Black metal has been rife with purists since it first emerged as a distinct subculture in Norway in the early 90s, and many of its most devoted fans still insist that it has to come from Scandinavia to be considered “true.” Ten years ago this faction was influential enough that American black metal was widely considered a knockoff or even a joke, but today the music’s audience is so much larger and more diverse that the zealots no longer have that kind of pull. American bands like Leviathan, Xasthur, and Wolves in the Throne Room are now seen as standard-bearers of the style, in large part because they’ve departed from its orthodoxies—instead of imitating 20-year-old Emperor records, they’re pushing black metal in new directions, coloring it with psychedelia or even prog rock.
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Black metal has pretty much always been dogged by a handful of bands that espouse philosophies that aren’t merely ugly but downright toxic: anti-Semitism, racism, ultranationalism, neo-Nazism. Some people believe Nachtmystium to be one of those bands, and while there isn’t a lot of incriminating evidence out there, in cases like this a lot isn’t required. In a 2005 interview with Metalreviews.com, Judd referred to MTV and other media outlets as “Zionist means of demoralizing young American’s [sic] artistic standards.” And two early Nachtmystium discs, 2001’s Unholy Terrorist Cult demo and 2002’s Reign of the Malicious, were at some point distributed by Vinland Winds and Unholy Records, respectively—both of which have ties to white supremacist organizations and specialize in national socialist black metal, an explicitly racist sub-subgenre.
Concerning the anti-Semitic quote, Judd insists it was taken out of context—but Metalreviews.com senior staffer Zadok Day is skeptical of that. “Our interviews generally are based on accurate transcripts,” he writes, “and assuming that to be the case here we at Metalreviews.com stand by it.” Whatever he was trying to get across in 2005, though, Judd now disavows the word Zionist. “I probably didn’t realize exactly what I was saying,” he says. “I made a stupid comment when I was a kid.”
Instinct: Decay was embraced not only by metalheads outside the black-metal enclave but also by fans it’d be a stretch to refer to as metalheads at all. “It’s really kind of easy to, you know, pioneer off into other realms with this type of music because it is such a closed-minded genre,” Judd says. “A lot of people, I think, are afraid or unwilling to really experiment. . . . It’s kind of easy to be creative with it because not a lot of stuff has been done with it. It’s still a relatively fresh genre of metal. What I notice is when black-metal bands change their genre, they turn into death-metal bands. If you look at Behemoth or somebody like that, you know, you go from being necro to Morbid Angel.” To be necro is to achieve the ideal state of grim, frostbitten black metal-ness. “You don’t go from being necro to a fucking jam band or whatever.”
Eyehategod, Nachtmystium, the Atlas Moth, Yakuza, Bongripper Sun 6/20, 8 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, $25, $20 in advance, 21+.
