Thulean Archives

This is black metal, huh? Wow. Well, is it really? Let's find out. As I explained to you in my video yesterday, black metal was a musical revolt against the trend of death metal. The term didn't exist before as a term for a music genre. It only existed as a name for a Venom album. Before 1991 we had heavy metal, we had glam rock, we had speed metal, we had thrash metal, and indeed we had death metal, but we didn't have black metal. When Darkthrone and Burzum became popular in 1992, some other bands started to change from death metal to black metal as well in the underground. When that newspaper twisted my words and made up some absolutely nonsense story in a Bergen in 1993, early the thing blew up. It became very popular and well known. In 1992, many had been inspired by the success of Burzum and Darkthrone, and they too started playing black metal. But in 1993, the thing exploded and almost all the Norwegian former death metal bands started to play black metal. And by the time black metal had already lost its meaning, it was no longer a musical revolt. It had become a new genre. And of course, this is what happens when you have success with something. Others want to do the same because they like it. They think it's cool, they think it's fun, they want to do the same. But then something strange happened. You see, Some thrash metal bands, and their fans saw that black metal became incredibly popular, so retroactively, they started to call their music black metal. And that's where the origin of this first wave black metal comes. Didn't exist. It was thrash metal, it was speed metal, it was heavy metal. They didn't even know what black metal was. And they never used the term before we started using it in 1991. So, no, even though Venom had an album called Black Metal, this was not a term used for their music. This was a term used for one of their albums. Venom was some sort of heavy metal, speed metal, thrash metal band. Same with Bathory. Bathory was a thrash metal, speed metal band, and so forth. None of them played black metal. None of them are black metal. Likewise, there was no third way the black metal, The bands starting to play what became a genre of its own, they play black metal just like the earlier bands. It's the same thing, isn't it? But in regards to those early thrash metal, speed metal, heavy metal bands, those of them who adopted the term black metal for their music retroactively, there's a term for that, you know. It is called fame parasitism. They just wanted in on the fame. And mind you, black metal term was something Euronymous wanted to use, and it could just as well have been called white metal or maybe dark metal or maybe rock metal, but Euronymous chose the term black metal, and it became popular. And Euronymous could call it black metal because nobody really cared about what it was called as long as it was original. I can add that if you want to watch more of these videos, there's a playlist on my account called My Black Metal Story, where I go into details about all sorts of stuff in relation to this. But if you want to know all the details about this, you can buy this book.