Dylstew

Wall of text story:
Once upon a time this new dude joined my class.
He's almost bald, like a skinhead. He wears these particular boots, like a skinhead.
My first thoughts were ''ooh, maybe finally someone else that likes punk''.
I also really hoped he wasn't a racist skinhead. I thought, eh, there's plenty of other types of skinheads that weren't racist (hell, the original kind listened to jamaican reggae/ska). I'm half black btw. I didn't want to judge him without knowing him.

I started talking to him and he said he loves Black Metal. I had never listened to Black Metal, but I was interested in it. I asked for some bands. he let me listen to Burzum on his phone, it was pretty nice.. He told me this story about how ****ed up the vocalist is, but creepily enough it seemed like he kinda looked up to him in a way.. I tried again, not to judge.

I noticed how with almost anything people said, he went against it. Sometimes those conversations would feel slightly strange..but I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt and not judge.

I asked if he liked any Punk, he only liked a few Oi! bands, pretty much.
Then a while later he said he told he listens to this german world war 2 music or whatever. , and he really REALLY liked it. that was weird...
He later actually said that the nazi/racist punk bands made better music...
Weirdly, when he told me all this **** he was still nice to me.
I kept thinking ''You do know I'm black..right?''

Then when listening to a Burzum album in class, which I thought was okay, suddenly a girl in my class and him were arguing really loudly. Apparently he said something racist about muslims(no, the girl was not a muslim). It seems like he's never said much about black people, but he does have a thing against muslims.

Then the biggest offense came. In drawing class, he was drawing what looked like Hitler. At least it was similar to him. I'm dead ****ing serious.
How did they even let this dude in our school? 0.o.

Now, somewhere I read that the burzum vocalist who's done a bunch of ****ed up **** is also racist, but I don't know if that's true.
Even so, that made me even more creeped out by this dude. The weirdest part still is that he's been pretty nice to me.

Now, this dude actually pretty much scared me off of listening to more black metal. At first I was really eager to check out more black metal, but now I'm feeling like it less and less. oh, and best of all, he's also a hipster. He literally said he didn't like Nirvana because it's too ''Mainstream'' -_-

The actual question:
So that brings me to my question, is Burzum racist? are any other big Black Metal bands racist? Just wondering.

Isbjørn

Burzum is pretty racist. The cover artwork of his newest album is littered with swastikas.

And yes, other big black metal bands are also racist. On the original back cover of Darkthrone's Transilvanian Hunger, the words "Norsk Arisk Black Metal", or "Norwegian Aryan Black Metal".

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Dylstew

What about these I intended to listen to?

Darkthrone
Dissection
Emperor
Gorgoroth
Immortal
Mayhem
Weakling

Isbjørn

Darkthrone is racist. Varg Vikernes from Burzum played in Mayhem for a while, so there's that, and Euronymous, one of the other band members, had some pretty extreme views. Jon Nödtveidt of Dissection was involved in the murder of a gay man. So yeah, many early black metal bands held questionable views, though not exclusively racist. Immortal is "clean", though.

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The Batlord

Questionable. Darkthrone are trolls who may very well have just been looking for attention. A lot of black metal bands can't really be taken seriously, even when it comes to racism. A lot of it is just attention seeking.

Don't take any of that Euronymous goofiness seriously. He was playing a part.

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grindy

Varg Vikernes is definitely racist (BTW Burzum is a one man project, so it's technically true to call him the vocalist, but that sounds weird.), but his music isn't. The lyrics don't deal with racial issues.
It's up to you to decide whether a musicians worldview impacts your enjoyment of the music, I for myself don't really care (although I have a jewish background), as long as he doesn't scream racist bull**** in my ear.
An ex-girlfriend of mine, who is black, was also a big fan.
I wouldn't buy his albums though, wouldn't want to finance such people.

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A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.

Dylstew

Yeah, that's the thing, the music itself is not racist, so I might listen to it, but it's still gives me a weird feeling. An uncomfortable feeling.

OccultHawk

My general impression is that a large percent of black metal bands will adopt any philosophy as long as it's offensive. Unless they put it into action, like burning churches or committing violent hate crimes I just take it as trolling.

Lord Larehip

So when did Muslims become a race?

Chula Vista

While technically not correct, I think it's been adopted as a race reference by a LOT of people since 9/11.

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”