National Socialist black metal

History

In the 1980s, 'black metal' referred to heavy metal bands with Satanic lyrics and imagery. In the early 1990s, the early Norwegian black metal scene developed the style into a distinct genre. The scene members were fiercely anti-Christian and generally presented themselves as misanthropic Devil worshipers who wanted to spread hatred, sorrow and evil. However, some bands (who did not call themselves black metal because they were not Satanic) wrote about pre-Christian Scandinavia and its folklore.

In 1992, members of the scene burnt down a number of churches. In August of the same year, Faust of Emperor killed a gay man who had propositioned him in Lillehammer. In August 1993, Varg Vikernes of Burzum killed fellow musician Euronymous – a well-known figure in the scene – and was arrested shortly after. Euronymous was said to be a communist, but Vikernes denies killing him over ideology. Although Vikernes's music has always been non-political, he began to express neo-Nazi views in writings and interviews after his arrest. He is generally seen as being responsible for popularizing such views in the black metal scene. According to an interview in Blood & Honour magazine, he had gotten in touch with the neo-Nazi organization Zorn 88 (later called the National Socialist Movement of Norway) in 1992 and joined White Aryan Resistance before he killed Euronymous. While in prison, "Vikernes began to formulate his nationalist heathen ideology" and wrote a manifesto called Vargsmål. It became available on the internet for a while in 1996, and in 1997 it was printed by a Norwegian publisher. Vikernes has long-since distanced himself from the NSBM scene and refers to himself as an "Odalist" rather than a National Socialist or fascist.

Some other members of the early Norwegian scene flirted with Nazi themes and imagery, but this was partly an attempt to provoke. Vikernes later claimed that the scene had begun "as a nationalistic (Norwegian-centric), racist and anti-Christian revolt" but was "hijacked" by the "Jew-dominated music industry". He claims the industry made it into another tool with which to destroy Europe, by promoting bands who embraced "everything sick and anti-European on this planet, from porn and promiscuity to drugs and homosexuality". Hendrik Möbus of Absurd called NSBM the "logical conclusion" of the Norwegian black metal movement and interpreted the church burnings as a "cultural atavism".

Vikernes wrote some lyrics for the album Transilvanian Hunger by Darkthrone, another key band in the Norwegian scene. It was released in 1994 with Norsk Arisk Black Metal ('Norwegian Aryan Black Metal') printed on the back cover. This caused much controversy, but Darkthrone offered an explanation and stated that they were "not a Nazi band nor a political band". At around this time, some other Norwegian black-metallers made seemingly racist statements. In 1994, Mayhem drummer Hellhammer said of the genre's links with fascism: "I'll put it this way, we don't like black people here. Black Metal is for white people". When Mayhem re-formed after Euronymous's death, they began releasing merchandise bearing World War II-era Nazi symbols. However, in a later interview, Hellhammer said "I don't give a crap if the fans are white, black, green, yellow, or blue. For me music and politics don’t go hand in hand". In 1995, prominent Norwegian black metal vocalist Gaahl described "niggers" and "mulattoes" as "subhuman" and stated his admiration for Vikernes and Adolf Hitler. However, he too has since distanced himself from these statements. Gaahl was voted Gay Person of the Year in 2010 in Bergen. According to the authors of Lords of Chaos, in 1995, three Swedish black-metallers (including Mika "Belfagor" Hakola of the band Nefandus) went on a "niggerhunt" in Linköping. Wielding an axe and two machetes, they "terrorized" a black man. Nefandus were later "considered to be Nazi sympathizers", though Belfagor explained: "This could not be further from the truth, but I guess this has to do with some of the controversial comments I made in various magazines in my youth, when I still aspired to play in the most hated band in the world. I used a lot of provocative language back then. But to sort things out: I associate with people of all creeds and colours. […] So to be labeled a Nazi or a racist is very offensive to me".

