Black Chronicles: A Short History of Black Metal — Part 2
The Second Wave: Norway, Frost and the Forest Catching Fire
If the first wave was the poison in the soil, then the second wave was the moment when the forest grew above it.
And this forest was not friendly.
In the early 1990s, something condensed in Norway that still shapes the image of black metal today: cold sound, corpse paint, radical aesthetics, anti-commercial attitude, nature mysticism, Satanism, scene myth, real crimes, legend-making, and music that did not merely want to sound heavier, but stranger.
Black metal was not invented here.
But this is where it became what many people mean when they say “black metal.”
No longer only leather, noise, and poison.
Now: frost, forest, ruin, grave, church, mask, cold.
And, of course, an unhealthy supply of very serious young men who apparently decided that daylight was a personal insult.
From the Antechamber into the Forest
The Norwegian second wave took the ingredients of the first wave — rawness, Satanic theatre, speed, provocation, dirt, occult darkness — and turned them into something more coherent.
The sound became colder.
The production often thinner and sharper.
The guitars flickered more.
The voices became less human.
Atmosphere moved to the centre.
Black metal was no longer merely aggressive. It became landscape-like.
That is one of the crucial points: with many Norwegian bands, the music does not simply sound like a song, but like a place. A snow-covered forest. A ruin. A night without warmth. A church that offers no comfort. A mountain that does not answer.
It was not only about being loud or evil.
It was about building a world in which niceness no longer had jurisdiction.
Mayhem: The Open Wound
Mayhem stand at the centre of this history like an open wound.
Musically, aesthetically, mythologically, and biographically, almost everything that still makes the second wave so heavy, fascinating, and problematic is tied to this band.
Mayhem were not simply “a band.” They became a point of convergence: rehearsal room, scene, label, shop, contacts, ideology, provocation, music, drama, death.
Their album De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, released in 1994, is still considered one of the central works of the second wave. It sounds cold, sacred, sick, strict, and strange. Not like metal that wants to be fun. More like a ceremony in a room where the walls have decided to listen.
But Mayhem are also inseparably connected with real death, violence, and scene myth. This must be handled carefully. It would be cheap to turn tragedies and crimes into mere dark decoration.
The important point is not: “Look how extreme all of this was.”
The important point is: here, music history became intertwined with real human abysses. And that shadow still lies over the genre today.
Monocle Note: When a band biography eventually starts sounding like a police report with a guitar appendix, it may be time to dim the candlelight and switch the brain back on.
Darkthrone: The Art of Cold
Darkthrone are another key.
Originally coming from death metal, they made a radical turn in the early 1990s with A Blaze in the Northern Sky. The album became one of the classic documents of Norwegian black metal: raw, cold, reduced, bony, unfriendly.
Here one can hear very clearly what defined the second wave: not polish, but consequence. Not technical showing off, but atmosphere. Not “we show what we can do,” but “we show what we refuse.”
Darkthrone did not make black metal bigger.
They made it barer.
And that was exactly its strength.
This music does not sound like a full throne hall, but like a hut without a fire. Like a forest path where, at some point, one realises one has already gone too far to simply turn back.
Darkthrone showed that reduction can be a weapon.
Less warmth.
Less comfort.
Less humanity.
More frost.
Burzum: Minimalism, Trance and the Problem of Legacy
Writing about Burzum always means doing two things at once: taking the musical significance seriously, and not downplaying the person behind it.
Musically, Burzum was enormously influential for the development of black metal. The sound is often minimalist, repetitive, hypnotic. Less band feeling, more solitary space. Less attack from outside, more endless corridor inward.
Many Burzum pieces do not work through classical song tension, but through repetition. Riffs circle. Structures stretch. The music becomes a state.
This is important for the atmospheric and trance-like element in black metal. Here, it is not only about frenzy, but about pull. About monotony that does not have to be empty, but can open something.
