Massive People
I asked Brandon Stosuy about black metal.
As I am lately wont to do, I was thinking about black metal. Specifically I was thinking about my difficult relationship with the less savory elements of the philosophies of some of my favorite black metal artists. As I have been wont to do since the column started, I was read Haunting the Chapel by Brandon Stosuy and noticed that the same issue had come up for him recently. I like to listen to synchronicity. (And I used to like to listen to Synchronicity—weird, huh?) So, I dropped Mr. Stosuy an email with a couple of questions on the subject. Here are his answers:
Recently on Haunting the Chapel, you’ve recommended a couple of black metal bands who have—fairly or unfairly—been linked to the less politically savory side of the black metal scene. Drudkh, for example, consistently puts out records you enjoy. Before he was in Drudkh, Roman Sayenko was the band Hate Forest, a band in the National Socialist black metal scene. Do the associations ever give you pause? The political views of the band? The lyrical content?
This is something I spent a long time trying to reconcile in Mirror Me, a project I did with Kai Althoff last year. We had a long long dialogue about it—he basically interrogated me, asking how I can be a liberal person (and vote for Obama, etc.) while listening to, enjoying Burzum. It’s complex. It’s also dangerous for me to simplify it like this, but it basically came down to my ability (or disability?) to disassociate, to enjoy the music even if I don’t believe in the philosophy behind it. (In Burzum’s case, his music has always been more about mythology and history and all of that… he keeps his truly hate-filled stuff for the prison writings, interviews.)
I did my graduate work on Dennis Cooper. Not that Dennis is NSBM, but I constantly had to answer questions from folks’ who had difficulties with his work, too. Like if I read Guide I was somehow mutilating a kid. Ditto Sotos, someone else I admire. And that’s a major difference, actually—I don’t admire Varg or Roman Sayenko or etc. But I do enjoy their music.
Making all this a little trickier is the fact that Drudkh songs are based on old Ukrainian poetry, they sing in the black metal style (generally impenetrable to listeners), never do interviews, and have issued maybe one press release in their history. Which is to say, what many of us who enjoy them enjoy is the purely sonic experience, divorced entirely from whatever the hell it is they are saying. Is that a reasonable way to justify an aesthetic—that we like how it sounds and, frankly, don’t really know what they are saying anyway? Do you ever worry, at some level, that it might be a bit of a cop-out?
The thing is, most of the bands who get that NSBM, or whatever tag, are really difficult to pin down on what it is they actually believe (or don’t). Most of them are the ones copping out. Unless they’re Arghoslent, their lyrics aren’t all that hate-filled … or even their Q&A’s. Again, there are the bigger fish like Varg or Famine of Peste Noire, etc., who save the more explicit bile and outbursts for their extracurricular writings/activities.
***
Brandon will be at Bar Matchless in Brooklyn tonight for The Greatest 3-Minute Top Ten Lists Ever. Betting there will be some black metal on that list. If you’re a New Yorker, you should go check that out.
Order a copy of MIRROR ME here. Looking forward to getting my copy. Another MIRROR ME interview here.
Obsess over Haunting the Chapel here. Secretly—or publicly—wish someone would mix up your mailing address with Brandon’s so that you got all his promo records.
Tags: Black Metal, brandon stosuy
I have been listening to Black Metal for the last ten years now. It has been a gradual progression: Motley Crue to Judas Priest to Mercyful Fate to Slayer to Deicide to Morbid Angel to Immortal to Gorgoroth. Bands like Gorgoroth refuse to publish their lyrics, so I agree that with the genre I love the speed, the quick time and vocals. However I do research some bands like Mayhem, Burzum and Carpathian Forest. If there are some ties with any fascism or racism then I won’t actually purchase the records, I will listen to them on-line. However one can’t dismiss the talent of the bands. If we go literary, can you still read Death on the Installment Plan or Journey to the End of the Night? Celine’s antisemitism was noted as he grew older, yet none of that specific hatred was in those works. Perhaps we have to judge the work on the merits of what is in them alone. When can we separate the talent with the work?
difficult relationship
Yes, Matthew, it’s a tricky call, reconciling pleasing sensation with ethical distaste or even revulsion. Pound and Celine, for example. Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will (though, for me, each of those ‘classics’ was interesting only intermittently and briefly).
Sometimes the discipline needed to separate openness to, say, formal ingenuity from the viciousness of the artist/message – so as to delight in the former while retaining the freedom to scorn the latter – , often this discipline is impossible to maintain, and one either ignores the content (I think: never a wise or even honest play) or rejects quality for an ethical subjectivity that’s circuitously vain.
