Chapter 9: Pagan Metal in Eastern Europe

Like Quorthon of Bathory, Rob Darken of Graveland has been interviewed by Death Metal Underground, the website which I have shown earlier to have essentialised thinking about race and gender running through its history and philosophy of what it thinks is authentic heavy metal. In the middle of a long, rambling interview posted in February 2017 Darken is asked about the move by some activists in North America to stop Graveland playing gigs there.¹ Darken proceeds to claim that the activists are censors unfairly trying to shut down heavy metal and black metal. He thinks that heavy metal has been marginalised and ridiculed. But he soon suggests that the “New World Order” is at work manipulating the activists. He is then asked about Trump and the rise of the right in Europe, and he responds that although people are controlled by the media and the Establishment in Germany and France, they will see through the propaganda and lies of the media and popular culture.