Experts have been discussing what could connect Nietzsche and the heavy metal subculture for several years. Art scholar and heavy metal expert Jörg Scheller pointed out: “Significantly, no philosopher is quoted as frequently in heavy metal as Nietzsche. ”¹ The website loudwire.com created a list of “11 Nihilistic Songs Inspired by Nietzsche” including “God is Dead” by Black Sabbaths album, “13,” Orange Goblins Song “Ubermensch” and “Beyond Good and Evil” by the band At The Gates.² The website Lebmetal.com List a number of bands that were heavily influenced by Nietzsche's nihilism, such as Gorgoroth, Beherit, Burzum, Emperor and Limbonic art.³ Numerous other examples could be mentioned, such as the band's Nietzschean inspiration Slipknot (music video)⁴ or the Ukrainian band The Nietzsche, which belongs to the genre of mathcore and is named directly after the philosopher (music video).

So what do Nietzsche and black metal or similar “loud”, “hard” and provocative musical styles have in common? First of all, it should be noted that these musical styles were and are predominantly influenced by heterosexual young men from the middle classes of western industrialized countries. They emerged in the 1980s with the entry of birth-strong generations into adult life and were influenced by the pessimistic, apocalyptic mental climate of the time, where media topics such as forest deaths, arms races and nuclear accidents corresponded with the actual decline of industry and the high level of youth unemployment and offered the younger generation a somewhat encouraging vision of the future. On the basis of this premise, four connections between Nietzsche and heavy metal can be defined: The male emotional life, the relationship with women, the desire for social recognition and the connection to Christianity.

First: Both Nietzsche and Heavy Metal follow the principle of “hard shell, soft core.” Sensitive artists often hide behind the harshness and aesthetic radicality of music. The music with its excessive volume, the yelling and screaming, the wild costumes in leather and metal, masks and make-up — all this serves as armor for the young man who despairs of the brutality and injustice of society. In a sense, this is also a role-playing game as part of an initiation rite: The growing young man recognizes the harsh social reality and sees the difficulties of advancement ahead of him. He plays the “Wild Man” to mask his doubts and weaknesses and to generate social attention. He oscillates between the refuge of soundproofed practice rooms and brightly lit stages decorated with imposing pit towers. His music is like whistling in the forest. This is also reflected in many lyrics of heavy metal, hardcore and punk songs, which are characterized by criticism of capitalism and pessimistic visions of society. To put it bluntly, this would mean: Sensitive people listen to hardcore, torturers love hits and music stadel. Harshness and volume are therefore also expressions of suffering and fear, with the parallels with Nietzsche's personality and his compensatory radicalism becoming clear. As is well known, he was also a loudspeaker finesse.

Second: the absence of women. Young men usually cultivate a love for the tough styles of music before they discover love for a woman. Heavy metal becomes relevant after the onset of sexual maturity and loses importance with partnership and family formation. This suggests that the hard music styles and the associated pose of the “wild man” help young men to deal with emotions or to mask them with self-images of strength, stubbornness and power. Young men fear that living out feelings could be interpreted as a weakness and question the desired male identity. In this sense, heavy metal and hardcore would be equated with male body armor, which is intended to create a protective aura of danger through martial arts, bodybuilding or tattoos. Nietzsche's personality was certainly heavily influenced by the lack of stable sexual relationships. His rash marriage proposals and views of women in general may have been motivated by corresponding frustrations and insecurities.

Third: The desire to be recognized and to assert oneself. Aesthetic, political, religious: On several levels, the hard musical styles challenge recognized authorities — after all, these are fields of action for young men who want to realize themselves, see themselves as representatives of a generation and want to fight for social relevance. Protest and ambition for advancement go hand in hand. In this sense, they demand: Free rein for the individual! No restrictions due to rules and morals! Here you'll find what you're looking for at Nietzsche. In addition, demonstrative contempt for “Christian slave morality” is part of self-portrayal as tough and cool, in keeping with body armor.

