Filed under: Black Metal | Tags: Aesthetica, Black Metal, Christianity, Helen LaKelly Hunt, Hunter Hunt Hendrix, Immortal Life, June Hunt, Liturgy, Ray Lee Hunt, Renihilation, Swanee Hunt, The Sister Fund
I got an e-mail yesterday from one of our readers named Zack Sigel. Zack is a childhood friend of mine who stumbled upon an interesting chain of events that uncovered an interesting facet behind infamous Liturgy front man Hunter Hunt Hendrix.
Here’s the e-mail:
“I’ve just randomly discovered Hunter Hunt-Hendrix’s entire family tree, and it ain’t pretty.
I saw a woman named Leah Hunt-Hendrix appear on one of my favorite political websites, Salon, and I immediately realized that that kind of hyphenated name can’t be too common. Here’s the article.
They make no mention of Liturgy or Hunter, but they mention her grandfather, an oil and gas billionaire, who is easily learned-about on Wikipedia.
The progenitor of this group has had quite the run: he had “three families and 14 children”. I narrowed his children down to just those born in the last 60 years:
Ray Lee Hunt – a male, so clearly not going to make a hyphenated family name with his wife
June Hunt – an evangelical Christian with a talk radio show in Texas; as Leah and Hunter are both based in New York, I discounted her quickly
Swanee Hunt – married a man named Ausbacher, so it couldn’t have been her either
Helen LaKelly Hunt – BINGO! She married a man named Harville Hendrix.
The Wikipedia article makes no mention of her children, but the timing all links up, and she is based in New York.
Even weirder, though, both Helen and her husband Harville are themselves extraordinarily religious people. Helen runs a Christian feminist program called The Sister Fund, and Harville is a “clinical pastoral counselor”, and he doesn’t mean he advises on livestock maintenance. Together they wrote a self-help book called “Receiving Love: Transform Your Relationship by Letting Yourself be Loved”. But beyond that, both Harville and Helen on their personal websites make no mention of Hunter or Leah; just saying that they have “six children and live in [various places, depending on which parent’s website you ask].”
What are the implications of this?
1) I don’t want to indiscriminately demonize the wealthy at all, especially as I am a fan of Liturgy and I appreciate Leah’s passion for the Occupy movement, but I do find it immensely interesting in the context of black metal itself, which has always been a traditional working- to middle-class brand of music. Fuck, Wolves in the Throne Room live in a damn forest.
2) Most of Hunter’s relations run the trend toward hardcore Christianity. I’ve always felt the need to gloss over Liturgy’s clearly spiritualist undertones, and I had deep concerns that it was legitimately a Christian band. “Aesthetica” has two crosses on its cover – the traditional Jesus cross and the inverted St Peter’s cross – and their first EP is very obviously meant to invoke heaven; it’s just rolling clouds in a sky lit by sunlight. Furthermore, that EP is called “Immortal Life“, one of the signature positives apparently offered by belief in Jesus. Their follow-up full-length album is called “Renihilation“, which I guess can be read as either “re-annihilate” OR a portmanteau – which, if I know anything about the cleverness of Brooklyn hipsters, is more likely – of “renew” and “annihilate” , which is precisely what the Bible purports happened to Jesus before his alleged ascension. If you have a moment to look at their lyrics, I suspect you’ll agree that Liturgy seems to have pulled a fast one on its fans seeking purer black metal; that is, black metal without a Christian stain.
3) There appears to be an element of shame shared between both parents and son. Liturgy has been a remarkably polarizing band with nearly enough potential to be called a game-changer in black metal. You would think either of Hunter’s parents would acknowledge its cultural success in a public venue. And after profiles in Pitchfork, the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Village Voice – the publications that immediately come to mind, but there are doubtless many more – Hunter has never mentioned his history, or his Christian upbringing.
4) I don’t want to imply that Christians can’t or shouldn’t make secular, atheist, Christian, or even Satanic black metal. It’s not like my own background – it was only a year or two after my Bar Mitzvah that I first discovered the likes of Burzum and Mayhem – would have been accepted in the early Norwegian scene either. But I do think that, because Liturgy draws from blank-slate religious themes and employs religious iconography in their work, they should be more upfront about which way those generalized religious themes skew. There is also the question of authenticity here; as with the religious scheme, coming from money (and oil money, at that) is I think, unprecedented to black metal, but I also don’t want to imply it should preclude Hunter’s legitimacy as an artist.
My issue is not that Liturgy is likely a Christian black metal band but that, for all the words Hunter has expended on Liturgy’s ideology and meaning, HHH has been reluctant to share that particular information.”
And with that, should Hunter see this article, Zack and I both invite him to entertain our curiosity. Post comments below.
– Jared Oates Haggard (Letter by Zack Sigel)
Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment
orlandooomdotcom 