YMMV / The Furnaces of Palingenesia

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Concerning The Furnaces of Palingenesia, one way of seeing it is as a satire of fascism. However, some have interpreted it as being a manifesto of spiritual fascism, which ultimately differentiates itself from the brand that is so widely feared and hated in this day and age.
  • As is extensively elaborated on throughout this page, there was a rather heated debate regarding the true political message of The Furnaces of Palingenesia. While it definitely comments on fascism, few can agree on its actual stance on the matter; many fans believe it to be a brutally satirical rebuke of fascist ideology, while detractors have gone so far as to accuse it of being a completely unironic NSBM album. It was also interpreted as the band trolling the entire metal scene and poking fun at current PC culture by painting an ironic picture of themselves becoming the same thing they're criticizing with their music. The "unironic NSBM" interpretation would seem to be completely Jossed by the Bardo Methodologies interview, as would the "trolling creator" interpretation - they come across as completely sincere in the interview in their opposition to totalitarianism of all flavours, be it rightist or leftist. They also acknowledge the involvement of persons with completely opposite political views, in particular Mikko Aspa.
  • "You Cannot Even Find the Ruins..." seems to have a different narrator than the rest of the album, being the only song with lyrics written in stanzas while the preceding tracks were written out in prose, and rather than pontificating on the glories of the Order it bleakly describes the collapse of civilization. Is it from the perspective of an omniscient narrator, demonstrating how the Order, like all societies, is doomed to eventually fail? Or is it in fact the same narrator as the rest of the album, finally putting all pretensions aside and laying bare his real vision for the human race?
• Awesome Art: The album cover is ornate even by the band's usual high standards, being both abstract and incredibly detailed while perfectly capturing the feeling of the music. Close inspection of the obelisk on the cover yields all sorts of disturbing details.
• Broken Base: Not over its musical or lyrical quality, but in terms of what political perspective the lyrics are endorsing. There's fairly strong evidence that the album is a satire of fascism and authoritarian communism, since there are several cases of self-aware irony in the lyrics, but presumed vocalist Mikko Aspa's recent association with far-right politics has caused quite a lot of controversy (though he also presumably doesn't write the lyrics). As a result, various listeners have interpreted the album's lyrics as endorsing stances of nihilism, Anarchism, anti-authoritarianism more generally, or authoritarianism (though the last interpretation is... controversial, to put it mildly). Or perhaps the band just wanted to cause arguments over the lyrics. Eventually the band cleared the air a bit with the 2019 interview, confirming that the French core of the band are anarchists and the album is a criticism of fascism. Arguments only died down a little bit after this.
• Complete Monster: The unnamed narrator from The Furnaces of Palingenesia leads the totalitarian political faction known as the Order. The Order uses fear and paranoia to force absolute loyalty from all citizens, encouraging citizens to turn in their own loved ones for suspected crimes or even kill each other for perceived disloyalty. As a result, countless innocents are subjected to horrific punishments or murdered. The narrator is proudly aware of the terrors that the Order inflicts upon the world and in fact pushes it forward to the point society completely collapses under his rule.
• Epic Riff: Like any Deathspell album, it has a lot. Special mention goes to "Imitatio Dei" and the bass in "Standing on the Work of Slaves". The dissonant riff that makes up the backbone of "Absolutist Regeneration" also qualifies and helps make the song a lot more unsettling.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: At this point most of their fans are pretty sick of hearing the argument that this is a sincere NSBM album, particularly after the band refuted it at such eloquent length in the Bardo Methodology interview. And even with that detailed interview, people still denounce it and label the interview as an "excuse" or as "pretentious".
• Genius Bonus: Like any Deathspell album, it's layered with obscure references to literature, history, philosophy, and politics.
  • Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of fascist rhetoric will immediately recognize many of the Order's stated goals and tactics as being right out of the playbook of Joseph Goebbels. The narrator also paraphrases Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong at other points.
  • Most notable is "1523", which references the "League of the Elect", a bizarre Christian Apocalypse Cult/proto-communist movement that took over the German town of Muhlhausen in 1525 and instituted exactly the sort of transformative "New Order" that the narrator aims to establish. "1523" refers to the year their leader, Thomas Muntzer, began preaching his radical visions and formed the League. Said movement is often cited as one of the first examples of a "millenarian" political movement, i.e, a movement that aims to decisively transform society to a desired utopian end goal and bring about the "end of history", wiping out all competing ideologies in the process.
• Harsher in Hindsight: A part of the lyrics describing the Order's Witch Hunt becomes this when detractors (especially those in PC culture) would begin to label the band as a Nazi/Fascist group due to Aspa's (apparent) involvement. To say nothing about fans also being labeled as "supporters of Nazism/fascism".
• I Knew It!: The Bardo Methodology interview no doubt caused a lot of this amongst fans who (correctly) read The Furnaces of Palingenesia as a condemnation of authoritarianism. Amongst other things, the interview made the anti-authoritarian sentiments of the core of the band explicit, as well as the fact that there was an ideological rift within the band regarding "a minority of the collective’s contributors – shall we say, parts of the second circle – who’ve been invited to partake because of their incredible talents as musicians" (almost certainly a reference to Mikko Aspa). It is a superb complement to the album and a fantastic piece of writing in its own right.
• Literary Agent Hypothesis: The album is presented as a manifesto for the Order, a political faction that does not exist in real life, though it is obviously made up of bits and pieces of nearly every real-world authoritarian movement. We can only hope that it doesn't get Defictionalised.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The horns at the end of "Renegade Ashes".
• Nightmare Fuel: The entire album is a relentless portrayal of the absolute worst of humanity, culminating with the implied extinction of the entire species.
• Tear Jerker: "You Cannot Even Find the Ruins", a bitter dirge for human civilization.