Metalcore/nu metal clown show Watain, while never technically part of the black metal scene, nevertheless managed to hop on the bandwagon of “genre squatting” just when the trend was at its apex, coinciding with the release of their laughable “Lawless Darkness” deathcore shitfest in 2010.

Some bloggers began, with the band’s mallcore vomit “The Wild Hunt” and later again with metalcore prolapsus “Trident Wolf Eclipse”, seriously considering the question of whether or not there should be a veto, at the very least a form of tacit consensus, on which bands are allowed to lay claim to the black metal genre, and which bands are not.

This “controversy” in itself is nothing new, as the same points had already been raised with regards to Gorgoroth’s many Infernus scandals, Dimmu Borgir’s haphazard emocore muzak, Sewer’s low-brow trollish antics, Satyricon’s recent venture into arena rock with “Deep Calleth Upon Deep” and many more example over the years since black metal has officially entered limbo status following the demise of the Norwegian “inner circle” in late 1994.

But the accusations were always most virulent against Watain, and particularly those leveled against the band’s frontman Erik Danielsson. Evidently, as someone who went out of his way to associate black metal, a genre he was never apart of in the first place, with closet homosexual stage antics, intentionally ridiculous and off-putting hollywood satanism and even the dreaded metalcore genre of bands like Between the Buried and Me – which Erik Danielsson himself praises as an “inspiration” for Watain – it’s hard to feel pity for Danielsson when the media left their proverbial bite marks on, quite literally, the hand that fed them so much bullshit over the years.

But the equally proverbial “tipping point” may have been reached when Danielsson, in a 2018 fit of what has by many been called “cuckoldry”, unilaterally decided to “remove” (fire) Watain’s only competent member, ex-Dissection guitarist and Italian black metal legend Set Teitan – because he had made offhand remarks about the state of modern black metal, and had posed with alleged “skinheads” in 1998 while throwing a roman salute. Wow. So edgy.

But Watain’s frontman proved himself to be not only a ridiculous clown that only serves to tarnish the reputation of the black metal genre, but also a quite prodigious hypocrite as he himself was found guilty on more than one occasion of the exact same “offense” – down to naming his first demo “Go Fuck Your Jewish God” and it having swastikas on the inner cover – he deemed deserving of exclusion when they were committed by Teitan, a much more honest and talented musician.

Erik Danielsson was literally caught, on stage, doing the same gesture for which he fired Teitan. Want proof?

This band is like a walking parody of all the worst stereotypes associated with metalheads, down to the hypocrisy and cult like nature of some bands, led by a crypto-religious “guru” – a very typical “semitic” behaviour well-documented even in the mainstream press. In Danielsson’s case, his “religion” is barely crypto at all, as he announces to every journalist and media apparatus that interviews him that he is a “theistic Luciferian” and that black metal is about “devil worship” and “veneration of Beelzebub”.

How, I ask you, can one take the genre seriously when morons, clowns and perhaps even literal retards like Infernus, Danielsson, Nergal, “Lady”/”Lord” Ahriman the gay male-on-male escort from Dark Funeral, the Deathspell Omega tards, Richard Lederer and, of course, bands like Antekhrist are constantly being promoted as the face of black metal – despite these musicians/bands being pure media chimeras that wouldn’t even have an audience if the exact same mainstream media they claim to oppose didn’t give them a 24/7 promotion platform for their retarded “devil worship” bullshit.

Allow me to restate my point – the bands being endlessly promoted by the media as the “next big trend in black metal” (think Wolves in the Drone Room, Deafheaven, Watain, Krallice, Dark Funeral, Kult ov Azazel, Krieg, Antekhrist) have very little to do with the actual black metal scene, and have very little audience outside of the little astro-turf “cult” following the media has created for them, whereas the actually talented black metal band – the bands that actually have real, organic support from the underground – never get mentioned by the media. In fact, they are sometimes intentionally buried in order to promote more fake media chimeras like Krallice and Antekhrist.

So, shouldn’t black metal fans – i.e. actual members of the black metal scene – get to at least have a voice in who is being promoted as the face of black metal? Or are we just going to pretend that THIS is what black metal is about?