Speaker 1: And we're returning. We sure hope you like the episodes
Speaker 1: investigating religious related subjects and conspiracies in the world of spirituality,
Speaker 1: because guess what, there's another one.
Speaker 2: And do you like death all of it?
Speaker 1: Like metals, You're like, wait, what are those?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Hee lung is A is a band that I really like.
Speaker 4: Their kind of paganis Oh my gosh, I remember you
Speaker 4: sent me one of those in right before recording an episode.
Speaker 4: Maybe it was this episode.
Speaker 1: No, no, it was because I think this one, this
Speaker 1: one might be the one with just you two on it.
Speaker 2: Oh maybe I think.
Speaker 5: Oh, I don't know, call it's been a long time,
Speaker 5: but I do remember I probably mentioned on this there's
Speaker 5: a documentary called Before the Light Takes Us that addresses
Speaker 5: a lot of the things we talk about in this
Speaker 5: episode pertaining to Norway's black metal scene, a spate of
Speaker 5: church burnings that captivated the media in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 5: I distinctly remember a Spin magazine feature in the nineties
Speaker 5: when I was a kid, and I think I cut
Speaker 5: some of these pictures out and pace them on my
Speaker 5: wall of different Norwegian black metal singers, one of whom
Speaker 5: I forget the name, kept a severed crow head and
Speaker 5: a bag and he would sniff it at a time.
Speaker 4: He would play.
Speaker 1: Dad the former lead singer Mayhem possibly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're almost entirely right why there was a whole
Speaker 5: feat because you wanted to smell that is fely mentally ill.
Speaker 1: He wanted people to bury him before shows so he
Speaker 1: could smell like the grave.
Speaker 5: And there is also a dramatized account of the story
Speaker 5: in the film Lords of Anarchy starring the Culcan that
Speaker 5: nobody talks.
Speaker 2: About that much.
Speaker 4: Kieran, I love Kieren.
Speaker 2: It's the younger one, Rory. I want r third. There's
Speaker 2: a third Culkin.
Speaker 4: Mcaulay will always the third heat.
Speaker 1: You never see the third Culkin coming.
Speaker 5: But anyway, movies apparently man, but I am interested in
Speaker 5: checking it out. But yeah, this is obviously a pretty
Speaker 5: interesting pet subject for all three of us, and it
Speaker 5: wraps into the larger phenomenon of the Satanic panic.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, the last thing, guys. Kieran Culkin was on
Speaker 4: SmartLess recently and it was one of the best episodes
Speaker 4: I've heard of.
Speaker 5: He's one of the best interview He just is himself.
Speaker 5: I absolutely love that guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you know he didn't learn until after the
Speaker 1: fact that the other people in succession were actors doing
Speaker 1: a script.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was just there.
Speaker 3: He just apparently.
Speaker 4: Love that guy.
Speaker 2: Hey, let's talk about some satanic black metal.
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 3: learn this stuff. They don't want you to know. A
Speaker 3: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 4: My name is Nol, my name is Matt Had.
Speaker 2: We had a stare off just as who is gonna start?
Speaker 4: I really should have said, they call me Matt. Ben
Speaker 4: is in a location far away, and yet we can
Speaker 4: still feel his ever present.
Speaker 2: Influence because it's ever present. That's his very nature. That's correct,
Speaker 2: omni present. He sort of hangs above us like some
Speaker 2: sort of cosmic cloud.
Speaker 4: Again, his presence is known. We are here with special
Speaker 4: guest producer Seth He's out there, Seth Ory, He's doing
Speaker 4: his thing. Wait, I'm looking at him and I'm seeing
Speaker 4: hands moving. I can't tell what it is, but it
Speaker 4: looks intricate and awesome. Wow.
Speaker 2: Can we give him a nickname? Seth Death, Seth Metal,
Speaker 2: Seth Metal. Yeah, you got it.
Speaker 4: That's better Seth Metal Seth Super Producer Johnson. Is that okay?
Speaker 4: I're we allowed to divulge your last day on the show,
Speaker 4: all right? Cool? He said, it's fine, Seth Metal Superproducer Johnson.
Speaker 4: That is your new title and it will be forever more. Hey,
Speaker 4: we're gonna do a quick check in you guys because
Speaker 4: something extremely exciting is coming to us in the future,
Speaker 4: probably not next year, probably twenty twenty one. Matrix the
Speaker 4: Fourth is happening now.
Speaker 2: It's called that the working title. Yeah, Matrix the Fourth
Speaker 2: Is that like a Highlander kind of situation?
Speaker 4: Yeah? There can only be four?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, don't a lot of people discount
Speaker 2: two and three? Can't we just wipe the slate and
Speaker 2: make this two?
Speaker 4: Oh? How I wish we could nol Yeah, are.
Speaker 2: You one of those naysayers of two and three?
Speaker 4: I'm not a naysayer so much as a close close
Speaker 4: You're right, it's close your eyes and like pretend it
Speaker 4: didn't happen, gotcha, And not necessarily because there are there
Speaker 4: are highlights, I should say in all three films.
Speaker 2: But I just remember the guy on all the TVs,
Speaker 2: the kind of Wizard of Oz character.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what was his name the Key Mask, No, the
Speaker 4: Key Masters, the Commissioner, the Commissioner, Yeah, yeah, no, the
Speaker 4: Architect Architect.
Speaker 2: That was I was close. It was an official title
Speaker 2: of some sort.
Speaker 4: But you guys is coming officially. We're gonna get more Neo,
Speaker 4: more Trinity, more everything.
Speaker 2: Directed by Alone Washowski.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just Lana, that's okay. You think that's gonna be
Speaker 4: a right? Who knows?
Speaker 2: Oh, I have a theory.
