Metal and radical politics: The need to embrace the shlock
A new book on black metal and 'red politics' inspired me but left me wanting more.
I still can't quite get over the fact that metal and left-wing politics are no longer strange bedfellows. Not that metal has ever been a predominantly right-wing culture (indeed, in the 80s, the US conservative right stirred up moral panics about it). Moreover, the crossover with anarcho politics in some metal sub-genres, particularly grindcore, did at least ensure that metal was never a political monoculture. Yet my early work on metal was predicated on the assumption that the persistence of a metal 'anti-politics' meant that acknowledging and addressing racism, sexism and homophobia in metal scenes would be an extremely difficult, ultra-long-term struggle.
It's not that this anti-politics has gone away, nor are the challenges in making metal an egalitarian space any less daunting. We are, though, further down the road earlier than I ever thought we would be. One modest source of the necessary critique has been the metal studies discipline that has exploded since the late 2000s (and in which I have been involved since the beginning, although I didn't start it!). Another has been the patient work of organisations such as the Sophie Lancaster Foundation which have been trying, amongst other things, to make gigs more welcoming to all. However, the most vigorous space in which metal and radical politics have fused is within black metal, which has attracted musicians, writers and activists keen to enact a revolutionary pushback against its fascist tendencies.
I recently reviewed Dawn Ray'd's extraordinary new work To Know The Light. Their radical anarchist politics doesn't just infuse their lyrics, it also pushes the band to explore new musical territories within black metal itself. It doesn't surprise me at all that the band are playing an acoustic set at an upcoming UK event to celebrate Kim Kelly's book on US labour radicalism. Kelly has been an important figure in promoting anti-fascist black metal and her writing on labour activism demonstrates the possibilities of a radical black metal politics.
Bill Peel's new book Tonight It's a World We Bury: Black Metal, Red Politics is a provocative intervention in this burgeoning cultural-political field. The book is also a sign that this field is far from being politically unified. For starters, Peel is more socialist than anarchist, albeit the less doctrinaire, libertarian kind of socialist. What struck me most about his book is that, in developing a vision of black metal that can both express and ground a 'red politics', he explicitly renounces attempts to 'purify' the genre by excising the reactionary elements from its history. What it means is that he recognises that we have to find some way to reconcile ourselves to the fact that Burzum and other far-right elements of black metal are so much part of the genre's foundation that it makes no sense to pretend otherwise. As Peel argues:
Black metal is not, and has never been, an unequivocally socialist genre. It cannot be reclaimed because it was never ours to begin with. While this may be controversial, I argue that any claims socialists make to black metal are as legitimate as the right’s. Fascists are not wrong to use black metal to express their political vision. They clearly see a usefulness which NSBM bands like Goatmoon, M8Л8TX and Absurd seize upon. So long as black metal speaks to them, black metal’s hatred for the world has the potential to be utilised by fascists. We cannot ignore this fact. Similarly, Red and Anarchist Black Metal (RABM for short) bands like Trespasser, Iskra and Skagos aren’t wrong to find value in black metal either. Black metal is, in the parlance of poststructuralists, “a site of contestation”. In other words, black metal is fought over by a multitude of actors, all of whom seek to lay claim to it. The task of this book isn’t of reclaiming black metal from the right and calling it ours. Rather, it’s about uncovering the uses black metal has when put in relation with socialist thought. What can class struggle and emancipation give to black metal, and vice versa?
What excites me about this approach is that it allows us to imagine a much more comprehensive radical vision for black metal than simply fighting to shut down its fashier adherents (although that doesn't mean we shouldn't still do the latter). Instead, Peel burrows into the bedrock of black metal - that which grounds the genre across political dividing lines, meaning it includes the fashy artists too - to forge a 'red politics' that is faithful to the genre's traditions but directs them differently. For example, here is how Peel turns black metal's esoteric desire for secrecy into a critique of capitalism:
Reactionary criticisms of confessional art tend to concern themselves with the art’s supposed degeneracy and narcissism. These inevitably end up in a kind of hickenand-egg conundrum wherein no one can feasibly determine if a piece like My Bed is an expression of social degeneracy or responsible for it. I want to concern myself with neither narcissism nor the supposed degeneracy of modern art. My aim is simpler: to understand this trend of artistic practice as an expression of a broader artistic and social desire to reveal oneself. Black metal opposes this desire with utmost severity, and reveals nothing, confesses nothing. Where contemporary artists seek personal recognition and a strange kind of freedom through revealing themselves, black metal artists only make themselves more obscure, finding freedom in the shadows. As we’ll see, the desire for unrestricted flows of information is vital to capitalism’s operation in the twenty-first century, and in this social field perhaps black metal’s desire for secrecy is more useful than it seems.
And later:
Black metal wants to reinvent the world, but it’s savvy enough to know that the politics of recognition can only get us so far. For now, it might be better to operate in shadows, tombs and crypts. It may well be better to incubate strength in secret rather than declare it out in the open, lest change be prevented by a vast array of information technologies. Black Circles — black metal secret societies out to remake the world — are a technique of organisation which demonstrate the value of secrecy. They are but one lesson of many we can take from black metal.
