yes of its spectators and critics. The artist has to somehow befriend his fans because art is not a job where it suffices for one to have only cold and impersonal relations with the others(you come, you play, you sell tickets, T-shirts and CD’s and go home with the due sum of money). Art amounts to a complex psychic-web of likes and dislikes all of them highly subjective-and subjectivity can’t be separated from friendship. He(the artist) has to attain this level of social acceptance as it is the judgment of the spectator alone which is able to create the space in the absence of which no such work of art could appear at all. Necrobutcher should read Hannah Arendt’s sinister(in the most humane possible sense…The fear of possessing without your wishing so a constant inner double, a dark twin buried deep inside of you who sometimes haunts your dreams and decisions - should be not a fear but a life-principle for every artist [the dark twin of the artist being the merciless critic - critic which he has to generate and simulate in his mind simultaneous with every process of creation if he wants to later successfully combat the inevitable real one]) but utterly true view of the actor as simply forced by all living substances to take the standpoint of the spectator or of the critic as well:
        “the public realm is constituted by the critics and the spectators, not by the actors or the makers. And this critic and spectator sits in every actor and fabricator; without this critical, judging faculty the doer or maker would be so isolated from the spectator that he would not even be perceived…He[the spectator] does not share the faculty of genius, originality, with the maker or the faculty of novelty with the actor; the faculty they have in common is the faculty of judgment.”(taken from Arendt’s Lectures on Kant’s        Political Philosophy )
And this faculty of judgment being the only faculty that the common spectator possesses(as he is deprived of geniality), one can be sure that, in compensation and in revenge, he’ll simply make the best possible use of it. That is exactly why, it would be very wise on the side of the actor/creator/genius to use judgment, outside their creative process, also as a tool by means of which to be able to get access to an “enlarged mentality”(empathy, alterity etc)
        As for the fear according to which, the fragile self might get dissolved - I could answer here that feelings and ideas, when given an artistic expression, they amount an elevation from relativism(relativism being seen as the last stronghold of the self[relativism says that ”there are no absolute truths or models for the self, each and every self has its own unique value independent of the presence of other selves”]): your artistic message achieves substance within your spectator and, through the medium of his reception(as materialized in criticism), it comes back to you, but in an enriched form. Thus, you become/are simultaneously yourself as well as the other…your are the other, somehow without being that other-because if you were the other by effectively and truly being that other, you simply couldn’t have been that other. As crazy as it may sound, the truth of this very fertile(after all) paradox holds: if you want to be something, the only way you can be that something is without being that something…in other words you have to distance yourself from the object of your desire(ideas and personal credo included in here) in order to gain perspective. Or, to make it even more elementary, you have to leave room for alterity, not for the sake of others but for the sake of achieving a higher quality for your artwork-which in this context becomes subject to an evaluation from a distanced point(from your own), point able to provide perspective.
        Away from this alterity, one can produce only artworks which Kant calls “without spirit” ( geistlos) - artworks “filled” in with a weird and sinister (inner) emptiness. THE SUBSTANCE ALWAYS COMES FROM THE PUBLIC(THE RECEIVER), THE ARTIST PROVIDES ONLY THE FRAMEWORKS, THE PATTERNS WHICH ARE THERE TO BE FILLED IN BY THE SPECTATORS BY MEANS OF THEIR INTERPRETATION. Denying the public leads to your voiding and vacuuming your artistic products. The opposite of geistlos within aesthetic theory would be groundbreaking - that is, the moment when the author, in his fight against the solidification of the masses, comes and issues a fault. But you have to have the material in which to dig this fault, don’t you? And the masses themselves are this precious material.

        The final part of this essay tried to answer the question of “how human dignity can be optimally protected and how diversity can be reconciled into unity without dissolving itself into homogeneity” Hopefully it did.
        This study is by no means a pleading for the idea that artists should make their artworks as accessible as possible…that they should commercialize their skills. By no means!!! It is instead a pleading for the idea that, when interviewed, they have to be as polite, accessible and well intentioned as possible, as interviews are interviews and they must not and cannot be regarded as part of the artistic work. Not even as part of a lifestyle which makes no distinction among music and the rest of the daily routine. Interviews are of another nature and have a radically different purpose(and to regard them as part of the music itself is a proof of an utter stupidity). They(the interviews) are a key screw meant to assure our social cohesion, a mandatory(from the point of view of the most basic and unavoidable common sense) concession which we, as artist(social entities), have to make to the society on which we depend. They have a first and foremost explanatory nature and thus become a complementary annex which is there to cover up some holes which happened to appear in the process - no need to make a masquerade in a hole…no need to make the most of your brutality in here as it is, as I said, something complementary…save the grimness for the music.

