The impact of Black Metal in me
I was in a terrible place at that point in my life. Just out of school, I was dumped out of a romantic relationship, friends were either leaving the country or joining colleges and had started to muscle up and talk big, local metal musicians were travelling the world, meanwhile, I lean, cold and lost had absolutely no idea what was wrong or right with me. I had no clue as to what I was supposed to do next although my anxieties, friends and parents did the task of reminding me that I had to do something substantial, and that too, very soon.
Not being the clever type, I persisted with playing the guitar. I had a 3000 Rs. local acoustic guitar and It sucked! I sucked, still do! In hindsight however, I never actually did enjoy guitaring but that was all I could think of doing for some reason. Roadmaps shown by others didn’t influence me and it was more like I had given up on life already and had thought strumming the guitar was the only thing I could do in my life as I slowly rotted towards nothingness. I didn’t imagine or plan myself as a musician, I was just in utter ignorance.
Visions didn’t exist, only confusion and pain did!
I learned through tabs and as I remember correctly, I enjoyed not a note of it! Yet, I kept persisting while the rockstar dream of early teens was becoming irrelevant and identity crisis was beginning to hit me hard.
My early teen years had alternative rock music and pop punk for its base. The type of music which made you either imagine yourself as the leading part of black t-shirt wearing, emo haired partying raucous group or as a black t-shirt wearing, emo haired person bruised from the treachery of your romantic partner or the stupidity of your family members.
This type of music and poetry did nothing substantial at all. They didn’t make me think, didn’t make me do anything. Apart from providing a style to my increasing testosterone.
Then came the trend of metal music in Kathmandu. Oh boy, at least the earlier rock trend had variety!
The metal culture, which I forcefully tried to be a part of, although I didn’t understand a sound of it, was all about long hair, musical instrument skill show-off, weed, alcohol and black wears. In one word: about Style!
The style of guitar playing, pants wearing; the style with which long haired guys tucked their hair behind their ears, smoked/denied cigarettes , drank; the style in which they talked, flirted with girls, talked about girls, etc. etc.
I looked up to them in awe and appreciation.
‘Wow, how stylish they are!’ I thought and imagined myself similar to them as I went to their concerts.
But I avoided being noticed. I didn’t pursue the path towards their sub-cultural success. Maybe because I have curly-frizzy hair which extends horizontally instead of vertically (metallers didn’t have afros) or maybe it was all an excuse and quite simply, I didn’t have it in me!
How pathetic, how sad, what a loser, what a waste, what a disgrace, what a joke…Can’t play guitar, can’t grow hair long, can’t get a girlfriend, no girls care about you…can’t style!!!
Then came the internet explosion in Nepal!
All of a sudden good internet in Sim Cards and through government serviced ADSL, made internet abundant at a good price. I had an old laptop and after we connected to the ADSL service, and I started to learn to surf, it was as if I had finally found a solace. Finally!
Still not daring to get rid of my black Machine Head, Slipknot t-shirts, I sat at home and started exploring things on the internet, primarily metal music. It was then that for the first time the back doors of music culture were opened to me. I hadn’t dared to even look there before!
Artists, their lyrics, their photos, their interviews, all there for me to drown on. But, still, no plans for the future, still nothing!
And then it happened:
As I explored music bands and went deeper into the jungle, I hit upon something called
Black Metal.
You know that moment when you discover something and a gush of ‘good juice’ flows all the way from your calves to your shoulders and you get so excited that you can sit down no longer and have to get up immediately and look at yourself in the mirror? This especially happens in internet-explorations.
I had that moment with black metal as I went through the photos and narratives of its formative years (of the second wavers to be precise).
Tall white anti-christian nordic guys with sleek longs hair and painted faces who hung out in the woods and talked about society, politics, religion and god — This struck a chord with me!
Although I was neither tall nor white, nor was I a christian from a developed economy with sleek long hair, I identified with them. For the first time, I identified with someone or some idea.
Narrative from the 1980s and early 1990s of young introverted but bold teenagers who rebelled with the prevalent trend, who loathed partying-show-off metallers and rockstars but pursued ‘true music’, disliked society and the culture of consumerism and materialism, started their own record labels and shops, burnt churches and even killed each other, hit me exactly where I needed to be hit if I was to wake up from my slumber. Height, color, religion, hair, nationality was irrelevant.
