IdiotInRemission weighs in on the Inquisition controversy

         

       Let me preface this with a blanket statement: I enjoy Burzum. Mr. Vikernes' political stance aside, I find him to be a musical genius and a talented artist whether he's creating black metal, dungeon synth, or whatever strangeness he's got going on now. I enjoy Peste Noire, and I enjoy some Satanic Warmaster. But I am not a nazi. I'm half Iranian, so any legitimacy I could have in the eyes of other white supremacists is absolutely moot. My grandfather fought in the French Resistance during World War II after fleeing Francists in Spain, and my girlfriend and absolute best friend in the world is Jewish.

          See what I had to do there? Because of my tolerance for music the metal community deems 'questionable', it fell to me to defend myself by citing everything from my ethnicity to my family history. Anyone could read those sentences, point a righteous finger and howl "J'accuse!" and that would be enough for most people.
          The same thing has been steadily progressing for Seattle BM outfit Inquisition, who some may know for their mind-bending 2013 release Obscure Verses For the Multiverse. After singing the praises of the band for nearly a year, the metal community abruptly turned on the band earlier this month. A self-described 'ex skinhead' posted a lengthy post on everyone's favorite alarmist social justice/metal blog Shameless Navel Gazing (the same blog who declared Lord Mantis' Death Mask as 'transphobic') in which said ex-skinhead Jason Gallant detailed an encounter between himself, then the driver of  Inquisition's tour bus, and bandmembers Dagon (Jason Weirbach) and Incubus (Thomas Stevens) in 2008.
          According to Gallant, after showing the band a swastika tattoo, Weirbach and Stevens 'applauded' and went on a lengthy right-wing rant about their love of the nazi era until Gallant gallantly (see what I did there) shut them down. Since the SNG post, the internet has exploded with speculation and amateur witch hunts into the issue. Metal Injection debuted some sensationalist articles on the matter, eventually calling off all bets with a sardonic "I don't care". The debate seems to have polarized fans - in one corner fans argue that, because Inquisition's subject matter deals almost exclusively with your run-of-the-mill anti-Christian angst and cosmology, the band's political views are inconsequential. In the other corner, folks are calling for the band's heads - insisting on their ostracism to the same controversial state as most NBSM acts. In a lot of ways, it's the same debate people have been having about Burzum for the past twenty years, but I digress.
           That's not to say the band have completely avoided the issue. Weirbach posted a similarly long-winded interview on the matter through Decibel in which he attempts to put the rumors to rest while dodging loaded questions from the interviewer. When the issue of Gallant's tattoos is brought up, Weirbach stays vague, insisting that his reaction to the tattoos was mostly shock. And when the issue of he himself being NS at the time is brought up:

Absolutely not. I’m not a Nazi and I’m not out to persecute a particular race—or any race—white or non-white[..]But I can honestly tell you that I never flat-out said I thought it [nazism] was a horrible thing, or that I was against it, but never did I say I was with it and that I believed in it. What I have always told people is I understand it. I understand that when you look at history and what was happening at the time, whenever you put yourself in everybody else’s shoes[...] it doesn’t matter how ugly it is to you or how great.

         Meanwhile, MetalSucks has done some investigating into the issue. Some of the evidence is fairly weak, but some other is fairly damning, the most sterling of which is Dagon's contribution through his side project 88MM (ಠ_ಠ) to a 2006 NSBM compilation from 'Satanic Skinhead records' (ಠ_ಠ) called Declaration of Anti-Semitic Terror (ಠ_ಠ). The band have been affiliated with unsavory NS types since their inception, with Antichrist Kramer, a well-known NSBM aficionado, designing the cover art for all of their full-lengths since 1998's Into the Infernal Regions of the Ancestral Cult to 2011's Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystic Macrocosm (aside: I think Inquisition may have been one of the bands Seth Putnam targeted with his parody project Impaled Northern Moonforest). However, the unifying factor of all the evidence in favor of Dagon being NS is that most of this information is not new.
          Declaration of Anti-Semitic Terror was released in 2006. 88MM has put out almost no material, and if its last.fm stats are any indication, the project is also dead. Even if the 2008 story of Jason Gallant is true, it has been six years. The most recent development was Satanic Skinhead's closing early last year. Antichrist Kramer hasn't done work for the band in three years.  Let's assume that Inquisition are not or no longer NSBM - the ensuing witch hunt and dredging up of information like this represents a dangerous development wherein those you associate(d) with can be used against you. This is not a good development for a variety of reasons.
          For example, let's assume Joe is in a band and he hires a Valerie Solanas worshiping lunatic feminist to be his roadie on tour. Joe does not care about his roadie's political affiliation, but makes a point of talking with them about it out of curiosity or politeness. Does that make Joe a radical leftist? No. So why then does Inquisition's business dealings with skinheads earn them such condemnation? Why is one person's spotty eyewitness account from six years ago suddenly inviolate truth?
           The Inquisition controversy represents one of the most ill-executed and frankly exceedingly unnecessary witch hunts in recent memory for me - and I go to McGill, the university that popularized the term 'microaggression'. The evidence, when it isn't out of date, is problematic at best, and at its core it represents the fervent desire of the metal community to castigate on a moment's notice. I will be continuing to listen to Inquisition, with my conscience clear, until recent, firm evidence develops, if it does at all. Is it likely that the band were NSBM? Yes. Is it likely they still are? Well, going off the few details we have - note Dagon's use of the present tense in his interview - we plain and simply do not know.