The Canon, I: an Enumerative Review; or, Canonical Black Metal: 1981-1983

I often make the assumption that those of you who frequent this lightless cavern are "in the know", and indeed the content here is purposefully not directed toward anybody who has only a passing interest in the genre.  I intend to keep it that way: Blackened Relics exists for those of us who feel this shit in the pits of our seared, forsaken hearts.

Allow me to clarify, then, before I present the first installment of this index.  It is not intended as a primer for the uninitiated into The Canon, to which I frequently make reference, but is, instead, my lens focusing in a very personal way on the essential music of the golden age of black metal (and a bit of the eras preceding and succeeding), which is ultimately the focal point of this entire site, in chronology.  Note that I may periodically update these as I realise I've forgotten something.  Without further ado, then...

The Canon, I: 1981-1983

1981

       

Venom - Welcome to Hell

Welcome to Hell is right, this snarling little bastard being, arguably, the first shot in the future black metal genre's war on everything good and clean, not to mention the record that kickstarted the extreme metal movement.  Though heavily indebted to punk on this, their debut, Venom was still squarely a metal band, right down to the gauntlets and fuck-your-sister demeanor.  It was essentially just dark, minimalist, trussed up speed metal at the end of the day, but, doom metal aside, what isn't?

1982

Venom - Black Metal

And suddenly, somehow, before the notions of thrash, doom, or death metal - hell, before even speed metal had a name, let alone could be considered a full-fledged, standalone genre - black metal was born.  Of course, neither here nor on the debut did it sound on the surface similar to how it would come to be known, but nonetheless, Black Metal initiated a number of tropes that would come to be genre-definitive, whether intentional or not: hyperspeed, chainsaw riffing and skeletal drumming, scuzzy, wind-blower production, a preoccupation with the demonic, alter-egos complete with patented noms de guerre, even monochromatic album art are all present and accounted for, and still to this day, approaching forty years later, are staples of the artform and accompanying aesthetic.

1983

  

Hellhammer - Death Fiend/Triumph of Death

While Hellhammer can lay claim to being responsible for the first genuinely "black" musical elements to appear on record anywhere, at the Death Fiend/Triumph of Death (two demos, one session) juncture, recording live in a toilet, no doubt, they had yet to figure out how to constructively communicate any kind of coherent weltanschauung.  The components here are effectively the same as those found on the subsequent two releases - a seething melange of Venom, UK crusties Discharge and everything-godfathers Motörhead - yet their utilisation and integration is forced and illogical and, ultimately, unsuccessful.  Translated: the songwriting's clumsy and inept, and not in a way that you're gonna like.  Still, the (untapped) spirit of productive nihilism swirling herein is the same foundational one that the group would go on, as early as a mere six months later, to fashion into the brutal, single-minded bludgeoning and earth scorching of the next two Hellhammer releases and, from there, refine as the stately, introverted, violent existentialism of Celtic Frost.

Hellhammer - Satanic Rites

A mere six months following the recording of the Death Fiend/Triumph of Death dual demo, a clunky, amateur affair, and here Hellhammer is already roaring back to life with what is without doubt one of the single most influential slabs of primitive, primordial (proto-?)black metal.  Satanic Rites is a much leaner, focused release than the preceding cacophonies, and the residue of it's brutal, minimalist Venom-cum-Discharge spiked with Motorhead miasma can still be seen clinging stubbornly to the hulls of everybody from '90s stalwarts Burzum and Ildjarn and into the 2000s via acts like 1349 and the entire raw black metal set.  It's rollicking, thudding two-evil-chords-and-two-only importance simply cannot be overstated.

Slayer - Show No Mercy

This album, or indeed anything by Slayer, may not, at first blush, seem as if it belongs here, but here me out: the first couple of Slayer's recorded output are and will always be, to my ears, seminal first wave black metal.  While Hellhammer was knocking around during the same year and ocean away with their first recorded output that stripped Venom's over-the-top Satanic, punk-infused metallic extremity down to its most basic components parts and marrying it back to the bleakly minimalist, bulldozing hardcore/crust of Discharge, Slayer were busy Stateside taking that same Venom template, spiking it with Judas Priestisms, and turning the whole seething melange up to evleven...hundred.  It's practically Bathory.

Genuflect you motherfuckers.


Note: You'll notice that Mercyful Fate is not listed here.  I'm actually a huge fan, and perhaps in the future I'll have a change of heart on this, but as of today, I'm convinced that from a musical standpoint, they don't belong here.  Aesthetic, sure, but the primacy of aesthetics is not one that I champion in this respect.

The Lords of Chaos Film: Shameful

Just don't.

When I initially heard of the potential for this movie, probably almost a decade ago now, I thought, "Oh, for fuck's sake."  Then nothing happened with it, save the occasional update about some core personnel falling through.  I had largely forgotten about it.

I had largely forgotten about it, that is, until sometime last year, when all of a sudden there were reports of it actually being filmed.  Shortly thereafter, it had a proposed release date.  I was still dubious that it'd ever actually happen, but lo and behold, in the final months of 2018, it did.  The prospect horrified me.  Still, I held out hope that it'd be a fully indie affair and would come and go with little said about it and even less remembered.

