Heavy Metal Music, Culture and Philosophy FAQ (Metal as Concept 2/3 )
The Hessian Studies Center
Posting-frequency: semimonthly
Last-Modified: 16-Mar-2006
2.2 Culture
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, our culture is not to make music for people who want
entertainment; our culture is to make epic and powerful things
out of the forces and remnants of destruction. There's a reason
for everything we do.
2.2.1 Meaningful Post-Rebellion
One function of metal culture is to provide some sense to
post-rebellion use of consciousness as an interpretive
guide to reality. To get into what we do, they must fall
- from the Heaven of oblivious iconistic belief - and
accept what will come next, which is the transition to
nihilism.
Crossing the void occurs not just in a philosophical
sense, but in a proto-adulthood state also, where it is
the question of what to do after the shaped existence of
childhood is replaced with the patterned survival of an
adult, all while the clock of mortality races through its
orbit. In this sense, metal is a mirror of what the self
faces and observes the self reacting to in a modern
existence after the twilight of the kingpin of
idols/ikons, "God."
"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
2.2.1.1 Culture has caught up with rebellion
Mainstream culture long ago appropriated rebellion as
its source of "cool", by replacing the values of the
previous generation with a new lessening of
restriction.
From James Dean to Jeff Spicoli, our heroes went from
being people of action to coalescing into ultimate
introverts who issue a complaint and then reject it
all, but with no idea, fluster and collapse into the
same morass of pessimistic conservatism which hides the
fears of the rest of the herd.
Metal is about a rebellion which comes from a
disagreement, less of a complaint than a challenge and
a rebuke, as it was when the metaphorical Satan looked
toward God and rejected Heaven's law for a freedom he
could not explain, but felt a thirst toward - an escape
from the fixed behavior of holiness to the random and
dynamic possibilities of an unformed land - Hell!
"In his book-length essay The Conquest of Cool,
Thomas Frank explores the ways in which Madison
Avenue co-opted the language of youthful '60s
rebellion. It is "the story," Frank writes, "of the
bohemian cultural style's trajectory from
adversarial to hegemonic; the story of hip's
mutation from native language of the alienated to
that of advertising." This appropriation had
wide-ranging consequences that deeply transformed
our culture--consequences that linger in the form of
'90s "hip consumerism." (Think of Nike using the
song "Revolution" to sell sneakers, or Coca-Cola
using replicas of Ken Kesey's bus to peddle
Fruitopia.) "
- book review on amazon.com of Thomas Frank's
"The Conquest of Cool : Business Culture,
Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism"
Metal does not wish to fall into the pit of becoming
another "fad" which is hyped-up, sold out, and then
worn into the ground as it is rehashed and overhyped.
This is the way of the transient. Metal is about
finding lasting value in nothingness and one's own
creativity together - not in fads, meaningless
indulgences, mindless "entertainment" or other forms of
life-denial.
2.2.1.2 Inversion of values in media hipness
Media hippies are public-identity characters that are
composed from statistical reasoning to reach the
broadest band of people who could project their
insecurities into an avatar of that character and in
that identification, become loyal consumers following
the instructions in the ads that came with that show.
Marilyn Manson, Korn, Pantera, "new" Metallica, Motley
Crue, Ani DiFranco, Rage Against the Machine, Cannibal
Corpse, Dimmu Borgir, Cradle of Filth, Dark Funeral and
Marduk provide this same function - these are "sold
out" bands who move their music not with an internal
drive to express but with a desire for the material
reward they get in exchange for experience, including
the experience itself.
Metal believes in an inversion of the inversion of
values which constitutes the media hipness, meaning
that values had to be taken to a greater complexity of
abstraction, as they are in lyrics such as Slayer,
Morbid Angel, Burzum, Gorguts or Death.
2.2.1.3 Metal rebels against the reason why there are
things to rebel against
Many genres feature bands which find something to rebel
against and fight it, hard. Metal rebels against the
need to rebel by taking a metaphorical look at the
process of power, in a method similar to William S
Burroughs' "Naked Lunch."
The metaphors of killing, death, destruction, sodomy,
infection, possession, suicide, hate, violence, and
necrophagia/coprophagia found in the songs and imagery
of metal music are not meant as literal objects but
implications that they are everyday objects - denied
objects - which confronts the listener with a more
morbid fate than nightmare, reality as a neutralized
dream.
2.2.1.4 And by understanding destruction, is aware of
creation
Destruction is the force that clears the way for
creation, or opens opportunity, at least. A world that
is cluttered, murmured the author, describes our world.
There is too much: other people, requirements to
society, debt to commerce (rent/health), excess
information, marketing information, terrifying news.
We wish to kill the waste and clear away the irrelevant
- hence the enticing motifs of forest fire, battle,
winter, genocide, and apocalypse.
