Phew ÂŒ What a Blizzard! Black Metal and the UK Popular

mms 4 (2) pp. 329–341 Intellect Limited 2018

Metal Music Studies

Intellect

10.1386/mms.4.2.329_1

4 ALEXANDER HAY Independent Scholar 2

329

341 Phew – What a blizzard! Black

2018 press

ARTICLES ABSTRACT KEYWORDS The second wave of black metal, with its most notorious moments emanat- black metal ing from the Oslo-centred scene of the early 1990s, was somewhat inevitably a UK media phenomenon in its native Norway, as the extensive television and news- newspaper paper coverage of the time demonstrates. This article will focus on one particular Norway nation’s coverage, however – that of the United Kingdom, and how it covered and media responded to the antics of the Norwegian black metal scene up to and including tabloid the trial of ‘Varg’ Vikernes in 1994. An initial study provides a disparate picture. The niche media of the United Kingdom (such as Kerrang!, Terrorizer and other extreme metal publications) could certainly be trusted to provide coverage of this provocative and indeed often dangerous fringe musical movement. How it was covered by the politically influential UK popular press, however, is another matter. If the discourse of early 1990’s black metal with its aggressively transgressive and aesthetically rigid approach made good tabloid fodder, the UK popular press with its own traditions, hobbyhorses, aesthetics and vitriolic right wing politics might at first seem a good combination. What, then, did UK press coverage reveal not just about black metal at this time, but also its own mores and attitudes? Was black metal seized upon by the UK press or ignored, and why? Finally, what does this reveal about UK journalism and black metal itself?

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Introduction – A blaze in the Daily Mirror It is certainly hyperbole to say that certain subjects are made for one another, but if any such genuine example exists, it must surely be black metal – in particular the notorious second wave of black metal – and British tabloid journalism. In many ways, black metal and British tabloid journalism ought to be a winning mix, at least in terms of compatibility. What, however, do I mean by black metal? For the benefit of those not already familiar with this heavy metal sub-genre, I will use five definitions. Black metal focuses on satanic, transgressive and misanthropic themes though to what extent depends on each band. Its sound is often deliberately low fidel- ity and harsh, with a suitably fierce, cold, rumbling and ominous quality to the treble. Its politics are transgressive, confrontational and often sinister, though unlike punk, the intention is not Dadaist provocation for its own sake, but often sincere, or at least, taken seriously, albeit to various degrees. The look is based on ‘corpsepaint’: white face make-up with black patterns, lipstick and eye shadow, ostensibly to resemble a plague victim. Black leather, spikes, chainmail and even medieval weaponry, alongside the more usual metal garb are also clear signifiers. Finally, the aesthetic is uncompromising and dark, or even nihilistic, with grotesque and profane imagery, and yet also host to a perverse romanticism or idealized relationship with nature and heritage (sometimes to the point of far right nationalism). It is also a sub-genre with strong links to Norway. While the first wave, with its roots in the early 1980’s thrash and NWOBHM scenes was spread across the world, the second wave was focussed in Oslo, centred around the ‘Inner Circle’ and the metal record store Helvete. Here, much of the aesthetic now commonly associated with black metal was developed and, for want of a better word, codified. To understand black metal in the modern sense, therefore, one must take into account the Norwegian (and broader Scandinavian) context in which the sub-genre developed. However, how can this possibly relate to British tabloids? How they covered the second wave of black metal is, of course, important from the perspective of the latter’s history and study. Yet what this would reveal about the British popular press itself is, of course, highly significant. As such, this article argues that the discussion is relevant for both these reasons. Indeed, black metal with its emphasis on transgression, horror, nihilism and larger than life personalities (even the ones that have died), certainly appeals to the main tabloid news values of the United Kingdom. As Gekoski et al. have observed (2012: 1216–22), a good ‘Red Top’-friendly murder has ‘perfect victims’, in the form of celebrities (consider the murder of Oystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth in 1993 by ‘Varg’ Vikernes), the sensational and the unpredictable, all of which perfectly describe the second wave and its excesses. How then, did the British red top press cover black metal? In order to address that question, this article will approach the topic from three angles. Firstly, a historical contextualization of occult/horror stories in the red tops. Secondly, a study of newspaper coverage in this context between the periods of 1990 and 1995 – the heyday of the second wave. Finally, I will argue that tabloid news values in a British context serve a particular purpose albeit one some may find surprising, and it is how the tabloids cover black metal, and by extension, its primarily Norwegian milieu, which allows us to draw this conclusion. I should, however, explain why other newspapers are excluded from this study. While middle market tabloids such as The Daily Mail, The Express and,

