Subverting the Restorative Nostalgia of Black Metal: Reading Swiss Band Zeal & Ardor Through an Afropessimistic Lens

Abstract

This article analyzes the ways in which Swiss experimental metal band Zeal & Ardor imagine an allohistory, according to which slaves in the American South embraced Satanism to resist white supremacism. Firstly, Svetlana Boym’s reflections on nostalgia are used to argue that Zeal & Ardor reject the restorative nostalgia that infuses black metal, instead generating an off-modern anti-linear temporality permeated with the trauma of slavery. Secondly, Frank Wilderson’s Afropessimism is employed to emphasize the homelessness that characterizes the band’s oeuvre. Thirdly, it is claimed that this off-modern turn distinguishes Zeal & Ardor from the futurism of transcendental black metal.