Black Metal Meditations and Childhood’s End

Now for some awesomeness:

During my formative years, the Earache catalog was my source for the best grindcore and Metal Blade my death metal tit – I used to eat up the fastest, most brutal music about ripping out entrails and swimming in gore.

Then came Black Metal which wiped my palate clean. When I bought Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Santhas in 10^th grade, my life was forever changed like a born-again Christian, only it was Satan calling me from the frozen northern waste-scapes telling me that wearing corpse paint, taking pictures in the woods with battle axes/maces, and posing with your head tilted down is the ultimate form of rebellion. I grew up in a boring town, not unlike the outskirts of Oslo must be, and identified with the boredom and angst I could detect in these poorly-spoken-English weirdoes. My hobbies in high school consisted in constantly trying to gross out my friend Aaron, biking, emulating Jackass, throwing glass bottles at runners going around our town stadium track from the top bleacher, and filming skate videos for my friends. The subject matter of Black Metal filled that void and brought a sense of identification to me.

The thing that spoke to me was the sense of play in that music – I know that will shock anyone familiar with Black Metal; TRVE KVLT fans will say that I’m not TRVE and detractors will say either “there’s nothing playful about Satan” or “don’t be so fucking dumb, it’s just fucking noise.” However, there is a sense of play to it because it’s theater, plain and simple. Play is important to any Work; there is a reason that kids have a magical (or rather, magickal) sense of reality. Why not be an astronaut, a fireman, or a Martian (as I chose as a kid)? They aren’t formed into roles yet, so their Work is rather natural and is only tempered by acculturation into modern society. They are natural pagans; think of imaginary friends/monsters under the bed and their proximity to the “spirits” and “daemons” of shamanism or medieval goetia. It’s the same principal because they are externalizing their fears and hopes into something separate mentally that can be “banished” and mastered to some extent.

Back to Black Metal, it’s the same principal (and, naturally, they are pagans). They are putting on costumes and externalizing their anger towards Christianity and hopes for a return to Pagan grandeur to change the world according to their Wills. Music can be a magickal working, an externalized form of your Will that is meant to transform both yourself and the listener. Most modern music is 4/4, bland, shuffle-beat music without a sense of theatrics to it and Black Metal refuses to play in that plane. It is a meditation on the eternal return of pagan themes. Read any of Burzum’s blogs (even though he is a racist dick who didn’t get enough time to serve) and you’ll get an insight into that world. It’s no wonder they are all closet D&D/Tolkien nerds, the ultimate form of grown-up dress up.

And now, because I love lifting weights and Black Metal:

Remember to always have fun!