One of the first NSBM releases was the 1995 demo Thuringian Pagan Madness by German band Absurd. It was recorded while the members were imprisoned for murdering a boy from their school. On the demo cover is a photograph of his gravestone and pro-Nazi statements. After this, Absurd became one of the pioneers of NSBM. Other bands deemed to be part of the early NSBM scene include Graveland, Infernum and Veles (from Poland), Nokturnal Mortum and Hate Forest (from Ukraine), Branikald (from Russia), and Spear of Longinus and Waffenbrüder (from Australia). In the 1990s, some of the earliest American black metal bands—like Judas Iscariot—joined an international NSBM organization called the Pagan Front, although Judas Iscariot's sole member Akhenaten left the organization. Thelemnar, the drummer of German band Secrets of the Moon, said he got to know him "only as an intelligent person and never as a Nazi".

Ideology

NSBM typically melds Neo-Nazi beliefs (such as fascism, white supremacy, white separatism, antisemitism, xenophobia, homophobia) with hostility to "foreign" religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, asf). Bands often promote ethnic European paganism, occultism, or Satanism. Hendrik Möbus of Absurd described Nazism as the "most perfect (and only realistic!) synthesis of Satanic/Luciferian will to power, elitist Social Darwinism, connected to Aryan Germanic paganism". Members of the band Der Stürmer (named after the antisemitic newspaper edited by Julius Streicher) subscribe to Esoteric Nazism, leaning on the works of Savitri Devi and Julius Evola.

Anti-Christianity and antisemitism

Typically NSBM musicians regard Christianity as a product of an alleged Jewish conspiracy to undermine the Aryan race by eliminating their Artglauben and their "original" culture. These musicians usually reject the legitimacy of Christian antisemitism as well as the German Christians movement, which celebrated and promoted Nazi ideology in the context of an unorthodox Christian theological framework. Hjarulv Henker of the band Der Stürmer said:

I don't think that a dogma like Christianity has a place in Aryandom. There is no way to make Christianity fit into the Weltanschauung of the Aryan Overman. Christianity teaches humbleness, the loss of National and Racial identity, and equality, things alien to our cosmotheory. You cannot combine Jesus with characters who represent Aryan ethics. ... Christianity is Christianity and it is Jewish by its very birth and conception, a vehicle in the Jewish world domination and designed as such.

White supremacy

NSBM bands typically regard White Europeans as superior to other races. They are concerned with "racial hygiene", preserving the "purity" of the White race and the traditional cultures of White European nations. They argue that these cultures have "degenerated" over the centuries due to "race mixing". These views are comparable to those in the chapter "Volk und Rasse" in Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Whereas Nazi leaders held pan-German and anti-Slavic views (the Nazis viewed Slavic people to be uncultured and inferior to Germanic people), the NSBM scene has had its German and Polish activists work together from the very beginning, though Germany and Poland have historically had conflicts. This contradiction is either masked, relativized or excused as a historical mistake. A conspiracy theory says the Jews would have prevented an alliance between Nazi Germany and other Eastern European countries. Knjaz Varggoth, singer and guitarist of the Ukrainian band Nokturnal Mortum, gives the following explanation for the contradiction: "Goruth of the Russian band Temnozor sees the Slavs and Germans as a part of a Hyperborean Aryan race and nowadays differing due to its degeneration.".

Paganism

As part of their anti-Christianity, anti-semitism and the idea that White Europeans should return to their "native" ways, most NSBM bands promote ethnic European paganism. Hendrik Möbus interpreted the church burnings in Norway as:

[A] cultural atavism, a sudden and inexplicable plunge back into pre-Christian, medieval conditions in all but outward reality. Like the Swiss psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung, would have said: Ancient archetypes resurfaced from our collective unconscious and repossessed receptive minds – which were, as a rule, still developing and thus especially impressible. The thus affected teenagers found themselves with an archaic state of mind and like in a mass-hysteria, they induced their condition unto others. It goes without saying that a, say, 18 year old adolescent who suddenly felt out of tune with his environment lacked the insight for a self-analysis.