The aesthetics of evil

(as resulting from Brennare’s artistic brainstorming)

Part 1

by Theodora-Eva Stâncel

        So, you’re on the train, going home listening in your headphones to your favorite metal band...
-You listen to metal music....asks the bovine like face next to you....oh my God!!!!! I could never listen to It , I would have problems sleeping at night...and she laughs it off while she gracefully makes a subtle cross over her generous breast.
        One may stumble over remarks such as these everyday, be it on the bus, train, in the park or at work. Metal has been around for many years but it has been hidden behind the veil of exclusivity, and I am talking about right down quality music. Kids today adopt whatever can make them stand out, just for the fashion of being „something else”. They have absolutely no idea of all the history and facets that carries within it, metal music.
        No ordinary individual can truly listen to It I guess, as no ordinary metal wannabe composer can actually write good music.
And what exactly qualifies as good music? Is it the melodic line or is it the words?
        Experts say that it is not as important what we say but how we say it. It’s all about tone, volume, vibrations, and the color of your voice.
How can the untrained ear of an amateur decide what’s the real deal? My guess is that one must go by instinct.
         Metal music, as a rule, generates a certain exclusivist subculture that has its own cipher of legitimacy. It adopts lyrical themes and concentrates on subjects such as violence, sex and the occult, that usually are not appealing to the common individual who does not have the ability to comprehend its essence and true character.
        Following the footsteps of a / my. metal lover I have come in contact with one of the greatest metal bands, and recognized as such. My very first encounter was with Boogie Bubble. After Boogie Bubble than came Devil’s Dinner, Burn fire Burn...and many more. But let us start with the beginning ...in 1994 „Lake of tears” opened (with „Greater Art”) the doors towards genuine auditory art, or as I like to call it, „poetry put to music”.
        „Lake of tears” represents a combination of the grotesque and the beautiful, of horror and romance; it is romantic tragedy governed by exalted emotions, joyous picks, and abyssal darkness. The highlight falls on the fearful thrill and the inherent reverence of the artist in front of aesthetic, spiritual and artistic elevation.
         Although “Lake of tears”, the band, has grown and matured while marking subtle shifts in stile and melodic approach, as a doom / gothic band, it embraces philosophical, fantastical, even magical themes, placed in a lyrical frame. Usually, the lyrics depict a dialogue between good and evil, the two forces becoming interchangeable and moving away from society’s traditional values. “Evil” and “Good” are fluid concepts re-created by each and every other person’s subjectivity: “Man of mercy, sinister disguise/ Cause I see evil, evil in your eyes/ Unmask yourself, and you will find/ You're just as evil, as evil as I. / There's a little bit of evil, inside of you/ A little bit of evil, inside you too.”( „Evil inside”- Greater art).
        The songs echo deception, despair, and solitude from the deepest, darkest corners of ones mind and spirit. The melodic line is heavy and in low tempo, revealing of the profound quality of the song. Some people may accuse them of being depressive and full of pessimism. Personally, I perceive it as a mysterious, occult atmosphere as the one that can be encountered in romantic/ gothic literature such as Emily Bronte’s „Wuthering Heights”. Emblematic is Catherine’s death scene where she swears to haunt Heatcliff all his days to come, so that they remain together even in death. Her “geist” walks the hills whispering her lover’s name in remembrance of their romance. At the end of the novel the headstones with their ancestral trees and engulfing poison ivy, the manor, and the encrusted lines above the doorstep recall all the history that went along with the Heights. The same atmosphere governs in the following lines: Past the forest of the flies of fire/Beyond the waters of shimmering tears[…]/ Up the hill the headstones lie/Up the hill the reapers watching eye/Up the hill the headstones lie/Headstones .../In the circle of stones dressed in ivy/By the garden of the serene flowers/And the spirits are there/Whispering my name”.( “Headstones” from “Headstones”1995)
        Sometimes the heavy romantic-gothic atmosphere is replaced by a medieval romance of, fairylands, enchanted forests, goddesses and myths. Realistic settings combine elements of an illogical scenario that creates the impression of a threshold in between dimensions. It is a sort of magic realism, which in fact has often been used in literature music and film. Magic elements find their way in situations that could, from the beginning, exclude the playful, enchanting element.
        I am thinking, in an interdisciplinary comparison, about Guillermo del Toro’s ecranization of Angelo Mitchievici’s “El labirinto del fauno” (“Pan’s labyrinth”). The director places his audience in front of a tragic fable, which comprises a cruel social realism and esoteric fairy tale. The balance between the two dimensions is safely guarded so as the focus does not fall exclusively on the fabulous, although towards the end of the film the borderline fades away, almost into a sensitive, non-sizable niche.
