Metal Reviews

http://books.google.com/books?id=GCM2MF ... &q&f=false

Some of the writing here is monstrously pretentious, but some of the more academically-inclined here might find it interesting. Particularly the chapter "Remain True to the Earth" which is a dissection of the "negative dialectical" philosophy of Peste Noire. Pretty heavy going trying to read it.

Where did I hear about this from? Was always interested in checking it out.

And now you can!

This guy is trying to apply the Hegelian triad to Peste Noire... After a few pages the novelty wore off and I was a bit like stfu now. Worth a flick through though for political philosophy students who like black metal.

David Hume could out consume
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,

Aha! Hunter Hunt-Hendrix is in Liturgy and mentioned this in a Metalsucks interview I believe.

It's Hegel? I was hoping it was Adorno's musical theory applied to metal because when Adorno addressed popular music he talked about jazz and was just overtly racist and basically said pop culture dumbed people down enough to let the Nazis take over. However his work on classical music is brilliant according to Zizek yet I don't know enough about classical music to even gauge it

Guy seems a bit too serious about the black metal, IMO.

The guy sees transcendental black metal as a religious experience in short so yeah he takes it pretty seriously.

I didn't read it all but I don't think he mentions Hegel by name, but he compares the triad of thesis-antithesis-synthesis to the philosophy of Peste Noire... I THINK he is kinda saying that they fail because they don't actually present a legitimate antithesis, they just have this unobtainable idealised image of a glorious past that never really existed.



Black metal can never be taken too seriously! Never!

What an original criticism of conservative movements. Is it addressing Peste Noire on a political level? I always thought they were some of the metaphysical satanists like DsO.

lol. I want what he's smoking.

Well he surrounds it in words I don't really understand so that may well be a completely unfair summary. He actually uses the word "Deleuzoguattarian".

Yeah, PN have given wuite lengthy interviews about their politics... they are among the more open about it. The most interesting parts of that chapter are the quotations from Sale Famine.

Deleuzoguatarrian makes me not want to read this at all.

Do you know, that may be wise.

Though like I said, the politics of Peste Noire are quite interesting in a "you guys are wankers!" kinda way. So, maybe scroll through and read some of the Famine quotes if you're interested.

link
An article on the violence in metal through Deleuze.

Edit: Can't tell if this is weak because it's missing three pages or because post-modernism is so empty.

Aaargh...

Can you use your philosophy skills to decipher this, trapt?

I hate D&G. I had a professor who loved and wrote books on it. 'Deterritorialization' is the shifting of labor away from old and to new means of production. 'Refrain' is a chorus which resolves the chorus; they're definining it as just a basic rhythm found in nature. So music would be creating new ways to apply our efforts to resolving the verses within nature?????

Could this mean like Megadeth as deterritorializing the Cold War through creating music which shows the underbelly of the politics, i.e., nuclear annihilation?

Yeah, it could be that. I also appear to hate D&G, judging by the way I find myself thinking "oh stfu" whenever I see their name mentioned.

I read it as the refrain being the "rhythms" by which some kind of subculture functions which is then translated into something which doesn't have any concrete attachment to place in the form of music. Then it is "reterritorialised" by other people elsewhere and in the process undergoes this "becoming-other" thing. I can kind of see how that could be interestingly applied to metal vaguely but haven't read that far in it yet.

Taking territory literally to explain how different cultures and regions subsume and develop genres? I can see what you're saying. I'm getting the 'stfu' attitude right now, looking up sources on this shit.

Political activism is reterritorializing, taking territories away from capitalism. In the process of new territorializations by different groups, new objections to the order are pronounced insofar as each music develops within a small group at first. As the music grows in popularity, capitalism reterritorializes it or seeks to, deterritorializing the subversive elements, leaving them obsolete or dated if they can't work towards the dominant ideology's ends. If music can express 'rhythms' which undermine capitalism, expressing melancholy or poverty or just discontent, reflecting the subculture of blacks in the South or working class kids in industrial countries, then it becomes political, blues or punk.

I don't know if this at all relevant but it's what I've been pondering on.

So could this explain black metal emerging in America and E. Europe in very different forms when both looked to the same Norwegian 2nd Wave for inspiration?

In America (and I guess to a lesser extent, the British Isles) the identification of Norwegian 2nd wave with nature evolved into a more extreme left-wing eco-fanatic philosophy while in E. Europe this evolved into a strongly nativist "this is our land" far right wing philosophy?