Theory

"All music is the same." - Paul Ledney (Profanatica, Havohej, Incantation, Revenant,
Contravisti)
Heavy metal music uses the same music theory that propels all Western music: the diatonic
scale and its harmony, the same rhythmic divisions and calibration, and the same
instrumentation. Rock music arose from polyglot influences; heavy metal injected Modernist
classical via horror movie soundtracks and then in the next generation stripped down
composition to the barest elements and then built it up again into a language of its own. Thus
much like rock exists within Western music, metal exists within rock, but by dint of its entirely
different approach and outlook constitutes a separate genre. What distinguishes metal is its use
of riffs as motifs or phrases. These allow metal musicians to unite two highly contrasting points
through an intermediate journey composed of dialogue between riffs in (usually) the same key.
Through internal dialogue, these riffs negotiate a balance such that the song arrives at
conclusions different from its starting point and can repeat its main themes in a new context
established by the changing shape of the riff. As a result, metal song structures vary more than
those of any other popular genre and contort themselves to the unique needs of each song.
However, since metal is still a form of popular music, this variation occurs as an addition to the
dominant verse-chorus structure, much as metal is an augmentation to culture as opposed to a
counter-reactive, revolutionary force. Through this method heavy metal inherits the technique
of modernist classical composers like Anton Bruckner and Richard Wagner, who used both
leitmotifs and the prismatic technique of repeating themes after variation to increase intensity of
mood, fused with the technique of hardcore punk musicians that stripped aside the conventions
of rock to write in keyless chromatic phrases. It inherits its song structure from the progressive
rock like King Crimson or Jethro Tull that was part of its founding inspiration, but wraps it
around these phrasal compositions inspired byhorror movie soundtracks that were derived
directly from modern classical. Using the instrumentation of rock, metal is able to channel its
more traditional heritage and, like its founders Black Sabbath, oppose the dominant illusions of
a time where pleasant mental escapism pretends it is combating a dominant undercurrent of
decay based in human evasion of reality. Metal is not just "not rock"; it is anti-rock. In this
sense, heavy metal may be the first "informational" genre of music in that its riffs act more as a
pattern language or design pattern to signal the intent of each motif than they serve in the rock
music role of filling harmonic space to accompany a vocal which defines the melodic progress
of the song. These motifs emerge from a sense of mimesis, or imitation of what exists in reality,
but in the case of metal this imitation seems to be not of physical objects but logical objects.
Metal is about information; information forms a level that unites thought, matter and energy by
putting them in the same arrangements and thus having the same informational outcome. Thus a
dream can metaphorically resemble reality, and the objects in reality can be re-shaped by the

actions of the dreamer corresponding to events in the dream, and even the cycling of energy can
be changed by an alteration in form of physical objects based on their abstract design or
thought-based properties. This Platonic similarity explains much of the evocative power of
metal: its riffs resemble sensations of reality if not reality itself, much like how horror movies
speak through metaphor about the horrors of life itself. The intensely ritualized vocabulary of
metal riffs resembles other types of design where repeated patterns are used in similar fashions;
the difference is that in metal this language of patterns is used toward fantastic and not
functional ends. Architect Christopher Alexander, who designated the term "pattern language"
to describe how similar needs produced similar architectures and how those in turn effected the
layout of whole communities, explained the importance of pattern languages and their use in
producing spaces for humans to live in:
When I first constructed the pattern language, it was based on certain generative schemes that
exist in traditional cultures. These generative schemes are sets of instructions which, if carried
out sequentially, will allow a person or persons to create a coherent artifact, beautifully and
simply. The number of steps vary: there may be as few as a half-dozen steps, or as many as
twenty or fifty. When the generative scheme is carried out, the results are always different,
because the generative scheme always generates structure that starts with the existing context,
and creates things which relate directly and specifically to that context. Thus the beautiful
organic variety which was commonplace in traditional society, could exist because these
generative schemes were used by thousands of different people, and allowed people to create
houses, or rooms or windows, unique to their circumstances.

Each pattern is a three-part rule, which expresses a relation between a certain context, a
problem, and a solution. As an element in the world, each pattern is a relationship between a
certain context, a certain system of forces which occurs repeatedly in that context, and a certain
spatial configuration which allows these forces to resolve themselves. As an element of
language, a pattern is an instruction, which shows how this spatial configuration can be used,
over and over again, to resolve the given system of forces, wherever the context makes it
relevant.

This sense of a pattern language producing design patterns specific to a certain function and
adaptive to context resembles the descriptions of another great thinker. The Greek philosopher
Plato wrote of divine forms which explained the patterns behind everyday objects and the
reasoning for their existence. He viewed these forms as a truer representation of reality than a
focus on the tangible and immediate material example of any given object. His description of
these forms is as follows:

[There are] men passing along the wall carrying above their heads all sorts of vessels, and
statues and figures of animals...which appear over the wall. Some of them are talking, others
silent...[The prisoners] see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the
fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave...And if they were able to converse with one
another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them? And
suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be
sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the
passing shadow? To them...the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.
In this metaphor, Plato describes what forms are by describing what they are not. In the
context of metal, the forms of riffs are not strictly mimetic; they do not imitate, for example, a
chair. They imitate the mental experience of someone perceiving an object in an event or
process and the resulting unity between that thought and the experience. The narrative riff style
encourages the expression of a process through a story, such as how a person came to a
realization, and the interlocking prismatic riff constructions emphasize this condition of change
restoring order but amplifying its context and thus meaning. In this sense, metal reveals the
underlying content to objects and experience as is relevant to the narrator. This fits with the
metal idea -- derived from Romanticism -- of the lone individual trusting an "inner self" where
truth and lie can be discerned and meaning can be found. The metal habit of knitting together
riffs to tell an evolving story exemplifies this idea. The narrative construction of heavy metal -especially underground metal, in which the genre found full expression after three generations -joins it with an elite fraternity of other genres in which song structure is specific to context. In
particular, classical music, cosmic ambient bands and progressive rock tend to use this
structuring scheme. It enables them to both experiment within a rule-based system where a
language is shared with the audience and thus can be used by reference to incorporate a wide
variety of ideas, and also to adapt their music as specifically as possible to its topic. This creates
a certain "poetry" of the song where the lyrics explain what occurs and lead changes in guitar
which determine the directional change of the song. In classical music, the song forms that
developed over centuries reflected the generative patterns required for certain types of context,
which in art means "content" and "topic." Metal creates an extremely naturalistic form of
information music as a result. Its songs, like structures found in nature, use simple ideas
expanded upon by their interaction over time so that through the internal dialogue of riffs, a
journey unfolds and reveals the intent behind the content as framed by the artists. Much like in a
poem, where the meaning is not "spelled out" but must be decrypted by the mind of the reader
who compares it to past experience and uses analysis to unconver its relevance and metaphor,
metal songs resemble subconscious ideas or even the shapes of memories and experiences in

our minds. Like abstract art, the unconscious metaphor indicates a similarity and creates a
connection between listener and topic.
A physicist, conceiving systems of differential equations, would call their mathematical
movements a "flow." Flow was a Platonic idea, assuming the change in systems reflected some
reality independent of the particular instant. Libchaber embraced Plato's sense that hidden forms
fill the universe. 'But you know they do! You have seen leaves. When you look at all the leaves,
aren't you struck by the fact that the number of shapes is limited?'

Narrative construction empowers each song to have a unique "shape," much as riffs have
shapes based on the phrase they repeat and the different tonal directions it takes. Heavy metal
creates a type of mental symbol in each song such that it evokes a sense not just of the
immediate but of the timeless archetypes of human life. Lyrics underscore this by avoiding the
personal and sensual that rock music favors, and instead looking at life through a lens of
mythology, history and fantasy. If a source of modern myth exists, it might be found in heavy
metal, where not only words and images but also the shape of riff and song like sigils encode a
type of not universal but particular experience that resonates with all who have undergone it and
amplifies context from the immediate to the eternal. In this heavy metal also resembles Greek
tragedy and other types of drama in which music plays a central role. In its role as an outsider,
metal opposes both current culture and anti-culture, preferring the intangible view of history
external to the perspective of our society and the daily mundane ideologies and rituals we use to
re-assure ourselves. Its "heavy" content shows us where there is a more fundamental truth; we
bind truth up in words, and in stories of the individual, and obscure the larger picture. For this
reason, its neo-Wagnerian motifs and narrative composition reveal an underlying need that our
society cannot address. It conjures up visions of ancient greatness, and metaphorical myths of
fantasy lands, to show us the world outside of the human definitions, rules, morals, laws and
mental constructs that we use to self-congratulate on our importance. This in turn brings up vir,
which is the notion of doing what is right; this differs from modern morality, which is focused
on defense of the individual against imposition of the will of another, because virfocuses on
what is right according to the mythic or cosmic order as a whole, and frequently involves acts
that modern people would say are "wrong" because they involve the sacrifice of one or more
individuals. The mythic-historical view of metal allows it to take this non-human perspective
and from it, to create myth:
[Myths] are the world's dreams. They are the archetypal dreams and deal with great human
problems. I know when I come to one of these thresholds now. The myth tells me about it, how
to respond to certain crises of disappointment or delight or failure or success. The myths tell me
who I am.

Although it takes some analysis to spot its origins, this mythic nature is the essence of heavy
metal and its choice to use longer riffs in narrative structures. This tendency has grown over
time from a way of writing riffs to a way of thinking and in doing so, lives up to the original
influence of horror movies on metal. Horror movies demonstrate the influence of mythmakers,
notably the greatest literary inspirations of metal including H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien,
Robert E. Howard, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, John Milton, Friedrich Nietzsche and E.A. Poe.
In pursing this mythological voice, heavy metal displays a number of technical innovations or
other changes from popular music:

Technique

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Structure

Technique, which normally serves to embellish, became under metal the science of
structure by creating ways for guitar to lead composition independent of drums and
vocals, which lead in rock music. Heavy metal worked through the austerity of power
chords and a jazzlike rhythm to a deeply chaotic and abstract blues. Speed metal used
muted-palm picking to create a mechanical, grinding sound, where death metal bands
began to use a flutterstrum which would turn a chord into a stream of undulating sound
with a massive tremelo effect, building a powerful tool for ambient melody.

Harmony

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Melody

Harmony in metal is used to unify a number of melodies to a sequence of tone centers

which represent the parts of the idea being manipulated by the song. The riffs which
metal bands use are structuralistic in that they describe rather than categorize, by the
nature of their wandering phrases which use structural similarity for coherence rather
than tonal unison. Where harmony serves to preformat a range of emotions for rock
bands, in metal, melody drives harmony, letting the composer take the music into
whatever direction he/she desires by dynamically associating tone centers with
contrapuntal arrangements, layering strips of reference to narrative and joining them with
harmonies.

Tonality

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Dynamicism

The major element of the evolution of heavy metal is a progression in tonality from the
blues-rock extrapolationist grab bag to the chromatic, dark and almost mystically
nihilistic tone patterns of death and black metal. The ability to change from a fixed-tonal
system to a system which, like the Doppler effect, is based on proximity and speed to

establish a current point of reference, provides for a basis of composition which is more
specialized for systemic expression than for linear expression.
Metal musicians have frequently cited classical composers, such as Johannes Sebastian Bach
(Bathory, Dawning), Richard Wagner (Burzum, Necrodemon), Ludwig van Beethoven
(Bathory, Condor, Organic), W.A. Mozart (Morbid Angel, Organic), Niccolo Paganini
(Organic), Modest Mussorgski (Sammath), Franz Liszt (Dawning), Bedrich Smetana (Condor),
Antonio Vivaldi (Organic), .
"Strife is evolution, peace is degeneration." - Varg Vikernes, http://www.burzum.com/

2.2 philosophy

That depends on how you see Utopia. In a sense, an ideal society would be a static society, and
any such society is an evolutionary dead end. Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose,
and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.

