black metal

Black metal is an extreme heavy metal subgenre. It is typically characterized by the use of heavily-distorted guitars, harsh vocals, fast-paced rhythms, and unconventional song structures. The first bands to pioneer the black metal style include Venom, Bathory, Mercyful Fate, and Hellhammer/Celtic Frost. These bands were mostly thrash metal bands that formed the prototype for black metal; they are referred to collectively as the First Wave. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a Second Wave emerged in Norway, including prominent bands like Mayhem and Darkthrone. Although there is no well-defined Third Wave, modern black metal bands have incorporated new musical and lyrical trends into their music.

Black metal has been met with considerable hostility from mainstream culture, mainly because of the misanthropic and anti-Judeo-Christian attitude of bands contributing to the genre. Additionally, a few black metal bands have been known to have associations with church burnings, murder, and National Socialism. Black metal is generally seen as an underground form of music, in part because it does not appeal to mainstream tastes and because its musicians often choose to remain obscure.

Characteristics

Black metal can contain, but is not limited to, the following characteristics:

Guitars

• Fast, highly distorted guitars played using alternate picking or tremolo picking.
• Relatively thin or thick guitar tone — low frequencies are typically absent, leaving solely the treble and the mids; sometimes with the bass completely removed.
• Pendulum strumming may be applied to fully voiced chords (usually minor) in a denser portion of a piece. The chords may also deliberately shift fully voiced minor barre chords up or down despite the applications suggested by music theory, such as E minor to C minor, which is usually avoided for its extreme dissonance.
• Frequent use of chromatics, shifted up and down by semitones from a given central tonic to create an uneasy atmosphere (commonly featuring the tritone interval). There is also frequent altering of already established scales for a more dissonant, "evil" sound, such as the harmonic minor.
• Infrequent use of guitar solos, compared to heavy metal and power metal, for example.

Drums

• Double bass, blast beat, and D-beat drumming. This creates a very simplistic yet effective sound.
• In some instances, the drums can take a slower role usually accompanied by a very dry and empty tone — especially for the effect of the atmosphere of the music. On occasion, some groups will dismiss drums altogether in certain segments.
• Some bands, often solo artists, use drum machines instead of a human drummer.

Lyrics and vocals

• A distinct harsh vocal style, often a very guttural rasp or a high-pitched shriek. This vocal style is nearly universal in the black metal genre. It is distinct from death metal in this respect, as death metal bands employ low-pitched, growling vocal styles.
• Some bands, particularly symphonic black metal bands, incorporate more traditional vocal styles into songs, often referred to as 'clean' vocals.
• Often there is a reverberation effect on the vocals, to make them sound more cavernous and atmospheric.
• Some black metal songs are complemented with choir-like vocals by males or females, much like a Gregorian chant.
• The most common lyrical emphasis in black metal revolve around Satanic, Pagan, or occult themes, and opposition to Christianity. Lyrics may often celebrate the cold, darkness, forests, and other natural surroundings of northern European countries, as well as their folklore and history. Lyrics also explore the darker aspects of life, including war, misanthropy, desolation, and violence.
• Lyrical content may be also inspired by fantasy, in particular the works of Tolkien set in Middle-earth. The Austrian band Summoning focuses almost exclusively on Tolkien's Middle-earth for its lyrical content. Other bands create their own fictional realms. For instance, certain songs by Immortal depict an imaginary kingdom called Blashyrkh. Bal-Sagoth also creates fantasy stories that are inspired by writers like Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft.
  File:Gorgoroth Band 1.jpg

  Controversial band Gorgoroth demonstrates corpsepaint, a once common element within the black metal subculture.

