Five hundred copies, pressed in Medellin in 1987, of a two track single almost nobody outside Colombia has ever held. That is the scale most of this roster worked at, and it is why the roll call below contains perhaps eight names a general reader recognises and thirty that were, at the time, invisible.
The six founding acts of first wave black metal are dealt with at length elsewhere. This is the rest of it: the Italians who were early and got nothing for it, the bands who worked behind the Iron Curtain on equipment the state controlled, the South Americans who invented the uniform, and the late arrivals who were already halfway into what came next. Read down the list and the striking thing is that it is a muster roll for an army that never once stood in the same field.
The six that every account names
| Band | Country | The record | Year | What it supplied |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Venom | England | Black Metal | 1982 | The name, the pseudonyms, the whole presentation |
| Mercyful Fate | Denmark | Melissa | 1983 | Occultism handled seriously, and the face paint |
| Hellhammer | Switzerland | Apocalyptic Raids | 1984 | Subtraction, and poverty treated as a method |
| Bathory | Sweden | Bathory | 1984 | The guitar tone, the rasp, the absence of warmth |
| Celtic Frost | Switzerland | Morbid Tales | 1984 | Permission to compose something ugly |
| Sarcofago | Brazil | I.N.R.I. | 1987 | The corpse paint, the spikes, the speed |
Those six carry the story. Everything below carries the argument, because a period that produced only six bands would not need a name.
Italy, early and uncredited
Formed in Pesaro in 1977 by Stefano Silvestri, who worked as Steve Sylvester, and Paolo Catena, who worked as Paul Chain, Death SS were putting occult theatre on a stage while Venom were still at school, and they spent a decade on demos and line-up collapses before Sylvester reassembled the group in 1988 and finally made an album. Everything Italian that followed comes back to them. Bulldozer, formed in Milan in 1980 around AC Wild on bass and vocals, were the loud half of the same instinct: The Day of Wrath, recorded at Psycho Studios in Milan with Algy Ward of Tank producing and released by Roadrunner on 13 March 1985, then The Final Separation out of Bips Studio in February 1986.
Two more sit alongside them. Necrodeath, out of Genoa, cut Into the Macabre at Obi-Wan Studio in Mulinetti in 1987, faster and less theatrical than either of the above. Mortuary Drape, formed in 1986, went the other way entirely and worked for the better part of a decade on demos and ritual before committing anything to an album, which is why their name circulates among collectors and almost nowhere else.
Behind the Iron Curtain
The eastern bands are the ones a western canon has the least excuse for forgetting, because their circumstances were the hardest and their records are among the strangest in the period. Törr formed in Prague in 1977 as a hard rock group, turned towards black metal across the eighties and got their debut Armageddon out only in 1990, once there was a state that would let them. Root, formed in Brno in 1987 around Jiri Valter, who performed as Big Boss, recorded Zjeveni in July 1990 and released it that December on Zeras, the only Root album with its lyrics in Czech.
Master's Hammer are the ones the second wave actually heard. Formed in Prague in 1987, they recorded Ritual between 5 and 9 December 1990 at Studio C, released it on Monitor in 1991 and had it picked up by Osmose three years later, and the record does most of what the Norwegian albums would do a year afterwards while also carrying timpani and a hunting horn. In Poland, Kat had been running in Katowice since 1979 and put out 666 in 1986, the Polish language version of the same album released elsewhere as Metal and Hell, with blasphemous lyrics written and pressed inside a state that took blasphemy seriously.
South America, where the uniform was invented
Cogumelo Records, working out of a shop in Belo Horizonte, is the single most productive address in this entire history. Sepultura came off its 1985 split, Sarcofago off the Warfare Noise compilation of 1986, and Holocausto recorded Campo de Exterminio in March 1987, an album whose literal descriptions of Nazi crimes have kept it under argument ever since. Outside that circle, Vulcano had been going since 1981 and released Bloody Vengeance on 10 August 1986, which by any reasonable measure is one of the first extreme metal albums made anywhere in the southern hemisphere.
Colombia is the part almost nobody covers. Parabellum, formed in Medellin in 1983, put out a two track single called Sacrilegio in 1987 in an edition of five hundred, and Terrorizer has since described them as one of the first black metal bands in the world. Reencarnacion, from the same city, added violin and classical guitar to something otherwise unlistenable. Euronymous of Mayhem named both of them as influences on his own band, which is about as direct an attestation of the line as this history offers.
A muster roll for an army that never once stood in the same field.
Scandinavia before Norway
There is a Swedish layer under all of this that gets skipped because the second wave happened next door. Mefisto in Stockholm put out two demos in 1986 and never made an album, which is the whole career and still enough for the tapes to be traded for thirty years. Morbid, also in Stockholm, recorded the demo December Moon in December 1987 with Per Ohlin singing, and Ohlin left for Norway shortly afterwards to front Mayhem, which makes that tape one of the more consequential objects in this history. Grotesque, in Gothenburg from 1988, put Tomas Lindberg and Alf Svensson together for two years before both went into At the Gates.
Norway itself contributed almost nothing to the first wave, and the exception proves how small the country's contribution was. Thorns, formed in Trondheim in 1989 under the name Stigma Diabolicum around the guitarist Snorre Ruch, produced two rehearsal tapes in 1991 and 1992 and no commercial release at all, and the guitar figures on them were carried directly into records other people made. Tiamat began in Stockholm as Treblinka in 1988 and had changed both its name and its direction by the end of the decade.
The late arrivals, already halfway into what came next
By the end of the decade the first wave and the second overlap, and the bands in this last group belong to both. Sabbat, begun in Japan in 1983 out of a group called Evil and led by the bassist who works as Gezol, played straight Venom worship with occult content for years before Envenom reached vinyl in 1991. Samael formed in Switzerland in 1987 and made Worship Him slow and cavernous when everybody around them was accelerating. Rotting Christ started in Athens in 1987 out of grindcore and took six years to arrive at the sound they are known for.
Three more close the era. Blasphemy, formed in Vancouver in 1984, released the demo Blood Upon the Altar in 1989 and Fallen Angel of Doom on Wild Rags in 1990, and everything now called war metal proceeds from those two tapes. Merciless in Sweden recorded The Awakening in 1990 and had it issued as the first release Euronymous ever put out on his own label, which makes a Swedish death metal record the founding item in the catalogue of Norwegian black metal's most notorious imprint. And Mayhem themselves had Deathcrush out in 1987, a record that belongs to this list rather than to the one after it.
Set them side by side, in five languages across four continents, and the case for treating this as one period holds only because the alternative is worse. What changed when the next generation took hold of the material is the subject of first Wave vs Second Wave, and the place all of it occupies in every chapter of the black metal story is the larger frame these forty bands sit inside.
