Prior to Bathory, one-man bands were pretty much unheard of within metal and there can be little doubt that the common perception of Bathory as a one-man outfit hugely legitimized the concept of the solo-driven, studio-only black metal band. It’s interesting to note just how many later bands in the movement, from Norway’s Burzum and Isengard to America’s Xasthur and Leviathan, would adopt this setup, something still largely unheard of in the thrash and death metal scenes.
Bathory’s self-titled debut, featuring one of the most iconic designs in the genre’s history.
Of course, if the actual music hadn’t delivered, such innovations would have been largely ignored. Thankfully, the eight songs on the album—bookended by two ambient pieces, including a three-minute-long Sabbath-esque storm and bells introduction—more than impressed fans. Continuing in a similar vein to the Scandinavian Metal Attack recordings, but increasing in both speed and aggression—a point highlighted by the rerecorded version of “Sacrifice,” which clocked in at a minute shorter than the original—the songs were aided by a more distorted and punchier sound, the combination of buzz saw guitars, pounding drums, and growled vocals proving a breathtaking formula.
Reviews in the press were, predictably, somewhat mixed. UK magazine Metal Forces gave the album a glowing review, with Dave Constable describing it as “the ultimate in total death,” and a mix of the “total raw sound of hardcore punk re DISCHARGE etc with metallic riffs at high speed, such as SLAYER at full throttle… so intense that even the most ardent San Fransiscan [sic] thrasher would have problems keeping up.” Kerrang! was less enthusiastic, complaining that “the worse this Satanic rubbish sounds, the faster it is and the more out of tune it is, the better it sells—this is obviously going to sell like crazy,” and concluding that “Satan should have a word with these boys, they’re giving him a real bad name.”
Quorthon interviewed in Kick Ass fanzine in 1985. “I’m not a fan of Venom at all, though I love the ‘Black Metal’ album…I thank them for what they have done for the Satanic-based metal movement of today.”
One thing the press did agree on were the startling similarities to Venom, a feeling that had no doubt been emphasized by the fact that one of the Newcastle trio’s more popular songs was entitled “Countess Bathory.” The accusations clearly aggravated Quorthon, who claimed that it was only after the release of the debut album that he picked up on Venom and other new acts such as Hellhammer. He argued on the Bathory website that the only impact this exposure had was to “deepen” the Satanic aspect of the band to make it more sincere and less in the style of horror comics or vampire fiction.
If Quorthon didn’t hear the Black Metal album before recording the debut, one might have to assume some higher power was at work as not only do both albums have songs entitled “Sacrifice,” but the lyrics to Bathory’s “Raise The Dead” and the third song from Venom’s Black Metal, “Buried Alive” (which actually bleeds straight into a track entitled “Raise The Dead”), are startlingly similar, both describing being buried alive and explicitly including mention of a “gasp for air,” a “tear at the lid,” and the promise that the victim will arise again from the dead.
‘Second album The Return, 1985, introduced what is probably the very first example of the black metal sound as we know it today. This particular copy belongs to one of the band’s most significant fans, Fenriz of Darkthrone.’
Certainly there is some evidence that Quorthon was a fan of the band’s second album. In a 1985 interview in U.S. magazine Kick Ass, he commented, “I’m not a fan of Venom at all, though I love the Black Metal album,” before going on to explain, “I must have been the first maniac to know about Venom in Sweden. Cronos has done a lot for this evil thing and I thank him for that, but he didn’t inspire me to sing this way as some think.”
Whether “deepening the Satanic aspect” was the only impact Venom had on the band, we shall never know for sure. Either way, the 1985 follow up, The Return…, was indeed a darker, heavier, and more Satanic album than its predecessor, and one that had much less in common with Venom. Songs such as “Total Destruction,” “Possessed,” and “Born For Burning” (dedicated to one Marrigje Ariens, burned as a witch in the sixteenth century) were markedly ahead of the debut in terms of production, performance, and sheer power. Well-received by critics, underground metal fanzines, and fans, the release generated impressive sales, especially considering its more extreme nature.
