Syndicate: Fwd: Polish Black/Ill Eas

[ederic Madre <fmadre@wanadoo.fr>]

>From: feste@mountainzone.net
>Subject: <nameless> Polish Black/Ill Ease
>Reply-To: nameless@freedonia.com
>Sender: owner-nameless@freedonia.com
>
>On Fri, 03 September 1999, Bob Bannister wrote:
>
> > 
> > http://www.grave.com/~mega/PBM/index2.html
> > 
> > "Black Metal in Poland is not about commercialism, trends or the bullshit which has corrupted the scandinavian scene."
>
>
> >From the individual band entries here, it's about picking up the nationalism of Norwegian Black Metal. What's so quirky and subcultural about this is that a nationalism is by definition (according to its own ideology) a particularism, so that you shouldn't be able to export the content. But that's exactly what happens here:  the Black Metal Poles say about themselves is what the Norwegians were saying about themselves 5 years ago. What defines the Polish people? Well, let's see...they don't speak Norwegian, and they're a "folk" on a "land." Visions of poorly-dressed band members being beaten with heavy handbags by truculent old Catholic ladies. "Pagan!?! I'll give you pagan!! Get back in your room Jerzy!!!"
>
>The religious references always look queer, because their occultism adopts anything ancient or ominous-looking from the fairly narrow inventory of cultures made available to them (ultimately) by scholars like me. The odd eclecticism of the mythology (cf. names on index page: "Lord Wind" is just an English gloss of the Sumerian high god Enlil, Akhenaten is a well-known heretical Egyptian Pharoah [whose vassals' scribal practices are actually causing me a lot of grief these days], and Thor is a pseudonym for a transvestite better known as RuPaul) cobbled together out of no living traditions, pays better tribute to the triumph of Christianity than any cathedral could. 
>
>That marginal subcultural minorities should want to be as brutal and dominant as the worst fascist dictators should come as no suprise to anyone after Littleton; it's all part of a complex interplay of myth and politics.
>
>Their National Socialism is equally mythological, though a lot more galvanizing (it makes them feel more powerful/makes us liberals feel more worried, or the other way around). I'd expect the bands to suck, but after playing some decent stuff from the Czech Black band Master's Hammer (best song titles: "I Don't Want, Sirs, to Pester" and "That Magnificent Deer Has Vanished;" these may be very assy translations from the Czech) on the air today I can't even rely on that. On the other hand, they were damn sure no Immortal.
>
>I also played "Rockerfeller Center" by Ill Ease, which I think a betternoise member put out, and it was massive indeed, faint hooks riding a wall of turbulence, with a kind of sonic integrity that Master's Hammer lacked. Plus no visible Nazi connections!
>
>
>Seth, punching a clock and drawing a check for atavism.
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________________
>A Member of MountainZone.com

anybody care to comment ? 

f.
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