What's with black metal ?

are the bands really as hardcore as some of the imagery they put out or is it kind of tongue and cheek?

wasn't there some scandanavian metal band whose lead singer killed the guitarist, took photos of the body and turned his skull into a necklace? and the photos of the body became an album cover? or did i dream that?

NSFW:

Gnar boots dawg

most of it is crap music with a lot of hype, but there are some bands that i like in that scene

  On 12/30/2009 at 3:41 AM, margaret thatcher said:

wasn't there some scandanavian metal band whose lead singer killed the guitarist, took photos of the body and turned his skull into a necklace? and the photos of the body became an album cover? or did i dream that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayhem_(band) the lead singer killed himself and guitarist took pictures of the scene and took a couple skull fragments. Later on, the guitarist was killed by another band member.

what is going on in that photo? is his brain on the ground? that's so well posed

  On 12/30/2009 at 3:54 AM, mrx said:

most of it is crap music with a lot of hype, but there are some bands that i like in that scene

  On 12/30/2009 at 3:41 AM, margaret thatcher said:

wasn't there some scandanavian metal band whose lead singer killed the guitarist, took photos of the body and turned his skull into a necklace? and the photos of the body became an album cover? or did i dream that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayhem_(band) the lead singer killed himself and guitarist took pictures of the scene and took a couple skull fragments. Later on, the guitarist was killed by another band member.

That guy, Varg Vikernes, was released from prison this year. Norway has a maximum sentence of 21 years and he got out in like 16.

Most black metal now is aware self-aware of tongue-in-cheek attitude, but they're still serious about their ideology. Very few are satanists, most are broadly anti-authority and pro-individualism. It's kind of like emo, the image is completely opposite of the genre founders.

The early stuff is low-fi, abrasive, and perplexing (Check out Burzum, Darkthrone, Mayhem). Most bands now are:

I recommend anyone interested in the music and scene, beyond all the purely wacky and shocking stuff, see if this is showing near you: http://www.blackmetalmovie.com/

  On 12/30/2009 at 4:06 AM, zaphod said:

what is going on in that photo? is his brain on the ground? that's so well posed

Yeah, it's the orginal singer of Mayhem, whose fitting stage name was Dead, after he blew his head off. Bandmate Euronymous found him, left to buy a disposible camera at a nearby store, then posed him and took some pics. This was a cover for a bootleg release. Euronymous claimed later that cooked his brain, which was untrue, but others confirmed he did make necklaces with the skull fragments. Dead was introverted; he was known for sleeping buried underground, using dead birds to make himself smell like a corpse, fasted to achieve starving wounds, and as his Norwegian bandmates always mention, was also Swedish.

ugh

  On 12/30/2009 at 1:53 AM, yek said:

are the bands really as hardcore as some of the imagery they put out or is it kind of tongue and cheek?

i'd say it was more tongue and cheek as time went on. i think they started out thinking they were really something

  On 12/30/2009 at 4:19 AM, joshuatxuk said:

  On 12/30/2009 at 4:06 AM, zaphod said:

what is going on in that photo? is his brain on the ground? that's so well posed

 

Yeah, it's the orginal singer of Mayhem, whose fitting stage name was Dead, after he blew his head off. Bandmate Euronymous found him, left to buy a disposible camera at a nearby store, then posed him and took some pics. This was a cover for a bootleg release. Euronymous claimed later that cooked his brain, which was untrue, but others confirmed he did make necklaces with the skull fragments. Dead was introverted; he was known for sleeping buried underground, using dead birds to make himself smell like a corpse, fasted to achieve starving wounds, and as his Norwegian bandmates always mention, was also Swedish.

holy fucking jesus

yeah that's fucked up shit

  On 12/30/2009 at 8:21 AM, ieafs said:

yeah but how can you take that as being a "serious" fuck-up. if you were "seriously" fucked up would you do it in such a pantomine way? how could you take that seriously?

 

it was just regular 20 year misfits who got deep into a fantasy world and tried to one up each other. the same reason that people shoot up schools or do anything like that.

 

i'm not dissing it as music or as an aesthetic. just seems kind of naive to take it that seriously.

Yeah, for the sake of brevity, I'll mostly agree with that.

Of the key founding members, two went to jail for murder and church-burning, one was murdered, and one committed suicide. Of Darkthrone, the only major early band that didn't get involved with that stuff, Fenriz runs a label and the Nocturno Culto is a school teacher. They stuck with the music, not the imagery.

I don't condone the actions of Varg and the others involved with the intial church-burnings, but it's intresting to note they specifically had a pro-pagan, anti-Christian motives that they publicly admitted to. The media attention spurred mindless teenagers to start burning random churches all over Norway and elswhere, and quickly established all of the superficial satanic association with the movement. Even now, the division of listeners is simple: 1. mature fans who enjoy the music and get a kick out of the imagery 2. idiotic teenage fanboys who take it seriously.

i'm not sure how you can't take that seriously. the guy is dead, his brain is on the floor next to him, but hey, no big deal. lol

  On 12/30/2009 at 4:19 AM, joshuatxuk said:

  On 12/30/2009 at 4:06 AM, zaphod said:

what is going on in that photo? is his brain on the ground? that's so well posed

 

Yeah, it's the orginal singer of Mayhem, whose fitting stage name was Dead, after he blew his head off. Bandmate Euronymous found him, left to buy a disposible camera at a nearby store, then posed him and took some pics. This was a cover for a bootleg release. Euronymous claimed later that cooked his brain, which was untrue, but others confirmed he did make necklaces with the skull fragments. Dead was introverted; he was known for sleeping buried underground, using dead birds to make himself smell like a corpse, fasted to achieve starving wounds, and as his Norwegian bandmates always mention, was also Swedish.

  wiki said:

Dead's suicide note read "Excuse all the blood" and included an apology for firing the weapon indoors.

