Black Metal and What it is

So this weekend has been a big metal geek weekend. Went to show Friday, spent Saturday night trading music with a friend, and today helped Davis with a project about black metal that she's doing for an art history class.

During the course of helping with that I wrote out a little history/analysis thing to explain what black metal is, and to trace some of the ideas in there. It's really interesting that a genre that began as goofy novelty music has evolved into on of the most diverse and experimental subgenres in popular music. I'm particularly interested, as a listener and as a music geek, in how black metal went from being a genre that was all about adolescent blasphemy to being a genre that incorporates anti capitalist environmentalism. It's been quite a trip.

The following is an effort to trace the genre, in rough sketch form, from when it was born to when it was fully developed and to talk briefly about contemporary extrapolations. It was written for an outsider to metal, which I think was useful to keep me out of the weeds of extreme geekiness. Anyway. Thought I'd share, even though this is impossibly geeky.


Pre-History, Part I: The First Wave of Black Metal (Commercial)

So. . . there was a band in England in the late seventies and early 80s called Venom. (They still exist today, but the original line up was only around for a little while.) Venom was the first extreme metal band, and they influenced everybody, including Metallica, Slayer, etc. They played really fast, sloppy punk rock sounding metal, and they sang blasphemous, evil stuff. That was novel thing to do at the time, and they were the really notorious for being offensive and also for being not really very good. There is a really funny moment in a documentary called "A Headbanger's Journey" where Lemmy from Motohead makes fun of them for being one of the worst bands ever.

As bad as they sounded, they WERE a lot of fun, and they are a major cult band. They invented the term "black metal" to describe what their music was. They wrote a song called "Black Metal." They were not serous occultist, and their version of "Satanism" was just silly stuff they made up to shock people. However, they invented a lot of musical devices that are widely used in extreme metal, and they helped to create the imagery that black metal bands use. I saw the drummer in a band wearing a Venom t-shirt with a pentagram on it Friday night. It's like now you see punk rockers with a black flag logo tattoo. A Venom t-shirt with the pentagram logo is the metal equivalent.






Mercyful Fate and King Diamond were from Denmark. (King Diamond was the front man for Mercyful Fate, and his solo albums and his work with Mercyful Fate can kinda be thought of as being part of the same body of work, even if the music was different) Their classic period was in the early to mid 80s. They sang horror movie styled songs about monsters and demons and ghosts and Gothic horror type stuff. Kind Diamond was (and still is) a Satanist, and he wore very elaborate facepaint and did a lot of macabre theatrical stuff onstage with coffins and bones. They are often considered one of the first black metal bands, but they don't have much in common with what we now call black metal, except for the "evil" imagery. The face paint was a big influence also.





Pre-History Part II: The First Wave of Black Metal (Underground)

During the 80s there were a whole bunch of underground metal bands trying to be the most extreme band on the block. Many of these bands did not play live very often, although some were local musicians who gigged and behaved more or less like a regular rock band. Some of these bands did not really "exist" other than being two or three teenagers who practiced occasionally and said "we're a band."

There were three ways that these guys got their music out. One was tape trading. Back then in heavy metal magazines (and underground homemade"zines"), there were classified sections where bands would advertize that they had made demo recordings. They would try to get attention with a snazzy evil description or a grainy picture, and then they would write to each other and trade tapes (their own and from other bands). Sometimes they would sell them at local record stores. Another way their music might get out would be if a local entrepreneur (usually a concert promoter or record store owner, or sometimes it would just be a metal fan with some money, often from a parent) would put together a compilation album documenting the local scene. Sometimes the local "scene" did not really exist, so guys who practiced together would work up a song or two so they could get their name on a record. The third way was, of course, independent record labels, which were often a hobby rather than a profession.

Some bands went through all of these phases. Metallica, which was not a "real band" with a permanent lineup and did not gig, contributed to a compilation and made a couple of demos before they existed as a live band. Eventually became more professional and started touring and got a manager and a record deal and all the trappings of professionalism. This whole system was a parallel system to that of punk rock, and the two networks interacted sometimes. This system is still around today, although 'zines have been mostly replaced by the internet.

This whole mish mash of semi-professional music was really important because it allowed bands to experiment with really grim, ugly music. Also, many bands accidentally made really grim, grimy music because they were not very accomplished and because the technical means available were pretty primitive. All of this music was by no means black metal (Metallica was, of course, not black metal), but some of it was, and these underground bands were the bands that really defined the sound and the imagery of black metal. Because they had no money, they would dress up in scary outfits and take pictures of themselves. For many fans, these pictures were the sole visual representation of some of these bands. Since some of these bands did not play live very often if at all, this ephemera was central to their bodies of work.

Here's the hitch though. . . .black metal was not really a genre at the time, and people didn't really use that term. There were a bunch of kids who liked punk rock and Venom and making offensive racket in their parents' basements, and some of them had similar taste. The lines between black metal and death metal or thrash metal were not always very clear. These genres were not well established. It was an international scene, with bands from South America and from Eastern Europe as well as American and Western European bands. It was, in other words, a disorganized, anarchic mess.

