My love/hate relationship with black metal is an often disappointing thing to navigate. A genre of music this counter-culture is so attractive to someone like me. When first exploring it I devoured everything I could find. A copy of Lords of Chaos is sitting about 10 feet from me right now, a book that changed my perception of how music can define a culture. It can transcend the scope of an album and cause people to take action. Unfortunately, these actions during the infancy of black metal were largely destructive and caused harm. I don't advocate that but music should be that powerful. It should provoke something within us rather than just being in the background while we perform for the people who employ us.
Having said that, people who make "traditional black metal" are now completely wasting my time. Black metal was originally a group of kids who were terrible at playing instruments and terrible at music production who simply wanted to dismantle Christianity. It was symbolic of something profound at the time but didn't carry the thoughtfulness or follow-through required to effect change. Luckily a handful of black metal musicians have understood this and transformed the genre into something more existential and less primitively rebellious. Svartidauði, for example, is an exceptional band writing exceptional music. The primitive hate of traditional black metal pales in comparison to the truly evil music on display here. This is certainly not an album I would suggest to those uninitiated with the history of black metal, but within the scope of the genre it's the bleeding edge of expression I'm always in search of.
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