A Consciousness of History?
Alexandra Cochrane
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Abstract
A brief analysis and discussion of the use of history, imagery and the fostering of a National Identity and Pride by Scandinavian Black Metal and Viking Metal bands.
Key takeaways
- This paper will analyse and discuss how the portrayal of Norse myths and legends have been utilised, and in some ways abused by specifically Scandinavian Black Metal/Viking Metal bands such as Bathory from Stockholm and Burzum from neighbouring Norway.
- Furthermore the study of how Black Metal and Viking Metal has utilised these myths and legends for their own purpose is also becoming more popular and therefore more mainstream because they appeal to a larger audience and not just purely academia.
- The stereotypical image of the Vikings is one of hyper-masculinity.
- The band's respective imagery also has strong links back to history and the Scandinavian forefathers, especially in terms of their cover art.
- Furthermore, a sense of national identity was This paper has discussed the use of Old Norse myths and legends by Black Metal and Viking some reasons for the use of the history itself including a desire to connect themselves back to their ancestral forefathers and how they are considerably marketable.
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This dissertation will aim to examine and analyse the connections between Black Metal fans and musicians and national identity and heritage exhibited through their use of lyrics, imagery and musical ideas. It will also look at the themes and potential misinterpretations of racism and nationalism within the lyrics, imagery and musical ideas. The English and Norwegian Black Metal scenes are the two prominent regional movements which will be focused on. Other scenes will also be looked into, in an attempt to draw parallels between different regional developments. Second hand research will be used to inform the ideas and concepts discussed. First hand interviews with prominent musicians in the scene will also be used in order to gain insight into their opinions and theories.
The Construction of Heavy Metal Identity through Heritage Narratives: A Case Study of Extreme Metal Bands in the North of England
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 03007766 2012 724605, 2013
Extreme and black metal is a music genre infused with ideologies of elitism, nationalism and exaggerated masculinity. In this paper, we explore the ways in which four bands from the north of England-Winterfylleth, Wodensthrone, Old Corpse Road and Oakenshield-construct mythologies, heritage narratives and identity through their own reflections on their music, metal and myths. These extreme metal bands in the North of England work inside the symbolic boundaries of their scene and exist within the imagined communities of their region. That is, the bands construct mythologies based around masculinity and around elitism, but also about "northernness."
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This paper will be exploring how a specific category of popular music known as Viking Metal thematically reconstructs heritage and what meanings we can decode from images generally dealing with an idealized past more than often symbolically equated with Norse myth and antiquity. On the whole we are investigating how song texts and furthermore visual elements contribute to the formation of a cultural identity and memory which not only expresses attachment for a particular time and space, but also serves as a leisure experience with the cultural proposal of an alternate selfhood residing in the reproduction of a mystical heroic populace. The study case is that of a few contemporary Swedish Viking Metal bands and particularly their appropriations of Norse mythology
Inventing Tradition and Mythologising the Nation in the English Black Metal Scene
The appropriation of folk musics in the construction of national identities has a long and widespread history. Composers and musicians have long plundered the resources of traditional musics and the associated connotations of authenticity and purity, either under the direction of the ‘state’ or in more personal modes of identity production. A contemporary movement in Britain’s ‘metal’ scene involves the utilisation of seemingly ‘traditional’ elements and overt references to idealised conceptions of heritage. These are used to promote notions of English or British identities, which are often entangled with ideas of whiteness. An examination of the stylised imagery presented in the artwork and typography of metal albums can reveal a great deal about the ideologies contained within the music. A deconstruction of these visual representations facilitates the extraction of an additional level of signification, which can enable a more detailed understanding of how the music and image function in the promotion of right-wing politics and the assertion of a white English identity. This analysis will be contextualised within the broader perspective of the metal scene, the performance and reception of this music and a perception of its position in relation to mainstream culture and politics.
