Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult

by Dayal Patterson

  Working as a trio, the group decided from the start to focus their lyrics and concepts around Northern mythology, its members unwilling to be tied to the Satanic/occult concerns that were prevalent among their peers, but sharing the same strong anti-religious sentiments nonetheless.

  “We were definitely linked to the black metal scene,” ponders Ivar, who became known as H.M. Daimonion around this time. “Norway was pretty small, the inner circle was really no bigger than fifty people and these bands all had a profound orientation toward the occult and we didn’t connect with that—simple as that. For us to start singing about that would be the most horrible betrayal toward the movement, so we needed to find our own conceptual expression, and that was the common ground we had.”

  “I remember seeing a play on TV about the Norse mythology,” recalls Grutle of the event that sparked his interest in the subject. “I asked my mother, ‘What is this?’ and she said, ‘Ah, it’s about the Northern gods’ and went to get this book she wrote before she became a teacher. I was fascinated, ’cos you don’t learn anything about it at all at school, the Norwegian school system had a subject called ‘Christianity’ when I grew up—now it’s called ‘Religion’ which is better, you learn about other religions—and you heard about Norse mythology as some sort of burlesque, childish thing. Like, ‘Oh, they used to think that Thor was running through the skies cracking the hammer and then you got thunder and lighting, ho, ho, ho.’”

  Enslaved’s early promo photographs and live shows were far heavier on the Viking imagery.

  Photo courtesy of Ivar Bjørnson.

  “I was taken out of those classes myself,” interjects Ivar, “and I think more parents should do it, it’s not really healthy. I think there should be a separation between monotheism and religion, or turn it round and have ‘religion’ with the monotheistic religions—Christianity, Islam, Judaism—then ‘belief systems,’ ’cos it’s so different. It’s like classifying psychosis along with normal mental health. There’s such a difference between Buddhism, Northern mythology, all these pantheistic religions on the one side who are saying, ‘This could be the truth, we have a bunch of different gods representing things,’ and monotheism on the other side. The finality of monotheism is so different to the ever-turning wheel of all the others.”

  As extreme metal musicians with an interest in Viking culture, it was inevitable that the members of the group would be influenced by the works of the mighty Bathory, and the Swedish legend’s mid-period releases seem to have partly guided the group’s incorporation of such themes into their own music.

  “Hammerheart and Twilight of the Gods were the most important to me,” Ivar explained to me in an interview at Wacken festival in 2008. “Bathory was an inspirational source because Quorthon used the ancestry and history in a very tasteful manner, using it philosophically, rather than just aggressively or in a politically tainted way. I’ve always been fascinated with nature and harsh weather, that’s the stuff I grew up with, so mythology dealing with those topics just resonated naturally. I think the main factors are recognition and identification, this gives a sort of backbone, an identity, with the important distinction that though it’s something you think is beautiful and are proud of, you don’t start comparing it with other people’s cultures. That’s where problems start, when it turns to politics.”

  The band’s interests in the ancient gods of their homeland was already evident on their second tape, 1992’s Yggdrasill, its opening number “Helmdalir” containing the rather unambiguous lyrics: “Heimdall is the name of an Old Norse God … He is great and holy.” Musically speaking, however, things were notably rougher around the edges than the likes of Bathory, with the furious, high-energy songs leaving little space for the epic and instead concentrating on rolling drums, chainsaw guitars, and eardrum-tearing screeches.

  The follow-up—the iconic EP Hordanes Land, released by Candlelight as a limited vinyl and one-half of the legendary Emperor/Enslaved split CD—hinted at things to come, however, with slower, moodier passages and lengthy songs (three tracks in a half-hour), although the musical content remained pretty raw.

  “Usually me and Ivar tried to rehearse during the week,” recalls Trym, “and then we all rehearsed in the weekends, so we were all involved in the creation of the songs. The hardest part back then was the arrangements, we did struggle to make all the different parts flow together and, as you can hear, try not to make very long songs!”

  One hugely supportive fan of the group was Euronymous, who heard the band around the time of Nema and told them to stay in touch, explaining that he might well be interested in signing the group to his label. While he would live up to his word, he nonetheless encouraged Candlelight to release Hordanes Land first in order to spread the name and drum up further interest in the group. In early 1994 the band’s debut album Vikingligr Veldi was indeed released on Deathlike Silence, though by this point Euronymous was no longer alive to see it. He would surely have been proud, however, as the record proved a massive leap forward for the trio and one that remains a compelling listen today. Boasting a large but relatively raw production courtesy of Grieghallen and Pytten, its busy song structures, strong melodies, mysterious atmosphere, and orchestral, synth-heavy approach sit comfortably alongside other early symphonic-leaning efforts of the day such as those by Emperor or Gehenna.

  “This was the first album we made,” explains Trym, “and that made us more focused about the songs and how they connected to each other. It was also recorded in Grieghallen with the famous producer Pytten and we all were a bit star-struck to be in this situation … he was also more open to new things, and pushed us to perform the best we could at that time. Not everything was planned before we went in the studio, so a lot of the atmospheric and symphonic parts were things Ivar played with in the studio. We liked these new elements and how they added a new dimension to the songs.”

