Lund University Publications

LUNDS UNIVERSITET | CENTRUM FÖR TEOLOGI OCH RELIGIONSVETENSKAP Abstract The most extreme subgenre of metal, black metal, is famous for its anti-Christian and Satanic aesthetics. Violent incidents connected to the formation of the Norwegian black metal scene in the early 1990s, such as Church-burnings, murders, and arsons, would make the genre notorious and solidify the perception that its fans and musicians reject religion. However, since black metal is born out of a Christian cultural context, very few researchers have paid attention to this musical subgenre in Muslim majority societies, and even less attention has been paid to how the Muslim context influences the aesthetical choices of the genre. A few years ago, some black metal bands in Turkey started to do something rarely seen before. Namely, to utilize Islamic semiotic resources in their cultural production, in an anti-Islamic way. Based on an extensive fieldwork, coupled with lyrical and visual analysis, this thesis explores this new relationship between Islam and black metal in Turkey. It seeks to answer the questions of why these expressions occur now, as well as which meanings are ascribed to them by black metal fans and musicians in Turkey. In doing so, the author argues that the increase in references to Islam in Turkish black metal are related to a dialectical relationship with international, as well as national, expectations of subcultural concepts such as authenticity and identity. Furthermore, the author explores the contemporary context of Turkey, which in recent years have undergone major changes in the political and social sphere, especially in relation to religion. The author therefore argues that the newly emerged expressions found within the Turkish black metal scene needs to partly be recognized as a subcultural response and counter hegemonic resistance towards the recent years of political and societal change in Turkey. Keywords: black metal, extreme metal, metal, subculture, Turkey, Islam, counter-culture, identity, resistance, social semiotics. Acknowledgments This thesis is the result of a long, hard, fun, and at times, frustrating process. It has also been a process in which I have been lucky enough to receive support and encouragement from several different institutions and colleagues, and I would like to extend my gratitude to them here. Firstly, I would like to say thank you to the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII) for believing in my project from an early start, and on two occasions granting me scholarships in order to finance my time in the field. Relating to this, I would also like to thank SIDA for granting me the Minor Field Studies scholarship, which further aided me during my time in the field. I would also like to extend my deepest gratitude to the many people I met during my stay at SRII in Istanbul. The endless nights of discussing, drinking, and laughing, have enriched more than just this thesis. I would, in no special order, like to mention, Helin Topal, Olof Heilo, Kristina Josephson Hesse, Bahar Uludağ, Johan Mårtelius, Ingeborg Fossestøl, Andrea Karlsson, Sultan Coban, Johanna Caminati Engström, and everyone else I forgot. Thank you all for making me feel so at home when I was so far away from it. I also need to mention Anders Ackfeldt, Rasmus Mattsson, Elsa Ralfsson, and everyone else who helped me by reading, commenting, or discussing earlier drafts of this thesis, which ultimately helped to improve it. Gratitude to Erik Hannerz for sharing his experience of collecting, and safekeeping, data with me. Our discussions of ethics will always stay with me in future time in the field. Last but not least I would like to express my deepest gratitude towards my supervisor professor Jonas Otterbeck, not only for taking on a project such as mine with great enthusiasm, but also for his never-ending generosity of time, intellect, support, and friendship, thank you. Of course, this whole project would never have been possible without the aid from all the amazing metalheads I met in Turkey. Words cannot express the amount of gratitude and respect I have towards you. Thank you all for letting me become a part of your life and experience the true madness that is the Turkish extreme metal scene. For obvious reasons, I cannot mention any names, but you all know who you are. It should also be mentioned that despite the generous aid I have received from friends and colleges while preparing this manuscript, the mistakes found within it are mine alone. Douglas Mattsson Lund, 28th of August 2018. Content I. Introduction 1 II. Paranoia, Painkillers, and a Broken Back 6 III. A Journey Through the Dark 16 IV. The Turkish Context and the Rise of Pious Conservatism 25 V. Spreading VX-Gas Over Kaaba 35 VI. Black Metal as