‘The Alchemy of Things Unknown’: Aleister Crowley, William Blake and Marilyn Manson at Khastoo Gallery.
The “The Alchemy of Things Unknown” exhibit intends examines individual works of art in relation to theosophy, sacred traditions and devotional practice. From William Blake’s illuminated works of divine imagination to Carl Gustav Young’s drawings of collective symbolic unconscious, the artists in this exhibition sought after or seek spiritual truths through art making.
Archive for the 'Occult' Category
The Norwegian Black Metal scene has always been one of pure fascination and one surrounded in a veil of intrigue, violence, savagery and murder.
Marry all that with a sound that is so raw, malevolent, and brutal in its structure, timbre and delivery and you have a movement that was destined to remain ostensibly underground yet always, controversial.
Directed by Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell Until The Light Takes Us is as raw, lo-fi and underproduced as the musical genre itself. The film features interviews with the key perpetrators of the Norwegian Black Metal scene, Darkthrone’s Gylve Nagell and the imprisoned Varg Vikernes, incarcerated over the murder of a fellow bandmate.
It isn’t a new story. The Norwegian scene had been covered extensively in the 1998 book Lords Of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground where this bastard genre spawned from the tail end of the Thrash Metal movement of the early 80′s.
The entire Norwegian scene gained notoriety moreso from the church burnings, Satanic vandalism and murder than from the deliberately awful musical stylings. Let’s face it, as musicians the entire scene was pretty naff, but as arsonists, now that’s where these temper-tantrum tough guys excelled at.
The film explores a grim world of art, music, arson, murder, religious and cultural rebellion. The streets of Oslo are permeated with every modern American gaudy icon you can imagine from McDonalds to Levis. And centuries ago, another invasion stripped the nation of its Nordic culture and history as Christianity’s stranglehold took hold and has yet to let go.
It’s a fascinating insight into the genre and director’s Aites and Ewell pretty much let the protagonists of the movement relay their views throughout the course of the film without any sort of rebuttal or counter argument. And it works.
Screening at ACMI
Friday April 2 9.30pm
Friday April 9 9.30pm
Only a few days to go now. I have heard it. It has blown me away. I need to hear it more before a full review can follow.
For now, over to Tom…
Until The Light Takes Us tells the story of black metal. Part music scene and part cultural uprising, black metal rose to worldwide notoriety in the mid-nineties when a rash of suicides, murders, and church burnings accompanied the explosive artistic growth and output of a music scene that would forever redefine what heavy metal is and what it stands for to other musicians, artists and music fans world-wide. Until The Light Takes Us goes behind the highly sensationalized media reports of “Satanists running amok in Europe” to examine the complex and largely misunderstood principles and beliefs that led to this rebellion against both Christianity and modern culture.
To capture this on film, directors Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell moved to Norway and lived with the musicians for several years, building relationships that allowed them to create a surprisingly intimate portrait of this violent, but ultimately misunderstood, movement. The result is a poignant, moving story that’s as much about the idea that reality is composed of whatever the most people believe, regardless of what’s actually true, as it is about a music scene that blazed a path of murder and arson across the northern sky.
View the trailer here.
Cradle Of Filth front-man Dani Filth talks books, vampires, horror and comedy.
I’ve ordered this book and very much looking forward to checking it out!
In 1975, while staying at Hastings, England, with my aunt, I was fortunate enough to be introduced by her to Kathleen (or ‘Johnny’) Symonds, a charming widow in her 60s, who had not only been Aleister Crowley’s last landlady but who was with him when he died in 1947.
Mrs Symonds and I soon established a pleasing rapport, which was sufficient to prompt her to reminisce about her former guest — a man made notorious by the popular press for the practice of ‘sex magick’ and other supposedly shocking occult activities — which she had refused to do with journalists. I met with her again on later visits to the South Coast resort, when she allowed me to tape-record her recollections.
Johnny had owned and run, with her husband Vernon, a large, gabled Victorian guest house named Netherwood. The property stood in its extensive 4-acre grounds, wherein were outbuildings, a lawn tennis court, a large garden, shrubbery and many trees, on The Ridge, a road running across the flank of the upland area behind Hastings, about 500 feet above sea level. Netherwood’s situation afforded extensive views of the town, its Norman castle, Beachy Head and the sea, which were doubtless part of its albeit wind-blown attraction to visitors.