-- William S

Burroughs
On the surface, heavy metal appears a distant from philosophy as one can imagine. A genre of
long-haired, beer-swilling, dope-smoking maniacs screaming lyrics about death, war and the
occult seems far removed from any pretense of structured thought. Yet under the surface
something else lurks. The word "occult" -- original meaning: concealed -- denotes hidden truths
of an esoteric nature which cannot be learned from symbols, but must be experienced in layers
with each layer giving rise to the ability to understand the next. It also applies to any genre like
heavy metal that conceals its truths in such layers. The occult resembles art itself which takes a
narrative form in contrast to the representative form of symbols. The earliest art -- a cave

painting of a hunt perhaps -- told stories: an attempt, a struggle, pitfalls and failures that were
overcome to achieve a goal. The outcome of these tales was not the interesting part since it was
already known; hunts were either successes or fatalities. What made them interesting was the
struggle in each, and the overcoming, and the prototypical version of a "moral" -- what was
learned in the process -- which meant that the teller revealed in narrative a change in his own
mental state through experience in the physical world. As humanity grew, this story-telling
attribute of art grew with it.
I grew up in an idyllic society, really. Homogeneous, no crime; everything was basically
perfect. We had stables with girls riding horses, who were playing on the outside... there were
no problems. Whatever. At some point, when we grew older, of course there were problems but
we didn't see them thus. Basically the truth, eh? But when you grow older, you see that things
are not the way you want them to be. McDonald's didn't appear until 1991 or 1992, and when it
did, we actually took a rifle and bicycles, we rode our bikes up to McDonald's, and we sat down
and started to fire on the windows. We were sneaking up and shooting at McDonald's, we
stockpiled weapons and munitions to prepare for war, because we not only suspected that there
might be a third world war, but we hoped that there would be a third world war. Not because we
enjoyed destruction so much, but because we knew that if you want to build something new,
you have to destroy the old first.
Most philosophies take a utilitarian view of life and measure actions by whether a group of
people would see them as "good" or "bad." But that utilitarian view has an Achilles heel.
Categories like good/bad become symbols. Symbols can take many forms: political,
commercial, moral and most importantly, social. A social symbol conveys membership in a
group or status within the group. For those who want to manipulate others, specifically groups
of other people, symbols serve a role art cannot. When they associate a symbol like "good" with
an act, they can trigger mass obedience, and by labeling other things as "bad," can wage war
against them using the superior numbers of the herd.

Heavy metal -- which finds beauty in

darkness, clarity in distortion, and justice in violence -- constructs itself from contrasted patterns
to reveal an underlying truth and a rejection of symbolism and utilitarianism. It worships power
and nature, not morality. Its view strikes away from the modern utilitarian notion of good as that
which pleases the group, and returns instead to the individualism tempered by nature worship
expressed by the European Romantics in art, literature and music during roughly 1600-1900
AD. M.H. Abrams provides us with a definition of Romanticism.

1. A revolt against accepted form: democratization of subject and language, a less formal
poetic voice, and a new range of subjects such as the supernatural and "the far away and
the long ago" adopted by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats and others; the visionary
mode of poetry adopted by William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley and William
Blake; and the use of metaphysical symbolism.
2. Focus on the poet's or writer's own feelings instead of a universal emotion shared among
all humanity. This emphasized spontaneity, meditative stillness, and a sense of discovery
through intuition. Imagination was seen as more important than fact.
3. External nature (landscape, plants, animals) became a persistent subject.

4. Often written with the poet or writer as protagonist.

5. A sense of progress, or of limitless good achievable by use of the imagination, instead of

reliance upon past methods.

He contrasts this to the values of the neoclassical period that immediately preceded the
Romantic:

1. A strong traditionalism rooted in their respect for Greco-Roman classical writers, and a
distrust of radical innovation.
2. Literature was seen as being primarily an art, or a skillset created by nurturing innate
talents through directed work. For this reason, complex formal rules and conventions
were highly important.

3. Art was seen as an imitation of nature, with human life being its prime subject and the
communication of ideals toward humanity its goal.
4. Emphasis was placed on what humans possess in common, such as characteristics, shared
experiences, thoughts, feelings and tastes. The goal was to express common truths in an
enlightening way.

5. Humans were viewed as limited and having specific places in a hierarchy of natural
events and beings, called The Great Chain of Being. It was considered best to find the
appropriate place in this and not go above it.

The most important part of this may be the "own feelings instead of a universal emotion shared
among all humanity" and "sense of discovery through intuition" which are complementary parts.
A metalhead does not seek knowledge in the ideas of the crowd or the universal feelings of
humanity, but in the experience of the individual and the inner truths revealed. The purpose is to
find an order in nature both inside the self and in the outside world, and as a result, a way to
escape the judgment of the herd and know not only what is true, for crowds lie to cover their
misdeeds, but also what is important. Among other attributes, metal is a proactive and valuative
philosophy which seeks to find an optimal experience in life.
They block out the landscape with giant signs Covered with pretty girls and catchy lines Put up
the fences and cement the ground To dull my senses, keep the flowers down -- Give My Taxes
Back, Dirty Rotten Imbeciles (Dealing With It)
Hateful savages Strong black minds Out of the forest Kill the human kind Burn the settlements
and grow the woods Until this romantic place is understood -- Absurd, "Green Heart," (Out of
the Dungeon)
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche draws a distinction between "Apollonian" or rigidly
order-based thinking and "Dionysian" thought which resorts more to an expression of the
human id, a chaotic and emotional force.
With Romanticism, Western thinkers rejected the order, balance, harmony and rationality of
Classicism and replaced it with a tempestuous focus on the human individual. While this
reflected the thought of the Enlightenment, in which the human form replaced the notion of a
divine order to all life, Romantics tempered this with a strong suspicion and distrust of what is
socially popular. The figure of the Romantic era is the lone actor who understands his or her
world through inner passion and finds it reflected outwardly in nature. As part of this new
discipline, Romantics emphasized "the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative,
the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental."

Among the characteristic attitudes of Romanticism were the following: a deepened appreciation
of the beauties of nature; a general exaltation of emotion over reason and of the senses over
intellect; a turning in upon the self and a heightened examination of human personality and its
moods and mental potentialities; a preoccupation with the genius, the hero, and the exceptional
figure in general, and a focus on his passions and inner struggles; a new view of the artist as a

supremely individual creator, whose creative spirit is more important than strict adherence to
formal rules and traditional procedures.
Romanticism produced some of the greatest works of literature the Western world has in its
canon, many of which evoked form and content similar to that of ancient Greco-Roman
literature without the surface formalism of the preceding Classicist generation. Among the
important contributions of Romantic literature were poetry from William Wordsworth and
Percy Bysshe Shelley, an epic poem about the fall of Satan entitled _Paradise Lost_ by John
Milton, and from the later Romantics, _Frankenstein_ by Mary Shelley, _Dracula_ by Bram
Stoker and _The Sorrows of Young Werther_ by Johannes Wolfgang von Goethe. In addition,
later writers such as Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft borrowed from Romantic themes.
Stoker, Mary Shelley, Poe and Lovecraft contributed the raw material of the horror story which
is the basis of the horror film genre from which heavy metal received its first and ongoing most
fundamental

inspiration.

In particular, the works by Mary Shelley, Milton and Stoker deserve further analysis in the
context of metal. In _Frankenstein_, which contained many allusions to the French Revolution
, a scientist becomes intoxicated by his own power and creates a "perfect being" who then turns
on human society; in _Paradise Lost_, Milton tells the story of Satan from the perspective of
that fallen angel, revealing the depths of a human-like ego; in _Dracula_, a parasite attacks

society and must be destroyed by chasing it to its Eastern lair and exterminating it. In that story,
the parasite grew out of the changes in a local prince who rejected God after his kingdom was
assaulted by Muslims and his wife slain. These books cover a huge span of European history
and fundamentally reject not just Classicism, but much of the Enlightenment and French
Revolutionary rhetoric of the time. Where the Enlightenment and Revolution saw all humans as
valid decision-makers, and thus equal, the Romantics saw a society out of control that had left
behind principles of reality found in nature to pursue its own swelling, monstrous ego.
The "new form" of her novel is more subjective, complex, and problematic than earlier monster
fictions in the political tradition. Mary Shelley translates politics into psychology. She uses
revolutionary symbolism, but she is writing in a postrevolutionary era when collective political
movements no longer appear viable. Consequently, she internalizes political debates. Her
characters reenact earlier political polemics on the level of personal psychology. In the 1790s,
writers like Edmund Burke had warned of a collective, parricidal monster -- the revolutionary
regime in France -- that was haunting all of Europe; in the aftermath of the revolution, Mary
Shelley scales this symbolism down to domestic size. Her novel reenacts the monster icon, but it
does so from the perspective of isolated and subjective narrators who are locked in parricidal
struggles of their own.

Heavy metal picked up this theme with its embrace of "heaviness" itself: a hidden, or occult
and esoteric notion, that truth is not accessible to the crowd. Ideas become heavy because they
resurrect truths which are known to nature, but not the human social mass which chooses only
ideas that flatter it and its sense of self-importance. To find these truths, the individual must
look within to what they know is true and reject that which the crowd embraces. Much as in
_Dracula_ and _Frankenstein_, the individual finds that others are unwilling to believe that
anything out of the ordinary is going on, and must tackle the problem on their own without
many resources.
Rape my mind and destroy my feelings Don't tell my what to do I don't care now, 'cause I'm on
my side And I can see through you Feed my brain with your so-called standards Who says that I
ain't right Break away from your common fashion See through your blurry sight -- Escape,
Metallica (_Ride the Lightning_)
The social philosophy of heavy metal can be described as "antisocialism." Metal embraces
everything that normally we exclude from social conversation -- death, ugliness, terror,
genocide, disease, warfare, perversion -- and somehow channels it into music that lacks beauty
in the decorative sense but makes from these repellent conditions an appealing conflict in which
we wish to see the best outcome push down the rest through those same dark methods. This
view remains socially unacceptable in both liberal democracies and conservative theocracies,
which is why the public view of metal disregards it and characterizes it as angry teenagers

protesting early bedtimes. That description would apply if heavy metal uniformly rejected
everything before it, but it tends to reject social illusion and human illusion and embraces forces
of nature and objective change such as history and its codification in myth. Antisocialism can
be seen in metal on a musical level as well as in its lyrics. Rock music is based in harmony, or
the idea of setting up a basic melody and then using vocals and change in key or shift to minor
key as a means of inducing emotion, usually of a contrasting/combined form like sadness and
delight simultaneously. This bittersweet feeling pervades most rock with a heavy sense of
emotion focused in the individual. Metal distances itself by basing the song around the riff
where changes in riff induce emotion instead. In that compositional method, what creates
emotional intensity is the relative change in riff as part of an ongoing song structure, more like a
poem than a pulsing constant sound. This inconstancy in metal proves essential to its method:
instead of creating an emotional state and then manipulating the listener with it, metal creates a
context and then adjusts this such that the change in riff and relation between riffs provokes in
the listener a recognition of a resemblance to some facet of life or experience. This establishes
one of the fundamental thoughts implicit in metal philosophy: the individual as inconsequential
in a world without inherent rules or an order above nature, in which meaning is derived not
from individual desires and judgments, but the process of interaction within the whole. Metal
adopts a certain kind of positive nihilism in this regard in that it sees life as a series of choices
based on options that emerge, not a process of following a built-in path to acceptance. The
esoteric nature of metal thought, inherited in part from its fascination with the occult, holds that
there is no one path for everyone only paths that some may opt to follow which have different
results from the others. Metalheads often draw a distinction between mainstream culture and
their own beliefs, or use terms like "poseur" to exclude those who are of the mainstream
mindset. That mentality originates in this division between private truth and public illusion.
According to the Romantic conception, the lost unity could not be restored by external means;
it had rather to grow out of man's inner spiritual urge and then gradually to ripen. The romantics
were firmly convinced that in the soul of the people the memory of that state of former
perfection still slumbered. But that inner source had been choked and had first to be freed again
before the silent intuition could once more become alive in the minds of men. So they searched
for the hidden sources and lost themselves ever deeper in the mystic dusk of a past age whose
strange magic had intoxicated their minds. The German medieval age with its colorful variety
and its inexhaustible power of creation was for them a new revelation. They believed
themselves to have found there that unity of life which humanity had lost. Now the old cities
and the Gothic cathedrals spoke a special language and testified to that 'verlorene Heimat' (lost
homeland) on which the longing of romanticism spent itself. The Rhine with its legend-rich
castles, its cloisters and mountains, became Germany's sacred stream; all the past took on a new
character, a glorified meaning.

