d o n e i t . MASTERARBEIT / MASTER’S THESIS R Tit e l der M a s t erarbei t / Titl e of the Ma s t er‘ s Thes i s e „What Never Was": a Lis t eni ng to th e Genesis of B lack Met al d M o v erf a ss t v on / s ubm itted by r Florian Walch, B A e : anges t rebt e r a k adem is c her Grad / i n par ti al f ul fi l men t o f t he requ i re men t s for the deg ree of I Ma s ter o f Art s ( MA ) n t e Wien , 2016 / V i enna 2016 r v i Studien k enn z ahl l t. Studienbla t t / A 066 836 e deg r ee p rogramm e c ode as i t appea r s o n t he st ude nt r eco rd s hee t: w Studien r i c h tu ng l t. Studienbla tt / Mas t er s t udi um Mu s i k w is s ens c ha ft U G 2002 : deg r ee p r o g r amme as i t appea r s o n t he s tud e nt r eco r d s h eet : B et r eut v on / S uper v i s or: U ni v .-Pr o f. Dr . Mi c hele C a l ella F e n t i z |l 2 3 4 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 7 2. Literature review ................................................................................................................. 8 2.1. History I: Sarah Chaker's digest of Mudrian, Moynihan and Søderlind ....................... 8 2.1.1. Historical sketch of Death Metal ................................................................................. 9 2.1.2. Historical sketch of Black Metal ................................................................................ 11 2.2. Present: Chaker interrogates the German Black Metal scene .................................... 13 2.3. History II: Keith Kahn-Harris maps Extreme Metal's infrastructure ........................... 17 2.4. History and Sound: Ian Reyes recollects the “Black Turn” ........................................ 21 2.4.1. “The Old Black” ......................................................................................................... 23 2.4.2. “The New Black” ....................................................................................................... 24 2.5. Sound: Ross Hagen listens to Norwegian Black Metal ............................................... 29 2.5.1. Keyboards and synthesizers in Extreme Metal ......................................................... 29 2.5.2. Mid-to-high-pitched screams ................................................................................... 33 2.5.3. Guitar playing, chord structures and distortion ......................................................... 34 2.5.4. Rhythm and production ............................................................................................. 35 2.5.5. Further descriptions in other sources ........................................................................ 37 3. Literature summary, research questions and methodology ........................................ 39 3.1. Literature summary ........................................................................................................ 39 3.2. Research questions ........................................................................................................ 41 3.3. Documents and recordings considered ....................................................................... 42 3.4. On transcription and Elflein's formal analysis ............................................................. 43 4. Documents: Black Metal's case against Death Metal ................................................... 46 4.1. The first charge: Lyrics and image ............................................................................... 47 4.1.1. The “religious” definition of Black Metal .................................................................... 49 4.2. The second charge: Sound ............................................................................................ 51 4.2.1. Von and electronic music against “hectic” Death Metal ............................................ 54 5. Analyses I: Elements of the 1980s “first wave” ............................................................. 58 5.1. Mayhem, Venom and German Thrash Metal ................................................................. 58 5.1.1. Locating Venom's idiolect ......................................................................................... 58 5.1.2. Mayhem's cover versions and German Thrash Metal ............................................... 61 5.2. Bathory ............................................................................................................................ 63 5.2.1. Bathory's “moving finger technique” ......................................................................... 64 5.2.2. Bathory's technique in relation to Heavy Metal's stream of tradition ......................... 70 5.2.3. „Epic“ tracks on Under the Sign of the Black Mark and Blood Fire Death ................. 74 6. Analyses II: Early 1990s Norwegian Black Metal ........................................................... 77 6.1. Mayhem at the end of 1990: Live in Leipzig ................................................................. 77 6.1.1. Chords and rhythmic variation in “The Freezing Moon” ............................................ 79 6.1.2. Tritones and the “moving finger technique” in “Pagan Fears” ................................... 81 6.2. Thorns ............................................................................................................................. 83 6.2.1. Parallel minor triads and wide-ranging arpeggios in “Home” .................................... 84 6.3. Darkthrone ...................................................................................................................... 86 6.3.1. Entombed, Swedish Death Metal and Darkthrone's Soulside Journey ..................... 86 6.3.2. A Blaze in the Northern Sky and Under a Funeral Moon .......................................... 87 6.3.3. Radical simplicity on Transilvanian Hunger .............................................................. 91 7. Conclusion: Resisting the trend and reviving what never was ................................... 94 7.1. The trend... ...................................................................................................................... 94 7.2. …and the techniques to resist it ................................................................................... 95 Appendix ................................................................................................................................ 97 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 97 Discography ........................................................................................................................... 98 Abstracts ................................................................................................................................ 99 5 6 Introduction 1. Introduction The topic of this thesis started out as a joke between me and my best friend. She pointed out to me that since I listened to Black Metal, I should write about it. We had a good laugh – but the thought stuck in my mind and the more I thought about it, the more interesting Black Metal appeared as an object of study. I had been listening to Black Metal since roughly 2006, being introduced to it by internet acquaintances. Though I never considered myself a “metalhead” or dressed like one, it has remained a staple of my listening ever since. Making it the subject of a thesis also has an auto-therapeutic aspect to it: I wanted to account for my fascination with a music that frequently came with worldviews diametrically opposed to mine. Beyond this biographical motivation, I believe Black Metal to be a rewarding object of studies taken on its own. Not only does it subject many norms of popular music, from one-person bands to the lionization of poor production standards, it also is an eminently historical phenomenon. Its bloodstained history is preserved in countless publications aimed at fans of it and fans of the morbid in general. But Black Metal is historical not just in that sense: When the Norwegian scene that would draw the attention of the international press with its crimes coined that music still at the heart of the contemporary Black Metal scene, they did not do so in the name of innovation. Rather, they were conservative revolutionaries with the express purpose of returning to an unholy past in the wake of Death Metal that in their eyes did not live up to its name. It was, as Nietzsche put it in On the Use and Abuse of History for Life, an attempt to give themselves “a past after the fact”. This thesis will provide an overview of the existing scholarly literature dealing with the history and present of Black Metal, one that does not presuppose any existing familiarity with the subject. From this, the research questions are developed. Following this, Black Metal's self-placing in relation to Death Metal is investigated based on documents from the canonized Norwegian scene. Finally, guided by statements from the scene, two analytical chapters will attempt to illustrate Norwegian Black Metal's relationship to the music it claimed to be returning to. In this, techniques used to individuate Black Metal from its chosen adversary, Death Metal, will receive particular attention. 7 „What Never Was“ – Listening to the Genesis of Black Metal 2. Literature review This chapter will review the most important secondary literature concerned with the history of Black Metal and