TIBERIAN VOCALIZATIONS: ARTHUR VON NAGEL ON POST-BLACK METAL (AND BEING A SHAMELESS METAL NERD)
Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 4:30pm by Arthur von Nagel
Black metal, in spite of its more purist fans, has undergone so many stylistic permutations since the Norwegian second wave’s arson-fueled media explosion that I’m hard-pressed to even define what black metal sounds like circa 2009. By frankensteining elements of Mayhem, Bathory, Burzum, Darkthrone, Celtic Frost, Emperor, Venom, Enslaved, Ulver and countless other classics with every unrelated style under the wintermoon, bands to follow spawned sub-sub-genres for all tastes: folk-black/Viking metal, symphonic black metal, war metal, suicidal black metal, atmospheric/ambient black metal, blackened post-rock, progressive black metal, black-thrash, blackened death metal, industrial black metal, national social black metal, black/doom, blackened crust, black n’ roll… and a peculiar little anti-style often referred to half-ironically as “post-black metal.”
In 1994 Ved Buens Ende released their demo For Those Who Caress the Pale and from then on everything, well, everything pretty much stayed the same as if it had never been released. Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas and Emperor’s In the Nightside Eclipse were released the same year, and I can only imagine that the whole underground metal scene worldwide was too busy trying to pick its collective jaw off the floor to notice a lo-fi demo from a band with a funny foreign name. The next year, VBE recorded their full-length Written in Waters and broke up without much notice in 1997. The band reformed briefly in 2006 but broke up again in early 2007 without having fulfilled any of their promises of live performances or new material, leaving Written in Waters as their first and final album.
