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should venom be called black metal?


agamerwholovesmetal

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33 minutes ago, KillaKukumba said:

I thought this question was already a thread on this forum? I'm sure I remember recently seeing this same discussion and like every time it happens there is never any resolve to the question.

I looked at the black metal forum and people seemed to discuss it back in 2017 but the question never seemed to be explicitly asked from what I saw

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20 minutes ago, KillaKukumba said:

I still seem to remember this conversation a few months back, but that's fine it's obviously just a matter of asking the right person. GG's solved it once and for all.

No charge even! And hey, if there's anything else you might ever wanna know about black metal, feel free to just ask me. You know where to find me. I only offer because I know you've admitted to being sub-genre challenged.

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14 minutes ago, KillaKukumba said:

I'm challenged by a lot of things, what else you an expert at?

Uh let's see....hunting for new kvlt black metal releases, ritual sacrifice, carmelizing various foods, quad-shot lattes, leaving my favorite shirts at the laundromat, reckless driving and lengthy pointless arguments (both in person and on the interwebs). I also have a map of metro-New York and Long Island in my head so if you're ever in need of directions because your Google Maps has crapped out on you then call me, I can get you just about anywhere.

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All great things that I shall keep in mind should I ever need such advice.

And I definitely think that there should be a banner across the top of the site with a link to your answer about Venom here in this thread. It would stop so many wayward travellers from loosing their footings as they traverse the path towards black metal.

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i still consider them black metal, even though they are technically n.w.o.b.h.m. in the eyes of the metal elites. i think venom atleast highly influenced the black metal genre with their raw recordings, gritty riffs and occult themes. but, i also agree though that bands such as bathory, vulcano and bulldozer brought more to it

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I consider Bathory's s/t the first BM album as we understand BM today.... with a tip of the hat to MF, Hellhammer and Celtic Frost.
my own personal take is that Venom is thrash/punk band.. and this comes through in their playing and arrangment, I mean you could consider them the bridge between punk and the big thrash four.




 

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On 4/4/2023 at 9:05 AM, CentipedeAbyss said:

I consider Bathory's s/t the first BM album as we understand BM today.... with a tip of the hat to MF, Hellhammer and Celtic Frost.
my own personal take is that Venom is thrash/punk band.. and this comes through in their playing and arrangment, I mean you could consider them the bridge between punk and the big thrash four.




 

First Bathory is very Venomy - ie punked up speed metal.

 

I would say The Return is probably closer to BM.  And after that Bathory quickly went back to a more speed/thrash approach before going folk metal etc etc.

 

IMO Venom are stylistically speed metal in my mind and in terms of scene part of NWOBHM.

 

Lyrically they were black metal back but then so was Mercyful Fate and Running Wild's first one.   You could have written a full fledged glam album about worshiping Satan and it would have been considered black metal.

Definition on whole first wave of black metal satanic lyrics) essentially has nothing to do with modern definition of black metal which is more about musical style.

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56 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

First Bathory is very Venomy - ie punked up speed metal.

I would say The Return is probably closer to BM.  And after that Bathory quickly went back to a more speed/thrash approach before going folk metal etc etc.

IMO Venom are stylistically speed metal in my mind and in terms of scene part of NWOBHM.

Lyrically they were black metal back but then so was Mercyful Fate and Running Wild's first one.   You could have written a full fledged glam album about worshiping Satan and it would have been considered black metal.

Definition on whole first wave of black metal satanic lyrics) essentially has nothing to do with modern definition of black metal which is more about musical style.

By "modern definition of black metal" you are of course referring to the 2nd wave style pioneered by the Norwegians in the early 90's with the tremolo riffs and all that stuff. But there is still black metal being produced today that shares much more in common with the punky, speed metally 1st wave than it does with those 6 originating bands from the early 90's Norwegian scene. Which all the guys from those bands have said was inspired by the first wave bands that came before them, (Venom, Bathory, CF/Hellhammer, Fate...) they just took it in their own original direction. But it's all black metal even if it doesn't all sound the exact same. There are more than a few musical genres where all the bands don't necessarily have to sound exactly the same.