Speaker 4: It's not.
Speaker 2: It's very obvious theory. But you know, Keanu is like,
Speaker 2: it's the key anaisance right now. He is on fire
Speaker 2: blowing up the world with all these John Wick movies,
Speaker 2: doing his own stunts, you know, just running around shooting stuff,
Speaker 2: blowing things up all him and they're just like, you
Speaker 2: know what, people need another matrix.
Speaker 4: That's right. Well, you know those movies are such an
Speaker 4: interesting comment on society, right, It's it's very much that
Speaker 4: science fiction commentary of the future thing. Sure, So I'm
Speaker 4: interested to see how it's manipulated or changed in some way.
Speaker 2: I think I'm not as big of a matrix head
Speaker 2: as you are, but I will say I think it's
Speaker 2: a very important film because it did a really good
Speaker 2: job of sort of pushing more heady science fiction like
Speaker 2: Philip K. Dick kind of stuff into the forefront of
Speaker 2: you know, culture, and so I will forever be grateful
Speaker 2: for that. I think if it wasn't for the Matrix,
Speaker 2: we wouldn't have gotten things like Scanner Darkly and some
Speaker 2: be weirder franchises that wouldn't have happened. I'm having a
Speaker 2: hard time identifying any others. Can you think of any.
Speaker 4: Four Bears to the Matrix? No, not necessarily.
Speaker 2: All I know is that it four bears came before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, four bears I met. You can say a lot of.
Speaker 2: Gosh, those are both the same word. What's the word
Speaker 2: for the thing that comes after.
Speaker 4: The cascade of science fiction? Hard science fiction? Right, that's
Speaker 4: kind of what you're talking about. But the Matrix really
Speaker 4: did popularize this kind of more heady science fiction. You're right,
Speaker 4: and thank you for that, with Chowski's and Neo's and
Speaker 4: trinities and morephesis.
Speaker 2: What are we doing today, We're not talking We're not
Speaker 2: doing a Matrix episode.
Speaker 4: We're not talking about that today. We are officially exploring
Speaker 4: music music because the music soundtrack, thinking about the soundtrack
Speaker 4: of the Matrix. But anyway, okay, we'll get away from that,
Speaker 4: how music can affect us both individually and collectively. And
Speaker 4: you know, the three of us here today, both you
Speaker 4: and Seth and I have a very personal connect to music,
Speaker 4: and I thought we would start maybe by talking about that.
Speaker 4: How is music affected you, Neil?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I grew up playing violin, and I
Speaker 2: sang in the church choir and all that stuff, and
Speaker 2: it started kind of kind of like gave up violin
Speaker 2: in favor of the electric guitar and started being in
Speaker 2: rock bands, started doing early on kind of some metally
Speaker 2: type stuff actually, and then got more into like Smashing
Speaker 2: Pumpkins and indie rock, and then gradually graduated more towards
Speaker 2: like pavement and that kind of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: But I got definitely got my start in much heavier
Speaker 2: music for sure.
Speaker 4: Nice see For me, I grew up playing drums in
Speaker 4: a praise band at a church, and that was all
Speaker 4: music was for me for years and years and years.
Speaker 4: And the connection that music had to religion was so
Speaker 4: so close, The two were so intertwined that it was
Speaker 4: difficult for me to even explore music outside of that
Speaker 4: because I was kind of stuck in this one place
Speaker 4: for so long at least mentally, but you know, as
Speaker 4: your journey. I also found my way towards lots of
Speaker 4: other genres and ended up really enjoying some of the
Speaker 4: heavier things in life, including well, really classical heavy metal.
Speaker 4: I really doubt it all Like Bach. When I say
Speaker 4: classical heavy metal, I mean some of the classics from
Speaker 4: the sixties, seventies, eighties. I was really enjoying learning about Sabbath.
Speaker 4: Like some Sabbath, I very much did so. Again, today
Speaker 4: we're talking about music. We're talking about how powerful and
Speaker 4: highly connective music can be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the act of writing it, performing it. It
Speaker 2: is a conduit between human beings people working together to
Speaker 2: create music, and with that creation there is thought and
Speaker 2: intention sometimes behind the actual material. The act of listening
Speaker 2: to music connects people to those creators, and it's all
Speaker 2: this kind of giant web of interconnectedness, of sharing and ideas.
Speaker 2: It almost can become its own kind of I don't know,
Speaker 2: religion might be a strong word, but it's definitely a
Speaker 2: way of identifying with lots of different people that share
Speaker 2: the same either values or the same kind of aesthetics
Speaker 2: that you do.
Speaker 4: No, you're absolutely right, listening to music connects us the
Speaker 4: listener right to those those people who are creating it,
Speaker 4: to the you know, the instrument choices they're making, the
Speaker 4: words that they're saying. And in a lot of ways,
Speaker 4: it can also connect us to ourselves because music can
Speaker 4: help unlock or maybe enhance the way that we're really feeling,
Speaker 4: the way, you know, what we're really thinking, stuff that
Speaker 4: we're not allowing out into the world openly. A lot
Speaker 4: of times music is that way to kind of have
Speaker 4: us connect back to ourselves. And you know, a lot
Speaker 4: of us get to choose the music that we hear.
