The Four Abrahams

A Philosophical Discourse
on Heavy Metal and Modernity

Text and photographs®Lutz Alexander Keferstein

Loyola University Chicago
June 2004.
nietzsche_reich@hotmail.com
Preface: Thy Kingdom Will Come

Tortured souls have been set free

taunting he who sits on high
pray thy kingdom come…
Morbid Angel
“Thy Kingdom Come”

In his Fear and Tremor Kierkegaard illustrates the three proposed stages of the

individual by means of the biblical story of Abraham. Since the method used in his text

is, rather than a plain and faithful incursion in the story, a reconstruction of it through the

description of all hypothetical scenarios, the reader cannot escape from a certain dosage

of suspicion, which involves his conclusion of the leap of faith. In one way or another,

Kierkegaard already knew the pious and graceful ending of the biblical narration.

Abraham had surely all the possibilities of action described by Kierkegaard in front of his

eyes and inside his mind, but the laws of temporality that govern the human existence

limited him to the election of only one of them. He was limited to and by the conditions

of his own humanity. The number of possibilities does not mind at all. The decision was

made, the action taken, and it will remain unchangeable for all eternity for it is now a part

of a past long time gone, which will never come back. The effects of the other

hypothetical courses of action can as well only be hypothetical.

Culture and its forms of expression are less limited than Abraham. As a sort of

organic being resulting from the gathering of the works of its representatives, culture can

walk as many paths possible, simultaneously. Art and culture can live many lives at the

same time. It is actually conformed by these many lives. On the other hand, the advice of

Kierkegaard’s leap of faith shows itself to be not so faithful; because it derives from facts

seen in retrospective, it is easy to advice to follow the words of God from the standpoint

of the shelter of a certainty given by a past, whose termination is already known, and

2
simply play with the “what ifs”, which will carry no further consequence than a

comforting intellectual, perhaps cathartical, mental exercise. However, the developing of

the decisions, actions and works of the representatives of culture, the creators, the artists,

directs its eyes towards an uncertain future. In a certain way, both Abraham and the artist

are in the search of immortality, of transcending the barriers of temporal and corporeal

limitations; but in comparison the path of Abraham is quite secure. He follows hetero-

imposed rules, furthermore, holy commands, whose obedience, in the worst case, would

translate only in the rejection of society in exchange of his desired transcendence: eternal

life in heaven; while the man aspiring to become an artist has to create his own laws if the

goal shall ever have any chance to be attained. The former has no responsibility beyond

his own actions, and even if he is to be negatively judged, it will only be so by third

parties, who do not play a central role in Abraham’s life or generation of commands. The

latter is, besides, responsible towards his nature, desires and capacities; towards the

external and the internal; toward his self-imposed norms. He is not only the subject of

more than one higher power, incarnated in the forms of art as a concept and stream as a

style; he also has to rise as a higher power himself, creating what gives him existence. A

conflict of forces impregnates the scene: the artist must reach flexibleness by offending

without desecration, transformation by destroying without annihilation, individuality

within the whole.

The real leap of faith is performed towards the future by the artist, in a world

conformed by art, which allows us, the public, to see the realization of all the possibilities

in the past and the present; to witness these everlasting dialectic in the form not of a

3
spiral, but rather in one of a spring, since there is no guarantee of the depuration

symbolized by the frequent recurred image of the former.

* * *

If Kierkegaard chose the story of Abraham to illustrate his inner tension to try to

elevate it to a general state of the human, Horkheimer and Adorno chose the one of

Odysseus challenging the myths as a symbol of the dialectic they saw in the cultural

existence of society. Kierkegaard proposed submission, remaining thus in the tradition of

mythical thinking while modernity describes a rather evident struggle between that

hetero-imposed dogmatism and the human tendency to defy it just to create his own form

of dogmatic despotism under the light of reason.

If metaphysical and logical principles are right, an effect has to be a reflection of

the essence of its generator. Thus, if the dialectical man expresses through culture, and

culture is the result of the works of man that conform it, these latter have to be a valid

source of dialectical analysis; but dialectics is not as simple as two opponents facing each

other. The Ying and Yang are not plain and pure extreme sides of the reality; each one is

impregnated in its core with the seed of the other, and this seed –if there is to be the

metaphysical logic necessary in such a concept – has to be its own side impregnated in its

core by the opposing side in a process that will continue ad infinitum. So in every form of

art, in any stream of each of these forms, and in each work that integrate that stream

dialectics has to be found.

Music, thus, has to reflect that order of things, and within music each one of its

streams. The rhythm of archaic drums was answered with the accords of sitars; the

solipsism of the instrument, with the communion of the group; basic compositions, with

4
classical symphonies, later confronted by more developed forms of popular musical

constructions. In retrospective, the classical mathematical precision and perfect tonalities

remained sacred until they were challenged by the syncopation of Jazz, and its either

sacred or highly intellectualized topics expressed in the form of religious or mystic

chants, suddenly faced the rebellion of the yearning of the common people manifested

through the lyrics of blues. Not that before these two musical streams there had not been

any other forms of popular musical expressions, but it is historically evident that until

their rise, classical music had not had any sort of real challenge to his authoritative crown

coming from outside its own lineage. Jazz and Blues arouse as two siblings that

reclaimed its rights to a robbed crown and with the favor of the peasants won their battle.

