In my last post I cryptically referred to a style of music called “Apocalyptic Folk” that I hinted had some thematic elements that might strike squeamish middle-of-the-roaders as, well, Nazi-ish. So let’s have a listen to some of my favorite “trigger the normies” examples from this classic genre.
First, a bit of history. The music scene that came to be known as Apocalyptic Folk is pretty much an entirely British concoction, emerging as one of the many offshoots of the punk scene that appeared in the early 1980s. It evolved closely with, and shared many performers with, the European industrial music scene, with one band in particular, Coil, being very influential in both. The genre is characterized by a blend of acoustic instruments with experimental electronic sounds, often sort of droning or hypnotic. Lyrically, the genre is usually explicitly neopagan and/or occult, with themes from Aleister Crowley’s writings common — although esoteric varieties of Christianity are also prominent, especially in the work of David Tibet and Current 93.
As you’ll see when I get to the songs below, fascist imagery and concepts — and indeed ideas to the right of fascism, like those of Ernst Jünger — are abundant in apocalyptic folk. But it’s important to note that neither the bands nor their fans were particularly political. I know it’s difficult for people on the left to comprehend the idea of being outside of politics, but I think that is a big thing on the right, especially the “deep right” as Curtis Yarvin recently described “our thing”. Once you’ve seen the grand scope of history — the continuous rising of empires and their destruction by the kinds of chaotic rabble currently gnawing at the roots of the West — politics just can’t seem as serious to you any more. But in any case, it’s rather amusing that several of the founders of the apocalyptic folk genre emerged from the band Crass, which was the literal flagship band of the original Antifa movement as best I can tell.
Anyway, to the music! We’ll start with an easy one — “Death of the West” by Death In June. Lyrics are pretty self-explanatory and hard to disagree with. From their masterpiece, Burial:
Another one that’s easy to like, “Lucifer Over London” by Current 93. The lyrics are amazing — a wonderful hodgepodge of Christianity, Crowleyan imagery (the name “Current 93” is an explicit homage to Crowley’s Thelema religion), and David Tibet’s own vivid imagination:
About the closest anyone from this music scene came to mainstream popularity was this cover of “Tainted Love” by Coil, which made it onto MTV’s 120 Minutes at least once or twice as I recall. Note the Crowleyan “unicursal hexagram” symbol and slogan “Love is the Law” that gets flashed on the screen, as well as John Balance’s stylized Black Sun and other occult symbols. Balance was an amazingly talented human being who died much too young. The raw emotion in this video gives an idea of who he was — and again, the juxtaposition of a gay man mourning a lover’s death from AIDS against a backdrop of supposedly fascist symbolism is the meat and potatoes of this genre:
Getting to some of the more edgy stuff, here’s Current 93’s song “Panzer Rune”, featuring an Asatru galdr chant by gythja Freya Aswynn. Aswynn’s approach to the rune-chant — droning the phonetic sounds of the runes — is the one I favor, but many modern Asatruar seem to prefer a different variety, where the names of the runes are chanted. Regardless, the name, the Germanic neopagan elements, and the fact it comes from an album called “Swastikas For Goddy” are all tailor-made to send Wokians into conniption fits:
And last, we’ll come to the most challenging piece, but the one that I think is the absolute masterpiece of the genre. This track, “Hitler as Kalki”, is derived explicitly from the writings of Savitri Devi, a German woman who traveled to India in the 1950s and started a religion based on Adolf Hitler and Hinduism, asserting that Hitler was the incarnation of the god Vishnu sent to move humanity out of the Kali Yuga — the Dark Age — into a new world. Devi correctly viewed Hinduism as the only surviving branch of the religion that had once ruled over the entire Indo-European (i.e., Aryan) world before Christianity and Islam appeared; whatever one wants to say about her “Man Against Time” notions regarding Hitler (pretty obviously we are not currently living in a new golden age of humanity), she was very influential in the resurrection of polytheistic ideas in Europe after World War II. Her thought is so far outside of anything most of us have considered before that it’s worth reading regardless of your politics. Anyway, the song is over 16 minutes long, but I encourage you to find the time to kick back, close your eyes, and experience this live performance in all its majesty:
In the end, of course, you can make whatever judgment you want about apocalyptic folk and the people who make it and those who enjoy it. I think the sensible conclusion a person should make from outside of the world that created and consumed this music, is that it is weird and I probably don’t really understand it. Personally, I love this stuff, and absolutely don’t care if that makes me a “Level 3 Nazi”. Heil Goddy!
The Antisocial Darwinist 