should venom be called black metal?

[agamerwholovesmetal]

I've seen people online argue if venom should be considered black metal or not. I'm in the camp of they are in fact black metal albeit a very early version of the genre but I was wondering what other people thought.

[CentipedeAbyss]

I dont specifically think the norwegians invented 2nd wave BM, Im am ofc referring to the european movement of BM when I cite 2nd wave which includes bands from Southern Europe and some bands in the Latin Americas


1st wave for me will be hellhammer, Celtic frost, Bathory, Sarcofago, Mercyful fate

I'll be honest I most fo the time dont listen to lyrics, Im paying attention more to the music... timing, arrangment, leads, etc.
The issue with BM is all about satan, is that early thrash, coming from punk, was very anti-establishment, and by consequence anti-church.... there are crust and thrash bands in 80s with satanic lyrics.... I dont necessarily think thats the deciding fator

ofc I realise that bands can cross genres, but if we can include Venom... can we include Slayers first album? the work of Amebix? Maybe at the time, it would be confusing, but I think in hindsight things are easier to sort out

ive alway wondered for instance, if Slayer were in Europe, woud they have been bundled together with Sodom and Destruction... or Bathory, Venom, MF and celtic Frost? instead of being one of the big thrash 4

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

2 hours ago, CentipedeAbyss said:

I dont specifically think the norwegians invented 2nd wave BM, Im am ofc referring to the european movement of BM when I cite 2nd wave which includes bands from Southern Europe and some bands in the Latin Americas


1st wave for me will be hellhammer, Celtic frost, Bathory, Sarcofago, Mercyful fate

I'll be honest I most fo the time dont listen to lyrics, Im paying attention more to the music... timing, arrangment, leads, etc.
The issue with BM is all about satan, is that early thrash, coming from punk, was very anti-establishment, and by consequence anti-church.... there are crust and thrash bands in 80s with satanic lyrics.... I dont necessarily think thats the deciding factor.

ofc I realise that bands can cross genres, but if we can include Venom... can we include Slayers first album? the work of Amebix? Maybe at the time, it would be confusing, but I think in hindsight things are easier to sort out

ive alway wondered for instance, if Slayer were in Europe, woud they have been bundled together with Sodom and Destruction... or Bathory, Venom, MF and Celtic Frost? instead of being one of the big thrash 4

 

Well I have heard people call early Sodom and Kreator black metal sometimes, even if they went on to be agreed upon historically as being thrash bands. I don't personally agree with calling their early stuff black metal (especially not Kreator) but I have seen it written. I think it always gets a bit unclear when a new metal genre is being created, as to which of the main influencing bands will end up being considered fully part of the new genre, or will they be considered 'proto' or remain part of an older pre-existing genre or could they be included as part of a different new genre. Because when we're talking specifically about the years 1981 through 1985 when all this was happening, heavy metal in general had only been in existence for a couple of years by that point. So everything was brand new to us and still pretty open for debate as for what we thought we should call it.

Every single 2nd wave black metal band you could name from any continent that was active by the early 90's ('94 let's say) is going to cite the same bands over and over as their main influences. Ask and you'll hear Bathory, Venom, Celtic Frost, Mercyful Fate, Sarcofago over and over again, as well as the German thrash bands. Indeed Bathory and Celtic Frost themselves have both cited Venom as their primary inspiration, a band who had only recently been formed just a few years before they formed. So it's understandable that some people will want to call Venom black metal, while others will want to insist they're nwobhm or speed metal or I've even heard some say thrash. I'd say calling them proto black metal is probably the most reasonable solution, but I wouldn't find it unreasonable if someone wanted to grandfather them in as the first legit black metal band. And indeed I have often found myself in this second grandfathering in camp too over the years. To me they're just so massively instrumental to the formation of my favorite genre of black metal, that I feel there needs to be a distinction made between their music and what the other bands in their nwobhm scene were doing at that time, and the genres they sprang from.

