WITHIN
THE ABYSS:
WEAPONIZED
CASSETTE CULTURE Within The Abyss1:
Ever since the mid 1980s, Black Metal has constituted a comprehensive
visual culture entwining varied artistic practices (collage, drawing, photography)
as a means of highlighting extreme sound productions through the medium of
illustrated cassette tapes. These were distributed by postal mail in a network which
was on the fringes of the time’s musical industry compromises. The transnational
distribution of demos, fanzines, flyers and other objects relating to Black Metal
shows a renewed interest for mail art in an underground network characterized
by multimedia solutions and visual landmarks shared by an entire community.
If bands used to target a small audience, the main actors of the movement soon
began to widen their influence by sending their demos throughout the world
thanks to a prolific practice of mail art and to highjacked broadcasting systems.
Mail art, whose invention is often attributed to the American artist Ray Johnson
in 1962 when he created the New York Correspondence School, as well as its
evolution into network art during the 1980s, can shed a light on the fashion in
which alternative communities remotely bring individuals with shared interests
together. In this regard, network art questions the consequences of the rise of
information and communications technology through international meetings
organized by mail art’s main figures (Hans Ruedi Fricker, Günther Ruch and
Vittore Baroni). If mail art is nowadays represented by several public institutions,
as can be shown by the recent exhibition “Le Message, c’est le reseau ! Mail art en
Belgique francophone2” (2020) at the BPS22 (Charleroi), as well as the “Pushing
the Envelope: Mail Art from the Archives of American Art” (2018) event at
Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery (Washington, D.C.), it should be reminded that
this practice involves actual counter-cultural stakes which aim to regain control
over a broadcasting system often managed by institutions. The radicalism of
Black Metal bands and their autonomous nature precisely contested any form of
institutional compromise, which transforms their own relation with postal exchange.
1. According to the name of the album composed by Grausamkeit in 1995.
2. “The Message is the network! Mail Art in French-speaking Belgium.”
1
by NICOLAS BALLET
“Where Cold Winds Blow3”
When mail art authorizes all techniques to personalize the sending of
collages, drawings, illustrated letters, photographs and other invented objects,
Black Metal allows itself all kinds of postal transgression to wage a visual war
upon contemporary normative systems through a strong taste for visual horror.
Black Metal affiliates contributed to the elaboration of an alternative artistic
network by creating fanzines such as Damage Inc. (Maniac), Petrified (Jon
“Thorns” Jamshid), and Slayer, which Jon “Metalion” Kristiansen designed during
the 1980s. The Norwegian author and photographer, who has corresponded with
extreme bands since middle school, reminds how labor-intensive it was to send
letters, exchange tapes and design zines. A rigorous organization, motivated
by a genuine curiosity for a movement whose nature remains to contest the
concessions made by mainstream artistic and musical channels:
The whole nature of fanzines and tape trading relied on the anticipation
that used to build while we waited impatiently to hear the latest
developments in the music we loved. If I wrote a letter in the old days,
it took a couple month – often longer – for the communication to go
back and forth. Once we got the Internet, everyone took so much for
granted, and we probably didn’t appreciate things as much. We had to
wait three years to get a tape from Brazil – now we can find it online and
download it right away. And we can forget about it just as easily. […] To
hear a Morbid Angel demo in 1987, you had to either write to Morbid
Angel or find a tape trader with good taste. You had to make an effort.
You couldn’t go to the store and buy it. We worked hard to create our
metal world, and that’s a feeling that I don’t think can be re-created. It’s
a thing of the past4.
The Black Metal cassette culture of the 1980s-1990s asked a total commitment.
This time-consuming commitment, seeking for information while massively
broadcasting an extreme parallel press5, was made possible thanks to the
3. According to the title of the track composed by Darkthrone for the album A Blaze In The Northern Sky (1992).
4. Jon Kristiansen, Metalion: The Slayer Mag Diaries, Brooklyn, New York, Bazillion Points, 2011, p. 30-31.
5. Many fanzines have documented the scene’s news ever since the 1980s. The recent project of Dayal Pat-
terson reissued anthologies of old fanzines in a collection called “Underground Archives Books”, published
by Cult Never Dies.
 development of reprography techniques, and mainly of xeroxing. Photocopying
indeed allows many artists to reproduce the visuals of their favorite bands before
designing their own graphic art into as many posters, flyers and cassette sleeves.