However, the end of history lies far away from our sight. Just as in any other royal

family, the new kings soon refused to mix with the mob, and performed an incestuous

marriage that gave birth to two sons, who, being a product of public incest, were in the

beginning rejected by society. Each one took different paths. The older, realizing the

possible power resting at the reach of his hands, reconciled with his rejecters and became

a prince, a symbol of the new Ying. The younger realized his brother’s actions and rose

against him, despised society and its values and remained rejected as a bastard, to

symbolize the Yang. Their names…Rock & Roll and Heavy Metal. The Tragedy of the

first is its self betrayal, which dissolved its inner dialectic and brought it to the end of his

history. Rock & Roll is a thing of the past, and left Heavy Metal with the load of

dichotomizing to survive, of becoming aware of his own dialectic and enhance it to

survive.

5
 The present text, has imposed itself the task, thus, to relate Horkheimer and

Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment to this bastard child – who despite all attacks

against it refuses to die – by means of the Kierkegaardian multi-possibilities method, but

differentiating from it, because in Heavy Metal, for it is a form of art and culture, all this

paths are vivid, real and, parallel.

The Mirror and the Serpents, or The First Abrahams

The destroying genius of idols

Will shroud the world with utter lies
My Dying Bryde
“Symhonaire Infernus Et Spera Empyrium”

Just as Odysseus symbolized the fight of the human reason, in its instrumental

façade, against the dogmatic monsters of myth, who before their succumbing to the

Greek hero terrorized, amazed and determined the contours of the human world, the

Enlightenment rose to defeat the dogmatic chains of an age marked rather by the

obscurities of blind beliefs –religious or philosophical –, than by the discovery and

comprehension of the real facts of nature. “The disenchantment of the world” that

produced “the extirpation of animism”1 together with the each time more powerful doubts

about the existence of an almighty entity, dictator of natural and moral laws, seemed to

liberate man’s mind and conducts. Kant’s exposure of the transcendental ideas and his

distinction between what we would like, what we pretend and what there actually is to

know was the stabbing that the enlightened thought gave to human beliefs, leaving as a

result a bleeding God fatally wounded. Just as Judas, who repented and unfruitfully

wished to help Jesus when the former foresaw the imminent death of the latter, Kant

1
Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno; Dialectic of Enlightenment, Stanford University Press, p. 2.

6
wanted to heal the bleeding God by means of his Critique of Practical Reason. His efforts

were in vain, and the human dethroned beliefs to crown the knowledge of the knowable.

However, there is an inner and irreducible tragedy involving the Enlightenment, which

Horkheimer and Adorno unveil in their approach to it. Knowledge substituted the

mythical thought which such strength, that its self-security mutate it to a myth itself.

“Enlightenment stands in the same relationship to things as the dictator to human beings.

He knows them to an extent that he can manipulate them. The man of science knows

things to the extent that he can make them. Their ‘in-self’ becomes ‘for him’.2”

Enlightenment’s own security made it our master. Today, scientific truths are true, even if

they result to be as nonsensical as the historical existence of the Cyclops Polyphemus.

The Big Bang is the origin of the universe even if the singularity was by itself, logically,

already the existent universe. The success of the formal Enlightenment meant the defeat

of his original essence. Power transforms even the most revolutionary ideals. Odysseus,

according to Horkheimer and Adorno, is the ultimate icon of the Bourgeoisie;

Enlightenment, the ultimate tool of this latter to justify its system of truths, including, of

course, the economic ones. Once liberating knowledge is today used as a mean of

political and economical oppression. Myth and Knowledge, obscurantism and

Enlightenment, suddenly appear as the image of a clown in the mirror3.

* * *

The spheres of human life are themselves micro-systems that platonically reflect

the form of the macro. A position that not quite convinced Adorno and Horkheimer, who

find it to be a conspicuous unity. This unity “confronts human beings with a model of

2
Idem, p. 6.
3
Spiritual Beggars, Beneath the Skin, On Fire, 2002.

7
their culture: the false identity of universal and particular”4. According to them there

was an identity between monopoly and all mass culture5. For them, the identity micro =

macro was more an artificial product than a reflection of natural universality.

Nevertheless, their suspicion came from their unrecognizing that in any dialectical

sphere, with which they seem eager to compare society and culture, each of its

conforming opposing parts is the product of an inner dialectic. It is indeed true that in

mass culture, the individuality gets lost inside a massive taste conformed by industrial

and economic interests, but it is also true that such a situation is that which impulses and

allows the individual to stretch the boundaries of cultural massification to try to rip them

apart. In a world where it were only possible either absolute solipsism or absolute

integration the differentiating concepts of generality and individuality wouldn’t even

exist. It is actually this failing or unwillingness to see this, which made Horkheimer and

Adorno look like Elitist-Marxists.

