AN EARLY BATHORY PROMO PHOTO
Bathory’s first three albums follow a similar mode of expression as Venom, though the music is made even more vicious by a potent arsenal of noisy effects and distortion. The hyperkinetic rhythm section blurs into a whirling maelstrom of frequencies—a perfect backdrop for the barked vocals of an undecipherable nature. Much of the explanation for this sound was simply the circumstances of recording an entire album in two-and-a-half days on only a few hundred dollars. The end result was more extreme than anything else being done in 1984 (save maybe for some of the more violent English Industrial “power electronics” bands like Whitehouse, Ramleh, and Sutcliffe Jugend) and made a huge impact on the underground Metal scene. In retrospect Quorthon says of Bathory’s first self-titled album, “If you listen to it today, it doesn’t make you tickled or frightened, but in those days it must have made a hell of an impression. Thinking back on how it was recorded, it’s amazing how big things can be made with small measures sometimes.”23 The lyrics were centered on black magic and Satanism à la Venom, although funneled through a bit of Scandinavian innocence and teenage melodrama which made them come off as even more extreme in the end. Quorthon is very honest in his assessment of the Satanism on the early records:
Well, at the time it was very serious, because today, ten years later, I don’t think I know anything more about it than I did then. I’m not one inch deeper into it than I was at that time, but your mind was younger and more innocent and you tend to put more reality toward horror stories than there is really. Of course there was a huge interest and fascination, just because you are at the same time trying to rebel against the adult world, you want to show everybody that I’d rather turn to Satan than to Christ, by wearing all these crosses upside down and so forth. Initially the lyrics were not trying to put some message across or anything, they were just like horror stories and very innocent. But nevertheless at the time you thought that you were very serious, and of course you were not.24
As Bathory matured over the course of their subsequent records, The Return... (1985) and Under the Sign of the Black Mark (1987), the music slowed down noticeably, songs became more elaborate, and the subject matter began to convey a degree of subtlety and ambiguity a far cry from the earliest singles. At this point came a remarkable shift of focus which, like their early primitivity, would also greatly influence the Black Metal scene of the future. Blood Fire Death, Bathory’s fourth LP, hit record shops in 1988 and was eagerly grabbed by extreme Metal fans around the world. Instead of the B-grade horror cover art of the previous album, an entirely different image greeted them: a swarming, airborne army of enraged valkyries on black horses, spurred on by the Nordic god Thor, hammer held aloft in righteous defiance as a wolfskin-cloaked warrior drags a naked girl up from the scorched earth below. This remarkable romantic painting by Norwegian artist Peter Nicolai Arbo, depicting the infamous “Wild Hunt” or Oskorei of Scandinavian and Teutonic folklore, was the ideal entryway into Bathory’s new sound which lay on the vinyl inside it. More accessible than the band’s previous noisefests, the new album was, nevertheless, just as brutal. Blood Fire Death employed the same amount of raw aggression, but channeled it through orchestrated songs and understandable vocals, which were helped along by more realistic and thoughtful lyrics. The first track was an evocative instrumental, “Odens Ride Over Nordland,” which recreates the soundtrack of sorts to the cover art, with the father of the Norse heathen gods, Odin (also called Oden, Wotan, and other names, depending on the Germanic language) riding his eight-legged horse Sleipnir across the heavens. The Norse gods are again invoked on the final track of the record, the title song:Children of all slaves / United, be proud / Rise out of darkness and pain
A chariot of thunder and gold will come loud / And a warrior with thunder and rain
With hair as white as snow / Hammer of steel / To set you free of your chains
And to lead you all / Where horses run free / And the souls of your ancient ones reign.25
With Blood Fire Death Bathory had forsaken the childish and foreign Satanism of their original inspiration but uncovered something just as compelling and fertile—the heathen mythological legacy of their own forefathers. The tapping of ancestral archetypes would become a matter of primary importance for the generation of Black Metal to follow, and an essential component of the genre.
