If you're a kid failing to fit in at school, something strange begins to happen in your mid-teens. You begin to embrace the outsider status as a badge of honour. This can manifest itself behaviourally, fashionably, culturally. Forever on the outside of the ‘cool’ clique looking in, you decide to build your own idea of... Continue Reading →

Satyricon and Gorgoroth both achieved an undeserved level of fame in the post 2000 extreme metal scene. The former for fusing black metal with more conventional chord patterns and time signatures, creating a style now known as 'black ‘n’ roll'. The latter for positioning themselves as the ugly and violent bastions of true black metal... Continue Reading →

Funeral doom represents the other end of the extreme metal spectrum to black metal in many ways. Whilst death metal largely relies on riffcraft before guitar tone to justify its existence, for funeral doom and black metal (approximately the fastest and the slowest of underground metal), surface level aesthetic can make or break an album.... Continue Reading →

I guess back in the day old school death metal was just…death metal. At some indeterminate point in the early 2000s it came to refer to artists at work roughly between the years of 1985 to 1993, who made a name through tape trading and zines. More recently still some metalheads have revisited our history... Continue Reading →

First, the disclaimer. I do not bear Enslaved any ill will. Their early output up to 1997’s ‘Eld’ represents better than average black metal. 1994’s ‘Vikingligr veldi’ deserving special mention as a classic. There’s no doubt that the shift in their career in the new century – marked by so called progressive/psychedelic influences – has... Continue Reading →

The belief that a key hallmark of raw black metal is music that intentionally alienates the listener is mistaken. Harsh vocals, distorted yet thin guitars, blasting drums, and shocking production values; all those descriptions do indeed apply to much black metal, but many musicians and producers tailored these low-fidelity values deliberately to create the desired... Continue Reading →

In the early 1990s thrash metal and death metal came down with a severe case of something called ‘groove’. Patient zero was probably Sepultura, who caught groove from an unnecessarily macho flee; known to science as ‘Pantera’. Other notable sufferers included the likes of Slayer, Napalm Death, Destruction, and many more. This only worsened as... Continue Reading →

Mischaracterising the Cold War’s end as the end of history has since morphed into an amusing theoretical anecdote; a historical touchstone for our own turbulent age; as if desperately exploring every aspect of the early 1990s will provide clues to our future. For underground metal however, a case can be made for our history’s end... Continue Reading →

1994 was something of a turbulent watershed for black metal. Some of its most revered works were released, some or all of which regularly make top multiple-of-ten lists to this day. It was also the year that many of its most infamous crimes were brought to light, and for a brief time the world beyond... Continue Reading →