After the falling of Rock & Roll – once a revolutionary response to a sexually

conservative environment – into social acceptance, embodied by Elvis Presley’s

becoming the icon of the culture of the nation of brutal capitalism; and the shallow

intellectual proposals that contrasted the rightness of the characterizing political and

social critics of the hippie movement, the destiny of music as a tool that could be used to

wake the people up against the unjust, industrial and mechanical trend of the world

seemed to be doomed. Horkheimer and Adorno’s words, once descriptive of their

present, resulted to be also prophetical of their near future: “Culture has always

4
M. Horkheimer & T. Adorno, op. cit., p. 95.
5
Idem.

8
contributed to the subduing of revolutionary as well as of barbaric instincts”6. Rock &

Roll and its sexual content sold out, and the hippies were too intellectually sterile to open

a space that could paradoxically save culture by means of counter-culture, let alone to

represent a real threat to the establishment. Erotic movements of hips, rather than causing

disgust, caused now millions of dollars, and the flower power caused more junkies than

ideological content for a movement. The power that Rock & Roll once showed, also

showed that music could have influence in the social and even legal realms; but in the

early 70’s that power was once again possessed by the controllers of the Culture Industry.

However, if the ideas are controlled as soon as they become massive, the discontentment

of individual visionaries will never cease to appear. Been dazed and confused for so long

is not true7. It was written that a new movement had to reclaim the crown of musical

social movements: “Revolution in their mind, the children start to march. Against the

world in which they have to live and all the hate that's in their hearts. They're tired of

being pushed around and told just what to do. They'll fight the world until they've won

and love comes flowing through”8. Two groups marked the birth of Heavy Metal, the

only stream of popular music embracing revolution in his core, as an essence, and in its

skin, as a form, that has managed to survive for more than three decades: Led Zeppelin

and Black Sabbath. If true that punk music also arouse as an alternative to the music

industry, it is also true that the phrase “punk not dead” is now as shallow as the neo-

punkers embodied in Nirvana, the Grunge movement and, even grosser, Avril Lavinge.

Punk seemed to be as dead as Ronald Reagan and, just as he, because of Alzheimer. The

reason why Heavy Metal has been able to live along rests in Hegelian reasons. Led

6
Ibidem, p.123.
7
Led Zeppelin, Dazed and Confused, Led Zeppelin I, 1969.
8
Black Sabbath, Children of the Grave, Master of Reality, 1971.

9
Zeppelin and Black Sabbath marked from the beginning on the inner dialectic that would

boost the Metal’s musical and ideological production. Heavy Metal has not only a fight

against the hetero-imposed system, but also an inner struggle that makes it swing from

kitsch to brutality. They are like two serpents that feed themselves with each other. If

Rock & Roll succumbed, it was because its whole internal fights were in the arena of the

popularity charts between Hound Dog and Big Balls of Fire; where there is no dialectics,

there is no process to guarantee the continuation of history. There was no need for it to

evolve. The opposition of styles between the two proto-metalians gave place to a future

multi-partition of styles and currents within Heavy Metal, each one defending a different

form of artistic expression and nomenclature, but all of them with the original goal of

protesting against the oppression of the Bourgeoisie and its handling of the Culture

Industry.

Led Zeppelin found strident accords and colorful perfectly noisy drumming as

their only tools to revolutionize, but the lyrics were not quite clean of the shallow

sexuality of rock & roll as the only way to offend the conservatives: “You've been coolin',

baby, I've been droolin', all the good times I've been misusin', way, way down inside, I'm

gonna give you my love, I'm gonna give you every inch of my love”9. They were fighting

for something that had already been fought for and achieved. Their criticism remained

ambiguous and the form and content of the metaphors used to call for rebellion were too

mild for the world to wake up. The recognizable blues influences and romantic-sexual

lyrics generated the, so to say, clear side of Heavy Metal, incarnated in Glam, Hard Rock,

Speed and –lately- Nu (sic). The lack of strength of this first segment of the Metal

bipartition can be easily recognized in the names of Led Zeppelin’s successive groups:
9
Led Zeppelin, Whole Lotta Love, Led Zeppelin II, 1969.

10
Kiss, Cinderella, Faster Pussycat (Glam); Rainbow, White Snake, Motley Crűe, Guns &

Roses (Hard Rock); Gamma Ray, Helloween, Cacophony, Rising Force (Speed); Limp

Biskit, Linking Park, Il Nino (Nu) and so on, or even full of egocentricity such as Bon

Jovi, founded of course by Jon Bon Jovi. Although the formulas of the clear side of Metal

remained heavy enough to maintain the majority of the listeners outside its realms, and of

the ultra-conservatives tearing up their hairs10, they succumbed without doubt to the

culture industry. Proof of that is the way in which ‘profane’ people immediately identify

these groups as the representatives of what Heavy Metal is. No need to be a sociologist to

recognize the connection between the 6 million copies sold, only in the USA, in the first

month of Guns & Roses’ first official Album, “Appetite for Destruction” and the formula

commercial Metal groups = Heavy Metal. Kiss and all the commerce surrounding them is

another perfect example of the claudication. If there is any true in the lines of

Enlightenment as Mass Deception, and “the mechanical reproduction of beauty (…) no

longer leaves any room for the unconscious idolatry with which the experience of beauty

has always been linked”11, the bourgeois formula let us know that art equals beauty

equals general acceptance and sensual desire. Glam Metal, Hard Rock, and – in a lesser

way– Speed obviously fell into the trap. The idolatry was there, but not one that came

from the autonomy of the individual rising, but rather from the dangerous liaisons of

popular art and entertainment. The case of Nu Metal is different, for it never intended to

be against-system. It rather is the system turned into Metal.