As it turns out, memes began to turn up on social media relating directly thereto, and suddenly the shrouded memory of that most personally-influential of all musical movements was thrust forward into the public consciousness, somewhere that it was simply never meant to be, and made a mockery of.

I hang my head for black metal.

"It's just music," I've heard some say.  "Why take it so seriously?"

For some of us, that's what it's there for. 

Bård Eithun (Thorns) - Daemonium Aeternus #2 - 1992

Snorre Ruch (Blackthorn), likely 1991-1992

Bård Eithun (Faust), likely 1991-1992

So here's where shit gets complicated, because I'm about to drop a giant, spiked gauntlet of a bomb on y'all: with the exception of Mayhem, Thorns is more responsible than any other band for the form of the black metal genre from the second wave on.  Paradoxically, they sound(ed) completely unlike any of their countrymen at the time of their first releases - a handful of demos in '91 and '92 - coming to (un)light, and that they never managed a proper full-length during this now-gestational period is a serious shame, for if they had, they would no doubt be mentioned in the same breath as the Mayhem/Darkthrone/Burzum/Emperor/Immortal pentumvirate.

Snorre Ruch rehearsing as second guitarist with Mayhem, likely 1992-1993, at the Kråkstad house

Snorre Ruch in prison, likely 1994-1998

Really though: the extreme harmonic dissonance and classically-inspired melodic key signatures, not to mention the lightning-wristed tremolo picking and general vibe of piercing blackness that the old Norwegian guard, and therefore the entire genre as it stands today, is known for all come from Mayhem and this band.  The fact that mastermind Snorre Ruch (Blackthorn, guitars/vocals) both played in Mayhem for a time as a second guitarist and contributed material to De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, not to mention, according to reports, fleshing out Dead's lyrical sketches for the record, should speak volumes.  Indeed, within the tracks on the legendary demos and rehearsals that the group, including in their embryonic form as Stigma Diabolicum, did manage are stalwart, immediately recognisable riffs that later ended up being used by Euronymous himself for that very blackened obelisk of swirling, antimatter miasma.

Thorns/Stigma Diabolicum - Demos, Rehearsals - 1991/1992

Mandatory.

Bård "Faust" Eithun kit killing, likely 1993 on tour in the UK with Emperor

Meanwhile, I've unearthed an interview with Faust (then known simply as Bård Eithun), who, during his Orcustus days before destroying the rhythm sections of Emperor's '93 and '94 releases - you know the ones - and murdering strangers in the woods, had, in fact, been pounding skins with none other than Thorns.  This piece is from Daemonium Aeturnus #2 (1992), the same Dutch 'zine, run by The Unsane of the ultra-cult Bestial Summoning horde, whose issue #1 served as the source for the previous relic featuring Fenriz directly following the release of A Blaze in the Northern Sky.

Bård Eithun (Thorns) - Daemonium Aeternus #2 - 1992


Æon

Black Metal Is Dead

Black metal is dead.  Dead forever.  May it rest in peace.

This doesn't mean that Blackened Relics is dead, of course.  I'm just pointing out a fact that is, at this point, indisputable by my reckoning.

Growing up - for the sake of reference, I heard my first black metal album (Emperor's Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk) at the age of 12 in early 1998, and after a few months had completely immersed myself in the stuff as much as was possible in the residual days of tape trading and fanzines and bedroom distros and minimal availability of online information - I always thought of black metal as "mine".  Perhaps that isn't fair, seeing especially how the strain of it - the Norwegian one that existed in proper form from approximately 1988 to 1994 - that is most readily regarded as "classic" and "canonical" was, by some measures, never meant to belong to any but its creators and their close associates.  Nevertheless, I very distinctly recall a time when this was possibly the only artistic medium that I'd ever encountered that truly resonated with me on a spiritual level - to an extent this is still true - and moreover, one when nobody knew what this stuff was.  This may seem difficult to conceive today in 2018, but extreme metal, and especially black metal, in the mid-to-late '90s was still very much an underground affair.

Granted, I'm from northern Middle Tennessee - hail the fatherland and the ancestors and all that noise - specifically a little place called Sumner County, where the northwest outskirts of the Nashville Basin commence their rapid rise toward the southernmost portion of the Northern Highland Rim.  Furthermore, I subscribe to a theory that reads thus: novel forms of expression in America tend to begin at the coasts and gradually migrate inward, with a few notable exceptions.  This theory is no longer as relevant today in the time of rapid and immediate transmission of information via the internet, but in 1998 it absolutely held true.  In and around Nashville (the closest metropolitan area to where I grew up, about 30 miles northeast thereof), most folks who were "in the know" barely knew what thrash metal - and I mean the pedestrian stuff, like Megadeth and Anthrax - was, and the "black metal" tag as I then espoused it was routinely met with head-scratching and shrugged shoulders and overall general indifference; bear in mind that, at the time, Nashville was not the rapidly growing, "hip" place that's become in the last five or ten years: it was an economically stagnating, decaying urban mecca that was decidedly not cool, and decidedly, collectively out-of-touch as far as the artistically-inclined went with things like extreme metal.  I point this out to illustrate the fact that the likes of black metal simply had no forum in my formative years.  I, meanwhile, had stumbled upon this music accidentally, via channels largely uninteresting or at best unavailable to others, and for the entirety of my youth before turning 18 or so, it would remain to me something that I and I alone loved and understood.

