Black Metal!

Mutiilation were so great. One of my favorite weird BM lyrics is from their "Black Eggs of Melancholy":

The desertic summer fades, the black curtains opens on a depressive autumn.
The ground gave rotten fruits this season.
The black wings of melancholy above the superstitious mortals.
The dogs bark at the moon, children wake at night.
Since the appearance of those weird black eggs

It's like a pocket Lovecraft story.

Ah, shit... Burzum's really good. I just discovered this today.

Abbath meets Trivium:

http://p.twimg.com/AviZ_YYCAAAFQpg.jpg

Six months or so into my Black Metal self-education, and here's what I know so far:

1st wave/influences: Bathory, Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, Venom, Hellhammer
2nd wave: Darkthrone, Mayhem, Burzum, Emperor, Gorgoroth, Satyricon
French: Belketre, Vlad Tepes, Mütiilation
newer stuff: Wolves in the Throne Room, One Tail One Head

Notes (to myself):

- I love Darkthrone. They've become one of my *all time* favorite bands just in this last half year or so. HOWEVER, they actually seem like one of the least "black" sounding bands of the list above, even on their BM classic records. I gather they were tremendously influential for a lot of other bands, esp on the production front, but from my retrospective viewpoint, it's not surprising they eventually grew out of playing BM, and went thrashier.

- Emperor is hugely overrated. When you look at what Mayhem, Burzum, Darkthrone, et al were doing at the same time, Emperor strike me as more style than substance.

- I LOVE the French bands listed above. Possibly the darkest sounding stuff of all, and definitely the harshest production

- all the stuff that supposedly influenced the 2nd wave ROCKS. Celtic Frost, at least in the 80s, was great, and it's kind of mindblowing to me to know that Bathory existed in the 80s. So black!

- newer BM seems to mostly take the "post-rock" path, ie walls of guitar noise and blastbeats instead of big riffs. Darkthrone and Mayhem actually did play lots of riffs, and sometimes even doom-y sludge beats. I think that's why I like those bands more than the rest -- more contrast.

i like filosofem because it is a shoegaze album.

Think Emperor are my favourite bm band

@treeship, yes there is a definite kinship between BM and shoegaze music, but I think only now do bands actually play off of this, as a conscious (?) thing. To me, BM lo-fi sonics and emphasis on what is harsh or cold seem just as much an escape into otherworldly noise as shoegaze does. Insular scenes, hard-to-obtain discographies, aliases, sordid backstories, indecipherable lyrics -- all of it can mystify, put a buffer between the band/listener and the rest of the world. I love the fact that you can interpret it as overt misanthropy, or self-medicating numbing agent.

Dominique, the first Ulver album, Bergtatt, is one of my favourite metal albums of all time and is a melodic (i.e. slightly folkish) BM classic made by some dudes in their teens. It's phenomenal and is my single recommendation in this field (for now).

Immortal "Battles in the North" y or n?

I will check it out! So far, my only exposure to "melodic" BM is the guitar parts on Transylvanian Hunger ;)

And that's not true, there's some stuff from Wolves in the Throne Room which could pass for Enya if I didn't know better (and those are my favorite parts!)

x-post

@sarah, don't think I've actually heard Immortal yet. I know they are supposed to be huge...you like?

xpost sort of

Battles in the North, like everything by Immortal, is really good but probably the least entry level of their stuff. It lives up to its insane song titles. At the Heart of Winter is the happy medium between their grimmer, white-out blizzard past and their more articulated and thrashy latter day albums; it's like a black metal Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, one dramatic moment after another, and bursting with riffs. Their most "authentically black metal" album however would probably be Pure Holocaust.

If you just want to rock out, go for their Sons of Northern Darkness, it's an album of anthems.

Oh, imma squeeze in 1 more BM recommendation then & basically leave it there, coz my undisputed number 1 album of 2013 was an avant-garde BM album made by a microtonal neoclassical composer, and not only does it sound not-of-this-earth but it's got some fucking tunes: http://jutegyte.bandcamp.com/album/discontinuities

^^^have proselytised this all over ilm, but one more mention won't exactly blight the place

I need to hear more of the 1st wave beyond the Big Four/Five. Bands like Sodom and Bulldozer are always being brought up as important precursors from that era... What I really want to find is more stuff like the Hellhammer demos - speed-metal (I guess?) played really raw and evil.

i've been listening to a ton of dissection in the past month. listen to dissection.

otm

Craft, "Fuck the Universe" fits any occasion. When I'm in a lousy mood, I think of it as "Give the Middle Finger to the Universe." When I'm feeling hopeful, I envision "Copulate with the Universe." Either way, it's some filthy, riffy, misanthropic shiz.

I think it's neat how black metal has evolved to include such disparate things as the raw, pummeling stuff such as Inquisition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQwat8pB8Ko

To the brooding, delicate blackgaze of bands such as Gris:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWUr3JWi9ZM

To the symphonic majesty of the likes of Summoning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewc4-0Pdc_A

That's three totally disparate albums from just this past year but all are undeniably black metal. And all three placed in the top 40 of the ILM Metal Albums list, incidentally. It's a big reason why it's become my favorite metal genre over the past several years.

i've been listening to a ton of dissection in the past month. listen to dissection.

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Monday, January 27, 2014 11:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

― call all destroyer, Monday, January 27, 2014 11:08 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes.

Emperor is my favorite metal band (mostly for the first two albums). I love Immortal, Deathspell Omega, Wolves In The Trone Room, Celtic Frost, Bathory, Mercyful Fate, Enslaved, Mayhem.

I adore Aghast, though it isnt metal, but it certainly is of the Black Norway scene. Havent heard the new Aghast Manor stuff.

