#glossary

Ardreyth: Adopted daughter of Minaste Mizzrym; later known as the Hand of Lolth. A female drow of House Mizzrym. Calimar Mizzrym: Nephew of Minaste Mizzrym and second son of Minaste’s sister. He holds the title of Qu’el’velguk in House Mizzrym. Da’viir Mizzrym: Elder brother of Calimar Mizzrym and firstborn son of Minaste’s sister. A male drow of House Mizzrym who holds the title of Qu’el’saruk. Jhaelra: Adopted daughter of Minaste Mizzrym and a priestess of Lolth. She oversees trade routes, intermediaries, hidden storehouses, and goods whose origins are better left unnamed. Minaste Mizzrym: Matron Mother of House Mizzrym; aunt of Calimar and Da’viir. An old and highly powerful priestess of Lolth, ruthless and hungry for power. Naenelis: Calimar’s lover; a surface elf whose death became central to Calimar’s downfall. Nymrak: A young Sargtlin whose death reminds Calimar of his own past mistakes. Shi’nayne: Adopted daughter of Minaste Mizzrym and a Yathrin of House Mizzrym. She oversees the resources that keep the house alive: supplies, debtors, servants, contracts, and capital. Tazagh Mizzrym: Minaste’s Qu’Faern; an older male drow who has survived long enough near Minaste’s power to understand its dangers. Veszra: A priestess of Lolth who commands Velkynlani’rath, a remote and dangerous outpost of House Mizzrym. Xullrae: Adopted daughter of Minaste Mizzrym; First Priestess of House Mizzrym and a Yathtallar of Lolth. She commands Minaste’s hunters and enforcers.

Glossary of Drow Terms Used

(this will be tidied up into an ACTUAL intro later for now I just wanna lay down my tagging system)

thinking out loud - "girlblogging" basically, just my passing thoughts

the nameless story of mine - my oc loreeeee 😛

bad poetry - poems from my google doc of the same name

answered - for when I answer my asks

Mask, Death-Face and Theatrical Dehumanisation

Corpse paint is one of the most recognisable images of black metal. Black-and-white painted faces, harsh contrasts, hollowed eyes, distorted mouths, pale skin. A face that is no longer meant to look entirely human. Or at least not conveniently human in any everyday sense.

To outsiders, it can easily look like: “Ah. People with very serious make-up decisions.” This is not entirely wrong, but it is somewhat insufficient.

Corpse paint is more than make-up. It is a mask. A transformation. A refusal of the ordinary face. The person behind the music steps back, and something else steps forward: corpse, demon, ghost, warrior, shadow, priest, spectre, forest creature, calamity with backstage access.

Naturally, this does not always succeed.

Sometimes corpse paint truly looks like an apparition from the depths. Sometimes like a cold death mask. Sometimes like ritual. Sometimes like nightmare. And sometimes it looks as though someone lost an argument with the wrong wall during renovation and then decided this was now their spiritual form. That, too, must be admitted.

What Is Corpse Paint?

In the metal context, corpse paint refers to a usually black-and-white style of face paint that became especially associated with black metal. The name suggests a deathly or corpse-like appearance.

Typical features include:

- white or very pale face paint

- black areas around the eyes, mouth, or cheeks

- harsh lines, cracks, spikes, or shadow shapes

- a deliberately cold, dead, demonic, or inhuman expression

- strong contrasts, often matching stage clothing, spikes, leather, bullet belts, or a darker visual aesthetic

Of course, there are many variations. Some are simple and severe. Some are wild and distorted. Some almost ritualistic. Some strongly reminiscent of horror, theatre, or war paint. Some highly individual. Some rather suggest that the artist had five minutes and a mirror of questionable loyalty.

Corpse paint is not a fixed rulebook. It is a visual code.

The Face Disappears

One important effect of corpse paint is this: the ordinary face disappears. And that matters.

The human face is strongly tied to identity. We recognise people by faces. We read emotion, closeness, vulnerability, intention. An unpainted face says: here is a person. Here is someone with daily life, a name, skin, tiredness, perhaps a tax return.

Corpse paint interrupts that.

It turns a face into a surface. A mask. A symbol. Something between human and non-human.

This fits black metal very well, because the genre often works with estrangement anyway: alien voice, cold sound, distance, night, death, myth, anti-Christianity, wilderness, departure from the normal.

The voice no longer sounds entirely human.

