God is perversion, The Regular said, after having gulped down the glass of champagne in one go, and the clouds are the dust from his feet, as the Old Testament Book of Nahum states, form and time are the conclusion, the perversion, the eternity, the road to the source, what everyone most fears; the maternal womb, Bernharður, my dear cumin friend, that’s the gateway into the perversion, it’s your origin, death, immorality, and god … Now, the Chamber Orchestra is setting up, they’re going to play Stabat Mater by Haydn, not Stabat Mater by Vivaldi or Pergolesi, Haydn but not Palestrina and not Scarlatti, Haydn instead, these are the designated Haydn days … on the other hand, it’d be refreshing to have some death metal on the turntable about now, but that’s probably not possible in a public space, have you noticed how boring reality is, Bernharður? An intricate weft of domination and aggression, leaving you unable to do what you want; in real life a man is never alone, never a wilderness, a man is in a settlement of boredom, it would be too stressful to put death metal on the turntable if not everyone’s into it, but then again no one listens to death metal except perhaps one or two teenagers who are neither old nor mature enough to be here inside this stately place, death metal is one of the most challenging genres of music that ever existed, in death metal there are swift chapter divisions and the feelings and emotions lie deep, the way burning magma does, down in the dark glow of the human soul, apathetic and venting simultaneously. Death metal is reminiscent of Bach, Beethoven, and Vivaldi, I want to say Haydn, too, but I cannot say Haydn this and Haydn the other, though it’s fun to say his name, Haydn, Haydn, Haydn, it’s like swallowing grapes whole, it’s better to say Bach, Beethoven, and Vivaldi, although Haydn is the emperor of classical music. Most people insist on a wide separation between death metal and Bach, Beethoven, and Vivaldi, they consider death metal childish and classical music mature, but it’s a short leap, in one sense childishness is a kind of advanced state, the sound differs, that’s all, though admittedly there’s no composer in death metal equivalent to Bach, Beethoven, and Vivaldi, much less Haydn, but there’s still a connection between so-called classical music and death metal as art forms; actually, I’ve never been able to call classical music classical music, The Regular opined, music genres come and go, the sound wakes and reverberates, what is genre, really? … genre is a tree … Now the orchestra is beginning Stabat Mater by Haydn … what a welter of pure grief, I feel like I never get closer to the nature of dreams than when I’m listening to good music, dreams are superior to waking because they are nearer to chaos, to the source, to perversion, god, eternal life, one fishes deep down in the abyss of the upper atmosphere, in emotions, futile memories, in absurdities pregnant with meaning … waking now seems rather eccentric compared to sleeping’s sensual oblivion …There’s no music anymore, just repetition and perversion, death metal ended music, was both its nadir and peak, the last remnants of the form: western music reached its pinnacle with Sturm und Drang, deteriorated from there all the way to death metal and flowed out onto the sand, in 1989 the album Altar of Madness by the band Morbid Angel came out; never before had such crazy energy surged out of speakers anywhere on the planet, it scraped deep inside you, direct contact with the depths, with rusted demersal trawlers sunk into the sand, and then this new genre, death metal, evolved with considerable power: two years later the masterpiece emerges, Blessed Are the Sick, a work of art, a masterwork, The Regular said, using telepathy in order that everyone could enjoy the orchestra and choir on stage performing Stabat Mater by Joseph Haydn, it was the beginning and the end, all masterpieces are serpents, they bite their own tails, and exist in isolation, they give nothing away except pleasure and death, vital pleasures but lacking in creative interest, the serpent eats itself and becomes a world unto itself, negative, unable to reproduce or approach any significance, only able to enjoy the inverse of time, caught between pleasure and forgetting its trials out there in the world, set apart from the sensations of life; the album art for Blessed Are the Sick is graced with a painting by the Belgian artist and symbolist Jean Delville, Les trésors de Satan, which hangs in Brussels in the Museé royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Belgium, or, as I call it, Bulgeum, museums and arts the heaving bodies full of fries and mayonnaise and waffles and cream … I’ve twice been to Bulgeum, and have made a beeline for the Museum of Beautiful Art with the sole purpose of seeing this picture, but both times they were working on the roof of the museum in the room where the picture normally hangs so it had been packed in cellophane and aluminum foil and put down in the basement; there’s plenty to see in the museum, of course, so I didn’t feel sorry about being in the empty shack, which wasn’t really empty and wasn’t a shack, either; I wasted my entire day at Hieronymus Bosch’s altar-tablet, no, a shame to say wasted in this context, spent the day, rarely have I spent my time better than at this altar of Jeremiah, and I wouldn’t have, or it would have been less