Metal Post! Emperor

So far my posts on metal have been with metal that has been only minimally controversial outside of metal itself. A few parents have probably gotten miffed that their sons were listening to Death's "Suicide Machine," that they would even have a kid who would ever listen to a band called Decapitated, or revel in Sepultura's savagery. My parents were understanding people, but my dad's stomach turned when he heard Slayer use a real kid on "Dead Skin Mask" to invoke the image of one of Ed Gein's victims. Now that I'm a dad I sort of get it.

Sometimes metal is personally upsetting for showing us what many of us don't want to see about ourselves, our neighbors, our churches, our beliefs, and our world. Sometimes what we see in the mirror is ugliness.

Emperor presents us with the genuinely dark side of ourselves while also being among the goofiest looking people on Earth. They are exactly what happens when people enthralled with an idea - Satan in this case. They end up looking pretty goofy. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a fair bit of Emperor's music. But we have to accept it for what it is - pretty well-written, aggressive, occasionally progressive metal that pretends to be epic and philosophically interesting. I sort of hate to make an ad hominem attack, but it's pretty hard to take people seriously when they look like Ihsahn and company in these pictures. Sure, that top picture isn't so bad, but the next one? They weren't featured in the 10 Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics (here for video) but they're still pretty silly.

Emperor, like other black metal acts (Gorgoroth, Mayhem, Immortal, Behemoth, Bodom, Dimmu Borgir) are Satanic. Ihsahn said in an interview, "I believe in wisdom, strength, and power through Satanism," which "is a more developed philosophy for the survival of the fittest" (video below). Like other Norwegian black metal folks, he is/was enthralled with the Norwegian pagan past and believed, through some combination of Satan and the Norwegian night and forest spirits (do we sprinkle Wottan and Thor and Loki and the Midgard serpent and the Valkyries in there too?). So he's into just as totally bogus a pile of nonsense as any Christian fundamentalist with ideas about myths and blood guiding him through the world. It might make for pretty cool and entertaining music.



It makes for a painfully stupid way to live.

"Human life is of no value. How can you have respect for something that is so weak?" Of course it's not just human life, but human creations. In the early 1990s there was a rash of church burnings and murders carried out by people in the Norwegian black metal scene. One of the murderers was in Emperor. Mayhem has the most famous story (see here...and if you think Emperor seems zonked, it's nothing compared to Mayhem whose fans got hit in the head at concerts by decapitated sheep heads).

I can get into a comic book. And obviously I love metal. It is an integral part of my life and presumably always will be. So long as I don't really have to pay attention to the lyrics, I can listen to Emperor. Ishahn writes some pretty cool guitar pairings, nice dynamic and textural changes (it is atmospherically sinister in a way), the arrangements are pretty interesting, and the vocal styles sans the lyrics create good contrasts.

I can't embrace church burnings. As much as I think that religion lacks for merit, I don't wish to destroy religious people's property, take away the relics of our common cultural history, or kill religious people. In fact, Ihsahn's utterly stupid comments in the above video are another piece of evidence for why religion is not only stupid, but dangerous. His brain and the brains of some of his pals were hijacked by a powerful religious meme that not only sanctions killing but sanctifies it. Such can be the power of religion.

Also, watch the little blurb from Gaahl from the band Gorgoroth in Metal: A Headbanger's Journey (totally recommended documentary!) In 2005, Gaahl was incidentally convicted of torturing someone for six hours and draining the person's blood. He claims it was in self-defense (watch here).

Steven Weinberg said, "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." Hitchens has challenged us to imagine a moral act that a religious person can do that a non-religious person can't do. He can't think of one and so far, neither has anyone else. But an immoral act that a religious person can do that a non-religious person can't do? That's easy. The Norwegian church burnings are another example.

Sometimes particularly insular and arrogant Christian fundamentalists like to accuse atheists of being Satanists. Not this atheist. There is no wisdom in yet another non-existent entity. There is great idiocy in this one.

Still want to watch some Emperor videos? Here ya' go. Enjoy the goofy armor and theatrics.

"I am the Black Wizards" (Live at Wacken)


"Empty" video (Check the free guitar play and bad horror movie backdrop)


P.S. If you want to listen to someone be really articulate about their religion, just watch Glen Benton of Deicide (who I saw in 1995) talk about "serving [his] master."
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Next metal post: Metallica