2.2.2 Meta-Rebellion
The rebellion against the parameters of power doesn't stop
at the next generation of rebellion. As this facet of metal
ideology is assembled of the roots of romanticism, it is best
to see it as a celebration of the uniqueness of the
individual.
2.2.2.1 objectless desire to be unconstrained
Metal expresses a desire for mental clarity and a
limitless power for self-motion. The impulse is to have
nothing interfering in motion so that there is no
constant obsession with material intrusion.
2.2.2.2 to derive thought independently
Individualism and its trademark, independent thought,
are highly valued in metal culture and lyrics.
2.2.2.3 to exist in organic harmony with death and life
A recognition of death and the forces of decay in metal
prompts a revelation of its philosophy of integration, an
embrace of the impermanent in life by recognizing the time
to life for all things in a larger, naturalistic
development.
2.2.3 Mythos
Mythos is the science of placing together a sequence of
metaphors in order to build a living structure, a story which
is always in the process of evolution while maintaining its
integral character. This mythos is the key of
self-identification within a subculture, in that it allows
one the space in which to create a character matching its own
ideals.
2.2.3.1 Introduction
In a subculture, beliefs have to work alongside a
sequence of tenets which run contrary to the subcultural
beliefs. Hence most mythos from this area focus on the
individual, and how to develop that to freedom.
2.2.3.1.1 Mythos a method of expressing character
A personality mythos carries with it the character
of warrior or journeyman ethos: to be free, to work
when that's needed and to play/pillage otherwise.
The hedonistic modern Hessian descends from Vikings and
Vandals of ages past.
2.2.3.1.2 Personal decisions political choices
In the modern age, we realize that personal
decisions imply a political value system, or at
least filtering system. The Hessian cultural
movement reaches out to network personal choices by
knowledge rather than force.
2.2.3.1.3 Mythos defines a public personal ideal
When one is able to speak the metaphorical language of
a personal mythology, one is able to express a subtle
but powerful reminder of who one is and why. There is
not scorn in "We who are not as others" but a hope
brought by enlightened choice.
2.2.3.1.4 Ubermensch
The idea of overcoming, or surpassing fear and
transcending limitation, to become a personal god or
omnipowerful human being is rooted deeply in metal, a
genre of people who work hard under adverse
circumstances to do very complex things.
2.2.3.2 Metal Mythos
The value of Hessian mythos can be seen in what it
manifests: a gentle ideology based in a placement of
self instead of a self image, a hopefulness for
environment and humans alike. However, such a
progressive view greatly clashes with contemporary
social values.
2.2.3.2.5 Mythos of Job
Job is the patient servant who waits dully for a
task that will free him from worrying about his
choice for another few hours. That is why in the
Bible, when Job is tortured in a battle between
"God" and Satan for Job's soul, his faith is so firm to
him - he wishes to know nothing but to what he can
adapt, since he has ascribed all his choice to divine
power. Hessians dislike Jobs and avoid them at all
costs.
2.3.2.1.2 Mythos of selling many albums
Similarly selling many albums is recognized as
mythically important, at best. Most people consume
without ever thinking about even the contents that they
are able to digest and repeat. So selling more albums
could even mean reaching fewer people, if society is a
sliding scale from awareness to oblivion.
2.3.2.1.3 Mythos of sexual appeal
Newer metals (speed and newer) do not use
gender-related words, as they work toward the
abstract. Once leather-clad metal warriors were
sexual powerhouses. Now they are powerhouse
warriors because they are almost asexual in their
abstraction (yet earthy in their behavior).
2.3.2.1.4 Anti-convention
Conventions are the calcification of a working
process. The independent yeoman information farmer of
the new frontier steers away from the known once it
becomes obvious how redundant it is.
2.3.2.1.5 Anti-tonesome
The self is envisioned as out of place, dissonant,
by the nature of its recomposition and so nothing is
whole, or perfect, ever; this is the essence of
tonal degradation.
2.3.2.1.6 Subculture
Participation in a subculture frees the ego and
subconscious from explanation, or justification, in the
same way drug addiction frees a madman from his dark
and morbid destiny.
2.3.2.1.7 Lasting ethos of ideology
Ideology is the essence of what is communicated as
mythos: a series of abstractions based on character
value which create a sense of uniqueness, or
differentiation, for the Hessian population. As such,
they hold to their ideology fiercely, as it is
essential for both self-image and self-placement in a
time where information filtering is the first line of
defense.
2.2.4 Living after Midnight
Hessians are both abstract thinkers and Hedonists. The
latter means a fair amount of partying, e.g. social behavior
involving the forbidden fruits of intoxication and/or
sexuality, even while thinking (and vice versa).
