by Ian Christe
Even as New York City exported rap music to the world in the 1990s, a group of Spanish-speaking women from Spanish Harlem and the South Bronx spawned the fanzine Endemoniada. The creative endeavor lovingly cradled metal-romantic amateur art and poetry along with the usual interviews and reviews. Editors Lucifera and Xastur, a pair of self-professed witches, oversaw highly personal explorations of the occult, gender issues, and somber unknown sounds. “You should see the look I get when I say I’m into metal,” says Lucifera. “Especially in my area, since I’m Hispanic. People are so closed-minded. They swear I’m trying to be white! Go figure.”
From Spanish Harlem and the Bronx, the editors of Endemoniada (Endemniada ‘line)
Yet for many young people in Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil, metal was the music that mattered. In the wake of Sepultura’s success, the cities of Bogota and Medellin, Colombia, spawned more than a hundred underground death metal and black metal bands. Signed to a French label, the Colombian band Masacre (not to be confused with Florida’s Massacre) was one of the most successful. Beginning in 1988, with its demo “Colombia … Imperio del Terror”—"Colombia … Empire of Terror"—the band dealt in its lyrics with the violence that was the scourge of that war-torn country. Masacre toured South America extensively, playing Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Peru, sometimes performing in strange venues but always reaching an informed local death metal scene, each with its own magazines, radio programs, and record labels.
Metal reached through cultural and national borders. The mountainous crucible of Mexico City was home to thudding thrashers Transmetal, Drakkar, and Death Warrant, influenced by early Los Angeles speed metal bands like Slayer, Agent Steel, and Hirax. Following a 1998 tour by Death, where Chuck Schuldiner was photographed amid Mayan temples, the Mexican headbangers began leaning toward death metal and exploiting the legendary heart-ripping blood-sacrifice rituals of their Aztec ancestors. Even the former Mexican provinces of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona were filled with headbangers and metaleros from the thriving Mexican metal universe. In Gallup, New Mexico, a city surrounded by the Navajo reservation, Mitch Harris of Napalm Death recalls finding discarded fistfuls of long, black hair on the floor after a frenzied show.
A world apart from the rich glam metal playground in West Hollywood, the backyards and wedding halls of East L.A. spawned their own Hispanic metal scene. There, raging death metal bands like Profécia spewed vile prophecies in Spanish to small audiences, including toddlers, grandparents, and skeptical groups of men huddled around beer kegs. Before being whisked to new bands far away, both drummer Pete Sandoval of Morbid Angel and guitarist Jesse Pintado of Napalm Death played in Terrorizer, which Pintado characterizes as “a bunch of Mexican kids thrashing away in their backyard.” During the late 1980s the band never played for more than twenty relatives and neighborhood kids—yet Terrorizer’s demo and rehearsal recordings remained a staple of underground tape traders, leading to a 1989 Earache release, World Downfall, which captured a lethal, slippery, thrash-based style.
Furthering the spirit of Terrorizer was the mysterious Spanish-language project called Brujeria. Formed by Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares, himself a veteran of the East L.A. backyard bashes, Brujeria extrapolated a terrifying worldview from the bizarre 1989 discovery of a cult of Matamoros, Mexico, drug lords who killed competitors via ritual sacrifice. Glorifying the dark arts of blood worship and heroin trafficking while dressed in a ski mask, the singer bellowed livid lines “El norte quiere nuestro cosecha de oro / Traffi-ciando drogas, coca y mota / La benedición satanica,” or “The North wants our golden harvest / Trafficking drugs, cocaine and pot / Under satanic blessing.”
Even in death metal the Brujeria album Matando Güeros— “Killing White Filth"—was a landmark in aural atrocity, employing the everyday violence of Latin America as a backdrop for a blistering onslaught of greed-induced horror. Color photographs on the CD sleeve depicted a decapitated body and bales of narcotics, images filched from the bloody tabloid Alarma!, a weekly dose of gore funded by the Mexican government. The part-time group managed a second album, Raza Odiada—"Hated Race"—featuring equal doses of slow, pounding numbers and pressurized speed bolts. On the opening song an assassin cuts down California governor Pete “Pito” Wilson, portrayed by punk singer Jello Biafra, in the midst of an antiimmigration speech. In search of heroes of revolt, the band toasted brazen idols like the rebels of the Chiapas uprising, Colombian drug boss Pablo Escobar, and that scourge of Catholicism, Lucifer.
