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JJ's Bizarre Blog #14 - In the Blackest Darkness, where Evil dwells
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Greetings, friends! Some time has passed and a new evil is bubbling beneath the surface, ready to pounce – it’s a new installment of the Bizarre Blog! October is drawing to a close but is still here and Halloween is yet to pass, so continuing off of the spooky entry from last time, we’re gonna delve deeper into the darkness and explore something truly macabre and demonic. The most evil of all metal subgenres and one that has been my obsession for the last several years – I am talking of course about black metal! So get your corpsepaint, spiked bracelets, bullet belts, Satanic bibles and horrible recording equipment ready and let’s dive right in!
For the uninitiated, what is black metal exactly, what does it sound like? Well, it’s a subgenre of extreme metal and along with death metal, it represent the heaviest and most extreme sounds available in the metal sphere. Black metal is most often fast, very aggressive and very dark. It’s defined by a lot of blast beat drums, heavily distorted tremolo guitars and an often raw and unfiltered sound. Vocals are mostly high pitched characteristic shrieks that stand in stark contrast to the deep guttural growls of death metal. Black metal focuses very heavily on atmosphere. Songs can often be long and they envelop the listener in an all-consuming wall of sound, which is why the tremolo and blast beats combo fits so well. Because of the love of atmosphere and the influence of dark ambient music and dungeon synth, keyboards are not a rare sight and often add droning melancholic melodies in the background that only reinforce the despair in the sound. Black metal often deals with Satanism as it’s main subject matter, mostly done for shock value and not of any genuine belief. Beyond that, lyrics almost always focus on the darkest aspects of life and delve in the deepest, most depraved corners of the soul. Subjects of fantasy and nature are common too, black metal being particularly well suited for walks in the forest.
So where did this edgy dark genre come from? Well, it’s time to talk about one of the most pivotal moments in metal history. Can you name me an album, from which an entire genre or subgenre of music was started? Maybe you can, but can you name me an album that started three whole subgenres? Well, that is definitely the case with the monumental 1981 debut record by British metal maniacs Venom, the dark and raw riff-fest known as Welcome to Hell! I will be talking a lot about this album in future blogs too, because it is just so influential! Venom took inspiration from the heavy metal of the early 80s and particularly from speed metal like Motorhead, so they thought to themselves “What if Motorhead was EVEN HEAVIER and EVEN FASTER? And what if instead of booze and gambling, we sang about Satan!” And that’s what they did, while not as heavy as the genres it inspired, thrash, death and black metal were all born here.
Black metal in particular emulated the sound of early Venom heavily, with the fast playing, rough production quality, unique appearances of the members and Satanic lyrics used for provocation becoming a core part of the DNA of the genre. Venom’s second album is, in fact, titled...Black Metal! Evolving the sound of Welcome to Hell further, this more mature and just as catchy 1982 record became just as iconic and gave the new subgenre its name!
Countless artists that you know and love today like Metallica and Slayer were heavily influenced by Venom and used that inspiration to form their own sound. After some years though, their sound caught the ear of a very talented Swede, who would go on to create a revolution in music. The man who would alter be known as Quorthon was inspired by Venom’s abrasive sound and Satanic imagery and sought to take it to the next level. So he founded his own band and named it after the Bloody Countess Elizabeth Bathory (as inspired by a Venom track, see above), from which the first true black metal album was made – the eponymous Bathory from 1984. Still with a very thrash-inspired sound, this album defined what black metal needs to sound like and pretty much every single band in the genre can trace their lineage back here.
Bathory’s next albums continued to evolve the genre and defined the so called first wave. Before Quorthon went in a different musical direction later in his career, he had produced some of the most influential black metal records to ever exist. To this day, long after Quorthon himself is no longer with us, his creations continue to enlist new disciples into the forces of darkness.
While Sweden was its birthplace, it was the kid next door that would truly become the domain of black metal – I am of course talking about Norway! It’s hard to say what it was, but Norway was just the perfect place for this black lightning in a bottle to be conceived and for the throne of darkness to be placed. Combine a generation of angsty teenagers thoroughly disappointed by authority with a heavy and dark sound, played with utmost aggression and evilness, even given a special Northern twang by Quorthon himself, it was all a perfect storm for the madness that was the second wave of black metal to be born. The beautiful nature of Norway also seemed to be the perfect fit. Here is where the genre truly came into it’s own and where a lot of it’s notoriety came from. Bands like Mayhem, Darkthrone and Immortal became the titans of the new movement and many of the really controversial stuff that I don’t want to get into came from them (research it yourself, but be wary!). They also took inspiration from the fashion and aesthetics of Venom and Bathory to create the iconic black metal look – face makeup called “corpsepaint”, black leather, spikes, bullet belts, pentagrams, skulls, flaming torches, etc.
