Under Construction @ Keele 2016 Volume 2 Issue 1 | Page 14

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neuters the experience that can be gained and the value inherent in journeying
through the aural maelstrom for oneself.
While often a destructive, confusing and violent genre of music which can so
easily disgust the casual listener, it is via the experience of listening 'through the
music' as opposed to 'to the music' that one learns appreciation and
comprehension.6 Black metal is transformative; black metal is transgressive; black
metal is transformative to the point of being transgressive, and vice versa. Here in
this collection black metal theory blackens ecology, and ecology expands upon our
understanding of black metal. This explicitly posits that the search for isolation and
the abyss expressed through the music is not just a passionate worship of the
natural world from which civilisation has ritually pared itself from, but a denigration of
the civilised world itself. In the same breath as the reverence for nature is invoked on
the inhale, the exhale reeks of viscous misanthropy.
The theme of negation rises frequently in black metal theory, as it does in the
collection. Black metal negates musical form and goodness; black metal theory
negates the dark space created by black metal itself by questioning and dissecting it;
melancology negates ecology, offering a negative reading whereby the natural world
becomes an oppressive violent force. Masciandaro offered 'Not black metal. Not
theory. Not not black metal. Not not theory' when speaking at the initial Black Metal
Theory Symposium, with the intention to introduce the idea of this new strain of
theory.7 It can be argued that negation therefore offers a more direct and definitive
interpretation of melancology, and indeed of black metal theory, than could be
accentuated by positive affirmation. Assum