Heavy metal rejects modern morality which aims mostly at protecting the individual from a
requirement to conform to social standards, but at the same time asserts that the individual can
reject any morality which is inconsistent with nature, history and mythology. Before this
modern morality, the idea of doing right possessed a different meaning: "vir," or a sense of
aggressive putting of things to right according to a natural, cosmic or metaphysical order.
Where modern morality is designed to preserve the individual against society, the ancient way
sought to promote healthy in society and surrounding nature as a whole as a means of
preserving the individual.

The expression of this belief in metal takes on a Faustian nature. A

German Romantic writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, wrote his immortal epic _Faust_ about
a man who makes a bargain with the devil and in it encoded the metaphor of the Faustian spirit:
humankind struggling with the necessary evils of suffering and death, yet aware of the great
things to be achieved once one accepts them in the bargain. As a result, the Faustian spirit
describes any individual who does not seek to explain away suffering, but wants to accept life as
a whole, and thus feels extreme passions in both pleasure and pain. It is the antithesis of the
passive and world-negating spirit of not only far-east philosophy and populist Christianity, but
also our modern notion of Utopian fantasies of making the world "safe." Metal rejects safety,
morality and the idea of "normalcy" or a single standard that tempers the nature inside of us.
The raging spirit of metal that embraces the dark side of life is Faustian in its very nature, as is
the tendency of black metal bands to glorify both death and the exultant experience of victory in
combat. Goethe emerged from the Romantic time period and outlook, but so did another group
of writers who expressed "naturalism" or a belief in the order of nature as more realistic and
often, more accurate and divinely inspired, than that of humankind. For misanthropes at a
structural level, naturalism rejects human morality and invented religions and replaces it with
substitutes derived from patterns found in nature, often through transcendental thought. Best
exemplified by William Blake (a major influence on The Doors) and Ralph Waldo Emerson,
this movement seeks to understand nature and its wisdom by recognizing that it is superior to
human orders for the purpose of adapting to and maintaing a high quality of life. Naturalists do
not cringe at the red talons of the predatory hawk tearing the mouse; instead, they praise the
greater strength of the mouse and hawk populations achieved as a result, and the trees which
will be fertilized by hawk droppings. It is an organic, gritty philosophy with deep links to
cosmicism, or acceptance of the universe as an order in itself which needs no remaking; this is
in dramatic contrast to Judeo-Christian moralism, which inherently finds fault with nature and
seeks to replace it with an morality designed to pacify fear of insufficiency, death and suffering.
Blake's concept of "the path of excess leading to the road of wisdom" is an esoteric statement of
this belief, and clearly influenced early heavy metal and is an unstated influence behind death
metal and black metal. Whether born yesterday, or an older person, the individual faces a world

in which many things happen, and some turn out positive for that individual, while others are
negative. Herein is the reason humans philosophize. We live because to some degree, we
believe in living, but it is a balance between emotions incurred by the positive and the negative
aspects of life. In this the fundamental question of philosophy can be seen, which is, "Why do I
live, and why is it that life includes negativity?" There are several approaches to this question:

1. Deny suffering. Whether through stoicism, or numbness, or a belief that the

individual does not exist, one can minimize the value of suffering to the individual.
However, when one destroys suffering in the representation of the world that every
individual has, one also reduces the impact of joy, and thus a stable norm is achieved but
great deeds, which require great passions and enjoyment of life, are stultified. The
problem of far-east philosophies comes to mind here.
2. Embrace suffering. Self-pity is a fundamental notion to all humans, because by
making the impact of suffering congratulatory to the individual, it allows the individual
to endure suffering, but also converts the individual into a masochist. When this happens,
the individual loses any higher impulse, and becomes fixated on the self and ways to
keep it afloat through additional suffering and, as a palliative, reward, which usually
takes the form of pity for others. This is the way of middle eastern religions, including
Christianity.

3. Explain suffering. Without finding a way to resolve the fact that it is real and its
impact will inexorably be felt, suffering can be interpreted as not only logical but as a
kind of logical optimum. In this view, one finds a reason that suffering exists, such as the
notion that because there is negativity there is space for change, and that which is not fit
for the future is eliminated. It is a naturalistic view, and this is common to all Pagan
beliefs: they understand suffering as a mechanism by which nature maintains itself and
encourages, gently when you consider how large the natural world is compared to the
individual, the growth of individuals and species.
The only philosophy that expresses vir is (c), because in this one subsumes the role of
suffering to that of a creative force, and thus does not lessen either suffering of joy, but finds it
natural and right that one might pursue enjoyment (and what it encourages: creative
achievement, whether writing better music or building bigger banquet halls) and also experience
suffering. There is no need or ability to explain away suffering; suffering is simply suffering, or

negativity, associated with empty spaces and "clearing" forces such as winter and death. The
individual following this philosophy must accept that some things, such as mortality and
suffering, are part of life as a whole, and while the individual will suffer and die, the whole will
continue and it is right that it do so, because the whole is the source of both the individual and
enjoyment.

In this, metal approximates the knowledge of hermetic, Pagan, Hindu and other

occult sects more than the exoteric vision of Western religion and morality. Metal music serves
as a popular target for those disturbed by evil, Satanism and occultism, only in part because
those views are taboo; the bigger sin is refutation of the accepted view with something that may
admit the taboo. During the 1980s when more people held Christian views, one of the primary
charges against metal at events like the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) hearings was
that it encouraged Satanism. This occurred during a time when people were being convicted of
child molestation under a theory of "Satanic ritual abuse" and the mainstream media never
blinked at the accusation.

Since its inception in Black Sabbath, metal has expressed a

fascination with both evil and the occult. At the point of its origin however this fascination
mostly dealt with the threat of evil coming to pass. Its thought verges close to Milton and Blake
in this regard by showing a utility of evil, and an experience of Satan which reveals the conflict
in the human soul between ego and world. Unlike most descriptions of evil, early metal lyrics
focused on evil as an explanation for the mass trends and politics shaping society. Black
Sabbath portrayed evil as a negative force controlling humanity behind the facade of civilization
and its institutions. Over the generations of heavy metal, the genre has changed its outlook on
these the role of evil.
Now in darkness, world stops turning Ashes where their bodies burning No more war pigs have
the power Hand of God has struck the hour Day of Judgement, God is calling On their knees
the war pigs crawling Begging mercy for their sins Satan, laughing, spreads his wings Oh, Lord
yeah! -- Black Sabbath, "War Pigs" (_Paranoid_)
During the speed metal years, metal kept essentially this same concept. In the hands of popular
culture and politics, evil found a way to corrupt good. However, the blame for this rested on
external parties and those with wealth and power. This both continued the Black Sabbath view
of "war pigs" controlling society and pointing it toward evil ends which culminate in the
destruction of all for their sins, and modified it such that the forces of evil were seen as
controlling that which was otherwise good. Witness this late-career summation from Metallica:
Lady Justice Has Been Raped Truth Assassin Rolls of Red Tape Seal Your Lips Now You're
Done in Their Money Tips Her Scales Again Make Your Deal Just What Is Truth? I Cannot Tell
Cannot Feel -- Metallica, "...And Justice For All" (_...And Justice For All_)
The death metal generation took over next but showed some overlap with the speed metal
years through bands such as Slayer. In their vision, evil corrupted good because what was seen
as "good" actually served to enable evil through the delusion, laziness and narcissism of

humanity as a group. This view combines the historical and the mythological to create a
"mythological-historical" perspective in which views changes in human experience as the result
of a shifting of underlying ideas, in this case a tendency for evil to be considered good. Slayer
express a vision of a society that has corrupted itself through "good" which was actually evil in
hidden intent, resulting in an insufferable world:
Fear runs wild in the veins of the world The hate turns the skies jet black Death is assured in
future plans Why live if there's nothing there Spectors of doom await the moment The mallet is
sure and precise Cover the crypts of all mankind With cloven hoove begone -- Slayer,
"Hardening of the Arteries" (_Hell Awaits_)
The following generation took the mythic view of history expressed by Slayer and made it into
an identity. In this view, the world is rotten and good is the source of this ill; the solution is to
destroy good, invert the cross, and let the churches burn. In this view, Christians and others who
affirm morality of the herd are the negative and corrupting force of evil, and good can be found
in doing evil to them. The idea of those who proclaim themselves as "good" being
fundamentally manipulative, hypocritical and deceptive emerges during this time.
Chant the blasphemy Mockery of the messiah We curse the holy ghost Enslaver of the weak
God of lies and greed God of hypocrisy We laugh at your bastard child No god shall come
before me ...Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law Rebel against the church Drink
from the chalice of blasphemy Rise up against the enslaver -- Morbid Angel, "Blasphemy"
(_Altars of Madness_)
At its extreme end, this philosophy begins to resemble advocacy for a Satanic holy war. In this
crucial step, good is not so much corrupted as it is wrong; the idea of goodness is illogical and
inherently manipulated and must be destroyed. This creates an important precursor to the
philosophical leap taken by black metal bands in the next half-generation.
We deny God and his rule We defy his supreme force Crucified by the dark power His death
was a glory Forgotten by our mind forever He's left the churches to torment us We'll destroy the
high altar Until we see the ashes of pain -- Sepultura, "Crucifixion" (_Morbid Visions/Bestial
Devastation_)
When black metal approached this topic, it evolved its dislike of good to a final stage: not only
was good corrupt, but it was illogical. Love, trust, equality, acceptance and universality were
illogical not by their own rules but by the rules of nature. Christianity was -- as Nietzsche saw it
-- the origin of humanism and liberalism which constituted a form of control of humanity
through social influence, a method of using guilt and shame to tame the exceptional so they
could be humbled before the herd. As a result, black metal created the first metal genre to not
only reject corrupted good, but to reject the notion of good, and to build within the concept of
"evil" a philosophy of natural selection, conflict, war and racial isolation. Naturally the latter
became the most controversial as since the end of WWII the Western nations have adopted a

policy of inclusivity and diversity. The embrace of nationalism that came with black metal -Mayhem practiced under Nazi flags, Darkthrone and Burzum advocated racial withdrawal if not
supremacy, even mild-mannered Enslaved sang of their Nordic land as separate from all other
peoples -- shocked and appalled many which seemed to prove the black metal approach to evil:
"good" makes people afraid to do what would be logical in nature, which is self-preserve and
allow natural selection to weed out the stupid instead of soliciting them for votes and selling
them products.
Run from this fire It will burn your very soul Its flames reaching higher Comed this far there is
no hold O, all small creatures It is the twilight if the gods - Twilight of the Gods, Bathory
(_Twilight of the Gods_)
Not all bands took these highly articulated approaches. During the death metal years, some
bands took a mere atheist/materialist stance:
Drown your sorrows in prayer But your prayers will never change the world I separate myself
From those who chase the spirit I can't fall to my knees And pretend like all the rest This is a
soul that doesn't need saving -- Immolation, "I Feel Nothing" (_Here In After_)
It is unclear whether Christianity is the actual target, or whether that target is "herd morality"
as Nietzsche would call it. Many metal bands, such as Slayer and Black Sabbath, have Christian
members who do not hide this orientation; few if any metal bands wish to be identified as
"Christian metal," in part because of the existence of a parallel underground within the Christian
community for popular music with an exclusively Christian message. Within metalheads there
is a distrust for selling out or joining an institution such that one would benefit from it because
then objectivity is occluded by the resulting self-interest. They apply that vision equally to
commercial interests, political interests and of course mainstream religion.