  On 12/30/2009 at 4:09 PM, zaphod said:

i'm not sure how you can't take that seriously. the guy is dead, his brain is on the floor next to him, but hey, no big deal. lol

yea wtf. i don't think doing horrible things to yourself is tongue and cheek....

  On 12/30/2009 at 5:38 AM, Calx Sherbet said:

Dead was introverted; he was known for sleeping buried underground, using dead birds to make himself smell like a corpse, fasted to achieve starving wounds, and as his Norwegian bandmates always mention, was also Swedish.

holy fucking jesus

I know man, Swedish. Fucked up.

edit: I fucked that quote up.

  On 12/30/2009 at 5:42 PM, Calx Sherbet said:

  On 12/30/2009 at 4:09 PM, zaphod said:

i'm not sure how you can't take that seriously. the guy is dead, his brain is on the floor next to him, but hey, no big deal. lol

 

yea wtf. i don't think doing horrible things to yourself is tongue and cheek....

It isn't. All that stuff was serious and fucked up. It established the notoriety of the genre and subculture. But since 1994, the bands making black metal have no connection to those events, and the imagery they use is often laughable.

Dead's suicide, the murders, and the church-burnings are beyond disturbing, as are people who admire it.

This, however, is not fucked up, it's silly, and they are a popular black metal group:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VBdAY8eA9w

Cradle of Filth are open about how the way they look is theatre. I mean, when you make music like that it kind of makes sense to get up in the black leather garb with the make up. It fits.

If these bands just wore jeans and t-shirt or whatever I think my head would explode a little bit. I'm not the biggest black metal fan, but I appreciate the dressing up like a moron side of it. It's fun!

Like, Mortiis would be boring if he didn't dress up like a troll. It really works, somehow.

Black Metal? only really like these guys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go3e-fvC5vs

and not many seem to know of them so...

I love Have A Nice Life but they're not black metal.

  On 12/30/2009 at 8:37 PM, Macca said:

Black Metal? only really like these guys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go3e-fvC5vs

 

and not many seem to know of them so...

Yeah, not black metal but I really dig it. They seem more in vein of Jesu.

It's not a bad guess though, this guy was in a black metal band, and now makes melodic but dark shoegaze stuff:

http://www.last.fm/music/Alcest

  On 12/30/2009 at 8:21 PM, ieafs said:

  On 12/30/2009 at 4:09 PM, zaphod said:

i'm not sure how you can't take that seriously. the guy is dead, his brain is on the floor next to him, but hey, no big deal. lol

well i guess suicide always has that going for it cause it makes it seem like you "really mean it". but the cliche is true - it is a kind of an easy way out. you only have to really mean it for a second and it's not like you have to live with the consequences. which is why i guess teenage suicide rates are quite high - just takes an impulse action.

 

i get what you mean but these are also people that name stuff after things in the lord of the rings and role-played out fantasy characters in the woods. anyone who wears make-up to look like a corpse in non-aesthetic real way is almost like thinking the people out of slipknot are hardcore and absolutely evil.

 

just seems like any sort of subculture like that is more borne out of insecurity and bad self-esteem and things like that. it's like taking the ku klux klan as anything other than this - and they certainly have done worse.

well...no. i think we're talking about two different things here. i'm saying specifically killing yourself and then a bandmate posing your corpse and photographing it is quite serious. it should be taken seriously because it's completely insane. it isn't evil, and no, these bands shouldn't be taken seriously for their imagery, which is ridiculous and laughable. but there isn't an argument for not taking a suicide seriously as in, whoa, that's fucked up. i mean, look at that photo. it's fucked up. it should be taken that seriously, as something messed up and far removed from the imagery that a metal band puts forth.

i should probably add that suicide results from a lot of serious mental problems that a person has to live with that drives them to kill themselves. so where this guy maybe thought he was evil or something, he was probably just crazy, and a scene like that just encourages that behavior. i can't think of a suicide where the person didn't mean it, even if they left a snarky note along with it.

Been into metal a long-long time, none of that hair metal shit but stuff like Black Sabbath, Prong, Slayer and Pantera etc. Never got into the Scandanavian black metal scene it seemed a bit sad to me, sort of appealing to sad introverted kids who need to chill out or get laid. The heaviest albums I would have would be every Slayer album, Panteras Far Beyond Driven, Celtic Frost's To Mega Therion (cool HR Giger artwork) and some of the Florida death metal scene like Obituary. Beyond that it just becomes mind-numbing noise, though I guess an REM fan would say the same of the bands I like LoL. Saw Naplam Death live once and they were excellent. There are Slayer fans who carve the bands name into their forearms with razorblades.

I am suprised some BOC fans don't do the same heheh. Just been browsing the forum over there and it seems those Scottish fellas have attracted some fanatical fans too.

i didn´t know about that movie, looks interesting. i had my own metal-radioshow in the early nineties in hamburg, germany and euronymous (the guy who was murdered by vikernes) and vikernes were penpals of me. i still have all the letters. was a funny time. a friend of mine who is running a small record label was also euronymous´ penpal at that time, and he knows two more people who were writing letters with him. having millions of penpals is sooooo totally evil eh?

i love black metal. some of it is like breakcore, you love it or hate it. and most of it has a serious tongue in cheek side. it's not worth arguing about, but black metal is awesome.

black metal is great. especially early ulver, striborg, nazxul, and some burzum. i also really like amesoeurs, even though they aren't exactly pure black metal because they mix it with indie/shoegaze, a really awesome combination!

i'm also working very slowly on my own black metal project. sounding quite interesting so far! though i don't think i'll ever do the corpse paint thing haha.