Blog on Music and Subcultures

2006-06-18T22:41:00.000+10:00

Original Emo!

Just thought this picture was funny.... :-)

2006-06-08T15:52:00.000+10:00

Hey Everyone,

Just wanted to say good luck to everyone with your assignments, hope it's going well. Mine is slowly coming along, and hopefully it will turn out better than the first one. Thanks for sharing this last semester with me, and for teaching me things I didn't know (and in some cases, things I didn't need to know)! :-)

2006-05-26T21:51:00.000+10:00

"Rare Madonna cover" and Britney Spears, by M. Manson

I just found a cover of Madonna's "Like a Virgin" performed by Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails, and it was quite interesting. It's a 7 and a half minute long song, and the first 2 and a half minutes are okay, but the last 5 minutes is entirely the sound of two girls experimenting with girl on girl action...! :-s

Anyway, I thought it was strange to find a M.M. cover of a Madonna song in the first place, and then I found a (alledgedly) M.M. cover of Britney Spears' "Born to Make You Happy", which was basically just her song with some hardcore beats in the background and some broken-up vocals here and there.

I only accidentally stumbled across both of these, and I don't know how authentic the Britney Spears cover is (it contains no trace of M.M's vocals, etc).

Anyway, just thought I would share my thoughts with you, especially since I'm doing a little bit on M.M. in my second essay. :-)

2006-05-26T16:39:00.000+10:00

Second Essay

Here comes the third blog entry that is actually about my assignment. I have made a topic statement for my second essay now, which I would like to share with Cory and everyone else who may be interested.

I want to discuss heavy metal music and its subcultures put in a local and global context in relation to the media. The essay will deal with the coverage of Australian, American and European heavy metal in textual and visual media, both in the bands’ home countries and worldwide. I would like to focus on general media coverage of heavy metal, and use bands from Australia, America and Europe as examples in my research.

I have decided on Marilyn Manson for the American continent, and Sonata Arctica for Europe, but I can't seem to decide on an Australian band for my essay. Heck, are there even any heavy metal bands in this country?? Sorry, I don't mean to be rude... But while browsing the net for Australian heavy metal bands, all I could come across was:

* AC/DC - not heavy metal!!,

* Metanoia - who I've never heard of; they only released one album since they started 16 years ago, plus they are a death metal band, which I want to stay away from because death metal isn't "fair" to include in the discussion of media representation, and

* BigPhallica - speed metal cover band with the drummer from the Vines),

and others that aren't really relevant for my essay, or for the music scene at all, in my opinion.

I really need to find an Australian metal band that people have actually heard of (at least in Australia), before I can continue on that part of my essay.

Otherwise, it's going well, I've found some literature on media coverage of different types of music, and I will be looking for Australian metal bands with all my strength and optimism for the next couple of weeks.

I hope everyone else are doing well on their assignments, and that you don't have the same annoying problem as I have. :-)

2006-05-21T23:56:00.000+10:00

Update on Varg Vikernes

I asked a friend who is a Burzum fan, and he seems to think that Count Grishnackh (Varg Vikernes) is still in prison.

He also tipped my of this website where you can read about Burzum and the music, the murder of Euronymous (in his own words), and the politics/Satanism/Nazism questions surrounding Vikernes and his past.

http://www.burzum.org/ - Website index
http://www.burzum.org/eng/biography.shtml - Bio and history

Otherwise, if anyone has more specific information on the jail release, please don't hesitate to share it with me. :-)

2006-05-21T20:47:00.000+10:00

Varg Vikernes (“The Count”)

Hey, I just wanted to post some information about ex-Mayhem member Varg Vikernes, better known as The Count. I don't know if he is more famous for his music or for the murder of his fellow band member in 1993, but I know that a lot of people even here in Australia know who he is, so maybe the following is of some interest. Most of it is from Wikipedia (I know - lazy research!), and I myself found it very interesting.

