Visions Of American Black Metal: Liturgy’s Hunter Hunt-Hendrix Responds (Stereogum)

If you have any interest in underground metal, black or otherwise, you’re aware of the uproar created by Brooklyn quartet Liturgy. Much of the disdain’s focused on frontman Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, and what people view as his “pretentious” reading of black metal (American and otherwise). For instance, a couple week’s ago Chris Grigg, the Philadelphia multi-instrumentalist behind HTC regulars Woe, wrote an open letter to Hendrix as an installment of his “decidedly irregular” Metal Review column at Metal Review.

Stereogum / Haunting The Chapel‘s Brandon Stosuy asked Hunter Hunt-Hendrix to offer his thoughts on the Liturgy haters/blacklash.

Photo: ©nielsvinck

“There has been a firestorm of criticism in the metal blogosphere about Liturgy and about me personally (ad hominem) and my ideas. I don’t know how to respond directly to it because I don’t recognize the object of attack — it is a phantasm, a caricature, something different from the reality of our band and the reality of my personality, beliefs, aims, vision and so on. All I know is that I am not the arch-enemy of the black metal community, and that the internet is a crazy thing. And yet I’m not totally surprised by the reaction. And, though sometimes it makes me feel bad, at other times it fascinates me … a chord has been struck somewhere.

So here I offer a few loosely related thoughts on black metal and counterculture: black metal is really profound as a culture and as a musical style — more so than many people realize. I am very interested in an ethics concerned with ecstasy, the transcendental, and affirmation. Liturgy comes from the intersection of these two ideas.”

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Tags: Brandon Stosuy, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, Liturgy, Stereogum

This entry was posted on Monday, June 20th, 2011 at 5:41 pm and is filed under 2011, Interviews, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.