Atmospheric and structural elements

• Unconventional song structures that are devoid of typical verse/chorus segments, and contain extended and repetitive instrumental passages, with less use of vocals than other styles of metal.
• Very fast-paced rhythms, often exceeding the speed of many other genres of music. Black metal rhythms are often simplistic, though some bands employ complex rhythmic sections.
• Occasional electronic keyboard use. The harpsichord, violin, organ, and choir settings are most common, which gives the music an orchestral feel or a cathedral-like setting. Some bands tend to use keyboards very frequently, whether it be as an instrument or even as the basis of their entire sound. They are generally placed under the symphonic black metal label.
• Certain bands have recorded with full symphony orchestras, such as Dimmu Borgir.
• Poor sound production and engineering is almost always intentional. The influential album Transilvanian Hunger by Darkthrone demonstrates this effect. However, many modern black metal bands do not follow this concept and use standard production techniques.

Live performances and band image

• Unlike most other musical genres, many black metal bands do not play live. Some bands, such as Burzum, Clandestine Blaze and Xasthur, are single-member bands that choose not to play live. However, other one or two-member bands, such as Nargaroth, Satyricon and Satanic Warmaster, perform live with extra musicians specifically for live performance purposes. A significant number of bands with a full line-up, like Gorgoroth and Dark Funeral, do play live.
• Bands that perform live often make use of stage props and theatrical techniques.
• Many black metal musicians adopt a 'neo-medieval' costume style that may include leather, spikes, bondage gear, "archaic" armor and weaponry.
• Album covers are usually atmospheric or iconic. Some feature natural or fantastical landscapes, like Burzum's Filosofem or Emperor's In The Nightside Eclipse. Other album covers may be violent, perverted, or iconoclastic, like Arkhon Infaustus's Hell Injection or Marduk's Opus Nocturne.
• Some musicians may adopt a stage name, often based in mythology or folklore. For example, Emperor's BÃ¥rd Eithun referred to himself as Faust.
• One of the most noticeable features in black metal is facial corpsepaint, the use of black, white, and occasionally red makeup in order to depict a corpse-like figure. In modern times, the concept has faded, with bands like Emperor claiming the image has lost its original meaning, which was to separate black metal bands from other types of performers. However, others like Gorgoroth and Dimmu Borgir still wear corpsepaint.

The First Wave

The First Wave of black metal refers to the bands that first influenced the black metal sound. Bands in the First Wave often overlap into the thrash metal genre, indicating one of the origins of black metal.

The term "black metal" was first coined by the British band Venom with their 1982 sophomore effort Black Metal. Although the musical style was much like thrash metal, a heavy and unrelenting emphasis on Satanic and occult themes, both in lyrics and imagery, was distinct. The music was in many ways unpolished in production. Guitars were far more blistering than other subgenres of heavy metal, and very "unclean" vocals relied less on melody than they did on raw, shrieking screams. Venom's members also adopted pseudonyms (the original lineup being Cronos, Mantas, and Abaddon), something not common for metal bands at the time.

Another band that can be considered pioneers of the genre was the Swedish band Bathory, led by Thomas Forsberg (under the pseudonym Quorthon). Bathory focused on suboptimal production standards to better suit their raspy vocals and furiously fast tempo, as heard on early albums such as The Return. They would also become responsible for being the first band to add an element of Norse mythology next to their occult themes, in both lyrics and album art. This was a concept that would become influential enough to spawn an entire sub-genre known as Viking metal, preserved for bands which focus strictly on such mythological ideals.

Other influences early on include Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, and the Danish band Mercyful Fate. King Diamond, vocalist and frontman of Mercyful Fate, was also one of the first to appear in corpse paint, a visual aspect of black metal that the vast majority of bands in the 1990s would take after (however, Metal Storm mentions Sarcófago as the first band with a "true" corpse paint). The "Second Wave" of black metal can be said to owe a debt to the Italian band Death SS, which mixed horror themes with thrash metal in the late 70s and early 80s. Euronymous also mentioned Sodom and Destruction as underestimated influences and "masterpieces of black stinking metal".