The guitar sounds like weather.

The drums sound like attack.

And the face looks as though everyday life no longer has jurisdiction there.

With all due respect: this is consistent.

Death, Mask, Ritual

Corpse paint can carry different meanings.

It can evoke death: pale skin, black eyes, death mask, corpse-like face. The face is not beautified, but emptied. It is not meant to look healthy, friendly, or socially available.

It can demonise: the musician does not appear as a private person, but as a figure. Something that does not have to be “nice” on stage. Something that can carry screams, cold, hatred, ritual, or myth.

It can feel ritualistic: like a marking for a threshold. Before: human. After: role. Before: daily life. After: performance. Before: face. After: sign.

It can also create distance. Someone wearing corpse paint does not say: “Look personally into my face.” Rather: “Look at the figure that has been created here.”

This is not merely decoration. It changes the relationship between musician, music, and audience.

Theatre and Seriousness

Black metal has a complicated relationship with theatre.

On the one hand, much of the genre wants to feel serious, raw, authentic, or dangerous. On the other, it works strongly with staging: clothing, poses, forest photos, candles, ruins, logos, masks, album covers, stage light, fog, symbols.

Corpse paint sits exactly on that border.

It can be a serious mask.

It can be a theatrical mask.

Most of the time, it is both.

And that is not automatically a problem.

Theatre does not automatically mean falsehood. Ritual is staged. A uniform is staged. So is a priestly robe, a crown, mourning dress, or war paint. Clothing and marking can change the person wearing them — or at least change the space around them.

The better question is not: is it real or performed? The better question is: what does the performance do?

When corpse paint works, the mask strengthens the music. It makes visible what is already happening in the sound: dehumanisation, death, frost, shadow, refusal, demonisation, ritual.

When corpse paint fails, the mask feels like a costume with no room behind it.

Then what stands before us is not the terror of the night, but someone who appears to have been released from the Halloween department somewhat prematurely.

Corpse Paint and the Second Wave

Corpse paint became especially tied to black metal through the Norwegian second wave in the early 1990s.

Bands such as Mayhem, Immortal, Darkthrone, Gorgoroth, Emperor, and many others shaped images that remain closely connected with the genre today: pale faces, black eyes, fixed stares, forests, frost, leather, spikes, weapons, ruins, snow.

These images became so strong that they almost turned into visual cliché.

When people hear “black metal,” many do not first imagine a guitar technique or a production aesthetic. They see a black-and-white face in the forest. That is the power of symbols.

They simplify.

They condense.

They can also flatten.

Corpse paint therefore became both: a powerful expressive tool and an immediately recognisable scene code. Whoever wears it stands in a tradition. But precisely because of that, it can quickly become formulaic.

Not every corpse-painted face creates depth. Sometimes it only says: “I am aware of the dress code.”

Why Not Just a Normal Face?

One might ask: why paint the face at all? Why not let the music speak for itself?

Of course, black metal can work without corpse paint. Many bands do not use it, or used it and later abandoned it. The mask is not a certificate of legitimacy. Nobody automatically becomes more credible simply by looking as though they climbed out of a grave under moonlight.

But when corpse paint is used well, it can do something an ordinary face cannot:

It lifts the music out of everyday life. It makes visible that another level is being entered. Stage, ritual, myth, horror, symbol, threshold.

Because black metal works so strongly with atmosphere, the visual aspect can expand the sonic space. It says: this is not only a concert. This is not only a band photo. This is a figure in the room. Or at least the attempt to become one.

The Danger of Cliché

The problem with powerful images is that they wear out.

Corpse paint can be overwhelming. But it can also become instantly parodiable. A black-and-white face in the forest is now so clearly black metal code that it can swing very quickly between serious, beautiful, ridiculous, and lovingly exaggerated. That is not necessarily a tragedy.

A genre that works so heavily with pathos, death, Satan, frost, and the evil stare must accept that someone will occasionally raise an eyebrow.

The art lies in not believing every symbol automatically. Corpse paint is a tool. Not proof of quality.

It can create a figure.

It can condense atmosphere.

It can create distance.

It can make death, cold, and ritual visible.

It can also simply look bad.

Even darkness is not immune to unfortunate make-up technique.

A Small Viewing Guide

When looking at corpse paint, try asking:

Does the paint truly transform the face — or does it merely sit on top of it?

