The Antichristian Phenomenon

I have uploaded my thesis about Satanism in black metal on Academia.edu and it will thus be fully viewable for everyone as an online resource. The file conversion didn’t seem to like some format editing in the original version, but it should not distract the reading experience too much. I have changed the file  from .doc (mostly because it felt too public and easy to access and change the content) into .pdf. Now the online version will appear as it does in the original paper.

No one is allowed to reproduce my thesis without my permission. Any attempts to claim authorship and profit out of my thesis will be strictly forbidden.

Abstract for those too lazy to read it on Academia.edu:
Satanism and antichristianity have always had prominent roles in black metal. While most musicians and fans would claim that true evil is organized religion and even more so Christianity, black metal also appears as a new religious movement, making this statement highly paradoxical. One way to understand this is the constant search for an authentic masculine identity, and how the modern consumerist society is perceived to create a social climate that make some groups within the society feel alienated. Such a group includes heterosexual, working class men that made up most of the early black metal scene.
With the help of the anti-aesthetic, which can take such expressions as self-mutilations and in the forms of opinions that it is good for humans to suffer instead of being happy, black metal men attempt to find their True Selves by separating that which they find masculine from the feminine – where Satanism and antichristianity become tools to do this. By idolizing and revering Satan as the perfect man, black metal men have started a war against Christianity to conquer which they think always belonged to them – namely their masculine identity from the on-going “feminization”.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 at 9:18 pm and is filed under Culture, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.