Is the party over?

Is metal transgressive?

Before breaking up in 2023, Dawn Ray’d were one of the most prominent Radical Anarchist black metal bands. The video for their song ‘Go as Free Companions’ features the band performing in what looks like an abandoned factory. It cuts to shots of people putting on black balaclavas and gloves, who slowly appear in shot alongside the band as the video progresses, brandishing signs that read “No one is illegal”, “Trans rights now!”, “Fight fascism” and “Liberate animals”. The comments section on YouTube – whilst predictably very critical of the band’s politics and their use of black metal to communicate it – is peppered with an interesting refrain addressing Dawn Ray’d’s relationship to transgression. One user claims that there’s “nothing more hardcore than seeing them hold a sign fight for trans rights…”, another saying that “yes because the world needs puritan hall monitor black metal”, or “this is like what happens when the principal has a band with the music teacher and a cop” (all typos reproduced intentionally).

This is an example of an essentially transgressive critique of Dawn Ray’d’s moral stance expressed by a conservative audience hostile to the progressive values championed in the video. Black metal, and indeed a lot of metal, has always stood on ambiguous political ground. To issue simple statements in support of refugees or anti-fascist sentiment in almost any other form of modern rock (bar country maybe) would be business as usual. But in the context of black metal it is seen as not only contrary to the norms of genre, but an act of conformism to establishment norms, of aligning with the perceived dominance of “woke” in the eyes of many black metal fans.

This is a microcosm of the tension that emerges whenever the left encroaches on artistic territory traditionally occupied by the right (or the politically chaotic). Radical Anarchist black metal attempts to coopt what it sees as a problematic artform and harness its transgressive power toward egalitarian ends. In the process, it was hoped that this would provide a safe space for potential leftwing millennial recruits reticent to engage with metal for reasons of moral hygiene. Dawn Ray’d clearly see themselves as championing minority, potentially transgressive, causes. But a section of black metal’s traditional fandom view this as “hall monitor black metal”. This is because, despite the fact that metal’s historical brand of edgelord vulgarity is now mainstream, it still sees itself as besieged. One of the reasons Trump’s brand of conservativism keeps succeeding is its ability to constantly position itself as outside the mainstream even when holding the highest seats of government. Trans rights and respect for refugees will always be seen as establishment moralising within this worldview.

This gets to the heart of metal’s “transgression” problem. The old enemies that would seek to police what metal can or cannot do are not dead, they just live on in the form of the woke mind virus. Nergal’s frequent run-ins with the Polish Catholic church are perhaps the only high profile after echoes of the traditional battles metal is used to, back when it went toe to toe with the PMRC in the 80s. Now, the moralising enemy is a woke mob who don’t want you to have any fun.

It should be noted that inverting the values of traditional religious conservatism still carries symbolic value in non-Western metal. I’d speculate that this is one of the reasons why music from South America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East appears more vibrant and self-assured than their European and North American counterparts. The latter of which sidestep the problem of transgression by complicating the music into ever more esoteric and largely meaningless permutations of avant-garde, or resorting once again to the nostalgia lever.

The left’s impulse to invert the ideology of problematic music in order to freely play with its forms has been artistically embarrassing and politically disastrous. In attempting to transpose a specific value nexus onto a politically chaotic yet proudly artisanal and often ascetic subculture, the younger progressive wing of metal has replicated in microcosm the political failures of its generation.

In order to repair some of the damage done by this project, it will be necessary to subject transgression within metal to a paradigm shift, one that is already well underway outside its borders.

Read the full article over on Substack.