Those were genuinely magical times.  I have never since felt anything so powerful as the essence of the early Norwegian records, and even the Swedish and the Polish and the French ones, for that matter.  I believed in it.  It fucking spoke to me, understand?  It was the lens I had been searching for through which I might at last view with some degree of clarity my then-hazy conception of life, of the world, above all of the human condition, and it was serendipitous that it's prescription was such as it was.  Frankly, it - all of extreme metal, all of extreme music, even, but still above all black metal - has been one of the single most important chisels in sculpting my adult weltanschauung.  I wear that badge with pride even today, as a thirty-two year-old man.

Times are different now, though.  That was almost two decades ago, that explosion of crystalline realization wherein I discovered my aesthetic, my ideological, my spiritual home, and since then, black metal has, to the greatest degree that an artform as once- and theoretically uncompromising as it possibly can, entered the mainstream.  Whether I like it or not, it isn't mine anymore, or yours for that matter, and there's nothing that any of us could've done to stop it's slip from our skeletal-fingered grasps.  Outsiders, the other, moved in and co-opted all of the genuine elements that once made it vital.  Those same elements, those essential monads that gave the genre meaning and motion, were stolen and hollowed out and put on display on social media, in meaningles memes, and, worst of all, in records masquerading has having some link to black metal's glorious past, thus rendering them suddenly meaningless in these new venues and incarnations.  I suspect that my meaning is clear without the citation of specific examples, which in this case I absolutely refuse to do lest I bear the responsibility of disseminating them even further.

ALl of the above, in the end, in a process lasting 20 years as of today by my reckoning, has ultimately killed the genre.  Black metal is dead.  Dead and gone.  Dead forever.  Just like any lifeform, it cannot be resuscitated by any means presently known to us.  It's tragic, isn't it, that an artform, a veritable weltanschauung from which I drew so much during the formative years of my own, could become such a miserable shell of its former self.

However, this is the very reason that I continue to, even sparingly, update this blog: in spite of its physical expiration, the spirit, the ethos of the genre's zenith may yet be experienced as genuinely today herein, and in other places like this, by us, we true believers, who ever refuse to drop the torch bearing the Black Flame.  Though its vitality no longer exist, it's essence still inspires, still transports, still transforms those of us who still possess the fortitude, mental, physical, spiritual, to handle it.  The creators, your Tom Warriors and Quorthons and Euronymouses and Fenrizess and Vargs, belched forth something into the collective consciousness of those prepared and willing to receive it that was so powerful that it ceased to be theirs, that it transcended the limitations of sound and word and time and space and will always exist, ripe to be tapped and channeled through us in the present day.  May this blog remain a suitable spike.

The Black Flame burns eternal...


Æon

Purify - Bury Post-Everything

Below you'll find the text - with a few modifications - of an angry post I wrote four years ago after some encounters with shithead hipster co-option of black metal.  I'm still angry about this, what with bands like Deafheaven, Krallice, and more beside emerging from the "post-black metal" (read: hipster, because it's a real thing that's dangerous) sewer.  I'm re-posting this primarily because this wave of largely American bands full of entitled art school students with inferiority complexes and - worst of all - no genuine interest in metal music as such outside of their warped and unfair view of black metal as a fetishized, avantgarde curio is not dying out fast enough; if I can keep even one other person from buying their records or seeing them live, then I've succeeded.

Don't believe me?  Think I'm buying into a "myth of hipster metal?"  Kill yourself.  Have a listen to Liturgy's (by far the worst of the bunch) abomination of a record Aesthethica, and track down their notorious video interview, as well as the "manifesto" of the pretentious ass behind that group, absorb the three, and then come back and try and give me a valid reason for not discouraging people from supporting these bands. You won't be able to.  

This is still happening.  Yes, I've posted nothing in a year, but real life happens.  Ten, twelve, thirteen years ago (I'm now 27, 28 in July) this blog would have been my sole activity, but these days, whether I like it or not, I'm grown: I'm married, I have a 'career,' and I run a side-business with my wife which increasingly takes up more and more of my time.  Still, music - above all heavy metal, above all black metal - is yet my greatest passion, just as it was nearly 16 years ago when I heard Emperor for the very first time.

I won't let this project die.  The state of black metal, at least that state by which it's increasingly coming to be known, concerns me.  The other day, I ran into a gentleman in the audience of a show that my wife and I produced, and he discovered that I was partial to black/death/etc. metal.  He was young - barely college-aged, although that is inherently neither here nor there - and proceeded to very excitedly tell me about all of the black metal he'd been listening to: Alcest, Amesoeurs, Wolves in the Throne Room, Liturgy, that ilk.  I asked him about Emperor, and he said, "I don't really know much about them, only that they're old."  Taken aback, I asked him about Darkthrone, Mayhem, and Bathory, and he said "I don't know: they're a little too noisy for me."

