Today we take a look at the video for The Soft Pink Truth‘s queer re-working of Venom’s classic “Black Metal“, which is off Why Do the Heathen Rage?, due out June 17th via Thrill Jockey. Drew Daniels‘ self-described “electronic profanations of Black Metal classics” are wickedly perverse, and, as a whole, offer a supremely layered art-work that fuses the genre’s Satanic energies with the libidinal energies of House music. Along the way it questions Black Metal’s murky history, a past which includes extremely powerful music, but also fascist politics, and hate crimes, as well as putting a lens to Daniel’s own interest in the subversive sub-culture, inquiring into the ways in which politics and aesthetics intersect into the complicated assemblage we call art! In a very interesting interview with Pitchfork, that is a must-read for anyone interested in the album, Daniels explains,
“When you cover a song, the stakes should never be low…a cover is, to me, a real challenge. Why does this have the right to exist? It’s a test. I don’t mean to sound like it’s a deadly serious thing, but if you’re going to touch a classic fucking song like Venom’s “Black Metal”, you better not be kidding around.”
The video is directed by fellow Baltimore resident Max Eilbacher, who has also worked with Daniels and his partner M.C. Schmidt in Matmos, as well as releasing his own music, and the video features an intimate look into Daniels’ obsession with the genre, including a glimpse at his black metal t-shirt collection, library of occult books, and some seriously wicked face painting!
[ylwm_vimeo height=”480″ width=”640″]95419613[/ylwm_vimeo]
