BLACK METAL and The Spirit of WANDERVOGEL Movement

By VOLKER HERRE 

(Written for Omaimon Paradosis Blog)

When I turned to Black Metal I perceived it as something in the spirit of the Wandervogel youth movement, a back-to-nature movement. All the cover arts with images of forests, that remained a welcomed message even when it was already the 500th album I owned with pretty much the same art, because it was an important message. 

Rejection of urban environments was a huge thing. At least for me it was. I remember being 18 and walking around the city imagining a post-apocalyptic scenario, abandoned cars left to rust, plants and trees taking over the concrete, and we would ride our horses carrying swords through this landscape, reclaiming it to our true selves. Walking in the forest at night was the essential experience. It was like a awakening, a mystical initiation. Only those who and pursued such pure experiences could understand the meaning of that movement, and it brought people together.

I know this aesthetic became old and gimmicky quite fast. I didn't stay in touch to get the 5000th album with a stupid forest on the cover, but I understand people for whom the music was more important than it was for me had to find excitement in something else. But it saddens me that that healthy impulse amounted to so little, that it was lost to saturation so fast. And as result, black metal is a predominantly urban phenomenon nowadays, it has turned more and more to aesthetics and movements that are urban phenomena, such as motorcycle gangs, anti-antifa punks, alt-right zio-conservatism, national-capitalism, alcohol and drugs culture, pornography, sexual perversions, anti-muslim etc. All that is impure and degenerate finds a proper environment to grow in urban areas...

Black metal has embraced kali-yuga. At some point, at the height of the pagan nature-worshiping wave, it tried to follow a different path, to affirm a different stance, but this effort didn't last long. People seen to identify artistic value in ambiguity, but art for the sake of art is no longer acceptable, we need art as a pathway to the truth. The NS movement was ambiguous in its stance towards modernity, it embraced it and at the same time it rejected it. But there was a sound logic behind this, embracing modernity was a means of taking control over the modernizing process and surpassing modernity, retrieving an earlier, more authentic experience. Embracing the current decline these days for the sake of art and artistic expression is pointless and self-destructive, it's ego-centric and short-sighted. It's a travesty really, it's providing an excuse for inappropriate behavior and immanence in nihilism...