NSBM in black metal: an inversion
Abstract: Black metal, a musical style that was named in the 1980s but arose in the early 1990s when it became musically distinct from heavy metal, brought about those musical changes because of a belief in heroic and world-conquering ideals instead of moral, "this is good and this is bad" style ideology; in doing so it escaped the complaint-oriented mentality of popular art and became transcendent in its beauty and supremacy over the moralistic orientation of Western society as a whole. However, starting in 1998, a turnover in fanbase admitted people inculcated heavily in this mentality into the picture, causing black metal to invert its ideals and become generic heavy metal/punk music.
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The issue of NSBM in black metal will not go away. It hasn't since 1992, when some Norwegians converted warmed-over heavy metal pretending to be "evil" into a form of music with some potential. It hasn't since 1998, when a generational turnover flooded the metal genre with thousands of new fans who knew nothing of its past or ideology. Yet those fans are the ones who complain loudest about NSBM; they say they'd rather be hateful without discriminating, and while most of them admit they dislike Christianity, they are guarded about making what they see as "hateful" statements about racial separation, anti-Judaism, and the like.
Hilariously, they're part of the same problem of which they complain, which in the words of one, is "if you stamp something with a label, like Christian metal or White Power music, suddenly having that allegiance becomes job #1, and quality is job #2." This is amusing considering that if we pause a moment, this description applies to all of black metal, which once had musical integrity but now through the emulation of thousands of also-rans, has-beens and wannabes, has leapt upon the rock-n-roll bandwagon and resembles warmed-over heavy metal more than the majestic and inspiring post-death metal style of melodic trance metal that was black metal.
There is some truth to the accusations about NSBM. Most of the people in the "White Power" and white nationalist movements are more interested in being extreme and detached from any social process than they are in meaningful change; this is in a large part due to the constant demonization of the entire ideology, and its need to have members in order to stay organized. If you can't have intelligentsia and social leaders as your membership, you instead get some very angry people who will achieve nothing except purchase of mediocre CDs - but this will allow you to have funding to publish books, magazines and other literature to support your cause.
But, what's black metal's excuse?
The original genre, which espoused Romanticism, naturalism, nationalism and other ideas that have been linked during musical development throughout history, with all of its grandeur and power, is now gone. It has been replaced by three-chord bashers and novelty-oriented trend bands. "This is unique; they use a flute, and they're from Japan." Everything that the genre stood for is dead, and this is significant because before these Norwegians, "black metal" was a joke term for Satanist bands like Venom and Mercyful Fate who were selling a paltry amount of records with their primitive heavy metal/blues/rock/punk sound and outrageous non-serious lyrics. Anyone who has listened to this stuff for some time realizes that it gets old quickly, as did most of the metal of the 1980s which had a lot of anger and energy but no connection to any long-term vision, or for lack of a better word, "solution."
Black metal from Norway changed all of that. Grandeur, epic and sweeping songs, and a sense of heroic honor and justice for nature and the cultures of the ancients emerged from what was at first a few alienated kids trying to make a go of it. This was a dramatic contrast to death metal, which had grown so angry and death-obsessed that it had become a parody of itself, and the rising trends of melodic heavy metal in death metal skin and the novelty, grind/jazz/powerviolence/metalcore type stuff that labels like Relapse pump out because they realize it's interchangeable.
People today in black metal remember none of the glory; to them Darkthrone is as distant as Venom, an ancestor that sounds like everything else if you don't listen closely. The epic melodies are gone, as are the heroic aspirations; today, instead of coming forth with brave and world-conquering statements, black metal whines. "The world hurt us! We hate everyone equally!" - these statements amount to little more than self-pity, the same disease that absorbed doom metal long ago and made it very profitable for the same East Coast labels owned by Judeo-Christians.
So if we have one statement to take from this, it is thus: the label alone doesn't define the music. The "black metal" bands of today are something that rock music fans would embrace, and people without ideology would adore, but they're garbage. They've got the same level of recombinant simplistic directionless bashing as hardcore did back in 1987, before it completely collapsed, never to arise again with the same intensity, and to an experienced listener, it's clear they're related more to heavy metal of the 1970s than to the black metal of the 1990s. In other words, an evolutionary dead end.
The label, like the Judeo-Christian terms "good" and "evil," is an external absolute - a classification imposed by the perceiver (and his social group) and not generated from structural analysis of the music itself. Like later Dimmu Borgir, which essentially shuffled and regurgitated Judas Priest riffs with black metal vocals and fast drumming with keyboards, this music is trend personified, and the ultimate refutation of black metal and what made it rise above other music. In other words, the people who are joining now are drowning this music with their inexperience, their fatalistic anger, and most of all, their inability to create the same: they're the joiners, not leaders - they seem something from across a crowded room and think, I want a part of that, although for them to have invented it is impossible.
Somehow, now we come full circle to NSBM; unlike most "White Power" music before it, NSBM arose from within black metal, because all of the early black metal bands - Mayhem, Burzum, Immortal, Emperor, Darkthrone - were connected to Nationalist ideas and Naturalist ideals. It was not a political creation, and before it was named, it wasn't even aware of its own politics (that took Darkthrone's run-in with Peaceville over a hilarious condemnation of "Jewish behavior"). Thus the music surpassed its own definition and its own label. It's ironic and saddening how a denial of these same beliefs has allowed the Johnny-come-lately metal fans to flood the genre and turn it into generic rock/heavy metal by inverting those labels.
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