‘Shrieking soldiers … wiping clean the earth’: hearing apocalyptic environmentalism in the music of Botanist

Abstract

This article presents a case study of ecocritical black metal, delving into the apocalypticism of the California-based black metal band Botanist, who conjures a world in which plants have violently destroyed human civilisation. It first contextualises Botanist amidst the broader current of environmentalism in extreme metal as well as within wider cultural explorations of plants as subjective beings capable of violence. The article then examines how Botanist taps into the logic of apocalyptic environmentalism, as the music presents the essential narrative of apocalyptic bioterrorism: humanity, with wanton hubris, has sown the seeds of its own destruction, and earned whatever horrors befall it on the way to elimination. With its bleak outlook and strident sound world, Botanist's music threatens to destabilise listeners’ assumptions about their place in the world and offers an example of what apocalyptic ecological urgency in music could sound like.

The Earth is Sick: Environmentalism and the Politics of Age and Gender in Children’s Musical Culture

“…Music provides "an avenue of cultural contestation or social and political engagement" (Peddie 2006: xvi), which is demonstrated by a long line of popular songs from Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" (1945) -the political edge of which was emphasized by the sticker on Guthrie's guitar: "this machine kills fascists" -to Beyoncé's open confrontation of racism in "Formation" (2016). Music's capacity as a vehicle for environmental activism more specifically is well documented in several recent studies (Fuller 2018;Ingram 2010;Lucas 2019). In her research on environmentalism in Icelandic musical culture, Nicola Dibben emphasizes that musical environmentalism is not bound by geographical or national borders but, rather, forms transnational "communities bounded by ideals and actions" (2017: 164).…”