Neckbeard Deathcamp - So Much for the Tolerant Left

After making waves last year with their wonderfully disrespectful parody of NSBM on White Nationalism Is for Basement Dwelling Losers, Neckbeard Deathcamp have quickly returned with another offering of neo-Nazi mockery. Since making waves online with the relative explosion of their debut album, Neckbeard Deathcamp have become much more well-known for their loud online presence than anything else relating to their music, which is fine.

When I talked about their breakout album last year, I mentioned how its valid artistic and comedic value stemmed from its very shittiness, an intentional characteristic of its mockery of the pathetic lo-fi production and terrible writing within the NSBM scene. Naturally, it’s not the kind of album you return to after enjoying the context-based (and indeed valid) comedy of it all. So it’s no wonder really that they’re back already, and while there have definitely been improvements on the musical front to show that this band can actually make a cohesive modern black metal album, the band kind of ends up repeating their original joke in a much less fitting package. I don’t know if the band have printed lyrics at all for this album, but being that it’s certainly not musically enjoyable enough for me to buy a physical copy in the hopes of finding more hilarious narrations and being that they haven’t included lyrics on their Bandcamp page, the main source of their debut album’s hilarity is lost on this one, which is left only with titles in the same vein as those on the debut.

The album’s cover donning the debut’s recognized Nazi eagle emblem made out of dicks above Richard Spencer getting a wedgie implies the same confident jeering at the alt-right that the debut had, but this album is not any more confrontational in context (and probably less so in content) than the band’s debut. And while snickering song titles and cheeky album art seem to suggest the band are content to continue making fun of the stupidity of white nationalism, the comedic fun really stops right there both in content and context.

The improved listenability of this album has me conflicted. On one hand, I actually wouldn’t mind replaying this thing in the future; it actually has some of the harsh, satisfying qualities in the forms that make black metal appealing. Songs like “Shitpostnacht” and “Operation Neet” actually carry some decent, down-tuned, lo-fi blackened sludge riffage, while the closing track and the 10-minute “Horseshoe Theory” seem to take cues from Primitive Man’s approach to harsh industrial noise, and the result is actually not too bad, nothing special, but certainly not as shitty as the purposely muffled and grainy debut. On the other hand, the NSBM spoofing aspect of the album is reduced to the occasional samples of neo-Nazi propaganda that pop up, effectively removing the purpose of the musical aspect of this whole project.

But Neckbeard Deathcamp wasn’t really even about the listening to the intentionally horrendous music in the first place. It’s been more about the surrounding discussion and the thrill of triggering sensitive neo-Nazis online and participating in the most vivacious expression of contempt for that group.Being that this is a music blog and I’m by no means any kind of expert on the best way to combat fascist ideology within metal or in the grander scheme of things, I didn’t want to talk about the cesspool of political discourse on Twitter, but being that this band’s identity and aesthetic is tied so closely to it (even if their music is not), I feel I have to at least briefly address that.

Conservatives and progressive activists alike have long lambasted, rolled their eyes at, and become frustrated over the recent trends of how the politically uninformed and uninvested co-opt the language of progressive activism into hollow, feel-good platitudes of pop feminism for the sake of clout through that dreaded act of v i r t u e s i g n a l l i n g. And the actual valid importance of virtue signalling in certain contexts is its own messy discussion, which I’m not going to suck up more of this music review with. But as aggravating as clout-chasing fake-wokeness is, the similar practice on the more radical side of the political spectrum, in its own way, is similarly problematic. On the more aggressively confrontational sliver of the broad anti-fascist position, the boisterous expression intolerance for fascism and its proponents under the guise of justified lack of civility is as much of a disingenuously motivated performance as what happens in the clout-chasing middle of the political spectrum. At least that’s what it seems to be from what I have consistently seen on the anti-fascist metal Twitter sphere that Neckbeard Deathcamp participates in and has now based their identity upon. And Neckbeard Deathcamp are honestly not even the most egregious offenders in that bubble, but they do participate in and perpetuate it, and it is something that needs to be talked about but seems to be rather suppressed. And just to be clear so that no one from that circle gets as quickly upset as the sensitive Nazis on the other side, it’s not that fascism isn’t a reprehensible ideology or that neo-Nazis deserve to feel as comfortable sharing their ideas as we do; it’s because the indulgence in the catharsis of vehemently vilifying the, indeed, justifiably condemnable evil of fascism seems to be done so lazily and aimed so irresponsibly that it comes across as self-serving and counterproductive. Rather than proclaiming baseless platitudes about girl power for woke pop feminist clout or publicly shaming borderline offences for the sake of self-righteous elation, the more radical version of these practices finds publicly committed antifascists chasing the same kinds of validation through ostentatious expressions of basic, widely appealing condemnation of fascism (like the feigned valor of the “Nazis are not welcome here” proclamation, as if it’s really all that bold or controversial of a stance or as if Nazis these days are even overt enough to be deterred by that kind of blanket-statement-ass lip service). But then there’s also the poor aim and irresponsible invocation of infighting when criticism of mishandling of aggression or advocacy for violence arises from other progressives, during which expressive and careless antifascists tend to deflect from justified questioning to the suggestion that criticism of their methods is compliance with, if not indicative of direct support of, fascism. It usually comes with the suggestion that the forsaking of civil discussion is justified because of how dangerous fascist ideology is and how critical it is to stamp it out. (“What kind of person is against punching Nazis?”) It’s the stereotypical cop-out of calling everyone against you a Nazi that the political right wing has run wild with. And, again, it’s not that Nazis should feel their worldview is valid and accepted in society. The problem with mislableing and then lashing out when the mislabeled defend themselves is that it looks ridiculously unreasoned from the outside (which it often is) and pushes away those quieter, less politically invested people on the fence away when they see it or experience it. I get that fascists these days are cryptic with their fringe status (which I certainly like to look at optimistically as one positive sign of the times among the many other dismal ones). But of course fascists will resort to these methods when the fully evolved from of their worldview is so universally detested. And if fascists will adapt their game plan to resist the one-dimensional attack of antifa shrieking, which they will if they haven’t completely already, anti-fascist activism and those who represent it like Neckbeard Deathcamp like need to adapt to combatting the more covert spread of fascism as well. Good god, I thought this was an album review, about an album, of music./10