Perhaps it’s a broader question. Do we utterly ostracize anyone with distasteful political beliefs, completely shunning anything they say or do regardlesa of content, or do we only shun their specifically objectionable output? How does a liberal society handle sociopathy?
Certainly this is a huge topic narrowed to a musical subgenre for the purposes of real-world examples. It just seems to me that it’s one that people should continue to discuss and think about. When someone tells me they think that all art should be divorced from artist in all cases, I always feel like they are letting themselves off the hook too easily. (This happened with the “Oh, my God! Mo Tucker’s a Teabagger” discussion, too.)
I like Drudkh and Burzum, and have complicated feelings about them. And I think it’s better to have complicated feelings about them.
it’s a little different, but a band like Wolves In the Throne Room make fantastic records, they just happen to be based on some confused mix of anarchist theory, eco-spiritualism and various mythologies. some could (likely do) call them “eco-fascists” and whether they’d accept that label is up to them, but they willingly call themselves proponents of an “extreme” ideology based in a spiritual worldview.
Slightly different but certainly an interesting band to bring up. Especially in view of this: as extreme as their eco-message might be, I find myself much more sympathetic to it. So am I, a person who leans in the direction of the environmentalist agenda, letting myself off the hook for being less inclined to say anything negative about Wolves in the Throne Room?
(I actually interviewed Nathan from Wolves a while back. I found him to be a pretty bright guy—articulate, thoughtful. We were talking not about his band’s idealogical bent, though, and instead the extremes in the Scandanavian scene.)
(And, man, those cats make fantastic records.)
I think Wolves In The Throne Room probably have the most beautiful lyrics of any metal band and their “deep ecology” themes are honestly what got me into them. I’ve never seen the problem in having “extreme” ideas so long as those ideas don’t involve hurting living beings. A pro-earth message seems to be the exact opposite of that of the NSBM movement.
Stosuy is a nerd. Just because he’s well connected to big artists, doesnt mean he’s some god of metal philosophy. Honestly, I think this article would have been more interesting and powerful if the writer had made it an introspective journey, explaining how he came to terms, or how he is at a loss with/or how this confusion partially torments him. Stosuy presents himself as some kind of “intellectual”. The answer to it is quite simple. The artist expresses an emotion through an art form (making the music), shares it with an audience (making cds and distributing them), audience shares said expressed emotion. At this point, since each individual is unique and different, the sounds/emotions the music creates becomes relative to individuals’ experiences, -how we perceive and digest it. In other words, we feel the emotion because the music is good, which makes the emotion right or relatable, where as the philosophy behind it is misdirected and is controllable within ones mind and easily discarded (if you can’t relate to it)because lets face it, the music comes first, it is the vessel, everything else goes along for the ride…
to put it in even simpler terms, listen to Burzum or Hate Forest, but if you feel guilty about it, dont buy it.
This argument doesn’t need to be limited to metal, just look at Miles Davis.
Stosuy is a nerd. Just because he’s well connected to big artists, doesnt mean he’s some god of metal philosophy. Honestly, I think this article would have been more interesting and powerful if the writer had made it an introspective journey, explaining how he came to terms, or how he is at a loss with/or how this confusion partially torments him. Stosuy presents himself as some kind of “intellectual”. The answer to it is quite simple. The artist expresses an emotion through an art form (making the music), shares it with an audience (making cds and distributing them), audience shares said expressed emotion. At this point, since each individual is unique and different, the sounds/emotions the music creates becomes relative to individuals’ experiences, -how we perceive and digest it. In other words, we feel the emotion because the music is good, which makes the emotion right or relatable, where as the philosophy behind it is misdirected and is controllable within ones mind and easily discarded (if you can’t relate to it)because lets face it, the music comes first, it is the vessel, everything else goes along for the ride…
to put it in even simpler terms, listen to Burzum or Hate Forest, but if you feel guilty about it, dont buy it.
This argument doesn’t need to be limited to metal, just look at Miles Davis.
How is it the “exact opposite” of NSBM?
Deep ecology stresses the importance of all living things in the Earth’s environment and how everything is connected to each other. Isn’t that exactly the opposite of what Nationalist movements are about? One being an idea of extreme connectivity and one being an idea of separatism…
[…] and “close-minded,” for instance, but nothing specific. As I told HTML GIANT, who asked me about liberal people listening to certain strains of black metal after reading the […]
[…] and “close-minded,” but with nothing specific to back that up. As I told HTML GIANT, who asked me about liberal people listening to certain strains of black metal after reading the […]