It might be hard to understand for people who weren't metalheads yet or might not have even been born yet in 1981 just how shocking and groundbreaking the whole Satanic thing was at the time. The band Venom actually made the mainstream nightly news in America (which is where I was first exposed to them) in 1981 because they were so shocking and so different from anything that had come before. Normies and squares and parents of teenagers were legitimately fucking concerned about them the same way the estabishment had been concerned about Elvis' undulating hip movements back 25 years earlier and thought rock & roll was the work of the Devil. People were genuinely concerned that listening to Venom was going to convert their kids into goat sacrificing Satan worshippers. And of course this concern only fanned the black metal flames and made Venom 20 times more popular than they ever would have been just on the merits of their shitty music, as kids back then absolutely fucking loved and took delight in the fact that they were so shocking and offensive to their parents and most older folks. We may take all that Satan crap for granted now all these decades later but I can tell you it was a BIG fucking deal back then, at least in America. Venom kicked off what's become known as the Satanic panic in the 1980's.

Really not sure why Slayer doesn't get credited as black metal more often as they wore leather and spikes and eyeliner in their early days and were often mildly Satanic lyrically. I'd say a reasonable case could be made for them as proto black and proto death as well.

Then you have Black Sabbath who often gets credited as being full-fledged heavy metal in the '70's when we know the majority of the music on their first 8 albums was clearly hard rock roughly commensurate with what other hard rock bands of that era were doing, just downtuned a bit. But they were so massively influential to the formation of heavy metal that we want to bestow honorary heavy metal status with full privileges upon them anyway. They're the god damned grandfathers of heavy metal FFS. Funny thing is Sabbath is also the band that pretty much all of the original 80's thrash bands cite as their primary influence (or one of them) but I guess it'd just be too much of a stretch to call them the grandfathers of thrash, so no one ever has. Even though they really should be.

It should be much easier to sort this all out in hindsight because 40 years later we know what happened after 1985, how things developed and where things landed. But yet even with the benefit of all that hindsight, a highly influential band like Celtic Frost (which was basically just a continuation of Hellhammer) will be considered by various different people to be black, death, and/or thrash without seeming to be a perfect fit for any one of them. Later era CF since their reformation in 2006 gets caught between black, death, gothic and doom without quite being a perferct for for any one of those as well. They're perpetually caught in between sub-genres where they're all of those and none of those at the same time. So obviously in cases like this there will be rampant speculation and debate among fans and metal historians as it seems more logical to different people to call them different things. Obviously at the end of the day it doesn't matter what genre(s) you wanna call any of these bands, we just enjoy their music for what it is, or we don't.

[Dead1]

16 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I would tend to agree but again, I didn't make the rules for sub-genres. I didn't coin the terms "first wave black metal" or "nwobhm" or any others. I'm just trying to figure out what all these various terms mean and go with what seems to have already been decided on as the general consensus and put into place by the powers that be.

Back in the mid 80's we had thrash metal, heavy metal and glam(poseur) metal. No one really broke it down much more than that. It was enough to say a band like Venom (or any band) was "heavy metal" and that would cover just about all of the possibilities and sub-genres. It wasn't until much later well after the fact that metal historians came along poking their noses in and naming all these things retroactively. No one back in 1983 ever thought one day we'd end up with this elaborate and confusing structuring of a hierarchy containing dozens of metal sub-genres and sub-sub-genres and their various hybrids. It was all new to us then, we were just so happy to have heavy metal bands to bang our boomer heads to.

 

I always think of NWOBHM as a scene, not a style.  Basically heavy bands in UK between 1979-1984. I mean Iron early Maiden (heavy metal with some speed metal elements) v Venom (speed metal) v Def Leppard (hard rock) v Witchfinder General (doom).  I would lump Motorhead (punked up rock, speed metal) in here as well - their commercial peak was 1979-1982. 

 

(I'd also lump grunge in as defined by geography and time period, not a actual style).

 

Current first wave black metal is conceptually daft as it is literally defined by lyrical content (ie slightly more than average content of satanic lyrics).  Remember you also had white metal which was Christian orientated lyrics (eg Trouble and Stryper).  If Bathory sang about awesomeness of Jesus on their first four albums, they would have been a white metal band despite the music being some of the rawest in existence.