But Burzum is also a prime example of why black metal cannot always be listened to musically without asking questions. Ideology, violence, political radicalisation, and reception hang heavily in the room here.
One can write about it. One should write about it. But not kneeling, not blindly admiring, not excusing.
Rather with a cold lamp.
Musical effect is not an acquittal.
Emperor: Grandeur in the Storm
While Darkthrone made cold barren and Burzum turned repetition into trance, Emperor brought in another dimension: grandeur.
In the Nightside Eclipse, released in 1994, stands for a more symphonic, majestic form of black metal. Here, the forest does not only become frosty, but vast. Almost imperial. The music races, but it also rises. It builds towers. It opens night skies.
Emperor showed that black metal did not have to be only raw and reduced, but could also be massive, complex, almost orchestral.
This is no longer merely cellar or earth-hole.
This is cathedral in the storm.
Of course, the music remains extreme. But it has this size, this dramatic ascent, this black splendour that would later influence many symphonic and atmospheric forms of the genre.
Monocle Note: Emperor are the moment when frost decides to study architecture.
Immortal: Blashyrkh and the Art of Frosty Theatre
Immortal brought their own form of cold into the second wave.
With their invented ice-world Blashyrkh, they created not only songs, but a kind of frosty fantasy realm. One can take this seriously, smile at it, or do both at once — which may be the healthiest attitude.
Immortal are often more theatrical, more visual, almost comic-book grand. Ice, battles, mountains, demons, eternal winter. This can feel magnificent. It can also look as if someone aimed a snow machine at a fantasy cover and then very firmly said “grim.”
And yet: Immortal are important because they show that black metal can also be worldbuilding.
Not only ideology.
Not only provocation.
Not only scene reality.
But myth as a self-built space.
Where others searched for darkness in real Norwegian forests, Immortal built their own frost continent. And that continent became part of the black metal landscape.
More Than a Few Bands
Of course, the Norwegian second wave did not consist only of Mayhem, Darkthrone, Burzum, Emperor, and Immortal.
Bands such as Gorgoroth, Satyricon, Enslaved, Thorns, Carpathian Forest, Ulver, and many others also belong to this larger picture. Some were more strongly Satanic, some more atmospheric, some more mythological, some more experimental, some later ended up somewhere entirely different.
The scene was small, but its echo was enormous.
A few people, a few shops, a few rehearsal rooms, a few labels, a few demos, a few rumours — and from this grew a myth that still appears larger than its original size.
That is typical of subcultures: they are often small while they are happening, and enormous once they are being told.
The Forest Caught Fire
One cannot write about the second wave without mentioning that the forest did not catch fire only metaphorically.
Church burnings, violence, murder, political and Satanic radicalisation, media hysteria — all of this belongs to the historical shadow of this phase. But precisely for that reason, one should not casually wave it around like a particularly decorative black flag.
That deserves its own part.
Because if one throws everything into the same pot, something quickly happens that black metal itself sometimes encourages: myth devours reality.
And suddenly real acts become aesthetics. Real victims become legend. Real responsibility becomes a fog machine.
That would be too cheap.
For this part, it is enough to say:
The second wave made black metal colder, more coherent, more atmospheric, and more dangerous. It shaped the sound, images, and myth that are still connected with the genre today.
It turned poison into a forest.
But this forest was never innocent.
What Remains?
The Norwegian second wave is still the great shadow over black metal.
Not because everything afterwards was merely imitation. That would be nonsense. Black metal later became global, diverse, contradictory, experimental, politically varied, spiritually varied, aesthetically almost impossible to map.
But the second wave gave the genre a kind of primal image:
cold sound,
shrieking voice,
flickering guitars,
corpse paint,
forest,
frost,
anti-Christianity,
rawness,
myth,
danger.
It is not the whole of black metal.
But it is the place where many paths begin.
Or at least the place where many people first realise:
This is not simply loud music.
This is a forest.
And somewhere inside it, something is burning.
