Melancology: Black Metal Theory and Ecology

by Scott Wilson

Melancology addresses the notorious musical genre black metal as a negative form of environmental writing that ‘blackens’ the cosmos. This book conjures a new word and concept that conjoins ‘black’ and ‘ecology’: melancology, a word in which can be heard the melancholy affect appropriate to the conjunction. Black metal resounds from the abyss and it is precisely only in relation to its sonic forces that the question of intervention in the environment arises in the articulation of melancology with ethics. That is, in deciding ‘which way out’ we should take, in deciding with what surpluses to dwell, with what waste, what detritus or decay in a process of unbinding with sonic forces that traverse an earth choking in wealth and death. The book thus provides a provocative and challenging contribution both to popular and intellectual debates on ecology.

Genres: Music, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory

255 pages, Paperback

First published September 26, 2014

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Osore Misanthrope · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ни по бабу, ни по стричевима, већ по правди ђавла истинога! Књига је ујед муве це-це, уместо општење мојих двеју љубави – блек метала и биологије (екологије).

Блек метал се диверзификовао у својим стриктним оквирима, и звучно и тематски.* Идеални (и изворни?) тип можда би био анти-теистички (а не сатанистички) one-man, DIY, low-fi black metal, инхерентно анти-догматски, индивидуалистички, песимистички, ларпурлартистички и елитистички. Мизантропија, природољубље (црна пасторала), космички хорор, нихилизам, гнев, сета, туга, екстатичност, носталгија, мистериозност и сл. биле би факултативне акцесорије, а злочини (убиства, силовања, спаљивања, хитлерисање) ексцеси који жанру дају кредибилност крзајући вео фикције у збиљу. Анти-догматичност иде руку под руку са научним дискурсом, иако је блек метал добрим делом окаљан спиритуализмом. Елитизам се огледа у неприступачном звуку који захтева инвестираног и посвећеног слушаоца (истренираних ушију), док самодовољност жанра оличена у самотним ствараоцима који читаве албуме компонују и снимају самостално, без прљавих руку продуцената и миксера, указује на уметност окренуту ка себи самој, која, учаурена у монохромну минималистичку насловницу албума, исказује презир према материјалном, према савременом луксузу, звуку и слици препегланих филтерима, према углачаним производима уметности који се кезе сваком купцу. Као и сваки други, и овај идеални тип је недостижан, али постоје приближне форме (мени драги Sadness, Trhä, Paysage d’Hiver).

Било да природу глорификује и/или дијаболизује, блек метал је увек у песимуму, области изван граница преживљавања, у пароксизму емотивног крика и јаука. Одличан пример жанра који бих назвао ecocidal black metal приказали су Advent Sorrow у споту Pestilence Shall Come: призори рата у Украјини из 2014. смењују се са снимцима природе и бенда који свира, укрштајући corpsepaint певача као симболичну прозопопеју са сликама деструкције и наизглед неокаљане природе, али у којој пахуљање боли, а ракун као да је на ивици суза. Ковитлање ове соничне изложбе афектира слушаоца мизантропа; шушка се да и блек металци плачу.

Иако је већина текстова блек метал нумера тек лоша поезија, синкретични угриз тријумфује у триптиху звук-слика-текст, оживљавајући рафалне паљбе са бојних поља (Marduk – Warschau 2), баханалије из пакла (Dark Funeral, Nordjevel), малигне ентитете у вечном снегу и леду (Immortal, Paysage d’Hiver), ноктуралне пулсеве густих честара (Severoth - Vsesvit), крик природе (Elderwind), веносек (Life Is Pain, None, Trist…), кошмаре (Аkhlys), космичку страву и апатију (Darkspace, Alrakis), шизоидни спој екстатичне носталгије и сетног безнађа (An Autumn for Crippled Children, Woods of Desolation, Sorrow Plagues)…

Цитати:

For black metal, darkness shows the way along an atheological horizon that marks the limit of absolute evil where there are no goods or resources to distribute and therefore no means of power and domination, a mastery of nothing.

Blackening embraces the purposelessness thoroughly: there is no purpose, no goal nor end in nature; there is not even negation, there is nothing, only a final endstille.

Morton’s ecological thought involves: The thinking of interconnectedness [that] has a dark side embodied not in a hippie aesthetic of life over death, or a sadistic-sentimental Bambification of sentient beings, but in a‘goth’ assertion of the contingent and necessarily queer idea that we want to stay with a dying world: dark ecology. Ово није једино позивање на Мортона у књизи, али је, попут овог, свако нејасни брбљетак.

A lot of black metal envisions the universe as a cold, mechanical, meaningless trap.

The mourning and melancholy of black metal is essentially this mourning for death – not the death of someone, or something or some lost past, but for death itself. It is felt in the love and fascination that black metal has for death.

Sick, wan, as pale as death, the melancholic, corpse-painted figure of the black metal kvltist presents an undead memento mori to the plane of immanent and imminent extinction.

Transforming the face into a battlefield of relational struggle between a black surface and a white surface, corpsepaint enacts the historical disjunction between the absolute black of early modern melancholy blood and the absolute pallor of post-Romantic depressive whiteness. Through corpsepaint, black metal achieves the re-occultation of black blood as an immanent experience of asymmetric struggles between life and death, dark and light, then and now.

The black metal musician’s melancholy is associated with ecological death, and a mourning that is not lack but desire towards renewal through decay.

[B]lack metal’s most obvious tendencies [are] not to reveal, but to conceal.