As a purist I have found it quite challenging to accept that there are bands considered by most metalheads these days to be black and death metal that stray pretty far from the original definitions of those terms. We have death metal bands with more prog (and other corrupting influences) than death in their sound as well as black metal bands without a shred of Satan. Even pretty sounding post-black, folk, prog-black and atmo-black bands seem to fall under the black metal umbrella nowadays. Still I would actually say by my way of thinking bands like Venom, Bathory and Fate qualify more as black metal than that kind of stuff ever could, and even more than stuff like Immortal that does have the tremolos just because of the Satan factor. Black metal more than anything else needs to sound evil. 

So you know my stubborn old ass wants to gatekeep a lot of this shit and say "No god dammit that's not black metal!" But the thing is like it or not commonly accepted genre definitions do change over time. Words have meanings and it's helpful when communicating with each other if we can all agree on the same definitions for given words. So if nearly everyone in the 2023 metal world wants to consider these non-Satanic, nature based and post bands to be black metal, I don't have much choice but to go along with this for the sake of being able to discuss these things with other people and have everyone be able to understand one another. I can exclude these bands in private, inside my own head, and refuse to think of them as "black metal," but I don't listen to any of that pretty posty proggy stuff anyway so what's the difference if other people want to call it black metal?

So in conclusion, you can have let's say a "new wave" of British heavy metal without there ever having been a preceding wave, but you can't have a "2nd wave" of black metal without there having been a first wave. So like it or not all those first wave bands are legit black metal. Maybe it would help to think of some of these bands as having dual citizenship. Mercyful Fate can hold two passports and be both black metal and trad heavy metal. Venom can hold 3 passports and be black metal, punky speed metal and nwobhm all at the same time. Being included in one sub-genre doesn't necessarily preclude a band from being included in others as well. 

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Problem with lots of hats is it make definition and description useless.  Descriptors have to describe something.

 

Eg If some one says what's your new vehicle and you say it's a transport vehicle well then that's really vague?  Is it a truck, a car, a bus, a plane, a boat, or cart and donkey ?

Eg if some one says "what does Venom sound like," then saying "black metal" or "NWOBHM" is rather vague.  Punky speed metal nails it perfectly.

Or alternatively if one says "What does early Opeth sound like?" saying death metal is vague and meaningless.  Melodic progressive death metal on the other hand gets much closer to their sound.

 

Also I find the whole concept of lyrical themes like Satan, Vikings and Pirates defining a genre stupid,  Iron Maiden sang about Satan on several songs - does that mean they're a black metal band?  Venom sang about banging hot chicks - does that make them a glam band too?

 

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10 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

What if someone doesn't know what punky speed metal is but they know what black metal is because everyone knows there is something called black metal, M-A even tried to ban it last week!

 

M-A tried to ban Black Metal?!?

 

Black metal is still largely a useless descriptor in that case.  I suspect a fan of Cradle of Filth or Dimmu Borgir or even some of those kvlt black metallers I used to know from the early 2000s would not really like anything from a band like Venom or Mercyful Fate.

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1 hour ago, Dead1 said:

Problem with lots of hats is it make definition and description useless.  Descriptors have to describe something.

 

Eg If some one says what's your new vehicle and you say it's a transport vehicle well then that's really vague?  Is it a truck, a car, a bus, a plane, a boat, or cart and donkey ?

Eg if some one says "what does Venom sound like," then saying "black metal" or "NWOBHM" is rather vague.  Punky speed metal nails it perfectly.

Or alternatively if one says "What does early Opeth sound like?" saying death metal is vague and meaningless.  Melodic progressive death metal on the other hand gets much closer to their sound.

 

Also I find the whole concept of lyrical themes like Satan, Vikings and Pirates defining a genre stupid,  Iron Maiden sang about Satan on several songs - does that mean they're a black metal band?  Venom sang about banging hot chicks - does that make them a glam band too?

 

Opeth didn't (I use past tense because they've since gone off the metal rails) sound like what I think of as progressive death metal. They weren't weird or techy sounding. Progressive melodeath with aternating growls and cleans might be closer to it. They were a lot more melodic than they were actually what I'd call progressive back in their early days.