Keeping Netherwood going during the Second World War, when there was food, fuel and petrol rationing, had been hard for the couple, but business started picking up in the second half of 1945, once the conflict was over.
For decades, music writers have been penning tell-all artist biographies and their personal interpretation of rock history. But on Halloween 2009, Fab Press will unleash a book that takes readers on a much deeper and darker journey into the inspirations behind the world of rock music.
Entitled “The Gospel Of Filth”, this coffee-table-sized volume is an all encompassing compendium of all things dark and taboo, written by renowned music journalist Gavin Baddeley (“Dissecting Marilyn Manson”, “Lucifer Rising”) and Dani Filth, the outspoken vocalist of British shock rock band Cradle Of Filth.
The history of Cradle Of Filth is but the linchpin that ties the expansiveness of “The Gospel Of Filth” together. With over 500 pages of content, the book reveals the unspoken and debaucherous dark side of humanity as it relates to culture, media, literature, art, film and music. It unearths the mysteries behind our insatiable fascination with vampires, werewolves, serial killers, and the occult, tracing the traditions of depravity — from folklore to pop culture.
Says Baddeley of the work, “The Gospel Of Filth’ must be the most ambitious project I’ve ever undertaken. Exploring every aspect of Cradle Of Filth was just the first step in a journey which takes us to the furthest reaches of the dark side. The result is, I believe a definitive gothic guidebook, an unholy text of truly biblical proportions!”
“The Gospel Of Filth” includes interviews with all members of Cradle Of Filth, past and present, offering their own personal takes on the world of the macabre. In addition, it contains edifying narratives from many of today’s dark music ringleaders, including H.I.M., Type O Negative, Within Temptation, Paradise Lost, Slayer, Gorgoth, Behemoth, and many others.
Not limiting itself to the world of music, the book features expansive discussions of dark art, poetry, and other things uttered in hushed tones, accentuated with exclusive interviews with English historian Peter Ackroyd, filmmaker Dario Argento, photographer/author Sir Simon Marsden, and artist JK Potter. If that weren’t enough, “The Gospel of Filth” is textured with rich, decadent testimonials by Guy de Maupassant, Anton LaVey, Stephen King, Marianne Faithfull, HP Lovecraft, Aleister Crowley, and other cultural luminaries.
Filth elucidates on the immensity of this labor of blackened love, “This book is the result of five years of painstaking research and investigation into the far-flung corners of the occult, the realms of literal darkness and all things fun, fearful and macabre. From scream queens to fever dreams and everything in between, this black grimoire uncovers the secrets and history of the esoteric and forbidden and is an absolute must for any lost soul curious about the darker side of life — be it a craving for vampirism, witchcraft, horror movies, serial killers, femme fatales, illicit fiction, exotic sex and drugs, black masses, or gothic fairytales. Making Halloween last all year or just a passing interest in the musical macabre, this book stands like a roadmap to Hell and beyond.”
“The Gospel of Filth” is a reference book, a pop culture retrospective, a literary guide, and a biography all wrapped into one all-encompassing tome with content that spans nearly all of recorded history.
The first pressing of the book is a signed and numbered, leather-bound, hardcover volume featuring a bonus chapter written entirely by Filth and is only available online at www.thegospeloffilth.com. It will be followed by hardcover and trade paperback editions with different cover art. The hardcover edition will also be limited to online availability, and the paperback (which does not contain the bonus chapter) will be sold in retailers worldwide.
More information and preview pages here.
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Throughout history, many have sought power and fortune by swearing fealty to the Devil. However doing deals with the Prince of Darkness requires both a light grip on reality and a sober comprehension of the quid pro quo required. A life of wealth and pleasure can be yours for the mere price of your eternal soul (and let’s face it, after reading that heaven consists of an eternity of praising a vain God with unceasing hosannas interspersed with the occasional trumpet blast, the comparative value of an eternal soul seems somewhat diminished). When you have pledged yourself to Satan there is but one rule if you don’t wish to avoid a merciful fate, and that is…don’t break the oath.
This is no ordinary album review.
