War Metal
Located in 2 routes
A chaotic, bestial fusion of black and death metal built for maximum violence: a churning, indistinct wall of downtuned guitar, relentless hyper-blasting and bombing-run double-bass drumming, and guttural roars trading off with cavernous black-metal shrieks. Production is deliberately murky and explosive, riffs dissolving into noise-soaked feedback, tremolo, and air-raid-siren chaos rather than discrete melody. Frequent grinding tempo collapses, militaristic imagery, and total Satanic/apocalyptic aggression define a sound meant to feel like an artillery barrage.
History
War metal (also called bestial black metal) traces to a late-1980s lineage of Brazil's Sarcófago, Sweden's Bathory and Australia's Sadistik Exekution, but was codified by Canada's Blasphemy, whose 'Fallen Angel of Doom....' (1990) and the surrounding 'Ross Bay Cult' of Victoria, British Columbia, set the blueprint. The scene's second generation — Conqueror, formed by Ryan Förster and James Read, with 'War.Cult.Supremacy' (1999) — sharpened the formula, and Förster's later band Revenge ('Triumph.Genocide.Antichrist', 2003) became the style's most prolific torchbearer. Florida's Black Witchery ('Desecration of the Holy Kingdom', 2001) carried it stateside, while New Zealand's Diocletian, Australia's Bestial Warlust and Finland's Archgoat globalized it. Labels Nuclear War Now! Productions and Osmose anchored the international underground.
Defining artists
Essential listening
- Ritual(1990) — BlasphemySpotifyYouTube
- War Cult Supremacy(1999) — ConquerorSpotifyYouTube
- Attack the Enslaver(2003) — RevengeSpotifyYouTube
- Unholy Vengeance of War(2001) — Black WitcherySpotifyYouTube
- Jesus Spawn(1993) — ArchgoatSpotifyYouTube
- Holocaust Wolves of the Apocalypse(1995) — Bestial WarlustSpotifyYouTube
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Metallum (Metal Archives)
- Discogs (Nuclear War Now! Productions catalog)
- Dayal Patterson, 'Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult'