by Ian Christe
For the seriously music-minded, enchantment with a band as prone to overkill as Venom was an obligatory yet passing phase. “After I was asked to leave Metallica,” recalls Dave Mustaine, “I was listening to Mercyful Fate and Diamond Head, but I wasn’t really listening to Venom. I liked the fact that it was disturbing, but the playing was nowhere near as good as the shock factor.” Nonetheless, the anarchic and bizarre band encouraged a veritable legion of imitators.
Hellhammer, a band from Nurensdorf, a farm village of 3,000 on the outskirts of Zurich, Switzerland, was one of the earliest to revisit Venom’s chaotic satanic din—after lowering the musical bar considerably. “Since we weren’t good enough yet to create something of our own, what we really did was copy the flying shit out of Venom,” says Tom Warrior, who then used the name Satanic Slaughter. “The song titles, the riffs, down to our ludicrous stage names—everything was copied from Venom. We thought Venom was the heaviest band, and we wanted to be heavier. Everybody thought we were a new heavy band, but in reality we were just a miserable photocopy.”
Hellhammer was possibly the most extreme example of imagination overpowering ability in a quest to reach ever-weirder heights. Still, such Xerox art was vastly entertaining on its own terms. The marrow-curdling shrieking that introduced “Triumph of Death” on its Apocalyptic Raids EP was a textbook case of the less-is-more school of dramatic metal—staging two-note guitar riffs with Klaus Kinskiesque vocal howls and dungeon production values. Writer Bernard Doe scoffed at Hellhammer in a Metal Forces review. “All I can say is this band are sure suckers for punishment,” he wrote, comparing “The Third of the Storms (Evoked Damnation)” to “Metallica’s ‘Whiplash’ being played by a bunch of three-year-olds.”
Instead of it squashing his low-budget visions, the hammering Tom Warrior took from the press taught him the value of any kind of publicity. “That Hellhammer had a limited musical quality—that we needed to work like insane-os—was clear to us way before Metal Forces wrote about us,” he says. “We were just playing at our limits. We didn’t have any formal training, and we had to find out everything for ourselves. We received a number of really bad reviews, and those created such publicity that the band was talked about immediately by everybody, because everybody wanted to hear why a band got such extreme reviews. A lot of teenagers were looking for the same thing we were, the same kind of musical rebellion, and they just dug into the demo. Whether the reviews were bad or not, we were an instant insider tip.”
Not quite ready for Metal Blade and Megaforce, the rawer underground bands became staples of the growing tape-trading domain. In Italy there was Bulldozer, with its slavish Venom-esque dirges. Germany produced Sodom, Destruction, and Tormentor. Greece offered Rotting Christ. Canada spawned Slaughter and Sacrifice. Brazil proffered Sepultura, Vulcano, and the senselessly dedicated Sarcofago, whose members wore primitive black-and-white “corpse paint” on their faces to symbolize a battlelike defiance of the church. Naming their style after a Venom album, these were the first black metal bands, the self-obsessed product of the metal subculture, with no overarching message or critique of society beyond the mere fact of their hostile existence.
Sometimes the power of the music mattered less than a creepy atmosphere and a convincing aura of secrecy. Such was the case with Sweden’s Bathory, whose guitars sounded like sewing machines and whose drums seemed to be built of wet cardboard. The band’s first album, 1984’s Bathory, depicted the image of an eerie goat, and the second, 1985’s The Return, simply offered a picture of the moon receding behind clouds. The minimal images conjured a huge mystique, as the crude lack of bearings set imaginations afire. “Ninety-nine percent of everything was in the heads of people,” says Bathory bandleader Quorthon. “After some time we realized people were drawn to the band because of the mysterious aspect. It wasn’t something we created. We would just have a shitty picture in a fanzine, and people would buy the fantasy. It’s the force of ignorance. When you tell somebody the true story, you are ruining their idea of something. In reality Bathory was a combination of the influence of Kate Bush, with a friend playing drums and patching up a little bit of the drums with a computer snare. People don’t want that—it’s like losing Santa Claus. Every time I talk about it, I kill a small part of me and the band.”
