Black metal | part 5

  - If musicians sometimes lose interest in a topic when the degree of its radicalism decreases, can we say that it is not specific ideas that are important to BM musicians, but nihilism as such?

- Now there are too many scenes, projects and ways to typologize them: geographically, by subgenres, by themes, in relation to commercialization, accessibility, participation in festivals, etc. That is, with all the desire, it is difficult to get statistics on which teams there are more find out more about the reasons musicians broadcast certain ideas and whether they consciously do it. But I do not doubt the existence of those for whom it is simply important to be radical, and for them this is the main criterion of authenticity.

- Previously, black metal was more often ideological and activist (church burning, murders), but today everything has mixed, and hybrids have appeared - from hipster black metal and black hop to black metal beer. How do you look at these changes from the point of view of the listener and from the point of view of the researcher? And how does the scene perceive them from the inside?

- I would not say that the burning of churches is in the past. But on the whole, it seems natural to me that there are more experiments, plots and commerce, because information and music itself have become more accessible, and as a researcher I really like that everything mixes, develops and becomes more complicated. If we talk about the visual side of the matter, then I am in a positive sense amused by trends like the penetration of black metal aesthetics into fashionable graphic design (there was even an event dedicated to this topic). I admire designers like Valnoir and his studio Metastazis who make quality and meaningful work for metal projects.

Metastazis studio work

The scene is not homogeneous, because opinions are very different, and I do not want to get involved in an endless discussion about authenticity. However, I would suggest reading the freely available chapter on underground ethics from Dyal Patterson's book Black Metal: The Evolution of a Cult. In short, there the musicians interviewed by the author say that everything is subjective, and, perhaps, the idea of ​​the underground has exhausted itself, but in any case, the main thing is not to try to please the public, but to spread the ideas in which you believe, even if not everyone can understand them and to accept.