Photo by Jeremy Farmer

Last month, Thurston Moore made some incendiary comments about black metal while promoting his new album with his new band, Caught on Tape. "Black Metal is music made by pussies of the lowest order, and we felt it was necessary to investigate this aberrant anti-music behavior," he said. "We feel like the sound and attitude of black metal is a loss of self, life, light and desire in a way where it becomes so negative that a whole new bliss arrives where we become super pussy."

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Moore explained the thinking behind those comments and elaborated further. When asked by Rolling Stone if he "was trying to be provocative", he said:

That was really taken out of context. It was really funny how people got tweaked by that. I was answering a question. How do you answer a question about black metal? Black metal, it doesn't even consider itself music. In fact, it doesn't want to be confused with any kind of music because it's something else entirely. It's a voided concept from its start. It's all about complete disintegration of existence. It's a music that uses the elements of rock instrumentation but it's so anti-everything that, for me, it doesn't matter what you say about it because it doesn't exist. I figured I would just write something ridiculous about it. And boy, did black-metal devotees get really upset by it. You're not supposed to be alive, so why are you getting upset?

He then talked about playing with black metal supergroup Twilight on the album III: Beneath Trident's Tomb:

There are certain stylistic maneuvers within black metal that really informed me as a guitarist and I use in my own playing. And I think some of the people who are seriously involved with that scene realized this about me and reached out to me. That's certainly true of Neil from Krieg, who sings on Twilight. He's a true black metal aficionado and devotee and he's a real important exponent of that music, and he reached out to me and wanted to know if I would take part in this project. And I think it was a little bit of a risk for those guys having somebody who's not exactly 100 percent in the scene to get involved. But I think they trusted my integrity with it.

When Rolling Stone pointed out that Sonic Youth have a song called "Non-Metal Dude Wearing Metal Tee", Moore replied, "And as somebody else said, 'Sonic Youth had a song called 'Satan Is Boring' – he's been attacking our lord ever since the Eighties!' I super enjoyed making that record. That's a wild community. It takes a lot of stamina to keep up with those guys because they're monsters."

Listen to "The Best Day" from Moore's forthcoming solo album: