Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult

by Dayal Patterson

  “That was fucking chaos,” groans Tägtgren, “because by then they became big and thought they knew everything! The recording was always good but mixing was fucking chaos, everyone was fighting with everyone else and in the end they went home with a shitty mix that I knew was a shitty mix, ’cos everyone was saying, ‘I need to be louder!’ All six of them, and I wanted to say, ‘Shut the fuck up,’ but in the end I was like, ‘Okay, whatever you want to do,’ and whoever had the loudest voice got their part louder. I mixed it and then Sven and Stian [Silenoz and Shagrath] came out alone and we remixed it and there was peace and quiet. I also wasn’t happy with the mastering, I had nothing to do with it, they took away a lot of important frequencies and it just sounded totally bullshit, flattened, empty and [ironically!] with no dimensions.”

  Despite this, the album remains one of the high points of the band’s career, though it’s interesting to note that they opted to head for another Swedish studio, Studio Fredman, for their next album, 2001’s somewhat transitional Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia. The album, which saw the band abandoning corpsepaint in their photo shoots for the first time, also had them edging away from their established melodic black metal sound. By this time the band had undergone a major lineup shift, thanks to the departure of Astennu and Nagash, the two initially working together again on Carpe Tenebrum before Nagash left to concentrate on Covenant (now The Kovenant, after a dramatic gothic/industrial metal makeover). Nagash would be replaced by bassist ICS Vortex, while lead guitar duties would be taken over by Galder of Old Man’s Child. In retrospect, Galder was an obvious choice; a longtime friend, his band had not only appeared on a split re-release with Dimmu but also shared several members over the years. Most obvious of these was the co-founder of both outfits, Tjoldalv, who now departed to play drums for newly formed melodic thrashers Susperia, ultimately replaced in both bands by Nick Barker, the British sticksman who had found fame with Cradle of Filth.

  “I had first talked about leaving for some months after having my first child in ’97,” explains Tjoldalv. “You get other priorities when you become a father. But I changed my mind and was willing to sacrifice much and continue the hard work with Dimmu. I don’t think the other guys were mature enough at that time to understand that I couldn’t hang out partying every weekend anymore. I was twenty-one at this time and the oldest in the band. After they got kids themselves they started to understand the situation I had to deal with. We released Spiritual Black Dimensions in ’99 and after doing some shows in U.S. and Canada, they unexpectedly told me that they had found a new drummer. They had talked to Nick Barker, who got sacked from Cradle of Filth, for a while behind my back. I had already started to put together a new band the year before, so I went to fully concentrate on Susperia. Despite all this, me and the Dimmus have been friends all these years, and still are.”

  The lineup would remain in place for one more album, Death Cult Armageddon, another opus that proved pivotal in the band’s career. With the writing predominantly split among Mustis, Shagrath, Silenoz, and Galder, the songs feature huge swaths of live orchestration courtesy of the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, Norwegian arranger Gaute Storas, and Czech conductor Adam Klemens. Yet it remains a surprisingly heavy effort since the parts not featuring classical musicians are largely untouched by synths, creating an album of notable musical contrasts.

  “We wrote the parts like we always do, with keyboards, then we had the conductor help transcribe that into notes because we’re metal musicians and we don’t know shit about notes,” laughs Silenoz. “They were really professional and of course having a bigger budget helps you to spend more time on both mixing and recording, and that definitely helped that album to sound the way it sounds. It really has this huge apocalyptic, bombastic, and dramatic feeling to it. So everything just expanded and it was good to be able to—for maybe the first time—be totally completely happy with an album. Of course it wasn’t perfect, because if it’s perfect then you won’t bother doing a new album, but it was damn close.”

  Despite its moments of brutality the album proved another huge seller, achieving 100,000 sales in the U.S. alone (making Dimmu the first Nuclear Blast signed act to do so). The relatively high-budget video for “Progenies of the Great Apocalypse” was given regular airplay on music channels, and other tracks appeared in a number of unlikely places, including the trailers for mainstream films such as Hellboy and Stardust.

