Living on the edge: black metal and the refusal of modernity

• Autor(a) principal: Pereira, Sónia
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/18169
• topic: Black metal; Modernity; Transgression; Transcendentalism; Abject; Death; Modernidade; Transgressão; Transcendentalismo; Abjeto; Morte

In his in-depth study of extreme metal, Keith Kahn-Harris (2007) states black metal has sought to provide the most radically transgressive discourse within all music genres that compose the overall scene ever since its emergence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Misanthropy, elitism and individualism, verging on the radical antisocial, have all become a part of the black metal community identity with its sense of longing for an idyllic vision of the past and some return to ancient traditions accompanying an absolute refusal of modernity and a wish for liberation from all its constraints. With death and time representing privileged and central themes in black metal music, recent developments in its study have originated what is now deemed Black Metal Theory, a philosophical approach to the genre that has been pushing the boundaries for a deeper understanding and exploration of its relationships with alternative visions of nature and the universe, existence and experience, life and death, religion and theology. This essay will attempt to shed some light upon the darker side of black metal and the way it has explored and often contested the meanings of modernity.