Alright, let’s do this! Be prepared for a lot of rambling and lots of bonus thought parentheses.
As many who know me know I used to write for a webzine, I was the 'zines resident "Very Wordy Writer" at the time, and I suppose this carries over to a lot of things. It's probably one of the reasons I miss forums so damn much. It's a lot easier to be wordy on those than short-form social media and I don't have the patience to write threads.
So, I decided to have a little fun and write an ode to one of my favorite albums -- underrated at the time, but grew to be more beloved, Rebel Extravaganza.
In 1999, black metal had already gone through a lot of shifts in the 2nd wave. (We won’t go into all the crazy stuff, that’s been done to death by this point, I focus on the music.) Between the old rawer stuff into the heavier, melodic but still cold stuff, in the later 90s it started to transition to a much more ‘big’ sound. Big, bombastic, and maybe just a little bit pompous.
Lots of bands started adopting a more heavily symphonic sound. It wasn’t any one band; it was a lot of them. (Keep in mind some bands already had some bits of symphonic sounds in their music; Emperor’s In The Nightside Eclipse, for example, had some of it, but it was a lot less…prevalent, perhaps might be the best way to say it.) Melodic sounds in black metal were nothing new; there’s a difference between that and full-on symphonic.
If the bands weren’t going symphonic, then some started to edge more toward the avant-garde. You did still have some bands doing the harsh, lo-fi stuff as they always did, but when you were listening to a lot of the albums in that late 90s time, you did start to hear more and more big, bombastic, heavily produced black metal. More and more bands were starting to adopt the sound; it WAS very successful, to be sure. Understandably so; it was generally more accessible. Emperor’s IX Equilibrium was even slightly more symphonic on a few songs(though they still kept the more proto-symphonic sound, rather than going full on to the bombastic, overwrought stuff.)
So where does Satyricon and Rebel Extravaganza come into play here? They actually(for as much as people -- as in, the more stickler types -- like to say ‘Their First 3 albums only'), had more variety in those first 3 albums than a lot of people really credit or remember. All three had melodic aspects, with DMT indeed having a raw sound but also experimenting with other instruments; it had, like it’s name suggested, a medieval vibe to it. The Shadowthrone was, probably their ‘closest sounding’ album to the Classic Black Metal Sound(I’d argue even more than DMT which was pretty experimental for the time in 1993), with Nemesis Divina oft being seen as their crowning achievement(I mean, I’m not alone here, it is my 3rd favorite album of all time for a reason, and it does have the song which might as well be considered Norway’s National Anthem.) Melodic, cold and heavy, though still with a slightly rough edge to its production.
So you had a time in the late 90s where black metal started to be drenched in the aforementioned big, bombastic and symphonic sound, as well as more avant-garde stuff, and there’s nothing wrong with switching it up, but after a strong, well-produced and melodic album in Nemesis Divina(as well their previous albums that had some arguably beautiful melodies mixed in there), they decided to push *completely* against the grain and make one of the ugliest, nastiest, heaviest and coldest black metal albums they could, changing up their own sound, as well as throwing something in the face of the current ‘prettying up’ of the genre. If you look back at the releases of '97 to '00 or so, it really did get heavy with the strings-and-big-production sound.
And so they did, with Rebel Extravaganza. And when it was released, boy did fans push against it. The thing was, *both sides* of fans pushed against it; it wasn’t raw and lo-fi enough to please the ‘trve’ crowd, nor was it big, accessible and symphonic to please the crowd that grew to like that sound(sometimes that's how people got *into* the genre at that time.) People looked at this thing and wondered what the fuck it was. It was over an hour long, opened and closed with songs over ten minutes long(to be fair, black metal wasn’t a stranger to long songs or anything but still), and just SO dirty. It was very well produced and had wonderful sound, but it was still icy cold. Some called it ‘industrial sounding’ but I could never figure this out, except for a couple of samples, there’s not much in the way of an ‘industrial sound.’ There WERE a handful of people that thought the album used a drum machine, but no, that was just their inhuman drummer playing at speeds not meant for human limbs. But it also had these complex musical layers to it that were also not too often heard at the time, hostile guitars and riffs which still managed to drop in a groove or three beneath the filth.
Everything about the album was nastier. The photo shoots took place in alleyways in London, with what might even be daylight shining into one or two of the pictures -- almost post-apocalyptic, rather than the usual eerie scenes of nature at night. The more forested corpsepaint pictures were replaced by urban decay and some bloody scenes of mayhem(almost like the two band members were murder-zombies; both of them had tattered, shredded clothing, the frontman Satyr was sporting his newly shaved head look and dirt smeared everywhere, and Frost, the drummer, was holding what seemed to be fistfuls of guts, his corpsepaint taking on a more horror-like feel.) They just purposefully set out to make something very, very different, and really, to me, they succeeded. To this day I consider it one of their finest albums(sometimes I think it’s even better than my favorite album of theirs, but that goes back and forth.) Even the name of the album told a story; “Rebel Extravaganza,” the album that was rebelling against much in that particular scene at the moment.
But with all of the pushback, there were people like myself defending it. I wasn't alone; there were a few of us who loved what it offered. It was, IMHO, exactly what the scene needed. See, it was cold and nasty, but there were also mad riffs and the album had those grooves floating around, too. It is also, and I’ll die on this hill, one of the best drumming albums of the 90s. There were ten tracks(with three of them shorter instrumentals), opening with the super heavy and groovy “Tied in Bronze Chains” and ending with “The Scorn Torrent”, a testament to percussion stamina everywhere. “Filthgrinder” remains one of my favorite black metal songs to this day and it's somewhat of a mainstay in their live sets(they often swap up their setlists, but if they play something from this album, it's often Filthgrinder.)
