Outsiders are afraid of Heavy Metal.
This might be a thought you haven't entertained in a while, reader, if you are on the inside. But there's truth there. Especially during the formative experiences that shaped us into a metalheads, at some point every one of us decided to take something of a sideways step from normalcy.
It could be said that the shift is minimal and phenomenologically, normals and not-normals act much too similarly. It could be further said that normalcy is a manufactured medium that society pays lip service to for utilitarian reasons and otherwise disregards 'behind closed doors'. It can be finally argued that this whole "I choose darkness" thing is a non-choice, that odd people find odd escapes deterministically, but this piece is not a debate on free will (for once). What interests me is to explore and clarify what was sacrificed in that perceived move outside the norm and what was gained for it.
Life in modern capitalism can be seen as an endless pursuit of carnal vanity. What is achieved through the purchase of pleasures is undone by definition daily: pleasure is fleeting. You are not done with food after you've tasted great cuisine nor are you done with sex after satisfying your lust once. You are not done with life just because you lived it briefly. One must chase the specters of fulfillment, defined endlessly by his consumer profile of the twenty-thirtysomething well after that time has passed and then suddenly, they're old and soon, dead. 'Spirituality' sounds like such a mumbo-jumbo, new-age term, doesn't it? It is instead the opposite, resolutely old-age. This is difficult to conceptualize if you've grown up watching The Simpsons endlessly point their finger to their own finger.
The pursuit of life's pleasures, even as it is encouraged by market tendencies and reinforced psychoactively through media, is always a risk. It takes a certain... animal-like obliviousness to see, desire and take, again and again. It's schizophrenic how that tendency in humans is discouraged by the ethical apologia of capitalism that is protestantism, yet the achievements of that tendency are glorified. The modern consumer is at once encouraged to be servile and community-minded and yet reap the benefits of pleasure like a trained killer, eager to strike. It's a curious state of existence that will ring true for some readers, to be surrounded by potential pleasures and yet feel paralyzed by the fear of their indulgence. I... I don't really want to kill anyone and steal their pleasures. And if I look to the left and right I see capable specimens place their hands at the small of the back of life and pull her in closely, though barely just acquainted, with such entitlement, without thought. Envy, yes?
I theorize that that fear is characterized by loss of control. Orgasm as death, gluttony as a brief madness. I will not however theorize as to what brings a man or woman in fear of loss of control at a formative age, it suffices for now to accept that such a fear exists in some. People such as this (and such as I) have this wrongheaded notion that those that desire and take automatically do so in full control of their capacities and faculties. This, experience shows, is not so and it is exactly in the surrender of higher reasoning that one may best explore pleasure. The trained killer is not trained after all, it comes naturally... But this initial envy-fueled recollection is never discarded because it builds on fear. The fear inside is that we're fundamentally broken for not being able to achieve what seems natural to others. Counter-definition of capacity and imperative, society tells us what to think.
The picture that comes to light is exasperating on many levels: to be pulled towards passions by definition unfulfilled, to be pulled off of a course that is at least dictated by one's sense of control, one's center, until one is old and withered and ultimately, dead. The fates laugh. All the while around one's life of slow motion, the rest, the more capable conquer and pillage without thought. Doesn't that feel like a waste?
Some philosophers and artists (and other sensitives) over the ages have felt it to be so, at least. Of all the higher strata of intellectual discourse that can offer alternative paths for the despairing youth, it's a cruel joke that some of us were most affected by the low regurgitations of Heavy Metal bands. But be it so, there was also a strength traded for lost clarity of thought from Nietzsche to Virgin Steele and from Castaneda (as the case is) to Unholy: These old philosophers and mystics are not scary anymore. The great Heavy Metal ghost is. Miraculously, as much as they have tried to cheapen it (and it could be argued that we have only barely survived a decade's worth of concentrated effort to defang Heavy Metal and market it to outsiders), it still is. Outsiders are afraid of Heavy Metal. It might be third rate philosophy, but spikes and chains and blood and darkness make up for it.
Did I hear that voice
or was it just a hallucination
And what about those shapes
For fourteen days I haven't slept
Still my shadow the secret of my life
Kept
By going through a long period of depression
I reached a permanent state of enlightenment
I'm the master above you bunch of slaves
I'm the Demiurge, creator of this universe
Master of not-doing
I, myself not fooling
The God of not-being
Everything as it is seeing
Near my death I saw
the white Gate of Death calling
There I didn't fall in
Let self die
Loosen souls dimension
For the sorcerer exhaustion brings ecstasy
For normal people, ecstasy brings ecstasy instead.
Unholy are a perfect band in this way. They're completely inapproachable to the outsider. Which isn't to say they're not alluring, it exactly means that they are, in fact. But they can only be approached on a bended knee, in their own terms. They will never be trendy (though it could be argued they made attempts at a more mainstream sound with each release) They sound demented but strong, no, the word I'm looking for is in-human. When some men become as beasts and rape life's pleasure, other men will become gods and denounce all earthly things. What is left when the soul dies? Surely something must remain the darkness at the candle's rest. Perhaps it is likeso, those whose eyes are accustomed to the light miss the world in twilight, but those who purposefully move from the light to the darkness keep the remembrance of the overworld as they descend into a different world of possibilities, of magic, of solitude.
I'm entertained when I read reviews of Unholy records and people go on about how 'weird' this music is. It's not weird at all. The people in Unholy were a bunch of teenagers from Finland, they were not gods. They probably were shunned by some girls. They dabbled with drugs. Their hair was real long. They kicked a member out of the band because he joined the Army as the Demiurge shall serve no man (elementary, yes?) and you probably know a few people like the dudes in Unholy, right? One of them is writing to you. None of these people are fundamentally different from the beasts, yet they pretend. They make fear into a weapon. Outsiders fear us as we fear them. As long as we are in-human, we will never futilely chase pleasure, as long as we are dead, we shall never die.
Conservation of energy: what must be sacrificed to achieve immortality, is movement. Become like stone, like a statue and you will never die. Center your energy and cruelly guard it until it is cold, entropic, imperceptible. In eternal darkness, time dies.
But flesh is not like stone. Have you ever stood up for six, seven hours straight? Muscles ache, one must endure. What is traded for everlasting life, for this neverending day, is an eternity of small pain. That is what the music of Unholy describes: small pains for eternal glory. Those of the outside will never understand.
This is why Heavy Metal still inspires fear: they seek pleasure to delay their thoughts on inevitable death. When death finally comes they are like pups, bargaining with the perfect end. "I... I don't really have to leave, do I? I was having such fun." But we bargain with death from day one, give him pain daily so that when he comes, his spectral visage is chartographed, or, has it come already? Is he here? I can not tell in the darkness if I have ever lived. In-human. Un-holy.
