The nature "mysticism", especially tied in with a particular locale, was an integral part of the amalgamated Volkish ideology that has historically been a source for Nazi ideology, and I do think there is a possibility that it has played a part, maybe not so significant, in the development of black metal re: involvement of nazis. Think of it as an affirmative, feel-good communal ideological-lyrical side that is coupled with the satanic*, destructive and/or nihilistic one. Too bad the imagined communities it can give rise to are ethnically pure, and militantly nationalist ones, with clear racist bases.

From my experience, people almost never think about this when this topic is raised, and the whole lyrical complex of nature-based black metal is viewed in a basically inherently positive light, both in terms of authors' intent and effects on the audience (if the latter is even addressed); I find this short-sighted. The issue isn't that this is inherently wrong, but rather that the effects of it are neither simple nor in line with how the authors may view what they are doing. This is completely evident re: Viking-themed stuff, but nature stuff plays its role here too I think.

*Not that Satanism can't be "positive", in terms of hedonistic self-realization and assertiveness, because obviously it can.

Satanism is not ONLY the one describe & professed by XIXth-XXth c such as Crowley.
It is actually Science, Knowledge, it is out of church, out of religion, satanism is not a choice but the way christain are judging peoples out of religion. If you look at what's satanism symbols, animals for example are individuals with mysterious life, mostly going underground, these animals are the one who makes you think twice regarding paradise (ie lambs typically).

So the one satanism followed by BM is not that one, it is a constructed philosophy (esoterism) first and then occult rites is another layer you can add to it. To me it means another religious stuff, just like masonery (english? maçons), believes. It's the result of "what is it they call us satanism?". Then you go religious and you do think the opposite, the enemy is white religion. Philosophically you could stay on first Nietzsche's layers, criticizing christians, religion, and its roots in proto-christianity/Judaism & Islam world. But to miss Niet. point, knowledge, selfconstruct mind, and a deep respect for cultures where these religion emerged. To me nazism is another weakness.

Just like you're on a balance (In Nietzsche the funambule) and you fell left or right, unable to manage equilibrium. Who's going to know? Who's going to make the effort of science? Will you find a human answer or will you try to understand, with the risk of being without answers maybe forever? Both human choices are weakness & fear.

Out of that there's the empathy, the feeling of others, will you try to help or will you make your own, do you think WE or do you think ME. That's the balance of left-right politic. Left, humanism, white religion & their opposite.

No, it isn't. This only holds true if the right side of the spectrum is reserved for assorted free-market libertarians, with varying degrees of acceptance of any kind of public authority.

Meanwhile, in the real world the nationalist right, and its militant, ethnic cleansing- and/or genocide-oriented wing, is all about the "WE". It's just a matter of what kind of WE we (hurr durr) are talking about.

Spooks, the lot.

totally disagreed about that, far right is a centralized point of view, collective is the nest, the protection
with right side politic is everyone can eat his neighbors (american way?), almost law of the strongest

there's no empathy in right side, materialism that's it, and I can of course admit this is theorical but still, right side is about "being realistic" so if you act slow you'll be paid slowly, a real collective view here is not WE like "how are you feeling today?"

here in my small town we had left with art, culture of reading, well being, slow business, now we have right and we got no art (organisation been fired), cars (a lot, big), building making (fast making ^^), hard business, security talk (protect our value & our goods) - this is so caricatural that this game is shameful to me (choose one or another) - and this is not a collective empathetic politic

Is it remotely surprising that a counter-cultural, anti-establishment music genre steeped in themes of radical identity and violent rebellion, enjoyed and made by predominantly young white men, would attract Nazis?

Not enough was done to stamp out these themes early on in black metal's second wave, and a lot of the people who stuck around in the scene had their white nationalist beliefs cement over time. Meanwhile, Nazis looking for a scene to recruit from had an ample subculture of angry, dispossessed young men to influence and target. The undercurrent has been there ever since and there's never been enough of a pushback to dislodge them.

Obviously black metal isn't a monolith, there are tons of bands and ideologies and subgenres, but I see way, way too much tolerance of Nazis among metal fans, whether that's actively embracing them, using it as a dog whistle, or simply being happy to turn a blind eye.

While I would certainly consider myself much more a death metal guy than a black metal guy I greatly enjoy a fair bit of black metal, particularly from the 90's through early 2000's. I like how people are talking about black metal taking themselves more serious though, which I agree they pretend to, but how serious are a bunch of 20 to 30 year old men dressed in make up and spikes while frowning and snarling really?

