I hope this thread takes off Nordic.
There's a whole world of underground music i am no longer in touch with.
..................
I hope this doesn't bore you too much but it's a little background to my musical history where Black Metal is concerned.
I got into Black Metal around 97 / 98 because i was bored with and never really got on with the whole Grunge and Nu-Metal wave.
I was at a bit of a loss with the whole music scene full stop. Metal as i knew it (Glam, thrash etc) was basically dead in the water. Mercilessly butchered by a lumberjack shirt wearing group whose singer ended up taking his own life because his own band ended up exactly the same as the whole movement they rebelled against in the first place.
Grunge was extremely dull -
Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam apart, it was hollow and miserable, seemingly without energy and the vitality of what had gone before it. Nu-Metal took this ethos and ran with it. The mags suddenly disliked everything i still loved, even
Maiden seemed in a state of decay so i needed to get a musical fix elsewhere.
I explored American country music and really took a liking to the wave of female singers/bands breaking through such as
Dixie Chicks and
Faith Hill. These artists brought the fun back into music and their use of rock guitar rather than banjo's helped, along with
Oasis, fill the void left by
Motley Crue, Kiss, etc.
What about the heavier stuff though?
Slayer hadn't released a great album for ten years, the same went for
Anthrax (
Sound of White Noise is an exception),
Megadeth, Testament etc. Even
Quorthon went Brit-pop for one album.
I'm not sure how but someone introduced me to an album called
Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk by
Emperor and i was blown away. Certainly the vocals took a bit of getting used to, but the music was fantastic. Amazingly fast guitar, ridiculous blast beat drumming and even a hint of synthesizer. The next album i took a chance with was
Rebel Extravaganza by
Satyricon and from then on the more popular bands of this underground genre known as Black Metal all became favourites -
Mayhem, Immortal, Dark Funeral, Darkthrone etc.
From this i moved into Gothic metal and as time went on the music industry changed. Grunge / Nu-metal died off apart from the cream of the crop and the old music returned. Bands such as
Motorhead, Maiden, and
Saxon had a whole new lease of life and i've never looked back.
In short i now listen to every form of music i've ever enjoyed, be it
Kiss, Leppard, Satyricon, Primal Scream, but have unfortunately lost touch with the underground scene so hopefully Nordic and this excellent thread can destroy me with more blast beats than i can ever hope for and have me on the look out for many great acts with indecipherable band logos.