Does it feel like mask, death-face, ritual, or merely costume?

Does it fit the music and the atmosphere of the band?

Does it create distance, cold, inhumanity, or myth?

Is it individual, or merely a scene template?

Does the image become stronger — or simply more expected?

The most important question may be:

Does the corpse paint serve the music? Or does it merely serve the cliché?

Because, as with everything in the Black Chronicles, not every symbol is automatically meaningful. Not every mask has depth. And not every grim stare from a coniferous forest is a revelation.

Sometimes it is merely a grim stare from a coniferous forest.

Which, admittedly, is already a respectable application letter in this particular genre.

What Remains?

Corpse paint is one of the defining visual signs of black metal.

It is make-up, but not only make-up. It is mask, death-face, ritual, theatre, refusal, and scene code. It removes everyday humanity from the face and turns it into something strange.

Used well, corpse paint can strengthen the music: make cold visible, withdraw humanity, create myth, open a threshold space.

Used badly, it is merely painted pathos with excessive confidence.

But perhaps that is exactly why it remains fascinating.

Corpse paint stands on the border between seriousness and theatre. Between death and costume. Between ritual and pose. Between transformation and make-up accident.

When the Drums Stop Walking and Start Attacking

Some drum patterns accompany a song.

Blast beats tend not to.

They do not enter the room with polite rhythmic support. They tear the door from its hinges, throw the carpet into the snow, and inform everyone present that different conditions are now in effect.

In black metal, death metal, grindcore, and many other forms of extreme metal, blast beats are among the most defining drumming techniques. They are fast, dense, aggressive, and create enormous pressure. But, as so often, it is not enough simply to say:

Blast beats are fast drumming.

That would be roughly like describing a storm as “moving air.” Not wrong. Merely insufficient in a most regrettable manner.

What Is a Blast Beat?

A blast beat is an extremely fast drum pattern in which the bass drum, snare, and cymbals are usually combined at high speed. Depending on style and technique, the hits can be distributed in different ways, but the effect is often similar: a dense, racing wall of sound that barely behaves like a normal rock or metal groove anymore.

The classic groove says:

Here is the pulse.

You may follow it.

There is a certain order.

The blast beat says:

Order has been informed.

It has left the building.

And yet a blast beat is not simply chaos. Good drummers play it with control. That is precisely what makes it so effective: the music sounds as if it is about to fall apart, while in reality it is holding enormous tension together. It is controlled loss of control.

Or, with slightly less dignity: the drums are not running. They are opening fire.

Why Blast Beats Feel the Way They Do

Blast beats create pressure.

They fill the room with hits until there is almost no air left between the impulses. This creates a feeling of attack, panic, frenzy, or overwhelm. The body is not comfortably given time to nod along. It is more likely placed into a condition.

It can feel like:

- storm

- machine gun fire

- panic

- attack

- flight

- collapse

- ritual frenzy

- a nervous system that has decided it will no longer behave itself

In black metal, blast beats often combine with tremolo-picked guitars. The drums create pressure from below, while the guitars flicker above like snow, blades, static, or a frostbitten insect swarm. Together they create that typical feeling: not merely fast music, but a wall of motion.

Not groove.

Not dance.

Not “come, let us nod along politely.”

More like standing in a storm that has little regard for personal comfort.

Blast Beats in Black Metal

In black metal, blast beats often have a different effect than they do in death metal or grindcore.

In death metal, they can feel brutal, physical, and mechanical. There, they often serve weight, precision, aggression, and bodily impact.

In grindcore, they often feel like an explosion of speed, noise, and political or bodily overload. Short, violent, merciless.

In black metal, blast beats are aggressive as well, but they can also take on something atmospheric. They do not only strike. They can become weather. Snowstorm. Hunting wind. A condition that does not end.

Especially when combined with thin production, shrieking vocals, and tremolo guitars, blast beats often merge with the overall sound. One no longer hears only a drum kit. One hears a surface of frenzy. This is an important difference.

The blast beat in black metal is not always only muscle. Sometimes it is meteorology.

Not Every Blast Beat Is the Same

There are different kinds of blast beats. Some place snare and cymbal hits together, some alternate more between limbs, some feel rolling, some chopping, some almost machine-like.

At first, one does not need to dissect every technical variant. It is more important to recognise the effect.

