Co-editors Stanimir Panayotov and Daniel Lukes join designer Jaci Raia for a conversation on their new collection, Black Metal Rainbows, a radical anthology envisioning black metal as open, inclusive, and unlimited: a musical genre whose vital spirit of total antagonism rebels against the forces of political conservatism.

Beyond its clichés of grimness, nihilism, reaction, and signature black/white corpse-paint sneer, black metal today is a vibrant and revolutionary paradigm. This book reveals its ludic, carnival worlds animated by spirits of joy and celebration, community and care, queerness and camp, LGBTQI+ identities and antifascist, antiracist, and left-wing politics, not to mention endless aesthetic experimentation and fabulousness. From the crypt to the cloud, Black Metal Rainbows unearths black metal’s sparkling core and illuminates its prismatic spectrum: deep within the black, far beyond grimness, and over a darkly glittering rainbow!

Daniel Lukes has written for metal and rock magazines Terrorizer, Kerrang!, Decibel, and Helvete: A Journal of Black Metal Theory. He has a PhD in comparative literature from New York University, and is the coauthor of Triptych: Three Studies of Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible (Repeater Books). He lives in Montreal, where he likes to disappear into the winter.

Stanimir Panayotov is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at School of Advanced Studies, University of Tyumen, Russia, and holds a PhD in Comparative Gender Studies from Central European University, Budapest. He works at the intersections of continental and feminist philosophy, non-philosophy, and late antique philosophy and has published in Heathen Harvest, Metal Music Studies, the Minnesota Review, Aspasia, etc.

Jaci Raia is an all-black-wearing art director currently living and working in New York City. She works in advertising, and uses her free time to take on a variety of both freelance and personal projects to fulfill herself creatively. After design and typography, metal music is her second love, and she spends a lot of time seeing shows in town and collecting records, tapes, and band shirts, much to the detriment of her wallet.