Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.02.2016, Page 39

Black Metal:
A Beginners Guide
First Wave: The bands that inspired the
second wave of black metal, typically
dated from around 1980 to 1991.
Check out:
Celtic Frost—‘Morbid Tales’
Venom—‘Black Metal’
Bathory—‘The Return’
Second Wave: The Norwegian scene,
which created the black metal “im-
age” (corpse paint, church burning etc).
These bands were more extreme in both
music and ideology than the first wave.
From 1991 to around 2000.
Check out:
Mayhem—‘De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas’
Taake—‘Hordalands Doedskvad’
Darkthrone—‘A Blaze In The Northern
Sky’
Burzum—‘Filosofem’

Third Wave: Definitions get hazy here,
but loosely, these are bands that were in-
spired by the second wave. Third Wave
music was much more experimental.
Here, many sub-genres of black metal,
like post-black metal, depressive suicid-
al black metal, avant-garde black metal,
were created.
Check out:
Deathspell Omega—‘Si Monumentum Re-
quires, Circumspice’
Funeral Mist—‘Salvation’
Shining—‘IV: The Eerie Cold’
Agalloch—‘The Mantle’
Why Iceland?
What is it about Iceland that created this scene?
Aðalsteinn (Auðn): Have you looked
outside? It’s fucking dark and depress-
ing.
Andri (Auðn): There are like four guys
that have formed fourteen black metal
bands, so that might have something to
do with how many there are. They keep
making side projects with the same peo-
ple.
Hafsteinn (Wormlust): Svartidauði.
They had a great release so people found
out about black metal bands in Iceland.
They found out that Iceland is a thing,
you know?
Stephen (Sinmara): With the excep-
tion of the younger guys—Misþyrming,
Naðra, etc.—most of these guys have
been doing this for nigh over a decade.
Somewhere in the media something
has now clicked, like “We should check
this out!” Now they are discovering all
these bands and as a result there are
more bands popping up, being inspired
by them.
Sturla (Svartidauði): What makes Ice-
land so special? I don’t know. I don’t
care. Let’s burn some churches and we
can get some unemployed anthropolo-
gist to explain that shit to us.
Tómas (Misþyrming, Naðra): It’s the
isolation. Like Taflan, everybody knows
each other online and in real life so then
everybody ends up listening to the same
albums, and wanting to create similar
types of music.
Þorir (Sinmara, Svartidauði): It’s a
prolonged effect of what a lot of us guys
have been doing for years. It’s finally
starting to come to full fruition.
CONTINUED FROM P: 14
Hannah Jane Cohen