Speaker 4: Of course, that isn't true for all people in all situations,
Speaker 4: but a lot of us get to decide which vibrations
Speaker 4: and concepts stimulate our brains on a regular basis. Think
Speaker 4: about it, our iHeart and Pandora stations or Spotify and
Speaker 4: YouTube playlists, and these choices that we're making, they're all
Speaker 4: influenced by a ton of factors, including our location in
Speaker 4: the world, our background, you know, how we grew up,
Speaker 4: the prevailing culture or wherever that is, and almost an
Speaker 4: infinite number of other circumstances that lead to what we're
Speaker 4: listening to at any given moment, especially regularly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it really can become its own kind of
Speaker 2: microcosmic cultural experience. So many times over the year, specific
Speaker 2: cultural movements within music have been associated with violence with
Speaker 2: a particular eliciting a particular response, or at least sometimes
Speaker 2: they're lumped in with that. Here are some examples across
Speaker 2: the world, from la to Paris, to New York City
Speaker 2: to Moscow, there have been several genres of hip hop
Speaker 2: that have lyrically addressed the violent circumstances facing communities and individuals.
Speaker 4: Then if you travel down to Mexico, Central America, you'll
Speaker 4: encounter these things that are called narco corridos or drug ballads,
Speaker 4: and in these there are explorations of people living on
Speaker 4: the other side of the law, generally within the the
Speaker 4: realm of the drug trade. Now today's episode, again those
Speaker 4: are just two examples. There's been violence associated with music
Speaker 4: across space and time. But in today's episode, we're heading
Speaker 4: over to northern Europe and we're gonna check out a
Speaker 4: place that's collectively known as Scandinavia, several different countries that
Speaker 4: are beautiful, sometimes frigid just in temperature. But again, you know,
Speaker 4: you can't let yourself be influenced by just what you
Speaker 4: see on television in the way a place like Norway
Speaker 4: is shown, because that is not everything within that country.
Speaker 4: There are all kinds. There's so much diversity that occurs
Speaker 4: over there, both natural and human made.
Speaker 2: Yeah, despite what you might see depicted in mass media,
Speaker 2: kind of lazy depictions of this region as being one
Speaker 2: particular thing. And today we're exploring some strange controversies, the
Speaker 2: conspiracies surrounding the Scandinavian metal scene, the spates of church burning,
Speaker 2: and allegations of Satanism.
Speaker 4: That's right, Satanism. Every time we cover anything that touches
Speaker 4: on this. I don't know there's an error about the
Speaker 4: episode just coming into the studio. I was in here
Speaker 4: earlier when Seth came in, and I was almost not startled,
Speaker 4: but I was in my own world here researching this
Speaker 4: stuff alone, and uh got spooked. You spook yourself, not
Speaker 4: necessarily spooked, but it's it feels like I'm doing something wrong,
Speaker 4: if that makes sense, just by even studying a word
Speaker 4: like Satanism.
Speaker 2: Well, I think a lot of that might have to
Speaker 2: do with your background.
Speaker 4: I think it's all connected.
Speaker 2: Of very Christian upbringing, and this is sort of like
Speaker 2: off limit stuff because at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: I mean, there's different flavors of Satanism. Right, there's you know,
Speaker 2: legitimate pagan kind of devil worship, and then there's Satanism
Speaker 2: as more of a form of protest or like a
Speaker 2: political movement.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So let's just before we get into too much
Speaker 2: of that, let's asked the quote, give the facts. Right,
Speaker 2: here are the facts. What is metal?
Speaker 4: Oh? Metal like the genre?
Speaker 2: Oh boy, Now let's talk about the material.
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, so metal is pretty tough to define. There
Speaker 4: are a lot of reasons for that. Music critics over
Speaker 4: the years and historians. We try, we as in humans,
Speaker 4: try very hard to categorize things like this and specifically music,
Speaker 4: because we have industries like the radio industry, that in
Speaker 4: the record industry that want to put things into categories
Speaker 4: so that you can sell them and you can package
Speaker 4: them and you can talk about them in a certain way.
Speaker 4: Metal is one of those things that is it's so
Speaker 4: spread out in what could be considered metal types of metal.
Speaker 4: But there are a few people who have gone through
Speaker 4: and said, Okay, this is how we are going to
Speaker 4: define this genre.
Speaker 2: It's pretty cool. The term have you metal? I don't
Speaker 2: even know. This was first used in a way to
Speaker 2: describe music in the sixties in the song Bond to
Speaker 2: Be Work.
Speaker 4: It's so weird to me that that was considered middle
Speaker 4: by Steppenwolf.
Speaker 2: The name of the band sounds more metal than the
Speaker 2: actual song. Like, to me, that just sounds like old
Speaker 2: school rock and roll kind of you know, But there's
Speaker 2: a lyric specifically in that song that says.
Speaker 4: Heavy metal thunder yeah, And that's according to you, Oh God, don't.
Speaker 2: Actually oh right, we're big fans out No, we don't
Speaker 2: have I think we're okay.
Speaker 4: And also according to Chad Bauer, the gentleman who was
Speaker 4: talking about Born to Be Wild, he notes that quote
Speaker 4: most considered groups like Black Sabbath, led Zeppelin in Deep
Speaker 4: Purple to be the first heavy metal bands.
Speaker 2: I can totally get behind that, because, I mean, all
Speaker 2: of those bands take the tradition of kind of blues
Speaker 2: and like bar chords, but they kind of add a
Speaker 2: little chug to it and have these riffs that sort
Speaker 2: of have this like very shared aesthetic. Led Zeppelin, to me,
Speaker 2: I would argue, is maybe less metal than Deep Purple
Speaker 2: and Black Sabbath. Led Zeppelin's a little more like really
Speaker 2: leaning on the blues side of it a little bit
Speaker 2: heavier and almost making their own kind of subgenre. But
Speaker 2: you know, these are the experts, so who are we
Speaker 2: to judge? From there? The concept evolved and branched off
Speaker 2: into an absurd number of subgenres and genres related to
Speaker 2: the sound. While associated with or influenced by metal, you
Speaker 2: couldn't really describe them in that specific way. Today. For
Speaker 2: a fantastic look at the history of metal and its
Speaker 2: various genres, we highly recommend checking out this site from
Speaker 2: MI I T Yeah MIT in Boston and that was
Speaker 2: metal dot MIT.
