Metal Reviews

Is this the most underrated scene in the world?

Cosmic Church, Horna, Circle of Ouroborus, Raate, Blood Red Fog, Foudre Noire, Saturnian Mist, Satanic Warmaster, Sargeist, Funerary Bell, Verge, Beherit, rarely hear anyone talk of any of these bands, while going bananas for everything that comes out of France and the Ukraine.

tl;dr - discuss Finnish bm.

Sorry for the additional namedrop, but ...and Oceans is one of my favourite bands of all time. Moonsorrow is a different flavour, but could be counted among the great Finnish bm bands as well.

ImpNaz is the only one I really care about and not really super into them.

Apart from some bands in the Finnish scene, I found most of the other stuff a derivative of say bands like Darkthrone and Immortal. The former goes for Horna and the latter for Azaghal. One only has to listen to the last two Azaghal albums to realize what a rip off they are from Immortal. Or the same goes for Horna, very reminiscent of Darkthrone. Although there are some bands that are trying to make original music and I appreciate that. The fact of the matter is, it is sometimes very hard to make traditional BM and not sound like the bands that originated them in the first place; nonetheless, one finds European bands creating very original music that goes to a very sophisticated route of their former influences.

i.e., the French bands, right?

When Horna, Sargeist, Wyrd, Behexen, Baptism and Satanic Warmarster were at the top of their game, about 6-7 years ago, Finnish bm was arguably the best one at the time. In time they fell under the radar. The releases got worse too. The French kept releasing quality stuff since then and are obviously the best right now.

I see nothing about French black metal that makes it clearly the best right now.

Three letters. DsO.

Most definitely. Kathy mentioned the obvious DsO. Also a band like Aosoth is another example. Another great example of European BM from a Swedish origin is a band like Watain.

Sargeist is great. Horna is great to. Sargeist really outdid themselves with Let The Devil In.

Nope.

I like DsO, but nope.

Heh, the finnish scene maybe somewhat derivative, but they do it well, really fucking well. And some of the newer bands have their own kind of sound imo, wouldn't describe Funerary Bell, Raate, Blood Red Fog or Saturnian Mist as darkthrone clones.

Anyway, the French scene is starting to disappear inside it's own dissonance. DsO are still ok, and Aosoth are good but derivative, but the DsO sound is getting copied way too much at imo.

BaN and K.P.N. are pretty good examples of excellent French black metal too.

.:crast:.

BaN were better in their early days, Ultima Thule and Memoria Vetusta are amaaaazing.

Well I'll be damned. Been away from this site a long time and most people's taste in BM still sucks.

Of course, with your purist taste in BM it is inevitable that a band like Deathspell Omega and more denser and complex BM is going to disappoint you. No surprise.

Nu-Deathspell Omega is not black metal, its avantgarde tech death at best and red hot nails being shoved down your ear canals at worst.

Pushing boundaries and breaking the commonalities has nothing to do with being true or not. It certainly does not take away anything from the "traditionalists and the conservatives" of BM.

Definitely an underrated scene. Some great bands out there. I'd say there are much better national scenes out there, but Finland deserves credit.