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Understanding Black Metal

  
  

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HCE
15:35 / 23.12.04
I have been reading John Darnielle's articles about Pig Destroyer, Mercyful Death, et al. and went out and bought a few albums. Mercyful Death was pretty easy, haven't listened to Morbid Angel yet, but Pig Destroyer is pretty impenetrable so far. It's not that I just dislike metal.

Are you a fan of this genre of music? How did you get into it? What do you get from listening to it?
 
 
Chiropteran
18:32 / 23.12.04
I don't have time right now to puzzle out what I find so moving about black metal, but I can tell you how I came to appreciate it - listening to Emperor's Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk, while actually gazing up at the, uh, welkin at dusk. In February (my appreciation for black metal is pretty seasonal). It was the musical embodiment of the cold, the almost painfully clear sky, the bleak grey beauty.

Also, I don't know Pig Destroyer or Mercyful Death, but Morbid Angel isn't exactly black metal.

~L
 
 
HCE
21:03 / 23.12.04
Yes, I've read up on it since this morning. Death metal, black metal, brutal something metal (forgot what the middle term was), technical, operatic.

I'll keep an eye out for Emperor, and for a dusky February.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
21:44 / 23.12.04
Rizla?

RIZLA!!!!


Does anyone know where Rizla is? I think his question just came up!

Although I have to confess, I'm quite partial to Nile. And Hatebeak. Hatebeak rule. I tend to find that I get a lot of the same thing from black metal that I do from noise- it just doesn't appeal to me quite so much because it's, well, music done fast and loud, rather than just cutting to the chase and ditching the traditional structures altogether. I kind of like black metal, but give me Non or Wolf Eyes over Emperor or Mayhem any day.
 
 
Brigade du jour
21:50 / 23.12.04
I'm a little out of touch with the nomenclature, so they probably don't count as black metal, but for my money you can't beat early Napalm Death.

I just revealed myself as a musical dodo, didn't I?
 
 
+#'s, - names
23:07 / 23.12.04
hahahahaha

Hatebeak. That rules. Hatebeak rule with a spam like extention.
Rulesz;kljz;lkjz.
 
 
hashmal
05:14 / 24.12.04
i know they're far from black metal these days, but i still love 'dusk and her embrace'
 
 
coweatman
16:55 / 24.12.04
pig destroyer isn't black metal.
 
 
BARISKIL666
00:40 / 25.12.04
I guess it was listening to Bathory's(RIP)Blood,Fire,Death album on headphones whilst wondering about a coniferous forest whilst picking black Magick mushrooms,I became totally absored into the atmosphere of it.Black metal is a very rural form of music in my opinion.It was started by the likes of Bathory,Venom,Hellhammer,Merciful Fate etc.. back in the early 80's,the lyrics and imagary being pure cartoon Satanism ala Denis Wheatly,but became a more Pagan obsessed creature.(particularly Bathory)Then more political(namely,National Scocialism)creature with the 2nd generation of bands from Scandinavia.
Heavy metal is a type of music that has been traditionally the victim of bigotry from non-heavy metal fans.I can only recommend careful listening to a good black metal album until one can penitrate the subtlties.Could you imagine a band such as Oasis/Blur or some such thing attempt to play full on technical death or black metal?They just have not the dexterity or ability to play such complex music.
Metal is the prog-rock of the 80's and beyond.
PS-Pig Destroyer are a grindcore band,Morbid Angel(top notch musicians)death metal really,Napalm Death a bit of both I suppose.
Yeah some Metalheads are retards,but black metal generally attracts a slightly more cerebral audience.
 
 
Locust No longer
19:32 / 25.12.04
Pig Destroyer is definitely grind and not black metal. I like Pig Destroyer for its thick, fast and chaotic sound. Like most grind, it takes a while to really get into it. Check out early Napalm Death, Sacrilege, Brutal Truth, Repulsion, Discordance Axis, and Carcass for more of a handle on grind.

