> This one's a bit unique as it all began with a small group of teenagers in Jessheim in Norway in the late 80s/early 90s. They wanted to be 'evil' and 'extreme' but they lacked the musical ability to rival the predominantly (at the time) Swedish and American Death Metal scenes. So instead they did what anyone would do (not) they started burning down churches, proclaiming themselves 'Satanists' and killing each other.
That statement ignores a big part of the black metal aesthetic and does a huge disservice to the many great musicians in the scene. The raw production values were in response to the rising popularity and commercialization of death metal around the late '80s and early '90s and the 'plastic' production that came with it. Listen to Soulside Journey and then A Blaze in the Northern Sky and try telling me it wasn't absolutely intentional. Then listen to anything Emperor released and try telling me "they lacked the musical ability to rival the predominantly (at the time) Swedish and American Death Metal scenes."
Euronymous spent tons of time perfecting the production of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. Whether it sounds harsh to the average listener or not (it does), he went out of his way to have 1) audible bass (check it out on headphones sometime), 2) thunderously huge drums and 3) cacophonous guitars, true to his playing style. These were all calculated, intentional decisions, meant to drive the cold, bleak aesthetic.
Indeed. Also, there's an interesting side-issue in that the 'corpse sound' of Black Metal was a conscious rebellion against overproduced death metal, but the same choices from a rock band would read as RAW, not 'bad'. There are parallels with AC/DC, who continually struggled against the record industry's desire to slicken and produce them.
I like the heck out of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (you'd never think it to look at me) and have listened to it on a really high-end professional mix system with very good DACs and amplification, and far from being 'corpse, bad' sound, they actually managed a big, live sound that delivers the impact of a black metal band quite well. Just because it's not 'slick' doesn't mean it's low fidelity. For instance, Jethro Tull's 'Aqualung' is a very similar 'raw' sound but strikingly high fidelity on the right equipment.
I strongly recommend the documentary, "Until The Light Takes Us" if you're interested in black metal. Varg "Count Grishnach" Vikernes in particular, interviewed in prison, has a lucid and striking account of the motivations of the early Black Metalists.
On that note: I consider "Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult" by Dayal Patterson a must read for any fan of black metal. Patterson went straight to the sources as much as possible and managed to paint a complete and (perhaps more importantly) non-sensationalist picture of the genre from just before it became a discrete thing up to the around the time the book was published in 2014.
I take extreme exception to their characterization of the beginnings of black metal. Not just because of the unfortunate dismissal of technical ability. Rather, anything that doesn't start off by mentioning Venom and Bathory and instead jumps to what is arguably the second wave totally outs itself as not having actually listened to what the larger names in the genre have themselves said. If you read interviews with the members of bands who started in the late 80's and early 90's they all have the same influences in common (with few exceptions): Kiss, Mercyful Fate, Venom, Bathory, and Celtic Frost. Skipping ahead a decade kinda misses how the aesthetic was established. Which as you mentioned was very much intentional.
Slightly off topic, but any recommendations on Mercyful Fate stuff? I don't know much of their back catalogue, though I did play this at a Halloween party once, I enjoyed it immensely, other people not so much!
Personally I'd recommend "Don't Break the Oath"[0] or "Melissa"[1]. But really their whole LP discography can be listened to in an afternoon. King Diamond as a solo artist has been a bit more prolific though.
Tangential question: how do you get around how overtly racist these bands are? You're citing Darkthrone, for instance, which is basically the poster-child band for teenagers using metal as an excuse to shoot people and burn things.
> You're citing Darkthrone, for instance, which is basically the poster-child band for teenagers using metal as an excuse to shoot people and burn things.
No, they aren't. You're thinking of Varg Vikernes of Burzum, and maybe Faust from (early) Emperor. Fenriz, Nocturno Culto and most of the rest of the Norwegian scene had nothing to do with Varg's 'black metal politics'.
As for getting around how "overtly racist" those bands are: you can't, at least with releases like Fullmoon's United Aryan Evil. If the subject matter bothers you, you simply don't listen.
