Second-Wave Black Metal
Located in 1 route
Second-wave black metal is the codified Norwegian sound: fast tremolo-picked guitar riffs in cold minor keys layered into shimmering walls, relentless blast beats and double-kick from the drums, and high, anguished shrieking vocals drenched in reverb. Production is deliberately raw, thin and trebly - the buzzing 'necro' guitar tone, near-inaudible bass and tinny cymbals are an aesthetic choice, not a budget failure. The atmosphere is freezing, hateful and majestic, conjuring winter, forests, Satanism and Scandinavian heathenism; many bands add icy synth, acoustic interludes and hypnotic repetition, all wrapped in corpse-paint and grim imagery.
History
The wave ignited in Norway around 1990 when Mayhem - guitarist Euronymous, vocalist Dead and drummer Hellhammer - became the scene's nucleus, with Euronymous running the Oslo shop Helvete and the Deathlike Silence label. Dead's 1991 suicide, a rash of church burnings, and Euronymous's 1993 murder by Burzum's Varg Vikernes turned the scene infamous; the music peaked with a run of 1992-1994 landmarks: Darkthrone's A Blaze in the Northern Sky (1992) and Transilvanian Hunger (1994), Burzum's early albums, Emperor's In the Nightside Eclipse (1994), Immortal's Pure Holocaust (1993), and Mayhem's posthumously completed De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (1994). Sweden's Marduk, Dark Funeral and Dissection extended the sound, and the template went on to spawn symphonic, atmospheric, depressive and post-black offshoots worldwide.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Michael Moynihan & Didrik Soderlind, Lords of Chaos
- Dayal Patterson, Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult (Feral House)
- Encyclopaedia Metallum (metal-archives.com): Mayhem, Darkthrone, Emperor, Burzum pages
- Wikipedia: De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
- Transilvanian Hunger
- In the Nightside Eclipse