Austria

Austria enters the account through two related strands: the winter customs of its towns and the work of Kadmon, an Austrian artist and occult researcher who compared those traditions with the legends of the Oskorei and traits of modern Black Metal. The country is presented not as the setting for a single event, but as a place where older seasonal customs remain visible and where those customs became a point of departure for interpreting Black Metal.

Winter processions

The book describes costumed Perchten parades that still take place in Austrian towns on certain festival days. These processions include both benign or beautiful-looking figures and their sinister, demonically masked counterparts, the Schiachperchten. Their contrast gives the tradition a double aspect: a public seasonal procession can accommodate both the attractive and the frightening.

The account connects these winter customs, cautiously, to the older worship of the Germanic winter and sky goddess Perchta. It places the Austrian parades alongside the Oskorei traditions, whose folk customs were associated with groups of young men riding at night around Yule. The material treats these as related winter traditions, not as identical practices.

Kadmon and the Oskorei comparison

After reading texts by Varg Vikernes, Kadmon investigated possible connections between modern Black Metal and the ancient Oskorei myths. Those myths describe a host of dead souls seen flying across the night sky, sometimes led by Odin; in some tales, the host swoops down and carries away a living person. The book notes that reports of the phenomenon circulated across the centuries, while related folk customs were once practiced in rural parts of Northern Europe.

Kadmon’s essay, reproduced as Appendix II, compares details in Oskorei tales with features of Black Metal, including noise, corpsepaint, ghoulish appearance, pseudonyms, high-pitched singing, and arson. He also identifies correspondences with the Austrian Perchten parades. Austria therefore serves both as a location for a living form of winter pageantry and as a cultural reference point in the book’s inquiry into how old legends and customs might illuminate the imagery and practices of modern Black Metal.