The small room at the Ritz PDB, almost empty when we arrived, is now packed to the rafters for the Liturgy show. As we wait for the opening act, Montreal’s post-metal/experimental rock Big Brave, to take the stage, I point out to my partner that this is not the crowd I’m used to at black metal shows. The room is populated by hipsters, women, and queer folx, dotted with a few familiar faces with long hair and band t-shirts, a far cry from the usual crowd of leather jackets and testosterone.
Don’t get me wrong, \\; I don’t mind this usual crowd, and it would be hypocritical to say I don’t relate to them. Growing up in a small town by the banks of the Saint-Lawrence River, I survived a brutal childhood because of music—punk rock, grunge, metal, you name it. If you say it’s cliché, I mean, you wouldn’t be wrong. I was the girl in a black trench coat that all the jocks both feared and bullied, while I was just playing D&D with my best friend, reading Les Fleurs du Mal, and listening to Cruelty and the Beast a thousand times (hey I was just a kid, and that album is solid). It’s cliché, and many of us now hang out in goth bars, and punk/metal venues, and because history repeats itself, we too have our very own Cerberuses guarding the gates of black metal.
Even if it’s slowly diversifying, the metal scene in general is still very, very male, straight, and white. I can see some of you rolling your eyes like you’re convulsing from demonic possession. Regardless of its controversial origins, I believe that today’s black metal should be inclusive, as it is such a niche sub-genre where we, weirdos who like brutal screeching riffs and growls a few people can tolerate, hail from different backgrounds to gather unto the darkness, chaos and desolation of this sound—and of small venues.
So, this cis-het, muscle tank-wearing, long-haired crowd is pretty much absent this evening (Then again: I do love you guys). Maybe it’s because Big Brave isn’t black metal. Maybe because both bands’ vocalists are female. Perhaps, and above all, because Liturgy are a controversial band in the black metal scene. For many, Liturgy are not black metal, but a pretentious abomination, a blight on mainstream black metal that needs to be eradicated.
In 2020, singer and guitarist Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix, HHH if you’re into the whole brevity thing, came out as a trans woman, but that wasn’t what sparked the most controversy. Ten years before, in 2010, HHH penned a manifesto, Transcendental Black Metal: A Vision of Apocalyptic Humanism, in which she declares Liturgy’s music to be “transcendental black metal” and provides a philosophical analysis of black metal. Even with my master’s degree in history, and a great, nerdy love of intellectual things, I found this dense reading, perhaps inaccessible to anyone who hasn’t studied philosophy. Nevertheless, I did find it extremely rich and, in many ways, right.
What I gathered from Hunt-Hendrix’s manifesto is that she aspires to renew and transcend what she calls “Hyperborean Black Metal”—Norwegian black metal that is nihilistic—in favor of black metal that affirms energy, “chaos, frenzy, and ecstasy.” Her proposition involves replacing the blast beat, the traditional drum technique used in black metal, with the burst beat, described as “a blast beat that stretches, flows, expands, and contracts, replacing death and atrophy with life and hypertrophy.” She aims to detach herself from satanic black metal and transform it into something much more “loving.” This resonated with me, perhaps because intersectionality is one of my core values, but also because I despise elitism and gatekeeping and desire to create a space for reflection around black metal.
We’re in the middle of Big Brave’s set, and a petite woman—barely taller than me—with small, oval glasses, a camisole, shorts, and flip-flops stands next to me, in the middle of the crowd. She’s attentively watching Big Brave’s fiery performance, as exceptional as the first time I saw them in this very venue. I cast a few furtive glances at my neighbor, trying not to appear too curious, but I do recognize her.
HHH has then endured severe backlash from black metal gatekeepers. The philosophy graduate’s YouTube channel is replete with long videos bearing hermetic yet intriguing titles such as “The Thirty-Six Decans of Transcendental Qabala” and “The Ten Antinomies of Apocalyptic Humanism.” For many fans, Liturgy rank alongside Deafheaven as “hipster” black metal—deemed pretentious and overly popular for a genre that, according to some, should remain obscure.
I scour the forums for comments: “Boring,” “pretentious,” “They’re opening up black metal to the general public and will turn all hipsters into fans who will destroy the genre.” A YouTube video by The Metal Tempest entitled “Why people hate Liturgy” explores the controversy surrounding the band. The presenter does a good job explaining the facts and taking a stand against the transphobic comments made against Hunt-Hendrix. Liturgy have been labeled “posers” and pretentious, while Hunt-Hendrix, before her transition, was called a “hipster f*ggot.” They even received threats after playing at the Orion festival, a fest that is is organized by Metallica.