The members of Mayhem proceeded in this way when they enlarged several sleeves
made by Venom in the 1980s. According to Jørn “Necrobutcher” Stubberud: “We
used the photocopier at school to enlarge the covers of Black Metal and Welcome
to Hell which made them bloody blurry so we placed transparent baking paper
on top and copied the whole picture ink. These kinds of posters didn’t exist so
we had to make them ourselves. It took hours and hours. The Langhus School
was our headquarters at night after rehearsal. All the covers for Pure Fucking
Armageddon were copied at school. We also made our own patches. We used a
bed sheet, which was semi-transparent to trace the artwork we wanted to copy,
and inked it in. We added another layer of bed sheet underneath to make them
thicker6.” The importance of image reproduction technique gives its name to an
artistic practice inherited of the 1960s and fully adopted by Black Metal projects:
xerox art, also called copy art. This technique not only allows artists to reproduce,
at a small cost and in great quantities, the images which illustrate their demos,
but also adds noise to their images thanks to the graphic transformation called
“degenerative process”: an alteration process of the image’s grain which increases
when copies are copied again. If the counter-cultural circles of the 1970s already
greatly relied upon these effects, the emotional relation which Kate Eichhorn
highlighted regarding xeroxing treatment fully echoes the pessimistic position
of Black Metal: “Copy machines apparently do more than produce documents
– they also produce an entire range of affects from blame to anger to anxiety7.”
The grain of photocopied images of the 1980s and 1990s perfectly embodies the
lo-fi sounds of saturated and repetitive compositions, yielding to this spectrum
of works a true force which interferes with the listener’s ear. This force transits
through the medium of the audio cassette which has become an actual tool for
cultural transgression.
Audio tapes are an essential object of Black Metal culture and nowadays trigger
renewed interest in artistic and historical circles8. Their cheap production
cost as well as their user-friendliness and the fact that they can be recycled
have transformed musicassettes into the ideal means to record and broadcast
confidential productions among an informed public. These kinds of experiments
had already won over the main actors of experimental and industrial music
in the 1970s and 1980s, as can be shown by what American artist and producer Hal
McGee has to say regarding this topic: “The audio cassette is the perfect vehicle:
inexpensive, portable, and malleable. Few of us in those days (and even now) had
the hundreds or thousands of dollars it cost to get a record pressed and released.
6. Jørn “Necrobutcher” Stubberud, The Death Archives: Mayhem 1984-94, London, Ecstatic Peace Library,
2018, p. 91.
7. Kate Eichhorn, Adjusted Margin: Xerography, Art, and Activism in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge,
The MIT Press, 2016, p. X).
8. See Jerry Kranitz, Cassette Culture: Homemade Music and the Creative Spirit in the Pre-Internet-Age, Fried-
richshafen, Vinyl-On-Demand, 2020; John Z. Komurki, Cassette Cultures: The Past and Present of a Musical
Icon, Salenstein, Benteli, 2019; Thurston Moore, Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture, New York, Universe
Publishing, 2005.
8
Cassettes, on the other hand, are accessible to anyone and everyone. They can
be purchased in a department store or drug store for a dollar or two apiece. So
if you have a couple of cassette recorders, you’re ready to record, duplicate, and
distribute cassettes of your music (or whatever) to as many or as few people
as your desire and pocketbook allow. The cassette is the counterculture’s most
dangerous and subversive weapon. It is a threat, an incendiary device, the
perfect tool for the cultural anarchist9.” This subversive and threatening aspect is
precisely what the Black Metal project adopted and amplified in order to shape
its own cassette culture. The medium of the cassette, its compact size and light
weight, thus broadcasts the movement’s themes, dealing with paganism, satanism
and psychic disorders, depending on the bands10. These topics are imbued with
a deep nihilist and misanthropic feeling, characteristic of a movement which
has managed to organize an autonomous economy, partly fueled by the bands
themselves when they create their own labels. Deathlike Silence Productions
(Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth), Cymophane Productions (Varg Vikernes),
Moonfog Productions (Sigurd "Satyr" Wongraven), or Northern Heritage (Mikko
Aspa) are as many labels that reinforce the independent aspect of the movement
which has its own iconographic codes and theoretical landmarks.
“Engulfed In Blackness11”
The Black Metal constellation indeed relied on illustrated releases or
even manifestos which the bands wrote in order to inform the listeners of the
themes which they explore in their demos. Texts were of primary importance in
the journey of several bands that wished to share their thoughts through occult
historical references. The members of the Italian band Mortuary Drape thus
published a text in their Demo Doom Return (1989) so as to claim their influences
linked with occultism: “Doom Return is another return on the occultism way.
