I'll just say now that musically this will most likely be my favorite album this year. For the last few years, I've probably viewed their Paracletus album as the best album of the 2010s. And that's where I'm conflicted.

I've never really followed personalities in metal, but from all the things I've read about their vocalist, Mikko Aspa, and his association with Nazism/National Socialist Black Metal, the guy seems like a piece of shit. How does one reconcile with liking the music of someone like that? I'm not sure I have a good answer to that yet. But, yeah, musically this album is kind of on another level much like Paracletus was.

>I've never really followed personalities in metal, but from
>all the things I've read about their vocalist, Mikko Aspa, and
>his association with Nazism/National Socialist Black Metal,
>the guy seems like a piece of shit. How does one reconcile
>with liking the music of someone like that? I'm not sure I
>have a good answer to that yet. But, yeah, musically this
>album is kind of on another level much like Paracletus was.

The closest thing I've settled on is to snatch musicans and celebrities off of their pedestals and just look at them as fully human but with deep flaws. So flawed that they have values which aren't palatable (to me).

Over time, I've realized that my standards for admiring an artist's character is arbitrary. In a lot of ways that standard serves to create a false sense of superiority in myself. That my morals are better than ____ because I don't do _____ or say ______. So, my values only exist to serve me and not a way to enact the positive change my own values suggest that I would want to see.

I've been toying around with the idea of taking my dislike of the behavior of my favorite artists and turning it into action by volunteering with a gay rights organization since I don't like homophobia in music or supporting a women's shelter since I have a problem with mysogyny. A way to expand the scope of what my anger can have an impact on.

At the very least, the fact that you ask that quesion is a sign that you don't endorse the hate the singer you mentioned has of non-Whites.

But if problematic behavior is the threshold for declining to support someone, we'd miss out on a lot of great art.

It's a great question you pose, though.