It's definitely worth reading Peel's book to appreciate the kind of vision for black metal he is setting out. Inevitably though, there is a danger that it will be read crudely as suggesting that 'black metal was always red' or 'black metal artists are socialists, they just haven't realised it yet'. This is definitely not Peel's approach which is fundamentally anti-essentialist, as concerned with what black metal could be as much as what it actually is. While the subtlety of his argument may be lost on some, the author's refusal to edit out the uncomfortable parts of black metal history means that readers won't feel they are being pushed into an irrevocable choice between accepting or rejecting artists that might be dear to them. Even though Peel exhalts the value of secrecy and rejection of the world as political practices, his vision of black metal is surprisingly open-hearted and welcoming.
Actually that's not entirely true. Tonight It's A World We Bury does more or less ignore one kind of black metal, and it isn't the fashy kind. He pretty much rejects the idea that non-esoteric forms of black metal have anything to bring to the party; and that means he doesn't see any potential at all in bands like Cradle Of Filth or Dimmu Borgir. Black metal as lavish commercial spectacle performed to large crowds is of no interest to Peel. And this is where Peel and I part company….
While there is plenty about my 2007 book Extreme Metal, that I would want to rewrite now (either to take into account more recent developments or because my views have evolved) I would still absolutely affirm these lines from the final chapter:
For a critically derided, unashamedly populist music to commit itself to musical radicalism, without rejecting its populist roots – this is at the very least noteworthy. The extreme metal scene is a powerful example of how popular music can be a source of artistic radicalism that is nonetheless rooted in a lived experience of community.
What I love about metal culture - genuinely love - is the ways in which some of the most 'difficult' forms of music ever created exist in relationship with music that is shamelessly popular and populist. In metal I can express the sides of myself that adore both gnarly esoteric art and schlocky, kitschy silliness.
Last weekend I attended the latter kind of gig with my two kids; an arena show featuring Sabaton as headliners, with Babymetal and Lordi as support. The crowd were happy and raucous, the bands had fun on stage. Sabaton were their usual selves; singing sometimes worryingly non-judgemental songs about war in all its forms, while bouncing round with giant grins on their faces. Ethically, politically, ideologically, they are an extraordinarily incoherent band, just as capable of starting the set with live favourite 'Ghost Division' - a thrill ride that takes you on a Panzer Tank blitzkreig - and of slowing things down with the affecting (and overwrought) WW1 song 'Christmas Truce'.
I wouldn't have attended the show if my kids weren't fans. But yes, I loved it. The show made me happy (a triumph considering that the incompetent fucks at the Wembley Ovo Arena meant we had to queue for 90 minutes to get in). What I particularly loved was the giddy vertigo-inducing revelation that I was excited by this joyful shlock-fest as I was by the Dawn Ray'd album. And I am not the only metalhead to 'play both sides' like this. In fact, I think this is exactly where metal's greatest potential lies; in the ability to be enthused simultaneously by the esoteric and the popular. This is what radical politics has had so much difficulty doing. While I abhor the Bolsheviks, they at least tried to develop (particularly in the 1920s) an aesthetic that could connect the avant-garde and the popular. It's an infernally hard task but where better to attempt it today than metal culture?
While I the growth of politically-radical black metal is something that excites and inspires me, I also recognise that metal culture more broadly can and has (sometimes) changed. In a 2022 episode, the LGBT podcast Hell Bent for Metal aired an interview with Sabaton’s vocalist Joakim Brodén. A friendly and jovial bloke, he was absolutely open about the band’s homoerotic dress code, sometimes described as ‘Village People in camo pants’. Although straight, he clearly had absolutely no issue laughing and joking about the band’s gay-friendly appearance. It would have been unimaginable for a successful metal band to do an interview like this even a couple of decades ago. That doesn’t mean metal culture doesn’t have huge issues with homophobia (and the uncomfortable quasi-amorality of some of Sabaton’s blanket fascination with war) but we shouldn’t underestimate how someone as recognisable and popular within metal as Brodén can make a real difference.
We are none of us one person. We have different, competing needs that we struggle to reconcile. Art can help us experience laughter and joy, it can steel ourselves for activist struggles, it can test us and help us explore difficult ideas and experiences. Metal is a space where we can do most of these things. And that's why, while I used to tell everyone who asked that I loved the extreme side of metal exclusively, now I embrace it all - even the bits that I don't like, even the bits that revolt me - because it is all connected.
Also, I've long expected a band with a queer take on hair metal to emerge and get popular - a group of trans women who look and sound like early Motley Crue? - but that sub-genre is so uncool that it's unlikely to happen.
When did "extreme metal" come to be seen as the standard for the genre? If you go back and look up old episodes of HEADBANGER'S BALL- and, yes, obviously MTV's idea of metal was very flawed - most of them are full of bands who make Ghost sound as abrasive as Deicide, but that was the average person's notion of metal even into the early 90s.