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until its closure in 1995, Today were certainly not above lurid exposes, and indeed, in the case of the first two, remain so at the time of writing, this article must, for reasons of space and focus, focus only on the red tops. Likewise, ‘quality’ or broadsheet coverage is for the most part left out for these reasons. Certainly a study of the other two markets would be instructive, but let us begin, at least for now, with the tabloids.

To the devil, a page 3 girl – Red tops and occult horror Yet why do black metal and red top news values seem so compatible? The answer lies in the central dynamic of tabloid journalism – its rampant, yet compelling hypocrisy. Perhaps the most notable recent expression of this comes in the form of the 2011 phone-hacking scandal, where it was revealed that red tops such as The News of the World, amongst others, were actively accessing the voicemail inboxes of murder victims, such as Milly Dowler (Freedman 2012: 17) through dubious means, and yet were striking up a rather mawkish and sanctimonious tone in their coverage at the same time. As Kellner has argued (2012: 1172), the power of the tabloid press, in particular those parts of it controlled by Rupert Murdoch, both thrive on scandal and yet pose a corrupting influence on the societies they claim to inform, and certainly entertain. Of course, his claim that the Murdoch empire has led to ‘the vulgar- ization and tabloidization of the media’ (2012: 1191) rather misses the point that it was vulgar and tabloidized long before Rupert Murdoch arrived on the UK media scene in the late 1960s. For example, consider the racist coverage of immigrants in the 1950s (Bingham 2015: 213) or how there was little difference in terms of how murdered prostitutes in 2006 were described, and denigrated, in the popular press than Jack the Ripper’s victims were 118 years earlier (Warkentin 2010: 44). Nonetheless, the UK media as a whole, and the tabloids in particular, not only reflects the political hypocrisy of the nation, but also a deep distrust and prejudice towards ‘the other’ (Cross 2014: 206–07). On the one hand, this makes it easy for it to attack/inadvertently promote unfashionable subcultures (Thornton 2005: 389), but it also allows it to show a strangely black metal attitude towards the ‘weak’ and the ‘undeserving’ (Barton and Davis 2016: 15–16). Yet the fact that the best-selling papers in the United Kingdom have been for a very long time red tops, and The Daily Mail, says a great deal about the public palate, and the red tops’ success in appealing to it. This compelling if not entirely savoury commitment to vicarious enjoyment of the shocking while ostensibly condemning it is, of course, a matter of public record. The Sun, being the United Kingdom’s top-selling tabloid since 1978 (McNair 2003: 180) until it was finally eclipsed by the mid-market Daily Mail in 2013 (Deans 2013: 2013), is of course the perfect exemplar of this principle. Its obsession with the serial killer Myra Hindley up to and including her death in 2002 is a case in point, with lurid rhetoric using words such as ‘EVIL’, ‘VILE’ and ‘ROTTING IN HELL’ as a matter of course, alongside headlines such as ‘THE DEVIL’ (Kay and Saxty 2002). This did not, of course, prevent The Sun positively revelling in the detail of her crimes, the impact on the families of her victims, or, indeed, reporting from outside the crematorium on the day of her funeral to a point that verges on salacious self-parody (Hunter 2002). One cannot read about horror in a tabloid, or indeed coverage of black metal, without at least a certain vicarious, if morbid thrill – or at least, that is the implied audience in both cases.

