Undoubtedly, part of what makes the tape so brutal is its highly amateurish production, but songs such as the title track and “Devil’s Attack” also bore considerable promise, and the hellish subject matter certainly made an impact. Another demo, Victims of Death, this time featuring eight songs, followed in 1984, before the iconic In the Sign of Evil EP was issued later that year. Featuring a slightly clearer sound than the demos—but only just—the release remains an aggressive, rabid-sounding piece of work. There’s a definite Venom influence, not only in the vocals, but also in the somewhat chaotic and primitive approach, which recalls Welcome To Hell, albeit with a more extreme and less melodic twist.
Sodom’s Obsessed By Cruelty, 1986. “Black stinking metal,” to quote Mayhem’s Euronymous, who named his Deathlike Silence record label after the second song on the album.
“The attitude, the riffs, it just sounded very violent and evil,” explains Apollyon. “‘Evil’ is a silly word in a way, but you know what I mean. I mean, you’re allowed to have fun and care about the environment and so on in private, but there’s no need to sing about it. So I still prefer really simple stuff, primitive, Sodom-like lyrics. And Sodom really have the best lyrics ever. Like that ‘Blasphemer’ song [from In the Sign of Evil], ‘Spit at the church, Evil I get’…. yeah I’m all for that sort of stuff. You can hear they really want to play as fast as they can and as vicious as possible and it really has a punk attitude, so I prefer the first albums when it doesn’t sound technically brilliant, it doesn’t sound too controlled or well produced.”
Sodom’s first full-length, Obsessed With Cruelty, was issued in 1986, following in a similarly violent vein while refining the band’s sound and including a lengthy atmospheric introduction. The opus impressed many fans, some of whom would go on to form their own bands.
Kreator’s Endless Pain, 1985. The band’s debut album, it features several songs originally recorded and released when the band was known as Tormentor.
“Obsessed by Cruelty is a very important black metal album for me,” ponders Fenriz of Darkthrone, “but when I bought it as a kid I was thinking, ‘Hmmm, this is strange thrash,’ I didn’t understand the blackness in it.”
Fenriz wasn’t alone in his appreciation. The record was also, according to Necrobutcher of Mayhem, both his and bandmate Euronymous’ favorite release of that year. Despite this positive reception from the underground hordes, it wasn’t long before the band started experimenting with catchier, more upbeat territories with their releases, the lyrics moving away from Satanic subjects and instead drawing on the fear of nuclear war that was making its way into the public consciousness at the time.
“It used to be spikes, chains, leather and black clothes…” bemoaned Mayhem’s Euronymous in 1991. As photos like this prove, the German black thrash bands of the early eighties were as influential in their appearance as they were their music.
KREATOR
Based in Essen, West Germany, Kreator formed in 1982 under the name of Tormentor, and featured the talents of vocalist/guitarist Miland “Mille” Petrozza, bassist Roberto Florettie, and drummer/vocalist Jürgen “Ventor” Reil. The trio drew their influence from black metal pioneers such as Mercyful Fate, Bathory, and Venom, hardcore punk music including The Exploited, and American speed metal/thrash bands such as Metallica, who had been steadily releasing demos since the start of that year. Tormentor would release two demo tapes themselves, one in 1983 and the other in 1984, the latter being End of the World, a suitably apocalyptic collection of songs.
Changing their name to Kreator the same year—a wise move given that there are a host of metal bands, past and present, called Tormentor—the group released Endless Pain in 1985. The album would prove an important milestone, its power and ferocity allowing it to sit comfortably alongside the efforts of Sodom and Destruction, the vocals sounding particularly harsh and demonic for the time.
