2. The Scandinavian Black Metal Scene “The product of an unholy union between death-metal churn and Viking bloodlust”, a vivid definition of black metal by the American journalist Darcey Steinke, which may not be applicable to the Californian black metal band Leviathan, but definitely finds its place in the Scandinavian black metal scene. In this chapter we’ll see to the music, the subculture and events within the scene that make Scandinavian black metal a controversial social issue.
2.1. The music, symbols and beyond Different black metal forms vary a lot, while the croaking vocal is the most noticeable and uniform symbol. The music itself is played fast in distorted guitar sound, often with dissonance on purpose. As black metallers share a common belief against the conventional blues-oriented metal music, guitar solo skills are seldom used. Interestingly, music critics believe that black metal stands nearer to classical music because of its adoption of classical instruments and the “story-telling” arrangement , which make up a strong contrast to the its fundamentalist nature.
Black metal as a music genre was named after the 1982 album Black Metal from the English band Venom, which achieved significant success for its extremist music concept and serves as a major foundation of black metal music thereafter. However, the scene didn’t draw as much attention as today until it came across the North Sea, where it met the pagan air from Odin’s land.
Following the success of the Swedish band Bathory, who was famous for the low-fi sound combined with satanic lyrics, a group of Norwegian bands in early 1990s brought black metal to its golden years, among them Burzum, Emperor, Mayhem and Darkthrone. From late 1990s on, the digitalization of music producing and promoting took Scandinavian black metal to a new stage. However, though the Nordic black metal scene attracts lots of attention from mass media and the publicity for its ideological activities, the music per se has never made it to be commercial success and still stays away from MTV, for which certain alternative music genres are generally acceptable.
Compared with other black metal scenes elsewhere, bands from Scandinavian are believed to share a common Viking-heritage dating back to the pre-Christian era, which can be told from their warrior-like stage out-fit, Nordic folklore influence in both melody and lyrics, as well as their daily behaviours. On the other side, Scandinavian black metallers also stick to the heavy metal tradition in terms of hairstyle, clothing and stage performance. Interestingly, this Viking style is not only adopted in other metal scenes with Germanic traditions, but also by bands and fans in Asian and Southern European countries taking Nordic black metallers as role models.
1. Introduction It is not difficult to capture a typical image of heavy metal music simply by viewing the discography of the British metal band Iron Maiden, where album titles like Killers (1981), No Prayer for the Dying (1990), Fear of the Dark (1992) and Dance of Death (2003) illustrate a world of devil, darkness and despair. Such image, often associated with long hair, black leather and head banging, has been radicalized further by extreme metal, a subgenre of heavy metal emerged in the 1980s which takes the mainstream metal music as a “pop” counterpart.
Black metal has been taking the lead among various extreme metal genres. Though this “extreme” form of extreme metal, together with death metal, never gained a wide audience in its three decades of existence, it’s been keeping a small, dedicated cult group in the 1990s and until 21st Century. On the other side, it also took the music-based socio-politics to an extreme never seen before . Though a British invented term, black metal gained its first fame through the Norwegian scene and achieved remarkable successes in Scandinavian countries, where conflicts like church-burnings, racist activities and murders among black metallers are not neglectable. At the same time, black metal also takes a deep root in the Nordic history and tradition, which makes itself even more controversial as a music-oriented subculture.
This paper seeks to find the connection between Scandinavian black metal music and the identity it creates. I will argue that Black Metal, being deeply rooted in the traditional Nordic culture, has constructed a collective identity of paganism, Satanism and racism within the Scandinavian scenes. The first section will present an overview of black metal music in Scandinavian countries, as well as its controversies. In the second section I’ll go over some theoretical approaches and definitions which are applied in my analysis. A systematic analysis will be carried out in the last part of this paper to explain the conformation of “black metal identity” in both aesthetic and ethic aspects regarding different ideologies the music genre presents.
重新下了4AD的BOOTLEG合輯聽,對很多歌的感覺都跟以前不一樣了。SWALLOW的《TASTES LIKE HONEY》還是很動人,應該家里還有SWALLOW的CD這樣子。再就是M/A/R/R/S的這首《PUMP UP THE VOLUME》,HOUSE樂曲的至尊作,充滿了濃郁的布魯克林味,REMIX版又透著早期科技舞曲的糙勁。