Indeed, aside from one track—“Bestial Lust”—the album had reduced the rock ‘n’ roll overtones present in the debut, making the Venom and Motörhead comparisons less relevant and leaving a collection of nastier and more punishing songs that some consider to be the first “true” black metal album. And if The Return… didn’t create the black metal sound as we know it today, the album that followed it two years later undoubtedly did.
In 1987, Bathory issued the masterful recording that would finally make the frequent comparisons to their contemporaries utterly irrelevant. It was an opus that would show little or no traces of the rock ‘n’ roll influences originally present within the band, instead pioneering a darker and colder direction, one that presented many hallmarks now common within black metal music, including lightning-fast tempos, primitive-sounding production, raspy vocals, Satanic lyrics, hypnotic song structures, and even the occasional use of keyboards.
“Under The Sign Of The Black Mark had such a cold atmosphere, so fucking, freezing cold,” explains ex-Mayhem vocalist Maniac. “Of course you had the Satanic lyrics, but there was something within the music that was really capturing me, it was really cold, sometimes even scary, and it just nailed something there with the whole sound of it. It’s always very hard to talk about how music influences you, but it set off an avalanche of emotions, it was like Quorthon actually managed to give sound to something that was inside of you, in a very appropriate way. There was an eerie gloom there that was overwhelming.”
By the time this third album was released, the metal world had become a very different place from the one in existence when the band formed, and the thrash metal scene was officially big news. Having begun as a resolutely underground movement, bands such as Metallica were now achieving strong sales, and the previous year had seen the release of the famous Master of Puppets album, as well as the equally iconic Reign In Blood by California hell-raisers Slayer. Fast, aggressive metal was now becoming relatively commonplace, a total contrast to the situation only three or four years before.
Nonetheless, with Under the Sign of the Black Mark, Bathory offered a musical creation of then-unparalleled darkness. Sure, there were other albums that contained unrelenting percussive bombardments, rabid vocals, and malevolent riffing, but where the album differed from the majority of similarly violent metal records of the time was in its hellish, unearthly atmosphere. Unlike the frantic guitar work of, say, Slayer, whose frequent riff changes would be adopted by the death metal movement in the years to come, for the most part the songs on Under The Sign utilized repetition and minimalism as their primary weapons, building tension with a mesmerizing effect.
“The eighties was a decade in the metal [scene] where everything was compact, there was no monotony,” comments Fenriz of Norway’s Darkthrone. “If you played a riff four times, that was it, you move onto the next riff. Ninety-nine percent of the albums were like that. Then came Bathory, with Under the Sign of the Black Mark.”
1987’s Under the Sign of the Black Mark: the final chapter in Bathory’s Satanic/black metal trilogy.
The gloomy, cavernous sound and restrained musicianship remain key factors in the album’s appeal, the pounding and unfussy drums beating their way into the listener’s consciousness in almost ritualistic fashion, nearly threatening to drown out the malevolent guitar lines and the screamed, demonic-sounding vocals. The finishing touch is the eerie synths that are used sparingly, but effectively, perhaps most notably on “Woman Of Dark Desires,” an ode to the murderous Countess who inspired the band’s name.
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nbsp; “I remember listening to [Under the Sign] every morning on my way to the high school,” explains Mirai of Japanese black metal act Sigh. “Personally the use of keyboard was a huge factor. Of course there were several thrash metal records with keyboards, but the way Quorthon used it was totally different from others. Back then nobody came up with the idea to use the keyboard to sound eerie or sinister.”
Vorph of Switzerland’s Samael is another musician who was significantly inspired by the use of keys on the album. “It was an incredible experience to listen to Under the Sign, as he was using some synthesizer, which was not common in that sort of music at the time and certainly that influenced [Samael] to have a keyboard later … it showed that you can have a lot of different ambiences and still keep the heaviness.”
