NSBM, or “National Socialist (Nazi) Black Metal” is a neo-fascist movement within the black metal scene. This is not necessarily a new idea, as mixing loud music with far-right politics goes all the way back to hardcore punk (although the Nazis were expelled swiftly from that scene). NSBM itself, however, originates in the 1990s, during black metal’s invaluable second wave in Norway, with Varg Vikernes of Burzum being the catalyst for the idea. It is admittedly small, however as we have seen lately, fascism does best when left alone to fester, like the cancer it is. The Nazis in the black metal scene make a fuss when called out, either insisting that black metal is apolitical (which, while factual, is a dishonest dogwhistle) or that Nazism is a natural extension of black metal’s ethos. This essay’s intent is to explore both.

At its roots, black metal is the final, most volatile form of “extreme metal”, an umbrella term used to encompass everything heavier than Sabbath. Aesthetically, it originated with Venom, a proto-thrash act from England, with their second album, the seminal Black Metal. The album gave the genre not only its name, but its distinct anti-Christianity, a theme which continues to this very day (although it’s worth noting that Venom plays this for shock value whereas later acts would be quite serious when they invoked Satan). The genre would develop proper with later acts from the “first wave” of black metal. Bands like Von, Bathory, and Celtic Frost, would later give the genre its cold, vicious, lo-fi, hostile to outsiders sound that its known for today, and set-up the musical framework for the crystallizing “second wave” in Norway.

In early ‘90s Norway, black metal found its second wave, and by extension came into its own not just as a genre, but as a subculture, with its own fashion and most importantly, its own ethos. The second wave of black metal was characterized by bands starting to use the label “black metal” as something other than a synonym for “Satanic metal” (as it would apply to Venom or Mercyful Fate, which otherwise conformed to this). This second wave was formed, not simply by the desire to create a heavier form of metal (as was the case with death metal), but a desire to escape a perceived cultural commodification. One must remember that at the time, thrash metal was mainstream, Cannibal Corpse was a semi-mainstream act, and overall those who dwelt in this particular portion of the metal scene began to feel alienated.

Thus, second wave black metal came not only with a harsh, deliberately lo-fi sound, screamed vocals, blast beats, and explicitly demonic and/or pagan lyrics, but a whole ethos to form itself around. The ethos of black metal is strange, and its exact form can vary depending on who you ask, but at the core, it is a rejection of modernity, in particular consumerism, collectivism, alienation, commodification, and globalism. In a word, it is anti-capitalist, although it rarely uses the term, or really an economic terms. It is also fiercely misanthropic, nihilistic, and in particular, obsessed with the past.

This past in particular usually being that of pagan Europe. Many black metal acts, especially in the Norwegian scene, were/are intensely enthralled with the idea of getting back to their cultural roots. This manifested itself in various ways. Some artists like Varg Vikernes and Hellhammer adopted far-right, ethnonationalist beliefs. Others, like Ulver, drew heavily from these roots to craft a kind of early folk black metal (see Vargnatt as well as their first three albums) rooted in Norwegian culture, but not necessarily rooted in any kind of explicit nationalism.

While it is perhaps incorrect to slap a label on the whole of black metal as nationalist (there are, for instance, many black metal bands that espouse anarchist and communist beliefs), the nationalism of black metal’s most prominent acts is difficult to deny. Black metal has the same fascination with a glorified past as any nationalist would have. They see the modern world as inferior, a product of mistakes.

However, and this is key now, despite its nihilistic, misanthropic, and arguably romantic view, it is a mistake to think that this is fascistic. The kind of “nationalism” that black metal views the world with is not some petty attachment to one’s people. Black metal, being anti-human in general, could not give a damn for this population or that population. Theirs is a concern with culture.