What happened is that some of these bands were retroactively considered black metal bands because they influenced the Scandinavian bands in the early 90s who were more solidly "black metal bands." The Scandinavian bands copied the low fi, trebly "cold" sounds, the imagery and dress (corpsepaint, black leather, spikes, bullet belts, metal t-shirts), they copied the tactic of making up scary names for themselves (Angelripper, Tom Warrior), and they copied the idea of bands existing as studio projects only. The idea of a "one man band" was kinda strange for heavy metal, which has always had a culture of partying and beer drinking, but these mysterious, sometimes reclusive amateur bands were sometimes revered for being mysterious and illusive. More often that not, that mystery was a result of bands with no professional representation and no stability developing a cult audience. So, like you might really love Sarcofago, but you couldn't really find out anything about them except for looking at the spooky picture on the album cover. Sarcofago DID, incidentally, play live shows and "exist" as a "regular band," but if you didn't live in Brazil, that was incidental.

Three of the most influential first wave underground bands were the previously mentioned Sarcofago from Brazil, Hellhammer from Switzerland, and Bathory from Sweden. They all sound like unholy racket and the songs are all about blasphemous nonsense. Hellhammer and Bathory did not exist as "real" bands who played shows and did other "real band stuff" at all. All three bands were mocked by the mainstream metal press (particularly Hellhammer) but all three bands had devoted cult followings which have grown larger over the years. They all took "scary" photos of themselves dressed up in leather and spikes blowing fire or playing with armor, and those photos were the bands' visual identities. Hellhammer changed their name to Celtic Frost and became pretty successful, but the guys in the band were really embarrassed by Hellhammer for years and wouldn't talk about it. Hellhammer and Bathory are super-duper influential, and a lot of musicians or bands have taken their names from their song titles.

These are hardly the only underground bands from the 80s who played deliberately crude, blasphemous heavy metal and dressed in scary clothes, but they are representative of the kind of thing that we retrospectively call "first wave black metal." I mentioned that the lines between black metal, death metal, and thrash were not always clear. This is the case. Generally though, first wave black metal bands made crude racket that sounds like of like blurry noise, while death metal bands used a more precise and heavy mid range attack, and thrash bands played cleaner, more technically accomplished music. Black metal was single mindedly grimy and anti-aesthetic, while other extreme music was more conventionally "powerful" and aggressive.










The Invention of Scandinavian Black Metal

So far we've got people making underground racket, trying to sound spooky, presenting themselves in these sinister alter egos, and just generally being mysterious and primitive. In that mishmash of underground racket, there were two band who really stood out in terms of trying to make something more serious: Bathory and Mayhem.

Bathory began as a low-fi black metal band (see above), and they slowly branched out to incorporate more stuff about Vikings and Norse mythology.

"Band" is something of a stretch. It was one guy who worked with whoever he could get. Their first recording was for one of those underground compilations discussed above, and so many people wrote in to praise the track that they were offered the chance to make an album. They did not really "exist" as a band until then.

Bathory is widely credited with being the first metal band to really seriously talk about paganism and define hostility toward Christianity as a part of Scandinavian nationalism. The nostalgia for a more "natural" pagan world and the grandiose music that Bathroy made were a HUGE influence on Scandanavian black metal. This was not make-em-up as you go blasphemy and random offensiveness for teenaged kicks, but an effort to write serious and ambitious meditations about Scandinavian culture and to argue that Christianity was an invading power. They were super mysterious, never playing live, but sometimes doing "tours" of record stores to do interviews and sign records.

Ironically, Quarthon, the dude who was Bathory, was not really into the pagan stuff or the anti-Christian stuff in "real life," and Bathory was, while incredibly ambitious for an underground metal project in the 80s, not connected to a particularly deep interest in history or to a personal religious belief (unlike some later bands). Quarthon considered Swedish history an interesting topic for more considered, ambitious music, period. He didn't have an agenda (unlike some late bands). He was irritated and horrified by the anti-Christian terrorism that broke out in Norway during the early 90s. Also by people mailing him animal parts as tribute.

This is the one video that Bathory made (from 1990 or so). This song is about the Christianization of Norway. This is a hard core influential piece of film. You've got hostility to Christianity linked to Scandanavian culture, and you've got a lot of images of people walking around in the woods. This might be something to look at to get an idea of the "ideology" of black metal. There is even an image of a stave church. (The "anti-Christian terrorism" mentioned above consisted mostly of burning historical churches down.)






Mayhem was, during the 80s, a much more underground band from Norway. They were really one of the undergound "first wave" bands discussed above, except that they took the "philosophy" of evil and death a lot more seriously than their peers. They were also a lot more interested in spooky atmosphere than in simple aggression. They used nature imagery and death imagery and blasphemy, and their live performances were sometimes chaotic, pseudo occult affairs.

Because the guitarist owned a record store that was kind of a meeting place for the metal scene in Norway, and because he ran an indie label that distributed a lot of the early black metal records from Norway, they were kind of the unofficial "leaders" of the Norwegian black metal scene according to some. (Of course, that claim is not accepted by anybody who was there, but it is inarguable that they were at the forefront of Norwegian black metal.) During the 80s they were sporadically active, recording a bunch of demos and live tapes. Mayhem was probably THE band who really created "black metal" as a distinctive style of music with a distinctive visual approach.