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What the Hindley case also demonstrates, however, is the use of occult or infernal language to describe her. Clearly, the darker side of the occult and outright horror are preoccupations of the popular press. As The Sun’s rival, The Mirror, demonstrates, British red top journalism has never retreated from reporting on occult issues, especially if they have a particularly lurid undertone. For example, one 1996 story declared that a man’s possible suicide in the Sussex town of Lewes ‘has lifted the lid on a serpent’s pit of Satanic prac- tices, church desecration, animal sacrifice and ritual burning’ (Merrin et al. 1996: 4–5). The story then proceeds to regale the reader with reports of animal mutilations, desecrated churches and defaced gravestones, backed up by the testimony of two local parish priests, and visions of a ‘black appari- tion’. The depiction of these events does, of course, smack of stock notions about evil and the supernatural, with particular parallels to the occult novels of author Dennis Wheately, whose taste for the lurid, blurring the lines between the erotic and the horrific, and his own right wing and racist politics seem perfectly at home in the red top sphere. Another Mirror story from 1999 featured a ‘Satan knifeman’ who ‘hated Christians’ and planned to murder a vicar. His flirtation with the powers of darkness began after he shared a cell with ‘a high priest of Satan’ (Young 1996: 7). The obvious violent overtones and the threat of violence towards clergy do, of course, have clear parallels to the crimes of the Norwegian black circle. So too does the reported appearance of the assailant, ‘shaven-headed’ (along with long hair, the other default hair style for many black metallers), and ‘wearing black clothes’. Nothing here is, quite literally, sacred, be it rever- ence for the old and the establishment (the knifeman nearly kills a pensioner, and wounds a policeman), or indeed the church, the shaken vicar, with ‘his wife Juliet, 35, and three young children’, noting that ‘it brings home to us the dangers that can face the clergy these days’. Again, parallels between this and the church arsons, desecrations and vandalism of the early to mid-90s in Norway are evident. Indeed, as The Sun’s sister paper, The News of the World, and its 1997 head- line, ‘Satanic Ghouls In Baby Sacrifice Horror’ (Radford 1997: 30) demonstrate, there is a clearly defined market for obviously dark occult themed and shocking material. Breathlessly, the story alleges that ‘already one child is reported to have been slaughtered in a perverted ceremony on the Isle of Wight’. Meanwhile, the story threatens that ‘the circle of depravity may have spread beyond the island’. Another story from The News of the World concerns a ‘Satanic Sex Monster’ who is referred to as ‘evil incarnate’, and rituals involving ‘a nude priestess as a living altar, but only when someone requires a baby’ (Acton 1999: 36). Like some of the Norwegian Inner Circle (the Oslo-centred fellowship of bands and fans who founded the second wave of black metal in the early 1990s), he has a thing for knives, but while the ‘Satanic Sex Monster’ also represents very British fears and preoccupations – it is implied he tries to prey on local children when he is not worshipping Satan – in many ways the description of the ‘High Priest of… The Satanic Templars’ could easily apply to a black metal band or its members. All these examples demonstrate a running theme – like horror stories, their primary purpose is not to inform, for as the lurid prose and emphasis on the most shocking aspects of the cases covered show, the main goal is entertain- ment. The reader is allowed to indulge their darkest impulses whilst protected by the respectable veneer of moral outrage and common decency. This has a

