Favorite First Wave Norwegian Black Metal Act.

Obviously all of these boring, by-the-numbers bands aren't experimental enough.

in the real world all kids are exactly like LJ clearly

who needs paper thin guitars, blast beats and nature worship when u can have a whole LP of boring sludge drones from the latest southern lord signee.

lolj.

LJ will be running a best avant garde black metal poll to go along with this one.

learn to crawl imo

i don't agree. for one thing, i don't believe there is a right or wrong way to familiarize yourself with a genre. the one bit of advice i would give anyone who was listening to stuff for the first time: dig in! listen to lots of stuff. bad and good. figure out what you like from there. and don't worry too much about people's lists and such. as far as starting with the more traditional...i don't get it. start wherever you like. and why do people gravitate to the "craziest" and most "out there" or most experimental examples of a genre first? because this can be the most fun place to start for an adventurous music fan. a lot of people who post on ilm enjoy the sui generis in lots of genres. it's simple curiousity. who took the genre the furthest? who was the most bonkers country/rockabilly/r&b singer of the 50's? you know? and i think if people start with that kind of stuff and like what they hear they might be more curious to hear where the music began. who were the pioneers? this is often true of rock fans. they start with the "crazy" free jazz and later, if they truly enjoy the stuff they hear, then they go back in time and learn to appreciate the more prosaic, but just as rewarding, pleasures of bop or hot jazz or whatever. once someone starts, wherever they start, you never know where thy are gonna end up.

<3

and now, Mayhem

just always gonna disagree w/ you on this one scott, I think it's bullshit when people take The Metal That's Most Comfortable For Me and then champion it as The Most Awesome Metal when they kinda don't know what they're talking about

feel the same way in other genres & fields too, my position is if you don't have a hunger to learn the history then you're doin it wrong

I know this is an obnoxious super-orthodox stance to take but what can I say, I'm a Catholic.

btw De Mysteriis was sweet, Ordo Ad Chao also sounding like it knows its plain evil from its megasuperdemonic

awesome is subjective, because it is my own awe kthx

mind you I am only too happy to have the important classic stuff impressed upon me, because one day it will stick and it will be like joining a particularly awesome club of people who understand why shit like this happens in the first place

i just think most people's musical education is haphazard at best. if someone says that their favorite jazz album is a love supreme i don't immediately scream WHY DON'T YOU LISTEN TO MORE CHARLIE PARKER!!?? sometimes it takes people a little longer to get used to a genre. everyone has a different way in.

x-post

"The Metal That's Most Comfortable For Me and then champion it as The Most Awesome Metal when they kinda don't know what they're talking about"

it might be the most awesome to them NOW. and maybe it always will be. maybe some people don't want to delve any deeper. i've got no problem with that either.

yeah I was the same way when I got into post-black-metal metal! and I'm glad people told me "you don't know what the fuck you're talking about" or I'd still be runnin around saying Amorphis was the best metal band of the mid-nineties

btw glad lj digs ordo ad chao that album slays, if you haven't copped gorgoroth ad majorem get to business man

I know you're gonna lol @ me because it is obviously the 10-minute avant-garde excursion, but listening to "Illuminate Eliminate" just now there was THE most awesome minimal build about 2 minutes in, working both with and against the blastbeats and the growls...god I can't help myself :(

Was really loving this shit before this song, honest, but game is being upped. Now it sounds like a helicopter. Oh my god.

Have ad majorem already, from a recommendation of yours back in '07. You told me I'd dig 'White Seed'. You were right. Now I need to hear the rest of the album properly, and get beyond the whole <3 Gaahl thing, into what the whole band were actually doing.

(High-pitched screams over a minimal backdrop going into a really evil new riff at the 7-minute mark = shit oh shit)

Seriously this is one of my top 5 BM songs.

And the rest of the top 5 has shit like Xasthur in it

I'm with you on illuminate eliminate I am not anti-experimental just pro-basics

you gotta kick that xasthur to the curb though dude

I think I'll reclassify Xasthur as dark ambient. Or funeral moan. Or something. I love it but it isn't really BM, it's operating under different sonic auspices.

Mayhem do this stuff so excitingly. There's so much subtle theatre. They ease or slam the throttle just the right amount at just the right time. I may vote for them with a sockpuppet. Really do <3 Nattens Madrigal so I'm sorta comfortable with my vote but if we're talking pure BM songwriting I think these guys might have Ulver beat.

for me it's all about transilvanian hunger

The two longest songs on the album are pulling out stops that were tantalisingly hinted at before. I really wanna get the other Mayhem albums now. I actually have (classic era) stuff by most of the artists in this list, and I do appreciate it when their songs come on shuffle. I just need to face the albums head-on now.

mayhem have a lot of bands beat. i voted for darkthrone though. just cuz i felt like it.

i love and/or appreciate pretty much everything ulver have done, and they made great black metal, but they are something else now and have been for ages.

and emperor made one of my top ten or twenty metal albums ever. but i still voted darkthrone.

