APPENDIX
Wall” (which is the title of the outro to the song) into a terrifying
2
void of irrelevancy and, ultimately, of non-belongingness.
The casting away of the fragmentary Human remnants into
the darkest and long-forgotten recesses of the inscapes of the Void
is no doubt a powerful imagery invoked by Sabbath’s “War Pigs,”
but like a gnawing demon, it is the mechano-in-organic tactical
vector (alternatively, the war-machine—for the two are so
inextricably complicit with each other that they cannot, in any
sense, be referred to individually) that rips away at our attention.
This tactical vector/ war-machine, which is more contingent
than evolutionary, is in no way similar to the difference-engines
devised by the “Evil minds that plot destruction” or of those
“Making war just for fun”; contrarily, it is a Nietzschean Monster
“…a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or
smaller…without loss or expense…without increase or income...an
ebb and a flood of forms…a becoming that knows no satiety, no
3
disgust, no weariness….”
If Sabbath’s “War Pigs” is a darkly mournful recollection of
crumbling structures (ending with Humans being ablated at
Electric Funerals before being wafted in the form of ashes into the
Void), then this contribution is a fragmentary account of our
(un)becoming-complicity with the mechano-in-organic tactical
vector/ war-machine as it spikes and triggers the collapse of
difference-engines thereby inaugurating a condition of Absolute
War!
Melanlogical Subjectivity
Reza Negarestani
This contribution will be written against the absolving neurosis
widespread in musical analyses which manifests either as a
2
Note that this ‘sense’ is missing in the Dio-led version of “War Pigs” from
the Live Evil album. Though one must in all fairness add that Geezer
Butler’s ‘live’ bass lines are simply ‘out of this world’!
3
Nietzsche, Will to Power, trans. Walter Kauffmann, #1067, pp. 550. I am
aware that there have been recent and perhaps more faithful translations
of Nietzsche’s works, including the aphorisms that are collected under the
title “Will to Power.” I have opted to remain with Kauffmann’s version
simply because there is an implied ominousness to his translation,
particularly of the aphorism being referred to.
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GLOSSATOR 6
compulsive obsession with exonerating forms of music or a wishful
search for musical entities freed from human interests, experience
and illusions.
Musical, vocal, ambient and ‘noisesome’ entities are often
absolved or castigated according to an inherently utopianist pattern
of emancipation which targets either human or the music, aiming
at unshackling one from the other or establishing an affective
freezone between them. Whilst the frequent use of justificatory
terms in support of Black Metal (such as ‘it is a misunderstanding
…’, ‘it is too complex to …’, ‘it defies reductio …’) conforms to
such emancipatory pacifications, the cautionary or reactionary
reprimands against Black Metal adhere to the rectifying negativity
inherent to the models of emancipation which never have time for
problematical elements. While the former attitude strives for
whitewashing ‘problematical problems’, the latter approach seeks
to dismiss the power of problematicity because it is instinctually
aware of the danger posed by the twists that the problematic brings
with itself: Twists implicit in problematical entities are capable of
overturning the course of emancipation.
Refusing to undo such neurotic pursuits and therefore
impairing the pattern of humanist emancipation, this contribution
affirmatively turns emancipatory obsessions inside-out, in-flecting
them so as to reveal an ideal commentator for black metal instead.
If Black Metal presupposes an inherent problematicity whose
problems and conditions cannot be absolved or resolved, then
where can we find a commentator who can impersonally embrace
the problematicity of Black Metal? And even more importantly,
what does this ideal commentator of ‘Black Metal as the fuscum
subnigrum of problematical problems’ look like?
This contribution seeks—and to some extent reconstructs—the
nigrescent (putrid) or black glossator of the Black Metal music and
culture. Adapting the notoriously confrontational spirit and
problematic nature of Black Metal, this contribution presents a
form of commentary set in motion as a fable which is told entirely
in the form of dialogues. ‘Melanlogical Subjectivity’ simultaneously
takes form according to the principles of two different worlds (with
their respective conjectural, narrative and problematical resources):
1.
The self-deluded fantasy worlds of Black Metal where
parallel worlds of mythic creatures such as humans,
elves, orcs and abyssal demons are pitted against each
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APPENDIX
other according to a predetermined course of events.
Everything unfolds according to an underlying twist
which only surfaces at the peak of the story–an
apocalyptic scenario of senseless battles between parallel
worlds with their respective problems which have been
set in motion only to bring about an unimaginable
apocalyptic twist. Black Metal’s Nordic mythology is the
epitome of such worlds of senseless events which
culminate in yet an even more senseless twist.
2.
The dialectical world of Greek philosophy on which
numerous commentaries have been written and the
dialogue-ridden texts of scholasticism in which the
swinging movement of arguments between the scholars
suggests a form of ‘live commentary’ that embraces and
perforates each problem with more problems.
Adapting these two resources which belong to Black Metal and
commentary genre, ‘Melanlogical Subjectivity’ is a dialogue
between two figures: a problematic archetype of Black Metal and a
figure called Ur-human. While the Black Metal’s archetype speaks
in a language which is entirely recomposed of lyrical fragments,
musical analyses of black metal, factual pieces and actual
interviews with Black Metal artists, the Urhuman recounts its ideas
as problematical comments on Black Metal. Oscillating between
absolving and pejorative, the Urhuman often lapses into an
emancipatory approach in its confrontation with the archetypal
Black Metalist. As the conversation between the two spreads out
on different levels of reciprocal commentary, we notice a terrifying
change is brooding within the Urhuman. From within, something
nigrescent and melanlogical presses hard against the surface of
Urhuman’s commentaries, bringing about the culmination of the
piece where the so-called Urhuman is unmasked as the ideal black
glossator of Black Metal.
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