Much like the

Romantic poets before them, many metal bands embrace occult and pagan beliefs, including
almost all of black metal and death metal. The Romantic poets found interest mostly in the
European traditions of occultism including Greco-Roman paganism and, with the rise of
nationalist sentiment in late Romanticism, the indigenous European cultures and their ancient
gods. The interest of the Romanticists centered around the possibility of a wisdom with levels of
revelaton as opposed to the single-level of modern Christianity which was then too easily taken
over by social trends, the whims of its audience or political influences. Others used occultism
and pagan beliefs as metaphor, including to explore a more naturalistic morality and to
symbolize a past era.
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that
bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered
now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.--Great
God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or
hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. -- "The World is Too Much With Us," William
Wordsworth, English Romantic poet (1789)
Heavy metal beliefs might be described as "transcendental." Transcendentalists hold that an
order pervades all of the universe which can be perceived by the individual and through its
understanding, the individual can come to understand the logicality of the cosmos and thus
discover the divinity within it. This order opposes the notion of "faith," where the individual
accepts as true what religious dogma says must be true, and dualism, which presupposes that
whatever spiritual order exists must do so in an entirely different world where the essential laws
of construction of that world differ radically from our own. Metal spirituality tends to take a
transcendental view, usually that by observing nature and reality, the individual can find deep
within themselves a revelation of the meaning and importance of existence. Selecting for where
they have more in common than not, certain ancestral beliefs can be grouped together as
"pagan" (a term originally designating their prevalence in the countryside). Pagan and occult
beliefs are similar on a structural level, with some arguing their origins in Hindu and GrecoRoman traditions have a single ancestor, and differ from Christianity in several key ways:

1. A lack of official doctrine and ideological qualification for entry (exotericism).

2. Good and evil as collaborative complements rather than oppositional.

3. Process and eternal renewal instead of judgment and final states.

4. Disbelief that a sacrament or magic words can substitute for knowledge or ability
(esotericism).
5. Nature-worship instead of worship of idealized humanity.

As if inspired by Dionysos, 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 impulses of the
raw id. This dovetails with the naturalism of paganism and its refusal to adopt a written
orthodoxy let it be co-opted into an exoteric philosophy capable of manipulation like the
mainstream organized religions including the "New Age" neo-Pagan ones. Paganism at its heart
embraces secrecy, hidden knowledge and elitism. Metal plays to this ideal with its own
tendency to obscure its meanings behind a wave of riffs but to leave the meaning plain for those

who can undergo a few levels of analysis to bring it out. Metal bands incorporate occult,
mythological, Pagan, Satanic, Norse and polytheistic imagery in a number of ways. Some
incorporate ideas of it into their lyrics; others use numerological formulae in composing riffs;
still others explore sacred ideas within their imagery or writing. With the rise of death metal,
this became more common with Rudra (Hinduism) and Asgard (Asatru), but with black metal
the use of lyrics expanded, including bands quoting from Eddas (Burzum, Enslaved) and
outright Satanic texts or practice (Acheron, Dissection). As black metal faded, the rising power
metal genre took up much of this material in a gentler form but remained fervently nationalistic
and separated in identity from Christianity. Heavy metal touches on another taboo thought
which is the idea of nihilism. Nihilism is not so much an advocacy as it is an issue that most
people tiptoe around. Is life meaningless? Our lurking fear is that nothing we do has any
significance beyond our own experience which vanishes at death and that we are at best only
physical bodies with impulsive needs. The gateway to this question and related lines of thought
is found in nihilism. Nihilism states a triad of anti-beliefs: no truth, no values and no
knowledge.
Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or
communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that
condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose
other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy.
F.W. Nietzsche introduced the concept of nihilism with his dichotomy between the "last man"
and the "overman": the last man is a pure materialist who cares only about his own comfort and
wealth, where the overman wishes to overcome the conditions of human life including its
transient temporality and create greatness and beauty far beyond the bounds of self. In many
ways, metalheads resemble the overman by discarding concerns for what is popular thus
profitable thus conducive to personal comfort and convenience, and instead laboring in darkness
to produce music that is meaningful to possibly themselves only. The problem most metalheads
find is that they encounter a world of self-destruction. A society that validates itself with its own
theories, unproven because of the vast wave of technological wealth upon which we ride, has
made itself into a crass mess of fast food, obedience-oriented jobs, flattery and pandering to
special interest groups. The only option seems to be to drop out and live in relative poverty
while avoiding its commitments, which then leads to evolutionary destruction of those who drop
out. Modern life gives us a choice of giving and becoming last men, or constantly struggling to
stay outsiders in order to strive toward being overmen.
"In our contemporary, youth are pretty much lost. They have no direction. Nobody is telling
them what to do. That is, people are telling them what to do, but the youth have instincts telling
them, 'This is wrong.' People are telling that Christianity is good, people are telling them that

the USA is good, NATO is good, our democracy is good. But we know -- if not intellectually -we know instinctively that this is wrong."
Nietzsche saw last men as being a symptom of "nihilism," which he defined as a lack of
importance assigned to anything beyond material comfort because of the lack of inherent
characteristics -- truth, God, knowledge, values -- requiring us to be otherwise. Metal retaliates
with a form of "active nihilism" that instead acknowledges the void and seeks to find meaning
in the possibilities of life instead. Metal bands routinely reject the mores and morals of society
around them, but instead of replacing them with an ethic of convenience, replace them with
morals of their own. The first and most important of these is the distinction between "poseurs,"
or those who use music as a means to socializing with others and being popular, and those who
are "true metal" and find meaning in the music for its own sake. Metal identifies primarily as
outsider art and always has. Its perspective views society as an error and sees the basis of this
error in the pleasant illusions most people tell each other in conversation, hear from the
television or read in advertisements. Like the Romantics, it scorns mass society and sees it as
based in people flattering each other with what they want to hear, not what they need to hear,
which is what they find within themselves -- if they are brave enough to look. In this sense,
metal opposes nihilism of the passive or fatalistic sort, and replaces it with an active nihilism
that acknowledges the lack of inherent truth but suggests that we can find a truth in survival
itself,

in

prevalence

through

conflict,

and

in

searching

our

inner

selves.

The reliance on instinct hearkens to both the examination of inner truths that the Romantics
explored and the reliance of early Idealist philosophers such as Kant on intuition as the basis of
knowledge. It also dovetails with the Nietzschean idea of most morality as a control mechanism

by those who need an external reference to avoid infringing. In his view, the moral questions
that trouble the average person are not only common knowledge but unexceptional to a person
of higher ability. For this reason, the law of social morality constrains those more able people
and ultimately enslaves them to the problems of those below them in ability, producing an
accelerating factor for nihilism.
Notwithstanding his frequent characterization as a nihilist, therefore, Nietzsche in fact sought to
counter and overcome the nihilism he expected to prevail in the aftermath o the collapse and
abandonment of traditional religious and metaphysical modes of interpretation and evaluation.
While he was highly critical of the latter, it was not his intention merely to oppose them; for he
further attempted to make out the possibility of forms of truth and knowledge to which
philosophical interpreters of life and the world might aspire, and espoused as "Dionysian valuestandard" in place of all non-naturalistic modes of valuation. In keeping with his interpretation
of life and the world in terms of his conception of the will to power, Nietzsche framed this
standard in terms of his interpretation of them. The only tenable alternative to nihilism must be
based upon a recognition and affirmation of the world's fundamental character. This meant
positing as a general standard of value the attainment of the kind of life in which the will to
power as the creative transformation of existence is raised to its highest possible intensity and
qualitative expression. This in turn led him to take the "enhancement of life" and creativity to be
the guiding ideas of his revaluation of values and development of a naturalistic value theory.
This way of thinking carried over into Nietzsche's thinking about morality. Insisting that
moralities as well as other traditional modes of valuation ought to be assessed "in the
perspective of life," he argued that most of them were contrary to the enhancement of life,
reflecting the all-too-human needs and weaknesses and fears of less favored human groups and
types. Distinguishing between "master" and "slave" moralities, he found the latter to have
become the dominant type of morality in the modern world. He regarded present-day morality
as "herd-animal morality," well suited to the requirements and vulnerabilities of the mediocre
who are the human rule, but stultifying and detrimental to the development of potential
exceptions to that rule. Accordingly, he drew attention to the origins and functions of this type
of morality (As a social-control mechanism and device by which the weak defend and avenge
and assert themselves against the actually or potentially stronger). He further suggested the
desirability of a "higher morality" for the exceptions, in which the contrast of the basic
"slave/herd morality" categories of "good and evil" would be replaced by categories more akin
to the "good and bad" contrast characteristic of "master morality," with a revised (and variable)
content better attuned to the conditions and attainable qualities of the enhanced forms of life
such exceptional human beings can achieve.

From this view, Nietzsche was not overly fond of nihilism, but some have posited that the
"active nihilism" is in fact what he argued for: an acceptance of the unimportance of life beyond
its immediate value, and from that, a desire to expand it and make it improve the experience of
life itself. This focus on experience translates into much of the hedonism and adventurism of
heavy metal, with its creative side channeled toward the music itself, and its sense of
improvement based on bringing what is "heavy" -- or real despite human everyday denial -back into focus. The idea behind this version of nihilism is that it liberates us from the "slave
morality" and allows us to see reality clearly, thus make decisions based on what is actually
happening. With its focus on results alone, and viewing them from the broader context of
history, heavy metal posits a new form of active nihilism: that instead of judging our decisions
by good and bad, we judge them by outcomes and whether those outcomes fit with what we find
not just acceptable, but "excellent" (in the immortal words of Bill and Ted). We know how past
acts have turned out and what resulted from them, so when we go shopping for actions to fulfill
our goals, we can compare past outcomes to desired outcomes and pick which actions fit best.
This creates a kind of table where we see that action A made result B, and A(1) -> B(1) and so
forth, and thus lets us index these backward by looking down the column of outcomes and
seeing which B(x) most closely approximates our chosen outcome. As metal puts this into a
historical view, it changes the focus from what we want as a personal result to what we desire
not just for today, but for ages hence. This also encourages us to see ourselves in the context of
history and compare the calibre of our acts to those who have come before us.
Only death is real. - Hellhammer
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. 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."
Mankind does not represent a development of the better or the stronger in the way that it is
believed today. 'Progress' is merely a modern idea, that is to say a false idea. The European of
today is of far less value than the European of the Renaissance; onward development is not by
any means, by any necessity the same thing as elevation, advance, strengthening. In another
sense there are cases of individual success constantly appearing in the most various parts of the
earth and from the most various cultures in which a high type does manifest itself: something
which in relation to collective mankind is a sort of superman. Such chance occurrences of great
success have always been possible and perhaps always will be possible. And even entire races,

tribes, nations can under certain circumstances represent such a lucky hit. - Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Anti-Christ
By rejecting inherent truths, metal explores an existential viewpoint in which the experience of
life itself is the goal. The choices we make define who we are, and some live epic lives above
the mundanity of the herd. This outlook emphasizes the experience of life itself rather than an
external reward, whether monetary or in some dualistic metaphysical realm. In other words, the
goal of humans is to find the best in life and to improve themselves by living not just well in a
material sense, but finding health in their spirits and an enjoyment in life. Any metalhead who
has noticed that most people appear depressed, lonely, beaten down, exhausted and generally at
odds with existence will sympathize with this point of view.
It's been my dream To enter the stream To let carnates know What life really means If one
understands That's all I can ask Life to you is such a wretched task! - An Incarnation's Dream,
Atheist
In black metal, Romanticism took a turn toward its later forms which were explicitly
nationalistic and naturalistic in defiance of the tendency of popular morality to "make safe"
what nature once relegated to lawless conflict. As societies passed more laws, and focused more
on defense of the individual against nature and social forces, the amount of control these
societies had over their citizens increased. To black metal musicians, this was a sign of decline
and a dying civilization because it favored the weak over the strong and produced a non-culture
based on safety, shopping and politically correct opinions.
Romanticism though in its beginning little concerned with politics or the state, prepared the rise
of German nationalism after 1800. It was an aesthetic revolution, a resort to imagination, almost
feminine in its sensibility; it was poetry more deeply indebted to the spirit of music than the
poetry of the eighteenth century had been, rich in emotional depth, more potent in magic
evocation. But German romanticism was and wished to be more than poetry. It was an
interpretation of life, nature and historyand this philosophic character distinguished it from
romanticism in other lands. It was sharply opposed to the rationalism of the eighteenth century;
it mobilized the fascination of the past to fight against the principles of 1789.
Black metal expressed this sentiment through strong nationalism. On the lesser end, bands like
Enslaved and Immortal wrote songs about their homeland, its traditions and legends. Even death
metal bands like Amorphis joined in this activity by writing albums based on the national epic,
the Kalevala. On the more extreme end, bands like Graveland, Darkthrone, Burzum and
Emperor expressed far-right sentiments and endorsed a strong nationalistic spirit. Even bands
caught in the middle, like Mayhem, were rumored to perform in a room decked with not only
Norwegian flags, but the flags of both Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Heavy metal utilizes a
method of uniting riffs so that no linear truth exists, but an immanent truth is discovered as the

listener connects the associations of those riffs. This is similar to the postmodern novels of
James Joyce and William S Burroughs, where a series of divergent threads unified unspoken
topics indicated by metaphorical assonance with consensual reality experience. The inversion of
value so that its inside might be seen, postmodernism serves as a philosophical hall of mirrors
by showing many potential truths as equivalent to a single truth at once.

