Praise

“Black metal is a fascinating genre—in part because of its complicated (and bloody) history but also because of the rigorous theory and deep thoughts buzzing around it. If you were to put together a perfect black metal book, one that captures that essential complexity while also providing historical and personal insights, it would be Black Metal Rainbows, a sprawling collection of essays, interviews, band and label profiles, and all kinds of art for both the true kvlt and the curious. It sets the new standard for how we should think about this music.”

– Brandon Stosuy, The Creative Independent

“Finally black metal is delivered from the tedious edgelords who have long diluted the decidedly queer heart of the desire for darkness, death, and despair as an effulgent world of creative infinity. This volume offers myriad trajectories, via art, philosophy, action, and music that black metal has created, perhaps because of, perhaps in spite of, its embrace of all things tenebrous. This delicious book is a beacon of black light that shows the wonders which occur when the atrophied figure of the dominant human undergoes putrefaction and emerges from the crypt in glittering cerecloth. An absolute joy to read.”

– Patricia MacCormack, author of The Ahuman Manifesto

“Despite being there in the moment during the ascent of the Venoms, the Bathorys, and the Hellhammers, I’ve tended to fidget warily from afar since black metal partly curdled into a mess of homogenized inhumanity. So, I welcome this collective liberating howl beyond the stereotypes of icy forests and puerile hatred. Bravo!”

– Barney Greenway, Napalm Death

“This is a manifesto as much as a book: A grand declaration of war against those who would confine black metal to crude invocations of masculine, heteronormative nativism. Black Metal Rainbows is an untamed collection of art, memoir, essays, and interviews that explode black metal into an infinity of kaleidoscopic pieces. It celebrates the truly unruly, the revolutionary and the playful, and it refuses to turn its subversive gaze away from black metal itself. A not-so-subtle reproach to those who condemn ‘wokeness’ as a pacification of black metal’s vitality, Black Metal Rainbows demonstrates an awakening to black metal’s true destiny.”

– Keith Kahn-Harris, author of Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge

“This wide–ranging compendium pushes past the conventional and conservative to explore black metal as a site of contest and transformative possibility—an act which is itself actually transgressive.”

– Jes Skolnik, senior editor, Bandcamp Daily