“Eerie and heavy” aptly summarizes this diabolical opus, yet despite its creative and commercial success, the record would turn out to be the final part of what is frequently described as Bathory’s “Satanic trilogy.” For Quorthon the interest in Satanism appears to have been predominantly related to thematic inspirations for Bathory (and perhaps as an expression of anti-Christian sentiments and rebellion), as opposed to any kind of personal faith, as the man himself explained on the Bathory website:
“We were just three shit kids aged seventeen/eighteen. We didn’t know a shit about life or death, let alone the stuff that metal and rock lyrics seemed to be made from. We’d never get to fuck bombshell bimbos, we’d never get to party all night long … We really couldn’t relate to those lyrics. We’d certainly listen to those NWOBHM albums, but when it came to write lyrics for our own material, we just picked up from the sources we thought seemed most graphic or effective … picking up the dark and evil themes was not a stand taken, a point of view made official, or a personal ideology expressed… It was quite simply… to irritate and to annoy those above-all know-all Christians, the church itself and the dictatorial Christian faith on a whole.”
After the completion of Under the Sign, Quorthon decided to steer the band into a completely new era, and in doing so helped to create another metal subgenre, Viking metal. Building upon the epic riffs that had appeared here and there on Under the Sign, and combining these with classical musical influences, Bathory’s fourth album, 1988’s Blood Fire Death, began a second trilogy, an era Quorthon described as the “pre-Christian Swedish Viking era.”
Such a description seems to underline his motives for the shift; by incorporating Scandinavian folklore and religion Quorthon was able to integrate his interest in national history while also continuing to voice his opposition to Christianity. If any doubt remained about the latter, eagle-eyed fans were able to locate “hidden” messages in two of the songs, “The Golden Walls of Heaven” and “Dies Irae,” by taking the first letter of each line of lyrics, thus spelling out the words “Satan” and “Christ the bastard son of heaven” respectively.
Ideologies aside, this lyrical shift sat well with the increased interest in classical music that Quorthon had picked up thanks to Paul “Pålle” Lundberg, the drummer on Under the Sign, who was more interested in the great symphonies, Kiss, and Bowie than he was extreme metal. This, along with the good reception that the classic mid-paced number “Call From The Grave” received, had persuaded Quorthon to move toward rather more bombastic, epic territories. And what better subject matter for such music—especially given the apparent musical influence of Wagner, a composer who based much of his work on the Norse sagas—than these equally epic tales from Northern Europe?
As it turned out, Blood Fire Death was only a gentle evolution from its predecessor, maintaining the high pace and ferocious vocals despite introducing emotive acoustic guitars and clean, almost chanted, vocals. It was Hammerheart, released two years later in 1990, that really created the blueprint for what became the Viking metal genre, with numbers such as “One Rode To Asa Bay” featuring strong melodies, a heroic atmosphere, predominantly clean vocals, and pounding, mid-paced rhythm. The album directly inspired the sound, concept, and aesthetic of many later bands of the genre, such as Germany’s impressive Falkenbach.
Though Bathory had departed black metal territory to some extent, the Viking trilogy would still have a marked impact on much of the scene, both with its heroic overtones and its use of pre-Christian spirituality and culture. Bathory would also have the dubious honor of becoming the first in a long line of bands from the black metal scene to be accused of Nazi sympathies. Hammerheart fell into considerable hot water upon its release, due to the song “Under The Runes,” which partly related to Germany’s SS, the SS insignia utilizing two “Sig” runes, hence the titular reference. This, coupled with the sleeve art’s use of a sun wheel, an ancient symbol appropriated by right-wing groups since the Second World War, led many to question and reassess the band’s use of Scandinavian themes.