This 2nd demo is a rising in musical sense after more one year of no sound. Its
means: cycle of the undead, reincarnation toward expiation, medianic contacts,
mysterious symbols and our quest in the great veil of separation (life-death;
spirit-material; light-darkness; woman-man…) the balance of the opposing. Our
demo is in memory to the great magic arcan BAPHOMET12.” This text was entailed
by the group’s first production, Necromancy (1987) [p. 70], where the band had
already mentioned its bonds with witchcraft: “This demo talks about necromancy
or divination by deads’ consultation. Speech regards astral world with particular
reference to the undead. All that represents for MORTUARY DRAPE a true faith
and a MISSION. Our demo is in memory of all those who lived, suffered and died
in the sacred name of WITCHCRAFT13.” Occultism can also be traced in the other
artistic practices which bands have chosen to reinforce the viral nature of the
Black Metal network. Many bands indeed illustrated their tapes with collages,
9. Hal McGee in Robin James (ed.), Cassette Mythos, Brooklyn, Autonomedia, 1992, p. VII-VIII.
10. Satanist iconography can sometimes be found side by side with gore imagery, inherited from the Death
Metal universe, consisting of a different public, with shattered skulls and zombified (Abduction of Limbs by Old
Funeral; The Grief Prophecy de Dissection) or deformed corpses (Amalgamation de Valhall) as well as many
nighttime depictions of cemeteries (Heaven’s Dark Reflection by Beyond Dawn; Lord’s eponymous 1995 demo).
11. According to the title of Grausamkeit’s track composed for the cassette album Fucking Goat Horness! (1996).
12. Mortuary Drape, Doom Return, 1989, self-released, cassette.
13. Mortuary Drape, Necromancy, 1987, self-released, cassette.
drawings and photographs, which circulated in small circles and using graphic
codes which infused the general visual culture of the movement. It thus barely
comes as a surprise that we can find a series of animated trees on the sleeve of the
Trail Of Life Decayed (1991) demo, designed by Niklas Sundin for Dark Tranquillity,
while Tommy Borgersrud drew three individuals wearing togas walking through
a forest made of living trees for the sleeve of Enter Obscurity (1992) composed by
Testimony [p.136]. We can also see the drawing of a satanic priest in the midst
of a ritual made by the Swedish graphic designer Kristian “Necrolord” Wåhlin
for A Winter Shadow (1991) by Tiamat, and which coincides with the satanic
celebration drawn for the demo made by Swordmaster in 1994 [p. 195]. Collage,
a popular technique in modern artistic circles (cubism, Dadaism, surrealism)
thus contributed to the magic processes of extreme artists in the 1980s, who
also shared physical bonds with their works, to the point where some of them
integrated themselves into such compositions. Maniac for instance appeared
in a collage made of planets for Fleshwound’s demo Radical Amputation (1994),
where the photograph of a saber beheading reminds the fascination that several
industrial music bands – SPK, Throbbing Gristle or Whitehouse, for instance –
had already experienced in the 1970s for unbearable images14 [p. 189]. Other
main actors of the Black Meal scene granted such importance to their image
that they chose to photograph themselves in scenes imbued with medieval and
fantasy imaginary.
Dark Medieval Times15: Black Metal Theater
Many musicians indeed explored a fantasized medieval imagery
in their pictures, by intermingling the material cultural of the Middle Ages
(armors, chain mail, swords, flails, etc.) to more contemporary elements such
as sadomasochistic accessories and corpse paint. The poses and attitudes which
these bands embodied in their staging – Funereal Moon, Satyricon, or Tsjuder
– echo the renewed interest of French theatrical circles for the Middle Ages in
the 1930s, such as the theatrical experiments lead by the professor of medieval
literature Gustave Cohen in January 1933. He indeed incited his Sorbonne
students of agrégation de lettres, a French competitive exam destined to recruit
teachers, to create a company, the Théophiliens, in order to stage medieval
literary texts. They played a transposition of medieval writings written by Gustave
Cohen, inspired by his vision of the theatre rather than factual knowledge of
the Middle Ages, a point which diverges from the Black Metal experience, which
rather chose to reveal the eeriest aspects of human nature through medieval
aesthetics. Indeed, if “Gustave Cohen and the Théophiliens of the 1930s defended
14. If the first track “Silvester Anfang”, composed by Conrad Schnitzler for Deathcrush (1987) by Mayhem
reveals a direct link uniting the experimental scene and extreme metal, obvious connections can be estab-
lished between these musical genres, as Adam Wright points out: “There’s a common nihilistic thread that
runs from Black Metal into certain realms of Industrial music, Psychedelic Noise, and underground fringe
literature that we surround ourselves with over here. Black Metal itself was wild and experimental when it
first took form, and its DNA is highly prone to mutation, despite what purists might argue. […] Black Metal
at its core is supposed to be otherworldly, fantastic, and by its very nature can lead the music into some
very strange and ‘experimental’ territory.” (Adam Wright quoted by Louis Pattison, “Nocturnal Transmis-
sions: The Selling and Distribution of Black Metal”, in Tom Howells(ed.), Black Metal: Beyond the Darkness,
London, Black Dog Publishing, 2012, pp. 86-103, p. 101-103).