2.2.2.1 Activities
Hessians are known to smoke a lot of pot, drink beers,
take ephedra, play loud music, form unlistenably
distorted bands, destroy religious icons, play video
games, watch horror movies, go to concerts and smoke a
lot of pot as commonly accepted social interactions,
while Hessians as individuals and more informal groups
engage in wide varieties of probably weird and lurid
behavior.
2.2.2.2 Intoxicants
Hessians favor a wide range of intoxicants for differing
reasons.
The most common Hessian intoxicant is THC
(tetrahydrocannabinol, the major active ingredient in
marijuana, hashish, bhang and kif) for the following
reasons:
- Ease of availability
- Mild or no long term effects
- Ease of consumption
- Hallucinatory/Psychedelic properties
- Non-capitalist distribution system
- Social activity
- Not an artificial "happy" reality
Some Hessians drink, but recently more have been
rejecting it in favor of a less corporate existence, as
have many smokers. Many Hessians used to take speed, or
methamphetamine, but more are taking the less-harmful
ephedrine.
Blood of illegitimate children of priests is also
intoxicating and delicious.
2.2.2.3 Events
Major events in the Hessian community include: concerts,
radio shows, drug parties, demolitions, fires.
2.2.2.4 Dialogues
One of the most important activities as a Hessian is
communicating. Hessians as part of an intense
structuralist desire articulate many different things, and
are more than willing to share information, guaranteeing
another at least temporary connection in the matrix of the
subculture.
2.2.5 Language
Hessian language is an abstract but organic rendition of
English (or other native language) into an abstract and
psychedelic descriptive field of structural importance.
Hessians are often highly technical, and their language
follows this model.
2.2.5.1 Relation to human animal
One very postmodern trend in metal is to declare the
dependence on a "human animal" and to speak of that
duality, between abstract mind and human flesh, with
familiarity. Its major function in the ideology of
metal is to make individuals aware of their
distinctiveness, or what they gave up when they let it
go.
2.2.5.1.1 Gender pronouns
Metal uses few gender pronouns, at least in recent
genres, as a way of distancing from the flesh and
the entire question of physicality of avatar.
2.2.5.1.2 Self-reference
There is little self-reference in metal for the
ostensible purposes of identification, but quite a
bit in the description of personal experience (as
in, of decay) or observations of physical occurrence
to the self.
2.2.5.1.3 Abstract
The most important aspect of metal's language is its
reliance upon abstract, Latinate and Germanic
structures as a method of describing something for
recognition as if by antigen. From the dooming
blast of old Slayer with its mythological lyrics to
bands like Morbid Angel with their philosophical guide
to post-Babylonian religion, death metal integrated a
fundamental change to the way we view language in
metal.
2.3 Ideology
Although not a vital component of the music itself, the
ideology that propels metal reflects the range of spirit
which enables one to create music that is both free and
structural. An evolving history of ideas is presented
briefly here.
2.3.1 Ideals
As all of us are, metallions are children of history who
look to the past to explain the thinking behind the
present. Here is a brief sampling of the identifiable
movements metal's got into.
2.3.1.1 Romanticist
As a philosophical movement romanticism predates
existentialism in its desire to explain life to the
individual, as if entertaining the theodicy of
Milton as a Protestant necessity for personal
self-actualization. It was about breaking free of
social confinement and finding the transcendent self
which could see the beauty in all things, an
extension of the egalitarianism of the Deists who
founded commercial America. Much of its focus
included a dialogue with death, a morbidity, an
insouciant desire to experience life as it occurs, a
hedonism, a fascination with the ancient, a querying
of self in vast universe, and a desire to achieve
that which is unique for its precision expression of
self. This movement empowered emotion to lead the
human on wild adventures, while setting logic free
in a world of its own to dream. Some say this is
the last time people in Western society reported
significant experience.
A fragment from the OED defines romanticism as "tending
towards or characterized by romance as a stylistic basis
or principle of literature, art or music; designating to a
movement or style during the late 18th and early 19th
centuries in Europe marked by an emphasis on feeling,
individuality and _passion_ rather than classical form and
order, and preferring grandeur or picturesqueness to
finish and proportion." This snippet defines both the
style and content of romanticist works, at least as
commonly known; investigating metal reveals their
inspiration.
The distinguishing characteristic of metal throughout
its history has been its youth-culture rejection of the
established world (youth reject their world for they can
afford to; once they are educated to lose hope they find
themselves in an easier existence) and declarations of
autonomy from the surrounding world and its disease of
bourgeouis commercialism, sexual elitism, intellectual
denial or spiritual cowardice, depending on what
generation of metal is expounding. In this metal has
affirmed the rejection of proportion/symmetry and the
overthrow of external principles which would control \
such as morals and aesthetics (finish); the root of this
tendency is the dependence on passion that takes over when
one has accepted science (see Nihilism, 3.1).
