What can I say that hasn’t already been said about the goddamn mighty Darkthrone? It’s been three years since I last interviewed drummer/co-vocalistFenriz, so naturally I jumped at the chance for a second round of interrogation upon the release of Darkthrone’s sixteenth(!) album, the ridiculously awesome The Underground Resistance. I mean shit, it isn’t every day you get the chance to interview your favorite fucking band.
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I don’t know that I have a favorite band anymore; in my old age I’ve become more of a favorite album guy. But, if I was forced at gunpoint to pick a favorite band, chances are the first one that would spring to mind is Darkthrone. They’re one of the few that can do no wrong in my eyes, whether we’re talking about the twisted death metal of Soulside Journey, the genre-defining pure Norse black metal of the A Blaze in the Northern Sky/Under a Funeral Moon/Transilvanian Hunger trilogy, or their current incarnation as a black/punk/traditional heavy metal hybrid. Even Goatlord, by far the worst album in their entire catalog, has its charms. No matter what direction Darkthrone take their sound in, they do it more than competently and with plenty of attitude, and I in turn always seem to find something to enjoy in whatever they do.
Although the prominence of Norwegian black metal isn’t what it once was, it could still be argued that they invented it and no one does it better. As often and as hard as I’ve been singing the praises of all things USBM of late, even I find it hard to refute that argument when presented with an album as front-to-back badass as Koldbrann’s Vertigo. I had heard the band’s name prior to receiving the promo from Season of Mist, but as yet hadn’t had the opportunity to give ‘em a fair shake; turns out the the quintet’s hard rocking take on traditional Norse BM is right up my dark alley.
Sleeping on fucking awesome bands seems to be the story of my life lately. My Last.fm scrobbler claims that I’d listened to Faustcoven thirty times prior to getting down with Hellfire & Funeral Bells on my computer for the first time, but I sure as heck don’t remember ever experiencing this doomed excellence prior to taking advantage of Nuclear War Now! Productions’ recent mega-sale and picking up the band’s third album on CD. Granted, I used to listen to a lot of random things while completely shit-hammered at ungodly hours in college, so it is entirely possible that the brain cells that remember Faustcoven have been lost forever to the whiskey gods. Whatever the case may be, after spending a great deal of time with this ghastly recording, all I can say is goddamn, have I been missing out.
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To say that God Seed’s debut was one of my most anticipated albums in a long time would probably be a massive understatement. The relentlessly abrasive, highly Satanic assault of Gaahl/King ov Hell era Gorgoroth is in my humble opinion some of the best black metal ever put to tape, so needless to say I was frothing at the mouth awaiting the duo’s next move. Finally, Gaahl and King have emerged from the Norwegian wilderness with I Begin after a long, strange trip that included a protracted legal battle over the rights to the Gorgoroth name, Gaahl temporarily “quitting” the metal scene and King releasing a solid and unfairly maligned collaboration with Dimmu Borgir’s Shagrath (Ov Hell’s The Underworld Regime). But is God Seed’s first outing worth the six-year wait? In a word: absolutely.
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For nearly twenty years Norway’s Aura Noir have reigned as overlords of blackened thrash metal. The band have just released their fifth full length, the filthy and lacerating Out to Die via Indie Recordings, proving that their patented black thrash attack is as ugly and vicious as ever. I spoke with multi-instrumentalist Apollyon, whom you might also be familiar with from bands such as Cadaver, DHG and more recently Immortal, regarding Aura Noir’s latest assault and subsequent plans for world domination.
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The scene: A small auditorium, somewhere on the East Coast. A “black metal symposium” event has brought the self-styled indie intelligentsia out in droves, packing the auditorium nearly to capacity. A scrawny, effeminate man with long hair approaches the podium. The man clears his throat and begins reading from his “manifesto,” proclaiming black metal as dead and stating that his own band is the savior of the genre. Suddenly, the double doors at the back of the auditorium fly open. A corpse-painted figure strides into the room from out of the shadows, cold winter air swirling about him. The figure is Hoest, multi-instrumentalist/mastermind of Norwegian black metallers Taake. Before anyone in the room can react, Hoest is on stage, stalking the scrawny man. Hoest grabs the man by the hair, pulls a large knife out of his belt and slits the man’s throat without so much as a pause. Blood spurts and pours everywhere, covering the podium, forming a massive plasma-slick on the stage. Another man, this one a so-called journalist that’s made a career out of dabbling in heavy metal for the amusement of the indie crowd, rushes on stage to the aid of his friend. As he kneels over the convulsing body, Hoest unsheathes a spiked club that was strapped to his back, bringing it down on the journalist’s head in one fluid motion, splitting his skull nearly in half. The crowd is in shock, unsure whether this is actually happening or merely part of the show. Without a word, Hoest jumps off stage and walks out the back of the auditorium from whence he came, taking care to shut the double doors behind him. He takes a padlock and chains from his belt, effectively shackling the doors together, trapping the audience inside. He then kicks over a large drum of gasoline, allowing it to seep through the cracks underneath the auditorium doors. Hoest lights a match, watching it flicker for a second before tossing it into the pool of petrol. The screams of those trapped inside lick at the frigid night sky along with the rising flames.
