(a combination and repost of material originally on my personal Facebook page and the LotFP Facebook Group)
So I was reading Blood Fire Death: The Swedish Metal Story by Ika Johannesson and Jon Jefferson Klingberg. It’s an interesting book with a great many stories I’d never heard before from Swedish metal history. It is peculiar in that it does not tell the Swedish metal story chronologically. Its chapters cover different topics as self-contained units; there is no real flow to the book as a whole and it feels like a collection of independent essays a lot of the time. Which is fine.
The book does spend a lot of time focusing on Swedish black metal and its characters, with their stories scattered throughout the book. “Black Metal” is chapter seven, but “Bathory” was chapter three and Pelle Ohlin’s story was chapter four, and chapter one was all about Nifelheim. As I said, odd structure. It goes on to have a chapter on the misogynist nature of black metal (chapter ten), Nazis in Swedish heavy metal (chapter twelve), and then, chapter thirteen is about self-harm in metal, with the narrative focusing on the band Shining and its main man Niklas Kvarforth. This is a band whose members practice regular self-harm (both in private and on stage), talk about their drug addictions and stints of being committed to psychiatric institutions, and say they hope they inspire their fans to suicide. The chapter also includes amusing anecdotes about the more normal gigging musicians who just happen to fill out the band’s lineup at various points.
Before going any further, I have to say that while many of the details were new to me, the “headlines” and general atmosphere concerning all this were known to me and after almost thirty years seem completely normal. Heavy metal is a musical genre that regularly deals with absolutely horrific subject matter, often from a first person perspective. And there was something in the water in Scandinavia in the early 90s that made certain circles of musicians go crazy… church burnings, grave desecrations, murder, political extremism (Nazism and communism) and yes, suicide. Whenever I go to shows (especially here in Finland), I assume some percentage of the crowd is in contact with these people (or their modern equivalents), approve of their actions, and maybe feel inspired to perform some actions of their own.
That’s just what it is to exist in a metal space. And I don’t think it improves much of anything to try to clean all that out. When I’d go to concerts in the US, it was always dangerous. Hard moshing that hurts people, stagediving, and other physicality at shows (I’ve bled, had chunks of my hair pulled out, had various other minor injuries at shows), skinheads staking out territory and messing up anyone who gets too close (until the Mexican group stared them down), security getting in fights with bands, security brutalizing members of the audience, open drug use, all that shit that makes concerts annoying… until I came to Finland and there was none of that. Which was nice… until Paul Di’Anno came to town one time, and he was in a mood, trying to pick fights with the club staff, antagonizing the crowd until the point a couple people tried to rush the stage and there was an ugly mood in the room. “Oh,” I found myself thinking. “It’s nice to be at a real metal show again.”
Our entertainment can be real, or it can be safe. The two cannot go together, and any call for safety is an attack on authenticity.
I myself know — or I guess I should say knew since I’ve been out of that loop many years — some of the people in and around the Swedish black metal scene when they were in close contact with the Norwegians and would visit each other. Had talks on the phone with some of the people that were in the Norwegian circle a few years after the fact. I’d actually attempted at one point in the 2010s to see if Tony Särkkä, aka IT, a musician who was at the time in contact with all the major players in the Scandinavian black metal dramas and tragedies, had been a role-player because I had a hunch that was the origins of the setting of his Ophthalamia concept albums (not least because the cover art of Ophthalamia’s 1994 debut, A Journey in Darkness, was the same art used on the cover of the first edition of Sweden’s Kult RPG). I wanted to publish the setting. My go-betweens couldn’t get me in touch (Särkkä had long left the metal scene and didn’t have a social media profile that I could find) but Blood Fire Death did confirm that Särkkä, as were many of the musicians that would create the black metal scandals and legends of the 90s, was a tabletop role-player.
Varg Vikernes of Burzum famously has a MERP map in the background of one early promo photo, he “recycled” shall we say imagery from TSR’s Temple of Elemental Evil cover art for his own Burzum and Det som engang var album covers, and even self-published his own RPG a few years back. (No, I have no intention of collaborating with Varg.)
Funny thing here, they were all pretty much teenagers (this lot is all roughly the same age as me!) when causing all this mayhem [cough cough], and the difference between “metal maniac” and “Satanic cultist criminal” seemed to be entirely down to musical tastes and hanging out primarily with people with similar tastes.
This is probably why I knew friends (and musical collaborators) of the infamous people but not the people themselves, since the trrrr00000 black metal was never my thing so I sorted myself out the same way.
I also suspect to the point of assuming it is true that some of the people I knew where not simply “friends of…”, but were simply lucky or smart enough to never have their names directly associated with the criminal behaviors. They were in the middle of the social and creative circles after all.
Still, it was always a bit awkward talking to people whose lives were very much defined even years afterwards by the fact that one of their best friends murdered one of their other best friends and all their artistic business was at the time wrapped up in the two of them and thus very much relevant to the topics we discussed. Or more extensively, talking to musicians who watched their lifelong friends and acquaintances disappear down the Satanic cult rabbit hole.
Although telling these stories right now I guess the real weird thing is after over 25 years of having this as background radiation and having gotten to know some of the people around it, it’s just a thing that happened; this group of people I don’t know and still am apparently learning about, but who were for about a decade only one step removed from me. I recognize them all as real people and not just abstract mythical boogeymen.
This black metal strain of “authenticity” is a tricky one for me. The years of my youth spent defending RPGs, and horror movies, most heavy metal, and every other “bad” thing I loved as being just make-believe just doesn’t work when trying to describe why I listen to this sort of thing, where the people wanted to take the “evil” imagery and make it real. And it is tricky to describe why I would take inspiration from it. Not just the imagery, but the emotions that this music draws from, and evokes.
