Necromancy in Black Metal

Black Metal is dead, which is wonderful. Those of us that are truly committed to this strange art know that its death does not mean its end; no, not at all, because unlike most other music, black metal strongly wields the power of necromancy. In fact, I'd argue black metal itself is very much rooted in this power of the "black wizards." And if this sounds like just decadent fantasy, you're wrong; necromancy is real. Why would Socrates so averse to writing his ideas? Because he understood that writing took away the spirit of the words. Yet, Plato wrote those words down and so we are able to raise his ghost out of the past and have him speak to us as if he were here, but in a material shell devoid of spirit.

Every time you open a book or listen to a song you are raising the dead. What black metal does is openly embrace this fact. There is the fetish for the rotting, the unholy, the magical, and the "necro" because it understands that living in the modern world means living within a history that grows upon itself constantly. We are living our lives and conducting our affairs on a mountain of human corpses, and as a true art, black metal embraces this metaphor of our existence today, glories in the fact that all educated westerners are using the power of black magic and the forces of the dead to their own benefit.

Let us resurrect it then; not by thinking forward (how will the fans respond? what is new?) but by stepping backwards into the ancient graveyard and taking the dead into our arms. No doubt the reason why Dead Can Dance appeals to black metal people so much is that Dead Can Dance performs these same rites of necromancy, just in a more ceremonial and less taboo fashion. While Dead Can Dance is reminiscent of Elizabethan magic in terms of raising the dead, black metal is more like the lone bearded sorcerer performing instinctual shamanic rituals to speak with spirits that can help him seek ultimate power (something which he probably knows he can never find, but is still passionate about the search itself and the weird wonders it allows him to witness).

Like a ritual, what successful black metal needs to do is provide an atmospheric framework that allows for the feeling of power, the feeling of not only connection with the spirits and the surrounding environment, but control over them. This means that any tongue-in-cheek snickering or reminders of the ordinary and day-to-day will break the spell. It must be consistently weird, dark, and fanatical, with the unflinching earnestness of an occult master.