Fourthly: Christianity as a reference. The tension between Nietzsche and Christianity, in whose spirit he was brought up, and in particular his well-known quip “God is dead” make him an advocate of provocative Satanism in the eyes of many heavy metal followers. From the perspective of secular Europeans, the metal scene, especially the American one, is almost obsessed with the theme of religion, although in addition to the “antichrists” and Satanists, there are also varieties of Christian metal and hardcore (“white metal” and the like). In any case, the frame of reference is often Christianity, which is due to the fact that it is much more influential and present in American society than in Europe and therefore offers much more friction for rebellious spirits. Jörg Scheller remarked:

On the one hand, heavy metal kept the symbolic worlds of the Christian church alive, on the other hand, it showed the hypocrisy behind it, think of Slayer. Heavy metal had an enlightening impetus in that it stood — knowingly or unknowingly — in the tradition of radical religious critics such as Diderot or Nietzsche. Nietzsche was convinced that Christianity was a symptom of decadence, that it carried on a cult of weakness and damaged virtues such as pride and the will to freedom. As a result, he preached the extreme — and the extreme is the core of heavy metal, as all metal musicians emphasize, regardless of their respective ideological orientation.⁵

The conference “Pop! Goes the Tragedy The Eternal Return of Friedrich Nietzsche in Popular Culture” [“Tragedy becomes pop! Nietzsche's eternal return in popular culture”] investigated the continued existence of Nietzsche's thinking in popular culture on a broad front for the first time in 2015 at ZHdK Zurich. Lukas Germann focused on Nietzsche's response in the Norwegian black metal scene.⁶ He defined the genre succinctly: “Black metal is a civilized game with the secret and repressed desire for the collapse of all civilization in forms and rules of art, appearance, and image.” Referring to the sub-genre of black metal, whose name is based on an album by the band released in 1982 Venom Going back, Lukas German spoke of now more than 33,000 bands worldwide. His investigation focuses on the Norwegian music scene of the early 1990s, in which two murders, one suicide and dozens of church arsons caused a stir. Norwegian black metal bands such as Mayhem and Emperor named Nietzsche as an important source of inspiration, the band Gorgoroth named several albums after Nietzsche's book titles: “How to philosophize with the Hammer”, “Antichrist”, “Twilight of the Idols”]. In general, the references to Nietzsche were rather superficial in most cases, stated Germann, and an important aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy remained misunderstood: “The celebration of life, celebrated especially at late Nietzsche, remains alien to Black Metal. And musically, most black metal bands don't actually follow Nietzschean paths either.” There was an impulse on the Norwegian black metal scene to combine life and art by cultivating a radical lifestyle and violently crossing the limits of art. Since Dionysian art pushed beyond itself, into practice, into life, one could certainly define the excesses that began in Norway in the early 1990s as Dionysian intoxication. However, the metal scene had failed to “understand the demonic-Dionysian intoxication of music and aesthetics as an opening, as an abysmal sea of possibilities.” Instead, they sought new limits, defined themselves through an exclusive identity and enmity, and cultivated the contempt of others. “The joy of evil, the creativity of contempt and destruction freezes into conviction” — but, according to Nietzsche, “convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”⁷because they lead to narrow-mindedness, unforgiveness and fanaticism and put an end to the free play of thoughts and arguments.

