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Old 07-25-2011, 01:15 PM   #7145 (permalink)
LoathsomePete
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Here's a few more albums to broaden your black metal horizon, from around the same time period and geographical area.

Emperor - In The Nightside Eclipse

Their debut album that really changes a lot of what was conventional about Norwegian black metal at that time. Before you even played the CD there was already a difference, the album cover was in color. It wasn't some low quality photograph, but it detailed and beautiful painting that looks like something out of a J.R.R Tolkien novel. The production value is also quite different, yet very much the same if that makes any sense. One of the key attributes that defined the second wave of black metal was the lo-fi recording techniques that gave the albums there characteristic "raw" sound, as well as fit into the low budget many of the bands had to work with. Emperor struck a very fine balance between preserving that raw sound, however making a smooth production work for them, rather then against them. Lastly this is probably one of the earliest examples of adding symphonic elements to the black metal sound, which depending on what ideology you follow this is either where black metal got incredibly interesting, or died. Regardless of where your beliefs on how "traditional" black metal should be, this album was one of the real combo breakers that gave outsiders a conduit to a very xenophobic genre of music.

My other recommendation would be Bergtatt - Et eeventyr i 5 capitler (1994) by Ulver. It translates into "Taken into the Mountain - An Adventure in 5 Chapters" and is the first part of a 3-part album series before the band pretty much abandoned black metal in favor of other genres. This album was pretty unique because it utilized the black metal sound, however experimented using acoustic passages and short sections of clean vocals. Also the song writing completely abandons the common themes of death and opposition of Christianity and instead focuses on Scandinavian mythology, specifically trolls. Ulver really did manage to take all the best pieces of black metal, the cold, bleak, and desolate sounds, yet make them melodic. It's definitely worth finding a translation for the lyrics and following the story, and then doing the same for the next two albums, which will blow you away as well.

Also this one just came to me, but I don't really feel like doing another write up so I'll just give you the band and album name.

Dissection - Storm of the Light's Bane
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