The only thing I can't seem to find out is if he actually got out of jail in April this year as planned? If anyone knows, or wants to find out, can you please tell me what you find of new information?

The man and the murder

Varg Vikernes (born Kristian Vikernes), is known by the nickname "Greven", Norwegian for "the Count". Vikernes has been around since the early days of Norwegian black metal, he was a member of the band Mayhem, and the creator of the one-man music project Burzum. Later he also became a prominent voice for Neo-Nazi ideology, now subscribing to a heathen Odalist ideology.

Vikernes is currently (?) in prison for the 1993 murder of his former friend and bandmate Øystein Aarseth, also known as Euronymous, from black metal band Mayhem. Vikernes was also found guilty of several smaller felonies; the arson of Åsane Church in Bergen, Skjold Church in Vindafjord, Holmenkollen Chapel in Oslo, and the attempted arson of Storetveit Church in Bergen. All this, and the consequent death of a firefighter, landed him the maximum sentence of 21 years in prison. Nevertheless, the sentenced was shortened (as is normal in Norway), and then lengthened again due to his escape.

At the time of Vikernes' arrest, the police found 100 kg of explosives in his home, but no one ever found out what the intentions behind the explosives was.

He was also charged for the arson of Fantoft stave church outside Bergen, although the jurors concluded not guilty. The judges said this was the result of an error of the jurors, but they refused to overthrow the whole case. Later appeals to higher courts were dismissed.

The reason for the murder of Mayhem guitarist Øystein Aarseth is still not clear, but has mainly been believed to take root in ideological differences as well as a power struggles between Vikernes and Aarseth. Aarseth was found dead outside his apartment in Oslo, allegedly with 23 stab wounds — two to the head, five to the neck, and 16 to the back, though Vikernes claims that the murder was committed partially in self-defense. He says that the majority of Aarseth’s stab wounds were received when Aarseth fell on pieces of a broken lamp that he knocked over in the struggle. Vikernes also claimed that there was a financial dispute over the profits from Burzum's first two full-length records (Burzum and Det Som Engang Var) as well as the first Burzum EP (Aske) that were released through Aarseth's record label, Deathlike Silence Records; however, Vikernes urges that this was never a reason for the murder.

There has also been suggestions that the murder was based on Aarseth's ties to Salem, a Jewish oriental metal band in Israel, to whom Varg had unsuccesfully sent a mailbomb.

Politics and religion

Vikernes is formerly a member of the extremist group White Aryan Resistance (Hvit Arisk Motstand), a group on the far right. He was also involved with the Norwegian Heathen Front (Norsk Hedensk Front), and for the latter he was said to be the leader in 2001. In 1999, however, he was noted as a member only, although a prominent one.

Vikernes helped create the Odalist movement, which is based on pride in one's own ancient cultural and religious traditions, used only by people with Germanic ancestry professing such an outlook. It can specifically contain elements of Ásatrú (Norse mythology). Vikernes is proponent of the Ásatrú religion and believes it is a religion for all Germanic peoples. Vikernes interprets the old Germanic lore in a fascistic way and belongs to the leading heads of modern esoteric fascism.

He also co-founded the All-Germanic Heathen Front, a subsidiary of Norwegian Heathen Front.

Music/Lyrics

Vikernes has written lyrics for several songs by the band Darkthrone, such as Quintessence, and As Flittermice as Satan's Spies. In these lyrics, he uses characteristics from Germanic folklore in which Satan is brought up in the context of an “eye” that is a source of light (i.e. the sun), with mentions of a “spear” and a “hall of battle”, all of which are masked references to the Germanic/Norse god Odin. This was done with the double meaning of Odin as the “adversary” of Jewish and Christian tradition, and it has been taken as proof that Vikernes was at one time a Satanist. Vikernes, however, has stated several times that he is opposed to Satanism as he considers it to be a reactionary form of Christianity.