What makes

postmodernism most distinctive is its absorption of intensely "chaotic" theories such as quantum
physics or non-linear mathematics, by virtue of its foundation in technology and looking past
superstition, but also peering beyond the intellectual process of illusion to see how the universe
functions as organism, with universal principles of growth. Afflicted with knowledge,
postmodernism tends to emphasize the "subtext" of each situation, where there is an
acknowledged reality and an underlying larger picture which often has nothing to do with the
material props at hand. As such, dreams of death and great journeys past the land of the dead are
complex and intriguing material.
Postmodernist philosophers ask us to carefully consider how the statements of the most
persuasive or politically influential people become accepted as the common truths .
Although everyone would agree that influential people the movers and shakers have
profound effects upon the beliefs of other persons, the controversy revolves around whether the
acceptance by others of their beliefs is wholly a matter of their personal or institutional
prominence. The most radical postmodernists do not distinguish acceptance as true from being
true; they claim that the social negotiations among influential people construct the truth. The
truth, they argue, is not something lying outside of human collective decisions; it is not, in
particular, a reflection of an objective reality. Or, to put it another way, to the extent that
there is an objective reality it is nothing more nor less than what we say it is. We human beings
are, then, the ultimate arbiters of what is true. Consensus is truth. The subjective and the
objective are rolled into one inseparable compound.
Heavy metal explores this subject through first fantasy and second, the demand arising from
any good story that it be at least plausible in comparison to what we know of existing reality.
For a fantasy story such as _The Lord of the Rings_ to work, it must be sufficiently removed
from our experience and yet congruent with it in parallel so that the world is plausible and the
fantasy can be interesting to beings such as ourselves with our struggles in this world. Much like
the conditions for metaphor and art itself, this requires both the postmodernist sense of truth and
a tempering of it with cold hard reality as experienced in life here. This also parallels the metal
view of dualistic religious faiths, easily summarized by "wishing does not make it true." In
contrast to dualism, metal offers a sense of transcendent mysticism which shadows that offered
by late Romantics and thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. The basic belief of a mystic is
that events and objects are interconnected in a structure that is larger than immediate material

parameters and as such can be accessed if one is open to transcendence, or letting go of the
visible for the abstract. The mystic finds significant experience in interpretation of everyday
events because in the mystical view, all events are connected by an underlying order, even if not
an inherent one. To the mystic, cause/effect reasoning dips deeper than the material and can
exist on a purely informational level, much as how sacred symbols and sigils are presumed to
grant a power over the objects they reference.
While we may believe our world - our reality to be that is - is but one manifestation of the
essence Other planes lie beyond the reach of normal sense and common roads But they are no
less real than what we see or touch or feel -- Burzum, "Lost Wisdom" (_Burzum_)
Heavy metal tends to find order beyond where most look for it. It possesses a tendency to see
chaos as a form of order or a precondition for order. The tendency of mathematical systems to
go from the linear, or vector measurement, to chaotic multidirectional entities is a measure of its
organicism, or the point at which it moves from chartable projections to the zone decided only
by theory. Organicism is a philosophy of information science which holds that in order for
something to articulate itself independently, it must be of an unmeasurable state of chaotic
motion. This calls to mind one of the instigations to the rise of chaos theory, the research of
Werner Heisenberg. His "uncertainty principle" is summarized as follows:
The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in
this instant, and vice versa.
Among other things, this means that those who inspect reality are in turn influencing the
system they are measuring. There are no impartial observers, only those who see what is
presented to them in response to their presence. This means the observer becomes integrated
into a system in which all measurements are variable in chaotic patterns without linearly
predictable jumps. A pattern with linear jumps suggests the order is evident within that pattern,
where a pattern with chaotic jumps suggests an order behind the evident pattern. Hence an
emergent organicism appears in many things, including metal, which approach problems in
which binary solutions (those composed of yes or no, off or on, right or "wrong") lead to
illusion, since the binary nature is a projection of the intelligences observing the situation and
not emergent from the properties and methods of the system itself.

This returns to the metal

and Romantic conception of the individual knowing the world through the inner self, or as
Immanuel Kant referred to it, "intuition." Kant saw intuition as the basis of our a priori
knowledge of the working of the world and its causality. However, this line of thought remains
distinct from individualism in both metal and Romanticism. Metal favors individualism but also
devoutly rejects it in its present form. As embraced by modern society, individualism means the
ability to make arbitrary decisions and still be defended. As seen by metal, individualism resides
in the ability to reject the insane arbitrary decisions of others. Strongly in favor of the

independent evolution of individuals so to allow them space to grow without the persistent
damage of scar tissue formed to avoid intervention by the arbitrary appearances of demands by
others, the individualist genre metal has developed a subculture with focus on the development
of the individual as a force of chaos and change in the otherwise patterned material/causal
world.
When night falls she cloaks the world in impenetrable darkness. A chill rises from the soil and
contaminates the air suddenly... life has new meaning. -- Dunkelheit, Burzum (_Filosofem_)
The reasons for individualist thought usually center around the idea that those who know what
they want for personal fulfillment will not project that on to others for purposes of control.
Individualism is a property of art and any other discipline which demands independence and
focus; systemic and/or chaos thinkers understand it as a form of parallelism, where individuals
in parallel discover the same truths by exploring their inner selves. Much like the Romantic
notion of the lone wanderer above the mist, this notion of individualism shows metal
encouraging the exploration of self to get over the self, in contrast to those unrealized souls out
there who know only desires of the basest (and most commercially lucrative) nature, and thus
enslave themselves to their desires.
Betraying and playing dirty, you think you'll win But someday you'll fall and I'll be waiting
Laughs of an insane man you'll hear Personality is my weapon against your envy Walking these
dirty streets With hate in my mind Feeling the scorn of the world I won't follow your rules
Nonconformity in my inner self Only I guide my inner self -- Sepultura, "Inner Self" (_Beneath
the Remains_)
As a method of interpretation, this metallic perspective verges on structuralism. Structuralism
posits that no exoteric or face-value interpretation of truth exists, but that all truth is emergent
and found from the analysis in the mind of the individual:
Since language is the foremost instance of social sign systems in general, the structural account
might serve as an exemplary model of understanding the very intelligibility of social systems as
such -- hence, its obvious relecance to the broader concerns of the social and human sciences.
This implication was raised by Saussure himself, in his _Course on General Linguistics_ (1916),
but it was advanced dramatically by the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss -- who is
generally acknowledged to be the founder of modern structuralism -- in his extensive analyses
in the area of social anthropology, beginning with his _Elementary Structures of Kinship_
(1949). Levi-Strauss argued that society is itself organized according to one form or another of
significant communication and exchange -- whether this be of information, knowledge, or
myths, or even of its members themselves. The organization of social phenomena could thus be
clarified through a detailed elaboration of their subtending structures, which, collectively, testify
to a deeper and all-inclusive, social rationality. As with the analysis of language, these social

structures would be disclosed, not by direct observation, but by inference and deduation from
the observed empirical data.
Structuralism describes a method for perceiving structure that requires interaction to be
revealed. This applies well to language or reverse-debugging of computer code, but as a
proactive measure applies to the methods that can be used to construct logical objects such that
they do not have linear structure but an internally-balanced emergent structure. This describes
the metal method of writing interlocking riffs as well as the method that listeners use to decode
them and perceive an order to the song as a whole. Unlike rock 'n roll, which has a linear
structure in a cyclic arrangement, death metal has a layered structure based on internal
correspondence between riffs that can only be perceived through observation and comparison in
reference to the whole.
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
Influences

H.P.

Lovecraft

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. His imaginative and lurid tales not only
inspired many horror films, but provided the basis of metal lyrics for every generation of
metal. Of all the writers cited by metal bands, Lovecraft not only ranks as most frequent
but as most esoteric.

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. Like many metalheads, he saw humanity as in decline and

in need of a unifying quest to give it purpose and to restore a sense of activities worth
doing more than attending jobs, shopping and downloading free internet porn.

Friedrich

Wilhelm

Nietzsche

The most influential philosopher in metal, Nietzsche shifted philosophy from the
somewhat inward-focused idealism to an existentialism that contained a practical
component. To Nietzsche, Christian morality of good/bad was irrelevant because the
universe thrived on conflict as a result of its will toward life, and this imbues each person
with a will to power. In those who can clearly articulate their own will, this turns into a
desire to do outward good; in those who do not self-actualize, it becomes a consumptive
and narcissistic impulse. Through his rejection of social morality and affirmation of the
lone individual striving against the herd and struggling to understand a reality best
expressed in constant warfare and predation, Nietzsche created the grandfather of all
heavy metal philosophy.

William

S.

Burroughs

Heavy metal got its name from a William S. Burroughs writing. The infamous writer of
_Naked Lunch_, 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.

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.

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. The phrase "to reign in hell" from various metal recordings references his classic
line spoken by Satan, "It is better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."

