Revolver Magazine's "25 Essential Black Metal Albums" Article

https://www.revolvermag.com/music/25-essential-black-metal-albums#hellhammer-apocalyptic-raids

What do we all think of this list? Have they made a reasonable fist of it or have they ballsed it up?

Anyone compiling a list of the essential albums of a genre as wide-ranging and with such a storied history as black metal is setting themselves up for a fall. I am unfamiliar with the mag in question, so I don't know what their expertise is, but I would say that for a magazine they have made a decent effort. Nods to Hellhammer and Bathory are obligatory I would say, as are Darkthrone, Burzum, Dissection, Emperor, Mayhem and Ulver. Satyricon, Dimmu Borgir, Cradle of Filth and Satyricon maybe not so much. Behemoth are much better-known in the death metal field and I love that Gorgoroth album, but I'm not sure if it's essential in this context. 

Personally I think WitTR or Panopticon should have had a look in (but probably not both) and possibly Blut aus Nord. Deafheaven are maybe ok as they opened up the way for Blackgaze, even though the style doesn't appeal to me much personally and Sigh were quite influential. Watain seem to be well-thought of, but I haven't ever really heard what makes that the case. DsO and Enslaved have both earned their places.

No War Metal is unforgivable, though. If you're gonna let blackgaze represent then war metal deserves a place at the table.

Overall, I would give the list a 7/10, although I'm sure there are plenty of trve kvltists gnashing their teeth and hammering their keyboards in frustration!

Venom - Black Metal

Bathory - Bathory

Hellhammer - Apocalyptic Raids

Darkthrone - A Blaze in the Northern Sky

Burzum - Burzum

Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas

Cradle of Filth - The Principle of Evil Made Flesh

Emperor - In the Nightside Eclipse

Dissection - Storm of the Light's Bane

Dimmu Borgir - Stormblåst

Marduk - Heaven Shall Burn ... When We Are Gathered

Ulver - Nattens Madrigal

Gorgoroth - Destroyer

Satyricon - Rebel Extravaganza

Weakling - Dead as Dreams

Sigh - Imaginary Sonicscape

Immortal - Sons of Northern Darkness

Leviathan - Tentacles of Whorror

Xasthur - To Violate the Oblivious

Deathspell Omega - Kénôse

Enslaved - Isa

Deafheaven - Sunbather

Lurker of Chalice - Lurker of Chalice

Watain - Sworn to the Dark

Behemoth - The Satanist

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Above this line is for ease of users to copy and paste for individual perspective.

For now I will be giving a Rating of FUCK YES, YES, NO, and FUCK NO, which I will elaborate on if requested.

Venom - Black Metal YES

Bathory - Bathory YES

Hellhammer - Apocalyptic Raids NO

Darkthrone - A Blaze in the Northern Sky FUCK YES

Burzum - Burzum FUCK NO

Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas YES

Cradle of Filth - The Principle of Evil Made Flesh NO

Emperor - In the Nightside Eclipse YES

Dissection - Storm of the Light's Bane NO

Dimmu Borgir - Stormblåst NO

Marduk - Heaven Shall Burn ... When We Are Gathered NO

Ulver - Nattens Madrigal YES

Gorgoroth - Destroyer NO

Satyricon - Rebel Extravaganza NO

Weakling - Dead as Dreams NO

Sigh - Imaginary Sonicscape NO

Immortal - Sons of Northern Darkness NO

Leviathan - Tentacles of Whorror NO

Xasthur - To Violate the Oblivious YES

Deathspell Omega - Kénôse NO

Enslaved - Isa YES

Deafheaven - Sunbather NO

Lurker of Chalice - Lurker of Chalice FUCK NO

Watain - Sworn to the Dark NO

Behemoth - The Satanist FUCK NO

7/25, but what do you expect from Revolver.

I have to say by the way that I am 90% that Lurker of Chalice is a band name generated here: https://www.metalbandnamegenerator.com/

It all depends on how you define Essential. Does that mean the best albums that everyone should hear, or does it mean the most important albums that either formed an important aspect of black metal or pushed it in a new (and also important) direction? Without defining that, it's difficult to assess.

