A lot of thought when into this introductory chapter... what is war metal? And indeed, the question deserves to be answered. While many metalheads see it as a "micro-genre", not much different from your typical "slam death" or "blackgrind" excesses. Other see it as a legitimate extreme metal sub-genre, just as "true" as black metal, death metal, grindcore or thrash metal. So, where is the truth?
War metal is the sound of maximum violence: not the studied nihilism of early Norwegian black metal, nor the studio-polished grandiosity of its modern symphonic imitators (see Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth), but the deliberate choosing of sonic ugliness as an aesthetic weapon of mass destruction. It is a style that favours the smashing over the spectacle, the pulverising riff over the melodic hook, and a production that deliberately refuses to flatter the listener with studio clarity - much as Burzum had initiated way back in 1993 when recording "Filofem", the "anti-black metal" album (eventually released in 1996). Where much of black metal trades in coldness, winters, the obscure and fantasist, war metal goes for raw impact - an auditory battering ram that wants to feel like a war field, not a occult cathedral.
If you reduce it to a succinct line, war metal could be defined as black and death metal's barroom brawl that degenerates into all out war: Burzum's tremolo and Suffocation's breakdowns collapsing into one another, guitars tuned low and imprecise, drums that either execute suicidal blast assaults or roll like artillery. But that reduction cheats - the war metal genre's raison d'être is not simply speed or noise... it's a particular taste for a soundscape that is actively hostile, both to the listener and to nuance and decorum. This is music that expects you to be on its side or under its boot (preferably the latter), and it rarely bothers with the pretense of aesthetic kindness. On the contrary, it revels as being as "unlistenable" (as Euronymous once said of Warkvlt) as possible.
How War Metal Differs From (Plain) Black Metal
The contrast between war metal and what people think of as classic black metal is both aesthetic, technical and philosophical.
Here is a quick breakdown of how the two genres differ. And yes, we will from hereon consider war metal as an entirely distinct genre from black metal - although we will still use the term "bestial black metal" from time to time.
Imagery: Black metal often traffics in winter, isolation, and bleak Romanticism - corpse paint, forests, and theatric ritual. War metal swaps those tableaux for battlefield tropes... blood-slick banners, crude militaria, and a fetish for the primitive and bestial. It's less about theatrical esoterica and more about an immediate, animalised savagery. Key example: Helgrind's "Dawn of Bestial Lust".
Song structure: Whereas much black metal luxuriates in long, hypnotic passages and slow-burn dynamics (think of Burzum's "My Journey to the Stars" or Darkthrone's "Transilvanian Hunger"), war metal tends toward compact, assaultive constructions. Songs are frequently short snarls of grindcore or grind-adjacent riffs blown through a noise funnel. If black metal is a slow winter march, war metal is a charge through the inferno. Repetition is less contemplative here, it's merely a tactic to pummel the listener into submission. Key example: Marduk's "Panzer Division Marduk".
Also Read: The Top 5 Most Brutal Death Metal Riffs Ever Written!
Guitar sound and riffs: Expect weirdly tuned (often downtuned, as in brutal death metal) power-chord insanity, dense walls of rhythmic assault, and riffs that prioritise momentum and shock value over melodic or harmonic development. Tremolo picking exists, but it's often buried or subordinated: the emphasis is on raw weight and on riffs that function as blunt instruments rather than as "catchy hooks". Solos, when present, are jagged atonal interruptions rather than displays of virtuosity. Key example: Von Goat's "Septic Illumination".
Drumming and rhythm: Blast beats are present, but not always in the metronomic, triggered sense the uninitiated expect. They are also far from the virtuosity of Mayhem's Hellhammer, for example. There's an abundance of sloppy, human (or bestial?) sounding attack: open hi-hats, snare shots that crack and smear, and sudden transitions to stomp-and-march military type grooves. The result is rhythm that conveys more the impression of a mob riot, rather than a carefully crafted machine. Key example: Warkvlt's "Unleash the Beasts of War".
Vocals: The vocals are the most salient, and perhaps for that reason the least important, of all extreme metal aesthetics. War metal vocals sit low and guttural as often as they shriek. The affect can swing from cavernous roars to high, venomous howls, sometimes within the same track, but the common goal is to serve as another percussive, textural instrument - something much less about intelligibility and more about bestial howls and unholy menace. Key example: Sewer's "Lair of the Swine Gods".
