Hahaha, I was listening today to this "Blood Cult" band, recommended to me by a friend who is a black metal elitist and whose taste I usually respect... He described it to me as a "Hellhammer meets Pantera" black metal group... things started badly with the first investigation in the internet, where I even read an interview with the singer... he described the band as "redneck black metal", and talked a lot of nonesense... well, shit is that, according to what I listened in myspace, they're one of the worst BM bands I had ever heard.... it was simply laughable. Horrible vocals, and instrumentation that seemed inprovised by a 5 yo boys... I mean... it was a very "interesting" experience to hear how low black metal can fall.

I don't listen to too much USBM, as the scenes of other countries seem to be better, but there are some quality bands from the US.

Krieg is an American band with a lot of varied material. A lot of it is generic. But some of it is awesome. Blue Miasma is a great black metal album, and so is The Black House. They're experimental, in a sense, but still deeply rooted within black metal. You can feel an aura of insanity and depravity just reeking from Blue Miasma. Rise Of The Imperial Hordes though, is simply generic and devoid of any special moments, just generic, primitive black metal all the way.

I also know there are a lot of mixed opinions about Leviathan, but I've always found it to be a great band. The instrumentation is great, the music feels hateful through and through, and it seems a lot more genuine than a lot of other bands in the style. It's sure as hell a lot better than Wrest's other project, Lurker Of Chalice (which IMO is terrible). It's a shame Wrest dropped Leviathan in favour of Lurker Of Chalice.

Also, while I don't particulatily like most of Wolves In The Throne Room's material, I highly respect their main influence for the epic, unique, and intensely sorrowful black metal they made on their only album. This band I'm talking abbout is Weakling.

Krohm has also released some quality material, but this varies a lot from release to release. A World Through Dead Eyes is really good, while The Haunting presence sometimes feels a little watered down to me.

Unfortunately, there's also a lot of crap bands from the US. I, for one, despise Xasthur. Malefic just fails at good songwriting. Velvet Cacoon is also terrible, as well as the aforementione Lurker Of Chalice.

Written by ForeverDarkWoods on 10.01.2009 at 23:36

I don't listen to too much USBM, as the scenes of other countries seem to be better, but there are some quality bands from the US.

Krieg is an American band with a lot of varied material. A lot of it is generic. But some of it is awesome. Blue Miasma is a great black metal album, and so is The Black House. They're experimental, in a sense, but still deeply rooted within black metal. You can feel an aura of insanity and depravity just reeking from Blue Miasma. Rise Of The Imperial Hordes though, is simply generic and devoid of any special moments, just generic, primitive black metal all the way.

I also know there are a lot of mixed opinions about Leviathan, but I've always found it to be a great band. The instrumentation is great, the music feels hateful through and through, and it seems a lot more genuine than a lot of other bands in the style. It's sure as hell a lot better than Wrest's other project, Lurker Of Chalice (which IMO is terrible). It's a shame Wrest dropped Leviathan in favour of Lurker Of Chalice.

Also, while I don't particulatily like most of Wolves In The Throne Room's material, I highly respect their main influence for the epic, unique, and intensely sorrowful black metal they made on their only album. This band I'm talking abbout is Weakling.

Krohm has also released some quality material, but this varies a lot from release to release. A World Through Dead Eyes is really good, while The Haunting presence sometimes feels a little watered down to me.

Unfortunately, there's also a lot of crap bands from the US. I, for one, despise Xasthur. Malefic just fails at good songwriting. Velvet Cacoon is also terrible, as well as the aforementione Lurker Of Chalice.

really?..what's your beef with lurker of chalice?...i think LOC is amazing..very harsh,yet beautiful and articulate..like the sigur ros of black metal

are you not a fan of Wrest's projects in general?

Written by Blood Red Moon on 12.01.2009 at 21:25

Written by Guest on 12.01.2009 at 20:51

Written by ForeverDarkWoods on 10.01.2009 at 23:36

I don't listen to too much USBM, as the scenes of other countries seem to be better, but there are some quality bands from the US.

Krieg is an American band with a lot of varied material. A lot of it is generic. But some of it is awesome. Blue Miasma is a great black metal album, and so is The Black House. They're experimental, in a sense, but still deeply rooted within black metal. You can feel an aura of insanity and depravity just reeking from Blue Miasma. Rise Of The Imperial Hordes though, is simply generic and devoid of any special moments, just generic, primitive black metal all the way.

I also know there are a lot of mixed opinions about Leviathan, but I've always found it to be a great band. The instrumentation is great, the music feels hateful through and through, and it seems a lot more genuine than a lot of other bands in the style. It's sure as hell a lot better than Wrest's other project, Lurker Of Chalice (which IMO is terrible). It's a shame Wrest dropped Leviathan in favour of Lurker Of Chalice.