Right, but Vikernes collaborated with Darkthrone, didn't he?
I can appreciate a lot of metal, but do not generally enjoy black metal just on musical grounds. But I find with repeated exposure I can usually find something to appreciate and enjoy in almost any music. When I was a teenager I had friends who were into the Black Metal scene (mostly because of theatrical bullshit like Vikernes and Euronymous), but after learning how racist the bands were, I decided not to acquire a taste for the music.
They collaborated a long time ago. The last collaboration I'm aware of was a few decades ago when they allowed Varg to write some lyrics while he was in prison for murdering Euronymous. It's hard to know why they did that.
Varg has maintained that Euronymous was planning to kill him. When asked why he thinks Darkthrone allowed him to write some lyrics despite being a pariah in the black metal community, he said that he thinks Fenriz believes him about Eronymous' plans. He said Fenriz may think it was unfair that Varg was charged with murder for killing a man who was planning to murder him.
That's obviously not how the law works, and what he did was deeply wrong. That said, I can kinda understand feeling some sympathy for someone in that situation.
Who knows if Varg is right about Fenriz. Frankly, Varg believes some pretty crazy stuff, and I'm not inclined to trust him about much of anything. But you never know. Maybe Fenriz took pity on a really screwed up kid who made a terrible mistake.
Anyway, onto the subject of racism. I think there was definitely a bit of racism in the early black metal scene. It's hard to know if it was genuine or just some kids trying to find a way to shock people. Either way, it seems like that's mostly gone these days (I can think of a few exceptions, but they're seemingly rare).
Black metal (and the people who create and listen to it) has grown up a lot over the last couple of decades. Fenriz even got elected to local office in his hometown!
Do you have some references for this (I was afraid this was a problem but hadn't looked into it)? Been wanting to talk to my son about that. He loves the music, he's seemingly not racist, but repeated exposure to that crap is not good.
It used to be a problem, but I haven't seen much overt racism in a while. Avoid Taake, as they're popular (won the Norwegian equivalent of a Grammy recently) and are outspokenly racist. I have no idea what the hell the awards committee was thinking.
Other than that, Varg (of Burzum) is also a neo-nazi, but he hasn't written any black metal in 20 years. In fact, he stopped writing black metal around the time he became a neo-nazi.
Aside from that, I don't think you're going to find much popular modern black metal that is openly racist. Maybe some band members are secretly racist, but they know better than to talk about it if they are.
My (now) wife introduced my to black metal over 15 years ago when I was still a kid. I turned out fine, and still have no tolerance for racism.
Maybe someone can recommend a documentary, but I think the thing is that there's a difference between enjoying music and buying into a lifestyle. I can't say how your son sees it, but he may just like the music.
If you look back at the music you enjoyed in your youth, I'm guessing you could find some music you like made by people with a questionable moral compass. However, you don't have to think about such things with music, sometimes it's just about the way it sounds.
If you're concerned about your son, why not see if you can broaden his musical horizons outside of metal, maybe there's something you'll find that you'll both enjoy. If you'd like a starting point, perhaps your son may like some classical composers like Bela Bartok, some of his pieces are easy for metal fans to appreciate:
Anti-religious music seems to invite anti-semitic people, so I'd guess there are more racist bands in black metal than in other genres. But the majority of black metal bands are not racist. There's a small fraction of bands where we know that some members subscribe to right-wing ideology and some of those bands have racist lyrics, but overall it's negligible.
"Popular" is pretty hard to define in a genre like black metal. Looking at "The greatest black metal bands" [0] I found 6 bands where at least one of the members has ties to right-wing ideology with 3 of the bands being outright neo-nazi music.
My parents referred to it as such. Meh, most people think it's crap anyway, so of course I'm going to be uncomfortable playing music around other people. Probably not that big of a deal anyway..
How is it "self righteous"?
Pretty much anything you read about Darkthrone in particular is going to point out their involvement with Varg Vikernes (who basically put Black Metal on the map) --- who is a neo-Nazi (a "blood and soil nationalist") and a convicted murderer --- and released an album with overtly antisemitic messages.
