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Help! I'm suddenly addicted to black/death metal!

  
  

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rizla mission
20:55 / 20.04.03
I'm not sure whether this is going to turn into a celebration of all things loud and silly or a support group to help me recover, but nevertheless, heed my sorry tale;

It all starts when, out of boredom, I buy a copy of "Terrorizer" magazine for larks. Putting on the cover CD, I find myself thinking "hey, some of this stuff's really good!".

Then I find myself buying (for £3) and avidly reading (again, supposedly for laughs) The A-Z of Extreme Metal.

Combine this with my unquenchable Black Sabbath obsession and general appreciation of horror movie excess and you may see an ominous pattern emerging..

I find myself wondering what record to listen to next and thinking "hmm.. haven't I got anything a little more CRUSHING with a bit more of a DOOMED feel to it.."

Now in recent weeks I've finally attained the ability to download MP3s, and what am I wasting my time downloading? Yes, metal I'm afraid.

I started with a few tracks by the more absurd metallers such as Bal Sagoth and Man'O War, purely for laughs, then decided to go for some old skool Scandinavian Black Metal, just out of morbid curiosity, to see what those guys who killed each other and burned down churches were up to musically speaking.. and damn me if Emperor and Darkthrone aren't ..well.. really fucking good!

Thus my interest turns from ironic pastiche to active appreciation, and - this old moral chestnut again - I begin to ponder whether I really should be digging this music which is made by people who are quite possibly deranged white supremicists with impressive battleaxe collections*, for consumption by misanthropic teenage boys and men who never wash their hair. It just ain't healthy.

And it's not just the assault-on-the-senses approach of the music that I like - the whole OTT goth-ness is really, I dunno, entertaining.. in the same way as H.P. Lovecraft's endearingly awkward prose. I'm a great fan of the death metal sub-genre that combines huge Sabbath-tastic riffs with operatic female vocals and gothic orchestral flourishes - it's like the musical equivalent of pigging out on birthday cake..

So anyway, what's people's opinions on this kind of stuff? Is it ghastly, stupid nonsense, or does anyone else want to confess a liking for machine gun drumming and singers pretending to be trolls? Should I stop listening to it, or should I feed the flames of my interest my downloading more songs with names like "Funeral Moon Over Carpathian Forest"?

(Oh, and rest assured I'm not going to start dressing the part, and continue to listen to a vast variety of other music as well - it's not a full blown obsession or anything)

*allegedly
 
 
uncle retrospective
22:14 / 20.04.03
I'm getting worried, all the music posts I contribute are Goth and metal. But any way.
Rizla, welcome to the club, listening to over the top metal is just such a rush. Now watch out for the haters, (should there be a z in that?)they will laugh at you possibly call you a meathead but they don't understand. And that's just fine.

Oh and watch out for the Satan based metal it gets a little dull after a while, try downloading Earache's back catalogue. Bolt thrower, Vader (for the Doomed side) and Napalm Death and Brutal Truth for the really fast, crazy, madness. Brutal Truth's "Extreme conditions demand extreme solutions" is amazing, download Walking Corpse and be slapped round by the best 90 second song since Slayers Necrophobic. Sweet.

Rock on Riz and remember If your not into metal your no friend of mine!
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
22:15 / 20.04.03
give in Rizla
these are people who regularly dress like vikings a beat each other nearly to death over the noway/sweden metal scene

i mean Varg Vickernes is in jail for stabbing a former bandmate in the face so hard he had to pust the guys head off with his foot

Erroneous killed himself, and before calling the cops, his flat mate took some of his brains and made soup, while turning skull fragments into neclaces for their other friends

how can you NOT listen to this stuff?
 
 
bio k9
23:10 / 20.04.03
I can't believe you guys got me to look into this shit but...

It was Christian "Varg" Vikernes, better known as Count Grishnackh, that stabbed Euronymous 23 times.

and

It was some guy named "Dead" that killed himself. In Euronymous' record shop.
 
 
Locust No longer
00:44 / 21.04.03
I remember breaking it to my friends that I, indeed, enjoy and possibly love metal. I come from a punk background which may not seem so far away from metal, but it's pretty big to say you like something different than the politically acidic and self important screams of DIY punk rock, especially if it's to say you like dumb loud noise. But, oh shit, it's great dumb noise.
Extreme metal is like most extreme forms of music. It's loud and abrasive and annoys people; there isn't many better things in life than annoying and abrasive music, however. I'll never get enough of blast beats and evil lyrics.

