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I am interested in the movement of Scandinavian rock musician performing a kind of stripped-down anti-Christian and pro-Heathen music/theatre.
I like the idea of purifying rock - a process begun by Black Sabbath, I suppose.
Also the Roman reports of the raucous chanting and shield bashing of the ancient Germans may have much in common with Metal.
In other words, Metal could be an atavism.
If we listen to Sabbath's 'War Pigs', for example, there is something in Osbourne's untutored wail across the grinding and ugly stop-time guitar riffs that recalls a primal past.
Ignore the idiotic and confused 'pacifist' lyrics; it is the sound of
the voice stretched across the stop-time gaps that is important.
Delivered in a Mid-Lands accent which I presume is closest to the Pre-
Norman Invasion Anglo-Saxon accent [and is therefore the most
despised - the upper-class English accent being the result of English spoken with a Norman-French accent].
Indeed, I imagine the Saxon warriors chanting something like this
[Uuut, Uuut ,Uuut!] when the Normans invaded in 1066.
Sabbath's sound worked at this point also because the rather stiff
and stentorian guitar is complemented by a loose and lolling bass [although the drummer seems to just follow the guitar than rather establish his own beat, this may not be a bad thing].
The point about the Sabbath song is that the atavism is almost
certainly accidental - those four Brummies had no notions of Saxon
war songs and the like.
I fear that much modern 'Metal' is too self-consciously atavistic and therefore not genuine enough. Self-consciousness is death of any movement [and this is the problem of art].
However, Black Metal is an exception.
Like Steel from Iron, Black Metal music took a long time to develop.
Its antecendents were all too eclectic - too 'democratic'.
Too Soft.
Even the most single-minded of the old bands were too varied both musically and conceptually.
Even Black Sabbath were too ambiguous.
Such music was not yet focused enough to be a high art.
The old bands might put out a 'concept album', but they had yet to make themselves the concept.
They were slaves to 'taste', slaves to open-mindedness, slaves to technique, slaves to egalitarian input.
They had yet to realise the necessity of the Artist-Tyrant that is Black Metal.
The need to heat the ore to explosive temperatures - the more molten, the 'blacker', the harder when cold.
Enter the Vikings once more.
The final step had to be taken in Scandinavia.
The English had once sneered at the Scandinavian 'lack of funk' [i.e., negoid rhythms].
This 'lack' was, of course, a gain.
[B]Lack. O.E. blæc "black," from P.Gmc. *blak- (cf. O.N. blakkr "dark," Du. blaken "to burn"), from PIE *bhleg- "burn, gleam" (cf. Gk. phlegein "to burn, scorch," L. flagrare "to blaze, glow, burn"). Same root produced O.E. blac "white, bright" (see bleach), the common notion being "lack of hue." The main O.E. word for "black" was sweart. "In ME. it is often doubtful whether blac, blak, blake, means 'black, dark,' or 'pale, colourless, wan, livid.' "Sense of "dark purposes, malignant" emerged 1583 (e.g. black art, 1590).
The 'black' in Black Metal means to Burn!
Blak
In Scandinavia Black Metal is perfected and made into a very Aryan form of Armour.
A 'Black Metal' in the sense of the Black Steel used for armour - harsh, simple, and lethal.
Some of the greatest art objects are to be found on the battle-field.
This music trains the Will to be Hard!
Once again the old culture wells up - the Aesir ride once more on the wings of blackened steei.
Once again our Hearts are Hard!
The artist must serve the three Aryan functions.
If he serves the mercantile class, then he will make 'product' - yes.
And that's all he does today.
But if he serves the warrior class he will not make product but will
embellish the weaponary and tales of war.
So for me, it is a question of: who is the artist serving?
Now I believe there is also a primitive art which comes from the
horse's mouth, so to speak. This is the art produced by a warrior
[for example] himself.
The warrior will have his own sayings, songs and art-work.
These will be crude but devastating.
All art derives from the hunter/warrior in my view.
It begins as functional or recreational adjuncts to the hunt/war.
Then a parasitic [in the best sense] class of people develop who have
purely artistic skills. They are able to devote themselves to art in
a way that no warrior could and so make a refined and elaborate
aesthetic enterprise. But this must always serve the functions. When
it strays from that it becomes indulgent, rococo etc.,
I look for a kind of purity in music even down to the instrumentation and the harmonic resources used.
I like renaissance lute music, for example [although not when
it is over-ornamented] because of the limitations that the instrument
imposes [just as I prefer linear drawing to full blown oil paintings].
I like the ideas of Plato in restricting the notes in a mode [and of
course the Indian ragas do this, although again, there is too much
ornamentation in them for me].
I want a music that has a similar spirit to the Black and Red vase
paintings of ancient Greece, but is far less fragile than pottery.
However, as Nietzscheans, we always find music a problem.
In the other arts we can find our Grand Style, but in music we are often at a loss - and search for the Dionysian.
Perhaps this is the problem: music was never meant to last; it was
meant to die on the air the second it was played. The recording of
music has destroyed Euterpe! We have grappled the Muse in chains and
tied her Promthea like to the rock: this is the curse of self-
consciousness which is enabled by sound-recording.
I have yet to find a truly Nietzschean music!