Which Burzum album do you consider to have overtly antisemitic messages? Varg only started being a Neo-Nazi in prison and after releasing most of his influential music. So this says nothing about Darkthrone.
I had listened to black metal for years, and avoid all of it with racist messages yet I even have listened to Burzum (mostly Filosofem), which doesn't itself have any racist messages I am aware of. Not like I listen for the lyrics. But it can be a "danger" since I did read into some of the shit Varg has written.. but the great majority of the music has no racist messages.
I was really into Darkthrone and still think they're okay, and I have nothing against any race or ethnicity.
Just one that I am aware of, and they apologized later, was their comment about "Jewish behavior".
Also, this:
Den Norrøne Rase må Slakte den andre
når blåmenn dunker for tungt på vår dør
Other than that, I don't know of anything else.
Being concerned over it sounds like wanting to ban violent videogames, overprotective. Like hardcore Christian parents against their children listening to rock music, but maybe not as much since black metal is basically how those kinds of hardcore Christians see normal rock music.
Thank you for claryfying! Would you mind to elaborate on that? I'm not a huge fan of Darkthrone and while I know that many of their songs are anti-judaism I don't remember any racist lyrics.
Great overall but the omission of "Death" (the band) in death metal is a mystery to me. Death was a great influence not just in death metal but metal in general and defined the genre. They were impeccable musicians and brilliant virtuosos. I think any song from Death's early albums is a much better example of the music's "sound" than anything else.
I used to enjoy The Sound of Perseverance, haven't heard it properly in a while, what was that instrumental track on that album with the harmonised guitars?
I find metal is one of the more interestingly diverging genres. The range of sound that falls under 'metal' is shocking. You can go from slow, with clean vocals and a (fairly) relaxing sound, to something earshattering.
Also, you can very often tell that the musicians are putting all they can into it. The music is very emotional in a lot of the subgenres, particularly black metal, and post-metal.
There's a guy, Sam Dunn[0], who is an anthropologist and metal head. He did the documentary movie Metal: A Headbanger's Journey[1] and later the documentary series Metal Evolution[2] on VH1 Classic. If you're interested at all in the topic, they're definitely fun to watch, a good way to find some new music, and learn a bit more and think more about what's going on with the music. Personally, I found the episode on Shock Rock to be my favorite.
"Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult" is a great introductory book on early black metal scenes around the world. Most black metal works focus on the Norwegian scene (Mayhem/Burzum/Darkthrone primarily), but Evolution of the Cult has chapters on Rotting Christ from Greece, Sigh from Japan, the Les Légions Noire bands from France and a whole host of others.
I consider myself a minor, amateur metalhead (to which I'm sure a real metalhead would take umbrage), and I have to look up the definitions of black and death metal every few months to remember the difference. It doesn't help that their names are so similar, and that I don't particularly like either genres.
Off-hand, there's also sludge, stoner, prog, doom, folk, nu, and power metal, and several different slices of each genre.
It would have made sense to divide up Death Metal into subgenres. Doom metal/stoner metal is the most interesting thing I've come across in recent years.[1]
What you're talking about reminds me of those tree diagrams for Rock music. I always found those helpful in terms of understanding the relationship between various subgenres.
They're totally different, though to be fair there are some bands like Manowar who are considered to be Power Metal. They are very focused on their aesthetic (shirtless, oiled up dudes in leather pants riding motorcycles). I think they get lumped in because their lyrics are about glorious battle and such, a traditional lyrical topic of the genre, but musically and aesthetically they're doing something very different from the rest of the genre. I think most Manowar fans consider them to be Power Metal, but many fans of the broader genre (myself included) would disagree.
