Is Black Metal Dead?

Last week's diatribe about the degeneration of black metal was only selectively popular. Of the people I've talked to, there's a split down the middle between those who agree with the article and those who violently oppose my conception of what's happening to the genre. This week's article focuses on the definition not shared between those groups, that of "degeneration" itself.

Since the word "degeneracy" can have a flexible definition, it is used here in the context of the historical development of a movement. In this view, like people all movements grow to a point of coherence from disparate origins and then, having reached a point of little internal motion, die. In order for this view to be sensible, one must measure the genre of black metal as a whole, and not be concerned about the few standout bands that are still producing viable output. We must look at the whole as a process of culmination passing into oblivion in order to realize its progress as the context in which music is created.

What has happened to black metal over the last four years could be referred to as a "democratization." As the older guard of the scene aged to the radical realms of 28-30 years old, they as a group underwent a rapid decrease in numbers, and the fanbase was flooded with less experienced fans. Simultaneously, the number of bands exploded as standards relaxed; when Mayhem and Darkthrone and Immortal were current, they offered a competition to which few could rise, but in the days of black metal as accepted form and known entity, it was easier to create from a template.

Further, the fanbase shifted from "fans" to "participants," seemingly each one with a band, zine, or web site he or she promotes independently of all others. Because each peson is interested in construing their own black metal persona and participation, there is no ideological focus; voices discuss the same issues for the sake of producing "unique" and "personal" opinions and the result is a cacophony of indistinguishable repetition. With the rise of the internet as a popular device occurring at roughly AD 1998, the added dimension of participation as entertainment like every other internet activity became manifest, causing a wave of black metal software accessories to additionally adulterate the focus.

Like any other natural entity, black metal will have its seasons. The spring is its youth, when growth is new and uncluttered, and can exist in its "purest" form to our intellects - it is unrecognized, and not yet a token as well-known as a genre from past, so the process of our still trying to "get it" gives it a mystical freshness. In summer, growth becomes abundant to the point where fall and the harvest season are a necessary reorganization before the killing and thus rejuvenating force of winter bringing spring. In black metal, when some of us say it is "degenerate" and "overgrown" and needs a cleansing, our thought is that winter must come to clear out the dead weight, and restore the internal competition to black metal.

The ability to compete and derive better ideas within an entity is something long-proven by nature to be necessary. Within every species, individual animals compete for the best adaptations to longstanding problems; within every ecosystem, species fight for different roles in augmenting and decreasing the abundance of creatures within. Internal competition prevents the worst thing possible that can happen in an information system: a locked, unchanging loop in which repetition is the norm. As in nature, ancient empires understood this facet of reality and so preferred war and chaos to certain forms of stability that were pleasant in the short-term but an inevitable disintegration on a longer scale.

When any group of people become locked into their own heads, and fixed in their focus, they end up producing output which fits only that group of people; this is the basis behind most "scenes" and "scenesterism," where in the absence of leadership a group of insecure people take control and consequently shape the scene to fit only their own needs. This solipsism is succesfull in the short term - everyone is "represented" democratically, and are happy with the product - but in the long term it fails to take new blood into the group. None of us were born as metalheads; we had to come to the realization of our place in this group over time. The next generations may not do so, as they will see the genre as bloated as it is.

Before black metal fully collapses into scenesterism, with parasites, sycophants, yes-men and toadies obliterating the voices of those with something to contribute, let's consider a metal solution. First, we must de-emphasize the individual and his/her "success" in the social strata of the genre; we are each products of nature and give what our situations allow. Second, we must embrace this winter and kill everything that isn't vital, like someone running into a blazing house looking for the most important possessions needed to start a life over again. And finally, we must consolidate rather than fragment resources in the name of each having our own plot of land.

There are even more radical solutions, such as using numbers instead of names, but once the basic idea is communicated - that we must reduce the presence of social popularity and return to an artistic ideal - that should probably be an incentive toward change. Like death metal before it, black metal is going the way of the decaying genre first seen in hardcore: an overnight explosion, everyone has a band, and there is no mystery anymore as we are all rehashing known quantities. Since there is nothing to exchange, the genre will become repetitive and degenerate.

Whether or not we agree on black metal being "degenerative" at this time, we can agree that there are fewer memorable releases in a genre which is releasing far more material than any other period of its life. Further, we can acknowledge that there are more "participations" which individually have nothing to recommend them, and have shorter lives than previous underground contributions. Thus, regardless of our desire to call it winter or summer, we should acknowledge where black metal needs to be selectively celebrated - and where it must be killed.

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