The inclusion of albums like The Principle of Evil Made Flesh and Burzum's debut suggests it's based on importance / influence, but then I fail to see how Sons of Northern Darkness, Rebel Extravaganza or Sworn to the Dark could be considered particularly ground-breaking or important.

Hmmm...I might throw together my own personal top 25 most important black metal list and see what it looks like.

I have to say by the way that I am 90% that Lurker of Chalice is a band name generated here: https://www.metalbandnamegenerator.com/

It's also a fantastic album. One of my favourites.

I have to say that the list is pretty ordinary if its title is assumed to be its real intent. It's clear that it's more about perceived importance than it is about highlighting the true benchmark releases. Most of the key bands are there but some of the releases that have been chosen leave a fair bit to be desired. I mean, how can one choose Bathory's self-titled over "Under the Sign of a Black Mark" or "Blood Fire Death"? Or "Burzum" over "Hvis lyset tar oss" or "Filosofem"? Then there are releases like "Stormblåst" which have absolutely no business being anywhere near a list like this one. I'm not even gonna start on the inclusion of "Black Metal" & "The Satanist".

The Satanist helped popularize the black death combo a little, so I'll give it that.  But yeah, I agree that this list tries to appear standard and comes off as below that.

It all depends on how you define Essential. Does that mean the best albums that everyone should hear, or does it mean the most important albums that either formed an important aspect of black metal or pushed it in a new (and also important) direction? Without defining that, it's difficult to assess.

The inclusion of albums like The Principle of Evil Made Flesh and Burzum's debut suggests it's based on importance / influence, but then I fail to see how Sons of Northern Darkness, Rebel Extravaganza or Sworn to the Dark could be considered particularly ground-breaking or important.

Hmmm...I might throw together my own personal top 25 most important black metal list and see what it looks like.

Maybe a fun project would be for the members of each clan to collaborate and produce a Metal Academy Top 25 Most Essential Releases list for the respective clan's parent genres. That way we have no need to concern ourselves with other publications speculative lists.

I think it is important to emphasise the necessity to make any lists relate to the most influential rather than the best of a genre. Let's face it, anyone can do lists of their favourites, or what they consider to be the best and they are ten a penny on the internet, but to aspire to produce lists of the most infliential, although still difficult to establish, is a  more objective search, particularly if produced collaboratively.

I agree Sonny. It's definitely a more objective process, but it also requires some level of knowledge. I've been thinking about what my black metal list would look like, and I thought it might be interesting for others to understand how I came up with certain choices as I make them. To be clear, this isn't because I think my process is the correct one or that I'm more knowledgeable than anyone else. I just thought it might be interesting.

A black metal list needs to cover all it's major subgenres, not just pure black metal. This means it's going to include some that I personally might not listen to much, such as Blackgaze and War Metal. That said, I do think there are some subgenres that contain so few releases that it's difficult to argue that any of them have been particularly influential on the genre as a whole (such as Black 'n' Roll and Black Noise). If they were really influential, there would be a lot more releases in those subgenres; at least that's how I view it. So for my black metal list, I want to make sure I include influential releases for Black Metal, Atmospheric Black Metal, Blackgaze, Depressive Black Metal, Melodic Black Metal, Pagan Black Metal, Symphonic Black Metal and War Metal.

MELODIC BLACK METAL

Let's start with Melodic Black Metal, as it has a really obvious launching point...1993. There were two major sounds that came to the fore in that year, being the Greek (or Hellenic) form of melodic black metal and the Swedish one. Dissection is the obvious choice for the Swedish sound, as their influence is massive (Dawn, Sacramentum, Naglfar, Dark Funeral etc.). It's not as clear cut on the Greek side though, with both Varathron and Rotting Christ releasing albums in 1993 with a similar sound. I have to say that it's stunning to me that RYM has Varathron's His Majesty at the Swamp as a pure Black Metal release and not Melodic Black Metal, as it sounds incredibly similar to Rotting Christ's Thy Mighty Contract. Varathron's album was released in August while Rotting Christ's was released in November, but are either of these albums the most influential release when it comes to the Greek Melodic Black Metal sound? I could argue that Rotting Christ's 1996 album is better received, but since numerous other bands had popped up with the same sound in the intervening years (Thou Art Lord are the most obvious example), I think my answer is Thy Mighty Contract. There's really only one other band I can come up with that has a sound not particularly related to the aforementioned bands that might have had a big enough influence to enter the conversation and that's Windir. It could be argued that their more epic viking-themed approach moved things in a different direction, but did they directly influence enough other bands? That's a little out of my listening zone, although I do like Windir. I'll include them as a potential for now, but I might need some convincing.

