Alex Kurtagić

Alex Kurtagić
Born 1970 (age 4445)
Residence United Kingdom
Occupation author, editor, publisher, artist, musician
Known for the record label Supernal Music,
the novel Mister
Website
alexkurtagic.info

Alex Kurtagić is an author, editor, publisher, artist, musician, and cultural commentator, based in the United Kingdom. He is the author of the dystopian novel Mister, the founder of Supernal Music, and the editor-in-chief of Wermod and Wermod Publishing Group. His writing deals with topics relating to culture, society, politics, music,[1][2] and community relations in the contemporary West. He is known as a proponent of elitism,[3] and as a critic of egalitarianism (as an ethics) and conservatism.[4]

Life

Alex Kurtagić's roots are Slovenian and Spanish.[5] Due to his parents' jobs he spent part of his youth in South America.[6] He was born in 1970, in Spain, to a father born in Croatia of Slovenian stock.

His parents moved frequently and he has lived in five countries, "both in the First and Third Worlds, located on both sides of the Atlantic", but he has spent most of his life in the United Kingdom.

Kurtagić went through the US educational system in both university and high school and completed his post graduate work in a British university.

In 1995 Kurtagić founded the band Benighted Leams, which has since released four albums.[7] In 1996 he founded Supernal Music,.[8][9]

During the mid-to-late 1990s Kurtagic was active as an album cover illustrator. Most of his artwork appeared on albums by black metal artists, such as Dimmu Borgir, Mayhem, Tormentor, Deinonychus, Ancient, and others. His artwork is featured in the book Heavy Metal Thunder: Album Covers that Rocked the World.[10] More recently, he has been active as a book cover illustrator.

Since 2009, Kurtagic has focused primarily on writing and publishing.

Writer

Kurtagic's dystopian novel, Mister, was published in 2009. Since then, Kurtagic has been active as a social, cultural, and political commentator. In 2011 a collection of his articles and essays was published in book form by Unitall Verlag in German translation, with the title Ja, Afrika muss zur Hölle gehen. A second collection, also in German, was published by Antaios in 2013 as Warum Konservative immer verlieren ('Why conservatives always lose').[11][12] Various other essays have appeared in The Radical Tradition: Philosophy, Metapolitics and the Conservative Revolution (Primordial Traditions, 2011), Black Metal: European Roots and European Extremities (Black Front Press, 2012), and Bowden: Thoughts and Perspectives, Volume Nine (Black Front Press, 2012), all edited by Troy Southgate.

Supernal Music

Supernal Music was mainly known throughout the late 1990s for its mail order catalogue of underground music,[13] particularly extreme metal in all categories, but mainly black metal. Later on it became known in the underground black metal scene through a roster that included bands such as Astrofaes and Drudkh from Ukraine, Fleurety and Mayhem from Norway, and The Meads of Asphodel from the United Kingdom.

In 2008 the British "anti-fascist" Searchlight published a critical article on fascist lyrics and imagery in some styles of black metal that included criticism of the label's newsletter for having featured Savitri Devi, Ernst Junger, Miguel Serrano, and Julius Langbehn on its covers and for the content of some of the CDs on offer.[14]

Discography

Benighted Leams

Bibliography

References

  1. Nils Wegner, "Ein Essayist des Eigenen", Junge Freiheit (24 April 2012)
  2. Karl Spracken, The Meaning and Purpose of Leisure: Habermas at the End of Modernity (Basingstoke and New York, 2009) p. 127
  3. Spracken, p. 127
  4. "Warum Konservative immer verlieren", Junge Freiheit 19/13 (3 May 2013) p. 3
  5. Martin Lichtmesz, "Alex Kurtagic: Mister", Sezession, December 2009
  6. Martin Lichtmesz, "Alex Kurtagic: Mister", Sezession, December 2009
  7. http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Benighted_Leams/10134
  8. Terrorizer Magazine #38 (January 1997)
  9. Terrorizer Magazine #126 (December 2004)
  10. Neil Aldis and James Sherry. 2006. Heavy Metal Thunder: Album Covers that Rocked the World. Mitchell Beazley. ISBN 978-1-84533-195-5
  11. "Der Funke" über Alex Kurtagic, Sezession (7 May 2013)
  12. Manfred Kleine-Hartlage, "Kurtagic: Warum Konservative immer verlieren", Pi (13 April 2013)
  13. Keith Kahn-Harris, Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge (Oxford: Berg, 2007), p. 64
  14. Searchlight A darker shade of black Issues 391–402 2008

External links