Quorthon of Sweden’s Bathory (New Renaissance)
Even Venom, the long-maligned originators of dirty black metal—whose entire career King Diamond called “a publicity stunt"—was not proud of its proliferate progeny. “We’re not really influenced by what’s going on these days,” Venom singer Cronos told Metal Forces in 1985. “Bathory— that guy Quorthon is a dick. I mean, he’s doing what we were doing on Welcome to Hell. It’s ridiculous!” Only one year after At War with Satan, though, Venom had already been replaced by a hundred younger bands striving to be wilder and more outrageous. As promotional materials from Noise Records promised, “Hellhammer makes Venom sound like the Bee Gees!”
In many ways these bands were still pantomiming in front of the bedroom mirror with counterparts around the world acting as a reflection. When young black metal bands did play live, their skills were ridiculously limited. For example, Mayhem, the force that introduced black metal to Norway, formed in the autumn of 1984 playing Venom and Metallica covers. The band rehearsed in a barn and allegedly finished its first show by crushing a bass guitar and showing their asses. It was crude entertainment, yet infinitely more fun than merely watching the canned careers of more skilled and self-important musicians.
Wherever heavy metal was in danger of becoming too clean, black metal soon took hold. Bathory represented the antithesis of the pretentious Swedish cult guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen, a tedious virtuoso. Malmsteen possessed all the qualities of metal heroes Ritchie Black-more and Eddie Van Halen but flashed his fingers on a Stratocaster guitar like a casino dealer shuffling cards—too precise, especially in an era when the best music tended to lack precision. He embodied a sterile, egocentric strain of metal that collapsed on itself when left too long in the sun. As much as Hellhammer represented ideas in place of skill, it was infinitely preferable to technique without soul.
At the time of Show No Mercy, Slayer still leaned heavily on image and shock value. In contrast to Metallica’s blue jeans, Slayer wore studded leather chokers and spiked armbands. The members applied thick black eye makeup before performing, during a period immortalized by the photos adorning the first album. “All the metal bands like Mötley Crüe and Pandemonium were wearing makeup, but it was girly,” explains Jeff Hanneman. “We wanted to look like men, so we looked like football players!”
Playing in San Francisco with Exodus, Laaz Rocket, and “thrash with class” act Savage Grace, Slayer received a roaring welcome, as had Metallica—but Bay Area bangers giggled at the band’s contrived presentation. Tom Araya recalls taking a bit of advice from the fans and throwing away his greasepaint. Present at the show, Ron Quintana agrees. “They were kind of laughed at. People up here told them to take off the makeup, and, surprisingly, the makeup didn’t last. I don’t think they ever wore it again.”
Musically as well, Slayer ascended from the swirling dark pit, remaining the technically advanced high priests of Venom-inspired
EARLY BLACK METAL
Initially considered bad power metal by the fanzine writers of the mid-1980s, the first leather-bedecked and upside-down-crossed black metal bands received the kind of dismissive reception previously reserved for punk rock. Still, coverage continued, due to the popularity and extremity of the bands, and soon there were little tributes to Venom running wild everywhere. The imitation of satanic extremes soon developed into something deeper in Slayer, Bathory, Possessed, and Celtic Frost, seeding a dedicated cult that had no interest in the flashy colors and need for attention of regular heavy metal. The speed was grueling, and raw, primitive emotion burned from the heart. As their minions grew into the millions, black metal became an underground fixture, forming the spiritual basis and direct musical in
spiration for death metal.
Satan’s Love Songs
Bathory, Under the Sign of the Black Mark (1987)
Destruction, Sentence of Death (1984)
Hellhammer, Apocalyptic Raids (1984)
Morbid Angel, Abominations of Desolation (1986)
NME, Unholy Death (1985)
Possessed, Seven Churches (1985)
SepuItura, Morbid Visions (1986)
Slayer, Hell Awaits (1985)
Slayer, Show No Mercy (1984)
Sodom, Obsessed by Cruelty (1986)
Venom, Black Metal (1982)
Venom, Welcome to Hell (1981)
devil’s metal. On the Haunting the Chapel EP, with its unbelievably fast “Chemical Warfare,” Slayer crested to a point that left the standards of power metal behind. While playing so fast that individual notes were hardly discernible, guitarists King and Hanneman sketched out rough approximations of melodies from the horrific side of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. Whenever the two guitarists veered out of time and control, drummer Dave Lombardo pounded order through the center.
