one in million
13 years ago
Saturday 27 February 2010
Asian Black Metal
With Black Metal splintering off into more branches than Barclays bank, it is becoming more apparent that the genre as a whole is becoming harder to define. What is Black Metal? Most of the bands that defined the scene have moved on to other fields of extremity. Emperor, Samael, Moonspell, Cradle of Filth, Rotting Christ, Gehenna, Satyricon, have all shed their Black Metal roots and crafted individual sounds of their own. Marduk, Gorgoroth and Dark Funeral still forge ravishing Satanic Metal whilst Dark Throne seem to be aimlessly wallowing in past glories. Immortal are slowing down by the album and Mayhem are simply treading water. Dimmu Borgir embody the spirit of the genre in name only as they ride their deserved wave of popularity. Maybe Abigor and Graveland still hold true the flames of the past but over all the modern scene in Europe is grinding into a repetitive cycle of cloning the past masters and bands becoming pale reflections of what once was.
That doesn't mean the genre, as a collective whole is bad, far from it. The Black Metal scene is here to stay and it is expanding in its own right to create some of the best extreme metal for a growing mainstream market. The fact is the very sourness of the music has inevitably become less cankerous to accommodate a wider audience. The polished productions have hacked away the boisterous disregard for perfection. The once tacky band photos are now professionally manipulated into sharp gleaming effigies of Hell. The mysteriousness of the bands now blown away to reveal normality and the complete opposite of the terrible portraits the fans once envisaged. To put it in a nutshell, Black Metal has become integrated with the mass marketing machine of commercial Metal music.
To consume the raw primitive essence of Black Metal I believe a band must crave the hunger of a scene free from mass media attention. The conditions when the first Norwegian bands appeared [not necessarily confounded in a fireball of exaggerated murder coverage or church burning's] playing without a safety net and not caring if they fell from the exciting challenges of playing something unique. The music was crude, the images bewitching and the all important mystery factor all too real.
Take away the comforts of labels signing anything that shits Satanic themes and the mainstream mags writing this and that about any one, and you get a precarious underground where nothing is certain and nothing tailor made for the awaiting masses. To put it bluntly, to feel the raw energy of Black Metal we must take our biased views and negative opinions on anything that isn't Norwegian and step into the sewers of a place where the very real corrupt lure of fame and fortune has yet to deplete the innocence of the music. This is the purest form of Black Metal. Music, untouched by ambition as it grows for the moment and never looks back. There can be no happy ending, no light at the end of the tunnel. There is just the depressive drone of the music and the anti social rankness of the bands themselves.
You can find it in South America and parts of the fragmented Eastern Block although that part of the world favours a more Death Metal approach. You can also find it in abundance in Asia. Now, you are no doubt imagining tanned skinned Asians and squinting short people chanting Satanic themes from a land where the very concept of Satan hardly exists. Maybe they could say the same about Hinduism or Buddhism being an alien form of religion to Europe and we know that not to be the case. The same applies to Asia where Christianity and the concept of Satan are very real.
To leap across this initial image of Asian Black Metal just look at the Japanese band Sigh. The only Asian band to really break out of the misconceptions of 'anything out of Asia must be shit". To leap further still across the Japanese scene you will discover long serving bands like Abigail and Sabbat.
Leap even further again and a whole list of Black Metal bands appear. Tyrant, Funeral Rites, Magnane, Infernal Necromancy, Gurugoth, Hurosoma, Old Serpent, The Under, Asrafil, Insanity of Slaughter and Holokaust Winds to name a few.
Here is a scene untouched by the tainted values of the western extreme metal culture. It thrives on anonymity and thus produces the rawest, Blackest and insane form of Black Metal. The music is disdainful to the ears just like it should be. The productions are often dire and the passion unquestionable. You can hear the anger, the total disregard for the mainstream and a deep brooding menace only existing in a real underground scene that has no over-ground scene to look up to.
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