Examples of the possibilities of modernizing and evolving Black Metal



Hellsaw -"Trist": Wild's Reprisal - "Cascadia Rising": Ahnengrab - "Omen"

Hellsaw, Wild's Reprisal & Ahnengrab are most certainly my favourites from the list posted below, and as for Ahnengrab i've had it on repeat since Saturday gone and it just gets better with every listen, its definitely an original and powerful record, pagan/power metal for sure but the vocals are Black Metal in style and flavour and delivery which seem out of place at first but with each listen less so. Now i will admit that i took a chance on Wild's Reprisal, but as soon as i heard the howling wolves and the solid rolling intro of beating drums on the opening track "A Fierce Green Fire Dying In Her Eyes" i was hooked, to me this is how modern/new black metal should sound, atmospheric and slightly meanacing, even a touch venemous. This is again perfectly accomplished on the track "Tragedy Of The Commons". The sound is also not a million miles from either Wolves In The Throne Room, Chasma, or Ordo Obsidium for it certainly seems something has be said of the Black Metal scene from the United States, (especially the the northern regions) as it is definitely in a good state of affairs and this certainly is a debut of the highest order. While, finally, Hellsaw simply play proper storming Black Metal that is intense and powerful, with the vocal rasps, riffing and blasting that any fan of Black Metal music would appreciate.

Black Metal Band Logos [Part II]

Here is, as promised in my original post on Black Metal band logos, six more pictures i put together using MS Paint, with another six to follow soon, would just love to get these on a couple of T-shirts.

London gig [Part II]

Have just purchased a ticket for Agalloch, Velinas and Fen again for The Camden Underworld on Wednesday 11th of April, and i must admit i'm really excited, plus i've been told to check out a pub called The Black Heart which is located on one of the streets behind or near the venue, i usually go to The Crowbar in Soho before any gigs i attend when in London but since that stays open till 4 a.m. i'll go afterwards, long as i'm still capable of course.

Absu and Impeity also play the Underworld the following night and i am still tempted to buy a ticket for that also, I would like to hear both bands, they play a Blackened type of Death Metal which does appeal to me.

London gig [Part I]

Will also be attending the Infernal Damnation Fest IX at the Camden Underworld on Saturday 19th May 2012, was at last years and once again the line up is amazing:

ENTHRONED (Be); GORATH (Be); FROSTMOON ECLIPSE (Ita); SATURNIAN (UK);
CTULU (Ger); FUNERAL THRONE (UK); FEVER SEA (UK) & THE FURIOUS HORDE (UK).

Black Metal Logos

I've been thinking about doing a post about Black Metal logos for a while, as i'm intrigued about both the style (as for example Death Metal has a visual style with blood, gore and colorful illustrations, whereas traditional Black Metal is usually dominated by legend, fog, nature, darkness and black and white photography) and the design of Black Metal band logos, and why is it that it seems that the more illegible the logo the better. Most also seem to have a homemade feel to them, quite possibly even hand drawn (some probably at least initially) but remain effective all the same.

Others simply just use a font, none are unique, but generally look like old-fashioned script (such as Burzum and Gorgoroth) but are as equally effective. Though most are made, i'm sure, with no intention whatsoever for anyone to ever be able to tell their band name from the logo, or at the least to make it extremely difficult to read.

Indeed some of the Typography appears to be complex, as sometimes some symbols (like an inverted cross or a pentagram, the numbers 666) or images (such as the devil, goat horns, skulls, trees, branches, the moon) are incorporated into the logo and illegibility is achieved. Also for it to look authentic it must be drawn almost symmetrical, (but even that is not totally necessary), and obviously works (and looks) best if drawn (and presented) white on a black background.

Some of my favourites are the logos for Ashdautas, Dark Fortress, Exiled From Light, Drowning The Light, Faustcoven and Satanic Warmaster. Christophe Szpajdel, a Belgian but now living in England, is probably the most well known designer of logos for Black Metal bands, having created those for Emperor, Moonspell, Nachtmystium, and Enthroned amongst many.

I have put together twelve of these pictures using MS paint, will add the other six in another post.

Black Metal Bands and "So Hideous, My Love..."

My first post on this blog listed all the Black Metal bands that i enjoyed listening to and had music by, so now i've decided to list all the bands that i have discovered since and whose music i've either purchased or downloaded, they are as follows:

Acherontas, Amesoeurs, An Autumn For Crippled Children, Angantyr, Aosoth, Archgoat, Austere, Battle Dagorath, Beherit, Brunanburh, Burning Church Forest, Celeste, Cult Of Erinyes, Deafheaven, Demonaz, Dornenreich, Enslaved, Falloch, Falls Of Rauros, Faustcoven, Forteresse, Gorath, Hrizg, Hyperborean, Kyla, Lapageria Rosea, Licht Erlischt…, Make A Change...Kill Yourself, Mgla, Midnight Odyssey, Myrkr, Nadiwrath, Negative Plane, Neige Et Noirceur, Neige Morte, Niflheim, Nine Covens, NunFuckRitual, Nyktalgia, Old Silver Key, Old Wainds, Owlscry, Paragon Belial, Pest (Sweden), Pest (Germany), So Hideous My Love…, Stutthof, Syn Ze Sase Tri, The Crevices Below, Thrall, Thy Light, Trollskogen, Wisdom Through Agony Into Illumination And Lunacy (W. A. I. L.), Weakling, When Mine Eyes Blacken, Wold, Worship, Zinumm.

