I have begun exploring Canadian/Quebec black metal. Seems a lot has happened under my nose in the last 15 years or so and I didn’t sniff much of it out. Tragic. Embracing CDs and cassettes again during the fucking expensive vinyl “resurgence” has opened the doors of a whole new world of music that was never pressed to wax. The vinyl there is is actually affordable too.

I understand being frustrated, sick, angry, disillusioned and tired about having no real choice in the broader world other than to go with the way things are. People who make and distribute violent, cacophonous music they knowingly won’t profit much from simply because they like it themselves is the last bastion of consistent authenticity I can find. So I continue down that left-hand path. I don’t want to meet them and they don’t want to meet me. Just the tape please. It’s beautiful.

Black metal is the only real silence I can find, silence being a lack of intrusive and undesireable noise. When historically asked about what made black metal different, I often said the soul. Black metal is about metaphorical, cosmic and spiritual violence and upheaval. Much like a reflection of the intellect of the world at large this can be either deeply philisophical or completely idiotic (i.e. theistic satanism, which just makes you the other side of the same coin. Play with imagery, don’t buy it). Like with any religion taking this stuff at face value is misguided. It’s meant to make you think, not be. The inside joke in all of this is that the outside world thinks it’s being taken literally and seriously because if they don’t they’re dismissing their own serious, literal convictions. What a mess.

Recently I have purged a significant amount of $2 CDs I had accumulated from thrift shops over the years. I thought I would draw people into my world if I had music they liked available. I did not. That music was from a world I obviously don’t belong to, purchased by a spirit that doesn’t exist anymore for a time and place long passed. It held no possible purpose in my future.

Gone.

When you live near an edge in any way it’s assumed you accept that you’re wrong for crossing the yellow line and that you know you’re just a devil’s advocate. Turns out that’s what the accusers are. Would it really be that bad to just do things “normally”? I dunno, would it really be that bad to stop being afraid and fighting for the homogenous in their quest for world boredom? Labelling myself in my own mind with the nomenclature of a world I don’t belong to has caused me nothing but problems. I’m not a title. I’m not a belief. I’m not your attitude problem. I’m not a job. I’m not anything.

I’m everything and nothing.