Archive-name: heavy-metal/metal-as-concept-3
Posting-frequency: semimonthly Last-Modified: 16-Mar-2006 See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge 2.3.2 Influences In addition to having core tenets of belief, metal also has a long heritage of influences whose ideas or responses to the same have provided foundational, contextual material regarding the time and space of the genre's evolution (background). 2.3.2.1 Ideologies Ideologies are united by a belief in the human ability to better its existence, and an understated logicality in which some form of rationalism is needed for coherence with the collective. 2.3.2.1 Rationalism Can be summed up easily with the idea that a systematic process of logical thought will provide the germinal material for a practical solution or creative contribution even in a lawless and chaotic natural context. Looming out of the advancements in theory of Europe after the Renaissance, Rationalism was a restatement of a historically consistent theme in human thought which underscored the Scientific Method, which had recently be used by the same European empires to provide the basis for an industrial revolution. 2.3.2.2 Autonomism Anarchy, or the political state in which there is no leadership and the ideological state in which no leadership is wanted, decayed from its own politicism and the inherent materialist, power-control structure to politics. Fading at the same time as punk rock, anarchist culture produced believers in autonomism, a philosophy in which the independence of all beings is the highest goal, and each being is seeking a way out of a natural state of confusion into a self-definitional state after which comes greater freedom of intellect. 2.3.2.3 Existentialism A very alcoholic writer once summed up Existentialism with the simple switch, "Existence before Essence"; however, this provides a great place to start a context comparison between Existentialism and the prevailing flavor of Utilitarian logic prevailing at the time. Christianity and its forefather Judaism believed in an inherent and inexorable logic to a world controlled from another system of logic by an omnipotent "god", a situation in which one's moral "essence" would be connected to one's creation off-camera by an omnipresence. Existentialism freed the human to admit a developing consciousness, and thus to self-refine according to where one found joy. Existentialism was heavily influenced by transcendentalists who in turn had been inspired by the Romanticists before them, and carried with it the revolution of philosophy in the age of the twilit gods: a further science of spiritual insight so that a wide range of individuals could perceive and think dissimilarly but remain unified by abstract logical agreements. 2.3.2.4 Buddhism The evolution of eastern religion from a caste system into a peaceful, self-empowering religion, Buddhism is an example of intense "spiritual technology" from which participants find an increasing clarity in perception and valuation. Among its many core concepts are the ideas of meditative calm, enhanced perception, ego-reduction, self-abstraction and parallel views of reality. 2.3.2.5 Classicism Classicism is a study and belief in the older civilizations in the western world such as the Romans, Greeks, Scandinavians, Sumerians and Egyptians, all of whom had legal systems, some technology, learning, and a lack of morality in their belief structures. Their gods were personalities who represented recombinant elements in nature, combining in stories which displayed a patterning of the troubled souls of ancient peoples. These societies perished, some might say, from their own success: they got large without the ability to control that largeness, and so relapsed into anarchy and death. 2.3.2.6 Structuralism Structuralist philosophies have existed for some time but a recent resurgence came after the logical rejection in Dada and other collagist philosophies which sought to eliminate a meaning not inherent in life through a randomness calibrated to defeat intellectual analysis. Structuralism is an evolution of Rationalism to the next level, in a technological age where any problem is a design issue, to be solved by changing the structure of the object(s) or process(es) based on logical deductions and corresponding creative outpouring. 2.3.2.7 Transcendentalist Transcendentalist thought has been part of many philosophies and will hopefully never go away, because it's a positive and universal view of life. Such scientific mystics as Emerson who found a deeply personal connection to nature and a complex beauty in the larger system of life established Transcendentalism as an idea in art and philosophy, but transcendentalist ideals are also common to Buddhism, Romanticism and Existential thought. 2.3.2.2 Thinkers As influential as ideologies were and are, they often consist of choices made in thoughtful response to the ideas presented by any number of writers or thinkers or performers. Hence this listing. 2.3.3.2.2.1 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche Born into a religious family, young Nietzsche showed a gift for scholarship and became successful enough that, by his early twenties, he held a professorship at a prestigious university teaching philology, or the study of the evolution of meaning through language, and ancient Greek tragedic theatre. Over the course of the next thirty years he bashed out multiple treatises on philosophy which were innovative, forceful, articulate, artistic and honest, granting them eventual approval with a worldwide audience. Nietzsche's philosophies centered around existential valuation, objectivism, and freedom from the mental weakness of morality as expressed in Judaism and Christianity. His works as a result promoted the predator over the prey, rejected pity and guilt, and affirmed a physical existential experience as a fundamental anchor of the self to world. To this day he is not widely understood, and his works are known for having inaugurated in the postmodern era, a humanity after facing the stark naked empty reality of its existence. 