Some of the bands listed above might not be classed strictly as Black Metal bands, such as Brunanburh, Enslaved and W. A. I. L. as they might have other elements such as Death, Doom, Folk and even Shoegaze within their music but still retain a strong Black Metal influence or sound. And all but one of the above list have an entry at Encyclopaedia Metallum (http://www.metal-archives.com) and which one is it they think is not "Metal" enough.........

http://store.playtheassassin.com/album/pta004-so-hideous-my-love

......personally i can't believe they don't think the band is "Metal" enough, check links below.

http://www.welovemetal.com/newsite/wordpress/2011/07/29/so-hideous-my-love-to-clasp-a-fallen-wish-with-broken-fingers/
http://www.metalsucks.net/2011/06/28/so-hideous-my-love-not-so-hideous/
http://exclaim.ca/Reviews/Metal/so_hideous_my_love8230-to_clasp_fallen_wish_with_broken_fingers
http://www.heavyblogisheavy.com/2011/06/23/so-hideous-my-love-are-actually-quite-glorious/
http://blog.timesunion.com/marshall/a-little-ambient-hardcore-never-hurt-nobody/5466/
http://occultblackmetalzine.blogspot.com/2011/06/so-hideous-my-loveto-clasp-fellen-wish.html

http://www.decibelmagazine.com/featured/streaming-so-hideous-my-love-to-clasp-a-fallen-wish-with-broken-fingers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DecibelMagazine+%28Decibel+Magazine%29

So what is it about Black Metal?

I definitely feel that it is a minority and possibly extreme genre of Metal music, and somewhat underground, but according to the pretty definitive Metal Archives there has been at least 20,560 Black Metal bands to date, now i will admit that although i'm forty years of age and i've been listening to metal music most of my life and i had heard of the happenings surrounding the scene, the murders, the church burnings etc, the First Wave of Black Metal still passed me by. It wasn't until i heard Emperor's "In The Nightside Eclipse" a few years after its release that i became intrigued, amazed by the astonishing atmosphere created, it was simply majestic and so i considered Black Metal a worthy sub-genre of that beast called Heavy Metal, and one i chose not to ignore, (it definitely had more substance than some of that Nu-Metal rubbish that reared its ugly head about that time when i first discovered it).

So i decided to delve further and purchased some Mayhem ("De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas"), Darkthrone ("Under A Funeral Moon" & "Transylvanian Hunger") and Burzum ("Burzum" & "Aske") which naturally led me to on Immortal ("Pure Holocaust") and Satyricon ("Nemesis Divina") amongst others. I must now admit though for years all i listened to was Emperor, of course, Dimmu Borgir, Gorgoroth, Behemoth, and now i'd even consider them a bit lame Cradle Of Filth, as the only record shop we had in the town didn't stock that much Metal, unless you listened to Nu-Metal or Iron Maiden or Sepultura (but i'll freely admit there's nothing wrong with a blast of "Roots" every now and then), and which is now closed maybe ten plus years and i had to travel to Peterborough or Northampton to buy records so thank god the devil hehe, for the internet and the advent of downloading as it just made the whole Black Metal scene more accessible, it could also be mentioned that it'll probably be always a little uncommercial, no bad thing i'm sure, i like it that way.

As it might be said that Black metal was created with the purpose to be the most inaccessible music possible, notoriously difficult for those listening to it for the first time,this could be true as early black metal was raw and (was it even knowingly?) very poorly produced, with blast beat drumming and distorted guitars and vocal styles that are high pitched rasps and guttural growls that are completely or mostly intelligible, and certainly that rawness was its calling card, some bands today still try to keep that sound (even though production values have improved) as to me Satanic Warmaster's "Nachzehrer" sounds like it was recorded in a cave, and Negative Plane's "Stained Glass Revelations", which i'm listening to at the moment, certainly has that early Black Metal sound but both are worthy examples of good modern Black Metal. Other bands which i consider to illustrate what is good about modern Black Metal are NunFuckRitual, Septicflesh and Ordo Obsidium (mentioned in a previous post), Throne Of Katarsis, Gnaw Their Tongues, Haemoth, Dodsferd, and the return of Archgoat.

And then there's these variations on Black Metal, such as Atmospheric Black Metal, Ambient Black Metal, Depressive Black Metal, and Post- Black Metal (sometimes called Shoegaze Black Metal - which might even possibly be considered bordering a little on mainstream) which are all deserving of merit and appeal to my tastes, as even though i consider Black Metal to be very atmospheric music there is nothing wrong at all with innovations that are a lot more melodic (hypnotic and ambient even) while maintaing a cetain rawness and the harsh sound, but with less aggression, and as such have re-kindled my love of Black Metal, bands such as Alcest, Falloch, Agalloch, So Hideous...., My Love, Thy Light, Lifelover, Deafhaven, Weakling, Lantlos, Heretoir, October Falls, An Autumn For Crippled Children and loads more, too many to mention, maybe in another post, and even Wolves In The Throne Room (the band that really got me into that atmospheric hypnotic wall of sound that can be created by the guitars, while still being firmly grounded in the Black Metal framework).

At the beginning of this post i stated that Black Metal is a minority genre but now as a genre it occupies at least half of my music collection (so now its definitely the majority!) and if you looked at my previous posts below about my recent purchases and downloads it's plain to see how that is, i'm always looking for new Black Metal music, hence this blog. (When i say new Black Metal music, i don't just mean new releases, as i'm sure there's loads of great Black Metal music out there, both old and new that i've not heard, as can be seen also with my wish-list).