Euronymous often brought up Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, Bathory, Sarcofago and Venom in particular as the inspiration behind his own project. But approach (side A "Fuck", side B "Off" on PFA...) as well as music on the first few realeases - namely Voice of a Tortured Skull, Pure Fucking Armageddon and Deathcrush, in certain ways, seems really punk-ish. Many notable black metal musicians mentioned crust and oi punk as having a direct impact on black metal music back then (Fenriz and Messiah surely talked about it on more than one occasion).

So my question is do you have any idea as to what bands might have actually had an influence on the earliest extreme metal (later to be black metal) realeases such as those mentioned above?

I'm pretty sure the bands on the Ingenting for Norge release has an influence on Mayhem's early sound


Can't help you much on this matter, but the early scandinavian hardcore scene is where you should look at, stuff like Fader War and Anti-Cimex

Necrobutcher said that they listened to all sorts of "heavy" bands, including punk. I know that Maniac is still big punk fan. On Deathrehearsal the band covers Dead Kennedys. There are also some live recordings of Mayhem covering Turbonegro and Sex Pistols. So I guess these bands are relevant.

Thanks to both of you, it's a good starting point. From my experience what usually happens is that when you know a few bands, you sort of automatically discover new ones - one band covers another, a band memeber plays in a different band with a similar music style etc. Thanks again, I'm definitely going to look into the matter.

a lot of early extreme metal bands take from charged gbh i noticed.
And a lot of them take from the dark side of early crust too.

like Discharge perhaps?

well discharge is one of those bands that changed the musical landscape.

I did some research on the release you mentioned and Fader War in particular and it turns out that while ahead of its time and somewhat influential, the band literally disappeared right after recording the 5 tracks that appear on this compilation, which apparently has 1 review and I guess 5 ratings on rateyourmusic.com. It is impossible to get the album at the moment, and the only listing I've found on e-bay quotes a price of $2,100 - pretty steep, I'd say . I tried to find it as a digital version, but that proved impossible as well. It's staggering that even though the release is such a rarity, people like yourself and the guy that wrote the review for rateyourmusic.com mention it as influential after so many years. Question - did you have a chance to listen to it? Either from a vinyl or as a digital version?



Could you name some non-UK82 bands that might fit that descripion as well?

Yeah, and I've just read that this release:



Was pretty huge as far as extreme music in general goes.

There were a number of Scandinavian bands alongside the already mentioned Anti-Cimex such as:
Absurd (swe), Asocial (swe), Mob 47 (swe), Kaaos (fin)

Japan also had some brutal punk/crust stuff like:G.I.S.M, Gauze, Crow
Though I don't know that Mayhem would have been aware of them at least at that time.

They aren't punk, but Euronymous was a fan of NME's Unholy Death album.

Interesting. It's a shame most of the releases from these bands are such hard to find (much harder that classics like Dead Kennnedys and the such), maybe with the notable exception of Anti Cimex, parts of whose material was re-released as compilations and is available through e.g. amazon. The Japanese bands are even more obscure. Eh, there should be a website dedictaed to hardcore just like this one is dedicated to metal - I can easily find info on uber-obscure metal bands here. On the other hand I still can't figure out e.g. who played in Fader War.



I believe I've heard about that, they're supposed to be very similar to Venom, which clears it up a bit since Euro was a huge Venom fan (his fvorite band, which success he was planning to emulate at some point I'd guess).

Just for the record, I've just found out that though the liner notes say it is a Dead Kennedys cover, in fact instead of that you have a Celtic Frost - Into The Crypt of Rays cover on that tape. But yeah, the fact that Maniac chose to mention Dead Kennedys could prove that he actually liked the band, even if they didn't cover their songs..Anyway.

Well fuck, I had no idea it was that expensive. I never had the chance to listen to the whole release, only some songs, in digital format. I mentioned it mostly because I read several times about its influence on Scandinavian extreme music, and because it was namedropped by the band itself.




I doubt Mayhem were aware of these bands since they were very obscure outside of Japan, though Euronymous could been aware of GISM since they attained some notoriety, but I highly recommend these three bands, excellent music, the japanese had a knack for making brutal punk that was ahead of its time

Right. I've found it on YouTube, funnily enough, so now I know how the band sounded like - I'm still interested how they could disappear almost overnight but still make an impact. Weird shit. And yeah, the Japanese bands are brilliant too. Perhaps he did know some of them, since he was a fanatic when it came to sending letters, trading records, sending promos and generally building a global underground network via Metalion and Slayer magazine as well as his own growing list of contacts (supposedly he spent almost all of his money on that, too).