The ‘true’ ones like Mayhem, Darkthrone, Burzum, Immortal really immersed me for months to come and although they sang about matters that were vague to me, they gave me relevancy as I related to them in way I could never do with artists like Pantera who sang about more relevant issues like peer politics, party, sex and attitude.
As the immersion continued, I can now say in hindsight, I had begun to filter out substance from the facade. As time passed, I managed to ignore the irrelevant stuff like church burnings, homophobia, peer-killing, face painting, black wearing, hair growing as I started to locate the things that mattered and followed them. Romanticism, Trueness (anti-rockstarism) and Music-listening was what I accepted and pursued.
Their romanticism with nature and culture which was apparent through their music, photos and interviews, triggered the value for self-identity in me which made me appreciate my own environment and heritage in turn. I was ignorant and blind to those things before.
Similarly, the trueness with which the founding guys pursued their art was something that had lacked in all of my previous cultural consumptions. I could begin to see how the artists that I grew up following were there only for the colorful returns and how much they lacked substance. That is where I probably understood that the reason the artists I previously followed, although they were out there in the mainstream, at times talking about sensitive issues, could never actually inspire me was because they lacked substance. They were only there for the show, so to speak!
But the most important thing for me with black metal was that it taught me to listen to music. The passion and confidence with which they talked about why they were creating what they were creating and not something else, made me really listen to what is to be listened.
I know this may be true of every artist that creates something brand new, but even with earlier black metal artists such as Bathory and Celtic Frost, you could see there was genius at work there. I am still indebted to this guy (1) Fenriz interview for Rockhard magazine — YouTube as he demonstrated to me what it was like to actually be serious about something and fall in love with it. He didn’t do concerts, hence, he may have even helped to open the idea to me that metal music or any kind of music for that matter need not be about showing off.
It’s about the music, not the show
And then there was this guy: Varg Vikernes — Wikipedia.
Ideologies aside, he is a genius musician and when someone of his ‘metal’ talent and ability talks about abhorrence towards the sex-drugs-rockandroll lifestyle in particular and poseur musicianship in general in favor of listening to the real deal, your whole approach towards popular music changes.
Hopeless as I was back then, I gradually learnt to keep my guitar away and just listen to the music.
That is how I started to enjoy and really experience sounds and music. I had now begun exploring music, not bands or rockstars. Although my social and psychological weaknesses and challenges persisted for a year or two after discovering black metal (it was not like every thought and perception gathered from almost a decade of nuance immediately vanished), the change eventually started to catch up.
When it did, I had begun exploring all types of music and through music I was being opened up to various ideas, perspectives and philosophies.
I was learning to listen and understand western classical music and with it I was learning about music in general and the socio-politics of the periods. That led me to exploring Indian Classical music and in no time I found myself learning Ragas at a local music-training centre with an acclaimed guru. Indian classical introduced me to Hindu philosophies and ideas which then triggered the will-to-know in me.
Through electronic music artists such as Ashra, Tangerine Dream, Klause Schulze, Vangelis and Steve Roach I was opening myself to cosmic concepts scientifically.
Discovery of artists such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Conrad Schnitzler had opened me up to the concepts of avant-garde and to the ideas and thinkings behind experimentations.
All in all, although I won’t say I completely came out of the rut, I did manage to eventually come out of that terrible place I was at that point in my life.
I was gaining weight, had started to feel warm on the inside, and started to know what was wrong or right with me. I now had a clue as to what I was supposed to do next as it started to seem that my anxieties and parents were there to help me out. I started to search for meaning and actions that are actually substantial. I even ceased having friends. But I would like to reserve the details of that side of the story for some other time.
Whether it was all due to my coming-of-age and the same amount of internet exploration with the then trendy-rock music would have brought about the same change or even better things in me, I can’t say. I don’t think I can go back and experiment. Therefore, I like to appreciate what happened and not dwell in would-have reveries.
Overall though, it taught me that things that look dark from the outside may have the capacity to take you to light, while things that look colorful and bright more often than not will lead you to the darkest abysses.