Speaker 4: Dot e du.
Speaker 2: It gives you a really cool kind of like what
Speaker 2: do you say, like an interconnected kind of like chart
Speaker 2: that tracks the evolution of metal.
Speaker 4: Right, it's awesome, it's heavy metal, it's MIT heavy metal
Speaker 4: one oh one, and it says shattering ear drums since
Speaker 4: two thousand and six. And if you read through this,
Speaker 4: it's fantastic. It gets into so many details. If you
Speaker 4: really want to, you know, learn about that. There's got
Speaker 4: to be a music show out there that you can
Speaker 4: listen to that's gonna go over all this stuff, or
Speaker 4: just go to this website cause it's a fantastic reed.
Speaker 4: Today we're just you know, we're gonna drill down a
Speaker 4: little bit further, just into one specific genre of metal. Again.
Speaker 4: We talked about Scandinavian black metal, and that's really where
Speaker 4: we're gonna remain for the rest of the episode. So
Speaker 4: go learn about metal if you wish, come back, and
Speaker 4: then we'll continue. We'll be right here. See, I told
Speaker 4: you we were here the whole time.
Speaker 2: We never really leave.
Speaker 4: Hey, Seth, just checking in. How how are you feeling
Speaker 4: about our discussion of metal thus far? Do you want
Speaker 4: to bring up the trytone or the Devil's integer, the
Speaker 4: Devil's chord change. I forget exactly what it's called. This
Speaker 4: is like the flatted fifth. Oh man, you guys, familiar
Speaker 4: flatted fifth.
Speaker 2: Sounds pretty evil?
Speaker 4: Well it again, it is. It does sound evil, and
Speaker 4: it was it was coined the I think it was
Speaker 4: the Devil's Oh. I can't remember exactly. I didn't actually
Speaker 4: write this down. This is me pulling from old, old,
Speaker 4: old knowledge that's deep in my head somewhere. It's a
Speaker 4: musical interval, let's see, composed of three adjacent hole tones.
Speaker 4: I don't really know what that means. I just know
Speaker 4: that one of them is a flatted fifth of the three.
Speaker 2: And this actually is this contained in metal music.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Black Sabbath in particular. If you go to that
Speaker 4: MIT site we were talking about, it talks about them
Speaker 4: using this to great effect because it's it almost feels
Speaker 4: like a note that shouldn't be there. If you're writing
Speaker 4: a traditional song with chord changes that are in the
Speaker 4: same key or something, this flatted fifth is almost it's
Speaker 4: eerie almost, or it throws you off a little.
Speaker 2: Sort of like the blue note and blues or jazz.
Speaker 2: It's the thing that makes it kind of sad. This
Speaker 2: is the thing that makes it kind of evil. Metal
Speaker 2: thrown up my horns when I say that. So yeah,
Speaker 2: making no mistake though. What we're talking about is Scandinavia,
Speaker 2: which is ground zero for heavy metal. In twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: the Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bilt tweeted quote Finland and
Speaker 2: Sweden seem to be the global leaders in metal bands,
Speaker 2: along with a map sourced from CIA dot gov a
Speaker 2: metalarchives dot com showing just how many metal bands originate
Speaker 2: in Sweden, Finland and Norway. This is very important to
Speaker 2: remember for later and people have actually studied Swedish and
Speaker 2: Finnish in an attempt to better understand some of their
Speaker 2: favorite metal bands.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, very much so. And you guys, we need
Speaker 4: to take a quick break. Then we'll get right back
Speaker 4: in and keep this rabbit hole going. And we're back
Speaker 4: talking the Scandinavian black metal. Now, according to the metal
Speaker 4: blog Invisible Oranges sounds interesting, right, it's by Cosmo Lee.
Speaker 4: The popularity of metal in any given region can be
Speaker 4: arguably reducible to a few factors. Now, there's a researcher
Speaker 4: that was consulted here named Donald McGuire, and he wrote
Speaker 4: a paper called Determinants of the Production of Heavy Metal Music. Now,
Speaker 4: this guy, he went deep. He explored fifty five different
Speaker 4: factors and found that the number of heavy metal that
Speaker 4: is produced in any given area depends on seven things.
Speaker 4: Are you ready for these? And seth, I'm gonna be
Speaker 4: looking to you to see if you agree with any
Speaker 4: of these, because it's it doesn't seem real to me,
Speaker 4: But there's some sand to this. Number one, the percentage
Speaker 4: of the population that is Catholic.
Speaker 2: The percentage of the population with zero religion.
Speaker 4: Okay, so those are two interesting, possibly opposing things. Number three,
Speaker 4: the latitude of the country.
Speaker 2: Whether the country has a Scandinavian legal history.
Speaker 4: Number four, the number of years that that country was
Speaker 4: under Marxist.
Speaker 2: Rule, and the number of the population that are males
Speaker 2: between the ages of fifteen and twenty four.
Speaker 4: And finally the number of concert halls per one million persons.
Speaker 2: So this isn't a perfect system by any stretch of imagination,
Speaker 2: but attracts with what we know about Scandinavian history, demographics,
Speaker 2: and culture. And you can read the full analysis over
Speaker 2: there at Invisible Oranges as well as the paper published
Speaker 2: in Metal Music Studies.
Speaker 4: Really interesting, right, So if we break some of this
Speaker 4: stuff down, if you have a percentage of a population
Speaker 4: that identifies at least as Catholic, then another significant portion
Speaker 4: of a population that identifies as having no religion, you
Speaker 4: can see how there could be some people at odds
Speaker 4: there when you throw in the latitude of the country
Speaker 4: at least. This is what I'm inferring, is that you're
Speaker 4: bringing in how warm generally and how humid the climate
Speaker 4: is in any given country. And also you know, depending
Speaker 4: on the elevation and in the area where people are located.