impressive, had The Fortune of Satan been hanging somewhere in the place, and all my energy been directed to that picture, as planned—so I feel that I didn’t waste the day in front of Bosch’s altar-tablet of Jeremiah but instead spent the day, the imagery on the altar-tablet explains all man’s consumption and his wasting of God’s gifts; it is in fact thanks to the band Morbid Angel and the album Blessed Are the Sick that I was such an eager visitor to Museé royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, where you often find death metallers scattered like seed about the place; I haven’t dressed like a death metalhead since I was seventeen, none of the visitors or staff could tell from looking at me that I’d come to the museum specifically to see the painting by the symbolist Jean Delville, Morbid Angel groupies go on pilgrimages to Bulgeum, to Brussels … Morbid Angel is a mystic band, the band’s occult background makes it a powerful band, they gained their knowledge from one single book, as happens so often with the occult, one very general book, full of enigmatic symbols, in the case of Morbid Angel it was the NECRONOMICON, which is actually a forgery, and that might be called its strength: Morbid Angel is based on the philosophy of the mad Arab in the Necronomicon. The Necronomicon was released in a pocket edition in the 1970s, a time when the members of Morbid Angel were growing up in Florida, under constant threat of the atom bomb, a threat that belonged to the adult world, a world they weren’t able to deal with, but that they heard about daily, the media saying the world might perish at any moment in an atomic explosion; where might they hide? In a garage with instruments and a large amplifier, little fellows fascinated by the Necronomicon, the Book of the Dead, finding shelter from the world’s threats, even as the book explained how to open portals and let unspeakable horrors in; that book was the foundation of death metal. The Necronomicon comprises the experiences of a mad Arab and his knowledge of the forces which lie beyond the manifestations of reality; the mad Arab writes that he saw unknown and unmapped lands, lands without place names, he is an ideal character for the writer H.P. Lovecraft, it was as if he foresaw the Cold War, monsters waiting outside the world’s limits, waiting to break in and destroy everything we hold dear … the Necronomicon is fictional, a sour mishmash of Sumerian Studies, the heart and brain of the HP-sauce oeuvre I myself read as a teenager who was into death metal: Morbid Angel shared it with me, they had read it and I had to read it, the Necronomicon itself is a hell in Lovecraft’s works, a fictional hell, anonymously published as an ancient manuscript, you can arguably trace death metal to a Brit, Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge, though he himself would hardly recognize that fact: this nineteenth century Brit, Sir Wallis Budge, worked at the British Museum and published the Egyptian Book of the Dead in 1899; this became the bible of Aleister Crowley and also obsessed H.P. Lovecraft, who made his own Book of the Dead, the Necronomicon, via a concoction of Sumerian Studies and the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and when it was reprinted as a mysterious Found Manuscript in the ’70s, there were two teenagers in Florida named Trey and David, they lost themselves in it, became dark symbolists overnight, establishing the band Morbid Angel to bring these discoveries into s
ight. Morbid Angel built its art and creations on a 17,000-year-old heap of lies and fictions which then found their way directly to me, and I swallowed it inside, essential for everything.
Although the band Morbid Angel had four members, two forces ruled it, Trey Azagthoth the guitarist and David Vincent the bassist and singer; Trey composed the music and David the lyrics. David Vincent’s voice is an occult growl; he was tall with blond wavy hair like Gunnar from Hlíðarendi, a bit tattered and worse-for-wear, with thick arms, bull-chested, and decorated with tattoos galore, a ring in his nostril, his tone deep and gloomy, he had chosen to lose his way out of guilt, wanted to search the dark woods of his mind, he was a poet with a propensity for sacrifice who shared his gloomy suffering as an act of sympathy toward others and as a cruelty, a solution for the lesser beings who followed him, pained and suffering, the way shadows follow a wolfherd; he was the great mother to these sufferers, blasting out protections for them with his creations. David Vincent was a beast. Trey Azagthoth was swarthy, you seldom saw his face’s sunken cheeks, never his eyes, due to his black hair and dark appearance, he was unassuming, his clothes shredded and torn; little was known about him. Trey was the fervor, David the means, but the real wonder is a third, background power which binds the band together, Peter Sandoval the drummer, very pimpled and unpredictable, he seemed to have sold his soul to the devil for his talent and art, he’s known as Pete the Feet due to his speed and stamina and outlandishness, and sometimes Peter Strandhöggvir, Peter Coast-Cutter, raining down coastal blows in his music, unpredictable, the drummer’s full name is Pete the Feet Coast-Cutter Sandoval, and one might say, The Regular said, that Pete the Feet Coast-Cutter Sandoval is the Robert Johnson of death metal …
Robert Johnson?
