Official Thread Black Metal

Toaster Mantis wrote: That's because Varg Vikernes is a huge Krautrock fan.

Just curious...but where's the official White Metal thread..?

Behemoth.

Nazi Occultist? Well, everyone's entitled to their opinions...

I used to dig Venom back in the day (late 80's for me) - they even had an 18 minute, side-long epic, but when I found out that the lead vocalist/bassist had a blacked out room with a Pentagram to worship Satan, I thought he was a pretentious knob and turned to Magma for comfort

As someone who likes black metal but doesn't really understand the appeal of most shoegaze as a result of finding it a rather uninteresting style when it comes to narrative structure of the songwriting, attempts to combine the two do nothing for me. Then again I also find most "depressive black metal" rather kitschy and not in a fun way.

For some genuinely progressive black metal, you might check out Darkspace. Lengthy, intricate compositions featuring creative production usually centered around a larger holistic narrative to the entire recording. Also while their music is as dark and disturbing in its outlook as to be expected from the genre, it is so in a more abstract conceptual manner and less sensationalistic.

Here are some more interesting recent black metal groups I think deserve more exposure:

Dark Buddha Rising dwell somewhere in the grey zone between black metal, sludgy doom and progressive/psychedelic rock. It's an at-first daunting looking hodgepodge of influences, not helped by their often incredibly ambitious song lengths and lyrics drawing syncretically upon esoteric occult religions from all over the world with almost Helena Blavatsky-like eclecticism. I am as a result extremely grateful that their end results show all the talent required to make such diverse inspirations come together seamlessly. Just like Helena Blavatsky grasped at the primordial truth behind all the world's religions, so it seems like DBR have tapped into the same spirit of genius at work in all the different genres.



Named after a Roman emperor, Diocletian are from New Zealand and belong to the so-called "bestial war metal" movement: A very thrashy style of black metal defined by a militaristic and vaguely totalitarian aesthetic, often with a slight dystopian tinge in the manner of early Voivod. (many of its earliest practitioners are Canadian so I don't think that's complete coincidence) I frankly find that sub-sub-genre pretty hit-and-miss with a higher than usual percentage being rather kitschy, but Diocletian are somewhat more technically involved and generally ambitious in their songwriting. It helps that their visual aesthetic isn't quite as cartoonish as usual for the style.



Lugubrum are a very odd Flemish black metal group whose entire concept and aesthetic draws on Flemish cultural history... if in a less overtly nationalistic way than typical for the genre. For instance their lyrics, atmosphere and cover art all take quite a few cues from Renaissance-era Flemish literature and art as best known from Pieter Brueghel the Elder's paintings in their stylish yet deranged Hell-on-Earth vibe. What makes their music interesting to people here is that they're the only Captain Beefheart-influenced BM group I've ever heard, as a result of the Captain being of Dutch-Flemish extraction....



Sühnopfer, a French one-man project, won't win many awards for originality. They are however the band for those of us who righteously consider Sacramentum's Far Away from the Sun one of the finest achievements of black metal only to be disappointed by that Swedish group's subsequent output. You know what that means: Highly melodic black metal with a strong death metal influence, showing both a level of ambition in the songs' narrative structurse and breathtaking complexity in the instrumental interplay that's rarely attempted in the genre - let alone pulled off this well.