Some months later, I ran into another gentleman at another show, again one that my wife and I had produced, who had sewn a Burzum - Hvis lyset tar oss patch onto the arm of a zip-up hoodie (sp?).  I asked him about it, and he responded sheepsihly, verbatim, "What can I say?  I have bad taste."  I raised an eyebrow and smirked, then inquired about his other patch, as I didn't recognize the logo.  "Wolves in the Throne Room," he answered, at which I hesitated before responding, "Of course: I should have known."  I abruptly excused myself.

There is a word that I hesitate to use for these two fellas, one based largely on their attitudes, but those of you who are old enough to know better and present enough to have been paying attention know what it is.  These bands (excluding Burzum, of course), their fans, and the general trend of which they seem to be a part will die out soon enough, and you'll never find any of them, or any groups resembling them, featured here.  I'll never use the terms "atmospheric," "depressive/suicidal," or "post-" to describe some mythological subset of black metal that the generation of listeners discovering this music - our music - of late have been applying in a (vain) attempt to refashion it more suitably in their own image.  Those of us who love honest-to-goodness black metal - unadulterated, untainted, unholy - won't let it die or be replaced or reappropriated.  It is still, at its core, heavy metal, not an outcropping of experimental arthouse rock, and I take it deadly seriously

The black flame still burns.


Æon 

Fenriz (Darkthrone) - Daemonium Aeturnus 'Zine # 1 - 1991

Soulside Journey-era group shot, probably ca. 1989-1990.  From L to R: Ivar Enger (Zephyrous), Ted Skjellum (Nocturno Culto), Hank Amarillo/Gylve Nagell (Fenriz), Dag Nilsen.

As I've been listening a lot to the Norwegian canon of late, following my presentation of the notorious Euronymous/Dead dual interview in Slayer # 8, I went and tracked down this short piece with Fenriz conducted right before the release of A Blaze in the Northern Sky, wherein he touches on the band's recent (and dramatic) transition from technical-leaning death metal to gnarled, grizzly black metal, resulting in what was, by some estimations, the first fully-fledged second-wave and/or Norwegian black metal record (I disagree, and point to Mayhem's 1987 EP Deathcrush, pretending that Pure Fucking Armageddon is ineligible given its demo status).

Fenriz (Darkthrone) - Daemonium Aeturnus 'Zine # 1 - 1991

Some notes about this: my presentation of it is in the old format, being that it's copied directly from web text and/or manually transcribed by me (the case in this instance is the former).  Please bear in mind that I've never actually seen this interview in print.  In fact, I've never even seen this issue of Daemonium Aeturnus (misspelled in the text as Dremonium Aeturnus) in print, physically, scanned, or otherwise.  I've never seen it referenced anywhere other than in the context of this Fenriz interview, which has been reproduced on a number of Darkthrone fan sites through the years.  Furthermore, I've never seen or even heard of other interviews from other bands with this issue.  Full disclosure.  However, it stands to reason that it did exist, as I have the second issue.

The text of this interview, in this case, was retrieved from http://come.to/northern_evilness/interviews/91.html, which was a great Darkthrone fansite from way back when.

The photos that I've included throughout, meanwhile, are especially fascinating, as you can see snapshots of the group's transition from death metal to black metal.  The band's adoption of corpse paint, meanwhile, may very well have begun with Fenriz, as many of the group shots below will attest.

Zephyrous, A Blaze in the Northern Sky sessions, ca. 1991

Nocturno Culto, A Blaze in the Northern Sky sessions, ca. 1991

Fenriz, ca. 1990-1991

Zephyrous, probably from the A Blaze in the Northern Sky sessions, ca. 1991

\

Fenriz, ca, 1990-1991

Nocturno Culto, probably from the A Blaze in the Northern Sky sesions, ca. 1991

From L to R: Nocturno Culto, Fenriz, ca, 1990-1991

Nocturno Culto, probably from the A Blaze in the Northern Sky sessions, ca. 1991

Group shot, from L to R: Dag Nilsen, Fenriz, Zephyrous, Nocturno Culto, ca. A Blaze in the Northern Sky recordings or 1990-1991

Group shot, from L to R: Nocturno Culto, Dag Nilsen, Zephyrous, Fenriz, ca. 1990-1991

Group shot, from L to R: Dag Nilsen, Nocturno Culto, Fenriz, Zephyrous, ca. 1990-1991

Zephyrous, probably from the A Blaze in the Northern Sky sessions, ca. 1991

Æon

Euronymous and Dead (Mayhem) - Slayer 'Zine # 8 - 1991

Dead (L) and Euronymous (R), 1990 or 1991, in the Kråkstad house

The interview featured here with both Mayhem's Euronymous and Dead from Metalion's Slayer 'Zine is one of the most cited and infamous interviews of black metal's entire history.  You've likely read portions of it already, as it's been directly quoted if not outright reprinted in every tome treating the genre, not to mention in more articles on the band and black metal in general than I'm even aware of.  It is absolutely mandatory reading.