Vikernes and Burzum

In 2000, Vikernes terminated his musical project, which he had continued from his prison cell, due to what he perceived to be negative notoriety. Vikernes believed that his philosophy was constantly misinterpreted by an ignorant fan base that was too closely related to black metal and Satanism. Vikernes released two ambient albums, abandoning the black metal 'scene’. Varg intended to continue Burzum if he were to be released on probation in April 2006. The new Burzum, Vikernes claimed, will be a continuation of pre-prison Burzum, specifically the Filosofem album.

An Australian media event

19-year-old Novak Majstorovic, guitarist of the band Schwarzreich, committed arson burning down a 100-year-old church in Melbourne in 2004. In all media depictions of the event he is said to have been heavily influenced by Burzum. However, he has stated on various message boards across the internet that the influence does not stretch beyond the superficial, and that the media has twisted his statements to the police to suit their own ends. He says the arson had very little in common with Vikernes' arson attacks, and that his own attack was a symbolic piece of propaganda that represented his quasi-anarchistic ideology.

Publicity

American journalist Michael Moynihan, the man behind the musical project Blood Axis, and co-author Didrik Søderlind wrote a book surrounding the events of the early black metal scene in Norway. The book was named Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground, and in giving his responses to the book he has stated that it is full of misconceptions and false hype.

Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground gives the history of black metal music. The book contains interviews with most of the prominent surviving members of the Norwegian black metal scene, including Varg Vikernes.

One of the major general criticisms of the book from inside the black metal scene is that it focuses quite a lot on Varg Vikernes, which detracts from the rest of the artists present and from black metal as a whole as Vikernes's views are extreme even by black metal standards.
Torstein Grude created a Norwegian documentary entitled Satan Rir Media (Satan Rides the Media), in which Vikernes gave a more positive review of Moynihan’s and Søderlind’s book.
Satan Rir Media also showed how the Norwegian news media tend to hype the Satanist angle, and unwittingly created a mass following a relatively small group of teenage boys, both in Norway and internationally.

While doing his time in prison, Vikernes himself wrote a book called "Vargsmål" (which means "Varg's talk"), which was about racial purity, Ásatrú, and his personal life among other things. It is said to be similar to Hitler's book, "Mein Kampf".

2006-05-19T18:17:00.000+10:00

Assignment update

Finally figured out how to post pictures! :-D (I'm far from the sharpest tool in the shed, I have realised...) I'm sorry about the first boring post, but I'll try to be a little more entertaining (and informative) from now on.

Please notice the hideous and totally irrelevant picture that I posted _all by myself_! It's Sam, the late award winning World's Ugliest Dog. R.I.P.

Anyway, this new post is just a little something for Cory about my next assignment and how I'm doing on that. That's why we're doing these blogs, right...? :-)

I have read through the criterias for the next essay (which I missed last time and that's why my first essay kinda sucked), and decided to focus on the local and global attention paid to heavy metal. I want to focus both on the bands and the fans, because I did a lot of research on the fans for my first essay.

The media profile on heavy metal, as far as I've come in researching it, is little close to none. This is only based on European fans and bands, but as regards to coverage in both Europe and worldwide.

Some of the Sonata Arctica fans I spoke to online said that you pretty much had to dig it up for yourself if you wanted to see anything about heavy metal in Germany, and that the media did not encourage attention to this sort of music.

Other people from the SA fan base said that there are entire magazines dedicated to heavy metal music in parts of Europe, whereas some magazines that deal with all sorts of music (from Britney Spears to Fiddy) save little or no space to material on heavy metal.

Someone confirmed that there is no real coverage of metal in the media in Western Europe. If there is anything at all, soap series with 16-year-old "metalheads" - who are mostly stereotyped as lazy and rebellious - are usually it.