An underground scene was no place for secrets, and it soon became known that Brujeria’s spurts of activity came only when its members could sneak away from their day jobs in Fear Factory, Faith No More, and Napalm Death. Brujeria might have been an in-joke among the prominent bands that lent it members, but the topics and approach were confrontational, disturbing, and real. Even in jest Brujeria represented truthfully the degree to which Latin America was a death metal stronghold. When the mainstream finally caught up with metal’s Latin flavor, Brujeria was nominated for the Best Rock Album at the 2001 Billboard Latin Music Awards.
So in the 1990s the tendrils of extreme metal unfurled via fanzines, regional distributors, and computers to implant themselves firmly in every hidden crevice of the globe. Metal was instinctively against many things, but wrapped up in all the blood and guts the belief that mundane individuals might aspire to immortality. Fans everywhere continued to play their crucial role, creating a culture whose values often strayed from the popular marketplace and normal behavior. If mainstream social structures could communicate such ideas half as fairly and effectively, groups of teenagers in gory T-shirts would not gather to listen to Slayer on every street corner from Chicago to Calcutta.
XVI
The Teen Terrorists
of Norwegian Black Metal
1985: Mayhem releases “Pure Fucking Armageddon” demo
April 1991: Mayhem vocalist, Dead, commits suicide
June 6, 1992: Fantoft stave church burned by arsonists in Norway
August 1993: Emperor records In the Nightside Eclipse
August 10, 1993: Mayhem guitarist Euronymous killed at his apartment
Fall 2000: Cradle of Filth signs with Sony
Rarely registering with the mainstream except when lumped together as a mass phenomenon dressed in black, the differences between metal subgenres were huge nonetheless. Even as death metal decimated artistic and commercial frontiers the world over, a cadre of talented, violent, and ultraserious black metal bands pulled the locus of metal power away from swampy Florida to the dark, cold countries of Scandinavia. There, all of the speed and experimentalism of the metal fringe regrouped with primal passion in what practitioners called pure Norwegian black metal.
Black metal in the 1990s was much faster and more orchestral than death metal, with fewer curving riffs to complicate its unrelenting assault. In the 1990s, this wave of bands imported the crude beginnings of 1980s black metal forefathers—Venom, Hellhammer, and Bathory—to capture their own evocative wash of night skies, natural wonder, and Nordic myths. A pronounced influence in this regard was the Swedish group Bathory, whose early-1980s albums were the ultimate sonic blend of speed and atmosphere. Even while looking to the American bands, Bathory founder Quorthon Seth found developing in cultural isolation in Scandinavia to be a creative asset. “Had we been from New York, we would have gotten gigs and contracts and gotten caught up in trends,” he says. “We didn’t have those kind of pressures—so we were able to add acoustic guitars and backing harmony vocals and the sound of a seagull flying by. Slayer would never get away with doing that, but we could.”
The One True Mayhem (Mayhem)
In Norway the second generation of black metal began with Mayhem—called “The One True Mayhem” to differentiate itself from bands in Oregon and New York using the same name. Founded in 1984 by sixteen-year-old Oystein Aarseth, aka Euronymous, Mayhem initially mimicked the simple satanic noise of Venom, whose 1982 opus, Black Metal,
gave the style its name, and the Swiss band Hellhammer. Through tape trading Euronymous came to admire also the speed of Napalm Death and the ferocity of South American bands like Sarcofago and Holocausto, who created incredibly savage music in lean circumstances. All these were bands from the metal fringes, who utilized extreme speed and drama to make themselves known to the underground. “Without Euronymous black metal would not be the same,” says Mortiis, original bassist for the Norwegian band Emperor. “Back then you didn’t have fifty thousand black metal albums out; you had, like, fifteen. It was different. Euronymous had this total Satan attitude. I didn’t have that—he had that. He was such a devil worshipper you wouldn’t believe it.
