True Confessions: I Don't Like Black Metal

I have something of a confession to make. I don't like black metal. I've tried. I really have. Now you may say this is of no import, but it's something of a mystery to me. Y'see, I'm 40 years old. I've been into metal since around '82-'83. I love thrash metal, I love death metal, grindcore, doom, crust and other bastard forms of music to death and still do. And when black metal's first serious wave appeared, I tried to like it, and some bands I did. I can't fault the early Burzum recordings for sheer ambient evil, the majesty of Emperor, the amazing primitivism of some of Darkthrone's earliest work all speak to me, and of course I will always hail Bathory from on high. But, apart from the sick strains of war metal like Beherit, Blasphemy, etc.,the genre has always left me cold. Now I was one of the people who followed the murders and burnings in Norway, and the copycat crimes they inspired, but that didn't make me feel any better about the music, especially since by that time the scene was dividing itself into ever sillier factions. The true necro-fiends, the vampire romantics, the epic melodramatics, as well as bands that were just plain awful. It reminded me of death metal's massive and mostly suicidal overpopulation in the middle nineties. And nowadays it's only the "weird" stuff like Xasthur and Wolves In The Throne Room that grab me at all. I'll catch up with stuff like Dead Raven Choir and Wolfmangler when I have hours to waste on questionable art. Read: probably never.

But that still doesn't really explain my general disdain for the genre. Death metal went through a similar growth/fall/resurrection syndrome, and I didn't lose my taste for it, so what's the deal? I think that for the most part, of almost any music style except power metal, black metal seems to be endlessly screaming "look at me! Look how evil I am!" The worst bands in the genre (Ancient, for example) seem to merely write odes their own bogus nihilism. And yes, while some did demonstrate that they were indeed, card carrying haters of life, you've got to admit that those cases are anecdotal at best. Black metal is horribly self-involved and relentlessly grim in a self-promotional sense (i.e. most of these nitwits wouldn't do what they do if no-one was watching). It's self-indulgent, preposterously overblown at times, as witness the fascist (not necessarily racist, but I'm not even going to get into the whole NSBM theater of shock in this revue) proclamations by so many meglomaniacs within the scene. All in all it just seems to boil down into one big evil pose-fest, as false in foundation as most of the pop-goth, pop-punk, nu-metal acts who's integrity is rightfully questioned constantly.

But Immortal are one of those bands who, at least intially got the genre right. This, their first album proper was released in Europe by the French Osmose Productions label, and made it to the US on the back of terribly misguided and badly handled distribution deal with JL America. But despite cheap-ass packaging, Immortal's atmosphere of evil and wintry mood helped them stand out among others donning corpsepaint and pentagrams. Mostly because they seemed to write actual songs, not just five minute frost-bitten love letters to their own subconscious. And plus, the songs here vary in tempo, recalling the varied moods of Bathory or even Venom, which adds a lot of depth to the material. True, "The Call of the Wintermoon" blasts off in a frenzied clatter of drumming, it manages to carry a deep resonance as well. Perhaps because there's actually some bottom end to the sound, something many a shrieking "necro" black metal album lack. "Unholy Forces of Evil" mixes up it's paces to keep the listener involved, while the intros to "Cryptic Winterstorms" and "A Perfect Vision of the Rising Northland" recall the kind of medeival ambience Satyricon would weild even more plainly on their debut album.

The band are shadowed on the sleeve, their faces obscured with the only sign of self-promotion being the one member who breathes fire. All in all, a moody, truly dark and affecting black metal record.

Now Immortal would soon change quite a lot, mind you, as on their next couple of albums they seemed compelled to perform tempos so fast that they burned a couple pf drummers out over the course of a few years. Beyond that, some are drawn to laugh at their ever sillier manner of presenting themselves, with some hailing the more riff-based metal they'd taken up by the turn of the century. But as far as Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism is concerned, it's one of the few black metal records I loved back in the day and still love now. Or am I not allowed to use the word "love" to describe black metal? Does this mean my cred has dropped? After reading Daniel Ekeroth's amazing book about the Swedish death metal scene, his impressions of the difference between that scene and the emerging black metal world was stark. Til that point metal had been about making great music and having a good time. Black metal was about posing evil and hating people. To some degree, it meant you had to become an asshole to gain admittance. Maybe that's why it was always a bit fishy to me...I didn't want to be an asshole. Huh.