On the other hand Black Sabbath’s straighter, desecrating, political and socially

critical lyrics, reflecting anger and unconformity were in harmony to a musical

10
Except for Nu, which is now a total part of the mainstream.
11
M. Horkheimer & T. Adorno, op. cit., p. 112.

11
construction that produced an image of chaos and rage. The time for the outcasts to come

back and transform art, was prophesied and could not find a better image to represent this

situation than the one of the ultimate icon of rebellion: “Now I have you with me under

my power, our love grows stronger now with every hour, look into my eyes, you'll see

who I am, my name is Lucifer, please take my hand”12.

One of the main objections proposed by Horkheimer and Adorno against Jazz or

popular culture, as a representative of the world of entertainment, was the desecration of

difficulty. What belonged to the genius, now belonged to mass13. Jazz represented a sort

of decoding that opened the possibility to the common people to walk hand in hand with

the art generating elite. However, history has proven that neither Jazz or popular culture

per se are that invitation to the V.I.P. party. Black Sabbath, just as free jazz, remained

codified enough to give a party that remains too scandalous and outrageous to entertain

those whose ears and capacity of metaphorical interpretation are not finely trained. If the

clear side of Heavy Metal gave place to kitsch, its dark side, conformed by ‘Sabbath’ and

their successors, gave place to spaces for intellectual and social factual rebellion. Iron

Maiden –icon of the Mexican youth underground culture of the 70’s and early 80’s –,

Judas Priest (NWOBHM14), Metallica, Slayer, Sodom, Testament (Thrash); Morbid

Angel, Suffocation, Divine Empire, Malevolent Creation, Orphaned Land – the first and

only Palestinian-Israeli Heavy Metal band known world wide, who use traditional

instruments and folk music– (Death); Napalm Death, Carcass, Exhumed (Grind);

Cathedral, Sorrow, My Dying Bride, Candlemass (Doom) among an interminable list of

groups, whose names immediately contrast with those of the commercial side of Metal,

12
Black Sabbath, N.I.P., Black Sabbath, 1970.
13
M. Horkheimer & T. Adorno, op. cit., p. 96.
14
New Wave of British Heavy Metal.

12
developed and shaped not only many more streams against the flow –confirmation of a

higher creativity free from willingness to be liked –, but, as we will se in the next chapter,

were as well more engaged with political and intellectual movements. Four Abrahams

walked all the way up Mount Moriah. The first defeated his hesitations, took the knife

willingly to obey God and was forgiven, instead he sacrificed the scapegoat; the second

hesitated, began to climb down, but fearfully repented of his disobedience, ran up, took

the knife, God didn’t stop him, killed the boy, killed the scapegoat and was forsaken: too

mild for God and an assassin for the people; The third Abraham climbed all the way up

just to shout: Non serviam!

The Carcass and the Death, or The worlds of Sade and Nietzsche turned into music.

Given the power of reason, yet throwing it all to the wind

No solution in evolution - only the blood-stained glass
A soul full of lies in contention, begs sacred yet worships profane
Lose sight of the fact that you're where it's at
Not the stars, not the cross, nor the moon
Corrosion of Conformity
“Mine are the Eyes of God”.

To defeat an oppressing God, a lack of faith results to be very effective; but to

defy a scientifically accepted truth is irrational; from an enlightened perspective,

impossible. Science has to be therefore opened to the same criticism as metaphysics,

because not only it denied the possibility of any transcendental knowledge, i. e., one

beyond the realm of things as they are given to us, but paradoxically, its negation of

transcendence results itself to be a negation of knowledge15. The necessity of stripping

the masks of oppression reached not only myths and religion but also the new idol in

which Enlightenment had become. Human chains are now stronger, and to break them it

15
M. Horkheimer & T. Adorno, op. cit., p. 90.

13
is required something that goes beyond myths, irrational beliefs, or positivist knowledge.

Although, Horkheimer and Adorno not quite foresaw an optimistic solution to the fusion

of the exactitude of knowledge and the strength of the myth given in modern times, they

present Sade and Nietzsche as introducers of two possible exit routes, where the first,

traced by the French writer, led to a cruel form of Anarchy; and the second, opened by

the German philosopher, led to the ‘higher self’16. Sade presented a world of cruelty and

no rules at all as the unavoidable future of mechanic rationality, and Nietzsche “replaced

the Law with self-legislation, so that everything was made transparent as one great

unmasked superstition”17. If they are rightly elevated to the representatives of those who

saw the ultimate stage of the oppressive enlightened rationality, there is no reason why

not to understand Heavy Metal’s artistic proposal –strongly influenced by both of these

positions – as following their stream of thought. Nietzsche, among many other

philosophers, is explicitly mentioned in plenty of Metal recordings, and many other of the

lyrics show a fascination caused by sadistic ideas of suffering. We find a clear succession

of phases: demythification – “Lies - And you fill their souls with all oppressions of this

world and all the glory you receive? So, What makes you supreme? Lies! Your crown is

falling. I offer fantasy and you, you creator are blind with envy”18 –; the praise of human

reason over beliefs as the logical effect of the former – “Mankind in his insatiable search

for divine. Knowledge has discarded all biblical teachings, realizing that the strength of

religion is the repression of knowledge. All structures of religion have collapsed”19 –; the

disenchantment brought by the chaos of the scientific order – “Science fascination, sinful

16
Idem.
17
Ibidem.
18
Morbid Angel, “God of Emptiness”, Covenant, 1993.
19
Slayer, “Darkness of Christ”, God Hates Us All, 2001.