While clearly not too concerned with the accusations, Quorthon nonetheless maintained that he was by no means a Nazi. For the rest of his career the only controversies that followed him were down to his musical decisions, with later albums such as Octagon departing from both the black metal and Viking styles, much to the horror of many fans.
Of Bathory’s twelve albums, there’s little doubt that it was only the first six that had significant relevance within black metal. It is therefore testimony to the lasting power of Quorthon’s vision that his premature death in 2004 was almost universally lamented within the scene, with fanzines, magazines, and bands paying tribute to the departed legend.
“I never bought any of his music after Hammerheart,” concludes Mayhem’s Necrobutcher. “But when he passed away, it was like something was missing, so I think Bathory was more important to me than I had remembered…. It showed us the way, more than inspired us musically, it was a new boundary broken with that band.”
5
HELLHAMMER
“The demos were just so raw… I was like, ‘Yeah, this is what I’ve been searching for.’”
—Black Winds (Blasphemy)
“Hellhammer were one of my favorite bands due to the really dark atmosphere they were creating, an unfamiliar gloomy atmosphere that maybe they were the first to do and which spoke straight to your heart.”
—Sakis (Rotting Christ)
“A band that did very little, but did it so good. Their approach to raw metal was so stripped down to the basic elements, very few managed to match it. I feel that with many of the riffs that they and Celtic Frost delivered … you can’t really make as heavy [a] riff without simply stealing.”
—Mikko Aspa (Clandestine Blaze)
HAILING FROM the somewhat unlikely location of Birchwil, Switzerland, the short-lived but utterly incendiary Hellhammer—along with Celtic Frost, the band who would later rise from their ashes—complete the handful of essential first-wave black metal pioneers. As early progenitors of extreme metal, they have, like Venom and Bathory, inspired numerous metal subgenres, yet it is black metal to which they are most closely aligned and their influence on the movement still resonates clearly today.
The story of Hellhammer is, without a doubt, inseparable from that of its founder, vocalist, and guitarist Tom Gabriel Fischer, better known to the world as Tom G. Warrior. To him the band owes not only its existence, but also its dark and uncompromising nature, which reflects his musical technique and then-limited level of ability, as well as a personality shaped by the severe conditions of his youth.
“I had a regular childhood until I was six years old,” Tom explains in his faultless and carefully measured English. “My parents then decided to divorce, and my mother took from the divorce a fantastic record collection. We moved to a tiny farm village of 1,500 inhabitants and my mother put the key around my neck and said, ‘You’re on your own now, I’m going to smuggle diamonds and watches over the world and you’re going to be alone for weeks on end.’ So that little six- or seven-year old kid was left at home with no relatives, no friends, no nothing, in a village he didn’t know. The only thing I had was this record collecti
on, so basically music became my best friend, that’s how it all started. I totally turned to music, I found my sanctuary there, it became my universe.
“Later my mother gradually drifted into insanity and the living conditions in my home became unbearable. I became trapped. There was no family and because I was an outcast and the village was so small, everybody knew about my background and the other young people decided I was going to be the perfect punching bag, being all alone with no brothers or sisters, no father. So I encountered drastic violence every day in that village in my teenage years. Nobody gave a shit. Nowadays in a politically correct society everybody jumps at the chance to help somebody and you read about cases like this in the newspaper, but at that time—mid-1970s, tiny farm town—nobody really gave a shit. The teachers actually sided with the young people who put the violence on me and the farmers made me even more outcast with their comments and their reactions toward me. At home my mother acquired ninety cats that lived in a confined space, the same space I inhabited. I grew up in feces, urine, cockroaches, tapeworms, and maggots for years and when I stepped outside I was beaten violently—that was my youth and this is the direct link [to] why Hellhammer even existed. I’m not telling this to tell a tear-jerking story, it’s simply the background to why my music became so dark. Why a little kid from Switzerland—not really a rock ‘n’ roll country—plays music that barely even exists yet. That music was a reflection of my life at the time.”
Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult Page 5
