LADY LIZ BATHORY'S BEAUTY & BLACK METAL

According to legend, Bathory's slaying were part of a beauty ritual, one that included bathing in the blood of her victims. She fervently believed these blood baths would restore her youth. Centuries before the cosmetic industry sold the idea of anti-aging by the billions to many gullible consumers with paycheck in pocket, Bathory was slicing up feminine youth to ensure her own babeness would remain in tact. It's debatable if you can even bathe in a bath of blood. But, hey, the Vampire Facelift is real, that's why Kim Kardashian has someone's blood on her face, I guess??


Other myth states that Bathory drank blood, dabbled in black magic, had lesbian lovers that were also accomplices in the elaborate methods of killing virgins which included sadist sexual acts. It's difficult to say if any of these accounts about Bathory are true since that shit was so long ago. Back in those days, it was word against word; elaborate tales could bring an entire royal family down. However, it is known that she lived from 1560 to 1614 and died in a stone room without a door, a precaution deemed necessary by the accusations against her, some proof of her real threat to the community.


Because she is a woman, a rarity in the serial killer realm, and her crimes are driven by vanity, she is particularly interesting. Her intense vampiric undertones pave the path to fantastical characterizations. If Bathory were alive in modern times, she'd be the ultimate Vampiress. Mix vanity with an obsession for control and power and you create a Paris Hilton-esqe heiress who feeds off other young women, easily overtaken by jealousy, relinquishing in her dirty rich wealth and most certainly donning Chanel's "Rouge Noir" on her talons (as transcribed to me in the '90s by the blonde powerhouse, Nadja Auermann, the nail polish shade was simply known as "Vamp"). In my mind she resembles a subject that hyper-sexualized fashion photographer Helmut Newton would portrait. Even though it is arguable that Newton's idealized woman is simply an upper class sex doll, easily objectified and reduced to her sexual prowess, there is still no denying that in her blood red lipstick she was part seductress, part man-eater, and could easily stab holes in any foe who crossed her path with the spike of a very dangerous high-heeled shoe.





I learned of Elizabeth Bathory through a particular record released in 1998 called Cruelty and The Beast by the metal band, Cradle of Filth. Its cover featured a devilishly attractive woman bathing in a tub of blood. It was a concept record completely focusing on the character Bathory, painting a gorey and romantice introduction to a babed beauty who feared light and took pleasure in ripped flesh. The record is no "Cthulhu Dawn" but still a decent introduction to the goofy "extreme" metal the British band is best known for.


Decades before Cradle of Filth, from the inspiration of British Black Metal band Venom's "Countess Bathory", Swedish "Viking metal" band Bathory began. The early '80s was an important time frame for metal, a musical phenom born in Europe (specifically England with intense influence from Black Sabbath). Bathory was one of the first metal bands to come out of Scandanavia and hugely influenced the Norwegian Black Metal scene written about in Lords of Chaos. Bathory's primary songwriter Quorthron (which "means a prince who's half-human and half-demon") was an adorable guy who incorporates keys and Norse Mythology in his music (he passed away in 2004. RIP, dude). Regardless of the evil appearance, he was not a violent guy who worshipped Satan or burned churches or killed his friends and ate their brains like some of the tales in Lords of Chaos speak of. He was a vegetarian who loves Kate Bush's Hounds of Love.


In more recent years, drone doom metal band, SUNN 0))) has a song under Elizabeth Bathory's native name, Báthory Erzsébet:

Here. Decompose forever, aware and unholy, encased in marble 
and honey from the swarm, a thin coat of eternal whispering 
that bleaches from within, a darkness that defiles thought, 
stolen by the wingless harpies whose memories lay waste the valley of diamonds, 
where the great One sleeps, her eyes, 
placid pits of violent tar and bitumen regurgitated by demons chained to misery, 
eyes that see nothing for there is only the darkness that wells up from inside, 
a great viscous cloud smothering hope, 
a blanket woven from the dung of the old ones, 
their disease the tapestry of all that is futile, 
her gaze burning holes in the veil that protects the chosen, 
her breathe a plague that unleashes the frozen wolves, blind, 
their tongues paint your heart with scorpions, 
their pestilence an invitation to the only one that matters for 
She is the presence that is all that is un-named, for it is Her, 
the unbegotten Mistress of the eternal hunger, 
dwell forever in her great unholy stomach where the damned befoul themselves in 
the glory of her fecund and bloody history, 
worship in the torment of a million wasted lives, 
bathe in the horror that the blood of time carries with the plague, 
and befoul yourself with worship, 
for she hates you eternally with the ferocious lust that binds all that inhabit 
the wasted and forgotten, the blissful loathing of you is now all that remains, 
alone, forgotten and Damned.


Bathory's imagery also fits well with the Goth teen counterculture of Japan, a country with a penchant for fantasy and the feminine (Carmilla from Vampire Hunter D is practically an anime version of Bathory). GPKism (above) have used Elizabeth Bathory as their concept for a series of musical releases, aesthetically embellished with roses and thorns, black latex, old world jewels and clothing, a Gothic Lolita's dream.