VALHALLA RISING: THE CONSTRUCTION OF CULTURAL IDENTITY THROUGH NORSE MYTH IN SCANDINAVIAN AND GERMAN PAGAN METAL
PhD THESIS
What happens when the electric guitar meets Thor’s hammer? The effect might be quite bombastic and trigger a sensation of empowerment and enchantment capable of temporarily relocating us to some imaginary places and eldritch times that could cathartically fill up an imagined identity. Metal music is an enormously rich and challenging cultural phenomenon, which has been captivating me for some years and where many times I found solace and an expression of my own emotions. Equally fascinating I find the distant past, with all its aura of mystique and exoticism – “the past is a foreign country”, as the saying goes. What I am writing about in this paper is somehow a compromise between the two, focused on an intriguing and dynamic stylistic trend in metal culture, which is to use Pagan histories as source of inspiration for the lyrics and images of the bands. One vital preliminary remark would be that when such bands aesthetically instrument the past and play with nostalgic reimaginings of history and heritage, they weave a personalized cultural narrative that corresponds to a symbolic collectivity and cultural memory. What guides this study are questions such as: how does the non-musical component relate to old sources and what kind of discourse does it produce? What does it communicate about the relationship between past and present? How can heritage narratives contribute to the formation of a metal identity? Is such an engagement meaningful in postmodern art and society? Not to anticipate too much, I will just hint that ancient tokens can acquire symbolic power if they perform within contemporary traditions of myth and fantasy. Additionally, since I used the term cultural identity in the title, this should be understood in this context as a constructed sense of collective self-representation that makes use of certain identifiers to happen. The identifier I chose to explore is Norse mythology, with reference to the collection of figures and stories in the Eddic material, which constitutes an aesthetic cultural marker that underpins a heritage narrative in metal music: the invention of Northernness. As pinpointed by Stuart Hall, the sense of collectivity is rendered by a more or less artificial imposed “self” built upon shared images of history and cultural codes that provide frames of reference and meaning. we can think about it as a shifting description of the subject, in the process of drawing symbolic boundaries. “The past continues to speak to us. But it no longer addresses us a simple factual past. It is always constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth. Cultural identities are the unstable points of identification or suture, which are made within discourses of history” . The situation is complicated in the postmodern context, where the subject simply disintegrates into a flux of discontinuity that problematizes the concept of identity itself turning it into a construct of language . And in this fragmented picture comes up extreme metal, a constellation of genres with abrasive sound and transgressive content, where one lyrical trend elevates sources like Norse mythology to cultural markers that enact dreams of a primordial past as forms of differentiation and authenticity, yet in a carnivalesque fashion with a strongly immersive touch. Mainly, cultural identity is achieved here through representations of heritage, understood in a context of metal culture. When recycling and reusing themes from old sources in a similar manner, bands invoke their own story and sense of belonging. As a case study I have made a selection (highly subjective, of course) of metal bands and song texts that resort to an intertextual play with the Eddic material, but with the hope to reach a more general overview with theoretical remarks that can be applied to the rest of the scene as well. Moreover, I have devoted large sections to the analysis of the interplay between metal and myth and how the former may be thought to generate an aestheticized spirituality. My practical selection includes bands Enslaved, Einherjer, Helheim (Norway), Månegarm, Amon Amarth, Thyrfing (Sweden), Falkenbach, Black Messiah and Odroerir (Germany), which beyond the aural differentiations share common markers in subject matters. The denominations Pagan and Viking metal are used in this paper to refer to the set of verbal and visual codes, in a nutshell a lyrical trend focused on pre-Christian themes, Nordic ones in the case of the latter, therefore they will often appear synonymously here since I am merely discussing the construction of Northernness. My particular focus will be on a content analysis of the Eddic themes in metal lyrics, but also on a broad contextualization of such a historical reception. That being said, let us begin our journey to Valhalla.
'Hold the Heathen Hammer High' - Viking Metal from the Local to the Global
Flow: Selected proceedings from the 2012 IASPM Australia/New Zealand Conference, 2013
Over the past three decades, the popularity of heavy metal in Scandinavian nations has allowed for a focus on national identity to become increasingly characteristic of the genre. However, while much Scandinavian heavy metal is centred on the image of the Viking warrior, the manner in which this Viking figure has been imagined as a discursive construct has allowed for its appropriation across different contexts. I argue that Viking metal is representative of the manner in which globalisation has allowed musical constructions of locality to shift across geographic locations, often resulting in a hegemonic representation of ethnicity. Viking metal, I contend, operates on two levels: the first being the reproduction of historical images of Vikings; and the second being that which encourages a romanticised vision of Viking culture. Both approaches are problematic, yet the second is fraught with complexities. Largely disconnected from specific historical contexts, 'Viking' comes to denote a romanticised vision of hypermasculine warriors from the North. It is this essentialism of the Viking that allows for its mobilisation across global contexts. Despite this increasingly far-reaching flow, however, Viking metal's connection to the Scandinavian landscape is never severed completely. Rather, these lands of the North are configured as an idyllic heterotopia in which this masculine warrior figure reigns supreme. Nonetheless, the friction between historical and romanticised approaches reveals ongoing disputes over who may claim this identity of 'Viking' and complex issues concerning authenticity and the politics of belonging. Thus, I argue that the flow of Viking metal from the local to the global and back again indicates that musical manifestations of locality are never static, but rather subject to ongoing reinvention and reproduction.