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, http://www.burzum.com/
Heavy metal can be seen as a subculture, or culture within a larger culture, as opposed to a
counterculture, or oppositional culture within a larger culture. The reason for this distinction is
that while heavy metal is rebellious it does not exclusively define itself as being the opposite of
what exists, but sees itself as a modification (or "fork" to the brachitic hierarchy of revisions) to
existing society, mainly because it operates on a level lower than that of institution -- it is a
spiritual re-alignment through a re-arrangement of values, or maybe we should say, a reevaluation of all values. In that light, it also makes sense to consider heavy metal to be a series
of ethnocultures, because each nation produces music of a unique sound and attitude, often with
a unique subset of the values and situations discussed in death metal. A fan can instantly tell the
difference between South American black-death and Swedish death metal, or Japanese
grindcore and American thrash. There are clear conventions to each that correspond to culture
and ritual, which correspond to ethnicity and geographic area. Since heavy metal was created in
response to the counter-culture, and was negative about the counter-culture but not enamored
enough of the dominant order to be a reactionary counter-counter-culture, we consider it a
subculture but refer to it generically as a "culture," because it has all aspects of culture: values,
rituals, symbols, clothing, lifestyles and art. Metalheads measure their worth through fulfillment
of their roles in this culture, not by tangible symbols of the same.
The world may be explained in sociological terms. David Riesman describes three basic social
personalities in _The Lonely Crowd_. 'Other-directed' people pattern their behavior on what
their peers expect of them. Suburban America's men in gray-flannel suits are other-directed.
'Inner-directed' people are guided by what they have been trained to expect of themselves.
[General Douglas] MacArthur was inner-directed. The third type, the 'tradition-directed,' has not
been seen in the West since the Middle Ages. Tradition-directed people hardly think of
themselves as individuals; their conduct is determined by folk rituals handed down from the
past. -- William Manchester, _American Caesar_

The heavy metal subculture makes itself instantly recognizable through its heavily codified
visual appearance: youth in black t-shirts with logos across the top and cover art below that,
with long hair and possibly tattoos, gathered away from society at events involving metal music
and places where metal is distributed. They resemble a small army in public, which has caused
many a hipster or journalist to wax poetic about the lack of individualism in the culture. It
seems instead that in coherence with the concept of "heavy," metal culture has placed itself
zenlike beyond a simple division into individualist/conformist. It recognizes the need for unity
in belief to make power. Within that, it allows for variation, as can be found in the proliferation
of diverse tattoos and the variation in shirts that metalheads wear, with a type of caste and
preference system formed by who appreciates what band, with those who like the brainier music
being the unacknowledged elite. It has rituals -- concert behavior, meetings for listening to new
music, record store power structures, friendship and courtship -- that borrow from their parent
cultures, composed of both traditional culture and its modern adaptation, although they borrow
more from the ancient remnants than the contemporary hybrid. This culture was so distinctive
at American high schools in the 1970s during the first generation of heavy metal that it was
branded with a variety of names: heshers, threshers, Hessians, headbangers, metalheads. In
Europe, other names came about from similar impulses, including metallion, metaller and
metalist, although these grated on American sensibilities and did not transfer. The name mutated
into "thrasher" for those who listened to thrash, a type of music formed of the hybrid of
hardcore punk and metal riffing, exemplified by D.R.I. and Cryptic Slaughter. For this reason,
metal culture became known as "Hessian" or "thrasher" culture, with most people outside
recognizing its members by site without much knowledge of the music or values behind their
behavior. Much of the reason for this approach originates in the attitudes of mainstream society,
somewhat correctly, toward standard teenager behavior: spoiled by an indulgent attitude toward
parenting, yet forced into rigid behavior to compete for future jobs, teenagers rebel but very few
do so in a way that both asserts childhood and adulthood as metalheads, generally ludic types,
do. Metal culture, or Hessian culture, involves loud heavy metal music made in the postmodern
interpretation of classical music and rock n roll arrangement, creating a disturbing noise and
profound motion in its practice and social implications. Author Kurt Vonnegut likens the role of
an artist to society as the role of the canaries miners brought into the coal tunnels to warn for the
presence of gas: when the birdsong changes or stops, death is near. At the end of the twentieth
century, as we suffocate in the meaninglessness of the social machine we have made, metal and
punk music are striking alarms of misery and fear hidden beneath the commercially-viable good
assurances which have more than once prompted the adage, "Talk is cheap." This sense of
"role" pervades everything, including instilling a sense of honor relative to the materialism of
society. Metal culture is what keeps the music from becoming like everything else that's in the
consumer market: products. Products want to do something so visibly, it is entirely distinctive,

while not doing anything beyond the norm so there are no objections to purchase. Culture keeps
spirit alive by serving as an interpretive landmark of existential questions, delivering to the
interpreter a sense of combining the metaphor of the art with the catalogue of past experiences
in life that might be relevant. In metal, the culture does not value making music for people who
want entertainment; it rewards the creation of epic and powerful things out of the forces and
remnants of destruction. As if it embraced paradox itself at the same time it attacked paradox as
a notion, metal invents itself out of nothing and creates a Romantic, transcendental sense of the
good through living according to its own tenets, untamed and not pandering to anyone or
anything else.
"No jobs!" - Demonaz Doom Occulta, Immortal

2.3. Context

Early Influences

Heavy metal arose in the 1960s when Western civilization re-examined

itself in the light of two disastrous world wars and an ongoing struggle against communism. As
the victor of both world wars, the United States led the world in thought and industry and its
influence dominated the post-war world. Originally formed of colonies which first attempted to
self-organize as a confederation, the new nation quickly committed to central authority in order
to act as a single entity. This caused a conflict between the rural South and industrial North over
what type of rule would prevail and after a disastrous Civil War, a strong federal entity was
selected and embarked on a series of programs ostensibly to improve living standards.

Over

the next forty years the United States unified itself with expansion of the founding concepts of
the nation in accordance with the decisions of the Civil War. The highest power was the Federal
State, but the Individual was its currency, and therefore America came to embrace its image a s
the "melting pot" in which the "poor, huddled masses" might find refuge. America invited and
enfranchised new groups of people, starting with recently-freed African slaves and continuing to

an acceptance of previously unwanted immigrant groups, such as Irish, Italians, Jews and
Eastern Europeans. After the second world war, Americans began to reconsider their mission in
light of their opposition to both fascism and communism, and opted for a purely inclusive
society which facilitated the individual desires of its members.

A similar outpouring of

sentiment emerged in Europe, especially in France which had been the birth of these theories in
its Revolution of 1789 when the ideals of the Enlightenment were put into political form. That
union produced a period of massive instability in France followed by the Napoleonic wars
which, foreshadowing the conflicts of a century later, involved an ideological struggle between
liberal democratic forces and those who opposed them for majority control of Europe. The
alliances that eventually triggered the first world war, which in turn triggered the second,
emerged from the jockeying for power that created unstable alliances between European
nations. As the 1960s dawned, Europeans and Americans began to assimilate the Revolutionary
rhetoric much as the Napoleonic French did, and extended this to social engineering. As the
forces of Revolution battled with the Establishment, a movement of youth arose which
embraced with great fervor the new revolutionary outlook. Before it gained any social status,
the cultural force of this revolution -- a "counterculture" -- possessed "outsider" authenticity and
cachet which made it a sought-after cultural force across the West, in part because of its
contrarian status and its lack of acceptance among the cultural and social mechanisms of the
day. Like a high school revolt riot, the counterculture united previously disenfranchised groups
under the Countercultural banner. As this group became dominant, it adopted freely from both
the "new left," the 1930s pre-war socialism, traditional American individualism and the new
science of managerial society. Rock music became the banner and motivating force behind this
youth-oriented movement. Industry invented rock music from existing forms but in the classic
habit of industry, streamlined them into a simple product which could be inexpensively created
and differentiated on the basis not of internal variation, but surface variations. This allowed
industry to recruit a lower quality of musician and improve profits through novelty, advertising,
and recording technique alone, which widened the margins on this new form of music. Rock
mixed country folk, derived from English drinking songs, Celtic folk music, German popular
music including waltzes and the proto-gospel singing of Scottish immigrants, with blues music.
The blues was not formalized until it was recorded, and at that point in time, a fixed structure
was imposed on it based on the interpretations of others. Broadly stated, it used a minor
pentatonic scale with a flatted fifth, constant syncopation, and distinctive "emotional" vocal
styles including call-and-response vocalization. Of all of its components, none were unique, nor
was its I-IV-V chord progression. To view it from an ethnomusical perspective, the blues is an
aesthetic (not musical) variation on the English, Scottish, Irish and German folk music which
made up the American colloquial sonic art perspective since its inception. From a marketing
perspective, however, the blues had to be marketed as a revelation from the downtrodden and

suffering African-American slaves, so that it might maintain an "outsider" perspective which, to

people bored with a society based on money and lacking heroic values, might appear more
"authentic" than their own. The birth of rock was the birth of the counterculture and the
establishment of the dichotomy: the marginalized, outsider and ignored versus the vapid, boring
and soulless mainstream. When country music was re-introduced to the then-standardized blues
form, the result was called rock music. Its primary difference from country was in its use of
vocals which emphasized timbre over tonal accuracy, and the adoption of a more insistent,
constant syncopated beat. While German waltz and popular music bands had invented the
modern drum kit and developed most techniques for percussion, their music and that of their
country counterparts in America tended to use drums sparsely, much more in the style of
modern jazz bands than in the ranting, repetitive, dominant methods of rock music. However, it
is hard to find someone in a crowd of mixed gender, race, class and intellect for whom a
constant beat is intellectually and sensually inaccessible, so it was adopted as a convention.
Much as the standardization of the blues took diverse song forms and brought them into a single
style, rock swept a wide range of influences into a monochromatic form. It seemed that industry
had created the perfect universal musical form. However it arrived, blues-country became
"rock" in the 1930s-1950s mainly because of technology. Adolph Rickenbacker invented the
electric guitar in 1931, and recording equipment advanced from the primitive to the cheaper and
more portable units brought on by vacuum tube and then transistor technology. Additionally,
microphones improved, especially those which could capture the nuances of voice. Louder
guitars and vocals required the simple shuffle beats of blues drumming to gain volume,
prompting a revolution in drum kit assembly. As a result, the simple blues-country hybrid
became a marketing standard known as "rock 'n' roll," then "rock," as it was absorbed into the
American mainstream. The earliest bands lacked much in the way of style, but wrote
complacently harmonizing pieces based on the European popular music of clubs in the 1930s
(much of jazz is based upon the same music). As time went on, the stylings -- appearance,
performance and cultural positioning -- of the music became more advanced, and the songs
themselves became simpler and more like advertising jingles.
Revolution

The 1960s: the Hippie

Rock music presented itself as an oppositional alternative to the "traditional,

boring" life of "the Establishment" and quickly became a galvanizing force for the counterculture. The innocent pop of the 1950s gave way to an angry voice that endorsed liberal politics,
sexual liberation, and general hedonism; these traits had been a mainstay of Western
revolutionaries since the 1600s, but starting in the early 1900s gained new force and after the
wars and the alliance with the Soviet Union, became seen as a positive counteraction to
industrial society, capitalism and authoritarianism. The problem offered by this new format lay
in its simplicity: because the songs were simple, which enabled them to be mass-produced and
sold through advertising alone, they also did not have staying power. A recording had to be

made once, and musicians throughout history have never read contracts, so labels could just
about print money with each additional copy made. The problem was that since the music was
interchangeable at an underlying level, it was also unsatisfying, so record companies looked for
new external aspects to add to the music in order to give it novelty, authenticity and thus the
"cachet of cool" sought by its audience. In the mid-1960s, rock exploded with a new variety
that was both musically more advanced and possessed more of a rebellious streak. The Beatles
took the forefront of this movement and created music which was melodically advanced
(although saccharine) and took on more explicitly sexual topics with a stance of disaffected
youth. Much of the posturing of this new rock music took its style from the 1930s alienated
youth novels of the UK and the outsider lifestyles of the Beats in the USA. With this was born
the counterculture in music: rock music distinguished by authenticity derived from its challenge
to existing authority, including social standards and morals. The more it tweaked the nose of the
Establishment, the more power it gained in the media and thus the more the product sold. The
Beatles proved masters at this, inciting controvery and adulation wherever they went, and
making edgy statements like "We're more popular than Jesus Christ" which the outrage-hungry
press dutifully reported. As the 1960s advanced, the power of television combined with the
intensity of the political situation led to a melding of the political counterculture and its rock
music. It became essential for rock musicians to talk about peace, love and the happiness that
was possible in a Utopian world of kindergarten-style sharing, all while amassing vast fortunes
and living in mansions. When the Beatles sang "All you need is love" they were already on their
second marriages, having covertly exiled one band member and possibly kicked another one to
death. And yet the vision of "love" versus a mechanical automatron world of 1950s style career
advancement, shopping as an activity and making war on the "misunderstood" Communists, as
a gambit that enabled its audience to envision themselves as revolutionaries changing society
from a primitive past toward an enlightened future, sold records like never before. The 1970s:
Mainstreaming the Dissidents As the 1960s came to a close, it became clear that rock music
had reached the end of its arc. Bands took the music to the extremes of progressive rock on on
hand, and toward the dark primitive sounds of Iggy and the Stooges and Black Sabbath on the
other. Everything that could be done had been done in its most elemental form. This spurred
experimentation in the 1970s with both form and content. In this decade, progressive rock
ventured farther from the norm, and new forms such as disco and punk appeared. In response,
rock music took on a new populist edge as it went from the somewhat grubby hippie fringe to a
mainstream hedonism that fused feel-good politics with digestible, slickly produced material.
New forms of music entered the pop lexicon as reggae and a modern, rock-infused form of
country music intruded. Even jazz found itself a rock hybrid with "fusion" music that applied
rock percussion and song structure to jazz, translating the intricately plotted musical density of
progressive rock into free-form jams that fit into rock songs like extended guitar solos.

