“There was a mass-production of such bands. Black metal became over-exposed, and this was the beginning of the commercialism which nowadays is a fact. Prior to this black metal was something truly different. The musical ‘nerve’ from the earlier years is today completely lost. The first artists were way more vital, while I have major difficulties in tracing this ‘nerve’ in bands we see today. One shall not categorically claim all new music to be bad, but there’s a problem to find something which really hits your heart.“

-Nocturno Culto (1999)

Black metal is dead. It has been for a very long time. This isn’t a recent realization but a sentiment that’s been echoed for decades. By the mid-'90s, bands like Burzum, Darkthrone, and Mütiilation were already lamenting the death of what black metal was supposed to be—raw, grim, and uncompromising. They were commenting on how the genre had been hijacked by trendy posers. Some may not understand this and might even lump together all of '90s black metal, not seeing much difference. But already during that time, there was an explosion of copycat bands and children who were jumping on the bandwagon. This began a drastic departure from the original spirit of the genre. The technological advancements in digital recording only helped water down black metal, leading it to lose the raw and primitive edge that made it what it was. Of course, the plague of modern production ruins all kinds of metal, not only black. But it was the loss of this raw and primitive sound, something that was so important to black metal, that meant it was affected all the more by this. Many bands began to stray further from its roots.

As the genre evolved it lost its core identity. For some reason, more so than other forms of metal, no matter how grim and raw bands might start out, there was something about black metal musicians that made them more prone to experimentation over time. Maybe it’s just a personal preference, but to me, black metal has very rigid and defined boundaries, and this is how it should be. There’s just not much room to experiment without completely spoiling things. The tendency of black metal musicians to bring in and incorporate elements that had no place in black metal was there from very early on, and it only grew more pronounced. The '90s saw bands like Enslaved experiment with effects that didn’t quite fit, and that was just the beginning. Overuse of keyboards, abandoning the raw sound, and the inevitable commercialization ensured that black metal was never going to be the same again. And it's not as if early death metal bands hadn't used keyboards to accentuate the atmosphere of horror; for example, Edge of Sanity did a very good job with this on their debut album, and Hypocrisy is another band that successfully used some keyboards on their first two albums. There is a correct way to do something and then there is the type of idiocy that infected black metal, using flutes and horn effects, for example. For one reason or another, the symphonic branch of black metal exploded in the '90s, and there were countless bands mimicking one another. Many of them were so oversaturated with keyboards that the actual guitars, vocals, and drums were buried in the background and seemed only secondary.

"Today, black metal seems to be dead, trendies has taken everything in hands... and Black Imperial Blood is one fist in their pig faces. Anyway, we're tired to be compared with those humans and their false black metal... Listen to us, admire us or scorn us, but don't try to be one of us. We definitely don't belong to the same world..."

-Lord Meyhna'ch (Sept. 1994)

I was not "waiting at the local record store" the day that A Blaze in the Northern Sky or Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism came out. I was mostly listening to thrash metal and the most evil thing I had discovered, by the time churches were being burned across Norway, was Slayer's Hell Awaits. However, as it concerns Burzum, I think I had an advantage. While I wasn't listening to these albums as they came out, I still managed to make the same progression as those that came before me. Unlike kids who, today, hear a million different "extreme metal" bands and then can't understand why bands like Venom and Bathory are so important, I was exposed to everything in the proper chronological order. I first heard Black Sabbath before I could even walk. I listened to various rock and metal bands, during the 80s and early 90s. I then ran across bands like Slayer, Venom and Hellhammer. This was my introduction to black metal, and darker music in general. Luckily, for me, I started at the beginning. So, by the time I heard bands like Mayhem, Darkthrone and Burzum, I had a decent background in the same old bands that had inspired them.