Transgression 53 VII. I Hate Muslims, but my Neighbor is ok 74 VIII. Concluding Remarks 81 Bibliography 85 Discography 94 Appendix One 97 Appendix Two 99 Chapter One Introduction The narrow street outside, just a stone-throw away from the busy Istiklal-avenue, was full of people dressed in black. Smoking, drinking and chatting they seemed to be taking a break from the concert that was happening in the venue across the street, where distorted guitars were blasting from the doors. A bit late to the party, me, my fellow students and our professor had just experienced an intensive taxi-ride through the streets of Istanbul, accompanied by Turkish disco music at an ear-deafening volume. We were supposed to meet up with a symphonic metal band based in Istanbul to see their show (which we missed) and talk about metal music in Turkey. I, however, also had another purpose – I wanted to see if I could get any information about black metal music in Turkey. Once we had confirmed that we were at the right venue, we unloaded three bags of dog and cat food (the entrance-fee for the night), and entered the venue. After a beer or two I approached the bar-manager and asked her, a woman with big purple dreadlocks, if she knew anything about Turkish black metal or anyone playing it in Turkey – she did and helpfully put me in contact with my first informant in the scene. A few months later I was on my way to start my first field-trip in Istanbul. This was in March 2014, and now, four years later, I hope this master-thesis will give voice to an under-researched and often demonized sub-culture in Muslim-majority societies. Enjoy. Why a Thesis on Islam and Black Metal in Turkey? Ever since I watched the music video for Renegade by the Swedish power metal act Hammerfall at the age of ten on Voxpop (a music show for kids where one voted on the most recent video releases), metal music has been a part of my life in one way or another. Like an entry level drug- user, I started out with “softer” bands such as Iron Maiden and Hammerfall, and then moved on to bands with harsher vocals and more aggressive playing style, until finally conquering the last frontier – extreme metal music. According to the sociologist Keith Kahn-Harris (2007, 5) extreme metal “teeters on the edge of formless noise” and, further, is an umbrella term for subgenres such as death metal, doom metal, thrash metal, grindcore and black metal, who share “a musical radicalism that marks them out as different from other forms of heavy metal”(Kahn-Harris 2007, 5). Black metal differs, however, from the other forms of extreme metal due to the genres emphasize on occult, Satanic, and anti-Christian themes (Kahn-Harris 2007, 4–5). The aesthetics of black metal have intrigued me since I was thirteen years old and many years later, when the time came to write my bachelor thesis in Islamic studies at Lund University, I saw a possibility to 1 combine my two interests of extreme metal and religion.1 From my perspective, the main effort of Islamic studies is to answer the core question: How are Islam and religion understood, used, and negotiated by different actors in society? This does not only include the study of religious groups, texts, or history, but also the study of the ones who hate Islam. Following Talal Asad (2012) – who emphasizes that Islamic studies need to occupy itself with studying different actors within different societies– I consider an in-depth study of Turkish black metal musicians relation to religions in general and Islam in particular, to be relevant, albeit possibly outside the expectations of Asad. By the end of this thesis. I hope you will agree with me. The present study is to a great extent a continuation of the bachelor thesis I wrote at Lund University called “‘Metal is the best way for blasphemy’: Islamisk representation i turkisk black metal” (Mattsson 2015). However, this thesis has been preceded by a longer and more extensive fieldwork (see chapter two) providing me with the opportunity to delve further into previous questions, as well as to include other dimensions to my research. Turkish black metal is, to this day, mainly an underground phenomenon and apart from my previous work (Mattsson 2015, 2016; Otterbeck, Mattsson, and Pastene 2018), there hasn’t been any significant scholarly attempts to study black metal in Muslim majority societies at large, or in Turkey more specific. Mark LeVine’s pioneering work on metal music in the Middle East Heavy Metal Islam (2008) does not address black metal and neither does his later articles (see for example (LeVine 2009, 2011)). Similarly, Jeremy Prindle’s graduate thesis “The Devil’s Prayers: Metal Music in Iran” (2014) while exploring metal music in Iran, does not focus on black metal either.

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