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curious similarity to how black metal is enjoyed by its fans – while many are more than willing to listen to albums by church arsonists, grave desecrators and murderers, and indeed dress up like them, as anyone who has attended a black metal gig will tell you, very few do in fact follow in their favourite bands’ footsteps. If red top tabloids let their readers experience the salacious through a filter that appeals to their own sense of themselves as moral beings, so black metal lets its fans experience transgression one step removed, but never to the point that they themselves light the matches or kick over the gravestones. What both also share in common is that they echo the form and func- tion of horror fiction. Indeed, as Smith points out (1994: 39–43) horror fiction requires the reader to recognize some aspect of the scenario based on their own experiences, to align with the presented point of view and to show alle- giance towards those whom the narrative suggests represent a clear moral framework. While this is certainly clear with red top readers – after all, most readers will tend to side with a baby about to be sacrificed, rather than the sacrificers – it also rings true with black metal fans. They dress ‘evil’ and their record collections are ‘evil’, and they may identify with the likes of Bard Eithun and Varg Vikernes but, like most horror fiction readers, they go no further and revert back to that more mainstream moral framework when the album finishes its last track. Yet while ostensibly journalism and reporting, at least partially, on real events, these news stories operate along these narrative lines; to whit, we are invited to view these strange and chilling events through the prism of our own experience, to sympathize with the world-view of the narrative – that of the authorial voice if not the author – and to demonstrate our sympathy with it rather than the fiends, fictional and non-fictional alike. As one letter sent to The News of the World and published a week after the ‘Satanic Ghouls’ story states:

On behalf of all innocent women and children, I ask you not to allow your story about satanic ghouls and baby sacrifice to be covered up. There is no place in society for perverts. (The News of the World 1997: 9)

Here we have an example of the reader’s response to this form of news coverage; we are meant to be shocked and horrified, to empathize with the alleged victims, and agree with the direction the newspaper takes. Implied sexism aside – it seems innocent men have nothing to fear – the most obvious criticism here is that this is simply low-hanging fruit, that it goes without saying that most would find this sort of behaviour abhorrent. Of course, that is the point – the coverage is intended to elicit a particular response on the part of the reader, one that works precisely because it is so untaxing and easy to grasp. Arguably, this is the heart of tabloid journalism – through unuanced outrage and empathy, we are led to agree with the newspaper, though in truth this is a fig leaf for baser, more venal urges. No one has ever read The News of the World just out of social responsibility, but neither has anyone, at least publicly, wanted to be associated with depraved infanticidal cultists. The tabloid press, until recently, served this purpose well – its readers are hypocrites, but at least not nihilists, in public, anyway. Black metal fandom, meanwhile, is much the same. As Venkatesh et al. note, ‘appreciating black metal is by no means a rational experience. It is one based on emotion and an

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outward connection to your surroundings as well as an inward response to all that surrounds you’ (2014: 376). This sounds very much akin to the tabloid reading experience, which operates in a similar irrational fashion, but this time using language and implied received wisdom to elicit a similar response (Conboy 2006: 26). The tabloid reader getting in touch with their ‘roots’ and flying an England flag during World Cup time, the theme to The Great Escape booming out as a ringtone, is not so far removed from the black metal fan visiting the rebuilt Fantoft stave church or dreaming of Scandinavian forests, wolves and bliz- zards. Both view the world from a kind of romantic chauvinism though the black metal outlook is more inquisitive and introspective (Prescott-Steed 2013: 47–48), and the tabloid readers’ outlook is more conformist and anti- intellectual (Van Dijk 1993: 100), and while there are tabloid readers who go one step further and commit racially motivated assaults or, according to popular myth, burn down paediatricians, so there are a few black metal fans who embrace racial nationalism and commit violent offences with equal vigour. Neither tabloid readers nor black metal fans are particularly held in esteem by polite or fashionable society. Neither seem particularly affected by this, given the stubborn health of the black metal scene, now an international phenomenon (von Helden 2017: 42), and the still high circulation of red top tabloids, despite recent declines (Greenslade 2017). There are, nonetheless, clear differences too. After all, black metal is a fringe subculture, whereas the tabloids still represent mass-produced, mass- consumed culture. If black metal is about rejection of the mainstream, tabloids represent deference towards it, or at least part of it. As Jostein Gripsrud argues, news media plays an important role not so much in indoctrinating and leading its readers but in echoing and reinforcing existing traditions, cultural assumptions and beliefs. I have already covered this in a previous paper (Hay 2015); nonetheless, it is worth reiterating Gripsrud’s main point:

