Now, something nagged me while reading Corpsepaint and I think it points to some tensions in the thinking behind the work. Nerding out alert! Black metal clusters together a number of extreme ideologies that are sometimes at odds with each other. With his seminal early albums, Varg Vikenes, the man behind Burzum, influenced Satanic Black Metal (SBM), National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM), as well as Depressive Suicidal Black Metal. Other central acts of second-wave BM like Darkthrone and Mayhem displayed both Satanic and NS sympathies. However, Erik Danielson from Watain is careful in separating the two. "Racial ideas, to me -- from my perspective as a spiritual person -- are really irrelevant. I study other cultures, and I'm interested in radical ideas of viewing the world, but when it comes to racial ideas, I've never really found a speech or text about it that could make sense to me. When we view the world from a spiritual perspective, racial ideas become very mundane, and insignificant. We are talking about an animal that developed into man and that is, to me, where my primary enemy lies. Not in any specific kind of that animal. We are all that animal, and I am completely uninterested in any ideas contrary to that, to be honest."
The anti-human impetus behind acts like Watain, Funeral Mist, or Inquisition, the satanic desire for liberation and transcendence of human nature is in conflict with any narrow interest in race or the war between races.
These tensions amongst BM ideologies are reflected in Corpsepaint and the world-views of the main characters. Max and Roland are rebels without a cause marching on a path to self-destruction. “Black metal is not for well-adjusted people,” Max thinks. “Hard drugs and corpsepaint are symptoms of the same disease.” On the other hand, Seph is more into the NS, land and blood side of things. She is dedicated to her community and the preservation of its heritage, something reminiscent of Varg Vikernes’ eurocentrism, except Seph is more focused on her pure Ukrainian heritage and blocking out any Russian contamination, and the decadent modern world in general. (David Peak proves to be a bit of a visionary here, given the war between the two countries that started last year.)
Now we finally get to what’s been nagging me about this book. Seph doesn’t believe in Odininsm or something that fits NS ideology, but in the Lord Leviathan, which sounds a lot like a god of death and destruction, something that a Satanist would worship. In other words, a god that doesn’t care about races, but is out to destroy all of humanity. Let’s take a closer look at how Leviathan is introduced:
Seph states, “He clears the path to ascend and wages war on the primordial being -- chaos itself, the bornless one -- unleashing the black miasma that covers the world. The war is long and it is difficult, but ultimately the Lord is crowned the victor. He becomes the all-knowing, ever-seeing protector of our lands. From that day forward, He reigns supreme as the Lord of the lords, ruler of the Black Sea, and bringer of peace. And we are all his children. His blood is our blood, the blood of the land’s firstborn son and daughters. He provides the air we breathe, the food we eat, and in doing so, he lives forever within each of us. And in death we return our bodies to the earth, joining our flesh to his flesh, the Lord Leviathan.”
Initially, I was tempted to interpret this through the lens of the Sumero-Babylonyan myth of the goddess Tiamat, the primordial chaos, who was defeated by Marduk. However, Tiamat, being bornless, is also deathless and one cannot kill what is already dead. Thus, even though Marduk proceeds to create the world and mankind, he cannot fully extinguish the principle of chaos that slowly penetrates the created universe and eventually brings about its destruction. So, in this interpretation, Leviathan would be the equivalent of Marduk, a creator god, a god of order, which fits the description of him as “bringer of peace.” Although, even on this view, it’s unclear why Leviathan favors one race or nation (Ukrainians, in this case) over others. The god seems to have local and universal attributes, making its nature difficult to grasp. Incidentally, this is also an ambiguity in the nature of the Christian god, who is both the god of the Jewish people and the god of humanity as a whole.
But even this line of charitable interpretation is called into doubt when, on the next page, Leviathan is characterized as “formless,” “the black and unknowable abyss that surrounds our world,” “the darkness between the stars,” “always at war with others like him.” These attributes again call to mind the goddess Tiamat, the dark mother of chaos, rather than Marduk, the creator. Moreover, Leviathan’s plan turns out to be the destruction of everything. He shows no mercy to his own people, those of his blood, he’s just ready to swallow the world. However, in an NS framework, one would expect that the creator God would favor one race over others or people exemplifying certain virtues like courage or loyalty, over cowards or cheats. That’s why Odinism and the promise of Valhalla are a good fit for an NS outlook. But there’s no Aryan paradise awaiting the followers of Leviathan, both believers and non-believers are turning to ashes and dust.
We may note that, like many ancient gods, Leviathan has a dual nature; he’s torn between opposites, creator and destroyer, bringer of peace and war, local as well as universal. But this unclear and paradoxical nature makes him a bad story character as the reader has no clue what he is exactly and this drains the emotional oomph of the narrative and its overall cogency.
Nerding out stops here. All in all, mythological discussions aside, I truly enjoyed Corpsepaint and its portrayal of music as an act of transcendence, liberation, and transfiguration. As Mortuus from Funeral Mist writes, "I choke the human within, to gain the will of a god."