The Second Wave

The Second Wave of black metal in the early 1990s came in part with the rise of Norwegian bands such as Mayhem, Burzum, Gorgoroth, Immortal, Darkthrone and Emperor. This wave not only added new atmospheric elements, but many of these bands would also be responsible for a rash of criminal controversy, as seen below. Classical elements were also introduced to a small degree and popularized the genre for a growing underground audience. Philosophically, an abrasive anti-Right Hand Path sentiment became a must for any band to be finalized as "black metal." In fact, bands that didn't exemplify such beliefs through actions beyond their music were often criticized by extremists within black metal's subculture. A dark, misanthropic mentality was complemented visually with the use of corpsepaint, which was also most prevalent during this wave as a statement to separate black metal bands from other rock bands of the era.

File:Mayhem-DeMysteriisDomSathanas.jpg

Cover of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas by Mayhem.

Besides the influence of Norwegian bands, a black metal scene in Sweden began to grow with the popularity of bands such as Marduk and Dissection in the early 1990s. Finnish bands like Beherit and Impaled Nazarene also emerged.

An abraded, very low fidelity recording style was common in most black metal at the time, and was often intentional to preserve an underground quality of the genre. Sometimes artists would branch off into related subgenres, such as death metal, keeping their Satanic and occult mentality intact. Such a style has been deemed "Blackened Death Metal." Mayhem's career, for example, began mostly in the death/black roots, moved to pure black, then towards progressive black in their later career. It was experimentation like this that aided black metal's growth, but would ultimately mean the end of the Second Wave by the mid-1990s, as more modern black metal bands started to raise their production quality and introduce new instrumentation such as synthesizers (commonly seen in industrial metal) and full-symphony orchestras.

Historical events in black metal

First black metal label

Øystein Aarseth's independent label, Deathlike Silence Productions, became the first label to dedicate itself purely to black metal. Deathlike Silence's stated goal was to release records by bands "that incarnated evil in its most pure state". The label would become home to Aarseth's own band, Mayhem, as well as other black metal acts like Burzum. Aarseth also opened his own record store, Helvete, as a prime outlet for black metal records. With the rising popularity of his band and others like it, the underground success of Aarseth's label is often credited for encouraging other record labels that previously refused black metal acts to then reconsider and release their material.

Church burnings

Headliners of the black metal scene in the early 1990s claimed responsibility for inspiring, if not necessarily perpetrating, over a dozen arson attacks directed at Christian churches in Norway. Many of the buildings were hundreds of years old, and widely regarded as important historical landmarks. The most notable church was Norway's Fantoft stave church, which the police believed was destroyed by the one-man band Burzum, Varg Vikernes, aka "Count Grishnackh". However, Varg would not be convicted for any arsons until his arrest for the murder of Øystein Aarseth in 1993 (see below). Interestingly, the cover of Burzum's EP release, Aske, portrays a photograph of the Fantoft stave church after the arson. It is unconfirmed whether or not Vikernes himself may have taken this picture.

File:Burzum aske.jpg

The cover of the black metal album Aske by Burzum depicts the charred remains of the Fantoft stave church.

In modern times, the church burnings have caused a minor divide within the black metal community concerning the legitimacy of the actions. When interviewed for the film Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, Gaahl of the band Gorgoroth praised the historical church burnings as "things I support", adding "there should have been more of them, and there will be more of them". However, other artists don't support the historical burnings. Necrobutcher, one of the founding and current members of Mayhem, was quoted in a mini-documentary that accompanied the same film, saying "I think it's ridiculous, especially the people that lit up our old fuckin' churches. They don't realize that these were actually Heathen churches, before Christianity. So they fucked themselves in the ass by doing that".