There is no doubt that scientific reception of Nietzsche has become more differentiated today and no longer generally labels him as an amoral Darwinist and pioneer of fascism. But this differentiation has not yet reached the breadth of society, including its subcultures. The traditional gloomy Nietzsche associations still have an effect here: rejection of morality, devaluation of women, contempt for the church, will to power. Nietzsche is still surrounded by an aura of brutality, uncanny and reckless. He is called upon as the godfather of extreme individualism and a borderline dominant quest for freedom. This highly simplified and one-sided interpretation of his work means that sometimes strange people act as Nietzsche fans — especially men whose behavior would today be described as “toxic masculinity,” in extreme cases even those who became active as perpetrators of violence and killers, such as the Leopold & Loeb Chicago murder case from 1924. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, at the time of the crime 19 and Richard Loeb, at the time of the crime 19 and 18 years old, together they planned the abduction of a person followed by murder, after they had already succeeded had committed minor crimes together. An eight-year-old boy became their victim. The two perpetrators from wealthy German-Jewish families were highly talented, Leopold read Nietzsche, in particular So Zarathustra spoke, and he was particularly fascinated by the idea of superman. Barbet Schröder's crime thriller Murder by Numbers (2002) with Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt in the lead roles took up this story again. In the film, Nietzsche is the source of inspiration for the highly gifted student Justin (Michael Pitt), who gives a presentation on the topic of freedom in high school. In doing so, he expresses the provocative thesis: “Freedom is crime, because anyone who really wants to be free acts radically egocentrically, puts himself above the good of the community.” With his classmate Richard (Ryan Gosling), he decides to commit a perfect crime in order to put this concept of freedom into practice. They murder a woman unknown to them but are convicted in the end. The conviction that, through intelligence and willpower, they can place themselves above morals and laws may also have prompted the real high school assassins of Columbine or the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik to do their things.⁸

Not every Nietzsche reader becomes a killer, but unmarried young men who seek their place in society and use militant, provocative methods are particularly susceptible to brutalized and abusive use of Nietzsche's ideas. In an intellectual-artistic context, these are primarily men who like to claim the aura of danger and present themselves in the field of subculture, as artists, writers or musicians. In black metal, for example, the aura of danger is now part of the aesthetic experience. As long as Nietzsche only acts as the godfather of an “aesthetic of evil” in this context, everything is still in the “green zone.” It becomes more difficult when the evil thus glorified crosses the threshold of imagination and enters real life, into practice. While in black metal Nietzsche seems to grant the license to be evil, brings him madonna In the name of love in the game. In 2015, she decorated her music video to the song “Living for Love” with a Nietzsche quote, in which the philosopher laments the malice of humans. While it rains red roses on the singer and sparks applause, a quote from Nietzsche is displayed in English: “Man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights and crucifixions he has felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself that was his very heaven.” In German: “Man is the cruelest animal. Up to now, he has been happiest on earth during tragedies, bullfights and crucifixions; and when he invented hell, behold, that was his heaven on earth. ”⁹

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Footnotes

1: https://norient.com/stories/war-nietzsche-metalfan (24/3/2024).

2: Cf. https://loudwire.com/songs-inspired-by-german-philosopher-nietzsche/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral (1/8/2018).

3: Cf. https://lebmetal.com/2010/03/metal-and-nietzscheism/ (3/3/2010).

4: Cf. https://andphilosophy.com/2018/12/01/nietzsche-and-slipknot-challenge-you-to-all-out-life/ (1/12/2018).

5: https://norient.com/stories/war-nietzsche-metalfan (24/3/2024).

6: Lukas Germann: The rest is just humanity! Black metal and Friedrich Nietzsche, presentation at the conference Pop! Goes the Tragedy The Eternal Return of Friedrich Nietzsche in Popular Culture (ZHdK Zurich 23/24/10/2015).

7: Human, all-too-human I, 483.

8: See the assassins at Columbine: “I simply love Hobbes and Nietzsche” (https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/columbine-massaker-ich-hasse-euch-leute-1354954.html [31.7.2006]). About Breivik: In his manifesto 2083 — A European Declaration of Independence He mentions Nietzsche in ten places (cf. http://de.danielpipes.org/blog/2012/07/breiviks-mentale-welt [22.07.2012]).

9: So Zarathustra spoke, The convalescent, 2.

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Source of the Article Image

Nietzsche must piano. Painting by Else Gabriel, Berlin 2019.