Forbidden Death
June 23 2008 at 01:34:21 AM  “Do you ever fantasize about being killed? Do you ever wonder about all the different ways of dying, you know, violently? I wonder like, what would be the most horrible way to die? - Return of The Living Dead, 1985 A few reflections after glancing at our sidebar and reading through the appendix of the exquisite zine, Dauthus, published by Timo Ketola. First, how Death Metal has become split into two traditions: One linked to an uncertain and preternatural chaos, whose foundations lay in trash cinema and pulp comics, focusing on grizzly details of murder, mystery, and the macabre, steeped in occult symbols and mythology (characteristic of both American and Swedish DM). And the other (later) tradition, developing out of the mid-Nineties variety of Death Metal, maintaining the same interests at heart, though often expressed in “true crime” scenarios and scientific delineations of gore; undertaken with a primary focus placed on instrumental prowess and technique. One path symbolizes that of the left hand and the other that of the right hand. Although the two may be reconciled through a concurrence of themes and influences, their approach places them almost completely at odds with one another. Not surprisingly, the latter is the form most widely acknowledged and accepted today (in terms of sales and media coverage) and has become influential on bands both inside and outside of the genre. As to what defines “Death Metal” precisely, Albert Mudrian’s Choosing Death provides a well-referenced history of the scene, but fails to adequately delve into the subjects underlining most of the genre, and instead focuses more on the competitive spirit that drove these bands into new extremes. In Lucifer Rising, author Gavin Baddeley touches on the music’s origins in the context of modern societies disconnected from the ritual and intimacy of death while leaning on Satanic tendencies throughout Rock and Heavy Metal. On the other hand, Ketola’s writings, though steeped in occult visions and rhetoric, offer a more concise and lucid rendering of the experience: "...Death/Black Metal strives for imbalance - total Death, total Satan, "too much" in all aspects.” This focus on the irrational that one reads throughout the various interviews and reviews in Dauthus, which was in the past exemplified by bands like like Necrovore, Nihilist, Morbid Angel, Deicide, Repulsion and Autopsy - echoes the changes in the European portrayal of death throughout the artwork of 15th to 18th centuries from the oldest tradition of resignation and repose toward a gruesome and later ecstatic state: “In the oldest dances of death, Death scarcely touched the living to warn him and designate him. In the new iconography of the sixteenth century, Death raped the living…” “…Like the sexual act, death was henceforth increasingly thought of as a transgression which tears man from his daily life, from rational society, from his monotonous work, in order ot make him undergo a paroxysm, plunging him into an irrational, violent, and beautiful world.” -Philippe Aries, Western Attitudes Toward Death In fact, to many young, white, male, suburban teenagers and their parents, sex and death were elevated to more or less equal status as THE most dangerous taboo. Searching through lyric sheets and artwork adorning many album covers of the earliest Death Metal bands, one finds striking confirmation of that famous observation in The Seventh Seal that sometimes, “A skull is more interesting than a naked woman.”   (L) Death and The Maiden. Niklaus Manuel Deutsch. 1517. (R) Insert for God Macabre's The Winterlong. 1993
Death Metal, in its primitive yet ceaseless drive to penetrate the walls of flesh and shadows of the mind, gave temporary retreat from the boredom and anomie of those youth born to a culture of hyper-sensitivity, political correctness and sanitizing of the dead. (Which may partially explain America’s aptitude and early foothold in Death Metal across the States, as opposed to the more recent infatuation with Black Metal.)
While breaking such earler provisions against sex, drugs and Rock n Roll signaled a fundamental weakening of authority and moral teaching, fascination with the end of life became symptomatic of anti-social behavior, tendency toward violent crime, and mental illness. Contradicting this, however, was the fact that Death Metal represented a community of its own (the underground), one linked by a simultaneous fear and desire to ponder both the known, served in handfuls of blood and offal, as well as the unknown gulf beyond. Even Florida’s Deicide, professed conduits to Mephistopheles himself had based part of their debut album on what is ostensibly a slapstick zombie comedy in Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn. Peer through the wild-eyed mass of tangled hair, caked jeans and bent brows inside the crowd and there’s a mischievous smile to be found. An interview in Dauthus with Tobias (AKA Mary Goore), of the now defunct band Repugnant, helps put this into perspective: “I’ve always seen humor as being very close to horror, you know like the banality of horror, death and darkness…as opposed to piety which is totally humorless. ‘Laughter is the invention of the Devil’…So it’s natural I’d get to feel very related to bands like Treblinka and Morbid who always kept a sense of humour while creating the sickest darkness.”  The horrible transi (decomposing corpse.) Tomb of former abbey of Saint-Vaast, Arras. 15th century. From Aries' Images of Man and Death.
However, it is rare today that these concepts are expressed (and naturally seldom experienced) to the same emotional and physical degree. Its meaning has been reduced to a superficial display of the music’s bare essentials - “cookie monster” growls, blast beats and zombies – and the emphasis shifted away from the content of songs and onto the individuals themselves. If bands today like Dead Congregation, Ignivomous, Drowned and Necrovation represent Death Metal to its most unbalanced and chaotic degree, modern releases from bands like Hate Eternal, Bloodbath, and Decrepit Birth might, in Ketola’s words, represent how: "with time, the bestial, only barely controlled chaos had developed/civilized/degenerated into a hairless creature fully aware of his own actions"
As I get older I become more careful not to romanticize these directions as undertaken consciously, but almost accidentally tapping into the void. Does this mean that at last we’ve found peace or do we fear the unknown now more than ever? I think perhaps a little of both. However, one must be cautious not to come to terms with this point prematurely, reveling in a creative mindset that only appears to move beyond these limitations. On this, Ketola’s words turn instructive, offering up one of the most vivid interpretations of the often voiced, though seldom understood phrase Only Death Is Real: “…if you shut out the daylight you'll start seeing a range of grayscales by candlelight instead, and most stagnate there, thinking they found darkness. But it was only the first step. The next is to blow the candle out. Again, your eyes (and mind) will adapt, and find balance. So you will have to pluck out one eye, so it continues...The body always seeks equilibrium, like the level of the sea. The Mission is to disturb that calm, if one's alchemy is to have any effect.” Inquiries into procuring the [oversized] twelve-page appendix to Dauthus can be made to Nuclear Winter Records (Greece). [Todd DePalma]
*header drawing originally by Jeff Walker Comments (0)
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