I think it’s because I empathize and sympathize with the alienation from “normal” society and self-destructive tendencies that are almost intrinsically a part of that. And this is where it gets all very strange and very relevant to LotFP.
Because as I understand it there is a demonstrable “contagion” effect when suicide is discussed in the media. Blood Fire Death even has an interview with a psychiatrist noting that some patients, when admitted for psychiatric care, “infect” other patients into adopting their self-harm habits.
But I know first-hand that “entertainment” dealing with these themes, and things made by truly disturbed (whether situationally or clinically) people, can be very helpful and a valuable coping mechanism when I am not mentally well.
I used to be a cutter for a brief period in my late teens. Not that I knew what I was doing so much, but I just wanted the blood, never visible scars. And by some stroke of luck there are no scars where I would do this to my legs. But I have other self-destructive, unhealthy habits that linger to this day, and I think a person making themself seriously overweight is not all that different from someone who has those tiger-stripe self-harm scars all over their arms (and who knows where else). Hell, when I see someone with a lot of piercings and/or tattoos, I mentally slot that into the same general category. The world sucks and people are going to do what they’re going to do to make sense of and cope with the way the world is.
When I was at my lowest point in my teens, it was Cathedral’s Forest of Equilibrium album that got me out of it. I don’t know how far I would have taken things had I not discovered that band and album and others like it, but I’ve gone so far as to say that album saved my life. Yet it’s absolutely unlistenable to me when I’m in a normal mood. It’s just too depressing. But when I am in a certain state of mind, it’s an old friend that’s there to comfort me and tell me I’m not alone in how I feel. A friend that doesn’t care that I haven’t even said hello in five years, ten years. It will always be there when I need it regardless.
That album affected me so much that a lot of my musical taste stems from exploring all the Cathedral influences, side bands, and activities. (frontman Lee Dorrian’s label Rise Above Records released the debut albums of Witchcraft and Ghost, for instance, as well as all of Blood Ceremony’s albums to date.) Learning of Dorrian’s fandom of old 70s prog/folk rock coincided with my discovering Opeth and Åkerfeldt’s love of the same, which led me to getting into Mellow Candle, Ice Age, High Tide, Fear Itself, Van Der Graaf Generator, Univers Zero, etc etc etc.
Along those same lines is Reverend Bizarre, in particular their album So Long Suckers. Not that it made me emotionally healthy, but I maintain that album saved me from complete catatonia in the wake of my first divorce.
(and while we’re there, I'll also mention Katatonia’s Brave Murder Day and Sounds of Decay releases, which are invaluable in dark times.)
Then there’s Sentenced, at one time a pretty popular band out of Finland... they settled into basically having the reputation for writing a lot of songs about suicide, and have a number of upbeat songs I can only describe as suicide anthems. (Excuse Me While I Kill Myself, Bleed, and Noose are the ones I most often go to.) Again, most times that’s not what I listen to... but boy do they do the trick when I’m angry. Not that I don’t have my more outwardly aggressive go-tos when I’m angry (The Haunted’s first album works supremely well for this, especially Hate Song and Three Times), but I do find it interesting that when I am angry I’ll go to things with a self-attacking focus.
And some of this type of thing has shown up in my work. It’s been clear to me from a very young age that my tastes are pretty weird to begin with, and a lot of the time it’s all in good fun from my perspective (even when “normal” people might find it completely offensive, but I do admit that’s part of the fun), but sometimes I put deeper personal touches in the work and those are always the most nihilistic bits and not at all in a spirit of fun. There is even one thing that has an explicit “go on, take control for once and kill yourself” message to it. And... I have to believe that people into the general vibe of what I do get what I’m going for. When I’m down, that sort of thing helps pull me back. That’s what I hope happens with work like that, there will be someone in a certain unstable frame of mind that comes across this and it makes them feel better, that they’re not alone, the same way similarly-themed work did for me. And how great would it be if it reached some teenager who doesn’t know what the fuck about the world, sees that, realizes there are people who have been down that same path and that there is a whole world out there for people who view things through that different lens?
But once it’s released into the world I can’t control who sees it or how they process it. And that worries me a bit. I can’t hedge my bets or put disclaimers on the work without ruining it. But if there’s someone out there who will be pulled back from the edge by my work... there’s also probably someone for whom it will be the final push.
It’ll happen, sooner or later. Because humans, with their differing needs in expressing themselves and their involuntary and subconscious ways of receiving and interpreting others’ expressions, are above all individuals. We are but isolated brains trapped in flesh jars flailing about with our imperfect meat suits and defective sensory perception trying to make sense of the world while we make our way through it until we drop dead.
No wonder many of us are so screwed up.
... and then after the self-harm chapter, Blood Fire Death has a chapter about Muskelrock, a Swedish festival all about classic heavy metal and good cheer and fellowship and being a big party. HOLY TONAL WHIPLASH BATMAN! (I’ve always wanted to go to Muskelrock, but every year it’s the same weekend as the UK Games Expo and my stupid ass behaves responsibly and goes to work instead of to the good stuff. Every year. Pandemic years excepted, of course.)
Bouncing from depressive music written by genuinely disturbed people to upbeat, powerful music intended to make the listener feel strong is also a completely normal thing for me, and maybe many metalheads. Blood Fire Death’s narrative structure is less that of a grand story, and more matching the experience of just throwing on various cool albums all day, now that I think about it.
Metal sucks! Have a nice day.