I like a lot of these bands a lot but can't see myself voting against darkthrone in many polls ever except maybe like a "best band that isn't darkthrone" poll & I'd probably vote darkthrone in that one too just to be an asshole

to me darkthrone's first few albums as a black metal band really capture the platonic essence of the genre, if there can be said to be one

Well, when I describe Blood Inside as my favourite album of the decade, I'm not for a second putting it in my metal top 100 - it isn't a metal album. It's not 'better' than metal, it's really just very different, with more conceptual affinity to Talk Talk (thanks Scott!) than uh Darkthrone (whom I will hear. Yes.) Shit, The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell was campy goth-industrial narration and that was 10 years ago

as far exemplifying shit id vote darkthrone but burzum are my favorite band out of these bands all told and considered, though ordo ad chao is probably my favorite album by any of these people and if gorgoroth were in the poll i'd vote them anyway

as far AS exemplifying shit, now dont that beat all

lol mclusky came on after ordo ad chao ended and it was like a burst of poppy sunshine as all the children linked hands and blew kisses at each other

maybe deep down that is what mclusky is but still lol

i never listen to enslaved. or satyricon. though i like them fine when i hear them. i listen to every other band on here at least once or twice a year. honestly, i listen to more death metal and grind than anything else. and a lot of old metal via tapes. most of the black metal i hear these days is new stuff i get in the mail from people like moribund and most doesn't make much of an impression. and some of the u.s. shoegaze drone bm stuff i end up liking a lot. but not much. i liked that first brown jenkins album. um, some other stuff.

someone brought in a box of metal tapes to the store to sell and i was so happy to find the 2nd S.O.B. album on Rise Above in there! Woo Hoo! I blasted that shit. how often do you see old S.O.B. tapes!?

also i just kept playing Dark Angel's Darkness Descends on tape over and over all week. what a record. sheesh.

scott have you heard the new blut aus nord

cause that thing is awesome

as far as black metal goes, i will confess that my knowledge of the first FRENCH wave is lacking. i need more. i'm just cheap and i hate downloading stuff. i would totally pay someone like gottpunch to burn me a cdr series of some of that stuff. or a lot of that stuff. old drakkar releases. vlad tepes. torgeist. stuff like that. i love the stuff i've heard over the years on the internet (like on youtube and last fm) and elsewhere. i don't know why i don't just learn how to burn shit on my own. it's like a thing with me. a mental block.

suggestions too for stuff to look for online. some of that stuff has never been reissued. just bootlegged endlessly.

i don't think i have heard the new blut. i'm a fan though.

2nd on the Blut Aus Nord. But if I had to make my 2009 metal list it'd be fighting it out with Funeral Mist for #3. Madder Mortem has #1 by a ways.

Mike from YOB tells me that this new Australian band Portals is sort of a Blut Aus Nord/Immolation hybrid. Check out their freaking costumes:

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

Portal is one of the freakiest bands on the planet.

portal album made my top 20 decibel list. it made most people's year-end lists. it was great.

New one forthcoming, too, apparently...

xpost - i was just curious to hear some of the more experimental bands, thats all - ive listened to a fair amount of the stuff mentioned on this thread from venom/hellhammer onwards, but the sheer amount of info on the internet on BM has me defeated, so i thought some recommendations might be helpful. i don't think there is ever any one correct way to get into a musical genre.

xpost: The first wave French "Legions Noires" stuff is essential, and some of their wildest recordings came out as tape-only side projects. Good selection at the Cosmic Hearse blog.

Discovering a genre retrospectively is a strange experience. I came in on the back of Black One, but I do feel it's essential to dig back to the roots. Knowing punk pretty much from the ground up, I can appreciate the irritation with people who come out with the equivalent of "Green Day are just the greatest ever . ." But, at the end of the day, you like what you like, and I do like Xasthur.

The upside is that there is so much to explore out there. Looking at the list, I still don't think I've covered enough to make an informed choice. Of the big four, I'm aware that most of the nowadays Black Metal I like is footnotes to side one of Filosem, but I'm leaning towards Immortal: frosty production, mad riffs and fanatical, single-minded attitude. You get to the end of an album, and just want to play it all over again.

Nothing is wrong with Xasthur. No one has to apologize for liking him whatever J0hn D thinks.

john is only jealous because xasthur is a better breakdancer.

both Xasthur & Green Day are actually fine btw

nah wait that was another BM dude wasnt it. Oh well, john's still jealous as there's 2 better breakdancers than him.

my style is impetuous

but can you do what Immortal do?
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/MMMMMMM_Pie/Miscellaneous/ImmortalSurfing.jpg

you know what's surprising to me is that the picture marduk had taken of themselves, shirtless by the pacific ocean - which century media sent out to everybody circa '04 I think - hasn't gotten the play that those immortal press photos have. can't even find 'em online but I remember getting sent them

http://i419.photobucket.com/albums/pp274/Dissociation_Drummer/immortal-YMCA.jpg