Mayhem was an emotional and ritualistic band consumed by a wild spirit—the band characteristically adorned its stage set with skinned pig heads. Initially there was a great deal of goofing around involved, but attitudes grew increasingly serious. Euronymous was essentially a realist who possessed worldly zeal and ego, but after several demo tapes the band found its poetic and morbid dimension in Swedish vocalist Per Yngve Ohlin, aka Dead, an erratic dreamer who buried his stage clothes underground to imbue them with proper gravelike essence. Onstage Dead inhaled from a plastic bag containing a dead bird. With changing lineups growing ever more dedicated, Mayhem traveled to eastern Germany in 1990 and recorded what became the gruesome Live in Leipzig CD—a classic outing showcasing Dead’s ghastly delivery on “Freezing Moon.”
In addition to playing guitar in Norway’s leading band, Euronymous also cultivated the local metal economy by operating Helvete, a black metal corner shop in Oslo, and running the Deathlike Silence record label. A flock of younger musicians thrived under the wings of his diverse interests. In the early days before joining one of Norway’s greatest bands, Emperor drummer Bard Eithun, aka Faust, worked at Euronymous’s store. Emperor guitarist Tomas Haugen, aka Samoth, lived in Eurony-mous’s shop for a period of time.
Early Emperor (Century Media)
Scandinavian teenagers took pride in their local extreme metal variant. In the early 1990s, fans gravitated toward the Swedish bands Unleashed and Dissection and the strong scene in Norway—spearheaded by Mayhem and including Darkthrone and Immortal. They were fatigued by the machismo and deflating dynamism of Florida death metal, which they came to see as overly commercialized and flagging in spirit. “Some imagine for some weird reason that death metal is something normal and available for everyone,” Dead told the influential Slayer ‘zine. “If you go into an ordinary school, you will surely see half of the children wearing Morbid Angel, Autopsy, and Entombed shirts, and once again I will vomit! Death black metal is something all ordinary mortals should fear, not make into a trend!”
Formed in 1991 from the ashes of its death metal band Thou Shalt Suffer, Emperor truly realized the artistic ambition of black metal, rejoining many distinct offshoots into an intensely mood-driven style. With their proximity to Germany, it was natural for the Norwegians to adopt the melodic methods of classic German speed metal bands like Destruction and Kreator—though black metal doubled every note to increase the rushing feel. Emperor and others also added keyboards and experimented with another natural ally, goth rock, particularly Kate Bush and the gloomy Sisters of Mercy. As a direct result black metal filled its ranks with young women who had found themselves edged to the periphery of the more muscular, mosh-pit-oriented death metal scene.
Creating a bizarre and altered atmosphere, these bands also returned theatrical flair to heavy metal with a vengeance. Like their predecessors in Venom and Hellhammer, the Norwegian black metallers adopted nicknames to replace given “Christian” names. Many wore capes and black-and-white face paint in the style of King Diamond from Mercyful Fate—a great change from the anti-image times of thrash and death metal, when bands like Exodus and Cannibal Corpse performed wearing sweatpants. To further prepare for their journey into the unknown, Mayhem, Emperor, Immortal, and Darkthrone posed for group portraits waving torches, mean-looking daggers, axes, and spiked clubs. “It’s the same thing as when punk and hardcore came out,” says Brutal Truth singer Kevin Sharp, a former metal columnist for CMJ. “They used to wear the spiked armbands or whatever for total shock value, just to say, ‘I’m a total shithead asshole.’”
Among other quirks there was a branch of radical environmentalism to the scene, as black metal artists populated CD jackets with natural landscapes and professed their affinity for nature—which Norway offered in powerful abundance. Trumpeting solitude as a virtue, teenage musicians began to resemble the famously isolated literary protagonists of Norwegian novels by the likes of Knut Hamsun. “Usually, we do walk to the mighty Isle of Man during the later hours,” Ovl Svithjod of In the Woods told the ‘zine Petrified. “We light a fire, put on some spiritual music or sound tracks, and talk and reflect on later happenings in life. It is indeed like balm for our souls.”
Unlike fun-loving thrash metal bands Exodus and Anthrax, who never stopped recruiting converts to the metal cause, black metallers ultimately viewed themselves as elites of rarefied sensibility. Their style was less a cause to be spread gleefully than a privilege to be cultivated by the chosen few. The populist concerns of death metal were scorned, and the landscape became internal, less extroverted. They took their cause very seriously. “We were young at that time,” writes BardFaust of Emperor. “We were dedicated to the core to a vital and subcultural underground world of harsh and devilish-inspired metal.”