 

Ironically Black Sabbath is in some ways a white metal band...just check out the lyrics to After Forever!

I think there's more of an argument for first wave black in terms of style - ie Venom, Bathory, early Sodom but even then it crosses over into speed metal and thrash metal (much like early death metal crossed over into thrash).  But I would exclude Mercyful Fate or Running Wild or whatever other traditional/classical heavy metal band sang about Satan a bit more frequently.

 

Oh and the other problem with defining black metal as Satanic lyrics is that so many black metal bands sing about paganism or other things (eg Marduk who love WWII) and you also get overtly death metal bands ala Deicide heavily sing about Satanism. 

 

And you're absolutely right about the number of genre labels being very limited in 1980s - in Slayer Mag fanzine which started in 1985, everything is referred to as thrash metal (both by the interviewers and bands being interviewed).  It isn't until very late 1980s you get more elaborate and precise genre labels. 

 

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

4 hours ago, Dead1 said:

 

I always think of NWOBHM as a scene, not a style.  Basically heavy bands in UK between 1979-1984. I mean Iron early Maiden (heavy metal with some speed metal elements) v Venom (speed metal) v Def Leppard (hard rock) v Witchfinder General (doom).  I would lump Motorhead (punked up rock, speed metal) in here as well - their commercial peak was 1979-1982. 

(I'd also lump grunge in as defined by geography and time period, not a actual style).

Current first wave black metal is conceptually daft as it is literally defined by lyrical content (ie slightly more than average content of satanic lyrics).  Remember you also had white metal which was Christian orientated lyrics (eg Trouble and Stryper).  If Bathory sang about awesomeness of Jesus on their first four albums, they would have been a white metal band despite the music being some of the rawest in existence.

Ironically Black Sabbath is in some ways a white metal band...just check out the lyrics to After Forever!

I think there's more of an argument for first wave black in terms of style - ie Venom, Bathory, early Sodom but even then it crosses over into speed metal and thrash metal (much like early death metal crossed over into thrash).  But I would exclude Mercyful Fate or Running Wild or whatever other traditional/classical heavy metal band sang about Satan a bit more frequently.

Oh and the other problem with defining black metal as Satanic lyrics is that so many black metal bands sing about paganism or other things (eg Marduk who love WWII) and you also get overtly death metal bands ala Deicide heavily sing about Satanism. 

And you're absolutely right about the number of genre labels being very limited in 1980s - in Slayer Mag fanzine which started in 1985, everything is referred to as thrash metal (both by the interviewers and bands being interviewed).  It isn't until very late 1980s you get more elaborate and precise genre labels. 

Well I think you might've hit on something here Deadovic. Most sub-genres of heavy rock/metal music in the pre internet days were born out of scenes. You're absoutey right, NWOBHM was a scene as was thrash metal as was hardcore punk as was grunge as was cock rock as was death metal as was grindcore as was 2nd wave black metal. These scenes weren't all just based on bands all sounding exactly alike (even if in some cases most of the bands in a given scene did sound very much alike) it was really more about them fitting the profile well enough to belong to the scene. That could've been a sonic profile or it coud be location or lyrical themes or having a certain look or whatevert it was. Bands had a bit more leeway to be sonically different and original back then, a liberty that most bands no longer enjoy today. Once you've selected your bands' sub-genre it seems like you become basically locked into doing the same old thing you've become known for ad infinitum. Don't stick closely enough to the template then you'll get fan backlash. Bands become musically type-cast if you will. There are so many more cookie-cutter bands these days following rigid musical templates and isn't that what everyone complains so much about? Too much conformity not enough originality?