The media are storytellers, reiterating stories that, like ancient myths, serve as ways of thinking about existential and social matters individuals and groups have to deal with in their everyday lives. (Gripsrud 2008: 42)

If we examine tabloid coverage of ‘satanic’ and ‘evil’ stories through this prism, we can, therefore, begin to understand that their main purpose is to reflect a world-view of a people who believe themselves under siege. Whether it is satanic cults, hoards of immigrants or killer Rottweilers, these all reflect the preoccupations of a mass audience that on the one hand fears and distrusts the other and yet derives a perverse thrill from reading about it, a kind of forbidden fruit that can be enjoyed only as long as it is tempered with the proper moral tone and lip service to fear and loathing. However, as Thompson has noted (1998: 25–26), the UK Press is also unique in the role it plays in moral panics. Which is to say, whereas media coverage in other countries – for example, Geraldo Rivera’s 1988 TV expose, Exposing Satan’s Underground – simply reflects and transmits existing concerns, the UK popular press is in fact proactive in creating and stoking moral panics. Whether it be video nasties, the aforementioned ‘devil dogs’, paedophiles and stranger danger, or most recently EU immigrants and refugees, the red tops have played a key role in ‘informing’ and motivating public fears as well as reflecting them.

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This places the UK popular press in an interesting position. Not only do they have an audience keen to be outraged and titillated in equal measure, and with an inexhaustible appetite for it, but also a means of engaging and leading those readers – though, as the riots and near-lynchings that resulted from the 2000 paedophile moral panic demonstrate (Critcher 2002: 524), this in itself can be profoundly harmful. Therefore, as demonstrated, the UK red tops have a ready-made language, response and audience for coverage of black metal crime and excess. Norwegian tabloids have covered the black metal scene with some vigour (Brændshøi 2005), yet, despite these favourable conditions, did the UK red tops report on what must surely have been ideal material?

I am the red top wizards – Tabloids, Norway and the same old Certainly, the antics of the Black Circle did not go unnoticed in the United Kingdom. If we look at the UK media as a whole, there was coverage of the Norwegian black metal scene at the height of its most criminal phase, which can be dated between the first church arson in 6 June 1992, which befell the Fantoft Stave Church (Campion 2005: 12), and 16 May 1994, when ‘Varg’ Vikernes was sentenced for the murder of scene Godfather Øystein Aarseth, also known as Euronymous. Certainly the most memorable was the lurid article on the Norwegian scene in issue 436 of Kerrang!, by Arnopp, whose tone ranges from the politely formal to the gleefully salacious (1993: 42–46). Another example is The Fortean Times’ ‘Viking From Hell’ article, from issue 80, 1994. Written by regular contributor, Ian Simmons, it had a caustic, dismissive and yet faintly gleeful approach to the antics of the Black Circle:

They were actually no more Satanists than the band Carcass were cannibal necrophiliacs if judged merely on their autopsy reportage lyrics. Somehow, in the translation to Norway, the irony was lost. (Simmons 1994: 35)

Yet if these publications were not strictly speaking fringe – both Kerrang! and The Fortean Times are professional published magazines with a reasonably widespread dissemination – nor can they be said to have anywhere near the audience or impact of tabloid newspapers at the time. This is important; the popular press not only appeals to a mass audience but also reflects it in a way more specialist publications could never aspire to. So, with this in mind, did the UK popular tabloid press cover what was, after all, precisely the sort of news story they were drawn to? To answer this question, I reviewed a cross section of red top news coverage from 1990 to 1995, using an archival service – to whit, Lexis Nexis. The keyword I used in my search was ‘Norway’ as this would surely feature in any coverage of the black metal scene, and its criminal activities, at the time. I discounted Sweden as, while there was a scene in operation there arguably before the Black Circle came into existence, the vast majority of criminal activity, at least to begin with, took place in Norway. Moreover, even the most cursory news coverage would include where these crimes took place, thanks to the Who-What-Why- Where-When principle. I also avoided using words such as ‘Scandinavia’ and ‘Scandinavian’ as these were too broad. Likewise, and ironically, I avoided terms such as ‘metal’ and ‘heavy metal’ as these would have resulted in limited search results, or