Mayhem controversy

In 1991, attention towards black metal increased when Mayhem's frontman Dead committed suicide by a shotgun blast to the head, which followed a series of self-inflicted lacerations to his arms. His note simply read "Excuse all the blood". The ammunition was supplied by Varg Vikernes, who played bass for Mayhem on "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas". Dead's body was discovered by fellow bandmate Øystein Aarseth (also known as Euronymous), who, instead of calling the police, ran to a nearby convenience store and bought a disposable camera to photograph the corpse. The pictures were later stolen and one was used as the cover image for a bootleg Mayhem album (Dawn of the Black Hearts). Claims that Aarseth took pieces of Dead's brains and made a stew out of them eventually surfaced, as well as claims that the members of the band made a necklace from the bone fragments of their friend's skull. The former claim was later declared false by the band, although the latter turned out to be true[1].

Aarseth's murder

Varg Vikernes of Burzum was arrested for the murder of Øystein Aarseth of Mayhem at Aarseth's home in 1993. According to official reports, Øystein received a total of twenty-three stab wounds: two to the head, five to the neck, and sixteen to the back. The circumstances of the murder are not entirely clear, and numerous stories have surfaced as a result. Rumors stated the act was merely Varg's attempt at "out doing" a stabbing of a civilian in Lillehammer, which was committed by another black metal musician the year before (see below)[2]. Realistically, however, the crime can most likely be attributed to a power struggle between Vikernes and Aarseth. The closing of Aarseth's record store (Helvete) may have alluded to a financial dispute over the profits from Varg's first two full-length records (Burzum and Det Som Engang Var) as well as his EP (Aske). Despite this, Vikernes himself claims the murder was not premeditated and was an act of self-defense, and that Aarseth had conspired to videotape the torture and eventual murder of Varg as a result of jealousy. Varg asserts that he had been informed of this plan by friends who Aarseth attempted to conspire with, and that Aarseth attacked him first upon their visit that night, resulting in the murder (Varg's story in full can be read on his website, Burzum.org).

Regardless of the circumstances, Vikernes was arrested within days, and eventually sentenced to 21 years in prison. He has since distanced himself from black metal and has released two albums of a much more ambient and electronic kind of music, Dauði Baldrs in 1997 and Hliðskjálf in 1999, but implied in a recent interview that he would write material similar to his older works upon his release from prison. As for Mayhem, Aarseth's murder nearly rendered the band extinct. However, the band continues to perform even today, fronted by original member Necrobutcher. Controversy still follows the band, albeit rarely. In 2003, a concert-goer in Norway received a fractured skull as a dead sheep's head flew from the stage while band member Blasphemer was cutting the head away from the torso[3].

Murder in Lillehammer

In 1992, Bård Faust of the band Emperor was in Lillehammer to see the newly constructed Olympic park. According to Faust (in Lords of Chaos), a homosexual man named Rhys Adamec approached him and suggested that they go together in the nearby forest. Faust claims he agreed and that, once in the forest, the man made potent sexual advances on him. Faust retaliated and stabbed the man to death with a hunting knife. In the fall of 1993, police began to investigate the murder of Øystein Aarseth from Mayhem, naming Varg Vikernes as a suspect; this investigation eventually led police to investigate Faust, and he was convicted for the murder in Lillehammer. However, his time spent in prison was relatively short, as he was interviewed for a black metal mini-documentary later that accompanied the DVD release of Metal: A Headbanger's Journey.

Social conflicts

There was also a conflict known as the "Dark War" between Norwegian and Finnish black metal scenes during 1992-1993. This started when Nuclear Holocaust of Beherit started to make prank calls in the middle of the night to Samoth of Emperor and to Mika Luttinen of Impaled Nazarene. The calls were mainly just babbling and playing of children's songs. Luttinen somehow got the idea that the language babbled was Norwegian and they were making death threats to him. These speculations were made by him probably because of the tensions between Finnish and Norwegian scenes during that time, as Euronymous wanted to lead his black metal movement into a more occult stance, where as Finnish scene continued with the more easy going attitude of LaVeyan Satanism.

