The verdict first, because the whole economy follows from it. The companies that built death metal were bought, floated and folded into corporate groups; the black metal record labels were inherited, abandoned, or run out of a flat by the man who also played on the records. Almost none of them was ever worth anything on paper. Between them they decided which albums exist.
What follows is the descent of that business, from a shop counter in Oslo with nine catalogue numbers to a reissue trade that now moves more vinyl than the original pressings ever did. The definitions the whole thing rests on are set out in black metal explained.
Nine releases, and the model that outlived them all
Deathlike Silence Productions was founded in 1987 as Posercorpse Music by Oystein Aarseth of Mayhem, and it ran from the Helvete shop in Oslo until 1994. Its catalogue was numbered Anti-Mosh 001 to 009 and its releases ran from 1990 to 1994: the Swedish band Merciless first, then Burzum, Abruptum, the Japanese group Sigh, Enslaved and Mayhem themselves. Nine items. After Aarseth was killed in August 1993 the Norwegian company Voices of Wonder took the label over, saw the last releases out in 1994 and wound it up.
Nine records is not a business. It is a proof of concept, and the proof was the important part: a label needed a bank account, a post office box and somebody's word, and everything else about the record industry was optional. Every operation described below descends from that demonstration, and a good many of them still run on exactly those three things.
The labels the musicians ran themselves
The single most durable idea in this genre's commerce is that the band should be the company. Sigurd Wongraven of Satyricon set up Moonfog Productions with Tormod Opedal around 1992 rather than accept terms from anybody else, and Dark Medieval Times appeared under its name on 25 October 1993. Moonfog went on to carry Darkthrone, Thorns and Dodheimsgard, which made it for a decade the most consequential Norwegian label after the one that had closed.
The pattern repeats across thirty years and four countries. Norma Evangelium Diaboli was founded in France in 2003 by the guitarist who works as Hasjarl, of Deathspell Omega, and its roster runs through Watain, Antaeus, Ofermod and Katharsis: a label that has never given an interview releasing bands that mostly do not either. No Solace in Poland exists so that Mgla and Kriegsmaschine answer to nobody. Werewolf Records in Finland performs the same function for the circle around it. In each case the company is an instrument of control rather than a route to a wider audience, which is the exact inverse of what a label is for everywhere else in music.
A succession of small businesses, each one inheriting a catalogue from the one that had just failed.
The outsiders who actually paid
Set against the self run operations stand a handful of companies with no connection to the scene that nevertheless financed most of its canon. Osmose Productions, trading from northern France, paid for the first Immortal album, the Impaled Nazarene debut and two of the three Greek debuts of 1993, at a point when France had no black metal scene of its own to speak of. Peaceville in England, a doom and death company, released Darkthrone and then argued with them about the sound. Spinefarm in Finland carried Beherit. Cacophonous in England took Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir before either was an export.
Candlelight Records, founded in England in 1992, released In the Nightside Eclipse in February 1994 and built a catalogue out of the aftermath. Misanthropy Records, established in Britain in 1993 by Tiziana Stupia specifically because other companies would not deal with Burzum, ended up carrying Ved Buens Ende, In the Woods..., Arcturus, Fleurety and Primordial as well, which is a more interesting roster than the reason it was founded. It closed in 2000 and a large part of its catalogue was licensed on to Candlelight.
Tapes, vinyl and the German and French middle
Beneath the album labels sat a tape and seven inch economy that never intended to grow. No Colours Records in Germany pressed a large share of the mid nineties underground. Drakkar Productions in France reissued the Legions material and a great deal else that had circulated only on cassette. Avantgarde Music in Italy, Supernal Music in England, Sepulchral Productions in Quebec, Terratur Possessions in Norway and Fallen Empire in the United States each did the same job for one scene apiece: two hundred copies, no advance, no contract worth the paper, and a catalogue that a collector can now recite.
The two French companies that grew past that are the exceptions that prove the rule. Season of Mist, trading since the mid nineties, and Debemur Morti Productions, since 2003, both built rosters large enough to require staff, and both did it by signing across several genres rather than by selling more black metal. Poland, whose labels have carried its scene since the early nineties without ever needing anybody else's distribution, is polish Black Metal.
| Label | Country | Founded | Run by | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deathlike Silence | Norway | 1987 | A musician | Defunct 1994, nine releases |
| Osmose Productions | France | 1991 | Outsiders | Trading |
| Candlelight | England | 1992 | Outsiders | Absorbed |
| Moonfog Productions | Norway | 1992 | A musician | Dormant |
| Misanthropy | England | 1993 | An outsider | Closed 2000 |
| No Colours | Germany | 1994 | Outsiders | Trading |
| Nuclear War Now! | United States | 2000 | A collector | Trading |
| Norma Evangelium Diaboli | France | 2003 | A musician | Trading |
| Debemur Morti | France | 2003 | An outsider | Trading |
The American arrivals
North America came late and changed the terms. Southern Lord in Los Angeles, founded in 1998 by a musician with a doom and drone catalogue, put out the depressive one man records of the early 2000s and then Wolves in the Throne Room, which is the point at which an American black metal band first had a proper budget behind it. Profound Lore in Canada, from 2004, did the same job for a wing of the music that European labels had no vocabulary for. The Ajna Offensive built its list out of occult publishing as much as out of records. Between them they moved the centre of gravity of the business several thousand kilometres west, and for the first time bands in the genre were dealing with companies that had marketing departments and press schedules.
Whether that was an improvement is still argued about, and the argument is about money rather than about music. A label with staff needs a release calendar, a release calendar needs records finished on a date, and a good deal of what makes this genre worth arguing over was made by people who took eleven months over an album because nobody was waiting for it.
Where the money is now
It is in the reissue, and it arrives twenty five years late. Nuclear War Now! Productions in California and Hells Headbangers in Ohio have spent two decades buying the rights to records that sold in the low hundreds and pressing them on double vinyl for an audience that did not exist when they were made. A Mexican album from 1994, an Australian one from 1991, a French cassette from 1995: all of them are now in print, in better packaging than they ever had, at prices their makers would not have believed.
Two things follow from that and both are worth stating. The catalogue has been rescued, which is a real service, because a great deal of this music would otherwise be gone. And the money is a very long way from the people who made it, because almost none of the original contracts anticipated a second life. That is the inheritance this business has left. What the labels on this page were actually paying for, country by country as the music left Norway, is the wider story.
