Metal Reviews

so its been a couple of months of listening to this off and on. Silvester Anfang is a great intro track, pretty good stuff.

Hmm I don't wanna beat a dead horse but ... I think I will (fun :twisted: ). I personally don't like Mayhem and would give this album a lower score based on musicianship, but can kind of agree with the influence that it had at the time. Is that how 'Classics' are dished out? Influence or how good it actually is? Basically then couldn't you say that most of the early metal albums are 'Classic' then?

Mayhem is a very good band. They have a very raw and evil atmosphere in their music and they really put a lot into their music and it changes from release to release. Ordo Ad Chao is a masterpiece and their other stuff is interesting too.

This particular album doesn't sound too great to me but they had balls and went with it and that's how you get things done.

BLEED DOWN THE FUCKING CORE!!
Great old school stuff
I think a lot of the newer black metalheads are wrong to consider it a black metal release which is partially true but I see it more thrash.

Que MetalWarrior316 in 3...2...1...

I think this is pretty borderline, it's almost proper black metal....but not quite...

Wasn't it Fenriz who once said that Black Metal is a mix of Thrash, Death and Doom Metal? But I would call Deathcrush still Black Metal, because all the early Black Metal was actually more an atmospheric thing and not exactly a musical style.

This topic might warrant a discussion thread of its own, but anyway.

As I see it Black Metal is more of an aesthetical develpoment than an actual sound. Ascribing a generic sound to BM is a bit of a contradiction since the genre as whole is so focused on intangible elements like evocative qualities, atmosphere and feeling.

So out of curiosity (particularly referring to the posts of Rhys and steve...): What is needed in order to be 'proper' BM? What defines it? Does it, in your opinion, have to have tremolo picked melodies and long periods of ambience? What disqualifies Deathcrush?

I'd call this a classic piece of Black Metal any time.

I think a (higher) distorted voice (croaking or screaming is IMO not so important), atmospheric elements and satanic or occult lyrics are necessary. Tremolo picking or blast beats are helping, but are IMO not mandatory. E.G.: Songs like "In the shadow of the horns" are mostly not fast, no tremolo picking, no blast beats, just some celtic frost riffs but nevertheless black metal...

I mean, even though Venom played actually normal heavy metal, they had many atmospheric parts, the singing was not clean and the lyrics were mostly evil.

Then came the second wave, which was heavily influence by the 80s first wave, but many fans claimed that only their sound was Black Metal. So I think the definition is more a fan problem and not something what the actual musicians concerns.

Satanic and/or occult lyrics are not mandatory to be classified as black metal.

Black metal is defined by production values and simple riffing that conjure up personal, intellectual exploration of the music.

IMO is the production value not really important. There are many good produced BM albums, which are not from COF or Dimmu Borgir.

For example Watain Sworn to the Dark. Or Emperor Prometheus... . Or Satyricon Age of Nero. Or Abigor Fractal Possession.

But if the lyrics are not at least a little bit occult or evil, what is the "black" in this kind of "Black Metal"?

Yeah, but three out of four of those are hardly pure Black Metal, all experimenting in some way or another. Black Metal is, at the end of the day, a certain sound influenced by Bathory/Venom/Celtic Frost/etc that bands then interpret individually.

Has the wrong atmosphere for me...feels like death metal in parts. Although keep in mind I listened to this well after most other classic pieces of black metal...

But I think there is no rule, that BM has to sound like recorded in the garage. And e.g. Celtic Frost had always a production, which was very good, compared to early Darkthrone or Burzum. Even the later Hellhammer demos had a better sound than e.g. Transilvanian Hunger.

But sure, the atmosphere makes sometimes a huge difference how the music works. It can make a black metal record of an album containing only thrash, death, doom and classic metal riffs and drumming.

That is a bit of an easy explanation. Particularly because the bands you mention could certainly all be described as Black Metal. Even though they sound very different they share a common aesthetic. Black Metal is made from many different musical backgrounds united in an overall feeling. Blasphemy pretty much forged their sound on a foundation of grind, but I doubt anyone would dispute them being Black Metal. Bathory draws from Thrash, traditional Metal and Punk music, but the result is undeniably Black Metal. The same goes for many of the other bands. Their musical ancestry might be different, but they make Black Metal nonetheless. Sound wise there isn't really a credible definition of pure Black Metal; it's all a matter of aesthetic and feeling.



This album comes from a time when the difference between the scenes was much smaller than today. That is, pretty much non-existent. The divide is not really made before the 90s and it's still not always clear-cut, so Death Metal is not far off. The Black/Death movement was pushing towards a new form of expression, but I think that it is quite clear what separates this album and an album like Sarcófago's "INRI" from a band like Death for example (and I'm not talking about musicianship).

Besides, I find it hard to imagine e.g. Burzum existing in its actual form if it wasn't for this album. So yeah, a Black Metal classic.

It's definitely a classic, and you can definitely run the no Deathcrush = no Burzum/whatever other band you want to name argument, I just enjoy listening to the later stuff than this.

Although if you want to hear where black metal comes from the riff in Deathcrush is about as perfect as it gets.

Yeah. Specifically Varg directly references many of the atmospheric components of Deathcrush. His vocals are more than a little inspired. Of course composition in Black Metal would improve vastly over the coming years, but the common denominator is definitely there.

The return of Eisenfaust has led me to wonder....what happened to Astaroth?

Didn't he erase his account or something?

Looking at the memberlist he apparently did