In the album cover of the Impaled Nazarene's Tol Cormpt Norz Norz Norz you can find texts like "No orders from Norway accepted" and "Kuolema Norjan kusipäille!" (Death to Norwegian assholes!). After their first LP, Impaled Nazarene quit playing black metal and defined their style as "Satanic death metal", disassociating themselves from the church burnings in Norway. The Finnish band Black Crucifixion also became known to criticize Darkthrone once or twice as trendies due to the fact that Darkthrone began their career as another death metal band. Beherit didn't really participate in the conflict, yet in Norway there was a band called Fuck Beherit which released two demos mocking the band. The conflict is also said to have had an effect on Beherit's decision to quit black metal, but there isn't anything concrete to this, only the somewhat same date. The conflict ended as both scenes withered.

It was normal in European countries for black metal enthusiasts to terrorize other notable death metal bands that were touring their country or in neighboring countries, on the basis of their lack of apparent "evilness" (the death metal sub-genre focuses strictly on theatrics, and is mostly devoid of major criminal attempts and controversy, unlike black metal). Many recall a strong Swedish death metal and Norwegian black metal rivalry.

Modern black metal

Despite a few recent controversies surrounding members of Gorgoroth, the black metal scene has lost much of the violence it had become known for in the early 1990s. Towards the mid-1990s, bands began to take new directions and increase their production quality. The introduction of electronic instruments, such as synthesizers, signaled the end of the Second Wave.

However, since the mid-1990s, an Eastern European black metal scene has been developing. Bands from the former Communist Bloc are recording material more in-keeping with the primitive nature of the early Norwegian artists. Many of these bands' lyrics glorify the pagan roots of their home countries, occasionally injecting elements of indigenous folk music into their arrangements. The Latvian band Skyforger is a prime example of this new aesthetic. The black metal scene in Russia and Ukraine has also produced many bands more in keeping with the carefully arranged sounds coming from Scandinavia, but with more appreciation for the low fidelity aesthetic of early black metal. The Czech band Trollech are a perfect example of an "old-school" Pagan black metal band. Svarrogh from Bulgaria has gained recognition in Western Europe, as well as the Ukrainian group Nokturnal Mortum; their earlier albums relied heavily on synthesizers, but their current work makes heavy use of Slavic folk instruments. Poland's one-man neo-Nazi band Graveland has striven for a 'medieval' feel, resembling a more developed version of later 'Viking' Bathory albums. From Romania, Negură Bunget is a prime example of traditional black metal, injecting their own indigenous mix of Dacian and Latin elements.

Bands such as Dark Funeral and extreme metal magazines such as Terrorizer believe that a Third Wave of influential black metal bands is emerging, this time from France and Sweden. These include Deathspell Omega, Arkhon Infaustus, Akercocke, and Ofermod. Many of these bands claim to be much more interested in Satanism and/or Occultism than previous artists and generally play a very raw extreme style. However, just as with the earlier Second Wave Norwegian bands they have started to experiment, Deathspell Omega are influenced by Gregorian chant and Blut Aus Nord now incorporate elements of ambient industrial. There is much controversy surrounding these new aspects; many black metal fans feel that this industrial influence and the increased production mean such bands do not fit within the black metal genre. Therefore, some modern black metal bands continue with the style and quality of the previous waves, as is the case with 1349.

Ideology

Any attempt to lay out the ideology of a musical genre is bound to generalize to the extent that some traits are unfairly played up with respect to certain artists, while others are laid out which do not apply to all. Nonetheless, there is a clear ideological thrust which can be sketched out which captures the essence of the thought behind black metal music.

The attitude taken to art in black metal is complex. To a large extent, aesthetics are ideology. Black metal is generally held to embrace anti-Christian sentiment, misanthropy, nihilism, Paganism, or Satanic imagery, as well as in rare cases racism and nationalism. In actuality most black metal musicians view their craft as a natural result of their inherent misanthropy and anti-establishment Weltanschauung . Similarly, there is often a deep link to nature which is emphasized, being a type of naturalism, with a heavy emphasis on mortality and the unknown aspects of death. More generally, most black metal musicians are strongly anti-collectivist, critics of religion and are advocates of individualism and rational egoism, but Nationalist Socialist black metal is an exception to this case.