Euronymous and Dead - Slayer 'Zine # 8 - 1991

The mythology of Mayhem has, at this point, entered into canonical legend, and I won't recount it here.  Perhaps at some point I'll do a full write-up of black metal's history, but that is a different (and massive) undertaking altogether.  It is, at the very least, worth pointing out that by 1991, Dead was, erm, dead, and Euronymous followed suit in 1993.  Mayhem, while having been around longer than nearly everybody else as far as "second-wave" black metal is concerned, produced surprisingly little material from 1987 to 1994 (the primary years of concern for this blog).  "Freezing Moon" and "Carnage," a pair of tracks recorded in 1990 for the Projections of a Stained Mind compilation on the Swedish Chicken Brain Records, were the only Mayhem studio recordings to feature the "classic" lineup of Euronymous (guitars), Dead (vocals), Necrobutcher (bass), and Hellhammer (drums).  While featured on the aforementioned compilation, they were also released as a standalone demo by the band, and in 1995 as a vinyl only EP.  They are utterly essential listening, and represent a glimpse at how De Mysteriis Dom. Sathanas may have sounded had they recorded it prior to Dead's suicide.

Mayhem - Studio Tracks with Dead, 1990

It seems that, in some circles, revisionism abounds with respect to Mayhem and their influence, not to mention the quality of their music, but the facts remain that they were utterly seminal with respect to the Norwegian scene and black metal's entire second wave, and furthermore that their music was utterly ground-breaking and remains both draw-dropping and among the absolute best the genre has offered and will ever offer to this day.

Respect.

The classic lineup, probably ca. 1990 or early 1991.  From L to R: Hellhammer, Dead, Euronymous, Necrobutcher.

Dead, probably ca. 1990

Euronymous, probably ca. 1990

Euronymous, probably ca. 1990

Dead, probably ca. 1990

From L to R: Euronymous, Necrobutcher, Dead, probably ca. 1988 - 1990, potentially in the Kråkstad house

Æon

Up from the Tombs... (a Statement of Intent)

I'm back.

Again, a solid year has elapsed since last I was active.  Again, Blackened Relics will never die.

Metal, and above all black metal, was the first thing I ever truly believed in.  No religion ever really stuck, no philosophical system ever spoke to me.  Black metal did both and still does, some twenty years after first discovering it.  The first records I heard from the genre (all bona fide classics, to be sure) were like (un?)holy, spiritual tomes, the musicians the very Gods themselves.  Black metal possesses a mysticism unlike any other artistic medium/movement/concept I've ever experienced.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not absolutely delusional.  I'm well aware that the fellas who wrote and recorded my favorite albums are not deities.  Regardless of what they might at one point have had you to believe, they're people, just like you, and just like me, regular dudes with leather jackets like mine and guitars like mine and a fistful of treasured albums like mine who were in the right place at the right time.  My reverence for this music is not rooted in the personalities of those who played it.

No, my reverence for black metal, above all for the early-mid '90s stuff, above all for the Norwegian stuff, stems from what I see as its uniqueness in the annals of heavy metal and music in general.  It tapped into that primordial center, the core of what makes heavy metal heavy metal.  It ruthlessly yanked out the pure, elemental essence of everything that heavy metal was imagined/intended to make a person feel/think/experience and presented it, distilled, as a veritable, bottled elixir that mere mortals like me could taste, and subsequently could we commune with the divine.

To clarify, I do not pretend to be someone or something I'm not.  I was not around in the late '80s/early '90s when the Scandinavian thing really started to blow up; I was much too young and in the wrong country.  I have never been anything remotely resembling a "mover and shaker" in any black metal scene anywhere ever, nor have I ever associated with those who are.  Who I am, though, is someone who has listened to this music for just shy of two decades, and who has embraced it and watched it change into something else entirely than what it was when I first got wind of it, which no doubt was something else entirely than when it's makers made it.  I am someone who feels this music to his very bones, has come to something of an understanding of its true spirit, and who believes in preserving it.  Am I within my rights by claiming to be privy to some sort of guardianship necessary to perpetuate what I believe black metal was always about?  I don't really care.  I feel its spirit powerfully enough that I believe my work with Blackened Relics is true to the same.

I believe that truly dedicated archivists (yeah, I know, it sounds real fuckin' pretentious, but that's what I am) of heavy metal and any/all of its derivatives are a swiftly dying breed.  Tape-trading is all but extinct.  The 'zine is a sliver of a shadow of its glory days.  Even Internet fan sites have largely died out.  Meanwhile, physical music releases, I believe, will soon no longer be produced in any capacity.  Casual listening/exploration is the norm.  Blackened Relics is intended to preserve not only the spirit of black metal itself, but also the practice of dedication to it.  Blogspots themselves are fewer and further between every day, but this will remain.

Immerse yourself.  Dedicate and isolate.

