Wednesday, July 6, 2011

80's Swedish Metal Fun with Bathory and Candlemass!!!!!!!

Ah yes, the wonderful 80’s. I recently listened to two classic 80’s metal albums both by Swedish bands, those being Bathory’s self-titled debut. For horror films, I have to say that one of my favorite periods is the early to mid 80’s- I’m thinking of Lifeforce, Critters, Ghoulies, Phenomena (also called Creepers), Scanners, Videodrome, countless other films. There are a number of 70’s films that are really amazing such as Phantasm from the 70’s as well. I used to be infatuated with early goth bands like Sister of Mercy and Christian Death from the time, but I’ve sort of worn those all out, with the strong exception of Joy Division. The early development of extreme metal from the time, that still carries a lot of magic for me. It would be very difficult to talk about that without mentioning Bathory.
Bathory have the distinction of being the first Scandinavian black metal band. The first time the term “black metal” was used was in the title of a Venom album, so Venom have the claim to being the first black metal band, but Venom is a British band. The main vocalist Quorthon died in 2004 at the very young age of 38 of a heart attack. They took their name from that weird Hungarian countess that supposedly bathed in the blood of her servants. Something like black metal is bound to be most active and interesting in the very formative years of its development. The whole bit with the church burnings started in the early 90’s, but the band Mayhem notoriously involved in the matter, had actually existed for many years at that point. I would rank a band like Akitsa as rival in quality to the best of anything I’d heard by Voivod, Celtic Frost, or Mayhem. That is the exception more then it is the norm. Bathory self-titled is a good album. I wouldn’t it rank it with the original Voivod line-up or early Celtic Frost, but the first Scandinavian black metal record, that’s not bad. Considering all the fecal music that the world produces, that is within the small iota of music I care about.
Another influential classic 80’s metal album from Sweden is Candlemass “Epicus Doomicus Metallicus”. That one I didn’t even pay for. Somebody posted the entire album on YouTube. It’s okay. Candlemass, despite bing a metal band from Sweden very much around the same time Bathory came out, don’t sound much like Bathory. As is frequently the case with doom metal, they are slower. Their songs are extremely lengthy as well. They also periodically used synth parts reminiscent of 80’s horror cinema and goth bands. There’s a song about a crystal ball on it. The track “Black Stone Wielder” on YouTube has the comment- “this song gave me a weird fucked up salvia trip once.”

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