As a genre, black metal tends to forego verses, choruses and traditional concepts of consonance and tonality to create an atmosphere of fear and terror. Predominantly originating in Scandinavia, it is an art form with a violent history, and its very existence is opposed around the globe today.
In 2004, Polish authorities confiscated concert video recordings of Norwegian band Gorgoroth, which were to be used in a forthcoming live DVD. The police based this seizure on the concert’s content, as the band played while flanked by sheep heads on stakes, four nude, crucified models, and numerous satanic symbols, all of which were covered in blood. The concert’s organizer was fined approximately $3,000 as a result. The band later recreated this incident in its Carving a Giant music video, available below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFn26ntmSsg&hl=en_US&fs=1]
The phenomenon is not limited to Poland or Gorgoroth. British cultural commissars charged Swedish metal band Dismember with obscenity in the early 1990s for the contents of its song “Skin Her Alive.” In America, GWAR was arrested and charged with obscenity law violations in North Carolina during its 1990 tour; the band was able to reach a plea bargain that included not playing within the state for one year. Rapper Ice-T’s side metal band, Body Count, was threatened with legal action over the inclusion of the song “Cop Killer” in its self-titled album. This excludes the civil actions brought against Slayer, Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest by the families of those killed – by others or their own hand – allegedly due to the artists’ music.
Beyond the music’s grim subject matter, the musicians who create metal – and specifically black metal – make themselves easy targets. Gorgoroth’s former singer, Gaahl, was sentenced to 14 months in prison and $32,424 in restitution for allegedly kidnapping a man, torturing him for several hours and collecting his victim’s blood in a cup, which Gaahl threatened to make his victim drink. Going back farther in time, Norwegian band Burzum’s bassist, Varg Vikernes, a/k/a Count Grishnackh, was convicted of burning down four historic churches in Norway — even using the charred rubble of one such burning as the cover artwork for a Burzum album. Vikernes also murdered his bandmate, Øystein Aarseth, by stabbing him almost two dozen times. Though the reason for the murder is still unclear, tension between Vikernes and Aarseth as to whether Burzum should promote Satanism or Norse religious beliefs is believed to be an underpinning cause.
As bizarre and repulsive as these events are, they do not bear on the quality of the perpetrators’ speech. The Miller test is, thankfully, created to focus on speech and not the characteristics of those who made it.
It is unpopular to stand in solidarity with Satanists, church-burners, torturers and murderers. In the interest of free speech, though, it is important to see their unique vulnerability because of their prior acts, even if they were criminal and we find them despicable. In light of increased pressure on Eric Holder and the DOJ to stop up obscenity prosecutions and “protect” America’s families and children, more vigilance is needed in protecting free speech — even if it isn’t porn.
