Enjoy My Flames

March 24, 2022 11:22 AM

Lapham's Quarterly delivers a deep-dive analysis of Roman allusions, imagery, and most of all, Emperors, in heavy metal music. Follow Jeremy Swist down the metal rabbit hole \m/
posted by supermedusa (14 comments total)

It's surprising that Maximinus Thrax, whose name may be the most metal of all Roman emperors, only rates two mentions.
posted by jedicus at 11:39 AM on March 24, 2022 [6 favorites]

the metal rabbit hole

Poor rabbit, that must be a very unpleasant place to live. I bet the acoustics are terrible.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:46 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

jedicusTOTES!! that name is SO metal!!!
posted by supermedusa at 11:49 AM on March 24, 2022

"And in 2015 the French death metal band Autokrator released its debut album, which features lyrics that continue Suetonius’ and Julian’s quest to denigrate Roman monarchs infamous for megalomania and moral depravity. Similarly, Autokrator’s mastermind Loïc Fontaine said, “I don’t admire rulers I speak about. Most of them are fucking bastards.”"

I interviewed Loic in 2016 about how one his other bands, NKVD, ended up in the Blair Witch. From what I can tell, he's a private, unassuming guy, and despite borrowing authoritative aesthetics for the stagecraft in NKVD and Autokrator, seems pretty consistent in his rejection of authoritarianism. He's also quite nice and kept sending me every album his label released even after I had hung up my blogging hat.

Autokrator's latest mentioned Trajan as well (and is a pretty solid album, to boot).

Thanks for posting this.
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 12:33 PM on March 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

Encyclopaedia Metallum is an internet treasure, for sure.

Song hits with "Sauron": 241
Morgoth: 133
Gandalf: 84
Oden: 470
Twilight Sparkle: 2
Fluttershy: 1 (Yeah, had to check that one out)
posted by gwint at 1:44 PM on March 24, 2022 [7 favorites]

Oden: 470

Spelled Odin in English, German, Norwegian, and most Latin-alphabet-using languages other than Swedish, I think. 2,588 hits.
posted by jedicus at 1:51 PM on March 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

Ah, good point. 2,588 + 400 songs by Amon Amarth
posted by gwint at 2:00 PM on March 24, 2022 [5 favorites]

Maximinus Thrax, whose name may be the most metal of all Roman emperors

I mean, trying a little too hard don't you think?
posted by rhizome at 7:01 PM on March 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

Maximinus Thrax, whose name may be the most metal of all Roman emperors

I mean, trying a little too hard don't you think?

Biggus Dickus was already taken.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:54 AM on March 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

No Heliogabalus? Metal doesn’t know metal.

Septemius Serverus was also fairly metal, and his predecessor, Pertinax, could be a band name…
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:07 AM on March 25, 2022

Oden: 470

Clearly they're songs about oden, the Japanese fish cake stew. Understandable, it's pretty tasty.

But I always thought metal was more focused on Ancient Egypt and Native Americans than Ancient Rome.
posted by star gentle uterus at 6:56 AM on March 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

Star Gentle Uterus, there's a strain of what might be considered western chauvinism in black metal especially, and that often manifests through Roman iconography and lyrics. Diocletian, for example, take their name from the Roman Emperor who persecuted Christians (as pointed out in the article), but Diocletian are also Nazi-adjacent and likely embrace those aesthetics both as a rejection of Christianity and as an embrace of national socialism.

Unfortunately, a lot of black metal is Nazi-adjacent, to the point that I tend to just assume a band is, at the least, composed of right wing edgelords unless they state otherwise. Anything on Nuclear War Now! (Diocletian's label), Hells Headbangers, World Terror Committee, and Terratur Possessions is pretty suspect, to say nothing of the blatantly NSBM record labels. Even nominally "neutral" labels like Season of Mist and Profound Lore are run by CHUDS who are perfectly fine with giving money to Nazis, despite the left-leaning bands they sign. Portal, the vaunted weird death metal band, for example, is signed to Profound Lore and were recently outed as Nazi-adjacent; their guitarist, Horror Illogium, posts Nazi iconography to his private Instagram account and was bragging in some interview about sneaking wolfshooks into their latest album's cover art.

Folks in this thread have alluded to the utility of Metal Archives for finding specific lyrical themes, but it's also really useful for figuring out how to not give money to Nazis. If you see lyrical themes like "tradition" or "history," those are big red flags. You can also click on band members and look at related bands. Sometimes a band will seem perfectly apolitical until you dig into members' past bands and find something explicit Nazi. Reddit.com/r/rabm is also a useful screen, as knowledgeable folks embedded in various metal scenes around the world have done tremendous work in uncovering the insidious right wing networks of musicians.

Generally speaking, if you're looking for non-Nazi black metal, stuff from the Cascadian Black Metal scene (e.g., Wolves in the Throne Rome) tends to be okay. The US scene certainly has its own share of NSBM (see Operation Werewolf), but it's definitely safer than any European black metal.
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 8:34 AM on March 25, 2022 [5 favorites]

I mean, trying a little too hard don't you think?

... and what's more metal than that?
posted by Paul Slade at 4:53 AM on March 28, 2022

Portal, the vaunted weird death metal band, for example, is signed to Profound Lore and were recently outed as Nazi-adjacent

Aw, fuck.

Thanks for the r/rabm tip. It would be nice not to have to mine for subgenres and maintain a "bad music for bad people" site (apologies to The Cramps) that would track the problematics like TV Tropes.
posted by rhizome at 1:27 PM on March 28, 2022