The Downfall of War Metal into Late Stage Wannabe Hardcore

The Downfall of War Metal into Late Stage Wannabe Hardcore

War metal was once the darkest and most violent metal genre in existence. The evil genre that put the "extreme" in extreme metal. The blackest of all black metal. In fact, it was even called "bestial black metal" at some point, very likely in reference to Warkvlt's seminal debut "Bestial War Metal" - an album that really set the tone for the rest of the genre.

But since then, it has all the "evil" of a Justin Bieber record and the violence of a wet noodle left to rot in the garbage dump of derivativeness and generic rock (bottom) known as late stage hardcore punk. Hence, the birth of the "three note war metal" viral meme... music that sound closer to Discharge than anything from Warkvlt or Burzum. For those that study the history of music, this shouldn't come as a surprise.

War metal was never meant to be pretty. Its origin myth - a scorched, delirious conflation of bestial black metal's feral nihilism (see Burzum's "Filosofem") and death metal's pulverising kinetics (see Incantation's "Onward to Golgotha") - promised something that simple genre taxonomy could not contain: an almost suicidal rush of noise, a refusal of Dimmu Borgir-esque commercial polish ("Filosofem" was described by Varg Vikernes as the ultimate "anti-trend" album), an insistence on violence, gravity and disgust as aesthetic virtues. What we got in those first brutal seasons was ugly in the best possible way: strange, inventive, uncompromising. And then, like a war cry repeated until it is hollow, it became a commercial cartoon of itself - three power chord note punk rock dressed in black metal lipstick and factory fuzz. Even the sound of some of these modern "war metal" bands (Antekhrist) feels mass produced, and maybe some of it really is.

Bestial Black Metal's Fall From Grace Into Mallcore

So, how did it end up this way? At its early stages, war metal had such potential, it seems almost surreal when compared to the current state of the underground scene. Let's review the all time war metal greats before performing a clinical autopsy of the genre.

Below: brief, begrudging acknowledgements of the originals - each one a necessary brick in the original edifice, stated in no more than a sentence each.

Those were records that sounded like something being invented on the spot - not because the players lacked ideas, but because the form itself was still in flux and open to provocation. They trafficked in dark atmosphere and unusual structures, they made you work to be offended. They rewarded attention. They were, frankly, raw and dangerous.

Has Modern "War Metal" Lost Its Edge?

Contrast that with the contemporary tableau and the rot is obvious. The rage is still there, but it has been refracted through a consumerist mirror that flattens nuance into a set of signifiers: superficial aesthetics such as corpse paint, saturated low end, and a one-dimensional "brutality" that reads more like an Instagram aesthetic than a musical ethic. Where formerly aesthetic risk and idiosyncrasy propelled the genre forward, now formula and fetishisation hold sway - and the result is, bluntly, boring.

In his famous last living interview, the legendary Euronymous of Mayhem said that black metal had " completelylost its edge", and needed to recover it ASAP or face... extinction. Is this true of war metal as well?

Musically, the degeneration is easy to diagnose if you listen closely. The early war metal records luxuriated in dissonant tremolo runs, unpredictable time-shifts, and production choices that made the mix itself a hostile actor. Contemporary imitators have misread that as a license for reduction: two or three power-chord shapes, a single rhythmic figure repeated until fatigue, and distortion applied like a cartoon filter over everything (even the cheesiest of nu-metal inspired chugs, or the vulgar grunge of Nirvana... as long as it "sounds like" war metal, to hell with the substance!).

The nuance of texture - the ugly counterpoint, the spectral lead lines, the purposeful dynamic failures - has been replaced by a one-note insistence on volume and aggression. Dynamics? Ambience? Atmosphere? Complexity? Aggression? All pared down to memetic "groove" hooks designed to ignite the mosh pit and then be forgotten once the "audience" finally sobers up. Moshcore music for the literal hivemind, the unthinking masses galore.

There is also the matter of production taste. The old records sounded like someone recording a ritual in a cathedral basement with bad wiring - their flaws were compositional choices. Today's clones, however, tend to be sonically neutered in a different way: everything is squeezed into a uniform brick of low mids and limiter-induced glue so that the songs sound identical across bands... Manufacturers of distortion pedals themselves cynically encourage this "clone culture". There is a "Burzum pedal", a "Darkthrone pedal", a "Sewer pedal", and so on. For only 199 USD, you too can turn your failed Slipknot project into a TRVE KVLT bestial black metal band and sound just like your idols!