Refining their sound somewhat while keeping the essence intact, the band issued their second album Pleasure To Kill in 1986, as well as a three-track EP called Flag of Hate, both of which honed the band’s brutal and cruel sound. From that point the group began to undergo something of a stylistic shift, illustrated by 1987’s Terrible Certainty album as well as the releases that followed. Of the three German black thrash bands at the time, Kreator are perhaps the least frequently credited within contemporary black metal circles, possibly for the simple reason that Mayhem’s Euronymous didn’t credit them in interviews in the same way that he did Sodom and Destruction. All the same they are an important part of black metal’s history, as Apollyon confirms:
“Of the three bands, I was mainly into Kreator originally. Pleasure to Kill is maybe the most complete album and I think the Flag of Hate EP is also very defining. Along with Destruction, Sodom, and Bathory they set the standards of how this music was supposed to sound.”
DESTRUCTION
Another three-piece—consisting of bassist/vocalist Marcel “Schmier” Schirmer, drummer Tommy Sandmann, and guitarist Mike Sifringer—Destruction originated from the southwest of Germany and originally bore the slightly odd name Knight of Demon. Though they formed in 1982—the same year as their Teutonic compatriots Sodom and Kreator—Destruction were the last of the three to issue a release, namely the EP Sentence of Death, which saw the light of day in 1984.
With a surprisingly competent production and some notably accomplished musicianship, Sentence of Death nonetheless contains its fair share of barbarity and diabolic intent, just as one would expect from a release whose cover photograph featured the members in a uniform of tight black jeans, leather jackets, inverted crosses, studs, chains, and bullet belts, an image that not only spoke volumes about the intent of its subjects but also did much to provide a visual starting point for the scene.
Infernal Overkill, the band’s debut full-length, followed in 1985 and was embraced by fans, the punchy, lightning-fast assaults such as “Bestial Invasion” and “Invincible Force” proving violently satisfying yet memorable enough to leave their mark on many of the bands that followed.
Like Kreator and Sodom, Destruction took an unashamed Satanic/anti-Christian position in their early days.
Slayer’s debut album Show No Mercy, 1983. An early milestone recording in extreme metal, it has unsurprisingly been rereleased and licensed countless times over the years.
“I know six, seven, maybe ten versions of that ‘Bestial Invasion’ riff,” laughs Apollyon. “I think even Darkthrone have something similar on their Under A Funeral Moon album, so for us [in the second wave] that was, and still, is a major inspiration.”
In a now-familiar story, the band gradually moved away from the proto-black territories of their original releases as the years went by, although Eternal Devastation, their second album in 1986, had enough unholy traits to please many fans of their earlier material. In fact, when Fenriz came to issue his excellent compilation, Fenriz Presents… The Best of Old School Black Metal, he included the song “Curse the Gods” from that very album. From his liner notes:
“I remember Euronymous (Mayhem) and me listening to this intro and wonder[ing] how the hell they made the guitar sound like that… This is more of a thrash metal number, but Destruction, Sodom and Kreator’s three first releases always had a black metal aura.”
SLAYER
Within the metal scene—and perhaps even beyond—Slayer have earned a uniquely iconic status, and they remain arguably the most successful extreme metal band of all time. With humble beginnings as a cover band that celebrated the likes of Iron Maiden, the group got their initial break thanks to a compilation, Metal Blade Records’ 1983 Metal Massacre Vol. 3, which they opened with the song “Aggressor Perfector.”
Both band and label were encouraged by the good feedback the song received, and later that year their debut album Show No Mercy was released on Metal Blade. Though the record was somewhat slower, less aggressive, and more melodic when compared to both their later recordings and the early-eighties efforts of, say,
Sodom or Bathory, the spirit was surely there, and the group emphasized a “Satanic” image from the start, wearing leather, face paint, spikes, and inverted crosses. Show No Mercy itself features numerous Satanic references in classic songs such as “Evil Has No Boundaries” and “The Antichrist,” and its cover depicts a large inverted “pentagram” composed of four swords, the one “missing” sword wielded by a slightly comic-book-style goat-headed warrior.
