Helvete: A Journal of Black Metal Theory: Issue 3: Bleeding Black Noise

by Helvete Journal, Amelia Ishmael (Editor), Andrew Doty (Design)

Black Metal Theory is noise. Lacking one clear manifesto or position, it fails to become an elite circle. It is amplified and transmitted electronically: through instruments, lo-fi recordings, internets, and print-on-demand publishers...yet rather than a clear direction of progress we glean only its subversive raw dissonance, disruptions, animalistic screams, resonating disturbances, high-pitched feedback, primitive growls, and its atmospheric statics, hisses, and drones. Black Metal Theory refuses to be hi-fi. It quenches its sonic thirsts from primordial-ditch stews that resemble the dark sludge of recently melted snowfall - pristine white flakes transmuted into a tumultuously sexy and delicious mixture of trash and dirt and ash and poison that swirls and splashes in ditches before seeping into the underground. Our ears drink this disharmonious black bile and our bodies suspend in its intoxicating formless complexities. The third issue of Helvete, "Bleeding Black Noise," features artwork and essays that focus on the sonic aspects of Black Metal, specifically its interactions with Noise - the interruptions, creations, and destructions of signals as black noise. "Bleeding Black Noise" is a revision of Steven Parrino's statement, "My relation between Rock and visual art: I will bleed for you." In this issue, Rock is replaced with Noise, and Bleeding is celebrated as a release of the Black Noise - raw energy and formless potential. The essays and art portfolios included here experiment with sonic and conceptual feedback, as well as the way that black noise works through feedback as a process, resonating as background hums or drones, and cascading in foregrounded screams. TABLE OF CONTENTS // "Untitled," by Alessandro Keegan - "Black Noise: The Throb of the Anthropocene," by Susanna Pratt - "Dead Body of a Performance," by Michael Sellam - "Vocal Distortion," by Simon Proll - "1558-2016," by Gast Bouschet and Nadine Hilbert - "Distraction," by Bagus Jalang - "Leaving the Self Behind," by Nathan Snaza - "Excerpts from z/w/a/r/t24 and Z/W/A/R/T Magazine 5," by Max Kuiper - "False Atonality, True Non-tonality," by Bert Stabler - "Untitled," by Faith Coloccia - "Nonevent: Grotesque Indexicality, Black Sites, and the Cryptology of the Sonorous Irreflective in T.O.M.B.," by Kyle McGee"

Genres: Music

144 pages, Paperback

Published December 14, 2016

Reviews

[Ipsa · Rating 3 out of 5]

when the hound of heaven hounds you and you find repose finally in black noise, a slow genrecide of black metal, it kills all referentiality including autoreference. you think it was depression but it was just you being masticated in the maw of Real. the world to you is a distorted feedback loop. noise. what you thought was a preternatural depression was your body's uncanny attunement to occult magnitudes of the inorganic, the raw non-events. it was your body conducting thought, your processual shredding. you were destitute, always an emblem, a sacrificial lamb to the Outside. your interiority is a ruse. it is nature chewing you, blackening your horizons and rendering you non-spatial. you are nowhere, only a meaty resonance for black-infrasound.

this life experience was my pivot to metal, and extreme noisy music in general. reading this journal helped me shape a lot of these thoughts and it also taught me a few technical things for which I am grateful. it is an uneven collection, mostly superficial, but I really enjoyed it.

[Katrin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third installment in the helvete series and for me this was a step forward. The first issue had no common theme, the second one did but I sometimes questioned the relevance of the material. Now this one had a theme, black noise, and all essays and art pieces seemed to fit quite well. I don't agree with all the different views on the topic, but this is how it should be. Black metal theory is mostly discussion and trying to explain something that goes so much beyond music. I enjoyed this one quite a lot and hope for more issues in the future.