Also, while I don't particulatily like most of Wolves In The Throne Room's material, I highly respect their main influence for the epic, unique, and intensely sorrowful black metal they made on their only album. This band I'm talking abbout is Weakling.

Krohm has also released some quality material, but this varies a lot from release to release. A World Through Dead Eyes is really good, while The Haunting presence sometimes feels a little watered down to me.

Unfortunately, there's also a lot of crap bands from the US. I, for one, despise Xasthur. Malefic just fails at good songwriting. Velvet Cacoon is also terrible, as well as the aforementione Lurker Of Chalice.

really?..what's your beef with lurker of chalice?...i think LOC is amazing..very harsh,yet beautiful and articulate..like the sigur ros of black metal

are you not a fan of Wrest's projects in general?

He said he liked Leviathan, but not Lurker of Chalice.

But how can you like Krieg, they are the most generic mediocre USBM band in my opinion.

overlooked that part when reading ,my mistake.

selective reading <3

I like both the slow paced and fast paced stuff..

i feel howl mockery at the cross and tentacles of whorror are pretty balanced when it comes to pace (atleast i think so)

EDIT* and yeah also like the doom/drone elements in lurker of chalice's music.

Wrest hanging out with O'Malley and Anderson is starting to show.

Written by Blood Red Moon on 12.01.2009 at 21:25

Written by Guest on 12.01.2009 at 20:51

Written by ForeverDarkWoods on 10.01.2009 at 23:36

I don't listen to too much USBM, as the scenes of other countries seem to be better, but there are some quality bands from the US.

Krieg is an American band with a lot of varied material. A lot of it is generic. But some of it is awesome. Blue Miasma is a great black metal album, and so is The Black House. They're experimental, in a sense, but still deeply rooted within black metal. You can feel an aura of insanity and depravity just reeking from Blue Miasma. Rise Of The Imperial Hordes though, is simply generic and devoid of any special moments, just generic, primitive black metal all the way.

I also know there are a lot of mixed opinions about Leviathan, but I've always found it to be a great band. The instrumentation is great, the music feels hateful through and through, and it seems a lot more genuine than a lot of other bands in the style. It's sure as hell a lot better than Wrest's other project, Lurker Of Chalice (which IMO is terrible). It's a shame Wrest dropped Leviathan in favour of Lurker Of Chalice.

Also, while I don't particulatily like most of Wolves In The Throne Room's material, I highly respect their main influence for the epic, unique, and intensely sorrowful black metal they made on their only album. This band I'm talking abbout is Weakling.

Krohm has also released some quality material, but this varies a lot from release to release. A World Through Dead Eyes is really good, while The Haunting presence sometimes feels a little watered down to me.

Unfortunately, there's also a lot of crap bands from the US. I, for one, despise Xasthur. Malefic just fails at good songwriting. Velvet Cacoon is also terrible, as well as the aforementione Lurker Of Chalice.

really?..what's your beef with lurker of chalice?...i think LOC is amazing..very harsh,yet beautiful and articulate..like the sigur ros of black metal

are you not a fan of Wrest's projects in general?

He said he liked Leviathan, but not Lurker of Chalice.

But how can you like Krieg, they are the most generic mediocre USBM band in my opinion.

Krieg have released a lot of substandard material, but they have also released The Black House and Blue Miasma, which are releases just reeking of a genuinely depraved/insane-sounding atmosphere that I find very enjoyable. Krieg do not play some kind of unique black metal style, but they have quality material, and often play their music in a way that create an atmosphere not usually associated with the type of metal they play. Frankly, I find Krieg to be one of the USBM bands which have the most quality in their better moments, even if they are a bit inconsistent and in no way unique.

As for Lurker Of Chalice, the music just fails to grab my interest on any level. The Sigur Ros comparison might still hold though, as I don't particularly like them either. It's unique, but not in a desireable way.

I'm not a Krieg fan, but saying that they're the most "generic" band in the US scene is completely pointless.... they do reach something unique with their black metal... I mean, they do improvise in their first stuff, they use classical music influence lately, every album has an individual character...

I still appreciate a few older Krieg albums. Destruction Ritual is pretty sadistic, one of those black metal cds that will put blisters on your ear drums. A couple tracks on Blue Miasma weren't bad, I liked the one that opens with a sample (which actually sounds like it could be Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z!) that says something like "Meaningless, huh? What do you know of meaningless?!?!".