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A visual analysis of English black metal (EBM) reveals a mythologised imagining of the nation. This imagery pervades EBM, and the surrounding narratives of ancient tribal history authenticate and affirm notions of a fixed ethnicity. ‘White’ is asserted as the naturalised national identity and domination is authenticated by narratives of ‘origin’ based on the ancient past. The invention and mythologisation of tradition is based upon an essentialist notion of national heritage, which has the potential to legitimise an idealised exclusionary ethnic identity. As such, the political positioning of EBM bands is highly contested, both amongst the musicians and the fans; this has led to the categorisation of some as examples of National Socialist Black Metal. This paper will reflect upon a collaborative project involving EBM musicians, which was undertaken as part of my practise-led research into the construction of English identities in composition. This project reframed EBM within the context of a multi-media performance. It explored the ambiguous elements of EBM (interchangeable notions of English/British/Northern European identities), and the seemingly contradictory influences present in the music (e.g. the assertion of ‘whiteness’ through a style rooted in black music, and the influence of medieval (church) music alongside pagan elements). This study will examine the idea of power in metal, and the potential for applying Foucauldian theory as a framework for exploring power relations within composition. This will facilitate a discussion of the combination of myth-making and power, which authenticates and empowers an overtly masculine ‘white’ identity in EBM.
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Masculinity is a permanently negotiated concept and it is more than often expressed by means of images and thematic narratives. We could regard gender as a constructed category reuniting hegemonic and authoritarian attitudes that serve as a means of empowerment, as a rhetorical device encompassing all sorts of stereotyped images that revolve around the idea of control. One way to imagine masculinity and endow it with a deeper historical sense represents the development of what we can call a warrior myth. Many music bands, especially from the area of Black/Pagan/Viking Metal resort to mythical or historical narratives involving warriors or groups of warriors fighting for or against a foe which can either be another community or a certain ideology. What we are attempting to explore is precisely how lyrics especially but also artwork and stage appearance create a hypermasculinity by associating it with images of past figures that are taken out of their context and imbued with values meant to fit the promotion of the desired self-image. In this sense we are primarily focusing on the category of Viking Metal and representative bands such as Amon Amarth, Einherjer, Unleashed or Tyr. All in all, statements of strong masculine features could also be regarded as a means of escapism which associated with other themes such as the glorification of ancestry and heritage create a larger framework for understanding the meaning of this “warrior cult”.
Extreme Music for Extreme People? Norwegian Black Metal and Transcendent Violence
Popular Music History vol. 6, no. 1/2, pp. 150-163, 2011
This article focuses on the events of the Norwegian black metal scene in the early 1990s, a period in which violent aesthetics in metal music became explicitly and deliberately articulated to real acts of violence. Concentrating on the musical and criminal activities of the band Emperor, the author suggests that the group's success was, at least in part, the result of members' simultaneous promotion and disavowal of their involvement in violent crime. The case highlights not only how not all claims of a link between music and violence are entirely fabricated, but also the necessity of rethinking conventional approaches to music, violence and controversy, given the ongoing legacy of the events of the early 1990s within the contemporary black metal scene.
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The construction of Heavy Metal identity through heritage narratives: A case study of extreme metal bands in the North of England, December 2012
Popular Music and Society, DOI:10.1080/03007766.2012.724605, 2012
The Leeds Metropolitan University Repository is a digital collection of the research output of the University, comprising citation records and, where copyright permits, full-text articles made available on an Open Access basis. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, visit the website at http://repository.leedsmet.ac.uk/ Alternatively, email the repository team at [email protected] 0 The construction of Heavy Metal identity through heritage narratives: A case study of extreme metal bands in the North of England Karl Spracklen (Leeds Metropolitan University, UK), Caroline Lucas (University of Leeds, UK) and Mark Deeks (University of Leeds, UK) Telephone: 44 113 812 3608 NB Biographies at the end of the paper 1 The construction of Heavy Metal identity through heritage narratives: A case study of extreme metal bands in the North of England Abstract Extreme and black metal is a music genre infused with ideologies of elitism, nationalism and exaggerated masculinity. In this paper, we explore the ways in which four bands from the north of England -Winterfylleth, Wodensthrone, Old Corpse Road and Oakenshield -construct mythologies, heritage narratives and identity through their own reflections on their music, metal and myths. These extreme metal bands in the North of England work inside the symbolic boundaries of their scene and exist within the imagined communities of their region. That is, the bands construct mythologies based around masculinity and around elitism, but also about "northernness."
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M/C Journal, 2018
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In the last thirty years the genre of heavy metal has seen an increasing number of bands utilise aspects of their national or regional identity to inspire their work. This identity portrayal has been manifested in many forms — visual, textual and musical, and often with combinations of more than one. In the context of the work of Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, and drawing comparison with the Romantic Nationalism movement of the 18th and 19th centuries throughout, this thesis examines the field and seeks to establish that writing on the subject has thus far failed in a number of key areas. The terms Viking metal, battle metal and Pagan metal form the core of current genre classification. I demonstrate how these are both inaccurate and insufficient, as they not only ignore the considerable breadth of work being produced, but also focus too heavily on bands from the Nordic region. As a result, the equally significant role that both the U.K. and Eastern Europe have...
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