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Tuesday, November 27, 2012

From A Dark Place: Black Metal's Inversion of Ethics and Aesthetics



The words are barely discernible, thin, fragile shapes formed out of the hoarse yet bellicose raging of a desiccated, cadaverous throat, leprous, shredded; its death-rattled breath conveyed by the thundering vibrations of drums breathlessly pummelled without pause. There is no rock ‘n’ roll backbeat here, just a furious cacophony.  Voice smashed and sliced open by explosions of percussion challenging the darkness, buzzing guitar chords rising and falling up the scale, lurching, striving like a swarm of ravenous insects dipping and swerving in the frozen, airless void, defying gravity, seeking the taste of death ... (From Scott Wilson (ed) Melancology: Black Metal and Ecology, Zero Books, forthcoming in 2013).

[cross-posted from Amusia]

Gewaltkunstwerk at Kristiansand Kunsthall (Norway)


Full documentation by photographer William Lacalmontie available via