Judas Iscariot, Xasthur. Nachtmystium, LEVIATHAN(whom I have a rare picture of him without corpse paint and he is with my buddy bruce...my friend bruce is tight with jeff wrest and he did a number of his tattoos), nough said.

There are a handful of good bands on the US scene indeed, but i wouldn't get too excited. lot of indie crap black metal going on there as well. that being said, everyone just remotely interested in USBM should check out the monolithic new album of Nightbringer (not that there's anything typical american about them, on the contrary, they sound a lot like the swedish orthodox bands).

What do you mean with crappy "indie" black metal? I mean, there are some black metal bands with appeal among the indie music audiences, especially Velvet Cacoon and Wolves In The Throne Room (which are both outstanding bands to these ears), but talking about "indie black metal" would be something differnet, something I hadn't heard yet. Maybe you could give some names, I would be interested in listening. I'm going to check Nightbringer, never heard of them.

Written by Guest on 19.01.2009 at 00:00

What do you mean with crappy "indie" black metal? I mean, there are some black metal bands with appeal among the indie music audiences, especially Velvet Cacoon and Wolves In The Throne Room (which are both outstanding bands to these ears), but talking about "indie black metal" would be something differnet, something I hadn't heard yet. Maybe you could give some names, I would be interested in listening. I'm going to check Nightbringer, never heard of them.

Bands that are getting this label are usually bands like Wolves In The Throne Room, Weakling, Lurker Of Chalice, Velvet Cacoon, Xasthur to an extent and Cobalt. It's a shitty semi-label used to criticize bands for being "artsy for the sake of being artsy", and who's got a following of indie fans/hipsters/whatever you want to call them. I've also seen it applied to a lot of black metal/shoegaze projects that's been popping up recently (such as Alcest), as well as the likes of Lifelover, Joyless, recent Shining and Amesoeurs. It seems to be somewhat associated with labels like Southern Lord and Aquarius Records.

It's mostly a shitty blanket term that doesn't really describe much.

Written by Guest on 19.01.2009 at 00:00

What do you mean with crappy "indie" black metal?

by indie crap i didn't mean black metal which is crappy, i was referring to their image and hippie attitude, some of which is present in their music.
however i do like some of these bands (nachmystium, velvet cacoon) but at the same time, everything extra musical annoys the hell out of me. there are ofc bands that are crap next to being indie, like wittr or krallice.

Written by Guest on 22.12.2008 at 00:02

Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 21.12.2008 at 23:41

SOrry but all those bands you just mentioned I find totally inferior to any of the bands Southern Wind posted. Anorexia Nervosa I find the most overrated french bm band together with Mutiilation, both shouldn't even be allowed within a mile of bands such as Leviathan, Xasthur, Wolves In The Throne Room, Weakling, Krallice, Krieg, Lurker Of Chalice and even Judas Iscariot.

France has the most overrated black metal scene in this world. I know you'l agree with me about that bunch of pathetic, self-parodic sexually frustrated assholes of LLN, but to these ears even bands like Deathspell Omega and Blut Aus Nord are worthless, pretentious as fuck failed experiments, by pseudo-intellectual people that seem to waste more time thinking of "intelligent" lyrics and concepts for their albums than writing good musics. French culture DOES have a problem in every single one of its manifestations by now... literature is written from theory instead of reality, movie and theater makers are just a bunch of stupids who still think art has a social value and so they pretentiously try to make their audience "think" instead of dedicating their fucking lives to make good pieces, painting is simply nonexistent... two of my (potentially) better teachers at university wew fucked-offed after making doctorates in France... now all their methods are based in plain TEHORY, while they clean their asses with REALITY. Sorry if I ofend anyone, but the French is an officialy sick culture. Ah, and this is written by someone whose blood is by more than half French.

sorry for the off-topic.

I thoroughly enjoyed this post

I still don't understand all the hype surrounding bands like Wolves In The Throne Room,Xasthur and Leviathan . Sure they're good and all but not as good as some people make them out to be.

Written by Damnated on 19.01.2009 at 23:56

Written by Guest on 19.01.2009 at 00:00

What do you mean with crappy "indie" black metal?

by indie crap i didn't mean black metal which is crappy, i was referring to their image and hippie attitude, some of which is present in their music.
however i do like some of these bands (nachmystium, velvet cacoon) but at the same time, everything extra musical annoys the hell out of me. there are ofc bands that are crap next to being indie, like wittr or krallice.

