A fuckton of musicians also using suspicious nazi aesthetics, being open to performing/collaborating with fashy bands, etc.
It even extends to more innocuous seeming stuff.
Oh, an experimental industrial album from 1970? You see, one of the members actually did some work with nazi black metal musician Euronymous in the 80s. Oh, an innocuous sounding 1985 synthpop album? Oh you see one of the band members did a lot of work with the neo-nazi band Death in June. Not to mention the more problematic artists around without a political reason for it.
Germany is apparently especially bad for this kind of thing, in the goth scene, because of course. I don’t know what your politics are, if I can even find that information, but if your band is named for example Ost+Front (Eastern Front), I am going to be suspicious of you even if you claim to be communists and as a foreigner am sure as hell not considering going to a performance where you or people who like you will be around even as spectators.
The deeper I dive into less than mainstream music, the more I start realizing that it is bad.
Did Imagine Dragons base their musical repertoire on the basis of the work of Varg Vikernes? Do they insert Nietzsche into their lyrics? Are they going to perform in festivals where you play Russian roulette whether the person you are next to has a Hakenkreuz-tattoo?
Probably not is the answer to all of the above.
spoiler
at least Depeche Mode and the Cure haven’t done anything too problematic, as far as I know.
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Well at least I can listen to The Smiths without worrying.
Wait, I’m getting something in my earpiece
Morrisey being and becoming the most obnoxious person in history makes it sting a little.
Was he always cringe, or did he become that over time?
I think it was always there. You can hear it on some songs. Getting older while privileged does accentuate that part of a person’s personality, though.
As a child I remember looking up to him because all everyone complained about him where I lived was his hatred of the monarchy, support for the IRA and vegetarianism, which to little me all seemed like good things so I went through a contrarian “Morrissey did nothing wrong” phase because where I grew up literally nobody cared about his racism enough to bring it up as a point against him. It was almost a year until I actually found out about his racism and then just stopped doing the entire thing sheepishly.
Robert Smith at least said to dismantle the monarchy in many interviews he’s done. Not sure specifically where he falls politically, but using his platform to be a vocal anti-monarchist for over 45 years is commendable even if he’s not on Roger Waters level.
Yeah, he’s also fought with Ticketmaster during this tour to keep prices low and has even forced refunds for fans who had their ticket prices go up because of their profiteering. He’s probably a socdem, but has certainly done some stuff that deserves respect.
Oh, and anti-rascist, had a song against killing Arabs early on and in the liner notes had an * with a full explanation.
Metal fans:
As a neofolk enjoyer I know this all too well. There’s a pretty good blog that highlights explicitly antifascist neofolk artists though that I use to find new projects.
David Bowie infamously made use of Nazi aesthetics, although I’m pretty he just intended it as a sort of commentary on pop culture celebrity worship, his actual politics were at least left-adjacent. Generally speaking though I think a lot of mainstream rock music has been a celebration of white capitalist culture masquerading as subversion, so there is inevitably a lot of dodgy politics in there.
Didn’t he have a Nazi phase during his drug era in the 70s?
I love a lot of Death and Black metal, but I kind of avoid expanding my horizons because I don’t feel like meticulously researching each and every band. While Dungeon Synth is an offshoot of Black Metal, most of the bands I see distance themselves from Varg personally and philosophically, even if that chud had a hand in the creation of a lot of genres. Punk can have that problem, but the nazi punks usually tell on themselves super easily. That said, a lot of punk scenes have a problem in a more Libertarian flavor, and that keeps me from really interacting with my local scene just out of unease.
Me listening to Rammstein and trying to convince people I’m not a nazi
They’re not afaik. They did have a sex-crime related scandal recently however.
They definitely aren’t nazis but listening to heavy metal German music around my friends makes them question things. Especially the song Deutschland
Ah, I see how it might be seen as sus I suppose.
I live in Germany myself, and it feels like half of the metal bands here are super-cheesy power metal. Admittedly, I’m not much of a metalhead, even though I dabble sometimes.
I could swear I seen the band actually come out and say they are anti-fascists but I might be talking rubbish
They are certainly anti nazi and some of their songs reflect that
Listening to black metal is like playing minesweeper at this point
What about Suicide? As far as I know they just thought it was funny to lock people inside before playing their sets.
During the 70s/80s the use of nazi imagery was just edgy counter-culture. Doing the thing that upset people the most because it was shocking. We see this exact same thing with how people do 9/11 edgyness now.
Somewhere along the line the satire got absorbed into the minds of the successful boomer bands that made money and for some of them it stopped being satire.
How do we feel about Lemmy of Motorhead wearing Nazi uniforms? Also, I was pretty bummed to learn about Mgła after the fact…
Lemmy’s a libertarian, I think? Shitty for a different reason.
Mgła
Yeah, I don’t even trust Polish pop artists ngl, and I’m from that cursed stretch of land myself.
I’m really surprised to find a lot of Poles here and on Lemmygrad. The average Polish political consciousness is definitely… complicated lol
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