Several of the fans I talked to said that not only the bands get bad coverage; the fans themselves are often presented in unfortunate ways that disagree with the fans' own perceptions of the subculture. Someone said that if there were a violent killing somewhere, the media were likely to "blame" the murder on heavy metal music, as it being negative influence on the killer.

To sum up, there is very little coverage of heavy metal music in Europe; however, as one of the fans said; if you look for it, you will find it. It is likely to believe that metal gets nowhere near as much media attention as other musical genres such as pop and R’n’B, and if they ever do get noticed, it is often negative publicity. Even though Finland is considered a big metal nation, it is still hard to get rid of the stereotypical associations that most people have to metal. Even in Finland and the rest of Scandinavia most metal genres remain on underground level compared to other dominating genres like pop and R'n'B.

For my next essay I'll by trying to find books that deal with heavy metal music and the subcultures, and I also need sources to lead me to both local and global heavy metal coverage. I'm not an expert on Australian metal, but it will be part of my essay.

So, from now on all my posts in here will be about polarbears and eyeball illnesses.

2006-05-01T16:52:00.000+10:00

First post

First of all, welcome to my blog.

At the moment, there's not much news about my Music Subcultures project; however, I am keeping a close eye on my chosen subculture which I will be writing about in my next assignment (Sonata Arctica - power metal band from Finnland).

I have also kept going back to the second fanbase forum that I used as an example in my first assignment, the Helloween fans.

An interesting observation made on both forums, is that most of the active posters in there tend to think that I'm a boy! Is it really that big a deal for a girl to post something on heavy metal music? It occured, after the threads I made as research for the first assignment asking for information about the subculture, etc, that people from the very beginning started referring to me as "he" and "him" - despite the pink female symbol next to my username. And my username was nothing more maskuline than "Pudding", so I don't quite see why that should misguide them...

Anyway, just an interesting observation. I did point it out on the Sonata Arctica forum, but it seems to have gone unnoticed. On the Helloween forum, however, I simply didn't want to give the wolfs anything more to feed on. Which leads me to the next and last point of this blog entry.

It appears there is one significant difference between the Sonata Arctica fans and the Helloween fans. Whereas the SA fan base were very enthusiastic regarding my European Power Metal project, and eager to help with any general information or their own personal experiences, the Helloween fans were quite arrogant, and "picky" on a few things. Of course I am generalising quite a lot here as I have only followed these cultures for a few weeks yet; nevertheless, in my humble opinion, I do think that the Helloween fans tend to take themselves (and everything else!) a little too seriously. I mean, come on - it's only a discussion forum, not a world conference...

For instance, after I created a thread in Helloween's Off Topic section asking which bands and genres people didn't like or even hated, there was one guy who stated:

"Oh, and I finally found something that I really HATE: Threads that serve the sole purpose of bashing things that people don't like. Annoying (Hugin: the Helloween forum)."

There was also another guy who was strongly opposed to the term "hate" as he thought it was much too strong to be used in situations like this...

On the other side, a sane person (except for the fact that he thought I was a guy...) who did see my point for asking the question, replied:

"Hugin and Halib, with all due respect, this time your good intentions are out of place. The user Pudding is just doing a project with the solely purpose of knowing about preferences. OK I think he should've written something like "do not post a reply to the post above yours, just tell me what you like and dislike". There's nothing to argue about here. I mean you're entitled to your opinions and such but this time, let the difficult-to-swallow opinions flow and go free before you guys lose your temper (Death23: the Helloween forum)."

The reason for the "mood" difference in the fanbases may be the age of the people on the forums; the SA fans being younger than the Helloween fans, and maybe a little less uptight about what is being posted on the world wide web.
PS: The Helloween fan who didn't like threads that are "bashing things that people don't like", was 30 years old.

Anyway, this was just something to keep you posted on where I'm up to on my project, and some of the experiences I've had so far in studying the power metal subcultures.

I will be back in a few days time (or a week; depending on how much I get done in between other projects and assignments) with another blog entry.