2.3.3.2.2.2 Immanuel Kant A strict and diligent philosopher, Kant was nonetheless marked by the inconsistency and often evasion of his thought; led by the developing ideas he had toward certain conclusions, he would equivocate where they conflicted with fundamental ideals of his Christianity, leading to some "hypothetical" conclusions used to wrap up the whole of his philosophy. That aside, Kant laid down the first epistemological view of modern philosophy and build a core structure of philosophical concepts and the boundaries of knowledge which remains useful today. His work in technical philosophy, especially moral philosophy, enabled him to clearly define the lines which would become battlefields in the future of 20th century philosophy. His importance to metal musicians comes mostly through his identification of the "perceptual filter," or a mask of association through memory which we as thinking beings use to reduce the complexity of external reality through tokenization. As metal journeys further into the postmodern, the model of strict consciousness which Kant developed becomes more and more useful in deconstructing reaction to limitless chaos. 2.3.3.2.2.3 J.R.R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was a professor of the English language at Oxford during the first half of the twentieth century, infusing his fascination with Germanic themes of honor and ancient mythology into a fantasy series involving a "middle earth" where magic and science were one. His works, which emphasized the journey over the end result, and a sense of personal integrity over external morality, are the third most popular cause of Hessianism, after Dungeons & Dragons and marijuana. 2.3.3.2.2.4 Jim Morrison James Douglas Morrison was born to a father who was an Admiral in the U.S. Navy, served under a classicist society of the 1950s, and came into his own at film school in the early to middle 1960s in Los Angeles, California. His subsequent project, the Doors, became the first truly dark rock n roll/pop band and laid down many thematic and musical paradigms metal bands would later reference in their innovation. 2.3.3.2.2.5 Adolf Hitler Like this man needs a biographical sketch - everyone knows the name "Hitler" and most are heavily indoctrinated to fear it, although few - even his celebrators - understand much of his philosophy. As an articulate and intelligent youth in Austria of the late 1800s, Hitler declared his will to become an artist and set forth to become such, surviving rejection from various schools and eventually, from the monetary machine that was society. Lingering in the city where he had found himself first on that path, Hitler as an offshoot of his learning process became involved in politics, in which he cofounded the most extreme party ever to be popular in a European nation: the National Socialist Democractic Worker's Party, or NSDAP. His philosophies rested on a concept of fulfillment of will, finding meaning beyond nothingness, and an absolute sense of love for environment, history, and self. Even after the long-fought and bloody defeat of the German nation and Hitler's subsequent suicide and cremation, his legend lives on in several thousand National Socialist movements active worldwide, as well as in recent metal bands. Metal bands paying tribute (but not necessarily allegiance) to Hitler through use of symbols, lyrics and/or public statements: Motorhead Slayer Bathory Burzum Darkthrone Metal bands identifying themselves as National Socialist: Graveland Legion of Doom Veles This covers the "classic" era of black metal. For more information on Nazi metal bands, try: http://www.nsbm.org/ Site devoted to Nazi metal. http://www.splcenter.org/ Site devoted to hating Nazi metal. 2.3.3.2.2.6 William S. Burroughs The infamous writer of "Naked Lunch," William S. Burroughs, is known as much for his heroin addiction as for his contributions to literature, including what might be called the first truly postmodern novel in "Naked Lunch." However, his contributions were vast, starting with his "cut up" style of literature which would weave a complexity of connections between granular sections of text randomly recontextualized in a chronological narrative. The philosophies of individual freedom, control, darkness and politics contained within "Naked Lunch" and subsequent works ("The Nova Express","The Ticket that Exploded","Cities of the Red Night") provided an unfathomably universalist basis to metallion rejection of authority, conformity, and materialist aesthetics. 2.3.3.2.2.7 William Blake One of the first transcendental poets to articulate his ideas in a structured metaphorology designed to transcend the calcification of Christianity, Blake spoke of sensual and intellectual excess as salvation for the soul and invented a form of morality based in joy which used its romanticism as a basis for its respect and fascination with life. Blake's detailed exposures of human reason and fear at its most primal and yet most symbolologic delivered a scientific mysticism to those who came after him (including Jim Morrison and William S Burroughs!) a shadow in which motion was possible, a darkness which mostly concealed a limitless beauty of freedom. 