Kathaarian wrote:
Angel Black wrote:
Kathaarian wrote:
Pfft. Yes, black metal is all atmosphere but black metal is black metal. And gothenburg is gothenburg. By that logic someone can make a black metal record with a string quartet, which somehow seemed like a good idea instantly as I was trying to prove the opposite.
Hmmm. Can something still be black metal but made with other instruments and/or following other influences in music (like gothenburg in this case)?
I think this can make a thread of his own. I'm not so sure about my answer, honestly.
But is BM only music?
Take a look on Sunn O))) - Black One. It's Doom/Drone but the atmosphere is pure black metal.
Take some records of Henrik Nordvargr Bjork. Mz.412 for instance. It's industrial, dark ambient but the atmosphere is pure black metal.
Don't know the latter but I agree with sunn O))) and also Nortt can be considered black metal in that sense. But does it qualify only because of it's bleak atmosphere?
I wasn't there when the scene was blossoming, I fell in love with BM when it was 10 years old and don't feel like being competent to judge what is and what isn't BM. However I learned from people who were there, and witnessed the birth of the scene that music wasn't the most important thing there, the atmosphere was the key. The gloomy, satanic, abhorrent noise was the target of those musicians. That's one thing.
The second is that in the 80s black metal was everything! Mercyful Fate, Venom, Sodom...Every stuff which was in a way afilliated with satanism/occultism was categorised as BLACK MUSIC. And perhaps that's why this approach still was very meaningful to the giants of second wave of BM in the early 90s. Let's take a look at Darkthrone. Those guys recorded Transilvanian Hunger as a kind of manifest of lo-fi noise.
And the last thing - I generally stick to the rule that if the music was called black metal/death metal/whatever metal during it's golden years and the people who were there created the name, categorised the music as the Whatever Metal then there's no point changing it