Black metal is far more primitive than grind in most cases (although there are often exceptions to the rule, bands like Enslaved and Emperor can be quite complex, structure wise). Most Black Metal that I've run into relies on a healthy love of (ahem) satanism and pagan ritual. Some of the early greats would be Bathory and Venom (however, the former is often considered more of a joke than true, darker than hell, black metal). I can't say I'm a huge fan of black metal but I do really enjoy bands like Leviathan, 1339, Enslaved, Crebain, etc. I'm more partial to the black metal that has almost a droney quality to it where the guitars become one dusty, hellish blur for unintelligible and tortured vocals to scream over and the drums function only as sort of fugue like jackhammers in the distant dank dark. It's undeniably theatrical and scary sounding and that makes me like it quite a bit. All in all, I find that it's a genre quite mixed up in a odd mishmash of pseudo-Nordic pride, Aryan worship, and silly homophobia. I've talked to a number of people "in the scene" and I have rarely been impressed. However, bands like Leviathan, Weakling and Xasthur from CA seem to be both interesting sonically as well as philosophically. I don't know if that answers any questions.
 
 
reFLUX
08:26 / 26.12.04
if you want more band names in the style of Death, Grinf ect. you could check out my thread about such bands somewhere else in the music section. (sorry, i don't do links) there you'll get advice as well as a nice cup of mulled wine
 
 
BARISKIL666
17:15 / 26.12.04
Some of my own music is available free to download on MP3if anyone's got the patience.Send a request to Jrbarriskill@aol.com.
Epoch are a fusion of psychedelia/prog. and death/black metal,a little bit different.
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
22:09 / 26.12.04
Man, heavy metal makes me laugh. You know, I'm sure, that it was developed in the late '60s by working class whiteboys, many of them British, who were trying to play the blues but were neither proficient nor soulful enough. Grrrr! Rock! As far as I'm concerned, there is only one heavy metal guitarist of note: Jimi Hendrix. He rocks alone in his room and the only door says "Clapton" on it. It goes somewhere else entirely. All heavy metal lyricists are merely amending the footnotes to Jim Morrison and Mick Jagger. Yoko Ono was bored with Noise and Wall of Sound all that rigmarole which metalists try to make hay from by 1979. The only thing heavy metal is really good for, aside from lending the occasional hook to more viable modes of expression, is scoring blow and trashy tail.

Not that those are not worthy goals in and of themselves.
 
 
reFLUX
10:14 / 27.12.04
your basic premise is correct. but sometimes i still wanna headbang like a teenager. what other music enables this?
 
 
All Acting Regiment
14:09 / 27.12.04
I used to listen to Mayhem a bit, when I was younger, and have heard a lot of various kinds of metally type stuff from mates. It's loud, and that's good- and it's very fast, and that's good as well, and certainly the technical skill is impressive: but a bit repetitious. I could never listen to the stuff all the time- I find it gets, well, boring, after a bit- it all seems to be essentially 4:4 time signatures speeded up (feel free to point out if you feel I've misjudged).

That, and the pompous "Oh yes, our black metal/other newly created subgenre of thrashy heavy metal stuff is technically skilled white man's music and much better than that filthy black hip hop/dance/drum n bass" attitude. Don't tell me this outlook doesn't exist in the scene, it does, and it's not good- it's as bad as the "oooh your music's just freaky nazi geek music" attitude displayed by people who haven't taken the time to listen. And so on. That whole schpiel was enough to put me off, especcially when it was coming from the bands themselves.
 
 
Fugazi
19:33 / 27.12.04
Qalin, you are completely ignorant of what metal is. The best musicians are in the genre (Dream Theater, Yngwie Malmsteen, many others), some of the most talented songwriters too, etc etc. Don't think badly of Metal just because of shit like Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park. Real Metal is a different thing. Go educate yourself :P

P.S.: A Hendrix with four hands couldn't play a Malmsteen, Petrucci, Randy Rhoads or George Lynch song. And that's that: legend as he is, he wasn't that good.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
20:23 / 27.12.04
"The best musicians are in the genre (Dream Theater, Yngwie Malmsteen, many others), some of the most talented songwriters too, etc etc. Don't think badly of Metal just because of shit like Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park. Real Metal is a different thing. Go educate yourself :P"

Except, Qalyn isn't talking about Linkin Park et al, which he makes obvious at the start of the post.

And define "best musicians". They may well be very good technical players, but to be honest I've never been moved by anything malmsteem has ever done. To my ears, someone who's good at scractching as good a musician as someone who's good at guitar.

I'm not getting at anyone in particular, but i think we need to remember that music taste is subjective.
 