2.3.3.2.2.8 Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft Writer of horror and other imaginative tales, the lurid and detail-oriented Poe captured complete control of the attention of his readers through shaped, articulated and very controlled words. Similarly, Lovecraft developed mythologies from simple brutality and built a spiritual structure of a phenomenology of evil from the myths of Ancient Sumeria combined with his perceptions of pre-religious darkness and fear. Together these writers contributed much of the basis of gore and horror and adventure in fantasy that pervades metal in the current time. 2.3.3.2.2.9 Ralph Waldo Emerson An American thinker and writer, R.W. Emerson remains most famous for his philosophies surrounding transcendentalism, or the belief that one can overcome limitations and error in life through enlightened, spiritual, meta-conscious thinking. He asserted that redemption could be found only in one's own soul and intuition, and encouraged those who were inspired by his words to turn back toward nature and introspection instead of relying on an increasingly externalized society. 2.3.3.2.2.A John Milton An English minister and poet, John Milton conceived and wrote the epic poem, "Paradise Lost," in which Satan is portrayed as a beautiful angel who rejects servitude in heaven and is exiled in flame, only to learn how to love the barren but self-decisional realm of Hell. 2.3.3.2.2.B Metal Historical list of bands important to ideological development of the genre as a whole, and why they were important. - Black Sabbath - Iron Maiden - Judas Priest - Motorhead - Metallica - Hellhammer - Bathory - Slayer - Morbid Angel - Suffocation - Entombed - Darkthrone - Burzum 2.3.2.3 Counterculture Starting in the late 40s American society slowly began to fragment after the pragmatism of focus on supremacy that had been the war effort which made the country a superpower had worn itself down in the contradiction of positivity and planning for nuclear warfare. Partially because of the intense political polarization along lines of materialistic duality (capitalist/communist) the social structure had become fascist and so dissenters were alienated, dropout characters who had to write their own book of survival. 2.3.2.3.1 Hippie As Black Sabbath grew into what it would be the hippie movement was carrying through the aftermotions of flowering in order to fully sell out, having peaked at perhaps a 1967-68 frame in which it expressed its ideology and desires. Hippies were hedonistic, semi-naturalist, anti-material-value, open to dynamic or chaotic action and peaceful/stoned as a collective character trait. 2.3.3.1.5 Beat In the late 50s and early 60s as American culture ground itself further into commercial uniformity and categorical boundariededness another subculture grew up which addressed the existential loss of American culture with am embrace of the impermanent, the powerless, the divinely mundane, in an effort to spread the word of value in life. Their fascination with the distorted, macabre and placeless, drifting existence which metaphorizes the modern lack of groundedness expressed a subconscious fear of the times which would precipitate coming social unrest. 2.3.3.3.3 Biker As far as everyone can tell a universal culture, bikers are the Gypsys of the industrial age with a nomadic existence outside of economic planning and therefore responsibility and reactivity. The party keeps rolling and the nihilism of the road is welcomed as it keeps all things from having meaning and a debt associated with their maintenance. 2.3.3.1.6 Punk Punk culture rebelled against the status quo with a total rejection of value and a nihilistic embrace of all that is worthless or destructive. It rejected materialism with a pragmatism of homelessness. A sense of romanticism founded a wandering nihilism, a violent pointlessness and a refusal to accept anything at face value. Since it had been taken to such extremes, it had become a characterizable appearance and sound which was soon cloned, promoted, budgeted, destroyed. 2.3.3.1.7 Horror Films The genre of horror films, despite on its commercial end having some of the stupidest material ever produced on celluloid calling it home, also communicates deeply with the unconscious mind through imagery of possession and entrapment by an unidentifiable but pervasive evil. Its description of evil, and its portrayal of human panic in reaction to it, won the horror film genre a place in the hearts of many Hessians. 2.3.3.1.8 Drugs No study of counterculture is complete without drug culture, which by its absence of any fundamental ideology guarantees its perpetuation through generations of thought and flesh, to illustrate how power and authority move through a simple model of supply and demand. We can blame W.S. Burroughs and Aldous Huxley for this. Once again, however, a metaphorology of connections between the physical and the mental. 