Oddly Filosofem is my least favorite of the first six Burzum albums (Daudi Baldrs and Det Som Engang Var are my faves); and aside from a few songs, Darkthrone's Blaze In The Northern Sky and Transylvanian Hunger didnt do much for me.

I'm thinking of going to an upcoming Negura Bunget show, but I only have the Om album and I didnt fully get into it even though it sounds totally like my sort of thing.
Kind of worried that it wont be a good idea to see them without being more familiar with their output and I've never been to a BM gig and I worry there might be that sort of crowd that scrutinizes people for not looking enough like one of them.

you do realise that the main guys left and formed Dordeduh?

the drummer (i think) kept Negura Bunget going (i still like the stuff he's done but its not a patch on Dordeduh)

I didnt know about that, thanks.

this is where all the cool trve cvlt hang *laces boots*

dom you hear any of this shit

I got another recommendation 4u - it's p emphatically undiluted BM in its songstructures and tonal choices but the *sound* is pure airlock warpstorm

the band is Darkspace; the album is Darkspace III

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp5bWy-a5Jo

the second track (3.12) is my favourite

I really want a compilation of all of the cheap, blown out, distorted synth intros and interludes from black metal albums of the early to mid 90s. Since I've been listening to this "Demonica" comp of early demos by Behemoth, that's sort of what's in my mind. Or Striborg.

Any suggestions for particularly synth intro/interlude heavy albums or demos?

Synth intro here is heavy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt5pEzCrVg0

See also Paysage d'Hiver, including the long, drawn out intro to his latest Das Tor. Not early 90s obv, but definitely coming out of the classic Burzum school. I feel like you probably know this stuff already?

https://soundcloud.com/thrilljockey/the-soft-pink-truth-introutro-mix

I feel like you probably know this stuff already?

I don't actually; been meaning to check out Darkspace (that track you posted is great) and I don't think I've heard Paysage d'Hiver... maybe at all? Maybe in a long time? But thanks for the suggestions!

Going to listen to that Soft Pink Truth mix when I get back, that's amazing! Thanks Alan!

sure!

imo there is something really hilarious about how the heavy metal just never kicks in.

Paysage d'Hiver is outstanding.

xpost makes me think of the very evocative Stars Of The Lid song title, "The Evil That Never Arrived"

Summoning - Old Mornings Dawn caught my eye more than anything else on the best of 2013 metal thread. Just listening to it now (I've really neglected metal this year) and I'm really loving it.

This thread was revived on the same day of some interesting news. All is not well in Blashyrkh, it seems.

http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/immortal-members-involved-in-legal-battle-over-rights-to-band-name/

I hope this legal stuff doesn't hurt the band too much.

Didn't realise Old Mornings Dawn was a Tolkien thing until I was reading about it last night. It's got so much of the beauty and sense of ancient history that the recent movies don't have.

Summoning are entirely Tolkien-themed, aren't they? A lot of their albums are named in tribute to evil fortresses.

I need to listen to more Summoning.

It appears most of their music is Tolkien based but it's less obvious now.
That normally would have put me off because I'm generally not a fan of artists extensively using someone else's mythology. But the music is so good.

Well loads of respectable bands have been extensively using Nordic mythology for years, not to mention (the antagonists in) Judeo-Christian mythology.

case in point: Isengard

Yeah I suppose. But those mythologies are pretty enormous and so much to pick from. I suppose Tolkien created a huge world to explore but when you go for HP Lovecraft, the same old names of monsters and places keep coming up.

Siegbran, can I request you (and any other metal experts) contribute to this thread..
Most EPIC GRANDEUR music of all time!
what are the most dazzlingly epic metal albums? Preferably symphonic.

Tolkienian grandeur and melancholy is a fine thing to try to capture in black metal form, imo. I wouldn't say the same for all fantasy novels.

How about Robert Jordan? Epic twenty minute tracks about women smoothing their skirts.

Still loving Summoning - Old Mornings Dawn. So wonderful.

Is anyone able to verify how accurate the translation of "Over Fjell Og Gjennom Torner" (specifically the last two lines) here is?: http://darkthrone-translations.blogspot.ca/

At least two other sources give roughly similar translations (e.g. http://lyricstranslate.com/en/over-fjell-og-gjennom-torner-over-mountain-and-through-thorns.html). I honestly thought Darkthrone were relatively innocuous.

jesus

it's probably accurate though. that's an early album; white suprematist bullshit was in the air among norwegian black metal dudes at that time.

it's so unfortunate because the music that came out of that scene is very powerful. i don't think you can divorce it from the racism though, as the cthontic power of the icy forest vibes was intimately linked, for them, to this nordic pagan stuff. hunter hunt hendrix has the right idea: instead of ignoring it all and pretending you can isolate the sound of black metal from the *energy* you need to transform the sound into something else, preferably its antithesis.

maybe that is new agey for ilx. i do kind of think the aesthetic of those early norwegian bands is corrupt, in a sense, and should only be appreciated "at a distance"

i don't think you can divorce it from the racism though, as the cthontic power of the icy forest vibes was intimately linked, for them, to this nordic pagan stuff.

Huh?

hunter hunt hendrix has the right idea: instead of ignoring it all and pretending you can isolate the sound of black metal from the *energy* you need to transform the sound into something else, preferably its antithesis.

Huh?

Varg Vikernes wrote the lyrics to four of the tracks on Transilvanian Hunger, but quite perplexingly, the lyrics to Over Fjell Og Gjennom Torner were penned by Fenriz. i guess the two of them had a common vision & ideology at that point in time, which is a shame. Transilvanian Hunger was also, incidentally, the album that originally came with the notorious disclaimer "Norsk Arisk Black Metal" ("Norwegian Aryan Black Metal")

by all accounts, the band has grown up a lot since then.