As for some of my favorite extreme metal bands:

-"Scum" period Napalm Death
-Discordance Axis (their last LP on Hydrahead is so good it hurts. Blazingly fast and technical but able to throw in the doom sludge, as well.)
- Nile
- Mastodon
- Jesuit
- Cattle Decapitation
- Asterisk (Rizla, if you haven't heard these guys, check them out. Crazy grindy metal, but tremendously progressive in structure.)
- Cephalic Carnage (Best metal of last year.)
- Morser

oh and the japanese greats like Bathtub Shitter, and More Noise for Life, and Carcass grinder.
 
 
The Falcon
01:27 / 21.04.03
Dillinger Escape Plan are good, too. And Kaddish.

I'd second the recommendation of old Earache, particularly Brutal Truth.
 
 
kurious oranj
10:24 / 21.04.03
I hold Terrorizer magazine and John Peel responsible for my own return to the 'dark' side that has many parallels to Rizla's.

Whilst I've never been a proper metaller - I've always liked to think I've got quite eclectic taste in music - I have also recently found myself buying more cds by people like Nile and Mortician.

The Peel championed Bal Sagoth are hilarious epic-cheese-metal. Why is it then that I now own two of their albums and have a signed photograph?

I also find myself considering getting a ticket for the Bloodstock festival (handily based in my home town). This promises to be a day of full on cheese-metal, headlined by Paradise Lost.

Of course hierarchies of taste shouldn't bother me. Maybe it's guilt over previous offences of musical snobishness that has driven me to it.

Suggestions...

Teen Cthulhu,
Red Harvest,
Lost Horizon (who are extreme only in terms of bad taste)

May I also ask for the offence of liking Happy Hardcore to be added to the charge sheet.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
10:39 / 21.04.03
I used to live with a guy who was really into black metal, and I must admit, it kinda grew on me. Check out Nile- they "sing" in ancient Coptic and have very ostentatious musical interludes.
I also recommend you read "Lords of Chaos- the bloody rise of the Satanic metal underground" (I think it's by Michael Moynihan, who's a dodgy possible Nazi, but it's a great book- and much funnier than I think it was intended to be) for the whole gory history of the Norwegian stuff.

Bathtub Shitter has to be one of the best band names ever.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
10:40 / 21.04.03
And is it just me, or is Terrorizer a much better magazine than it looks like it should be?
 
 
rizla mission
11:48 / 21.04.03
Actually, I find the writing in Terrorizer is mostly pretty dumb/dull. But then, it has lengthy, serious interviews with fucking demented Gore-Metal bands, plus a cover Cd of same, and is thus automatically better than anything else you can buy in Smiths.

Naturally I already dig Napalm Death (again, bought the record for a joke, ended up loving it..), Nile, Slayer, Dillinger Escape Plan.. and Mastadon and Teen Cthulhu are just obscenely good. Not to mention good old Intestinal Baalism.

And Bal Sagoth are indeed just one of the best things in human history. You haven't lived 'till you've heard The Dark Liege of Chaos is Unleashed at The Unsorcelled Shrine of Azura-Kai (The Splendour of a Thousand Swords Gleaming Beneath the Blazon of the Hyperborean Empire, Part.II).
 
 
that
13:11 / 21.04.03
Shouldn't that be 'ensorcelled'?

I've listened to some death/black/extreme metal. Morbid Angel, Slayer, Napalm Death, fucking godawful shite-fest that is the cringeworthy Cradle of fucking Filth. I used to really like My Dying Bride, who are kind of goth metal really, I suppose, but in a very violins and big fucking waves of guitars way - same for Paradise Lost. I guess I just don't have the patience anymore to listen to some bloke shouting in a constipated manner about devils and shite.
 
 
rizla mission
15:47 / 21.04.03
Yeah, it guess should be 'ensorcelled'. I don't suppose the Dark Liege of Chaos would bother making such a fuss about it if it was 'unsorcelled'.
 
 
grant
16:34 / 21.04.03
Waitaminute - didn't Dillinger Escape Plan do that quiet bit on the mixtape locust made a couple years ago... the Scottish-accented guy talking (not singing) about running into his ex-girlfriend with the moody, slow music behind him?
 
 
reFLUX
19:26 / 21.04.03
i'm pretty much in a similiar situation. have always liked the grind and the Death, but as of late become very interested in Black Metal. i wanna be cool and download some Throbbing Gristle or Aube or any other of those way-out noise bands, but i just downloaded Mayhems first album (De Dom some shit), and i am freaking my mind out. i have become almost obsessed with the killing and suicide shit in Norway since reading an article in Bizare. i even wanna read Lords of Chaos.
i just want to be totally NECRO!
(but i'll never listen to Burzum)
 
 
rizla mission
20:07 / 21.04.03
grant - I believe that would be Arab Strap. I've got the same tape and there are a couple of things missing from the tracklisting. Dillinger Escape Plan do shockingly heavy maths-metal/'post-hardcore' kinda stuff..