They were unfortunately at the center of several of the most notorious incidents in Norwegian black metal. One of their lead singers (they have had 3) killed himself, and the guitarist/songwriter was murdered by another musician. When their first studio album was released during the early 90s, the band did not really exist anymore, although they reunited and continue to tour and make records.

Here's a bunch of pictures of them with their most well known, and probably most representative, song. It's a spooky, violent song about the atmosphere of a cold night.




Early Scandinavian Black Metal a.k.a. "The Second Wave of Black Metal" (started 1990ish and continued through maybe 1997 or so)

Mayhem made the biggest impact, by they had peers in Norway and in Sweden, who were mostly playing death metal (if they were old enough to be in a band) but liked the same underground stuff Mayhem did. Some of these guys, particularly in Norway, followed the "paganism or nihilism and nature stuff and death imagery stuff" and "low fi, spooky records" and "fantasy images and nature images and underworld images" stuff and invented "black metal" as s distinct genre of music.

What was new about this music? New in metal was the idea of playing melancholy, hypnotic music instead of heavy exciting music. There was also strong sense of the music being a part of some kind of rebellion against western imperialism and against religion. Some saw black metal as a political and spiritual "movement" in a way that was different from how people understood death metal or thrash metal. They also saw the church as being an invading force (although it happened centuries ago) that imparted an "unnatural" ideology.

Most of these guys were more interested in using these themes to create spooky outsider art or sometimes to celebrate serious interested in Norse culture, but a minority, the most famous being the infamous Varg Vikernes, were more "political," sometimes espousing nationalism and racism. That ugly side of black metal culture is real, but it's a minority position, particularly since the music has an international fanbase. There was, however, a string of church burnings that was related to the ant-Christian activism that some of the bands were involved with in the early 90s. Norwegian liberal culture is often portrayed by these bands as being hostile to individualism, and so you get a lot of songs about mythological stories celebrating powerful individuals. Prometheus and Satan are probably most popular. (There are differences between the Norwegian stuff and the Swedish stuff, but you can kinda ignore that, I think.)

So you've got a complicated mix of stuff there, where typical teenager metal stuff (hostility toward religion, fantasy themes from popular culture, obsession with death and violence) is taken seriously and related to a critique of Christianity, liberal democracy, western imperialism, and consumer culture. Very often in second wave black metal there is some idea of a "nature" that is going to rise up against an oppressive modernity.

Sometimes bands used images of hell as an expression of individuality rather than as as effort to be scary. Sometimes these themes are obliquely expressed, sometimes directly, sometimes very seriously, and sometimes there are just a means to make heavy metal music.You also get a lot of approaches to the music. The gloomy low fi racket was sometimes turned into more purposefully droning and even gloomier low fi racket while other bands took the melodic, melancholy aspects of the music to an extreme by incorporating classical music and bombastic progressive elements.


Here's a Burzum video that ties all of these themes together:




Here's Emporer sporting some armor in the snow and doing some stuff with nature and candles and the like:




Satyricon doing pagan stuff and fantasy stuff and occult stuff and nature stuff. The melodic music with all the chanting and stuff are pretty directly influenced by Bathory.This has dated a bit.





Although the "second wave" really was the explosion that happened in the early 90s, the ideas they came up with continue to be a part of black metal.


Here's Waitan focusing more on the "blasphemy, hostility and individuality" stuff and using hell imagery:




Nature and paganism stuff continues to be popular also:






Spreading out. . .

Second wave black metal, because it offered a wider range of thematic and emotional possibility than earlier metal, gradually became an international underground music with lots and lots of interesting variations. For example, in the U.S., some bands have stressed the environmental themes in the music quite strongly, and some have articulated black metal to radical environmentalism or to more meditative, less confrontational kinds of pagan themes than what the Scandinavians did. Agalloch and Wolves in the Throne Room two prominent example. They use lots and lots of nature imagery, and Wolves in the Throne Room famously likes to play shows in the woods or in other alternative spaces. They light their stage with lamps and conduct their shows like rituals rather than like rock concerts.





That's hardly all, but it's plenty for a looong blog post. I haven't even discussed the tensions surrounding the music during the late 90s and early 00s when black metal was becoming more commercial. I think what's interesting is the transformation of the music from being a novelty offshoot of heavy metal to a particular expression of adolescent underground kicks to an international genre of music that includes some of the most musically progressive and thematically interesting stuff in contemporary popular music.

I'm not sure anybody could have predicted that we'd get from Venom to Wolves in the Throne Room, and the genre continues to mutate. In fact, right now there's a big backlash against "hipster friendly" black metal like WITTR who aren't into blasphemy and ugliness and who draw influence from post rock and other non-metal music. (Liturgy, a much more non-metal postrock band who draws from black metal and is given toward hipster pretension gets more ire though. I like Liturgy, actually, but they know how to push people's buttons.)

In any event, black metal's shadow looms larger all the time, even as the original impulses that created the music have subsided. Interesting records should keep coming down the pipe.