AEon

Mika (Impaled Nazarene) - Sinistrari 'Zine # 1 - 1992

Impaled Nazarene: members unknown; date unknown

One of the seminal war metal bands (to my ears) along with Blasphemy and fellow countrymen Beherit (and maybe Sarcofago?), not to mention about as completely over-the-fucking-top as extreme metal gets, Finnish killsquad Impaled Nazarene drew from much the same well as the Norwegians and Swedes with respect to influence.  However, where those two factions went for atmosphere (Norway) and melody (Sweden), early Impaled Nazarene (and early Beherit, for that matter) blasted o'er the path of full-on chaos and destruction, influences from both grindcore and crust punk prevalent especially on albums like (my personal favourite) Ugra-Karma.

Here, then, is an interview from 1992 (23 years ago as of today, which is mind-blowing) conducted with vocalist Mika Luttinen in the first issue of American 'zine Sinistrari.  Something that I've noticed in reading interviews from our era of interest with the likes of Finnish cults like these fellas and Beherit, as well as even the likes of Marduk, is that they're not nearly as deadly serious/surrealistic as those given by the Norwegians.  In fact, the only other scene that comes to mind whose members espoused similar severity was the French Black Legions milieu.  Maybe sometimes the guys from the early Polish scene would spout off about impending holy wars, but the Norwegians (and the French) easily take first place in that respect.

Mika (Impaled Nazarene) - Sinistrari 'Zine # 1 - 1992

I know that I said that 1993's sophomore release Ugra-Karma is my personal favourite Impaled Nazarene record, and I meant it and it is, but the debut Tol Cormpt Norz Norz Norz is more extreme and of greater historical interest given the format outlined herein: the punk influences from the former are not nearly as prevalent, and it's far and away one of the more violent and chaotic black metal releases both of the era that I'm treating and also ever.  It, and the band's entire oeuvre, for that matter, is tragically underrated by my reckoning.

Impaled Nazarene - Tol Cormpt Norz Norz Norz - 1992

Æon

Avaëthre & Këëtrëh (Belkètre) - The Black Plague # 1 - 1995

Avaëthre (Vordb) & Këëtrëh, date unknown

Belkètre is, at this point and for those who've been paying close attention, beyond legendary.  A member group of the French Black Legions debuting around '89 or so as Chapel of Ghouls (Morbid Angel title right there), the duo gradually morphed into the snarling, tortured beast that was Belkètre by '91 or '92.  By my reckoning, they were by far the most aggressive and experimental of that circle, all ugly dissonance, furious paces/drumming, and an uncommon knack for structuring songs and even whole works (demos, splits, but no albums) such that the dynamic of the sense of dread that they cultivate ebbs and flows as naturally and convincingly as the waters on the shores of Hell for which these two are no doubt destined.  Also, did I mention that they've produced some of the most enduring and classic black metal releases in history?  Their side of the 1995 split with Vlad Tepes, March to the Black Holocaust, is nothing short of monumental; the same goes for their handful of demos/rehearsals, which none of us are ever supposed to have heard.

This interview was done with both members, mainman Avaëthre (better known as Vordb - guitars, vocals, drums) & Këëtrëh (also known as Aäkon Këëtrëh, purveyor of an eponymous ambient project - guitars, vocals, bass) in the 1995 French 'zine The Black Plague, reportedly produced by Meyhna'ch of the one and only Mütiilation, and it's easily one of my favorite black metal interviews conducted with anyone, ever.  You'll see why.

Avaëthre & Këëtrëh (Belkètre) - The Black Plague # 1 - 1995

Did I mention that March to the Black Holocaust - both fucking sides of it - is essential on the level of the Norwegian records?

Belkètre - March to the Black Holocaust - 1995

(Aäkon) Këëtrëh & Avaëthre (Vordb), date unknown

(Aäkon) Këëtrëh & Avaëthre (Vordb), date unknown

I said I wasn't done.

Æon

I get sidetracked, see...

Yeah.  It's been over a year since I posted anything new, huh?

My fault.  In the meantime, for the record, I have been updating the format for old interviews such that the original text be preserved as much as possible wherever possible while still adhering to my stylistic vision for this project.  But yeah, honestly, I haven't even touched this little blog in close to a year.  Sincere apologies for that, but I'm trying desperately to find the time to do this some more.

So what the hell am I so busy doing?  I've mentioned this before, but I'm married, have a full-time job, have a small side-business (in a loose sense of the term) that I run with my wife, and play in a metal band, whose name I'm not going to mention because I don't want to use Blackened Relics as a promotional vehicle.  That's what I've been doing.  All of those things.

Further, my tastes at any given point tend to run in cycles, and while black metal is ultimately my favorite kind of music ever in the history of music, I like tons of other stuff too, and since I last worked on this blog I've been through glam rock (early '70s English stuff), glam metal (don't tell anyone, but I'm a huge Mötley Crüe fan), EDM (especially minimal techno and microhouse), power metal and '80s European speed metal, classical, gothic rock, and most lately gore/deathgrind.  At last, though, the wheel has come full circle, and the flame of the black candle has been reignited, and I'm about to go on a 'I'm-not-doin'-a-goddamn-thing' vacation for a week, which means I can fart around with this all I damn well please.

Stay tuned...