Great music is great music and I try to enjoy it as such regardless of what the artists ideologies and views are but I think its funny how concerned people are with their image when the idea they are trying to paint is nihilism and apathy.

It lives!

How is it a stupid take? Angel of Death was the first time nazism was portrayed in a neutral storytelling light rather than a beat you over the head telling you its bad. Now of course Jeff would claim that "he shouldn't have to tell you its bad, that should be obvious." Except a lot of people are hateful and/or stupid.




This on the other hand, is indeed stupid. I've never understood this claim. Under The Runes doesn't mean SS runes.

I'm sorry but presenting an over-simplified take as an answer to an extremely complicated issue as if no further discussion is needed is just stupid.

If black metal is meant to represent "evil", IMO the most "evil" thing I can conceive of isn't Satan, it's fascism/totalitarianism/nazism/"hate"/etc., which, at their core, I consider to be death cults, representing all that is antithetical to what makes us connected as human beings. It would honestly be surprising if this wasn't one of the logical paths of thinking if one were to analyze black metal "ideology" or whatever.

Yeah this.

People in this thread have shared a ton of very interesting information, historical and ideological background, and it seems very obvious that the issue is far more complex then "Because Angel of Death, and because people are stupid and take everything literally."

Like... yeah, the increasing presence of extreme, violent and shocking themes in extreme metal played a role in shaping black metal and making it more welcoming to extreme ideas but like, say that instead of saying that Angel of Death caused it all.

Ever watched Kelly's Heroes? The good guys split the gold with the Nazis at the end.

I don't see how the 2 correlate. If anything, I'd say the ideology came first and the music was second. That also would imply that any wave/scene of black metal has its ultimate and logical end in fascism, which we know isn't even true for the Norwegian scene. Let's also not forget that an entirely different wave of kids also heard Venom in the 80's, and the logical conclusion for them to top that extreme wasn't fascism, it was singing about blood and guts.

They correlate though. Fascism, Nazism and extreme right wing totalitarian politics are evil and scary, black metal wanted to explore the darkest themes of humanity, in the context of the 80s and Christian religion as a powerful institution, satanism was the logical first step to shock the audience. The years passed and satanism became a caricature of itself, especially in the rock n roll world, so what's next? What is the most edgy stuff that black metal can write? Suicide and self-hate? Got It. Hatred to mankind in general? Got it too, so what's left? Hatred against specific kinds of people? We also got that unfortunately.

That only applies if every extreme music genre always ends up in fascism as its natural conclusion of "what's even more shocking and extreme", which we know not to be the case. That also would imply that non extreme genres cannot be fascist, which again we don't know to be the case.

Now, was this a driving force for quite several bands? I don't doubt it (I would like to know which ones though), but it can't be a universal for every single one of them.

I don't think that every extreme genre of music speaks about the same stuff, the only one that specifically talks about evil is black metal. Death metal revolves more about violence and gore, grindcore more about politics and perversion in its most fucked up form, but black metal has always been about evil and the darker side of humanity, in the most literal sense of the phrase. The line between satanic/nordic occultism and nazi/germanic occultism is very thin.

Ok, but ns black metal doesn't just explore fascism, white supremacism and neonazism as themes, which would work with your logic, it embraces it as an ideology. Were not talking about a bunch of guys writing songs about nazi death camps, like Slayer did with Angel of Death, we are talking about a bunch of guys who believe in these ideologies.

Also, the fact that black metal explores evil as a theme, doesn't necessarly make it logical that it would lead to fascism. Following that kind of logic, I could argue that violence is also part of fascism, so why is death metal not leading to fascism as well?

I think that in death metal, the escalating of violence and brutality lead to genres like slam and brutal death metal, trying to convey the most disgusting and heaviest sounds that can be possibly made with a guitar, drums and bass. The lyrics became more brutal, describing horror scenarios like serial killers and mass murderers. But that kind of violence doesn't have any ideology behind it, it's just brutal for the sake of being brutal. Death metal is not necessary evil per se, it talks more about violence as a concept, at least in my interpretation of the genre.

Black metal on the other hand, since the very beginning always had something to say about the state of the world and mankind, first the enemy was religion, then as a counter posture, satanism became popular with the genre, but as time passed those themes became obsolete and new horizons were expanded in the search of the blackest and darkest themes, and what is more dark and evil than literally the regimes that discriminated, segregated and exterminated millions of people from around the world.

