Now that the Black Metal movement has been analogized to Richard Perle and David Frum (see this for more "depth"), I think a little common sense is in order. (Link via Glenn Reynolds.)

The Norwegian Black Metal movement is now over ten years old. A number of its original proponents are either dead or in prison, and while it has been repeatedly analyzed as a musical phenomenon, most serious students of rock history agree that Black Sabbath was its progenitor. Frankly, aside from its obviously contrived Satan-Hitler-Evil shock value (read this interview with the late Euronymous to get a feel for the latter), Black Metal strikes me as tired and unoriginal. An adolescent mass-nightmare till the fans all overdose, kill each other, or grow up.

But not so fast!

Black Metal has now been infused with new political life, by means of one of the most strained analogies I have ever seen.

Why, it's so Nazi, it's positively Bush!

A sample:

Black Metalists saw heathen Norway in a life-or-death struggle for existence with the Semitic tribes’ Judeo-Christianity, Perle and Frum see Judeo-Christian America under threat from Islam. And both have the same solution: War, dude!

To be fair, Vikernes and another Black Metalist murderer, Hendrik Mobus, come off as far more interesting, intellectual and complex with their second-rate Nietzschean ideas mixed up with D&D mythology, whereas Perle and Frum’s war manifesto is surprisingly dull and sparse. Indeed, on each page the words are spaced so far apart you could drive a fertilizer-packed white van between each line. I read it in one sitting and came away with only one memorable line, in which they disparagingly called Belgium "France’s pilot fish." On the other hand, Perle and Frum have used their influence over Bush to rack up a far, far higher corpse-count than the hapless Norwegian dirtheads, so they more than make up for their lack of aesthetic flair or stylized corpse paint with genuine blood on their hands.

Indeed, every sad word of An End to Evil oozes Perle’s and Frum’s pained, wasted 60s youths: wasted in yellow sheet stains, wasted studying maps color-coded with spheres-of-influence, wasted memorizing German armaments, and college years wasted playing Risk in their dorms while the socially successful hippies frolicked and fucked all around them. Perle and Frum will never forgive America for this humiliation and therefore they want to egg it on to its suicide by prodding it into a multi-front apocalyptic world war.

Their Black Metal plan is simple: Push North Korea to the brink and China right along with it; set the path for war against Iran; foment a Shiite independence movement in oil-rich eastern Saudi Arabia; kick Russia out of the G-8; invade Syria and Lebanon, while pushing Israel to turn the heat up even further on the Palestinians; and lastly, openly declare our hostility to the European Union, even if it means making enemies of France and Germany.

This raises another interesting question: Should Black Metalists cut their hair and vote Bush-Cheney ’04? Dude, I think the answer’s pretty fuckin’ obvious. In fact, thanks to these guys, America has become the world’s first Black Metal Nation.

Why Black Metal? Wouldn't the Ku Klux Klan have served equally well?

Or do you supposed Ames is trying to shame the South Park Republicans?

An "exile" living in Russia before his current stint, Ames clearly enjoys the politics of shame. In this earlier "twofer" piece ( in which Israeli officials are "racist freaks" who resort to "ethnic cleansing"), Ames condemns Israel -- a dreadful place Ames into which he warns the United States is degenerating:

I remember the first time I went to Israel how surprised I was by the lack of enthusiasm most of the young Israelis I met had for Israel. They were tired of war, tired of isolation. They wanted to lead normal lives, not to be pariahs of the world. That was in 1991, during the first Intifadah. The salad days by comparison. When I returned to Israel last May, the deterioration was incredible. Now the Israelis barely venture outside of their homes. They live in a constant state of siege. Moreover, they have lost all moral legitimacy in the eyes of basically every country on earth except for America. Most of the world views them as something between an apartheid regime and the Gestapo, the very inverse of everything Israel was supposed to stand for. Israelis and their supporters defensively label their critics anti-Semites; the isolation is furthered, the positions even more hardened.

Wherever you stand on the issue, if there's one thing America does not and should not want to become it's Israel. Isolated, loathed, fearful, under siege...

You have to admire the man's consistency, and his dedication to the principle of America's "descent." First, we were following the Israelis to our doom. Now it's the Black Metal Nazis.

While Ames is too slick to play the tired game of calling Bush Hitler (and he certainly can't directly compare Israel to the Nazis) I suspect he'd like to do both.

Hence the very strained analogy.

And like Black Metal itself, the analogy is as evil as it is lame (or maybe as lame as it is evil.)

(ADDITIONAL READING for anyone who is interested....)

I don't want to burden readers with a long "exposé" of Black Metal history, but
here's a pretty good summary of links from a San Francisco Museum of Modern Art site.

On Nazi connection to Black Metal:

Whilst overtly racist or fascist sentiments are far from the norm within the Black Metal and wider Extreme Metal genre and the intolerance of such beliefs within the Metal industry in general has been clearly illustrated on many occasions, it cannot be said that those who are open and committed to extreme right-wing beliefs have not gained attention and some support through the controversial iconography and discourse they have used.

On the tiredness of Black Metal:

Though most bands who attach themselves to the label of 'national socialist' pledge allegiance to no particular group or organization, it is worth noting that such, if any, of these organizations a few and far between, and have become more of an enigma than the image portrayed by the bands. One can even go so far as to say that the trend is dead. It's true: there are a number of bands that label themselves as national socialist, but it is rare to find one that can actually base their political stance on any tangible evidence or theory; it's mostly just hype. Some say the hype died the day that Varg Vikernes - the founder and lone member of the Black Metal/Avantgarde band BURZUM - decided to step away from the national socialist approach and embrace a more mystic path dictated by myth and folklore, while others believe that the sub-genre never existed in the first place.

Discussed as hype by Cradle of Filth drummer:

Barker sees the current worldwide popularity of black metal as a part of a cyclical process. "It's the way scenes come and go. The death metal thing got big at the end of the 80s and the first three years of the 90s. Then that died out, and the black metal thing started happening. Now, especially in Europe, the black metal thing is saturated, exactly how the death metal scene became, and the old-style thrash thing and old-school metal seems to be getting quite popular in like a full cycle, and people are starting to appreciate the old stuff more. You listen to bands from Europe, and they're trying to copy Venom."

While Venom is in many ways the progenitor of modern British black metal, it was the genre's transit to Scandinavia that poured a black shadow over the musical style. The 1993 murder of Euronymous, a key figure in the Norwegian metal underground, by the self-styled "Count Grishnackh," brought nationwide attention to a music scene that reveled in pagan history, virulent anti-Christian activism and bloodthirsty lore of Viking times.

It's not an attitude Cradle of Filth are eager to be associated with. Said Barker of Scandinavian black metal: "We're kind of keeping away from it. There's a lot of bullshit behind it all, a lot of false pretense. A lot of them go for this white supremecy neo thing, which we're not really into. We're British. We're not a part of that. We sound different, we look different, and we're treated a bit as an outsider anyway. You get a lot of people from Scandinavia talking shit about us-bands like Satyricon, Marduk... just talking bullshit-like they're the real black metal, and when they see us, they're going to have a fight with us. You know, playground stuff. They're just bags of hot air. We played in Norway in December, and nobody showed up. These big hard guys who talk shit about us whimped out at the last minute."

A few more links:

National Socialism And Metal: Has The Trend Been Killed?

Evolution of Black Metal.

Murder of Euronymous

Zzzzzzzz........