Nostalgia: second wave black metal (list-making included)

Treblinka is black metal, but Sumerian Cry through Clouds is death metal. Admitedly it has a very black metal feel to it but musicially it IS death metal.
 
damn, what an awsome thread...now i can go back in time and check out the bands i missed, thanks!!!
 
Sumerian Cry is within the grey area between Black and Death Metal. Which is why I include it in both my top 20 Black Metal albums and top 20 Death Metal albums of all time lists. It was written as a Black Metal album, however, so it should be considered primarily as such.

Also, since the thread starter mentioned both Beherit and Varathron:

Check out Hail - Inheritance Of Evilness. It's essentially an amalgamation of Drawing Down The Moon and His Majesty At The Swamp encased within the twisted mind of a fucked up Finn.

http://www.thebasar.org/MP3/War_Must_Go_On.mp3
http://www.thebasar.org/MP3/Barbaryan_(Finland).mp3
 
MasterOLightning said:
I think the best of the 2nd wave is covered here for sure. These releases are definitely in no danger of being forgotten. They are well documented on other sites and forums, and even stuff, like Kvist, that never made a big splash, is certainly more recognized now than a few years ago. Labels continue to try to rerelease the old OOPs, and sometimes forgotten tracks resurface. Metal fans worldwide have certainly taken care to preserve the legacy of that pre-digital music age. A few things inevitably slip through the cracks, but the situation is generally good.

What I am concerned about is that the best of black metal from 97-07 is never put on equal footing, and the poor signal-to-noise ratio has made it difficult to find standouts. I can't accept that the mental facilities required to create good black metal have disappeared from the human consciousness. There must be more great albums out there. Fairly often, people show up and say that they do not get Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, and they are told to keep listening to it. Then after 5 or 10 listens they get it. I wonder how many great albums were lost in the last 10 years because no one told people to keep listening to them. It's hard to believe that at a time when it has never been easier for a band that's good to record music and expose it to millions of people, that so few make it into the evoked set. For every Forgotten Legends or Genevieve, are there really 2000 total duds?

Maybe my perspective is badly skewed by message boards. If 10 people know and like a band and are somewhat vocal about it, then that's a popular band. Even if 5 or so speak up about something, it appears there's an actual following. And if 0 of the 50 or so regulars know a band, then it doesn't exist. Such small samples can be dangerous. Good luck finding bigger samples in the real world though.
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Good post. I think your point about the differing forum populations is a good one. It just so happens that this one is very old school oriented.

I also think that now bands are easier to find than before, so both good and bad bands are heard versus just the good ones, creating an illusion that that era was better. Also, the scene as a whole has had 10 years to appreciate the classics and forget the bad stuff that came out then.
 
Well there's also the matter of the duplicate rarely ever matching the quality of the original. And there's also the matter that a lot of people here simply prefer the style of this period, and the bands of today that they like tend to be the bands that come close to this style. That era was better. :loco:
 
I think the internet, especially myspace music, has benefited both the unrecognized older bands and all the newer bands that have kept within the bounds of the underground. Newer bands actively promote and feature their material to be readily accessed by the public much more efficiently than in the 80's or early 90's. Older obscure bands, including extinct ones, have myspace pages created by fans, so even after their demise, their material is still readily accessed to newer fans.
 
Necuratul said:
Well there's also the matter of the duplicate rarely ever matching the quality of the original. And there's also the matter that a lot of people here simply prefer the style of this period, and the bands of today that they like tend to be the bands that come close to this style. That era was better. :loco:
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I'm not arguing that the current era is better, but that the best music of the past 10 years is not appropriately credited most of the time. Part of the problem is the wild disagreement as to what the best, most relevant BM of the present actually is. Bands like Alcest, Xasthur, Nachtmystium, Leviathan, and even the last DsO, are extremely polarizing, in a way that almost nothing from the 2nd wave is. Is it just a matter of time before opinions are sorted out? If enough people with taste like something, it eventually is accepted to be good, so that people will say "This album just isn't my style" instead of "This album sucks" if they happen to not like it.

Too many people are guilty of allowing perceived (if not actual) scenesterism to sully their opinions of current bands. It became a total non-issue with Velvet Cacoon's Genevieve, which in spite of all the non-musical associations, is a brilliant album.

I split my purchases maybe 60/40 in new/older BM releases, and I certainly make an effort to at least hear some of the unavailable old stuff, but my budget is less than most people's (but more than BlueWizard's). I think I'm just more interested and hopeful for the future of the genre than most people are.
 
It is a non-issue in that the boring crapness of that album has nothing to do with the ridiculous story behind it, just like the brilliance of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas has nothing to do with the ridiculous story behind that.

Also, I wasn't responding to you, I was responding to cookiecutter. I have plenty of hope for the future of Black Metal, just not in the same bands that you do.
 
I am with MasterOlighting for this one.

What has seemed to happen is a more spread out sense of good black metal albums. When you think of the how these albums are released you rarely ever find a scene behind it. Good black metal albums seem to come out of nowhere now. While bands like Markduk and Dark Funeral will be putting out the same record over and over again bands like Peste Noire and Urfaust are putting out records that sound interesting but have no real sense of mass appeal. So are there brilliant records being released today. Yes, there are. La Sanie des siècles - Panégyrique de la dégénérescence and Death - Pierce Me are both amazing records that have come out in recent years that give me hope. And than when you look at some demos being put out and some labels that ant to keep black metal alive than I have a good amount of hope.


On saying that the older times were better for black metal,

Yes, its true. No one can hold a candle to Filosofem or A Blaze In The Northern Sky but you do have to understand there were so little records being released. I am sure that there are much more better record being put out now than there were back in 93.
 
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