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First Wave of the First Wave?


salmonellapancake

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Do you think that there is a first wave of first wave black metal? I mean like the bands that influenced the First Wave bands. Guys like Judas Priest, Motorhead, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix, UFO, KISS, Uriah Heep, Nazareth, Budgie, Thin Lizzy, Sex Pistols, Misfits, Black Flag, and so on... And if so, could Stoner Metal bands also be considered Black Metal, as they are influenced by these very same bands?

I know it sounds weird but what do you guys think?

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On 2017-5-30 at 10:00 AM, salmonellapancake said:

Do you think that there is a first wave of first wave black metal? I mean like the bands that influenced the First Wave bands. Guys like Judas Priest, Motorhead, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix, UFO, KISS, Uriah Heep, Nazareth, Budgie, Thin Lizzy, Sex Pistols, Misfits, Black Flag, and so on... And if so, could Stoner Metal bands also be considered Black Metal, as they are influenced by these very same bands?

I know it sounds weird but what do you guys think?

Well, yeah. Plenty of people have traced black metal backwards to the very start of rock n roll, then the blues, then I don't know, slave songs or wherever it came from. Remember how Varg Vikernes renounced metal music at one time because of its roots with black blues musicians? Classic Vargy. 

So in effect you could keep going back as far as you wanted, but I'm not about to start listening to Sex Pistols and telling everyone they're first first wave black metal. Are you?

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ANUS OV YE GÖATLORD has been performing TRVE first-first-first-wave BM since before the Common Era. Since ovr first yak-skin demos we have set ovrselves apart from the crowd ov WORTHLESS POSERS svch as "blves", "heavy metal", "Roman plainchant", and other pretenders to the Throne Ov Grimnitvde, with ovr steadfast dedication to the Holiest Ov Holes. Ovr frostbitten, vncompromising first-first-first wave BM has endvred for centvries, to crvsh all weak fools beneath the Hooves ov the mighty ANUS.

 

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8 hours ago, FatherAlabaster said:

ANUS OV YE GÖATLORD has been performing TRVE first-first-first-wave BM since before the Common Era. Since ovr first yak-skin demos we have set ovrselves apart from the crowd ov WORTHLESS POSERS svch as "blves", "heavy metal", "Roman plainchant", and other pretenders to the Throne Ov Grimnitvde, with ovr steadfast dedication to the Holiest Ov Holes. Ovr frostbitten, vncompromising first-first-first wave BM has endvred for centvries, to crvsh all weak fools beneath the Hooves ov the mighty ANUS.

 

They certainly talk the talk, but unfortunately sound like any other lame third wave wannabes. They should have just left it with the humorous descriptions, which are pretty funny. 

It sort of reminds me of that old joke: "We're so underground that we broke up before we ever formed and have no demos". 

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41 minutes ago, Requiem said:

They certainly talk the talk, but unfortunately sound like any other lame third wave wannabes. They should have just left it with the humorous descriptions, which are pretty funny. 

It sort of reminds me of that old joke: "We're so underground that we broke up before we ever formed and have no demos". 

Iceni and I didn't know what we were starting. To be fair, we had never heard black metal before, and were living in yurts.

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6 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Iceni and I didn't know what we were starting. To be fair, we had never heard black metal before, and were living in yurts.

I guess you could say the truth yurts. 

A lot of people make 'joke' black metal bands for some reason. I have a friend here who does it too. He's mad for it and gets very excitable talking about it. For some reason a lot of people are drawn to this sort of thing haha. 

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9 minutes ago, Requiem said:

I guess you could say the truth yurts. 

A lot of people make 'joke' black metal bands for some reason. I have a friend here who does it too. He's mad for it and gets very excitable talking about it. For some reason a lot of people are drawn to this sort of thing haha. 

It's ok, we have you around to keep things appropriately dour.

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The first wave of the first wave is just Motorhead and punk... which means that the first wave of the first wave of the first wave is Chuck Berry and Little Richard. How more black can you get? None! NONE MORE BLACK!

It all makes sense, as long as you're not that idiot whose initials are V and V and who now spends time making videos of himself and his kid in the woods and puts them on youtube. What a sad dude.

