In Search of Metal pt 3: None More Black
You are summoned forthwith to pay homage to the one true king
Aside: I can't figure out how to change my newsletter header, and Bluesky is censoring my links because it has a Game of Thrones extra dead in the corner. whoops
Has any subgenre gotten the SHAFT in these brackets like black metal, relative to its prominence? The whole 90s, no Mayhem, no Emperor, no Immortal, I think a Darkthrone album made the cut once. Some of the titanic 90s classics—not metal classics, just CLASSICS—got frozen out by this black metal drought, and when you consider that Death and Carcass albums routinely made it, the only explanation for this is that voters are not bothering with black metal because they assume all these bands are Nazis. And look, yeah, a fair number of them are. I tried my damndest to get Immortal, the most apolitical black metal band on the planet, in the Best of the 90s tournament, and it came in dead last for nominations. Kent threw me a bone putting Bathory in the 1990 tournament and it lost in the first round to Twin Peaks. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it ROCK, it seems. Well we're gonna try this again. By gar, you people ARE gonna nominate at least ONE black metal album, and vote it to seed 128 so it can lose to Radiohead, but it is gonna BE here, dammit. A brief explainer on black metal: black metal is a metal subgenre pioneered by a bunch of Scandinavian edgelords who took the premises of metal—obsession with evil, darkness, Satan—to its logical extreme. Cross that edginess with a nativist streak, some paganism, you have a recipe for a genre that sounds extremely cool and wades into dubious ethical territory more often than would be preferred. Like death and thrash metal, black metal takes a bit of its musical identity from punk—less the rockin' political variety than the atonal experimental one—and the rest from grim 80s metal bands like Venom, Celtic Frost, Mercyful Fate, and the aforementioned Bathory. Black metal is a lo-fi and atmospheric genre, and even in its symphonic hi-fi forms, it tends to try and overwhelm you with grandeur. Something Wagnerian about that, you might say *tugs collar*. Readily identifiable by high-pitched vocal shrieking and rapid runs of tremolo-picked guitar, black metal is even more abrasive than death metal, but less interested in rocking your socks off. Musically speaking I daresay it'd be more to the taste of these voters if not for the troubling political undercurrent. Let's get into it
Urkraft by Thyrfing: The sole example of viking metal that I will be covering, this doesn't really sound like the rest of the black metal, it's halfway past Bathory on the way to Amon Amarth. Lotta folk instrumentation and soaring singalong choruses. It's a lot of fun but it's an hour long and fairly repetitive, without the hypnotic quality that usually excuses this genre's monotony
My score: ☆☆☆
Kristall & Isa by Paysage d'Hiver: Very lo-fi Swiss band, this record is largely ambient with occasional spurts of harsh black noise. Band members have gone on record against black metal's Nazi tendencies, which is nice. This one's slight but it makes good background music.
My score: ☆☆☆½
Mardraum—Beyond the Within by Enslaved: This one might be the most difficult listen, it's very harsh and unrelenting, a fury of difficult, abrasive emotions played out in dense compositions. Enslaved are a prog-leaning band and would become more so, but they're still pretty firmly in the realm of black metal here. This is a tough listen even for me but I think it's worthwhile.
My score: ☆☆☆½
Impaled Northern Moonforest (self-titled): A ten-minute parody by Anal Cunt's Seth Putnam, Impaled Northern Moonforest is pretty funny once you get used to the extremely kvlt production. Pretty sure he's slapping his knee for percussion, and it sounds like he's masturbating. The track titles are the best part.
My score: ☆☆☆½
Midian by Cradle of Filth: In the days before everybody and their mother had heard of black metal thanks to the likes of Deafheaven and the growing legend of the Mayhem story, Cradle of Filth may well have been the sound's primary exporter around the world. An English band, the kvlt black metal heads despise Cradle of Filth, but they're a lot of fun, if rather schticky. They have a heavy gothic influence, lot of melancholy symphonic elements and autumnal keyboards, and they sound supremely goofy; they seem to be singing about vampires or something most the time. I personally don't think the songwriting backs up the novelty on this particular album but it's more accessible than most black metal, and has a fair amount of female vocals.