The rest of the genre is derived from the lineage of the band Helloween, itself heavily influenced by the NWOBHM. Many point to 'Keeper of the Seven Keys Part 1' as the first Power Metal album. Other early bands include Blind Guardian and Gamma Ray (which was founded by Kai Hansen, who played with Helloween and is considered by many to be the father of the genre). It's closely associated with Speed Metal, the line between them is not always clear but modern Power Metal bands tend to have "something extra" beyond fast guitar and high-pitched vocals, whether it's symphonic or progressive influences, more existential lyrical topics, a focus on storytelling, etc. It's often more about who the band is friends with than their musical or lyrical content or aesthetic. It's closely associated with Scandinavia, and it's worth noting that Symphonic Metal was at the very least heavily influenced by this genre, the respective scenes being tightly entwined/the same people.
Some examples of what many self-identified fans of Power Metal would consider good Power Metal-
Helloween- Keeper of the Seven Keys Part 1
Sonata Arctica- Ecliptica
Kamelot- Epica (The Symphonic Metal band Epica named themselves after this album)
Rhapsody- Symphony of Enchanted Lands
I never understood why bands went to the compressed machine like sound. The Ratt song has so much more "soul". And this is coming from a Blind Guardian fan!
I always thought that GnR was a bit of a divergence from so called "hair metal", sure some of the guys had that big hair that was practically a uniform, but they had a different feel than your stereotypical hair metal bands like Warrant or Ratt. Hair metal had the glitz and glamour of rich rockers partying to excess, but Guns and Roses just had more sleeze. In reading Motley Crue's The Dirt and Nikki Sixx's Herion Diaries, they really sold that image a bit for me in that, while they got along well with each other on tour and partied together, there was a bit more of a dirty aspect.
The depth and breadth of all the sub-genres of metal is really pretty shocking, even for people that have listened to it all their lives. I have a slightly loose definition of metal, so in my mind I can go from Blackened Thrash/Death from someone like Skeletonwitch (an all time personal favorite), to whatever the hell 3 Inches of Blood is (all I know is it's awesome), to viking themed Death Metal, to all acoustic stuff from Eluveitie, all the way to a cello trio like Apocalyptica or maybe even Break of Reality (less so) and still be "in the genre" so far as I'm concerned.
Good list of examples. I like to point people to Every Noise at Once ( http://everynoise.com/engenremap.html ) to show the differences between the types of Metal.
BTW, it is really really nice to see a post related to this my favourite type of music here in Hacker News. For people that do not understand Metal I can recommend the documentary "Metal, A HeadBanger's journey" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal:_A_Headbanger's_Journey ) which tries to explain in a "anthropological" way, the background of metal.
Metal is a fairly broad group of genres, I'd suggest there's something in it for everyone.
Just for fun, I'd be interested in hearing some recommendations. I'll start with one, this is The Space For This by Cynic, I'd guess you could call this melodic tech death metal, but as Zappa said, talking about music is like fishing about architecture, just see if you like it!
My typical music tastes lean mostly toward classic rock and indie. Never was a huge metal guy. Then I stumbled on the doom metal band 'Pallbearer.' Their album 'Foundations of Burden' blew my mind. Epically melodic, complex, and moving all while fully living up to the 'doom' sound of the genre. Highly recommended.
- Rammstein - Du Riechst So Gut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrmsJhf89MY (music video)
-- nearly everyone's heard of Rammstein; their music videos are always well done and usually tell a story, often based on traditional Germanic fairy tales.
- Eluveitie - The Arcane Dominion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-hkjryDCmg
-- folk metal again, from their album "Evocation 1", which was recorded with traditional, acoustic instruments.
- Lordi - Hard Rock Hallelujah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGe8qID9gSs (music video)
-- These guys won Eurovision in 2006; their gimmick is that every band member is a monster (think Gwar).
- Nekrogoblikon - We Need a Gimmick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q3ub1SUYfg (music video)
-- another band with a gimmick (heh) - goblins, obviously. Vocals are again an acquired taste, but this whole album is worth listening to for a wonderful story about goblins trying to commit autogenocide.
Yeah, it's definitely an acquired taste. I really genuinely found myself liking Nekrogoblikon, though - the album hits some sort of spot I didn't know I had.