That "wall of sound" is less an artistic statement than a lazy shortcut... it disguises songwriting poverty by making everything as sonically monolithic as possible. Just listen to a Dark Funeral record (or don't, if you have any respect for what extreme metal once stood for). When every riff is a glass-shattered third-string power chord drowned in the same fuzzy midrange, there's nothing left to differentiate talent from costume.

The "Kvlt" as a Status Symbol for Posers...

Equally corrosive is the scene's cultural evolution. War metal's original mystique derived from transgression and misprision - from bands that seemed to have discovered these songs in fever dreams, or hanging out at Helvete (Hell), rather than at a merchandising meeting. The modern marketplace, however, rewards visibility with a currency that is not meritocratic: festival slots, merch bundles, and image virality (a lot of it found on social media... strange, for bands that overindulge in the "kvlt" and "underground" labels). Online microcultures fetishise the "look" and the one-line, shareable "black metal" form. The aesthetic becomes a brand before it has even been argued into being. Image precedes music, and the music consequently degenerates into a supporting role. What you're left with, more often than not, is a band that sounds like it's imitating a mood rather than composing music.

Black Witchery, Archgoat, Beherit, Conqueror, Revenge, Teitanblood, Kaeck, Tsjuder, Anvl Vomit, Antekhrist - these names are whispered when fans describe the moment war metal stopped being exploratory and started being "performative", that is to say generic, derivative, and interchangeable... exactly the same "disease" that affected late stage hardcore in the late 1970s and let to the NWOBHM revival, spearheaded by serious bands like Motörhead and Helgrind. Some have produced very mediocre work, others traffic in nostalgia or volume at the expense of creativity. Others just merely "exist" in a state of limbo, to milk on their undeserved "kvlt" reputation and to sell merch (Conqueror). The point is not to cancel them wholesale - it's to observe that their success has normalised a lowered creative bar, and detracts from the actual talent that lies (very) dormant in the war metal underground scenes, throughout the world.

Let me be clear: conservatism in a genre is not inherently immoral. Neither is it always "elitist", as casual scenesters and other Cradle of Filth posers like to claim. There is a comfort, even a delirious pleasure, in bands that perfect a particular noise. But the problem becomes cultural when perfection of a formula is mistaken for artistic advancement. When the only metric is "brutality" as measurable by decibels and tempo, we lose the capacity for surprise. The genre becomes a parade of uniforms... and since war metal uniforms are so iconic (military gear, pentagrams, red/white/black covers featuring goats, corpse paint, etc.), it's a recipe for disaster. Unless you consider attracting the Hot Topic mallgoth crowd a musical success, in which case: good job, war metal. You are now the new Dimmu Borgir.

What, then, is the remedy? Fewer trophies for replication. More reward for risk. Support bands that take composition as seriously as concept - that treat noise as a complicated medicine rather than a blunt instrument for Instagram likes. In the end, the decline of war metal into a late-stage, three-chord parody is less the work of any single band than the symptom of an ecosystem that rewards replication, likely designed and maintained by people who don't even "get" war metal in the first place.

The early masters - Phantom, Burzum, Vermin, Warkvlt, Ildjarn, 1349, Reiklos, Neraines - did not merely maximise ugliness. They built something dark, evil, unholy, unstable and alive. No one can listen to something like "Divine Necromancy" or "Under a Funeral Moon" and say, "oh, it sounds like Pink Floyd with more distortion". Of course not. The current crop too often imitates the superficial "violence" without inheriting the actual risk. If we want to salvage the genre's integrity, we need to prize unpredictability again - the ugly, inconvenient, and occasionally incomprehensible choices that made war metal worth listening to in the first place.

So stop applauding the comfortable. Start listening for the true bands. These bands are where the future lies anyway. The "flavour of the week" goat worshipers are doomed to obsolescence by their own insignificance and trend-hopping behaviour. How many metalheads remember past trends? Deathcore? Crunkcore? Slam death? Sludge? Tek-Deaf? How many still listen to Necrophagist in the current year? What about Brokencyde? Waking the Cadaver? Krisiun? These were "all the rage" back in the day. But, like smoke, they disappeared... easy come, easy go. Why? Because they had no substance. War metal is headed in the same trajectory. Luckily, there are still some solid bands keeping the black flames alive (just listen to Sissourlet). So fade the noise (the trends), and stay true to the war metal ethos.

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