Norway. Vikings, right? Well, what if - just as a thought experiment - what if instead of axes, Vikings had "axes?" Y'know, electric guitars. What kind of music you think they'd make? Maybe Led Zeppelin had it right. "Immigrant Song" would be a great soundtrack for pillaging! But you forget: no axes. So, if Vikings had to actually roll in a concert PA set up, and pillage foreign lands via the music... what then? Black. Metal.
A brief run-down of the stylistic and thematic elements of Black Metal. Evil: evil sounds, evil thoughts, evil deeds. Guitars: abrasive and trebly, no riffs or solos, sustained chords or repetitive tremolo-picking (rapid single-note drones). Drums: technique from the ridiculous to the sublime, often employing blast-beats (rapid single-drum accents). Vocals: demonic, high-pitched gurgle to wailing shriek (not much growling). Themes: alienation from and rejection of modern society, especially the invading, foreign ideology of meek submission, Christianity. Evil.
The Foundation - First wave 1980's. That's right! This is where it all began. Extreme metal was just beginning to one-up the NWOBHM. Metallica would bear the standard for an American underground. But the foreigners were doing some completely different stuff. It wasn't there yet, but archaeologically, it was.
Venom – "Black Metal" – Black Metal (1982) The song and/or album title that gave the whole genre's name. These guys were notorious jokers, though... which apparently wasn't inherited. (UK)
Hellhammer – "Messiah" – Apocalyptic Raids (1984) Possibly the most influential, earliest musical roots for it all. (Switz)
Sarcofago – "INRI" – INRI (1987) These guys apparently feuded with Sepultura. This country isn't big enough for both of us! Hilarious, scary. (Brasil)
Bathory – "For All Those Who Died" – Blood Fire Death (1988) And here's where the classic/standard BM vocals all begin. (Swede)
Trve [kvlt] Norwegian Black Metal - 2nd wave Those crazy kids in Norway. They created an all-new monster from the body parts strewn around the laboratory. And when they weren't inventing a new type of metal, they were burning down churches and killing each other.
Burzum – "Jesu Død" [full] – Filosofem (1993) Solo project of Varg Vikernes, he would combine the cold sterility of home recording with ambient approaches. Thus expanding the palate beyond purely metal sounds. (Nor)
Mayhem – "Freezing Moon" – De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (1994) The iconic Norwegian Black Metal band. Original lead singer, Dead, killed himself. Rumors abound about what bandmates did before authorities were summoned: brain stew, skull fragment pendants, a quick run to buy a disposable camera. Guitarist Euronymous ran the Oslo record store that the scene coalesced around. He was killed by bassist Varg. They're still going, without any of those three obviously. (Nor)
Darkthrone – "En Ås I Dype Skogen" – Transilvanian Hunger (1994) (Nor) The main originator of intentionally low-fi recording approach as a Black Metal aesthetic. (Nor)
Immortal – "Blashyrkh (Mighty Ravendark)" – Battles in the North (1995) Immortal are terrific, and ridiculous. Much like this awesome video, which was influential on early waves of BM videos. I can watch it over and over! (Nor)
Finland/Sweden - so close! Beherit – "Sadomatic Rites" – Drawing Down the Moon (1993) Somewhat experimental for this time period, using synths and all. I honestly don't know a lot about this band. (Fin)
Abruptum – [10 minutes of…] Obscuritatem Advoco Amplectére Me (1993) On the outer edges of experimental for Black Metal in general, going to very Noise areas. Album-long tracks, crazy sounds. Main guys go by IT and ALL. (Swede)
Marduk – "Glorification of the Black God" – Heaven Shall Burn… When We Are Gathered (1996) Never really listened to much Marduk either. Blasphemous blackened Death, but what isn't these days? Yet another BM band to take an ancient civilization's deity name for themselves. (Swede)
Beyond the Second Wave... Bands start breaking from the pack, exprimenting with punk sounds, industrial sounds, symphonic crap, crazy political ideas. Black Metal begins to lose its "purity of essence."
Nargaroth – "Black Metal ist Krieg" – Black Metal ist Krieg (2001) Title has become quite the rallying cry, as you might imagine. I think it's the only thing I know about Nargaroth at all. (Ger)
Anaal Nathrakh – "The Supreme Necrotic Audnance" – The Codex Necro (2001) They had me at the Excalibur references, but I really dig this band. They mix in other heaviness, like Death, Grind, and Industrial. Good stew. (UK)
Aborym – "With No Human Intervention" – With No Human Intervention (2003) According to Wikipedia, they call it "hard/black alien industrial metal," which seems only fair. I like this band also, although I'm not familiar with their post-Attila stuff. (Nor/Ita)
Hate Forest – "Domination" – Purity (2003) Nationalistic BM. Aryan, Nietzschean, but also Slavic. (Ukraine)
Folk BM Several bands go the opposite direction, incorporating non-BM roots into their music.
