My obsession with Led Zeppelin began when I first stole a glimpse into their world via a crack in the door of my grade school friend’s older sister’s bedroom and saw that black poster depicting four legends in their prime bathed in bright stage lights posing perfectly with their respective instruments atop strange symbols, each to their own corner like the four writers of a new rock ‘n roll gospel.
“It's a darkness you can't deny…” —Agreed, indeed, proceed to…
“But it don't belong in a grown up mind…” --If I haven’t already given away my age.
“Distortion finds its place in a youngsters eyes. Coming into life you need its grind…” --Now this is EXACTLY what Jack Black finds so indispensible about it in the movie “School of Rock.” And who can deny he’s right? JB sums it up at one point indirectly as “Stick-it-to-the-man-disease.” It’s a fun way for kids to break the chains of childhood and assert themselves in preparation for the jungleland of adulthood — quite a necessary step.
“But at a certain point you got to let it go. OR IT WILL CROSS THE PERMANENT THRESHOLD…” --MMJ’s only warning so far. But these are solution oriented lyricists yes yes: “You know you gotta find it out in something else good…”
“Oh black metal so misunderstood!” --Here is the ambivalence you detect. Usually when someone asserts that something is misunderstood, it is in defense of that which is misunderstood. In MMJ’s case it is the opposite, but on many levels, so, again, they were right on with this lyric. (And it never hurts in rock ‘n roll to be vague — which, really is the crux of the whole matter.)
So MMJ calls it ‘black metal’ — it used to be referred to as heavy metal, I believe the first person to coin that phrase was William S. Burroughs (you want to talk about exploring the dark side…read The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead) Anyway, regarding MMJ’s warning; it’s a warning that’s been around since time immemorial, and one need look no further than the watered-down propaganda called world history to note its necessity. But let’s start with Nietzsche’s warning not to look too long into the abyss lest it stare back. What he means to say, I think, is firstly recognition of the fascination of the Dark. Manly P. Hall at a very young age put together a massive book detailing it for starters. But after the Matrix (1999) we renamed this abyss “The Rabbit Hole” from Morpheus’ referencing Lewis Carroll's “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass.” But the hybrid idea is supposed to be a journey not unlike Joseph Campbell’s delineation of the Hero’s Journey, where everyone from Ulysses to Christ literally goes to hell and back, but returns with a means for salvation.
Yet, I know there are distinctions made in genres and subgenres of rock. Black metal could be in reference to some European movement in the 1990’s, the fans of which would defend as much different than the stuff that came out of the late ‘60s and evolved into HM. Still, to me, it’s all the same wonderful angst. I would underscore wonderful for what wonder is. The Wonder Years, etc. What would we do, who would we be without rock n’ roll. The freaks of the mid-60’s were the hicks that made a bonfire of the Beatles records after Lennon’s infamous indirect comparison to Christ, not the Satanic Beatles. That’s what we FEEL. But is it true? Because one could, if one was so…ahem…paranoid and schizophrenic, to suggest that “It was 20 years ago today (’67, Summer of Love), Sgt. Pepper (Aleister Crowley, who died in ‘47) taught the band to play…” Hmm, not that far off really considering Timothy Leary “Turn on, tune in, drop (acid)” was a student of Crowley’s, to say the very least.
The blocks and hurdles to the Whole Truth are numerous, including the stabbing laughter of giggling skeptics, who dismiss everything out of hand but offer very little in return. Kind of like an overused Occam’s Razor point of view. Anyway, the dark of the dark side is everything from Jungian to Absolute. So good luck. I choose all the above as parallels. Sounds contradictory, but it really isn’t. There is a Whole truth, I believe and it casts Kantian shadows here and there that I take as pieces to the puzzle, not as laughable incongruities. But that’s me.
As to the material extent of what could cross the threshold MMJ writes about...? I've heard many stories; I think I've seen evidence, etc. But that comes down to a matter of Faith or Not, I guess.
Though it probably doesn't alter the meaning of the song, MMJ is not referring to heavy metal ("heavy metal" is still a term, by the way), but a specific sub-genre of heavy metal called black metal: blast beats, shrieked vocals, extremely distorted tremolo picking, intentionally shit recording quality, corpsepaint, undeniably anti-Christian pro-pagan lyrics. The second wave of black metal was probably the most responsible for articulating its specificities, and most of those bands were Scandinavian: Mayhem, Emperor, Burzum, etc. A lot of the members of that particular scene were involved in church burnings, one of the members committed suicide with...
Though it probably doesn't alter the meaning of the song, MMJ is not referring to heavy metal ("heavy metal" is still a term, by the way), but a specific sub-genre of heavy metal called black metal: blast beats, shrieked vocals, extremely distorted tremolo picking, intentionally shit recording quality, corpsepaint, undeniably anti-Christian pro-pagan lyrics. The second wave of black metal was probably the most responsible for articulating its specificities, and most of those bands were Scandinavian: Mayhem, Emperor, Burzum, etc. A lot of the members of that particular scene were involved in church burnings, one of the members committed suicide with a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head (and his bandmates took pictures and made jewelry from pieces of his skull), and one brutally murdered another after he became convinced that latter was going to torture and kill him and film it. Gruesome, fascinating stuff.
With that in mind, the song becomes even more poignant and humorous.