Turisas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzDWSkNuE-w is from their concept album, _The Varangian Way_, about a northerner who goes to Constantinople to join the Varangian guard.
Thank you for the recommendations, wouldn't say they were my personal taste, but you've picked out a couple I've not heard before, so thanks for the introduction.
Here's one more recommendation, Needled 24/7 by Children of Bodom:
I wish there were some representative samples linked from this. Based on the description, I don't think I'd be able to distinguish Black Metal from Death Metal.
Also, metal is an incredibly varied genre. If you think you don't like metal, I'd be happy to recommend a couple of different sample songs and see if any of them catch your fancy and change your mind.
At one point when I was young, and hence rather an idiot in some ways, I used to think this was just for metal (and of course I considered all other music utter crap). Later I found out not only metal is varied (d'uh) and everytime I think I've heard all styles in some genre or subgenre of music I find something which doesn't really seem to resemble anything else, then look it up just to find out someone gave the style a name already, or labelled it as a mix of some other styles. E.g. these days I'm (re)discovering the more underground electronic hardcore scene and even there it's amazing how many variety there can be with what is basically the same kickdrum and bassline which started the whole thing all over again.
I don't think I'd be able to distinguish Black Metal from Death Metal.
depends, compare Dimmu Borgir's Enthrone Darkness Triumphant with Death's The Sound Of Perseverance or so, should give you an idea
Give it a chance, I'm not a fan of the "we're like srs evil" aesthetic but the genre has produced a lot of high-quality art. A lot of bands sidestep Satanism and focus on paganism's affinity with nature, letting the atmospheric quality of the music lull the listener into a trance-like mindset of connection and oneness. Here's Agalloch, perfect for a snowshoed stroll through the forest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cXz69kk9YU
Thrash Metal is basically "L.A style" high pitched voice , Death metal is more like "Tampa style" growly voice, Black Metal is more about the look than anything else and Heavy Metal, well any rock band can play heavy.
I won't call the author right or wrong on their categorizations, but metal - and maybe all genres of music - break down in the following ways:
1) Subject matter, which for long-running bands tends to have a fad-like flavor (e.g. AC/DC's Highway to Hell and Back In Black have more satanic subject matter than DDDDC or Fly On The Wall.)
2) Presentation / aesthetics / "Dress code" -- For instance, Van Halen vs. Mötley Crüe. Both wore spandex; MC also wore obvious makeup, dyed / teased hair, and sort of shambling / fishnet clothing, VH did not. Black Sabbath tended a little more towards leather and black, while their equally-loud peers Led Zeppelin looked a little more hippy.
3) Band composition / Musical direction -- For instance, it is nearly impossible to call your band metal if it has a keyboard player (Sorry Styx and Deep Purple.) How about guitars? Some bands - GnR and Aerosmith had dedicated lead and rhythm guitarists, who harmonized a little; Other bands, such as Priest and Iron Maiden, had more-or-less two lead guitarists who would split leads and/or harmonize multiple times per song.
Just a forinstance, KISS would be metal based on 2, but not so much 1 (their subject matter was mostly sex and drugs, very little death and hell.), and their approach to 3 was pretty much Rick Derringer territory.
That statement ignores a big part of the black metal aesthetic and does a huge disservice to the many great musicians in the scene. The raw production values were in response to the rising popularity and commercialization of death metal around the late '80s and early '90s and the 'plastic' production that came with it. Listen to Soulside Journey and then A Blaze in the Northern Sky and try telling me it wasn't absolutely intentional. Then listen to anything Emperor released and try telling me "they lacked the musical ability to rival the predominantly (at the time) Swedish and American Death Metal scenes."
Euronymous spent tons of time perfecting the production of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. Whether it sounds harsh to the average listener or not (it does), he went out of his way to have 1) audible bass (check it out on headphones sometime), 2) thunderously huge drums and 3) cacophonous guitars, true to his playing style. These were all calculated, intentional decisions, meant to drive the cold, bleak aesthetic.