Night’s Nirvana: On Norwegian Black Metal
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Two major stories that I have about Black Metal scene that might be illuminating.
I had heard through the grapevine that there was an obscure black metal festival deep in the woods somewhere. After digging around I found the Shadowoods metal festival [2] which turned out to be an invite only philosophically anarchist inspired one night show, now a two day festival of the most obscure "kvlt" black metal bands around. I never got the chance to go but from what I understand the best of the genre comes out to play and members of the top black metal bands in the world come to attend.
The other story is about people's reaction to black metal. I typically wear a metal shirt around, even as an undershirt and whenever someone sees one they often inquire about it. I'm even wearing my favorite Bathory shirt prominently on TechCrunch [3]! Anyway someone came up and asked me about Bathory and I enthusiastically went into the whole tale about countess Bathory bathing in blood [4] and why it inspired the band. At the end of the story the person looked totally horrified and basically turned and walked away. Typically happens when describing any black metal band.
[1] https://youtu.be/OJeLYvc7sXk?t=8m46s
[2] https://shadowwoodsmetalfest.com/about/
[3] https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/batch17...
10-15 years ago, I used to tell people about Meshuggah -- something like "My favorite of all time. It is the greatest thing since sliced <Cough>. Think of it as like modern jazz, but played a bit faster and heavier. I'm not that musical, I have to listen to a song dozens and dozens of times to get half of the stuff happening (I think, I probably get less). It is just efficient, you listen one minute and you get at least two or three minutes of other music."
They looked at me as if I was an idiot or was trolling them. (Both true, arguably. :-) )
Today, half of the university kids around where I am now seems to know more about Meshuggah than me. Literally. For an old favorite band.
Sigh, it is hard being a hipster when your stuff gets mainstream.
:-)
You could not pay me to listen to Burzum. Mayhem hit on some nice atmospheres early on, as did Darkthrone though I prefer their first album (which was death metal), but other more popular bands from Norway like Enslaved, Satyricon, Immortal, Emperor, Gorgoroth, etc. never did anything for me. A few of the more experimental bands from Norway like Ulver and Arcturus are worth checking out, but all in all black metal is not my cup of tea :)
There's no room for Nazis in metal.
I do actually welcome controversial lyrics and imagery in metal. I see it as sort of a canary in the coal mine for freedom of speech. With lyrics that are racist, misogynistic, militant, or even pedophilic, it's hard to tell how these bands straddle the line as far as actually advocating the ideas in their lyrics vs. wanting to evoke negative emotions and shine a light on the ugliness of humanity. The band Cynic summed up my view of extreme metal nicely with one of their demos titled "Reflections of a Dying World", and so in that sense I think even the most heinous lyrics have their place in metal, because anything else would be ignoring who we really are collectively as humans. I also find it a bit odd that the metal scene gets particularly worked up about racism, whereas murder, rape, torture, etc. are more-or-less par for the course in extreme metal nowadays.
What does ones political political alignment has to do with music?
That said, I've been on stage in Germany when Neo-Nazis tried to enter the venue to attend the show. The looks of legitimate distress on the attendees faces are something I won't forget. Personally, I find it really hard to separate art from artist and artist from political alignment.
It's funny how tastes in music work. No 2 people are ever the same.
Personally Burzum is my favourite from that scene. It's beyond stripped back. There's something that resonates with me about picking a nice simple melody, played on a plain old MIDI keyboard (presumably) with a basic sine-wavey type instrument and just riffing on the atmosphere for 8 minutes.
Yep, attach an obligatory "IMO" to every statement that I write in this thread. I definitely agree that there's no objective truth as far as enjoying music. I listen to so much death metal that would sound like noise to most people and that contains eye-rolling levels of goofiness too (e.g. frog-like guttural vocals that I endure only because I like the instrumental parts so much).
Doesn't matter, Butchered at Birth is the best DM album of all time IMO.
I love Infester's grinds and sludge but the vocals are too muddy for me personally - they don't have the bite (range) of Schuldiner, Benton or Barnes.
Seriously though I have never been a fan of any of the non-norwegian black metal acts and have found that it's not at all associated with the antics of the old days but rather that they have the right sound. Namely very analog - with exception of some of the symphonic black metal albums.
I would argue that Norwegian scene gets attention because it was among earliest (or even the earliest?). I'm sure that if you asked your favorite older bands from Greek or Czech they would cite Norwegian BM as their inspiration. Personally I'm not a fan of Norwegian BM as well and prefer French (Peste Noire, Amesoeurs, Pensées Nocturnes, Mütiilation, few LLN projects) and Polish scenes (Medico Peste, Batushka, Behemoth). Also, talking about BM, I cannot not to mention favorite band from my home country - Nahash.
P.S. honestly, I'd never imagine a discussion about black metal here, on HN. Nice.
One of the things I find fascinating about metal is this development of different sounds from country to country. You're right to say that Norway came along very early, as did the South American scene with its more thrashy interpretation from bands like Sarcofago, Sextrash, Vulcano, Mystifier, etc. I hope that regional aspect isn't lost (or lost already) with the interconnectedness of the internet, but on the whole the internet has probably had a massively positive effect on music in general.
And your country had a small but interesting death metal scene too! I am fond of Conscious Rot, Regredior and Ghostorm and even have a few old demos from those bands.
Yes, I agree with that. There are countless of interesting, unheard bands on the Internet from all over the world, not some clones of most popular bands, like it was usual in earlier days. Even Youtube offers some gems on random playlists from time to time.
"I am fond of Conscious Rot, Regredior and Ghostorm and even have a few old demos from those bands."
Wow, I'm surprised you know these bands, they are not widely known by younger "metalheads" even in my own country. Ghostorm was the all-time best metal band from Lithuania imho. Sadly, metal scene is virtually dead here nowadays..
I would recommend Lords of Chaos first, as a primer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lords_of_Chaos_(book)
Before digging into Until the Light Takes Us.
He have a special place in my personal music history. I started to listen to a bit extreme metal in the 90s and was a bit shocked by my own taste. From the early Metallica to death metal, it got steadily more extreme.
The limit was Darkthrone -- I got an album and (at least at the time) I felt physically sick if I used headphones! Years later, I saw that series of youtube interviews with Fenriz, discussing the music. He was so knowledgeable and, more or less, dismissed most genres I love in metal (Meshuggah, Nile, etc) as not really that interesting. :-)
These days, I can enjoy the early Darkthrone stuff, but it was a funny reality check to realize early that I'm not really that metal, I just like the music. :-)
The first album, for me, that gave me that physically sick feeling like you describe was Portal's Vexovoid record. We can debate whether or not Portal fits into the general category of Black Metal, but damn that album is just frightening.
Something about Portal reaches deep. It's odd because I'm not necessarily a huge fan of their music in terms of just listening to it as music, but I like how there's something exhaustively serene (in a twisted way) about the atmosphere, like a dark meditation/trance almost.
When I heard Portal before, I was more into a bit faster.
Portal's whole aesthetic plus the music really creates this inexplicable atmosphere, what I picture as if I had been tapped into the degrading mental state of Jack Torrance.
Deathspell Omega is a band that I can't get enough of. I remember listening to Si monvmentvm reqvires, circvmspice during an overnight drive from Halifax, NS to Sydney, NS and just experiencing moments of fear or sheer terror. Something that I can't say that any other album has done for me.
The new Deathspell Omega record is brilliant. IMHO they are at the forefront of current Black Metal.