Alex Kurtagić

Alex Kurtagić (born 1970) is a Spanish-born artist, cultural commentator, musician, novelist, and publisher, based in the UK. 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 ethic) and conservatism.^[4]

Life

Alex Kurtagić's roots are Slovenian and Spanish. Due to his parents' jobs he spent part of his youth in South America.^[5]

He was born in 1970 in Spain to a father of Slovenian descent and a Spanish mother. He has lived in five countries, "both in the First and Third Worlds, located on both sides of the Atlantic", but he spent most of his life in the UK. 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, he founded the band Benighted Leams, which has since released four albums.^[6] In 1996 he founded Supernal Music.^[7][8]

During the mid-to-late 1990s, he was active as an album cover illustrator. Most of his artwork appeared on albums by black metal artists, such as Dimmu Borgir, Deinonychus, and others. His artwork is featured in the book Heavy Metal Thunder: Album Covers that Rocked the World.^[9] More recently, he has been active as a book cover illustrator. Since 2009, he has focused primarily on writing and publishing.

Writer

Kurtagić's dystopian novel, Mister, was published in 2009. Since then, Kurtagić 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').^[10][11]

Supernal Music

Supernal Music was mainly known throughout the late 1990s for its mail order catalogue of underground music,^[12] 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" magazine 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.^[13]

Discography

Benighted Leams

• Caliginous Romantic Myth (1996)
• Astral Tenebrion (1998)
• Ferly Centesms (2004)
• Obombrid Welkins (2006)

Bibliography

• Mister. Iron Sky Publishing, 2009; ISBN 978-0-9561835-0-7
• Ja, Afrika muss zur Hölle gehen. Unitall Verlag, 2011; ISBN 978-3-905937-43-5
• Hesketh-Prichard, Vernon, Where Black Rules White (foreword), The Palingenesis Project (2012); ISBN 978-0-9561835-8-3
• Warum Konservative immer verlieren, Antaios (2013); ISBN 978-3-944422-35-0
• Lovecraft, H.P. The Conservative (foreword), Arktos (2013); ISBN 978-1-907166-30-3
• Robison, John. Proofs of a Conspiracy (foreword), The Palingenesis Project, 2014; 978-1-909606-03-6

References

External links

• Wermod and Wermod official website
• 2005 Interview with Benighted Leams