Windir – "Saknet (The Longing)" – Arntor (1998) This is a good album. The main guy died a few years later, wandering the Norwegian forest in winter. Black Metal. (Nor)
Drudkh – "Furrows of Gods" – Blood In Our Wells (2006) Some overlap with Hate Forest, but somewhat more folkloric than straight nationalism. Although it's more like modern national heroes, poets, etc... (Ukr)
The center cannot hold... It's like no-one actually plays true Norwegian-style Black Metal anymore. And honestly, it becomes more interesting. Sonic experimentation, theoretical concepts, personal expression, pretty sections. Nothing's too crazy anymore!
Blut Aus Nord – "Our Blessed Frozen Cells" – The Work Which Transforms God (2003) BAN recently returned from the industrial experiments to their Black Metal roots. New album is great: #11 Metal Next 10! (Fr)
Deathspell Omega – "Carnal Malefactor" – Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice (2006) Academically rigorous metaphysical investigations into the teleological underpinnings of Satanism. For real. (Fr)
Krallice – "Wretched Wisdom" – Krallice (2008) The newcomers. Technical and urban, rather than scuzzy and wooded. (USA)
2009 (or just more recently) Mount Eerie – "Wind’s Dark Poem" – Wind’s Poem (2009) And now we get to where we are now. A mumbling indiexperimental singer-songwriter kinda digs Black Metal, and incorporates it into his new album. Sounds good, great press! (USA)
And here's more newer stuff from bands already covered: Beherit – "Axiom Heroine" – Engram (2009)
Sometime around college, I heard Tago Mago (1971) and Autobahn (1974), and Big Black's cover of Kraftwerk's "The Model." But I doubt I put them all together too much.
Like quite a few musics, my full awareness of Krautock started with the Spin Alternative Record Guide (1995, OOP). In addition to entries for Can and Kraftwerk, this was appended to Faust's:
After Faust, you'll surely want to venture further into the Krautrock hinterland. Start with Neu!, a group something like Germany's Television. Combining radiant guitars with the unsyncopated symmetry of the motorik beat (also used by Kraftwerk) to create an aura of restrained elation...
Amon Duul II lay at the baroque end of the Krautrock spectrum; imagine Led Zeppelin produced by John Cale and you'll get some idea of the grandiose delights of Phallus Dei, Dance of the Lemmings, and Yeti. As for the rest... Ash Ra Temple's [sic] lysergic raga-rock and Popul Vuh's pellucid, almost Gothic instrumentals can be taken straight, but Brainticket and Guru Guru walk a precarious line between sublime and ridiculous.
If you think that didn't spark my interest, you don't know me! (And maybe you don't, but it did.)
Around the same time and unbeknownst to me, crazy Julian Cope (of The Teardrop Explodes) was self-publishing Krautrocksampler (1995, OOP). He defined Krautrock very narrowly, as music that could not have been created anywhere but in the late '60s and '70s German rock underground. Therefore, he leaves off some landmark albums from his otherwise seminal Krautrock Top 50 list.
A couple more genre'l notes before we dig into the exemplars. The term Krautrock was originally coined by the contemporary British music press, apparently as a condescending perjorative. It gained currency when it was embraced by some of the acts themselves (especially Faust's song with that title), by John Peel, and obviously later by Julian Cope and others approvingly. Cope would definitely not include a band like Brainticket (they're Swiss), but I'm going wide.
Still, he's pretty right on: the only thing drawing together Velvet-y agit-funk and side-long synth-suites is their roots in the German youth counterculture of the '60s.
Top shelf The seminal bands that are centrally identified with the genre. Many of their members cross over into other important Krautrock acts or made a mark solo. Band name links go mostly to All Music Guide biographies, song titles go to the best YouTube clip I could find - without repeating previously posted songs.
Second class All of these acts show up in Cope's Top 50 albums list, but they're not the major names. For the most part, they were more experimental, shorter lived, and/or not quite as titanic as the top shelf bands.
Third tier There's some great stuff here, and some of it's way, way out there. But these are more obscure, or drifting away from what really makes the music Krautrock. Still worth checking out... if your interest hasn't already run dry.
Nowadays Expanding from those included on the old 3 Who Would... Kraut post. Don't want to overdo it by including anyone I can imagine being heavily under the influence, but I'm also leaving out avowed admirers such as Radiohead, Flaming Lips, and Wilco. They just don't often sound Krautish.
So, I was reading at one of my regular internet music places, and all of a sudden I'm hearing about a contender for album of the year (this current one). Investigating, I discovered a strange and new-ish phenomenon. I didn't realize we'd gotten to the point where a few similar albums would trigger the immediate christening of an all-new sub-sub-genre, then the re-christening, and re-christening, and re-christening. Then an all-out critical scrum over what genre tag should triumph.