14
believers. Species in mutation, sordid disorders. Our leaders missed the point and forced

to dominate and destroy to get what people want: cultural coded society”20 –, and as the

ultimate result, either the sadistic chaos – “Grope in the grime, the evaporating motions

slush. Pulverizing your gut, in my rubber boots and gloves. Your nates purple and raw,

brillo pads scour and cleanse. Sticking plasters on abrased organs, to try and make

amends......Scour...abrase...scrub...erase....Your innards I corrode. This process you will

loathe. Your innards I evacuate, with my crude methods of hate.[Solo: rectal intubation

with intolerable hot enema]”21; or the Nietzschean rediscovery of the self – “The one

eyed old man told me that the face that I will see has paralyzed a thousand brave men

sure of victory. I cannot fight blindfolded and I'd freeze if I should see. So I need to

sacrifice my eyes to see all from within. The one eyed old man told me of a lake that no-

one knows of, where the end of the sky unites with the bottom countless feet down deep;

and he told me when this world was young into it's depths his eye he had thrown, so that

though one eyed, he could see more than can be seen. I'll throw my eyes into the lake. So

that I will see from within I'll throw my eyes into the lake and when blind I will still

see”22–.

Whatever the path might be taken, the braking with the myth in favor of the light

of reason shall only be a stage before the heavy weight of Enlightenment causes it to fall.

If taken for granted that the first step was to cleanse the human mind from the oppression

incarnated in ideas of fear or hope, whose content’s existence rests far away the reach of

human certainties, it is also truth that the security we have about the exactness of our

knowledge, which has dragged humans to the level of becoming themselves oppressors

20
Voivod, “Blame Us”, Voivod, 2003.
21
Carcass, “Excoriating Abdominal Emanation, Symphonies of Sickness, 1989.
22
Bathory, “The Lake”, Blood and Ice, 1996.

15
of their surroundings and of their own, has also to be dethroned by the Nietzschean

“Overman”, in other words, the reconciliation of the human with his nature, but now in a

more elevated stage, as the true form of liberation. Contrary case, a sadistic future could

present itself as unavoidable.

The influence of such human-nature-reconciling position found its maximum

expression in Heavy Metal during the first half of the 90’s, in which the founding father

of Death-Metal, i.e., Death and his founder lead guitarist and singer, Chuck Schuldiner,

surprised the underground scene by changing the name of the game just as they had done

it half a decade ago with the release of their First Album ‘Scream Bloody Gore’ in 1987.

Told in retrospective, with Death’s first album, which contained the most brutal and

aggressive riffs recorded so far, a new era in Metal commenced. From that moment on a

sort of brutality race was declared among the groups to come; except for Death

themselves. While the rest of the groups seemed to follow the sadistic fatality of

Enlightenment, each album released by Death showed a more developed musical

structure and a deeper conformation of ideas. So that just when the rest of Death Metal

bands was hypnotized by the seductive face of raw rebellion and desecration of any sort o

values, Death released, in 1991, their fourth album: ‘Human’, which contrasted the now

repetitive formula of classic Death Metal’s riffs without losing its aggressiveness. This

was accompanied by an also progressive metamorphosis of their lyrics, which moved

from early simplistic gore loaded texts and death connotations – “(…) you watch them eat

your friends, ask for evidence, a hook right through your tits. Torn to pieces. Torn to

pieces. Torn to pieces. Torn to pieces”23–, to psychological topics –“Transforming your

life from the inside out. Overcoming fear that made you doubt. Observing what is stored
23
Death, ‘Torn to Pieces’, Scream Bloody Gore, 1986.

16
in the subconscious (…)”24 –, to a highly philosophically and intellectualized

interpretation of the human nature mostly full of Nietzschean content – “Followers to the

leaders of mass hypnotic corruption that live their lives only to criticize. Where is the

invisible line that we must draw to create individual thought patterns? Prisoners of

mental deception: be free within singular judgment!”25–. Concepts like ‘Infernal Death’,

‘Zombie Ritual’ and ‘Mutilation’ were substituted by those of ‘Flattening of Emotions’,

‘Lack of Comprehension’ and, some albums later, ‘Individual Thought Patterns’, ‘The

Philosopher’ and ‘Flesh and the Power it Holds’. The message was not only

metaphorically clear but also explicitly mentioned in Death’s final album with the classic

sentence "Those who fight monsters should make sure that in the process they do not

become a monster, and when you look long into an abyss the abyss also looks into you"26,

i. e., the classic Nietzschean statement to critique Kant’s irreducible rationality, the best

grounded basis of Enlightenment.

24
Death, ‘Within the Mind’, Spiritual Healing, 1989.
25
Death, ‘Individual Thought Patterns’, Individual Thought Patterns, 1991.
26
As cited by Chuck Schuldiner in the Album ‘The Sound of Perseverance’, 1997.

17
The Beauty in the Beast or The Public Gets what the Public (doesn’t) Want27

Trapped together, another wasted generation is sold,

with no meaning, no depth, they're there to be bled,
never breaking the mould, anonymous, blank,
no individuality, misinformed, a wholesale,
blinkered non-entity, on it's knees born,
- another generation to scorn.
Carcass
“Generation Hexed”

It seemed that Horkheimer and Adorno suffered themselves a strong dichotomy of

social sentiments. The Marxist influences in his ideology, reflected in his pungent critics

against the bourgeois system and cooption of any sphere of life by Capitalism, contrast

with all the anti-popular culture comments sparking all along the text of the

‘Enlightenment as Mass Deception’. If they were politically liberal, they certainly

appeared to be artistically conservative. However, their criticism seemed to derive not

only from the vulgarization of the art they feared it would result from its popularization.