The same inspiration resurfaced intensely on the next release, 1990’s Hammerheart, with the songs written from a more personal point of view. The record is, to a deeper and more romantic degree than its predecessor, an attempt to seriously explore the mindset of a Viking Age practitioner of Ásatrú religion. Ásatrú, which translates to “loyalty to the Æsir [the pantheon of pre-Christian Nordic gods],” is the modern word for the revival and reconstruction of the religious beliefs of the Norse and Teutonic Northern Europeans. It is often accompanied by a strong hatred of Christianity, considered to be an alien religion forced on one’s ancestors under threat of death. Bathory was not the only Swedish band of the period to advocate a return to Ásatrú (the singer of the heavy biker-oriented Punk group the Leather Nun in fact led an Ásatrú organization for a time), but they would have the most impact with their actions.
On Hammerheart, Bathory’s music undergoes an epic restructuring. Most of the songs clock in at ten minutes apiece, the vocals are clearly sung and even surrounded by chanted choral backdrops. Richard Wagner is thanked in the credits. The cover art, a romantic oil painting titled “A Viking’s Last Journey,” depicts a Viking ship burial of a nobleman, where the corpse is pushed to sea in a longship, set alight by torches. Ironically it was not long after this that many a Norwegian Bathory fan would pick up real-life firebrands, and employ them in their own neo-Viking fantasy.
The final release in Bathory’s “Ásatrú trilogy” came with 1991’s Twilight of the Gods, which further emphasized the musical elements of European Classical composition. Lyrical themes were drawn from Nietzsche’s dire warnings about the spiritual malady afflicting contemporary mankind. Beside this came veiled references to the SS divisions of World War II Germany in the song “Under the Runes,” which Quorthon admits was a deliberate provocation:
I wrote it in a way so that it would create a little havoc. “Under the Runes” is, to begin with, just my way of saying that regardless if it’s in the sky, the land, or deep down in the oceans, we will fight for my father’s gods’ right to have a place in any form of discussion when we discuss Sweden...
We tend to think of ourselves as modern, down-to-earth Protestant Christians—healthy Christians. And we never talk about how Sweden was prior to that, more than 900 years ago, because we have a history of 2,000 years of being Ása-faithful, and just 970 years of Christianity. And if they don’t want to talk about it, I’m prepared to fight any kind of war by the great hail, under the runes, for my father’s gods. Because there are certain values, from those times, worth fighting for.
And in creating havoc, being able to talk about what the song is all about, I wrote it so that it would be able to be taken as a Second World War song. Because then I knew people would keep on picking out that lyric, and then I would keep having to answer questions about it, and would get the idea out there.26
This was not the first time Bathory trod onto questionable ground with symbolism. Hammerheart featured a sunwheel cross emblazoned on its back cover, an oft-used icon of radical right-wing organizations. Quorthon professes some naiveté in the matter, but it’s hard to believe he wasn’t aware of the full potency of such visual elements. As he explains:
In Sweden that’s also the symbol for archeology, but in Germany it means something completely different. And the original colors for the logo and titles were black, white, and red—the original German colors. I didn’t even think about it, but people went berserk, so we had to print them in gold.27
Though not conscious of its influence, Bathory managed to create the blueprint for Scandinavian Black Metal in all its myriad facets: from frenzied
cacophony to orchestrated, melodic bombast; reveling in excesses of medieval Devil worship to thoughtful explorations of ancient Viking heathenism; drawing inspiration from European traditions to deliberately flirting with the iconography of fascism and National Socialism. Bathory’s first six albums encapsulated the themes which would stir unprecedented eruptions from the youth of Scandinavia and beyond.
Bathory’s bizarre bloodline of demonic inheritance—and that of Black Metal itself—can be traced straight back through Venom, Mercyful Fate, and other darker-themed Metal bands of the early ’80s, to the Heavy doom-ridden sounds of Black Sabbath and the mystical Hard Rock of Led Zeppelin, to their bluesy antecedents the Rolling Stones, and all the way to a poor black guitarist from the American South who may have sold his soul to Satan in a lone act of desperation. An unlikely Black Metal pedigree, but there it stands, helped along the way by countless others who poured their own creative juices into an evolving witches’ brew.
