Drudkh is a band in Ukraine who, despite never having performed live, given any interviews, or released any biographical information about themselves, have hundreds of thousands of streams on Spotify, even though the streaming service only expanded its operations to Ukraine in July 2020.[1] However, when one scratches the surface, it becomes clear that Drudkh is a band worthy of analysis. While only a few images of the band exist online, if one searches for the members’ original formation in the early 1990s as Hate Forest, one will find a video of the band performing at the 2002 Kolovorot, a Ukrainian pagan music festival, in front of a giant Kolovrat; a Slavonic symbol often used in lieu of a swastika.[2] As well as this, Drudkh seeks inspiration for its music from the nation’s Romanticist poets who often deal with Anti-Russian and Anti-Polish themes, release merchandise patriotically displaying the Ukrainian flag, and have, according to some fan rumours, released material that espouses white supremacy. What this analysis of Drudkh is aiming to achieve is not to confirm whether or not a single band is racist, but rather to analyse how this acceptance of the use of such symbols and themes in music reflect a wider political subculture: that of Neo-Nazism within Black Metal.
In order to achieve this goal, this project shall take the form of an essay whose scope begins with the introduction of pagan, Nietzschean, and Nazi themes into the Black Metal genre in Norway in the late 1980s, before analysing how this extreme and violent culture spread through its music across Europe in the 1990s. While a brief foray into anthropological theories regarding subcultures will assist in analysing why music can have political consequences, the overall theme of this first part of the essay will be to integrate the history of European Black Metal into a wider tradition which exists within political commentaries on the 1990s — those which describe it as a decade of worldwide anti-globalist backlash.[3] However, as indicated in the opening paragraph, the ultimate goal of this essay will be to draw connections and linkages between the contemporary Black Metal scene in Kharkiv to far-right militias in Ukraine and political movements in Russia, Greece, France, and beyond Europe.
Essentially, by taking such a broad scope in both time and space, perhaps a new metanarrative could be drawn to link modern far-right politics to transnational forces in the 1990s. However, despite such a scope, the issue remains that this is a niche question revolving around an often dismissed subculture which is barely 30 years old. Primary sources are plentiful in the form of fanzines, online forums, and photographs, but these lack verifiability. Secondary sources are also problematic since they generally lack academic rigour and fall into the trap of taking myths as truths.[4] However, there is so much material that it will be possible to make connections, and there is truth that can be grounded because we can confirm that these people exist, that the events surrounding them occurred, and that their art is published.
In this case, to draw a clearer and wider picture of this history, it is better to focus on the lateral connections between events, rather than the specific details of each event, as these details become mythologised by an overly imaginative fanbase, and also by participants of the events seeking to be perceived as being as extreme as possible. Therefore, a band which releases almost no biographical information is a valid starting point to this history of contemporary European Neo-Nazism, since the significance of the band does not lie within the actions and ideas of its members, but in the community and scene which surround and define it, and this analysis will, because of this, not be distracted by unverifiable details about the band itself.
To assist in making this project a valid analysis of these currently unconnected historical facts, the essay shall employ historiographical theories which are yet to be applied to the Black Metal scene, the sources for which shall be identified in an historiographical subsidiary essay titled “how is music viewed as a transnational vehicle for ideas in traditional historiography?” This will allow for a more in-depth analysis of the question “how do the Neo-Nazi currents which persist in Black Metal today influence far-right politics transnationally?”
[1] Drudkh, “Artists”, Spotify, <https://open.spotify.com/artist/4q5mj9YpaYesKvHzN8XYve> [accessed: 10/03/21].
[2] ΚΩΣΤΑΣ ΜΠΟΛΝΤΑΣ, “Hate Forest Live at Kolovorot 2002”, YouTube, 27/07/2019, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaxDhFeD8FM> [accessed: 10/03/21].
[3] Subculture Theory is applied to music scenes in the latest volume of the Studies in Symbolic Interaction (1978-2016) series; an obvious example of this theme in political commentary is Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations (1996).
[4] Dayal Patterson’s Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult (2013) offers perhaps the best collection of primary source material and secondary source analysis, but it lacks academic rigour.