Black metal and the extreme right, Part 1

Keith has a thoughtful post about Varg Vikernes and Burzum up at his weblodge which you can read here. I'm not going to go deeply into the details here for anyone not familiar with him, but in short, Varg "Count Grishnackh" Vikernes is the musician behind the Norwegian ambient black metal band Burzum, who also happens to be an unrepentant neo-Nazi and murderer who was recently released from prison after serving sixteen years of a twenty-one year sentence for the murder of Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth of the band Mayhem as well as the arson of three churches. Wikipedia offers a useful summary here. Burzum also has a new album coming out, which is getting a lot of coverage in the metal press and is correspondingly generating no small amount of controversy.

Back to Keith's post. He writes that he is

slightly embarassed to admit that I am looking forward to hearing it. The music of Burzum has always struck me as incredibly powerful in its stark, minimal beauty. Yet, like many others that I know, I also find my liking for Burzum difficult given Vikernes's loathsomeness. This isn't of course a problem confined to Burzum - there are loads of revolting artists in history who have created amazing work, Wagner being the most famous example - but it is particularly difficult given the location of Burzum's work in the metal scene...Part of the problem with Burzum is that the issues surrounding the artist are often reduced to a choice between absolute anti-racist rejectionism and apolitical 'it's only music'-ism. I reject that choice. Burzum's work is simply too interesting musically to be dismissed outright but Vikernes's views are too much a part of his work to be simply ignored. What Burzum requires is active, critical listening that goes alongside an active, critical political imagination.

I disagree with Keith's judgement of Burzum. I think that it's interesting in the way that it contrasts with what were, at the time, the prevailing trends in metal. Leaving behind the the heavy, muscular, and riff-based sounds of death metal, the Norwegian black metal bands focused more on raw, primitive atmospherics. Burzum was arguably the most successful group--at least in terms of aesthetics--in rejecting both death metal and in creating something entirely new from the usual black metal influences of Venom, Bathory, and Celtic Frost. Personally, though, it doesn't do much for me. There are some standout Burzum tracks, but I haven't found any of his albums to be compelling as a whole. Some of them--I'm thinking of Hliðskjálf here--are unlistenable, and are a reminder that Varg's intention of purging non-Aryan influences from his music is aesthetically as well as morally and politically disastrous. That said, Burzum is massively influential, though this I suspect has more to do with sensationalism about Varg's criminality than it has to do with his music--for example, there's a Hollywood movie in the works about Norwegian black metal with a "teen heartthrob" from the Twilight movies playing Varg. That isn't happening because some studio executive really "gets" Filosofem.

Though I do really like Keith's injunction to be active and critical listeners.

I don't think there's a point in here, but I'm going to pick up on this post later...