Is Black Metal Friendly to National Socialism?

When modern black metal first came about in the early 1990s, there was very nominal debate about its political influences. First, few bands wore their allegiances on their sleeves; unless you read the lyrics to "My Journey to the Stars" very carefully, there was almost no explicit mention. Second, at that time black metal was a discarded genre. Almost everyone listened to death metal, and very few even liked black metal or would admit its legitimacy.

Finally, it would have surprised no one. Much like when watching Lord of the Rings or Braveheart or Apocalypse Now one has a sense of an ancient warlike order, when listening to black metal one sensed a realistic and amoral entity underneath the Romanticized skin of the music. "Romantic" in this case refers to the literary-artistic movement, not the greeting cards. Romanticism in art combined a love of nature, a desire to free oneself from the crowd, a lack of allegiance to gods or morality, nationalism and existential experience.

Did he say "nationalism"? Yes: nationalistic feeling was endemic to all Romantic poets, writers, composers. However, for us moderns to understand nationalism, we have to realize that nationalism refers to a previous type of country, one which was entirely composed of the same ethnic group. To be French meant to be French in language, culture and, inescapably, heritage. Every ethnic group has an instinct of self-preservation which impels them to exclude outsiders, because if you do the simple math, a mixed group is no longer the original ethnic group but something more like the rest of humanity.

Nationalism has historically included other beliefs. See if you can match any up with black metal. As mentioned above, it supports racial segregation. It also supports aristocratism, which refers not to the effete "I inherited money and am useless" type of royalty, but a network of princes and local kings who would defend and nurture their local communities. These were bred over many centuries of promoting the best and most noble warriors to the point of being tribe-leaders. In Germany, they were almost exclusively blonde and blue-eyed. This group corresponded to the "Aryan" caste in ancient India, who were also almost exclusively blonde and blue-eyed.

Aristocratism bridges an even more dangerous topic area than race, and it is that people have varying degrees of quality. In the modern free-for-all, we would like to believe that someone born a toilet scrubber can rise to be leader of the land; back then, they acknowledged that it took many generations of breeding before one had the moral capability to lead, and also, they preferred not to have kings who led giant nations roped together by some political ("democracy","capitalism","freedom") and not organic factors such as tribe and culture.

In ancient societies, you were born into a role, and rose only by being exceptional over several generations. To moderns, this seems frustratingly limited, but the flipside is that with a lack of economic competition, people worked much shorter hours, lived and purchased in their local communities, and did not have to commute or file paperwork. Their businesses served a role in the local community, and did not make excessive profit, and for this reason the community extended to them good graces in case of accident or disaster. One was from birth onward competent for the task one did, and the leaders - well, let's just say that neither George Bush nor John Kerry would have even been considered as leadership material.

The essence of aristocratism is a homegrown European notion of a karmic cycle: at the lowest level, humans are little more than animals. If they exert a form of natural selection upon themselves, and attempt to rise above that level, those who survive will be apt for it; if they do this for several levels, they eventually rise to a state of having a higher intelligence, degree of physical strength and beauty, and moral character ("nobility": the ability to see what is correct for the natural order of society as a whole, and not to get distracted by personal or emotional issues). At the very top are those who are fit to lead by the nature of having a transcendent consciousness; it is thought that these much higher IQ than most modern people and were far less fearful, neurotic and self-obsessed.

And they were blonde, blue-eyed, and noble: "Aryan." It is interesting to note that Aryan does not refer to physical characteristic only. It designates those who have a higher degree of spiritual discipline in addition to those physical traits, including intelligence; "Aryan" literally means "of noble disposition," and it is this that qualifies one as Aryan, not some physical attribute. The world is full of people who are blonde because they are the great-great-great-granddaught of the concubine of a Nordic king; this does not mean they have the noble integrity, strength or intelligence of an Aryan. Aryan does not mean "white," and it does not mean "blonde/blue"; it is a subset of both of those groups that qualifies itself first by genetics, and second, inescapably, by moral character and intelligence. It is a measurement of quality of the person in question, and in ancient societies, it alone determined they were fit to lead.

With aristocratism came a necessary fascism: people who were not capable of being leaders were not expected to make the decisions of leaders. There was no "democracy," except among those of the higher elites who had already proved their contributions to a society. Ordinary people were expected to either be laborers, artisans, or warriors; only the highest strata of society were fit to be leaders or priests. This was for many centuries an effective way to guard against corruption by literally excluding those of the short-sightedness necessary to be corrupted. Someone with a high degree of spiritual discipline will not sacrifice a kingdom for material reward.

