'Hideous Gnosis' Black Metal Symposium Held In New York; Report Available

December 15, 2009

Ben Ratliff of The New York Times reports that "Hideous Gnosis", a six-hour theory symposium on black-metal music, was held this past Saturday afternoon (December 12) at Public Assembly, a bar and nightclub in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

"The purest black-metal artist is one who's unknown and inaccessible," said Nicola Masciandaro, a professor of medieval literature at Brooklyn College who organized the six-hour event.

"There's lots of resentment toward a sensible discourse around black metal," said Mr. Masciandaro in an interview. "There's also lots of dissent and difference around what black metal is. Its center of gravity is an essential negativity, an idea of some remainder, something that cannot be reduced."

Masciandaro was inspired to organize the symposium, he said, by the conference on heavy metal, held last year in Salzburg, Austria, organized by Niall Scott of the University of Central Lancashire.

Read the entire report from The New York Times.

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