As a heavy metal enthusiast since puberty, there have always been certain elements to the music and the aesthetic of the music and the artwork I found very appealing that many others would find revolting, blasphemous or controversial. I still can't really provide a simple explanation to someone who has little-to-no appreciation for heavy metal as to why I find Heavy metal, particularly the more extreme sub-genres of Heavy Metal, so fascinating and relative to my personality. Even the people who consider themselves passionate about all types of music would have a difficult time appreciating the same levels density, raw energy and emotion within certain Heavy Metal records that people like me can discover and identify with. Its my belief that this same kind of perspective on the music is what makes fans of Heavy Metal more opinionated, passionate and faithful to the music as opposed to fans of any other genre of music because Heavy Metal has been so unjustly persecuted, ridiculed, and undermined ever since its origins in the early 1970's.

So because the heavy metal fan base is so fervent about particular styles, concerts, albums, etc., the advent of the Internet has given fans a chance to freely sound off about what they love, what they hate and everything in between. It's actually quite a mess if anyone were to take even the smallest amount of time to look at the feuds between certain camps of metal fans that have established themselves online. From time to time, someone presents a theory or question to the metal community that deserves a great deal of attention. This essay is about one of these questions.

Submitted to reddit.com/r/Metal on June 13, 2012 with the thread title "Dear Shreddit, what do you guys feel about nazi-Black Metal?" Username Ferlove wrote:

"Black Metal is one of my favorite metal genres, and I've always made sure that the black metal bands I'm listening to isn't a bunch of far out nazi jerks. But lately it has annoyed me a lot, because I really love the music from BURZUM, AETHALRUNA and the list continues. Should I just download the music and not really support it, or should I still just avoid the bands?"

I felt like responding personally to this inquiry since I've had similar inner conflicts in the past about listening to certain metal bands because of my family's heritage and background. I used to feel like there was something wrong with me if I enjoyed listening to BURZUM or NOKTURNAL MORTUM* because, let's just say, the musicians themselves don't look too kindly on people who share my ancestry. Because of my personal conflicts with metal in the past, which shared similarities to the conflicts addressed by this 'Ferlove' individual, I concluded that this question that deserved a more in-depth and serious examination based on facts rather than just my personal opinions.

The expression of hatred towards Jews, homosexuals, and people of African descent in popular music, not just heavy metal, is nothing new. The genres of country, rock, folk, even electronic music all have their dark corners where their respective art-forms have been twisted into preaching messages of white power and anti-Semitism.

A common message heard behind a good majority of Heavy Metal bands is the idea of power, strength or virility. Since the genre isn't specifically as lyric-driven today as it was in the days of IRON MAIDEN or JUDAS PRIEST, it maintains these philosophies of power (physical, intellectual and spiritual) through the music itself. All instruments required for playing heavy metal reflect these ideas through their volume, speed, tone and technicality.

It appears that the philosophies behind heavy metal, as opposed to genres like electronica or folk, is more susceptible to draw in a white, male audience because of the images and messages that many successful and popular heavy metal bands appeal to primarily.

A few mainstream heavy metal bands have had a history of using images of Nazism or other symbols of racial strife: Lemmy Kilmister, bass player and front man to heavy metal pioneers MOTORHEAD has a niche for having press photos taken of him wearing Nazi officer hats that are part of his SS uniform collection; Jeff Hanneman, the late guitar player and song writer for the band SLAYER has an outspoken fascination with Nationalist Socialism, Nazi memorabilia and has been criticized for writing the song "Angel of Death", a song about Josef Mengele and the medical experiments performed on the Jews in the Nazi concentration camps.

But similar to the late-seventies Punk Rock bands that also displayed swastikas and other Third Reich imagery, these eccentric attributes of the musicians and how it related to their bands was done only for shock value. Both Kilmister and Hanneman have both come out and denied affiliating themselves with Nazi beliefs or politics and rightfully so. Its common sense for any successful heavy metal musician who makes money on the music they play to distance themselves from any political statements reflecting beliefs involving Nationalism, Fascism, Nazism, Anti-Semitism or white supremacy.