Black metal thrives in the earthly traditions of European paganism and heathenry, seeing it as untainted and uncommodified by the imperial touch of the modern world. Furthermore, black metal has no marriage to the nation-state nor to race nor even to a collective of ideas in a given plot of land, as would be the case with civic nationalists. It couldn’t rightly care about the supposed greatness of Britian, France, Norway, Italy, Germany, or what have you, nor do they give a solitary fuck about the British, French, Norwegian, Italian, or German people (“pure” or not). Black metal is unconcerned at best, and (due to its misanthropy) hostile at worst, to the concepts and implications of nationality.

It should be noted that despite its Eurocentric and Satanic roots, black metal can be found across the globe, and is by no means constrained simply to the theologies that anger the Christians. Some black metal acts go so far as to reject Satanism and heathenry altogether in their philosophical outlook, citing either Satanism’s roots in the Abrahamic mythos, or simply due to being atheists. Black metal, while not internationalist, is very much widespread and divorced from any kind of integral nationalism necessary to Nazism. It has no greater unity to die for, it lives quite explicitly for itself and only itself, in an admittedly insular manner. It is an isolationist, individualistic, nihilistic, misanthropic ethos, tied to nationalism only in a similarity (it’s romanticized view of what once was).

It’s also worth noting that for some black metal acts, even this implicit nationalism is wholly inapplicable. Scott Connor of Xasthur, for instance, has made an entire career making songs about (general) hatred, suicide, and misery, topics that are completely disconnected from any kind of nationalism. Per “Dead” Ohlin of Mayhem was also infamously uninterested in any kind of culture, nation, or people, and the bulk of his writing pertained to his own depression and to invoking the supernatural. This kind of thought applies not only to Xasthur and Dead, but to the entirety of subgenres like DSBM (Depressive Suicidal Black Metal) and blackened doom metal.

The iconography and philosophy of black metal leans hard on the concept of “evil”. Evil, however, is an incredibly subjective term, and so we must investigate what is meant by “evil” in the context of black metal. Being anti-theistic and principally anti-Christian, black metal leans hard on concepts which are associated with evil. This is mainly done by invoking Satan and using extreme blasphemy (and in the ’90s, some use of animal blood by acts like Mayhem and Gorgoroth, although this has largely stopped). To be sure, black metallers and the general public would consider this, at least aesthetically, to be evil.

Nazism, similarly, is considered by the general public at large to be evil. It should go without saying why they think this, but something of more pertinent interest would be the Nazis own view of themselves. NSBM acts frequently use evil as a point of justification for mixing Nazism with black metal. Black metal is evil, Nazism is evil, therefore the logical conclusion to black metal’s philosophical outlook is Nazism.

The first problem with this is that it is reductive and ignores historical context. To be sure, black metal certainly invokes what most consider “evil”, but this in and of itself has two main issues: Firstly that evil is subjective and secondly that evil is not its primary focus. Black metal is first and foremost a rebellion as we discussed earlier on, explicitly against modernity and implicitly against capitalism. To some this may be evil, and black metal has no qualms with that label, but to others it may not be. There are multiple fields that enter into the critique of modern civilization, ranging from psychoanalytic theory to full on rejection of civilization.

The second, and more damning problem, however, is that evil is not generally a title Nazis wear with pride. They may, like George Lincoln Rockwell, use their beliefs for shock value to attract attention (although given the distance between black metal and the mainstream, this would be a waste of time), but at no point does the Nazi, or any kind of integral nationalist, view what they do as “evil” in a meaningful way. If you were to ask Andrew Anglin of Stormfront if what he does is evil, he’d tell you, “no”. If you were to ask David Duke if what he does is evil, he’d tell you “no”. If you were asking Richard Spencer if he preached evil, he’d say “no”. Obviously this would be said to avoid looking bad, but fascists in general believe that they are operating for a greater good, specifically the good of the state and the good of “their people” (read: whites). They believe that they operate on nice sounding abstract concepts like glory, honor, tradition, the family, and the fatherland (as though land were sentient). It should go without saying that black metal is pretty much unconcerned with all of this. This narrative that NSBM acts put forward therefore falls apart — it is, like most things Nazis say, a ruse.