Fascism resulted from two ideas: first, that the people must act together with one will; second, that specialization of ability regulated what tasks one undertook, and this had in turn two parts: one would not operate above one's specialization, but in one's area of expertise, unless a radical screwup happened one's word was supreme. For this reason, artisans and warriors were better treated than in a modern time, as they were by definition valued experts who were trusted, integral parts of the civilization. When people could not abide by this order, they met retaliatory force; when foreign groups got too close, warfare was inevitable.

This form of fascism eliminated the kind of internal dialogue we see in modern society, especially the mixed-tribal empires of the United States and United Kingdom. These societies pride themselves that anyone can become wealthy and powerful even if coming from humble beginnings, but very few actually do. What happens instead is a massive internal conflict between classes, ethnicities, genders, sexual preferences, lifestyle choices, moral standards, etc. that is never resolved. It is war without end, and without a victor, and therefore everyone emerges exhausted while the default mode of operation - make money and run away to gated communities - persists. Fascist societies do not have this problem.

While the above sounds extremely fixed, it is not, as these ancient societies were extremely meritocratic. There was no political doublethink to interfere with someone from any tribe rising to the top of his or her field; as it was extremely unlikely that they would rise further, that happened rarely and only in the case of a truly exceptional person. In modern times, we are cheap with praise, and call anyone who can spell their name consistently "exceptional," but this was not so back then. To rise that far, one had to be one of history's greats. Not surprisingly, the ancient times produced many truly great thinkers where our time produces a decreasing number of lesser ones.

Meritocracy in ancient times meant that one rose by merit, but it was open only to those from the local tribe, in order to keep out those who would destroy that tribe by bringing in another culture. Any culture that wishes to survive must defend itself against a parasite; much as a virus brings foreign DNA into your body, an outsider can - no matter how good his or her initial intentions - without meaning to smuggle in the values and ideas of another culture, and use them to take over your own. This is the mathematics of natural survival and where in a modern time we pretend it is not true, the ancients had no such pretense.

Meritocracy in ancient times occurred by ability, and not by money or political factors. For this reason, the overall population quality was higher, as was the quality of output from the professions. Where today's artisans are little more than machine operators, artisans in ancient times were highly skilled and expected to have a thorough understanding of their craft. Coincidentally, the quality of artifacts uncovered from ancient societies dwarfs anything we are willing to do in a modern one.

Wealth was secondary in ancient societies because there was minimal economic competition. If one was the village blacksmith, barring gross incompetence there was no reason for another blacksmith to arrive, so one did not. Local societies kept closed ranks against outsiders, not only of other races, but of other tribes and even towns, which gave job security to local artisans. One wished to carefully serve one's clientele, because these were the people upon whom one depended in times of disaster, but there was no sense of competing for dollars and thus, the records tell us, these people did not grind their teeth at night while awaiting the hour to go to work the next day.

With this knowledge, we can see that the truth is not so simple as either "black metal is national socialism" or "black metal is not national socialism." The truth is that black metal, national socialism and Romanticism all share a common ancestor, which is the ancient Caucasian societies of Europe and India. Nazism is an attempt to bring back the aristocratic past; Romanticism is an attempt to explain its values; black metal is the translation of Romanticism into sonic art applicable to the machine age, which is shown by its tendency to take mechanical noises (distortion) and bend them into reflections of ancient melodies, like a scratchy recording sent through a time machine.

Looking at the process of history, we can see that this has come full cycle. The ancient philosopher Plato warned about cities; they brought commerce over the sea in boats, and then strange people, and then a lack of culture, and finally a breakdown in the system that sustained the society as a whole. Other ancient historians echoed the same idea in different forms. Some even suggested that societies had a life cycle, by which they were created by a few strong people and when that culture broke down, became polyglot directionless political entities which required the credulous populations of cities for support, and finance. In contrast, the type of system represented by the ancient order was healthier and self-renewing.

The major philosophical change that accompanied the domination of Europe's ancient order by the new cities, their merchants and social order based on economics, as seen by the fact that most history before its origin was destroyed, was the conquering of the European soul by a middle-eastern religion named Christianity. Where previously society had been hierarchical, Christianity espoused the belief that there was no qualitative difference between humans, and therefore, that aristocracy must be destroyed. Instead of believing, as the ancients did, that all bad deeds came about because a human on the lower levels of the karmic ladder interfered in the higher, the Christians believed that "good" and "evil" were metaphysical concepts that could seize all people equally.

