Explorations in the Extreme, On the Fringes of Music: The First Wave of Black Metal
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| Hellhammer |
We all, or at least everyone that likes black metal, knows that the current sound of black metal is mostly influenced by what is called the second wave which started somewhere around the mid 80s in Norway with the formation of Mayhem. But before that there was another wave of bands starting to emerge in the late 70s and early 80s that are now known as the first wave of black metal. When talking about the first wave of black metal there are usually two questions being asked, who was the first black metal band and is most of the first wave even black metal (mostly, not really). A number of bands are usually mentioned when talking about the first wave, most notably of course Venom and Bathory. Other bands include King Diamond, Hellhammer/Celtic Frost, and some Teutonic thrash metal bands that were an influence on black metal's early development like Kreator, Sodom, particularly In the Sign of Evil, and Destruction. The Wikipedia article also mentions Death and Possessed as parts of the first wave, but I honestly think that's bullshit and I've never seen that claim anywhere else. Possessed at least makes some sense as an influence, considering their anti-theistic and satanic imagery. Death, on the other hand, doesn't really have many sonic or thematic similarities to the other first wave bands, despite drawing from some similar influences.
Now, so much for an introduction that will already piss a few people off, which is of course an absolute unavoidability when talking about black metal. The question is what can you expect from this article ? Well, what this will not be is a breakdown of the specific timeline of first wave black metal, instead I have picked out four, more like five, bands, and I will talk about their records and where I think their influence shows in what we call black metal nowadays. Mostly this will just be an article for me to fuck around, listen to some records again, and piss someone off with my uninformed takes. The bands that I will be focusing on today are Venom, Bathory and Hellhammer/Celtic Frost. I'll also include a short section about Sodom, but only to talk about In the Sign of Evil. I have never listened to that record, but it has been mentioned so much in the context of first wave black metal that I wanted to give it a listen for this article. King Diamond should probably not go unmentioned as well, particularly for his introduction of face paint, which would later inspire the corpse paint of second wave bands. However I won't be dedicating a whole section on him.
Bathory
If there is one thing that I want to get out of the way first with Bathory, it's that, in my opinion, Bathory were the first real black metal band, and Under the Sign of the Black Mark was the first real black metal record. Now, why do I say this ? I mean Venom established the term black metal and released records years before Under the Sign of the Black Mark, or even Bathory's self-titled, were released. Well, I think the record did something Venom never did, and probably also weren't interested in: it not only has the classic black metal aesthetics, but also is the first record where the thrash metal roots of the genre are mostly an afterthought and the sound is through and through black metal. One significant difference this still has to what the Norwegians would do later on are the emotions on display here. This record doesn't feel cold or isolated, and definitely not melancholic, instead it feels blisteringly angry and aggressive.
Another Bathory record that has to be mentioned here is Blood Fire Death (and to a lesser extent also its follow ups Hammerheart and Twilight of the Gods). This record is the predecessor to both modern pagan black metal and viking metal, with its introduction of Nordic mythology as the central theme in place of the previous satanic themes. As such, it paved the way for bands like Windir or Enslaved, as well as numerous bands in the viking metal style which don't really fall under the black metal umbrella, such as Scald. Although, at least the sonic development of that genre is more fully fleshed out on Hammerheart and Twilight of the Gods it is already present here on the title track.
Let's start off this part with a bit of sacrilege ,shall we? After all, that is what all this black metal stuff is about, right? I don't think I had ever heard a full Venom record before writing this article, and I remember telling a friend a few years ago that they were just another boring NWOBHM band that just put on some makeup and played some theatre with costumes. Now, I don't know how much Venom I had listened to at that point exactly, but definitely not a lot, and disliking the band was probably more of a matter of misguided principles at that point. Well, now that I'm older and I have stopped taking things as seriously, I gave them another listen for this article. More specifically, I listened to Welcome to Hell and, of course, Black Metal. And while I would say that I still don't really get it on a personal level, and this is certainly not for me, not really a surprise since I don't really like the NWOBHM. But I do get why this was such a huge influence on later bands. For releases from 1981/1982, this is pretty extreme and chaotic, combined with the satanic lyrics; it certainly must have been pretty crazy to hear as a teenager interested in making metal and scaring your parents during the 80s.
Hellhammer is a band that, in my opinion, needs to be mentioned in basically any article about extreme metal and its foundations. Whether you think Hellhammer is unlistenable garbage, or you think they are the greatest thing to happen to metal since Tony Iommi recorded the first riffs for Black Sabbath's self-titled, I think that it's undeniable that they have laid the groundwork for the development of extreme metal in the following years. Everything is here with this band: the extremely lo-fi production, the repetitive riffs and the classic back cover layout on the vinyl version of Apocalyptic Raids.
Not only that, but the whole aesthetic of grainy, black and white pictures taken by Mayhem, Darkthrone (Picture of Fenriz shown above) etc. was inspired primarily by Hellhammers own band pictures. They have recently been released alongside a ton of other artwork in a photo book called Only Death Is Real, for those interested in more of those pictures.
After Hellhammer of course came Celtic Frost and while I think that with Morbid Tales, which feels mostly like a more well produced and thought out Hellhammer, the band already removed some of the black metal elements more present in Hellhammer, I still think that their second record, To Mega Therion, should not go unmentioned here. Not to say the whole band's catalogue has not been a huge source of inspiration for later black metal bands, thinking of Darkthrone's Panzerfaust, for example, but I think To Mega Therion's aesthetic and sense for the dramatic has had a huge impact. especially on the more "popular" strain of black metal with bands like Cradle of Filth or Satyricon. Hearing the intro track Innocence and Wrath alone should give you an idea of why I think that, with its combination of a slow doomy riff and keyboard. This might also be seen as the birthplace of all symphonic metal, not just the symphonic black metal that followed after it.
Damn when I first set out to listen to In the Sign of Evil as part of this article, I did not expect it to have this much of a black metal feeling. I expected it to be a thrash metal release with some slight black metal undertones, but it really has a lot of the trademarks black metal still has today, especially the extreme repetitiveness of its riffs and the atmosphere they create. Some of these riffs could be put directly onto Darkthrone's Panzerfaust, which, to be fair, is one of their most thrash ,or rather Celtic Frost inspired, releases, and while you may notice it, it would blend it pretty nicely. Perhaps it is not worth a whole section in an article about first wave black metal, but I can definitely see why it always gets mentioned as an important release, and well, this is my article and I wanted to write about it so here we go.
Well, have we answered all the questions surrounding first wave black metal and unearthed its secrets. Not really, but I hope you have had some fun with this article, and if you are new to the subject, perhaps learned something or gave a record I mentioned a spin. If instead you are someone already familiar with black metal, I hope you at least got angry at something in this article or reminisced about your discovery of these bands.
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