Nazism, like all fascism, is anti-individualistic. The subordination to the state and it’s needs is the backbone of fascist dogma, and indeed all integralist dogma. Furthermore, it advocates quite strongly for white supremacy (at least in the Euro-American model), being against immigration, miscegenation, and human rights for people of color. Although they often won’t admit this bit, fascists are pro-capitalism, at least in the sense of a state monopoly, what Mussolini called corporatism. They’ll sometimes call this “Strasserism”, “National Syndicalism”, or “National Bolshevism” to appear more legitimate, but this is a dogwhistle for Nazism.

It should be fairly obvious that all of this contrasts quite heavily with the ethos of black metal. Individualism is a cornerstone of black metal, black metal is at least implicitly anti-capitalist, and a specific fetish for a minority of the global population is in contrast with universal misanthropy. However, even this does not quite get to the core of why Nazism and black metal are incompatible ideas. Black metal is founded upon a disdain for modernity and commodification of prior metal subcultures. At its roots is nihilist individualism of a particularly absolute variety. It lives only for itself, and its consistent followers have generally kept to this. Individual black metallers may subscribe to Nazism, liberalism, conservatism, feminism, communism, etc; but in the end, there is no political black metal.

Because black metal is rooted in anti-modernity and anti-commodification, its philosophical outlook by default declares explicit political allegiance as antagonistic. All of them. This is neither a left-wing nor right-wing argument, this is the intrinsic philosophical defense mechanism of contemporary black metal. That’s why semi-mainstream acts like Cradle of Filth and Deafheaven are so maligned. That’s why black metal is traditionally recorded badly and why so many bands still record on cassette, an otherwise dead medium. That’s why there is no National Socialist Black Metal, there is no Feminist Black Metal, Liberal Black Metal, Maoist Black Metal, Libertarian Black Metal, or what have you. The philosophy of black metal as a whole is incapable of bonding itself with anything. It is, perhaps fittingly, a philosophical black hole. Something may enter, but it may not leave.

One final criticism to be leveled against the NSBM movement, perhaps the only hilarious one, is that NSBM as a movement is doomed to fail. Whilst it is true that fascism does best when left alone and allowed to spread within subcultures — the rise of nationalist attitudes amongst gamers is excellent proof — it can really only due so when this subculture has some broader connection to the outside world. Take for instance Nazism’s previous attempts to court the youth by playing loud music. The Rock Against Communism scene, established by hardcore racists in response to the Rock Against Racism movement, had legitimate power as a movement when it was established, rock music at that time being the sound of choice for the mainstream. In a similar vein, the attempted invasion of the punk scene throughout the late 80s to mid-90s, and the current infiltration of the hipster scene, are all excellent methods of spreading fascist lies.

To be sure, even the use of something like thrash metal or death metal would, to an extent, be a good move by fascists. Of course that wouldn’t work very well, not only are these scenes more accepted, they’re also downright anti-fascist, either explicitly or implicitly. And so black metal, being underground and a haven for fascism’s prime infection target, alienated working class people, seems to be at first glance, the perfect place for fascism to thrive. The only problem with this strategy being that black metal’s own isolationism makes it impossible for it to spread. Even worse, black metal meets fascism, as it does all political ideology, with resistance (as well it should). This is not to say that NSBM should be left alone, we established earlier that fascism does best when allowed to fester, but it is to say that even as a strategy to spread Neo-Nazi propaganda, NSBM is garbage.

All of which is why NSBM has rightly been met with resistance, both within the scene and outside it. Nationalism, whether of the integral, civic, or liberating variety, has no place within black metal, and racism even less so. So long as black metal breathes its own strange, cold, nihilistic air of liberty, there is no place for fascism in the scene. In conclusion, to quote Jello Biafra: Nazi punks fuck off.