  “In those days everything was just done from a sincere personal wish to make some kind of audial [sic] expression,” explains Ivar, who had handled synths as well as guitar within the band since its formation. “It was the same feeling as in May ’91, everything was so intense and physical almost, you played the song in the rehearsal room and it felt like the most important thing ever. The idea to use symphonic elements and synthesizers was inspired by both the pomp of classical music as well as contemporaries: particularly Czech pioneers Master’s Hammer. It was a way to add even more drama and intensity to the music—there could never be enough majesty and dramatic chord shifts.”

  “Ivar was really a young guy, a kid,” laughs Pytten, who would continue working with the band for much of their career, “but he was a very focused person. Not just about the music, but about the whole situation. He was being the accountant, keeping track of hours, keeping the books, which was a new situation for me in the studio! But as a band they have always been really conscious and focused … they ended up being good friends of mine.”

  With Deathlike Silence effectively finished following Euronymous’ death, the band signed to France’s Osmose, releasing their second album, Frost, in late 1994, less than half a year after Vikingligr Veldi. Given this short gap it’s surprising just how different the album is from its predecessor and stylistically it’s a definite step back from that album’s symphonic overtones. Despite retaining the use of synths, clean vocals, and clean guitars, the trio nonetheless forged a notably more traditional-sounding metal album, with a far rawer, guitar-focused sound.

  “On this one we wanted to push the limits further and add more aggression and speed in particular,” Trym states. “We felt more comfortable in the studio with Pytten and knew he could add the sound and atmosphere we wanted for this album. As the album was called Frost, we wanted to have a ‘cold’ sound, and I think we managed this very well. And as we had become better musicians, we could work on more advanced parts and at the same time make the arrangements better for each song.”

  Alongside the coldness remains a definite sense of
atmosphere, and the minimal but ever-twisting sound aptly hints at harsh northern winters and terrible battles in the snow. Indeed, the band proved more engrossed in Norse lyrical preoccupations than ever, as evidenced by song titles that included “Yggdrasil” (the “world tree” in Norse cosmology), “Wotan” (or Odin, the leading player in the Norse pantheon), “Loke” (better known as Loki, the trickster god), and “Fenris” (Loki’s ferocious wolf son). There is even a track called “Gylfaginning,” which is named after the first part of the Edda, the book written some eight hundred years ago by Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson and from which we take much of our understanding of the Norse gods.

  By now there was certainly no questioning Enslaved’s Viking credentials, a point cemented by the release of Eld in 1997, a record whose cover featured the blonde-haired Grutle seated on a wooden throne, goblet in hand, wearing a large Hammer of Thor and chain mail. If ever there was a poster band for the Viking metal scene—which now included countrymen such as Einherjer and Helheim—here they were, with an album that more than matched its cover in terms of content. Opening with “793 (Slaget Om Lindisfarne),” a sixteen-minute saga that more than matched Bathory for stirring and melodic majesty, it was an album that leaned closer toward the Viking metal template than ever before, making use of slower, more heroic passages and rousing, cleanly sung vocals.

  Viking black metal’s most iconic cover? Eld, 1997.

  “Eld is an extremely important album in our discography—and I dare say that it is a very important album for the extreme metal genre,” comments Ivar, “but it was comically underrated at the time of its release. In some circuits it was even ridiculed for the organic and rock-like production, clean vocals, and prog-influenced riffs. Those were the days when Abyss Studios was the shit, where every sound—including the silence between the songs—was the result of sound replacement and triggering. We were like the old geezers still using letters when the kids were using e-mail. Then in the 2000s when other people were also getting gagging reflexes from the silly plastic sound prevailing in metal, Eld came into fashion. Trends are silly, and can’t be trusted either way.”

  Nonetheless, a clear black metal spirit still abounded, which the band drew on heavily for the following year’s Blodhemn, a far more violent record that relied more heavily upon catchy, aggressive riffs, despite folk touches and a hint at the progressive direction to come. Despite featuring new members—guitarist Roy Kronheim and recently departed Gehenna drummer Dirge Rep—the record marked something of a return to the band’s musical past, though the cover image of the four members in period dress, standing on the shore with a longboat moored nearby, suggests the group’s heart was in much the same place.

  This two-pronged fork of lyrical consistency and an ever-shifting sound would become a hallmark of the group. Blodhemn itself marked the end of an era in many regards for the band, who introduced a pronounced progressive streak with 2000’s Mardraum: Beyond the Within, then expanded on it considerably as time went on. Today the group are widely regarded as one of the most essential prog metal outfits going, and their Viking and folklore themes continue to take center stage lyrically, while the band shift sonically from record to record. Yet while their artistic devotion to the subject might suggest a literal praise of the mythology in question, the band are keen to distance themselves from later groups who adopted neo-paganism (or Ásatrú, the “faith of the gods”) in a more religious sense.

  “‘Religious’ is a Christian term, just like ‘king’—there were no ‘kings’ in Norway or Sweden at that time,” Grutle explains. “We’re not religious, to be religious is to follow a god. In Norse mythology they didn’t follow the gods, they had each god representing a certain feeling or force. Advising, rather than giving rules. You get some New Age people who say, ‘I believe in Odin, I believe in Thor, I’m so religious.’ Well if you’re religious you’re no better than the Christians.”