My obsession with Led Zeppelin began when I first stole a glimpse into their world via a crack in the door of my grade school friend’s older sister’s bedroom and saw that black poster depicting four legends in their prime bathed in bright stage lights posing perfectly with their respective instruments atop strange symbols, each to their own corner like the four writers of a new rock ‘n roll gospel. “It's a darkness you can't deny…” —Agreed, indeed, proceed to… “But it don't belong in a grown up mind…” --If I haven’t already given away my age. “Distortion finds its place in a youngsters eyes. Coming into life you need its grind…” --Now this is EXACTLY what Jack Black finds so indispensible about it in the movie “School of Rock.” And who can deny he’s right? JB sums it up at one point indirectly as “Stick-it-to-the-man-disease.” It’s a fun way for kids to break the chains of childhood and assert themselves in preparation for the jungleland of adulthood — quite a necessary step. “But at a certain point you got to let it go. OR IT WILL CROSS THE PERMANENT THRESHOLD…” --MMJ’s only warning so far. But these are solution oriented lyricists yes yes: “You know you gotta find it out in something else good…” “Oh black metal so misunderstood!” --Here is the ambivalence you detect. Usually when someone asserts that something is misunderstood, it is in defense of that which is misunderstood. In MMJ’s case it is the opposite, but on many levels, so, again, they were right on with this lyric. (And it never hurts in rock ‘n roll to be vague — which, really is the crux of the whole matter.) So MMJ calls it ‘black metal’ — it used to be referred to as heavy metal, I believe the first person to coin that phrase was William S. Burroughs (you want to talk about exploring the dark side…read The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead) Anyway, regarding MMJ’s warning; it’s a warning that’s been around since time immemorial, and one need look no further than the watered-down propaganda called world history to note its necessity. But let’s start with Nietzsche’s warning not to look too long into the abyss lest it stare back. What he means to say, I think, is firstly recognition of the fascination of the Dark. Manly P. Hall at a very young age put together a massive book detailing it for starters. But after the Matrix (1999) we renamed this abyss “The Rabbit Hole” from Morpheus’ referencing Lewis Carroll's “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass.” But the hybrid idea is supposed to be a journey not unlike Joseph Campbell’s delineation of the Hero’s Journey, where everyone from Ulysses to Christ literally goes to hell and back, but returns with a means for salvation. Yet, I know there are distinctions made in genres and subgenres of rock. Black metal could be in reference to some European movement in the 1990’s, the fans of which would defend as much different than the stuff that came out of the late ‘60s and evolved into HM. Still, to me, it’s all the same wonderful angst. I would underscore wonderful for what wonder is. The Wonder Years, etc. What would we do, who would we be without rock n’ roll. The freaks of the mid-60’s were the hicks that made a bonfire of the Beatles records after Lennon’s infamous indirect comparison to Christ, not the Satanic Beatles. That’s what we FEEL. But is it true? Because one could, if one was so…ahem…paranoid and schizophrenic, to suggest that “It was 20 years ago today (’67, Summer of Love), Sgt. Pepper (Aleister Crowley, who died in ‘47) taught the band to play…” Hmm, not that far off really considering Timothy Leary “Turn on, tune in, drop (acid)” was a student of Crowley’s, to say the very least. The blocks and hurdles to the Whole Truth are numerous, including the stabbing laughter of giggling skeptics, who dismiss everything out of hand but offer very little in return. Kind of like an overused Occam’s Razor point of view. Anyway, the dark of the dark side is everything from Jungian to Absolute. So good luck. I choose all the above as parallels. Sounds contradictory, but it really isn’t. There is a Whole truth, I believe and it casts Kantian shadows here and there that I take as pieces to the puzzle, not as laughable incongruities. But that’s me. As to the material extent of what could cross the threshold MMJ writes about...? I've heard many stories; I think I've seen evidence, etc. But that comes down to a matter of Faith or Not, I guess.
Though it probably doesn't alter the meaning of the song, MMJ is not referring to heavy metal ("heavy metal" is still a term, by the way), but a specific sub-genre of heavy metal called black metal: blast beats, shrieked vocals, extremely distorted tremolo picking, intentionally shit recording quality, corpsepaint, undeniably anti-Christian pro-pagan lyrics. The second wave of black metal was probably the most responsible for articulating its specificities, and most of those bands were Scandinavian: Mayhem, Emperor, Burzum, etc. A lot of the members of that particular scene were involved in church burnings, one of the members committed suicide with...
Though it probably doesn't alter the meaning of the song, MMJ is not referring to heavy metal ("heavy metal" is still a term, by the way), but a specific sub-genre of heavy metal called black metal: blast beats, shrieked vocals, extremely distorted tremolo picking, intentionally shit recording quality, corpsepaint, undeniably anti-Christian pro-pagan lyrics. The second wave of black metal was probably the most responsible for articulating its specificities, and most of those bands were Scandinavian: Mayhem, Emperor, Burzum, etc. A lot of the members of that particular scene were involved in church burnings, one of the members committed suicide with a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head (and his bandmates took pictures and made jewelry from pieces of his skull), and one brutally murdered another after he became convinced that latter was going to torture and kill him and film it. Gruesome, fascinating stuff.
With that in mind, the song becomes even more poignant and humorous.
I like the rest of your interpretation, though.
The song refers to guns...black metal.
The song refers to guns...black metal.