15. According to the title of the album composed by Satyricon in 1994 and produced by Moonfog Productions.
a historical and conservative conception of the visual forms of shows16”, Black
Metal bands however delved into medieval imagery while radically inscribing
themselves within this universe. The Théophiliens of the 1930s offered a renewal
of the time’s theatrical forms thanks to a reinterpretation of medieval literature
while the artists of the Black Metal scene lingered on the darkest elements of the
Middle Ages by reinterpreting extreme torture scenes in their visuals – which
could embody the historical periodization called Dark Ages. The members of the
French band Torture proceeded in such fashion when they recycled a 15th century
engraving showing the execution of a torture victim by sawing so as to illustrate
the sleeve of their demo (1996). On this image, two torturers can be seen sawing
the victim’s body in its length, while two other convicts are lying on the ground,
awaiting their own execution [p. 251]. The recycling of this type of iconography
testifies the movement’s liking for violent motifs, which are meant to parallel
the “screaming of Black Metal, which can sometimes explicitly refer to torture or
suffering17”, according to Bérenger Hainaut. The reinterpretation of this period
thus renews the historical approach of the Middle Ages which had already taken
place in several artistic circles.
in the photographs of wild expanses seen in many productions, and in which
several musicians pose equipped with studded armbands and bladed weapons.
We should yet still wonder whether, behind these new staged codes, Black Metal
could perhaps be seen as “a Romantic kick against the specifically postmodern
mentality that is marked by a certain ironical attitude and superficiality in
relation to self and life, thereby expressing a lack of capacity, courage or will to
passionate commitment and to show ‘the world’ who one really is19”.
Nicolas Ballet
Contemporary art history PhD
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Postdoc Labex CAP (Centre Pompidou/CRAL)

If violence penetrates the entire scene from a sound, visual and

behavioral point of view, it is however important to remember that, behind this
fascination for the mortuary, actually lies the idea of a reconciliation between
man and nature, stemming from the staging of Dead according to Thurston
Moore: “Dead was the person who brought the theatrical statement of wearing
corpse paint in performance, not as a reference to any Kiss/Alice Cooper trope,
but to express the most intimate relationship of man and nature, the living
corpse howling its bloodlust18.” This relation with nature can fully be grasped

16. Véronique Dominguez, “Les Théophiliens et le Mystère de la Passion : une réflexion en acte sur l’adapta-
tion du théâtre ancien (1936-1939 ; 1950-1954)”, in id. (dir), Renaissance du théâtre médiéval. Contributions
au XIIe colloque de la Société internationale du théâtre médiéval (Lille, 2-7 juillet 2007), Louvain-la-Neuve,
Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2009, p. 177-199. Also see Helen Solterer, “Jouer le Moyen Âge : Gustave
Cohen et la troupe théophilienne”, in Véronique Dominguez, Marie Bouhaïk-Gironès, Jelle Koopmans (dir.),
Les pères du théâtre médiéval. Examen critique de la constitution d’un savoir académique, Rennes, Presses
universitaires de Rennes, 2010, p. 255-281.
17. Bérenger Hainaut, Le style Black Metal, Château-Gontier, Éditions Aedam musicae, 2017, p. 22. 19. Gry Mørk, “With my art I am the Fist in the Face of god”: on old-school Black metal”, in Petersen Jesper
18. Thurston Moore, “Afterword”, in Jørn “Necrobutcher” Stubberud, op. cit., p. 253. Aagaard (ed.), Contemporary Religious Satanism: A Critical Anthology, Farnham, Ashgate, 2009, pp. 171-198, p. 195.