A blast beat can:

- whip a song forward

- violently open a passage

- create a sense of chaos

- turn the music into a wall

- contrast with slow, heavy sections

- create trance when sustained long enough

- become exhausting if it carries nothing

Because here, too, speed alone is not proof of quality.

A blast beat can be impressive. It can also feel like musical continuous fire without aim, at which point one eventually looks at the clock with polite concern and hopes someone in the rehearsal room will soon show mercy.

Blast Beats and Trance

Interestingly, blast beats do not have to feel only aggressive.

When they run long enough and connect with repeated guitar figures, they can tip into a kind of trance. One no longer hears every single hit consciously. The drums become a stream. A motor. A racing surface over which the guitars hover or cut.

This is especially important in atmospheric black metal.

A fast beat can, paradoxically, create vastness. Not because it is comfortable, but because it creates a constant movement. The music runs so relentlessly that at some point it no longer feels like running, but like a weather system.

The body registers the pressure.

The mind follows the riff.

And somewhere between the two, a space opens.

This is the peculiar art of extreme music: something that initially sounds like attack can, under certain conditions, become a state in which one almost floats.

With all due respect: this is a considerable achievement for something that, on the surface, sounds like someone falling down a staircase while remaining remarkably disciplined.

Blast Beats as Contrast

Blast beats are especially powerful when they do not simply cover everything permanently, but create contrast.

A slow, heavy section can suddenly break into a blast beat. Then it feels as if the ground has split open.

Or a racing part can suddenly collapse into silence, doom-like heaviness, or a slower middle section. Only then does one realise how much pressure had filled the room before.

These shifts matter. Extreme music often lives not only from constant intensity, but from tension: slow against fast, heavy against racing, physical against spectral, pressure against emptiness.

If everything is always maximal, eventually nothing is maximal anymore. Even a storm needs a cliff face to strike against.

A Small Listening Guide

When listening for blast beats, try asking:

Does the drumming feel like groove, attack, storm, or machine?

Does the blast beat create pressure, or merely speed?

Does it strengthen the atmosphere, or bury it?

Does it contrast with other sections?

Does it lead into frenzy, panic, trance, or simple exhaustion?

Does it sound controlled — or merely hurried?

The last question is crucial.

A good blast beat is not simply a drummer doing a great deal very quickly. A good blast beat holds tension. It can be attack, weather, engine, abyss, or threshold.

A poor blast beat, on the other hand, is sometimes merely a very busy drum kit with a sense of mission.

At this point, the archive raises one eyebrow with polite but unmistakable concern.

What Remains?

Blast beats are among the essential tools of extreme music.

In black metal, they can fuel frenzy, intensify frost, turn guitars into a snowstorm surface, and push the listener into a state between pressure, resistance, and trance.

They are not only fast.

They are a way of changing space.

A song with blast beats does not simply stand before you.

It comes toward you.

Sometimes like an attack.

Sometimes like a storm.

Sometimes like a wall of cold and motion.

Sometimes like a nervous breakdown with astonishing rhythmic discipline.

Or, more briefly:

The drums are playing very fast.

Regrettably, silence has been informed and has submitted its resignation.

The Sound of Snowstorm Guitars

Some black metal riffs do not feel like riffs in the usual sense. They do not enter the room, introduce themselves politely, and offer you a rhythm to nod along to. They arrive more like weather. A flicker. A swarm. A storm of notes. A restless, freezing movement less interested in groove than in turning the air itself sharp. This effect often comes from tremolo picking.

Put simply, tremolo picking is a guitar technique in which a note, chord, or small group of notes is picked very rapidly and repeatedly. Instead of letting a note ring out naturally, the guitarist attacks it again and again in quick succession.

In black metal, this technique is almost everywhere.

It is one of the reasons the genre so often sounds cold, frantic, hypnotic, thin, cutting, or strangely vast. Tremolo picking can make the guitar feel less like a physical instrument and more like wind, static, insect wings, snow, panic, or a blade moving too quickly to see.

Monocle Note: Should the unprepared ear identify this merely as a swarm of frost-afflicted insects, it would not be entirely mistaken — only admirably determined to miss the larger point.

Not Just Speed

It would be easy to say: tremolo picking simply means playing very fast.bBut that would be insufficient.

In black metal, tremolo picking is not only about speed. It is about texture. The function of the guitar changes. A riff no longer has to feel heavy, grooving, and muscular. It can become a surface. A current. A storm front. A wall of motion.

