My Average Opinion of why Liturgy are valid.
Whewy, it has been a very long time since I got off (or onto) my backside to actually put something on here. I'm doing an MA at the moment and where the BA gave my some time to mess about..for MA's..no, just no.
Anyway, the project I've been focussing on has been centred around black metal, from the first wave through to now. More specifically I have been looking at  'Liturgy', 'Wolves in the Throne Room', 'Krallice', 'Deafheaven', 'Panopticon' and 'Altar of Plagues'. The paper itself was about ecology, specifically Tim Morton's 'dark ecology' from his 2005 book 'Ecology without Nature' and this wasn't supposed to be an especially academic blog but, IMAvgO, Tim Morton is awesome. I'm not going to pretend like what I was doing was significant, however, it was an opportunity for me to listen to a genre that previously I had NO knowledge of. I like doom/alt/stoner metal and 'Disma's' 'Towards the Megalith' was my favourite metal release of last year I think.  However, up until this point my knowledge of black metal was mainly (mis)informed by that Vice documentary and a Dimmu Borgir video on youtube that someone showed me, so basically no knowledge or means to a greater appreciation.
I’m not going to go into too much depth, but I found the black metal crash course I was put through (thanks to some friends, and of course the internet) to be interesting. I’ve enjoyed everything I have heard so far, particularly Emperor, Ulver and Darkthrone.Â
It is an age old argument, but worth repeating that the genre cannot be stereotyped by the criminal activities of Burzum and so on. It’s just a lot bigger than that. But, from as a newcomer to the genre, I found myself siding with Hunter-Hunt Hendrix of Liturgy’s view that black metal needs to experiment and change if it is to remain potent and powerful, it can’t be a cult forever. Let’s value, remember and continue to enjoy the innovators  but not let the form become fatigued by overuse. I’m not saying this to try and critique the Norwegian paradigm as bad/misguided/wrong (bar the violence/murder/arsons) at all – this is only my opinion, but, I am more concerned with the view that tries to enforce that the Norwegian way is the one and only way. I think that black metal fans who vehemently favour the Norwegian form of the genre have no reason to be threatened or concerned with the recent American bands that have been appearing. The form will not deconstruct everything that came before it in the same way that criticising Liturgy etc will prevent them from pursuing their interests.
I will say at this point that I like Liturgy a lot, HH’s manifesto is bonkers but daring which I admire. I came up against so much b.s for liking Liturgy in various contexts! and so I think is something of a relief of tension on my behalf.  From what I have read, what has upset kvlt purists is that Liturgy have apparently been bastardizing black metal and then playing on b/m stages which has caused the endless insults and dismissals of the band. When examined properly, I think Liturgy draw on a number of facets of black metal that allow them to be as ‘authentic’ or valid as any other black metal band previously. Tropes that feature across many (certainly Norwegian bands – although this is not an exhaustive list) include: an attachment to an – at times selective - ancient history of the nation, an anti-modern, anti-global stance and therewith an attempt to reconnect with the environment and surrounding eco-system in order to transcend modernity/civilization that (in the Romantic sense) has separated man from Nature or subject and object.  The Norwegian (or Hyperborean) employment of Satanism and violence is symptomatic of a more general opposition to the societal norms of Norway (Satanism and black metal are not the same thing after all) – leading to church burnings etc, but as Attila said in Sam Dunn’s documentary Metal: A Headbangers Journey, some of the very old churches burnt were part of the fabric of early Norwegian culture, it made no sense to burn them.
Again, as with all of this, it is my opinion, but the tropes of anti-modernity, ecology that I outlined above are the same main areas that Liturgy are influenced by, they have simply transposed this into a very American setting and context to form their own paradigm which they have backed up with a different sound… the same facets but with different contents. This is where people get pissed off, but where I just can’t see why...wouldn’t it be more pretentious/false to take a template of b/m from let’s say for simplicities sake, Emperor and then try and argue that the cultural content of Emperor in 1994 is as applicable and relevant to America in 2012? Surely that makes a whole lot less sense and is pure imitation. If the attitude that this is wrong holds any water then the second wave of black metal surely should never have happened. Following that kind of argument, European hip-hop should never have existed..
I would argue that whilst there are musical techniques that have remained from black metal’s inception - Bathory’s innovation of the retched vocals for example – have retained their roles, but, the composition of ‘blackness’ has changed. I don’t believe that black metal in America means entirely the same thing that it did in Norway, both have emphasised different areas of the nebula of black metal, bringing one theme to the front and pushing another to the back. I think American black metal is about a greater melancholy which leads to introspection, in the case of WTTR this is a mourning for the damage done to the environment, compare this with let’s say Ghaal’s attachment to Satanism and the ideology of the individual…even though this ideology means oxymoronically infringing and destroying other individuals in its wake. Blackness indicating misanthropy and violence in the first and second waves of black metal has changed in America, it is connected to the American gothic - the parallel subtext to nationhood, which is based in unsavoury realities (slavery, the bare truths of capitalism) and the exploitation of the environment (N.B I am not  implicitly suggesting that the US has ever been alone in either of these, but I am speaking in an American context here).Â
Rant over. I’ll review something nice soon. Of Montreal perhaps..they’re nice and smiley.