Gaahl, ex-singer for Gorgoroth, tells the journalist: ‘My family owns three mountains. There’s not much else around there. Love of nature is a big part of Black Metal. It’s easy to feel isolated in nature. And solitude and distance from everyone else is very important to us.’

The hope for ecological reversal that is found in Wolves in the Throne Room’s music, a longing for a return to a non-existent harmony, suggests an ecological model that is alien to dynamics, to energetic modes of existence, as well as to the complexities of feedback loops as they relate to ecological systems. That is, in relying on ancient and pseudo-Pagan aesthetic models of nature, Wolves in the Throne Room set up nature as a set of entities which are being damaged or defiled – processes which will be ceased only by the destruction (or at least massive reduction) of the human race. (…)Wolves’ model, and other ecological black metal bands such as Botanist (to say nothing of other Cascadian Black Metal they have been called) over emphasize the thingness (or material stability) of nature, thereby implying that the earth is an infinitely regenerative Gaia-like-entity and/or that the possibility exists for an unrestricted reversibility of the damage that has already been done to the earth (as the privileged representation of nature-for-humans).

The songs of Botanist are told from the perspective of The Botanist, a crazed man of science who lives in self-imposed exile, as far away from Humanity and its crimes against Nature as possible. In his sanctuary of fantasy and wonder, which he calls the Verdant Realm, he surrounds himself with plants and flowers, finding solace in the company of the Natural world, and envisioning the destruction of man. There, seated upon his throne of Veltheimia, The Botanist awaits the day when humans will either die or kill each other off, which will allow plants to make the Earth green once again.

Sadness does something to the way we see the world. In the experience of deep sadness, the world itself seems altered in some way: coloured by sadness, or disfigured by it. Rather than living inside us, as our normal passions do, our sadness seems to envelop everything.

[B]lack metal is not something universally fixed, but a virtually mobile unreachable thing, like an unmineable mineral that weirdly relocates its inaccessibility according to the equipment on the surface.

Меланкологија – одјек обезљуђене планете у умирућем свемиру.

*Raw BM, Ambient BM, Atmospheric BM, Melodic BM, Symphonic BM, Folk BM, Pagan BM, DSBM, Post-BM, Blackgaze, Avant-garde BM, Experimental BM, Cascadian BM, Dissonant BM, Bestial BM, War BM, Blackened death metal, Black/Death, NSBM, Unblack metal/White metal…
*Themes: Satan, Darkness, Death, Depression, Nature, Melancholy, Anti-christianity, Anti-theism, War, Atheism, History, Paganism, Literature, Philosophy, Cosmos...

[Katrin · Rating 3 out of 5]

black metal theory is for me at least interesting enough. I don't want to start arguing if it has a right to exist and if it makes sense in the broader scheme. but some essays are definitely worth a read and putting a musical style, but also an art form into context. is that necessary? i guess no, but i see how black metal fascinates a lot of people, who also try to understand it, even if maybe that is a futile endeavour. some essays were really good. i liked the ones about black sun, black blood, green and blackening, as well as the piece mostly on satyricon, to the mountains. there were some pieces that i understand much less. the one about the image of the fly had almost nothing to do with black metal, as well as the too eccentric piece on worms. i did not agree with the essay arguing that nature is not the escape-form for black metal and that true black metal obviously is born out of the secluding and emotionally draining loneliness inside a big city. to me, black metal is not only the norwegian landscape. there is so much that can influence, create and shape black metal, from the scorching heat on a deserted plain on a windswept greek island, to an anonymous multi-storey building in which people merely exist and live in their own isolation, to the snow-capped trees in a vast Finnish wintry forest or inside an ancient ruined welsh castle, surrounded by seemingly endless green hills, echoing the wind like laments for times past. all this, all this can be black metal.

[Ryan McCarthy · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a fan of black metal, a proponent of deep ecology, and an avid reader of philosophy, I thought this book would be right up my alley. And in a sense, it was. But it also disappointed me deeply. I think there is an over-eagerness to intellectualize ideas to an extent that they are nearly incomprehensible to anyone outside of niche academic circles. I think the vast majority of philosophers are guilty of this, and I think it renders their ideas and arguments impotent. Clarity should be the guiding principle in any philosophical piece, and I think it is self-evident that the authors of the essays in this book were NOT aiming for clarity. I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that unless you are already deeply acquainted with a variety of complex and dense philosophical concepts (Schopenhauer's writings, Kant's general arguments, cosmic pessimism, etc.), you won't take much away from this book. I sure didn't.

[Ro Nowak · Rating 2 out of 5]

Essays that did good things to my brain:

- "WormSign" (Nicola Masciandaro)
- "Shuddering: Black Metal on the Edge of the Earth" (Steven Shakespeare)
- "In the Abyss of Lies: A Short Essay on Failure in Black Metal" (Liviu Mantescu)
- "To the Mountains: The Implications of Black Metal's Geophilosophy" (Dominik Irtenkauf)

Overall maybe I simply don't like philosophers / people too in love with their own edgyness / zer0 books shenanigans. (Will I continue reading them because content-wise the stuff they put out is right up my alley? Yeah, unfortunately this is the path I have chosen.)

[b · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me-thinks the edgelords doth protest too much.

[Alexandru Pavlov · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book links the aesthetics of black metal to modern art and phylosophical views in an interesting way, providing new perspectives to this deep and complex genre. It gave me a deeper understanding of black metal and a greater appreciation. A must-read for any kvltist.

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

My work was featured in Amelia Ishmael's essay, but I also enjoyed Drew Daniel, Eugene Thacker and Nicola Masciandaro's pieces. A thoughtful compilation.