Session 7: Race and Identity I
Session 7: Race and Identity I
Chair: Joseph Russo
Nordic Nationalisms: Black Metal takes Norway’s Everyday Racisms to the ‘Extreme’
Laura Wiebe Taylor
Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Metal music has traditionally been the domain of young white heterosexual masculinity. While displays of sexism and misogyny are relatively common in the scene, outright homophobia and racism are less prevalent. However, during the early 1990s a small group of musicians from Norway’s emerging black metal underground demonstrated how readily the valorization of national identity and cultural heritage can transform into declarations of racial purity and Nordic superiority. The media characterized these black metallers as deviant, which made it possible to ignore the specific nature of the artists’ bigotry and its similarity to more popular and widespread, if disguised, forms of racism. Despite mainstream Norway’s denial of complicity, black metal musicians’ espousals of racism and ultranationalism cannot be understood independently of a larger geopolitical environment – one that includes not only historical Norwegian Nazism and contemporary national socialist extremism but also the recent successes of far-right politics in Norway as well as anti-immigrant sentiments circulating in the public sphere. Examined within this context, black metal’s nationalistic racism can be seen as an ‘extreme’ reflection of the xenophobia and cultural nationalism proliferating throughout Norwegian society and of the ‘everyday’ racisms these attitudes engender. This paper will discuss the racism of the early Norwegian black metal scene in terms of its intersection with nationalism and xenophobia in Norwegian society, drawing upon Marianne Gullestad’s recent anthropological studies of racism in Norway as well as scholarly and popular accounts of the Norwegian black metal underground, such as Keith Kahn-Harris’s _Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge (Oxford: Berg, 2007) and Moynihan and Søderlind’s _Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground_ (Los Angeles: Feral, 2003). My intent is to demonstrate that the racism of black metallers was not an inexplicable aberration but an unfortunate intensification and amplification of mainstream racist views.
Extreme Politics and Extreme Metal: Strange Bedfellows or Fellow Travelers?
Justin Davisson
KZSU-FM, DJ and Metal Music Director
Extreme Metal’s relation extreme politics provides for a variety of examples. From Slayer’s “Angel of Death” in the 1980’s to the Norwegian Black Metal scene in the 1990’s to the current strain of National Socialist Black Metal – extreme politics have played a role in extreme metal either aesthetically or ideologically. Such combinations are nothing new in the music world. Richard Wagner’s denouncement of Jews is widely known. Performances of his works are still very controversial in Israel. Furthermore, one can look at the 1970’s punk movement in England and its use of using Nazi imagery for shock value. Additionally, racist lyrics have in the past cropped up in hip-hop artists such as Public Enemy and Ice Cube. Heavy Metal’s own relation with such extreme attitudes has a history that has been around almost as long the genre itself.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the growth of both extreme metal and its relation to extreme politics. Extreme Metal can be defined as Thrash Metal (i.e. early Metallica, Kreator), Grindcore (Napalm Death, Pig Destroyer), Death Metal (Morbid Angel, Nile) and black metal (Darkthrone, Burzum). Extreme politics can be defined as both ultra–right (i.e. fascist and Nazi) and on some instances ultra-left wing (communist, anarchist). This will also look into whether or not certain artists are using extreme politics for mere shock or to actually endorse dangerous ideas. Furthermore, this will explore how these ideas have spread worldwide throughout the metal scene. This will also focus on the marketing of each phenomenon across the Internet. While generally considered “outsider” music, there have been numerous media stories, books, documentaries and even art exhibits on Extreme Metal. Such a sensation could explain why Varg Vikernes’ image appearing in a window of a t-shirt shop in such unexpected places such as Berkeley, California. In summary, this will touch on how and why music from the margins of society can be affected by politics from margins of society.
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