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These concepts really get my goat I am afraid.  The fact is there is no "first wave of the first wave" and I don't understand what people get from searching for this as an actual part of a genre's evolution.  Everyone just needs to grasp the concept of influences in music, just because Motorhead, punk, Black Sabbath or whoever are influences on a genre it does not make the first wave of it.  In a way, to describe these artists as such detracts from their individual contribution to music.

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I think it's natural to have questions about what exactly constitutes "black metal" when the first wave bands played everything from heavy metal to loose, punky thrash. I think the sonic similarities there were more coincidental than deliberate, especially in light of how divergent their trajectories were after the early to mid 80s - for instance, Sodom grew up into a real thrash band, Celtic Frost went avant garde before shitting the bed, Bathory evolved towards Viking metal, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond kept playing riffy, melodic heavy metal. Keep in mind that it wasn't just about the music - part of what defined early black metal was the Satanic subject matter and growing interest in the theatrical aspects of performance, which carried over into the second wave. I'm personally unconvinced by some of the arguments I've read, for instance the ridiculous notion that Danzig qualifies as first wave BM because of his Satanism and punk roots. But my point is that - while looking for the influences is a great exercise - as Macabre points out, they're only influences; and particularly in the case of black metal, musical influences only get you so far. It's been around for over 30 years and even the people who love it most don't agree about what it should sound like or what constitutes the appropriate motivation for playing it. 

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It all goes back to Hendrix, man :grin:

Seriously though, I think black metal also refers to the Time when bands began playing in that style prominently. In other words the style, the period of time that it initially came about and how it developed after are what defines black metal inseparably. I don't think that anything that came before it or influenced it can practically be ranked similarly. It'd be like saying that all music is black metal. It's a marginal term anyway, but there's a big, unavoidable difference between Bathory and Judas Priest; same for the other bands in the OP.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've never been entirely comfortable with the idea of a first wave of black metal anyway. They were more like a very loose group of bands that didn't even use the term black metal except for Venom who basically aren't black metal anyway. 

When people point at Sodom, Slayer, Venom, Celtic Frost etc I'm just not convinced that 'black metal' has any meaning for this group of band's early releases. Obviously they were massive influences of what later became black metal as we know it today, but they're all thrash bands basically. 

I think the first wave of black metal was just Bathory. 

Don't throw shade at me over this - I know the metal world has apparently agreed that the first wave is a thing, and I'm going along with it. I'm just saying it's not hugely convincing for me personally. 

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1 hour ago, Requiem said:

I've never been entirely comfortable with the idea of a first wave of black metal anyway. They were more like a very loose group of bands that didn't even use the term black metal except for Venom who basically aren't black metal anyway. 

When people point at Sodom, Slayer, Venom, Celtic Frost etc I'm just not convinced that 'black metal' has any meaning for this group of band's early releases. Obviously they were massive influences of what later became black metal as we know it today, but they're all thrash bands basically. 

I think the first wave of black metal was just Bathory. 

Don't throw shade at me over this - I know the metal world has apparently agreed that the first wave is a thing, and I'm going along with it. I'm just saying it's not hugely convincing for me personally. 

I agree. I've heard people lump Mercyful Fate into that group as well. And apart from image and lyrical themes, I wouldn't call them Black Metal. They were a huge influence on Emperor and other bands, but no, not "the first wave." Honestly, Sepultura's Morbid Visions has more in common with Black Metal and even then it's really nothing more than an influence.

Speaking of Venom, here's how "Black Metal" came about (excerpt from an interview with Venom Inc. from metal-rules.com):

Quote

 

Well how do you usually start writing the new riff?

Mantas : Let’s put it this way, when we did European tour, we did South America, we did America. When I got back from touring, I loaded 82 riffs from my phone into the computer. Now we’ve been setting on the tour, so we’re sitting in hotel rooms and even when I went back home. I was just playing, messing around. That’s pretty cool. On my phone now I’ve probably got about other 20 or 30 riffs, just did the video clips of little and stuff. Sometimes I’ll just set a drum program and I’ll jam. I think if you ask any musician who writes songs, they’ll tell you exactly the same thing. A lot of the stuff just comes instantly. Sometimes I think if you work on a song for too long, it’s not meant to be. The best songs write themselves, you just let them happen and that’s the thing. I may have told you the story, but I’ve told everybody a story. But “Black Metal” was written when I was taking a dunk. I was just sitting on the toilet, some people will take a magazine in and they’ll read a magazine while they’re having a shit. One day I took a guitar in and I was just sitting there and the first few riffs from “Black Metal” and that was it. It can happen at any point, doing all that.

