Quote:
Originally Posted by The Batlord
It's not just the production. Old school black metal was closer to hardcore punk than a lot of thrash, usually cause the bands didn't play their instruments very well, and it gave them a simpler, noisier sound (such as Venom or Hellhammer OR early Sepultura).
And the reason death metal and black metal could be almost indistinguishable in the eighties was because they were coming from the same influences (such as Venom and Hellhammer). Even in the late eighties when death metal was more defined they still had traces of that sound. Look at Obituary and how obviously influenced by Celtic Frost they were.
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Yeah, they do a lot of basic strumming riffs a la punk, I talked about this, I call it the "wall of sound" effect. More modern black metal bands tend to have the wall of sound with picking produced in for a more "metal" effect, but even 2nd wave black metal bands like Emperor and Mayhem was using those basic punk style riffs. To me, that's part of the production, though. You have to decide to produce it in a way that incorporates picking, using more intricate/technical progressions, and more melodic sounds, which black metal did not back then, and rarely does now. Slayer has this sound on their early albums, especially with the riffing. They were more technical in some ways, but their sound was still very "punk".
Even the grindcore stuff towards the end of the 80s like Napalm Death and Repulsion has similar characteristics to black metal/death metal/thrash metal. With that said, I can predict what a band is going to be labeled as upon first listen with a pretty decent success rate, even if the differences are subtle.