2.3.3.1.9 Fascism Extreme thought of all kinds has left an impression on metal intellectuals, but none have had quite the enduring effect or effective symbology of fascism, especially the subset emerging in the emerging German-Austrian blood nation of the early 1940s. Its dedication to ideology, its naturalism, but most of all - its design sensibilities, structural fluency, and extreme goals - appeal to the sentiment which arises from seeing freedom possible in a world of people who would rather be trapped; from this anger arises. The predominant icon of self-entrapment would be Judeo-Christianity, the materialist philosophy behind western morality and law that many blame for recurring problems with social honesty and self-articulation. The average person is degenerated by the same Judeo-Christianity leaving him incapable of reasoning on a higher level at all. If anybody talks bad about the Jews, our world's prejudiced sub-humanity automatically stamp him as the "Nazi-scum" or a "prejudiced-fuck" and a "racist." The average person does not even realize what the Jews are up to. Simply read the bible (2 Mos 19:5, 5 Mos 6:10-19; 1-3, 16-24;20:10-17) and see for yourselves. What is more racial than to claim to be "God's chosen people"? So who is the real racists? - Varg Vikernes, http://www.burzum.com/ 2.3.4 Methods What differentiates art from most normal forms of communication is that art is not a referential causality structure but a disconnected, purely abstract form of expression in which reality is left as interpretation and knowledge of the reader. It is a form of immortality not for the author but for the experiential language with which it expresses its time, place, and transcendence thereof. Some argue that art can possibly be dogmatic, but for that to occur, art loses its elegance as a metaphor and becomes a command, which inevitably boils it down to someone telling someone else "to be" something. Control. Art is anti-control. Throughout the ages it has led the evolution of society with visions of new ideas that appeal more to the subconscious mind than the constant flow of ideas from the articulative/conscious mind, allowing it to transcend time and place and circumstance to communicate an ideal. Pure aesthetics leads to almost instant boredom in that it has no placement beyond the immediacy and thus creates a void in time in which amusement was achieved, rather than a transfer of data; this is solipsistic to both parties and results in an expectation of null communication, a broken connection rather than some new idea/creation. "How do you account for the vision of the man possessed on stage, and the man sitting before me? We are quite the opposite to what is personified on stage. Every band has it's own way of dealing with shit and if they play this kind of music, or even just any extreme music, maybe they are like that full time, maybe not. Like we always say, people like Rick Astley are probably the biggest wankers in the world. They probably come off stage, and wanna kill kids. With us, its the contrary, on stage we are executing the whole other persona, in regular social conditions we are pretty straight forward." - Lemmy Kilmister, Motorhead As much as any other form of expression has a purpose, art does: to communicate that which is out of range for other forms of known interaction. In art the surreal can be real and the unstated the visually unavoidable, so there is a tendency to explore our minds with a rendering engine of mnetal projection. Metal uses this projection to communicate a bond to existence outside of social conditioning and materialism, creating an ideology of freedom and chaotic possibility which by accepting death instills more hope than those who deny darkness. After the industrial age, we in the information age look to the next age, when we've as a species had some time to play with our new toys. In the information age, the highly-trained are valued; in the post-information age, the highly intuitive and powerfully analytic at an organic level are intensely valued. When machines have handled the mundane, pure thought will reign, if humanity does not suicide first. 2.3.4.1 Metaphor Metaphor is the primary expression of abstract communication, by demanding that the user inference a commonality between two events and by that, to understand the "device" of the metaphor: how it functions as a truth for a wide variety of input or context, and can take on an ironic meaning the closer one comes to a full expression of understanding its "truths": where its implication of correspondence between two objects events methods is an abstract match and there is information created by knowledge of the similar workings of both entities. 2.3.4.1.1 metapatterning: comparing event to whole Metaphor expands a mundane thing into a much larger one, in many usages. Such a thing happens in metal, where some of the most mundane activities on earth - partying, mass slaughter - stand as metaphor for existential doubt and resurrection overside the void. These metaphors work both ways and so often in metal an ancient legend is a form of diagnosis for the current context of a work's reception. (Artists live two lives; before they are discovered, they are able to create and project, and, when they are known: when they address a waiting audience with an evolving concept of worldview and intellectual language.) 2.3.4.1.2 subconscious communication Metaphor often "feels" right to individuals because what it expresses is beneath the level visible by their articulative mind, thus can be more complex than what ordinary language, visual information or sound can possess. The metaphorology of journeys, death, decay, apocalypse, winter, death, war, and genocide in metal are subconscious manipulations of our sense of reality and the future it holds. 2.3.4.1.3 Post-quantitative Symbology The Judeo-Christian revolution in western thought brought with it great power because its theology and worldview/theodicy supported the idea of quantitative symbology, which worked around ages-old prohibitions on division of existence. However, the tradition of morality and character from which Judeo-Christianity descended is fundamentally material, and so it is no surprise that this foundational religious theory of western thought after its invasion in 1100 AD has supported the largest expansion in material wealth and mechanical structure in history. As anything ages however it approaches the time in which its foundational principles need expansion and as such this age is approaching for material aesthetics (morality) as a philosophical doctrine, with whatever replaces it facing a need for coherence in chaos and post-dystopic society. Metaphor provides an insight to this kind of thinking by associating a matrix of ideas with a central narrative as a method of explaining options and situational function to anyone willing to accept an idea and manipulate it. 2.3.4.2 Metacognitive thinking The ideology and metaphorology of metal stresses a larger view of existence than the immediate and as such produces thinking about the nature of thinking as a means of interpreting the highly abstract. 