Speaker 4: I wonder if elevation, I wonder if you should have
Speaker 4: put elevation in there somewhere. That would have been fascinating.
Speaker 4: But you know, then the other ideas of just literally
Speaker 4: saying does it have a Scandinavian legal history fascinating, And
Speaker 4: then the whole Marxist rule thing, I don't know. I
Speaker 4: want to learn more about that, so I'm going to
Speaker 4: go back and read some more about that later. But
Speaker 4: for now, let's just keep going on here because we've
Speaker 4: pretty much established what metal is a little bit at least,
Speaker 4: and we also know that metal itself, several versions of it,
Speaker 4: is supremely popular within the Scandinavian countries that we mentioned above,
Speaker 4: you know, Sweden, Finland, Norway.
Speaker 2: Yet in the States, the US and abroad, it's always
Speaker 2: kind of had a bit of a controversial image, right.
Speaker 2: So during the Great the Satanic Panic in the US,
Speaker 2: heavy metal music, along with dungeons and dragons, were both
Speaker 2: sided its contributing factors and everything from violent assaults like
Speaker 2: the murder the child murders at robin Hood Hill. Yeah,
Speaker 2: those guys were all metal fans, and they were sort
Speaker 2: of railroaded because of that that fact alone, and you know,
Speaker 2: was implied that because they listened to heavy metal music,
Speaker 2: they were participating in some sort of satanic rituals, which
Speaker 2: brings us to another factor, the rise of devil worshiping,
Speaker 2: or the perceived rise of devil worshiping during that period,
Speaker 2: and property damage and more.
Speaker 4: And it's crazy there because things range from annoyances like
Speaker 4: property damage and riff raff coming around here listening to
Speaker 4: their heavy metal music and messing up my garbage cans
Speaker 4: to literally murder. That's that's at least the perceived stuff
Speaker 4: going on here from portions of the US population. And
Speaker 4: just to add to all that stuff, anything culturally that
Speaker 4: becomes a little bit popular that is contrary to some
Speaker 4: of the what I guess what the powers that be
Speaker 4: would wish the established culture would be. I don't know
Speaker 4: if that even tracks is making sense to anyone listening
Speaker 4: out there. But anytime something is a little outside of
Speaker 4: the regular thing, especially when it comes to religions in
Speaker 4: or the popular religions in an established area, it can
Speaker 4: be viewed I think that it's seen as anti establishment,
Speaker 4: and a lot of times these movements are meant specifically
Speaker 4: to be anti establishment or anti norm I guess. Now
Speaker 4: in Scandinavia, particularly in Norway, there is a genre that
Speaker 4: we've kind of mentioned here called black metal, and this
Speaker 4: in particular was cited as the cause of an intense
Speaker 4: anti Christian terrorist campaign. That's right, an anti Christian terrorism campaign,
Speaker 4: and black metal was cited as being a part of
Speaker 4: a conspiracy to protest the country's dominant religion through the
Speaker 4: act of literally burning down the most sacred sites of
Speaker 4: people's faith in Norway churches. Now here's a big question
Speaker 4: was this true. Was black metal truly to blame for
Speaker 4: this conspiracy to burn down churches across Norway. We're gonna
Speaker 4: explore that, and we're gonna talk about reasons that it
Speaker 4: may have just been a little bit of propaganda at
Speaker 4: the hands of media in the vicinity in Norway to
Speaker 4: fight back against some anti establishment movements. But we're gonna
Speaker 4: find out. So let's move forward. Here's where it gets
Speaker 4: crazy right here, right here, all right, I'm ready for it.
Speaker 4: I feel like I just set up all that stuff
Speaker 4: as in, like we're gonna find out, we're gonna do this,
Speaker 4: We're gonna we're gonna check into it. Well, guess what,
Speaker 4: we already researched it. We're in here recording it right now,
Speaker 4: and it's absolutely true that black metal itself in some
Speaker 4: way had to do with this conspiracy to burn down
Speaker 4: churches in Norway.
Speaker 2: Between nineteen ninety two and nineteen ninety six, no less
Speaker 2: than fifty successful or attempted church burnings were attributed to
Speaker 2: musicians and fans of the black metal scene in Norway.
Speaker 2: So CNN describes black metal in this way, and this
Speaker 2: is very very good description. Black metal is a subgenre
Speaker 2: of heavy metal music that typically takes on anti Christian, satanic,
Speaker 2: and paganistic themes. Black metal songs typically have a fast
Speaker 2: tempo they called blast beats and featuring the feature shrieking.
Speaker 2: I've always refer to them as kind of witchy vocals
Speaker 2: like like that, yeah, yeah, and also heavily distorted guitars,
Speaker 2: more so than just like your metal zone pedal, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: any guitarists out there, a lot of the audience might
Speaker 2: remember the boss metal zone. Yes, classic metal good distortion.
Speaker 2: It's more of a wall of It's an absolute, distrustioning
Speaker 2: wall of distortion, like like static almost like it's almost
Speaker 2: bordering on atonal. But then there are shreddy rifts and
Speaker 2: lead licks and everything like that, and unconventional song structures
Speaker 2: so lots of weird time signatures, tempo changes, things like that,
Speaker 2: and some of the big bands in that scene that
Speaker 2: the term black metal actually comes from, the British group Venom.