"The sound has many names, but none of them seem to fit just right. Dream-beat, chillwave, glo-fi, hypnagogic pop, even hipster-gogic pop - all are imperfect phrases for describing a psychedelic music that's generally one or all of the following: synth-based, homemade-sounding, 80s-referencing, cassette-oriented, sun-baked, laid-back, warped, hazy, emotionally distant, slightly out of focus." - Pitchfork review of Psychic Chasms (2009)
No, the place wasn't Pitchfork (although I've come to terms with its place in my music quest), and the album wasn't Neon Indian's. It was elsewhere, and they were actually talking about Washed Out's current year output. See, the gimmick here is these American guys are doing on a small scale with lo-fi recordings and "micro-labels" what British folks were doing in the '80s on a huge scale on Mtv. Darker sentiments, presented beatwise, and wrapped in sunny pop hooks.
Arguably, more than genre tags like "glo-fi" or The Wire critic David Keenan's "hypnagogic pop," but those labels can be useful, too... - Pitchfork review of Life of Leisure (2009)
From what I gather, the leading light here is Memory Tapes (or Weird Tapes or Memory Cassette). As with anything so premature and ill-defined, there's a lot of variation between acts. This/these guy(s) seem to rein it in a bit - including some guitars, not getting so lost in the wooze... I dunno, my research was pretty limited. They do offer the more experimental, UK-only 22:22-minute bonus disc/track from their latest, "Treeship," for free download.
Seems like every other day, an evocatively named band would come about and contribute to this glo-fi/dreambeat/chill-wave thing that was perfect for those unbearably humid August nights rife with possibility... - Pitchfork review of Seek Magic (2009)
So, what's wrong with just "indie-synthpop"? Hmmm... I think I'll throw in my own competing label - how about "bunnygl!tch"?
Anyway, I thought you should know what's going on. Personally, I much prefer the hauntology style they're practising over at UK's Ghost Box (downloadables on artist's release pages), influenced by previous generations of studio-work at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Especially The Advisory Circle and Belbury Poly. It's generally more restrained and polite than the noisier bunnygl!tch stuff. But that's England for ya!
Here I was going to write a whole explanation on what all I mean when I call many of these bands "post-rock." But this Wikipedia article does a really good job. (Post-rock fans are the type to make sure the Post-rock Wiki entry is up-to-snuff.) I would just disagree that it’s “non-rock” music - it’s just as much rock as Krautrock and prog-rock.
But basically, we're talking about rock band line-ups playing rock-type songs that put the emphasis on aspects that most real rock bands don't focus on. Dynamics instead of "changes," songs drawn out in arcs rather than verses and choruses, tones and moods over riffs and vocals. Not to be confused with the similarly-rooted, and somewhat overlapping, genre math-rock.
Louisville's Slint was a major nexus for both. For post-rock, they staked out new spaces for the guitars and rhythms to explore. For math-rock, they built algorithmic song structures, and made the instruments wheel geometrically around a common center of gravity. Spiderland (1991) is one of the pinnacles of '90s independent rock, far beyond its seminal role in genre-spawning.
Two intermediary bands are worth mentioning here. Don Caballero (more math-y, still with riffs but instrumental) started off with For Respect (1993). Rodan were also from Louisville, taking it from math to post-math. Here's my own personal How the Winter Was Passed 7" (1993), a rarity! Both of these were way too early to be either/or, so they're kind of like transitional fossils in the evolution of whatever we're talking about.
[Pt. 2 here]
True post-rock starts taking form around the time of Tortoise's Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996). It's got the instrumentals, it's got the atmosphere, it's got the 20-minute opening track, and the elaborate full-sentence title. It's got the look and feel of hand-tooled avant rock. And it got enough critical acclaim to launch a whole sub-genre.
Scotland's Mogwai took it international with Young Team (1997). Slow and serious, built like a classical symphony... They also would need two/part YouTube videos due to song lengths.
The major Montreal scene (and acronymic names) began with Godspeed You! Black Emperor (aka GY!BE). Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (2000) brought in cinematic dynamism, slow-build-to-apocalypse crescendos, and all epic songs. And a formula is born!
Explosions in the Sky (or EITS) are from Austin, and nice folk by all accounts. They take their post-rock a bit heavier, metaller, more explosive! Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever (2001) continues in the proud tradition of interminable album titles. Its airplane cover and textual art got the rumors going about something about 9/11. Nonsense...
You can read more about Japans's Mono and their melancholy film-score classicisms, with extra noise outbursts, here. The Athens, GA youngsters in Maserati speed it up, motorik-style. As their (single-word!) bandname would imply.
Finally, Austin's The Calm Blue Sea is very Mono-esque, which is to say Very Godspeed-ish... They have several videos found here, and have just recently scored a silent film.
And that brings us up to now, with Mono and Maserati finishing their tour together in Austin next weekend. I can only assume The Calm Blue Sea will be in attendance.
Just for good measure, there’s also post-metal, descended from Neurosis mostly. But that’s an altogether different story...