Dissection - Storm of the Light's Bane (1993)

Rotting Christ - Thy Mighty Contract (1993)

Windir - Arntor (1999)

Anyone have any thoughts at this point? No reason we can't formulate the list collectively. Please don't start throwing around suggestions for other subgenres just yet. I'd like to put my ideas out there without influence and get reactions.

I've always thought of Dissection as more of a melodic death metal band, thus my personal pick would probably be either Nær sólen gar niþer for evogher or Far Away From the Sun, as I consider those as more representative of a typical Swedish melodic black sound. All that said, Storm of the Light's Bane's influence is undeniable so I'm totally fine with keeping it too.

I love Varathron and they may have the more consistent discography but Rotting Christ is the more influential one. I'd stick with Thy Mighty Contract  as well - it encapsulates the charming naïveté of the early hellenic scene perfectly.

For the epic Norwegian style, I'd suggest looking at For kunsten maa vi evig vike (1996). It was released a few years before Arntor and is usually regarded highly.

I agree that Thy Mighty Contract isn't Rotting Christ's best album, and I wouldn't personally call it classic, but clones started coming out in 1994 (check out Thou Art Lord's Eosforos album), so it was clearly highly influential. The sound was formed immediately, so I'm actually comfortable including it above other Rotting Christ albums. Anyone else have an opinion?

I love Kvist (bought the CD back in 1996), but I've never thought of it as influential. I guess with Windir there are bands that have clearly lifted their sound from them (just go listen to Mistur's Attende album for an obvious example), whereas I've never listened to an album and thought "these guys have definitely been listening to Kvist".

Essential: absolutely necessary; extremely important.

To me this should be a pretty small  list. 25 seams like more than just the necessities. I'd be thinking along the lines of 

1. Venom-Black Metal

2. Mayhem-De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas

3. Bathory-Under the Sign of the Black Mark

4. Immortal-Battles in the North

5. Darkthrone-Transylvanian Hunger.

Something like that looks about right to me. Essential to me, implies sparsity. There are other albums that are very good, but I feel like this is the bare minimum I can give a person to leave them with a strong idea of what the sub genre is.

I love Kvist (bought the CD back in 1996), but I've never thought of it as influential. [...] I've never listened to an album and thought "these guys have definitely been listening to Kvist".

I am inclined to agree (such a shame though, I'd be delighted to hear more music in the same vein!), but it's the album that comes to my mind when I hear the phrase "Norwegian melodic black metal". Therefore I'd still pick it due to it being an essential listen. However, I can see that my fondness for it may be skewing my opinion so let's leave it at that.

One could also make a case for Nattens madrigal (1997). It may be raw and not very accessible, but it certainly is drenched in sugary melodies, somewhat uplifting even. A quintessential release from a very successful and influential band, one might say.

Other than that, I'm happy to settle with Windir and agree that Arntor is the one that should be getting the spot.

Essential: absolutely necessary; extremely important.

To me this should be a pretty small  list. 25 seams like more than just the necessities. I'd be thinking along the lines of 

1. Venom-Black Metal

2. Mayhem-De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas

3. Bathory-Under the Sign of the Black Mark

4. Immortal-Battles in the North

5. Darkthrone-Transylvanian Hunger.

Something like that looks about right to me. Essential to me, implies sparsity. There are other albums that are very good, but I feel like this is the bare minimum I can give a person to leave them with a strong idea of what the sub genre is.

