It is one of the subgenres of metal music whose roots are quintessentially unconventional and revolutionary against the established order and everything that comes with it.
And to be more specific, when metal began to enter the big halls and from where it was considered reactionary music by the press, the system and society, its assimilation and mutation occurred, simultaneously with social acceptance on the part of all these “paper workers” who previously accused it of corrupting the youth and passing on hidden messages about Satanism, drugs, prostitution, vagrancy, suicidal tendencies and I don’t know what other characterizations all these ravens of the system had attributed to it, literally frightening the parents who saw their children dressing in black clothes and band t-shirts and listening loudly in their rooms to the harsh sound coming from the stereo speakers, while on their outings they would gather with other children going at concerts, sharing their love for this kind of music. In other words, listening to metal was an attitude and a way of life at that time, from the early 80s until around the early 2000s, expressing the disgust of young people against the socio-political-religious rot that was suffocatingly trying to crush the dreams of young people, clipping their wings and turning them into mindless robots and obedient appendages of a well-oiled man-eating system.
A thunderous NO TO FUCKING AGAINST the decency and massification of society. Unfortunately, however, life in the perishable material realm of existence in which we find ourselves proves that nothing lasts forever, and this is exactly what happened with the entire mentality of metalheads, if not the world, since the early 1990s, when heavy metal had been accepted by the mass media, which just a few years ago considered it decadent and something that corrupts youth.
All the great classic bands of pure-blooded heavy metal filled stadiums and many thousands and even millions of dollars flowed into the bank accounts of the voracious record companies of the listen listen “music industry”, the parasitic scum that exploit the effort and toil of musicians, literally draining
every form of artistic expression, sucking the blood of the bands through a straw.
The fact that many of these bands managed to get rich and have their songs played on radio stations and television, because we are talking about an era when the internet had not yet appeared, is due to the fact that, although the record companies were handing out crumbs to the artists, we are talking about astronomical revenues from the companies, which means that even in the worst case, the money given to the bands was enough and more than enough to make many of them rich. And we are talking about profits that the mind of a simple day laborer cannot even comprehend. So it was the golden age of the two-way “banker”, which led the most famous of these bands to sell out their ideals and values ​​with which they started as kids rehearsing in a semi-basement studio with a lot of love for music and big dreams for the future, spitting on the fans who bought the first records and all kinds of merchandise of their favorite bands, resulting in the bands becoming more and more commercial, making major concessions to the music, the themes and the ideology with which they started, were loved and promoted by the simple metalhead, who was looking for a civilized way out through his favorite music from the shabby system. All this happened to the heavy metal, hard rock bands of the era and at the same time the relentless record companies had found the replacements for these genres in the early 90s, creating a new genre that would have and did in reality, as it turned out, the means for the companies and their minions, the well-known journalists, “bright, omniscient” record critics of the metal “my ass” magazines, to continue to get rich.
The horror of grunge music was now a fact. A jumble of some half-educated and supposedly wild rebel children, idiots in the system of children who only knew how to pick up two chords on the guitar and strum unabashedly with a lot of distortion, bleating like sheep on the verge of epilepsy, pretending to be revolutionaries. Some people with square hair and shorts who jumped like springs on stage, stressed by hard drugs and temporary and very quick success, thinking that they were fighting the establishment, making the aforementioned vampires of the multinationals together with the submissive journalists rub their hands counting the billions. Since the purpose of this particular text is to talk about underground black metal and how it has managed to maintain its playful style and ideological background pure and unadulterated, I will not expand further on the prostitution of metal with the contribution of the record companies.
All I will add to all this is this:
So there, at the end of the 90s, when all of us hardcore metalheads of the extreme thrash – death – black metal sound thought that the fashion of musical irrelevance and the pedantry of grunge had finally passed, a new one, again manufactured by the well-known and not exceptional vampires of the music industry, made its appearance, breaking our balls once again. And yes, I am talking about Nu Metal. What is this again? Nu Metal contains everything I described above in relation to grunge with even more distorted guitars and low tuning to make the sound even heavier, combined with inarticulate screams coming from the jungle and elements of hip hop, and whatever other nonsense the mind can think of. The short pants and the sleazy, childish, supposedly revolutionary behavior of the well-known “new hard” sound continue to exist in nu metal but in a superlative degree, creating the illusion in young kids that this music is really hard.
In your dreams, you scumbags of the masses.
I will not mention any grunge and nu metal bands for the simple reason that I do not want to give value to such decadent and harmful to human ears and psyche sound interferences. I will simply use the words of a good friend who in a relevant conversation told me that Nu Metal = No Metal. Hello Giannis! Unfortunately, over time, we fans of genuine extreme metal thrash – death – black metal have experienced yet another great disappointment from several of our favorite bands. While until the mid-1990s, the extreme sound seemed to hold high the flag of authenticity and uncompromising character, this began to change after 1995, which was also a turning point for the subsequent course of extreme metal. Thrash metal, as we knew it around the mid-1980s, which was considered very extreme and revolutionary and, according to many, including me, the ancestor of death and black metal, had begun to “clean up” its sound and “polish” its productions quite a bit, while also lowering the speed of the tracks. This and many other things led many people to switch to its two derivatives, the subgenres of death metal and black metal, which until then continued with undiminished force to tear apart the listeners’ acoustic drums with the brutality that characterized them. Many subgenres began to emerge from death metal at that time, such as the more atmospheric and melodic death metal with keyboards, the slower doom death, but also brutal death, techno death, etc., losing much of the original “yeast” that created it, that is, a more extreme thrash with heavy “cave-like” vocals as if they came directly from the grave.