2.3.4.2.1 Fantasies Romanticism in metal stresses fantasies not of the sexual but mythological or mystical nature, an emphasis on creativity through a journey whose structure is known. A greater metaphor is seen for existence in which creativity and adventurousness are the traits which survive the filtering of reality's demands. 2.3.4.2.2 Structure Fundamentally based in melody rather than harmony as most rock music is and interpreting that idea through multiple metacognitive worldviews/metaphysics/generations allows metal to express structure 2.3.4.2.3 Autonomism Since a metaphor is abstract, it must be interpreted personally and in context, a case in which it will apply objectively as it always has through a translation of one's application of the idea to circumstance. GIGO. 2.3.4.2.4 Will To explore a metaphor, one must will to do so. It is not an accidental process. There are more metalbands with complex mythologies than one might expect; some highlights: Morbid Angel, Immortal, Darkthrone. 2.3.4.2.5 Inertia A martial art is the study of converting energy from an intended percussive move to a continuous kinetic move, deflecting violence while tiring the opponent while ready to strike. 2.3.4.3 Postmodernism A movement of reflection for society as it entered its twentieth century development phase of technological industrialism, a method of analysis known as postmodernism arose as a new style of modernism which reaffirmed traditional goals of rationalism, structuralism, and transcendental metaphysics but to this added the realizations of new interpretations in philosophy and physics (Nietzsche and Einstein) as a means of explaining the seeming isolation of being human when one is caught in a matrix of powerful information which is dead to the artificial arbitrary network of values society imposes for the sake of control. Postmodernism emphasizes an intergration of many different ideas into one, articulation of the subjective persona behind authorship, an aesthetic which in order to keep itself pure inverts itself into the unmanageable, and an emphasis on structure behind events rather than events themselves. Metal manifests this to an absurd degree with its paranoid obsession with the occult and the fundamental alignment of different personalities of power. 2.3.4.3.1 Aesthetic The constant distortion, grittiness, and organic structures of death metal and black metal would appeal to many postmodernists, as would the comedic antics of exaggeratedly "evil" black metallers who are reflected back to their audience a mockery of evil to illustrate how the dichotomy is false, that there is only thought and chaos. Taming chaos is a mystical science, so mysticism is portrayed through minimalistic structures which shift dynamically to demonstrate a nihilistic yet existential worldview of exploration and growth (as patterns in the music modulate into structures of great spaciousness). Bands that are evidently postmodern: Morbid Angel, Darkthrone, Suffocation, Slayer, Demilich, Entombed, Hellhammer, Burzum. Bands that are evidently modern: Metallica, Testament, Exodus, DRI, COC. Bands that are romantics: Therion, Celtic Frost, Cemetary, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden. 2.3.4.3.2 Structure Structural emphasis in metal reflects a design that is aware of chaos and how to channel it, indicating a larger awareness than categorical or fixed data structures which deliberately finds ways to articulate musical ideas at more abstract, nihilistic, and minimalistic levels. It removes metal from the recombinant world of rock, based around the scale of fixed intervals, and allows chromatic experimentation for true pantonality. 2.3.4.3.3 Artistry Usage of the techniques of art to new dimensions of nihilistic exploration, even addressing the relationship of art to viewer/hearer, postmodern works often experiment with gritty production values, strange or surreal tones, absurdist and extremist structuralism. All of these apply to metal from Slayer onwards; black metal and death metal owe their origin to this idea break, which moved metal from its classicist hearbroken nihilist motivations to a more scientific and abstract, dissonant response to the decay of human society into suicide. 2.3.4.3.4 Philosophy A pervasive doubt and feeling of human helplessness against the limits of perception permeated the atmosphere that birthed postmodernism, in which a morbid fascination with the conventionalized implications of Nietzsche had the bean-counting sheep of society in terror. He removed a structure they found reasonable, and as a result, the trauma resulted in much dramatics before postmodernists explained the more positive side of Nietzsche: if one understands him as a whole, not much has changed in his view of existence from the status quo, but a method of perceiving truth - a clearer one. His innovations, like those of the Buddhists, were primarily used to invent a spiritual technology for perceiving the nihilistic roots of a chaotic nature, avoiding superstition and seeking a mysticism rooted in the logic of existential value. Second-level interpretations of Nietzschean morality analysis, power ethics and the resulting desire for existential meaning can be found in such works as "Naked Lunch" by William S. Burroughs, Ulysses by James Joyce (who is arguably a modern), The Sound and the Fury from William Faulkner and "Hell Awaits" by Slayer - and all metal afterwards. 