This can sound pretty silly, but despising a band for the imaginery behind them is equally incoherent as liking them for the same reason. I mean, I know there are a lot of kids into the indie scene who like Velvet Cacoon or WITTR because of extra-musical factors, but leaving them behind because of their manifest is just skipping great bands because of ideology. Musically both bands are genial in my opinion... I hate that hippie shit behind them, as you apparentely do, too, but I wouldn't stop enjoying them for that reason. I don't remember if it was you or Velvet who said in some thread that he/you felt attracted by Deathspell Omega at first because of their "impersonality", which means, music being completely isolated from the individual, but I feel that's exactly the same as being attracted by any other band by any other extra-musical element. I had also began enjoying some bands because of lyrics or even cover-arts, there's nothing wrong with that if at last you like them musically (I ordered Corvus Corax's album after reading an interview with them)... but yeah, I agree that some bands are over-hyped by their attitude towards music rather than by their music itself, especially in the USA... I just happen to love some of those bands anyway.

Written by Guest on 20.01.2009 at 03:39

This can sound pretty silly, but despising a band for the imaginery behind them is equally incoherent as liking them for the same reason.

i completely agree. i like velvet cacoon for their music, and dislike wittr also for their music. the later also annoy me with their attitude. skipping on bands then bashing them is just plain hypocrisy.

it was velvet who said he liked the impersonality behind dso's music, and i support this; that is why i try to make all personal bands/artist impersonal, not carrying about members, album covers, or lyrics. (as long as they are long haired guys who worship satan )

Anyone here heard of Fauna from cascadia? They have an image similar to that of Wolves in the Throne Room and I had recently listened to their first release "Rain" and found it to be a pretty good effort. It's just one long 63 minute long song, about the first five minutes of which are silence/rain sounds, and then up to about the 20 min mark it's acoustic guitar and from there on out, raging black metal with some slight dronish moments.

I don't know man, alot of material floods over most other stuff that ever comes into the circle but none more than Von and Velvet Cacoon strike more.

Well, americans take everything and turn it into a trend, they are practically attempting to take a massive shit on black metal, so no, it doesn't belong there.
stick to britney spears.

Hmm, I seem to have forgotten about Croatia's huge, influential metal scene....

Oh wait, they don't have one.

Written by Smurfophagist on 12.08.2009 at 14:53

Well, americans take everything and turn it into a trend, they are practically attempting to take a massive shit on black metal, so no, it doesn't belong there.
stick to britney spears.

Forget the fact that Von was a huge influence on the Scandinavian black metal scene....

Written by spirit_inblack on 11.08.2009 at 07:11

Anyone here heard of Fauna from cascadia? They have an image similar to that of Wolves in the Throne Room and I had recently listened to their first release "Rain" and found it to be a pretty good effort. It's just one long 63 minute long song, about the first five minutes of which are silence/rain sounds, and then up to about the 20 min mark it's acoustic guitar and from there on out, raging black metal with some slight dronish moments.

Fauna are great... I would recommend anyone who likes drugs to listen to them in acid it's pretty fun.

Written by Zombie, M.D. on 13.08.2009 at 04:21

Written by Smurfophagist on 12.08.2009 at 14:53

Well, americans take everything and turn it into a trend, they are practically attempting to take a massive shit on black metal, so no, it doesn't belong there.
stick to britney spears.

Forget the fact that Von was a huge influence on the Scandinavian black metal scene....

actually the only USBM bands i like are Von, Judas Iscariot and I Shalt Become. but stuff like Wolves in the throne room sometimes really make me lose my faith in nowadays BM.

Written by Smurfophagist on 12.08.2009 at 14:53

Well, americans take everything and turn it into a trend, they are practically attempting to take a massive shit on black metal, so no, it doesn't belong there.
stick to britney spears.

USBM does take a backseat to countries like Norway, Finland, Sweden and even Germany, but it's not entirely without merit.

Take Winter of Apokalypse for example. An ultra fine specimen of USBM. And certainly not the type of thing you'd expect to come from Portland Oregon.

As if Scandinavia had any interesting output outside a few select albums in the last 10 years anyway.

I have tons of "interesting" albums from Scandinavia. It's all taste and preference, but we're not here for Scandinavia....we're here for USBM.

Written by Zombie, M.D. on 14.08.2009 at 04:19

As if Scandinavia had any interesting output outside a few select albums in the last 10 years anyway.

or are without trend-jumpers.

and as if the US is the only country to produce pop crap like Britney Spears...

Written by Zombie, M.D. on 14.08.2009 at 04:19

As if Scandinavia had any interesting output outside a few select albums in the last 10 years anyway.

No, but Slavic black metal is in it's golden age. No one knows how good bands these bands are, because they are extremely underground, mostly because only a few of them can get a signed contract with any record label due to their NS beliefs.

I find Absu very enjoyable...got their own thing goin and its just damn cool.