Rather, they saw a projection and massification of the bourgeois ideology in the decoding

of the art. The liberalization of art that “permitted the participant to play the role of the

subject” and its massification exposed the receptors in authoritarian fashion to the same

taste conditionings28. Thus, this democratization and liberalization of art were only masks

of another form of unfreedom, a critic not quite inexistent in the Metal scene:

“Communication ways are controlled by that slime; T.V. controls your brain, so you must

get in line; radio erases your will and decides what you like; newspapers fill their sheets

with indignant lies”29. However, the massification of art is not only a product of the

bourgeois search for power, but also of the complicity of the simple structural

27
Title partially taken from Napalm Death,” The Public Gets what the Public (doesn’t) Want”, Enemies of
the Music Business, 2000.
28
M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno, op. cit., p. 95.
29
L.D.B., Judicial Slime. L.D.B. (never released E.P.), 1994.

18
formulation of reality done by the oppressed. By stating that “the mentality of the public,

which allegedly and actually favors the system of the culture industry, is a part of the

system, not an excuse for it”30, Horkheimer and Adorno explicitly point out the common

spectator as a partner in the crime of having turn art into another expression of mass

control, and its utilization purely as a means to manipulation and monetary profit. Again,

this observation is found within the Metal ideology: “Screwed up people everywhere, but

I ain't got time to care. I feel lovely, la la la lovely! All kind of souls down to the curb, but

me help? Don't be absurd. I feel lovely, la la la lovely! Cause it's a problem of society, if

it doesn't affect me and I feel lovely. As long as I feel lovely I'm not guilty of your abuse,

see? It's all self-induced”31.

On the other hand, the affirmation that Heavy Metal, or at least its dark side,

represents an answer to the dilemma of creating a form of artistic expression that could

be really used as a liberating strength is one that would bring at least Adorno to tear his

cloths off; but he also committed the mistake of underestimating Jazz’s artistic value and

overestimate the people’s musical appreciation –“A jazz musician who has to play serious

music (…) involuntary syncopates (…) [such ‘naturalness] constitutes the new style, a

‘system of nonculture to which one might even concede a certain unity of style of it made

any sense to speak of a stylized barbarism”32. If it were true that Jazz decoded the

musical complexity, it had then to be accepted that people’s understanding cannot go

farther than Kenny G or Chuck Maggioni. The only real reason, if any, why Jazz could

not be wholly understood as cultural rebellion lies on its lack of social lyrics and

definitely not on its popularization of musical values. A possible critique they could

30
M. Horkheimer & T. Adorno, op. cit., p. 96.
31
Suicidal Tendencies, “Lovely”, Lights… Camera… Revolution!, 1990.
32
M. Horkheimer & T. Adorno, op. cit., p. 101.

19
throw in the face of Metal is that “the permanent compulsion to produce new effects

which yet remain bound to the old schema, becoming additional rules, merely increases

the power of the old schema, becoming additional rules, merely increases the power of

the tradition which individual effect seeks to escape”33; but that seemed to convert reality

into an inescapable prison, nearer to grant rightness to positivist approaches than to

revolutionary dialectics. Another critique is the intellectualization of amusement, through

which culture and entertainment fusion strengthening the system’s machinery while

weakening art34.

Nevertheless, whoever does not recognize in Heavy Metal one of the modern

forms of art as cultural rebellion full of social, political and philosophical content is

simply not deeply familiarized with its underworld, or –as it is sadly the case in some

youngsters – their own intellectual capacities are too limited in order to read between the

lines. The sometimes straight and sometimes metaphoric, raw, offensive lyrics in

conjunction with the multifarious structure of its sound could be understood as a

deliberate regeneration of the codification that Adorno and Horkheimer found necessary

in art. The messages are there, open, for the general public, but only the conscious

individual will see the depths hidden below the surface; an idea, which is not alien to

Horkheimer and Adorno, who praised the expressionist concepts of conformation of the

work as a whole in detriment of the right to exclusivity of attention conquered by

understandable details. “By emancipating itself, the detail has become refractory; from

Romanticism to Expressionism it had rebelled as unbridled expression, as agent of

opposition, against organization. In music, the individual harmonic effect had obliterated

33
Idem.
34
Ibidem, p. 114.

20
awareness of the form as a whole. (…) the particular detail has obscured the overall

composition”35. The idea of art as an equilibrium given by the whole and its outstanding

parts is presented by Heavy Metal in the paradoxical form of images coming out of music

and the lyrics that accompany it. He who pays attention only to the distortion of the

guitars and not so to the overall composition and extremely complex solos, to its

‘eccentric’ lyrics and not so to their intended meaning, to the long hairs and not to the

brains, shall not judge Heavy Metal, for he doesn’t know it, let alone understand it. Thus,

three are the steps to understand the philosophy in Metal. Each one acting as a

progressive filter: 1) the discovery of the highly classical music elements among the

noisy and aggressive riffs; 2) the reading between the metaphorical lyrics and

identification with the social and political content; 3) the intellectual enrichment of the

individual by means of reading, at least – but not only –, the authors in which these lyrics

are based. The perfect example of this artistic/ideological equilibrium can be encountered

in Pestilence, Cynic and Atheist, first groups to mix Metal’s innate aggressiveness with

clear and distinct elements of Jazz and profound spiritual concepts, taken from deep

philosophical conceptions of life –“How could I forget such a revelation? To love without

fear and learn without questions. How could I regret the meant occasions? I must begin

this day again. Freedom and reason shine through. Paddle upon the clouds one's own

canoe”36; naturalist’s –“You say there's freedom within our nature. Well I don't think you

understand. Mother Earth has fallen to Mother Man. The air, the sea, the grass, the trees.

