Slow and Accelerating Violence at the Edge of Apocalypse: Black Metal’s Dark Ecosophy as Strategy of Resistance Against Climate and Social Breakdown

Ferrett, D ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8421-6308 (2026) Slow and Accelerating Violence at the Edge of Apocalypse: Black Metal’s Dark Ecosophy as Strategy of Resistance Against Climate and Social Breakdown. In: Women and Femme Voices in Metal Music, Culture, and Scholarship: Feminist Strategies of Resistance. Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series . Routledge, London. ISBN 9781032608938

Text (A chapter for an edited book entitled Women and Femme Voices in Metal Music, Culture and Scholarship) Slow and Accelerating Violence at the Edge of the Apocalypse.pdf - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only until 24 October 2027. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (576kB) | Request a copy

Abstract / Summary

In metal studies, connections between nature, ecology and philosophy emerge most explicitly in black metal practice and theory (bmp&t) and often in combination with black metal’s trajectory towards and representations of the apocalypse and the void. In the context of escalating climate and social crisis, this chapter will focus on bmp&t when it engages with dark futurist thinking and ecological concerns to question the broader relationships between climate crisis, right wing ideology and ideas about the apocalypse as they resonate with current anxieties about accelerating trajectories toward climate and social breakdown. It asks critical questions about the dark ecosophy within bmp&t and aims to expand on its potential.  
 
To date, discourse about this relationship has been predominantly established by white male theorists in correspondence with primarily white male musicians as the dominant subjects of black metal music and subcultures. This discourse is frequently underscored with a trajectory towards brutal destruction based on an accelerationist logic. Through discourse and listening analysis, the chapter questions the intersections between black metal ecological philosophy, accelerationist theory and the characterization of pace as both practice and theory veers towards an ultimate void or inevitable apocalypse. This analysis prompts a critique that raises the significance of gender as both repressed and fundamental to bmp&t’s concepts of pace, anticapitalism and trajectories towards the abyss, meaninglessness, death. Tracks from doom band Bismuth and black metal band Dawn Ray’d, reorientate the pace and logic provided by bmp&t, complicating pace, tempo, trajectories and offering a philosophy with ramifications for how one might reimagine the void and ecological futures.

Item Type:	Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Dark Ecosophy, Black Metal, Accelerationism, Slow Violence, Gender
ISBN:	9781032608938
Subjects:	Performing Arts > Music & Sound Philosophy & Psychology
Department:	Academy of Music & Theatre Arts
Depositing User:	D Ferrett
Date Deposited:	30 Apr 2026 13:19
Last Modified:	30 Apr 2026 13:19
URI:	https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/id/eprint/6458

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