Metal Reviews

Norsecore? I hear it getting bad mouthed all over the internet, but I still don't know exactly what it is or what it means. Could somebody fill me in? Please and thank you.

Some genre kvltsters made up for bands that aren't tr000 enough.

Norsecore is bands like Marduk and early Dark Funeral. Really, really fast with pretty much non-stop blast beats, set to BM screeching. Most people don't like it because they can't handle the sheer intensity of it, and so mock it to hide the fact that they are pussies and can't handle an album punching them in the groin.

Panzer Divison Marduk would be the best example of it.

That emotionless "BM" where the only thing that's going on is ultra fast blast beats and ultra fast tremolo picking.

It is also used by people in the way Husker said.

or what the posters above me said. It's usually not as good as "black metal".

but it still has it's place.

I agree with much of what has been said already.

Marduk was good a decade ago and is pretty good now.

Yup. What they said. Hyper fast black metal without the emotion and the atmosphere that is vital to black metal. Like Gorgoroth, Marduk, Dark Funeral...

I dislike most of it, but I do like some. If it's as mindfuckingly crushing as Marduk - Heaven Shall Burn... you gotta love it.

BM that's based musically more on extreme hardcore punk (not the modern stuff, the real grind/crust shit from the 80's) than traditional metal. Tons of simple, often trem-picked riffs and simple drum beats (nonstop blasting is common).

Typical nordic BM, basically. Gorgoroth, Dork Funeral, newer Marduk, even Ildjarn are norsecore. Not necessarily a bad thing, just out of voque for a long time.

You guys are splitting the wrong hairs... I think Jurgen is the only one who's right. I'm moving to BW.org soon, cuz LOL, it has nothing to do with being emotionless.

I beg to differ. That might be a definition taken from somehere, but it isn't accurate. Which 90's bm band other than Darkthrone has hardcore punk influences? Mayhem? Immortal? No way. Not even close. And norsecore bands like Gorgoroth, Marduk and Dark Funeral are especially nothing like that. Either we're talking about different hardcore punks, or that definiton is wrong.

However it is right to call it "black grind", but I don't think that any of the bands were actually influenced by grindcore, it's just that they are trying to take music to the extreme, playing really fast and emotionless, and that extreme happens to be grindcore.

Grindcore on the other hand is influnced by harcore punk, but that's what I call splitting hairs. It isn't directly related to norsecore.

All In my humble opinion.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I think I passed out for 2 seconds while writing this.

Kathy is right.

It's called norseCore for a reason here, it's does not have enough traditional metal influences to be metal. Norsecore is not a serious term, it's just made to call shit on the Norwegian sound anything but metal. It doesnt have to be influenced by hardcore punk, then again Darkthrone listens to punk, whose Transilvanian Hunger is the blueprint of all norsecore. You are not about to call that 'emotionless' are you?

Norsecore is Transilvanian Hunger, Black Metal is Welcome To Hell. The end.

This thread is LOL, and Jurgen wins. and Darkthrone rules

You're wrong there. Darkthrone's hardcore punk influenced album is A Blaze in the Northern Sky, they dropped that in TH. Transilvanian Hunger is their minimalist album, which influenced more underground trve kvlt bm bands than norsecore bands. If Transilvanian Hunger was the blueprint of norsecore then it would be atmoshpheric and mid paced. Which it isn't.

Immortal - Battles in the North = yup
Darkthrone - Transilvanian Hunger = nope

No Darkthrone is fast enough to have influenced norsecore....

Pretty much everyone. The primitive style of the guitar riffs and drumming is taken from hardcore punk. Blastbeats were a punk thing before some BM and DM bands started incorporating grind influences into their music.

Let me put it this way: do the guitar riffs on, say, Ildjarn albums remind you more of Judas Priest or Discharge?



A lot of the old Norse bands were influenced by hardcore punk and crossover/proto-thrash stuff very directly. There are old photos of the Mayhem dudes in Cryptic Slaughter shirts, Faust was a big fan of Napalm Death and so on.



I agree that there aren't really any punk rock influences on Transilvanian Hunger, but a lot of the more extreme crust/grind bands had the same kind of primitive buzzsaw riffing (Darkthrone incorporated their own special nordic melodicism into it, but constant trem picking was in no way their invention) and repetitive drumbeats just like TH, years before TH.

Punk is as multi-faceted as metal and metal has borrowed from punk from the early days. Motörhead is an obvious example, and so are Venom. Iron Maiden were dissed as punk rockers by a lot of traditionalists in their early days, because they played extremely fast for their time, and Paul DiAnno wore spikes and stuff.

The heaviness of Black Sabbath + the speed of punk = the foundation of thrash, black and death metal.



I think we can all agree on that!

Jurgen puts forth a convincing argument, even to someone like me that doesn't like punk music on principle.

And we can all agree on Darkthrone.

Darkthrone rules. Nuff zaid.