Theodor Bock

The Chosen One, the latest album by the Neoclassical group Winglord, develops the concept formulated by its predecessor, Heroica. The quality is even throughout, and in some places is superior to their debut album.

This album offers the listener 11 tracks. The style can once again be classified as Neofolk, even if the classical and, in a manner of speaking, “cinematic” streaks are far more marked than they are among the giants of the genre. While the grandfathers of Neofolk, bands like Death In June and Sol Invictus, often make use of repetition and industrial strains, here we find complex soundscapes, with an ambience that has more in common with the music of Romanticism. The arrangements, on the other hand, shift between primarily musical ones (although hardly in the typical verse-bridge-refrain style), and other modern, popular forms. Influences from film scores and recent computer game theme music are obvious, and occasional electronic riffs can be discerned in the midst of the generally more acoustic instrumentation (archeofuturism, anyone?). The folk influences are also far more pronounced than on Heroica, with intercalated melodies calling to mind the medieval countryside or the Renaissance court. The militant ingredients in the music are less obvious—they are present, but the atmospheres are more subtle and perhaps integrated better than among bands such as Bunkergeist.

The third installment of Identitär Idé (Identitarian Idea) took place in Stockholm, Sweden on August 27, 2011. Although attendance was down slightly from our last event, the pleasant atmosphere more than made up for it. Visitors started gathering at noon, and when the doors swung open at one o'clock, everything got underway immediately. The walls of the venue were covered in Soviet-style “artwork” romanticizing labour and socialism, meaning that the venue must have been affiliated with the Swedish Social Democratic Party, which lent the afternoon a surreal backdrop. More than one visitor found this amusing, and a reminder of the strange character of Sweden—a country more or less ruled by a Leftist radicalism that most Americans would only encounter in an academic setting.

In addition to the lectures that had been announced in advance, several cultural activists were also in attendance. Arktos sold books (and, apparently, a lot of them), a recently established T-shirt company called Dixerwear showcased a number of their designs, and the well-known Swedish nationalist weekly Nationell Idag distributed free back issues and subscription information. The artist Marcus Andersson also exhibited some of his paintings—very impressive works of a kind virtually extinct in the contemporary “art” world.

After a short introductory speech, the first lecture began. Swedish dissident author and expat Lars Holger Holm discussed the history and present state of modernism and postmodernism, primarily in art. Holm contended that modernism had gone from a movement which, despite perhaps being destructive, was at least dynamic and creative, especially when compared to the sterile conformism and stagnant repetition of meaningless provocations and forms as we see in postmodernism. He goes on to describe the ongoing dumbing-down of art known as “modern” and the impossibility of any kind of democracy within the domain of art, illustrating his speech with examples known to the attentive crowd who, at the end, burst into applause.

Dr. Alexander Jacob was next, discussing the religious and political views of Richard Wagner. Wagner, he maintained, believed in a specifically Aryan form of Christianity, which emerged as a result of its spread to Europe, as opposed to the forms of religion which go by that name in the modern world, which he believes have returned it to its Judaic roots and resulted in a universalist creed which fosters usury and racial degeneration. He explains how Wagner saw the solution to this problem in the re-emergence of a specifically Germanic form of Christianity, which would reinvigorate the belief in love and union with Nature. At its conclusion, some controversy erupted when it was suggested that Wagner had been merely Nietzsche in cheap clothes. Dr. Jacob replied that Nietzsche was a "completely unoriginal philosopher" who had actually stolen ideas from Wagner, and whose basic notions were simple inversions of Wagner's developed to justify his own endeavours. Mr. Holm protested, and a contentious—though brief and entertaining—discussion ensued. After his presentation, it was certain that a good part of the crowd will delve deeper into the subject on their own.