Indigenous black metal artist Blackbraid to play Launchpad

Blackbraid, the solo project of Indigenous black metal musician Jon Krieger, is coming to Launchpad on Saturday, Sept. 20.

Although he lives in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, Krieger was born in Mexico and has Indigenous roots, which he said connects him to the culture of New Mexico.

“With us being an Indigenous-centered black metal band, Albuquerque has been huge for us,” Krieger said. “There’s a bunch of different tribes around there, and it always feels like home. It’s one of the best crowds we’ll ever play. It doesn’t matter how big the venue is, people always go crazy for us in Albuquerque. We love that place.”

Navajo fans, in particular, have embraced Blackbraid.

“The Navajo Nation has been just insanely welcoming to us,” Krieger said. “I think we’ve played Albuquerque three or four times now. Earlier this year, we did a one-off over there, actually. Whenever we come there, (the audience) is mostly Navajo every time.”

Black metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music that gained popularity in Norway in the early 1990s. On the surface, its appeal to Indigenous audiences in the United States may seem surprising. But Krieger sees parallels in their shared history and culture.

“Black metal will always be very rooted in chaos and paganism and nature,” Krieger said.

Krieger explained that Scandinavian black metal was part of a movement to revive folklore and traditions which centuries of Christian culture had suppressed.

“It’s pretty much the exact same thing that happened when Europeans came to America, too. They did the same thing and tried to destroy our culture and make us convert,” he said. “We might be on two different continents, across the world from each other, but the base emotions and disdain for being made to conform is especially strong amongst both cultures. So, I think it fits perfectly, honestly.”

The threat of cultural genocide is a theme in some of Blackbraid’s songs, including “Wardrums at Dawn on the Day of My Death” from their recent album, “Blackbraid III,” which was released on Aug. 8.

Although Blackbraid’s music can get extremely loud and heavy, “Blackbraid III” begins with an instrumental acoustic guitar track, “Dusk (Eulogy).”

“Acoustic, I feel, always has its place in black metal,” Krieger said. “I’m a huge fan of acoustic, and I think it speaks to a lot of the softer emotions that are in the music. By starting with an acoustic guitar, I see it as laying the foundation for (the album). Like, you know it’s going to be a black metal record, but right out of the gate, it’s already not what you’re expecting from a black metal record, I guess.”

Some of the softer feelings Krieger identified in the album involve a mix of beauty and sadness in the face of death.

“Death is a huge theme on the record. Death and rebirth and sadness and sorrow. It’s all very interconnected in my mind,” he said. “A lot of the beauty in this world is a direct product of death. It’s like a recurring cycle.”

As an example, he pointed to the album’s third track, “The Dying Breath of the Sacred Stag.”

“It’s talking about the stag dying and returning to the earth. It’s more cyclical than an end to me. It doesn’t feel like death is the end. It’s the start of a journey. Or, in this case, the start of the rest of the album,” Krieger said. “But the beauty has always been inseparable from the sadness in nature to me. So, I try to convey that with the music.”

In the album’s louder, more intense moments, the content of Krieger’s screeching vocals may not always be clear. But he said he chooses to focus on the emotions.

“I would rather have it be emotional and raw,” he said. “But I’ll always publish my lyrics, too. I know some black metal bands don’t do that, because they want to be secretive or whatever. But I’ll always have the lyrics published when we release the album, so people can look them up if they want and see what they’re listening to and read along. But in the moment (of performing), I would say it’s more about the emotion.”

Although black metal often deals with the theme of death, it is not the same as death metal. But Krieger acknowledged there is significant overlap between the two subgenres.

“They say black metal is more atmospheric, and I guess it can be. Some black and death metal sounds exactly the same, and you can barely tell the genres apart. They get very closely intertwined at times,” he said. “But I think death metal is more focused around technicality and riffs a bit more whereas black metal, traditionally, is a lot of tremolo picking. You’re still playing just as fast as a death metal band, but I think it’s more rhythm based, and maybe a little more of a punk influence.”

Some of the early Norwegian black metal bands became associated with violence in many people’s minds, with bands like Mayhem accused of inspiring church burnings. But Krieger, who shared a stage with Mayhem in Finland, said the musicians were not nearly as scary as their public image.

“They’re cool,” he said. “They’re just a bunch of old rockers who like to drink beer. I mean, I guess they’re crazy, but not any more crazy than Ozzy (Osbourne) or Motörhead. It’s just rock ’n’ roll at the end of the day.”

Krieger said there is a difference between his own stage persona and who he is in his daily life, too.

“I think sometimes it’s easy to forget that we are just normal people at the end of the day,” he said. “Well, I guess it depends how you want to define normal, because we’re all crazy f---ing weirdos.”

The diversity of Krieger’s musical tastes might also surprise people.

“I like pop and country,” he said. “I listen to a ton of metal, too, but also a lot of electronic music, like ambient stuff. I’m all over the place.”

He even said he is considering putting out a Blackbraid folk album.

“I think I’ll definitely put out a folk album one day, like an all-acoustic one,” he said. “I think it’s probably definitely in the pipeline somewhere down the road.”