That is why black metal often feels less riff-based than many other forms of metal, even though it is absolutely built on riffs. The riffs are there, but they are stretched into atmosphere.

A traditional heavy metal riff may feel like a fist.

A death metal riff may feel like a machine, a jaw, or a body being dragged.

A black metal tremolo riff often feels like weather.

Cold weather, usually.

This genre appears to regard warmth as an imposition and devotes itself, with notable commitment, to hostile meteorology.

The Sound of Distance

Tremolo picking also creates distance.

Combined with harsh vocals, thin production, blast beats, and reverb, the guitar can stop feeling close and physical. It becomes spectral. The sound seems to come from elsewhere: across a frozen field, through a ruined wall, from the far end of a forest, or from a cassette tape that has seen things.

This distance matters.

Black metal often does not want to sound like five musicians standing directly in front of you in a room. It wants to sound like a place. Tremolo picking helps build that place.

It can create:

- frost

- panic

- trance

- vastness

- tension

- grief

- grandeur

- spiritual unease

- the musical equivalent of staring into a forest and realising the forest is staring back

Of course, not every tremolo riff is automatically profound. Some are merely fast. Some are thin. Some run in circles without ever opening a door. Speed alone does not create atmosphere.

But when tremolo picking works, it can turn a simple pattern into a landscape.

Why It Fits Black Metal So Well

Black metal is often less interested in comfort than in intensity.

Tremolo picking fits this perfectly because it refuses to settle. It keeps the sound in motion. Even when the harmony is simple, the constant picking creates tension. The ear receives no soft resting place. The music shivers.

This is why it works so well with blast beats: the drums create pressure while the guitars create a rushing, flickering, almost blinding surface.

It also works in slower passages. A tremolo-picked melody over slower drums can feel mournful, distant, or majestic. Not every tremolo riff has to attack. Some drift. Some ache. Some unfold like fog.

This is one of black metal’s great tricks:

The same technique can sound like violence, weather, grief, ritual, or cosmic emptiness depending on context.

A fast tremolo riff with blast beats can feel like a snowstorm.

A slow tremolo melody can feel like watching the last light disappear behind mountains.

A raw, badly recorded tremolo line can sound like a ghost trapped inside a broken radio.

With all due respect: that is versatility.

Tremolo Picking and Trance

One reason tremolo picking is so powerful in black metal is repetition.

A riff may circle again and again, changing only slightly, or not at all. At first, this can seem monotonous. And sometimes it is. Let us not pretend every repeated riff is a sacred passageway.

Some are merely musical furniture abandoned in a cold hallway, still insisting upon significance.

But repetition can also create trance. The constant picking removes some of the usual sense of movement in a song. One no longer waits necessarily for a chorus or a dramatic hook, but begins to inhabit the sound. The riff becomes a path. Then the path becomes a loop. Then the loop becomes a state.

This is where black metal often stops behaving like ordinary entertainment.

It does not always perform for you. Sometimes it surrounds you.

A Small Listening Guide

When listening for tremolo picking in black metal, try asking:

Does the guitar feel like a riff — or like weather?

Does the repetition create boredom, tension, or trance?

Does the sound feel close and physical, or distant and spectral?

Does the tremolo line create cold, grief, panic, grandeur, or emptiness?

Is it carrying the atmosphere — or merely running very fast in place?

That last question is important. As always, the Black Chronicles insist upon discernment.

Not every fast guitar is a snowstorm.

Not every snowstorm is meaningful.

And not every haunted shrubbery of notes deserves reverence.

But when tremolo picking is used well, it becomes one of black metal’s essential tools: a way of turning strings into storm, repetition into trance, and a simple riff into a landscape one can almost enter.

Or, less poetically:

The guitar is being picked very fast. Regrettably, the forest has been informed.

Nadsat is a fictional register or argot created by Anthony Burgess for his dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange, published in 1962. It is a blend of English, Russian, and other languages, reflecting the teenage subculture in the story. The name "Nadsat" comes from the Russian suffix equivalent of -teen as in thirteen: "-надцать (-nad·tsat.)" Burgess drew on his linguistic expertise and experiences from his time in Leningrad to develop this unique language, which serves as a way to immerse readers in the characters' world while also distancing the violence depicted from reality.

Below is a glossary of Nadsat terms and their meanings for reference (there are more exhaustive lists online):