Last week, the New York Times ran a report from “Hideous Gnosis” which the Grey Lady described as “a six-hour theory symposium on black-metal music” at Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s Public Assembly bar.
I’d heard about this on Invisible Oranges and was moderately intrigued. I don’t like the music, but it’s impossible as a metal fan to completely ignore the sub-genre’s impact, and I giggled at the thought of this “symposium.” I imagined a kvlt event like that would be held at a cold, concrete dungeon, adorned with candles and big tomes written in dead languages — kind of like the glimpse we got into Gaahl’s basement in A Headbanger’s Journey. A bar was probably a better setting–nothing better than a quick side-game of Golden Tee to keep you awake during a snoozer like this. (Ohhh snap!)
But the article in the Times (“Thank You, Professor, That Was Putrid”) genuinely piqued my interest in the event. Writer Ben Ratliff did a respectable job explaining the bare-bones-basic nuances of extreme metal in a way that the average non-metal Times reader could understand (one of my non-metal coworkers seemed to get the gist of it). He avoided getting ass-kissy or judgmental, and he clearly knows enough about black metal to write with (relative) authority. There were some groan-worthy moments — my eyes rolled back into my head reading Liturgy’s Hunter Hunt-Hendrix’s thoughts on “burst beats” and the American spirit of transcendentalism in his band’s music — but it got my gears turning.
My first instinct was to write a sarcastic post here about how nerdy and unmetal the idea of studying metal is, but I’ve decided to give the “Hideous Gnosis” transcripts a read-through and try — God, I’ll try– to give the music a fair shake again. Pretentious opining to follow.
~ Liam










