What is left of blasphemy? (guest entry)

Words by Belisario of El Negro Metal

Some months ago, as I received the visit of some family friends who were walking the Way of Saint James, I found myself in the situation of having to attend a mass at my adopted hometown’s cathedral, something which, by quirks of fate, I had still never done before. Once there, I found out that the service in question included a nomination ceremony for two priests, which meant it was prolonged up to three times the usual length, almost two hours in total. This extended stay in such a devout ambiance, amidst the intoxicating fumes of incense and the thundering of the sumptuous organ located in the choir, was very favourable for all kinds of reflections, beyond the initial surprise and the gradual annoyance. The careful observation of the religious pageantry, the repetition of the same empty words and gestures, and the anachronism of the belief system underpinning the whole brought to my mind the blasphemy and anti-religious anger which inflamed the days of my late teens, when at the age of seventeen I discovered black metal. It’s been more than two decades now, but that negative drive was the fuel for many of my ideas at the time, whose effects do partially reach out, so I believe, to the present day. After all this time and standing now at the doors of middle age, what is then left of that blasphemy?

It might be useful to point out for international readers that, as was the case for many of my fellow Spaniards raised around the same time, my family background was distinctly Catholic. However, unlike most Spanish families at the time, mine was strongly practising, so I did get a first-hand knowledge, for good and for bad, of what religion looks like when seriously followed and observed. As I got older, two were the main problems I identified in that family faith which had been instilled in me since my early years. On the one hand, the immense hypocrisy of so many believers who don’t practice what they claim to believe; on the other, the patent lack of adaptation to the current reality, something the Catholic Church and other Christian Churches have been suffering from for centuries. The Scriptures and the liturgy are repeated verbatim, but two thousand years later Christ still hasn’t returned, and most of the ideas which worked in the times of the Roman rule over Galilee have little to say to the modern human being. Upon discovering black metal a new conflict added up: the evidence of Christian imposition over earlier forms of religiousness, more primitive but no less authentic. The importance of reconnecting with that seemed to me not only urgent, but also fascinating, and such was my view for a few years.

Over time, my views didn’t soften as a result of social inertia; instead, they became nuanced due to various readings. Georges Bataille’s Theory of Religion and, specially, Mircea Eliade’s The Sacred and The Profane made it clear to me that a return to original paganism was impossible for the simple fact that such state had been overcome, through Christianity, in a process later reaching modern agnosticism and atheism. In the same way it is not possible to continue worshipping natural deities when a God prevails that is ubiquitous and bigger than the universe, human faith in any monotheist religion inevitably crumbles upon discovering how the laws of physics work and successively transcending geographical, astronomic and molecular boundaries, because it is simply untenable, something which can be traced in Western culture at least since Spinoza (yet another enlightening reading). In the present day, in the prosperous and secular Western world –a category which is more sociological than geographic–, it is only the most fanatical, poor and ignorant who still firmly believe in the same God of the Middle Ages.

What does this last sentence actually mean? That in the current world God is no longer a threat, nor a foe to eliminate, as it was conceived by the early bands which conceptualized black metal in the 80s and 90s. Rather, it is a gigantic moribund corpse that keeps disintegrating all by itself (again, mainly in the most laicized parts of the West). This lessening of religiousness –though not religion– leaves behind traditions, rites and institutions that are made more of inertia than anything else, but still survive thanks to the fact of having received merely partial replacements, such as philosophy, politics, culture or even soccer. Those act as identity or even existential nourishment for many people, but no longer manage to bring together the whole of society as was the case in the past. Although some institutions, congregations and religious groups do maintain a considerable economic and political power, the Christian God is almost devoid of any spiritual influence over society as a whole in most European countries, including my native Spain, where only sixty years ago its presence was still a monolithic truth supported by a fascist state which used it as an efficient method of control.

It’s precisely this lack of a global substitute that could fill its absence which allows religion’s legacy to survive as a referent on various levels, such as ethics (if we think about values beyond the church institution) or the history of arts and ideas, fields which might have a positive angle even for those who abhor any church hierarchy. For people who, as this author, have on one side a liking for historical tourism and, on the other, try to increase their personal culture through different kinds of reading, there’s a moment in life in which one ends up making peace with quite a few aspects of religion, if only because the strong opposition fostered in the beginning has been filled with nuances, personal knowledge of the rich history of religions has grown and so has the awareness of the limited approach, both ideologically and philosophically, of the early antichristian metal bands. The evidence that religion is historically interwoven in many things which may be of cultural interest, such as architecture, paintings, literature or music, is enough to start viewing through different lenses the artistic output it promoted, in spite of not sharing nor approving its foundations.

Another facet no less important to be considered is the fact of living in society, with the adaptation this implies beyond the early years of wild youth. Quorthon himself stated in some interview that, as one grows older and starts paying taxes, it is but natural to stop rejecting society as a whole and begin to ask for something in return, and I do think there could hardly be anyone more relevant to quote on this matter. After years of fantasizing with church burnings and the dethronement of idols, one choses to become civilized and try to get along with people who might have a different way of thinking and even harbour religious faith, for the simple reason that one is increasingly unsure that a satanic uprising or a neopagan utopia could be a solution to anything, judging by the social outrage and the reinforcement of community religiousness brought about by the episodes of antichristian vandalism in the early 90s in Norway, not to mention the diverse failed attempts to restore paganism, starting by Julian the Apostate already in the 4th century of our age.

Nothing in the two previous paragraphs amounts to saying that this author surrendered, became idle or abandoned the radical power that metal’s blasphemous attitude can deliver to worldly existence, or so he likes to think. Among the tangible benefits still obtained from it one can mention, for instance, a reinforcement of the distrustful behaviour towards any form of organized belief, a personal autonomy on an intellectual level as well as an encouragement of the eagerness to break taboos and gain access to a less evident knowledge (which could be one of the interpretations of philosophical Satanism). It is also undoubtedly a way of life, through the act of belonging to an established subculture –metal– which, as every culture, essentially consists in giving up a series of divergent options in exchange for a set of shared values and certainties, which are useful to set up one’s own existence and identity.

This last statement can seem paradoxical but it is not: in order to advance in life and be truly free one needs a basis and a context, and through its rebellious, incorruptible and blasphemous attitude, metal more than delivers on both accounts. This is what is left of blasphemy for me, and I can tell that now, even when the rage and the newness are rather far away, it is still something of great importance. Giving it up down the road would have been the same as rejecting all the ideas and passions of youth, labelling them as immaturity or infantilism, turning the page as if they had never existed and embracing social conformity. Instead, what I did and still do today is going deeper into them, keep on discovering and learning, as if the door opened so many years ago by that music which came from another dimension had never closed. A person changes and gets transformed, but that which instils true life never wears out, which is why it wouldn’t make any sense to leave it behind.

This article was originally written and published in Spanish at https://elnegrometal.es/2024/09/13/opinion-que-queda-de-la-blasfemia/

Belisario, November 2024