Song: Part I – The Death of Dead
Viewed: 15 - Published at: 2 years ago
Artist: Hunter Hunt-Hendrix
Year: 2010Viewed: 15 - Published at: 2 years ago
THE HAPTIC VOID AS FINAL CAUSE The history of metal can be considered in terms of levels of intensity. Considered in this way, black metal shows itself to be a culmination or endpoint of this history, and also a dead end. The historical development of extreme metal is not a chance series of stylistic shifts. It is teleological - governed by a dimly understood but acutely felt Ideal, or a final cause. This final cause is named the Haptic Void. The Haptic Void is a hypothetical total or maximal level of intensity. It is the horizon of the history of metal.
Orientation towards the Haptic Void is expressed as feeling. The feeling is a unity, but in thought we can break it down into four elements:
There is first of all a certain muscular clenching, a constriction of the jaws, fists, arms and chest. Secondarily there is an affect: a certain aggression or brutality, a paradoxical sense of power, destruction, fullness and emptiness. Thirdly it features a primordial satisfaction relating to the affect which acts normatively. Good metal produces a satisfying bouquet of clenching, constriction and brutal affect. Finally there is a barely discernable je ne sais quoi that says “not enough”. A complementary dissatisfaction – as though no brutal breakdown can be quite brutal enough. It is a fissure, a crack, a lack of being. An insufficiency compared to the promised plenitude. Maybe it’s the inability of any concrete song to measure up to the inspiration that gave birth to it. Paradoxically this dissatisfaction is felt in direct proportion to the level of its complement.
It is this dissatisfaction, this fourth element, which causes extreme metal to develop new styles over time. This is the pull of the final cause. This opening, this fissure, is the angel that guides metal’s history. We see metal march towards the void, leaving thrash, death metal and black metal, successively, in its wake.
But the promise made by the Haptic Void is a lie. Only its absence is ever present. TRANSILVANIAN HUNGER Hyperborean Black Metal is the culmination of the history of extreme metal. Hyperborean Black Metal was born in the Arctic Circle, which is traditionally known as the Hyperborean realm. The Hyperborean realm is a land that is fallow because it lacks periodicity. There is no birth or death there because the sun neither rises nor sets.
Hyperborean Black Metal is the culmination of the history of extreme metal (which is itself the culmination of the history of the Death of God). The subject of this history may be compared to a mountaineer, maneuvering over and across the various terrains of thrash, grindcore and death metal – or rather, carving these terrains into the mountainside - and striving to reach the Haptic Void, dimly understood but strongly felt, glimmering brightly at the summit.
Hyperborean Black Metal represents the moutaineer’s arrival at the peak and a supposed leap off of it, directly into the Haptic Void. A total, maximal intensity. A complete flood of sound. An absolute plenitude. But there he learns that totality is indistinguishable from nothingness. He learns that it is impossible to leap into the horizon. And he is left, crestfallen, frozen and alone, in the Hyperborean realm. It is a dead static place, a polar land where there is no oscillation between day and night. But stasis is atrophy. The Hyperborean realm is dead with purity, totally absolute, selfsame and eternal. The mountaineer undergoes a profound apostasy that he cannot fully understand and arrives at nihilism.
The technique of Hyperborean Black Metal is the blast beat. Pure black metal, represented by Transilvanian Hunger, means continuous open strumming and a continuous blast beat. But the pure blast beat is eternity in itself. No articulated figures, no beginning, no end, no pauses, no dynamic range. It is a bird soaring in the air with nowhere to perch even for a moment. What seemed at first to be a great clamor dwindles to an atrophied hum. Having climbed to the peak of the mountain, the mountaineer lies down and freezes to death.
Orientation towards the Haptic Void is expressed as feeling. The feeling is a unity, but in thought we can break it down into four elements:
There is first of all a certain muscular clenching, a constriction of the jaws, fists, arms and chest. Secondarily there is an affect: a certain aggression or brutality, a paradoxical sense of power, destruction, fullness and emptiness. Thirdly it features a primordial satisfaction relating to the affect which acts normatively. Good metal produces a satisfying bouquet of clenching, constriction and brutal affect. Finally there is a barely discernable je ne sais quoi that says “not enough”. A complementary dissatisfaction – as though no brutal breakdown can be quite brutal enough. It is a fissure, a crack, a lack of being. An insufficiency compared to the promised plenitude. Maybe it’s the inability of any concrete song to measure up to the inspiration that gave birth to it. Paradoxically this dissatisfaction is felt in direct proportion to the level of its complement.
It is this dissatisfaction, this fourth element, which causes extreme metal to develop new styles over time. This is the pull of the final cause. This opening, this fissure, is the angel that guides metal’s history. We see metal march towards the void, leaving thrash, death metal and black metal, successively, in its wake.
But the promise made by the Haptic Void is a lie. Only its absence is ever present. TRANSILVANIAN HUNGER Hyperborean Black Metal is the culmination of the history of extreme metal. Hyperborean Black Metal was born in the Arctic Circle, which is traditionally known as the Hyperborean realm. The Hyperborean realm is a land that is fallow because it lacks periodicity. There is no birth or death there because the sun neither rises nor sets.
Hyperborean Black Metal is the culmination of the history of extreme metal (which is itself the culmination of the history of the Death of God). The subject of this history may be compared to a mountaineer, maneuvering over and across the various terrains of thrash, grindcore and death metal – or rather, carving these terrains into the mountainside - and striving to reach the Haptic Void, dimly understood but strongly felt, glimmering brightly at the summit.
Hyperborean Black Metal represents the moutaineer’s arrival at the peak and a supposed leap off of it, directly into the Haptic Void. A total, maximal intensity. A complete flood of sound. An absolute plenitude. But there he learns that totality is indistinguishable from nothingness. He learns that it is impossible to leap into the horizon. And he is left, crestfallen, frozen and alone, in the Hyperborean realm. It is a dead static place, a polar land where there is no oscillation between day and night. But stasis is atrophy. The Hyperborean realm is dead with purity, totally absolute, selfsame and eternal. The mountaineer undergoes a profound apostasy that he cannot fully understand and arrives at nihilism.
The technique of Hyperborean Black Metal is the blast beat. Pure black metal, represented by Transilvanian Hunger, means continuous open strumming and a continuous blast beat. But the pure blast beat is eternity in itself. No articulated figures, no beginning, no end, no pauses, no dynamic range. It is a bird soaring in the air with nowhere to perch even for a moment. What seemed at first to be a great clamor dwindles to an atrophied hum. Having climbed to the peak of the mountain, the mountaineer lies down and freezes to death.
( Hunter Hunt-Hendrix )
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