User:LiteralKa/ANUS

The American Nihilist Underground Society (ANUS) is a loose-knit collaboration of writers, artists, programmers, sculptors, musicians and philosophers that engage in promoting nihilism and neoclassical culture through numerous mediums, including the publication of articles on philosophy, weekly editorials, and the promotion of metal music. ANUS, known for its extensive Dark Legions metal archives, was one of the earliest places on the web to find black metal discussion, and has been cited for its definition of heavy metal.

History
The American Nihilist Underground Society was co-founded originally as a nihilistic hacker organization in 1987 by Spinoza Ray Prozak (who would go on to host of the KSPC 88.7 "Metal Show" radio program ) and "Chromatic Death". From 1987 until 1992, ANUS ran a series of free speech and "non-taboo" bulletin boards (including the Usenet newsgroups alt.rock-n-roll.metal.death and alt.music.black-metal) that attracted "metalheads", hackers, artists, and activists. After several "run-ins" with law enforcement which often resulted in censorship, ANUS developed its philosophy and began to promote it with the intention of changing the philosophical attitudes of Western Culture towards nihilist ideas of thought. The ANUS website began as a small web server in 1993, eventually acquiring the "anus.com" domain name in 1996.

Ideology
The American Nihilist Underground Society advocates nihilism as a means of transcending illusion, believing that through accepting nihilism as a philosophical value, society will begin to perceive the universe as an abstract design and appreciate the beauty of reality. ANUS espouses a mixture of integralist and nihilist philosophies, believing that as a society, have lost our way and need to re-invent our values. However, ANUS emphasizes that nihilism is a gateway and not a destination.

Written and artistic material
Weekly written material published on the website's written articles section is often of a very philosophical nature and critical of contemporary social attitudes and practices. ANUS often takes an ethnomusicological approach when writing about music, and a critical view on the role of race in society. The group has published both literary and artistic works in its esoterica section, and publishes multiple metal and neoclassical culture ezines, including Heidenlarm, Exponentiation, and The Undiscovered Country.