THE MEADS OF ASPHODEL Begins Work On New Album - Sep. 14, 2011This is pretty horrific and I'm not sure what to think about it, but I'll let Metatron speak for himself:
(Blabbermouth.Net)
Vocalist Metatron of the English progressive black metal band THE MEADS OF ASPHODEL will go to Krakow, Poland in November to research Auschwitz for the band's new album, to be titled "Sonderkommando". The concept behind the release is to see the Holocaust from the eyes of the Jewish Sonderkommando (these were the unfortunate workers who removed the corpses from the gas chambers, and after removing teeth/hair and valuables, cremated them). From their words the album will lament on the burning death pits, Block 11, the crematoriums, the daily arrival of the trains and their human freight destined to the jaws of murder and to be stacked like logs in a factory of death.
Metatron will record narratives and parts of the album on site in Auschwitz to capture some of the horror of a unique chapter in history.
[...]
Commented Metatron: "Maybe some things are best forgotten, maybe unspoken. Then again, maybe they should never be forgotten, and if spoken of, maybe the world will be a better place by remembering."I could have sworn that I've blogged on this band before, but I can't find a link now.
UPDATE (18 September): Ezra Glinter comments at The Forward's Arty Semite blog:
It’s hard to know what to make of such a project. Is it serious? Well intentioned? Exploitative? Metatron frames it in the pious language of Holocaust remembrance: “Maybe some things are best forgotten, maybe unspoken. Then again, maybe they should never be forgotten, and if spoken of, maybe the world will be a better place by remembering.”He thinks not. Read it all.
What he doesn’t acknowledge is the possibility — or probability — that attempting to interpret the most horrific of Holocaust horrors through the lens of contemporary black metal will cheapen the raw force of the facts themselves. As Primo Levi wrote, the creation of the Sonderkommandos was among the Nazis’ most heinous acts, because by forcing their victims to carry out their own destruction, they made them complicit in their crimes. Can Metatron and The Meads of Asphodel do justice to such a thing?