        The Fantastic appears in the context of Franco’s bloody Spanish civil war, where the main character Ofelia and her mother Carmen accompany Captain Vidal in a wild, wooden territory where he has orders to fight against communist guerillas. Under the terror established by Captain Vidal the little girl, Ofelia finds the gate to a parallel world of the fairies, princesses and mythical creatures.
         The fantastic and the real mingle together, to such extent that the magic manages to transform the physical reality. Ofelia follows the paths of the labyrinth to a sacred alter of the underworld. There she learns about her ancestral pricier legacy, as princess Moana of the land of the dead. In order to reinstall herself into her royal rights she has to accomplish three missions (as in all fantastical stories where the hero must prove himself by accomplishing three tasks, imposed to him by a superior authority).
        Within the deep underworld she enters the walls of a palace where a monstrous being, devours the two guardian elves. She must override the temptations of the underworld and regain the essential sense of existence, through separation of good and evil (as understood in fairytales and heroic stories), and through conquering the menacing labyrinth.
        One attempt to represent the magical “other world” (as an alternative to the physical one ) is “Nathalie and the fireflies”( “The Neonai” 2002), There is depicted a realm of the sun, that opens itself to the world each morning as the sunbeams bounce against the earth: “Comes the morning with scarlet and black for you maybe/ Past the sun hides the one with fires anew”. The dawn comes erasing the shadows of the only true beauty, that is the radiant darkness, and brings the day of tomorrow and everything it embodies: “Comes the morning with sorrow/Smile with a heart full of tears/Nathalie comes the ones of tomorrow/With the fireflies there/Comes within, comes without, what's the scarlet about/And the one from the sun for his fires and few/Soon comes the sun, soon comes the morning here baby/Comes the morning with scarlet and black there for you/ Oh, do they come there anew.”
        Daniel Brennare, the vocalist and composer of the band created an „Alice in Wonderland” type of world, a fairy tale like story that features elves, trolls, fairies: „We wander worlds sometimes, green forests, stars and stories, /a secret time under 3 moons/ We walk the clouds at times and ride on dragon faeries, a drink with friends under 3 moons („Lady Rosenred”-A Crimson Cosmos) and enchantment: „Clairvoyant stare, a moon clad fate/ Absent beauty, for you I wait. Come to me, come to me, come to me, oh goddess of love/ Come to me, come to me, cleanse my heart and cleanse my soul.”( „Under the crescent”- Greater Art”).
        Imagine a new year’s eve spent in the cemetery, delightful evening of “vague shadows, purple toned sky”, you-a stroll on the creepy, dark allies, the smelling the stench of death emanating from the spongy ground, the musk, the fog. You are trying to escape the commercial passing into the year that is going on the city streets. Then you activate your musical memory and you see in front of you the hologram of “cloud demons with wands of doom, chanting lines of solitude”. And as you lie down on an poison ivy engulfed grave, as if trying it for match, you call your own playful demon friend to keep you company: “Come demon and chant for me, come bring my eye some mystery/Strange things and stranger one finds, in them cloud lands of my mind/[...]/Upon clouds of purple they ride, doing evil/Every boogie bubble holds a demon inside, /each and every demon rides upon a purple cloud”.
        Brennare is definitely a poet , he tries to create images of the universe, of himself, of universal values, by making use (consciously or not) of literary stylistic devices. He uses repetitions and inversions to highlight the essence and in the same time maintain the atmosphere of the genre. His art deliberately arranges modes of expression so as to display the most unknown layers of human creativity. In „Greater Art” (Greater Art), he makes reference to a land of „greater art” where the decay of human becomes avoidable.. A subtle liaison is made with the very core of metal music, an exclusivist music that is incomprehensible for the average ear: „There is a land, a land that mountains guard/A land for most mortals far/But if you pure in heart, the time will come to you/ When you may follow an avatar through[...]/Seek the lands, ride the winds/Ride into its heart, the realms within/ On eagle wings, of highest ground/Carried to the place where art is found/A beauty great, inside its heart/Beyond the lost land of greater art"/ [...]No music sounds, no harps to play/The gods have left, now they're far away/ Dark the land, broken silver stars/All that remains, are only memories of greater art.”
        This territory is described as a sort of Mount Olympus where high, harsh picks hide the essence of true beauty. Behind those mountain walls: “The gods play there, a soft sound of harps/And in the air shine silver stars./There is a land, a land that mountains guard/A land for most mortals far/But if you pure in heart, the time will come to you/When you may follow an avatar through”.
        “Greater art” is a type of “ars poetica” that describes how true art should appear as, and the hardships one must overcome before being able to writ good music.