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misleading ones, and also meant that coverage, which did not use these words, would be excluded. One criticism that could be levelled at this approach is that it is too open and would return a great many false positives. However, I argue that a broad search brings advantages a more focused one cannot. That is to say, the variety of results would allow for a varied array of material that can provide surprising and revealing insights. The only problem this poses is the sheer bulk of the material returned, which is mitigated by the information it also provides. The newspapers I chose to examine were as follow: The Sun, The Mirror and Sunday Mirror, The People, The Daily Star, The News of the World and both The Daily Record and The Sunday Mail. The majority of these are typical examples of the red top tabloid genre. To whit, they are national in scope and in terms of sales, but also share other features, beyond the obvious red top aesthetics, assumptions and tone. They are all produced and printed in London, and so are products of the mainstream UK press – despite their espoused popularism, they are as much the products of the elite UK media class as more ‘high brow’ publications, ranging from The Guardian to the London Review of Books. There are, however, a pair of exceptions but I will qualify their inclusion. The last two newspapers are Scottish rather than UK-wide, but given their circulation and shared news values with the English-based papers, I included them out of a sense of completeness. They are, after all, both regional and national newspapers because they are Scotland-wide in their appeal. Furthermore, in terms of look, design – the style of font and graphics used – tabloid sensibility and preoccupations, namely celebrity, sport, scandal and comment, they are very similar to their London-based brethren. It is also worth pointing out that journalists routinely work on one red top and then a competitor. For example, Wendy Henry, former editor of The Sunday People, worked previously at The Sun. Meanwhile, the notorious Kelvin Mckenzie was editor of The Sun but then worked for Mirror Group Newspapers, as did Piers Morgan and David Montgomery. This means a wide dissemination of shared news reporting technique and news values. In other words, all the red tops covered as part of this research shared similar meth- odologies and ideologies, despite the nominal political differences between, for example, the right-leaning The Sun and the left-leaning The Mirror. It may come as a surprise to some red top readers that their preferred paper is produced by people who have also worked on their rivals. Any commitment to a particularly political stance, unless it is from a committed right-winger such as The Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh, or The Mirror’s Paul Routledge and his ‘Old Labour’ perspective, is conditional. The only real loyalty, for the most part, is to the ideology of the red top: a somewhat right wing, cynical populism, manifested in an overall tone that all these publications share and a tendency towards faux morality, often belied by dubious behaviour, be it intrusion on grief, phone-hacking or paparazzi photojournalism. Fittingly, then, the results were uniform and yet surprising nonetheless. While I expected at least a few results pertinent to black metal, the results instead revealed something I found deeply surprising. What did the results reveal? The vast majority of stories pertained to Norway only in terms of football (Dillon 1994: 58–59), vague references to Vikings (Sunday Mail 1995: 7), whaling and the King and Queen of Norway, on a royal visit, being described as ‘Biking Vikings’ (Frame 1994: 22). In other words, even as churches were burnt to the ground, people were murdered and senior figures in the Oslo Inner Circle were being arrested with explosives and firearms, this did not