However, many underground or independent musicians with political beliefs comparable to Nationalist Socialism typically attach themselves to the subgenre of Black Metal which has even spawned a sub-genre for these kinds of bands: Nationalist Socialist Black Metal, or NSBM for short. Metal fans with extreme, right-wing beliefs attach themselves to this particular genre more so than even some Neo-Nazi musicians have latched onto hardcore punk bands from the United States.

The concept of Black Metal emerged during the early 1980's from Europe, a continent where Nazism and fascism originated even in their most primitive forms. Primarily, the content of most of Black Metal is a rejection of Christianity or any other orthodox religious beliefs and an embrace of darkness, evil and Satan. Although the metal bands of the early 1980's laid the foundation to what would become Black Metal, many historians of Metal music have labeled this era as the "first wave" and consider the "second wave" of the early 1990's the time where the sounds, the styles and the motifs of Black Metal really started to come into its purest form. Many of the bands responsible for incorporating these new elements most commonly, some would say stereotypically, associated with black metal hailed from Scandinavia, specifically Norway.

The music soon became overshadowed by the controversies and crimes that were connected to some of the musicians writing and producing Norwegian Black Metal. Soon, the "second wave" of Black Metal scene in Norway became better known for the suicides, murders and arsons connected to the few Black Metal musicians committing these crimes. The media began to accuse Black Metal of being linked to these crimes, completely ignoring the absence of the relation between the numerous church burnings and the Norwegian bands making the music. Before the "second wave" had concluded in the mid-1990's, Black Metal bands started to emerge from non-European countries such as the United States, Canada, and Japan. The genre of Black Metal is still being written and recorded from bands from all over the world and the genre has become an important part of the history of heavy metal.

From an exhaustive independent research project I started once I began composing this article, I began to catalogue as many bands or artists that write Heavy Metal music with a message of hatred, Nationalism or racial supremacy behind the creative goals (lyrics, album covers, merchandise, overall image) and sociopolitical motivations. "Hate metal" is a term I coined for this project to include metal bands of all genres, not solely NSBM, that contain messages of hatred, intolerance and Nationalism.

If anyone were to do a search through the Encyclopaedia Metallum, the most thorough and popular online resource for all things Metal, the results for how many white power and Nazi-sympathizing bands exist within the global community of heavy metal are shocking. From my own research, 159 results came up on the website's list of bands when the keywords "National Socialism" are entered into the lyrical theme filter; 167 results for the abbreviation "NS"; 66 results for "racism"; 63 results for "Aryanism"; 40 results for "Nazism"; 37 results for "anti-Semitism".

Wafting through hundreds of Nationalist Socialist musicians, merely the names of the bands themselves tend to give away what the band is making music about. Some names such as 'Infernum' or 'Graveland' carry the stereotypical gloomy/horrific associations with this style of heavy metal and the listener or fan may be completely unaware that the music carries a message of racial heritage. Its when you start to notice the disturbing amount of bands with not-so-subtle names like 'Xenophobic', 'Aryan Kommando 88', and 'Negrobutcher', it begins to be really clear to anyone with an elementary understanding of history what the music is saying.

As I began to further my research, I began to see this as a global movement that doesn't exist in just one specific area of Europe or North America. The hatred in "Hate Metal" is strikingly universal amongst bands that reach beyond both the Atlantic and the Pacific. I began to see "Hate Metal" bands from places like Malaysia, China, Guatemala, and Brazil, a country that has had more "hate metal" bands in total than Norway, United Kingdom and Austria combined.

The five countries where the largest amounts of "Hate Metal" bands have emerged from are, in ascending order: France, Poland, Russia, Germany and the United States. The U.S. dominated all other countries of origin with just over a hundred known bands to establish themselves as producing NSBM or any other genre of metal that contains messages of hatred towards non-Aryan races or supremacy of the white race. Sweden, Finland, Canada, Brazil, Greece, Italy, and the Ukraine all showed that they hold shocking amounts of "Hate Metal" bands as well. Despite having some of the most infamously intolerant metal musicians, Norway showed that they had very few results for "Hate Metal" bands, completely disproving my original hypothesis that all of Scandinavia produced the majority of "hate metal".

