What's your opinion about Black metal ?

[Bruticus]

I realize there's a gigantic thread dedicated to black metal, but what the heck, I'm just looking for a few opinions.

Generally, how do you perceive black metal, what do you think is good/bad about it, and which bands do you broadly have in mind ?

 

[Phylactery]

I’m the resident black metal whore. It’s my favourite subgenre of metal. I love everything about it (when it’s good). How it can be both savagely violent and hauntingly beautiful, sometimes even within the same song.

Post-black metal, shoegazy black metal and anything commonly associated with hipster black metal can fuck right off, though.

 

[no country for old wainds]

Post-black metal, shoegazy black metal and anything commonly associated with hipster black metal can fuck right off, though.

don't forget "atmoshit"

 

[CiG]

Black metal at its best for me is transportive like no other genre in metal.

I think black metal of all the genres I like has the lowest lows but also the highest peaks in terms of quality, which really makes all the digging and wading through the drek worth it when you find that piece of music spewing cold primeval savagery.

When I think of black metal I tend to always go back to the same 2 albums; A Blaze in the Northern Sky and Pure Holocaust. The primitive and ancient sounds of Darkthrone and the ice cold battle magic of Immortal, represented by their peak albums, is black metal perfection to me.

These are some favourite songs and a pretty good example of what I like about black metal:







The drums on "Heimdallr" are a special highlight for me, they're so warlike!

 

[HamburgerBoy]

It's a barely-unified pseudogenre and closer to a culture, though that isn't quite right either. Lacking metal's first principle and genetic essence, which is the riff, it tries in vain to define itself through dogmatically-asserted ideals. Much like attempts to define what it means to be "American", that meaning rapidly disintegrates when it becomes its own definition. As long as you're an American first and do what Americans(tm) do, you're good. As long as you claim to be black metal and do what black metal people do, you're good. But then things get tricky. Speculators and monopolists begin asserting their aesthetic might over the territory. Black metal seems stronger than ever; after sufficient generations of arbitrary selection, the old guard maintains a total hegemony on what it means to participate in that culture, and largely by luck a few musical elements precipitate from that. Now, it isn't different for the sake of being different, but something New and Exciting. It was easy enough to create a makeshift identity around land ownership or anti-Christianity, but then what happens when new arrivals dilute the once-selective stock through sheer number? Musical migrants around the world came to black metal's shore in search of a new life, enamored by the promises of atmosphere, ambiance, emotion, ambition. Goodbye shoegaze, goodbye neofolk, goodbye noise rock, goodbye 90s JRPG soundtracks, we've left you for the prospects of a new, better sound in which to plow our music. But when they arrived, they found that the soil was little more than sand, with a small number of men dismally failing to hold it into higher order. This endless expanse of two-chord tremolo-picking and drum machines shifts with the winds and submerges all that dare approach her. From the tides, a new race of mongrelized bastards pops out, half-breed stammering incontinent mutants spraying out a putrid mist of Burzum, My Bloody Valentine, and National Geographic soundtracks. If it weren't for their poor ability to actually digest their wide range of influences, you wouldn't even be able to determine them. Plastic paddies as music. Those who created this cesspool are now forever damned to tread it with the refugees they hate and see as antithetical to them, because should they leave it, they would cease to exist at all.

 

[Phylactery]

don't forget "atmoshit"

Well yeah, but plenty of black metal I like comes under the banner of “atmospheric” according to some. Burzum, SdG, Darkspace, etc.

Like you’ve said previously, everyone should just stop using “atmospheric” as a genre descriptor.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

atmospheric pornogrind is the best.

 

[CiG]

Creating an atmosphere on a pornogrind album is easy; use porn samples.

 

[Phylactery]

They are my favourite tracks from A Blaze.. and Pure Holocaust (or tied with As the Eternity Opens). But the Vikingligr Veldi track is a weird choice as it sounds almost nothing like the rest of that album. It’s much more violent and hammering and less epic. Good song, still. Midgards Elder is my favourite from VV and has been for many years.

 

[CiG]

But the Vikingligr Veldi track is a weird choice as it sounds almost nothing like the rest of that album. It’s much more violent and hammering and less epic. Good song, still. Midgards Elder is my favourite from VV and has been for many years.

Precisely why I chose it.

The album itself isn't necessarily representative of what I love about black metal, but that specific song is.

 

[Phylactery]

The sheer balls of Darkthrone to suddenly switch genres and open their new album (at the time) with the 10 minute oppressive as fuck Kathaarian Life Code. I fucking love that ridiculously morbid and demented laugh when the guitars first come crashing in. And the second riff slays.