        For ages humanity associated the concept of evil with the devil. But who is in fact the Devil/ Satan/ Belzebut? Christianity impregnated in the minds of is flock the amusing image of an enraged beast, hideous, with great big threatening horns who uses his sharp triton to push the sinners back into a boiler full of molten tar. Imagine generations of people who before going to bed have stayed up accounting their daily sins so as to see whether or not they have over passed the threshold between being good and bad.
        “Lake of tears” lyrics are abundant in the word “evil” but its connotation is essentially different of what Christianity denotes by it. Evil and its associations are depicted as states of mind and attitudes towards the surrounding world. The Devil is no longer the classical demon figure but that of a mysterious being that can unfold before your eyes the secrets of the night, of the dark side (of our lives, and all things around us).The dark is associated with mystery , unknown prosperous territories, and spiritual depth.
        The Devil character becomes more and more similar to Satan in Milton’s “Paradise Lost”. The latter is a masterpiece that depicts the fight between Heaven and Hell. The lyrical interplay presents Satan in a very favorable light transforming him in one of the most, if not “the” most popular character. He is charming, witty, a very presentable, figure, and the posture of the intellectual that tries to act in favor of those who wish to act in their own favor.
        Sin and death spring from his own inner being, Satan creates his own hell, and thus the concept of evil (in the traditional view) transforms radically. God is seen as the tyrant and Satan as a fighter for his own liberation from the authority of a creator. He states that he and the fallen angels are self-created and thus eliminate the authority exercised upon them by God.
        Devil’s dinner, is one of the representative songs from “A Crimson Cosmos”, wonderfully written by Daniel Brennare who once more displays his poetic stream and skills. Brennare describes a central moment of human existence while using the scenario of a gothic in between lands where , at a magical hour , the gates to hell are opened and the gallant Satan invites you at his table.
        The lyrics, by use of inversions, suggest a mystical incantation. As the clock strikes twelve the earth opens its bowels and from Hell’s the deepest corners its Emperor arises. He “speaks the evil spell, / he speaks the evil spell as the bell strikes 12”, and then the moment comes to say farewell to the ordinary world and enter the mysterious shadow underground world. Governed by a dark romanticism the dinner takes place at a table set for, three (an intimate, even familiar circumstance), where candlelights sustain the gloomy atmosphere.
        The Devil is the perfect host, who does his best so that the guests feel at ease in his presence, he is even glad that he has companion in the lonely dark realms.
The story presented by the lyrics is that of the inevitable final moment when we all have to say goodbye to earthly existence. While others end up in Heaven, our protagonist asked to be reserved a chair in Hell. A perpetually worm place, where one can indulge in hedonistic pleasures: “A table set for three, my lily, /him and me and a chandelier, and a chandelier/All seven candles lit, it scares a little bit, oh little lily dear”.
        Lucifer is an all powerful, generous supernatural being is doing his best to make one feel comfortable. Even more, the company longing “Lucie” is pleased to have guests in his Florida-like premises (the difference being that in Florida it smells like flowers, and in Hell, like molting tar-the very high temperature being their common element ): “As the bell strikes 12, he welcomes us to hell,/ he welcomes us to hell as the bell strikes 12/He's the one so bad, and he's the one,/ the one so very glad as the bell strikes 12”.
        “Lake of tears”, as an entity it is extremely complex and there is room for much interpretation. I have tried to make an introductory reference to the phenomenon that has had a great impact on my musical knowledge. Being of a literary formation I have mainly focused on the lyrics.
        Personally, I feel that a very important, and mentionable detail about „Lake of tears” music is that no matter the subject of the lyrics or the gravity of the melodic line, the song in its entirety escapes the feeling of helplessness in front of ones own limitation and sometimes even falls into an amusing, optimistic posture. See for instance the 1997 album “A Crimson Cosmos” a sort of psychedelic music that tries to reproduce the workings of hallucinating, intoxicated mind (maybe by superfluous artistic turbulence): “Fading little ones not knowing, they soon fade away, /the tiny mushroom houses of yesterday/Dreaming all those dreams so evil, so evil are the dreams they dream tonight/But the man in the moon he smiles, and he says:/"Come, come and try some cosmic weed and glance a world so strange indeed"/Knowing there's no evil down where I go, knowing there's no evil tonight/Knowing there's no evil down where I go to find it all out.”(“Cosmic Weed”- “A Crimson Cosmos”).

        There are many aspects of “Lake of tears” that escaped my interpretation in this short fragment, therefore the second part of “The aesthetics of evil” will appear in the next issue of this magazine.