If the motivation to embrace nazism as an ideology was because it's the logical extreme of pure evil and darkness then you'd be probably right, but that's not the case since nazis believe it to be entirely justifiable and morally OK to have the lesser humans exterminated so that white babies have a secure existence or whatever. The idea that nazism is the ultimate evil and thus befitting black metal only makes sense if you are not actually a nazi, and this half-baked reasoning and the indifference that results from it is what allowed the early utterances of some of the pioneering voices of the genre into a full-blown infestation.

I think this is the point though - the vast majority of people flirting with NS imagery and lyrics weren't "actual" nazis and were just being edgy bois.....but of course, that then opens the door wide for the genuine article to walk right in

So in that sense, I absolutely agree with the final line of your post, but that's my understanding of how it gets to that point in the first place.

Never meant that comment as Bathory being NS, It just that Bathory introduced romanticism of the past into metal. Romanticism of the past is one thing not only the original proto fascists were into but also still part of what happens to draw in young people into far right ideologies today.



Also we might be talking about nazism being the most "evil" ideology so it makes sense for black metal bands to adopt that as a theme. We are looking at it from a 2024 perspective here. Norwegian black metal in 1993 was all about being counter culture. The other black metal scenes around that time were not nearly as into being counter culture. The Greek scene was maybe the scene the most into ancient pride but all the other scenes were imo mostly doing the same thing 1st wave bands were doing in the mid to late 80s. Except the Czechs who knows what they were really into at that time man.

Only because he have a Tiger tank

thanks nazis are not into black metal anymore, they all found a way through Discogs & now planing a brand new world of shipping policy nightmare, banned if complain, your fault if you missed it

why so much dumb mind on the web ? because here it's about zero and one, so you are or you are not, law of the strongest in absolute way, so why trying to invade art where we can't win (uh yeah not so good at creative side) ?

yes, we will have AI implemented, biomechanism and so on, one mind one though

numeric already is a perfect totalitarism, just because we can be banned for strong language or anything that fits no global politness
I am for example banned from Discogs for years now because I complain about a record change, imagine in real world I would be crucified for wrong data field filling
I've been banned from all Linux forums because I do have problems they won't recognise being true

numeric is nazi mafia all together, no need guitar work

We are already manipulated and influenced every day and woe betide us if we try to think with our heads…

fascism is not part of history but it is all around us

^ Get a load of these Beavis & Butt-head motherfuckers.

They'll also have AI write at least 100 below 10% reviews for Onwards to Golgotha indistinguishable from genuine writing so mods will be forced to accept them - on top off offering you testosterone blockers day and night.

Woe surely is upon us.


It sure took some times, but bonus points for the "anti-numeric" angle I guess. Garbled nonsense beats worn-out nationalist tropes any day, at least for me.

Damn... what a great dog whistle...

It's crazy that this kind of backward rhetoric still pops up in contexts like when we're talking about actual white supremacists. The idea that there is an actual risk (or even a significant amount of people supporting) to see the male and female genders dissapear is beyond ludicrous. The rise of the far-right and their actual presence in democraticly elected governements is far more concerning and far more real then people ever being forbidden from singing about the male and female genders. Jesus...

Jesus it’s a joke…

Why are so serious?



Cit

I’ll leave you the the millionth discussion about Nazism in metal…

Enjoy

I love it when people like this suddenly realize no one at the party is buying their crap so they do the "It was just a joke lol this party sucks anyway bye" even tho they were the ones obviously making everyone in the room tired like an energy vampire. I would hope that then they go home and do some self-reflection but we all know that's impossible because vampires don't appear in mirrors in the first place.

Jokes are supposed to be funny. What's funny about your joke?

See, he says stupid things but he doesn't actually mean those things and he is, in fact, not stupid. Now that is some classic comedy.

Call provocation…

Stupid things?

I don’t know….

And suddenly, a brief glimmer of self-awareness.

That's not really the case though, is it? Those who first opened the door for nazi politics into black metal (Burzum, Absurd, Graveland, etc) to this day are openly and unrepentantly nazis.

I think they're referring to this kind of stuff (see thanks list on the right):

I mean I'll give you there's always been a lot of this ironic namedropping but imho this kind of thing is still a couple of steps behind actually promoting nazi ideology.

i don't know this band but yes this looks like provocative Siouxsie's arms style