  Just as the band distance themselves from those who follow the Viking mythology as a faith, so too are they quick to play down the notion that there has been any integration of traditional Viking music into their sound. Indeed, as Ivar points out, such a feat is probably not even possible.

  “We did a lot of research in the early days and were a bit surprised to find there was no musical tradition from that era,” Ivar concludes. “There was only the vocal chants—storytelling in a melodic sense, remembering things through rhyme—and the pounding of the Viking ships, which resembles the heartbeat. Then we looked at these bands claiming to be Viking-sounding and traced their roots, which were actually from Christian medieval Europe—not very good if you want to be a pagan band.”

  In that sense, Viking metal (black or otherwise) differs most obviously from folk metal in that it opts to suggest the mood of its chosen subject matter, rather than integrate actual elements of the period. All the same, as we shall see, many bands within black metal would prove that the influence of medieval Europe—and even more recent decades—could provide just as valuable a source of inspiration.

  40

  MOONFOG AND ULVER

  FOLK AND FOLKLORE IN BLACK METAL PART II

  “In an over-populated Europe old Norway remains to this day nature’s unspoilt realm: in the depth of her great forests stillness reigns as it did a thousand years ago. Here the modern world seems strangely unreal and irrelevant.”

  —Text from the sleeve of the Ulver/Mysticum EP, a telling insight into the psyche of the Norwegian scene in the early to mid-nineties

  THE MOONFOG YEARS

  A RESPECTED BAND in nineties Norway, Satyricon proudly drew direct inspiration from medieval Europe, even going so far as to dub themselves “medieval metal” in their early days. Unlike bands such as Enslaved, this fascination manifested itself most obviously through the incorporation of actual passages of folk music, as seen on their aptly named 1994 debut Dark Medieval Times, which makes extremely effective use of acoustic guitars, folk riffs, and even flutes, most notably on the album’s lengthy title track. These influences would slowly disappear over the course of the band’s next two albums, The Shadowthrone and Nemesis Divina, before being done away with in dramatic fashion on 1999’s industrial-black makeover album Rebel Extravaganza, which concerned itself with an explicitly urban aesthetic.

  Such historic folk interests were explored with some intensity around this time in Norway, particularly by the band’s frontman Satyr, who indulged his interests both in Satyricon and medieval ambient solo project Wongraven, as well as with his label Moonfog, which included two folk black metal acts, both featuring Fenriz. First was Fenriz’s solo project Isengard, a heavily Tolkien-inspired proposition which took its name from Lord of the Rings and its logo from a role-playing game based on the same book. The project had actually begun in 1989 as a death metal entity, but increasingly integrated clean vocals and stirring folk traits into an otherwise Darkthrone-like template, culminating in full-lengths Vinterskugge (1994) and Høstmørke (1995). The result proved something of an acquired taste, particularly the latter album’s loose compositions and “hey nonny” vocals.

  An advert for Vinterskugge, 1994, the debut full-length of Fenriz’s black/folk metal solo project Isengard.

  The same year saw the marginally more polished Nordavind album released by Storm, a one-album project in which Fenriz collaborated with Satyr himself, the duo giving traditional folk a black metal overhaul. Unsurprisingly, the album bore heavy similarities to Isengard, Darkthrone, and early Satyricon, though the inclusion of female vocals alongside those of Satyr and Fenriz set it apart somewhat. Curiously, these were contributed by Kari Rueslåtten of The 3rd and The Mortal, who later claimed in the national press that she had been deceived regarding the true nature of the album, unaware of its anti-Christian and nationalistic overtones.

  Fenriz’s folk dabblings ended in 1995, and today he is at pains to distance himself from folk metal in general, including his own contributions to the genre. Interestingly, his inspirations during this per
iod turn out not to have been the ancient folk music of his homeland that one might imagine, but an outfit from a much more recent period of history.

  “In 1994 I was into the Norwegian seventies folk rock band called Folque,” he explained to me during an interview on the subject of folk black metal in Terrorizer. “I was into pulling old, sad, shepherd’s songs and Norwegian/Swedish traditional music into the metal scene. I wish I never did. Folk metal should be deleted. Luckily I was also into the Viking albums Bathory did so masterly some years before—Hammerheart and Twilight of the Gods—so many okay songs came out of the Isengard project.”

  Making it clear that he prefers the “death metal ordeal” of Isengard’s early works to the “folk shit most people seem to prefer,” Fenriz is even more damning of Storm and the prevalence of folk influences in Norway at the time.

  “We were idiots and didn’t understand that folk and metal should never mix,” he laughs. “I thought Skyclad was amusing and my own fling with folk metal too, but after it was done … oh brother. Folk is good. Metal is good. But together? No. It sounds too merry for phat fuzz, and those of you who can’t hear that must be lacking a chromosome or something. Isengard had at least something else to offer than pure folk metal, but Storm? I ain’t touching that with a 666-foot pole.”