Extreme music for extreme people?
Norwegian black metal and transcendent violence
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v6i1.150Keywords:
Emperor, heavy metal, moral panic, neo-Nazism, Norwegian black metalAbstract
This article focuses on the events of the Norwegian black metal scene in the early 1990s, a period in which violent aesthetics in metal music became explicitly and deliberately articulated to real acts of violence. Concentrating on the musical and criminal activities of the band Emperor, the author suggests that the group’s success was, at least in part, the result of members’ simultaneous promotion and disavowal of their involvement in violent crime. The case highlights not only how not all claims of a link between music and violence are entirely fabricated, but also the necessity of rethinking conventional approaches to music, violence and controversy, given the ongoing legacy of the events of the early 1990s within the contemporary black metal scene.
References
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Thornton, Sarah. 1995. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Oxford: Polity Press.
Walser, Robert. 1993. Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover: University Press of New England.
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Whalen, Gregory. 1997. ‘Emperor: Their Satanic Majesties Request…’. Terrorizer 39. http:// www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jasen01/warsongs/emperorinterview.htm.
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Discography
Emperor. 1994. In the Nightside Eclipse. Candlelight MIM7318-2CD.
——1997. Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk. Candlelight MIM7327-2CD.
Arnopp, Jason. 1993. ‘We are but Slaves of the One with Horns...’. Kerrang! 436, 27 March.
Baddeley, Gavin. 1999. Lucifer Rising: Sin, Devil Worship and Rock’n’roll. London: Plexus.
Beste, Peter. 2008. True Norwegian Black Metal. Brooklyn: Vice Books.
Bogue, Ronald. 2004. ‘Violence in Three Shades of Metal: Death, Doom and Black’. In Deleuze and Music, ed. Ian Buchanan and Marcel Swiboda, 95–117. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
‘Death Metal Teacher Sacked’. 2010. Orange, 6 May. http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Death_metal_teacher_sacked.
Hensley, Chad. 1995. ‘Legion of the Night: An Interview with Emperor’. EsoTerra Magazine 6. http://www.esoterra.org/empor.htm.
Hinchliffe, James, and Dayal Patterson. 2009. ‘Soaring on Blackened Wings’. In Terrorizer’s Secret History of Black Metal, ed. Louise Brown, September (Special issue of Terrorizer magazine).
Kahn-Harris, Keith. 2004. ‘Unspectacular Subculture? Transgression and Mundanity in the Global Extreme Metal Scene’. In After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture, ed. Andy Bennett and Keith Kahn-Harris, 107–118. London: Palgrave.
—2007. Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. Oxford: Berg.
Metalion. 1994. ‘Emperor’. Slayer 10: 4–5.
Moynihan, Michael, and Didrik Søderlind. 1998. Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground. Venice, CA: Feral House.
Pettman, Dominic. 1995. ‘“It’ll All Come Out in the Mosh”: The Articulations of Death Metal’. Southern Review 28: 213–25.
Richardson, James T. 1991. ‘Satanism in the Courts: From Murder to Heavy Metal’. In The Satanism Scare, ed. James T. Richardson, Joel Best and David G. Bromley, 205–217. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Roccor, Bettina. 2000. ‘Heavy Metal: Forces of Unification and Fragmentation within a Musical Subculture’. The World of Music 42: 83–94.
Rosenbaum, Jill Leslie, and Lorraine Prinsky. 1991. ‘The Presumption of Influence: Recent Responses to Popular Music Subcultures’. Crime & Delinquency 37: 528–35. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1177/0011128791037004007
Thornton, Sarah. 1995. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Oxford: Polity Press.
Walser, Robert. 1993. Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover: University Press of New England.
Weinstein, Deena. 2000. Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture. Boulder, CO: Da Capo.
Whalen, Gregory. 1997. ‘Emperor: Their Satanic Majesties Request…’. Terrorizer 39. http:// www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jasen01/warsongs/emperorinterview.htm.
Wright, Robert. 2000. ‘“I’d Sell You Suicide”: Pop Music and Moral Panic in the Age of Marilyn Manson’. Popular Music 19: 365–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0261143000000222
Discography
Emperor. 1994. In the Nightside Eclipse. Candlelight MIM7318-2CD.
——1997. Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk. Candlelight MIM7327-2CD.
Published
2012-05-14
Issue
Section
Countercultures
How to Cite
Phillipov, M. (2012). Extreme music for extreme people? Norwegian black metal and transcendent violence. Popular Music History, 6(1-2), 150-163. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v6i1.150