1984 saw the release of both the Haunting the Chapel EP and a live album entitled Live Undead, and the following year the band released their second album, the much-loved Hell Awaits, a record whose title and infernal cover art demonstrated that the group were sticking to their guns with their unholy fascinations. The point was further highlighted with the backward recordings of the words “join us” and “welcome back” in the intro. In 1986 the band released Reign In Blood, an album that most metal fans view as both their finest effort and one of the most important albums in metal’s history.
Due to the numerous extreme and blasphemous bands beginning to emerge at this point, it’s probably fair to say that Slayer’s influence on the black metal movement began to wane around this time, though songs such as “Altar of Sacrifice” and “Jesus Saves” remained in a suitably blasphemous vein. Interestingly, unlike most of their contemporaries, the band have never entirely abandoned the Satanic/anti-Christian themes of their early works. Though their lyrics have expanded to embrace other subjects, albums such as 2001’s God Hates Us All (released, strangely, on September 11th and featuring a blood-splattered, nail-embedded Bible on its cover) and 2006’s Christ Illusion (whose cover depicted a mutilated Jesus in a sea of blood and severed heads) have continued to cause much controversy—especially since vocalist Tom Araya now claims to be a Catholic.
VULCANO
While North America and Germany certainly dominated the early thrash movement, South America would also prove something of a hotbed, particularly Brazil, the first country in the region to significantly embrace the genre. One of the earliest names was Vulcano, which started life as a hard rock band before reinventing itself a few years later.
Vulcano: Bloody Vengeance. Released in 1986, it is almost certainly South America’s first black metal album, and is still one of the most potent.
“I joined Carli Cooper (bass) and Paulo Magrão (guitar) in ’78 and together we created Astoroth,” explains bassist/guitarist and co-founder Zhema Rodero. “One year after we resolved to change the name to Vulcano, and in the following year I moved to Santos [São Paulo]. There I reformed the band and we started to play in high schools, college, major events, etc. In 1983 we recorded our first single.”
Despite Cooper’s absence from the new lineup, the single, Om Pushne Namah, would feature hard rock-styled songs he had written way back in 1974. Employing a new vocalist named Angel one year later, the band shifted style considerably, aiming to blend “the lyrics of Black Sabbath with the songs of Motörhead.” Recording a demo in 1984 and a live album the following year, the band finally unleashed their debut album Bloody Vengeance in 1986. Featuring a cover illustration of a dead priest in a burning church as well as explicitly Satanic lyrics, the album showcased a raw and distinctly sinister proto-black/thrash sound, alternating between a possessed battery and a more crawling pace, the guitar assault topped off by Angel’s inhuman bellows. Musical influence had clearly seeped in from the likes of Venom, Celtic Frost, and Sodom, these inspirations also being more than evident in the band’s attire.
“Bloody Vengeance was recorded during a weekend and we had to use the same amplifier for all instruments so the sound is not so good,” says Zhema. “The album was rebellion against the system—laws, moral, ethics and any kind of religion. My biggest influence came from an alchemist and occultist belief. I always made a continuous search for anything that could explain the contradictions of the human being and its destiny, but I never believed in religions, sects, or dogmas. We do not dislike just Christian belief: we always disagreed with all the revealed religions, be it Christian, Islamic, Jewish, etc.”
Like their German peers, Vulcano soon made a shift toward a more refined and less infernal thrash sound, partly because the famously corrupt police began hassling the band after drummer Laudir Piloni was photographed bringing human bones to a show. This change was noticeable from the Anthropophagy album, released just one year later, and a further two albums would follow before the group split in 1990. Happily, they would reform in 2004, and while Zhema is now the sole founding member, the group have kept in touch with their dark roots and have been embraced by new generations of fans thanks to members of significant second-wave bands such as Darkthrone and Mayhem quite literally wearing their influence on their sleeves. Sweden’s legendary Nifelheim even released a split with them, describing Vulcano as “one of the only remaining great and real ‘black metal’ bands.”
