Why Do Black Metal Bands Keep Doing Bad Things?

One time, I went to a yoga class in Portland. Like any edgy 25-year-old guy, I wore my Burzum shirt. On my way out of class, a fairly aggressive-looking girl said something in this snarky tone like, “Do you even know who that is?” I said, “Yeah, he’s a bad person that made music I like.” I thought the conversation was over. 

The next time I came to yoga, the teacher cornered me and asked me if I was a nazi. After the conversation, of course, I thought of all the excellent points I could have made, like how both of my grandfathers fought nazism on both fronts of WWII, and how I only exist because the nazis failed to kill my family. But instead, I just said, “Yeah, you found the nazi hiding in a yoga studio in Portland.”

As annoying as the incident was, I did start to wonder what it was that drew me to Burzum and other Scandinavian black metal. Was it the underlying hatred apparent in the shoddy production and barely audible lyrics? Was it that the music echoed an ancient xenophobia of my shamefully white ancestors?

Probably not, I decided. A few days later, I even went on a date with a non-white girl who had a Burzum shirt on. Still, I left that shirt in a closet and gained a newfound appreciation for Deafheaven. Nobody corners you in yoga over Deafheaven.

It’s tough to deny the dark mystique of black metal, as few other genres have been so plagued with musicians who love doing bad stuff. Multiple documentaries have covered the troubled early days of Burzum, Darkthrone, and other first-wave black metallers, so I’ll only give you the bare bones.

Black Metal and Crime in Europe

In the early ‘90s, a group of Norwegian metal musicians began burning historic churches and committing other crimes to express their Scandinavian Pagan and Satanist views. At the time, black metal was very new, and the public was terrified, having only recently witnessed the American “satanic panic” of the ‘80s.

One of the oddest incidents in this “first wave” involved a suicide. In 1991, Mayhem vocalist Per Yngve Ohlin (ironically nicknamed “Dead”) killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head, Øystein Aarseth (nicknamed “Euronymous”) took a picture of the aftermath and used the gruesome scene as an album cover. 

Euronymous would shortly tell his bandmate: “Dead has done something really cool! He killed himself.” Evidently, the two weren’t the best of friends. Later, Varg Vikernes of Burzum fame would develop a similar kind of animosity for Euronymus and stab him to death, completing a morbid circle and forever cementing the brand-new Black metal genre in infamy.

Dead (pictured alive) and Euronymous

But later waves of black metal didn’t chill things out much. In 2004, Gaahl, lead member of Gorgoroth, purportedly hit a man over the head after a party, beat him, and drained his blood into a cup. Gaahl disputed the accuser's story in court, saying that he merely got into a fight and offered the cup for the man to bleed into. The court didn’t buy it, since the other man’s injuries were far more severe than his, and Gaahl did prison time.

Black metal has also been tainted with the foul, stinky stink of extreme nationalism. Varg Vikernes and his contemporaries, for example, have long been known for their vaguely xenophobic, racist rants. 

But Absurd, a far-right-leaning German band, is perhaps the most blatant instance of nazism in black metal. The band’s founding members landed themselves in jail for murdering a boy who allegedly knew about an affair one of the members had been having. 

From then, lead member Hendrik Möbus wound up in further trouble and escaped to the US. He started hanging about with various pagan nazi groups and doing nazi salutes until US Marshals nabbed him. 

Absurd’s successors have continued playing to audiences of mixed enthusiasm. When confronted for their views, they have attacked audience members, and there’s little to suggest that anyone involved in the project has softened their nationalistic attitudes.

Gaahl in normal, everday garb

In America

You might imagine that something might be lingering in the air in Europe. An echo, perhaps of some distant viking age, or an ooze of malignant white nationalism. But even America has had its share of black-metal miscreants. And the assortment was much the same.

You have nazis:

In the late 90s, an American wave of BM musicians guttural shouted their sympathy for the nazi cause, inspiring small covenants of fans to do the same. Under the protections of freedom of speech, bands like Black funeral and NON found listeners where European counterparts found opposition.

Today, fringe nationalist bands still play small venues, especially in the rural south.

And unprovable, disturbing crimes:

In 2012, Jef Whitehead of basement BM outfit Leviathan was sentenced to probation after being acquitted of most of a many-count, brutal sexual assault charge. Allegedly, Whitehead had bashed his girlfriend’s head against a wall, leaving her unconscious before assaulting her. Although the the court didn’t find sufficient evidence of the horrific “tattoo gun rape” he was accused of, it’s safe to say that the relationship wasn’t the healthiest.

And the list goes on, but I won’t waste your time by doing what Google can do better. Metalheads in America can be just as crazy as those across the pond.

Why Are Black Metal Musicians So Crazy?

It’s tough to think of another genre that has been so plagued by violence and controversy. Except for rap, perhaps. But just as with rap, it’s important to remember that the vast majority of these musicians just want to make cool music. 

“Still, there must be something about the music itself,” you may say, that attracts the most violent, nationalistic, fringe people. Well, let’s explore this.

People make music for many reasons. These may include:

  • Expressing viewpoints or deeply-held beliefs

  • Finding an outlet for feelings

  • Creating a community

  • Seeking money and fame

  • Counteracting trauma or bullying

  • Dealing with mental illness

None of these reasons really exclude the darker aspects of human nature. One might, for example, wish to create a community and acquire fame in order to control and dominate other people. Or one might find few legitimate venues for promoting anti-semitism brought on by mental illness, outside of the fringe world of metal music.

As with almost anything else, there’s bound to be a curve of averages. The majority of metal musicians make music for average or positive reasons. In fact, some studies suggest that metal fans are among the happiest, nicest people

But a small number make music for the wrong reasons, and this minority disproportionately makes headlines. Throw satan and a few ritualistic acts in the mix, and you have a recipe for a media panic.

So now that we’ve explored the darker side of black metal, it’s probably a good time to point out that there are literally hundreds of awesome black metal bands out there that don’t have the slightest bit of controversy attached to them. Whether you want to keep listening to Burzum or Gorgoroth is up to you. If you can separate the music from the musician, then go for it. Just be prepared to answer questions if you decide to do it in yoga class.

And that’s it for today. For more metal music, history, art, and literature, keep browsing Metalblog.

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