Speaker 2: It was one of the most influential black metal bands,
Speaker 2: and there were other acts like Bathory, Mayhem, Barzoom, Immortal Emperor,
Speaker 2: and my personal favorite Gorgoroth, whose lead singer plays a
Speaker 2: big part in some of these stories. So it's important
Speaker 2: to note that these acts of church burning or vandalism,
Speaker 2: property damage, what have you, they could be actually considered
Speaker 2: acts of domestic terrorism with one unified aim, and that
Speaker 2: is to protest the very existence or you know, the
Speaker 2: hegemony the kind of dominance of Christianity in Scandinavia, a
Speaker 2: country that was founded on a pagan or Odinist kind
Speaker 2: of set of beliefs and then sort of taken over
Speaker 2: by Christian Christian beliefs, and these churches very much represent
Speaker 2: that hegemony in that kind of you know, other force,
Speaker 2: that kind of zen and maybe steers the history of
Speaker 2: this part of the world away from their more you know,
Speaker 2: kind of the Viking type roots.
Speaker 4: It's interesting to see it as almost cultural vengeance against
Speaker 4: that kind of thing or you know, taking back the
Speaker 4: power of the history in some way. It certainly doesn't
Speaker 4: excuse the acts in any way, but it is interesting
Speaker 4: to see it in that light. So let's jump to
Speaker 4: the the documentary Satan Rear Media. Satan Rides the Media, okay,
Speaker 4: and in it, prominent members of Norway's black metal scene
Speaker 4: are asked.
Speaker 2: Satan rear media means in English, Satan rides the media.
Speaker 2: I got it.
Speaker 4: That's not like abtitle. Apologies, Yeah, I should have specified that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's we would call it here and Nolan, I would
Speaker 4: call it Satan rides of the media. So they take
Speaker 4: the Norway's black metal scene and they ask a bunch
Speaker 4: of people about these instances of church arson and inside
Speaker 4: it there's a guitarist named Jorn Ing Tunsberg and he
Speaker 4: was convicted for a church arson and he answers or
Speaker 4: at least considers this question by saying, quote, the reason
Speaker 4: behind burning asy church was that Norway is always so
Speaker 4: moral Christian morals, rules and regulations are always religious. The
Speaker 4: more Christian, the more you hate it. You understand that
Speaker 4: Norway should not be Christian, as in, you understand who
Speaker 4: he's speaking to. You understand that Norway should not be
Speaker 4: Christian and then he says, and that is the reason
Speaker 4: for burning asan church. It's asan e church. The point
Speaker 4: is very symbolic really, so it kind of gets to
Speaker 4: what we're talking about. It's a reaction to something that
Speaker 4: they view as improper.
Speaker 2: So this other fellow named Varg Vikerns, who was imprisoned
Speaker 2: for charges including the murder of a fellow black metal
Speaker 2: musician named Eronymus. Uronymous was in a band called Mayhem
Speaker 2: and Vickers was in a band called Barzoom. He was
Speaker 2: also imprisoned for the charges of burning down three churches
Speaker 2: and the attempted arson of a fourth. So this is
Speaker 2: how he responds to this notion of what Christianity means
Speaker 2: to him as a native Norwegian quote, the church has
Speaker 2: behaved so disgracefully, basely and cruelly in Norway. It's incredible
Speaker 2: when they talk about Satanism. When someone burns a church,
Speaker 2: they ought to look to themselves and remember all the
Speaker 2: sacred places they have burnt, they being the Christians, and
Speaker 2: ruins on top of which they have built their churches.
Speaker 4: Wow. Again, that whole thing just feels like metal lyrics.
Speaker 4: They have a point there, right, when you think about
Speaker 4: the Crusades, you think about the things that the most
Speaker 4: popular religions in the world have done as a large group.
Speaker 4: Certainly isn't to vilify any of the individuals, right, but
Speaker 4: as institutions over time, for hundreds and hundreds of years,
Speaker 4: many of them have don and some fairly horrific things.
Speaker 4: So if you look to other documentaries and interviews, you'll
Speaker 4: hear black metal musicians offer similar things. As a gentleman
Speaker 4: named call gaa Hl his realname is Christian ivand Espittal,
Speaker 4: he's the guy that's in Gorgorath, That's the dude. That's
Speaker 4: the dude, and in Metal a Headbanger's Journey. This dude
Speaker 4: unapologetically expresses his supportive church burnings, and it's kind of
Speaker 4: unsettling because he also expresses his desire to see more
Speaker 4: church burnings. Let's just burn them all. And here's his quote.
Speaker 2: He says, church burnings and all of these things are,
Speaker 2: of course things that I support one percent, and it
Speaker 2: should have been done much more and will be done
Speaker 2: much more in the future. We have to remove every
Speaker 2: trace from what Christianity and the Semitic roots have to
Speaker 2: offer this world. Satanism is freedom for the individual to
Speaker 2: grow and to become superman. Every man who is born
Speaker 2: to be king, because king, every man who was born
Speaker 2: to be a slave doesn't know Satan whoa You kind
Speaker 2: of get a pretty serious sense that he is literally
Speaker 2: anti Semitic because he's talking about how the Semitic roots
Speaker 2: and you know, religion and culture are inherently a bad thing.
Speaker 2: And he's kind of espousing some like almost nichean kind
Speaker 2: of like the same things that Hitler would have talked
Speaker 2: about as far as like, you know, becoming the superman,
Speaker 2: and there is very much a kind of Aryan flair
Speaker 2: to what he's saying.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, and here in you know, we've had several
Speaker 4: examples here at this point of people either supporting or
Speaker 4: at least lending a tiny bit of support to these
Speaker 4: church burnings that were occurring in Norway in Scandinavia, and
Speaker 4: it's easy to maybe think, oh, well, then everybody in
Speaker 4: the black metal scene has this view the black metal
Speaker 4: as a genre, as a music and as a culture
Speaker 4: means that it's anti all of this stuff in church burnings.