Æon

New Format

At the outset of this project, I insisted on manually transcribing every interview I posted: this was the way it was done on the fan sites of old, and in the interest of maintaining a thematic appearance - all black background, all white text - this was how I was going to it.  I made a big stink about maintaining spacing and punctuation and grammatical errors and all that noise.  However, as I thought about the reasons behind such anal retention - accuracy, preservation, etc. - it dawned on me that it doesn't get any more accurate than a copy of the source itself. 

From now on, all interview .pdfs will include scans from the 'zines where formerly there were just text transcriptions.  However, I'm still going to make them black with white text, because that's how I want to read things and that's how I think black metal-oriented things should look.  Other than that, they'll all be exactly as they originally appeared in their respective 'zines of publication.  You'll also notice a sort of introductory cover page with band logo, publication information, and any relevant notes from me: this, as I see it, is at once a necessity and also part of the bigger picture of where I want this project to go, which will be revealed in time.

I should note that interviews with no scanned source on my end, like the Emperor (Mortiis) interview from Transylvanian Damnation or the Darkthrone (Fenriz) interview from Daemonium Aeturnus that's coming up real soon, won't be changed.  This is because they are copied from old, long-dead fan sites, and I have yet to come across them in any other format, neither physically nor electronically.  Therefore, they're going to remain exactly as they are and you'll just have to take my word that their content is as close to the original source - which will always be cited - as I can make it.

While I convert all of the old interviews that are already posted to the new format, those of you who frequent this place - I know you're out there, because I consistently rack up pageviews - may find that a link to a file temporarily doesn't work.  Don't worry: it's only because I'm in the middle of removing the old one and replacing it with the new.


Æon

Kolgrim (Unpure) - Tales of the Macabre # 1 - 1993

 
Unpure are (Encyclopedia Metallum says they're still active) an early(ish) group from Sweden whose earlier efforts have been largely overlooked, no doubt due to their relatively late arrival on the scene.  (The fact that the most enduringly influential second-wave black metal bands all "officially" debuted by 1994 at the very latest cannot be denied, regardless of how good those that followed may have been).  They released a trio of demos during 1993 and 1994 before finally signing with the now-famed Austrian label Napalm for a pair of full-lengths in 1995 (Unpure) and 1996 (Coldland), consisting solely of core duo Kolgrim (bass, vocals) and Hräsvelg (guitars, drums, vocals) for all of the previous save the first demo and second LP.  In 2001, likely coinciding with the revival of interest in Swedish black metal thanks to new groups like Watain and Funeral Mist, the band released an album - Trinity in Black - through the then-cult French Drakkar label famous for its insanely limited Black Legions material.  A final full-length followed in 2004 via the Polish Agonia label, World Collapse, after which, as far as I can tell, the band fell off the face of the planet.

This piece, from the ever-reliable Tales of the Macabre # 1 from Germany, 1993, is almost more of a write-up interspersed with a brief interview with Kolgrim, but I've transcribed it despite the brevity of the interview proper for both posterity and because I think Unpure's early releases have never gotten the accolades they deserve.

Kolgrim - Tales of the Macabre # 1 - 1993

The record is great.

Unpure - Unpure - 1995

Ultra-primitive, almost pre-Norwegian second wave in its sensibilities, Unpure alternates between blasting, interweaving streams of sinister tremolo melody and trudging, morphing, ever-evolving power-chord dirges with subtle, sparing use of harmonic accents to particular effect.  It brings to my mind Samael's debut with respect to the latter, the speed/death/black metal of groups like countrymen Merciless or Rotting Christ for the former.

More to come here...


Æon

AC Wild (Bulldozer) - FETU # 7 - 1989

When my laptop bit the dust back in March or April or whenever the Hell of last year, I was working on a transcription of a piece on Italian kinda-black metallers Bulldozer from issue # 7 of the famed, primarily thrash- and hardcore-oriented Japanese 'zine FETU (Fatal Execrable Transmaniacon Undertakers - I'm pretty sure they were Napalm Death fans), published in 1989.  It's easily the most nonsensical transcription I've ever done: I genuinely have no idea what AC Wild is talking about half the time.  Granted, the interviewer had his work cut out for him given that he was trying to translate responses into English via Japanese from a fellow who thinks in Italian; the results are often hilarious.  Still, it's nonetheless an enlightening read, particularly the details Wild divulges regarding his friend's suicide.  Also, the very last line reads, in reference to the momentousness of a live Bulldozer performance in Japan, "Who needs Exodus or Testament?"  Well said, well said.

AC Wild (Bulldozer) - FETU # 7 - 1989

In reading the interview, you'll no doubt notice that the album being promoted is 1989's Neurodeliri.  However, by my reckoning, the essential Bulldozer release is without contention the debut, 1985's The Day of Wrath, and it's for that album that I'm including them on Blackened Relics.  It's a motherfucker of a record, throwing the first Bathory LP, Show No Mercy and the first couple Venom albums into a blender, dousing the mess with liquor, and then incinerating the whole unholy cocktail.  I simply cannot recommend it enough; talk about raw.  To my ears, it's just as seminal in the lineage of black metal as the prior Bathory and Sodom's In the Sign of Evil.

Bulldozer - The Day of Wrath - 1985

 

 I'd also like to take this moment to assure you all that this album cover is one of the only times that pink will ever appear in this project.