Who sold his soul to the devil, one of the lead wethers in Satan’s fortunes, a true wild sheep, all those who want to be artists have to sell their souls to the devil, sacrifice everything, including themselves, go beyond all limits, otherwise there can be no art, it’s an unfortunate job being an artist, and perverted—with occasional joy, however, some pleasures, actually nothing but pleasure, idle pleasures that erode one’s inner being … many people think that art requires suffering, that’s not quite right, no art causes suffering, rather art becomes a triumph over pain, the same thing applies to beauty, the same thing applies to truth; O, what a miserable destiny, being an artist … that man there ought to know all about it, the underworld poet Worm Serpent, one of the poets who frequents this place, he wrote the book The Black on the Shore, poets are odd screws, most writers aren’t poets, of course, upon closer inspection, usually poets are stupid people pretending to be wise, some are poets by nature but do nothing with that, they’re maladapted in some respect so fail to nurture their talents, perhaps in a treatment center or job they hate, in order to find the poetic they would need to mute their personality and let their environment swallow them and hope to be squeezed back to life in the asshole of reality, that’s my opinion, the true poet goes through the world like a child, as Georges Bataille said about William Blake, The Regular said, Worm Serpent has just published the book The Buzzing of Existence, he publishes many books a year and he pesters people on the street so that they are forced to buy them off him, other people can’t handle him because he is a dwarf, but also not a dwarf, people don’t know what to do, best to just pay and get the hell away, I’ve seen people buy books and discard them in the trash can on the next street corner, out of his sight, it’s sad, there are not many dwarfs left, they’ve been destroyed, Worm Serpent is a true poet although everyone says he isn’t, that will happen after he’s dead, isn’t that just swell? He is, of course, truly mad, but a real poet has to enter the moonlight, go to the altar of madness and return afterward to mass, it’s perhaps not until after death that the poet returns: the mental patient remains in madness, unable to control his travels; the poet walks out of the church, the poet does not even need to go into the church, or so I think Bataille said of Blake, though he never said that, poets don’t need anything but the smallest fragment in order to describe the entire world, one little seed becomes a whole field of ideas, and all these ideas the world … the poetry book Detritus in Studded Tires—Stars in Rubber Heaven, that’s the name of one of Worm Serpent’s, The Wind Does Not Know the Way Home, The Low Hum of Flight, Time and the Phone, My Dirtiest Shirt Clean, Designer of the Mixmaster, you must collect them, The Rustle of the Bag came out after this and there are many others too, there’s no way to keep up, I usually go on the run if I see Serpent twisting along the street and am ashamed; it quite destroys a man’s day! He is doing his best; no one can tolerate him now, but when he dies everyone will compete to acquire his books, to talk about their friendship with him, about how remarkable he was, though while he is alive very few people can put up with him, a very few good-hearted people and only for a micro-moment …Worm is sometimes called The Venomous Snake, and he is really happy with that, presents himself sometimes as a venomous snake, people see him on the street and think: there goes the viper with its poisonous tooth, best to flee … he is a biting poet, said The Regular, both a word for the poison of a serpent and an ancient poetic locution for swords …Worm is a dwarf and not a dwarf, he is a big dwarf, a short serpent, he is always out on the street downtown selling his books and chatting with people, one needs to be in quite the special mood to meet him, one has to be in an outdoor mood, in the mood to sit on a bench and have nothing to do, moderately pessimistic, then you’re ready for the poet, sitting on a bench in the afternoon sun and taking snuff with him and grumbling about how bad the situation is everywhere, in parliament, out in the world, Worm spends all day downtown persecuting people, at dinnertime he goes to the west side of town and rings the doorbell of some influential member of society, a sea captain, a bank manager, a foreman, he gets to eat with one of them, sells a book or is dealt with in the form of a thousand króna bill to go back downtown to sit in a cafe or bar and spend the money. I don’t know where he lives; he probably rents a room somewhere up in an attic where he writes poems, and paints, too, abstract symbolist pictures with a naive-ish appearance … Jean Delville, the Belgian painter who painted The Fortune of Satan—the painting I have never seen because the roof leaks in the Museé royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique and the picture is always down in the basement—belonged to a mighty symbolist movement at the end of the nineteenth century in France and neighboring countries, I’ve always loved this concept, symbolism, the sequence of chords in this concept, they were great eccentrics, these symbolists, Delville joined a simple revival of Spiritism in Europe, it pops in my mind to call them a kind of spiritual impressionist, I’m thinking out loud, said The Regular via telepathy, you’re getting my unfiltered thoughts, straight from the barrel … no, now I’ve lost the thread … as soon as you begin to explain something, you lose your thread … Morbid Angel … there’s an unexpected connection between Morbid Angel and the symbolists, it runs deeper than just the fact that Les trésors de Satan by Jean Delville graced the cover of Blessed Are the Sick: mysticism, based on emotion and invented information, a fiction, the NECRONOMICON is fiction, and not a lie, there’s a big difference there, it is a relationship to pleasure, to dark feelings … being high … an exploratory expedition to the source-forest … Edvard Munch is a symbolist and I reckon Vincent Van Gogh is also a symbolist, although all the art historians in the world seem to me likely to disagree, Van Gogh is usually classified as impressionism or postimpressionism … you’re on the right track when art historians are disagreeing with you … The Scream by Munch, that’s the same howling as death metal, though death metal doesn’t set palms to cheeks on stage, that would smack of effeminacy, there’s significant homophobia in death metal, but it’s the same scream, a scream within from the limits of Being, an invocation, an invocation to death after life … there’s a certain art to screaming, or rather to bellowing, there are small amounts of screaming, purer experience, a bellow is a balanced scream, tempered, death metal
is the taming of wild destruction, the bellow siphoned from a man so he can retain his sanity, bellows are small screams that prevent screams going quantum like in Munch’s painting, which is an effeminate howl, untamed, desperate, it would be fun to write a paper about howling in death metal, to examine the types of howls, the distinction between bellowing and howling and screaming, their characteristics and meaning, the thesis could be called:
Oraefi Page 13