No three words connote "PROG ROCK" more negatively than Emerson Lake & Palmer. Their
music is incredibly pompous, for they are incredibly pompous individuals. One of them (does it
matter which?) famously said their goal was to create "a pure white European music with no
black influences."

Culture responded to the tumult of the 1960s by making a safer mainstream version of it.
Corporations staffed by unexciting men in suits adopted radical hippie slogans and used them to
sell mundane products. Even more, all of popular culture got behind appropriating the hedonism
of the 1960s and translating it into the everyday. Technological futurism without ideological
structure mated the sensual lifestyles of the 1960s with the commercial values of the 1940s.
"Free love" became swinger parties, psychedelic exploration became better living through
chemistry, and pacifism became a popular fashion of self-expression but no longer as much of a
political statement. The radicalism of 1968 gave way to consumerism with benefits of 1978.
Commerce and conservatism assimilated the forces that once opposed them. Similarly, rock
lost its edge, and while many people explored fusion, synthpop, disco or reggae, the most
radical drifted toward punk. Stripping rock down to its basics using power chords, punk
destroyed the rules and democratized the art form even further. Now it was no longer necessary
to play an instrument for months or years in order to become famous; you could play for six
weeks, make a catchy (but edgy) song and make it onto the radio. The driving impetus toward
punk was, much like that of early heavy metal, to remove the artificiality of rock music and
replace it with something more elemental. Although many bands developed the sound, starting
with 1960s bands like The Stooges, punk rock formalized itself with The Ramones in 1976.
Their goal was to remove influences and escape the rock world, in part to avoid being
commercialized and assimilated as they viewed 1960s and 1970s rock as having been.
Mr. Ramone once described his guitar style as "pure, white rock 'n' roll, with no blues
influence." "I wanted our sound to be as original as possible,'' he said. "I stopped listening to
everything."

Despite this brave statement, punk became quickly assimilated because its low threshold of
instrumental ability and recording quality allowed just about anyone to make it. In response
thousands of bands erupted so that by the end of the 1970s, punk consisted of thousands of
bands with interchangeable names, songs, attitudes and recordings. What was first the work of
pioneers became a big party where anyone could join in. Much as rock music itself
democratized and streamlined genres as diverse as country, blues, big band and folk into a
single entity, punk also became a snowball that picked up the flavor of the month and rolled it
into a new easily-digestible format. As the decade clicked over into the 1980s, a genre known as
"pop punk" emerged as college students began picking up instruments and making softer,

gentler and more introspective versions of punk songs. The result assimilated punk rock into the
mainstream rock industry. The 1980s: the Material World In outrage, punks reclaimed their
territory with hardcore punk at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s. This music went even
more extreme, using chromatic scales and two-chord songs, and added more savage vocals that
used the distorted voices that folk singers applied at parts of their songs when bad characters or
negative events entered the fray. Punk hardcore changed music for two reasons: first, it removed
itself from rock by deconstructing even the marginal rules of rock, and second, it designed itself
to avoid the mainstream music industry entirely with a do-it-yourself (DIY) aesthetic and the
creation of a separate network of zines, radio stations, tape traders and clubs who catered to this
music and its fanbase and excluded everything else. For the first time, a sub-culture challenged
the counter-culture and threatened to entirely drop out of society at large. Punks lived in squats,
or appropriated empty buildings, and survived by foraging while they dedicated their time to not
becoming either suit and tie guys or burnout hippies who thought peace would save the world.
Punk had a message: society was terrible because people were terrible, and no easy solution like
"love" would save the day. Instead, it was time for war! Hardcore punk formed a parallel world
to that of metal during this period. An innovation on either side passed to the other, and drove
the next evolution of that side. Thus hardcore picked up on metal drumming, then sent it back
with additional simplification, where it was adopted; metal adopted hardcore vocals, then made
them more extreme, and sent those back where they were enthusiastically received. During the
mid-1970s metal went through its own flirtation with stadium rock and was almost assimilated,
but came back through a DIY underground movement in the NWOBHM who paralleled the
punk attempts to do the same. Even more, both genres borrowed from tropes of the rock world
and adapted those to their own forms, albeit in such customized form that they were
unrecognizable. Metal adopted the lengthy complex solos of stadium rock but passed them
through a hardcore punk filter to make them chaotic and violent, and converted the extended
bridges of post-progressive stadium rock into new song structures. In turn, rock picked up on
the idea of distortion and punk rhythms. During the 1980s, the only relevant symbols were
monetary and social success, meaning a modern adaptation of the white picket house in the
suburbs, the minivan, local church and school groups and happy children with no cares in the
world. A decade of overextension and massive expenditure on cold war buildup shattered most
of this and replaced it with a literal reality of subservience, slowly flipping the power balance to
a sublimated leftism. As the smiley futurism came to a close at the turn of the eighties it was
clear the alienation was not an affliction but a condition of the system, and more extreme
responses arose. Both the old-school conservative system and the hippie "revolution" had failed
in their aims. In the mainstream, the previously "new left" leanings of our culture were
overshadowed by the pragmatism of gaining money and power, and in the underground, a new
series of dissidents found themselves in desperate paranoia against the industrial society slowly

surrounding them. Slowly, the pragmatic "eat and assert needs" conservativism of America
flowered with Ronald Reagan, and the underground new left moved toward media and went
mainstream to combat the money and power of old school interests. The defining aspect of the
1980s was the Cold War and its attendant threat of nuclear annihilation. Where 1950s and 1960s
children feared bombers in the sky, 1970s and 1980s children feared first ICBMs and then
cruise missiles and submarine-launched nuclear holocaust. Folklore absorbed the legends of the
nuclear Cold War: seven minutes between detection and detonation, nuclear winter, doomsday
machines and computers waging cancelation warfare across the globe. In the West, conservative
politicians took office and began the biggest military buildup since WWII in preparation for
either land war in Europe or a Naval/Air battle for dominance of the oceans. No one knew how
long the Cold War would last, and each side over-estimated the other. For those growing up
during this time, the threat of immediate obliteration proved a driving force behind the music
they listened to, and musicians heard this call and made their rhetoric even more extreme. The
result was a decade which outwardly tried to affirm all that the people in their 30s and 40s
found meaningful, namely a white picket fence vision of America from the 1950s but wrapped
in a cushion of safety and removal from the internal problems of the West. It was a bracingly
reactionary time, in which "Communist" was once again a career-threatening insult, and in
which the Christian religion and the process of making money for oneself again became the way
in which social importance was reckoned. Naturally, this provoked a resurrection of the
Counterculture and its strongest incarnation yet, since it had been absorbed in the 1970s and,
since popular opinion was close to its own values, had been assimilated. Now that it once again
had something to rebel against, it manifested itself in a growing cadre of die-hard liberal
specialist movements and alternative art, literature and music scenes. This gave metal a new
commitment which was resistance to the dominant warlike culture and its tendencies toward
control as the battle between revolutionaries and Establishment wore on into its second decade.
By the mid-1980s however hardcore punk waned because it both had exhausted its repertoire of
simple songs and needed to be more complex to avoid overlapping with previous material to
such a degree as to be seen as a variant of it, and it had been assimilated from within by those
who, seeing how easy it was to make hardcore punk, opportunistically created their own bands
despite a lack of artistic content or actual talent. The result was a flood of "DIY" sound-alike
bands who promptly drove most of the serious fans away from the genre and replaced them with
"fanboys" or those who wanted to be in the scene for the purpose of being in the scene, and saw
music as incidental to that process. Metal had its own version of these, both "sellouts" who used
the music for personal monetary gain, and "poseurs" who used the music to gain social prestige
and from that gain personal importance. Toward the end of the 1980s, hardcore bands converted
themselves to either post-hardcore bands like Fugazi, emo bands like Rites of Spring, or pop
punk bands like Jawbreaker. During the 1980s, rock downgraded its intensity from stadium

levels for a flirtation with synthpop which created the archetypal 1980s sound: electronic drums,
lush keyboards, distorted but soft guitar and stark vocals. As this sound gradually became
assimilated by the type of shiny pop that American radio stations had perfected in the 1950s, a
quasi-underground "indie" (independent) rock community came to life. Borrowing the DIY
attitude and simple aesthetics of punk, this genre produced simple rock music with heavy
emotional overtones of alienation, melancholy, loneliness and uncertainty. It styled itself as a
form of counterculture toward the positive, financially-geared, strong and militaristic spirit of
the politics of the time. Led by bands like REM and Yo La Teno, indie rock eventually became
a fairly mainstream style, but for a few years in the 1980s it was the rebel of the rock world,
doing everything exactly the opposite of what conventional wisdom dictated. The indie scene
cemented the "new" dichotomy in music: one was either with the mainstream attitude and tastes,
or went underground and catered to something else. The biggest influence on music during the
1980s was not sound, but video. In 1981, the first music videos began rolling out over cable
channels. Because they were on cable, and not regular TV, they could be more risque than what
went on television sets. Songs had to fit within the format defined by the video, which was
essentially a three- to five-minute movie revealing a storyline with some kind of ironic or
otherwise high-contrast ending, interspersed (usually) with the band playing or lip synching
within a scene. During the 1980s, a successful video greatly helped launch a song into the
slipstream and soon became necessary for all bands hoping to make it in the mainstream. Indie
rock bands were able to avoid this for some time, but as soon as they migrated to larger labels,
the demand existed for them to also put out videos, which in turn influenced their songwriting to
fit into the "MTV format" of slick verse-chorus with a lengthy bridge or other space for
concluding action in the mini-movie.
Watch as flowers decay On cryptic life that died The wisdom of the wizards Is only a
neutered 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_)
Also during this time arose the worst of the governmental attempts to limit the expression of
rock music. Politicians had been itching to limit this music since the 1960s since, with the
voting age lowered to 18 and television broadcasting constant entertainment into every home,
rock music had become a more formidable method of changing public opinion than the New
York Times and MacNeil-Lehrer report combined. In 1985, the Parents Music Resource Center
(PMRC) campaigned for warning labels on rock albums; in 1990, Judas Priest was sued under
the theory that they had encoded "backward masked" or reverse-order sound in their music that
encouraged fans to commit suicide, based on a 1985 suicide-pact shooting by two teenagers.
This was also the era of the "Satanic panic" that involved teachers at the Virginia McMartin
preschool going to trial on the theory that they had sexually molested their students as part of
the rituals of a Satanic cult. This paranoid outlook reflected much of the politics and political

reality of the time, as society tore itself apart both from counter-culture remnants of the 1960s
and a Soviet nuclear threat that had its citizens living in terror. The 1990s: Counter-Culture
becomes Culture This changed in the 1990s. That decade dawned with the maturation and
assumption of the reins of power by those who had been students during the tumultous,
counterculture-dominated 1960s. In chasing the symbols of peace, happiness, love and
tranquility, the "youth counterculture" of the 1960s and 1970s embraced its oppressors and soon
the peace sign became another icon of commercial culture. Capitalism and socialism became
bonded in a new form of government, "globalism," which felt that the industrial mix of
capitalism, liberal democracy and social welfare was the ultimate form of government and the
final evolution of human society.