Slayer live in 1985 (Todd Nakamine)
In early 1985 Slayer revealed Hell Awaits, displaying newfound mastery of this increasing speed. As whirlpools of controlled chaos consumed tracks like “Kill Again,” the music took on an advanced and sinister character. Both “Hell Awaits” and “At Dawn They Sleep” were epic narratives with tempo changes, instrumental breaks, and swarming passages—it was clear the rules were fresh and provisional. Though production remained muddy, the technical skill of the twin guitarists was vastly improved. Tom Araya’s vocal range still modulated between growls and energetic screams, never losing its musical quality. What’s more, “In Praise of Death” and “Hardening of the Arteries” were as fast as anything Slayer ever played. It was advanced study from a band that had clearly graduated since Show No Mercy, and the band fed from these basic creative fountains for many years after. The landmark Reign in Blood later stripped Slayer down to its most effective form, but Hell Awaits proved that greatness did not need to be so precise.
Unlike the playful Hellhammer and Bathory, Slayer had serious aspirations. Yet perhaps because Metallica had a head start with melody, Slayer continued its push to become extremely fast and heavy. It pursued that path long after Metallica had professed a lack of interest in pure speed. As a result Slayer cultivated a narrower but more intensely dedicated audience. Hell Awaits quickly sold 100,000 copies, a major hit by any independent-label standards and the first great success for Metal Blade. “The Slayer stuff started to explode just after Armored Saint had been signed to a major label,” Brian Slagel recalls. “That’s pretty much when Metal Blade became a real thing.”
Metal Blade had now established a cycle of testing new talent on its compilation series then signing the popular bands to longer recording deals. From 1984’s Metal Massacre V the label kept Fates Warning, Omen, and Voivod—and lost Metal Church and Overkill to higher bidders. Metal Blade also began licensing the best and earliest of the European power metal and black metal bands, like the highly vaunted debut mini-LPs from Sodom, Destruction, and the perversely appealing Hellhammer.
For Exciter, whose 1983 LP Heavy Metal Maniac stood alongside Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All at the very forefront of power metal, the dawn of the rawer black metal genre was reason to worry. “All these fifteen-year-old kids all of a sudden came out putting albums out, going ten thousand miles an hour, putting Satanic lyrics on, and they sell like a hundred thousand copies,” complained singer/drummer Dan Beehler to Kick Ass Monthly. “You can only take that garbage so far. Some bands do speed well, like Metallica, and they’re successful as a result, but you can’t take some of these little kids out of a basement, throw them onstage in front of five thousand people, and expect ‘em to be good.”
Though Tom Warrior retained no illusions about the short-lived Hellhammer, he defends the unique qualities of the underbelly. “No matter how low the technical level of some of the harder music is— and many times it sure is,” he says, “it is nearly impossible to play convincingly to audiences if one doesn’t live, breathe, and understand it, if it isn’t rooted in one’s very blood. Because hard music lives so much from primitive instincts of power—from guts—it is hard for an outsider to really master it mentally and physically, no matter how talented and willing that outsider might be.”
Emerging as carriers of a new strain of innovative metal, Warrior and Martin Ain launched Celtic Frost after they stopped chasing Venom into satanic metal perdition. They disbanded their flamboyantly disgraced act Hellhammer, and—as Warrior puts it, “learned how to really play guitar.” According to Warrior the group chose its two-word name in homage to Cirith Ungol, a fantasy-inspired band from Metal Massacre. On songs like “Dawn of Meggido” and “Tears in a Prophet’s Dream,” Warrior, bassist Ain, and drummer Reed St. Mark were as powerful as Slayer without leaning on the tried-and-true formula of pentagrams and devil horns.