As someone who was introduced to modern black metal at the end of 1996, it was a very difficult journey to make alone. I always remember that it was the Darkthrone song "Over fjell og gjennom torner" that was responsible for getting me into second wave black metal. It was one of the gems among a lot of trash that I'd heard on "The Haunted Mansion". This college radio show was rather eclectic and mixed a lot of black, death, and gothic metal together. Around the same time, I was getting some music magazines, such as Metal Maniacs, and it really didn’t help matters that they covered so many poser bands like Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir, bands that were more about the aesthetic than the music. From much of what I was seeing, "black metal" appeared to be rather goofy.

My only friend at the time echoed what a lot of the other metalheads at school and at concerts were saying, which seemed to be sort of the consensus toward black metal in the United States at the time: it was weak and gay. At the beginning of my journey, it was actually a guilty pleasure that I kept to myself, because for every good band like Darkthrone or Burzum that I heard, there were several dozen horrible bands. Of course, the aforementioned magazines and radio show were more likely to cover the most recent releases. This meant that, since even many of the better bands had fallen so much by then, my introduction to several of them was quite unflattering. It was definitely an uphill battle. I was at least fortunate to encounter some 'zines that reviewed older stuff and was also eventually steered toward some good bands through mix tapes from pen pals in Europe. As well, the internet was much smaller than it is today, and there were no sites like Metal Archives to research tons of bands. It wasn’t possible to go listen to something immediately on YouTube or download an entire discography of a band five minutes after hearing about their existence. As well, I was not among those who had frequent access to the internet at the time. Actually, it would be quite some time before I was able to access the web more regularly. However, there were times when I would go to the school library and look up those old sites and learn about some bands that were maybe worth checking out. So, to be confronted with so much garbage and still be drawn to the good bands and make an effort to seek those out and try to find more in a similar vein was more difficult and required more dedication. And thus, it was all the more fulfilling when you tracked down another good band and finally got your hands on an album that you had been searching for. By the end of the ‘90s, I was realizing that modern releases were, for the most part, getting worse and worse. Even instances of decent songwriting were ruined by awful modern production.

By the end of the '90s, it was obvious that modern black metal was in decline. The better-known bands were all sounding worse, either chasing trends or falling apart internally. It was clear that to get deeper into black metal, the best way was to go backward, not forward, and to dig into the past to try to unearth older works and lesser-known bands. As far as I was concerned, the turn of the century represented a continued downgrade regarding pretty much everything. That’s not to say that I had completely given up on things. But out of all of the black metal being released, I was generally more attracted to the more primitive and traditional stuff, so one could say that my preferences were getting more and more narrow. Over the years, I only kept up with a small handful of bands that kept the true spirit of black metal alive, yet even those eventually went on to disappoint. There are still moments that surprise me. A decent album here and there, like Tranquility of Death from Clandestine Blaze, but these moments are rarer by the year. And when they do come, it begs the question: does it really matter? Would the world be worse off without this album? Probably not.

It's not uncommon for someone to recommend a band that supposedly sounds “old school” but the fact of the matter is that so many years have gone by that it just doesn’t matter. Even if they’re doing everything they can to avoid the modern and to emulate the originators through style and sound, it just doesn’t matter. There is absolutely nothing that some kid born in the 2000s can possibly say or contribute to black metal that is anything more than just cosplay. And honestly, so many fans have been doing this since early on. And what's the kind of statement so often used? "We are keeping the flame burning." So what? No one needs you to do this. All of the old albums, demos, and rehearsal tapes exist with or without some kids imitating and playing dress-up. The corpse of black metal is just being molested by people who think they can somehow bring it back by dressing the part. If you want to keep the flame burning, then continue uploading things to Youtube, continue sharing files, continue writing reviews and spreading the word of the real black metal. But painting yourselves up and trying to use photo programs to make these imitation Xerox album covers and using filters and other computer trickery to try to make something sound raw... it’s all just trying to be part of something that was already dead and over with before you were even born. It's all irrelevant. It doesn't matter how desperately these kids want to relive something that is already gone. It’s a pale echo at best, and no amount of imitation will ever capture what truly made it real. Black metal has been done to death. There’s nothing new left to say.