The nemesis is the major fearless leader: Mother Man”37 –; and even full of clear

Kantian connotations – “The Highest Intelligence as the explaining principal of existence.

35
Idem, p. 99.
36
Cynic, “How Could I”, Focus, 1994.
37
Atheist, “Mother Man”, Unquestionable Presence 1991.

21
Visions and conclusions eager to reveal some kind of significance. Critical realism, an

imperfect reality. Knowledge, a human construction of theories, moving the limits of

wisdom to edges of its disappearance. Explanations captured in schemes of time,

unfolded with human interference. The emptiness of ignorance in a darkened void of

mystery. Unanswered questions to be solved by the presence of some deity”38. As a

curious fact, these three bands were never again signed by any record company, claiming

that they were too heavy for the Jazz scene and too jazzy for the Metal one. There is an

inescapable relationship between this situation and the Adornian vision of art, since “the

more all-embracing the culture industry has become, the more pitilessly it has forced the

outsider into (…) bankruptcy”39. Cynic, Atheist and Pestilence –saving the proper

dimensions and distinctions– are the dying Mozart and Beethoven, in poverty and

forgotten.

Metallica and The 30 Metal Coins, or the Last Abraham

Misleader, you twisted things to satisfy

Deceiver, this greedy lust you can't deny
How could I be so naïve to believe all the lies
you so easily told?
Kreator
“Betrayer”

Modern times are dominated by the bourgeois conception of value. Something is

as valuable as it is capable of enriching the machinery and its controllers. Thus, value is

determined in monetary terms in all spheres of human life. Things are as appreciated as

they are capable of being bought and sold with the major profit possible; men are as

appreciated as they can be a part of the sell-buying world and even more the more they

38
Pestilence, “Spheres”, Spheres, 1993.
39
M. Horkheimer & T. Adorno, op. cit. P. 107.

22
can afford being in transaction disadvantage without minding, i. e., the more expensive a

superficial product is, the more important its possessor will be. Consumption is presented

to the people as the ultimate form of freedom and democratic power; although it is

precisely consumption what weakens the individual and raises the Bourgeoisie to stages

of total domination of reality. When an individual consumes far beyond his needs and

gathers interminably, he resigns to his inner essence, he becomes less human through

reification –the Marxist idea of alienation – and this leads to a deeper existential vacuum

that will take the alienated individual to try to fill it with more consumed objects. The

ultimate trap of the shallow soul of Capitalism.

Art has been all along history a double edge sword. The act of producing art

liberates the creator of the work, but the product itself enslaves him as soon as he is in the

need of living by means of selling it. The culture industry rose as the overwhelming giant

it is when this irreducible fact encountered the modern liberal economic ideology. Art

had to be democratized, so it could be consumed by everyone. Its appreciation doesn’t

matter, what matters is its acquirability. Just as bread, the easier it is to be digest, the

more it will be consumed by the buyer: the transformation of art into entertainment. “The

(…) elements of culture, art and amusement have been subjected equally to the concept of

purpose and thus brought under a single false denominator: the totality of culture

industry”40.

Heavy Metal’s ideological corner stone was to escape from that situation. It

sought to create something as indigestible and lack of the modern homogenizing empty

concepts of esthetic values, as it could be. Heavy Metal was meant to be not only a

40
Idem, p. 108.

23
revolutionary form of artistic expression, but also a door to passion. However, history has

also told us that any passion brings it Judas within.

All along the 80’s there was an hegemonic group that became the icon of the

Metal proposal; its music and lyrics, its declarations to the underground press and attitude

on the stage were a symbol of the scene’s strength. Its own name carried the sign of the

movement: Metallica. From 1982 till 1991 –year in which they released the black album

– I never met a person, who claimed to be metalian, that didn’t idolize the ‘Gods of the

Bay’. Full of political, social and idealistic content, their lyrics mixed in perfect balance

with the aggressive riffs and charisma of Metallica’s members. Their songs range from

idealistic and naïve battle hymns for the outcast youth: “Metal Militia! We are as one as

we all are the same, fighting for one cause. Leather and metal are our uniforms

protecting what we are. Joining together to take on the world with our heavy metal.

