Beautiful Wicked World

Hate-driven, joyfully perverse songs of praise for radical psychic abysses affect us deeply. They force us up against our moral, legal and personal limits. The wicked world is beautiful, and full of beautiful songs: the core of our musical canon of hymns of battle and piracy, Crusade songs, march and Mafia music, paeans to murder and cruelty. Why are we surprised to discover such bloodlust in ourselves? Aesthetic pleasure in the destruction of others? Do evil hymns represent fantasies of excommunication and catharsis? What would a non-evil life be worth? Aren’t murderers and abysmally evil people actually sexy?