Norwegian black metal, transgression and sonic abjection

Abstract

This article explores the music and transgressions of Norwegian black metal in the early 1990s. Facial and vocal masking, emblematic in corpsepaint and screaming, lay at the intersection between these two modes of existence, musical and criminal. Masking in black metal leads to the creation of a new persona, what I call the ‘black metal double’. This double enacts a splitting of subjectivity between personal and public personas, and the vocal scream comes to navigate the space between these personas. This bifurcated existence predicates an alternate, abject mode of being for black metal performers. Masking becomes a theoretical means for living two lives: one as private citizens and the other as black metal musicians who transgress criminal and musical limits. By collapsing the boundaries between abjection and subjection, black metal musicians create new spaces of political and cultural meaning-making through masking.