Ever since I was a kid reading horror themed comics and watching a slew of Satan inspired 60’s and 70’s late night TV fillers I have been magnetically drawn to all things demonic. I didn’t grow up in a particularly religious household but I remember avidly reading the New Testament’s Book of Revelations (which reads like the demented screenplay for a big-budget Hollywood horror blockbuster). Yet despite this or perhaps because of it, my devotion to all things occult blossomed as I grew. Aleister Crowley became a mentor. Anton LaVey an instructor. My fondness for such subject matter was a raw attraction towards, not a repulsion of the saccharine stifling of conventional Christian rites. Their message of intellectual freedom and personal power perfectly contrasted the meek and servile submission peddled by the ignorant and hypocritical messengers of Yahweh.
“Some people have lost their way. Some people have lost their mind.”
When I first heard Mercyful Fate’s Don’t Break The Oath, I was 19, at university, and had been perfectly primed for the message it carried. I therefore confess that this review cannot help but be biased. Despite my subsequent self-annihilation and rebirth as a sane human years later this album continues to maintain a relentless grip on my imagination rekindling dormant memories and reanimating a world that for me has been dead a long time.
This album, along with its predecessor Melissa, is quite rightly considered one of the finest black metal records of all time. I should say one of the finest metal albums period. While Mercyful Fate are credited as one of the founders of the black metal genre, they are the polar opposites of co-founders Venom. Where the latter were a brute force, delightfully battering the senses with their delivery (often playing at the edges of their limited abilities), Mercyful Fate offered a highly melodic, capable, refined and ultimately sinister window into their ungodly vision.
The album was recorded in 1984 under the laudable production of Henrik Lund a year after the equally well produced Melissa. The record opens with A Dangerous Meeting – the rapid sawing of guitars giving way to a melody faintly reminiscent of early Iron Maiden yet stamped with a distinctive style. This penumbral song a perfect introduction to the tracks that await.
If you have never listened to Mercyful Fate or King Diamond then we must confront the issue of the voice. If Frankie Valli had desisted from “walking like a man” and had instead forsaken his soul singing in the service of Satan then he could quite possibly have gone on to father King Diamond, the Fate’s distinctive vocalist. KD’s operatic blending of tenor and falsetto harmonies is at times uncannily reminiscent of Valli. Many fervent headbangers who admittedly adore the music and admire the song-writing are instantly put off by KD’s voice. You are either for or against. With us or against us. There can be no middle ground. Listen for yourself and decide.
His voice is at its best in Desecration of Souls, the third track. The soaring falsetto harmonies overlaying his anguished singing is truly wonderful. The song is pumped along with a classic NWOBHM riff most ably accented with completely fitting and wonderful guitar solos by Hank Shermann and Michael Denner.
The album’s songs are linked by a story arc begun on the previous album – Melissa. It loosely follows a theme of devotion by the protagonist to his lost love and his subsequent quest to achieve reparation for his loss. Said reparation is of course sought through the agency of the dark one.
The second side (yes, I’ve got this on LP) begins with the epic telling of The Oath. The ethereal beginning echoes Black Sabbath with the tolling bell and falling rain. This forms a backdrop for the pipe-organ introduction which gives way to a rocking rhythm. While the risk of wallowing in cliche is large at this point, the sheer beauty of the melody and nobility of the lyrical delivery never let the concept falter. The song links several memorable riffs interspersed with great double solos. Underpinning all this, Timi Hansen’s bass playing makes Steve Harris proud. Surely, this paean to Lucifer must be the most listened to track on Satan’s iPod.
The Oath is followed by the foot-stomping, head-banging Gypsy. Its melodic style cementing the unique personal sound of this awesome band. Mercyful Fate have not failed to deliver on this record. Every song reinforces their polished yet brooding style and evokes a convincing and ever increasing sense of menace. From Nightmare which starts off a boppy little number that shifts back down a gear braking the tempo yet increasing the menace, to the etheric and evocative instrumental To One Far Away. The album ends with the fitting Come To The Sabbath, a fine, melodic, almost speed metal rendition of a coven’s ritual to curse the murderer of Melissa.
Our connection to art defines its value. I have related a very personal story about this record, revealing what it means to me. I am a legendary Black Sabbath fan, yet if I were stuck on the proverbial desert island, it is this album which I would wish to accompany my lonely yet gratifying decay into despair. Go. Get. Listen.
