I am the black wizards: MULTIPLICITY, MYSTICISM and IDENTITY in BLACK METAL music and culture , a Thesis by Benjamin Hedge Olson

slayerslayerSun, 09/12/2018 - 06:23

Abstract -

Black metal represents one of the most dramatic, violent and obscure representations of
contemporary international popular culture; it is an extremist sect of an extremist sect. An
understanding of popular culture’s most extreme polarities is imperative to an understanding of
its range and general character. I will argue that black metal culture is radically different from
all other forms of metal and must be understood as a unique form of cultural expression that
signifies a dramatic break from both traditional metal and secular modernism. Although black
metal has proliferated across the world, taking up certain indigenous variations in its various
locations, it has retained three basic characteristics that make it exceptional and significant: 1.)
Black Metal is characterized by a conflict between radical individualism and group identity and
by an attempt to accept both polarities simultaneously. 2.) Black metal is centered on an
extravagantly romantic view of nature and an idealized past, both of these concepts being very
much intertwined. 3.) Black metal celebrates the irrational and primal; it is a critique of modern
rationalism and secularism.

https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=bgsu1206132032&disposi...

it is 132 pages so be warned . i havent read it all yet.

Dossmo on Sun, 09/12/2018 - 21:55

Hmm, read the first 20 pages and crossread well into the second half. Strange thing. So many citations from Lords of Chaos, Kerrang magazine. Wrong album titles (Bathory, Emperor), questionable sources ("one interview with a black metaler", "philosopher Frederic Nietzsche"). He doesnt seem to dig, it reads as if he took Lords of Chaos and wrote an even more evil and misanthropic manifesto about "the scene" to scare his lectors into giving him a good grade, always emphasising the fact, that there are so few sources about the scene and noone has ever written much about it. Which is plain wrong, I just have to turn my head to my bookshelf or take the 'zine box out of my basement.

Liberator on Wed, 12/12/2018 - 01:22

That's kind of what I feared reading through his abstract. The issue with conceptualizing black metal like this to the umpteenth degree is that most of these people, more often than not, are outsiders or passers-by looking in. I also feel like most people either over-analyze or make it (black metal) overtly grandiose a thing and thereby completely miss the mark.