Tom Warrior of Celtic Frost
(Jean-françois “Big” Lavallée/Metal K.O. Productions)
There was a huge difference between Celtic Frost and Hellhammer. Steeped in total heaviness, the crushing Frost relied on curious influences from outside the realm of metal, like the weird noises and otherworldly impulses Warrior first found in Brian Eno’s 1970s band Roxy Music. In the 1980s heavy metal had become the premiere outlet for strange and interesting sounds. As drummer Away of Voivod told Kick Ass Monthly, “There is a band for which I’ve got real respect, Celtic Frost. Their lyrics are original and intelligent, and when you’re listening to them, you know that those guys have real strange minds.”
In 1985 Celtic Frost released Morbid Tales, a multithudding suite of formidable power riffs, and then in 1986 produced its genre-busting epic To Mega Therion—Greek for “the big beast.” With a thick guitar sound best described as groaning, the record had elements of Metallica and Slayer as performed by an agile granite monster, lumbering but deftly sure of its choreography. “ To Mega Therion was basically an expression of my own immaturity and male urgings,” recalls Tom Warrior. “That’s why it has such a Conan-like fantasy touch to it. It’s made for people in puberty, definitely. That’s certainly the roots of heavy metal. That whole sense of revolution and wanting to be powerful is definitely a puberty thing. Fans don’t have to be offended by that. Everybody goes through it. That’s why heavy metal is so powerful.”
For the cover of To Mega Therion, Swiss painter H. R. Giger lent his struggling countrymen free use of Satan I, a 1977 painting of a tentacle-sprouting demon armed with a slingshot made from the outstretched arms of a crucified Christ. Though they lived fifteen minutes from the Oscar-winning Alien artist, Celtic Frost approached Giger by mail in true tape-trader style, submitting a lengthy explanatory package. “On Mother’s Day of 1984, the phone!” writes Tom Warrior. “It’s H. R. Giger in person! He’s not only a total gentleman but astonishes us by wasting little time before delving into the possibilities of how to make the cooperation work, including the large-format presentation of artwork.” As the taut tendrils of To Mega Therion reached beyond the colored pencil skulls of Metal Massacre V, it marked a change from amateurish fandom to real artistry.
While Metallica eyed the mainstream, Slayer, Celtic Frost, and Bathory rapidly changed the rules of the underground. Separated by talent and geography but united by international money orders and tape trading, one impulse all the stamp-licking, black metal spawn shared was a fetish for all things outrageously satanic, including pentagrams, inverted crosses, and the ever-present emblem of a goat’s head. Says guitarist Trey Azagthoth of Morbid Angel, a band formed during the heady days of 1984, “Back then there was a big thing about attacking Christianity. I was raised Christian, and I was kind of brainwashed, and I hated those beliefs. I can understand, now that I’ve studied psychology and I know the importance of religion, how people get conditioned to beliefs and develop perceptive filters.”
Virulent new players joined Sla
yer on the cutting edge, playing with skill to match their guts. In junior high, outside San Francisco, Larry Lalonde and Jeff Becerra played UFO songs in Blizzard. They wore sleeveless American-flag shirts and grew hair to their shoulders, the farthest their mothers would permit. Upon reaching high school the pair were recruited by Mike Torrao and Mike Sus for the less-wholesome Possessed. “Their singer had shot himself in the head,” says Becerra, “and they didn’t have a bass player. I wanted to go heavier anyway. I was more into being heavy as far as drinking beer, going out with as many girls as I could, and playing as fast and heavy as I could, like Motörhead. I asked Mike what the name of the band was, and he said ‘Possessed.’ I said it sounded kinda satanic, and he said, ‘Well, it is!’ That was kinda scary.”
Still, Possessed soon found a manager in a girlfriend’s mother— fifty-something Bay Area dealmaker Debbie Abono. An anomalous
DEMOS OF DOOM
Many of the giant, influential recordings of the black metal genre never appeared on vinyl at all but were shared internationally by tens of thousands of underground tape traders. By the time these bands landed record deals, they were already household names—at least in the basement.
Demo-Tape Trader Top Ten
Death, “Infernal Death” (1985)
Hellhammer, “Triumph of Death” (1983)
Messiah, “Infernal Thrashing” (1984)
Slaughter, “Surrender or Die” (1984)
Morbid Angel, “Thy Kingdom Come” (1985)
Nasty Savage, “Wage of Mayhem” (1984)