He argues that later on they would have realized the meaning of these emotions, begun to identify with paganism and taken "an active interest in Nationalist politics designed to preserve and to cultivate this very heritage".

The booklet of the Absurd album Asgardsrei depicts the Knights Templar, the Teutonic Order and the Waffen-SS as warriors of the "Asgardsrei", which the bands define as a term for an alleged godly and Germanic group of warriors.

Satanism

Besides pagan beliefs, part of the NSBM scene embraces an interpretation of Theistic Satanism, depicting Satan as an ancient Aryan counterpart to Yahweh, the god of the Jews and Christians. This view is often called "völkisch Satanism" or "Aryan Satanism". Chraesvelgoron of The True Frost sees Nazism as the political appearance of Satanism and the collective deification of man as a social animal, as godliness instead of humaneness. His bandmate Sadorass calls the same ideology a development of blood and soil (völkisch way), diverse occult teachings and the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche in connection to Darwin's evolution theories. Greek black metal musician Magus Wampyr Daoloth (of Necromantia and Thou Art Lord) said in an interview for Lords of Chaos: "If you consider that fascism and Satanism have a lot of similarities as they both advocate power, spiritual and physical excellence, responsibility, survival of the fittest, elitism, etc., it's logical that some bands advocate both".

However, many pagan and far-right bands see Satanism as a part of Christianity or Judaism. Also, some non-political Satanic black metal musicians hold pagan bands in contempt, and do not recognize them as black metal because their lyrics and ideology do not include Satanism.

NSBM and the broader white nationalist movement

Many white nationalists have warmly received NSBM for its lyrical content and ideals. However, some have not, due to the music style as well as the genre's perceived association with the rock & roll lifestyle. However, Lords of Chaos notes that alcohol and illegal drugs never played a big part in the Norwegian black metal scene. Some also reject black metal musicians and fans for having long hair, which they associate with hippies and left-wingers.

William Luther Pierce, founder of the white nationalist National Alliance, sought to promote NSBM as well as other forms of white nationalist music through Resistance Records, believing that music would "make the National Alliance rich and spread its message most effectively". To this end, he accommodated Absurd frontman Hendrik Möbus while the latter had fled to the United States to evade German authorities. Although Pierce appreciated the ideological mindset of NSBM and Resistance Records, as well as the financial gains, the music did not personally appeal to him, and he attacked the "sex, drugs & rock'n'roll" and "negroid" influences.

NSBM and the broader black metal scene

NSBM artists are a minority within black metal, according to Mattias Gardell. They have been rejected or strongly criticized by many prominent black metal musicians – including Jon Nödtveidt, Tormentor, King ov Hell, Infernus, Lord Ahriman, Emperor Magus Caligula, Protector, Erik Danielsson of Watain, and the members of Arkhon Infaustus

Some black-metallers liken Nazism to Christianity in that it is authoritarian, collectivist, and involves a "herd mentality". It also conflicts with the misanthropic views of many artists; Benjamin Hedge Olson writes that the shunning of Nazism within the scene "has nothing to do with notions of a 'universal humanity' or a rejection of hate" but that Nazism is shunned "because its hatred is too specific and exclusive". While some black-metallers boycott NSBM bands and labels, others draw a line between the music and the musicians, as they only care for the music. Some have criticized this as passive support for NSBM. The bigger print metal magazines tend to ignore records by NSBM bands. The book Unheilige Allianzen caused a short debate, leading Legacy magazine to stop printing ads for NSBM labels. Another debate happened in the "letters" section of Rock Hard magazine following the article Der rechte Rand im Black Metal (Black Metal's Far-right Border).

Prominent black metal band Darkthrone have also maintained an apolitical stance throughout their career – although Fenriz claimed he was once arrested while participating in an anti-apartheid demonstration and later had a "phase of being really angry with ... other races" before he became "totally unengaged in [political] shit". Joakim of Craft said, "I don't think national socialism mix[es] with the ideology of real Black Metal in a way, but that doesn't go further than labels. I only think NS Black Metal is an inappropriate label for the music".

List of artists