What replaced the social order of the ancients, thanks to Christianity, was a system based on economics: since we were all equal, the hierarchy was replaced by monetary competition, which was viewed as "fair" at the time. We had to "prove" ourselves in terms of our earnings, because it was assumed that those who earned the most were the most intelligent and qualified; no mention of nobility of character, oddly. This both raised up the poor, who now had a chance to become wealthy even if they did not have the judgment to lead, and crushed the aristocracy, who now had to spend their time administering money while being deprived of their role as nurturers, protectors, and organizers of the community. The world was turned upside down.

Historical processes such as the above take centuries to come about, and only gradually become noticeable as they spread outward from cities into all areas, and outward from a few professions into all of them. It took almost a thousand years for the virus to take hold, but when it did, Europe rapidly plunged into an industrial revolution, following by a series of devastating wars between patriots - those who wanted a political-economic order - and nationalists, or those who wanted to retain what of the older order could be salvaged. This culminated in colonial and territorial wars which finally exploded in WWI which, unresolved, became WWII a generation later.

Exactly one generation after being the world's hero, saving us from the "evil" Hitler and Tojo in WWII, America became the world's "evil" by fighting a war in Vietnam against a Sino-Soviet front. At this point, the Western soul broke; it became clear that what was promised by Christianity, or an equality of men and a banishment of "evil," had become an empire of lower-quality people worldwide who, having dominated the smart, now pressed the world toward destruction. It's hard for us to remember, now, but back then it was commonplace to have daily drills in preparation for a final nuclear assault between the Cold War powers. Insanity was reaching its peak.

Exactly one generation past the end of the Vietnam war, black metal arose from people who would be at the age to fight a war should it break out suddenly. This war, however, was internal to Western society: it was a conflict between ancient values and modern values, and in many ways, was a last-ditch effort to hold back the flood of modern changes which were destroying ancient Europe ethnically, culturally, morally and physically. Black metal was a guerrilla outsider art movement; unlike most popular musics, it did not pick one of the options (leftism, rightism, greenism) within modern society, but opted to pick something other than modern society as its ideal.

All of the original black metal bands - Emperor, Darkthrone, Burzum, Immortal, Enslaved, Gorgoroth, Varathron, Mayhem, Beherit - exhibited an exact match for Romanticist thought, which includes appreciation for ancient ruins, love of the occult, condemnation of Christianity and populist culture, running from "the madding crowd," and a pride in one's tribe. These bands flourished from 1990-1995, and then faded out; they had said their piece, and now retreated or simply commercialized themselves as a new popularity hit black metal. Those who could not have invented it, or recognized it when it was underground, now surged into it and obliterated the genre with their demands for more of the music with no regard to the quality of it. This was reminiscent of what happened to hardcore music in the late 1980s, which turned it from vital and independent music into a troop of clones each trying to get their piece of the action.

Before their genre sold itself out like any other modern product, black metal bands created the one vital statement to emerge from the music of the 1990s. Where grunge bemoaned existence and offered the same pale product as a solution, hedonistic liberalism, as offered by rock bands dating back to the 1950s, and rap championed violent black nationalism alongside drug dealing and pimping and carjacking, black metal had an actual solution: we must change our thinking toward that of the ancients. While the modern order had physical control of the external world, they said, the ancient civilizations had a better grasp on the internal world, and therefore, cultivated people with a higher quality of spiritual and moral outlook.

Black metal was explicitly anti-Christian, anti-Modern, and anti-conformity (unlike "nonconformists" and "iconoclasts" such as Kurt Cobain, who advocated mass revolt which engenders conformity as a solution to conformity). It also embraced visions of natural surroundings, natural processes like predation, and an easeful attitude toward death: it was not "suicidal," but it refused to demonize death, either. It advocated not just denying Christianity, but war against Christianity, and its demons were not the bad guys of Slayer lyrics but the good guys who swooped in and saved the people from a hidden parasite named Christ. It was the culmination of every issue metal music had ever addressed, a culmination of the anti-social impulses of hardcore punk, and, in a first for modern music, a solution other than the tired mantra of hippie bands who would nonconform through the conformist order of secular Christian morality, or "equality."

