The trumpets are sounding and the Apocalypse beckons. Empires come and go, civilisations rise and fall. Throughout millennia the indomitable cycle of birth, death and rebirth has left its indelible mark upon the stuttering ebb and flow of human history. Few people, before the advent of the fifth century, could have imagined that the mighty Roman Empire would soon be lying in tatters at the feet of its barbarian invaders. And now, over 1500 years later, we find ourselves at another crucial juncture in history. Before us the cracks are finally beginning to appear in the seemingly invincible edifice of Western domination. Civilisational decline, therefore, is not a new concept; it is part of a timeless process, and today we find ourselves at the tail-end of our own rapidly diminishing epoch. Accompanying the collapse of a civilisation are the prophets, the doomsayers and those who inevitably seek to hasten the process, but there is also a role for the poet, the artist and the musician. As far as the latter is concerned, one of the chief bastions of the prevailing apocalyptic mentality has been the Neofolk, Industrial and Neoclassical genres. Indeed, buried deep within our European and North American subculture, its purveyors and protagonists do not simply reach for the proverbial fiddle as the flames begin to spread through the heart of Rome itself, but they provide us with new insights into the causes of our demise and remind us of the cultural traces which–for better or worse–have made us who we are.
http://heathenharvest.org/2014/11/29/literary-troubadours-of-the-apocalypse-voices-from-the-neofolk-industrial-neoclassical-underground/