2.3.4.3.5 Presence In much the same way as its invocation of the author removes a barrier imposed by a media society, postmodernism's presence as dogma (post-dogma? meta-dogma?) in the active lives of its adherents contributes to a trickle-down effect not only through the politics and personal choices of that individual, but through the lives of others who look up to that individual if that individual "succeeds" in some appreciable way. 2.3.4.4 Cultural individualism One theory of self-identity suggests that one's self identity should be relegated to those things literally which are pleasures of the earth and her diversity itself, but this leads to an unsettling suggestion of wholesome values unless you couple it with intense drug use. Especially in the last decade, intense culturalism has permeated metal, some of it celebrating the cultures now scorned for previous decades of nationalist activity. 2.3.4.4.1 Identity In a Hessian ideological state, identity is relegated to a simple statement of function that is unconnected to being. Most normals will say, "I am a fry cook," or whatever the occurrence of employment might be, but a Hessian would probably say, "I'm here... I was somewhere else, but now I'm here, and I'm thinking about..." in an encounter that might likely end up involving drug use. 2.3.4.4.2 Ideology The concept of ideology as a product of individual differentiation, e.g. according to most psychological models as a level of development of personality and intellect, is taken for granted in the Hessian community. Where in mainstream society to have political values other than "don't rock the boat" is as it has been through all of history taboo, Hessians carry a variety of extremisms, but any Hessian who has been thinking about the music for a while and letting it get into his/her blood will see the presence of ideological values in the discipline, compassion and personal relevance of such music. It's interpretive artistic spirituality as culture. 2.3.4.4.3 Politics Politics are the physical incarnation of one's metaphysical and/or ideological structure. So one acts out what one feels. Extremist politics in the postmodern society reject society, conventional values, morality, and ideas of punitivism, control, authority and hierarchy. Most Hessian are anti-capital, but most are also anti-communistic. They are pro-"A really new way of doing things" in a world that promises new innovation and delivers it under the same old terms. 2.3.4.4.4 Spiritualism Through its metaphorical and systemic qualities, metal is mystically inclined as much as it is by its romantic qualities, if not more. The connection is a pragmatic attitude to life as something that is beautiful not through mystery but experience, the evolving construct of information that is one's life. Such a metaphysical view often requires an address of spiritualism to explain its back-end significance, e.g. why such a discipline was conceived. In the age of the end of history, however, any source of hope is viewed suspiciously as spiritual, since spiritualism remains one of the few unquantified and hence vastly oversold commodities on the planet. 2.3.4.4.5 History With Black Sabbath, a postmodernist inversion was reified as the subtle contextual morbidity and paranoid fear of an increasingly technological society. The bomb - and then, computers - 1984? Terror in the minds of the people at this, as transmuted through music, became a powerful method of channeling alienation. The morbidity within was expressed without, allowing the within to leave what was external there and to move on its own, creating a space of inner peace in which ambition could foment. Henceforth there have been plenty of morbid metal bands, from Hellhammer to Morbid Angel to Darkthrone to Ildjarn. 2.3.5 Events 2.3.5.1 Atomic bomb 2.3.5.1 In 1945, two atomic weapons were detonated over large Japanese cities, ending WWII in the pacific, setting the stage for the evolution of human power structures after the war ended. The next forty-five years were a precarious balance between two warriors nations who fought only through proxy, never quite willing to invoke their main means of defense, the nuclear weapon. True paranoia sunk into a populace too patriotic to admit it, giving the 1950s a quaint appearance to us now. 2.3.5.2 Viet Nam When Black Sabbath laid down the foundations for metal in 1969, not only was the world still at nuclear standoff but also, the war in Viet Nam was going badly for the Amerikans. Instability was present but not discussed as to do so was to undermine the war effort which had never ended. For some, the corporate thematics to the execution and bureaucratic nature of the war in Viet Nam raised the disturbing notion that underneath the "reasons why" for the war which people acknowledged at a surface level of social interaction, there was an insidious, materialistic truth. In 1972, Thomas Pynchon wrote a book called "Gravity's Rainbow" centered around this idea. 2.3.5.3 Reaganification A return to the righteousness of the 1950s, in which a justification of threat had been replaced by ultrasimplification of politics in which material ethics prevailed over ideology which was by its nature perverse, since it did not accept the bounty of material as its ideological goal. This was probably the most destructive period in American history: when she highjacked her own standards to push brutally forward in a political struggle with no clear outcome. However, the social changes brought about in this era were, like everything else in the 1980s, a trend and so they flitted through the viewfinder of history for several seconds before being replaced by the newest morph. 