If someone asks me "What does Venom sound like?" then I would just tell them what they sound like. I'd say they're a first wave black metal band born out of the nwobhm scene in the early 80's that sounds like (badly out of tune) punky Satanic speed metal. Don't see what the problem is there. You can of course consider them as part of whichever sub-genre(s) you like. I was just giving my thoughts on the matter because as you know I really enjoy these sub-genre debates. Imo it would simply not be wrong for one to say they are either black metal or nwobhm or punky speed metal or some combination of the three.

There are always going to be certain bands like Venom and Celtic Frost that coud go into any one of a number of different sub-genres without being a dead solid perfect fit in any single one of them. In those cases it's natural for there to be some disagreement on how to categorize them. Most bands are a bit easier to define. But it's those bands who ride along the seams where different sub-genres intersect and connect that can often prove to be most interesting. Like black/thrash or black/death or even some bands that have elements of all 3.  

As far as Iron Maiden being black metal, well shit mate I think I like them twice as much already just from considering the possibity that somebody somewhere might think they're a black metal band even facetiously. I think with genres common sense shoud prevail. One or two songs about Satan (or Vikings or Pirates or banging hot chicks) won't define a band as such because a couple of songs isn't enough to override the main identifying aspects of their sound. But if the majority of a band's material has a common theme that fits in perfecty with an existing genre then some people are gonna want to put them in that box. I don't make the rules my metal brother. You said yourself this evening in a previous post up there somewhere that you know first wave black metal had everything to do with Satanic lyrical themes. So you shouldn't be surprised when people want to put overtly Satanic bands like Venom and Fate in the black metal category. I don't see how one could penalize these bands for not sounding exactly like other bands they directly inspired that didn't even exist yet in the early 80's.

 

54 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

M-A tried to ban Black Metal?!?

I'm betting it was probably some kind of an April Fools joke. They have been known to proclaim silly shit like that before on April Fool's Day.

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my thoughts have pretty much been said by GG, genres evolve over time, and so it’s not unreasonable to call venom black metal and still recognise the genre has progressed beyond the sound they helped pioneer. For proof of concept see Suffocation and Cryptopsy, both bands who sound radically different to Death and Incubus, on a sidenote, still hate they had to change their name because of a shitty indie band, Portal and Gorguts also fit under the death metal banner. That’s why it’s helpful to have sub-sub-genres like avant-garde DM or DSBM.

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16 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

I don't even think singing about a theme 100% constitutes a genre.  I mean Amon Amarth sing near exclusively about Viking shit but really they're just a melodic DM

To me it's all about sound and style.  

I would tend to agree but again, I didn't make the rules for sub-genres. I didn't coin the terms "first wave black metal" or "nwobhm" or any others. I'm just trying to figure out what all these various terms mean and go with what seems to have already been decided on as the general consensus and put into place by the powers that be.

Back in the mid 80's we had thrash metal, heavy metal and glam(poseur) metal. No one really broke it down much more than that. It was enough to say a band like Venom (or any band) was "heavy metal" and that would cover just about all of the possibilities and sub-genres. It wasn't until much later well after the fact that metal historians came along poking their noses in and naming all these things retroactively. No one back in 1983 ever thought one day we'd end up with this elaborate and confusing structuring of a hierarchy containing dozens of metal sub-genres and sub-sub-genres and their various hybrids. It was all new to us then, we were just so happy to have heavy metal bands to bang our boomer heads to.

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I’m in the same boat, though in my case, it’s because all the sub genre labels were well established by the time I was actively seeking to learn more about the music I was listening to, up until about 2010. I just thought it was all metal, from Judas Priest to  CoF, that could also be because that’s how JB hi-fi categorised it on the shelves

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Quite a coincidental topic because a non-metal mate sent me a message the other day asking my opinion on some band called Polyphia (WN, check it out, you'll love it!)

After I expressed reservations that incessant noodling does not a good band make, he sent me back a gif of Immortal from that old VHS in the forest, saying "I guess viking metal is more your thing".

Now, intuitively I figured that Immortal was second wave black metal but didn't know how I knew that. I also assumed Venom was first wave, but had to read up on how that was actually defined.

In any event, I knew Immortal wasn't viking metal.

Presumably the second wave was influenced by the first wave because they really liked satan and shitty production/not being able to play instruments properly. At least insofar as Venom is concerned. Mercyful Fate is pretty solid production-wise. Although, I am still amazed that King Diamond had a career after adopting such a risky vocal style. But glad he did.

 

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