Black Metal Theory Symposium I (2009) - audio

Sound recordings of select presentations distributable as one file. Download here.

Or individually:

Anthony Sciscione - ‘Goatsteps behind my steps’: Black Metal and Ritual Renewal (mp3)
Brandon Stosuy - Meaningful Leaning Mess (mp3)
Erik Butler - The Counter-Reformation in Stone and Metal: Spiritual Substances (mp3)
Hunter Hunt-Hendrix - Transcendental Black Metal (mp3)
Joseph Russo - Perpetue Putesco - Perpetually I Putrefy (mp3)
Niall Scott - Black Confessions and Absu-lution (mp3)
Nicola Masciandaro - Anti-Cosmosis: Black Mahapralaya (mp3)
Scott Wilson - BAsileus philosoPHOrum METaloricum (mp3)
Steven Shakespeare - The Light that Illuminates Itself, the Dark that Soils itself: Blackened Notes from Schelling's Underground (mp3)

Hideous Gnosis: Schedule and Flyers

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HIDEOUS GNOSIS
Black Metal Theory Symposium
December 12, 2009
The Public Assembly
70 North 6th St
Brooklyn, NY
1:00-7:00 p.m.
$10 cover

A gathering dedicated to the mutual blackening of metal and theory.

I: 1:00-2:15
The Light that Illuminates Itself, the Dark that Soils itself: Blackened Notes from Schelling’s Underground
Steven Shakespeare
The Counter-Reformation in Stone and Metal: Spiritual Substances
Erik Butler
BAsileus philosoPHOrum METaloricum
Scott Wilson
(moderator: Niall Scott)

II: 2:20-3:30
Transcendental Black Metal
Hunter Hunt-Hendrix
Anti-Cosmosis: Black Mahapralaya
Nicola Masciandaro
Perpetual Rot: Obsessive Cycles of Deterioration
Joseph Russo
(moderator: Steven Shakespeare)

Interlude: 3:30-4:30
Nader Sadek, Baptism in Black (Phase II)
Sym-posium (together-drinking)

III: 4:30-5:45
‘Remain true to the earth!’: Remarks on the Politics of Black Metal
Benjamin Noys (in absentia)
The Headless Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Evan Calder Williams
Black Confessions and Absu-lution
Niall Scott
Meaningful Leaning Mess
Brandon Stosuy
(moderator: Scott Wilson)

IV: 5:50-7:00
Black Metal and Evil
Aspasia Stephanou
Red in a World of Black: A Discussion of Blood in Black Metal
Murray Resinski
‘Goatsteps behind my steps’: Black Metal and Ritual Renewal
Anthony Sciscione
(moderator: Erik Butler)

Sculpture by Lionel Maunz

Sponsored by Glossator and Show No Mercy
Organized by Nicola Masciandaro

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Why do you compel me to divulge things that would better remain unknown to you?--Silenus

What coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulosity as the specter of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against nature? Molded by the dead brain of a hybrid nightmare, would not such a vaporous terror constitute in all loathsome truth the exquisitely, the shriekingly unnamable?—H.P. Lovecraft, The Unnamable

He is not a return to the past; he has undergone the corruption of the “present-day man” and nothing has more place within him than the devastation which it leaves . . . the memory of Plato, of Christianity and above all—the most hideous—the memory of modern ideas, extend behind him like fields of ashes. But between the unknown and him has been silenced the chirping of ideas, and it is through this that he is similar to “ancient man”: of the universe he is no longer the rational (alleged) master, but the dream.—Georges Bataille, Inner Experience

But suddenly the Mirror went altogether dark, as dark as if a hole had opened in the world of sight, and Frodo looked into emptiness.—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

The black tablet of vision, I hold dear for the sake
That to the soul, it is a book of the picture of the dark mole of Thine. —Hafiz

Painting by E.S.S.E. (Eternal Secret Society of Entities)

“I’ve seen demons / And I’ve been shown things that no-one should see / And I know why birds alight from cables with no-one beneath / Who’s on the side of the angels / Who’s on the side of Satan / God’s not there anymore / I know why birds fly / No-one’s there anymore” (Caïna, “Hideous Gnosis,” Mourner [Profound Lore Records, 2007]).