  Wisely, the band supported the record with a heavy touring schedule that would take up a good chunk of the next four years. This left the members burnt out, however, and brought significant tension to the unit. An early casualty was drummer Nick Barker, who was let go in early 2004 and replaced onstage by Dane Reno Killreich and American Tony Laureano, of death metal acts Panzerchrist and Nile respectively.

  “Well the thing with Nick was obviously not because he is a bad drummer,” laughs Silenoz. “It was more on a personal level, there were personal clashes on tour and things we felt we could not get to the bottom of. Nick is a great guy and a great drummer and very talented, so from that point of view it was really fucked up and sad that it had to end that way.”

  Traditional endorsements, such as the one here for Blackstar Amplification, illustrate Dimmu Borgir’s shift into the mainstream metal scene in recent years.

  “Definitely, looking back, things started to not be as fun as it used to,” Vortex ponders. “I felt [Nick] was important within the band. But after Death Cult there was a lot of touring and it was a very good period for Dimmu commercially. There was the Ozzfest, and if Dimmu had continued doing concerts after that it would have been a huge step, but after so much touring the mood in the band was not the same. Actually when we were told we sold 100,000 copies I was like, ‘Of course we have,’ because we were working really, really hard and we were confident that it would just get bigger.”

  The band’s next effort, Sorte Diaboli (released in 2007), saw a massive leap away from the industrial aesthetic of its predecessor. Instead, the band’s first concept album tells the story of a medieval priest who begins doubting his faith and eventually becomes the Antichrist, the story explored in a number of high-budget and award-winning—but sometimes painfully hammy—promo videos. Musically, the album was a natural follow-up to its predecessor, perhaps the only surprising addition being Mayhem’s legendary Hellhammer on drums.

  “We’ve known Hellhammer for many years, he’d always liked the band and said, ‘If you ever need my services I’m just a phone call away,’” explains Silenoz. “He’s been playing all sorts of styles, from power metal to the most necro black metal, so for people here in Norway it was not a big surprise. Of course I can see why some people in, say, South America might think, ‘What the fuck?,’ their whole world is shattered because Mayhem is their biggest influence and they hate bands with keyboards, so I can see some people being offended.”

  Dimmu Borgir circa 2007’s In Sorte Diaboli album with Silenoz in the forefront. Photo courtesy of Nuclear Blast Records.

  Hellhammer would depart after the album’s release, however, and more serious lineup chaos would follow, with both Simen and Mustis leaving under highly acrimonious circumstances, both publicly suggesting that Mustis had been cheated out of writing credits, while a statement issued by the band retaliated with claims of long-running unprofessional behavior and disinterest. Whatever the truth, the duo’s departure did not have a major impact on the band’s sound—though Simen’s stunning clean vocals have been impossible to replace—and 2010’s Abrahadabra saw the group continue in a vein similar to the two previous albums, utilizing both the Kringkastingsorkestret (the Norwegian Radio Orchestra) and Norway’s Schola Cantorum choir, as well as clean vocals from Kristoffer “Garm” Rygg and Snowy Shaw, along with drums by Polish black metal veteran Dariusz Brzozowski.

  Having moved away from their somber black metal beginnings over the years, Dimmu Borgir are now somewhat distanced from the genre, a point they readily admit. Unlike, say, Cradle of Filth, h
owever, Dimmu are still generally seen as representing the genre by those outside the movement, a representation that manages to both infuriate hardliners in the scene and bring new listeners from mainstream metal into the thrall of black metal.

  31

  UNDERGROUND ETHICS

  “I remember Euronymous and I were telling jokes back in the early nineties that everything would be ruined the day Nuclear Blast started to sign black metal bands, we used to have good laughs about that… I’m sure he would be very surprised to see what happened…”

  —Metalion (Slayer Magazine)

  TO THOSE who witnessed the birth of modern black metal during the late eighties and early nineties—a time when outfits such as Cradle of Filth and Satyricon were still releasing demo tapes with photocopied sleeves and hand-drawn covers—the idea that the genre would ever have a mainstream face must have seemed unimaginable. Not merely because of the extremity of the music, since death metal was already proving that extreme metal could attract large audiences and shift units, but because black metal—at least in its “second wave” form—had all but defined itself by an uncompromising code that required a Satanic (or at least anti-Christian or misanthropic) outlook and a strict adherence to a specific set of values.