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In spite of being the birthplace of the genre as we know it today (so-called “1st wave” bands notwithstanding), Norway’s icy grip on black metal has loosened considerably over the course of the last several decades. Many of the scene’s godfathers either called it a day (Emperor) or shifted their musical stylings away from black metal to varying degrees (see: Ulver’s fruit-bot trip hop, Darkthrone’s journey down the ol’ Manilla Road, Enslaved’s psychedelic Viking-prog, etc), leaving Norwegian black metal fragmented. With the next generation of Norse BM practitioners either not yet ready or perhaps not willing to step up and take their places at the dark lord’s left hand, the focus of black metal has centered on other countries such as France and the US in recent years.
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I find it odd that several prominent (I use the term loosely) metal websites decided to ban coverage of Burzum in response to a recent online rant by Varg Vikernes regarding the shootings and bombing carried out by Norwegian extremist Anders Breivik. Isn’t this ban coming about seventeen years too late? A self-righteous denouncement of Vikernes this point in the game is basically the same as saying “Murder and arson are okay, but hey, we draw the line at hateful remarks!” Of course, I realize that these sites weren’t around back when Vikernes was actually committing crimes, but if they truly found him to be so deplorable, shouldn’t they have banned coverage from the outset based on his actions and not some ineffectual hate-mongering that no one would have paid attention to in the first place had they not drawn attention to it with their sanctimonious grandstanding?
But I digress. I do not wallow in the cesspool of imagined ethical superiority, and therefore have no problem discussing Varg Vikernes’ music. Contrary to what the metal morality police attempt to shove down our throats, it is entirely possible to separate Burzum from its creator’s dodgy politics/beliefs. With that out of the way, it pleases me to say that Varg Vikernes the musician has solidified his “comeback” and proven once and for all that his trailblazing brand of black metal is indeed timeless with Fallen, his second album since being released from prison in 2009.
But what is it that makes Burzum timeless? For me, it’s Vikernes’ guitar playing. His note choices and sense of composition have a hypnotic effect, the very definition of the infamous black metal “trance-out”, a web of spindly, treble-soaked riffage that’s all too easy to get hopelessly lost in. Whenever I listen to Fallen I think of enormous trees, with gnarled, twisted, tangled roots burrowing deep into the soil; it probably has something to do with the earthy, slightly raw guitar tone Vikernes employs here. It gives the album a naturalistic quality that makes the compositions feel as much like folk music as black metal, but without ever degenerating into the silliness that “folk metal” typically implies (perhaps more akin to neofolk?). Of course, black metal at its core has always been a form of folk music, and there are few better suited to uphold that tradition than an outlaw/pariah such as Vikernes, who also happens to be one of the genre’s architects (okay, so maybe you can’t separate the man from the music 100%, oh well).
Speaking of tradition, Fallen was recorded at Grieghallen with production and mixing assistance from Pytten. This studio/producer combination has been responsible for nearly every landmark album in the Norwegian black metal canon (De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, In the Nightside Eclipse, etc) and although only time will tell if Fallen will ever reach the same level of acclaim as those classic recordings, the album does manage to capture a similar vibe without sounding forced or self-consciously retro. This is how black metal is supposed to sound; uninhibited, mesmerizing and totally free from the trappings of modernity.
In addition to showcasing Vikernes’s six-string mastery and benefitting from a strong production scheme, Fallen also represents Burzum at its most compelling from a compositional perspective. If anything, the album comes off as a refinement of the ideas that Vikernes began to explore on Filosofem; the spellbinding repetition, hazy, quasi-psychedelic atmospheres and unique vocal approach have been honed to a fine point. Whereas Filosofem sounded like a collection of experiments (albeit very successful and interesting ones), Fallen sounds like a collection of songs. In this respect, Fallen brings the more experimental qualities of Filosofem together with the sharp yet expansive songwriting style Vikernes brought to the fore on Hvis Lyset Tar Oss. Indeed, the more I listen to Fallen, the more I tend to view 2010′s Belus as a “warm-up” album.
