"Black Metal in the Culture Industry"
unpublished research project
Abstract:
As a student of Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin, Theodore Adorno [1903-1969] continued the Marxist perspective of the Institute of Social Research [later known as the Frankfurt School]. His work on the culture industry presents cultural criticism highlighting the potential and successive failure of modern media, both that of “high” culture and of “popular” culture, to overcome the dialectic relationships established through the post-industrial social situation of capital societies.
In this paper look at Adorno’s essays on music (an area which he wrote extensively about)3 and the culture industry alongside the subculture of Black Metal.
Focusing on the Black Metal band Emperor, I first look at the recording formats of Emperor’s their demo Wrath of the Tyrant which disrupts the artificiality of the produced album through low-fi recording. Then, I look at how the aesthetics of the Black Metal band Emperor favor the autonomous individual, a yearning for rebirth and a new valuation of “the new.” I conclude by reaffirming the relation between the Black Metal subculture, and describing how it both resists and is contained by industry.