13 barn owls in a trenchcoat<p>In the very late 1990s there was this proto dungeon synth and black metal band in Germany called Blod Besvimelse (cod Old Norse for "blood drowning"), led by a keyboard player called Melse along with her then-boyfriend-later-ex-husband BSoD, the main member of Heroin Makes Happy. </p><p>Some people maintain that BSoD wrote most of the material attributed to Melse, but I hold that the keyboard led stuff has her style all over it. He's also a cunt who's fucked around with antisemitic imagery, and mostly irrelevant to this story.</p><p>Melse's work was obscure, but some low quality tapes have made it onto YouTube</p><p>This is Misanthrop, a personal favourite<br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iAL29pwpcY" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">youtube.com/watch?v=0iAL29pwpc</span><span class="invisible">Y</span></a></p><p>Melse died in 2013 of a probable overdose and this is all Deep Black Metal Lore, right?</p><p>So imagine my surprise when a clip of Misanthrop turns up, uncredited, in a YouTube Short about cats (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tulTBsYULRY" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="">youtube.com/shorts/tulTBsYULRY</span><span class="invisible"></span></a>) from some German? content-stealing chop-shop channel, which in turn sampled it from another annoying YT Shorts channel involving gnomes.</p><p>And it was at this point, in early November, that I decided to detective work my way back to how this reached the relative mainstream. (For a given value of gnomes.)</p><p>The gnomes channel (MTG Gnomes Brazil at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/source/oPv-GvUAK6Y/shorts?bp=8gUeChwSGgoLb1B2LUd2VUFLNlkSC29Qdi1HdlVBSzZZ" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">youtube.com/source/oPv-GvUAK6Y</span><span class="invisible">/shorts?bp=8gUeChwSGgoLb1B2LUd2VUFLNlkSC29Qdi1HdlVBSzZZ</span></a> )l seems to have basically no subs and exclusively uses Misanthrop for its soundtrack. But why?</p><p>It then links back to this different gnomes channel, which frequently uses credits that just link back to itself.<br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/source/CvbuWdWolIY/shorts?bp=8gVRCkUSNgoLQ3ZidVdkV29sSVkSC0N2YnVXZFdvbElZGgs3Y3cwcmNCQXV6TSIHCIgnEgIIDyoEEgIIDxoLN2N3MHJjQkF1ek0ovY-1uqTBs8F8" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">youtube.com/source/CvbuWdWolIY</span><span class="invisible">/shorts?bp=8gVRCkUSNgoLQ3ZidVdkV29sSVkSC0N2YnVXZFdvbElZGgs3Y3cwcmNCQXV6TSIHCIgnEgIIDyoEEgIIDxoLN2N3MHJjQkF1ek0ovY-1uqTBs8F8</span></a></p><p>At this point, my notes read "dear gods, it's gnomes all the way down".</p><p><strong>That</strong> channel, ImUseMouse, recursively links the track credit back to itself, but I eventually got it back further, to this video : <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvbuWdWolIY" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">youtube.com/watch?v=CvbuWdWolI</span><span class="invisible">Y</span></a></p><p>This one actually credits Blod Besvimelse, via a reupper on Soundcloud<br><a href="https://soundcloud.com/anatolij-radchenko-521459996/blod-besvimelse-misanthrop" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">soundcloud.com/anatolij-radche</span><span class="invisible">nko-521459996/blod-besvimelse-misanthrop</span></a></p><p>And from here, via some comments on the track, I discover that a gnome meme (Crawly) apparently did introduce the band to a bunch of people</p><p>Which took me to the source:</p><p>Four months ago, someone created a musical video that mixing video about Crawley - the gnome TikTok character of this Russian entertainer that you can find at <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@crawly_possessed" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="">tiktok.com/@crawly_possessed</span><span class="invisible"></span></a> -<br>with the track Misanthrop by Blod Besvimelse and new lyrics and original musical elaborations on Misanthrop's main theme.</p><p>This appears to be where it started and, I repeat, what the fucking fuck?!</p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-Zsgt74Q_w" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">youtube.com/watch?v=9-Zsgt74Q_</span><span class="invisible">w</span></a></p><p><a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/BlodBesvimelse" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>BlodBesvimelse</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/DungeonSynth" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>DungeonSynth</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/BlackMetal" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>BlackMetal</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/CrawlyPossessed" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>CrawlyPossessed</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/gnomes" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>gnomes</span></a></p>