The majority of those involved in the scene are not outspoken with regard to either nationalism or xenophobia (these values are almost exclusive to National Socialist black metal), perhaps because standard black metal ideology is influenced by anti-idealist philosophers who often regarded racism as a form of idealism or philanthropy. Nonetheless, many black metal bands espouse a form of nationalism that is not racism: they are merely proud of their nation, but do not deny the right of other people of other nations to be proud of theirs. This is part of the anti-collectivist mindset which is sometimes held. It follows logically that homogenisation between cultures (irrespective of race) is something to be avoided, and the way to avoid this is to take pride in being a representative of one's own culture, and produce art that is distinct to it. This form of nationalism is manifested musically by the incorporation of folk elements to some black metal bands' work.

National Socialist black metal

A black metal movement that deals with Neo-Nazi ideologies, often mixed in with topics pertaining to European pagan religions, National Socialist black metal (NSBM) is more interpreted as an ideology than a sub-genre as there is not any developed "style" to play black metal in a National Socialist way. However, the term has stuck around not only because there are traceable movements and labels that sell NSBM exclusively, but also because it is such a hotly debated topic; giving rise to questions like whether it does or does not coincide with traditional black metal characteristics, or whether it should even be considered a subform, as most black metal bands do not adhere to the ideology. Even though NSBM bands usually have topics that concern Paganism, it should be noted that most black metal bands celebrating Paganism are not NSBM.

Several popular black metal musicians, such as Frost of Satyricon and Ihsahn of Emperor, are opposed to NSBM. Much of this is due to the fact that many black metal bands are wrongly thought to be NSBM due to the anti-establishment ideology of their music, as was the case with Burzum.

Unblack metal

A controversial take on the black metal sound with lyrics that depict Christianity positively has been dubbed "unblack metal". The style emerged in 1994, with the release of a CD entitled Hellig Usvart by Horde. Horde embraced anti-Satanic themes, as evidenced by song titles like "Silence the Blasphemous Chanting", "Invert the Inverted Cross", and "Crush the Bloodied Horns of the Goat". The same year, a Christian group known as Antestor recorded Martyrium, which contained elements of black metal and death metal, but was never actually released until later. The release of Antestor's The Return Of The Black Death on the label Cacophonous Records in 1998 proved influential on the Christian black metal movement. Cacophonous found out that Antestor held Christian beliefs and later dropped them from the label.

Black metal and the media

Despite the fact that black metal is an underground genre, there are references to black metal in mainstream media.

• The cartoon show Metalocalypse is a show about an extreme metal band called Dethklok, with many references to leading black metal artists on the names of various buildings such as "Dimmu Burger", "Gorgoroth's" electric wheelchair store, "Burzum's" hot-dogs and "Behemoth" studios (as well as the man who owns Behemoth studios, whose name is "Mr. Grishnackh"). .
• In the videogame Guitar Hero 2, a character named Lars Umlaut resembles a black metal musician and blows fire.
• A Norwegian commercial for a laundry detergent once depicted black metal musicians as part of the advertisement.
• Black metal bands such as 1349, Dimmu Borgir, Bathory, and Satyricon have had their videos make appearances on MTV's Headbangers Ball.
• Comedian Brian Posehn makes a visual reference to Norwegian black metal bands in the music video for his comedy song "Metal By Numbers" 4.

Notes

==See also==

• Black Metal Inner Circle
• List of black metal bands

Literature

• Moynihan, Michael. Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground. Venice: Feral House, 2006. ISBN 0-922915-48-2
• Khan-Harris, Keith. Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. Oxford: Berg, 2006. ISBN 9781845203993

References

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