The Real Black Agenda

Well, the cold has begun to settle in. Which means dark, frigid, unforgiving black metal will soon permeate the air of the Grier home. You can expect nothing less than the raw, primitive output of old-school Mayhem, Darkthrone, Enslaved, and Celtic Frost. It’s the right metal for the right season. The kind that you can almost feel blow through the pines as you walk over the fallen needles. The kind “Where Cold Winds Blow” “Under a Funeral Moon,” just “(Beyond the) Northern Winds.” It’s the time of the year where I find myself once again—burrowing under cottonwood leaves until the warm suns of spring arrive to dry them out. So, it’s only fitting that one of my favorite black metal vocalists is back with an October release. This time, however, Nocturno Culto ain’t here for another go-around of Darkthrone. No. Instead, Culto is back with his buddy Sarke. And with them comes Viige Urh.

For the two generations who have grown up since Lyndon Johnson was president, the events as well as the thinking behind the revolutionary and romantic pretensions of the Sixties are almost equally unclear. This was the era of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Summer of Love; it was also at the heart of the civil rights and anti-War movements. The year 1968 saw the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, the ascendance of the hippies and Yippies, Black Power, Neo-Marxism, and the beginnings of Postmodernism.

The 1960s still loom in the national rearview mirror as a kind of cultural myth. Today, most Americans under the age of 60 regard this volatile era with both ignorant wonder and intuitive awe. What was it really like the activism, the violence, the drugs, the counterculture, the permissiveness, the radical politics? Where did it all come from and what were they thinking?

Artus Films of France has just released a phenomenal set of four Erich von Stroheim movies, "The Great Gabbo", "The Crime of Dr. Crespi", "The Mask of Diijon", and "The Lady and the Monster". All of them are in English, with removable French subs. The set is named "Erich von Stroheim Mystérieux".