Once the initial thrust of black metal was over, then and only then did the arguments over national socialism start, indicating the new generation of fans had no inkling of what black metal meant, and therefore were looking for symbols to adopt, as if pretending they knew what was going on (interestingly, at this point most of the older bands and fans really did bow out, as if grateful to be obsolete from such a disaster). Being blockheads, these fans were oblivious to any answer outside of "Yes, black metal is national socialism" or "No, national socialism has no place in black metal." Their minds did not possess the capability for subtle thought, such as what might reveal the truth to them. Alarmed by the dangerous beliefs of older bands, the newer fans for the most part abandoned them, preferring the newer bands which sounded like Green Day or The Offspring adopting a commercialized mixture of heavy metal and black metal. Like punk, black metal sold out.

For this reason, comparing post-1995 black metal to the original is pointless; what exists after 1995 from the black metal genre is, for the most part, an imitation. Bands like Cradle of Filth made heavy metal with black metal voices and tempos; because their music was familiar to listeners, e.g. was something they already knew with a new and novel aesthetic, they were commercially successful. It would be pathetic to say the "underground" resisted. Instead, it created bands that were commercial in an underground sense, meaning that they were designed to sell to people who wanted something that sounded like an underground band, but their motivation was the same as Cradle of Filth: to pander to the expectations of an album buying public. They had nothing to say except repeating symbols found on older albums.

This is why there is fundamentally no difference between Dimmu Borgir and Grand Belial's Key; they both exist to please listeners who want to purchase something that tells them something to which they already agree. Black metal can never return to the point where it was a lone voice in the wilderness of art; in order to continue with its original spirit, it would have to go deeper into exploration of the depth of its ideas, and not simply repeat them. However, the quality of black metal fans and artists today does not permit that: they are one standard deviation of intelligence away from the original Nordic black metal bands, and will never understand what is necessary. This realization was formalized when first Nargaroth, and then Velvet Caccoon, became massively popular and successful until they publically stated they were joke bands designed for profit and mockery of the black metal fanbase (which, hilarious, seems not to have noticed).

The phenomenon known as National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) arose in the late 1990s as one way of keeping the belief of original black metal alive. It should have known better: you cannot teach anyone anything except what they are ready to learn, and the new fans did not have the brains for either National Socialism or Romanticism. Instead, they became the type of people attracted to modern "neo-Nazi" or "White Power" organizations: thugs and lowlifes who would like to be Aryan, and therefore claim they are Aryan by virtue of their membership in pro-white organizations. These people, and these organizations, however, understand nothing of national socialism; their fundamental philosophical statement is that if we exclude other races, somehow, the white race will be OK. These groups are also legendary for their willingness to blend Eurasian and Semitic "white" hybrids into Northern Europe; like Kurt Cobain, they hope to defeat conformity through more conformity, and thus are doomed to failure.

In response to NSBM, a number of "black metal fans" began talking about how such views were unwelcome in black metal. These people are idiots: black metal is beyond Christian morality, and thus would not limit such views, although it would never embrace the way they were said or the people espousing them who did not understand them. Black metal has always been esoteric, or aware of the qualitative differences between people and thus the nature of truth as something few see but many in "the madding crowd" emulate. Anti-fascist "black metallers" are the crowd, and they are more destructive to black metal's integrity than the NSBM clones. Both groups have forgotten the distinct possibility that black metal and National Socialism share a common ancestor in realm of values.

National Socialism is beyond Jewish-Christian "morality" in that it does not affirm the importance of the individual over doing what is right. If the individual must die for what is right to happen, whether as a victim or a hero, it is fine; what is important is achieving an organization to humanity that adapts to nature and therefore is enduring. In this the ancients and the Nazis are one and the same: they believed that a cosmic order was more important than physical consequences, and thus would fight to the death to assert abstract principles invisible to the crowd as whole. Both groups believed in ethnic separation and localization, and both were highly conscious of nature. In fact, the Nazis did their best to emulate the ancients even in architecture and uniforms.

Clearly black metal has its sympathies with whatever it is that the ancients and National Socialism share. The sense of qualitative assessment of humanity, nature-worship, ancestor-worship, tribal ethnic allegiance and withdrawl from crowds and the politics of manipulatin them are all central to black metal as well as those civil orders. Many of the founding black metal bands liked to perform surrounded by Nazi artifacts; many were pro-Nazi; even more were not opposed to Nazism, and admired some of what the Nazis did. However, the situation cannot be simplified into "pro" and "con," so it is safest to go with the longer sentence that describes the situation: black metal upheld values found in common between many orders, including Romanticists, Theosophists, National Socialists and the ancients.