Regardless of what you think of Varg Vikernes the person, it is difficult to deny the significance of Varg Vikernes the musician, especially when he continues to craft such intriguing, vital and relevant work. Fallen just might be the most fully realized Burzum album to date, an elegy for what once was, and a glimmer of hope for the future of the black metal tradition.
Before Satyricon was playing at fashion shows and striving to create the perfect arena rock album for androids, main man Satyr Wongraven ran a label called Moonfog Productions. Between 1999 and 2001, this label unleashed three black metal albums that did a great deal towards paving the road for the trajectory of the genre over the course of the next ten years (and beyond). I refer to these albums as “The Moonfog Trilogy”. For those unfamiliar, these three albums are:
Satyricon – Rebel Extravaganza (1999)
Dodheimsgard – 666 International (1999)
Thorns – Thorns (2001)
I’m not sure if it was by coincidence or by design that Moonfog featured the trifecta of Norway’s (then)cutting-edge black metal bands. Satyricon being on the label was obviously a given, but the fact that Satyr wisely aligned his own project with Thorns and Dodheimsgard (DHG) made the label appear as a united front of sleek, futuristic black metal bands. Of course, we mustn’t forget that Darkthrone was also on Moonfog at the time, sticking out like a sore thumb. I’ve always theorized that the inexplicably panned Plaguewielder was Darkthrone’s twisted attempt at the “Moonfog sound”, but that’s a whole other post unto itself.
Back on topic. United under the banner of Moonfog, these three albums shared a sonic and visual aesthetic that completely fucked up and in some aspects outright rejected the established tenets of black metal as it was known at the time. There were no crude black and white corpsepaint-in-the-forest photos or Old English fonts to be found on these releases. The artwork was colorful, modern and clearly crafted by someone who knew a thing or two about graphic design. Black metal’s pagan terrorism tactics were eschewed by Moonfog in favor of visuals that evoked urban blight and the grim underbelly of our not-too-distant future. Satyr and Frost’s makeup on the cover of Rebel Extravaganza makes them look less like grave-robbing ghouls and more like some sort of STD-infested heroin-zombies lurking in the darkest gutters of major urban centers. 666 International‘s cover appears to be the aftermath of an attack by the aforementioned heroin-zombies, with its shadows and stainless steel and what appears to be a whole lot of blood being washed down the drain. To this day, I’m still not sure what exactly is going on with Thorns‘ album cover. To me it alternately looks like a giant alien entity raping the sun and an insect giving birth.
Thorns, 666 International and Rebel Extravaganza were just as forward-thinking musically as they were visually. Each album is unique, but they also share certain sonic characteristics. The production schemes are cold and clinical. The guitars are all treble, cutting through the mixes like surgical saws. On the surface, they’re nearly devoid of anything resembling emotion, but as the listener peels away the layers cyber-grime, the humanity trapped within begins to reveal itself, screaming to be freed from the twisted mass of mechanized torture.
666 International was the first of the three albums to be released (June 11th, 1999 according to Metal Archives) and marked a major stylistic shift for DHG. The traditional black metal of previous albums such as Monumental Possession completely disappeared in favor of a heavily industrialized take on the genre that hasn’t been equalled before or since. I often claim to not be a fan of industrial/black metal hybrids, and that is because 99.9% of the bands that have attempted to cross-pollinate the two styles have failed miserably. DHG on the other hand, mastered industrial black metal the first time out. 666 International is cold and mechanical yet grimy and frightening at the same time. The guitars are white noise and static, harnessed into form by bloody mechanical hands. Programmed-sounding beats dominate the musical landscape, sickeningly precise and repetitive. It is the soundtrack to mankind being rounded up and enslaved by an army of rogue machines. And yet there are distinctly human elements clawing their way up from the depths of the stainless steel sonic hell the album creates. Aldrahn’s extremely versatile vocals, and the occasional piano melodies that creep up remind you that 666 International is the work of people and not replicants. This is the sound of black metal’s willful primitivism being engulfed and subjugated by the technological age.
Satyricon’s Rebel Extravaganza might be an even more terrifying listen. In some spots the album is unbelievably caustic, in others it almost fully embraces the conventions of rock ‘n’ roll at its most pure. Amidst the the filth-grinding yet sterile atmosphere, the band trots out riffs and grooves that are unmistakably headbang-able, but they are surrounded on all sides by hard angles and cold, unforgiving atmospheres. This album is probably the most traditionally black metal-sounding of the three, but this is BM at it’s most gritty, urban and ultramodern, like if Satyr and Frost had scored the soundtrack to Blade Runner instead of Vangelis.