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even register in the red tops. This was of course deeply counterintuitive at first, but as I continued to analyse these results, a pattern of sorts did begin to emerge. The only stories that did not fall into this pattern included a story about a young Norwegian child being kicked to death by her classmates (Daily Record 1994a: 15), a stalker pursuing a TV presenter to Norway (Barber 1994: 14–15) and a Norwegian mental patient killing a fellow patient for making too much noise during eating (Daily Record 1994b: 11). In other words, it was neither their ‘Norwegianness’ that stood out nor any link to black metal – not least because it was not there – but simply their strange and unusual nature. Had these events happened anywhere else other than Norway, they would have remained as newsworthy for these reasons. Indeed, it is for the same reason that the closest to anything even vaguely black metal related was a ‘101 Facts’ article that revealed that Norway had a village called Hell (Riches 1994: 19–22). Horrible though some of these stories were, there was no black metal connection and the Norwegian aspect was merely there to serve as a background detail. Even the quality press paid more attention to black metal than the red tops – The Sunday Times for example, not only mentioned music documentaries on British TV and radio during the period covered, but also selected them as ‘Critics’ Picks’ (Perry 1993: 43[S9]) (Duckworth 1995: 49[S8]). Indeed, the coverage, though brief, nonetheless demonstrated far more understanding, let alone interest, than the red tops even attempted:

The Scandinavian fascists who had adopted this music as their anthem for the assertion of racial purity are a good deal more frightening than the brattish British lot. (Duckworth)

This raises an intriguing question. Why, then, did the UK popular press not seize the rich and grisly opportunities offered by black metal? As mentioned, these stories had all the key ingredients for a good red top story – horror, violence, transgression and the occult. Even the exceptionally bloody 1991 suicide of Mayhem’s lead singer, Pers ‘Dead’ Ohlin (Silk 2013: 14–15), would surely have been grist to the red tops’ mill – the gory photograph of the after- math, the use of it as a cover for a Mayhem release, and rumours of brain and skull fragments being eaten or made into jewellery… these must surely have been the very epitome of a British tabloid story. It helped that Ohlin’s sense of humour was quite British in its bleakness. His suicide note that asked readers to excuse the blood, and his wearing a t-shirt with the legend ‘I [Heart] Transylvania’ would surely have been ideal for the tabloids. Gore and black humour, as opposed to black metal, is of course a cornerstone of UK red tops – consider The Sun’s front pages dwelling morbidly on the dead body of Muammar Gaddafi (Wheeler 2011: 1), or the murder of two US TV journalists (Samson 2015: 1), complete with tasteless photoshopping of muzzle flash, or a 4-year-old boy who apparently has the mark of Satan on his chest (Parker 2014: 1). Yet this, and the other key events of the second wave, did not register. For the answer, we must return to the principles of UK tabloid journalism – not as they pertain to sensationalism, but how they reflect and echo the preconceptions of their readers. For both tabloid journalist and UK reader, it seems that the notion of Norway as anything other than some vague Scandinavian country where football, Vikings and occasionally strange news stories happen,

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was too much of a departure from received wisdom. Compounding matters further is the recent history between Norway and the United Kingdom, where two cultures with considerable similarities in some senses, particularly sport, are also defined by considerable cultural differences – for example, the United Kingdom’s class-ridden society in contrast to Norway’s comparatively egali- tarian settlement (Goksøyr 2013). This is compounded, on the one hand by a sense of inferiority on the part of the Norwegians and a sense of oblivious- ness on the part of the British, leading to a strange state of affairs whereby the Newcastle band Venom are ignored in the mainstream UK music press and yet were integral in the development of the Norwegian black metal scene. For the British, Norway has either been ‘a haven unaffected by the discontents of civilisation’ in the nineteenth century (Fjågesund and Symes 2003: 54), or just another Scandinavian country, as this article’s survey of press coverage demonstrates. Even in terms of similarities, the United Kingdom and Norway have drifted apart – consider the very different outcomes of North Sea oil for British and Norwegian societies since 1979 (Cumbers 2000: 241). It would take Anders Behring Breivik’s 2011 terrorist attacks for the red tops to feature Norway as a front-page story (Flynn and Hughes 2011: 4–5). For Norway to even register in the consciousness of the red tops, it had to undergo a particularly intense, horrific and unusual event (Griffiths 2011: 6–7). Perhaps fittingly, the tabloids have taken to referring to Breivik as a ‘fiend’ and a ‘neo-nazi monster’ (Syson 2011: 1, 11), and detailing his love life (Syson 2012: 29) (McCrum 2015), but once again his Norwegian-ness is treated as circum- stantial. He has merely joined the likes of Fred West, Harold Shipman, Ian Huntley and Myra Hindley in a rogues’ gallery of tabloid bogeymen, objects of only too understandable fear and horror, but also shorn of their context and reduced to supervillains. Indeed, this indirect addition of Breivik to a British tabloid rogues’ gallery is made clear by the way he has inspired tabloid readers to write disgusted, vehement letters that nonetheless congratulate the newspapers that report on him:

