Romanticism — erupting in literature, art, politics, and architecture — may have been the original notion that humanity went too far into modernity, which we might describe as the society that has become successful enough to restyle the world in its own image.
The artists and thinkers who worked in this genre emphasized an appreciation for nature, a melancholy outlook instead of “happiness,” a sense of being inspired and animated by events instead of repetition, a strong affinity for the organic including nationalism, and hints of pagan morality.
Black metal fell handily into this camp, several hundred years later and after Nietzsche revitalized it by explaining it as celebration of natural variety instead of universal interchangeable parts human lives, but so did death metal, although it embraced the darker more Poe, Lovecraft, and Tolkien edge.
Metal may have in fact created postmodern Romanticism by explictly embracing power, in a Nietzsche-Redbeard-Aurelius sense, instead of trying to reinvent morality as a political construct:
4. Heavy Metal as postmodern science
Heavy Metal, as a form of art, is postmodern science. Accepting the
precepts of postmodernism and countering them with science, it has
produced a logical, anti-materialistic, Romanticist philosophy which
encourages reduction of mercy, pity, self-pity, solipsism,
sentimentalism, morality and other intellectual errors. Its culture is
a tight-knit group of people joined by an ideology transferred by sound
who have made changes in the “public culture” more prominent than the
hardcore, metal, gothic and industrial “sub-cultures.”Objectivism is seen as Romanticist in heavy metal, which by nature of
its exploration of the ambiguous, unknown and evil hopes to decode
“aesthetic,” or appearance and categorical position, as a process of
“structure,” or underlying logical conditions in material or
intellectual space. This objectivism is romantic in that it posits a
level at which humans can interact with their world wholistically
through design, and in doing so, can build themselves an externality to
reflect the inner peace they seek. (Metal does not stop there, but its
recommendations for inner peace are best decoded by practice – the
secrets will not be given away here.)
Perhaps this gives us a path for the future. Christianity is dead and diversity is dying; wealth transfer (socialism, entitlements) need to die because they are the basis of consumerism, and humanity needs to pare itself back so our environment can survive. But that is still missing something.
This species first struggled to survive, then to thrive, and now it struggles against its own narcissism. It needs a positive goal instead of lots of rules about what not to do. Until we rediscover this spirit, we are lost, but metal shows us somewhat of a path.
Tags: alt.fan.goat, objectivism, postmodernism, Romanticism
– a strong affinity for the organic including nationalism,
How is nationalism organic? The railroads created nationalism,and the postal service, guns which secured property rights against warlords and universal suffrage made it concrete. Nationalism is predominantly modernist.
– Black metal fell handily into this camp, several hundred years later a
Several hundred years later? Glaring error.
– This objectivism is romantic in that it posits a level at which humans can interact with their world holistically through design, and in doing so, can build themselves an externality to
reflect the inner peace they seek.
Essentially solipsism or mysticism. Your elevation of romanticism from aesthetics to ideology
is really just a justification of subjectivity at best and solipsism at worst.
– Its culture is a tight-knit group of people joined by an ideology transferred by sound
who have made changes in the “public culture” more prominent than the hardcore, metal, gothic and industrial “sub-cultures.”
How have metalheads made changes in the “public culture” more prominent than the others mentioned? Jim Carrey and Nic Cage are metalheads. Do you mean them? I like The Mask and Ghostrider as much as the next man but your claim seems fairly ludicrous.
May your sword stay wet like a young girl in her prime!
I’ll be nice… must… not…. troll…
Gaming is the new metal… Just follow those Path of Exile 2 channels for example, and you can see how balls-deep this thing can go. Forget metal, everything’s basically been done to death.
But gayming on the other hand, there’s no end to the possibilities, virtual reality baby!
Which album is superior between Gorgoroth’s first and Ancient’s first ?
Ancient’s first (and the EP), but the second Gorgoroth is where they shine. Almost everything afterwards felt its imprint.
Pentagram. It’s a killer album and among top 10 of the Norwegian bm albums.
I dunno, man. Nationalism always seems so forced and controlled. Like the opposite of organic, really.
Nationalism means mono-ethnicism and a focus on culture, not making money or gaining popularity. It’s widely misunderstood because people use it now to mean intense patriotism.
if you have one ethnicity and a strong love of your culture (or your culture that was) how can you not be intensely patriotic?
Since the late 50’s, liberals have attempted a cultural coup and in the process relegated any form of nationalism as “right-wing”.
Patriotism is loyalty to nation-state and political entity representing that nation-state; nationalism is loyalty to your people, genetics, culture, and ancient gods.
The cultural coup you describe was probably just WW2.
Patriotism means loving your “patria,” your fatherland. Soil and liberty, the true aristocratic ideals. Nationalism prioritizes language and blood.
I don’t believe in liberty. It’s another empty symbol. I vomit on freedom, brotherhood, and equality.
incredibly short definitions don’t you think? Ok.
