Black Metal
Marilyn Watelet, Belgique, 1998, 48 min

Documentaire (…) qui nous fait entrer dans ce petit milieu du rock satanique de 1998 et, de concerts en rencontres, s’attache à suivre ces jeunes gens en rupture de société. Loin d’illustrer un jugement préconçu, MARILYN WATELET risque son film derrière l’image que les Black métals donnent d’eux-mêmes et que les médias et les politiques reprennent et amplifient.

C’est un voyage dans la Belgique des villages ordinaires où ont lieu les concerts Black Metal, rock violent et brutal aux messages ambigus. Vêtus de noir, maquillés, déguisés en barbares, des adolescents se retrouvent, dansent, boivent, se battent, essaient de draguer et partent dans la fièvre d’un concert, le temps d’un samedi soir. Ils disent avec des mots maladroits leur envie d’échapper au quotidien, au vide de leur vie. Ils ne savent rien de l’Histoire, rêvent d’un monde cruel tout en regrettant de faire peur aux filles. Parents et villageois pensent qu’il faut que jeunesse se passe et pour les organisateurs, ils sont un marché comme un autre. Dans ces rites de passage entre adolescence et âge adulte, l’ennui existe toujours et, de la violence de leur engagement, certains passeront à autre chose avec la même conviction. Certains se replieront sur la famille pour retrouver la tribu et pour d’autres, la tentation de se fixer dans ce discours extrémiste en fera la cible privilégiée d’une dérive d’extrême droite.

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How Much Black Metal Can You Take? (April 13, 2014)
One Man Metal (2012) presented by Noisey (December 20, 2012)
Xasthur par BRYAN SHEFFIELD, Self-Titled numéro 8 (June 23, 2011)
Black Metal Satanica (2008) by MATS LUNDBERG (June 13, 2011)
‘Black Metal’ (2005) photographs by STACY KRANITZ (June 4, 2011)
‘Svart Metall’ (2009) par GRANT WILLING (June 2, 2011)
Until the Light Takes Us (2009) by AARON AITES & AUDREY EWELL (June 1, 2011)
Norsk Black Metal (Norwegian Black Metal) (December 4, 2010)
Det Svarte Alvor (1994) A Black Metal Documentary (December 2, 2010)

Co-presented by David Hall from Handshake Inc., as well as HEAVY MONTRÉAL represented by Jean-Francois Michaud, Peter Dehais, Heidy Proulx Hadden, Caroline Guertin and Caroline Audet.

DETAILS

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Grimposium: Trve Kvlt Arts, Films, Sounds and Texts in Extreme Metal (March 22, 2014)

Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare
John Fasano, Canada, 1987, 83 min

Recording some new music in an isolated farmhouse, the band Triton gets more than they bargained for when something horrifying stirs in the darkness. Eternal evil haunts this place and the band members start turning into demons from Hell itself! After a day of making music – and making love – this band is starting to break up… one by one… limb by limb. The band’s lead singer, John (JON-MIKL THOR) Triton, holds the key to defeating this horror once and for all – a secret that culminates in a battle between good and evil! Triton versus the Devil himself!

Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros

(…) The latest coup from the dark arts is ‘Charlie Charlie Challenge’, a Ouija Board-ish pursuit in which players—who tend to be, let’s face it, kids and teens—cross two pencils over a piece of paper and attempt to summon a Mexican demon. According to no less reliable a source than the Daily Mail, four Colombian high school students were hospitalized for “hysteria” after playing the game, which set off an international pandemic of DIY voodoo:

Hundreds of teens have uploaded videos—from the UK to the United States, Sweden and Singapore—in which they ask, “Charlie, Charlie, are you there?” and then flee in terror when the pencil appears to move by itself …

“It’s a craze that has gone too far… It’s very dangerous for a young child to play with contacting the paranormal and diabolical,” Doctor Kelven Guerrero, who works at the Hato Mayor del Rey Hospital, told MailOnline.

He added: “It can cause a great amount of trauma in a young person … One of the major problems has been that in order to start playing a child must ask permission of Charlie to play.

“But Charlie also has to give permission for the game to end,” he ominously added.

The BBC, for its part, has maintained that the whole thing’s a hoax. Let’s hope not. I, for one, laud the efforts of these brave young people to install the legions of hell on earth and bring about the enduring reign of the Prince of Darkness. But I quibble with their methods.

Pencils have always been among the finest weapons in a Satanist’s arsenal; problem is, these kids are stacking with them instead of drawing with them. It’s downright primitive. To behold the true power of an occultist with good draftsmanship, one need only look to an eighteenth-century grimoire called Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros (meaning ‘Most rare summary of the entire Magical Art put together by the most famous Masters of this Art. Year 1057. Do not touch me’), about which the Internet yields little. It’s written in Latin and German; the Wellcome Library, which published a high-resolution scan of the book in its entirety, suggests that it dates to 1775, though its unknown author apparently attempted to pass it off as a relic from 1057. The volume is labeled NOLI ME TANGERE: don’t touch.

It doesn’t take long to see why the illustrator wanted to put several centuries between himself and these drawings. They convey a world of such hyperbolic perdition that you almost want to visit it, if only as a tourist. Genitals spit fire and snakes; hideous, multilimbed creatures sprout heads and pendulous breasts like tumors. In one panel, a string of crimson beads connects a mutated donkey’s knife-cum necklace to the raw end of his penis; he’s carrying a bloody piece of flesh on some sort of fire poker. In another, a litter of flying baby serpents come tumbling from the vagina of a flame-eared, bug-eyed, speckled, bulbous cat-woman. Those are among the two easiest to describe.

You can see (…) images (above and) below. The lesson is clear: the newest generation of sinful mystics is not doing nearly enough to further their art. Together, we can teach these kids to harness evil as a creative force for a darker, less inhabitable tomorrow.

Dan Piepenbring
The Paris Review

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The Secret Teaching of All Ages (1928) by MANLY P. HALL (October 1, 2010)
The Devil’s Bible (January 4, 2010)