i just want to be totally NECRO!
(but i'll never listen to Burzum)

It's interesting you should say that.. admittedly Burzum seem to be the only prominent Black Metallers who are out-and-out Nazis, but then I would have thought that if one wanted to a avoid listening to music made by people who believe/do/say unpleasant things, one would be best to avoid the whole scene completely.. lots of these groups have been involved in some pretty dodgy stuff, and I'm worried that part of the reason I'm listening to Black Metal is heavy morbid fascination with these frigthening people who take the comedy misanthropy of heavy metal deadly seriously and put it into practice (even if they are fucking hilarious most of the time). I get the feeling reading about Black Metal that a lot of the people involved are pretty right-wing, but keep quiet about it to avoid negative publicity.. to single out Burzum and assume the other groups are ethically ok seems a bit of a dodgy assumption to me - all that intense negative energy and nihilism in their music's gotta be directed somewhere.. As you can probably tell from the above, I'm tearing my hair out (metaphorically speaking) over this whole fascination/repulsion deal..
 
 
at the scarwash
22:55 / 21.04.03
I think that everyone should listen to Stinking Lizaveta. They are not extreme or black metal, but they are cooler than your grandma. The song at MP3.com is from their first record. I think that they have better ones, but it's a decent sample. Instrumental power trio free jazz metal that will totally fucking cram you.
 
 
at the scarwash
23:07 / 21.04.03
Oh yeah. And I've never heard anything quite so extreme as Sleep's hour-long hymn to weed, "Jerusalem."
 
 
videodrome
23:23 / 21.04.03
For the truly necro, there's only one name to know: Anaal Nathrakh.

TOTAL FUCKING NECRO!

(ahem.)

They've got stuff on mp3.com, I think, as well as a few discs, most of which are hard to find in the states but in plentiful supply through HMV in the UK. Go figure.

And one of the five best records released last year was Oceanic, by Isis.
 
 
rakehell
00:58 / 22.04.03
Hi. I'm rakehell and I listen to black metal. *hi rakehell*

I recently got back into metal through Ulver. I bought their adaptation of "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", loved it and proceeded to buy more. They've lately become weird electronica - which is more my style.

Totally in love with Garm's voice I bought Arcturus' "The Sham Mirrors" which rocked my world and I have to make an effort to get some of their back catalogue.

I missed Mayhem tourning Melbourne - apparantly they did that "throwing the pig's head in the the crowd" thing - but Opeth are tourning soon and I'll be along to see that.
 
 
Cop Killer
05:21 / 22.04.03
Well, Rizla, in that Lords of Chaos book, they have extensive interviews with a lot of the prominent members of the Norwegian Black Metal scene so you can see who's on the level. Marduke, I know for a fact, are nice guys, cuz my really fucking metal buddy met them outside Riley's Rockhouse (the place where most metal bands play in the Chicagoland area [I saw Manowar with Immortal there about a year ago and it fucking ruled]) while they were at the Dairy Queen next door. He said they were some of the nicest people he's ever met and anti-fascist to boot. That and their shirts proclaim them to be "Christ Raping Black Metal" which fucking rules!
There is nothing to be ashamed of as far as a love of metal is concerned. I have this going theory that heavy metal (mostly thrash metal I think) is the new indie rock. And if you're worried about your musical credibility, check out the Accused, who play really fucking fast thrash/punk metal that's really cartoonish in a tounge in cheek sort of way. And they're from the Seattle scene of the mid to late eighties. I especially recommend Martha Splatterhead's Maddest Stories Ever Told, cuz it's totally fucking wicked.
 
 
rizla mission
08:53 / 22.04.03
For the truly necro, there's only one name to know: Anaal Nathrakh.

TOTAL FUCKING NECRO!

Yeah, I'm familiar with them thanks to Locust's latest mix CD. Not so much "loud" as "Bloody Hell! To the bunkers!!" Incredible stuff.

Marduk are pretty funny. They're the ones who said their new album was "the same unholy cosmic terror, but this time with more of a groove to it!", a quote is going to adorn my bedroom door as soon as I reclaim the magazine to cut it out of..
 
 
doctorbeck
09:47 / 22.04.03
how come nobody has mentioned newcastles finest

VENOM

who after the Sabs were probably the godfathers of this scene.

abadon, mantos and the other one, i forget their names now, one of them ended up working as a care assistant in the old peoples home i worked at in newcastle.

andrew
 
 
Cop Killer
07:21 / 23.04.03
Yeah, I was meaning to mention Venom, then forgot, because I do that sometimes. They did give the Black Metal scene its name and all. They couldn't really play their instruments all to well -- at least on their first few albums, but their stuff wasn't that great after At War With Satan -- and they didn't take themselves nearly as seriously as the other bands around them or spawned from their seed.
 
 
rizla mission
11:25 / 23.04.03
Does anyone know the band Abruptum?