The romantic movement of literature in Europe
(predominantly England and France) inspired poetry and
existential literature such as Mary Shelley's
_Frankenstein_, the story of a creature brought to life
finding his essence unfolding as he grows, only to realize
the conditions of his life doom him to obscurity and
isolation. These works are the ancestors of the seminal
modernists James Joyce, William Faulkner, and W.S. Burroughs,
as well as the genesis of genres such as science fiction,
fantasy, and horror.
The fascination with the eldritch and morbid, the
biological and the destructive, as well as the unfolding
question of humanity's place in a technological world, are
hallmarks of this movement leading a clear trail through
history to today's metal movements, especially black metal
in which all logic is rejected in favor of total emotional
hatred and nihilistic passion for the abstract.
These lyrics explain best:
Mayhem, 1993, "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas"
Life Eternal
A dream of another existence
you wish to die
a dream of another world
you pray for death to release the soul.
One must die to find peace inside, you must get eternal
I am a mortal but am I human ?
How beautiful life is now when my time has come
A human destiny but nothing human inside
What will be left of me when I'm dead, there was
nothing when I lived
"What you found was eternal death
no one will ever miss you"
2.3.1.2 Existentialist
Existentialism is the science of the evolving
individual, and how to understand human development
from a psychological, sociological and metaphysical
view. "Existence before essence," as it has been
summed in the past, depicts existentialism as the
concept that without any inherent purpose, we "wake
up" when we are born here and then must find some
way to explain value into our lives. As we grow we
become more of what we are, or wander in a
personalityless materialism.
2.3.1.3 Postmodernist
The inversion of value so that its inside might be
seen, postmodernism is about mirrors. A mirror of
the self, so that it can be seen as the subjective
in a world of objectives that it is; a mirror of the
world and a mirror of that mirror, to keep
consistent projections (time).
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.
Founders such as James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, William S
Burroughs, and Emperor make this movement valuable for
what it is: a violent fist against the aesthetic remainder
of rationalism, where an illusion of public good and
intent is manipulated to justify vast thefts.
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.
"The people in power will not disappear voluntarily,
giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to work. This
thinking is fostered by the establishment; they like
nothing better than love and nonviolence. The only way I
like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot thrown
from a a high window."
-William S Burroughs
2.3.1.4 Mysticism
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.
2.3.1.5 Shamanism
A shaman is a tribe's seer sent forth into the
wilderness of his own personality in order to dig
forth the answer to the question everyone is blinded
from asking. A master of finding the obvious behind
a whole structure of reality designed to hide it.
2.3.1.6 Nihilism
Nihilism leaves a complex etymology in the Oxford English
Dictionary: "Total rejection of current religious beliefs
or moral principles, often involving a general sense of
despair and the belief that life is devoid of meaning."
This gives a historical sense of the word as something
anti-religious, anti-moral, and anti-meaing, but does not
explain the root of that: a belief in the lack of
arbitrary values except the immanent and contextlessness
function-value. Nihilism rejects conventional valuations
and replaces them with the pragmatic assessments of
science and atheism, allowing freedom of movement before
considering precedent and normativity.
In modern times nihilism is a dual entity, composed of
emotional nihilism or the breakdown of all values or
caring (closer to apathy) as well as the nihilism
described above, which is merely a removal of arbitrary
illusion as imposed by social conditioning. Metal has
always espoused some form of nihilism, from its roots in
god-rejection and social cynicism to its over-glorious
heavy metal days when no excess was enough. Death metal
took nihilism to new extremes of rational description of
human irrationality, fragility, and doom, but black metal
takes nihilism a step further and assumes it as a weapon
against conventional moral and spiritual restrictions.
"My name is Varg Vikernes and I play in Burzum. Burzum
means either darkness or light, depending on how you see
it really. If you're a Christian it probably means
darkness."
- Varg Vikernes, http://www.burzum.com/
2.3.1.7 Organicism
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.
It's as if in escaping Heisenberg one becomes integrated
into a system in which all measurements are variable in
chaotic patterns, e.g. 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) and
therefore a science of fuzzy logic and organic decisions
is needed.
The sheer relentlessness of the fact that the human mind
still so far outperforms our computers a comparison is
ludicrous indicates that a more powerful and efficient
logic than our stacks of decimal calculations will be
needed. Hence an emergent organicism 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.
2.3.1.8 Naturalism
A belief in or intense study of nature, Naturalism is a
fundamental component of metal's fascination with the
natural and the dual appearance of natural order. In
order to appreciate the beauty of a system including its
most brutal and predatory moments, one must understand it
as a whole to see the function which this tendency plays,
and for what conceptual development to reality. The
inexorable but chaotic order is studied through musical
emulation and lyrical hyperbole in a genre partially
dedicated to transcendence of natural boundaries, with an
appreciation for the strength and continuity of nature.
2.3.1.9 Individualism
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.
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.
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