Originally Posted by The Batlord

I guess the biggest difference between First and Second Wave black metal is that the Norwegian scene was an actual scene, unlike the early bands which were just as likely to be associated with thrash metal (Sodom) or existed completely by themselves (Bathory). The Norwegian bands sort of had a mission statement due to being influenced by a few guys who had this extreme view of what metal should and shouldn't be, and since the scene was so small and so insular it kind of all built upon itself and went further and further until all influences from thrash metal and modern death metal sort of got purged until their was this purity that never existed with the earlier bands.

Listen to Sarcofago's INRI album and Mayhem's De Mysteriis and you'll hear just how similar they are, and yet INRI is just as much a thrash album as it is a black metal album, whereas by the time Mayhem recorded their album they'd gotten rid of a lot of those "extraneous" influences and focused almost entirely on the Hellhammer and Bathory spectrum of metal. I'm not entirely sure what all that has to do with your post, but that's my sermon.



Totally. While they are obviously different in a lot of ways, just like Obituary is obviously different than Hellhammer, when I go on a binge for that kind of thing I usually end up flitting from one of those eighties extreme metal genres to the other without much thought.