Because I just downloaded a track by them, and it's really great and unusual - it's still black metal, but it doesn't have the machine gun drums or the wall of noise - it's really minimalist: slow, brooding tempo, guitar that sounds like Tony Iommi trying to be Thurston Moore and earth-shakingly deep monster vocals.. really evil sounding - it's not often that the "less is more" principle works in metal, but it does here.
 
 
videodrome
14:17 / 23.04.03
For the truly unusual (in the black metal world, at least), look for Bohren and Der Club of Gore. Supposedly they're a BM band, but their disc Black Earth sounds a lot more like Angelo Badalamenti's soundtrack for the second Twin Peaks film that will never be.

Also look for the Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra disc - one seventy-minute track that's incredibly heavy and, well, black. And only one man is behind it all - that's some dedicated evil. Anyone who makes it all the way through gets a free steak dinner.

The same guy is part of Nokturnal Mortum, whose disc NeChrist is one of the funniest things I've ever heard, full of animal and forest sounds, and some honest-to-Satan black metal hoedowns.

There's samples of all of the above at the black metal pages of Aquarius Records.
 
 
Cop Killer
07:19 / 26.04.03
Yeah, I know the band Abruptum, pretty good stuff. And they have a midget, or little person, in the band that calls himself "It" because he's too evil to have a name.
 
 
Seth
22:50 / 27.04.03
Riz: the following is from an email sent to me from Danzig is God. He's been unable to post since changing his ISP, so he forwarded me his recommendations:

I have also got some recommendations for rizla if you want to pass them on

Converge - Jane Doe
Cephalic Carnage - Lucid Interval
Cannibal Corpse - Tomb of the Mutilated
Decapitated - Winds of Creation
Morbid Angel - Blessed are the Sick
Iron Monkey - Our Problem
Mortician - Hacked Up for Barbeque
Soilent Green - Sewn Mouth Secrets
Deicide - Once Upon the Cross
Carcass - Necroticism Descanting the Insalubrious

I know there are some fucking ridiculous names and titles in there, but hey, they're EVIL!!!!!!

Iwould choose Iron Monkey and Soilent Green above the others, but thats just an opinion.

That Carcass album title is a classic.
 
 
uncle retrospective
08:34 / 28.04.03
That Carcass album title is a classic.
It's also has some of the daftest lyrics ever, they read like Med school undergrads writing Metal murder songs.
Ok it kicks ass by the way.
 
 
Danzig: He Pitys the Fool!
10:29 / 28.04.03
Hooray! I know have a job with internet access, so i can post. So Reflect posted my suggestions, but i have some more. I have recently downloaded some stuff by Soilwork, and is highly recommended. Also the new Children of Bodom album is amazing! Rock Hard, Rock Heavy, Rock Animal!!!!
 
 
Punji Steak
12:20 / 28.04.03
"they read like Med school undergrads writing Metal murder songs" - I thought they were? Oh, and don't know if they quite qualify for this thread but Danzig were a fucking fantastic band.
 
 
Danzig: He Pitys the Fool!
14:22 / 28.04.03
Danzig is still amazing. Shame there isnt too much of the 'band' anymore. Has to be pointed out that when i saw Danzig last year, he is going incredibly thin on top. He kind of looks like the evil midget twin of Hulk Hogan, Brother!
 
 
HysteriX
16:18 / 28.04.03
i say listen to whatever the fuck you want as long as you like it because it appeals to you.
you should check out some crust punk i think it has more substance but is similar.
nausea
neurosis
remission
discharge
filth
icons of filth
AMEBIX-NO GODS NO MASTERS
brother inferior
LEFTOVER CRACK
 
 
Punji Steak
21:36 / 28.04.03
and on from that, Icons of Filth are supporting Conflict at the Forum in London on the 21st September. Conflict themselves are playing Mean Fiddler 11th June. Inner Terrestrials are supporting both gigs (very very good band)...
 
 
Danzig: He Pitys the Fool!
06:40 / 29.04.03
Neurosis are a quality act! If you get the chance, have a look at their dvd that has just come out. It revolves around the last album, and is film based on the spirit of the music. They have also put some film on for their last Tribes of Neurot album. Truly amazing, and the best live band i have ever seen, bar none.
 
 
uncle retrospective
06:52 / 29.04.03
DiG My hats of to you, you know your good metal.
Riz, I'd recomend Neurosis's Through silver in blood. A great mix of slow crushing metal and magic (and not in a tosser way) with some great Tim Leary samples.
 
  

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