A couple of things that need to be said about the data that I collected on these bands: I have not catalogued which bands that are on the list were still active or not. Nor have I catalogued the number of band members belonging to each band or project, the mass of their recorded discography or whether the bands were known to play live or not. Although I cannot comment on figures like the average number of members in a typical NSBM band, I can state that it is not uncommon that a good number of these bands are made up of only one musician.

If an artist's politics truly disturbs anyone to the point where listening to their music makes them feel guilty or upset, perhaps its best if they probably don't listen to their music anymore for their own sake. The purpose of listening to any kind of music, including metal, shouldn't make you feel like you're doing something wrong or that you are some kind of sympathizer to the beliefs of a particular artist you enjoy. But the solution isn't always that simple.

When I was a younger metal fan and started to become more aware of these kinds of bands, perhaps I got too wrapped-up in the "Nationalism" I was opposed to. I had forgotten all about how subjective music was supposed to be regardless of what the musicians themselves believe in. Now, whenever I listen to "Filosofem"**, I hardly ever think about how I might be perpetuating Varg Vikernes' beliefs*** just by enjoying it. God forbid I ever do that, right? I just simply appreciate the music for what it is. Why should I let his or anyone's ignorance and hatred get in the way of me enjoying anything?

On the other hand, buying a CD or a shirt with the BURZUM logo on it is an entirely different ballpark because by doing so, even if you personally disagree with the artist's views, you're still jaded enough to endorse a symbol that represents hatred and intolerance, not black metal music. BURZUM merchandise is just like the Anarchy 'A' logo or any imagery depicting the Confederate flag on merchandise you'd find at a clothing retail chain. The people that buy them are oblivious to the irony of their actions and self-image. Even if you get the impression that the person who is wearing a BURZUM shirt is harmless and most likely not a racist, how can you really tell that it isn't a deeper meaning into someone's dark side?

We don't have to support or encourage people like Varg, though. We should never forget that we have complete control over what we like and what we don't like. We have to be wise enough to know the difference between someone else manipulating us to think or feel the way we do and being honest with ourselves.

*[two prominent European black metal artists who notoriously preach anti-Semitic views and other beliefs associated with Nationalist Socialism both inside and outside their music]

**['Filosofem', which translates to 'Philosopheme' in English, is an LP recorded in 1993, released in 1996, by the Norwegian artist BURZUM, a black metal project consisting of only one musician, Varg "Count Grishnacht" Vikernes. All vocals and instruments were performed by Vikernes and 'Filosofem' is often credited as one of the most important records to come out of the Second Wave of black metal movement and commonly heralded as a triumph for both Norwegian musicians as well as the subgenre of black metal.]

***[Varg Vikernes of BURZUM is more notorious for his politics and extreme world-views than his music. Vikernes is open and honest about his racist, xenophobic, anti-religious beliefs and has been an advocate for neo-Nazi, neo-Pagan, Nationalist Socialist and other white power movements in the past. In 1994, he had been convicted of burning down four Christian churches in Norway, which he has previously claimed to be in retaliation to the construction of these churches over places of Pagan worship. The most notable of these arsons was the Fantoft stave church, built in Bergen, Norway during the 12[sup]th[/sup] century. A picture of the church's burnt remains was used as the cover for BURZUM's EP 'Aske' ('Ashes' in English). Vikernes was sentenced to 21 years in prison for the murder of MAYHEM guitarist Euronymous and this incident, and served 15 years until he was released on parole in 2009. Most recently, he had composed a two-part statement in 2012 for his website on the bombings and massacre in Oslo, sympathetic yet critical of the actions taken by mass-murderer Anders Breivik.]