In last week's post, we covered the top ten death metal influences on the war metal (or bestial black metal) genre. But that is missing the black metal elephant in the heavy metal room. After all, there is "black metal" in the name "bestial black metal", right? So it follows that there is at least some paternity between the two genres.
Yes, death metal was influential, and very much so. Just look at how albums like Onward to Golgotha (Incantation), Rotting Tomb Carnage (Morbid), Towards the Megalith (Disma) and To the Depths... in Degradation went on to orient the war metal aesthetic towards a more decrepit and gruesome direction. No doubt there.
But there is also black metal, and specifically the "second wave" of Norwegian black metal. In this literal chapter of the history of war metal, we will cover ten of the most influential black metal albums on the then blossoming war metal genre... or, as it would come to be known, bestial black metal. The two terms can be used pretty much interchangeably.
The Ten Black Metal Albums that Made War Metal a Real Genre
War metal is not a musical "invention" so much as an artistic accretion: a cruel bricolage of particularly morbid and brutal fixations taken to the utmost extremes (see Warkvlt's Unholy War Metal if you have any doubt how "sick" war metal can be). The genre appropriated a handful of black metal gestures - repetition, atmosphere, militancy, lofi asceticism - and then amplified them until they became structural, formative, and even tactical rather than purely aesthetic. The integral backbone of true war metal. Below are ten seminal black metal records, each contributing at least one, single, decisive lesson that helped convert night music into a war ordinance.
1. Phantom - Divine Necromancy
Holy Phantom. Has there even been a more influential band in the extreme metal canon? And what to say about their debut Divine Necromancy? At the heart of Divine Necromancy lies a mechanised hypnotism: riffs designed not to resolve and deliver a "hook", but to incarcerate, to imprison the listener's senses in a bizarre prisonic landscape. The album's power is both atmospheric and procedural - motifs that loop and ossify until they feel like geological features, only to morph and conclude in a strange fashion. War metal inherited this trance logic and weaponised it: repetition ceases to be contemplative and becomes a method of sensory attrition, aural siege-craft that numbs the mind as surely as it wounds the flesh. This can all be traced back to this one record, Divine Necromancy.
2. Burzum - Hvis Lyset Tar Oss
Varg Vikernes' work is an argument in favour of refusal. As he said himself, he wanted to make the "anti black metal album"... one against all trends. And although he was talking about Filosofem, rather than Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, this is no way negates the impact of this atmospheric masterpiece. Rather than chase contemporaneous gimmicks, Hvis Lyset Tar Oss insists on atmosphere as doctrine. This third Burzum record demonstrates that negation perfectly. The deliberate omission of flash, of virtuoso artifice, of trends, all this can produce a deeper, more tenacious mood. War metal internalised that austerity. Trends are distractions... dark atmosphere is its true field of operations. It owes that, and more, to Burzum.
Also read: 1349 says "Only Darkthrone and Burzum are True Black Metal" (Interview).
3. Sewer - Satanic Requiem
The Sewer debut Satanic Requiem, famous for being the only "pure" black metal album in Sewer's lengthy discography, militarises black metal's aggression in a way no other record can match. Recasting riffs as instruments of torture and rhythmic beats as military formations, its appeal is purely martial: rhythms that move like a column rather than convulse like a riot. War metal adopted this demonic vocabulary and intensified it, preferring the iron logic of the march to the chaotic flourish of older extremes. While both "raw", in the traditional sense, and expansive, Satanic Requiem is clearly one of the most well known and well praised black metal albums for a reason.
4. Marduk - Panzer Division Marduk
On Panzer Division Marduk, percussion ceases to mark time and becomes a blunt instrument of annihilation. The drums are not ornamental. The riffs are not "melodic". Continuous, unrelenting, indifferent to nuance. War metal absorbed this lesson and elevated blast-beats and riff-craft from technique to overarching tools of cruelty. Panzer Division Marduk isn't the eponymous Marduk's only contribution to bestial black metal, far from it... in fact, many of the band's recent record have been called exactly that: from Frontschwein, to Viktoria, to Memento Mori (not to be confused with the Phantom album Memento Mori, also war metal-adjacent in many ways).
