The Assimilation of Black Metal

Metal is in dire straights. Under assault from external forces in the form of nu-metal borrowing techniques and appearance from metal bands and slamming it into derivative mainstream music, the genre is now pressured from within as well. While older genres like power metal and doom remain stable in the declining years of their creativity, black metal - which was recently the most visible of metal's genres - is now collapsing on itself.

When it first emerged, black metal intruded upon a world of underground music dominated by death metal which had become also popular among the rebellious crowd who wanted to avoid the moronic hip hop then in favor with their peers, and thus found attraction to the most disruptive music yet created. This crowd flooded metal with the behavior of a football audience, bringing with them the ethic of convenience: Beer. Simple choruses. Ignoring the collective in favor of the individual's wants.

Consequently, black metal was not initially accepted; it was heretical in that it did not embrace bass detuning, fast percussive rhythms and chortling cadences. Smooth rippling melody lines and extruded open-throated vocals did not appeal to the Cannibal Corpse crowd. The earliest black metal bands aspired to classical musicology in their use of melody and song structure, and then continued the tradition of architectural riffing that had been innovated by death metal but gave it tone to avoid the random, thudding, amusical rhythmic arrangements introduced by the populist wing of the movement, deathgrind.

The first wave of the new style was a handful of bands; this is the most nostalgic and beautiful slice of any genre, as in its youth, its pure passion shows through without concern for specifying technique and ideas to be communicated to a larger audience. After a curious pause in which seemingly the style was going to falter in its own momentum, the second wave showed up. Next a massive divergence occurred with the introduction of hybrids, variants, and traditional metal influences. The start of this wave was probably Pete Tagtgren's "The Abyss" project, which solidified black metal riffing into a lexicon.

Immediately the genre grew. More people than ever had been involved with metal before began dressing, "acting," and espousing black metal. Hilariously, the genre also fragmented in the same style as American politics. On the left were the "new breed" of hybrid black metal bands, trying to work in emotional rock music (Agalloch), and on the right were the extreme purists who ended up being throwbacks to past glories (the Beherit, Blasphemy and Darkthrone clones). Together they were manipulated by a fledgling record industry to make profits at the expense of the genre.

That at least was the situation in early 1999. Three years later, things have finally run their course. Having mistaken the momentum for the cause, many people of a lesser caliber than those who originally sought black metal have flooded the fanbase. Audience and labels are locked in a feedback loop to see who can buy more dumbed down music thus eliciting more simplified music from the producers. Aping off itself, black metal spirals out of control with no reference points outside of its internal conflicts.

The consequences are brutal. The deteriorating fan base cannot recognize new talent and keep hyping emulations of known successes. The market floods with clone bands. With each iteration, more mainstream elements intrude, so that bands are like Dimmu Borgir essentially Judas Priest dressed up as black metal. As a result, there is a loss of the mystique which once defined this style. Thus those who could be intelligent fans are moving on. Black metal is comfortably being assimilated by the same general "metal-ness" that sucked up death metal and now waits for a new style.

To metaphorize, the transition of black metal to a dead genre was like cirrhosis of the liver: a sudden influx of sugars in the form of intoxicants caused the organ to produce an abundance of fat which it could not transport outside of its own boundaries. This forced it to "tolerate" the fat and store it within the liver cells themselves, which were squashed by the bloat and consequently died. With fewer living cells, the liver could not longer keep up its own processes, and was poisoned by the waste of its own excess.

Few genres demand as much long-term allegiance as metal, and get it. Of styles likely found in a record store, only metal, industrial, country, jazz and classical have enduring audiences. Other genres are bigger, but people stay with them for fewer years. As history has shown us, metal is too easily absorbed by the mainstream. Black metal selling out and the rise of nu-metal occurred at the same time - is anything in the universe "coincidental"? It's interesting to note that a similar absorption afflicted death metal, heavy metal and hardcore punk, all of whom relied on popular-music-style short song formats.

If we are lucky, the next iteration of metal music will abandon the pop-song framework it has adopted for the past three decades and like classical, industrial or jazz will find a new format that allows a certain degree of narrative and musical complexity to be explored without having to be forced into a wholly simplified, three-minute song with vocals and high degrees of repetition. Every other metal band aspires to classical guitar anyway; why not liberate our impulses toward something that is clearly enjoyed and valued?

My guess is that the coming generation of metal will cross the methods of death and black metal with the new directions that epic bands like Burzum and Beherit covered in their later works. It will be something like a cross between "Electric Doom Synthesis" and early Morbid Angel, or a hybrid of Gorguts "Obscura" and Burzum's "Hvis Lyset Tar Oss." This is if metal recovers from its slump. Otherwise, something new will be created and rapidly absorbed into the mainstream, possibly taking the whole of the genre with it.

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