Sarcófago: Rotting, 1989. While cover artist Kelson Frost apparently refused to include a crown of thorns so as not to identify the figure as Christ, it made the final image no less controversial.
“In the early 2000s I began to realize [the band’s influence],” says Zhema. “It was a big surprise for me because I could not know that our music, rough, raw and brutal, might be a reference. I’m really proud of that.”
SARCÓFAGO
Still Brazil’s most famous black metal practitioners, the infamous Sarcófago was co-founded by Wagner “Antichrist” Lamounier back in 1985. The previous year had seen him installed as vocalist for the now hugely popular Sepultura (whose Bestial Devastation EP and Morbid Visions album, released 1985 and 1986 respectively, also demonstrated an influential proto black/thrash sound), but he had fallen out with the other members and left to begin his own project. Warming up with three demo cassettes (Satanic Lust and The Black Vomit from 1986 and Sepultado from 1987), the band would put themselves squarely on the map with 1987’s I.N.R.I. A genuinely classic opus, the album drew influences from international acts vsuch as Sodom, Bathory, and Hellhammer, putting a distinctive spin on them while maintaining the chaotic violence (the frantic blastbeats of drummer D.D. Crazy being of particular note) and boasting a slightly tighter sound than their contemporaries.
Just as influential was the iconic cover—featuring the band posing in a cemetery clad in an impressive array of spikes, bullet belts, studs and inverted crosses and with black paint around their eyes—which presented an even more extreme aesthetic than that of earlier bands and thus had a huge impact on future acts. It would, in particular, inspire Norway’s Mayhem, with Euronymous once famously stating “I’d like to see a scene … where the people in the scene all look like Hellhammer or old Sarcófago, spikes and chains.”
1989’s Rotted maintained the blasphemous intent, its cover painting depicting the grim reaper licking Christ’s face, but saw the band moving in a more technical direction, with longer songs and more complexity in the songwriting. By 1991’s The Laws of Scourge the band had undergone a fairly dramatic—if not unprecedented—reinvention, Wagner and co-founder Geraldo Minelli utilizing new members to create a more technical death/thrash sound, the lyrics covering more earthly subjects as opposed to the infernal topic of old. The band would find greater success with the formula, even getting some love from MTV, but ultimately split in 2000. The legacy of their early days would live on, though, this brief snapshot providing enough ammunition for decades to come.
While the bands that follow in this book did much to connect the first and second generations of black metal, there’s no doubt that the groups in this chapter played a vital and often overlooked role, even if only in their more formative years. Black thrash, meanwhile, has had several resurgences in popularity over the years and maintains a dedicated fan base, with bands such as Bestial Mockery and Nifelheim (Sweden), Aura Noir and Vulture Lord (Norway), Destroyer 666 and Gospel of the Horns (Australia), and Sabbat and Abigail (Japan), among others (hell, at a push even the later output—and indeed the demeanor—of the iconic Immortal could be
considered pretty black thrash/first-wave black metal in nature), keeping the crazed spirit of the early eighties alive.
8
BLASPHEMY
“Gerry was probably not the most productive guy of the early nineties in tape trading, but it was always the top quality recordings and good contacts he sent me. I thank Black Winds, Blasphemy, and Michelle Remembers for being a such great inspiration on my journey. I believe Blasphemy.”
—Nuclear Holocausto (Beherit)
BY THE MID- TO LATE EIGHTIES, several key acts had helped push black metal to the raw, chaotic, and violent extremes that were its logical conclusion. Yet in most cases the emphasis on brutality proved to be only a temporary stance, and by the close of the decade legends such as Bathory, Destruction, and Sarcófago had all moved some way from their primitive beginnings and expanded into less primal and aggressive territories as their musical abilities and songwriting evolved. The black flame they had lit could not be extinguished, however, and a new generation of bands soon appeared to take their place, wielding occult brutality not as a temporary weapon to be dropped when one’s musicianship had sufficiently improved, but as a permanent medium of expression.
Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult Page 9