 

So basically: Did you know you were making history with that album? "I just had to take a shit." lol

 

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1 hour ago, morbidspectre said:

I agree. I've heard people lump Mercyful Fate into that group as well. And apart from image and lyrical themes, I wouldn't call them Black Metal. They were a huge influence on Emperor and other bands, but no, not "the first wave." Honestly, Sepultura's Morbid Visions has more in common with Black Metal and even then it's really nothing more than an influence.

Speaking of Venom, here's how "Black Metal" came about (excerpt from an interview with Venom Inc. from metal-rules.com):

So basically: Did you know you were making history with that album? "I just had to take a shit." lol

 

Perhaps what's most interesting is that he calls taking a shit a "dunk" which is pretty remarkable. 

 

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I've never been entirely comfortable with the idea of a first wave of black metal anyway. They were more like a very loose group of bands that didn't even use the term black metal except for Venom who basically aren't black metal anyway. 

When people point at Sodom, Slayer, Venom, Celtic Frost etc I'm just not convinced that 'black metal' has any meaning for this group of band's early releases. Obviously they were massive influences of what later became black metal as we know it today, but they're all thrash bands basically. 

I think the first wave of black metal was just Bathory. 

Don't throw shade at me over this - I know the metal world has apparently agreed that the first wave is a thing, and I'm going along with it. I'm just saying it's not hugely convincing for me personally. 

 

I know that you're not trying to be inflammatory, and I'm not responding in that nature either, rather just aiming for some clarification. An important distinction needs to be made between black metal and thrash metal, but it's hard since Sodom, Kreator, Sepultura, and other first wave black metal bands became thrash metal bands, and Slayer and Destruction combined the two sounds at the start of their career before dropping the black metal elements and going for straight-up thrash. Celtic Frost, Venom, Mercyful Fate, Hellhammer, and others however, didn't play thrash riffs at any point in their career. Black metal is a style based on the riffing cadence, note selection, and overall songwriting style used by these bands, and a lot of that identity becomes lost because most fans are only identifying with the second wave, which is almost assuredly the sound that they heard to get them into the genre. In Norway and Sweden, the most popular black metal scenes, the second wave began as the second waves in every other prominent black metal producing country, which retained most of the first wave's base in their sound with a greater emphasis on atmosphere. However, it didn't take long before the first wave was all but stripped from those sounds, so since this is what most people identity as Black metal, they're looking to these bands in the past and not seeing any common links. That does make a lot of sense as to a reason for the denial of the first wave, but upon exploring beyond those countries scenes in the second wave, it's much more plain to see that the first wave is the origin of the sound and not some kind of "spiritual ancestor" that "merely influenced" later bands because of their themes and lyrics.

 

Sent from my HTC6535LVW using Tapatalk

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I disagree with the term "first wave black metal." The appropriate term would be "proto-black metal," because the bands that are referred to as the first wave are the bands that influenced the genre and laid out its different elements. But these bands had pretty much nothing to do with each other, and while Bathory did have the basic black metal sound down and Sarcofago were halfway there, bands like Mercyful Fate, Celtic Frost, and Venom sound almost nothing like black metal (and I say that as a huge Celtic Frost fan). I advocate for the term "proto-black metal" because their relationship with black metal almost perfectly mirrors the relationship between punk and "proto-punk" bands like The Stooges, The Velvet Underground, MC5, New York Dolls, etc. - the elements were there, but it took bands like Darkthrone and Mayhem to put them together. 

 

One big issue with the term is that it takes these bands out of their cultural/artistic context. The most obvious victim of this is Venom. The first two Venom albums are awesomely raw and cathartic, but if you see their antics and visuals, they look ridiculous in an almost Spinal Tap-like way. This becomes even more glaring when you compare them to bands like Celtic Frost or Bathory. But doing so is unfair, because those aren't really their contemporaries. Venom came out of Britain at the same time as NWOBHM bands like Saxon, who were visually and theatrically every bit as ridiculous as Venom, if not moreso. Compare Venom to those bands, and they're actually notably less bloated and more raw. 

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