Fascism in Black Metal and How to Spot It

For being one of the most exciting genres in metal today, it’s disappointing to see that the issue of fascism core to its conception still runs rampant to this day. Here’s what you can do.

National Socialist black metal, also known as NSBM, Aryan black metal, and Neo-Nazi black metal, is a political movement and subgenre within the black metal music scene that promotes neo-Nazism, and Fascist and white supremacist ideologies. NSBM artists typically combine neo-Nazi imagery and ideology with ethnic European paganism, Satanism, or Nazi occultism, or a combination thereof, and vehemently oppose Christianity, Islam and Judaism from a racialist viewpoint. NSBM is not seen as a distinct genre, but as a völkisch movement within black metal. According to Mattias Gardell, NSBM musicians see this ideology as “a logical extension of the political and spiritual dissidence inherent in black metal”.