Rebel Extravaganza is also the most emotional of the three albums, but the only emotions on display are anger and hatred. This is an album forged of pure nihilism, of taking pleasure in the loss of humanity and giving oneself over to the technological/urban nightmare foretold by 666 International.
“This would be the way of the misanthrope
in order to create you must destroy
We would greet the nuclear morning mist
We would smile at all life dying”
-from “Prime Evil Renaissance”
The end of the world will not be some hellfire ‘n’ brimstone biblical apocalypse, it will be collapsing skyscrapers wrapped in a tangle of wires and circuitry, humanity choked by a cloud of radioactive vapor, our bodies converted into fossil fuels. Rebel Extravaganza is a celebration of that moment.
If Rebel Extravaganza and 666 International represent black metal’s (and by extension humanity’s) struggle against the onset of technology and urban sprawl, then Thorns represents the machine army’s victory march over the charred, broken bones of the human resistance as black smoke pours out giant factories, blotting out the sun for all eternity. This is an album of precision and discipline, as engineered by Thorns mastermind Snorre Ruch, who himself might be a visitor from the horrific future, so advanced and bizarre is his approach to guitar playing and composition. Although I’m not aware of any interviews that focus extensively on his six-string technique, I’d imagine it would be a fascinating interrogation. His use of dissonance and choice of notes that fit together in a manner that can best be described as uncomfortable, or maybe unsettling, has never been fully replicated, at least not to these ears. Even the most traditional of metallic moments sound utterly extraterrestrial in Ruch’s hands.
Thorns is Thorns the band’s first and so far only album. Ruch released several highly influential demos in the early ’90s before being sentenced to 8 years in prison as an accomplice to Varg Vikernes in the murder of Oystein Aarseth, but nothing (not even the Thorns vs Emperor split) could have prepared the scene for the highly advanced take on black metal that is Thorns. The recording delivered (and still does deliver) on everything Satyricon, DHG and ultimately black metal as a genre had promised up to that point (albeit via very non-traditional means), total inhumanity, total domination, total damnation, total death. The sound is so unnatural/synthetic/alien that it’s hard to fathom any flesh and blood whatsoever being involved in its creation.
Amidst Thorns‘ mechanized onslaught there is a peculiar eeriness to the proceedings, due in large part to the dark electronic influences that inform portions of the recording. There is something undeniably unnerving about the clanking industrial noises of “Shifting Channels”, the squealing synths that bubble under the surface of “Existence” and the moments of pitch black ambience that continually creep up. By adding these elements into the mix, Thorns amplifies and transforms black metal’s reliance on conjuring an atmosphere of sickening malevolence.
The most telling evidence that Thorns is indeed the culmination of this trio of Moonfog releases is the presence of both DHG’s Aldrahn and Satyricon’s Satyr Wongraven handling the vocals. As the narrators of the first two chapters, it is only fitting that they be present for the climax, and Thorns finds both men’s voices positively dripping with acidic venom. Their contributions give the three albums another level of continuity, creating a sinister narrative that spans across them. It is the most immediately recognizable tie that binds them all together.
Thorns, Satyricon and DHG weren’t the only Norwegian black metal bands experimenting with electronic/industrial atmospheres or trying to push the genre forward (see also: Mayhem’s largely misunderstood Grand Declaration of War), but these three albums are inextricably linked on so many levels that it is hard to ignore their collective impact. For me personally, listening to Thorns and Rebel Extravaganza (I didn’t discover DHG until much later) made me realize that black metal didn’t have to be recorded in the middle of the forest on a malfunctioning 4-track machine. These albums threw the true kvlt rulebook out the fucking window and then shot it to pieces with an AK-47 and lit the remains on fire. Although Thorns would fall off the radar and both Satyricon and DHG would never again reach the levels of sheer brilliance they’d attained, all three bands can rest assured that their place amongst the pantheon of black metal’s greatest innovators will forever remain secure thanks to these albums.
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Postscript:
Don’t bother going to the Moonfog records website, as it hasn’t been updated since May of 2007. However, if you do venture over there, you can see pictures of a sold out Thorns t-shirt that I would kill for under the mailorder section.
Last I heard, Snorre Ruch was creating ambient soundscapes for art installations as Thorns LTD. However, the band’s page on Shirts & Destroy claims that he is working on a new Thorns album w/ a re-tooled lineup. Here’s to hoping.
I’ve made much ado lately about what is and isn’t black metal. Going back and listening to Thorns, Rebel Extravaganza and 666 International in nearly constant rotation has reminded me of what black metal is really all about. Black metal is ultimately all about freedom. The only rule is that there are no rules.
And yes, I still think Liturgy sucks.
