bands that start out as black metal but get bored with it and go insane

"the idea of a genre that includes burzum, root, darkspace, enslaved, and deathspell having a "traditional sound" is goofy to begin with."

Dan OTM, especially as Abruptum are in there as well.

"ultralimited characteristics"? I really hear a lot of diversity, particularly compared to other rock genres. The restrictions around the non-musical aspects of BM do seem pretty severe, but isn't that a way of marking off a territory for the true believers to run wild in?

Most of my CDs sound like DThrone, yes. And "genre experimentation" - no matter how great or small - w/in the confines of BM's ultralimited characteristics results in a big ol trainwreck 98% of the time.

But is that really different than any other genre? I don't think it is.

my fave bm album to listen to recently (came out last year, but i've been playing it a ton this year):

http://blog1.musicfield.jp/du_do2/archives/DRAUTRAN.jpg

drautran - throne of the depths

so beautiful to me. basically, german viking bm with occasional acoustic interludes and atmospheric fx.

also, not bm, but blackened doom-wise, the new velnias album on god is myth is really cool. for primordial/agalloch fans:

http://www.god-is-myth.com/images/Velnias_cover_Thumb.jpg

"Anyhow, it's not "experimentation is bullshit," it's when ppl get like "oh the BEST stuff is ALWAYS the stuff that doesn't actually sound like it has much to do with the genre any more" that I go "look if you don't actually like the stuff why the fuck are you listening to it?""

Ah, so your problem is with straw men. Beat 'em, John, beat 'em hard!

Me, it's more looking for stuff that's like Gravitar or Sleep, but veering further into BM. But hey, I'll totally cop to being a dilettante who still thinks of Venom as black metal.

Weaklings, christainised weaklings all!

like scorpion hidden under a rock it strikes the hand. like blizzard that rips off your face. a lion in the jungle that makes work of your throat. a morsel of meat you choke upon. a disease that makes your genitals fall off. there is only Byzantum.

\m/

I'm very belatedly exploring the BM scene and like to think that this thread is due for a revival.

Dødheimsgard - A Umbra Omega (2015) is fairly bonkers

love that record

ctrl-F: "ulver"
--->
'open-mindedness is not a BM virtue man'
--->
laughed so hard I startled my parents' paunchy calico, who was snoring on the couch

*: dilute calico; grey/orange/cream, rather than black/orange/white... important to get this right, otherwise she might sit on my head while I'm sleeping.

are cats black metal? this one sorta looks like a wolf, which has me thinking yes

Emptiness and Furia come to mind first. The former, from Belgium, were a sort of black/death hybrid that made a monster of weird, cinematic paranoia on Nothing but the Whole then went into something I can't even define on their latest, linked below; Furia were always a slightly skewed folkish black metal band (from Poland) whose releases have gotten more and more "post," but not in the usual post-metal or post-rock way -- it's like some kind of thunderous drone jam music now.

https://emptiness.bandcamp.com/album/not-for-music

https://paganrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ksi-yc-milczy-luty

Previous albums from these bands are also highly recommended.

Thanks for the suggestions, o. nate and Devilock.

I'm not familiar with the others, but the little I've heard of Furia's latest album made me want to investigate further.

Negură Bunget's final two LP's also roam farther and farther afield from their BM roots, but if anything they sound progressively less insane.

Angizia

Started out twenty years ago as already borderline black metal, quickly changed to theatrical cabaret/rock opera/klezmer, mostly on piano and accordeon - and all sung in German.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScngHItonDw

I can't really imagine that non-German speakers get much out of it except for a total wtf-experience, but the story in this concept album/play about "Winter's Dark Companion" is pretty entertaining - there's this misanthropic figure who travels around in freezing midwinter from home to home, accompanied by a servant in clown makeup carrying a grammophone on his back with Schubert records. Which he plays while the titular Gesell goes around murdering people. It's basically a Fargo episode set in the 19th century.

I feel like I should be able come up with some more straight bm bands that got increasingly weird, but can't really think of many. I think Mayhem got pretty strange, didn't they? And Manes? I don't really rate either of them though.

I do love some loopy "avant-garde" metal though, and I think these are some good ones that haven't been mentioned:

A Forest of Stars - Opportunistic Thieves of Spring
Smohalla - Resilience
Pyramids - A Northern Meadow
Mastery - VALIS
And OP mentioned Anubi, their only album is fucking NUTS

Angizia are a bit too theatrical for me though lol

Pensées Nocturnes? Not very accessible for non-French. Also stuff like Aborym, recent Abigor (like Time Is The Sulphur In The Veins Of The Saint), In The Woods, Sigh, Thy Catafalque.

well, the only sort of metal i listen to is false black metal. i like myrkur's "mausoleum"- she started out being hyped as black metal and had a lot of serious black metal dudes working on her album, but she still got a lot of flack because, well, she's not a dude and therefore couldn't possibly be trve cvlt. so for her followup she just went into a crypt with a choir, a piano, and an acoustic guitar and recorded some stuff. not "batshit insane" per se but pretty awesome new age with some great natural reverb.

abu lahab was always batshit insane. i have way more respect for the black metal folks in islamic countries because over there you can actually get put to death for saying that stuff, so they tend to work under pseudonyms (the historical abu lahab was muhammad's uncle, condemned in the qu'ran as a heretic). my favorite record of his is "as chastened angels descend into the thoracic tombs" from 2011 but i haven't heard all his stuff.

"the tortoise boat" by laetitia in holocaust. a pretty obscure one, acoustic combined with programmed blastbeats, but again i like the sound they have.

this feels like a good place to keep everyone updated on the unfolding oranssi pazuzu situation

http://listen.20buckspin.com/track/v-rimyrsky

amazing track imo

also for some reason the drummer for jaga jazzist has a black metal project, i guess because he's norwegian and it's mandatory over there. their only record is a live record and i'm more into shitty lo-fi basement tapes with no high end whatsoever but if you're into noise-kraut jams you could do worse than "killl". don't watch the video if you're epilepsy-sensitive. there's also "book of sand" if you want to try out some RABM, but i'm personally not very impressed by any rabm i've heard.

Master's Hammer Slagry

certainly fits the 'go insane' description. It might only be 41 minutes long, but it's hard to find anyone who can sit through the whole thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uuIlcxxXiY

ved buens ende becoming virus (who eventually got boring, but boy o boy is "carheart" still NUTS in 2017)

would dispute 'eventually got boring' but sure

also omg this master's hammer album, lol

it's basically that komar/melamid 'most unwanted song' but pretending (not very hard) to be a metal album

Well as a reward you'll get six minutes of actual metal at the end.

Lugubrum De Ware Hond ("The True Dog")

Half demented free jazz, half demented black (or as they call it themselves, brown) metal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfwhalYgaAk

'Brown' as in NSBM, or..?

Brown as in feces.

i see :)

lol at the final three posts