Satanic Bowels: Medieval Inversion and the Black Metal Grotesque

Abstract

Black metal has the power to stimulate the mind, to bring the listener to the very edge of an intellectual nihilistic abyss. While the experience of black metal can be one of transcendence and annihilation, it is nevertheless rooted in the embodiment of the listener. Black metal’s primal sound and aesthetic are closely associated with the chaotic lower abdomen, including the generative organs and the bowels, which in medieval cosmology represented torment, melancholia, and demonic forces. Black metal bowellism translates this medieval visceral inversion into an expression of the Bakhtian Grotesque, a gleeful and anarchic rejection of the hierarchical order. This chapter connects this metaphysical inversion to a desire to return to an imagined medieval world, but one of dissolution and decay rather than a reconstitution of older hierarchies.

Citation

Walter, B.S.G. (2019), "Satanic Bowels: Medieval Inversion and the Black Metal Grotesque", Barratt-Peacock, R. and Hagen, R. (Ed.) Medievalism and Metal Music Studies: Throwing Down the Gauntlet (Emerald Studies in Metal Music and Culture), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 171-180. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78756-395-720191015