Probably a top 10 black metal song of all time for me.

 

[CiG]

Probably a top 10 black metal song of all time for me.

My pool isn't as deep as yours, but for me also.
I went out of my mind when I first heard that album and replayed that opening track into oblivion. I heard Under a Funeral Moon first and that didn't really prepare me for the sound they had on A Blaze in the Northern Sky, which didn't really have the standard thin, cold and distant sound of Under a Funeral Moon. It's thick with cave dust and hurricane winds! The riffs are so in-your-face and utterly blatantly there.

 

[PrincessHades]

I like old school sounding black metal with plenty of heaviness and thrash influence e.g Bathory, Hellhammer, Darkthrone, Immortal, and Mayhem. Most of those autistic atmospheric bands suck ass

As for blackness, I really dont care. Its not about how dark it is, its about how good it is, though sometimes a dark sound is what makes an album, a good example being early Bathory

 

[Draehl]

Not a fan of pure/orthodox/kvlt BM, but it's the best genre to mix other shit with IMO. In fact, I'd say the majority of metal I like is a BM hybrid or at least influenced.

Blackened Folk is probably my favorite since it tends to round off the sillier Folk elements and the more shrill BM bits- Moonsorrow, Falkenbach, Nokturnal Mortum, etc.

Black/Doom can be some really amazing plodding/hypnotic shit like the latest Urfaust, The Ruins of Beverast, Yith, etc.

Black/Death can be a mixed bag but can create some absolutely sick stuff like Desolate Shrine, Abyssal, & Necrophobic.

Atmoblack & Melodic Black both bring a unique sound, if sometimes leaning too hard on their respective shticks. Atmo is especially great when done with some inspiration and not sounding like another Burzum or Summoning clone.

Black/Trad I don't know the most about, but what I've delved into tends to have a nice dark groove, same with Black/Thrash.

 

[CiG]

Black/Trad I don't know the most about

 

[The Ozzman]

It's a barely-unified pseudogenre and closer to a culture, though that isn't quite right either. Lacking metal's first principle and genetic essence, which is the riff, it tries in vain to define itself through dogmatically-asserted ideals. Much like attempts to define what it means to be "American", that meaning rapidly disintegrates when it becomes its own definition. As long as you're an American first and do what Americans(tm) do, you're good. As long as you claim to be black metal and do what black metal people do, you're good. But then things get tricky. Speculators and monopolists begin asserting their aesthetic might over the territory. Black metal seems stronger than ever; after sufficient generations of arbitrary selection, the old guard maintains a total hegemony on what it means to participate in that culture, and largely by luck a few musical elements precipitate from that. Now, it isn't different for the sake of being different, but something New and Exciting. It was easy enough to create a makeshift identity around land ownership or anti-Christianity, but then what happens when new arrivals dilute the once-selective stock through sheer number? Musical migrants around the world came to black metal's shore in search of a new life, enamored by the promises of atmosphere, ambiance, emotion, ambition. Goodbye shoegaze, goodbye neofolk, goodbye noise rock, goodbye 90s JRPG soundtracks, we've left you for the prospects of a new, better sound in which to plow our music. But when they arrived, they found that the soil was little more than sand, with a small number of men dismally failing to hold it into higher order. This endless expanse of two-chord tremolo-picking and drum machines shifts with the winds and submerges all that dare approach her. From the tides, a new race of mongrelized bastards pops out, half-breed stammering incontinent mutants spraying out a putrid mist of Burzum, My Bloody Valentine, and National Geographic soundtracks. If it weren't for their poor ability to actually digest their wide range of influences, you wouldn't even be able to determine them. Plastic paddies as music. Those who created this cesspool are now forever damned to tread it with the refugees they hate and see as antithetical to them, because should they leave it, they would cease to exist at all.

 

[Draehl]

Definitely aware of that one tho. And Slaegt

 

[CiG]

Definitely aware of that one tho. And Slaegt

Don't know Slaegt, will check them out.

 

[Draehl]

Don't know Slaegt, will check them out.

 

[Sophii]

Black Metal is cool; I tend to ride the more weird side of it. Dødheimsgard is super rad with their Supervillain Outcast album, taking futuristic industrial traits and turning it black metal. As well as Mayhem's black sheep album Grand Declaration of War.

But primitive black metal is the purest evil. Japan has one of the coolest old school black metal bands - SABBAT!