A sense of displacement: Longing for past heritage in Olde Throne's black metal

Olde Throne is a solo black metal project created by Harrison McKenzie, a young musician from Christchurch. The main theme of his music production is Scottish and Irish history and mythology, more generally themes related to Celtic culture. After spending time in 2019 in Scotland, Harrison McKenzie became increasingly interested in the history and mythology of this land far from his native home. He felt a strong emotional connection to the past of Scottish people, in fact his surname is influenced by this ancestry. His passion for Norwegian black metal, developed in his teenage years, was linked to the search for his past, giving rise to Olde Throne’s musical proposal. This ‘Riffs’ article, developed from a textual and musical analysis and corroborated by an interview with the musician of Olde Throne, attempts to highlight how nostalgia for a past, more imagined than lived, conceals a sense of displacement that finds its way out through the aggressive and extremely emotive sounds of black metal, a musical category little practised in Christchurch. Europe, as the cradle of Scottish and Irish cultures and as an ideal place to play and experience black metal, takes shape imaginatively in the sonic and lyrical coordinates of Olde Throne’s music.