Spreading the message to everyone here. Come let yourself go”41; to much better

constructions of political criticism as they were growing more mature: “Halls of justice

painted green. Money talking. Power wolves beset your door. Hear them stalking. Soon

you'll please their appetite. They devour. Hammer of justice crushes you. Overpower (…)

Justice is lost, Justice is raped, Justice is gone (…) Apathy their stepping stone, so

unfeeling. Hidden deep animosity, so deceiving (…)”42. But as a sort of bizarre Oracle of

Delphos, Metallica’s “painted green. Money talking” foresaw the destiny of the group. In

1990, Metallica changed his all-time producer Fleming Rasmussen and hired Bob Rock,

also producer of Bon Jovi. From that moment on their destiny was sealed. Bob Rock

always understood that in the culture industry “everything has a value in so far as it can

41
Metallica, “Metal Militia”, Kill’em all, 1982.
42
Metallica, “And Justice for All”, …And Justice for All, 1989.

24
be exchanged, not in so far as it is something in itself”43. Metallica’s concept of art as no

commitment fell into the abyss in which its ground, at the very bottom, as its constituting

material, extends the idea that the social validation equals the merit of the work44. Since

1991 Metallica, with every new album released, rapidly turn to countrallica – “Oh, can't

stop this train from rollin'. Oh, nothing brings me down. No, can't stop this train from

rollin', no, no, no, no, no, no, no, forever only no...”45 – and sometimes even more

grotesque, popallica –“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ooooohhhh, yeah! Bad, Yeah!”46 –; they

did it as rapidly as the acceptance of their music became a worldwide generalized factor.

If once the pagan formula was glam/hard rock = Heavy Metal, today the first factor has

mutated and shall be read Metallica. The indignity of appearances in MTV, the

Grammies Music Awards and even playing in the same stage than Britney Spears, among

other international icons of stupidity and entertainment in the latest version of the Rock’n

Rio, Brazil, were only equaled by lyrics such as those from the ballad ‘Nothing Else

Matters’: “So close no matter how far, never be so much from the heart, forever trust in

who we are, and nothing else matters”47 or the most infamous ‘Enter Sandman’, which

marked the beginning of the end: “Say your prayers, little one, don’t forget my son to

include everyone (!!!)”48. Metalian hearts bleed in agony and pain when confronted to the

criticism of those conservative ignorant of the true Metal, who claim that Metallica’s

music is just noise and desecration of values, a synonym of madness that better be

oppressed. They bleed for they know these profane criticizers do not know half of the

43
M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno, op. cit. p. 128.
44
Idem.
45
Metallica, “Better than You”, Re-load, 1997.
46
Metallica, “Bad Seed”, Re-load, 1997.
47
Metallica, “Nothing Else Matters”, Metallica (Black Album), 1991.
48
Metallica, Enter Sandman, Metallica, 1991.

25
story, they do not know the real limits of noise and desecration, they do not know how far

the symbolic offenses towards a shallow monetary society can really go in Heavy Metal,

they just know Popallica. If Metallica was once the ultimate icon of rebellion, today they

represent, for true metalians, the ultimate icon of the corruption greed can cause. They

sold out to the interests of the Capitalist machinery. They perfectly incarnate Horkheimer

and Adorno’s words and proved that “as the demand for the marketability of art becomes

total, a shift in the inner economic composition of cultural commodities is becoming

apparent. (…) In adapting itself entirely to need, the work of art defrauds human beings

in advance of the liberation from the principle of utility which is supposed to bring

about”49.

The fourth and last Abraham, also shouted “Non serviam!”, saw in the floor a

small sack and opened it. Inside there were 30 metal coins, immediately took the knife,

wounded the third Abraham, took the brains away from the scapegoat, was forgiven by

God, and with no remorse rose himself as the leader of the people.

49
M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno, op. cit. p.128.

26
Genealogic Tree of Heavy Metal (in order of historical appearance)

Heavy Metal

Clear Side (1969) Dark Side (1970)

Led Zeppelin Black Sabbath

Hard Rock (1969) NWOBHM (1974)

Glam (1972)

Speed (1980)

Thrash (1982) Hard Core (1982)

Black (1983)

Death (1986) Grind (1987)

Doom (1988) Power (1989)

Nu (1998)

27
 THE PHILOSOPHER

By: Death

Do you feel what I feel

see what I see, hear what I
hear, there is a line you must
draw between your dream
world and reality.
Do you live my life or share
the breath I breathe.
Lies feed your judgement of
others.
Behold how the blind lead
each other.
The philosopher.
You know so much about
nothing at all.

Ideas that fall under shadows

of theories that stand tall.
Thoughts that grow narrow
upon being verbally released.
Your mind is not your own,
what sounds more mentally
stimulating is how you make
your choice.
So you preach about how I'm
supposed to be, yet you don't
know your own sexuality.
Lies feed your judgement of
others.
Behold how the blind lead
each other.
The philosopher.
You know so much about
nothing at all.

28
 LACK OF COMPREHENSION

By: Death

A condemning fear strikes down

Things they cannot understand
An excuse to cover up weaknesses that lie within
Lies
Laying your guilt and pain
On people that had no part in the molding of a life
That creates its destruction
Lies
Right before your very eyes
A reflections of the mistakes
To the end you will deny
Your part in the demise of a life
Lack of Comprehension
Thriving on your cliché
Compelled by self-resentment

Reaching into the minds of those that created

The depression in which they
In which they drowned their flesh and blood
Lies
So easy to blame the
Everlasting fear on a pathetic attempt
To justify the ending of life
Lies
Right before your very eyes
A reflections of the mistakes
To the end you will deny
Your part in the end of a life
Lack of Comprehension
Thriving on your cliché
Compelled by self-resentment

29