The same thing happened with my very favorite black metal, which while in its beginnings sounded like very fast thrash with riffs played mainly with “open” chords and tremolo picking creating a mystical and mysterious atmosphere that, in combination with the long-term repeated measures, traveled the listener to virgin forests and heroic times of the untamed pre-Christian world.
The vocals that characterize it are also distorted but not like the heavy ones of death metal, on the contrary they sound like high-frequency screams, adding even more magical atmosphere to the songs.
We are talking specifically about the pure-blooded Raw Black Metal of the first era, which unfortunately was not unaffected by the turmoil of the greedy lucrative system of the music industry.
From pure raw black metal emerged atmospheric black metal, which also has its value, which uses keyboards but does not lose its ferocity and speed, symphonic black metal accompanied by a classical orchestra, thrash black metal, which also does not lose its brutality, avant-garde black metal, which to be honest I have not watched since I am not interested, is something like an atmospheric operatic symphony. There is also pagan black metal, which is also expressed by Pythagorean Circle, my personal musical project, Viking black metal with the corresponding theme, but from there we start talking about the decline of the musical idiom of black metal itself, such as the abominable DSBM (depressive suicidal black metal) post black metal (what exactly does the poet want to say here, I don’t understand it after black metal?) What kind of nonsense is this? Other branches of black metal are NSBM (national socialist black metal) and finally the completely foreign bodies abscesses of black metal such as Christian or unblack metal (here even the stones laugh) along with the fabricated sign of the times of political correctness of globalization of the alleged “revolutionary fighters” of the left-wing intelligentsia and the sleaze culture. I am referring to the RABM (red anarchist black metal) of some anti-fascist groups (antifa) who have the illusion that they are fighting against the capitalist system, while in essence they are paid organs of stateless globalizers such as the wretched George Soros. So these good guys have reached such a point of brainwashing that they consider anyone who talks about gods, homeland, blood, traditions, roots and race as a far-right fascist who must disappear.
It is commonly referred to as the long arm of Jehova.
People who are consumed by canceling concerts of genuine black metal bands in a thuggish, partisan manner, just because they happen to be referring to all of the above and are looking for “safe” commonly worshipped bands to listen to and promote, have no place in black metal. I suggest they stay in their homes or in some squat, eating fruit custard and putting red flags with hammers and sickles on their bottoms. Come on, because at some point we have to end all these unwashed Stalinist orphans! So, although black metal also suffered from commercialization, mainly after the mid-2000s, and many of these bands began to be heavily thrashed, “softening” their sound and “refining” their lyrics, it possesses an element that keeps its core pure and immune to the scourge of sellout, the woke agenda and the political correctness of the subhumans of extreme capitalist liberalism. We are talking about the underground space, which is the stable pillar of creativity and free artistic expression, resistance and reaction against globalization, prostitution and ethnonihilation. Underground black metal is the cornerstone for the past, present and future of authentic black metal, free from irrelevant impurities and quality discounts. It is the heart, the soul, the flesh and the bones of true black metal.
Black metal was not created to be easily accessible to everyone.
Black metal is not a fashion and it is not music for every idiot and irrelevant poseur to have fun with.
Black metal is a propaganda mechanism and in all probability it is also the last line of defense of the thinking people, musicians and listeners who make it up and who consciously resist this whole decline in morals and values ​​imposed by multinationals and their minions.
Black metal is a weapon of spiritual power, inner search and moral evolution.
Black metal was not created to be safe.
All you brainless two-legged people directed by internationalist centers, stay away from black metal.
Black metal has nothing to do with mandated political parties and factions of divide and rule. Eat your hay and stay away all you party dogs.
Right, left, center and in general the entire political system faithfully serves and implements, policies that come from alien centers of power against the interests of the indigenous citizens of the countries with the aim of making them foreigners in their own homelands.
Parliamentarism is the enemy of nations and together with the applied monotheism destroys our lives on a spiritual and material level.
Black metal expresses pure patriotism, love for the gods, for Nature, for the Heroes of every Race, for the ancestors, for the traditions of each country and opposition and resistance to every kind of Abrahamic sect of globalization and internationalist ecumenism.
On behalf of my personal musical work Pythagorean Circle, I wrote the above text, boldly expressing my disgust for the current decline of metal and modern society that has lost its way by recklessly and submissively following the dictates of the globalists. As Pythagorean Circle, we remain faithful to our ideals and the traditional values ​​of pre-Christian Hellenism, the Greek Worldview, the Greek value system of the Virtues, and pure raw pagan black metal. Through the underground raw hellenic pagan black metal that Pythagorean Circle advocates, we will continue to resist this entire dystopia of soulless modernism until the last drop of our blood.
No compromise, no tolerance for the pilgrims.
Long live Eternal Greece.
For our altars and hearths, for the gods of our forefathers, for blood and soil.
Hail Immortal Pagan Spirit.
Christos “Ancient Scholar” Tsichlas.