My score: ☆☆☆½
Spirit the Earth Aflame by Primordial: On the more folkish, contemplative side of black metal, Spirit the Earth Aflame is a beautiful recording but it's got a real retvrn vibe and I'll be frank and say that the guy who leads this band does seem to be some variety of soft chud. It's an engrossing listen all the same
My score: ☆☆☆☆
Suicidal Emotions by Abyssic Hate: so I was listening to this, thinking "say, that's good stuff, sounds like shoegaze, they'd like this", figured I'd better cross my T's and dot my I's before I added em—they were not featured on the reference page I've been using to gauge a band's politics so I googled. Whoops! This is one guy and he's a full-blown Nazi, the kind that calls other *Nazi* black metal bands posers—though oddly this album seems to just be about depression, don't think there's any Nazi content here. If you wanna hear a Nazi be really sad this'll do the trick.
My score: ☆☆☆☆
Grand Declaration of War by Mayhem: For the most part, the black metal bands with big releases this year aren't the type I have to apologize for too much, the only band I decided to outright disqualify from coverage is Deströyer 666, not so much because I'm unwilling to engage with music by truly horrible people—see previous entry lol—but because this process is very time consuming and I'm not going to waste time pitching a band that has a "Controversy" section on Wikipedia. I will, however, make an exception for Mayhem, for two reasons. One, there's quite a lot of debate as to the extent to which the non-Varg members of Mayhem were or are some flavor of Nazi, vs just being controversy-baiting edgelords, if you care to make the distinction—and it is very much in Mayhem's interest nowadays to remain calculatedly mum on the subject, let the question bring attention but not ruin. And two, because whether or not they are, I think Mayhem has been grandfathered into the discussion; they are the most famous black metal band, nobody has to go out of their way to discover Mayhem, nobody can be unpleasantly surprised by Mayhem. You don't happen upon Mayhem and go "aw dang, Count Grishnakh ia a white supremacist 🙃🙃🙃". All this said, Grand Declaration of War is an unusual album in that the kvlt black metal heads *despise* it. It's experimental, not in the dissonant harsh way this genre often is, but in a very slick, ornate, extroverted one: the tone is martial, much of the vocals are more like spoken word manifesto that sound yelled through a megaphone, and the music borders on being straight-up progressive metal. Conceptually, the album's lyrics seem to be largely-adapted from Nietschze (thus making its fascism-quotient crystal-clear, as it always is when Nietschze's involved). Also, the only thing this has in common with the "classic" Mayhem lineup is the rhythm section, the creative control seems to be in the hands of guys who weren't around in the prime Varg years. I think this is a very interesting and engaging album, and it's very funny that this widely-disliked album sounds substantially-more-fascist than much tr00er and more-definitely-fascist black metal by simple virtue of it being a guy yelling Nietschzean poetry over martial rhythms. Also there's a trip-hop track on here for some reason.
My score: ☆☆☆☆
Damned in Black by Immortal: 15 of you liked Immortal enough to nominate them for the best of the 90s, and I reckon 15 will probably be more than enough for this tournament. But let me make the case: this album just *rocks*. Immortal are the AC/DC of black metal, all killer no filler, here to make you bang your head as you gallop through frostbitten kingdoms. If any of the original black metal bands were "in on the joke", it was Immortal—just watch the "Call of the Wintermoon" video. But they sound dead serious, and fun as hell. My official "if you only listen to one" this time is a lengthy and difficult (if artistically-rich) record, but this is only 36 minutes that you will decidedly not regret, so I implore you to check it out as well.
My score: ☆☆☆☆
But if you only listen to one....
Dead as Dreams by Weakling: An American band, Weakling only existed for a brief period in the 90s, during which they recorded their only album, which has gone down as a legendary cult item. It sets a profoundly-despairing mood across its nigh-80-minutes, a sonic representation of pure anguish. The compositions are lengthy, progressive, engrossing. It's a serious bummer, masterfully-so. I'm probably underrating it.
My score: ☆☆☆☆½
Dismissed