Post-coldwar instability arose when the sudden collapse of

communism under Western economic pressure created a vacuum of social direction which was
eventually resolved in unity between moral emotion and needs for power. As little had changed,
social boredom increased and with the official ideology of non-change created the most
nihilistic, disposable society ever. Entertainment media became prevalent as CDs, VCRs, a nd
stereos of a high-performance nature became common. The large screen TV lit America at night
and warmed her power grids with the drooling inattention of a stagnant, functional land.
Worldwide, America was seen as a cultural leader and thus was embraced despite the horrifying
failures of the American system. The focus of world leaders turned inward to militarize against
drugs, racism and separatism.
There is more chaos, war, pollution now than ever before in our recorded history. Of course, we
might have known a period with even worse conditions, but the Christians burned all the
records that could tell us about it anyway. Like in the library of Alexandria, wherever the
Catholics or Protestants or Christians came, they destroyed the culture. They ruined the culture.
They burned the culture. And they burned the records of these cultures. That includes the
European cultures. That includes African cultures, Asian cultures, American cultures; wherever
they were, they destroyed everything. They want to replace our culture with Americanization,
with the Judeo-Christian cultures. Christianity is the root of all problems in the modern world.

Any analysis of this time will reveal the increasing presence of television, cable television,
movies and radio in the collective consciousness of Americans. In addition, the Internet, a
defense communications subsystem, exploded into public life with AOL and dot-coms
clamoring for inflated market share. The new Clinton economy raced up to meet it with token
appeals for heart-tugging issues but a fundamentally sound economic policy which fostered
growth, allowing an increase in corporate power and correspondingly, distrust of corporations
especially the multi-national corporations that globalism favors. World culture sighed a
collective disbelief of ideology and iconography except as applied to hedonism, entertainment
and public status. Belief in any meaning toward a cause was seen as a method of getting killed,

and conflict avoidance for both commercial and moral purposes became the public standard of
behavior in America and other countries in its economic model. The hedonistic culture of the
1960s merged with the consumer culture of the 1950s. And while the edges of boredom on this
vision showed, to many the classic 1960s archetype of the population being oppressed in being
kept from the fulfillment of their urges, as a means of expressing a template of life, came true in
the ability to have a job, make money and express hedonistic outpourings. People began talking
about their careers in emotional terms when in fact they were signaling social status. With
culture dead, religion dead, and no historical consciousness to speak of, what remained was
being better than someone else or some other group. Underneath the positive pluralistic
propaganda a new society appeared in which the goal was to improve personal wealth and
power at the expense of others with whom it was assumed nothing was held in common.

The result was the "Me generation" turned into an ideal for new generations and created a new
era of narcissism, where little allegiance existed even among family members. Broken homes,
degenerate and abusive marriages, parents working until late at night and a constant stream of
media emphasizing human failure and conflict took its toll. Almost aphasic in their approach to
politics and ideology, the generations arising in this time were entirely temporal in their
approach to values and without belief in any form of ideal, as all ideals had behind them a
commercial engine. As if in sick replay of the Vietnam conflict, human intentions seemed
"good" but turned out "bad" - through something we brought with us no matter where we went.

Emotional nihilism approached, and raging spirits sought reason to live or, in other ranges,
significance of death.

With the election of Bill Clinton, a sensation of new directions suffused

the Western world. The world shifted toward Utopia plans just in time for the Soviet Union to
fall. When the walls came down in 1991, people assumed that a new era had arrived in which
the old threats no longer existed. Counterculture merged with mainstream culture yet again,
incorporating the 1980s capitalist ideal with the 1960s liberal idealism. The result was that
bands found endorsing counterculture themes no longer elicited the authenticity they craved,
and turned toward other ways to oppose the dominant mostly-liberal power hierarchy. Indie
rock merged with metal and punk to form a kind of primitive but hook-laden sub-genre known
as "alternative rock." Borrowing heavily from the 1960s, this sub-genre nonetheless injected
itself with the cynicism and world-weariness of those who feel the promised Utopia was nothing
but. Alternative rock essentially absorbed indie.
Welcome citizen of our adorable nation Serve and be a part of us in modern time Parents have
never existed; your blood, state property Leave personality; total trust will make security Your
ears - our information Your eyes - our sight Implanted in society - only for the security From
childhood to the grave Every step will be safe as we are behind Guided through life blessed in
our birth So our secret son welcome to the promised life... -- Carbonized, "For the Security"
(_For the Security_)
Perhaps the biggest explosion of the 1990s was techno. Invented in the 1970s by fusing disco
structure and synthpop technique, techno mutated two decades later as people began to use dual
turntables to mix existing albums into a form of dub. Frequently, they combined techno and
chill-out or ambient musics to create intricate layered dub "sets" lasting around an hour that
took listeners through the stages of ritual: initiation, ego dissolution, orientation, union,
deepening, clarification and absorption. By taking users through these "journeys" or
"adventures," techno sets extended music beyond a listening experience to a participatory
experience. While not everyone enjoyed techno, the appeal and power of this approach
influenced many other genres who wanted to incorporate the sense of unity and action in their
work. Some of the most prominent music of this era, notably indie and electronica,
distinguished itself by being minor-key and having high energy, creating an atmosphere of
wistful sadness as one finds in Autechre or Nirvana. As the Clinton years wore on, c onfidence
increased. Cheap labor from Asia enabled vast profits to roll in, and then the internet created a
new industry in which people invested and made fortunes. It seemed like life had finally
returned to normal after the world wars and turbulence of the 1960s, but toward the end of this
period, doubts intervened. The remarkable smugness of the globalist capitalist liberal
democracy grated on many people, and the countries who were not participating in the great
first world gold rush alarmed many who saw a minefield of future enemies being sewn. Music
reflected this by turning the downcast mentality of alternative rock into a truly outcast and

depressed mentality. Genres like doom metal and "suicidal black metal" thrived. The world
wanted a negative trip and it found musical expression in genres with the sense of negated
possibility of a bad situation being otherwise. As this new generation assumed hold, the rules of
the 1980s faded. No longer was it enough of a commitment to rebel against perceived
authoritarianism, since the people in control were the anti-authoritarians. Nor could there be any
compromise with counter-culture, since that also had won, nor with industrial society and its
materialistic and consumerist urges, since that had either been assimilated by or had assimilated
the counter-culture. Heavy metal had to invent a new path and chose, through black metal and
death metal, that of rejecting modern society as a whole. This provided a new and more extreme
direction that involved revolt against Christianity, the concept of equality, and even the notions
of love and trust. Heavy metal reached maturity in its nihilism and at the same time invented its
own path. Black metal blazed a path for itself through church arsons, murder and violence, but
equally shocking reclaimed authenticity by proclaiming a love for Nietzschean natural selection,
nationalism (and sometimes outright racial exclusion), anti-Christianity and anti-liberalism.
Black metal rejected the entire postwar tendency toward liberalism and governments as
protectors and guidance of citizens, and turned back to culture, nationalism and Social
Darwinism which were in the 1990s the most powerful taboo one could invoke. The 2000s:
Interregnum As the Clinton years drew to a close, it became apparent that the dot-com bubble
was about to detonate and it did, creating a recession that damaged some of the mood. This was
followed shortly by terror attacks across the world, including the "9-11" attacks in New York,
and a resulting war on terror. During this time, most of rock music saw an opportunity to re-live
the Reagan years: Bush II was in office, and the Soviets had been conveniently replaced by
world terror. Music took a turn toward the rebellious at the same time that many of the 1990s
genres began to appear visibly exhausted of any potential, but kept going through the motions
because of a necessary faith that answers could be fond in this direction. This created an
undercurrent of "counterculture II" during the George W. Bush years, but it remained
unconvincing and faded quickly.
More than three decades after Black Sabbath conjured images of the dark arts, heavy metal is
growing up. The genre is increasingly incorporating social and political messages into its dense
power chords.

Cattle Decapitation vocalist Travis Ryan said his San Diego band's mix of

charging guitars and an animal rights message is drawing a diverse crowd that includes activists
as well as traditional metal fans.
During this time pop music came to somewhat of a standstill, paused for a moment, and then
began to explore past directions which had not quite been fully developed. Nu-metal rose as
bands revisited rap/rock from the past two decades and made a more virulent form; pop
recombined 1980s instrumentation, 1990s emotions and 1970s stadium rock to make a new

form of pop. This in turn hybridized with rap and hip-hop, changing its rhythm and subject
matter. As hip-hop became an accepted form of music in the mainstream pop community, rock
and pop began a convergence which resulted in forms that were different on the surface but very
similar at an underlying level.
It's very hard to recognize the truth when you are bombarded by lies all the time, every minute
of the day. Even in sleep, because you dream of the places you have during the day. You are
bombarded by commercials and completely senseless information every minute of the day. If
you turn on the TV, you are bombarded; if you turn your head in some direction, you see some
sign or some commercial. If you read magazines, newspapers... senseless information. The news
are themselves products being sold. Everything is meaningless. Sure, the truth is out there -- not
to sound like some 'X-files' but -- the truth is of course to be found, but in a sea of lies. It's just
impossible to find it unless you know how to look, where to look and when to look. Of course,
it's not possible to just get up in the morning and just say 'OK, I'm going to go find the truth this
day,' and go find it. You have to try, and fail, and eventually you will weed out all the lies and
you end up with something at least similar to the truth. The truth is hidden, under grass, under
some rocks, in a hidden trail, a forgotten trail in a forest. And when you are trying to find these
trails, you will stumble, you will get snagged on branches in your face, you will make mistakes
before you finally find it.
With the rise of personal computer technology, home recording had become simpler and more
affordable. In the 2000s, the drive to get people on the internet manifested itself in vastly
cheaper computer hardware and software. This caused a new generation of music to possess
much more advanced production and to streamline toward variants of known styles that could
be easily grafted on to a base of techno or dub. As a result, greater emphasis fell on the
instrumental ability of those bands who chose to go the "organic" or semi-organic route.
Coupled with an explosion in American education in the 1990s, including music education and
a greater diversity of training materials, the technical ability of musicians and producers rose in
tandem. The 2010s: Instability Returns When the Bush presidency ended in what seemed
like universal disapproval, society launched itself in the opposite direction mandated by
counterculture II and elected the first African-American President in the USA while pushing
further to expand the European Union to include groups outside of Western Europe. At this
point, popular music found itself unable to take a stance which reflected alienation other than on
a personal level. Music became more introspective and emotional, focusing on specific issues
such as environmental crises that were popularly approved, but generally tying these to a
personal narrative. With the vast democratization of recording technology enabling people to
produce full albums from a single computer and piece of software, more music flooded the
market than ever before. The years after that time brought great indecision to metal. It had

achieved total taboo status and yet, as industry and popular desires took hold, had lost that same
outlook and become assimilated by the norm. As a result, metal bands turned toward
hybridization with rock and related genres, and began to adopt a more friendly attitude toward
the former counter-culture values that were now mainstream. By the time Barack Obama was
elected in 2008, heavy metal had been entirely absorbed by the culture around it except for a
few die-hards. This impacted its creativity and threw the genre into a slump. At the same time,
the popularity wave caused by the huge upheaval and consequent popularity of black metal for
its perceived authenticity pushed metal further into the public eye. To meet this new demand,
metal produced more refined versions of existing genres, mutating death metal into "technical
death metal" which was essentially later hardcore merged with progressive rock and lite jazz,
and fusing black metal with indie-rock, a move formalized by the transition of Sonic Youth
guitarist Thurston Moore into black metal supergroup Twilight. The resulting cultural abyss
assimilated all music which it encountered, subverting it to feed the dominant paradigm of the
age which rewarded utilitarian and moral tokens based in narcissism above all else. The word
"compassion" became popular as a way of gaining entry to a now-dominant counter-culture
whose ideas threatened no one and thus as uncontroversial, did not assert any form of
authenticity. The remaining authenticity was sought in the personal and the social, where artists
addressed conditions of life without enwrapping them in any broader purpose than emotion.
However, stormclouds obscured the horizon. Despite the modern assertion that all problems
could be solved with education, science and technology, society appeared to be disintegrating
from within. Artists had no way to address this other than to notice it, which was controversial
enough that it achieved authenticity but not popularity, or to go further into re-iterating the
dominant dogma through more and more personal perspectives. Becalmed in confusion, artists
look toward greater extremity in an uncertain future.