“soil” is just a piece of dirt. It’s what you do with that dirt that makes it special. From people gathering on a certain piece of “soil” languages are born, developed or enhanced. The blood that toils the land gives rise to cultures and identity that one can associate with and take pride in.
Any person that loves their “fatherland” does so for more than just soil and liberty.
More than just a Robert Frost nature poem.
Nationalism and patriotism are one in the same.
Nationalism is for peasants. Patriotism is for aristocrats.
People don’t fight for “their people.” They fight for leaders.
“Patriotism” is loyalty to a political system, so no: aristocrats have loyalty to their culture, genetics, and gods. Peasants like means-over-ends logic such as political systems.
Who creates a “political system”? The elite. Not the plebs. And created based on what? Only the natural elite, the aristocrat, is capable of putting love of one’s fathers and one’s fatherland above the democratic, superstitious, and leftist priority of the blood-identity complex. “Nationalism” is essentially a democratic-revolutionary movement, based upon stirring the rabble to resist and destroy traditional aristocratic structures of society. Metal is the most aristocratic of all “popular” music forms.
Political systems arise from economic needs, and those reflect the many, not the few.
Revolutions are plebs/proles.
Nationalism is an impulse toward mono-ethnic societies instead of big government systems.
Agreed with the last sentence. Don’t agree with the username; if you are gay, be the best gay anyone can be.
The end goal of patriotism is nationalism, but the two can be severed, so we go with the inalienable one: genetics and culture.
That’s the nationalism I’m talking about, yes, not patriotism. One more strained ode to the local landscape simply because you should and imma shoot myself.
No, because it works. Nationalism bonds people with culture and genetics. Patriotism, communism, fascism, et al try to fake that with politics. It’s like making a locomotive out of Taco Bell feces.
Pointing fingers at patriotism isn’t going to make nationalism and its artists and poets less forced. I think we can talk organic when a people is enjoying their traditions unaware of its uniqueness in relation to other nations. Nationalism, on the other hand, seems painfully aware of its country’s place in an international context and more concerned with proclaiming an alleged uniqueness than actually living it.
Acrobatics. Gymnastics. Contortions.
Culture is organic because it arises from the interaction between genetics and environment.
You suddenly want to make it Christian-taboo to restore this, instead of just lying down to perish?
That’s artificial and arbitrary.
These assumptions about where I stand are pretty far off the mark.
I don’t share your need to moralize about nationalism. What works, works!
I haven’t considered this in moral terms at all. That’s on you. What works does indeed work, and culture itself is indeed organic, but I find the modern attempts (19th century onward) to be (aesthetically?) strained rather than organic. Their attempts don’t seem to work all that well.
This is moralizing: “seems forced and controlled” versus implicit political legitimacy of democracy.
As I stated, I have doubts about the various modern systems, including communism, fascism, and democracy.
However, because of what democracy has done, EVERYTHING is now “forced and controlled” because those are the remaining powers.
The point is to avoid top-heavy unstable bureaucracies like the NSDAP as well as the usual bureaucracies from democracy.
(Cont. from nationalism thread)
I’m not impressed by the modern political systems either, including democracy, but I’m talking about nationalism’s cultural expressions. I love a culture which springs naturally from the mono-ethnic, but not so much one that feels the need to proclaim its mono-ethnic, cultural or environmental excellence. Among the mono-ethnic cultural expressions I experienced in my youth, that kind of thing would always stand out as unnatural. That’s the top-heavy (or forced and controlled) I’m concerned about.
Benevolent xenophobia is the correct approach, BUT you have to keep in mind that in a democratic era, you’ve got to publicize your belief system and make it sexy or it becomes ONLY your hobby.
Politically, promoting some form of ethnic unity is perfectly valid, I agree with you on that. But when nationalist politicians enter parliament wearing folk attire, or artists produce fanciful works of a country’s historic events, politics and culture clash in a way that’s not making either of them any favors. They both appear superficial – and far from sexy.
All art and politics is superficial in the way you describe. Was Ottorino Respighi an ancient Roman? No, but “Ancient Airs and Dances” and “The Pines of Rome” remain masterpieces despite him being a disgusting wop. Were Mozart and Brahms fake for putting out Hungarian dances re-interpreted, even though neither was a quarter-Jew Hungarian? Shakespeare never even went to Italy but he wrote about it extensively (it’s unclear if he visited Denmark). All art is fake and hokey if you look at it the right way, and all politics is manipulating stupid herd animals into doing what is best for them despite their fervent Karen tantrum opposition to it. If you go smart, YOU FUCKING LOSE! There’s a reason people hate democracy and having anyone but the top 1% IQ band choose the winners in art. Is Dead Can Dance hokey? Definitely. And yet, it’s also solid. Is Laibach hokey? Certainly. Kraftwerk? Indubitably. And yet, great art comes from great hoke, in these cases.