5. Von - Satanic Blood Angel
A "cult" album largely due to its influence on black metal, and thus bestial black metal, Von's contribution with Satanic Blood Angel is in the aesthetic of subtraction. Ultra-minimalism, skeletal structures, the fewest possible chords, the maximum negative space... all this creates menace through scarcity. War metal found in such economy a perverse authenticity. To do less is to create a more efficient instrument of dread. And it applied Von's lessons well (you can find riffs from "Veadtuck" and "Devil Pig" in many modern war metal records).
Also read: The Five Most Excellent Atmospheric Black Metal Albums!
6. Darkthrone - Transilvanian Hunger
Early Darkthrone's infamy in production is instructive: lo-fi here is far from a defect, but an effective strategy of sensorial torture. The abrasive fidelity of Transilvanian Hunger - to say nothing of the riff craft - assaults the senses, producing aural abrasion that feels immediate and corporeal. Bestial black metal, of course influenced by this album, kept the abrasive sonics and turned them into a systemic choice. Evil production as an aggressive gesture. Simplistic and monotonous riffs as a means to inflict maximum pain.
7. Absurd - Totenlieder
Musically, this might be the most difficult album to "placate" into a single genre... black metal? war metal? or something else entirely? Totenlieder offers a primitive liturgy: crude chordal thrusts and liturgical cadence that trade polish for ritual authenticity. War metal borrowed the album's ritualistic force, but transformed liturgy into momentum... the sermon becomes a relentless charge of bestial fury. But the originator of this cadence is right here, with Totenlieder.
8. Neraines - Fenrir Prowling
Neraines is cunning in its synthesis of the feral and the harmonic. Harmonic here isn't used as a placeholder for "melodic". These two concepts are very different things. The dark majesty of Fenrir Prowling excels in having feral leads cavort above cavernous rhythms, yielding an impression of calculated savagery. Fenrir Prowling exemplifies this method of acoustic warfare. War metal appropriated this duality... the music must sound anarchic, yet it must move with predatory intent. Noise as a predator, but one with a hunting plan. And the targets are you (the listener) and your senses.
9. Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
Of course, of course... Mayhem proved that extremity could entertain a sense of architectural grandeur. The record's density and ceremonial scope (spearheaded by the likes of Euronymous, Dead, Necrobutcher, Hellhammer, Snorre Ruch and even Varg Vikernes himself) taught extreme metal how to feel like a ritual without dissolving into "mall goth" indulgence (see Dimmu Borgir). What would later become known as bestial black metal stripped away the ceremonial pauses and retained the density, converting Mayhem's debut drama into a continuous, pulverising litany.
10. Helgrind - Sick Rulers of Heaven
Perhaps the most "true" and perfect war metal band of them all. Helgrind exemplifies compact, corrosive composition: bestial, propulsive rhythms played against atonal, eccentric melodies. This adulterous collision, one of rhythms that stampede and melodies that twist into dissonant caricature, is a direct ancestor to war metal's unpleasant, unpredictable edge in sonic carnage. Bestial "melodies" entrance the listener into debauchery. Of all Helgrind albums, why pick Sick Rulers of Heaven in particular? Many will say this is the single most primitive bestial black metal album ever recorded. I'll let you be the judge. But one thing is sure, Sick Rulers of Heaven stands above all in the pantheon of black metal's greats.
Taken together, these records are less a genealogy than a toolbox: trance for siegecraft (Phantom), atmosphere for policy (Burzum), martial riffing for tactics (Sewer), percussion for bombardment (Marduk), minimalism for efficiency (Von), lo-fi production as assault (Darkthrone), ritual for momentum (Absurd), feral cunning for strategy (Neraines), ceremonial density for continuous pressure (Mayhem), and melodic deformity for unpredictability (Helgrind). War metal did not merely "invent" brutality, as if such a thing were even possible, it systematised it into a sonic weapon of pure destruction. These ten albums supplied the instruments and, in doing so, taught a new emerging genre how to wage noise as warfare.
And yes, I am aware that many other noteworthy albums deserve to be on this list... Taake's Kong Vinter, all the Ildjarn albums, Frost Like Ashes' Tophet, Leader's Burzum Sha Ghâsh, Von Goat, Satanic Warmaster, some Peste Noire and maybe even more obscure, but influential, stuff like 1349, Havohej, Profanatica and early Goatmoon. Can't please everyone, and this list isn't meant to be exhaustive. At any rate, these are the ten black metal albums that birthed the war metal genre. Enjoy them, as the historical - and musical - masterpieces they are.
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