Soon the destructive gleam of Norwegian black metal took on a malicious focus. Deicide returned from a tour of northern Europe in 1992 reporting that a bomb had been detonated at its concert in Stockholm. Allegedly the explosive was planted by animal-rights activists inflamed by the group’s advocacy of animal sacrifice—or whatever anti-American urges would compel street activists to blow up a rock club. Deicide’s drummer, Steve Asheim, however, speculated that the blast was actually an attack against the opening act, Gorefest, by ultrasatanic Norwegian black metallers. The bomb was an augury of events that would turn the metal world into a scary place, where being the fastest band or collecting the most obscure demo tapes was no longer the measure of credentials.
As it happened, the rise of black metal coincided with the thousand-year anniversary of Christianity in Norway, when two pagan kings, Olaf I Tryggvason in 995 and Olaf II Haraldsson in 1015, violently imposed religion on the western coast of Norway and hastened the end of the Viking era. In studying the atrocities perpetrated by the cross against their forebears, the pentagram-laden black metal bands of Norway found an ambitious aim that elevated satanic pranks to the level of religious jihad: to cast out Christianity as violently as it had invaded, returning Norway to a natural condition of spiritual harmony.
With such dramatic historical fragments in mind, the black metal children—mostly in their late teens and early twenties— attacked the religious landmarks of their stern Christian tradition, raiding churches in the dark of night using matches and gasoline. The first to burn was the majestic twelfth-century wooden-stave church called Fantoftkirke, torched in the predawn hours of June 6, 1992. That arson was fast followed by the burning of Ullandhaug Bedehaus Church, Revheim Church, Holmenkollen Chapel, Skjold Church, Ormøya Chapel, Hauketo og Prinsdal Church, and Asane Church. “All this is said to be of historical value,” said Vegard Tveitan, aka Ihsahn, of Emperor in a 1996 interview, “though still being of Christian value, it was to be reduced to a pile of ashes.”
SCANDINAVIAN BLACK METAL
The distillation of death metal into a simpler, more concentrated style, black metal abandoned lurching chaos for a million-miles-an-hour assault on the senses. Later the music became entwined in the feuds and terrorist dramas of Norway and eventually bloomed into a creative flowering of orchestral angst, complete with choral arrangements and techno fugues. Black metal musicians made some of the most moving heavy metal ever created—the criminals among them also raised the most disturbing questions about the music’s potential social uses. Dissectio
n and Marduk actually hailed from nearby Sweden, also home to the genre’s godfather, Bathory.
The Blackest of Hates
Bathory, Under the Sign of the Black Mark (1986)
Beherit, The Oath of Black Blood (1990)
Burzum, Filosofem (1996)
Darkthrone, Transilvanian Hunger
Dimmu Borgir, Enthrone Darkness Triumphant (1997)
Dissection, The Somberlain (1993)
Emperor/Enslaved, Emperor/Hordane’s Land (1993)
Emperor, Into the Nightside Eclipse (1995)
Enslaved, Frost (1994)
Immortal, Battles in the North (1995)
Marduk, Panzer Division Marduk (1999)
Mayhem, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (1993)
Mortiis, Anden Som Gjorde Opprör (1994)
UIver, Nattens Madrigal (1997)
A 1900 stereoscope card depicting Fantoftkirke
Nonetheless, the black metal vandals were unusually articulate criminals—hand in hand with this period of literal mayhem came a series of incredible creative breakthroughs. Mayhem’s vocalist, Dead, committed suicide with razors and a shotgun in April 1991, but Euronymous kept the band going. He shortly set about recording Mayhem’s long-awaited debut LP, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. (Before calling police, Euronymous somewhat coldly claimed to have picked pieces of Dead’s skull to make jewelry, and cooked and eaten a stew containing some small portions of brain.)
Following the tradition, begun by chronically understaffed bands Bathory and Hellhammer, of employing “session players,” Euronymous summoned operatic vocalist Attila Csihar from the Hungarian group Tormentor in the spring of 1993. “I remember them waiting for me at the train station,” Csihar told the ‘zine Descent. “Euronymous was wearing a black cloak. He was a dark man, and he was very short and stout. [Bassist] Varg Vikernes was waiting for me with an iron mail cloak like a Norse viking. The other guys, [guitarist] Snorre Ruch, aka Blackthorn, and [drummer Jan Axel von Blomberg, aka] Hellhammer, were more normal. Vikernes was driving the car and listening to very fast and hard techno.”