Written by:	Hyvaarin
Published:	May 31, 2007

ISOLATION AND BLACK METAL

Not long ago I was made aware of a documentary on black metal produced by VBS.TV (http://www.vbs.tv/player.php?bctid=769427891&bccl=NDEyODIxMzEzX19NVVNJQw) that focuses on a key member of the scene and attempts to offer an honest picture of the black metal movement as it is today, rather than rehashing tired and glamourised representations of the genre. Naturally, I had to write about it...

Though the documentary is presumably intended to be an illumination of the genre as a whole, it's centred quite strongly on Gorgoroth/the singer Gaahl. This is for good reason - Gorgoroth are a textbook BM band, sonically (employing blastbeats; abrasive, aggressive guitar playing; screamed vocals), visually (long hair; massive spiked armbands; inverted crucifixes; corpsepaint; pig heads on stakes set up in front of the stage), and when it comes to extra-curricular activities (Gaahl was imprisoned in 2005 for "torture-like violence"; guitarist Infernus was released on parole in March this year). Phew.

Anyway, the documentary starts off with some concert footage, then a background of the style and the band. Only when we get to the stuff with Gaahl (dubbed "the most evil man alive" by Terrorizer magazine) does this documentary start to show its unique value.

Interviewees suggest that Gorgoroth is a band fueled by ideology more than aesthetics, and judging by the interviews with Gaahl, he plays a large part in this. Living in the tiny town of Espedal (a town apparently owned and inhabited mostly by his family), he is isolated from the general Norwegian population. The documentary crew are said to be the first journalists permitted to visit Gaahl at his house. As further rejection of contemporary society, Gaahl lives without much of its technology - he has neither phone nor plumbing (in fact, one journalist mentions having to walk a kilometre through mud to go to another house just to "take a shit" (pardon the language...). Individualism is clearly a big thing for Gaahl, which he makes clear by sharing his philosophy of "following the god within yourself."

So how do we relate this to BM? Gaahl's defiantly individualistic way of living and thinking matches up perfectly with the violent rejection of Right-Hand Path, collectivist religion that is found in BM. His rejection of technology and "cultural advancement" is also similar to several common BM musical practices, such as the rejection of highly developed instrumental technique and the use of lo-fi production. At one stage Gaahl actually makes his attitude to creativity and convention explicit - he attributes his dropping out of art school to the failings of its rules and expectations ("you cannot go to school to become an artist"). For him (and the genre of BM), "the process of creating is based on being away from people" and convention.

Perhaps the most extreme example of isolation and struggle in the documentary is when Gaahl leads the crew on a walk up a snowy mountain to a hut his grandparents built. Several members of the crew don't understand why he would bother with a "nature walk" when it's supposed to be a documentary about metal, and struggle with both the concept and the task considerably. There is one thing that really struck me about this scene/idea - the suggestion that isolation is a part of Gaahl's heritage thanks to the fact that Gaahl's grandparents would build a hut at such an impractically high altitude, where there are no trees (which would require them to carry the logs up the mountain themselves). Could it be, then, that as well as being a rejection of contemporary society and values, the very BM idea of privileging isolation is an acceptance of the previous "way of doing things"?

Makes sense to me..