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Well, yes and no. The question
we face with the bands whose records are presently rocking me to hell is:
“Hey, are these guys nazis?” And this is a question that can be
shrugged off only by the very young or by the despicably & willfully
jaded. There are plenty of them -- nazis, I mean -- in black metal; death
metal’s preference for straight-up putrefaction over politics is one
of the reasons why death metal kicks black metal’s ass. (The other
reason is that death metal is, y’know, like, just better.) It’s
hard to say what came first -- the desire to shock the gentry, or the attraction
to the gentry-shocking political stance, but whatever the case, by 2002
there are a whole bunch of black metal guys who express their infatuation
with some of Hitler’s sillier ideas by writing about old Norse epics
(which in and of themselves are quite cool), and by sketching us vs. them
apocalyptic scenarios that hint darkly at a pretty foul-smelling xenophobia. |
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