Speaker 4: They would view church burnings as a good thing. But
Speaker 4: you have to remember that doesn't mean just because we
Speaker 4: have three or four doesn't mean that the whole thing
Speaker 4: is monolithic. It doesn't mean that all the musicians and
Speaker 4: fans support this practice, but it is, you know, something
Speaker 4: in the wheelhouse of what we were wanting to explore
Speaker 4: when we set out to do this episode, which is,
Speaker 4: can music itself or the culture surrounding and music influence
Speaker 4: us and influence our actions? And when I say us,
Speaker 4: I mean everybody. Anybody could it. And at least it
Speaker 4: appears in this way that the shared outlook or in
Speaker 4: motivation for a lot of this type of music does
Speaker 4: seem to be steering at least quite a few of
Speaker 4: the people involved in it in a certain direction. But again,
Speaker 4: if you tried to say all of black metal is
Speaker 4: doing this at all times, it would be like saying
Speaker 4: all fans of hit pop or whatever. Anyone who's ever
Speaker 4: attempted to freestyle of Verse are one hundred percent on
Speaker 4: board with drive by shootings, which is like one of
Speaker 4: the stupid stupidest things you could say. And I feel
Speaker 4: dumber for even mentioning. It.
Speaker 2: Don't feel that way, Matt, but it needed to be said.
Speaker 4: It's an equivalency.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And furthermore, it seems that the supporters of church
Speaker 2: bringings are themselves not a unite in front in the
Speaker 2: first place. Some folks like Var Vickerns seem to argue
Speaker 2: in favor of what they see as a culture war.
Speaker 2: In his blog post, Vicarans argues that the conflict between
Speaker 2: pre Christian Norway and modern Christianity is similar to the
Speaker 2: fear and conflict between some modern Europeans and Islamic culture.
Speaker 2: Should also be noted that the core of vickerns beliefs
Speaker 2: are rooted in racial ideology, which is also seems to
Speaker 2: very much be the case for Gaul.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you definitely see the echoes there. Now, there are
Speaker 4: others involved with this stuff who are not a part
Speaker 4: of the black metal scene, lone actors outside of Norway
Speaker 4: who may simply be disaffected, isolated people. Overwhelmingly the people
Speaker 4: who took part in this were young men, and perhaps
Speaker 4: they were just seeking an outlet for some inner rage,
Speaker 4: some personal conflict, some conflict that they see as a
Speaker 4: wider thing. But it doesn't necessarily have anything to do
Speaker 4: with what we've been speaking about prior to this.
Speaker 2: So it follows then that the original waves of church
Speaker 2: burnings were based on this kind of religious fanaticism, the
Speaker 2: idea that pre existing Norse mythological beliefs were the true
Speaker 2: creed of the region, and that Christianity had to be
Speaker 2: uprooted and driven from the land in its entirety. So
Speaker 2: the association with a Christian Satan therefore doesn't make a
Speaker 2: whole lot of sense in that context, right. Why would
Speaker 2: a religious fanatic commit an act of violence in the
Speaker 2: name of a supernatural being that his or her actual
Speaker 2: religion doesn't even acknowledge.
Speaker 4: That is pretty weird, right, We were talking about that
Speaker 4: a little bit off, Mike, Just how in order to
Speaker 4: truly believe in some kind of religious satanism you would
Speaker 4: have to essentially take the or be a Christian but
Speaker 4: just an anti Christian, rather than have another view. It's
Speaker 4: really strange.
Speaker 2: So denying the idea of Christianity would also make it
Speaker 2: where you would have to deny the existence of Christian
Speaker 2: Satan or a Lucifer. So there'd be no reason whatsoever
Speaker 2: in this frame of thought for Satan to exist, much
Speaker 2: less to be supported by physical acts of violence. Fun fact,
Speaker 2: how much of a cultural supremacist is Vickarans Well? He
Speaker 2: actually refers to Christianity as a quote immigrant religion.
Speaker 4: How racist is he?
Speaker 2: He constantly complains that the character based on him in
Speaker 2: the fictional film Lords of Chaos is a quote fat Jew.
Speaker 2: This guy is kind of a hot garbage person.
Speaker 4: That is unfortunate that that person has those beliefs and
Speaker 4: says those thinks. Okay, so we're gonna take another quick
Speaker 4: word from our sponsor, and then we're gonna come back
Speaker 4: with our conclusions and what we've found here. We're back.
Speaker 4: So the question remains how much of the satanism that's
Speaker 4: extolled in Black Metal, at least at the time that
Speaker 4: the church burnings were happening, was genuine, how much of
Speaker 4: it was ideological, or how much of it was true
Speaker 4: theistic satanism that we've talked about before on the show,
Speaker 4: and how much of it was more or less window
Speaker 4: dressing or pr meant to provoke and garner attention. Because remember,
Speaker 4: these are musicians. They have bands, they have obligations a
Speaker 4: lot of times to sell a certain number of records,
Speaker 4: and you need to get your name out there. This
Speaker 4: is certainly one way to do it, but you could
Speaker 4: also wind up in jail, which would probably be a
Speaker 4: bad call. But we do know that there were true
Speaker 4: believers in the Scandinavian black metal scene. Uronymous this guy
Speaker 4: that we've talked about earlier. He was often credited as
Speaker 4: one of the primary founders of the actual Satanic movement.
Speaker 4: He described himself as a theistic Satanist.
Speaker 2: Exactly in an interview by Asa Lafenpera for Kill Yourself
Speaker 2: magazine charmingly titled magazine, Uronymous put his beliefs in this
Speaker 2: way quote, I believe in a horned devil, a personified Satan.
