Westboro Baptist Metal - "Antichrist" Review (0%)
When I was a kid I remember seeing a news report on a Westboro Baptist Church protest.
I say protest but there was like 2 or 3 people holding "God Hates Fags" and "Thank God For Dead Soldiers" signs while an occasional car driver would honk to signal his disapproval or something.
I was pretty young but I remember thinking that the whole thing seemed fake.
Staged, to be more precise.
I mean, come on... 2 or 3 people holding signs in the middle of nowhere and every news channel just happens to be there to document the "event" in the most minute details?
Years later, I learned a little bit more about the history of the Westboro Baptist Church and my initial suspicions were all but confirmed.
Contrary to what the media was claiming at the time, the Westboro Baptist Church was neither "right-wing" nor was it even an organic movement.
The Westboro Baptist Church was purely an astroturf group set up by a certain Fred Phelps, with the help of the media, and never amounted to anything more than he and his family parading around the streets of rural America and sometimes "protesting" a soldier's funeral.
As for Fred Phelps himself, he spent his pre-Westboro years suing private companies for "racial discrimination".
"I systematically brought down the Jim Crow laws of this town", he claimed.
That's hardly fitting of a neo-Hitler, so I understand why the media were so eager to keep that aspect of his life concealed.
What's interesting about the Westboro Baptist Church is that their antics had the effect of uniting two supposedly antagonistic factions of US politics behind the "War on Terror" and the neoconservative agenda: the pro-homo left and the pro-military right.
How is that related to black metal, and to Gorgoroth specifically?
Keep reading.
Westboro Baptist Metal
I recently watched the documentary Until the Light Takes Us and the parallels are just too obvious to ignore.
In this film there is a particular interview with Varg Vikernes (Burzum) that caught my attention.
During the interview, when asked about Satanism, Varg Vikernes starts by claiming that "none of the bands involved in the original black metal scene were Satanists" and that the "devil worship" was nothing more than a media creation.
Both of these statements have been corroborated by pretty much every black metal artist involved in the early Norwegian black metal scene.
Varg Vikernes is not a Satanist. Fenriz is not a Satanist. Nocturno Culto is not a Satanist. Euronymous was not a Satanist. Abbath is not a Satanist. Hellhammer is not a Satanist. Dead was not a Satanist. Frost is not a Satanist.
Satyr of Satyricon admits as much: "We were about 30 in the black metal scene and not one band worshiped the devil or anything like that".
Black metal is not satanic, no more than the Westboro Baptist Church is a "right-wing Christian movement".
While the media was eager to paint the Norwegian black metal scene as Satanists, it was a completely fabricated image that had nothing to do with the resentment of Norwegian black metal musicians towards Christianity and middle-eastern values.
The media wanted it to be about devil worship, they were ready to completely fabricate a false history of black metal to suit their narrative.
But this is where it gets interesting.
During the same interview, Varg Vikernes says: "This interpretation, by the media, made up the foundation of a completely different movement. [...] That was a result of the media coverage. [...] But then there were copycat bands, unrelated to our movement, that were confirming the media's version. They were making all of it worse. The media was saying 'this is about Satanism', I was saying 'hey, you're wrong', and then the media was saying 'no, we're right... look at these guys [the copycat bands]'.".
What changed since then?
Well, during the mid-nineties, there was a little something called the Internet that started to get pretty big.
All of a sudden, information wasn't a one way street anymore... the original black metal bands could give their own version of the events.
And they all, pretty much unanimously, confirmed what Varg Vikernes said: "Yeah, we just hate Christianity because it seeks to erase our native European/Scandinavian culture. Black metal has nothing to do with goats and pentagram".
The media was pretty much between a rock and a hard place because, for the first time in history, the false history of black metal they worked so hard to create was falling apart.
Enter Infernus, the Fred Phelps of black metal.
Some black metallers accuse Infernus of being a rapist and a neo-nazi while others accuse him of being a crypto-feminist.
But mostly, everyone in the black metal scene agrees that he's a poser clown.
So after starting his band Gorgoroth well after the second wave of black metal ended and the hysteria surrounding "Satanism" was beginning to die down, what was the first thing Infernus did?
He ran to the media and introduced himself as a "prophet of Satan" who "made a pact with the Devil to dethrone Euronymous", thereby providing them with an alibi justifying their completely fictional narrative of imaginary black metal devil worshipers.
Never mind the fact that Infernus was never part of the original black metal scene.
Never mind the fact that he is exactly the type of "copycat band" that Varg Vikernes warned about.
The media had their alibi, and they were more than willing to compensate Infernus for his efforts by promoting him as the "face of black metal".
Let's go back to the Westboro Baptist Church for a moment.
Do you know what every single member of the family did when Fred Phelps died?
They all, without a single exception, "saw the light" and rejected the "hateful doctrines of bigotry".
Now they are all "educators" giving seminars about "tolerance" and "equality". You couldn't make this up.
They figured there was much more money to be made playing repentance and conning gullible liberals into buying their books about a completely fictional cult that never existed outside of media news reports.
So, how much money are you willing to bet that Infernus, who is himself just a media prop, will soon follow suit?
How much are you willing to bet that once the gravy train of "satanic black metal" runs dry, he too will "see the light", convert to Christianity and reject the "hateful doctrines of Satanism"?
He too, like the Westboro Baptist Church, will turn on a dime once he is no longer useful to the media narrative.
Conning gullible kids with a fictional Satanic act...
Conning gullible seniors with an equally fictional Christian act...
It's just good business.
Antichrist score: 0/100.
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