The puzzle of DSBM

The suffering artist, the boxed self-mutilator and, contradictory, the emulator of depression has found its way to many listeners over these last ten-fifteen years through a scene of degenerate hipsters who add influences accordingly to their free-for-all experimental soup. The notion that it's a scene consisting of former black metal artists is questionable, to say the least. Rather it's a mash-up of persons and constellations of eclectic backgrounds, which form this web of unholy matrimony in music. The quality of this music ranges from pure hacks to highly developed artistry, and the quantity of the scene is, or has, swelled considerably since its dawn.

But what concerns me is one of the core in the lyrical contents in DSBM. Thematically it's nothing new, the old influences from blues comes first to mind, also there's many others beyond that musical era. But the mere quest to express deepest depression, to somehow find its core and thrive on it in its most negative ways perplexes me. If you're really that down, so fucking bored with life, how come you have any will left to create songs and record them? Real suicidal depression is a terrible power. It can swallow you whole and cut all bonds you might have to this world before you even come to realize it's an emotional dead-end, eating away at you. I've seen people vanish completely from the face of the earth, to later appear on the news, washed up on the banks under a bridge or hanging from their own ceiling lights. Before their disappearance they hadn't the strength to do anything, not even get up out of bed and make food to survive. The only viable option to rid themselves of their plight was to end their life. That's real suicidal depression. To try and emulate this mental black hole is to ridicule those people that actually didn't make it, who didn't manage to escape it. They were in dire need of assistance and we failed to help them in their most crucial hour.

If it was just a matter of trying to trigger that emotional feeling without any thematically strings attached I wouldn't have any problems with it. Many bands have done so in the past without any plump motives like DSBM bands. Or if you're out to gain energy from negativity, like Abandon (RIP) did, then it's also another thing - trying to create positivity, to progress something productive out of a benighted state isn't an easy thing but a honourable task for any worthy artist and in which case I salute those efforts.