Only a few years and a few more selective ingredients were needed to push the cauldron of Black Metal from the edge of the hearth and into the fire...
FEAR RUNS WILD IN THE VEINS OF THE WORLD
THE HATE TURNS THE SKIES JET BLACK.
DEATH IS ASSURED IN FUTURE PLANS
WHY LIVE IF THERE’S NOTHING THERE?
SPECTERS OF DOOM AWAIT THE MOMENT
THE MALLET IS SURE AND PRECISE
COVER THE CRYPTS OF ALL MANKIND
WITH CLOVEN HOOFS BEGONE...
—SLAYER, “HARDENING OF THE ARTERIES,” 19851
2
DEATH METAL DIES, BLACK METAL ARRIVES
BLACK METAL IS A BASTARD CHILD, CONCEIVED FROM THE PROMISCUOUS intermingling of a number of evil seeds, with only the general formula of Heavy Metal as its fecund womb. Abaddon notes the reality of the situation when discussing how many of the Metal sub-genres of the ’80s and ’90s came in the wake of Venom’s outbursts:
I don’t think any band sets out to become an institution. A band sets out simply to fulfill different goals at different times in their career. ... We were interviewed once and somebody said, “Venom’s obviously not a Heavy Metal band. You don’t sound like Heavy Metal and you don’t look particularly Heavy Metal; you look like punks with long hair.” We said Venom is Heavy Metal—it’s Black Metal, it’s Power Metal, it’s Speed Metal, it’s Death Metal. And all of these sub-genres had never been heard of before. All of the sudden one band is considered a Speed Metal band, one is considered a Death Metal band, and another is considered a Black Metal or a Power Metal band. What we meant is that Venom is all of these things, and all of these genres could emanate from Venom. We didn’t mean for it to happen, but that’s how it turned out. A band like Pantera have nothing in common with a Scandinavian band, or a band from England like Cradle of Filth—they don’t sound like them. But when you draw back to where their all influences come from, you find Venom.2
By the closing years of the ’80s, cutting-edge Metal groups had absorbed influences from both the bombastic “New Wave of British Metal,” with ultra-masculine bands like Saxon and Judas Priest (the latter so much so they often crossed over the line of homoeroticism, with singer Rob Halford’s leatherman get-ups), and the burgeoning Hardcore scene, with its lack of pretentiousness and gritty depictions of reality. The gnarlier second generation of Punk, Hardcore mirrored the same angst of the lost generation of American youth as did Metal; both thrived and cross-pollinated in the sprawling no man’s lands of suburbia. Punk’s do-it-yourself ethos carried over into everything and increasing numbers of kids formed their own bands, pressed their own albums, and organized concerts. Hardcore began to merge with elements of Heavy Metal and vice versa. Boundaries blurred and—as in the early days of Venom—kids from both scenes liked the same bands, attended the same shows, and voiced the same simple slogans of teenage turmoil and rebellion.
UNITED SATANIC AMERICA
Overt expressions of Satanism remained buried deep in the Metal underground, and Venom never reached the same visibility in the U.S. they had achieved in England. The closest American parallel to Venom was L.A.’s Slayer, with their odes to bloody sacrifices and moonlit rituals on the early records Show No Mercy (1983), Haunting the Chapel (1984), and Hell Awaits (1985). Bands from the States never seemed to achieve quite the unadulterated level of blasphemy wielded by the British founders of Black Metal, but they did their best. Slayer penned endless songs about Satan and black magic, but interspersed these with vague attempts to comment on the horrors of warfare and other social ills. After some initial promo photos dressed up in spikes, leather, and makeup, feigning the bloody sacrifice of a blond female, the band opted for a more realistic image of beer-drinking everyday Metalheads.
SLAYER ONSTAGE
While most of the harder American Metal bands of the period stuck to less ornery lyrical themes, Slayer were not the only ones dabbling in diabolism. Another California band, Possessed, released its Seven Churches album in 1985, destined to be a influential slab of proto-Black Metal, and others waited in the wings to emerge. Even Mötley Crüe, later to devolve into Glam Rock sissies, began with a punkified debut and followed it up with Shout at the Devil, bringing a watered-down taste of the demonic to hundreds of thousands of impressionable suburban kids.