I FIND it incredible that the maximum prison sentence in Norway is 21 years. If ever a person deserved more, it is psycho Anders Breivik. I’m sure if he was to be put in front of a firing squad - with no blindfold so the fear can be seen in his eyes, just like his victims - there would be no shortage of volunteers to fire the guns. I would be the first in the queue. (The Sun 2011: 41)

Once again, a world-view is confirmed and a monster castigated, as with Hindley, Shipman, Sutcliffe, West, Nilson and others. Nothing intrudes in an existing narrative with all its preconceptions and blind spots.

Conclusion – De Mysteriis Dom Rupertus Murdoch In this light, the red tops’ ignoring of black metal is one of the great ironies of journalism, but also understandable given the strange dynamics of these publications. These are narratives of stagnation, of stasis. To say the red tops are conservative may seem a truism, but in truth, as this research demonstrates, they are in their own way the very embodiment and perpetuation of it. Tabloids are bought and read by readers who want to stand still. No views are challenged; on the contrary, they are, time and again, reaffirmed and unchallenged. The 2016 vote for Brexit is a case in point – The Sun described

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it as ‘our chance to make Britain even greater, to recapture our democracy, to preserve the values and culture we are rightly proud of’, while noting earlier that ‘…we were the first to do [this] centuries ago’ (The Sun 2014: 1). Change is seen as a dire threat. A return to the past or a rearguard action against the progress of history is meanwhile portrayed as virtuous. Coarse, provocative, insincere and brilliantly appealing, the red tops also constitute the death of the British imagination. Readers receive more or less the same rhetoric, propaganda, gossip, outrage and prejudices they read ten years ago, twenty, thirty, forty… Yet, let me conclude with a final observation. In terms of its hate, its xeno- phobia, its rejection of Christian values, its need to tear down idols and ruin the once-respected; its personality cults in the form of columnists and notorious criminals; its need to persecute and defame; its utter rejection of the post-War settlement, an obsession with Nazis and war; and its aggressive, transgressive means of communication, may I propose that the Great British Tabloid has far more in common with black metal than either may wish to admit? After all, every trait I have just attributed to the red tops could equally apply to black metal. The only difference, of course, is that black metal wears its vileness on its sleeve (or at least, its spiked wristband), while British tabloids cloak themselves in a most pernicious hypocrisy. Perhaps then the ultimate irony is that black metal, in contrast to the phone-hacking humbuggery of the red tops, finds itself in the curious position of occupying a moral high ground. As The Sun once proclaimed during The Falklands War, ‘GOTCHA’!

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SUGGESTED CITATION Hay, A. (2018), ‘Phew – What a blizzard! Black metal and the UK popular press’, Metal Music Studies, 4:2, pp. 329–341, doi: 10.1386/mms.4.2.329_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS Dr Alexander Hay comes from an eclectic humanities background. He is also a music journalist having written on and interviewed bands such as Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir. His research interests include the history of journalism and online media. E-mail: [email protected]

Alexander Hay has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.