What is more important than a symbol, such as a Swastika or peace sign, is the beliefs themselves. There will always be people who discover the original Nordic black metal and are amazed by the quality of the music and what it evokes in the listener, which is very closely related to the beliefs of both artist and listener. These people do not need to have someone thrusting a Swastika into their faces while screaming ethnic slurs over a drumbeat, nor should they trust some prattling ex-punk-rocker who talks about how "racism" has "no place in black metal." Those two groups of idiots do nothing but mislead, and they do it for their own self-image, because they'd like to think of themselves as better than they are for having found the "right" ideas (Conformity for Nonconformists, Inc.). For those who want to know what black metal was about, it is important to look into the ideas themselves.

In doing so, one escapes the tedium of fighting political battles; politics does not directly address values. To adopt the values instead of the symbols is to escape the political dimension and to go directly to the philosophical and thus, on a practical level, to have a values system one can use to make decisions. Some idiot NSBM white power hatecore band cannot inspire you to protect natural woodland, but the values behind the original black metal bands can. This is why, while the people who scream against NSBM are annoying idiots clearly worthy of back alley executions, NSBM is not a solution to their ignorance. Only the actual values of the original art are (also worth noting is that continuing black metal in its mediocre form is destructive to these values; it would be better to let the genre die and be reborn that to keep it on Terri Schiavo-esque life support).

Even more, it's important not to lose sight of the fact that the ancient values of our culture are achievable without something extreme like NS, WP, WN or even Antifa. What is needed is to assert these values and not the political structures that "represent" them (in the same way the phrase "it's a good deal, honest" is purported to "represent" truth). This can be done peacefully, respectfully and without burning churches, even.

You will be given a number of chances in this world to make these values manifest. The final stage is seizing political power and changing our entire system from modernity to something more like that of the ancients; it will be both "new" and "old," in that it will be a different stage in the life cycle of a civilization. You may have to escape the ruins of this civilization, or even destroy it, in order to achieve that. Before such a time, however, you can speak out for these values and make them effective in every area of life in which you have power.

To be a Romantic is to recognize that truth is elusive, and can be hinted at but never stated in bullet points or an instruction manual. Those who are destined to know will find out, if they apply themselves; if they do not, a new destiny (failure) has been created for them. In my own life, I have applied these values. I deny the foods, behaviors, organizational structures and values of modernity. Any time I have control, I will elect for an ancient order (meritocracy, aristocracy, naturalism) in preference to a modern design (centralization, standardization, politicization).

I make no secret of the fact that I prefer being with not only my own race, but my own tribe, but I do not do this by speaking endless negative, hateful rhetoric about other races. I recognize that other tribes and races become annoying to my people because they have different standards and behavior that, by virtue of being different, force us to either compromise our own standards (never) or exist without standards (the founding premise of multiculturalism). I recognize that unless we exist separately from all other races and tribes, we will be bred into mushy, cultureless lumpenproletariat of indeterminate heritage. Further, I recognize that many within my own "race" are going to use race as a means to try to gain access to our society but, much as the races are different, so are the tribes, and it's healthiest to exclude them.

It's not a secret either that I think humanity is growing too fast, and taking up too much earth, and that "mass revolt" or an uprising by the unqualified masses is responsible. I don't hide my disdain for mainstream Christianity, but I praise the few Christians (notably, Eckhart and Emerson) who figured out a transcendent, Aryan form of Christianity. I will never cache my belief that democracy is a complete and utter failure, and when in positions of authority, I never "call for a vote" as my colleagues do, but make firm and insightful decisions. I don't own a television (never have) and I don't pay much attention to the news-entertainment media. I read the classics of literature, spend time with friends, or spend time alone working on projects to better myself and the world. This is a fuller life than watching TV, playing video games, and listening to music "products" from modern society.

This is a sustainable future for the ideals in black metal. Whether or not National Socialism is a sensible worldview, espousing it as a symbol does not convey the true meaning that is needed, which is for those who can think to adopt the values of an ancient time. That era was a healthier phase in the life cycle of civilization, and a part of that cycle to which we must return if we want to stave off the death of our civilization; or, a part of the cycle in which we must start what comes after the post-Christian, modernized "West." These are the real issues, not fighting over whether or not black metal tolerates a certain symbol.

The issue of NSBM in black metal will not go away. It hasn't since 1992, when some Norwegians converted warmed-over heavy metal pretending to be "evil" into a form of music with some potential. It hasn't since 1998, when a generational turnover flooded the metal genre with thousands of new fans who knew nothing of its past or ideology. Yet those fans are the ones who complain loudest about NSBM; they say they'd rather be hateful without discriminating, and while most of them admit they dislike Christianity, they are guarded about making what they see as "hateful" statements about racial separation, anti-Judaism, and the like.