Equally important are the Misfits, Glenn Danzig’s Punk band from the early ’80s. They never sang of political problems (like the rest of their Punk and Hardcore peers) but rather a realm of B-grade horror films and space aliens. Beginning with a campy image of ghoulish makeup and “Devil locks” (a pointed clump of hair hanging down in front of their faces), the Misfits mutated into Samhain, injected more Metal into their sound, and sang pagan hymns to dark forces in nature. By 1988 the group had changed names again, to simply Danzig. They continue to this day, pumping out impious Blues-based Metal and walking much the same tightrope of spiritual and moral ambivalence as Black Sabbath did two decades ago.
SOUNDLY THRASHED
The late ’80s saw the brief ascendency of Thrash Metal, exemplified by bands like Anthrax, M.O.D., Metallica, and even the more extreme Slayer. In Europe, the German groups Kreator and Sodom left a strong mark, along with Swiss ensemble Celtic Frost, who started out as the seminal outfit Hellhammer. Sodom toyed with Satanic themes on their first few albums, and band members adopted pseudonyms of “Angelripper,” “Witchhunter,” and “Grave Violator”—the last of these bearing an ominous ring in light of the real-life activities Black Metalers would partake in a few years later. Hellhammer/Celtic Frost flirted with darker occult subjects for lyrical fodder, but eventually turned into something resembling a metalized Art Rock band. Like any style hyped incessantly by the music industry, Thrash Metal’s days were ultimately numbered. The genre became too big for its own good and major labels scrambled to sign Thrash bands, who promptly cleaned up their sound or lost their original focus in self-indulgent demonstrations of technical ability.
POSSESSED SEVEN CHURCHES
Peter Steele of gothic Metal band Type O Negative (and former frontman of the late ’80s “neo-barbarian” Speed Metal act Carnivore) accurately characterizes Thrash Metal as a form of “urban blight music,” a palefaced cousin of Rap.3 His remark is astute, and it wasn’t long before Thrash bands like Anthrax actually began collaborating with Rappers and incorporating elements of Hip Hop into their songs. The less compromising underground watched such developments with dismay, and eagerly awaited for its phoenix to arise from the ashes of the now dead Thrash genre.
Innovations in the louder forms of music have almost always come at the hands of the fans—fans who pick up instruments of their own, determined to do one better over their mentors, or disgusted with seeing their favorite music swamped in the wake of commercial sell-outs and corporate record labels meddling in the affairs of the underground. Speaking about the longevity of extreme Metal, Abaddon of Venom observes, “This kind of music always fractures, but the most important thing is that it always has a lot of passion in it, from the fans, wh
ich keeps it together. It’s the power of the fan base that will always keep it there.”4
CELTIC FROST
DEATH THROES
Concurrently emerging in both the U.S. and Europe, Death Metal was the antidote the underground had awaited, reintroducing a sense of immediacy and danger otherwise lost after the early demise of Thrash. Death Metal took the speed of both Hardcore and Thrash to build its skeleton, and fleshed this out with churning, down-tuned guitars and a growling style of singing which provided a dramatic antithesis to the falsettos and high-pitched lead vocals dominating mainstream Metal at the time. Death Metal’s subject matter was not far off from that of the Misfits, but instead of B-grade ’50s horror, one now found the Z-grade slasher movie violence of the ’70s and ’80s served up in endless rotation. Songs detailing infinite varieties of murder, torture, rape, and dismemberment were spewed out from the growing army of Death Metal acts around the globe. The related genre of Grindcore, more heavily indebted to the politics of English anarchist and “peace Punk” pioneers like Crass and Rudimentary Peni, produced its own massively popular groups Extreme Noise Terror, Napalm Death, and Carcass. The latter are noteworthy for their graphically nauseating cover art on records like Symphonies of Sickness—collaged photographs of butchered meat and human autopsy photos, accompanied by lyrics drawn from textbooks on medical pathology.
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