New RYM Metal Tag: Dissonant Black Metal
https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/dissonant-black-metal/
Do we wanna add this or is this nonsense like downtempo deathcore?
Discuss.
Thanks for the heads up Rex. When we contemplate the addition of a new subgenre we usually ask ourselves a few key questions:
1. Are there people that like the main genre but dislike this particular strand of it & vice versa? If so, then it gives us a reason to differentiate it from other stands of the main genre i.e. allow people to isolate it in searches.
2. Is the subgenre different enough from its parent genre to demand its own tag? Is it easily identifiable?
3. Is it easy enough for us to determine which releases should reside under this new subgenre tag if we were to implement it?
I've actually spoken to Ben about wanting this subgenre for the site in the past as I think it fits the criteria for question 1 & 2. We weren't in a position to implement it at the time though as it would have been too hard to figure out which releases to add to it without actually listening to them all which is obviously not an option. I'll speak to Ben about this & we'll see if we feel like moving forwards with it. If we do, it likely won't be for some time as we'd want RYM to do the hard work for us by firming up which releases should be added & which shouldn't. We'd definitely want to see more than a couple of votes before determining a release should qualify as we don't want to be perennially changing our tagging.
One thing this move would do would eliminate the necessity for dissonant black metal releases to reside in The Infinite which seems to be quite common.
I'm all for Dissonant Black Metal. Let's give RYM a few months to sort itself out and then we'll implement it here.
My surface level thought is that if Dissonant Death Metal gets its own fork, then surely Dissonant Black Metal should be its own thing? As I started thinking more about it and looking into it though, the additional "Dissonant" adjective is 100% fair to describe bands ranging from Blut Aus Nord to Ulcerate, but I was surprised at how small the subgenre actually is. Learning that there are only about 350 Dissonant Death Metal albums listed on RYM is honestly shocking, but that's probably because the champions of the genre (Ulcerate, Gorguts, Ad Nauseum, Imperial Triumphant, etc.) make it seem way larger than it really is. These are powerhouse bands that have people screaming for more dissonant stuff, and it looks like the number of releases is finally spiking to keep up with the demand, but this is about Dissonant Black Metal. The reason why i bring this up is because I've never been the biggest fan of extremely cornered genre tags, even though I appreciate and utilize the distinction between what an Ulcerate and a Bolt Thrower album sounds like.
Breaking up the pool into another genre for another couple hundred releases out of the tens of thousands gets tiring for me, and I think "dissonance" in Black Metal is way harder to pin down than in Death Metal. There's very much a structural change in the music for Dissonant Death Metal, relying less on song structure and more on, well, dissonant and swirling passages. There's obviously some Black Metal that's very structured, but the core sound of Black Metal is already pretty dissonant, especially when you start dipping into Atmospheric Black Metal. I'm fully expecting to be corrected on this, but even your ultra-classic Black Metal albums like Darkthrone's Transylvanian Hunger don't exactly have a lot of harmony to them, but I'm not sure if they are exactly atonal. It doesn't help that RYM's definition of Dissonant Black Metal cites "cleaner production style", "complex song structures" and an "esoteric atmosphere", which to me sounds like someone decided they needed a specific subgenre for Deathspell Omega, modern Blut Aus Nord, and that's about it. I get what they're going for, but it's too hyper-specific for me considering there's the tried n' true original Black Metal dissonance, the dissonance that comes from Atmospheric Black Metal, and whatever dissonance Depressive Black Metal is trying to accomplish for bands like earlier Leviathan.
HOWEVER
One thing this move would do would eliminate the necessity for dissonant black metal releases to reside in The Infinite which seems to be quite common.
I was obviously more on the fence about this until reading this, I think this is a massive point that I agree would help some weird cases for The Infinite. If a North album ends up being just too dang weird, the only recourse the Academy has at the moment is to slap an Avant-Garde tag on it and whoosh it over to The Infinite. I think MA has done a good job of weeding out these fringe cases, like having Blut Aus Nord's Undreamable Abysses not labeled as Avant-Garde yet having Nahab reside in The Infinite, but Dissonant Black Metal would be a simpler solution to the question of whether something is Avant-Garde enough. As much as I like The Infinite living up to its namesake by stretching across multiple clans and genres, I wouldn't be opposed to adding Dissonant Black Metal even though I still stand by everything said above.
I also get frustrated by the need to further sub-categorise metal genres, but I think in this instance it's a valid one. The influence that Deathspell Omega have had on black metal can't be overstated. There are many (admittedly) lesser known bands that are attempting to utilise a similar sound. I reviewed one here at Metal Academy not long back actually...
https://metal.academy/releases/23898
Bekor Qilish, Kvadrat and Skaphe are other bands that come to mind that are very obviously bringing Deathspell-like dissonance into their music. I do feel there's something quite distinct about the sound that was introduced by Blut Aus Nord's The Work Which Transforms God and Deathspell Omega's mid-2000s releases. They don't have traditional black metal riffs at all.
For anyone interested, I think these are good examples...
https://open.spotify.com/track/2eDaorhzqRSmuYdPFW7Jnu?si=728c5b45a7584f69
https://open.spotify.com/track/5FSASFBCaKkBYhH6iYq4kN?si=9f51be8b321a4f29
https://open.spotify.com/track/377pFq2o7qSZSU9wAo8oiI?si=635093e767b540a0