What the hell do I know about black metal? Right. Nothing. That’s not stopping me from trying, though. Sam offered to introduce me to the genre (because I can never discover enough music), and copied several albums for my consumption. I’ve made my way through two of them: Weakling‘s Dead As Dreams, and an album that it inspired, Wolves In The Throne Room‘s Diadem of 12 Stars.
There’s a funny feeling that washes over the uninitiated during the first moments of one’s foray into a black metal record. Should I expect speedy guitar riffing and low-end subsonic grunts? Are these assumptions too generalized and incorrect? Will I be able to last through one song? The first moments of “Cut Their Grain and Place Fire Therein,” the lead track on Dead As Dreams, were more confusing than revelatory. Keyboards. Weeping guitars. When the composition finally (and quite dramatically) shifted gears, It was most reminiscent of an avant-garde record. The guitars “riff,” but they do so buried beneath a nearly impenetrable wall of static. The vocals went from unaffected guttural howls to grunts to ear-piercing shrieks. The transitions are nicely timed, and the movements between slowed-down, burning fuzzy passages and up-tempo chugging (do they call it chooglin’ in metal?) are expertly navigated. Also, epic guitar solos. It’s not all grinding annoying bullshit after all!
I like the Wolves In The Throne Room record more. It might stem from what Sam told me about the group. They’re not face-painters, they don’t throw carcasses at audiences, and they don’t drink blood. Instead, they live on a self-sufficient commune (how Amon Duul-like!) outside Olympia, growing their own food, raising their own animals, and, in their spare time, recording black metal! According to Sam, they “sympathize with the Earth Liberation Front. Cool! Diadem of 12 Stars conjures notions of a band that admires experimental rock as much as it does speedy death metal. They stretch silence, play with acoustic guitars, drone like mad, and shroud riffs in eerie ambiance. The vocals aren’t so good–I’d rather it be an instrumental record–but it’s not gross or unpalatable. In fact, it made me laugh a few times as I recalled songs from “Metalocalypse.” For a bunch of hippies, it’s quite fascinating.
In the coming weeks, I’ll review the other four albums, then I’ll decide once-and-for-all whether or not “Black Metal” should be added to my list–alongside such styles as ska, IDM, twee pop, jungle and cabaret–of genres with absolutely no redeeming value, whatsoever.