 
Fugazi
00:04 / 28.12.04

Strukut-käto, even though I, for one, do not enjoy that much of Malmsteen's songs and really dislike him as person, I have to admit: no one can play the guitar like he does. He's one of a kind, and very few can touch him. I'm not talking about musical taste here, we all know that gets subjective as hell. What I'm saying is the best musicians are the ones who can play their instruments in a exceptional manner, that distinguishes them from the others. Can Malmsteen play a Clapton song? Yes. Can Clapton play a Malmsteen song? No. Is Clapton better than Malmsteen then?
You may like him better, but you can not say he is superior to Malmsteen. Does that count for anything at all, or has old fat Yngwie been wasting decades playing stratocasters for nothing? You have to give the credit where credit is due.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
00:29 / 28.12.04
Yes. Fundametally, you have to respect Malkstreem for doing what he does.
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
00:39 / 28.12.04
Let me be perfectly clear about this: I can't stand Clapton or any of that hippy shit.

Maybe I can explain this with a parable. One day, two bulls crested a hill and beheld, in the valley below, a great herd of cows. The first bull, who was young and full of pep, said, "Hey, pops, let's run down there and fuck one of them cows!" And the old bull, who'd seen a thing or two, said, "I got a better idea, son. Let's walk down there and fuck 'em all!"
 
 
Mystery Gypt
02:46 / 28.12.04
wow... can any thread be derailed just by using the word "metal" in a weird context?

my second, and slightly more pertinent question, directed i suppose to people who aren't so into metal is -- has the phrase "black metal" come to mean, for people who aren't really involved in this or any other genre, a broad vague description of current metal which which is distinct from KROQ-era nu-metal? the reason i ask is that the genre is something so specific and easily identified, yet constantly misused (on this board, for example) -- so im wondering if the phrase has entered mainstream (music) journalism and become altered of its original meaning. anyone?
 
 
Fugazi
11:18 / 28.12.04
Bulls and cows... could you be a wee bit more specific?
 
 
rizla mission
11:39 / 28.12.04
Rizla?

RIZLA!!!!


Does anyone know where Rizla is? I think his question just came up!

Regrettably I'm stuck without internet access at the moment. My work PC has been utterly purged of anything remotely fun/distracting. It doesn't even have Paint. I'm trying to update my weblog once a week though. Hi everybody.

My, this thread has taken a rather frightening turn, hasn't it? And not, like, frightening in a good, Metal way.

What I'm about to say will probably sound incredibly geeky and pointless, but after 18 months of reading Terrorizer it seems as basic as the alphabet and I'm amazed that people theoretically interested in the subject don't have a clear distinction... so forgive my patronising attitude, but to define terms;

QUICK GUIDE TO CURRENT METAL SUB-GENRE DIVISIONS;

DEATH METAL:
Sound - drums are relentlessly fast blastbeats, tho not as fast as grindcore and prone to some slower 'beatdown' bits. Guitars tend to be extremely downtuned playing sped up, sludge-toned versions of basic caveman metal riffs, vocals are of the extremely low and growly sing-like-a-monster variety. Occasional screeching Slayer-style noodly solos and sometimes melodies in the chorus and stuff. Tends to be made by large, mean-looking American men with long hair. Think: Slayer, Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, Carcass etc.

These days, Death Metal tends to be extremely generic and predictable musically, and uses an aesthetic/imagery that's pretty dumb and cartoonish. Good for a bit of drunken headbanging but gets dull pretty quickly IHMO.

BIG EXCEPTION: Nile, who are fucking amazing musically and lyrically whilst still being a great Death Metal band.

BLACK METAL

Sound - mechanically precise blastbeat drums, guitars usually thrashed fast as possible, with a far more mid/high tone than DM - a very cold, metallic sound, sort of a "blast of icy wind" kinda thing. Vocals also tend to be less deep and more screeching/tortured. There seems to be an ever-growing division between this 'raw' black metal and the more 'sophisticated' strain that adds lots of synths, strings and operatic/gothic malarky.

Aesthetic - obviously I could carry on about the bizarre network of imagery that Black Metal draws on all day, I find it fascinating and hilarious. One basic distinction is that whilst a Death Metal band tend to be just a bunch of dudes with long hair, Black Metal grabs hold of the whole tradition of rock theatricality going all the way back to Kiss and Alice Cooper and takes it to .. rather extreme lengths. You know the score - corpsepaint, chainmail, spikes, breathing fire, swinging bloody great ceremonial axes around, generally looking like insane modern day viking bezerkers.
A lot of Black Metal tends to be made by po-faced Northern Europeans who take it all rather too seriously, hence, well, all the crazy stuff you've probably heard about.