Hilariously, they're part of the same problem of which they complain, which in the words of one, is "if you stamp something with a label, like Christian metal or White Power music, suddenly having that allegiance becomes job #1, and quality is job #2." This is amusing considering that if we pause a moment, this description applies to all of black metal, which once had musical integrity but now through the emulation of thousands of also-rans, has-beens and wannabes, has leapt upon the rock-n-roll bandwagon and resembles warmed-over heavy metal more than the majestic and inspiring post-death metal style of melodic trance metal that was black metal.

There is some truth to the accusations about NSBM. Most of the people in the "White Power" and white nationalist movements are more interested in being extreme and detached from any social process than they are in meaningful change; this is in a large part due to the constant demonization of the entire ideology, and its need to have members in order to stay organized. If you can't have intelligentsia and social leaders as your membership, you instead get some very angry people who will achieve nothing except purchase of mediocre CDs - but this will allow you to have funding to publish books, magazines and other literature to support your cause.

But, what's black metal's excuse?

The original genre, which espoused Romanticism, naturalism, nationalism and other ideas that have been linked during musical development throughout history, with all of its grandeur and power, is now gone. It has been replaced by three-chord bashers and novelty-oriented trend bands. "This is unique; they use a flute, and they're from Japan." Everything that the genre stood for is dead, and this is significant because before these Norwegians, "black metal" was a joke term for Satanist bands like Venom and Mercyful Fate who were selling a paltry amount of records with their primitive heavy metal/blues/rock/punk sound and outrageous non-serious lyrics. Anyone who has listened to this stuff for some time realizes that it gets old quickly, as did most of the metal of the 1980s which had a lot of anger and energy but no connection to any long-term vision, or for lack of a better word, "solution."

Black metal from Norway changed all of that. Grandeur, epic and sweeping songs, and a sense of heroic honor and justice for nature and the cultures of the ancients emerged from what was at first a few alienated kids trying to make a go of it. This was a dramatic contrast to death metal, which had grown so angry and death-obsessed that it had become a parody of itself, and the rising trends of melodic heavy metal in death metal skin and the novelty, grind/jazz/powerviolence/metalcore type stuff that labels like Relapse pump out because they realize it's interchangeable.

People today in black metal remember none of the glory; to them Darkthrone is as distant as Venom, an ancestor that sounds like everything else if you don't listen closely. The epic melodies are gone, as are the heroic aspirations; today, instead of coming forth with brave and world-conquering statements, black metal whines. "The world hurt us! We hate everyone equally!" - these statements amount to little more than self-pity, the same disease that absorbed doom metal long ago and made it very profitable for the same East Coast labels owned by Judeo-Christians.

So if we have one statement to take from this, it is thus: the label alone doesn't define the music. The "black metal" bands of today are something that rock music fans would embrace, and people without ideology would adore, but they're garbage. They've got the same level of recombinant simplistic directionless bashing as hardcore did back in 1987, before it completely collapsed, never to arise again with the same intensity, and to an experienced listener, it's clear they're related more to heavy metal of the 1970s than to the black metal of the 1990s. In other words, an evolutionary dead end.

The label, like the Judeo-Christian terms "good" and "evil," is an external absolute - a classification imposed by the perceiver (and his social group) and not generated from structural analysis of the music itself. Like later Dimmu Borgir, which essentially shuffled and regurgitated Judas Priest riffs with black metal vocals and fast drumming with keyboards, this music is trend personified, and the ultimate refutation of black metal and what made it rise above other music. In other words, the people who are joining now are drowning this music with their inexperience, their fatalistic anger, and most of all, their inability to create the same: they're the joiners, not leaders - they seem something from across a crowded room and think, I want a part of that, although for them to have invented it is impossible.

Somehow, now we come full circle to NSBM; unlike most "White Power" music before it, NSBM arose from within black metal, because all of the early black metal bands - Mayhem, Burzum, Immortal, Emperor, Darkthrone - were connected to Nationalist ideas and Naturalist ideals. It was not a political creation, and before it was named, it wasn't even aware of its own politics (that took Darkthrone's run-in with Peaceville over a hilarious condemnation of "Jewish behavior"). Thus the music surpassed its own definition and its own label. It's ironic and saddening how a denial of these same beliefs has allowed the Johnny-come-lately metal fans to flood the genre and turn it into generic rock/heavy metal by inverting those labels.