Buyer Beware: Rope Sect, Iron Bonehead Productions and their affiliations with hate
Listeners can make up their own minds about whether they’d like to support Rope Sect going forward. After everything I’ve learned, I won’t be.
(Content warning: references to neo-Nazis and white supremacy, and images of nooses.)
I fell hard for Rope Sect’s hooky, gloom-soaked melodies the first time I heard them, at the end of 2017. At the time, the Berlin band had released just a handful of songs, barely enough to make up a half hours’ worth of music, but I listened to it daily for months.
So I was incredibly excited to learn that Rope Sect is releasing its first full-length record, The Great Flood, in August. Until I learned that they’d signed a record deal with Iron Bonehead Productions, a label long affiliated with neo-Nazi, white supremacist and National Socialist Black Metal bands and organizations.
These affiliations have been documented in depth elsewhere, so I won’t go into detail here. You can learn more at these links:
https://nsbmboneheads.wordpress.com/
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/10/17/18827359.php
After I tweeted my disappointment with Rope Sect’s choice of labels, I got a message through my website’s contact form from someone named Steve M., saying, “I think I need to clean this up on behalf of the band.” Here’s his note in full:
Rope Sect neither support nor has anything to do with any political ideology. It is ridiculous to connect the band with right-wing politics at all. Also, the label doesn’t support NSBM or any political affiliation either; they made this clear a couple of times and Rope Sect is not responsible for any personal views or opinions of other bands or people related to the label.
The label and the band both have e-mail addresses, so it’s no bother to ask or get in touch with them directly instead of making public accusations on social media. Don’t spread rumors like these, please. Again, Rope Sect distance themselves from any political connection or ideology and they don’t have any right-wing connection, neither artistically nor personally.
I replied:
Hi, thanks for reaching out. I don’t understand your connection to the band, but let me start by saying that I am a big fan of their work and listen to it often. That’s why I was so disappointed to see that their first full-length album — which I have been looking forward to — is coming out on a label that publishes NSBM work and whose owner has long been affiliated with neo-Nazi ideals.
You say that Rope Sect “distances themselves” from any political connection or ideology, but that isn’t possible when sales of their records will mean money going into the pocket of someone who supports the dehumanization and genocide of others. Rope Sect has chosen to do business with this label and can’t “distance themselves” from its owner’s beliefs (and to call these ideas “politics” is telling — it isn’t political to believe in the value of all human life).
As recently as nine months ago, Iron Bonehead toured its Never Surrender fest, with several neo-Nazi bands in the bill. Has the label or Patrick Kremer issued any kind of public statement or apology since then, disavowing any future association with NSBM/neo-Nazi bands or ideals, and apologizing for supporting and making money off these ideals in the past? If so, please point me to it.
Lastly, I know Rope Sect has built its aesthetic around rope imagery and given the band’s relative anonymity they are going to use this imagery instead of showing bandmembers in its videos, but to release a video (“Hiraeth,” an otherwise gorgeous song) just weeks after an international uprising over the death of George Floyd — whose death was a literal lynching in every way but for the presence of a rope — featuring a man dragging a noose seems incredibly insensitive, at least.
Far from “spreading rumors,” I feel like people ought to be aware of what they’re buying, and where their money is going. Everything I’ve said here is easy to verify. As I said, if the label or its owner has in some way apologized for their affiliations, I’d love to see them.
I received no response. A few days later, I reached out to the band directly, through the contact link on its Bandcamp page, saying I was thinking of posting something about the situation but wanted to see if they had any comment. Here was the response I got, presumably from someone in the band:
It is more than obvious that we are NOT tied to politics or any political movement whatsoever. Even mentioning the band in connection with NSBM is just grotesque and even preposterous given the background of our members. Iron Bonehead Prod. have made several statements about this years ago as well. There are no politics involved.
In response, I sent the same note that I sent to Steve M. that I quoted above. Again, I got no reply, even when I sent a follow-up note.
It’s confusing for the band to stand behind “the background of our members,” considering that the band keeps the identities of its members secret, identifying them only as Inmesher, Harbinger and Gaarentwynder (the latter referring to a the task in rope production of winding or twisting the rope). As far as I can tell, Rope Sect’s members have not been outed as members of other bands, as eventually happened with Ghost.
There are a few photos of them online, however. Although I don’t recognize any of the members, the photos reveal that the band has performed with a noose dangling above them and nooses around some of their necks. The noose is widely recognized as “one of the most powerful visual symbols directed against African-Americans, comparable in the emotions that it evokes to that of the swastika for Jews. Its origins are connected to the history of lynching in America, particularly in the South after the Civil War, when violence or threat of violence replaced slavery as one of the main forms of social control that whites used on African-Americans. The noose quickly became associated with the Ku Klux Klan.”
Maybe that’s what “Rope Sect” referred to all along. Their main imagery has featured people’s heads wrapped in rope, but the inclusion of nooses at all is telling.
Unfortunately, in the course of my research I discovered that Rope Sect has been with Iron Bonehead for a few years now, including its Proselytes EP and a LP compilation of Proselytes and its debut tape, Personae Ingratae.
Listeners can make up their own minds about whether they’d like to support Rope Sect going forward. After everything I’ve learned, I won’t be.
