Das Spiel mit dem Feuer: Religiosität, Okkultismus, Esoterik, Spiritualität und der Bezug zu nationalsozialistischen/faschistischen Ideologien im rechtsoffenen Musik-Underground

ZusammenfassungDer Artikel setzt sich mit dem Zusammenhang von Jugend‑/Subkulturen, Religion und Rechtsextremismus auseinander. Es wird die Frage aufgeworfen, inwiefern religiöse Haltungen, spirituelle Bezugsrahmen sowie Rechtsextremismus in verschiedenen historischen Jugend‑/Subkulturen zu finden sind und auf welche Weise beides miteinander bis heute verknüpft wird. Damit geht die Frage einher, wie sich in den betrachteten historischen Szenen des Gothic-Rock, Neofolk oder Black Metal das Inhaltliche mit dem Ästhetischen verbindet und welche Konsequenzen sich daraus für die Einordnung und Interpretation von diesen Szenen ergeben. Berücksichtigt werden dabei die politischen Bezugsfelder, auf die sich die Szenen inhaltlich wie ästhetisch eklektizistisch berufen.

When Cotard's syndrome fits the sociocultural context: The singular case of Per “Dead” Ohlin and the Norwegian black metal music scene

The sociocultural context of psychiatric patients shapes symptoms experience and expression, as well as how patients deal with a disorder and how society appraises its symptoms. Specifically, the context may influence the social appraisal of a behavior as normal or pathological. Therefore, markedly pathological symptoms may not be accordingly recognized by peers when they are in consonance with the sociocultural context. Per “Dead” Ohlin was a Swedish musician who was a member of the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem from 1988 until his suicide in 1991, at age 22. Black metal is a musical movement characterized by death worshiping and anti-Christianism, and is also associated with church arsons and murders during the 1990s. Even among peculiar personalities such as black metal musicians, Ohlin was considered the personification of the movement ideals due to his eccentric and unparalleled beliefs and behaviors, claiming, for instance, that he was already dead. In this article, we propose that Ohlin's eccentric beliefs and behaviors were symptoms of an unrecognized psychiatric condition, Cotard's syndrome, and discuss the diagnostic dilemma presented by Ohlin's artistic persona and singular context. The compatibility between his symptoms and the sociocultural context of black metal may have obscured his mental disorder. If so, Ohlin's unique case may shed light upon one of the effects of context in a psychopathological process: concealing a psychiatric disorder and reinforcing symptoms that fit a particular environment.

CLARA Review: K. F. B. Fletcher & Osman Umurhan (eds), 2020: Classical Antiquity in Heavy Metal Music.

The concepts ‘classical antiquity’ and ‘heavy metal music’ may appear to be worlds apart. Not only are they separated chronologically but each belongs to an entirely different habitus. While the classical is associated with tradition, good taste and harmony, heavy metal is, at least by some, associated with the very opposite: the breaking of tradition, bad taste and disharmony. And yet, as the present book shows, a very large number of heavy metal bands reference antiquity in various ways, including exponents of Thrash Metal, characterised by speed and aggressiveness; Death Metal, characterised by macabre subject matter and growling vocals; Black Metal with related subject matter but less polished style, and other subgenres. Bands from countries ranging from Greece and Italy to Scandinavia incorporate classical quotations in their lyrics or rewrite ancient texts and myths. Some sing in Greek or Latin, others in Italian or English. The titles of songs, such as Hymn to Apollo, Hymn to Zeus, Medusa and so on, further show the classical inspiration.

Temporal Emotions and Historical Vulnerability: Music as a Vehicle of Ideology in Cold War and Peste Noire

This essay focuses on the Polish film Cold War and the oeuvre of the French nationalist black metal band Peste Noire, examining them as twenty-first-century texts that disclose music’s capacity to solicit emotion in the service of ideology. Despite their aesthetic and ideological differences, each text demonstrates the importance of temporal emotions – that is, emotions that register a heightened sense of the relationship between present, past and future. Each text portrays these emotions’ ideological significance when attached to ideas of a national past. Dwelling on Peste Noire’s racist-nationalist use of the medieval past, the essay explores music as a medium for emotional performances in which white people appear to convey vulnerability while actually reconfirming white supremacy. Peste Noire’s idiosyncratic performance of aggressive vulnerability is a temporal emotion that self-consciously lays claim to a long emotional tradition reaching back to the French Middle Ages.

Design, Manufacturing and Test of CFRP Front Hood Concepts for a Light-Weight Vehicle

Composite materials are very often used in the manufacture of lightweight parts in the automotive industry, manufacturing of cost-efficient elements implies proper technology combined with a structural optimization of the material structure. The paper presents the manufacturing process, experimental and numerical analyses of the mechanical behavior for two composite hoods with different design concepts and material layouts as body components of a small electric vehicle. The first model follows the black metal design and the second one is based on the composite design concept. Manufacturing steps and full details regarding the fabrication process are delivered in the paper. Static stiffness and strain values for lateral, longitudinal and torsional loading cases were investigated. The first composite hood is 254 times lighter than a similar steel hood and the second hood concept is 22% lighter than the first one. The improvement in terms of lateral stiffness for composite hoods about a similar steel hood is for the black metal design concept about 80% and 157% for the hood with a sandwich structure and modified backside frame. Transversal stiffness is few times higher for both composite hoods while the torsional stiffness has an increase of 62% compared to a similar steel hood.

Burzum shirts, paramilitarism and National Socialist Black Metal in the twenty-first century

Over the last ten years, the radical right has proliferated at an alarming rate in the United States. National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) has become an important feature of neo-Nazi, White supremacist and militant racist groups as the radical right as a whole has gained traction in American political life. Although rooted in underground music-based subculture, NSBM has become an important crypto-signifier for the radical right in the twenty-first century providing both symbolic value and ideological inspiration. The anti-racist and apolitical elements of the North American metal scene have responded in a variety of different ways, sometimes challenging racist elements directly, at other times providing ambivalent acceptance of the far right within the scene. While fans, musicians, journalists and record labels struggle to come to terms with the meaning of NSBM and how it should be addressed, NSBM-affiliated political and paramilitary groups have formed and started making their violent fantasies a reality. As many elements within the American metal scene continue to perceive NSBM as a purely artistic movement of no concern to the world outside of the metal scene, proponents of NSBM are marching in the streets of Charlottesville, burning African American churches, murdering LGBTQ people and plotting acts of domestic terrorism.