There's a whole massive underground of Black Metal stuff that thrives on it's own esoteric cultishness. Pretty much every band seems to have a strong, slightly crazy, belief system of one kind or another, be it Satanism, Heathen Viking religion, Pagan nature worship or, yes I'm afraid, in extreme cases, Fascism. The things they all seem to hold in common are a strong strain of misanthropy (often coupled with scary superior-to-the-common-horde elitism) and an obsessive hatred of Christianity.

KEY EARLY INFLUENCES: Venom, Bathory, Celtic Frost.

CLASSIC PERIOD NORWEGIAN BANDS: Mayhem, Burzum, Emperor, Darkthrone

COMMERCIAL/GOTHIC STUFF: Dimmu Borgir, Cradle of Filth, Satyricon, Mortiis...etc.

REALLY FUCKED UP SHIT: Anaal Nathrakh, Abruptum, Axis of Perdition, Reign of Erebus, Revenge.... thousands more.


GRINDCORE

Locust can probably define this a lot better than I can - y'know.. EXTREMELY fast, punishing, fairly unique musical form, sometimes really simplistic ala early Napalm Death / Extreme Noise Terror, sometimes really, really complex and technical ala Discordance Axis. Strong connections with hardcore punk, often allied with extreme left politics / animal rights.

DOOM

Good catch-all term for all the really slooooow post-Sabbath stuff. I can't get enough of it. I guess kind of borders onto stoner rock at one end (St Vitus, Pentagram) and avant-drone nastiness at the other (Sunn 0))), Khanate).


Not that petty genre definitions mean a thing of course, and great bands are always going to be the ones that break out of them entirely, but nevertheless, thought I'd do my best to get that straight for the starter of this topic and anyone else who might want to know.

"ENEMIES OF METAL / YOUR DEATH IS OUR REWARD!"

Have fun.
 
 
Mystery Gypt
15:10 / 28.12.04
one of my favorite aspects of Black Metal is a sound you hear a lot which sounds much more like a document of some distanct, strange, terifying sound rather than the precise, well recorded metal machine you might hear in later Emperor albums. One of the great earliest Black Metal "bands", called Burzum, was actually just one guy playing everything by himself. (he's now in jail for murdering a another early Black Metal figure). you are reems and reems of cds out there that all look the same -- pure black album cover with indecipherable band name logo -- that sound like a few truly possessed, deeply commited people playing a super low fi, ritualistic sound. I'd recommend, for example, NACHMYSTIUM.

there is also a very unique strain that you can hear in exactly one release: the band ENSLAVED put out an album called BENEATH THE LIGHTS -- it must have been their 9th or 12th album. they still dress as vikings, but obviously they got bored with the confines of the genre, and this one album sounds as though Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine put together a metal band. its stunning.

any beginner in this genre should pick up the book LORDS OF CHAOS which gives you the whole (amazingly interesting) history and points you to a ton of albums.
 
 
HCE
15:10 / 28.12.04
In case my second post didn't make it clear, I've learned more about the sub genres of metal since I posted this thread. I called it black metal at first because all the albums I mentioned are in a section labeled Black Metal at Amoeba Records in Los Angeles.

I was hoping the thrust of this thread would be what people love about this music. Taxonomy is less interesting to me, personally, but if other find it to be of value that's fine, and I think that looking at Rizla's descriptions gives me a sense of what might attract people to one or another genre.

A note on the Hendrix vs Malmsteen debate -- this is not unlike the many debates about Alfred Cortot (classical pianist famous for the great expressiveness and beauty of his playing, as well as notorious for his inconsistency). The word 'better' is not useful when comparing two guitarists, because that skill is akin to a tool. A better guitar does not make a better guitarist, though it certainly doesn't hurt. Perhaps it is more useful to say that Malmsteen is skilful, where Hendrix is soulful.
 
 
Mystery Gypt
15:13 / 28.12.04
and rizla, as far as your fear about being "patronizing" goes... fuck 'em. if someone started a thread asking to chat about Hip Hop and then focussed entirely on the new Gwen Stefani album, they would be shredded. the "ha ha metal is so goofy all the time no matter what" attitude is SO boring... and to think that its showing up on a board that's ostensibly held together by readers of "intelligent comic books"...

pop culture is what it is folks. wrapped in a package of trash and waste, it unveils transcendent gifts to those who do the work unwrapping it.
 