  As we’ve seen, many of these values were laid down by Euronymous of Mayhem and put into practice by the bands who surrounded him. Musicians rejected their death metal origins almost overnight and adopted a dress code of spikes, chains, and corpsepaint, in contrast to the casual street attire of the death metal scene. Lyrics became dominated by evil and Satanism as socially aware themes went out the window. Unashamedly reactionary, black metal positioned itself in opposition to a burgeoning “life metal” scene that had begun to gain acceptability by “normal” people. Black metal therefore became the most underground form of metal largely by nature of its extremity and closed-door approach to outsiders, and consequently, doing what was necessary to be considered credible within the scene almost guaranteed low sales and obscurity, because the genre’s audience was initially so limited.

  But somewhere along the way, against the odds, things changed. Very quickly certain bands began to find significant success, and in doing so had their underground status compromised. Even Euronymous himself, who along with the rest of Mayhem had consistently put dedication to the scene above making money, began to voice doubts about keeping the genre “underground.” In many later interviews he explained why he considered it acceptable—and perhaps even necessary—for bands to make money and achieve success as long as they stayed true to black metal values.

  Issue 3 of U.S. zine Petrified. Editor Jon “Thorns” Jamshid was also the owner of the Full Moon Productions record label.

  “There is obviously an antagonism between being ‘underground’ in the common sense of the word, and the original black metal ideas,” he commented in Isten magazine. “If you start to look at how black metal bands were in the ancient days, such as Venom, Mercyful Fate, Hellhammer, Bathory, Destruction, Sodom, etc., you see that they had nothing to do with what is called ‘underground.’ They were signed to big labels, they earned well-deserved money and were NOT submitted to the hardcore laws which are ruling the ‘underground’ today… All these ‘underground’ rules look great at first sight—the music becomes a protest toward the commercial music industry. This is good of course. But on the other hand—they KILL the bands. After eight years of being broke, I’m starting to become quite fed up. Why shouldn’t I live on the music? Of course there are limits, I HATE to see Earache bands with videos on MTV, and I was DISGUSTED to see Entombed playing a playback show for discokids on a disco show on Swedish TV. These people shall FEAR this music. We must return to the old days of Venom and the other ancient ones. They were big, but they were NOT commercial!”

  “Euronymous was an intelligent guy,” comments Grutle of Enslaved. “A band has to survive. You have to sell records and bring the madness to the masses to live out your philosophy. He wasn’t thinking underground and all that bullshit… he wanted to make something of it and after he died we did so. Selling a lot of records was a hundred percent Euronymous.”

  Ultimately, it is of course totally subjective as to which bands became “big” and which became “commercial,” which stayed “true” and which “sold out.” Even so, many acts once considered sacred have been seen, rightly or wrongly, to have betrayed their black metal roots: Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir, and Satyricon—to pick the most obvious examples—were once an unquestionable part of the underground, but have been branded as traitors by some who say they compromised themselves in order to gain acceptability and/or sign with major labels.

  Other defining acts of the early days, such as Mayhem, Gorgoroth, and Dissection, also saw their audiences grow (the latter two even signing with major label Nuclear Blast Records), yet retained more of their “underground credibility,” underlining that it’s not high record sales that do the damage as much as the concessions bands are perceived to have made in order to achieve them. Similarly, it’s interesting to note that in Norway Satyricon and Keep of Kalessin seem to attract more criticism than Dimmu Borgir (despite having smaller sales and a heavier sound), due to a heavier media presence—for example, frontman Satyr has appeared on pseudo-dating show Dama til (“Girlfriend”), Satyricon played a fashion show on national TV, and Keep of Kalessin have competed in Eurovision.

