The dark passion
of black metal that surrounds us is mostly referred as something hard to
explain. This world of darkness, melancholy and fire is utterly incognita realm
where we embrace death, decayedness, isolation while delving into melancholia
shores by exploring despair, sorrow, actually being different than anyone else
and continuously burning with our passionate fire conceivably coming from
Pandemonium!
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| John Martin/Pandemonium |
As music writers,
we have been writing about this music, reviewing the albums by focusing on
certain melodies, unspeakable atmosphere, and soul-shattering vocals. Endless
discussion would go for guitars as heavy metal, according to me is a guitar
music genre while all other instruments for sure utterly important and crucial
as well. The thing is, when the drums turn into heart beats, bass drags one to existential
depths while the listener experiences idiosyncratic soundscape of destroying,
groundbreaking black metal vocals, this frenetic music really completes. Occasionally
keys, strings or even wind instruments e.g. saxophone make a perfect sense for experimental
black metal. One should give an ear to Ihsahn’s “After” or White Ward’s “Futility
Report” albums for the excellent usage of saxophone into black metal in
avant-garde concerns.
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| Melancholia/Domenico Fetti |
The lyrics… One
should be aware of how the lyrics are one step ahead in black metal as they are
already in the definition of this “more than music” with specified themes. Darkthrone
is the one who mentioned and revealed directly the priority of the lyrics in
black metal unlike other heavy metal genres. Certainly other genres have some
clarified themes that they are mostly into, nevertheless these themes cannot be
said as sine qua non to be defined as such. The idea itself behind black metal makes
sense and it is the dark, desecrated, subversive aspect that have desires to
explore what are beyond the borders, limits of thoughts, ideas and even human
bodies where we encounter self-destruction here. Aforementioned lyrical
concentration can be found in Watain albums that are done over-eagerly. As for
dark poetical aspect, Sun of the Sleepless would be the best example that influenced
by 18th century romantic era poets as Lord Byron, Shelling, Keats,
Georg Trakl.
Black Metal
lyrical-wise can be called as the signifiers, the symbolic bleak language
conveying via wailing, howling or beast-like growls. One should remind Ghost
Bath, Numeronean or Karg for such derailment which is a sort of ambivalent
approach for listeners, as for me, just a notorious creativity, and a musical
noose around one’s neck!
Notwithstanding
the effort the reasons of black metal in musical and lyrical sense and also mentioning
the certain notorious mind which one is born in, fully inherent, there is still
something eerie which is undefinable in this dark passion. It occurred under
the name of the “certain something” in this music. Irresistible, magical, this unnamable
cause of this darkest love is a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’.
All those reasons
you keep counting is insufficient. There can be any other art forms having
similar qualities but still not light a fire in your life. According to Žižek,
it seems to be the additional reason that cannot be named on the level of this
set of reasons, and this is because this additional fact is not so much a fact
but rather a decision by the subject. Yet on the side of the object, there has
to be a point, or rather a void, an empty space that allows to project this
decision upon it.
As for Robert
Pfaller who thinks possibilities of art in Althusserian terms, “it is the form
that causes the love, that is, the subject’s transference. One can also say it
is the magic, or the charm of art, or its master-signifiers, that bring this
about”*. All I can say is the hectic deviance that I would like to dedicate my soul
all over. It might be some sort of Faustian bargain that we sacrifice normality
over deathlike bloody aesthetics.
Pfaller, Robert, The Efficiency of Ideology and the Possibilities of Art: An Althusserian Account: Vol 4 No 2 (2016): Stasis. Art, Politics, Ideology: A Problematic Triangle