Æon

The (Emperor's) Return...

A new laptop means - at last - access to all of my materials, which furthermore means giant updates.

I'm seriously itching to work on this; be on the lookout for more albums/demos added to the older sections, not to mention photos where available.  Also, I'll be posting brand new, classic transcriptions along with - you guessed it - accompanying photos and "files".

As a teaser, I'll say this: I'm pretty sure that I was in the middle of working on an old, out-of-the-way piece on Bulldozer when the laptop went to Hell (Heaven?).  Beyond that, in the last year I've been listening to a lot of old, crusty stuff like Mutilated (France), Protector (Germany), Merciless (Sweden), Poison (Germany), and Imperator (Poland); maybe not all strictly black metal, but I think they all deserve mentions because A) they were all hugely influential on many of our favorites, and; B) they're all seriously fucking awesome.  I plan to give them all the full treatment - if you know what I mean - as well as devote plenty of space to the canonical classics.

It's good to be back.

Æon

This Will Always Be Happening

I'm fully dedicated to this little blog.  However, I'm a busy man: I have multiple jobs, one of which involves running my own business with my wife.  Add to that a "career"-y day job, said wife, and a band, and I barely have time to shit.

This blog is the first baby step of the realization of a long dream of mine, and I won't put it to rest quietly.  Instead, the way it's going to work as exactly as it's been doing: I'll post a whole bunch of stuff when I have the occasional large block of free time.  Between those large blocks of free time, new material will be sporadic.

Also, my laptop which has all of my material on it is temporarily kaput, so until I can get it fixed, my hands are pretty tied as to what exactly I can do.

Still, this will continue, and I thoroughly appreciate and sincerely thank all of you who keep coming around and looking at this stuff.  I can see that kind of thing in my stats, you know.

AEon

Gorgoroth (Funeral Winds) - Holocaust # 7 - 1994

Yet another semi-forgotten gem: Funeral Winds.

They were among the first fully-fledged "second-wave" black metal bands from the Netherlands.  Also, they were fucking awesome.  Unfortunately, they never managed to release a full-length during the "glory days," and have since fallen into relative obscurity.  Still, they received a fair amount of coverage in the 'zines of the day, and from 1992 to 1995 they managed to release a handful of demos, a two-song EP, and a split with Japan's Abigail before at last delivering an "official" debut in 1998 in the form of the jaw-droppingly good Godslayer XUL.

Gorgoroth (Funeral Winds) - Holocaust # 7 - 1994

Godslayer XUL is about as old-school as you can get, even by 1998's standards: these guys clearly have Morbid Tales and To Mega Therion in their collections and listen to both frequently.  Actually, the album sounds so much like a stripped-down early Celtic Frost that it comes off as sounding not a bit unlike early 80s UK hardcore à la Discharge and Charged G.B.H. and the legions of Swedish bands that followed in their wake.  This is a good thing.  After all, there's a fine line between incredibly raw black metal and incredibly raw d-beat/crust.  Regardless, Godslayer XUL absolutely goes for the jugular throughout the duration of all eight of its tracks, three-chord, minor-scale shred and ultra minimalist, vaguely-death-metal-influenced tremolo melodies abounding.  There's certainly little subtlety to be found therein, and what subtlety exists is incredibly subtle, but isn't that what all the best black metal is about?

Funeral Winds - Godslayer XUL - 1998

Æon

Schiekron (Ungod) - Tales of the Macabre # 1 - 1993

So Nåstrond and Ancient Rites are pretty cool, and I'll listen to either one of them any day; Germany's Ungod, on the other hand, are downright godly.  *Ahem*.  Excuse me.

But seriously: Ungod were among the first genuinely "second-wave" (I'm starting to feel like all of these "-wave" terms are silly.  I get it, I really do, but...) black metal bands to crop up in Germany along with Martyrium - who would later become Secrets of the Moon - and Dawnfall.  Their 1993 debut, Circle of the Seven Infernal Pacts, while not quite as mind-blowing as your Mayhems and Darkthrones, deserves at least to be mentioned alongisde more secondary Scandinavian classics as Dark Medieval Times and Those of the Unlight.  Bassist Schiekron was interviewed by Germany's Tales of the Macabre #1, 1993, and his responses were, for the most part, exceptionally lucid and straight-forward. 

Schiekron (Ungod) - Tales of the Macabre # 1 - 1993

To be quite frank, and surely much to bassist Schiekron's chagrin, their debut fits in very nicely with what the Norwegians and Swedes were doing around that time: it's at once incredibly raw (no keyboards whatsoever) in the style of yep-you-guessed-it-Bathory-and-Hellhammer and insanely minimalistic in places like Transilvanian Hunger, interestingly enough a whole year before the latter was released.  Melodically, the album is exceedingly simple, yet in possession of a quality that exudes in places genuine diabolism, in others overwhelming sorrow.  I even hear pre-Nightside Emperor's most trudging inclinations - sans the keys - during some moments, and that in itself is a feat to behold.  Bottom line: this release is fucking awesome.  You can thank me later.

Ungod - Circle of the Seven Infernal Pacts - 1993

Æon