 
Mystery Gypt
15:22 / 28.12.04
Amoeba does it best in that section. there's plenty in that sullen pile.

what's attractive about Black Metal? its that the players mean it. originally, they were very isolated kids in norway who heard Venom and Mercyfyl Fate and DID NOT REALIZE THOSE WERE FUNNY. they took the satanism dead seriously and it spoke to them and they emulated it and turned it into sometihng fully of emotion and genuine brutal violence. this is exactly what happened when Iggy saw the doors play, and then when Darby Crash saw iggy. the kids can see something beautiful and transcendent hidden in the ridiculous.

the reason people make such a big deal out of the seemingly nit-picky sub genre distinctions is because there is a different kind of intention and a different mind set of person behind the music. the black metal guys have been notoriously willing to take it all the way, with the murdering, kidnapping, church burning, and over the top theatrics. death metal guys have a much more even keeled sense that what they want from life is to do tons of speed, drink tons of beer, and get bloodied up thrashing to hyper violent music.

here is a side not that may or may not be of interest: about half of the members of new york's ultra arty avant-darlings No Neck Blue Band have become so obsessed with black metal that they all started secret black metal side projects, soon to be releasing totally anonymous black-shrouded albums in the near future. a group that arty and desperately sincere would never have fucked around with death metal... ya see?
 
 
rizla mission
10:57 / 29.12.04
Yeah, Black Metal seems quite the thing in experimental music circles right now... there was a great interview in the Wire a couple of months back with Stephen O'Malley of Sunn 0))) et al, and it was great to see him looking mean in his Hellhammer T-shirt and talking in a pretty thoughtful manner about the connections between black metal, minimalism and free jazz... very uplifting to see Cecil Taylor and Abruptum mentioned on the same page.

As Mystery Gypt mentions, it's the total un-self consciousness of the musicians that makes black metal such a kick - I'm sure that myself (and the members of the No Neck Blues Band) can spend all day listening to crazy noise music made by self-aware po-mo English speaking hipsters... but it's a different kettle of fish entirely being hit by this insane racket made by strange, isolated people in the dark Northern lands who actually believe they're axe-wielding pagan warriors...

And on a side note: damn it! I too was gonna make an anonymous Kult Black Metal demo and see whether it took off... there seems to be a whole world of metal fans who seem to reckon the more horrifically lo-fi and incomprehensibly fucked the music is, the more 'for real' it is, and hell, I could totally do that! I couldn't think of a good way to do the drums though, and thought that the neighbours might be likely to have be arrested whilst I was practising the vocals. But at least I had a lot of fun trying to come up with a good name - I can't choose between "Prenatal Lycanthropy" or "Goddess of Sodomy"..
 
 
Mystery Gypt
14:06 / 29.12.04
the answer is obvious. take a trip out to the middle of the woods one day and lay down your drum track in a clearing in the middle of the night.
 
 
Chiropteran
12:25 / 30.12.04
the answer is obvious. take a trip out to the middle of the woods one day and lay down your drum track in a clearing in the middle of the night.

Worked for Ulver.

\m/

~L
 
 
Michelle Gale
15:48 / 30.12.04
Black Metal = daft pretentious shite trying desprately hard to be offensive.
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
22:32 / 30.12.04
"Let's walk down there and..."

Okay, I promise to stop trolling this thread now.
 
 
hashmal
20:34 / 31.12.04
the kids can see something beautiful and transcendent hidden in the ridiculous.

nice
 
 
Seth
12:49 / 01.01.05
P.S.: A Hendrix with four hands couldn't play a Malmsteen, Petrucci, Randy Rhoads or George Lynch song. And that's that: legend as he is, he wasn't that good.

Yes, but can Superman outrun the Flash?
 
 
Fugazi
22:12 / 01.01.05

Compared in terms of pure skill, Hendrix is more like Wolverine next to Malmsteen :P

And just for the record: my favourite guitar player ever was the late Criss Oliva from Savatage. The guy could make/play everything with an awe-inspiring emotion. And not just complex solos (24 Hours from The Hall of The Mountain King), but also fuckin' heavy riffs (Damien from Edge of Thorns), acoustic stuff (Silk and Steel from Gutter Ballet) and beautiful pieces of music (Believe from the Streets album). That's my personal "musical Superman": skillful, soulful and a fuckastic songwriter

But really. My basic point was that Metal has much to offer. But you have to know where to look, cause there's a lot of shite around. But if you do find it... You probably won't regret the search.
 
  

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