So when we're judging some of these rock and metal sub-genres of decades past I think you have to allow for some bands to sound a bit different, like Mercyful Fate for instance whom every metalhead everywhere loves to point out sound very different from the rest of their first wave peers. But the general consensus around the time when that sub-genre was being given its name seemed to be that even considering MF's more traditional heavy metal approach to how their music and vocals sounded, they still fit the profile well enough to be considered an important part of the 1st wave black metal scene. And more importanty all of the original 2nd wave Norwegian bands cite Fate as an important main musical influence on their sounds, right alongside Venom, Bathory and Cetic Frost. And that's good enough for me. And it should be good enough for you too. Whether you even like their music or KD's vox or not they were a unique and highly talented metal band and it's clear they really did belong in the first wave bm sub-genre because they were part of that scene. Can't go back and cancel them now.

Also I have to ask, why would black metal bands singing about paganism or death metal bands singing about Satan be a "problem?" I have absolutely no idea what any of the black or death metal bands I listen to are singing about anyway. There are many bands that do both of those things but you just state that this is a problem without explaining why. Is it just because your inner OCD needs all the bands to act and sound alike? Now you know I'd be the first one to agree that if your music strays too far from not necessarily Satan per se, (because I'm not comprehending or reading any of these stupid lyrics) but from the overly aggressive, vicious and hateful character inherent to black metal, that's no good. Because that's what I'm there for and if you don't have that then it's not even black metal anymore to me. Was just curious what your reasoning was since I know you're really not into black metal at all aside from like a handful of blackened thrash or speed metal bands.

[Dead1]

It's a problem if you're using lyrics to define genres. As mentioned to me it's all about overall sound and style.  Lyrics be damned.  Doesn't matter what the genre is.

 

If we define black metal as bands that sing about Satan then Deicide and early Slayer are black metal bands and a Mayhem/Burzum clone that sings about Pagan gods is not black metal.  

You can't say "a defining feature of something is that it's black, except when it's not."

 

As for influence it's irrelevant.  The two brothers from Nifelheim love Iron Maiden so much they were featured in some TV show about mad collectors for their Maiden collection.  Doesn't make Nifelheim traditional metal, NWOBHM or Iron Maiden blackened thrash metal.

Or In Flames who love Depeche Mode but it doesn't make Depeche Mode melodic death metal/alternative metal or In Flames synth pop.

After all some of the biggest influences in metal are non metal like Sex Pistols or classical music.

 

And what's really fascinating is that while you are all about an open (Satanic) church for black metal, you get very anal when classifying power violence, crust and grind despite the stylistic aesthetics of those actually being far closer to each other than King Diamond is to Burzum.

 

I am more black and white with my definitions - I think the old 1980s one are worthless eg US Power Metal, thrash for everything, and their definition of black v white metal.

 

Things have been far better codified in the 1990s and later (eg invention of groove metal classification as well as all the post metal subgenres).  And the new codification based on music and not lyrical content and geography.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

30 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

Things have been far better codified in the 1990s and later.  And the new codification based on music and not lyrical content and geography.

We now that western society does everything they possiblty can via the internet there won't be so many sub-genres coming from actual scenes anymore. People form bands now with other people they've never even met in person. Going forward I'm thinking new sub-genres will likely be created mostly by people on the internet grouping things together according to what they sound like. So that should make you happy. 

 

Black Metal By Fenriz. Here he draws the 80's metal family tree and explains in much more detail than I could how 80's metal led to 90's 2nd wave black metal. But it's a 45 minute video so I know you probably won't bother with it especially if you're still at work.

 

Oh and I'm not the one who's anal about the definitions of pv, d-beat, crust and grindcore and all their various offshoots. I'm just going by what the generally accepted definitions for those sub-genres are according to people who were into this kind of music and categorized everything welll before I came along. They're the ones who are being anal and separating bands into micro-genres based on small differences. I have all that stuff tagged as simply "crust" or "grindcore" or "deathgrind" or "hardcore" here on my end, I don't get involved with micro-genres like neocrust or stenchcore. But I do enjoy learning about what these different terms mean and how they came about, I find shit like that interesting. And when conversing on the webs I do try to abide by by what the established sub-genre definitions are. Otherwise why have sub-genres if everyone's just going to use their own made up ones?