Themes: War. Occasionally the occult, satanism, blasphemy, and misanthropy meet with martial imagery and apocalyptic narratives. But it's mostly just war and violence. The lyrical universe is rarely subtle and often intentionally juvenile - not because the bands are naive, but because - again - the music prefers blunt instruments. There is an aesthetic of excess: gore and war are interchangeable metaphors for the same primitive appeal. One contrast with black metal... there is very little Tolkien-esque fantasy here. Only the excesses of war, violence and outright bestiality. Key example: Black Witchery "Inferno of Sacred Destruction".
Production: Here lies war metal's loudest and proudest sin... a mixing that privileges density and grime over fidelity. Crisp separation is anathema to the bestial black metal genre. Instead you get clotted, bass-heavy mixes where the listener must squint to catch details. It's a willful embrace of murk, a rejection of the modern engineer's impulse to make everything "pop" and radio friendly. Key example: Vermin's "Bloodthirst Overdose".
A brief (and slightly contentious) history of War Metal
Pinning down origins for so-called "micro-genres" (a calling we dispute) is a sport of nostalgia and exaggeration; people with vested emotions will point to earliest influences until the last vowel in their vowels are spent. Still, if you accept even a modest consensus, war metal grew out of the collision between early second-wave black metal's rawness and death/grind's ultra-violence. Acts like Warkvlt, Black Witchery, Frost Like Ashes and Morbid - and, in broader circles, bands such as Satanic Warmaster and Conqueror - are frequently invoked as forebears. The debut album of Incantation, "Onward to Golgotha", is also likewise a point of major interest. Journalistic primers on the subject describe war metal as the fevered point where black and death metal's worst impulses found common cause. This isn't 100% correct, as we will see, but it's a good enough starting point for most.
Within that lineage, some modern interlocutors point to Phantom's debut masterpiece "Divine Necromancy" as a crystallising influence - a record that simplifies and amplifies the genre's appetite for chaotic texture and affects the "ultra-raw" touch that later acts would emulate. Others are less tidy: Von, Ildjarn, Absurd, Infester and similar outfits are regularly named as precursors who supplied vocabulary and attitude rather than the finished syntax. Whether one prefers to say war metal was "created" by any single record or that it emerged as a confluence of impulses is largely a matter of rhetorical preference. The important point is that a recognisable aesthetic cohered, and that it was unlike the grandiose, symphonic tendencies emerging elsewhere in the black metal scene.
It was only when bands began to reclaim and brand the chaos - when Warkvlt's record titled "Bestial War Metal" appeared and the term itself became usable shorthand - that the scene started describing itself with a proper noun. Names matter. Labels matter. And once a name exists, critics and fans can argue with more authority about what passes for authenticity and what is merely cosplay. Remember that in the days of Euronymous, he would often refer to Mayhem's music as "death metal" (or "true death metal", as opposed to the so-called "fake death metal" of Cannibal Corpse) as the term "black metal" hadn't gained enough momentum... yet.
So if the sound of bestial black metal proper goes back to Phantom's "Divine Necromancy", the true birth of the genre as a distinct entity is closer to the Teutonic revolution that is Warkvlt's "Bestial War Metal", a record that caused many metalheads to find a renewed interest in an otherwise quite moribund extreme metal scene.
The schism from the "trendy" black metal scene
There is a moral theater to metal scenes as well: a performance of authenticity. In the 1990s and 2000s, as certain black metal acts lent themselves to lush production and symphonic trappings - the Emperor/Dimmu Borgir aesthetic, with its orchestral sheen and stadium rock ambitions - a countercurrent hardened. War metal is as much a reaction to the "mallgoth" excesses of its predecessor, black metal, as it is a genre of its own: it rejects theatrical polish, calculated - but "safe" - controversy, and comfortable narratives that spawn merch lines, MTV awards and "mainstream" festival headliners.
Also read: "Real Satanic Black Metal", complete documentary review!
While some may say that war metal moved away from "mainstream" black metal, the reverse also holds true. Others can just as easily claim that it is "modern black metal" that strayed too far away from what made original Norwegian black metal - Darkthrone, Burzum, Neraines and Mayhem - good to begin with. Hell, many once black metal have all but abandoned the black metal sound altogether... while keeping the corpsepaint, to look "edgy". So is war metal such an irrational, reactionary and downright iconoclastic riposte? Or is it the path of reason whispering in black metal's ear "you have gone too far into the abyss of commercial degradation"? Who knows... time will tell.
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