2.3.5.3 End of Cold War After the cold war ended, a great relief permeated the period of instability following the interruption of the balance of hegemony while inside itself, the politicized portion of western thought forgot about most foreign policy decisions. The warfront excess flooded society and soon social control turned inward during an inreasing war on drugs and a paranoid age of technological integration of citizenship information. However, the main delineation for this period is the vast apathy. There is nothing left to prove, or do. We're out of the hot water but we're still insane. So the greatest tension here is the entropy of humanity slowing down for death. 2.3.5.4 Internet When the Internet connected the world, what we saw was that technology was making our lives remarkably similar in different parts of the world. The unification of information also gave one a greater view of the human behavioral spectrum as a whole, revealing some of the greatest insanity. Also, the Internet is living proof of the postmodern theory of subtext, since the faceplate always talks about customer service but the reality is that everyone wants to download porn discretely. 2.3.5.5 Millenium The coming of hte millenial change has forced neurosis into apathy, creating a tension of unreality as the date hovers near. Mass destruction fear is our public terror, but our private fear is that it will not occur - thus dooming us to the same apathetic existence we have known in the presence of technology, where all basic problems are solved and the consequent need for further space has us feeding on ourselves. This illusionary cycle weighs heavily on our minds as the guilt of our lack of achievement weighs heavily at the second millenium marker. 2.4 Applicability "And so what the hell does any of this have to do with anything?" Well I'll tell ya. Subculture is important, because originally it was the resistance to a dominant attitude that determined reality through the expectancy in the human factors at all levels, and because as Amerikan advertising agencies have increasing pitched the hipness of the subculture, subculture itself has moved away because of its ideological separation from the main culture. In the age of ideas, we're seeing a philosophical split and in the case of metal, a consistent one, which makes it worth observing. 2.4.1 Musically The influence of metal mainly spread to rock music, where its techniques and tones are being practiced in other packaging. 2.4.1.1 Heavy music The principles of detuning and using low E power chords have made it into maistream music, a Black Sabbath innovation worn into mainstream culture by countless doom and speed metal bands. 2.4.1.2 Psychedelic/ambient The sense of melody, and the breakdown of melody into technologically specialized pieces, is something shared between metal music and ambient/electronica, and psychedelic music shares with metal its epic structures and demanding melodic regimen. 2.4.1.3 Experimental violent The rhythms and power chord geometries of metal have fascinated many experimental musicians who have used them to create extreme influences in varying genres. 2.4.1.4 Grunge The basic model patterns of grunge are based on the work of Black Sabbath in re-arranging the pentatonic scale for their own usage. 2.4.2 Aesthetically In the abstract, aesthetics have as a whole been influenced by the ideas in metal: distortion, dirt, ambiguity, nihilism. Other systems of people were at work on similar ideas as well, but this area is where metal, through its network of fans from whom the intelligent are often successful, distributed valuable information and ideas. 2.4.2.1 Degraded The abraded or washed-out textures of jeans in the 80s were a precursor to the higher-grade graphics of the next generation, where worn-out or grainy, gritty surfaces were part of the aesthetic that inverted the conditions of its own slick, context-less appearance. 2.4.2.2 Stark The dynamicism inherent in the presence of metal, and its structural coherence, demonstrate a stark or shocking aesthetic which also is at work with current designers of visual media. 2.4.2.3 Structural When an aesthetic seeks to outdo itself, it goes to the next level: intense structuralism, which such as the kind used in metal can be used to create a vaster depth of emotional connection through its literality and universality. Metal's structuralism has influenced radio rock in the 90s more than any other attribute of any other genre. 2.4.3 Philosophically Philosophically metal has been the only major underground movement to tackle a technical philosophy of existence and spirituality, and has contributed through its public image an association with hedonism and spirited off-the-cuff living. 2.4.3.1 Hedonism The excesses of metal players and fans are well known, spreading the virus of divisiveness between drug takers and others. 2.4.3.2 Nihilism The cold-eyed stare with which metal reduces the negative or ambiguous in life to null or little value gives it the same epic power as the raw literality of its characters during a journey. 2.4.3.3 Romanticism The daring Romeo and Juliet style rapiership with the darkness of reality and its intensity gives metal a powerful Romantic background. 2.4.3.4 Politics Politically more people are electing to follow metal lifestyles, meaning that fewer moral and more logical decisions are going into politics. 