Endstille - "Anomie" (video)
Endstille – “Anomie” (official video)
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anomie, also spelled anomy
in societies or individuals, a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals
Encyclopædia Britannica
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Endstille’s Infektion 1813 (Season of Mist, 2011) is big and sad, though not in the conventional sense. Metal can have a community aspect – see the 80,000-strong horde at Wacken. After Burzum, though, “one-man band” is no longer oxymoronic. Black metal produces acts like Corpus Christii and Leviathan that amplify lone voices into symphonies of negativity. It’s inspiring that these musicians share their skills with the world. But their music holds no light. It articulates a collective psychic trauma that only deepens as humanity heads towards ruin.
Endstille are a multi-man band, though the video for “Anomie” almost denies that. It is careful not to show more than one band member together in the same frame. The musicians saw away at their instruments by themselves; the drummer, in particular, seems to achieve a lonely ecstasy. No triumphant fires or heads on stakes here – instead, we see languid smokes, unexplained violations, and vagabonds wandering through a dingy setting set in brick.
Few music expresses the disconnect of the individual from the collective like black metal. The result can be great beauty and power, but that power is double-edged. Black metal has a tradition of being anti-human and anti-life. That sounds hip until one remembers that Western civilization is already anti-human and anti-life on a massive scale. Rejecting Gemeinschaft (see “Anomie”‘s lyrics below – they’re ESL, but you’ll get the gist) in favor of “anomie” – doesn’t that just perpetuate the status quo?
Another song on the album says, “I am the only one at the deepest place on earth!” It’s unclear whether that’s a cry of lament or victory. But it’s clear that the feeling is deep. My ears are open, but so are my eyes. I observe with caution.
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ANOMIE
I cut out the persistence of time
Unslaked hunger for life
Man’s got admirable moments here
Perchance he’s death so near
Expressionism
Formative ideal
“Gemeinschaft”
Anomie!
Disillusioned image of death
Agony of a new age
Enrooted in a metaphor of war
Like an endtime-occult shade humanity
In dimension once initial helplessness
An affliction of unlived affects
Expressionism
Formative ideal
“Gemeinschaft”
Anomie!
The combat as an inner experience
Anomic researched bunkum
A miasma of a corroded civilisation
If there will ever be a new barricade erected
I’ll greet the tempest of exaltation…
… with a bullet in my heart
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