  Erik Danielsson of Swedish black metal act Watain, one of the most successful and boundary-crossing acts in the genre today, is a man who has given a lot of thought to the various ways of bridging the gap between the underground and wider recognition, and has much to say on the subject.

  “‘Adapting’ is what constitutes selling out,” he explained to me in a largely unprinted interview for Terrorizer magazine in 2007. “Adapting to the preferences of the masses, ridding yourself of unwanted contents, washing your hands until they are clean and shiny, ready for mass production. The genius of black metal lies within its unbound chaotic essence, untamed artistry, and wild and evil creative thinking. This is why selling out is considered not so sexy within a black metal context. Both Gorgoroth and Dissection refused to adapt themselves to the will of others. Satyricon stands for rock ‘n’ roll entertainment, Dissection for Satanism. The former means showbiz, the latter means black metal. I see nothing wrong with being involved in showbiz—I like Frank Sinatra and stuff like that. But what I just don’t understand is who these bands are trying to fool when they claim to still be bonded to the black metal legacy. They blindly follow rule number one in the book: ‘How to lose one’s credibility,’ namely, ‘Don’t be credible.’”

  “There are limits,” opines Nergal of Behemoth, who like Watain have achieved a slow but impressive rise despite a fairly ferocious sound. “I’d hate to see Behemoth sell out, but then I know there is a bunch of people who probably think we sold out a decade ago. I know we can take this to the next level and make it more massive and more dangerous and crazy and still be on the covers of the magazines, have glamorous photo sessions and make fucking billion-dollar videos. One does not collide with another, that’s how I see it and that’s pretty much the attitude of the early black metal bands, they didn’t care about these ‘underground rules’ and they are the originators of this whole genre, and if you spit at Venom you must be an idiot you know? They were very fucking glamorous, they were big, they wanted to be like Kiss but they were Satanic and dangerous and filthy and chaotic. You have to be smart and keep your eyes open and make sure you are not going to end up a clown in a circus someday. There’s probably a very thin line between becoming really big and becoming very pathetic, so you have to be smart in how you promote your band, know what your foundation is, stick to your guns and just be honest. Then I’m pretty sure you can do whatever you want.”

  Poland’s Holocaust fanzine, issue VIII, created by eventual Pagan Records founder Tomasz Krajewski.

  Perhaps unsurprisingly given its reactionary nature, as soon as black metal manifested a
mainstream face in the mid-nineties the movement began to polarize, with underground black metal becoming more resolute and clearly defined in response to the increased commercialization of this once strictly subterranean movement. Where black metal as a whole had once shaped itself in opposition to a commercial death metal scene, underground black metal defined itself in opposition to that part of the black metal scene that was perceived as having betrayed itself or lost its original spirit. Taking inspiration from the movement’s glory days, swaths of musicians have dedicated themselves to this cause in almost every country where metal exists.

  Perhaps ironically given the intolerance of the genre, a pretty universal set of values has formed, one that crosses international boundaries and frequently includes limited print runs, a lack of promotion, and stark, inaccessible imagery and sound. While many early bands utilized a basic aesthetic, poor productions, and limited releases—often on cassette format—due to a lack of resources (upgrading as soon as possible) many now employ such elements intentionally (right down to the use of cassette), despite design and recording software being far more widely available and CD and vinyl releases being much more affordable.

  As we shall see in the next chapter, France’s Black Legions played an early and important part in demonstrating how bands could adopt a strictly anti-commercial approach in an age where genuine success as a black metal band was becoming increasingly possible. Unlike the Norwegian scene that had inspired them, contact with the outside world was kept to a minimum and aside from a handful of “official” releases, most recordings were self-released and only distributed within the circle and to those considered worthy. American act Judas Iscariot were another band who proved a huge inspiration within this context, being somewhat less hardcore in their approach but sharing a taste for limited editions, tape-only releases and “anti-scene/anti-sellout” lamentations.