Music I Like – Black Metal

I’ve always liked metal, but it took me a long time to come around to black metal. First, there’s the culture. I have a strong negative reaction to the self-righteousness of white males slavishly copying a handful of mentally ill teenaged white males from decades ago. Besides the cultural *shudder* “purity” of a movement, there’s the sonic rigidity. The tropes of #trveNorwegianblackmetal are so rigid that I struggle to tell any of the thousands of copy cats apart. But black metal is ubiquitous, so it was inevitable that I would find a few bands to enjoy. In fact, one of the best concerts I’ve been to in recent history had a line up heavily skewed towards black metal. Mostly I enjoy groups whose blackness is polluted with other colors, or bands who blacken other genres. Anyway, here are a few black metal and black metal adjacent bands I’ve enjoyed lately.

Ashbringer

As I mentioned, to my ears the vast majority of black metal is an indistinguishable mass of buzzsaw guitars, blast beats, and cavernous yet shrill shrieking. Then there’s Ashbringer. Many of those sonic markers make an appearance, but they share space with melody, dynamics, atmosphere, and genuine emotion. Absolution also incorporates all my favorite guitar tricks: the noodly, semiclassical openings, twinkly post-rock solos, Pelican-like rhythmic builds. Absolution sounds like falling in love, which is a miracle in a genre built on hate.

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Andavald

I discovered the Icelandic band Andavald in a track-by-track of their album Undir skyggðarhaldi in the Grapevine. Besides my own fascination with all things Icelandic, I’ve never been able to quite put my finger on what makes Icelandic black metal stand out, but Andavald has it. They also have some of the same cold majesty as Cascadian black metal. I haven’t been keeping up on my Icelandic studies, but in the article they say the title means

being under a spell of darkness, being the captive of a shadowy presence.

The album is captivating, but to me the shadowy presence is fae. Theirs is a spell you don’t want to escape.

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Nechochwen

It’s strange how black metal, which in its purest form sounds utterly inhuman, has such a close relationship with folk music, which is literally the music regular people can make for themselves. But it’s not strange that I would enjoy the hybridization of these two styles that I rarely enjoy in their purest forms. Nechochwen fuses black metal with American folk, and infuses the result with lyrical themes of Eastern Woodland Indian culture and history. How could I resist The Ancient Pulse?

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Arx Atrata

I almost filed Arx Atrata under instrumental metal, because the vocals are strictly textural. That’s true for a lot of metal, but vocals on The Path Untravelled really blend into the music like just another fiber in the weave. Personally, I love that. To me, black metal is at its best when its beautiful. Like sculpting with rusty metal and discarded scraps, you have to art harder to make beauty from blast beats and tremolo guitars, but the reward is worth it.

The Path Untravelled doesn’t sound like upcycling, though. As the second “l” in Travelled indicates, Arx Atrata is from England, and they sound like it the same way Wolves in the Throne Room sounds Cascadian. The vibe I get from it is very Mists of Avalon. This could be fae music.

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Hope Drone

The only hope you will hear in the music on Void Lustre is in the band’s name. Seriously, do not listen to Hope Drone when you are depressed. The album starts like watching water drip from from melting ice. After what feels like an eternity of absolute solitude, builds into a nihilistic frenzy. There is neither hope nor relief to be found on this album. But as Edgar Allan Poe so wisely pointed out, the natural perversity of human nature draws us towards otherwise avoidable destruction. There is an attractive sheen in the void.

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Spellcrying Machine

Essence of Datum is a bit of a different beast. Their album has possibly the best name of all time, Spellcrying Machine. Seriously, I want to read the novel with that title. The music is more propulsive and blackish than post-metal, but there are no vocals. There are no streams available to listen to on their Bandcamp page. But you can hear the whole album over on YoutTube, where they’ve posted a mesmerizing animated video that’s more like a screensaver than a music video. It’s weird and captivating and I like it.

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