Speaker 2: In my opinion, all the other forms of Satanism are
Speaker 2: bullsh I hate that some people think up idiotic ways
Speaker 2: of making eternal peace in the world and dare to
Speaker 2: call it Satanism like so many do. Satanism comes from
Speaker 2: religious Christianity, and therefore it shall stay. I'm a religious
Speaker 2: person and I will fight those who misuse his name.
Speaker 2: People are not supposed to believe in themselves and be individuals,
Speaker 2: be individualists. Rather, they are supposed to obey, to be
Speaker 2: the slaves of religion. I think he's being tongue in
Speaker 2: cheek here. I don't I know.
Speaker 4: It seems like.
Speaker 2: A smart alec.
Speaker 4: It seems like so much of it is just a commentary,
Speaker 4: it's cultural commentary. But again, in a way, these are
Speaker 4: these are artists, right, These are people who are massively
Speaker 4: creative when they when they make music, when they you know,
Speaker 4: decide what their band's gonna look like, what the stage
Speaker 4: is gonna be like, what the album cover is gonna
Speaker 4: look like. It certainly isn't hard to imagine that there's
Speaker 4: also some creativity happening here when you're speaking with a
Speaker 4: magazine such as this. But you know, to this day,
Speaker 4: long after Uronymous is murder, remember this was a whole
Speaker 4: other thing, right by varg Vickerns. Yeah, people argue about
Speaker 4: how much of his image Uronymous, how much of it
Speaker 4: was sincere, and how much of it was truly attention
Speaker 4: seeking or you know, posturing or again kind of an
Speaker 4: act on purpose to be a part of the stage
Speaker 4: show and a part of the version of himself that
Speaker 4: exists within his music.
Speaker 2: And yet none of this stuff, none of these realizations
Speaker 2: are gonna unburn any churches.
Speaker 4: So there it is.
Speaker 2: There was in fact, an active conspiracy to burn churches
Speaker 2: in Norway in the nineteen nineth But however coordinated these
Speaker 2: attacks might have seemed outsiders, the reality is they were
Speaker 2: motivated by a number of different, at times completely contradictory reasons.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, you're talking about religious fanaticism led some people
Speaker 4: to set fire. Others appeared to be attention seeking. They
Speaker 4: seem to be displaying provocative behavior on purpose for a
Speaker 4: different reason.
Speaker 2: Yes, some acceptance seeking or proving themselves to be part
Speaker 2: of a group of isolated loners, which is really interesting
Speaker 2: to write, I'm part of this group of isolated people.
Speaker 2: Well it's the counterintuitive, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but again it makes sense in another way. And
Speaker 4: you know they're also cultural and ideological and sometimes racial
Speaker 4: supremacists that were in play there, as we saw at
Speaker 4: the end. But as for a true you know, shadow
Speaker 4: of Satanism that's looming over Scandinavia, we still have to
Speaker 4: ask ourselves in the end how much was true satanism
Speaker 4: on the part of the individuals involved. There were some,
Speaker 4: but we can't prove much more than that. How much
Speaker 4: of this whole thing was influenced by the media coverage,
Speaker 4: by a bit of hysteria. I mean, there are a
Speaker 4: lot of churches burning around in a fairly short period
Speaker 4: of time. That could be pretty scary, and it would
Speaker 4: also cause people to turn on their TVs and watch
Speaker 4: a news station and buy newspapers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and how many of these incidents were just attempts
Speaker 2: to get attention. More than twenty years later, these questions
Speaker 2: kind of still remain, and.
Speaker 4: I don't know how we're truly gonna get rid of
Speaker 4: all of them, but we do know there's more to
Speaker 4: look at here, and perhaps we'll continue down this rabbit
Speaker 4: hole a little bit, you know, at a later date,
Speaker 4: but for now, we're gonna leave it at that. Churches
Speaker 4: were burned, for sure, and enough people within the black
Speaker 4: metal scene in Norway and the rest of Scandinavia, enough
Speaker 4: people seem to be in on it and happy about.
Speaker 2: It, yeah, willing to talk about it. There's a really
Speaker 2: interesting documentary called Before the Light Takes Us that is
Speaker 2: about all of this stuff. Really interesting, goes into great
Speaker 2: detail about the feud between bar Zoom and Mayhem and
Speaker 2: that murder and how that kind of fed into this
Speaker 2: scene and a lot of the kind of I don't know,
Speaker 2: for lack of a better term, identity politics behind this stuff,
Speaker 2: because it was these kind of factions about like who
Speaker 2: could be more evil and who, you know, was more
Speaker 2: a true believer. But even within that there is a
Speaker 2: lot of posturing. And I mean, you know, these we
Speaker 2: haven't even talked about this. These these black metal artists,
Speaker 2: they wear corpse paint and I have a very which
Speaker 2: is white makeup and you know kind of runny black
Speaker 2: eye like liners around their eyes, sort of looking almost
Speaker 2: like a king diamond that that the artist or whatever
Speaker 2: or like sting the wrestler. Yeah, I have a very
Speaker 2: distinct memory of a really great article because a lot
Speaker 2: of this happened when I was a kid who was
Speaker 2: in Spin magazine and an interviewed a handful of like
Speaker 2: kind of like big figures in the Scandinavian black metal scene.
Speaker 2: And I remember one of them like had a decaying
Speaker 2: crow that he kept in a bag and every time
Speaker 2: he would like perform, he would like sniff the decaying
Speaker 2: crow in the bag so that he had the set
Speaker 2: the smell of death in his nostrils. So, I mean,
Speaker 2: there's definitely a drive among some of these folks to
Speaker 2: be very authentic and to absolutely i don't know, for
Speaker 2: lack of a better term, practice what they preached, and
Speaker 2: some of that involved burning down churches.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and sniff and crows. That is just that's a
Speaker 4: way to win me over.
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