A potentially divisive question: is "black/thrash" a genuine part of the black metal umbrella or is it just evil thrash metal LARPing as true black metal?
AUTISM COMMENCE.
AUTISM COMMENCE.
HamburgerBoy
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First-wave, arguably, in the same sense that Led Zeppelin could be called a metal band but Kingdom Come not. Retro-wave, for the most part no, it is a derivative musically of thrash metal.
Black/thrash is an old, consistent enough subgenre that the riffs used by the bands could also be counted as incorporated into the black metal canon. Black/thrash has been around since the 1980's, I really don't see any reason why the subgenre shouldn't be seen as part of the black metal canon, especially considering it existed long before atmos/folk/DSBM etc.
Furthermore, if black metal riffs = a riff within the common style established by the major black metal bands, why don't the thrashier black metal bands get included in this definition? Sabbat for example. Sarcofago for another.
HamburgerBoy
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Like what? Bathory was built on Venom/Motorhead and Manowar riffs. Sodom similar minus Manowar. Kreator on Metallica, Exodus, and Slayer riffs. Destruction was probably the only black/thrash band that musically advanced the genre and turned it into black metal proper (but that ended after their first album when they went to a pure thrash sound). I could accept a band built purely on early Destruction/Tormentor-style riffing as being separate from thrash, but none of the black/thrash bands are to my knowledge. There's little musically-defining about the first-wave, which was always primarily about image until approx 1987-89.
I don't understand your point unless to ask why Sabbat and Sarcofago aren't considered thrash, which is based on a false premise since they very commonly are (in addition to being considered black).
Bloopy
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I've seen thrash bands that are a bit black and black metal bands that are a bit thrash, but probably more of the latter. But then those bands tend to mix in death metal as well. Exordium Mors is a good example.
Everything came from something prior obviously, all I'm saying is that a band using thrash riffs doesn't disqualify it from being black metal for any reason I can understand, which you've just basically demonstrated by pointing out that most of the bands considered important to the development of black metal in the 1980's were thrash bands or heavy metal bands. Darkthrone were inspired to abandon death metal because Fenriz rediscovered his old Sodom, Destruction and Celtic Frost records for example.
Sabbat and Sarcofago are considered thrash, as well as black metal, I didn't say otherwise. I'm saying; per your "a riff within the common style established by the major black metal bands" comment, surely Sabbat and/or Sarcofago can also be seen as bands using riffs from within black metal that are thrashy, thus establishing black/thrash as a proper subgenre of black metal? Bands have been basically cloning them since the 80's and 90's so I don't really see why black/thrash shouldn't be considered an actual type of black metal.
Are you saying black metal truly begins with Live in Leipzig or something? Nothing prior to 1990 counts?
HamburgerBoy
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As I said before, it makes some sense to call those bands black metal, just as it can make sense to call Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin heavy metal, or Slayer and Exodus death metal, especially since bands like Destruction were at one point the closest thing to black metal. That's a matter of influence and ancestry, but it's also relative. In the 1910s, American progressives supported radical proposals like a 3% income tax, which would put them far to the right of any currently-serving Republican senator or congressman today. Those people don't get to use the term anymore. Metal genres become established when they stop evolving and settle on a particular set of riffs.
Sarcofago pushed the edge of what it meant to be a black metal, but it's not like they walked down to the polls and registered themselves as members of the black/thrash party. They upped the blasting, upped the shrieking, upped the tremolo-picking, etc, it was a gradual evolutionary process until black metal reached its quintessence. It was those things that earn them credit as a black metal pioneer, not the fact that they happened to still use some standard thrash riffs too, just as it's not the Diamond Head and Angel Witch riffs in Metallica's discography that established them as the seminal thrash band.
The exact day/year/release doesn't matter. I can accept Hellhammer/Celtic Frost being black metal proper, sure (I don't consider them to be a thrash metal band at all). I think there's a clear musical line that began to be drawn by the time of post-Deathcrush Mayhem, however.
Sarcofago pushed the edge of what it meant to be a black metal, but it's not like they walked down to the polls and registered themselves as members of the black/thrash party. They upped the blasting, upped the shrieking, upped the tremolo-picking, etc, it was a gradual evolutionary process until black metal reached its quintessence. It was those things that earn them credit as a black metal pioneer, not the fact that they happened to still use some standard thrash riffs too, just as it's not the Diamond Head and Angel Witch riffs in Metallica's discography that established them as the seminal thrash band.
The exact day/year/release doesn't matter. I can accept Hellhammer/Celtic Frost being black metal proper, sure (I don't consider them to be a thrash metal band at all). I think there's a clear musical line that began to be drawn by the time of post-Deathcrush Mayhem, however.
By this logic current common parlance dictates that black/thrash = a subgenre of black metal.
HamburgerBoy
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It's not a sub-genre of black metal. It's generally either 1) an ancestor of black metal or, 2) a hybrid of thrash metal and black metal. Deathhammer didn't come up with their riffs by listening primarily to Darkthrone or Burzum, they did so by listening to Destruction and Kreator, and maybe a little bit of incidental/anachronistic Darkthrone rubbed off as well. Is blackgaze a sub-genre of shoegaze? I'd say no, it's a sub-genre of black metal with shoegaze influences. Is funk metal a sub-genre of funk? No, it started largely as heavy and thrash metal bands incorporating funk parts, often as a joke, until they decided to start making entire albums out of it.
HamburgerBoy
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Master_Yoda77
Juggalo
TechnicalBarbarity
-TheNightsBane-
it would be more correct to say most black/thrash actually falls under the thrash metal umbrella.
The Ozzman
Melted by feels
TechnicalBarbarity
-TheNightsBane-
Why should black/thrash not be included but all that random riffless/folk riff/punk riff black metal is included? Just seems to me to be very convenient to disqualify all that black/thrash because your point is about how black metal as a whole has shitty riffs.
Krow
Garbage Connoisseur
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