It’s curious why there is so much hatred from many fans of a scene that itself is often judged and misunderstood. I remember the episode “Metal Evolution: Extreme Metal” in which Albert Mundrian, editor-in-chief of Decibel, spoke about the trve kvlt black metallers’ negative reactions to bands like Cradle of Filth because “black metal was not supposed to be pretty; it was meant to be ugly and awful, and it was supposed to scare you; you weren’t not supposed to ballroom dance to it.” I’m really not a fan of Dimmu Borgir, for example, who, in my opinion, have done far more damage to the mainstreaming of black metal than Liturgy ever could, but I can’t help but conjure the iconic scene of Gretchen Wieners in Mean Girls, yelling to Regina George “You can’t sit with us!” because she wears track pants and is not supposed to.
At the exact moment Hunt-Hendrix takes to the stage, a tall blond man resembling David Lee Roth from the ’80s and his Suicide Girl girlfriend step right in front of me (that is me being judgmental, and I hate this, but I’m only human). HHH begins the first track of her new album, 93636, which is meant to symbolize a digital representation of “paradise” in Thelema. I’m a fan of this esoteric kind of stuff. Bring more magic to the world, baby. I can’t see a thing, and no joke, the guy turns around at least three times, looks me dead in the eye, realizes he’s blocking my view, and just stands there—as if to say, “Yeah, I want to make sure I’m really blocking your view.. For all the criticism I might have of the metal scene, I’ve mostly had good experiences at shows, where the bigger guys usually check in with us smaller folks, almost like gentle giants with hair longer than mine and tees that would make your granny cry.
After the first song—a simple series of looped chants that form an angelic polyphony—the complex, dissonant, and wonderfully brutal melodies we know from Liturgy follows, with HHH sharing smiles with her band members. But I can’t help it; the guy in front of me, whom I’ve now dubbed David, is nearly ruining my show. Between elbow jabs and a “Hey man, seriously, can you move? I can’t see anything,” David and his metal-Barbie girlfriend spend the evening kissing, with no visible emotion or enthusiasm towards the show.
I catch myself thinking that David and Metal Barbie have no business here, that they’re brutes who don’t know how to behave and don’t understand the possibilities of black metal. I am furious, boiling, trying to keep my cool. The woman next to me, a short brunette wearing a plain blue sweater, must have noticed me fuming and cursing at them. She moves in front of her boyfriend, and they let me take her spot so I can enjoy the show. They’re not dressed in typical metal attire at all. But, damn it, yes, kindness is punk, and it’s metal AF. They’re metal AF, the way a lot of us envision metal as a more and more inclusive scene and space.
HHH addresses the crowd: “This is an old one,” and begins “Generation.” Chills run through my body. I’m floating between the bass notes, the burst beat, and the cacophonous guitars, entering a kind of trance. I calm the fuck down. I headbang with my partner, with the couple next to me, with the crowd. And it strikes me. David and Barbie clearly don’t know how to behave. There’s people like this in every scene. But I also dislike the elitist, judgmental voice inside me bitching at them. I’m no better than them, or any Darkthrone t-shirt wearer who rants against Liturgy. Call me a flower-sniffing hippie, but this is not who I want to be. Sometimes I fail, but at least I try.
I come back from my reality check while I’m watching HHH, who, while absolutely shredding it, is smiling and, to my surprise, appears humble. I don’t know her personally, but at this moment, I’m not finding any hint of pretentiousness in her stage presence. She seems like an introverted, head-in-the-clouds kind of person, possibly neurodivergent—and I say that in the most loving way, being someone with ADHD myself. Yes, she comes from a very, very wealthy background, being part of the Hunt oil/football family, and maybe people also hate her for this. But from what I’ve seen tonight, this girl wearing shorts, and flip-flops, no corpse paint or band shirt is transcending what it means to be a black metal artist in 2023. I, for one, have always had a soft spot for the black sheep among black sheep. Because if all black sheep wear “Conformity is the death of the soul” t-shirts, the subculture itself becomes a hotbed of conformity, doesn’t it?
I’m not saying if you don’t like Liturgy, you’re a transphobic, elitist hater. Not at all. I’m just saying that I prefer to headbang with a girl in her flip-flops than with a guy who accepts me only in full black metal gear. This is how we breach the gate unto a glorious pandemonium of banshee howls, distortion, and glitter.
Photos courtesy of Johann Wierzbicki and Jessica Hallock
