Yuku free message boards

Quote:

---

I agree with some of that, especially that black metal places too much emphasis on the visual/theatrics and not enough on their art and/or ideology

---

Black Metal is all about the visual/theatrics, it was meant to be this way. There was never an idea behind BM, it never stood for anything and that's what made it different than anything else. Ideology? Please! Every fukkking one of those corpsepainted singers claims to be a descendant of the old paganists/diabolists/alchemists/occultists if not son of Odhin, Thor's sister in law and so on. And what is their ideology after all? "Blood Torture Witchcraft Satan/ Satan Death Torture Witchcraft" or probably " I will break a fukkking christian skull/ Valhala awaits me for though I'm dull/ I'll let the christian fokkkers never/ defile the Great Oak whatsoever Chorus: Hohoho, where's my ale"
BM means to say NOTHING. Thats what I like about it.

Another nice thing about BM: it never had any potential. The so called TRUE BM is the one nobody is supposed to hear, sung by two 16 year old boys with flour and mommy's black eye-line on their faces in a smelly garage in the outskirts of anywhere. Everything else is listened to, adored, has fans, gigs, tours, signed shirts, CDs etc. etc. - a whole lot of things that could never go along with the idea of true BM. In other words - you can never listen to true BM - if you listen to it, it is not true.
Still wondering why we are surrounded by "false" black metal?

Thoughts? Yup, a few...

First of all: note taken, I will try to keep that as civilized as possible (and not be the fukkk that I usually am).

Quote:

---

Now, I would disagree with a majority of that. What is a generalized definition of "black metal" as a genre (that all bands would agree upon)?

---

Of course the term "black metal" is debatable, as is any term in our language. Ask what exactly is BM, and you will end up with the answer that nobody knows for sure. And yet if you ask somebody - how do you understand BM, he will, much like you and everyone else here, state that BM is Burzum, Darkthrone, Lim Art, Arcturus etc. etc. So we don't know what BM is but we do know who plays it. Therefore, to make things easier we just use a veeery large generalisation and spread the term all over those bands, whose music has certain common elements. Of course they are not all fully described as BM, thats why we have NSBM, sympfonic BM, folk-metal, Viking metal etc. which are again generalised for the same reason.

Quote:

---

Black metal has no potential? Then how do you explain the existence of a band like Summoning, that would have never realized their OWN potential without the influences of bands like Burzum and the unstructured, "anything goes" freedom that was unique to the genre in the early 90's? Do you think they would have stayed their developmental course in the restrictive and smothering confines of say, death metal?

---

First of all here is not the place to put Summoning, since Summoning are no longer BM, but have developed their own unique style. You see, there are Bands like Summoning, Negura Bunget, Profanum etc. who have the potential in them and who no longer stay in the general genre once they realize that potential. They leave because their potential takes them somewhere else, on their own path, while others still repeat what was already said and done ad nauseam. So you see Summoning has potential, BM doesn't. You say that BM helped Summoning build their own style and realize what they carry in them? That is undoubtedly so, but are you suggesting that if they were to start off as a DM, t(h)rash, Ambient or whatever band, they would have never had any potential at all? Potential is what you carry in you, it is not gained through the influence of a certain genre. What you stated up there could be interpreted as "the quality and potential of a man depends greatly on the high school he has graduated in". Yes, BM did help the guys realize what they can do, but so would any other genre. They could have become an uniquely sounding DM influenced band as well, if they prefered to start off with DM. You see it is potential that comes first, the initial genre is rather a matter of personal preferences.

Quote:

---

Do people still honestly argue whether bands are "true" and "untrue"? That debate was tired 10 years ago. And for the sake of argument, how does a band finding an audience make them "untrue"? All of the original Norwegian bands found an audience (albeit a very small one at first) despite their obscurity, so does that mean that all of them were "untrue"? Summoning sell CDs and band shirts, are they "untrue"?

---

Hehe, this is kinda funny. First of all you say that the true/untrue debate is a thing of the past, and right after that you demonstrate that you (and not only you I bet) still think in those cathegories. "Summoning sells CDs and band shirts, are they "untrue"?". That is to suggest that you do somewhat believe that Summoning are "true", am I not right? And yet you tell me that those cathegories are outlived. Well evidently they are not. As for Summoning's truenes, well, being no longer BM, they are no longer bound by those cathegories ( which are very typical for the BM genre) so you might as well say that Summoning are beyond trueness.
As I said trueness is something BM cannot do without. It is sort of a measurement of how close is a band to what the genre is supposed to be. Trueness matters to almost all BMers as penis lenght matters to almost all men - less true= less BM; shorter= less man. BM is and always was all about trueness.

Quote:

---

Black metal is entirely about aesthetics and theatrics? Then why do any of us bother listening to the music?

---

You misunderstood me evidently. Let me put it this way: There are some bands to which aesthetics and theatrics are important as well as music. There are also those who are not that capable of producing decent music and therefore aesthetics are of greater importance than music.
But in both cases aesthetics/theatrics are of great importance to BMers.

Quote:

---

Black metal has no ideology? Better tell the guys in Darkthrone, Deathspell Omega, Blut Aus Nord, Spear of Longinus, etc. I'm pretty sure the motivation behind the founders of the genre was a little more substantial than "nothing". I agree that many, if not most black metal bands are limited in their worldview and subject matter, but not all.

---

I agree that founders of the genre are those who used to carry the potential to develop it and their motivation was indeed "nothing". As you said BM was created rather as an escape from the crowded scene and the motivation behind it is an escape from ideology. Yes, they all want to destroy everything, some through war between races, some through nuclear war, some through Satan comming and farting on everybody, doesn't really matter. That is not an ideology, rather and anti-ideology. BMers are anti-everything.
BTW, ever wondered why BM chose exactly satanism as main theme? Those two have very much in common. Much like BM satanism too has no ideology. Its sheer purpose is to oppose christianity, not to be a stand-alone idea. Its ideology is to averse christian dogma. As you see, satanism was the natural choice for BMers seeking to oppose everything that surrounds them.
And then we have the pseudo elitist BMers, who always try to encode some very obscure and undoubtedly highly intelligent sense into their music. Well I risk offending someone here, so I will cut the rantings short. Let us just say that they are veeery far from what true BM was meant to be, believe it or not.