Over time, people gained more and more appreciation for this album. And when you really look at black metal in general, in the 2000s+, while the symphonic bands stuck around(it was, again, a quite accessible sound), things did start to get ‘nastier’ again, bit by bit. Was it because of this album? Maybe not only this, I’m not sure, but I do feel like Satyricon did the scene a favor by dropping this thing how and when they did. Maybe it planted some subconscious seeds somewhere. The symphonic black metal didn't go anywhere, mind you, but I did notice an uptick of brutal albums in the 2000s.
I really, really would love to see a game-changer album like this done by a young band nowadays, in this world of cleanly-produced modern metal(much of it deathcore inspired), but it feels like the young musical revolutionaries are hiding. Algorithmic streaming(and those Damn Phones) really has put a damper on things and I feel like this album, when I think about it, is a perfect example of how. It might just be the way my brain sees it, but I see an album that was made in response to a musical world that started shifting a certain way.
But when young folks(remember this album was being written in ‘98 or so? Recorded and released in ‘99, I’m not sure of the exact writing dates, but about that, which meant the guys were still pretty young, in their early-mid 20s) are constantly fed only things they like due to algorithms, and never get exposed past a song or two of things they don’t like(and it’s far too easy to just shut out things you don’t like nowadays), I can’t help but feel that stifles that sort of creativity to really push back against things. Today’s young musicians often grew up on stuff that formed in the 90s and 2000s(and of course you get some young folks into the classics as always), but I feel like rather than ‘Inspired by X’ some newer material sounds more like ‘very very directly inspired by X to the point where it shares the sound a little too closely.’
Mind you, there are plenty of bands that have younger folks in them that are talented and they’re not making *bad* music or anything, but there’s not really been anything that I’ve seen that really blew things up, like, say, Black Sabbath did during their time, or Motorhead did, or Bathory, or the thrash bands both from the Bay Area and Germany, and bands from the Norwegian scene in the ‘90s….after the ‘90s it really started to slow down I noticed. Far less really ‘stands out.’
Anything that felt stunning post-90s seemed to come from the bands *from* the 80s and 90s, at least for me(or members of bands from the 80s and 90s that formed other projects) rather than another generation of young bands that started in the 2000s+. Some metalcore-like bands started to push things in the 00s and got pretty ‘big’ for the genre, but it swiftly started to become a bit too sanitized feeling after that and they got a bit lost in the mix. A lot of bands that got their start in the 2010’s +(made up of relatively unknowns before that) don’t sound terrible or anything to my ears, and I’ve genuinely tried, but there’s a definite stagnation there; a lack of growth or pushing the envelope.
And I – and many others – are waiting for someone to try to break out and pull another Rebel Extravaganza out for the extreme metal genre. (Not in the same style, of course, but the idea behind it.)
There’s a fair amount of talented young bands, but not much in the way of young musical revolutionaries. There’s a difference. Maybe they don’t *want* to be revolutionaries, and while that’s fine – I couldn’t, nor wouldn’t, want to force that – I am still kinda disappointed in it.
Okay, I digressed a bit there. But coming back around to this album; it was a game changer because it was one of those times where a band brought back, in a way, the original ‘spirit’, the way black metal before was raw and uncompromising, only they did it their way, by adding a coat of polish, production, and excellent, progressed musicianship and songwriting on top of it. They didn’t strip it down naked like Under a Funeral Moon, but they weren’t afraid to assault everyone with something completely off-the-wall what they were getting used to over the past couple of years of more and more of the prettier, symphonic music(or, if you skipped that, the very raw and lo-fi sound, which was your other main option, and they didn’t even go the avant-garde route that a few bands did.) They didn’t care that people pushed against the album, either; and that’s the way it has to be done, I think. If they cared, we wouldn’t have gotten this album(nor the rest of their excellent discography, of which they never cared what anyone thought.)
That said, I’m not a musician(I was for awhile, but decided behind the scenes was the place for me, but I did spend some years bashing on a kit in a very mediocre manner), so I’m kinda wondering even what something would SOUND like that pushes against the grain these days. I’ve heard one rather excellent black ambient band from Germany called Von Jeglichem Wort, which is very cold, slow, dark and atmospheric; in it’s way it IS something that breaks far away from the current sort of ‘popular, ultra-clean deathcore sound’ in metal a lot, which I appreciate, but it’s I’d say it’s own genre, which for me(if I had to describe it) blends atmospheric black metal with old 70s German dark ambient/electronic type of music. It’s rather beautiful in its stark way.
I do urge anyone curious about the genre to listen to this album, though(and dig into the band’s whole discography, for that matter!) and if you’re just getting into extreme metal, grab it. It’s by no means pretty as I’ve said several times here, but it’s so fucking good and I find myself coming back to it just as much as I do my favorite album of theirs(Nemesis Divina.)
Here’s Tied In Bronze Chains for a teaser:
I’m really not sure where I was going with this whole thing, I think this particular blog turned into a mix of praising a game-changing album while at the same time lamenting the lack of other game-changing albums(from new, young bands. Hell, I think some of those 80s and 90s bands are still trying and evolving!)
Hell, I think in a way this blog is my way of sort of pushing back against things. Rather than post giant threads on social media that get lost, I’ll post here. I don’t mind using social media as a tool(and it’s nifty for keeping in touch with friends and family these days), and posting links to things, but perhaps going back to some of this is my way of being like ‘Yeah I’ve had enough of what’s going on right now.’
'Til next time, or whenever I get an urge to word vomit again!
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