Other bands from the time like Enslaved, Emperor, Satyricon, Dimmu Borgir and more continued to add new wrinkles to the fabric of black metal and helped cement the Trve Norwegian sound into the zeitgeist of metal. 1994 in particular is what I regard as the peak of this movement as so many of the most legendary black metal albums of all time came out that year.
Norway made black metal their own, but that doesn’t mean Sweden didn’t forget that they were the true birthplace! Through the 90s and until today, Sweden has produced countless iconic black metal bands that stand as some of the best you can find!
This dark miasma continued to spread rapidly across Europe and then the world, with many more nations like Finland, Greece, Germany, the UK and the US, among many others adding their own flare to the sound. Nowadays, black metal is a global phenomenon, with bands being found anywhere from Mongolia and Malaysia to Angola and Argentina. There is something about this pitch black sound that seems to appeal to a part deep within our souls that many of us probably didn’t know we had. Something universal that goes beyond any boundaries of culture or climate. It scratches some sort of primal itch that can unite us all under these black banners like few other sounds can!
In recent years, Poland has emerged as “the new Norway” of sorts, with a huge black metal scene forming and many of the nation’s bands rising up as some of the best new vanguards of the genre. I don’t know how it happened, but it seems a similar lightning-in-a-bottle moment to the one in Norway has formed, and Poland just cannot stop pumping out top quality black metal, with a distinctly nihilistic realist approach for most of the examples, corpsepaint and spikes replaced with black hoods and masked faces, the horrors of demons and Hell replaced with the drudgery of life itself and the Hell of existence. A fight for survival in the modern world.
As the genre grew and expanded, it was only natural that subdivisions and subgenres of it would form. The first notable one is the fusion with it’s bloody brother death metal, forming a style known as blackened death metal. The Norwegian pioneers had already taken huge inspiration from death metal and many of them played in the death metal style before shifting over to the darkness, but reintroducing a more distinctly death metal sound helped create a beast of unimaginable proportions. This fusion feels like the true definition of heaviness. Combining the brutality and unbridled aggression of death metal with the impenetrable darkness and suffocation evil atmosphere of black metal creates a juggernaut of shadows and violence that goes above and beyond the limits of both, the whole greater than the sum of its two parts. This even spawned some submovements of its own such as bestial black metal and war metal, that I encourage you to research further for some extra brutality.
Another subgenre sought to take the sound in the other direction - melodic black metal. As the name implies, this takes the usual formula and adds more pronounced melodies and a less dense sound. While black metal, by its very instrumentation, tends to be more melodic than its brother death metal, melodic black metal seeks to go even further in that direction and evoke a more melancholic and introspective feeling without going into full Iron Maiden-esque dual guitar and catchy choruses like melodic death metal does.
Black metal has always been connected with history, mythology and ancient traditions, ever since Bathory first introduced Norse mythology to their lyrics, as well as during the Viking metal movement of symphonic keyboard and folk instrument driven black metal sound. So naturally, folk black metal is a fairly common occurrence, tapping deeper into the dark beauty of nature and ancient tales. Folk instruments also seem to blend surprisingly well with the dense wall of sound created by the guitars and drums.
Black has many shades and over the years, many other movements have arisen within the genre - such as the complex and enticing progressive black metal, the bizarre shoegaze fusion known as blackgaze or black 'n' roll that strives for a more catchy classic rock/metal sound and tries to revert back to the original first wave style of Venom or Bathory. Also, I'm gonna mention two abbreviations - NSBM and DSBM. I'm not gonna say anything else about either of those.
And thus, we emerge from the darkness, enriched with new profoundness. Black metal to me is such a unique genre - metal itself loves dealing with dark, macabre and taboo subject matters, but no other subgenre likes to delve this deep into the most deprived recesses of the human soul. No other genre is so adept at creating an all-consuming atmosphere, devoid of light and hope, but yet so exciting and engaging. Be not mistaken, this isn't music just meant to ruin your mood or anything. It's much more than just shock-value Satanism and people who really love wearing black and getting lost in forests. It exists to acknowledge the dark aspects of life and fight against them, because to embrace the worst of life is to conquer it. The only thing faster than light is the darkness that precedes it. So march forth and build your own throne of evil! With my playlist, you'll have the perfect symphony to accompany you along the way. Stay safe, take care of yourselves and happy Halloween too!
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