2.4.3.5 evil mysticism As the public forefront of popular culture's fascination with evil, metal music is almost an ikon for Satan himself. People often ask why metal is fascinated with evil and has been since its inception in Black Sabbath, who were formed partially to enable their occult beliefs a forum. The answers perhaps lie in the definitions of romanticism and nihilism coming together for a dark but empowering worldwide: as if inspired by Dionysius, the crafty god of wine of the Greek era, or by Fenris, the wolf of apocalypse of the Norse, metal bands have rejected order in favor of chaos and hedonism. The hedonism is explainable to the materialistic parametrics of nihilism combined with the passion and life-seeking sensuality of romanticism, and the chaos is the midnight tempest which buffets away the weak and encourages autonomy and independent direction in those who would survive. Humanity's path toward apocalypse has made even more trenchant these views, and consequently varying interpretations of evil exist in metal today. Some have even taken this farther, to associate the Bacchus/Dionysius spirit of mind with its Nietzschean metaphor of the brave, independent, and analytical yet impassioned artist struggling in a world of sleepers. I have said too much and will leave it there. "Watch as flowers decay On cryptic life that died The wisdom of the wizards Is only a neurtured lie Black knights of Hell's domain Walk upon the dead Satanas sits upon The blood on which he feeds" - Slayer, "Die by the Sword" (Show No Mercy) 2.4.3.5.1 Satanism To discuss the topic as briefly as possible, several popular types of satanists and their beliefs include: - LaVey satanists: They use The_Satanic_Bible as an inspiration or basis for their belief system, which is closely related to humanism. They do not necessarily believe in the existance of supernatural figures, including god and satan, and believe that worshipping these imaginary figures does no good and is degrading. A good reference on this Satanism is The_Satanic_Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey. - "Hollywood" Satanists: This group uses a combination of the name Satan, Satanic worship, Satanic rituals, and Satanic references to shock and offend those who buy into the "Satan is evil" that mainstream groups/cults have propagated. They often are poorly educated in the occult and more well studied occultists will reveal errors and lack of knowledge in their statements on Satanism. - Devil-worshippers: There are few, if any, of these groups in Satanism. Christians and Jews would like you to believe otherwise. You are advised to not take statements from their religious opposition as truth, when it is far more likely to be a "straw man" argument, where a biased mockup of your beliefs is created and then skewered for its artificial extremity. - Gnostic/Transcendental Satanists: These apply the principles of "evil" in a very distributed and analytical, abstract method, coming up with a peaceful but nihilistic philosophy that is terrifying to normal people but highly sensible. "It's a concept album about what once was before the light took us and we rode into the castle of the dream. Into emptiness. It's something like; beware the Christian light, it will take you away into degeneracy and nothingness. What others call light I call darkness. Seek the darkness and hell and you will find nothing but evolution." - Varg Vikernes, varg@burzum.com "Cursed Black magic night We've been struck down Down in this Hell Spells surround me day and night Stricken by the force of evil light The force of evil light" - Slayer, "Black Magic" (Show No Mercy) 2.4.4 Decryptically Metal, like most Postmodern art, is an experience and not a medium. Hence there are several layers which must be removed from their compacted form, "decrypted" and served up to the reader by some part of the inner brain. This enables the music to survive longer before being aesthetically ripped off. 2.4.4.1 Experiential Conception of Art The lyrics, culture and music of heavy metal warriors is heavily encrypted within experiential reference and heavily technological language, but like many other genres from this period it does provide a literal level, and a meta-level, to all three facets of its art. 2.4.4.2 Existential Gateway to Darkness To decrypt it is to understand it and be open to virus Metal's virus comes wrapped in the appearance of death, meaning that where there is a weakness to death, it equalizes and penetrates. The morbidity, paranoia, passion and politics of metal over the years has shown a passage by which one accepts death, and the nihilistic chaos of material reality, and in doing so lays down the foundation for transcending it. To do that is to become a gleeful nihilist; a postmodern nihilist is a "post-nihilist" One would transcend material with nihilism, and then transcend nihilism with its natural self-reduction: a "post-nihilist" would be one who could nihilistically view human existence and see within it a space for creativity, joyful in the emptiness and impermanence of reality. Metal, by introducing structure and spirituality and Romanticist individualism and nihilism, issues to its listeners a challenge to explore it deeper and bond with what causes it to be, rather than what it "is." "Falsified Spirits Farther They Fall Soon They Will Join Us In Hell See The Sky Burning The Gates Are Ablaze Satan Waits Eager To Merge." - Slayer ================================================================ (c) Copyright 1994-2006 Hessian Studies Center @ www.hessian.or User Contributions:
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