That's a very limited view of what black metal is (plus it has to be said that Venom isn't black metal at all). There is so much variety to be found within the genre, and not including any of the subgenres would be doing a disservice to it.

To be clear though, I'm specifically putting together a most influential black metal releases list. It would be near impossible to collaborate on a best black metal releases list, as that's purely subjective. As an example of this, my list would likely contain numerous albums that you've given 2 or less stars (such as Hvis Lyset tar Oss, Dark Medieval Times, In the Nightside Eclipse and Heart of the Ages).

Absolutely agree with "Storm of the Light's Bane" as almost everyone who plays melo-black seems to quote that album as an influence.

I am not nearly steeped enough in the Hellenic scene to gainsay your pick there, Ben, so will go along with you.

Windir's Arntor is, again, an album many quote when talking about melodic black influence, so will tick that box too.

I would just throw a more recent release into the ring which has seen an awful lot of bands trying to emulate it and that is Mgla's "Exercises in Futility". It's not a release I am a particular flag-waver for, but I have seen a lot of bands and reviewers referencing it in the context of modern melodic black metal and it seems to have been a particular touchpoint for a lot of younger bands.

Deafheaven - Sunbather NO

Behemoth - The Satanist FUCK NO

Why would anyone be against Sunbather?  It has like a million emulators in the blackgaze scene and is considered the definitive album for the variant.  The Satanist is also very big for helping with the black death combo in a time where the two are in constant war with each other.

I agree that Thy Mighty Contract isn't Rotting Christ's best album, and I wouldn't personally call it classic, but clones started coming out in 1994 (check out Thou Art Lord's Eosforos album), so it was clearly highly influential. The sound was formed immediately, so I'm actually comfortable including it above other Rotting Christ albums. Anyone else have an opinion?

OK, so it's clear that your concept for the list is to target releases that are "influential" rather than "essential" which is fine. I would still argue that the Greek melodic black metal scene shouldn't necessarily command a position in a list of just 25 black metal releases in terms of influence though as I think there are a few more significant melodic black metal releases that will miss out as a result (e.g. "Arntor" & "Far Away From the Sun"). Is it just that they appeared a little later on?

One could also make a case for Nattens madrigal (1997). It may be raw and not very accessible, but it certainly is drenched in sugary melodies, somewhat uplifting even. A quintessential release from a very successful and influential band, one might say.

I can certainly see what you're saying about the melodic component as I actually find that record to be a little too melodic for my taste but I still wouldn't call it a genuine melodic black metal release so feel that we're better off discussing it a little later on.

I would just throw a more recent release into the ring which has seen an awful lot of bands trying to emulate it and that is Mgla's "Exercises in Futility". It's not a release I am a particular flag-waver for, but I have seen a lot of bands and reviewers referencing it in the context of modern melodic black metal and it seems to have been a particular touchpoint for a lot of younger bands.

I agree that "Exercises in Futility" should be considered for the list but I don't feel that it's a legitimate melodic black metal release which is probably why Ben hasn't mentioned it already. It certainly showcases a melodic edge but it's more of a secondary component than a primary one in my opinion.

Why would anyone be against Sunbather?  It has like a million emulators in the blackgaze scene and is considered the definitive album for the variant.  The Satanist is also very big for helping with the black death combo in a time where the two are in constant war with each other.

I completely agree in regard to "Sunbather". It should be an absolute no-brainer here as it changed the black metal world overnight. I guess my issue with "The Satanist" is that the black metal component is out-weighed by the death metal one which makes it seem a little out of place next to the rest of the releases that we're considering for the list.

If you're going for most influencial then you have to include Black Metal. Which IS a first-wave black metal album, and it gave the sub-genre it's name. Quite a lot of the first and second wave artists site it as a primary influence. 

Remember the first wave was little bit more relaxed in it's parameters than the second wave. Mercyful Fate is also considered a first-wave black metal band, and they are farther away than Venom from what became the "pure" template.

Remember the first wave was little bit more relaxed in it's parameters than the second wave. Mercyful Fate is also considered a first-wave black metal band, and they are farther away than Venom from what became the "pure" template.

Not here they aren't!

OK Big Dawg.