Toby Miller asserts that "[t]he model liberal citizen is a clear-headed, cool subject who knows when to set aside individual and sectarian preferences in search of the greater good." An interesting counter-example of this model citizen was a small group of folks in the early Norwegian Black Metal scene. Their aesthetics are based on brutality and repugnance. As Euronymous (member of Mayhem until his murder in 1993) puts it, "It's very important that the music is filled with dark moods and that the music smells of destruction ... [Black Metal is] something raw and evil ..."The scene is infamous for its extra-musical activities of church-burning and intra-group murder along with their over-the-top garb of spikes, inverted cross necklaces, and make-up, topped with a menacing scowl (a veritable wealth of signification). These musicians can easily be read as typifying the antithesis of the citizen (the citizen being "self-limiting, self-controlling").
As Miller goes on to claim "that consumption and citizenship have become mutually constitutive," it is also interesting to hear Euronymous's comments on the commercialization of the Black Metal genre: "I think that the main problem is that Death Metal* is now commonly available and accepted, the underground is dead. In the ancient days, it was extremely unpopular and extreme to play in a band like Mayhem, most people hated us ... Now Death Metal is commercial, and bands like Cadaver have even played gigs for their parents. This is not good. This does not help the underground, it's killing it. Real Death Metal should be something normal people are afraid of, not something mothers can listen to." Consumptability leads to de-authentication. Or, perhaps, consumptability leads to citizenship, the very thing that the scene may be read as eschewing.
*At the time of this interview (1991), genre terminology was not codified. Here we may read "Death" as "Black" though they are no longer considered synonymous. Mayhem is now considered Black Metal, though Euronymous earlier in the interview says, "I play in a Death Metal band, or maybe you should call it Black Metal." The animosity Euronymous expresses may foretell this genre bifurcation.