Well, I don’t mind hokey when you put it that way. I guess I’m just allergic to mixing art and mass movements.
In my view, there is an organic movement, and then attempts to translate it into politics, which are unsteady because they are minority movements. I don’t think either of the two big ones worked that great, although Franco did OK in Spain. I’d rather we just grew up and admitted that democracy was a mistake.
Black Metal is a leftist hobby.
They hate christianity (already a dead corpse in the 90’s) but not utter a single word against islam.
Its edgy to praise evil, satan, rape, murder… But god forbid being called racist!
They love democracy (no consequences), hate the police and Mayhem gigs smell like weed. They are urban creatures.
There is no black metal or any kind of metal whithout struggle. Western society is in a confortable coma.
Metal is now just a symptom of a dying civilization.
Agreed that to be a naturalist one has to oppose:
* Abrahamism and foreign religions generally
* Internationalism, immigration, diversity, and multiculturalism
* Pacifistic means-over-ends humanistic morality
* All socialist style wealth transfer and subsidies
* Any pretenses of anarchy
* Democracy, equality, entitlements, and consumerism
So it’s good we get this started for the next generation.
“They hate christianity (already a dead corpse in the 90’s) but not utter a single word against islam.”
I guess you never heard Thor’s Hammer — Three Weeds From the Same Root.
This is an anomalous and dated reference, but I wish there were more.
Something probably needs to shift in the aesthetic of Black Metal for it to feel truly adversarial to Islam from a modern-day western cultural perspective. There’s something organic about the trajectory of metal religious commentary, from the ecstatic Christianity of Black Sabbath to it’s inversion in Black Metal, e.g. Havohej. Anti-Christian and even anti-Jewish themes have more often been portrayed as an enemy from within, a subversion of white/European culture, perpetrated by whites, using the imagery of Judeo-Christianity that has been perpetrated by whites in their own image (Celto-Nordid Jesus) as the dominant culture.
Islam is an invading force, recently consolidating power by numbers and establishing itself as a threat mostly to progressive western values, rather than traditional ones. The opposition to Islam is and should largely be a racial one. Their ideology is driven by militancy and warlike nature, which is far less alien to Black Metal than Protestantism and modern day Catholicism. On the spiritual battlefield, the war against Islam is a more difficult one to wage, compared to flogging the dead horse of Christianity. I don’t think modern metalheads are up to the task or brave enough to approach it, as nostalgia is far more comforting. This remit feels out of scope in terms of where metal has been and gone, for it to feel artistically and culturally relevant in the face of a ‘new’ enemy.
All Abrahamist religions are from the middle east. Europeans need religions from Europe.
Here is my general take. Black metal needs:
1. A new mythology. Averse Sefira was closest here but I would like something independent of the Semitic religions.
2. A positive aspiration, meaning something which makes an individual a success for being part of it.
3. Use of guitar melody and complex songs like Kraftwerk did with keyboards.
4. Opposition to the two-headed hydra of Abrahamic dualism (neoplatonism) and individualism (egalitarianism).
5. Getting away from geek culture. Death to all Redditors, death in the ovens.
6. Restoration of the classics and admitting that since 1994 there have been very few quality releases.
Islam is just Christianity when it’s angry.
Christianity is just Judaism at a photo op.
Judaism is just Zoroastrianism with an HOA.
First, lets get comments back on track. Schiller was gay and so is back metal. Hail Satan!
Second, this article is sufficiently lazy and generic to have been written by ChatGPT. Still, it must be difficult coming up with content for at least three websites.
I don’t need you analyzing my every step, telling me how to live my life. You’re shooting yourself in the foot, you’re a useless moron. The spontaneity of life is what make life interesting. Brett is the worst thing to have ever happened to the internet.
Proudly standing against the horde of hamsters who want to make it into Gilligan’s Island.
“Proudly standing against the horde of hamsters who want to make it into Gilligan’s Island.”
Or Richard Gere’s rectum.
This needs to be Pretty Woman II: Rectal Boogaloo.
I’d like to thank the Romantics for shitting up the world with pretentious, self-absorbed cry-babies, who think they’re special because they fetishise sublimity together with their stupid “pain.” Or was that the New Romantics?
Probably the same shitheads who ruined black metal with their imitation bands and “depressive suicidal black metal”. Buncha rubes I tellya.
I know a lot about art, but I don’t know what I like.
Rest in peace to a legendary filmmaker, David Lynch. The man was a visionary and his demeanor was a representation of a lost time in America where things were far simpler. His films displayed the opposite of what he represented and showed the ugliest sides of Nature. I wish more filmmakers had the talent he had. All filmmakers I generally appreciate these days stole from him. Damn shame…no more creativity just like in metal.
Tell me: what would “HEAVY METAL NATIONALISM” look like?
Not much, since it would be civic nationalism.